I was prepared on Thursday night to do a posting, but the news from Mumbai stopped me cold. There seemed so little to say, as word was awaited regarding the fate of the people in the Chabad House.
Well, now we know, and it is time to mourn, and to rant, and to respond with strength. Let it be clearly understood that the Chabad House was targeted by radical Muslims because of its Israeli/Jewish association. This was hardly random. Along with at least six other Israelis (and close to 200 others killed elsewhere in the city), Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg, who ran this Chabad House, have been murdered cruelly. They established the Mumbai Chabad Jewish Center five years ago. It has been a popular stopping place for Israelis tourists as well as for other Jews from all over the world. What wasn't provided there? Shabbat hospitality, a Jewish library, classes, hospital visitation, a kosher meal plan, brit milah (ritual circumcision) arrangements, chevreh kadisha (care for the dead), outreach, drug prevention programs, etc. etc.
Rabbi Nochum Light, serving as the Chabad rabbi in Annapolis, MD, who was a lifelong friend of Rabbi Holtzberg, said, "He died doing something that was his mission. His favorite thing was to make this world a happier and better place. All he wanted to do was help people."
Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, the vice-chairman of Chabad's educational arm said, "Gabi and Rivky Holtzberg made the ultimate sacrifice. As emissaries to Mumbai, Gabi and Rivky gave up the comforts of the West in order to spread Jewish pride in a corner of the world that was a frequent stop for throngs of Israeli tourists. Their Chabad House was popular among the local community as well as with visiting business people."
~~~~~~~~~~
Chabad of Mumbai has established an appeal to benefit the young children of Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg [a 2-year old, Moshe -- whose birthday was today!! -- was rescued by his nanny; there is one other child but I have no information on this child] and to rebuild Chabad in Mumbai.
This is altogether fitting.
Rivka Holtzberg's parents, Shimon and Yehudit Rosenberg, flew from Israel to Mumbai Thursday night. They must now return with their orphaned grandson and his parents' bodies. Every terrorist attack is to be deplored, every victim mourned. But this is one of those incidents that truly tears the heart. That they should have some assistance is appropriate, a small blessing in a time of unimaginable pain.
And the Mumbai Chabad Jewish Center? I like the attitude of Andrew Benjamin, who called my attention to this fund. We must fight back, he says, and doing this is the best way. We must celebrate the rebuilding of this institution. We must survive and prevail.
It is appropriate to do tzedaka in the memory of the Holtzbergs. That their beloved Center should be assisted would have pleased them enormously. But if not that, consider some other act of charity or kindness in their memory. Some act that will make the world a "happier or better place."
Should you wish to donate to the Chabad Mumbai Fund:
https://www.mychabad.org/templates/relief/donate.asp?&lang=en&site=chabadindia.org
~~~~~~~~~~
Everything else will wait yet another day. There will be more to say about Mumbai, undoubtedly, and a great many other issues. I note here, which is a matter of considerable significance, that Westerners and in particular Americans and British were targeted by the Mumbai terrorists.
~~~~~~~~~~
see my website www.ArlenefromIsrael.info
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Jamat-ud-Dawa (LET Political Wing) on Mumbai Attacks: "Not a Legitimate Tactic"
Evan Kohlmann
In the aftermath of this week's terrorist attacks in Mumbai, Indian government officials and media outlets have already begun pointing a finger at Islamic militants in neighboring Pakistan -- particularly an organization known as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET). The LET has been designated by the U.S. government as a proscribed foreign terrorist organization -- along with its accused political wing, Jamat-ud-Dawa (JUD).
Earlier this evening, I spoke via telephone with the official representative of JUD, Abdullah Muntazir, to discuss the situation in Mumbai and mounting allegations of involvement by LET and/or Pakistani Islamists. Muntazir strongly denied these charges, referring to the attacks as an "internal problem" for India. He repeatedly insisted to me, "we have nothing to do with it", and blamed Indian "propaganda" for "divert[ing] the attention of the public media" --- which he described as "their usual practice." Interestingly, during our conversation, Muntazir went even further and actually condemned the events that have taken place in Mumbai as needless "carnage": "Islam does not permit killing civilian people." He added, "I don't think that this is a legitimate tactic."
In the aftermath of this week's terrorist attacks in Mumbai, Indian government officials and media outlets have already begun pointing a finger at Islamic militants in neighboring Pakistan -- particularly an organization known as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET). The LET has been designated by the U.S. government as a proscribed foreign terrorist organization -- along with its accused political wing, Jamat-ud-Dawa (JUD).
Earlier this evening, I spoke via telephone with the official representative of JUD, Abdullah Muntazir, to discuss the situation in Mumbai and mounting allegations of involvement by LET and/or Pakistani Islamists. Muntazir strongly denied these charges, referring to the attacks as an "internal problem" for India. He repeatedly insisted to me, "we have nothing to do with it", and blamed Indian "propaganda" for "divert[ing] the attention of the public media" --- which he described as "their usual practice." Interestingly, during our conversation, Muntazir went even further and actually condemned the events that have taken place in Mumbai as needless "carnage": "Islam does not permit killing civilian people." He added, "I don't think that this is a legitimate tactic."
DEFENDING YOURSELF AGAINST TERRORISM: A DIFFICULT TASK
Barry Rubin
For years, India has been subjected to periodic terrorist attacks throughout the country. But what happened in Mumbai is something new and different: a full-scale terrorist war.
This is the kind of threat and problem Israel has been facing for decades. What are the lessons for India from Israel’s experience, points also reflected by India’s own recent history?
First, India needs and has the right to expect international sympathy and help. It will get sympathy but will it get help? Once it is clear that other countries must actually do something, incur some costs, possibly take some risks, everything changes.
If the terrorists come from bases or training camps in Pakistan, after all, India wants international action to be taken. Pakistan must be pressured to close such camps, stop helping terrorists, and provide information possessed by Pakistani intelligence agencies.
But how might this happen? Will Western countries make a real effort? Are they going to impose sanctions on Pakistan or even denounce it? Will they make public the results of their own investigations about responsibility for the terror campaign against India?
Not likely. After all, such acts would cost them money and involve potential risks, perhaps even of the terrorists targeting them. Moreover, they need Pakistan for various things, notably to cooperate on keeping down other Islamist terrorist threats, not spread around nuclear weapons’ technology too much, and being cooperative on maintaining some stability in Afghanistan.
This parallels Israel’s situation with Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. For decades, the United States and some European countries have talked to the Syrian government about closing down terrorist headquarters in Damascus. The Syrians merely say “no” (though sometimes they have just lied and said the offices were closed). The United States even did put on some sanctions. But by being intransigent, pretending moderation, and hinting help on other issues, Syria has gotten out of its isolation.
So, despite all the pious talk about fighting terrorism, in real terms, India—like Israel—is largely on its own in defending itself from terrorism.
Another problem India faces, like Israel in the case of Lebanon, is that it is dealing with a country that lacks an effective government. Pakistan is in real terms a state of anarchy. Even within the intelligence apparatus, factions simply do as they please in inciting terrorism. Given popular opinion and Pakistan’s Islamic framework, even a well-intentioned government would be hard-put to crackdown.
In Israel’s case, the whole rationale for regimes like those in Iran and Syria is a radical ideology. So pervasive is the daily incitement to hatred and the lies, that popular opinion supports the most murderous terrorism. The murder of Israeli civilians brings celebrations in the Arab world. The usual types of appeals to law and order, holding governments responsible for their actions, shaming them, or going over their heads to appeal to the masses on humanitarian grounds simply don’t work.
So what’s a country to do? It will consider cross-border raids against terrorist camps or retaliation to pressure the terrorist sponsor to desist. Sometimes it will actually take such action. But can India depend on international support for such self-defense measures or will it then be labeled an aggressor?
How much is India willing to risk war with Pakistan even though it has a legitimate casus belli due to covert aggression against itself by that neighbor? And let’s not forget that Pakistan has nuclear weapons, a situation which Israel may soon face in regard to Iran.
Now we can see the logic of terrorism as a strategy by radical groups and countries pursuing aggression by covert means. The terrorists and their supporters have lots of advantages; the victims are not only put on the defensive but have to make tough decisions about self-defense.
Finally, there is the dangerous “root cause” argument. Many Western intellectuals and journalists—as well as some governments—are ready to blame the victim of terrorism. In Israel’s case, despite desperate efforts to promote peace, making of concessions, withdrawals from territory, and offer of a Palestinian state, it is said to be the villain as not giving the Palestinians enough.
The terrorists and their sponsors use this situation to their advantage. By being intransigent—demanding so much and offering so little—they keep the conflict going and are able to pose as victims simultaneously.
Will some suggest that if India merely gives up Kashmir and makes various concessions, the problem will go away? This might not happen but it is worth keeping an eye on such a trend.
The Indian government is thus going to have some very tough decisions to make. How will it try to mobilize real international support, not just expressions of sympathy for the deaths and destruction? In what ways can it seek to destroy terrorist installations and deter their sponsors?
Israel’s experience offers some lessons: depend on yourself, be willing to face unfair criticism to engage in self-defense, take counter-terrorism very seriously, mobilize your own citizens as an active warning system, and decide when and where to retaliate.
Defending yourself against terrorism is not easy. Unfortunately, even in an era of “war against terrorism” those truly willing to help in the battle are few and far between.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal.
For years, India has been subjected to periodic terrorist attacks throughout the country. But what happened in Mumbai is something new and different: a full-scale terrorist war.
This is the kind of threat and problem Israel has been facing for decades. What are the lessons for India from Israel’s experience, points also reflected by India’s own recent history?
First, India needs and has the right to expect international sympathy and help. It will get sympathy but will it get help? Once it is clear that other countries must actually do something, incur some costs, possibly take some risks, everything changes.
If the terrorists come from bases or training camps in Pakistan, after all, India wants international action to be taken. Pakistan must be pressured to close such camps, stop helping terrorists, and provide information possessed by Pakistani intelligence agencies.
But how might this happen? Will Western countries make a real effort? Are they going to impose sanctions on Pakistan or even denounce it? Will they make public the results of their own investigations about responsibility for the terror campaign against India?
Not likely. After all, such acts would cost them money and involve potential risks, perhaps even of the terrorists targeting them. Moreover, they need Pakistan for various things, notably to cooperate on keeping down other Islamist terrorist threats, not spread around nuclear weapons’ technology too much, and being cooperative on maintaining some stability in Afghanistan.
This parallels Israel’s situation with Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. For decades, the United States and some European countries have talked to the Syrian government about closing down terrorist headquarters in Damascus. The Syrians merely say “no” (though sometimes they have just lied and said the offices were closed). The United States even did put on some sanctions. But by being intransigent, pretending moderation, and hinting help on other issues, Syria has gotten out of its isolation.
So, despite all the pious talk about fighting terrorism, in real terms, India—like Israel—is largely on its own in defending itself from terrorism.
Another problem India faces, like Israel in the case of Lebanon, is that it is dealing with a country that lacks an effective government. Pakistan is in real terms a state of anarchy. Even within the intelligence apparatus, factions simply do as they please in inciting terrorism. Given popular opinion and Pakistan’s Islamic framework, even a well-intentioned government would be hard-put to crackdown.
In Israel’s case, the whole rationale for regimes like those in Iran and Syria is a radical ideology. So pervasive is the daily incitement to hatred and the lies, that popular opinion supports the most murderous terrorism. The murder of Israeli civilians brings celebrations in the Arab world. The usual types of appeals to law and order, holding governments responsible for their actions, shaming them, or going over their heads to appeal to the masses on humanitarian grounds simply don’t work.
So what’s a country to do? It will consider cross-border raids against terrorist camps or retaliation to pressure the terrorist sponsor to desist. Sometimes it will actually take such action. But can India depend on international support for such self-defense measures or will it then be labeled an aggressor?
How much is India willing to risk war with Pakistan even though it has a legitimate casus belli due to covert aggression against itself by that neighbor? And let’s not forget that Pakistan has nuclear weapons, a situation which Israel may soon face in regard to Iran.
Now we can see the logic of terrorism as a strategy by radical groups and countries pursuing aggression by covert means. The terrorists and their supporters have lots of advantages; the victims are not only put on the defensive but have to make tough decisions about self-defense.
Finally, there is the dangerous “root cause” argument. Many Western intellectuals and journalists—as well as some governments—are ready to blame the victim of terrorism. In Israel’s case, despite desperate efforts to promote peace, making of concessions, withdrawals from territory, and offer of a Palestinian state, it is said to be the villain as not giving the Palestinians enough.
The terrorists and their sponsors use this situation to their advantage. By being intransigent—demanding so much and offering so little—they keep the conflict going and are able to pose as victims simultaneously.
Will some suggest that if India merely gives up Kashmir and makes various concessions, the problem will go away? This might not happen but it is worth keeping an eye on such a trend.
The Indian government is thus going to have some very tough decisions to make. How will it try to mobilize real international support, not just expressions of sympathy for the deaths and destruction? In what ways can it seek to destroy terrorist installations and deter their sponsors?
Israel’s experience offers some lessons: depend on yourself, be willing to face unfair criticism to engage in self-defense, take counter-terrorism very seriously, mobilize your own citizens as an active warning system, and decide when and where to retaliate.
Defending yourself against terrorism is not easy. Unfortunately, even in an era of “war against terrorism” those truly willing to help in the battle are few and far between.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal.
Thanks for the Advice
Bill O'Reilly
Saturday, November 29, 2008
One of the things I am deeply grateful for this Thanksgiving season is that my father was a frugal guy and made a big deal out of it. A child of the Depression, William O'Reilly Sr. hoarded his dollars and lectured his children on saving, not spending, money. Sure, it was boring. My sister and I had visions of Snickers bars and Good Humor ice cream dancing in our heads. But as soon as I started making some money cutting lawns and shoveling snow, I saved a nice piece of it primarily because my father was 6 feet 3 inches tall.
Not everybody got that lesson. The current economic horror can be traced back to one major trend: Americans borrowing money they can't pay back; buying houses they can't afford, running up credit card debt like crazy. Of course, the banks were only too happy to help out -- providing massive amounts of credit to people of limited means. What's the difference between a drug dealer and a mortgage broker? Interest.
So now we are all getting pounded, but some are better off than others. I still hear my father's voice when my paycheck rolls in, and much of that check gets deposited in the bank. It does not get spent. It sits there in insured accounts, winking at me. But it's there, and it will protect my family and me if disaster should occur.
Along with the saving habit, my father also mocked materialists. Living in Levittown, we had the basics and that was that. If my dad saw somebody buying something dumb -- like a foreign car for instance -- he'd make fun of it. Our "pre-owned" Nash Rambler wasn't exactly stylish, but it got us to the beach.
When my father died, he left my mother no debt and enough cash to live on for the duration. Mom is now approaching 86 years old, and if she wants a steak, it is there for her. My father's legacy is one of rock-solid responsibility and every obligation met.
If all Americans were like my dad, the following things would happen: First, Starbucks would go bankrupt. Spaghetti joints would replace the overpriced coffee houses. There would be no sign of a Bentley automobile. Costco would rule from coast to coast. Nobody would pay 10 bucks to see a movie unless Clint Eastwood returned as "Dirty Harry." Any restaurant with "fusion" on the menu would be empty. No one would eat gelato. Ever.
But everybody would have money in the bank, and the credit card companies would be weeping. Also, there would be no bailouts for slacker corporations or white-collar thugs like the AIG guys.
My father always said to be thankful for what you have. And make sure you have enough.
Copyright © 2008 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Update: Six Israeli and Jewish hostages murdered at Chabad Center, Mumbai in shutdown for second terror wave
November 29, 2008, 9:04 AM (GMT+02:00)
Islamist terrorists murdered six Israelis, including Rabbi Gavriel, 29, and Rivka, 28, Holzman, taken hostage in the Chabad Center during their assault on Mumbai Wednesday, Nov. 26. Two more victims identified were Betzion Chroman, who held dual US-Israeli citizenship, and Leibisch Teitelbaum, an American from Brooklyn. Chabad Center was seized together with two big hotels and other high-profile targets across the city
Atrocities began coming to light Friday night when Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak told Channel 1 TV that some of the bodies bore signs they had been bound hand and foot and two Israeli women had been killed hours before the men.
Four Israelis are still missing in Mumbai as the overall death toll rises to 195. Four were rescued with the 100 hostages released from the Oberoi Hotel, where 24 bodies were discovered in the rooms.
Saturday morning, the Indian government said the Taj Palace Hotel, the last of three sites seized by Islamist terrorists in Mumbai, was under control and all the terrorists were dead. Blasts and shots rang out as police went through the rooms in the vast compound.
