Category Archives: International Affairs

Enter The Clowns

By Abu Faris | Published: November 24, 2009

If confirmation was needed, the recent decision of the Sudanese President, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, not to travel to Copenhagen for the UN climate change summit “in retaliation” for Danish cartoons depictions of the prophet Muhammad underscores the widely-held view that the Sudanese Islamist regime is packed with thugs, crooks and terminally dim buffoons.

The Sudanese head of state faces an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) last March accusing him of orchestrating war crimes in Darfur. Despite making several trips in the region, Bashir has so far avoided all states that have ratified the ICC statute.

However the threat of arrest is not what deters the President. At least not according to the loud-mouthed Sudanese ambassador to the UN, Abdel-Mahmood Abdel-Haleem. The ambassador is a man known for living in a hallucinogenic atmosphere of hyperbole on a planet far, far removed from reality. Speaking to BBC World’s Hardtalk,  Abdel-Haleem became characteristically over-excited:

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Also posted in Farce, Islamism, Misc | Leave a comment

Hasan in 2007: “Offensive Islam is the Future”

By Yossarian | Published: November 17, 2009

The Washington Post has obtained a copy of a slideshow presented by Major Hasan to US military doctor colleagues in June 2007. Rather than speak about medical topics, as he was supposed to, he lectured on Islam, suicide bombings and threats the US military would face if it continued to fight in Muslim majority countries. He called it “The Koranic World View At It Relates to Muslims in the US Military”.

View it here.

At slide 11 he discusses fatwas concerning Muslims serving in the US military. It concludes with a quotation whose origins are unclear:

“It’s getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims.”

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Also posted in Islamism | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Death Threats, Part Of An “Exclusively Political Method”

By Yossarian | Published: November 16, 2009

Global Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) likes to claim that it is devoted to an “exclusively political method” which is non-violent. Even though HT would be happy to see the deaths of millions and its ideology and strategy has been well documented by my Spittoonite comrade Houriya (not least in the excellent, but somewhat prosaically titled, report Hizb ut-Tahrir: Ideology and Strategy (pdf) which she authored with her colleague Hannah Stuart) there are still many politicians, civil servants and the like who repeat the wrong-headed platitude that HT is non-violent.

They could not be less correct, as a Bangladeshi news site reports:

The Dhaka University’s vice chancellor received death threats on Sunday from banned Islamist outfit Hizb ut-Tahrir.

The organisation in two letters asked A A M S Arefin Siddique to reinstate central coordinator of the outfit and spokesman professor Mohiuddin Ahmed to his position in the university without delay.

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Also posted in Islamism | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Islamists set terms in war on jihad

By Yossarian | Published: November 15, 2009

Swapan Dasgupta has an interesting article in The Pioneer today. He explores the differences between the recent case of Major Nidal Malik Hasan and that of the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her bodyguards 25 years ago.

The saga of an armed custodian of military power turning roguish, whether out of stress or conviction, is not new. Just 25 years ago, there was the incident of the Prime Minister’s own bodyguards turning their guns on the person they were entrusted to protect. The reason was not any personal dislike of Indira Gandhi but a political (or, if you must, religious) retribution for the military action on the Golden Temple in Amritsar. A few months earlier there were incidents of mutiny among Sikh soldiers unable to digest the desecration of their holiest shrine. In weighing a perceived injustice to their faith with loyalty to the state, individuals exercised painful options — and only a handful involved rebellion.

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Also posted in Islamism, Secularism | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

The Saudi-isation of Pakistan

By Yossarian | Published: November 11, 2009

A Pakistani magazine article from earlier this year.

Soldiers, policemen, factory and hospital workers, mourners at funerals and ordinary people praying in mosques have all been reduced to globs of flesh and fragments of bones. But, perhaps paradoxically, in spite of the fact that the dead bodies and shattered lives are almost all Muslim ones, few Pakistanis speak out against these atrocities. Nor do they approve of the army operation against the cruel perpetrators of these acts because they believe that they are Islamic warriors fighting for Islam and against American occupation. Political leaders like Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan have no words of solace for those who have suffered at the hands of Islamic extremists. Their tears are reserved exclusively for the victims of Predator drones, even if they are those who committed grave crimes against their own people. Terrorism, by definition, is an act only the Americans can commit.

