#islamic warlord

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Michael Collins

Published: Oct 17, 2024

Yahya Sinwar, the elusive leader of Hamas regarded as the mastermind behind the militant group’s brutal attack on Israel last year, is dead.

Israel said Thursday it killed Sinwar during a military operation in Gaza.

Hamas has yet to comment, and it was not immediately clear what impact Sinwar’s death will have on the Israel-Hamas war.

Here’s what we know:

What's the latest on the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar?

Israel’s Defense Forces announced it had killed three Hamas militants during a military operation in Gaza on Thursday and was investigating whether one of them was Sinwar.

A U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said Israel was conducting DNA tests on the victim’s body to determine if it was Sinwar.

Israel's Foreign Minister Israel Katz later confirmed Sinwar’s death.

"This is a significant and moral achievement for Israel and a victory for the entire free world against the axis of evil of radical Islam led by Iran," Katz said in a statement.

A second U.S. official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, said it appears Sinwar may have been killed in a mortar attack.

Katz said Sinwar's death "opens the possibility" for the immediate release of the remaining hostages taken during Hamas' attack on Israel last year and "paves the way for a change that will lead to a new reality in Gaza."

Who is Yahya Sinwar?

Sinwar was the leader of Hamas, which staged a surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking 250 hostages. He was considered one of the architects of the attack, which touched off a bloody war between Israel and Hamas that, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, has resulted in the deaths of more than 42,000 Palestinians.

Sinwar, 61, had been in charge of daily operations in Gaza before the Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. He was declared Hamas’ political leader after his predecessor, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in July by a bomb hidden in his guesthouse in Tehran.

Dubbed "The Face of Evil" by Israel, Sinwar was known for operating in secrecy, moving constantly and using trusted messengers for non-digital communication, three Hamas officials and one regional official told Reuters. He had not been seen in public since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel and was believed to be hiding in the network of tunnels that Hamas used to conceal weapons, fighters and hostages.

Sinwar was a key player in failed negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage-release deal. He was the sole decision-maker for Hamas, three Hamas sources told Reuters. Negotiators would wait for days for responses filtered through a secretive chain of messengers.

Sinwar's early years

Sinwar was born in the Khan Younis refugee camp in southern Gaza in 1962. Before the war, he would sometimes tell of his early life in Gaza during decades of Israeli occupation. He once said his mother made clothes from empty U.N. food-aid sacks, Gaza resident Wissam Ibrahim, told Reuters.

In a semi-autobiographical novel written in prison, Sinwar described scenes of troops bulldozing Palestinian houses, "like a monster crushing its prey’s bones," before Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.

A ruthless enforcer tasked with punishing Palestinians suspected of informing for Israel, Sinwar then made his name as a prison leader, emerging as a street hero from a 22-year Israeli sentence for masterminding the abduction and murder of two Israeli soldiers and four Palestinians. He then quickly rose to the top of the Hamas ranks.

He became a member of Hamas soon after its founding in the 1980s, adopting the group's radical Islamist ideology, which seeks to establish an Islamic state in historic Palestine and opposes Israel's existence.

He was arrested by Israel in the late 1980s for allegedly orchestrating the killing of two Israel soldiers and several other Palestinians he accused of being collaborators. He was sentenced to four life sentences by Israel and had spent more of his life in jail than outside it when he released in a prisoner swap in 2011 that freed Gilad Shalit, an Israeli solider held captive by Hamas for five years.

Sinwar is believed to have helped establish Hamas' internal security service, known as Majd, whose tasks include finding and executing alleged Palestinian collaborators.

Sinwar was 'murderous terrorist' and 'obstacle' in ceasefire talks

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, traveling with President Joe Biden to Germany, called the news of Sinwar’s death a “very significant day in the Middle East.”

“This is a murderous terrorist responsible for the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust,” Sullivan told reporters aboard Air Force One. “He has a lot of blood on his hands – Israeli blood, American blood, Palestinian blood. And the world is better now that he's gone.”

Sinwar was “a massive obstacle" to peace in Gaza and efforts to secure a ceasefire and hostage-release deal, Sullivan said.

“At various points along the way, Sinwar was more interested in causing mayhem and chaos and death than actually trying to achieve a ceasefire and hostage deal,” Sullivan said. “We repeatedly saw a moment where it was him, in particular, who stood in the way of making progress towards the ceasefire-hostage deal.”

