#Al Qaida

[journosatyam]

how-terrorists-recruited-by-terror-organization-explained

कट्टरता नहीं, वफादारी जरूरी; आतंकियों की भर्ती का पैटर्न क्या होता है?

डिस्क्लेमरः इस लेख का मकसद किसी भी तरह के आतंकवाद या हिंसा को बढ़ावा देना नहीं है.

ढूंढेंगे तो ऐसी कई फिल्में मिल जाएंगी, जिनमें एक किरदार को पहले सीधा सा और जिम्मेदार दिखाया जाता है लेकिन बाद में वह सिस्टम से तंग आकर आतंकवादी बन जाता है. मगर क्या कोई व्यक्ति सिर्फ इसलिए ही आतंकी बनता है? या फिर कोई भी आतंकी संगठन भर्ती करते समय कुछ 'खास' देखते हैं? 

असल में आतंकवादी एक 'विचारधारा' है और जो भी इससे प्रभावित होता है, वह आतंकवादी बन जाता है. वह दुनिया की नजरों में 'आतंकवादी' होता है लेकिन खुद को 'मुजाहिद' बताते हैं. मुजाहिद एक अरबी शब्द है, जो 'जिहाद' से निकला है. जिहाद का मतलब 'संघर्ष' या 'लड़ाई' से है. हर 'आतंकवादी' खुद को 'मुजाहिद' बताते हुए दावा करता है कि उसकी लड़ाई किसी सत्ता या धर्म के दुश्मनों से है. ऐसा कहकर वह खुद की कायराना हरकतों को 'वाजिब' ठहराने की कोशिश करता है, मगर ऐसा है नहीं.

हालांकि, इन्हीं 'आतंकवादी' और 'मुजाहिदों' के अंतर ने पाकिस्तान को आज 'आतंकवाद की फैक्ट्री' बना दिया है. 1979 से 1989 के बीच जब पाकिस्तान की सत्ता में जनरल जिया उल-हक सत्ता में थे, तो उन्होंने मदरसों में पढ़ने वाले छात्रों और हजारों युवाओं को 'आतंकवादी' बनने में मदद की, जिसे वे 'मुजाहिद' बताते थे. ऐसा उन्होंने इसलिए किया था, ताकि अफगानिस्तान में सोवियत संघ (अब रूस) का मुकाबला कर सकें. सोवियत की सेना इन मुजाहिदों से हार गई थी. इसके बाद इन्हीं मुजाहिदों ने मिलकर तालिबान बना लिया और फिर अल-कायदा भी इसी तरह बना.

पूरा आर्टिकल नीचे दिए लिंक पर क्लिक करके पढ़ें👇

कट्टरता नहीं, वफादारी जरूरी; आतंकियों की भर्ती का पैटर्न क्या होता है?

[gerardt10]

🇸🇾 🇺🇲 🇪🇺 🇧🇪 🇬🇧 🇨🇵 🇩🇪 𝔹𝕝𝕒𝕘𝕦𝕖 𝕕𝕦 𝕛𝕠𝕦𝕣

🆕 Le nouveau défenseur de la démocratie occidentale en Syrie. Sans blague.

Un terroriste bon teint d’Al Qaida, reconverti à l’amour du pluralisme politique.

[unita2org]

ECCO CHI SONO I TERRORISTI CHE COMPIONO ATTENTATI IN RUSSIA PER CONTO DELL’OCCIDENTE (TERZA PARTE)

Macron/Rotschild l’ultimo interprete dei desideri dei massocapitalisti Rete Voltaire “Sotto i nostri occhi” (11/25) Le due anime della Francia di Thierry Meyssan Proseguiamo la pubblicazione a episodi del libro di Thierry Meyssan, Sotto i nostri occhi. In questa puntata la Francia si mostra divisa: il presidente fa il gioco degli anglosassoni, mentre il suo rivale gollista quello del Qatar;…

[originalleftist]

Yeah, waving the fucking Al Qaeda flag is not going to win you points with the general American public, most of whom are old enough to remember watching the twin towers fall.

Nor is it going to ever meet the approval of any credible candidate for President, because the President is the commander in chief of the US military, swears an oath to uphold the Constitution, Al Qaida are literally enemies of the United States, and I know we might have lost sight of this during the Trump Presidency, but NOT COMMITTING TREASON is basically the lowest bar for a President.

