ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Protecting the climate by trashing Mother Earth By Ethel C. Fenig

Posted By on May 1st, 2017

Another spring day, another massive temper tantrum, exploding brain meltdown, euphemistically called a “march” protesting “climate change,” by the real liberal-left now that their alt/antifa unwanted one-world, phony-science, no-tolerance-for-diversity has been massively rejected in the U.S. and Europe — not to mention the slaughterhouses of the Middle East and North Korea.

On Saturday, there were so-called marches for the climate across the country. Well, you can’t really be against climate, can you? It is there. If you don’t like the climate where you presently live, move. Or buy some air conditioning and/or heating equipment. But no, that doesn’t work for the climatistas. But yes, all the human hot air expended at these silly gathering certainly changed the immediate climate, unlike the several previous Ice Ages in which the climate-change cold cycle seemed to begin and then end several thousands of years later without any human interference.

But then, during those cold, colder, coldest times renowned environmentalist and climatologist Leonard DiCaprio, in between being paid untold millions for acting gigs, wasn’t around to enlighten the planet. Now he is. Dashing in from one of his many luxurious energy-guzzling homes — or maybe from one of his equally energy-guzzling yachts all well-stocked with nubile under-30 females — he proclaimed, “Climate Change is Real”. Well, who can argue with an authority like a Hollywood star? The gaggle-eyed spineless resisters didn’t.

Afterwards, exhausted and exhilarated from the attention their childish, feel-good behavior, the overgrown climate marching mental two-year-olds departed, leaving behind, as two-year-olds do, their detritus – garbage — for others, the adults who don’t believe in climate change but in cleanliness, to clean up. As happened on Earth Day/March for Science the week before. As on the Women’s March a few months earlier. And the garbage from the March For Life before that. Oh, wait… those marchers cleaned up after themselves. What? Wait? Are the real planet lovers people who want kids and mostly don’t believe in climate change?

Of course, the average reader didn’t read about environmentalist’s casual disregard for garbage on this delicate planet in any respectable Washington-based news outlet because they were busy preparing for the White House Correspondents Association dinner a few hours after the climate march. The self-important correspondents missed the march, so they couldn’t report on it and its trashy aftermath. Instead, at the dinner, they heard trash talk from their master of ceremonies, a son of immigrants of some color, who criticized the president — “the elephant not in the room” — for doing his job of listening to the citizens of the country in person instead of through the warped “reporting” lens of those professionally assigned to the task. Elephants! Oh, the animal cultural appropriation!

Later at the dinner, Bob Woodward reassured the noncorresponding correspondents by addressing the absent Donald Trump (R), “Mr. President, the media is not fake news.” The fake news newsies applauded. Bathed in self-love and desirable victimhood, the correspondents left their gathering, leaving the mainly minimum-wage staff to clean up after them, thus protecting the planet’s climate.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

For Palestinians, Potential Top Leadership Candidates Emerge Fatah party members and a Hamas leader are among those considered possible future heads of the Palestinian Authority By Rory Jones see note please

Posted By on May 1st, 2017

This terrorist gallery of putative successors to Abbas is, as my late mother would say “worse and worser”….all Arafat redux…..and they would be touted by the media as “moderates and partners for peace, by partisans of the two state delusions. rsk

Here is an overview of four Palestinian leaders who could assume control of the Palestinian Authority through elections or by succession:

Marwan Barghouti , Fatah party

Marwan Barghouti appearing in a Jerusalem court, in a file photo from January 2012. Photo: Bernat Armangue/Associated Press

Marwan Barghouti, 57 years old, is the most popular candidate to succeed Mahmoud Abbas as president of the Palestinian Authority. However, he is in prison serving multiple life sentences for planning attacks against Israelis. Under Palestinian law, Mr. Barghouti could run for president and hope that Israel released him in the event he won.

Ismail Haniyeh , Hamas

Ismail Haniyeh in a March photo from Gaza City. Photo: Mohammed Asad/APA Images/Zuma Press

Ismail Haniyeh, in his mid-50s, is Hamas’s most senior leader in the Gaza Strip. He is soon expected to become leader of the Islamist movement and take over from Khaled Meshaal. For Mr. Haniyeh to become Palestinian leader, his Hamas faction would have to win presidential and parliamentary elections, an outcome that would worry Israel and the international community.