With his death, the U.S. will redouble its efforts to end the war, secure the release of the remaining hostages and chart a path forward that will enable the people of Gaza "to rebuild their lives and realize their aspirations free from war and free from the brutal grip of Hamas,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.

==

Reminder that Biden, Harris and Blinken all told Israel not to take Rafah. Israel ignored them, evacuated over 950,000 people in two weeks ("genocide," huh?) and proceeded anyway. If they'd listened, Sinwar would still be alive and planning more terrorist attacks.

And now, the world is rid of terrorist warlord Sinwar.

Keep in mind that by the Gaza Health Ministry, he will be counted as an "innocent."

[tlaquetzqui]

Can’t believe I called the genocide denier behind Springtime for Saladin Kingdom of Heaven “Piddly Snot”, when “Skiddly Rot” was the actual spoonerism of his name.

[radfemsiren]

I speak a lot about how ironic it is that Christians that hate Islam want to be taken seriously for their faith, but I don’t think the average person understands how deep this irony goes.

For those not well read in both faiths, Islam is a nearly 99% identical copy of Christianity. Moses is Musa, Abraham is Ibrahim. Gabriel is Jibreel, Adam and Eve is Adam and Hawa. Joseph is Yousef, Job is Ayub. Ishmael is Ismael, Isaac is Ishaaq.

Same prophets, almost the exact same stories and canon. Muhammad was an illiterate shady businessman who saw Christianity for what it was, a way to control women and shut down critical thought. He aspired to be a pedophile warlord and borrowed methods from the exotic west to fulfill his goals.

His first wife was older than him. His last was a 6 year old. As he gained power through conquest after conquest, and had his “miraculous visions” of verses being revealed to him, no one could tell that nearly every line he spoke was a stuttering copy of a faith already popular in a far away land. His fellow traveling merchants could, and he was a laughingstock to them. His first scribe could and was banished for noticing his obvious plagiarism…He eventually had to switch gears and market Islam as a “final chapter” of Christianity.

So anyway, that’s why I find interfaith arguments darkly hilarious.

[afghanbarbie]

i was born in taliban-controlled afghanistan and spent the majority of my childhood under the subsequent american occupation. my village was controlled by terrorists and warlords and patrolled by american soldiers who pretended they were 'peacekeepers' but, for the most part, were only interested in abusing local afghans and raping women and girls. i've both witnessed and experienced the sexual violence of my country's islamic fundamentalist factions as well as american occupying forces.

what i've seen both israel and hamas do to women in palestine and the occupied territories is eerily similar. i know people love to shout resistance by any means necessary! and similar slogans, but rape is not about 'resistance', it's about men exerting power and control over women. making excuses for it just goes to show how ready and willing 'leftists' are to throw women to the wolves as soon as they see an opportunity.

and if you think the men of hamas go home after raping their 'conquests of war' to treat palestinian women like saints, you haven't been paying attention to male violence throughout human history at all. the men who use war as an excuse to rape enemy women are going home to rape, beat and abuse their wives and daughters just the same.

[paperlunamoth]

I can't believe that some people still need to hear this: Islam is not compatible with feminism. Islam is not compatible with LGBT+ rights. Islam is not compatible with any component of any form of liberal or leftist ideology. The founding "prophet" of Islam was literally a child molester, slave owner, warlord, and all around absolutely shit human being. The hijab, niqab and burkha are blatant and profound symbols of female oppression. You cannot complain about rape culture and then claim that there is nothing wrong with how Islam expects women to present themselves and why. The reason for Islamic modesty is literally the explicit belief that women are responsible for how they are sexualized by men and that women are responsible for men's actions. As in, this explanation is part of the religion's scriptural canon.

Stop defending a religion that passionately despises you, people like you, and people you care about.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Benjamin Kerstein

The U.S. decision to finally end Iran’s perennial impunity and force its theocratic regime to pay a price for its genocidal imperialism is welcome, but it means we are about to meet a familiar personage once again: the weeping terrorist.

The weeping terrorist is a bifurcated creature. First, there is the terrorist part: He slaughters large numbers of people in the most sadistic and public way imaginable; wipes out entire religious, ethnic and racial groups of which he disapproves; undermines and topples governments; foments civil war; props up dictators and tyrants; and finally commits genocide.

Then comes the weeping part: When the victims retaliate, the terrorist erupts into floods of tears at his unprecedented and unspeakable suffering, the brutal assault on his rights and freedoms, the vile racism and bigotry of those who persecute him, the immutable purity of his motives and the righteousness of his cause.