And yes, I do think publicly supporting Al Qaeda and spreading its propaganda could qualify for the definition of Treason in the Constitution:

"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to the Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."

Precedent IIRC is that treason only applies to aiding someone we are actually at war with, but Al Qaeda qualifies. In 2006 Adam Gadahn became the first American since the 1950s to be indicted for treason after joining Al Qaeda and becoming a major spokesperson and advisor of theirs'. He was subsequently killed in a drone strike overseas in 2015.

However, he was a senior Al Qaeda operative and such charges are very rare, so in practice a treason charge for being a flag-waving dipshit would be unlikely (unless Trump wins like a lot of these "protester" imbeciles want, then Treason could be anything Dear Leader doesn't like).

From a "Pro-Palestine" protest in Washington DC today, 7/24. The green flag is the flag of Hamas, for those who don't know (who have always maintained their position that their goal is to kill/ethnically cleanse all Jews. They have never gone back on this position, despite what idiots on tiktok may say.)

How much longer are Jews supposed to sit here and be gaslit about the rabid antisemitism that is absolutely taking over the left like a fucking title wave. How much longer will people even pretend that everyone doesn't just think killing Jews is cool again.

[tlaquetzqui]

Just saw some white supremacists and anarchists both saying “Israel shelters pedophiles!”

You know most countries on the Arabian peninsula have no defined age of consent, right? That’s not a coincidence. Mainstream Sunni Islam defines “old enough for sex” as “can co-sleep safely”. Which is toddlers.

The ulema have agreed that it is permissible for fathers to marry off their small daughters, even if they are in the cradle. But it is not permissible for their husbands to have sex with them unless they are capable of being placed beneath and bearing the weight of the men.

—Ibn Battal, Exegesis of the Sahih Al-Bukhari (one of the two main collections of sunnah and hadiths in Sunni Islam)

[youthchronical]

Somali forces end a 24-hour siege by al-Shabab militants on a hotel, leaving all fighters dead - The Times of India

MOGADISHU: Somali security forces on Wednesday ended a 24-hour siege at a hotel in the central city of Beledwyne, leaving an unknown number of people dead, including all the al-Shabab militants who launched the attack, officials said. The attack began when a car bomb exploded Tuesday at the Cairo Hotel, which houses traditional elders and military officers involved in coordinating the…

[atsvensson]

Dom i mål om finansiering av terrorverksamhet

Dom i mål om finansiering av terrorverksamhet. Södertörns tingsrätt har dömt en man till ett års fängelse för grovt brott mot lagen om straff för finansiering av särskilt allvarlig brottslighet i vissa fall. Tingsrätten har kommit fram till att mannen har finansierat terrorverksamhet i Syrien genom transaktioner under perioden den 5 oktober 2019 till och med den 3 november 2020. Åtalet har gällt…

[streetreporters]

Major Security Concerns As Jihadi Fighters from Africa’s Sahel Begin Settling in Nigeria - Reports

Jihadi fighters, who had long operated in Africa’s volatile Sahel region, have now found a new home in North Western Nigeria, several media sources have reported, raising security concerns. This migration, they say, followed a trend of militants seeking refuge in wealthier West African coastal nations. Reports say that the situation poses significant security challenges and raises more concerns…

[allthegeopolitics]

The Syrian factions that toppled President Bashar Assad last month named an Islamist former rebel leader as the country‘s interim president on Wednesday in a push to project a united front as they face the monumental task of rebuilding Syria after nearly 14 years of civil war. The former insurgents also threw out Syria’s constitution, adopted under Assad, saying a new charter would be drafted soon. The appointment of Ahmad al-Sharaa, who was once aligned with al-Qaida, as Syria’s president “in the transitional phase” came after a meeting of the former insurgent factions in Damascus, the Syrian capital.

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[comeonamericawakeup]

The biggest threat to the United States is not China or Russia or other "external threats," said Max Boot. It's "our own political dysfunction." The U.S. remains fundamentally strong, with the world's biggest and most resilient economy, the most powerful military, and 50 allies, compared with a handful for China and Russia. China's once-booming economy has stagnated, due to poor central planning and an aging and shrinking population. We remain the world's only true superpower and an "indispensable nation," keeping rogue actors like Vladimir Putin and Iran in check. But extreme partisan warfare and a growing isolationist movement have put us on the road to abdicating that critical role. A divided Congress cannot even pass a budget, or agree on military aid to embattled allies Israel and Ukraine. If Donald Trump and his "American First" brigade regains the White House, he'll likely abandon Ukraine, pull the U.S. out of NATO, alienate allies, and cripple our nation's global power. A host of enemies, including Nazi Germany, al Qaida, the Soviet Union, Russia, and China have been unable to cripple the U.S. and demote us to second-class status. But Americans may succeed where "others have failed."