Mumbai is shut down - schools, shops, traffic - against a second terrorist wave as police armed with machine guns patrol the streets. Friday, Islamist gunmen returned to their first target, the city's main rail station for a second attack. DEBKAfile reported earlier that some of the terrorists had remained on the loose away their first targets to continue their "mission."
As the investigation began, the FBI sent a team to join the Indian probe. Islamabad is fending off allegations that Pakistani elements were involved with offers of full collaboration into the inquiry. The UK press is highlighting the "British connection" arising from the discovery that some of the terrorists were Pakistani British citizens.
In New York, Friday night, Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky voiced the outrage of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement and conveyed condolences to the families of everyone murdered in Mumbai. NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly said the atrocity reminded us of how connected the world is in the face of terror.
Indian commanders reported that Israeli hostages were killed in the course of the commando raid which began early Friday, Nov. 28. Choppers dropped soldiers onto the roof of the Chabad Center which caters to Israeli and Jewish visitors to the city. Later a big hole was blown in an outer wall.
Indian investigators are examining a satellite phone and GPS map recovered from a trawler, the Kubar, floating in the Arabian Sea. The crew was missing from the vessel except for its master whose body was found with bound limbs and his throat slit.
Islamist terrorists murdered six Israelis, including Rabbi Gavriel, 29, and Rivka, 28, Holzman, taken hostage in the Chabad Center during their assault on Mumbai Wednesday, Nov. 26. Two more victims identified were Betzion Chroman, who held dual US-Israeli citizenship, and Leibisch Teitelbaum, an American from Brooklyn. Chabad Center was seized together with two big hotels and other high-profile targets across the city
Atrocities began coming to light Friday night when Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak told Channel 1 TV that some of the bodies bore signs they had been bound hand and foot and two Israeli women had been killed hours before the men.
Four Israelis are still missing in Mumbai as the overall death toll rises to 195. Four were rescued with the 100 hostages released from the Oberoi Hotel, where 24 bodies were discovered in the rooms.
Saturday morning, the Indian government said the Taj Palace Hotel, the last of three sites seized by Islamist terrorists in Mumbai, was under control and all the terrorists were dead. Blasts and shots rang out as police went through the rooms in the vast compound.
Mumbai is shut down - schools, shops, traffic - against a second terrorist wave as police armed with machine guns patrol the streets. Friday, Islamist gunmen returned to their first target, the city's main rail station for a second attack. DEBKAfile reported earlier that some of the terrorists had remained on the loose away their first targets to continue their "mission."
As the investigation began, the FBI sent a team to join the Indian probe. Islamabad is fending off allegations that Pakistani elements were involved with offers of full collaboration into the inquiry. The UK press is highlighting the "British connection" arising from the discovery that some of the terrorists were Pakistani British citizens.
In New York, Friday night, Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky voiced the outrage of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement and conveyed condolences to the families of everyone murdered in Mumbai. NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly said the atrocity reminded us of how connected the world is in the face of terror.
Indian commanders reported that Israeli hostages were killed in the course of the commando raid which began early Friday, Nov. 28. Choppers dropped soldiers onto the roof of the Chabad Center which caters to Israeli and Jewish visitors to the city. Later a big hole was blown in an outer wall.
Indian investigators are examining a satellite phone and GPS map recovered from a trawler, the Kubar, floating in the Arabian Sea. The crew was missing from the vessel except for its master whose body was found with bound limbs and his throat slit.
'The Moderate Islamist'
David Solway
FrontPageMagazine.com
The counsels of our Islamic-appeasing intellectuals today may be summarized in the career of Alistair Crooke, founder of the Conflicts Forum and formerly a special adviser to EU envoy Javier Solana. In the London Review of Books (Vol. 29, No. 13), Crooke self-assuredly asserts that the hard-line approach to Islamism, along with the refusal to countenance the more amenable elements in the Muslim world, is “opening a space, not for moderate pro-Western secularists…but for those who believe that to build a new society you must first burn down the old one.” For Crooke, it seems the Arab world is crawling with pro-Western secularists just waiting for the opportunity to construct open, liberal democracies, confine the influence of the Koran to the mosque and the private sphere, recognize Israel’s right to exist within secure and defensible borders and neutralize the family compact paradigm that has governed the Muslim world from the beginning of its recorded history. Like so many others on the “rational Left,” Crooke is dreaming in jihadi-color.
No longer content to postulate a frivolous separation between “extremists” and “moderates,” Crooke and those like him have now come up with a super subtle distinction between “Islamism” and those “moderate Islamist movements” such as—wait for it—Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. Anyone who has troubled to scan the charters of these organizations and follow their actions in a real-world setting would be right to wonder what planet the Crookes and Solanas et al. of the diplomatic Left are living on—a planet on which exotic beings like moderate extremists are part of the natural fauna. But we must have our nursery icons: Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and the moderate extremist.
Be that as it may, a “moderate Islamist movement,” the home of Crooke’s “thoughtful Islamist,” is an oxymoron that exists nowhere but in the fevered imagination of the professional negotiator, the political partisan and the ever-compliant media. For example, in a June 25, 2007 release, the BBC informs us that Hamas “espouse[s] a more moderate brand of Islamist politics” than al-Qaeda. This is like saying it’s better to be killed with a gun than a bomb. Moreover, the broadcaster insists that Hamas has “always shunned al-Qaeda’s advances.” He is obviously ignorant of the famous poster showing Hamas’ spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin posing beside Osama bin Laden, of Sheikh Abd al-Majid al-Zindani, a bin Laden operative, addressing a Hamas fundraiser in March 2006, and of the mounting evidence that the 2003 attack on Mike’s Place bar in Tel Aviv, carried out by suicide bombers holding British passports, was a joint al-Qaeda/Hamas operation—the two British-Muslim terrorists were members of the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic Al Muhajiroun and were hosted by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Logically speaking, what can the term “moderate Islamist” actually mean? Is there such a thing as a “moderate” Nazi, a “moderate” fascist, a “moderate” Bolshevik? If a “moderate” is one who continues to insist on the necessity of destroying Israel, coddling a nuclear Iran and pursuing the war against the West, what then is an “extremist”?
The diplomatic appeasement of the radical terrorist will only allow them to regroup, to prepare for further hostilities, to strengthen their military hand and to extend their reach far into the future, as happened precisely in 1936 when a British-brokered détente permitted the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem to gather his forces and unleash even more havoc in the region.
But Crooke and his fellow oracles are not to be deflected by reality: from their perspective, the West and especially the U.S. are responsible for the breakdown of order in Gaza by refusing to deal with Hamas; the unprovoked attack on Israel by Hizbullah in summer 2006 plainly had nothing to do with Iranian strategy but was really a “U.S.-backed war to destroy Hizbullah in Lebanon”; Western policy is alienating and radicalizing the as-yet uncommitted Muslim world; and the “domestic Israel lobby” in the U.S. continues to pursue its sinister intent toward abetting Israel’s “hegemonic ambitions.” The highlight reel hooey of such convictions might be almost entertaining if it did not cut the sinews of our preparedness.
Crooke, like many others, welcomes with unseemly warmth the Arab-Palestinian argument for a bi-national state as the only viable solution to the conflict in the Holy Land—in other words, the end of Israel as we know it—and blithely accepts the accusation that Israel has “salami-sliced” the West Bank with its “army posts, military zones, fences and Israeli-only roads”—the familiar anti-checkpoint argument that pretends there is no such creature as a Palestinian suicide bomber on his way to butcher as many Israeli civilians as a thoughtful Islamist can possibly take with him.
Whether they are simple-minded innocents or shrewd manipulators, Crooke and his ilk have cause and effect reversed: the checkpoints do not foment terrorism; terrorism created the need for checkpoints, as anyone with a brain in his head can see. No sooner had the checkpoint at the Ariel Junction—the scene of several drive-by shootings and suicide bombings in the past—been lifted than a shooting attack on Israeli civilians followed. Nor did terrorists take long to strike when the checkpoint at the Shuafat crossing in northern Jerusalem was dismantled; 20-year-old Rami Zoari was shot and died of her wounds shortly after.
Furthermore, Crooke’s reliance on UN maps and documents—the Monopoly money of today’s intellectual currency—to make his case is evidence of either credulity or bad faith. Crooke is also unwilling to admit what both the Israeli and Palestinian administrations know, that it is Israel with its checkpoints, intelligence services and anti-terrorist raids which keeps the weak and beleaguered Fatah regime from toppling as a victim to Hamas insurgency. Nor does he question the fact that some sixty years after the UN partition plan paved the way for the creation of the Jewish state, Israel remains unrepresented on maps and globes in Arab countries—a Fatah anniversary poster portrays the area where Israel should be screened by a portrait of Yasser Arafat, a keffiyeh and a rifle.
That he quotes favorably Hizbullah terror chieftain Hassan Nasrallah clearly reveals where Crooke’s real sympathies lie. How he might countenance the civil unrest, amounting to a mini-civil war, unleashed by Hizbullah in the streets of Beirut and in other parts of the country in May 2008, or parry the observation of Lebanese political analyst Antoine Basbous (Liberation 9, 2008) that Lebanon has been earmarked by Iran as the “scene of operations, a land of Jihad [where] imperialism and Zionism need to be defeated,” must remain in the realm of the ineffable.
Crooke would also have to embark on some difficult maneuvering to explain Hizbullah’s violation of the 1989 Taif agreement, which provided for the disarmament of the various competing militias. For although Hizbullah was renamed as a “resistance force” against an external foe in order to evade the terms of the proscription, its armed involvement in an internal conflict has put it in clear breach of the entente. “Even the Israeli enemy didn’t dare do in Beirut what Hizbullah has done,” said Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora. But Crooke would surely find a way to exonerate one of his favorite terror groups. And Israel would doubtlessly figure as scapegoat.
Apologists like Crooke, to borrow the title of Aaron Klein’s new book, are only Schmoozing with Terrorists—and not to gather information, as did Klein, but in mindless sympathy with their aims. Unfortunately, the malediction of Isaiah does not seem to operate in the their world: “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness…” Thanks to professional appeasers like Alistair Crooke, this inversion has now become standard procedure.
All of which makes me think of the old light bulb joke formula, of which I offer a concluding variant. How many Islamists does it take to change a light bulb? None. We do it for them.
David Solway is the award-winning author of over twenty-five books of poetry, criticism, educational theory, and travel. He is a contributor to magazines as varied as the Atlantic, the Sewanee Review, Books in Canada, and the Partisan Review. His most recent book is The Big Lie: On Terror, Antisemitism, and Identity.
FrontPageMagazine.com
The counsels of our Islamic-appeasing intellectuals today may be summarized in the career of Alistair Crooke, founder of the Conflicts Forum and formerly a special adviser to EU envoy Javier Solana. In the London Review of Books (Vol. 29, No. 13), Crooke self-assuredly asserts that the hard-line approach to Islamism, along with the refusal to countenance the more amenable elements in the Muslim world, is “opening a space, not for moderate pro-Western secularists…but for those who believe that to build a new society you must first burn down the old one.” For Crooke, it seems the Arab world is crawling with pro-Western secularists just waiting for the opportunity to construct open, liberal democracies, confine the influence of the Koran to the mosque and the private sphere, recognize Israel’s right to exist within secure and defensible borders and neutralize the family compact paradigm that has governed the Muslim world from the beginning of its recorded history. Like so many others on the “rational Left,” Crooke is dreaming in jihadi-color.
No longer content to postulate a frivolous separation between “extremists” and “moderates,” Crooke and those like him have now come up with a super subtle distinction between “Islamism” and those “moderate Islamist movements” such as—wait for it—Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. Anyone who has troubled to scan the charters of these organizations and follow their actions in a real-world setting would be right to wonder what planet the Crookes and Solanas et al. of the diplomatic Left are living on—a planet on which exotic beings like moderate extremists are part of the natural fauna. But we must have our nursery icons: Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and the moderate extremist.
Be that as it may, a “moderate Islamist movement,” the home of Crooke’s “thoughtful Islamist,” is an oxymoron that exists nowhere but in the fevered imagination of the professional negotiator, the political partisan and the ever-compliant media. For example, in a June 25, 2007 release, the BBC informs us that Hamas “espouse[s] a more moderate brand of Islamist politics” than al-Qaeda. This is like saying it’s better to be killed with a gun than a bomb. Moreover, the broadcaster insists that Hamas has “always shunned al-Qaeda’s advances.” He is obviously ignorant of the famous poster showing Hamas’ spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin posing beside Osama bin Laden, of Sheikh Abd al-Majid al-Zindani, a bin Laden operative, addressing a Hamas fundraiser in March 2006, and of the mounting evidence that the 2003 attack on Mike’s Place bar in Tel Aviv, carried out by suicide bombers holding British passports, was a joint al-Qaeda/Hamas operation—the two British-Muslim terrorists were members of the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic Al Muhajiroun and were hosted by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Logically speaking, what can the term “moderate Islamist” actually mean? Is there such a thing as a “moderate” Nazi, a “moderate” fascist, a “moderate” Bolshevik? If a “moderate” is one who continues to insist on the necessity of destroying Israel, coddling a nuclear Iran and pursuing the war against the West, what then is an “extremist”?
The diplomatic appeasement of the radical terrorist will only allow them to regroup, to prepare for further hostilities, to strengthen their military hand and to extend their reach far into the future, as happened precisely in 1936 when a British-brokered détente permitted the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem to gather his forces and unleash even more havoc in the region.
But Crooke and his fellow oracles are not to be deflected by reality: from their perspective, the West and especially the U.S. are responsible for the breakdown of order in Gaza by refusing to deal with Hamas; the unprovoked attack on Israel by Hizbullah in summer 2006 plainly had nothing to do with Iranian strategy but was really a “U.S.-backed war to destroy Hizbullah in Lebanon”; Western policy is alienating and radicalizing the as-yet uncommitted Muslim world; and the “domestic Israel lobby” in the U.S. continues to pursue its sinister intent toward abetting Israel’s “hegemonic ambitions.” The highlight reel hooey of such convictions might be almost entertaining if it did not cut the sinews of our preparedness.
Crooke, like many others, welcomes with unseemly warmth the Arab-Palestinian argument for a bi-national state as the only viable solution to the conflict in the Holy Land—in other words, the end of Israel as we know it—and blithely accepts the accusation that Israel has “salami-sliced” the West Bank with its “army posts, military zones, fences and Israeli-only roads”—the familiar anti-checkpoint argument that pretends there is no such creature as a Palestinian suicide bomber on his way to butcher as many Israeli civilians as a thoughtful Islamist can possibly take with him.
Whether they are simple-minded innocents or shrewd manipulators, Crooke and his ilk have cause and effect reversed: the checkpoints do not foment terrorism; terrorism created the need for checkpoints, as anyone with a brain in his head can see. No sooner had the checkpoint at the Ariel Junction—the scene of several drive-by shootings and suicide bombings in the past—been lifted than a shooting attack on Israeli civilians followed. Nor did terrorists take long to strike when the checkpoint at the Shuafat crossing in northern Jerusalem was dismantled; 20-year-old Rami Zoari was shot and died of her wounds shortly after.
Furthermore, Crooke’s reliance on UN maps and documents—the Monopoly money of today’s intellectual currency—to make his case is evidence of either credulity or bad faith. Crooke is also unwilling to admit what both the Israeli and Palestinian administrations know, that it is Israel with its checkpoints, intelligence services and anti-terrorist raids which keeps the weak and beleaguered Fatah regime from toppling as a victim to Hamas insurgency. Nor does he question the fact that some sixty years after the UN partition plan paved the way for the creation of the Jewish state, Israel remains unrepresented on maps and globes in Arab countries—a Fatah anniversary poster portrays the area where Israel should be screened by a portrait of Yasser Arafat, a keffiyeh and a rifle.
That he quotes favorably Hizbullah terror chieftain Hassan Nasrallah clearly reveals where Crooke’s real sympathies lie. How he might countenance the civil unrest, amounting to a mini-civil war, unleashed by Hizbullah in the streets of Beirut and in other parts of the country in May 2008, or parry the observation of Lebanese political analyst Antoine Basbous (Liberation 9, 2008) that Lebanon has been earmarked by Iran as the “scene of operations, a land of Jihad [where] imperialism and Zionism need to be defeated,” must remain in the realm of the ineffable.
