• Home Page
• Computer Blog
• Chess Blog
• Exercise & Diet Blog
• Theology Blog
• Islamic Terrorism Blog
• Contact Us

Iraq: Jihadist group sends threat letters to Mosul churches over plan to establish an Assyrian-Christian police force

Dhimmis are forbidden to bear arms. "Iraq: Islamist group threatens churches in Mosul," from Adnkronos International, July 2:

Mosul, 2 July (AKI) - An Islamist group has sent threatening letters to Assyrian churches in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, asking them not to cooperate with US forces.

The letter sent by The Batallion of Just Punishment, Jihad Base in Mesopotamia, also opposes the establishment of a sectarian Assyrian-Christian police force, reported the Assyrian International News Agency on Wednesday.

"We caution and warn anyone who tries to rob us through dealings with the Americans or through the spreading of American forces and/or police to protect the Holy Shrines in the Islamic Republic of Iraq, that these shrines would remain target of the freedom fighters," the letter said.

"We remind the dhimmi people [Jews and Christians] that Iraq is for the noble Iraqis and not for how you are now."

The Islamist group also refers to Assyrian Christians as 'Dhimmi', or a non-Muslim subject of the state governed by Islamic Sharia law.

Of course, that includes paying jizya, which has been extracted under brutal threats.

"I suspect this letter may have actually come from Ansar Al-Islam," said an unnamed Assyrian community leader, referring to the Kurdish Islamist group affiliated with al-Qaeda.

"The Kurds don't want us to have our own police force."

Assyrians are an ethnic group in Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria. Nearly all Assyrians converted to Christianity during the first century A.D.

Most of the Christians in Iraq belong to the Assyrian and Chaldean Catholic denominations. Others groups include Syrian Orthodox or protestants....

Indonesian Police Raids in Sumatra Yield Suspects, Bombs

Over the past three days, the Indonesian police counter-terrorist formation, Detachment 88, has conducted a series of raids in and around the city of Palembang in South Sumatra province. On 28 June, a Singaporean national named Alim (alias Omar, alias Taslim, alias Abu Hazam) was the first to be detained. According to the Indonesian media, Alim is a bomb-making expert who was trained in Afghanistan prior to 2001 and met Osama bin Laden on several occasions. Alim is said to have received further bomb-making instructions from Dr. Azhari Husein, the Jemaah Islamiyah bomber who was killed in a police shoot-out in East Java in October 2005.

On 1 July, eight (possibly nine) Indonesian nationals at three locations--all said to be members of Jemaah Islamiyah--were arrested. At one of these three locations, twenty assembled bombs and several kilos of explosives were found. The police are still not sure what target(s) were being contemplated by this cell.

Shabir Ally vs. Jay Smith: Violence in the Qur’an and the Bible

Danish women held captive abroad

Details on Colombia Hostage Operation Right Out of Spy Thriller

First accounts on the rescue operation, now being provided by Colombian military officials, while still veiled on some key points, suggest that Colombia carried out a spectacularly successful sting operation in which Colombian commandos pretended to be FARC officials come to take the hostages to a new location for a possible diplomatic negotiated exchange.

According to Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos in his Bogota news conference, Colombia infiltrated FARC's 1st Squad and Secretariat. How that infitration contributed to the commando operation was not specified, beyond apparently providing the geographic location of the hostages. Whatever the mechanism -- government agents run inside FARC? -- Colombian intelligence tricked the FARC into believing that the hostages, who had been divided in three groups by the FARC, should be brought together in a single group to be handed over to FARC leader Alfonso Cano for a possible diplomatic, negotiated solution to the hostage crisis that would achieve FARC political objectives. As a result, FARC's high command agreed to travel with the hostages as a means of transferring them to Cano on a helicopter that actually belonged to the Colombian military and was actually manned by Colombian intelligence personnel.

According to Minister Santos, not only were all of the hostages safely rescued, but two senior FARC officials and some 15 other FARC soldiers were arrested in the process, also without violence.