The weeping terrorist has been here before, particularly in his Palestinian nationalist form.

For over a century, the Palestinian national movement has murdered, raped, dismembered, incinerated, assaulted, slandered, demonized, ethnically cleansed and religiously persecuted not only Jews and Israelis but anyone who stood in its way. For just as long, the Palestinians have responded to any retaliation with a deluge of tears. No one has suffered as much as they, they sputter, no one’s “resistance” has ever been more justified, and no people has faced such racist and genocidal enemies. After all, look at all these dead women and children, the weeping terrorist wails after having murdered scores of women and children.

This piece of theater has been performed by many empires, nations and religions. But it must be said that it is embedded particularly deep in the history of Islam. To this day, Muslims view Muhammad as a persecuted prophet without honor in his own country, when he was an immensely powerful and notably aggressive warlord. One may feel he was justified in being so, but the fact that he was is incontrovertible.

The Muslim world today often brands its enemies as “crusaders,” although the Crusades were essentially a belated response to the Muslim conquest of the entirety of the Middle East and North Africa, the subjugation of their indigenous populations, and the establishment of a settler-colonial empire. Indeed, Muslims still lament the loss of Andalusia, even though they had merely lost what they had conquered and colonized from Christians a few centuries before.

[former-leftist-jew]

You know they speak Arabic in Morocco for the same reason they speak French in Canada, right?

Bonus points:

Nazi dumbfuck

It’s like Zionists have one strategy when their ideology manifests as genocide. Israel is a racial separatist state. It practices apartheid and ethnic cleansing, that’s why fascists like it. A two-birds (a flock of birds)-one stone scenario for fascists is that the state of Israel encourages self-deportation of Jews, has an incredibly consequential lobby in American politics, is committing an obvious yet somehow easy-to-deny genocide of Muslims, and does all of that while forcefully claiming it is nothing less than synonymous with Judaism itself.

Zionism is Jewish Mormonism.

I can’t believe I didn’t realize that until this ask. I won’t elaborate unless someone asks in good faith and gives me like a week to write an essay, but I’ll stand by that analysis.

Lmao.

[sunnycanvas]

Could you write a story about Salah ad-Din's daughter and Baldwin?

After surviving the disastrous seventh crusade, a weary and battered crusader found himself lost and alone in the aftermath of the war. He realized that God had spared his life for a purpose: to reclaim Jerusalem from what he saw as heretical hands. With great effort, he limped along, using a makeshift stick as a crutch and desperately in need of medical attention.

As he trudged forward, rain began to pour from the heavens, soaking him to the bone. Exhausted and seeking refuge, he came upon a modest house and decided to take shelter beside it. It was at this moment that an elderly man appeared, recognizing the crusader's attire and his own past as a fellow crusader.

"Ah, a fellow crusader," the old man began, a wistful smile forming on his weathered face. "I, too, used to be one of your kind. But age eventually forced me into retirement."

The crusader was taken aback by the old man's revelation, realizing that he must have served during the era of King Baldwin's reign. Reading the young man's thoughts, the old crusader continued,

"I have seen a time when King Baldwin of Jerusalem, the one who was a leper, beat Saladin although he only had 300 armed men against Saladin's 3,000. But now your sins have come to such a pass that we round you up in the fields like cattle."

The bewildered crusader couldn't fathom the reference to "sins" made by the old man. Confused, he inquired, prompting the old man to knowingly explain, "Your sins date back to the first crusade, where innocent lives were brutally taken, staining the streets of Jerusalem with so much blood that it reached ankle-deep. It was during that time that two souls, (Y/N) Salahuddin's sister and King Baldwin IV, fell in love. Their affection for each other was evident in their eyes, but it's a tragic tale of love lost amidst the chaos. Few dared to speak of their love within the palace walls, as the nobility largely despised them."

The crusader was taken aback by the old man's sympathetic view of (Y/N). After all, he had always heard rumors accusing her of using witchcraft to seduce King Baldwin IV. The old man, sighing, seemed to understand the young crusader's inner turmoil. He retreated into his house briefly and emerged with food and medicine, tending to the crusader's wounds with care.