Crooke would also have to embark on some difficult maneuvering to explain Hizbullah’s violation of the 1989 Taif agreement, which provided for the disarmament of the various competing militias. For although Hizbullah was renamed as a “resistance force” against an external foe in order to evade the terms of the proscription, its armed involvement in an internal conflict has put it in clear breach of the entente. “Even the Israeli enemy didn’t dare do in Beirut what Hizbullah has done,” said Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora. But Crooke would surely find a way to exonerate one of his favorite terror groups. And Israel would doubtlessly figure as scapegoat.
Apologists like Crooke, to borrow the title of Aaron Klein’s new book, are only Schmoozing with Terrorists—and not to gather information, as did Klein, but in mindless sympathy with their aims. Unfortunately, the malediction of Isaiah does not seem to operate in the their world: “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness…” Thanks to professional appeasers like Alistair Crooke, this inversion has now become standard procedure.
All of which makes me think of the old light bulb joke formula, of which I offer a concluding variant. How many Islamists does it take to change a light bulb? None. We do it for them.
David Solway is the award-winning author of over twenty-five books of poetry, criticism, educational theory, and travel. He is a contributor to magazines as varied as the Atlantic, the Sewanee Review, Books in Canada, and the Partisan Review. His most recent book is The Big Lie: On Terror, Antisemitism, and Identity.
Zawahiri continues pontificating, predicting, and predicating
Evidencing that al-Qaeda's Internet problems have been, at least for now, solved. "Zawahiri blames global financial crisis on 9/11 in latest al-Qaeda video," by Ben Farmer for the Telegraph, November 28: Al-Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has said in a new internet video that the international financial crisis is the result of a US war on Muslims and the Sept 11 attacks.
A common theme of al-Qaeda, one that goes back to the Soviet-Afghan war.
Zawahiri also claimed the recent security gains made by US forces in Iraq were only temporary and Afghan President Hamid Karzai's offers to negotiate with Taliban elements were a sign of his regime's weakness.
The comments in a new internet video come a week after Zawahiri compared US President-Elect Barack Obama to a "house negro" implying he did the bidding of whites.
The video, "Al-Azhar – The Lions' Den", was posted on jihadist websites earlier this week according to the SITE intelligence group, which monitors online Islamist militant propaganda.
Zawahiri said: "This crisis is one of ... the series of American economic haemorrhages after the strikes of September 11... And these ... will continue as long as the foolish American policy of wading in Muslim blood continues."
"The ones shouldering the burden are taxpayers, whose money was spent to rescue senior capitalists and to protect the fraudulent interest-based system from collapse."
The Egyptian militant claimed the US was doomed to failure in Afghanistan and the tribal regions of northern Pakistan and had been exaggerating its successes.
"I challenge you [US President George W Bush], if you are really a man, to send the entire American army to Pakistan and the tribal regions for it to end up in hell," he said.
In Iraq, he predicted US gains were temporary and the country's Sunni Awakening Councils of former insurgents who have been credited with stemming the country's bloodshed, would not be accepted by the Shiite majority government.
He also called on Egyptians to hold a general strike to pressure the Government to open the Gaza border to defeat an Israeli siege of the area ruled by militant Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.
"What is the problem if students, employees and workers were to refuse to study and work until the siege is lifted on Gaza?" he said.
"Are we unable to carry out such a peaceful strike?"
The 57-year-old fugitive is Osama bin Laden's most senior lieutenant and has a $25 million US government bounty on his head for involvement in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in East Africa.
During the 80-minute video he made no reference to the recent terrorist attacks in Bombay.
A common theme of al-Qaeda, one that goes back to the Soviet-Afghan war.
Zawahiri also claimed the recent security gains made by US forces in Iraq were only temporary and Afghan President Hamid Karzai's offers to negotiate with Taliban elements were a sign of his regime's weakness.
The comments in a new internet video come a week after Zawahiri compared US President-Elect Barack Obama to a "house negro" implying he did the bidding of whites.
The video, "Al-Azhar – The Lions' Den", was posted on jihadist websites earlier this week according to the SITE intelligence group, which monitors online Islamist militant propaganda.
Zawahiri said: "This crisis is one of ... the series of American economic haemorrhages after the strikes of September 11... And these ... will continue as long as the foolish American policy of wading in Muslim blood continues."
"The ones shouldering the burden are taxpayers, whose money was spent to rescue senior capitalists and to protect the fraudulent interest-based system from collapse."
The Egyptian militant claimed the US was doomed to failure in Afghanistan and the tribal regions of northern Pakistan and had been exaggerating its successes.
"I challenge you [US President George W Bush], if you are really a man, to send the entire American army to Pakistan and the tribal regions for it to end up in hell," he said.
In Iraq, he predicted US gains were temporary and the country's Sunni Awakening Councils of former insurgents who have been credited with stemming the country's bloodshed, would not be accepted by the Shiite majority government.
He also called on Egyptians to hold a general strike to pressure the Government to open the Gaza border to defeat an Israeli siege of the area ruled by militant Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.
"What is the problem if students, employees and workers were to refuse to study and work until the siege is lifted on Gaza?" he said.
"Are we unable to carry out such a peaceful strike?"
The 57-year-old fugitive is Osama bin Laden's most senior lieutenant and has a $25 million US government bounty on his head for involvement in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in East Africa.
During the 80-minute video he made no reference to the recent terrorist attacks in Bombay.
Captured jihadist: Lashkar-e-Taiba trained us in marine warfare
Ajmal's claim that all of the jihadists were Pakistani citizens does not fit other accounts (except in possible cases of dual citizenship), but he also describes a smaller number of jihadists. Time will tell if the rest of his story holds up. "Arrested terrorist says gang hoped to get away," from the Times of India, November 29: NEW DELHI: The gang of terrorists who wreaked mayhem in Mumbai for three days were made to believe by their Lashkar bosses that they were not being sent on a suicide mission and that they would be coming back alive.
In a sensational disclosure made by Ajmal, the jihadi nabbed alive by Mumbai cops, the group had planned to sail out on Thursday. Their recruiters had even charted out the return route for them and stored it on the GPS device which they had used to navigate their way to the Mumbai shoreline.
This suggests that the terrorists were willing to undertake a mission which they knew would be very risky, but not necessarily suicidal.
Sources said that the bait of safe return must have been used by the recruiters to convince the wavering among the group to join the audacious plot against Mumbai.
Ajmal made another important disclosure: that all terrorists were trained in marine warfare along with the special course Daura-e-Shifa conducted by the Lashkar-e-Taiba in what at once transforms the nature of the planning from a routine terror strike and into a specialized raid by commandos.
Battle-hardened ATS officials are surprised by the details of the training the terrorists were put through before being despatched for the macabre mission. This was very different from a terrorist attack, and amounted to an offensive from the seam, said a source.
Ajmal has revealed the name of his fellow jihadis all Pakistani citizens as Abu Ali, Fahad, Omar, Shoaib, Umer, Abu Akasha, Ismail, Abdul Rahman (Bara) and Abdul Rahman (Chhota).
The account of Ajmal also strengthens the doubt of the complicity of powerful elements in the Pakistani establishment. According to him, the group set off on November 21 from an isolated creek near Karachi without the deadly cargo of arms and ammunition they were to use against the innocents in Mumbai. The group received arms and ammunition on board a large Pakistani vessel which picked them up the following day. The vessel, whose ownership is now the subject of an international probe, had four Pakistanis apart from the crew.
A day later, they came across an Indian-owned trawler, Kuber, which was promptly commandeered on the seas. Four of the fishermen who were on the trawler were killed, but its skipper, or tandel in fishermen lingo, Amarjit Singh, was forced to proceed towards India. Amarjit was killed the next day, and Ismail the terrorist who was killed at Girgaum Chowpaty took the wheel.
A trained sailor, Ismail used the GPS to reach Mumbai coast on November 26. The group, however, slowed down its advance as they had reached during the day time while the landing was planned after dusk. The group shifted to inflatable boats, before disembarking at Badhwar Park in Cuffe Parade.
From there, they mandated to kill indiscriminately, particularly white foreign tourists, and spare Muslims split up into five batches. Two of them Ismail and Ajmal took a taxi to Victoria Terminus. Three other batches of two each headed for Oberoi Hotel, Cafe Leopold and Nariman House. The remaining four went to Taj Hotel. [...]
Kasab told the police that he and 9 others got off a vessel about 10 nautical miles from Mumbai and shifted to two boats hijacked from fishermen.
One source in ATS familiar with the details of the interrogation quoted him saying that in all 16 fidayeens came to Mumbai on Wednesday. A native of Faridkot in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), 21-year-old Kasab told police they had done a reccee of Mumbai few months ago. He said he had come along with eight of the operatives to Mumbai as students and lived in a rented room at Colaba market, a stone's throw away from Nariman House.
comment: This is initial information regarding the murderers-time will tell if it is completely accurate-developing story.
Thanks Jihad Watch
In a sensational disclosure made by Ajmal, the jihadi nabbed alive by Mumbai cops, the group had planned to sail out on Thursday. Their recruiters had even charted out the return route for them and stored it on the GPS device which they had used to navigate their way to the Mumbai shoreline.
This suggests that the terrorists were willing to undertake a mission which they knew would be very risky, but not necessarily suicidal.
Sources said that the bait of safe return must have been used by the recruiters to convince the wavering among the group to join the audacious plot against Mumbai.
Ajmal made another important disclosure: that all terrorists were trained in marine warfare along with the special course Daura-e-Shifa conducted by the Lashkar-e-Taiba in what at once transforms the nature of the planning from a routine terror strike and into a specialized raid by commandos.
Battle-hardened ATS officials are surprised by the details of the training the terrorists were put through before being despatched for the macabre mission. This was very different from a terrorist attack, and amounted to an offensive from the seam, said a source.
Ajmal has revealed the name of his fellow jihadis all Pakistani citizens as Abu Ali, Fahad, Omar, Shoaib, Umer, Abu Akasha, Ismail, Abdul Rahman (Bara) and Abdul Rahman (Chhota).
The account of Ajmal also strengthens the doubt of the complicity of powerful elements in the Pakistani establishment. According to him, the group set off on November 21 from an isolated creek near Karachi without the deadly cargo of arms and ammunition they were to use against the innocents in Mumbai. The group received arms and ammunition on board a large Pakistani vessel which picked them up the following day. The vessel, whose ownership is now the subject of an international probe, had four Pakistanis apart from the crew.
A day later, they came across an Indian-owned trawler, Kuber, which was promptly commandeered on the seas. Four of the fishermen who were on the trawler were killed, but its skipper, or tandel in fishermen lingo, Amarjit Singh, was forced to proceed towards India. Amarjit was killed the next day, and Ismail the terrorist who was killed at Girgaum Chowpaty took the wheel.
A trained sailor, Ismail used the GPS to reach Mumbai coast on November 26. The group, however, slowed down its advance as they had reached during the day time while the landing was planned after dusk. The group shifted to inflatable boats, before disembarking at Badhwar Park in Cuffe Parade.
From there, they mandated to kill indiscriminately, particularly white foreign tourists, and spare Muslims split up into five batches. Two of them Ismail and Ajmal took a taxi to Victoria Terminus. Three other batches of two each headed for Oberoi Hotel, Cafe Leopold and Nariman House. The remaining four went to Taj Hotel. [...]
Kasab told the police that he and 9 others got off a vessel about 10 nautical miles from Mumbai and shifted to two boats hijacked from fishermen.
One source in ATS familiar with the details of the interrogation quoted him saying that in all 16 fidayeens came to Mumbai on Wednesday. A native of Faridkot in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), 21-year-old Kasab told police they had done a reccee of Mumbai few months ago. He said he had come along with eight of the operatives to Mumbai as students and lived in a rented room at Colaba market, a stone's throw away from Nariman House.
comment: This is initial information regarding the murderers-time will tell if it is completely accurate-developing story.
Thanks Jihad Watch
Amnesia, Followed By Near-Total Recall
Claudia Rosett
It's now more than six years since I first labeled a file "Oil-for-Food" and began reporting on the former relief program for Iraq that has since become shorthand for United Nations corruption. In all that time, one of the greatest frustrations has been the shroud of secrecy, evasions and lies with which the UN to this day has veiled not only its handling of Oil-for-Food, but the long series of scandals that have continued to brew in its diplomatically immune depths.
For outsiders, one of the biggest obstacles to uncovering the truth about the UN is the sheer tedium of its procedures and lingo. Waste, fraud and abuse--when disclosed at all--tend to come wrapped in generic labels, referring in many cases to unnamed officials, with the shockers often embedded deep in lengthy, bloodless reports. Investigations too often devolve into drawn-out coverups, while UN officials look for ways to contain not the harm to the public, but the damage to the UN's reputation.
Even in the reports of the supposedly tell-all 2004-2005 UN-authorized inquiry into Oil-for-Food, led by Paul Volcker, it is hard in many places to draw a line between exposé and coverup. One of my favorite examples is Volcker's first interim report, released in February 2005, in which his committee described disturbing behavior by the person who was then deputy secretary general, Louise Frechette, referring to her 12 times without once mentioning her name.
When Volcker finished his inquiry, instead of heeding congressional urgings to release the underlying evidence, he turned the archive over to the black hole of the UN's own legal department. This not only ensured that many lingering questions would remain unanswered; it obscured the matter of whether they had ever been asked in the first place.
So, it was with great interest that this week I picked up a new book on the UN, Backstabbing for Beginners: My Crash Course in International Diplomacy by Michael Soussan. Framed as a coming-of-age story, this is an insider memoir by a former UN staffer turned whistle-blower.
Born in Denmark and schooled in France and the U.S., Soussan went to work for Oil-for-Food in 1997, arriving as a wide-eyed young man with a desire to "make a difference." In 2000, about halfway through the 1996-2003 program, he resigned in disgust. Four years later, when scandal erupted over the program, he began to speak up.
Soussan spent much of his time at Oil-for-Food at the right hand of the program's executive director Benon Sevan, an Armenian Cypriot whose Byzantine management style earned him the in-house nickname of "Pasha." This was a prime perch from which to observe the UN's inner workings.
Soussan writes with a crisp sense of the absurd, lampooning a long list of characters and UN practices. For those who would see no evil in the UN, there is plenty here to illuminate its internal contradictions, endless infighting and the self-serving ethos of its ever-expanding operations. There are anecdotes here that ought to warn off any U.S. administration from placing any serious trust in this institution.
But it was with a certain disquiet that I reached the end of this 332-page book. To get to the real news, you have to turn to page 295. That's where Soussan discloses, 10 years after the fact, that he was present at the moment when the alleged deal went down between the Iraqis and Sevan for the Oil-for-Food director to start receiving payoffs from the government of Baghdad. (Sevan, who has been living for more than three years beyond reach of U.S. extradition on Cyprus, says he is innocent of all wrong-doing.)
In considerable detail, Soussan now recounts the scene (1998, at a lavish lunch hosted by an Iraqi official at the Baghdad Hunting Club) complete with quotes, the fish and salad on the menu, and the bistro attire of the waiters. Hit with indigestion, Soussan was making trips to and from the men's room and did not hear the full conversation between the official and Sevan. But he heard enough, both at the table and on the way back out to the car, to reconstruct a fair chunk of the exchange, including Sevan's inquiry about how to procure Iraqi oil contracts for a friend.
He quotes the Iraqi official inquiring "What is your ... friend's name?" He describes Sevan's mumbled response, and the Iraqi's reply: "Tell your friend to contact us again." He describes the doubts voiced immediately afterward by a UN colleague who was also present and remarked in an aside to Soussan, "This is not the proper way to conduct official business."
But despite his self-appointed role as whistle-blower during the investigations in 2004 and 2005 into Oil-for-Food, during interviews with the UN-authorized Volcker inquiry and with federal prosecutors, that conversation apparently slipped Soussan's mind so thoroughly that he says he never mentioned any of this dialogue. By his account, it was not until Volcker in August 2005 produced a report alleging corrupt behavior by Sevan that a light bulb went on, and he realized what he had heard. By that time, Sevan, after almost a year of lingering in New York to "assist" in the investigations, had quietly skipped town.
In his book, Soussan muses: "Had I connected the dots earlier and talked to the authorities about Pasha's efforts to introduce his 'friend' the oil trader to the Iraqi government during our lunch at the Baghdad Hunting Club back in 1998, it is possible that the District Attorney's office might have moved against him much faster and arrested him while he was still in New York."
Soussan rationalizes this missed opportunity by suggesting that had Sevan been found guilty early on the investigations might have stopped there. "Chances are we never would have found out about the true extent of the corruption that plagued our international system."
Come again? Actually, had Sevan been arrested and persuaded to turn government witness, he might have shed a great deal more light on figures inside the UN; in the end, not a single employee was fired and former Secretary-General Kofi Annan by 2006 was dismissing the biggest fraud ever exposed at the UN in terms such as "If there was a scandal... ."