Mohammed Dahlan , Fatah party

Mohammed Dahlan speaking in an interview with the Associated Press in a file photo from January 2011. Photo: Majdi Mohammed/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Mohammed Dahlan, 55, was the former Fatah head in the Gaza Strip until he fell out with Mahmoud Abbas. He lives in Abu Dhabi and has the support of some Arab nations, such as the United Arab Emirates, to return to the Palestinian territories to help lead. But just 7% of the Palestinian public want to see Mr. Dahlan take over as Palestinian leader, according to the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.

Mahmoud Aloul , Fatah party

Mahmoud Abbas in February appointed Mahmoud Aloul as the vice president of the Fatah party, for the first time indicating he might support a Palestinian official to succeed him. Mr. Aloul, a former governor of the West Bank city of Nablus, wasn’t appointed as deputy in the Palestinian Authority, however, making it unclear whether he would succeed Mr. Abbas.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

How to Defuse the North Korean Threat China’s interests are aligned—for the moment—with those of the U.S., Japan and South Korea. By Mark Helprin

Posted By on May 1st, 2017

Mr. Helprin, a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute, is the author of “Winter’s Tale,” “A Soldier of the Great War” and the forthcoming novel “Paris in the Present Tense.”

North Korea has embarked at breakneck speed upon a slipshod effort to field land-, mobile-, and submarine-based ICBMs with nuclear warheads. Unlike the eight other nuclear powers, North Korea’s doctrine resides unknowingly and capriciously in the mind of one man.

All nuclear doctrines are different, but most never go beyond the conditional when treating their arsenals as instruments of deterrence. North Korea, however, issues an unrelenting stream of histrionic threats that comport with its recklessness in the shelling of South Korea and sinking of one of its warships, the kidnapping of Japanese citizens in Japan, assassinations abroad, executions and Stalinist gulags at home, criminal sources of revenue, proliferation of missilery, and, tellingly, its perpetual war footing.

The totality of its declarations, behavior, and accelerating nuclear trajectory cannot be ignored. Nuclear weapons alone radically change the calculus of any strategic problem. Given the complexity and fragile interdependence of the structures of American life, nuclear detonations in only a few of our cities constitute a true existential danger. North Korea’s successful August test of the KN-11 submarine-launched ballistic missile—along with its construction of a second ballistic-missile submarine and its development of longer-range land-based missiles—will put North America at risk.

Note that North Korea has no defensive need of nuclear weapons. Because of the vulnerability of South Korean population centers, it can exercise an almost equivalent deterrence with its conventional forces and huge stockpile of chemical weapons.

Over two decades the U.S. has run the extremes from President Clinton’s foolish or deceptive claim that his diplomacy had solved the North Korean nuclear problem, through the serial procrastinations of subsequent administrations, until the belated realization that if nothing else works the U.S. will have to attack North Korea full force. The first option has failed. The second, to which it is possible we may be compelled, is catastrophic.

The heart of South Korea’s economy and half its 50 million people are densely concentrated within range of the approximately 10,000 North Korean artillery pieces, rocket launchers, and short-range ballistic missiles capable of delivering chemical munitions, of which North Korea has an estimated 5,000 metric tons. Even conventional explosives would have a devastating effect. No matter how fast South Korean and American forces raced to suppress such fires, not to mention a nuclear attack itself, millions would probably die.

With such shock and escalation there is no guarantee that China or Russia would not come to North Korea’s aid. Russia could also take the opportunity to feast upon Eastern Europe if American power were monopolized by the battle, as it would be.

As undesirable are the two extremes of a North Korean nuclear strike or pre-emptive war in armament-saturated East Asia, America cannot accept the former. The U.S. will be forced to the latter if it fails to exploit the considerable ground that still lies between them.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Bolton Unmasking Files Democrats give Susan Rice a pass they didn’t give to John Bolton.

Posted By on May 1st, 2017

Democrats and their press allies are going all in to squelch the Susan Rice “unmasking” story, insisting that the decision by Barack Obama’s national security adviser to seek the name of at least one Trump campaign official was routine and no big deal. Tell that to former Bush Administration official John Bolton, whom Democrats pilloried for doing the same with far more justification.

The U.S. routinely eavesdrops on foreign officials, and sometimes U.S. citizens are caught on tape. Intelligence agencies strip the names of those U.S. citizens for privacy. A source confirms that Ms. Rice nonetheless requested the name of a Trump transition official in at least one intelligence summary, and Ms. Rice has all but confirmed that she did.