As the old man tended the crusader back to health, the old man nostalgically reminisced about his own youth. He began recounting his own story:

Year 1180

"My memories take me back to my childhood, where my parents spoke passionately of the Holy Land and the divine duty to protect the birthplace of our Lord from heretics. Back then, I longed for adventure and dreamed of becoming a Knight Templar, wielding wooden swords while my parents toiled and prayed. I proudly proclaimed myself a future knight to my friends. While my friends mocked me my parents encouraged my aspirations. I soon fulfilled my dream and became a knight to say I was sad would be understatement leaving my hometown especially my friends and parents would be understatement. Alas! there was nothing to be done

"As a young adventurer in the Holy Land, I served as a Knight Templar under the command of Reynald de Chatillon, a notorious warlord who was a Crusader lord based in the Kerak castle known for his ruthless raids. Some claimed his actions were meant to tarnish Salahuddin's reputation in the eyes of the Islamic world. However, his actions took a grave turn when he captured Salahuddin's sister, who was traveling in a caravan from Egypt to Syria .Salahuddin was furious when he learned of the attack. He saw it as a personal insult, as his sister was among the prisoners.

The old man's voice held the weight of history as he recounted these events. He paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts before continuing.

Reynald looked at me and said "You, new comer" I nervously pointed to myself and he said "Yes, you. Go and inform Guy de Lusignan about my capture of prisoners especially our enemy's Salahuddin sister". "Be quick as possible before the news reaches the king" he commanded. I hurriedly mounted my horse and raced toward the palace. Sadly, I arrived too late. The news had already reached the castle, and they were embroiled in heated discussions."

I was afraid to turn back and face the wrath of my lord, for the failure of my work.

"My friend, recognizing my predicament, suggested I join the Knight's Templar during the discussion.

"The king will appreciate your presence, it will show him that you are loyal to crown not your lord"

"Besides lord Reynald is going to be punished" Heeding his advice I entered the room and saw the hall was already dissolved in aggression.

The old man's voice grew intense as he recalled the heated debate within the castle's walls.

The king who was patiently listening to all arguments noticed me entering and nodded as if to acknowledge my presence

“Guy de Lusignan and Reynald de Chatillon, with the Templars, have attacked a Saracen caravan" exclaimed my friend entering first and I followed behind him

“It was no caravan. It was an army headed for Bethlehem to desecrate our Lord’s birthplace.” Guy defended himself

“Reynald, with the Templars, have broken the King’s truce. Salahuddin will come" Tiberias interrupts

“Tiberias knows more than a Christian about Salahuddin’s intentions.” Guy challenged while Tiberias says “That I would rather live with men, than kill them. Is certainly why you are alive.”

“That sort of Christianity has its uses, I suppose.” Guy mocked with his followers in the army who laughed along with him

“We must not go to war with Salahuddin!” Tiberias exclaimed. “We do not want it, and we may not win it.”

 ‘Blasphemy!’ Knight Templar yelled with protest and fought with Knight Hospitallar who were arguing back as well.

"There must be war, God wills it!" Guy agreeing yelled as well "God, wills it".

"Amidst the heated discussions, there were clashes between Templars and Hospitallers. Some cried out for war, invoking God's will, while others, like Tiberias, urged restraint. The King Baldwin IV, sat patiently while reading letter."

The old man's eyes sparkled with memories of that fateful day. Suddenly Baldwin IV raises his hand Tiberias noticing yells

"SILENCE"

Making the whole hall quite. Baldwin IV looked at the crowd and spoke in his raspy voice "I had sent a word to Reynald to let go of prisoners but he refused" As he said this the king tried getting up from his throne. Tiberias offered his hand worried about the king. However Baldwin IV raised his hand to as if signal he is capable of this much. As he got up the King whispered in his advisor’s ear. "We must be quick as possible before news reaches Salahuddin or else there will be war"

“My Lord, if you travel you will die" Tiberias voiced his concern

“Send word to Balian to protect the villagers.” the King in commanding tone yelled “Assemble the army.” which was followed by cheers of the knights

The king arrived to the place where Reynald had supposedly taken Salahuddin's sister. King displaying extraordinary dignity ridding in his horse went forwards my lord. As he got down his horse he headed towards my lord. Reynald went pale in fear. When the king reached him he took off one of gloves and extended his leprous hand and declared,

'I am Jerusalem, and you, Reynald, will give me a kiss of peace.' Reynald kissed the King's hand desperately, knowing the gravity of his actions. But the King, without hesitation, began to administer punishment. After he was done the king asked "Where is the princess?". A knight informed him that she, along with others, was held in prison. The King nodded and headed toward the castle, but suddenly, he stumbled. Several knights, myself included, rushed to his aid. Despite our pleas for him to rest, the King was determined."