In short, based on the facts made public so far, Colombia appears to have conducted a sting operation straight out of a spy thriller which actually worked, rescuing the hostages without a single shot being fired, dealing FARC a devastating blow.

FARC is FARC’d: Assessing the Hostage Rescue

The first reports about the Colombian military’s rescue of the 15 hostages held by FARC (in Spanish) indicate an impressive intelligence operation. The hostages were held in three separate locations. Colombian intelligence had infiltrated one of the FARC fronts holding the hostages as well as the FARC Secretariat. They told the front commander “Cesar” that the hostages were being transferred on the orders of FARC chief Alfonso Cano. After gathering the hostages in one location the FARC unit was met by a helicopter, ostensibly from an NGO (that doesn’t actually exist). Then the hostages were loaded onto the helicopter and the FARC commander and his deputy were taken captive to be handed over to judicial authorities. The other members of the FARC front were permitted to escape.

The fifteen hostages were rescued without firing a shot. The long nightmare of the hostages and their families is finally over.

There are many implications to this tremendous success.

Read the complete post here.

Turkey Update

Third Temple preparations begin with priestly garb

Colombia Rescues Ingrid Betancourt and Three US Hostages

The dramatic news that Colombia had successfully rescued Ingrid Betancourt and three Americans held hostage for years by FARC terrorists represents a further break-through by the Uribe government in what has been an extraordinary year of successes against FARC.

We still don't have the details, but what is by now clear is that Colombia's decision to raid FARC camps across the border in Ecuador on March 1, which had the result of killing one of its senior leaders, Raul Reyes, and of obtaining critical intelligence held in FARC computers, provided information that in turn helped enable Colombia to secure a series of further objectives against FARC.

So far, all that is known is that the rescue took place in Eastern Colombia following months of surveillance by the Colombian government. Earlier this week, a French-Swiss mission had managed to resume contact with FARC hostage-takers. The former French consul in Bogota, Noel Saez, and the French-Swiss academic Jean-Pierre Gontard had met with a close associate of Alfonso Cano, the new FARC leader at an undisclosed location in the jungle in an effort to secure Betancourt's release. They had been authorized by the Colombian government to engage in dialogue in order to conclude a humanitarian agreement for a prisoner exchange. They were trying to restore a communication channel with the kidnappers. Clearly other things were going on at the same time. A prisoner for more than six years, Ingrid Betancourt has been reported to be in poor health. Less is known about the condition of the three US hostages kidnapped in 2003 during an anti-drug operation, Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes, and Keith Stansell.

This is a very big win for Colombia, which has steadfastly rejected FARC's demands for recognition, release of FARC guerrillas imprisoned by the Colombian government, and the creation of a demilitarized zone that would have allowed FARC safe-haven in designated areas. Prior to Colombia's March 1 raid, they were on a path to achieving political support for these objectives, aided by officials in Ecuador and Venezuela. With this rescue, which may well involve collaboration by defectors from within the FARC, the collapse of the FARC as a political, terrorist, and criminal force in Colombia, after 44 years, may be nearing.

Crossroads in History: The Struggle against Jihad and Supremacist Ideologies

In fighting Islamic supremacism, instead of an approach only based on tactical measures and efforts at clever twists of terminology, what if America had a true strategy that was instead based on the defense of our values on human equality and liberty?

The true challenge of Islamic supremacism to America and the free world is not about Islam, Islamism, or terrorism, but about us. It is a historic challenge to determine whether we truly have the courage of our convictions on equality and liberty and we are willing to fight for these ideals, or if we will instead accept the continuing growth of anti-freedom ideologies here and around the world.

Islamic supremacists are counting on their belief that America is no longer willing to fight for such freedoms, that it has gotten too soft to do so, and that regardless of the success or failure of individual Jihadist tactics, eventually we will tolerate a continued growth of Islamic supremacism. The crossroads in history that we stand at remains whether or not we will prove Islamic supremacists correct, or if the idea defined in our very Declaration of Independence and chiseled in a marble memorial in America's capital - that "all men are created equal" - is an idea that America will once again sacrifice to defend.