Granted, the mind plays tricks, and Soussan deserves congratulations for deciding to speak up at all. But it's hard to believe that in the thick of the investigations, while testifying to Congress and writing articles about the program, he had no clue what he'd witnessed.
On March 11, 2004, just three days after Soussan published an article in The Wall Street Journal describing Oil-for-Food as corrupt, former Journal staffer Therese Raphael wrote a long and detailed article (to which Soussan makes no reference) describing documentation found in Baghdad pointing to alleged oil payoffs to Sevan. Over the following year, as investigations went on, there was enormous coverage available to anyone following the story--which Soussan certainly was--on how the graft worked, including further allegations about Sevan.
Nor does it seem that the questions put to Soussan by investigators were overly subtle. He recounts that "After one interview in which I refused to speculate about Pasha's guilt, an assistant DA asked me point-blank whether I was protecting Pasha out of a sense of loyalty."
In the end, to this welter of amnesia followed by near-total recall, Soussan adds that he was relieved not to have had to testify against Sevan, glad that this man "who had taken me under his wing when I was an absolute beginner in the world of international diplomacy would be spared the prospect of spending his retirement years in jail."
On a further upbeat note, Soussan concludes that the Oil-for-Food scandal kicked off a new era of radical reform at the UN--one in which he himself sounds ready to re-enlist if called upon (which is what he tried to do between resigning in 2000 and turning whistle-blower in 2004). He claims that "UN whistle-blowers were offered new protection. A steady progression toward greater transparency was in motion, and to the best of my ability I would contribute to this process in the future."
In truth, the Oil-for-Food scandal sparked a huge debate at the time and may have served some purpose in alerting American taxpayers to the corrupt nature of the UN, which their dollars so substantially support. But of genuine reform, there has been almost nothing.
Promises of transparency faded into policies of "financial disclosure" that require no public disclosure at all. The ever-expanding budget remains an opaque and largely unaccountable morass. UN internal audits are now at least made available to the public by the U.S. Mission, but even when they expose wrong-doing, few seem to notice. and almost nothing gets done.
An Ethics Office set up to protect whistle-blowers has proved toothless, as illustrated by the firing and subsequent mauling of whistle-blower Tony Shkurtaj, who called attention to the "Cash-for-Kim" abuses in the UN Development Program's North Korea office. The vaunted reform of the Geneva-based, depraved UN Human Rights Commission into the new Human Rights Council has offered no improvement--unless one counts the $23 million new ceiling recently installed, courtesy of Spanish taxpayers, in its meeting chamber.
Soussan's tale is a complex and interesting one, and I thank him for two kind references in the book to my own reporting. But to frame Oil-for-Food as a coming-of-age story, either for the author of this book or--more important--for the UN itself, is dangerously misleading.
Claudia Rosett, a journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, writes a weekly column on foreign affairs for Forbes.com.
It's now more than six years since I first labeled a file "Oil-for-Food" and began reporting on the former relief program for Iraq that has since become shorthand for United Nations corruption. In all that time, one of the greatest frustrations has been the shroud of secrecy, evasions and lies with which the UN to this day has veiled not only its handling of Oil-for-Food, but the long series of scandals that have continued to brew in its diplomatically immune depths.
For outsiders, one of the biggest obstacles to uncovering the truth about the UN is the sheer tedium of its procedures and lingo. Waste, fraud and abuse--when disclosed at all--tend to come wrapped in generic labels, referring in many cases to unnamed officials, with the shockers often embedded deep in lengthy, bloodless reports. Investigations too often devolve into drawn-out coverups, while UN officials look for ways to contain not the harm to the public, but the damage to the UN's reputation.
Even in the reports of the supposedly tell-all 2004-2005 UN-authorized inquiry into Oil-for-Food, led by Paul Volcker, it is hard in many places to draw a line between exposé and coverup. One of my favorite examples is Volcker's first interim report, released in February 2005, in which his committee described disturbing behavior by the person who was then deputy secretary general, Louise Frechette, referring to her 12 times without once mentioning her name.
When Volcker finished his inquiry, instead of heeding congressional urgings to release the underlying evidence, he turned the archive over to the black hole of the UN's own legal department. This not only ensured that many lingering questions would remain unanswered; it obscured the matter of whether they had ever been asked in the first place.
So, it was with great interest that this week I picked up a new book on the UN, Backstabbing for Beginners: My Crash Course in International Diplomacy by Michael Soussan. Framed as a coming-of-age story, this is an insider memoir by a former UN staffer turned whistle-blower.
Born in Denmark and schooled in France and the U.S., Soussan went to work for Oil-for-Food in 1997, arriving as a wide-eyed young man with a desire to "make a difference." In 2000, about halfway through the 1996-2003 program, he resigned in disgust. Four years later, when scandal erupted over the program, he began to speak up.
Soussan spent much of his time at Oil-for-Food at the right hand of the program's executive director Benon Sevan, an Armenian Cypriot whose Byzantine management style earned him the in-house nickname of "Pasha." This was a prime perch from which to observe the UN's inner workings.
Soussan writes with a crisp sense of the absurd, lampooning a long list of characters and UN practices. For those who would see no evil in the UN, there is plenty here to illuminate its internal contradictions, endless infighting and the self-serving ethos of its ever-expanding operations. There are anecdotes here that ought to warn off any U.S. administration from placing any serious trust in this institution.
But it was with a certain disquiet that I reached the end of this 332-page book. To get to the real news, you have to turn to page 295. That's where Soussan discloses, 10 years after the fact, that he was present at the moment when the alleged deal went down between the Iraqis and Sevan for the Oil-for-Food director to start receiving payoffs from the government of Baghdad. (Sevan, who has been living for more than three years beyond reach of U.S. extradition on Cyprus, says he is innocent of all wrong-doing.)
In considerable detail, Soussan now recounts the scene (1998, at a lavish lunch hosted by an Iraqi official at the Baghdad Hunting Club) complete with quotes, the fish and salad on the menu, and the bistro attire of the waiters. Hit with indigestion, Soussan was making trips to and from the men's room and did not hear the full conversation between the official and Sevan. But he heard enough, both at the table and on the way back out to the car, to reconstruct a fair chunk of the exchange, including Sevan's inquiry about how to procure Iraqi oil contracts for a friend.
He quotes the Iraqi official inquiring "What is your ... friend's name?" He describes Sevan's mumbled response, and the Iraqi's reply: "Tell your friend to contact us again." He describes the doubts voiced immediately afterward by a UN colleague who was also present and remarked in an aside to Soussan, "This is not the proper way to conduct official business."
But despite his self-appointed role as whistle-blower during the investigations in 2004 and 2005 into Oil-for-Food, during interviews with the UN-authorized Volcker inquiry and with federal prosecutors, that conversation apparently slipped Soussan's mind so thoroughly that he says he never mentioned any of this dialogue. By his account, it was not until Volcker in August 2005 produced a report alleging corrupt behavior by Sevan that a light bulb went on, and he realized what he had heard. By that time, Sevan, after almost a year of lingering in New York to "assist" in the investigations, had quietly skipped town.
In his book, Soussan muses: "Had I connected the dots earlier and talked to the authorities about Pasha's efforts to introduce his 'friend' the oil trader to the Iraqi government during our lunch at the Baghdad Hunting Club back in 1998, it is possible that the District Attorney's office might have moved against him much faster and arrested him while he was still in New York."
Soussan rationalizes this missed opportunity by suggesting that had Sevan been found guilty early on the investigations might have stopped there. "Chances are we never would have found out about the true extent of the corruption that plagued our international system."
Come again? Actually, had Sevan been arrested and persuaded to turn government witness, he might have shed a great deal more light on figures inside the UN; in the end, not a single employee was fired and former Secretary-General Kofi Annan by 2006 was dismissing the biggest fraud ever exposed at the UN in terms such as "If there was a scandal... ."
Granted, the mind plays tricks, and Soussan deserves congratulations for deciding to speak up at all. But it's hard to believe that in the thick of the investigations, while testifying to Congress and writing articles about the program, he had no clue what he'd witnessed.
On March 11, 2004, just three days after Soussan published an article in The Wall Street Journal describing Oil-for-Food as corrupt, former Journal staffer Therese Raphael wrote a long and detailed article (to which Soussan makes no reference) describing documentation found in Baghdad pointing to alleged oil payoffs to Sevan. Over the following year, as investigations went on, there was enormous coverage available to anyone following the story--which Soussan certainly was--on how the graft worked, including further allegations about Sevan.
Nor does it seem that the questions put to Soussan by investigators were overly subtle. He recounts that "After one interview in which I refused to speculate about Pasha's guilt, an assistant DA asked me point-blank whether I was protecting Pasha out of a sense of loyalty."
In the end, to this welter of amnesia followed by near-total recall, Soussan adds that he was relieved not to have had to testify against Sevan, glad that this man "who had taken me under his wing when I was an absolute beginner in the world of international diplomacy would be spared the prospect of spending his retirement years in jail."
On a further upbeat note, Soussan concludes that the Oil-for-Food scandal kicked off a new era of radical reform at the UN--one in which he himself sounds ready to re-enlist if called upon (which is what he tried to do between resigning in 2000 and turning whistle-blower in 2004). He claims that "UN whistle-blowers were offered new protection. A steady progression toward greater transparency was in motion, and to the best of my ability I would contribute to this process in the future."
In truth, the Oil-for-Food scandal sparked a huge debate at the time and may have served some purpose in alerting American taxpayers to the corrupt nature of the UN, which their dollars so substantially support. But of genuine reform, there has been almost nothing.
Promises of transparency faded into policies of "financial disclosure" that require no public disclosure at all. The ever-expanding budget remains an opaque and largely unaccountable morass. UN internal audits are now at least made available to the public by the U.S. Mission, but even when they expose wrong-doing, few seem to notice. and almost nothing gets done.
An Ethics Office set up to protect whistle-blowers has proved toothless, as illustrated by the firing and subsequent mauling of whistle-blower Tony Shkurtaj, who called attention to the "Cash-for-Kim" abuses in the UN Development Program's North Korea office. The vaunted reform of the Geneva-based, depraved UN Human Rights Commission into the new Human Rights Council has offered no improvement--unless one counts the $23 million new ceiling recently installed, courtesy of Spanish taxpayers, in its meeting chamber.
Soussan's tale is a complex and interesting one, and I thank him for two kind references in the book to my own reporting. But to frame Oil-for-Food as a coming-of-age story, either for the author of this book or--more important--for the UN itself, is dangerously misleading.
Claudia Rosett, a journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, writes a weekly column on foreign affairs for Forbes.com.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Mumbai: A Message to Obama (Take heed, America)
Tariq Alhomayed
Asharq Alawsat
Over the past few years, it has been easy for most people in most places to attack US President George W. Bush, who is preparing to leave the White House, as they attributed mistakes and crises to him forgetting that the war on terror is still in its early stages. Not only did they criticize him for the methodology in dealing with terrorism, rather they have made him a scapegoat for everything The one to benefit the most from all of this was US President-elect Barack Obama. However, the Mumbai terrorist attacks in India that have left over 130 people dead represent a clear message to Obama, if not the entire world. It is a message for one person specifically whose positions are still being formed.
The Mumbai operation is a message to President-elect Barack Obama to say: you have dreams of a better world but this is the real world that you must deal with. In spite of how you have arranged your priorities, terrorism will always be at the top of the list.
The coordinated terrorist attacks that targeted roughly ten places in Mumbai including a hospital, cafes, restaurants, hotels as well as communication outlets, and foreign tourists, are evidence that the serpent of terrorism is still alive and strong.
Moreover, the methods that were used in the terrorist operation prove that [fighting] terrorism is not the responsibility of one country, it requires international efforts. According to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the attackers came from outside India “to create havoc in India’s commercial capital.”
As the hostages of various nationalities remain in captivity in India’s commercial capital, Mumbai, global interest of the event continues to grow and when the terrorist operation is over, the facts that cannot be ignored will remain.
India is an influential country politically, economically, and even with regards to technology. It has international weight as it is not a marginal country that the world can overlook. In addition, there are other significant meanings to the statement that the perpetrators came from outside India.
This reminds us of the raging battlefronts in Pakistan and Afghanistan where there is open confrontation with Al Qaeda and the Taliban and this is an issue that President-elect Obama has spoken about several times on the basis that the foundation of the war on terror is Afghanistan.
But the questions remain: Can America fight terrorism on its own? Can it rebuild Afghanistan that has been destroyed essentially since the Soviet invasion? Can Washington ignore Iraq at the expense of Afghanistan?
The problem of terrorism does not only afflict the country in which it exists; the danger lies in ignoring it. For the countries that believe that they are distant from the issue of terrorism, it will soon catch up with them; in fact it is on their doorstep. The danger of what is happening in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan is that it is concentrated in a region in which ignorance, tribalism and nuclear weapons come together.
However it is important here to highlight that the terrorist incident in India may be indicative of greater danger to come. On Wednesday, a warning was issued that terrorists might target the New York transit system and this reminds of the circumstances the surrounded 9/11 – it started with the targeting of American embassies and the USS Cole bombing in Yemen and then came the New York attacks that shocked the world – bearing in mind that America is going through transition of power.
Therefore, we must say that those who love peace and who want to wipe out terrorism are countless…but the road to its elimination is a long one
Asharq Alawsat
Over the past few years, it has been easy for most people in most places to attack US President George W. Bush, who is preparing to leave the White House, as they attributed mistakes and crises to him forgetting that the war on terror is still in its early stages. Not only did they criticize him for the methodology in dealing with terrorism, rather they have made him a scapegoat for everything The one to benefit the most from all of this was US President-elect Barack Obama. However, the Mumbai terrorist attacks in India that have left over 130 people dead represent a clear message to Obama, if not the entire world. It is a message for one person specifically whose positions are still being formed.
The Mumbai operation is a message to President-elect Barack Obama to say: you have dreams of a better world but this is the real world that you must deal with. In spite of how you have arranged your priorities, terrorism will always be at the top of the list.
The coordinated terrorist attacks that targeted roughly ten places in Mumbai including a hospital, cafes, restaurants, hotels as well as communication outlets, and foreign tourists, are evidence that the serpent of terrorism is still alive and strong.
Moreover, the methods that were used in the terrorist operation prove that [fighting] terrorism is not the responsibility of one country, it requires international efforts. According to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the attackers came from outside India “to create havoc in India’s commercial capital.”
As the hostages of various nationalities remain in captivity in India’s commercial capital, Mumbai, global interest of the event continues to grow and when the terrorist operation is over, the facts that cannot be ignored will remain.
India is an influential country politically, economically, and even with regards to technology. It has international weight as it is not a marginal country that the world can overlook. In addition, there are other significant meanings to the statement that the perpetrators came from outside India.
This reminds us of the raging battlefronts in Pakistan and Afghanistan where there is open confrontation with Al Qaeda and the Taliban and this is an issue that President-elect Obama has spoken about several times on the basis that the foundation of the war on terror is Afghanistan.
But the questions remain: Can America fight terrorism on its own? Can it rebuild Afghanistan that has been destroyed essentially since the Soviet invasion? Can Washington ignore Iraq at the expense of Afghanistan?
The problem of terrorism does not only afflict the country in which it exists; the danger lies in ignoring it. For the countries that believe that they are distant from the issue of terrorism, it will soon catch up with them; in fact it is on their doorstep. The danger of what is happening in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan is that it is concentrated in a region in which ignorance, tribalism and nuclear weapons come together.
However it is important here to highlight that the terrorist incident in India may be indicative of greater danger to come. On Wednesday, a warning was issued that terrorists might target the New York transit system and this reminds of the circumstances the surrounded 9/11 – it started with the targeting of American embassies and the USS Cole bombing in Yemen and then came the New York attacks that shocked the world – bearing in mind that America is going through transition of power.
Therefore, we must say that those who love peace and who want to wipe out terrorism are countless…but the road to its elimination is a long one
Mumbai Terror: In cold blood
THE JERUSALEM POST
The dreadful images coming out of Mumbai since late Wednesday night have stunned Israelis - and not just because the city's Chabad House was targeted along with a hospital, open market, the main train station, a popular restaurant and two posh landmark hotels. At least 125 people are known killed and some 327 wounded. The bloodbath reminds us that, though Muslim extremism is often traceable to some local grievance, it's in essence part of a larger conflict between civilizations. Islamists are violently affronted when Hindus, Jews, Buddhist or Christians are sovereign over a Muslim minority.