(Y/N) was there in the cell crying but she got quite when she heard footsteps coming towards her. "No, matter what I won't allow you to hurt me"

"Princess" Baldwin IV said in his gentle voice. Realizing it was not Reynald (Y/N) came out of the dark and went into the light

I looked at the king and saw he seemed to be smitten with the girl but also had hint of pity in his face. "She must be truly terrified" I heard him mumble

"Princess, I apologise for the conduct of my knights". "May I please get the pleasure of knowing your name". (Y/N) who was surprised at gentleness of king mumbled her name in whisper "It's (Y/N)". Baldwin IV nodded at her and commanded the knights to treat the prisoners with outmost respect. "The princess shall get her own residence in palace" Baldwin IV commanded but the princess yelled "And get assaulted by your fellow murderers!" "I would rather live and die in prison than to submit to you and besides" (Y/N) face darked in anger and she leaned forward and said with outmost animosity "Flee from the leper as you would flee from a lion". "There is no way I would stay in the palace of leper". The place had gotten awfully quite . You could fear the sound of drop of water easily until a crusader shouted "You ungrateful wrench, how dare y-" but the king lifted his hand shutting him up. The king turned towards (Y/N) and said

"People said that the diesease is the punishment for the vanity of the kingdom, if it's true I call it unfair" As the king said this he quietly laughed at the end of the sentence. The king suddenly seemed lost in thought and (Y/N) noticed how beautiful his blue eyes were and got lost in them. The king then said "I am aware of the sins commited I can't change what happened but I can change what will happen" "Please come and live in the comfort of the palace"

The crusader looked at pity at old man as he looked at the old man who appeared to be on the brink of death. Death had been a familiar companion on his crusading journey, but this stranger had stirred something within him in the short time they had spent together. The old man managed a feeble smile and softly spoke, "I wish I could share more with you, but I can feel my time has come."

The crusader responded, "I believe you've been a good man, and I have no doubt that our Lord will grant you the kingdom of heaven."

The old man's eyes twinkled as he continued, "When I first saw you, you reminded me of the king. Gentle, non-judgmental, and wise. I'm grateful I trusted my instincts and shared part of the story with you. There's much more I could have shared, but alas, my time has arrived."

With a tinge of sorrow, the crusader whispered, "Don't worry; I believe. I believe that (Y/N) and King Baldwin IV were good people who became victims of their circumstances."

As the old man heard these words, he seemed to find peace, a burden lifted from his weary soul. He must have carried these stories with him for so long, yearning to share them but having no one to confide in.

In the fading light, the old man slowly passed away in the crusader's arms.

The old man slowly died in crusader's arm and the crusader felt the rays of sunshine on his face. "The heavy rain had stopped" he thought. In that solemn moment, the crusader felt a rush of warmth and energy. He knew this day and the stories he had heard would remain etched in his memory forever.

Fast forward to present day:

"Both Christian sources and Arab sources have hostile opinions of Salahuddin's sister (Y/N) and Baldwin IV respectively, William of Tyre was said to be trusted resource but historian like Bernhard Hamilton spent lot of time proving otherwise. Now it's a well known fact that William of tyre work is biased with political agenda" (Y/N) said excitedly. "You are such a history nerd" your friend teased. "King Baldwin IV was said to understand the concept of chivalry" (Y/N) replied dreamily. "Of course, you like chivalrous knight while I like rough and aggressive man like my boyfriend" your friend said lost in dreams on her boyfriend.

"Are you borrowing that book, I need that as well. I am searching for this book for so long". Baldwin IV mumbled hesitantly.

"Isn't it Baldwin IV? He is said to be sickly but popular among his peers" Your friend giggled leaned down near your ear whispered "He is said to be gentle man, perfect for old romantic like you". You playfully shoved your friend.

"BEEP". You turned towards the sound and saw your friend's boyfriend with his bike. Your friend giggled "I gotta go" "Meanwhile you enjoy your date with your new boyfriend" and rushed away

You playfully rolled your eyes and turned towards the boy and said "Sorry about that"

The boy gave a bright smile and said "No worries. It's refreshing to meet someone who shares my passion for history." "How about a cup of coffee and a discussion on the history of the crusades?

