Category Archives: Islamism

The “CIA Created the Al-Qaeda” Myth

By Effendi | Published: September 27, 2011

It wasn’t Pakistan but the CIA that created the savage Haqqani Taliban network that U.S. Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen has been belatedly fingering as the chief culprit in Afghanistan’s agonies, Rehman Malik, Pakistan’s Interior Minister, declared on Sunday. It is an outrageous lie, as anyone even vaguely familiar with the terrorist savageries visited upon the people of South Asia over the past three decades will know. But I don’t expect that this will matter in the least to fashionable “left-wing” opinion among the world’s rich white people, where the consensus has for some long while served with remarkable precision as an echo of the lumpen view incited by right-wing Pakistani chauvinists.

Terry Glavin offers an insight into the history of the Haqqani Network, that Taliban stronghold in Pakistan, nurtured and funded by Pakistan’s secret police, the ISI.

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Also posted in Terrorism | 3 Comments

Mecca: Sacred Muslim Sites Destroyed To Create Hotels and Public Toilets

By Effendi | Published: September 25, 2011

Mecca: Blingsville, KSA

According to an article in the Independent, urbanisation projects for the redevelopment of Mecca are responsible for the destruction of many sites sacred to Muslims. The following are the next to feel the brunt of the demolition crews:

Bayt al-Mawlid

When the Wahabis took Mecca in the 1920s they destroyed the dome on top of the house where the Prophet Mohammed was born. It was thenused as a cattle market before being turned into a library after a campaign by Meccans. There are concerns that the expansion of the Grand Mosque will destroy it once more. The site has never been excavated by archaeologists.

Ottoman and Abasi columns of the Grand Mosque

Slated for demolition as part of the Grand Mosque expansion, these intricately carved columns date back to the 17th century and are the oldest surviving sections of Islam’s holiest site. Much to the chagrin of Wahabis, they are inscribed with the names of the Prophet’s companions. Ottomon Mecca is now rapidly disappearing

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Posted in Islamism | 1 Comment

Why I Hate Al Qaeda

By Cross Post | Published: September 11, 2011

This is a cross-post by Karima Benoune

2,975 reasons to hate Al Qaeda. There are millions more.

To start, there are 2,975 reasons from 90 countries. An unforgettable patchwork quilt of humanity that was disappeared on a Tuesday morning ten years ago. (credit for photo above depicting many victims of 9/11) But that is only the beginning.

I hate Al Qaeda for all the human beings they have killed – the Africans, Americans, Arabs, Asians, Europeans, agnostics, atheists, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims.

I hate Al Qaeda because they have murdered thousands of Muslims even while claiming to represent them, a claim they make even while bombing mosques during Ramadan. Because they reduce a rich religious heritage to a series of absurd prohibitions. They make the most sacred pronouncements, like Allahu Akbar – God is Great – into threats, into epithets.

I hate Al Qaeda because of the Caliphate of Doom they want to build.

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Also posted in Terrorism | 5 Comments

apparently we’re all robert spencer now, according to the weasels at “spinwatch”

By bananabrain | Published: August 24, 2011

we at the spittoon have for some time been a target for the not-very-impressive “spinwatch” site, which appears to be the hobby-horse of strathclyde university’s answer to bob pitt, dr david miller. dr miller, we hardly need remind you, appears to think that spittoon authors are without exception rabid “neo-cons”, by which he appears to mean some sort of catch-all imperialism of liberal democracy imposed by force of arms on the bucolic, picaresque and entirely pacifist natives of the middle-east and south asia. as if this wasn’t bad (or inaccurate) enough, we are also supposed to be apostles of islamophobia; apparently it isn’t clear enough to someone who is supposed to be an academic that what we oppose is the virulent political ideology known as islamism – as well as other forms of religious and political extremism; jewish, christian, atheist, muslim, ethnicity-based – we are equal-opportunity anti-extremists, or we certainly try to be.

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Also posted in Activism, Anti Muslim bigotry, Blogosphere, Dodgy Policy Wonks, Education, European Fascism, Far Right Extremism, Homophobia, Identity Politics, Moral relativism, Nutters, Racism, The Far Left, The Left, The Regressive Left | 20 Comments

“A Momentous Occassion” – iEngage Exposed

By Effendi | Published: July 20, 2011

When you get a chance, do please read the report which documents the iEngage campaign to gain access to the position of the APPG Secretariat by Dr Chris Allen at Applied Social Studies, School of Social Policy at the University of Birmingham. It was this report which recommended to MPs to drop iEngage. To its credit, it has catalogued, fairly and with clinical precision, the deceptions and chicanery employed by iEngage to cover up their extremist agenda.