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Also posted in Islamism, Secularism | Tagged , | 19 Comments

Awlaki Responds to Fort Hood Shooting

By Yossarian | Published: November 9, 2009

First the Spittoon brought you the news that the darling of Cageprisoners, East London Mosque, City University‘s Islamic Society and others too, Anwar al-Awlaki, had, in the past, been the imam for the Fort Hood murderer, Major Nidal Hasan. A connection which also linked him to two of the 9/11 hijackers, for whom Awlaki has been described as being a “spiritual advisor”.

Well, now Awlaki has responded to the shooting with an entry entitled Nidal Hassan Did the Right Thing (pdf) on his blog. I reproduce it below in the hope that people in various capacities in government (central and local), the media and more will become familiar with this man and never again will he be able to sully a venue in Britain.

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Also posted in Islamism | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Fort Hood Murderer Shared Imam With 9/11 Hijackers

By Yossarian | Published: November 7, 2009

And guess who it was…

Whilst Sunny, Harry’s Place and many more speculate about what lay behind Major Nidal Malik Hasan’s murderous rampage in Fort Hood, the Huffington Post carries a piece written by Kamran Pasha, who has a Muslim soldier friend, Richard, who knew Hasan. It contains a fascinating and troubling detail.

As Richard got to know Hasan better over the next several months, he found the major to be a pious man who was at the mosque daily. But Richard also began to garner a sense of Hasan’s political views that troubled him. A black-and-white outlook on Islam and life that had no room for nuance or debate. Hasan had apparently attended a mosque led by an imam named Anwar Al-Awlaki, a Yemeni scholar whose political views Richard disagrees with.

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Also posted in Terrorism | Tagged , , | 24 Comments

Zionist propaganda?

By Yossarian | Published: November 5, 2009

As a book read by nearly every child in Britain at some point, ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ is one of the most important ways in which children can be introduced to the horror of the Holocaust. And, given many Arab and Middle Eastern countries’ horrific levels of Antisemitism, it was great news when Paris-based Aladdin Project announced that they were distributing Farsi and Arabic translations of this profoundly influential book.

However:

Naim al-Qalaani from Hezbollah’s Committee for the Boycott of Zionist Goods in Lebanon told the TV the book’s distribution was a flagrant violation and a move toward normalization with Lebanon’s archenemy, Israel.

The diary of Anne Frank has been sold in Lebanon for years, both in English and in earlier translations into Arabic, and it was not clear why Hezbollah’s TV chose to highlight its existence in the country now.

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Also posted in Antisemitism, Islamism | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Iceland Under Threat Of War

By Yossarian | Published: October 28, 2009

Thomas Friedman famously wrote about the “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention”, that no two McDonald’s-having countries will go to war.

Since Israel now has a kosher McDonald’s, since Saudi Arabia’s McDonald’s closes five times a day for Muslim prayer, since Egypt has 18 McDonald’s and Jordan is getting its first, the chances of a war between them are minimal. But watch out for that Syrian front. There are no Big Macs served in Damascus. India-Pakistan? I’m still worried. India, where 40 percent of the population is vegetarian, just opened the first beefless McDonald’s (vegetable nuggets!), but Pakistan is still a Mac-free zone.

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Posted in International Affairs | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Iranian government employee involved in British ‘Prevent’ programme

By Guest | Published: October 28, 2009

This is a guest post by Sheikh Spear

****

Iran is a brutal theocratic dictatorship that executes minors, stones adulterous women to death, persecutes religious and ethnic minorities and murders and imprisons non-violent protestors for calling for free and fair elections.

Presenter

Fareena Alam presenting on Press TV

It is also not exactly supportive of the UK’s struggle against Islamist extremism. The Iranian government is widely believed to have supplied Iraqi insurgents with many of the roadside bombs that killed British soldiers in Iraq, Iran’s leaders have also called for the extrajudicial murder of a British novelist and funded London-based radical Islamist outfits such as the comically misnamed Islamic Human Rights Commission.

One would think, therefore, that the British government would regard employees of the Iranian government as being less than ideal partners for the UK domestic ‘Preventing Violent Extremism’ programme.

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Also posted in Islamism, PVE, Your View | Tagged , , , | 34 Comments

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