[bobemajses]

Bukharan Jewish boots from Samarkand, Uzbekistan, ca. late 19th century

Many Samarkand Jews describe themselves as indigenous to the region, having arrived prior to the advent of Islam, and long before the Uzbek dynasts conquered the territory. In 1168, renowned medieval Jewish traveler Benjamin of Tudela wrote that 50,000 "Israelites" resided in Samarkand, among them "very wise and rich men." In the 14th century, many Persian Jews were welcomed by Tamerlane, the great Turkic warlord and founder of the Timurid dynasty, to boost trade and production in materials which were weaved and dyed. Thus, Samarkand, the city Tamerlane adorned as his capitol, became a major Bukharan Jewish center.

[beardedmrbean]

People say Arab colonization was peaceful?

The crusaders, Vlad Tepes, and even the hard push for the USA navy pop up out of nowhere. Also why are the Jews in Israel so trigger happy then?

Several of the Crusades were defensive wars ya, also several of them were Roman Catholic vs Eastern Orthodox aka Rome vs Constantinople.

But ya no if you look at the history of Islam, and the guy that started it, dude was a warlord, among many other things, and they went around spreading Islam by the sword.

That's how it all went and that's historically verifiable fact that they spread it 'by the sword'

Not saying Christianity isn't guilty of that either, but nobody ever tries to handwave away the historical injustices and atrocities committed by them, that and we're not doing anything like that anymore on any grand or approved scale at least.

Everyone agrees that the wbc is a bunch of assholes I think.

If Israel was as trigger happy as people try to make them out to be, there wouldn't be any "palestenian" people, if they wanted to do a genocide gaza would be a big parking lot.

Fun how hamass puts rocket launching infrastructure in the middle of fruit orchards and then complains that Israel is destroying their crops, but that's a different ask I think.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

“There have been many murderers, robbers and sexual predators in history.

There were even those who claimed they were anointed for it by God.

But there was only one person who made a religion out of it."

-- Craig Winn

[postoctobrist]

Hey this is a weird thing to ask but you seem like you would know (based on the time on WTYP you started explaining Wahabism): what ARE the Taliban? What's up with them philosophically, who/what is Talib(?), etc. All the American education system ever taught me was "the Evil Government of Afghanistan who we are righteously overthrowing, oo-rah, USA!, etc."

So a ‘talib’ is a student of an Islamic religious school, ‘taliban’ just means ‘students’. That’s where they started out, a network of religious schools in southern and eastern Afghanistan.

Who they are and what they believe is sort of the same question - when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, they provoked a huge resistance that was essentially Islamist in character, both because Afghanistan was already a conservative and religious place, because it was now suddenly full of Russian atheist communists doing war crimes, and because the intelligence services of the US, Pakistan and several Arab countries saw an opportunity to stick it to the Soviets. You can loosely call all of these insurgents ‘mujahideen,’ ‘guys who do jihad,’ and like a lot of insurgencies it depended on individual leaders holding together coalitions of tribal and ethnic loyalties. A lot of these leaders were also not what you might call good guys themselves.

The insurgents win, the Soviets get forced out of Afghanistan, and what follows is an immediate and brutal civil war to determine who gets control of what’s left. The Taliban are in an interesting position because they hate all the warlords equally and have been themselves propped up by particularly Pakistani intelligence, who see them as controllable. They also benefit from a lot of the traditional popularity fascists get: they seem personally clean, orderly, they’re going to restore tradition and brutally punish the right people. They actually seem serious about being Muslims, which matters if you are a serious Muslim and have previously been beholden to a bribe-taking rapist blasphemer. We saw some of these dynamics again with the rise of Daesh/ISIS/whatever. And while they’re mostly Pashtun they’re far less tribalist and far more able to incorporate members of other ethnicities. Yeah, they seem a bit weird and foreign and alienating and they have this look in their eyes, but you should see the other guy.

Anyway, the Taliban win the civil war and establish the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. It’s really bad. Their idea of government is extremely strict, theocratic, and perhaps most of all misogynistic. You get a lot of executions, women being stoned to death in football stadiums, things of this nature. They rule Afghanistan in this way for years but resistance continues from former warlords, most notably a guy called Ahmad Shah Massoud, ‘Afghanistan’s George Washington.’ They successfully assassinate Massoud on September 10th, 2001, with a bomb concealed in a TV camera during an interview.