THE WEEK November 24, 2023

[atheistcartoons]

Islam for Beginners I: "Now Do Muslims!"

Because I often criticise Christianity, some Christian friends have suggested, "Now do Muslims!" They join a chorus of similar anonymous grumbles. I criticise Islam (and Hinduism and Judaism and others) regularly but they only notice when their religion is put under the spotlight.

The right-wing Christian obsession with trashing Muslims is also a recurring problem among stand-up comedians. Both popular light entertainer Dara O’Briain and tortured sarcastic intellectual Stewart Lee were forced to address it in their sets.

As someone who writes satirical articles about the Catholic Church, I also write satire about Islam but not in a way that Christian critics would like. I get the recurring impression that well-researched, well-written Islamic-themed comedy is not what they’re looking for at all.

O’Briain and Lee and myself wrangle with Christianity because we come from Christian traditions. We know exactly which parts of the religion are ridiculous and which parts we can discuss with confidence. Sometimes I feel like nothing will satisfy the "Now do Muslims" crowd except hateful invective.

Muslims

Segal's Law states that a man with a watch knows what time it is but a man with two watches is never sure. Talk to one Muslim and you think you’ll have a handle on Islam. Talk to two and you will never be sure.

There are wildly divergent interpretations about even the most generic aspects of Islam. Whenever you read “Muslims think X...” or hear “Muslims believe Y...” there is a great chance that whatever follows will be wrong. An example is when the leadership of Al-Qaida thought the problem with Iran is they’re too pro-American. There is no way to shove this into any standard Western narratives of “what Muslims think”.

A recent survey of Indian Muslims revealed that 6% of them don’t believe in a god. This was around twice the percentage of Hindus and Christians who gave the same answer. Indian Muslims don’t have to worry about atheism, however. The same survey revealed that (nearly 20%) more of them think avoiding pork is more important to Islam than believing in a god.

In the West, we have been trained to see “Muslims” as a monolithic block of opinion. Whenever we see them on the news, it’s usually because some of them have been out murdering again. These people are often referred to as “hardcore Muslims” or “Muslim fundamentalists”. We are being nudged towards the conclusion that the more violent Muslims are, the closer they are to the “real” Islam. There is not much evidence to support that conclusion.

In 2015, Muslims in India (which has the third-largest population of Muslims in the world) demonstrated in support of France during the Islamist attacks in Paris. Muslims in the Maghreb will be less tolerant of France’s shenanigans. It’s not coherent, therefore, to say that “Muslims” either support France or don’t support France. Some do and some don’t and these positions will be driven by politics more than religion.

"Now Do Muslims!"

I will! This is the first article in a series I will post throughout Ramadan called "Islam for Beginners" (some of which will be based on articles I wrote for OnlySky Media). They will deal with the most sensitive and salient issues I see among Western commentators. I have done lots of research (including reading the entire Koran) and read lots of commentaries and spoken to lots of Muslims and boiled it all down into nice Tumblr-post-sized chunks.

Disclaimer 1: If you expect to read a defence of Islam as if it were based on some universal or demonstrable truth, you will be disappointed. I reject any and all supernatural claims made by everyone and everything in Islam. Disclaimer 2: If you expect to read excoriating diatribes trashing Muslims, or glib mockery, you will also be disappointed. I’m not interested in enabling racists or xenophobes.

Western media has at best neglected Islam and Muslims and at worst intentionally misrepresented them. We may not be there yet, but I’d like to nudge the public discourse towards a place where Islam can be robustly criticised without accusations of bigotry and the human rights of Muslims can be robustly defended without accusations of Islamist apologism. At the very least, I'm hoping to start some interesting conversations.