Here’s a brief excerpt:

Engage

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Also posted in UK Politics | 9 Comments

MPs Vote IEngage Out of the APPG

By Effendi | Published: July 20, 2011

The JC brings good news, tremendously good news:

MPs on the all-party group on Islamophobia have voted against using iEngage, the controversial Islamist group, as its secretariat.

The vote on Monday evening, by 60 to 2, followed the resignation in February of its Conservative chair Kris Hopkins and Labour vice-chair Lord Janner over an earlier decision to use iEngage.
Despite their resignations the group retained the link with iEngage. However it pledged to investigate fully concerns before iEngage was officially confirmed.

Lib Dem MP Simon Hughes, who took over as from Mr Hopkins and Lord Janner as one of the group’s chairmen, was tasked with considering iEngage’s record. In June he asked Birmingham University academic Chris Allen to compile a report to be sent to members of the group.

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Also posted in UK Politics | Leave a comment

Today the Murdoch Empire, Tomorrow the Pro-Fascist Left?

By Effendi | Published: July 17, 2011

Nick Cohen thinks that the sections of the media and the political establishments of the “liberal-left” which reflexively supports and patronises Islamist theocratic movements (largely because they are “politically correct” stevedores of anti-semitism) will ultimately be dismantled with the same lightning speed as with the unravelling of the Murdoch media empire. Can he be right?

When you watch Baroness Jenny Tonge for the Liberal Democrats, Jeremy Corbyn for Labour or the Muslim Council of Britain, Cage Prisoners or – and I am ashamed to say this – the “liberal” press where I make my living, you see them deploy two tactics. The first is a determined refusal to admit the nature of radical Islam. They never discuss the misogyny, homophobia and antisemitism, let alone stir themselves to confront it.

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Also posted in Antisemitism | Leave a comment

Maajid Nawaz: A global culture to fight extremism

By Effendi | Published: July 16, 2011

This is Maajid Nawaz on TEDGlobal discussing why extremist organisations, whether they are far-right or of the extremist religious-right Islamist variety are succeeding in a globalised way whereas those who aspire to democratic culture are falling behind.

He frames his discussion on 4 points:

  • Complacency
  • Political Correctness
  • Political and Economic failure
  • Ideology of Resistance

Also posted in Democracy | Leave a comment

more precision needed – and include me out!

By bananabrain | Published: July 13, 2011

from the excellent-but-ferocious ophelia benson at butterflies and wheels:

“More precision needed. There should be a stamp for that. MPN should be like LOL or TMI.”

i agree. what narks me somewhat (and no doubt there are all sorts of reasons why i am wrong about this) is that this is *precisely* what bothers me about statements about a) religious people and b) the tendentious-as-feck word “judeo-christian”.

“But there again – that’s a matter of fact, not something that can just be declared from the armchair as if it were self-evident. Are Muslims as “diverse” as any other group of people living in the UK? Are all groups living in the UK exactly as diverse as each other, neither more nor less? I don’t see why that would be the case. It’s certainly not impossible that there is something about Islam and/or the history of people who emigrate from majority-Muslim countries that makes Muslims as a group tend to be different from other people as groups, including being less “diverse.” That’s something to find out, not just to announce as a necessary truth. Or a sacred cow…”

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Also posted in Anti Muslim bigotry, Antisemitism, Blogosphere, Freedom of Religion, Homophobia, Human Rights, Jewish Extremism, Moral relativism, Multiculturalism | Leave a comment

The Evangelical Intifada

By Guest | Published: July 3, 2011

This is a guest-post by Joseph Weissman

Stephen Sizer is a well-known Anglican vicar and theologian, who presents himself as a world expert on extreme theology. Sizer claims that most Christians who support Israel are “Christian Zionists” obsessed with the End Times. Dr Anthony McRoy is an evangelical theologian and Bible lecturer who holds similar beliefs to Sizer, and also sees Christian Zionists as a major obstacle to peace. But there is another side to Sizer and McRoy.

In 2007, Sizer accepted an invitation to give a series of lectures in Iran. Sizer was invited by Ayatollah Khomeini’s daughter – Zahra Mostafavi. Ayatollah Khomeini ruled Iran with an iron fist.

Under Khomeini’s rule, many Christians were arrested and even killed, for “heresy” and “insulting Khomeini”. Khomeini died in 1989, but his cruel ‘Khomeinist’ politics live on. Sizer has aligned his theology to co-operate with Khomeinist politics. McRoy has presented Khomeinist suicide bombers as virtuous.

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Also posted in Antisemitism, Christian Evangelical Nutters | 2 Comments

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