America and the West are at a critical crossroads in history in their faltering struggle with Islamic supremacist ideologies and Jihadist terror tactics. Increasingly, groups seek to halt any meaningful debate and halt any challenge to the ideology behind Jihad, and they seek to redirect such debate and action to focus only on the terrorist symptoms of such a supremacist ideology. Such diversionary efforts are being made by non-violent Islamic supremacist groups and activists, government officials, academics, and media commentators. The solution to this can be found in recognizing how Islamic supremacism (as any supremacist ideology) is opposed to our values, and in understanding America's historical experience in defeating other supremacist ideologies.

Iranian parliament considers death penalty for encouraging apostasy from Islam and other means of “harming mental security in society” over the Internet

Now there's a cringe-worthy turn of phrase. "Iran mulls death penalty for Internet crimes," from Agence France-Presse, July 2:

TEHERAN - Iran's parliament is set to debate a draft bill which could see the death penalty used for those deemed to promote corruption, prostitution and apostasy on the Internet, reports said on Wednesday.

MPs on Wednesday voted to discuss as a priority the draft bill which seeks to "toughen punishment for harming mental security in society," the ISNA news agency said.

The text lists a wide range of crimes such rape and armed robbery for which the death penalty is already applicable. The crime of apostasy (the act of leaving a religion, in this case Islam) is also already punishable by death.

However, the draft bill also includes "establishing weblogs and sites promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy", which is a new addition to crimes punishable by death.

Those convicted of these crimes "should be punished as "mohareb' (enemy of God) and "corrupt on the earth'," the text says.

Under Iranian law the standard punishments for these two crimes are "hanging, amputation of the right hand and then the left foot as well as exile."

As prescribed by Qur'an 5:33.

The bill -- which is yet to be debated by lawmakers -- also stipulates that the punishment handed out in these cases "cannot be commuted, suspended or changed".

Internet is widely used in Iran despite restrictions on access and the blocking of thousands of websites with a sexual content or deemed as insulting religious sanctities and promoting political dissent.

Blogging is also very popular among cyber-savvy young Iranians, some openly discussing their private lives or criticising the system.

Human rights groups have accused Iran of making excessive use of the death penalty but Teheran insists it is an effective deterrent that is carried out only after an exhaustive judicial process.

The judicial process is of far less use in assuring justice is done when the laws being applied are unjust in the first place.

The number of executions soared last year to 317 amid a campaign which the authorities said was aimed at improving security in society, and was sharply up on 2006 figures when Amnesty International recorded 177 executions.

All legislation in Iran has to be rubber-stamped by a conservative clerical watchdog before it is written into law. The Guardians Council vets bills to see if they are in line with the constitution and Islamic law.

Al-Masry Al-Youm Publishes Prosecution Investigations in Abu-Fana Monastery (1-2)

By  Said Nafea   

Al-Masry Al-Youm obtained a copy of the investigations launched by South Menya Prosecution into the Abu-Fana Monastery incidents.

The investigations, which were carried out by chief prosecutor Ayman Mamdouh, said the chief prosecutor received a phone call on May 31 from Yunis Hassan, head of Mallawi Police Station prosecution, about the gunshots at Abu-Fana Monastery, west of the city of Abu-Fana.
(more…)

Why Mugabe Won

The tragic failure of the African Union to take any steps to sanction the fraudulent and violent regime of Robert Mugabe was a given as soon as the despot sat at the table. Because Mugabe knew his audience, or what was to be his jury.

Mugabe, correctly, told many other leaders that "their claims to power were no more legitimate than his," and chastised other for holding even worse elections than he did.

The tragedy for Africa is that Mugabe is right. And because he is right, Africa, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, remains an open wound, hospitable to radical Islamist groups (Somalia, Kenya, South Africa etc. for al Qaeda. The west coast, from Sierra Leone to Cameroon, for Hezbollah, and the Congo as a free for all, for criminals, terrorists and rogue states) and rapacious militias (the Lord's Resistance Army) and countless criminal gangs (Nigeria being the prime example.)