AS WE try to make sense of the mayhem unleashed on Mumbai, a city of some 13 million souls, our thoughts naturally are with the family of Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg. We are anxious, too, for the dozen or so other Israeli hostages. And we express our condolences to the people of Mumbai who have lost loved ones in this reprehensible assault.
Mumbai has been attacked six times since 1993, most recently in 2006 when 200 people were killed in a train-bombing. The nature of the latest attacks, however, with multiple terror teams hitting some 10 targets with explosives, automatic rifle-fire and grenades - in an operation that carried on from one day into the next - suggests a far higher level of coordination and training than anything seen before. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the attacks were launched from outside India "with the single-minded determination to create havoc in the commercial capital of the country." Plainly, the terrorists are connected to elements in the failed state of Pakistan. At least some of them may have arrived by sea, landing across from the Taj Mahal hotel.
They hunted-down guests with US, British and Israeli passports to take as hostages. At the Chabad House, Indian neighbors nobly tried to fend off the attackers until they themselves were driven back by terrorists' bullets.
Israelis feel at one with the people of India, especially at times like these. Both countries are modern incarnations of ancient civilizations. We share common political values, overlapping security concerns and a growing commerce.
India was established in 1947; Israel in 1948. Both peoples rejected British rule, both faced Muslim opposition to their independence. The subcontinent was divided into the secular state of India and the Muslim state of Pakistan. In the Mideast, the Palestinian Arabs rejected the idea of two states for two peoples. Substantially, they still do.
Though much still needs to be done to draw India and Israel closer, enormous steps have been taken since New Delhi first recognized Israel in 1950 and finally established an embassy in 1992. Israel has actually maintained a consular presence in Mumbai, formerly Bombay, since 1952.
India is a genuine multicultural democracy. Among its 1.1 billion people are 150 million Muslims. Its former president, and father of New Delhi's nuclear program, is a Muslim.
NO ONE yet knows who carried out these attacks and speculation is rampant. Pakistan has in the past encouraged terrorism in Kashmir. Its doubtful India's unstable neighbor is explicitly responsible for the aggression (the government there denounced it), but Pakistan has multiple power centers and its intelligence service has previously been linked to the Taliban. Both they and al-Qaida have an interest in diverting attention away from the Pakistan-Afghan border. And coincidentally, Pakistani troops reportedly opened fire on Indian positions along their joint border on Thursday. Still, al-Qaida specializes in mega-attacks using suicide bombers, which was not the case here. Even if it turns out that this outrage was the handiwork of Lashkar-e-Toiba - or one of its front-groups - which wants to turn India into a Muslim state, that still doesn't unveil the real masterminds.
Whoever did this wanted to create panic, scare off foreigners, undermine India's economy and turn the country's people against one another.
ISRAELIS have long argued that no political grievance, no perceived injustice and no religious creed can ever justify waging war against civilians. Others have sometimes made excuses for "resistance" movements.
If any consolation can be derived out of the heartbreak in Mumbai, perhaps it will be that India will work ever more vigorously in international forums to isolate terrorists and the state's that sponsor them.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1227702350509&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Media stop the attacks-let me introduce you to the Holtzbergs
Nov. 28, 2008
JPost.com Staff , THE JERUSALEM POST
"Gabi and Rivky Holtzberg made the ultimate sacrifice," said Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice chairman of Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch, the educational arm of Chabad-Lubavitch as news of the young couples' murder at the hands of terrorists clarified from a pessimistic assessment to a bitter reality. "As emissaries to Mumbai, Gabi and Rivky gave up the comforts of the West in order to spread Jewish pride in a corner of the world that was a frequent stop for throngs of Israeli tourists. Their Chabad House was popular among the local community, as well as with visiting businesspeople.
"For five years, they ran a synagogue and Torah classes, and helped people dealing with drug addiction and poverty," continued the statement. "Their selfless love will live on with all the people they touched. We will continue the work they started," Kotlarsky was quoted on the Chabad Website as saying.
At a press conference in the Jewish Children's Museum in Brooklyn, a visibly grief stricken Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, chairman of the Educational and Social Services arms of the Chabad-Lubavitch Movement, eulogized the Holtzbergs, describing their charitable work as "selfless" and describing
the young couple as "two of our finest."
The couple leaves behind a single baby boy, Moishe, who will be marking his second birthday on Saturday, as an orphan.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1227702359810&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
JPost.com Staff , THE JERUSALEM POST
"Gabi and Rivky Holtzberg made the ultimate sacrifice," said Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice chairman of Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch, the educational arm of Chabad-Lubavitch as news of the young couples' murder at the hands of terrorists clarified from a pessimistic assessment to a bitter reality. "As emissaries to Mumbai, Gabi and Rivky gave up the comforts of the West in order to spread Jewish pride in a corner of the world that was a frequent stop for throngs of Israeli tourists. Their Chabad House was popular among the local community, as well as with visiting businesspeople.
"For five years, they ran a synagogue and Torah classes, and helped people dealing with drug addiction and poverty," continued the statement. "Their selfless love will live on with all the people they touched. We will continue the work they started," Kotlarsky was quoted on the Chabad Website as saying.
At a press conference in the Jewish Children's Museum in Brooklyn, a visibly grief stricken Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, chairman of the Educational and Social Services arms of the Chabad-Lubavitch Movement, eulogized the Holtzbergs, describing their charitable work as "selfless" and describing
the young couple as "two of our finest."
The couple leaves behind a single baby boy, Moishe, who will be marking his second birthday on Saturday, as an orphan.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1227702359810&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
She got it Right! "Livni: Western world under attack"
The gauntlet has been thrown down to our feet-how we respond in the coming months is critical.
Foreign minister tells press conference no details on Chabad attack in Mumbai can be divulged until Indian commando completes operation within; Israeli security personnel, medical teams standing by as battle resumes on third floor
Ronen Medzini
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni convened a press conference Friday in which she stated that Foreign Ministry personnel were awaiting the end of the Indian commando operation in the Mumbai Chabad house."It appears the incident is over," she said. "The senior security officer and his people asked permission to enter the premises but then more shooting and explosions broke out."
Livni said Indian security forces were still in the building, moving from floor to floor of the building in an attempt to clear it of terrorist presence. She added that ZAKA and medical teams were standing by. Indian television reports said five hostages had been killed in the terror attack.
The foreign minister said initial reports had indicated that the situation at the Chabad house was "very problematic". She added, "Our world is under attack, and it doesn't matter if it's in India or somewhere else. Only when things like this happen do we understand that we are partners in the same battle.
"This is a reminder to the world. We are the target, and it's not just Israel but the whole Western world. As we understand it they were looking for guests with American, British, and Israeli citizenship."
Israel's ambassador to India, Mark Sofer, updated the conference by phone. He said the fighting had been rekindled on the house's third floor, and that security and IDF personnel were still standing by.
Comment: Do not make light of this fact: the terrorists, intent upon murder, singled out Westerners-they asked for those carrying American and British passports-they knew the hotels they attacked were host to these internationals. I do not know what more some ofyou need to understand what is going on across the planet-outside of the USA and actually now creeping into American society.
Fitzgerald: The Mumbai jihadist link to Al-Qaeda, and why it misses the point
“Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism specialist with the Swedish National Defense College, said there are ‘very strong suspicions’ that the coordinated Mumbai attacks have a link to al-Qaida....” -- from this news article (see below) Yes, yes. We have all heard the solemn discussions about whether or not the "Deccan Mujahideen" is a new group, or an old one, or a made-up group, and whether or not there is a "link" to Al Qaeda. And this kind of focusing on the trivial, the nearly insignificant, goes on and on and on, when the real point is this: these are Muslims. They may be from within India. Or not. They may be from Pakistan. Or not. They may have been encouraged or funded by Arab Muslims. Or not. They may have links to Al Qaeda. Or not.
What matters is that they are Muslims attacking, attempting to kill, non-Muslims, in order to obtain their aims. And their aims are to weaken -- in this particular case -- India. And they wish to weaken India in order to make the government of India appease Muslims and meet their demands, whether in Kashmir or in India proper. And once those demands, whatever they may be, are met, other demands from Muslims will be made, and will have to be met, for there is no end to this. The Jihad does not have an end point. There is not a finite goal, but rather an endless series of goals, with each success feeding triumphalism.
The only time this has not happened, in the past 1350 years, is when Muslims have been stopped, either by superior military power -- as outside of Poitiers, or when the Ottomans were repulsed twice at the Gates of Vienna, or by the clear understanding that the Infidels were overwhelmingly more powerful, militarily and economically. That, through the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, was clear to all concerned.
And though Muslims on their own, because of inshallah-fatalism, could never create advanced economies, they have become rich from oil (and gas), a manna that only an accident of geology could provide. Now they enjoy trillions of dollars which, while allowing many of them lives of incredible luxury and decadence beyond anything the Western world has experienced, also helps to fund the Jihad by paying for mosques, madrasas, armies of Western hirelings, propaganda, and campaigns of Daw'a. What's more, at the same time, and quite independently, the Western world, having forgotten its own historical experience of Islam, and its elites, political and media, having lost the ability to heed its real scholars and their cassandra warnings, instead listened to the espositos, the armstrongs, the assorted MESA-Nostra defenders-of-the-faith-and-fatah-of-Islam, and allowed into the Western midst millions of Muslims. They did this without realizing that they brought with them, undeclared, in their mental baggage, an alien and a hostile creed, one that flatly contradicts the principles -- all the principles -- of advanced Western societies.
These trillions in oil revenues, and these millions of Muslims who in an act of civilizational near-criminal negligence, have been permitted to settle deep behind what Muslims themselves are taught to regard as enemy lines, explain the threat of Jihad on a global scale today.
And there is no need to waste valuable time on the radio or television pondering ponderously whether the attackers are domestic or foreign, whether they are connected to Al-Qaeda or not. That may of some interest in helping to round this particular group up. But if too much time is spent on such matters, it distracts from the pedagogic task at hand: to explain to listeners and viewers that the key element here is Islam. It is Muslims pursuing, as they have a duty to pursue, Jihad. In this particular case they have chosen to do so using terrorism, but all around us other instruments, more effective because far less attention-getting, are being used toward the same goal, the same end: the removal of all obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam -- everywhere.
That's why, when any "terrorism expert" -- some are good, some are not so good, some are idiotic -- proceeds to enjoy his time on the air discussing endlessly what this group should be called, what other groups it is linked to, what its "cause" is -- it's a case of missing-the-pointness that, at this point in the history of the world, is downright dangerous.
"Battle intensifies at Taj Mahal Hotel
Nov. 26, 2008
Associated Press , THE JERUSALEM POST
Explosions and gunfire intensified at the elegant Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai Friday afternoon as Indian commandos battled with Islamic terrorists holed up inside the building with hostages, two days after a chain of terror attacks across India's financial center left at least 143 people dead and and 288 wounded.
Earlier Friday, Indian commandos ended their siege of the Oberoi hotel and officials said commandos had killed two gunmen there.
"The hotel is under our control," J.K. Dutt, director general of India's elite National Security Guard commando unit, told reporters, adding that 24 bodies had been found. Dozens of people - including a man clutching a baby - had been evacuated from Oberoi earlier Friday.
Security officials said their operations were almost over.
"It's just a matter of a few hours that we'll be able to wrap up things," Lt. Gen. N. Thamburaj told reporters Friday morning.
The group rescued from the Oberoi, many holding passports, included at least two Americans, a Briton, two Japanese nationals and several Indians. Some carried luggage with Canadian flags.
One man in a chef's uniform was holding a small baby. About 20 airline crew members were freed, including staff from Lufthansa and Air France.
"I'm going home, I'm going to see my wife," said Mark Abell, with a huge smile on his face after emerging from the hotel.
Abell, from Britain, had locked himself in his room during the siege. "These people here have been fantastic, the Indian authorities, the hotel staff. I think they are a great advertisement for their country," he said as security officials pulled him away.
The well-coordinated strikes by small bands of gunmen starting Wednesday night left the city shell-shocked.
Late Thursday, after about 400 people had been brought out of the Taj hotel, officials said it had been cleared of gunmen. But Friday morning, army commanders said that while three gunmen had been killed, two to three more were still inside with about 15 civilians.
A few hours after that, Thamburaj, the security official, said at least one gunman was still alive inside the hotel and had cut of electricity on the floor where he was hiding. Shortly after that announcement, another round of explosions and gunfire were heard coming from the hotel.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh blamed "external forces" for the violence - a phrase sometimes used to refer to Pakistani terrorists, whom Indian authorities often blame for attacks.
On Friday, India's foreign minister ratcheted up the accusations over the attacks.
"According to preliminary information, some elements in Pakistan are responsible for Mumbai terror attacks," Pranab Mukherjee told reporters in the western city of Jodhpur.
"Proof cannot be disclosed at this time," he said, adding that Pakistan had assured New Delhi it would not allow its territory to be used for attacks against India. India has long accused Islamabad of allowing militant Muslim groups, particularly those fighting in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, to train and take shelter in Pakistan. Mukherjee's carefully phrased comments appeared to indicate he was accusing Pakistan-based groups of staging the attack, and not Pakistan itself.
Islamabad has long denied those accusations.
Earlier Friday, Pakistan's Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar, in Islamabad, denied involvement by his country: "I will say in very categorical terms that Pakistan is not involved in these gory incidents."
The gunmen were well-prepared, apparently scouting some targets ahead of time and carrying large bags of almonds to keep up their energy.
"It's obvious they were trained somewhere ... Not everyone can handle the AK series of weapons or throw grenades like that," an unidentified member of India's Marine Commando unit told reporters, his face wrapped in a black mask. He said the men were "very determined and remorseless."
A US investigative team was heading to Mumbai, a State Department official said Thursday evening, speaking on condition of anonymity because the US and Indian governments were still working out final details.
India has been shaken repeatedly by terror attacks blamed on Muslim militants in recent years, but most were bombings striking crowded places: markets, street corners, parks. Mumbai - one of the most populated cities in the world with some 18 million people - was hit by a series of bombings in July 2006 that killed 187 people.
These attacks were more sophisticated - and more brazen.
They began at about 9:20 p.m. with shooters spraying gunfire across the Chhatrapati Shivaji railroad station, one of the world's busiest terminals. For the next two hours, there was an attack roughly every 15 minutes - the Jewish center, a tourist restaurant, one hotel, then another, and two attacks on hospitals. There were 10 targets in all.
Indian media showed pictures of rubber dinghies found by the city's shoreline, apparently used by the gunmen to reach the area. Both the luxury hotels targeted overlook the Arabian Sea.
Analysts around the world were debating whether the gunmen could have been tied to - or inspired by - al-Qaida.
A previously unknown group calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen claimed responsibility in e-mails to several media outlets. The Deccan is a region in southern India that was traditionally ruled by Muslim kings.
Survivors of the hotel attacks said the gunmen had specifically targeted Britons and Americans, though most of the dead seemed to be Indians and whoever else was caught in the random gunfire.
One of the gunmen "stopped once and asked, 'Where are you from? Any British or American? Show your ID," Alex Chamberlain, a British citizen dining at the Oberoi, told reporters.
Among the dead were two Australians and a Japanese, said the state home ministry. An Italian, a Briton and a German were also killed, according to their foreign ministries.
The United States, Pakistan and other countries condemned the attacks.
Relations between Hindus, who make up more than 80 percent of India's 1 billion population, and Muslims, who make up about 14 percent, have sporadically erupted into bouts of sectarian violence since British-ruled India was split into independent India and Pakistan in 1947.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1227702333602&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull"
What matters is that they are Muslims attacking, attempting to kill, non-Muslims, in order to obtain their aims. And their aims are to weaken -- in this particular case -- India. And they wish to weaken India in order to make the government of India appease Muslims and meet their demands, whether in Kashmir or in India proper. And once those demands, whatever they may be, are met, other demands from Muslims will be made, and will have to be met, for there is no end to this. The Jihad does not have an end point. There is not a finite goal, but rather an endless series of goals, with each success feeding triumphalism.
The only time this has not happened, in the past 1350 years, is when Muslims have been stopped, either by superior military power -- as outside of Poitiers, or when the Ottomans were repulsed twice at the Gates of Vienna, or by the clear understanding that the Infidels were overwhelmingly more powerful, militarily and economically. That, through the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, was clear to all concerned.