Democrats and the media have been at pains to call this business as usual. House Intelligence Committee Democrat Adam Schiff released a tutorial on why unmasking is “lawful.” “Susan Rice Did Nothing Wrong,” said an NBC headline, quoting no one on the record.

That’s not what liberals said in 2005 as they opposed Mr. Bolton’s nominate to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Then Senators Joe Biden and Chris Dodd kicked up a fuss that, as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, Mr. Bolton had 10 times over four years asked for the names of American officials who were swept up in National Security Agency monitoring.

Mr. Bolton and the State Department were clear that he followed procedure and provided intelligence officials with sound national-security reasons for requesting the names. Interpreting intelligence was central to Mr. Bolton’s duties, so unmasking names on rare occasions wouldn’t be unusual.

Critics nonetheless assailed Mr. Bolton for behavior for which they now absolve Mrs. Rice. Mr. Dodd claimed unmasking was “rarely requested” and “infrequently” by “non-career political appointees such as Mr. Bolton.” The New York Times reported that the identifies of Americans are released “only in response to special requests, and these are not common, particularly from policy makers.”

Democrats argued (with no evidence) that Mr. Bolton’s requests were politically motivated and the Los Angeles Times questioned whether Mr. Bolton had requested the names to “intimidate intelligence analysts.” A Times editorial called on Mr. Bolton to “step aside,” noting Mr. Dodd was “rightly inquiring about Bolton’s unusual request to look at [NSA] intercepts and why he asked for the identities of analysts. Why indeed?”

House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes recently stepped aside from his committee’s Russia probe after complaints that he talked publicly about the unmasking. But in 2005 Democrats couldn’t stop talking to the press, mostly complaining that Bush intelligence agencies wouldn’t give Congress the names of those Mr. Bolton had unmasked. “I just think it’s important to remember here that Mr. Bolton himself was able to look at this classified information,” said then Sen. Barack Obama.

The Administration ultimately agreed to show transcripts (with the names redacted) to top members of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Democrats then drew up a list of 36 individuals whom Mr. Bolton had clashed with over the years and called on National Intelligence Director John Negroponte to rule out that these were the people Mr. Bolton had unmasked.

Senator Jay Rockefeller claimed that Mr. Bolton’s decision to share the name of one unmasked citizen with a direct subordinate (who possessed the necessary security clearances) was improper and amounted to the mishandling of classified information. Democrats dug in, and Mr. Bush was forced to name Mr. Bolton to the U.N. as a recess appointment.

Compare all this to the Rice episode. Ms. Rice had no direct intelligence duties in her NSC post, and no Democrat has provided a valid reason that Ms. Rice might have needed to unmask anyone associated with the Trump presidential campaign. Twelve years on, not one of the 10 individuals unmasked by Mr. Bolton has had his or her identity leaked. By contrast, the Washington Post reports that no fewer than nine Obama appointees or career officials leaked or confirmed the identity and conversations of unmasked former Trump adviser Michael Flynn.

If John Bolton’s unmasking was questionable, then Mrs. Rice’s was more so. The House and Senate Intelligence committees should investigate what she did and why.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

See the astonishing reason actor Richard Dreyfuss left Tucker Carlson absolutely speechless

Posted By on May 1st, 2017

THANKS DPS

Actor Richard Dreyfuss, known for roles in “Jaws,” “The Goodbye Girl” and “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” left Fox News host Tucker Carlson utterly speechless on his show Friday night.

Dreyfuss, according to Carlson, emailed the Fox host a few days prior asking to appear on Carlson’s show to talk about a recent issue that Carlson and another guess sparred over: the federal judge’s recent ruling which said that it’s unconstitutional for President Donald Trump to unilaterally withhold federal funds from “sanctuary cities” for not complying with his demands.

Carlson’s point was there was no outcry from Democrats when former President Barack Obama threatened to withhold federal funds from North Carolina last year over the state’s controversial “transgender bathroom law.”

Dreyfuss explained to Carlson that the president and the executive branch, constitutionally speaking, don’t have the right to withhold funds from states. That job, Dreyfuss explained, belongs to Congress.

But Dreyfuss didn’t want his conversation with Carlson to end there.