Unfortunately for the Taliban, they had also welcomed back into Afghanistan an old Saudi mujahid called Osama bin Laden so that he had somewhere to do his side hustle, something called ‘the base,’ ‘al-Qaeda,’ and the day after their big triumph he does something else.

[REEL MISSING] Anyway now they’re back and Afghanistan is an Islamic Emirate again. Foreign policy feels great, doesn’t it?

[radfemsiren]

Everytime westerners say Christianity and Islam are equally bad I know they are fucking morons. Jesus wasn’t a sick warlord with Jewish sexslaves and a favorite wife who was a 6 year old girl.

I think Jesus himself was much more meek figure and less of a clear threat than Muhammad, but encouraging sexual slavery and pedophilia is still very present in Christianity.

Muslims are very insistent on never changing anything about original religious texts, so the predominant sect of Islam, Sunni, is nearly completely identical in practice to the original Muslims 1400 years ago…

Christianity is much more fluid and the Bible has gone through numerous changes depending on the whims of whichever king is in charge at the moment… I think this created a much more distilled, watered down version of the religion that is more palatable to modern audiences.

Maybe Islam would be more tolerable to me if even the slightest amount of amendment was allowed… but that will never happen. The faith is dependent on submission and obedience, and individual thought and new ideas are not allowed.

So if the faith must be completely dependent on the prerogative of an ancient pedophile, then the faith must go

[wrathzy]

The Execution of Tatiana Usmanova:

The Chechen Wars were a string of vicious conflicts between the Russian Federation and the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. These brutal onslaughts transpired in two stages, from 1994 to 1996 (The First Chechen War) and 1999 to 2009 (The Second Chechen War), producing devastating consequences for the Russian Federation and the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria in terms of significant human suffering, including military and civilian casualties, civilian displacement, and eradicated infrastructure. From 1994 to 2003, as many as 50,000 to 250,000 civilians were killed in the combined Chechen wars, along with thousands more deaths of fighters from both sides.

The spread of technology during the Chechen wars allowed for the filming of various war crimes, and it became a breeding ground for atrocious propaganda footage, mainly by the Chechen rebels. These guerilla warfare-styled fighters employed psychological warfare to strike fear into the hearts of the Russians. One of the tactics they would utilize is recording the executions of captured Russian troops, then leaving the videotape on the body for the enemy to discover. A few of these videos were eventually uploaded on popular snuff hubs like Documenting Reality or Rotten and are considered the original gore videos available to watch online. One such video was the recorded murder of Tatiana Usmanova, which had vanished for some time before emerging on the internet once again.

32-year-old Tatiana Usmanova and her husband, Hassan Edilgireev, lived in the Adreevskaya Dolina village in the Zavodsky district of Grozny. On the evening of October 1st, 2001, Tatiana, Hassan, and her friend, Elena Petrovna Gaevskaya (reportedly paying a visit to the couple), were abducted by five pro-Chechan militants from their home. According to sources, the Chechen militants accused Tatiana of collaborating with local police or other agencies. Tatiana was murdered on camera in front of Hassan, while Elena was shot to death off camera. Hassan was tortured by the rebels; however, they allowed him to live because he was of Chechen descent. All of the killers, except for the cameraman, were around 18 years of age. Tatiana's execution footage was not released to the public until 2004, after the Grozny police obtained the tape, initiating a separate investigation into who was responsible for Tatiana's murder. While everyone who participated was eventually identified, most were already dead.

The killers were identified as:

Islam Chalayev: Killed during an FSB mission in April 2002 Khamzat Tazabaev: Killed during an FSB mission in February 2004 Adlan Barayev: Killed during a special operation in 2004 Arbi Khaskhanov: Official status is unknown (may still be alive) Ilyas Dashaev: Already serving time in prison for past crimes

Sources cite that Ilyas Dashaev was part of the group led by Arbi Barayev, a Chechen warlord who had been explicitly selecting young and ruthless men to join. Dashaev then moved to a different group led by Islam Chalayev at the beginning of 2001. In January 2002, federal troops launched an operation against Dashaev and detained him. By December of that year, the Stavropol Regional Court found him guilty of murdering the heads of administrations for several Chechen villages, and two employees of the Urus-Martanovsky District Department of Internal Affairs, as well as banditry and robbery, earning him a sentence of 20 years in a maximum security penal colony. Finally, in 2007, Ilyas Dashaev was convicted by the Supreme Court of the Chechen Republic of the 2001 murders of Tatiana Usmanova and Elena Petrovna Gaevskaya and was sentenced to an additional 22 years. According to Dashnaev's court testimony, he confessed to brutalizing Tatiana and Elena for talking to authorities and dumping their bodies into a river.