[royal-confessions]

“Finding out from court documents that Prince Harry requested some protection after Al Qaida called for him to be killed after serving his country as a serviceman and a royal yet apparently he's being "whiny" and ''dramatic" for wanting him and his family protected. Poor Harry!” - Submitted by Anonymous

“Soooo no one is going to mention the fatwa put out against Harry that the royal family knew about, and STILL were like “we’re not giving you security even though a terrorist organization wants you dead”” - Submitted by Anonymous

“How much time in prison did Christopher Gibbons and Tyrone Patten-Walsh get? These are the white supremacists who called for "abomination" baby Archie to be "put down" and were found guilty of terrorism charges. I'm asking because I'm pretty sure they didn't get life in prison so one day they will be free, out and about, ready to put their words into action. We literally can name people who want to harm if not kill Sussex family members yet RAVEC & Charles say no to security. Disgusting racists.” - Submitted by Anonymous

[enarei]

"I have repeatedly and unequivocally condemned Hamas. I have repeatedly said that the 7 October attacks were unspeakable and horrific. Apparently, this is deemed insufficient. In the German context, the term Zivilisationsbruch (“breach of civilisation”) is used by scholars as a reference to the Shoah [the Holocaust]. In effect, the museum is arguing here that they can’t show my work because I have not acknowledged an equivalence between the Holocaust and the 7 October attacks. To demand that such an equivalence be pronounced, as a condition for exhibiting my work, is to effectively demand that I relativise the Holocaust. In order to comply, I would have to betray my fundamental understanding of the Shoah as a singular historical event. Need I point out the absurdity of Germans dictating to Jewish people how they should articulate their reactions to the heinous massacre of Jewish people at the hands of terrorists? What will come next? Will every Jewish person in this country be asked to retrospectively condemn the Shoah and unequivocally deny having empathy for the Nazi regime?"

"The notion that every progressive Jew in this country can be assumed to be harbouring antisemitism unless they publicly denounce Hamas is patently ridiculous. One is apparently guilty by default, until one declares oneself innocent. This reminds me of the post-9/11 climate, in which Arabs, Muslims and Sikhs who did not publicly condemn the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center were automatically suspected of condoning al-Qaida."

[beardedmrbean]

DAMASCUS (AP) — Druze spiritual leader Sheikh Hikmat Al-Hijri on Thursday harshly criticized Syria’s government for what he called an “unjustified genocidal attack” on the minority community during deadly sectarian fighting in Druze-majority areas south of Damascus this week.

Syria’s Information Ministry said 11 members of the country’s security forces were killed in two separate attacks, while Britain-based war monitor The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 56 people in Sahnaya and the Druze-majority Damascus suburb of Jaramana were killed in clashes, among them local gunmen and security forces.

The clashes broke out around midnight Monday after an audio clip circulated on social media of a man criticizing Islam’s Prophet Muhammad. The audio was attributed to a Druze cleric. But cleric Marwan Kiwan said in a video posted on social media that he was not responsible for the audio, which angered many Sunni Muslims.

On Wednesday, 15 Druze men were killed in a highway ambush as they were heading to support armed groups south of Damascus against pro-government gunmen. No group has immediately claimed responsibility for the attack on the convoy.

“This collective killing is systematic, clear, visible, and documented,” Al-Hijri’s statement read. “We no longer trust a group that calls itself a government, because the government doesn’t kill its own people through extremist gangs that are loyal to it, and after the massacre claims they are loose forces.”

On Wednesday afternoon, the Syrian government said a deal was reached between Druze dignitaries and official representatives after which security forces and pro-government gunmen entered Sahnaya and Druze gunmen withdrew from the streets.

Videos on social media showed what appear to be pro-government militias beating Druze men they had captured in Sahnaya and making offensive sectarian remarks.

The Druze religious sect is a minority group that began as a 10th-century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. More than half of the roughly 1 million Druze worldwide live in Syria. Most of the other Druze live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981. In Syria, they largely live in the southern Sweida province and some suburbs of Damascus.

Syria’s leadership, former insurgents who toppled former President Bashar Assad in December, has promised to protect minority groups but they’re led by Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, which has had affiliations in the past with the Sunni Muslim extremist al-Qaida group and is viewed by the minorities with suspicion.

Most Druze spiritual leaders and factions have opted to air their grievances in closed communication with the new government, but concerns have heightened after a crackdown on Assad loyalists in Syria’s coastal province turned into a series of targeted revenge attacks against the Alawite minority group. Videos widely circulated of houses burned down and bloodied bodies of Alawites on the streets. Tens of thousands of Alawites fled south to neighboring Lebanon and many are too scared to return.

The Druze have since become reluctant to lay down their arms, which they say they need for protection.