“I want to mention one thing,” the actor told Carlson. “You were talking about the speakers on university campuses. And I am totally, incontrovertibly on your side about this.”

“I think any intrusion into freedom of speech is an intrusion into freedom of speech. And when one of the presidents of one of the colleges said, ‘this is a school, not a battlefield,’ I said, no, it is a battlefield of ideas and we must have dissonant, dissenting opinions on campuses and I think it’s political correctness taken to a nightmarish point of view,” Dreyfuss explained.

The star actor continued:

I have withdrawn from partisan politics. I am a constitutionalist who believes that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights must be central and the parties must be peripheral. What’s most important for me is what you just mentioned haphazardly, we are over 30. Civics has not been taught in the American public school system since 1970. And that means everyone in Congress never studied the constitution and the bill of rights as you and I might have.

And that is a critical flaw because it’s why we were admired and respected for so long, it gives us our national identity, it tells the world who we are and why we are who we are, and without a frame that gives us values that stand behind the bill of rights, we’re just floating in the air and our sectors of society are not connected.

EDUCATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump and Congress Can Help Restore Campus Free Speech Withdraw the Obama Title IX ‘guidance’ and tie federal funds to respect for the First Amendment. By Harvey Silverglate

Posted By on May 1st, 2017

Mr. Silverglate, a co-author of “The Shadow University,” is a co-founder and board member of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Samantha Harris, FIRE’s vice president for policy research, contributed to this article.

The culture of censorship within higher education is now legendary. And although the problem is of long standing, the Obama administration made it worse by giving academic bureaucrats a convenient excuse—“the feds made us do it”—for punishing speech. The Trump administration and Congress could help restore academic freedom, without which higher education cannot flourish.

Campus censorship affects faculty as well as students and guest speakers. And conservatives aren’t the only targets. At Louisiana State University, Teresa Buchanan’s tenure didn’t protect her from dismissal in 2015 for occasionally using vulgar language in her education classes. She did so, she said, to prepare future teachers for the language they would encounter from some students. Administrators ignored a unanimous faculty committee recommendation against termination and a report of the American Association of University Professors that found Ms. Buchanan’s academic freedom was violated.

In a statement to the press, LSU claimed it was following “the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights’ advisements.” That would be a 2013 OCR statement, in a settlement with the University of Montana, that in order to comply with federal antidiscrimination laws, universities must ban “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature,” including “verbal” conduct—in other words, speech. LSU gave these “advisements” weight because of OCR’s power to withhold federal funding. The Obama administration’s overreach in higher education produced many stories like Ms. Buchanan’s.

The new administration has an opportunity to undo this damage. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos should instruct OCR to rescind its “guidance” undermining the right to free speech and guarantee that universities that receive federal dollars return to their role as centers of inquiry and learning, not censorship and indoctrination. Further, OCR’s practice of setting national standards through “guidance”—without seeking comment from academic institutions and the public—should end. Future regulations should be subject to open debate, as mandated by the Administrative Procedure Act. CONTINUE AT SITE

EDUCATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Spreading Tentacles of Censorship By Eileen F. Toplansky

Posted By on May 1st, 2017

The list of those who are “disinvited” to forums where free speech should exist keeps getting longer. In some ways, it is a badge of honor to be included in that list; in other aspects, of course, it is the abject failure to respect the right to hold an opinion. Ultimately, it is “campus fascism” on the rise.

Phyllis Chesler is the latest victim after having been “disinvited by the King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Arkansas Law School.” In her article titled “Being a Zionist is even worse than being an Islamophobe,” she describes being censored by a state university. She was part of a conference on a subject on which she is an expert, having studied the topic of honor killings for many years and she has a track record as an academic, an author, a human rights activist and women’s rights leader. But none of this mattered since, as so many are learning, “objectivity, true facts, clear reasoning, genuine intellectual diversity and the capacity for self-criticism” are now verboten — gone from centers of academic learning.

Instead they are replaced with vulgarity, incivility, obtuse thinking, censorship, and outright violence.

Bruce Bawer writes a searing appraisal of the hypocrisy of three Center faculty members — Joel Gordon, Ted Swedenburg and Mohja Kahf — who “slammed” Chesler. These three found Chesler’s alleged anti-Muslim bigotry, hate speech and lack of a diversity of views so abhorrent that she needed to be shut down. The fact that Chesler has “spent her career decrying the systematic misogyny in Islamic cultures” while highlighting the refusal of many of her former feminist allies to address this issue was just too much for these intellectual weaklings.