It didn't help that host Egypt and main mover Libya have such wretched histories of their own in terms of elections.

In addition to Mubarak and Gadaffi, here is a partial list of those sitting in judgement of Mugabe and his thuggish regime, as I wrote about for the Washington Post My full blog is here.

NEFA Foundation: “The FARC in Transition: The Fatal Weakening of the Hemisphere’s Oldest Guerrilla Movement

Today the NEFA Foundation published a paper I wrote on the overall weakening of the FARC in Colombia and the likely options for its future development.

The new paper, "The FARC in Transition: The Fatal Weakening of the Hemisphere's Oldest Guerrilla Movement," is a followup to one I did analyzing the publicly released documents taken from the computer of the FARC's second in command, Raul Reyes, killed by Colombian troops in raid into neighboring Ecuador.

The paper posits that in the near term, the new FARC leadership-for the first time in its 44-year history dominated by urban, educated leaders rather than peasants lacking formal education-will try to launch a major military strike in order to prove its legitimacy to the rank and file.

In the long term, however, this group may be in a better position to negotiate an end to the conflict. However, in mid-term the FARC is likely to devolve into more isolated, criminal groups. Those commanders who control cocaine production and/or engage in kidnapping for ransom will survive in alliance with criminal groups, and those that have few outside sources of income will likely wither away. The consequences for the government will be the weakening of a major threat to the state, but increased criminal and drug trafficking activity.

Protest Egyptian government allowing criminal attacks on Coptic Christians

By Online  

Coptic Christians and their supporters will demonstrate on Parliament Hill at 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 5, 2008 against the Egyptian government for continuing to allow criminal elements to wage regular attacks on Egyptian Copts and their properties.

Buses carrying demonstrators from Montreal and Toronto will join with Ottawa Copts for the peaceful demonstration organized by the Canadian Coptic Association. From Parliament Hill, the demonstrators will march at 2:00 p.m. to the Egyptian Embassy at 454 Laurier Avenue East to continue their protest.
(more…)

Egypt fighting population growth

Egyptian government advocates family planning as population growing faster than economy can support.
CAIRO - Red and white banners along Nile bridges and Cairo streets this month were Egypt’s latest effort to curb an increasingly pressing problem: a population growing faster than the economy can support.
(more…)

The obligatory jiziyah arrives in Denmark

Denmark: Church pays protection money to Muslims to prevent attacks on church-goers

Jerusalem: At least 4 killed, 44 injured as Palestinian goes on rampage with bulldozer

Watch this space for updates. "Bulldozer driver shot dead after going on rampage in capital," from the Jerusalem Post, July 2:

At least four people were killed and 44 were wounded - one seriously, one moderately and 42 lightly - on Wednesday afternoon when a bulldozer driver went on a rampage in downtown Jerusalem.

Police said that the driver plowed his vehicle into two public buses, toppling them over, and slammed into several cars.

A off-duty soldier took the gun from an elite policeman at the scene and shot the terrorist dead. The soldier, Moshe Klessner, 18, is the brother-in-law of IDF officer David Shapira, who killed the terrorist in the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva attack, Channel 2 reported.

Klessner was assisted in neutralizing the attacker by another elite policeman.

Another elite policeman was lightly wounded, apparently by gunfire, indicating that the terrorist was armed.

Police said the incident was definitely a terror attack, emphasizing that the terrorist, Jabr Duwait, a 32-year-old father of two from Jebl Mukaber, was carrying an Israeli identity card. The Mercaz Harav attacker was from the very same east Jerusalem town....

UPDATE: The Jerusalem Post now reports 3 killed, and 57 injured.

HISTORIC HANDSHAKE: Iraqi President actually greets Israel’s Defense Minister

PENTAGON OFFICIAL WARNS ISRAEL COULD ATTACK IRAN BY YEAR’S END: Chairman of Joint Chiefs was in Israel over weekend