[justforbooks]

Homeland by Richard Beck – how 9/11 changed the US for ever

Journalist Beck argues that the war on terror made America vastly more authoritarian, paving the way for Trump

Almost a quarter of a century on, is the US still being shaped by 9/11? Richard Beck thinks so, despite all the other shocking and pivotal events there since the 2001 attacks, from the financial crisis to the twin election victories of Donald Trump. In this long, ambitious book, which aims to be an “alternative national history”, encompassing politics, popular culture, consumerism, policing, the use of public spaces and even trends in parenting, Beck argues that 9/11 turned the US into a more aggressive, angry and anxious place, with Trump’s ascendancy only one of the consequences.

Beck depicts the “war on terror” that his country launched in response to al-Qaida’s surprise assault as a continuing, almost limitless military operation, which in its first two decades alone caused “900,000 deaths”, including those of “nearly 400,000 civilians”. His account of interventions and atrocities in countries such as Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan is clear and powerful, switching smoothly between strategic objectives and individual victims, yet much of it will be familiar to anyone who even casually follows US foreign policy.

The book is more original when it lays out the war’s less obviously lethal but profoundly malign effect on America itself. A presidency with massively expanded powers; increased surveillance of US citizens; innocent people arrested and detained on vague “national security” grounds; a greater readiness to use torture; and the thickening of the Mexican border into a militarised zone a hundred miles deep – in these and many other ways, the American state has become more authoritarian and intolerant since 9/11. Meanwhile, US society, Beck says, has followed a similar path, making it increasingly difficult for Muslims and other minorities considered suspicious to lead full political lives, or even appear safely in public during the frequent periods of mass panic about terrorism or triumphalism about its supposed vanquishing.

From all this bleak, carefully collated evidence, Beck draws a striking and timely conclusion: “If September 11 had not occurred, Donald Trump could never have become president.” Nor, the book suggests, could he rule in such a draconian and crudely nationalistic manner while retaining so much public support. The desire for revenge after the horror and humiliation of 9/11, conscious or unconscious, remains so huge that it will take many more years to sate. Superpowers that considered themselves wronged do not forget.

George W Bush, a reckless rightwing Republican by the standards of his day, if not now, was president when 9/11 happened, and reacted with characteristic illiberalism and overconfidence, establishing much of the secretive bureaucracy and elastic legal framework of the “war on terror”, and disastrously invading Afghanistan and Iraq. Then, the much more revered Barack Obama – who turns out to be one of Beck’s main targets – stealthily continued the war, at times appearing to be winding it down with troop withdrawals and conciliatory speeches, while in reality replacing Bush’s macho “shock and awe” displays of force with drone strikes and other assassinations. On the war’s home front, Beck points out, Obama also “tripled the budget” of the Department of Homeland Security’s infamously tough immigration and customs enforcement agency, “deported some three million people”, and further blurred the line between immigrants and terrorists in the public mind.

Why did a supposedly liberal president, who had opposed the Iraq war as a state senator, end up continuing the “war on terror”? For Beck, there is a grand, systemic explanation for the militarism of every US government since 9/11. “With the United States unable to muster the economic strength to maintain [its] hegemony around the world,” he writes, “militarism is the next best option for managing discontents abroad and at home.” In other words, the “war on terror” has never really been about terrorism, but about maintaining America’s global supremacy and internal status quo, threatened not just by radical Islamism but the rise of other superpowers, and growing domestic and foreign discontent with the US economic model.

It’s a compelling thesis. Yet Beck doesn’t connect its many elements closely enough to make it absolutely convincing. His book seems to want to be both a rigorous geopolitical analysis in the style of New Left Review and a work of novelistic nonfiction, informed by the doomy American panoramas of Don DeLillo. In places, he pulls off this tricky fusion, and the pages hum with unsettling facts and conclusions. But elsewhere the book is too broad-brush.

For all its epic sweep, sometimes plunging far back into America’s violent history, the account also omits at least one important precursor to the “war on terror” era. Ronald Reagan’s 1980s presidency, shortly after the US defeat in Vietnam, was also driven by vengeance and intense nationalism, and featured an ever-expanding and authoritarian government campaign against a supposedly vast global threat, the “war on drugs”.

Reagan is now widely remembered as a charming old conservative, rather than a ruthless enforcer of American privilege. This bold and outspoken book, despite its flaws, could help ensure that the domineering ways of the post-9/11 presidents are better understood.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?