Thus, Phyllis Chesler joins the ranks of other worthy and courageous individuals such as Milo Yiannopoulous, Ann Coulter, Charles Murray, Heather McDonald, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Nonie Darwish, Brigitte Gabriel, and David Horowitz, whose voices are being silenced in institutions of higher learning.

And so the symposium went on without the expertise of Dr. Chesler. In fact, “no one contacted [her]. No one sent a letter of regret or support and no one issued a statement of solidarity.” Consequently, “. . . yet another disgraceful episode in the ever-lengthening chronicle of campus compromise and cowardice on the topic of Islam” occurred.

It is way overdue that every one of these speakers who truly put their lives on the line to uphold the core principle of freedom of speech receives the unwavering support of all Americans.

It is way overdue that parents of students attending schools such as the University of Arkansas, University of California-Berkeley, and Claremont McKenna College to name a few, should remind administrators that such suppression of expression is a “view at odds with the foundation of this country. In fact Frederick Douglass, once said “speech suppression is the equivalent of theft.” And if a university fails to acknowledge this supremely profound idea, then it no longer deserves financial support.

It is high time that administrators publicly explain how they can justify violence on a campus that is supposed to be dedicated to the freedom of thought. Instead what we see are “administrators responding to the intellectual thuggery with sympathy and understanding.” They need to be held personally accountable for the violence and censorship.

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Convergence of US-Israel national security interests Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

Posted By on May 1st, 2017

In 2017, the national security interests of the US and Israel have converged, in an unprecedented manner, in response to the anti-US Arab Tsunami; anti-US Islamic terrorism; the declining European posture of deterrence; drastic cuts in the US defense budget; an increasingly unpredictable, dangerous globe; Israel’s surge of military and commercial capabilities and US-Israel shared values.

Contrary to conventional wisdom – and traditional State Department policy – US-Israel and US-Arab relations are not a case of zero-sum-game. This is currently demonstrated by enhanced US-Israel strategic cooperation, concurrently with expanded security cooperation between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other pro-US Arab countries, as well as stronger cooperation between the US and those same Arab countries. Unlike the simplistic view of the Middle East, Arab policy-makers are well aware of their priorities, especially when the radical Islamic machete is at their throats. They are consumed by internal and external intra-Muslim, intra-Arab violence, which have bled and dominated the Arab agenda, prior to – and irrespective of – the Palestinian issue, which has never been a core cause of regional turbulence, a crown-jewel of Arab policy-making, nor the crux of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Israel’s posture as a unique ally of the US – in the Middle East and beyond – has surged since the 1991 demise of the USSR, which transformed the bi-polar globe, into a multi-polar arena of conflicts, replete with highly unpredictable, less controllable and more dangerous tactical threats. Israel possesses proven tactical capabilities in face of such threats.

Thus, Israel provides tailwind to the US in the pursuit of three critical challenges, which impact the national and homeland security of the US, significantly transcending the scope of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Palestinian issue:

1. To constrain/neutralize the Ayatollahs of Iran, who relentlessly aspire to achieve mega-capability (nuclear), in order to remove the mega-obstacle (the US) from the Persian Gulf, and achieve the mega-goal (domination of the Muslim World and subordination of the “modern day American Crusaders”).

2. To defeat global Islamic terrorism, which aims to topple all pro-US Arab regimes, expand the abode of the “believers” and crash the abode of the “infidel” in the Middle East and beyond.

3. To bolster the stability of the pro-US Arab regimes, which are lethally threatened by the Ayatollahs and other sources of Islamic terrorism.

Moreover, Israel has been the only effective regional power to check the North Korean incursion into the Middle East. For instance, on September 6, 2007, the Israeli Air Force destroyed Syria’s nuclear site, built mostly with the support of Iran and North Korea, sparing the USA and the globe the wrath of a ruthless, nuclear Assad regime.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Saudi Arabia’s ‘Lavish’ Gift to Indonesia: Radical Islam by Mohshin Habib

Posted By on May 1st, 2017

Prior to Saudi Arabia’s attempts to spread Salafism across the Muslim world, Indonesia did not have terrorist organizations such as Hamas Indonesia, Laskar Jihad, Hizbut Tahrir, Islamic Defenders Front and Jemmah Islamiyah, to name just a few. Today, it is rife with these groups.