And though Muslims on their own, because of inshallah-fatalism, could never create advanced economies, they have become rich from oil (and gas), a manna that only an accident of geology could provide. Now they enjoy trillions of dollars which, while allowing many of them lives of incredible luxury and decadence beyond anything the Western world has experienced, also helps to fund the Jihad by paying for mosques, madrasas, armies of Western hirelings, propaganda, and campaigns of Daw'a. What's more, at the same time, and quite independently, the Western world, having forgotten its own historical experience of Islam, and its elites, political and media, having lost the ability to heed its real scholars and their cassandra warnings, instead listened to the espositos, the armstrongs, the assorted MESA-Nostra defenders-of-the-faith-and-fatah-of-Islam, and allowed into the Western midst millions of Muslims. They did this without realizing that they brought with them, undeclared, in their mental baggage, an alien and a hostile creed, one that flatly contradicts the principles -- all the principles -- of advanced Western societies.
These trillions in oil revenues, and these millions of Muslims who in an act of civilizational near-criminal negligence, have been permitted to settle deep behind what Muslims themselves are taught to regard as enemy lines, explain the threat of Jihad on a global scale today.
And there is no need to waste valuable time on the radio or television pondering ponderously whether the attackers are domestic or foreign, whether they are connected to Al-Qaeda or not. That may of some interest in helping to round this particular group up. But if too much time is spent on such matters, it distracts from the pedagogic task at hand: to explain to listeners and viewers that the key element here is Islam. It is Muslims pursuing, as they have a duty to pursue, Jihad. In this particular case they have chosen to do so using terrorism, but all around us other instruments, more effective because far less attention-getting, are being used toward the same goal, the same end: the removal of all obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam -- everywhere.
That's why, when any "terrorism expert" -- some are good, some are not so good, some are idiotic -- proceeds to enjoy his time on the air discussing endlessly what this group should be called, what other groups it is linked to, what its "cause" is -- it's a case of missing-the-pointness that, at this point in the history of the world, is downright dangerous.
"Battle intensifies at Taj Mahal Hotel
Nov. 26, 2008
Associated Press , THE JERUSALEM POST
Explosions and gunfire intensified at the elegant Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai Friday afternoon as Indian commandos battled with Islamic terrorists holed up inside the building with hostages, two days after a chain of terror attacks across India's financial center left at least 143 people dead and and 288 wounded.
Earlier Friday, Indian commandos ended their siege of the Oberoi hotel and officials said commandos had killed two gunmen there.
"The hotel is under our control," J.K. Dutt, director general of India's elite National Security Guard commando unit, told reporters, adding that 24 bodies had been found. Dozens of people - including a man clutching a baby - had been evacuated from Oberoi earlier Friday.
Security officials said their operations were almost over.
"It's just a matter of a few hours that we'll be able to wrap up things," Lt. Gen. N. Thamburaj told reporters Friday morning.
The group rescued from the Oberoi, many holding passports, included at least two Americans, a Briton, two Japanese nationals and several Indians. Some carried luggage with Canadian flags.
One man in a chef's uniform was holding a small baby. About 20 airline crew members were freed, including staff from Lufthansa and Air France.
"I'm going home, I'm going to see my wife," said Mark Abell, with a huge smile on his face after emerging from the hotel.
Abell, from Britain, had locked himself in his room during the siege. "These people here have been fantastic, the Indian authorities, the hotel staff. I think they are a great advertisement for their country," he said as security officials pulled him away.
The well-coordinated strikes by small bands of gunmen starting Wednesday night left the city shell-shocked.
Late Thursday, after about 400 people had been brought out of the Taj hotel, officials said it had been cleared of gunmen. But Friday morning, army commanders said that while three gunmen had been killed, two to three more were still inside with about 15 civilians.
A few hours after that, Thamburaj, the security official, said at least one gunman was still alive inside the hotel and had cut of electricity on the floor where he was hiding. Shortly after that announcement, another round of explosions and gunfire were heard coming from the hotel.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh blamed "external forces" for the violence - a phrase sometimes used to refer to Pakistani terrorists, whom Indian authorities often blame for attacks.
On Friday, India's foreign minister ratcheted up the accusations over the attacks.
"According to preliminary information, some elements in Pakistan are responsible for Mumbai terror attacks," Pranab Mukherjee told reporters in the western city of Jodhpur.
"Proof cannot be disclosed at this time," he said, adding that Pakistan had assured New Delhi it would not allow its territory to be used for attacks against India. India has long accused Islamabad of allowing militant Muslim groups, particularly those fighting in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, to train and take shelter in Pakistan. Mukherjee's carefully phrased comments appeared to indicate he was accusing Pakistan-based groups of staging the attack, and not Pakistan itself.
Islamabad has long denied those accusations.
Earlier Friday, Pakistan's Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar, in Islamabad, denied involvement by his country: "I will say in very categorical terms that Pakistan is not involved in these gory incidents."
The gunmen were well-prepared, apparently scouting some targets ahead of time and carrying large bags of almonds to keep up their energy.
"It's obvious they were trained somewhere ... Not everyone can handle the AK series of weapons or throw grenades like that," an unidentified member of India's Marine Commando unit told reporters, his face wrapped in a black mask. He said the men were "very determined and remorseless."
A US investigative team was heading to Mumbai, a State Department official said Thursday evening, speaking on condition of anonymity because the US and Indian governments were still working out final details.
India has been shaken repeatedly by terror attacks blamed on Muslim militants in recent years, but most were bombings striking crowded places: markets, street corners, parks. Mumbai - one of the most populated cities in the world with some 18 million people - was hit by a series of bombings in July 2006 that killed 187 people.
These attacks were more sophisticated - and more brazen.
They began at about 9:20 p.m. with shooters spraying gunfire across the Chhatrapati Shivaji railroad station, one of the world's busiest terminals. For the next two hours, there was an attack roughly every 15 minutes - the Jewish center, a tourist restaurant, one hotel, then another, and two attacks on hospitals. There were 10 targets in all.
Indian media showed pictures of rubber dinghies found by the city's shoreline, apparently used by the gunmen to reach the area. Both the luxury hotels targeted overlook the Arabian Sea.
Analysts around the world were debating whether the gunmen could have been tied to - or inspired by - al-Qaida.
A previously unknown group calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen claimed responsibility in e-mails to several media outlets. The Deccan is a region in southern India that was traditionally ruled by Muslim kings.
Survivors of the hotel attacks said the gunmen had specifically targeted Britons and Americans, though most of the dead seemed to be Indians and whoever else was caught in the random gunfire.
One of the gunmen "stopped once and asked, 'Where are you from? Any British or American? Show your ID," Alex Chamberlain, a British citizen dining at the Oberoi, told reporters.
Among the dead were two Australians and a Japanese, said the state home ministry. An Italian, a Briton and a German were also killed, according to their foreign ministries.
The United States, Pakistan and other countries condemned the attacks.
Relations between Hindus, who make up more than 80 percent of India's 1 billion population, and Muslims, who make up about 14 percent, have sporadically erupted into bouts of sectarian violence since British-ruled India was split into independent India and Pakistan in 1947.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1227702333602&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull"
Connecting the Dots: Pakistan, Jihadists, and Deobandi Shariah Authorities like Mufti Usmani
Update No. 1: Thanks to Roger Simon of Pajamas Media for posting an update link to this article.
From the India Daily:
Terrorist Ajmal Amir Kamal, a resident of Faridkot, Multan in Pakistan, a Pakistani elite commando, caught in Taj, got his orders from shadow ISI and Osama Bin laden
Kiran Mathur
Nov. 27, 2008
The man is in custody. He is an educated youth, a college student, educated in Pakistan's Islamic school where Osama Bin Laden is respected as God's Prime Agent. He got his direct orders from shadow ISI, Pakistan's clandestine intelligence militia founded by Saudi oil money and American billions of dollars paid to Pakistan to fight terror. He was caught by the Indian NSG in Taj. He was brain washed by the Islamic ideology that drives hundreds of thousands of young Muslims to the dark alleys of Waziristan where American money for Pakistan's war against terror and Saudi oil money get funneled into Al-Queda terror training ground. They want to take Afghanistan over. They want to take control Pakistani nukes. They want to slave India into submission. Terrorist Ajmal says that will happen one day, it is just a question of time.
Indian security forces have him. Some say he is just a SIMI fellow from Indian college and lying about his identity. The real culprits are gone leaving him there to make up a story.
He was brought to Indian shores by a large mother cargo ship. He boarded with forty others to rubber rafts silently to India Gate. The bribed Mumbai police was ready to give them the necessary cars, infrastructure to start spreading out all over Mumbai with most sophisticated ammunition and ammo dumps all over the city planned beforehand.
Now, from where does the obligation and menacing drive to engage in Jihad derive? The answer is traditional, authoritative, pedigreed Shariah--or Islamic law. Thus, from the most authoritative Deobandi (the dominant Muslim group in Pakistan and India) Shariah authority in the world, Mufti Taqi M. Usmani, we learn that Muslims living in the West and given total freedom of religion must still engage in violent Jihad against the infidels among whom they live.
Now you might ask, so what? So what the leading Shariah Sunni authority in the world, and certainly the most authoritative Deobandi authority, says Jihad against the infidel is mandatory irrespective of the West's Middle East policies, irrespective of the respect the West bestows upon Muslims?!? So what he maintaines the absolute obligation to establish Shariah-Islam the world over as the dominant theo-political order overrides all considerations?!? So what? Muslims can just ignore him!
But this is only true of Muslims who reject Shariah. For the hundreds of millions of Shariah faithful, following the legal pronouncements of the leading Shariah authorities is part and parcel of their very being. As we learn from two Havard professors Vogel and Hayes, both big proponents of Shariah-compliant finance and both paid quite well by the Wahhabi-oil soaked money from the Gulf through the endowment of the Harvard Islamic Law Project:
Islamic legal rules encompass both ethics and law, this world and the next, church and state. The law does not separate rules enforced by individual conscience from rules enforced by a judge or by the state. Since scholars alone are capable of knowing the law directly from revelation, laypeople are expected to seek an opinion (fatwa) from a qualified scholar on any point in doubt; if they follow that opinion sincerely, they are blameless even if the opinion is in error.
And, from an important text authored by a Bahrain Treasury official and an Australian economics professor who specializes in Shariah-economics, we learn that there is no room for Western notions of a nation-state:
Since Islamic law reflects the will of [Allah] rather than the will of a human lawmaker, it covers all areas of life and not simply those which are of interest to a secular state or society. It is not limited to questions of belief and religious practice, but also deals with criminal and constitution [sic] matters, as well as many other fields which in other societies would be regarded as the concern of the secular authorities. In an Islamic context there is no such thing as a separate secular authority and secular law, since religion and state are one. Essentially, the Islamic state as conceived by orthodox Muslims is a religious entity established under divine law.
For Usmani's fatwa for Jihad against the West, read below . . .
Mufti M. Taqi Usmani, born in Deoband, India, was a judge on the Shariah Court in Pakistan and on the Shariah Appellate Bench of the Pakistan Supreme Court, a position he occupied for more than 20 years. He currently sits on numerous Shariah authority boards and chairs the Shariah board for the most authoritative of the standards boards for the SCF industry, the AAOIFI.[i] He also was a founding member of the Dow Jones Islamic Index Shariah Advisory Board and was forced to resign only after SANE's David Yerushalmi, together with Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, put pressure on Dow Jones through editorials published in New York business papers.
Usmani is hardly an unknown entity. He has published and spoken prolifically on the evils of the West, America, and the obligation for offensive Jihad. Much of this literature has been summarized by Alex Alexiev, vice president for research for the Center for Security Policy[ii], in his short dossier on Usmani. Drawing on open source research, Alexiev exposes Usmani as a Shariah authority fully committed to the Law of Jihad.[iii]
The most telling of Usmani’s legal rulings on Jihad is found in the last chapter of his book, Islam and Modernism, published in 1999 in English and later republished in 2006 and available on Amazon.[iv] In that chapter, Usmani responds to a Syed Badrus Salam of Jedda, Saudi Arabia, who has submitted an inquiry for a legal ruling to Usmani. In his query, Salam seeks to interpret the various authoritative Shariah scholars who ruled in favor of violent Jihad against non-Muslims in a historical context. He attempts to suggest to Usmani that aggressive Jihad against non-hostile, non-Muslims was no longer required as a practical matter. Arguing that while violent Jihad was effective in the days of Mohammed and the Caliphates as the most effective way to convert the world to Islam, he opines that today this was no longer the case. When Muslims are without military power and live in Western societies which allow freedom of religion and grant Muslims the opportunity to convert non-Muslims peacefully, Salam maintains that the best approach to spreading the “Message of Allah” is through “[c]ompromising relations and amicable treatment”.
In his written response, Usmani rejects any such suggestion. His response is provided below in full for three reasons: (1) it sets out in clear terms the standard, traditional Shariah doctrine on the Law of Jihad; (2) the response is a private response that Usmani purposefully made public by including in a book which was originally published in Urdu and which he subsequently had published in English; and (3) providing only a partial quote and allowing the reader to access the original at some other time would lessen the stark and startling impact of the legal ruling by one of the world’s most authoritative Shariah scholars and one of the most important Shariah authorities in the SCF world. His response was as follows:[v]
I am in receipt of your esteemed letter. Whatever you have written about Jehad can be summarized as this “If a non-Muslim state allows for preaching Islam in its country, Jehad against it does not remain lawful.” If this is what you mean, my humble self does not agree with it. Obstruction in the way of preaching Islam does not mean only a legal obstacle, but greater power or domination of a non-Muslim state against Muslims is by itself a great obstacle in the propagation of Islam. There are no legal restrictions in most of the countries today on preaching Islam, but since their grandeur and authority is established in the world, it has led to developing a universal feeling which forms a greater obstacle than the greatest legal binding in the way of free propagation of Islam.
For this reason the most important purpose of Jehad is to break this grandeur so that the resulting psychological subordination should come to an end and the way of accepting the Truth become smooth. As long as this grandeur and domination persists the hearts of people will remain subdued and will not be fully inclined to accept the religion of Truth. Hence Jehad will continue. The Qur'an said in Sura Tauba:
Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.[vi]
Here, killing is to continue until the unbelievers pay Jizyah[vii] after they are humbled or overpowered. If the purpose of killing was only to acquire permission and freedom of preaching Islam, it would have been said “until they allow for preaching Islam.” But the obligation of Jizyah and along with it the mention of their subordination is a clear proof that the purpose is to smash their grandeur, so that the veils of their domination should be raised and people get a free chance to think over the blessings of Islam. Imam Razi has written the following commentary on this verse:
The purpose of “Jizyah” is not to let the unbelievers stay in their contumacy against Islam but sparing their lives to give them a chance for a time during which they may hopefully get convinced of the truth of Islam and embrace it. So when an unbeliever is given time wherein he would be observing the respect and honour of Islam, and hearing the arguments of its validity, and also observing the baselesness of disbelief, these things would convince him to turn towards Islam. This, in fact, is the real purpose of legalizing Jizyah.
The other question worthy of notice is: Do we find an example that the Prophet (PBUH)[viii] and his companions ever sent any missionary groups in other countries before Jehad and waited for their reaction to allow or disallow the missionary work? Did they go for Jehad only when they were refused to carry out the missionary work for Islam? Was any mission sent to Rome before attacking them? Was any attempt made to avoid Jehad against Iran and did they contend on seeking a permission for preaching Islam for that purpose? Obviously it was not so. Thus there can be no other conclusion that only a permit for missionary activities was not the aim. If that would have been the only aim many of the bloody combats could be stopped only on one condition that no obstacle would be placed in the way of the mission of Islam. But at least in my humble knowledge there has not been a single incident in the entire history of Islam where Muslims had shown their willingness to stop Jehad just for one condition that they will be allowed to preach Islam freely. On the contrary the aim of Muslims as declared by them in the battle of Qadsia was, “To take out people from the rule of people and put them under the rule of Allah”. Similarly, the Our'an said:
And (you O Believers) fight them until persecution is no more and the Din is all for Allah.
In the exegesis of this verse my reverend father Mufti Muhammad Shafi has written:
The meaning of religion is “Authority and domination”. Thus the meaning of this verse would be that Muslims should continue until the Muslims are safeguarded against their contumacy, and the religion of Islam becomes a dominating power so that it offers protection to Muslims from the atrocities and mischiefs of others.
He further said:
The nutshell of this explanation is that Jehad against the enemies of Islam is obligatory on Muslims until the danger of their mischief or evil-doings is over, and the domination of Islam is established over all other religions. Since this will occur only near the end of the world, the command of Jehad remains till the last day. (Ma’arif-ul-Qur’an vol 4, p. 233)
In short, my humble self is of the view that the purpose of Jehad is not just to get the right of missionary activities in any country, but it aims at breaking the grandeur of unbelievers and establish that of Muslims. As a result no one will dare to show any evil designs against Muslims on one side and on the other side, people subdued from the grandeur of Islam will have an open mind to think over the blessings of Islam. Factually, this aims at safeguarding Islam. It is for this reason that the scholars who have called Jehad “A Protection” must be looked in the above context. But the basic element of this “protection” is to break the grandeur of unbelievers and establish the authority of Islam. Hence this basic element cannot be excluded from it. I think that all Ulema (Religious scholars) have established the same concept about the purpose of Jehad. Moulana Idrees Kandhalvi stated:
By commanding Jehad Allah does not mean that all the unbelievers be killed outright, but the aim is that the religion of Allah should dominate the world, and Muslims live with honour and dignity, and obey and worship Allah in peace and tranquillity and there be no danger from unbelievers to interfere in the religion of Islam. Islam is not in enmity with the personal existence of its enemies. It resists such a grandeur and power that may become a threat for Islam and Muslims. (Seerat-ul-Mustafa vol: 2, p. 388)
At another place he writes:
The implication of this verse is an obligation imposed on Muslims to fight against the unbelievers till the disorder and mischief cease to exist and the religion of Allah become supreme. By 'mischief in this verse is meant the mischief anticipated from the grandeur and power of disbelief. And “The religion is all for Allah” means the exhibition and domination of religion, while in another verse it is stated,
[Arabic verse in the original inserted here.]
that is, the religion of Islam should gain so much domination and power that it may not be subdued by the power of infidelity and the religion of Islam becomes fully secure from the mischief and danger of disbelief (Ibid vol. 2, p.386)
If the need for Jehad was abandoned just on getting the permission of Tableegh (Missionary activities), then we see that Muslims already have this permission in most of the non -Muslim countries of the world (It is a pity that this permission is not given in some Muslim countries) which implies that Muslims should never have to lift the sword. As a result disbelievers may establish and hoist flags of grandeur all over the world and their awfulness and supremacy on the people would stay dominating. The policies will be theirs, the commandments will be theirs, ideologies will be theirs, views will be theirs and the strategies will be theirs, yet the Muslims would have to be conten[t]ed with the permission for their missionaries to enter those countries. The question arises how many people would be prepared to listen to the Muslims or give a serious thought to their speeches and writings in an atmosphere where disbelief had established its grandeur and awe throughout. How can the efforts of Muslim missionaries be effective in an atmosphere where anti-Islamic doctrines being spread on the strength of political power with full vigour, and their propagation carried out with means not possessed by Muslims?
If, however, Islam and Muslims attain such a power and grandeur against which the power and grandeur of disbelievers be subdued or at least it may be unable to create sedition and mischief mentioned above, then, of course, mutual compromise through peace treaties with non-Muslim countries is not against injunctions of Jehad. Likewise as long as the required capabilities for breaking the grandeur of disbelief are not possessed by Muslims, peace agreements with other countries, along with all efforts to accumulate the sources of power, are indeed lawful. In other words, there can be two types of agreement with non-Muslims.
1) Mutual compromise and peace agreements can be made with countries that have no power which could threaten the grandeur and domination of Muslims. This will be enforced as long as they do not become a threat to the Muslims again.
2) If Muslims do not possess the capability of “Jehad with power” agreement may be made till the power is attained.
My article published in March, 1971 as referred to by you pertains to these particular types of agreements. The excerpts of article published in June, 1981 pertain to the state where the grandeur of unbelievers dominates over the Muslims. Hence your expression that, “Aggressive Jehad is obligatory against hostile, and non-compromising non-Muslim states subject to capability, so that their power breaks and they do not form obstacles in the way of Muslim Missionary works. Jehad is not advisable against non-hostile and compromising non-Muslim states who allow freedom of missionary activities” ..... It is correct if it means what I explained above.
But if it means that just by permitting missionary activities a non-Muslim state becomes “non-hostile and compromising” and Jehad against them does not remain lawful or desirable, then in my view this is not correct. Arguments in favour of my view have already been advanced.
As for your deliberation that “... Particularly these days when territorial expansion is generally condemned contrary to the times when conquering the land was common which was regarded as a credit to the attribute of the kings and rulers. The Aggressive Jehads forming the major parts of Islamic history all belong to the same era.” ........ With all the respects for you I strongly condemn it, because, if this is taken to be correct it would mean that Islam does not have a measure to determine a thing as good or bad. If a bad thing is counted as an “essential attribute” at the particular time Islam would begin to march on the footsteps of this practice and when people begin to condemn it at another time Islam would also follow the suit. The question is whether Aggressive battle is by itself commendable or not? If it is, why the Muslims should stop simply because territorial expansion in these days is regarded as bad? And if it is not commendable but deplorable why Islam did not stop it in the past. Did it continue to practice because this was regarded as a creditable attribute of the kings”?
In my humble opinion this interpretation of the Aggressive Jehad of Islamic history is extremely incorrect and far away from the facts. Even in those days when this thing was considered to be a creditable “Attribute of the kings” Aggressive Jehads were waged not because it was customary for that period of time but because it was truly commendable for establishing the grandeur of religion of Allah. There were other “Attributes of the kings” that in the excitement of victory they never made any distinction between women, children and old people when persecuting them. But Islam did not encourage it just because it was customary. On the contrary Islam not only framed such military rules and regulations but also practically enforced them as could not even be imagined by the “kings”. These were a matter of great surprise and rather unbelievable for the people who had not only become used to the barbarism of those kings but also became their admirers.
Aggressive Jehad is lawful even today for the purpose it was lawful in those days. Its justification cannot be veiled only because the peace-loving inventors of Atom Bombs and Hydrogen Bombs label it as “Expansionism” and resent those who have put the chains of slavery around the necks of the people of Asia and Africa. They are still bleeding under these heavy chains.
With due apologies, I may point out that it seems to me the result of the grandeur of the paganism that people have fixed their standard of good and bad on the basis of the propaganda which produces a lie as truth and truth as lie and then causes it to work into the minds of people to the extent that, to say nothing of non-Muslims, the Muslims themselves are overawed and inclined to adopt an apologetic attitude. If breaking such a grandeur of falsehood and evil comes under the definition of “Expansionism” we should venerate the blame of this expansionism with complete self-confidence, rather than stand humble before them as though saying, “when you thought that Aggressive Jehad was good we practised it, but since you have started condemning it in your books..... and only in books.....we have also forbidden it on ourselves.”
My humble self can never agree with this way of thinking.
Humbly yours.,
Muhammad Taqi Usmani.
[i] See AAOIFI Sharia Board, http://www.aaoifi.com/sharia-board.html (last visited Feb. 1, 2008) (providing short biography of Usmani); see also Alex Alexiev, Usmani Dossier (on file with the author) [hereinafter Usmani Dossier] (providing information on Usmani based upon open sources).
[ii] The Center for Security Policy is a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit policy think tank. See Center for Security Policy, http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/.
[iii] Usmani Dossier, supra note 340.
[iv] Mufti M. Taqi Usmani, Islam and Modernism 123-39 (2006).
[v] This work is an English translation and contains some grammatical, spelling, diction, and punctuation errors. Most of these errors have been left as they appear in the original. Only some quotation marks used in indented quotes have been removed.
[vi] In the original, this verse was in Arabic. It is the infamous “Sword Verse” found at Qur’an, 9:5
[vii] Jizyah is a special tax imposed on non-Muslims to establish their subjugation to their Muslim rulers. See generally Bat Ye’or, The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam (1985).
[viii] PBUH is an acronym for “peace be unto him” typically said following Mohammed’s name by Shari’ah adherent Muslims.
From the India Daily:
Terrorist Ajmal Amir Kamal, a resident of Faridkot, Multan in Pakistan, a Pakistani elite commando, caught in Taj, got his orders from shadow ISI and Osama Bin laden
Kiran Mathur
Nov. 27, 2008
The man is in custody. He is an educated youth, a college student, educated in Pakistan's Islamic school where Osama Bin Laden is respected as God's Prime Agent. He got his direct orders from shadow ISI, Pakistan's clandestine intelligence militia founded by Saudi oil money and American billions of dollars paid to Pakistan to fight terror. He was caught by the Indian NSG in Taj. He was brain washed by the Islamic ideology that drives hundreds of thousands of young Muslims to the dark alleys of Waziristan where American money for Pakistan's war against terror and Saudi oil money get funneled into Al-Queda terror training ground. They want to take Afghanistan over. They want to take control Pakistani nukes. They want to slave India into submission. Terrorist Ajmal says that will happen one day, it is just a question of time.
Indian security forces have him. Some say he is just a SIMI fellow from Indian college and lying about his identity. The real culprits are gone leaving him there to make up a story.
He was brought to Indian shores by a large mother cargo ship. He boarded with forty others to rubber rafts silently to India Gate. The bribed Mumbai police was ready to give them the necessary cars, infrastructure to start spreading out all over Mumbai with most sophisticated ammunition and ammo dumps all over the city planned beforehand.
Now, from where does the obligation and menacing drive to engage in Jihad derive? The answer is traditional, authoritative, pedigreed Shariah--or Islamic law. Thus, from the most authoritative Deobandi (the dominant Muslim group in Pakistan and India) Shariah authority in the world, Mufti Taqi M. Usmani, we learn that Muslims living in the West and given total freedom of religion must still engage in violent Jihad against the infidels among whom they live.
Now you might ask, so what? So what the leading Shariah Sunni authority in the world, and certainly the most authoritative Deobandi authority, says Jihad against the infidel is mandatory irrespective of the West's Middle East policies, irrespective of the respect the West bestows upon Muslims?!? So what he maintaines the absolute obligation to establish Shariah-Islam the world over as the dominant theo-political order overrides all considerations?!? So what? Muslims can just ignore him!
But this is only true of Muslims who reject Shariah. For the hundreds of millions of Shariah faithful, following the legal pronouncements of the leading Shariah authorities is part and parcel of their very being. As we learn from two Havard professors Vogel and Hayes, both big proponents of Shariah-compliant finance and both paid quite well by the Wahhabi-oil soaked money from the Gulf through the endowment of the Harvard Islamic Law Project:
Islamic legal rules encompass both ethics and law, this world and the next, church and state. The law does not separate rules enforced by individual conscience from rules enforced by a judge or by the state. Since scholars alone are capable of knowing the law directly from revelation, laypeople are expected to seek an opinion (fatwa) from a qualified scholar on any point in doubt; if they follow that opinion sincerely, they are blameless even if the opinion is in error.
And, from an important text authored by a Bahrain Treasury official and an Australian economics professor who specializes in Shariah-economics, we learn that there is no room for Western notions of a nation-state:
Since Islamic law reflects the will of [Allah] rather than the will of a human lawmaker, it covers all areas of life and not simply those which are of interest to a secular state or society. It is not limited to questions of belief and religious practice, but also deals with criminal and constitution [sic] matters, as well as many other fields which in other societies would be regarded as the concern of the secular authorities. In an Islamic context there is no such thing as a separate secular authority and secular law, since religion and state are one. Essentially, the Islamic state as conceived by orthodox Muslims is a religious entity established under divine law.
For Usmani's fatwa for Jihad against the West, read below . . .
Mufti M. Taqi Usmani, born in Deoband, India, was a judge on the Shariah Court in Pakistan and on the Shariah Appellate Bench of the Pakistan Supreme Court, a position he occupied for more than 20 years. He currently sits on numerous Shariah authority boards and chairs the Shariah board for the most authoritative of the standards boards for the SCF industry, the AAOIFI.[i] He also was a founding member of the Dow Jones Islamic Index Shariah Advisory Board and was forced to resign only after SANE's David Yerushalmi, together with Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, put pressure on Dow Jones through editorials published in New York business papers.
Usmani is hardly an unknown entity. He has published and spoken prolifically on the evils of the West, America, and the obligation for offensive Jihad. Much of this literature has been summarized by Alex Alexiev, vice president for research for the Center for Security Policy[ii], in his short dossier on Usmani. Drawing on open source research, Alexiev exposes Usmani as a Shariah authority fully committed to the Law of Jihad.[iii]
The most telling of Usmani’s legal rulings on Jihad is found in the last chapter of his book, Islam and Modernism, published in 1999 in English and later republished in 2006 and available on Amazon.[iv] In that chapter, Usmani responds to a Syed Badrus Salam of Jedda, Saudi Arabia, who has submitted an inquiry for a legal ruling to Usmani. In his query, Salam seeks to interpret the various authoritative Shariah scholars who ruled in favor of violent Jihad against non-Muslims in a historical context. He attempts to suggest to Usmani that aggressive Jihad against non-hostile, non-Muslims was no longer required as a practical matter. Arguing that while violent Jihad was effective in the days of Mohammed and the Caliphates as the most effective way to convert the world to Islam, he opines that today this was no longer the case. When Muslims are without military power and live in Western societies which allow freedom of religion and grant Muslims the opportunity to convert non-Muslims peacefully, Salam maintains that the best approach to spreading the “Message of Allah” is through “[c]ompromising relations and amicable treatment”.
In his written response, Usmani rejects any such suggestion. His response is provided below in full for three reasons: (1) it sets out in clear terms the standard, traditional Shariah doctrine on the Law of Jihad; (2) the response is a private response that Usmani purposefully made public by including in a book which was originally published in Urdu and which he subsequently had published in English; and (3) providing only a partial quote and allowing the reader to access the original at some other time would lessen the stark and startling impact of the legal ruling by one of the world’s most authoritative Shariah scholars and one of the most important Shariah authorities in the SCF world. His response was as follows:[v]
I am in receipt of your esteemed letter. Whatever you have written about Jehad can be summarized as this “If a non-Muslim state allows for preaching Islam in its country, Jehad against it does not remain lawful.” If this is what you mean, my humble self does not agree with it. Obstruction in the way of preaching Islam does not mean only a legal obstacle, but greater power or domination of a non-Muslim state against Muslims is by itself a great obstacle in the propagation of Islam. There are no legal restrictions in most of the countries today on preaching Islam, but since their grandeur and authority is established in the world, it has led to developing a universal feeling which forms a greater obstacle than the greatest legal binding in the way of free propagation of Islam.
For this reason the most important purpose of Jehad is to break this grandeur so that the resulting psychological subordination should come to an end and the way of accepting the Truth become smooth. As long as this grandeur and domination persists the hearts of people will remain subdued and will not be fully inclined to accept the religion of Truth. Hence Jehad will continue. The Qur'an said in Sura Tauba:
Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.[vi]
Here, killing is to continue until the unbelievers pay Jizyah[vii] after they are humbled or overpowered. If the purpose of killing was only to acquire permission and freedom of preaching Islam, it would have been said “until they allow for preaching Islam.” But the obligation of Jizyah and along with it the mention of their subordination is a clear proof that the purpose is to smash their grandeur, so that the veils of their domination should be raised and people get a free chance to think over the blessings of Islam. Imam Razi has written the following commentary on this verse:
The purpose of “Jizyah” is not to let the unbelievers stay in their contumacy against Islam but sparing their lives to give them a chance for a time during which they may hopefully get convinced of the truth of Islam and embrace it. So when an unbeliever is given time wherein he would be observing the respect and honour of Islam, and hearing the arguments of its validity, and also observing the baselesness of disbelief, these things would convince him to turn towards Islam. This, in fact, is the real purpose of legalizing Jizyah.
The other question worthy of notice is: Do we find an example that the Prophet (PBUH)[viii] and his companions ever sent any missionary groups in other countries before Jehad and waited for their reaction to allow or disallow the missionary work? Did they go for Jehad only when they were refused to carry out the missionary work for Islam? Was any mission sent to Rome before attacking them? Was any attempt made to avoid Jehad against Iran and did they contend on seeking a permission for preaching Islam for that purpose? Obviously it was not so. Thus there can be no other conclusion that only a permit for missionary activities was not the aim. If that would have been the only aim many of the bloody combats could be stopped only on one condition that no obstacle would be placed in the way of the mission of Islam. But at least in my humble knowledge there has not been a single incident in the entire history of Islam where Muslims had shown their willingness to stop Jehad just for one condition that they will be allowed to preach Islam freely. On the contrary the aim of Muslims as declared by them in the battle of Qadsia was, “To take out people from the rule of people and put them under the rule of Allah”. Similarly, the Our'an said:
And (you O Believers) fight them until persecution is no more and the Din is all for Allah.
In the exegesis of this verse my reverend father Mufti Muhammad Shafi has written:
The meaning of religion is “Authority and domination”. Thus the meaning of this verse would be that Muslims should continue until the Muslims are safeguarded against their contumacy, and the religion of Islam becomes a dominating power so that it offers protection to Muslims from the atrocities and mischiefs of others.