A mere three weeks after the Saudi king wrapped up his trip, at least 15,000 hard-line Islamist protesters took to the streets of Jakarta after Friday prayers, calling for the imprisonment of the capital city’s Christian governor, who is on trial for “blaspheming the Quran.”

In a separate crisis, crowds were demanding that Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (known familiarly as Ashok) be jailed for telling a group of fishermen that, as they are fed lies about how the Quran forbids Muslims from being governed by a kafir (infidel), he could understand why some of them might not have voted for him. If convicted, Ashok stands to serve up to five years in prison.

Accompanied by a 1,500-strong entourage, Saudi King Salman bin Abdul Aziz arrived in Indonesia on March 1 for a nine-day gala tour. He was welcomed warmly not only as the monarch of one of the world’s richest countries, but as the custodian of Islam’s two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina.

While appearing to be taking a holiday rather than embarking on an official state visit — the 81-year-old sovereign spent six days at a resort in Bali — the king had some serious business to attend to. In what was advertised as an effort to promote “social interaction” between Saudi Arabia and Indonesia — with His Majesty announcing a billion-dollar aid package, unlimited flights between the two countries and the allotment of 50,000 extra spots per year for Indonesian pilgrims to make the hajj to Mecca and Medina – it seems as if the real purpose of the trip was to promote and enhance Salafism, an extremist Sunni strain, in the world’s largest Muslim country, frequently hailed in the West as an example of a moderate Islamic society.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Smokescreens in Islam: Confusing the Public about the Facts by Denis MacEoin

Posted By on May 1st, 2017

Qadri’s admirable take on terrorism conceals another large elephant in the room. Islam has for centuries used violence against non-Muslims in what is considered a legitimate manner: through jihad. It is not simply that Muslim armies have fought their enemies much as Christian armies have engaged in war. Jihad is commanded in the later verses of the Qur’an, is endorsed in the Traditions and the biography of Muhammad, and codified in the manuals of shari’a law. Qadri knows this perfectly well, and at times inadvertently reveals as much in several ways.

Qadri does not just insist that Islam is a religion of peace and security. By tucking all references to jihad in footnotes in transliterated Arabic, he never has to explain what it is about and how it relates to his rulings on what is and what is not permissible.

It is hard to be a reasonably knowledgeable Muslim and not know that calls for violence pervade the Qur’an and sacred traditions, or that Islamic armies have been fighting European Christians, Indian Hindus, and others since the 7thcentury.

Islam, after all, conquered Persia, Turkey, North Africa and the Middle East, Greece, Spain and most of Eastern Europe — until its armies were stopped at the gates of Vienna in 1683.

Following the terrorist attack outside Britain’s Houses of Parliament on March 22, 2017, it was not surprising or wrong that many Muslims denounced the attack and declared it to be un-Islamic. Two days afterwards, Dr. Mohammed Qureshi, chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Shropshire Islamic Foundation, said:

We need to be united in this situation.

We should not give any religion a bad name and these people need to be dealt with in full force and there should be zero tolerance when it comes to dealing with them.

My heart goes out to these victims. And my heart goes out to the people’s families and those who are injured. I pray they all have peace in their minds.

He added:

There is no place for these acts in the religion of Islam.

The people are being radicalised and the young and vulnerable people need to be protected.

We need to disassociate this with Islam, as Islam is a religion of peace.

This view was echoed in a press release by the Foundation, in which sympathy for the dead and their families was followed by a commitment to non-violence: “as a community, we need to come together to condemn violence and hatred and work towards cohesion and tolerance”.

More recently, a document about Islamophobia published by the Green Party of the United States affirmed the purportedly peaceful character of Islam:

The highest goal of the Islamic faith is Peace. Peace is pursued over all and for Muslims the world over, ‘holy war’ has nothing to do with the concept of jihad. The Arabic word translates as ‘struggle,’ and is used a handful of times in the Quran to speak of the struggle to stay on the righteous path, to fulfill obligations to family, community and Creator, what the Islamic scholars call a higher jihad.

These claims, however, seem innocent of the verses that say:

So when you meet those who disbelieve [in battle], strike [their] necks until, when you have inflicted slaughter upon them, then secure their bonds…. And those who are killed in the cause of Allah — never will He waste their deeds. Surah Muhammad [47:4]