He further said:
The nutshell of this explanation is that Jehad against the enemies of Islam is obligatory on Muslims until the danger of their mischief or evil-doings is over, and the domination of Islam is established over all other religions. Since this will occur only near the end of the world, the command of Jehad remains till the last day. (Ma’arif-ul-Qur’an vol 4, p. 233)
In short, my humble self is of the view that the purpose of Jehad is not just to get the right of missionary activities in any country, but it aims at breaking the grandeur of unbelievers and establish that of Muslims. As a result no one will dare to show any evil designs against Muslims on one side and on the other side, people subdued from the grandeur of Islam will have an open mind to think over the blessings of Islam. Factually, this aims at safeguarding Islam. It is for this reason that the scholars who have called Jehad “A Protection” must be looked in the above context. But the basic element of this “protection” is to break the grandeur of unbelievers and establish the authority of Islam. Hence this basic element cannot be excluded from it. I think that all Ulema (Religious scholars) have established the same concept about the purpose of Jehad. Moulana Idrees Kandhalvi stated:
By commanding Jehad Allah does not mean that all the unbelievers be killed outright, but the aim is that the religion of Allah should dominate the world, and Muslims live with honour and dignity, and obey and worship Allah in peace and tranquillity and there be no danger from unbelievers to interfere in the religion of Islam. Islam is not in enmity with the personal existence of its enemies. It resists such a grandeur and power that may become a threat for Islam and Muslims. (Seerat-ul-Mustafa vol: 2, p. 388)
At another place he writes:
The implication of this verse is an obligation imposed on Muslims to fight against the unbelievers till the disorder and mischief cease to exist and the religion of Allah become supreme. By 'mischief in this verse is meant the mischief anticipated from the grandeur and power of disbelief. And “The religion is all for Allah” means the exhibition and domination of religion, while in another verse it is stated,
[Arabic verse in the original inserted here.]
that is, the religion of Islam should gain so much domination and power that it may not be subdued by the power of infidelity and the religion of Islam becomes fully secure from the mischief and danger of disbelief (Ibid vol. 2, p.386)
If the need for Jehad was abandoned just on getting the permission of Tableegh (Missionary activities), then we see that Muslims already have this permission in most of the non -Muslim countries of the world (It is a pity that this permission is not given in some Muslim countries) which implies that Muslims should never have to lift the sword. As a result disbelievers may establish and hoist flags of grandeur all over the world and their awfulness and supremacy on the people would stay dominating. The policies will be theirs, the commandments will be theirs, ideologies will be theirs, views will be theirs and the strategies will be theirs, yet the Muslims would have to be conten[t]ed with the permission for their missionaries to enter those countries. The question arises how many people would be prepared to listen to the Muslims or give a serious thought to their speeches and writings in an atmosphere where disbelief had established its grandeur and awe throughout. How can the efforts of Muslim missionaries be effective in an atmosphere where anti-Islamic doctrines being spread on the strength of political power with full vigour, and their propagation carried out with means not possessed by Muslims?
If, however, Islam and Muslims attain such a power and grandeur against which the power and grandeur of disbelievers be subdued or at least it may be unable to create sedition and mischief mentioned above, then, of course, mutual compromise through peace treaties with non-Muslim countries is not against injunctions of Jehad. Likewise as long as the required capabilities for breaking the grandeur of disbelief are not possessed by Muslims, peace agreements with other countries, along with all efforts to accumulate the sources of power, are indeed lawful. In other words, there can be two types of agreement with non-Muslims.
1) Mutual compromise and peace agreements can be made with countries that have no power which could threaten the grandeur and domination of Muslims. This will be enforced as long as they do not become a threat to the Muslims again.
2) If Muslims do not possess the capability of “Jehad with power” agreement may be made till the power is attained.
My article published in March, 1971 as referred to by you pertains to these particular types of agreements. The excerpts of article published in June, 1981 pertain to the state where the grandeur of unbelievers dominates over the Muslims. Hence your expression that, “Aggressive Jehad is obligatory against hostile, and non-compromising non-Muslim states subject to capability, so that their power breaks and they do not form obstacles in the way of Muslim Missionary works. Jehad is not advisable against non-hostile and compromising non-Muslim states who allow freedom of missionary activities” ..... It is correct if it means what I explained above.
But if it means that just by permitting missionary activities a non-Muslim state becomes “non-hostile and compromising” and Jehad against them does not remain lawful or desirable, then in my view this is not correct. Arguments in favour of my view have already been advanced.
As for your deliberation that “... Particularly these days when territorial expansion is generally condemned contrary to the times when conquering the land was common which was regarded as a credit to the attribute of the kings and rulers. The Aggressive Jehads forming the major parts of Islamic history all belong to the same era.” ........ With all the respects for you I strongly condemn it, because, if this is taken to be correct it would mean that Islam does not have a measure to determine a thing as good or bad. If a bad thing is counted as an “essential attribute” at the particular time Islam would begin to march on the footsteps of this practice and when people begin to condemn it at another time Islam would also follow the suit. The question is whether Aggressive battle is by itself commendable or not? If it is, why the Muslims should stop simply because territorial expansion in these days is regarded as bad? And if it is not commendable but deplorable why Islam did not stop it in the past. Did it continue to practice because this was regarded as a creditable attribute of the kings”?
In my humble opinion this interpretation of the Aggressive Jehad of Islamic history is extremely incorrect and far away from the facts. Even in those days when this thing was considered to be a creditable “Attribute of the kings” Aggressive Jehads were waged not because it was customary for that period of time but because it was truly commendable for establishing the grandeur of religion of Allah. There were other “Attributes of the kings” that in the excitement of victory they never made any distinction between women, children and old people when persecuting them. But Islam did not encourage it just because it was customary. On the contrary Islam not only framed such military rules and regulations but also practically enforced them as could not even be imagined by the “kings”. These were a matter of great surprise and rather unbelievable for the people who had not only become used to the barbarism of those kings but also became their admirers.
Aggressive Jehad is lawful even today for the purpose it was lawful in those days. Its justification cannot be veiled only because the peace-loving inventors of Atom Bombs and Hydrogen Bombs label it as “Expansionism” and resent those who have put the chains of slavery around the necks of the people of Asia and Africa. They are still bleeding under these heavy chains.
With due apologies, I may point out that it seems to me the result of the grandeur of the paganism that people have fixed their standard of good and bad on the basis of the propaganda which produces a lie as truth and truth as lie and then causes it to work into the minds of people to the extent that, to say nothing of non-Muslims, the Muslims themselves are overawed and inclined to adopt an apologetic attitude. If breaking such a grandeur of falsehood and evil comes under the definition of “Expansionism” we should venerate the blame of this expansionism with complete self-confidence, rather than stand humble before them as though saying, “when you thought that Aggressive Jehad was good we practised it, but since you have started condemning it in your books..... and only in books.....we have also forbidden it on ourselves.”
My humble self can never agree with this way of thinking.
Humbly yours.,
Muhammad Taqi Usmani.
[i] See AAOIFI Sharia Board, http://www.aaoifi.com/sharia-board.html (last visited Feb. 1, 2008) (providing short biography of Usmani); see also Alex Alexiev, Usmani Dossier (on file with the author) [hereinafter Usmani Dossier] (providing information on Usmani based upon open sources).
[ii] The Center for Security Policy is a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit policy think tank. See Center for Security Policy, http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/.
[iii] Usmani Dossier, supra note 340.
[iv] Mufti M. Taqi Usmani, Islam and Modernism 123-39 (2006).
[v] This work is an English translation and contains some grammatical, spelling, diction, and punctuation errors. Most of these errors have been left as they appear in the original. Only some quotation marks used in indented quotes have been removed.
[vi] In the original, this verse was in Arabic. It is the infamous “Sword Verse” found at Qur’an, 9:5
[vii] Jizyah is a special tax imposed on non-Muslims to establish their subjugation to their Muslim rulers. See generally Bat Ye’or, The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam (1985).
[viii] PBUH is an acronym for “peace be unto him” typically said following Mohammed’s name by Shari’ah adherent Muslims.
The Holtzbergs- Not "Ultra" and Not Missionaries
The Mainstream Media are already in the process of demeaning and dehumanizing the Jewish victims of the Mumbai massacre. They are routinely called “Ultra-Orthodox” and I have already read of them them being referred to as “missionaries”. Shabbat is approaching so I don’t have time to frame a complete response and as much as it is not my usual way to write in haste, I need to tell you, these are lies.
I know the Lubavitchers very well. When we went to Ukraine to adopt our two boys six years ago we spent Passover with the Chabad in the Grand Synagogue of Kiev. The soviets had used it as a marionette theater. It was virtually destroyed until it was lovingly restored by the Chabad. There was no condescending pretense that our (Conservative American) brand of Judaism was less Jewish than the full Lubavitch observance. There was only the open handed, loving hearted Chabad wish to help us be the best Jews and human beings we could be. Their hospitality ad open-mindedness are the only "Ultra" thing about them.
We also visited Zhitomir, the city where my grandfather was born. There too, a tireless and dedicated Shaliach welcomed us and treated us with respect and love. He showed us how they have restored the Shul, are reclaiming the Jewish cemetery and are, daily, sending out hot meals over hundreds of miles of decayed and neglected country roads all over the Zitomir Guberna (a political region, like a state that I think is about the size of one of our eastern states) to the elderly, isolated Jews who have survived first the Tsar, then Hitler and then The Soviets.
Since we brought our boys home, they have attended the local Chabad Jewish day school here in Boston, Shaloh House, where they have learned to excel in Mathematics, Science, English, Tanakh, Mishna and Hebrew. They have also seen, first hand, the love and gratitude the whole families of Russian immigrants whose children they study and play with, feel for America and Western Civilization- in all its diverse and chaotic glory. They are not insular and isolated, they are accepting and open.
We have attend religious services there and I can tell you, although the ritual basis is very traditional and strict, they are open and helpful for those who can't keep up.
The Rabbi at Shaloh House, Dan Rodkin is, as were the Rabbis we met in Ukraine, a luminous soul with not a missionary thought in his mind nor a derogatory word in his vocabulary. I am very sure that Rabbi Holtzberg of Mumbai was out of that same mold.
The mainstream media is ignorant (only some are intentionally so) but, in a way, you can't blame them- because so many of our fellow American "Jews" foster the "Ultra" canard about these beautiful souls who in so many way epitomize what it means to be a not just a Jew, but a “fully human being”. May Rabbi Holtzberg and his wife, at least, be the beginning of an awakening.
Tell the world: “They were neither Missionaries nor ultra-Orthodox zealots they were, simple, devoted and loving people serving a very high purpose.”
They were murdered by zealots for purely political and bloody purposes. Here is a question for anyone who still denies that Caliphate Islamism is a problem: If they could do this to the Holtzbergs, if they could do this to all the other innocents people in Mumbai and Madrid and Beslan and New York and Jerusalem, how long will it be before they do it to you or someone you love? When will you stop trying to minimize and even excuse what they are doing by denigrating their victims?
Posted by Yaacov Ben Moshe
Comment: I confirm this report-I am not Jewish, I am absolutely outraged with this portrayal-i live in Israel, I am following this story on several different media outlets and the print media. Stay tuned Westerners-listen carefully to the media stories-I choose to use my anger to motivate me to present the truth to the world even when the ignorance and agenda-driven BS enrages me.
I know many young Israelis who after serving in the IDF head to India and other locales in that neck of the woods. They stopped at the Holtzbergs, they were fed, greeted warmly-these were two human ,kind, benevolent people-stop labeling them in order to word-smith a picture you have in your head.
At least five Chabad House hostages have been killed
JPost.com staff, Yaakov Lappin and AP , THE JERUSALEM POST
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said there is "no room for great optimism" about the fate of Israeli hostages inside a Jewish center in Mumbai.
Earlier, Israel's ZAKA rescue service said five hostages and two gunmen were killed inside the center. It did not identify the victims.
Livni did not confirm that report at a news conference Friday. But she said she could not be optimistic about the hostages' survival.
UPDATE:As I am posting this in Israel, it has been announced, moments ago, they are all dead-the outright sadness ladens the air with its heaviness-how, how could such evil present itself. I am in mourning as I write as is all of Israel, I suspect. Sky News quoted Indian National Security Guards chief J.K. Dutt as saying two gunmen were also killed in the operation against Islamic terrorists that had holed themselves up inside the building.
Earlier, following reports that the operation had reached its conclusion, Mumbai Police Chief Hassan Ghaffoor stressed to the crowd outside the Chabad center that "the operation is ongoing" but in its "final stage."
It came after commandos blew a hole in the wall of the besieged building as they tried to box in the Islamic terrorists who were holding an unspecified number of hostages.
The massive explosion shook the Chabad center, blowing out windows in neighboring buildings, while gunfire and smaller explosions followed the blast.
Commandos had rappelled from helicopters to storm the center earlier Friday, two days after a chain of Islamic terrorist attacks across India's financial center left at least 143 people dead and the city in panic.
Israel's ambassador to India, Mark Sofer, said he believed there had been up to nine hostages inside. Sofer denied reports that Israeli commandos had taken part in the operation.
The hostages were believed to include Chabad Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka.
Haim Hoshen, the Foreign Ministry's Head of Asia and South Asia Department, told the Jerusalem Post that two to four Israelis were being held inside the building.
The Foreign Ministry said that a total of 17 Israelis were still unaccounted for in Mumbai.
Meanwhile, the Holtzberg's two-year-old son, Moshe, who was rescued from the attack, was reunited with his grandparents, Shimon and Yehudit Rosenberg, who arrived from Israel to take custody of him.
Speaking to Army Radio on Friday, a relative, Yitzhak Dovid Grossman, said there was "an eruption of emotion" when the grandparents met their grandson. But he said they soon resumed "worrying about what is happening with Rivki and her husband."
Also Friday morning, two Israeli businessmen were freed together with the dozens of hostages rescued late Friday morning from Mumbai's Oberoi hotel.
Earlier, an El Al plane carrying some 300 Israelis arrived at Ben Gurion Airport from Mumbai.
One of the passengers described the atmosphere in the city to Army Radio.
UPDATE #2-now confirmed, the five Israeli hostages have been found dead.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said there is "no room for great optimism" about the fate of Israeli hostages inside a Jewish center in Mumbai.
Earlier, Israel's ZAKA rescue service said five hostages and two gunmen were killed inside the center. It did not identify the victims.
Livni did not confirm that report at a news conference Friday. But she said she could not be optimistic about the hostages' survival.
UPDATE:As I am posting this in Israel, it has been announced, moments ago, they are all dead-the outright sadness ladens the air with its heaviness-how, how could such evil present itself. I am in mourning as I write as is all of Israel, I suspect. Sky News quoted Indian National Security Guards chief J.K. Dutt as saying two gunmen were also killed in the operation against Islamic terrorists that had holed themselves up inside the building.
Earlier, following reports that the operation had reached its conclusion, Mumbai Police Chief Hassan Ghaffoor stressed to the crowd outside the Chabad center that "the operation is ongoing" but in its "final stage."
It came after commandos blew a hole in the wall of the besieged building as they tried to box in the Islamic terrorists who were holding an unspecified number of hostages.
The massive explosion shook the Chabad center, blowing out windows in neighboring buildings, while gunfire and smaller explosions followed the blast.
Commandos had rappelled from helicopters to storm the center earlier Friday, two days after a chain of Islamic terrorist attacks across India's financial center left at least 143 people dead and the city in panic.
Israel's ambassador to India, Mark Sofer, said he believed there had been up to nine hostages inside. Sofer denied reports that Israeli commandos had taken part in the operation.
The hostages were believed to include Chabad Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka.
Haim Hoshen, the Foreign Ministry's Head of Asia and South Asia Department, told the Jerusalem Post that two to four Israelis were being held inside the building.
The Foreign Ministry said that a total of 17 Israelis were still unaccounted for in Mumbai.
Meanwhile, the Holtzberg's two-year-old son, Moshe, who was rescued from the attack, was reunited with his grandparents, Shimon and Yehudit Rosenberg, who arrived from Israel to take custody of him.
Speaking to Army Radio on Friday, a relative, Yitzhak Dovid Grossman, said there was "an eruption of emotion" when the grandparents met their grandson. But he said they soon resumed "worrying about what is happening with Rivki and her husband."
Also Friday morning, two Israeli businessmen were freed together with the dozens of hostages rescued late Friday morning from Mumbai's Oberoi hotel.
Earlier, an El Al plane carrying some 300 Israelis arrived at Ben Gurion Airport from Mumbai.
One of the passengers described the atmosphere in the city to Army Radio.
UPDATE #2-now confirmed, the five Israeli hostages have been found dead.
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