Tatiana's Execution Video:

The footage of Tatiana's execution is 17 minutes and 55 seconds long, and it appears the cameraman recorded with a night vision filter inside a dark basement. Upon starting the video, you see a beaten Tatiana sitting on the dirt floor alongside Hassan, and she's interrogated for the first two minutes, occasionally being hit with a flexible rod. Despite the abuse, Tatiana appeared remarkably composed during the interrogation by the rebels.

From 2:30 to 3:50, one of the captors is seen digging a shallow pit for blood to flow in. The camera interchangeably zooms on Tatiana, and the expression on her face is of pure despondency as it seems there is no way out for her. Around 4:58, she began to panic, pleading for her life while they bound her hands together with tape. The video then cuts to Hassan having tape placed over his mouth before shifting back to Tatiana, who is on the ground with her mouth taped.

One of the rebels presses a combat knife onto her throat, not cutting it, but to practice where to cut. At 6:25, one of the rebels cuts the tape off Tatiana's mouth, and she begins murmuring to them, but what was said is not known. From 8:30 to 9:20, Tatiana has her mouth taped again as the rebels prepare for the killing.

By 9:20, the militants place Tatiana on her side by the hole. One holds her head back to expose her neck, while the other begins to sever her throat. A faint squeal leaves Tatiana's mouth as her throat is carved wide open, and her blood is seen streaming into the hole. The killers also took turns lacerating and holding her down against the dirt until she's finally decapitated. At 9:49, the footage cuts to a black screen, but you can hear the rebels talk amongst each other for about a minute or so before it cuts to Hassan at 11:06.

Hassan's head was covered in lumps and lacerations, indicating that the killers badly beat him. At 11:26, the cameraman walks around Tatiana's beheaded corpse as he laughs. One of the killers can be seen at 12:04 boasting with Tatiana's head in his hand before placing it on the floor. The remaining minutes of the footage show the killers probing Hassan, who appears to be in shock due to what he had witnessed happen to his wife, and then the video concludes.

[afghanbarbie]

The sex-based apartheid against women in Afghanistan cannot be reduced to, "Afghan men saw Afghan women enjoying freedom and got mad, so they established extremist religious governments to stop it." I am really tired of seeing this misconception and oversimplification spread around by leftists, liberals and feminists – it's racist, and simply not fucking true.

The majority of Afghans want a secular government and for the oppression of women to end. The Taliban represent a minority of Afghanistan's people. The deterioration of Afghan society – in particular, women's rights and freedoms – directly results from decades of foreign intervention, imperialism and occupation. Afghans did not destroy Afghanistan, the United States did, and the USSR paved the way for them to do so.

Had Afghanistan never been treated like a pawn in the games played by imperialistic powers, had we not been reduced to resources, strategic importance and a tool for weakening the enemy, extremism would have never come to power.

An overview of Afghanistan's recent history:

The USSR wanted to incorporate Afghanistan into Soviet Central Asia and did so by sabotaging indigenous Afghan communist movements and replacing our leaders with those loyal to the USSR. The United States began funding and training Islamic extremists – the Mujahideen – to fight against the Soviet influence and subsequent invasion, and to help the CIA suppress any indigenous Afghan leftist movements. Those Mujahideen won the war, and then spent the next decade fighting for absolute control over Afghanistan.

During that time period, known as the Afghan Civil War, the Mujahideen became warlords, each enforcing their own laws on the regions they controlled. Kabul was nearly destroyed, and the chaos, destruction and death was largely ignored by the United States despite being the ones who caused and empowered it. This civil war era created the perfect, unstable environment needed to give a fringe but strong group like the Taliban a chance to rise to power. And after two decades of war, a singular entity taking control and bringing 'peace' was enticing to all Afghans, even if their views were objectively more extreme than what we had been enduring up to that point.

When the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, they allied with the same warlords that had been destroying our country the decade prior and whom they had rallied against the Soviets – these are the people that made up the Northern Alliance. The 'good guys' that America gave us were rapists, pillagers, and violent extremists, no better than the Taliban. And that's not even mentioning the horrible atrocities and war crimes committed by American forces themselves.

So, no, Afghan men did not collectively wake up one day and decide that women had too much freedom and rush to establish an extremist government overnight. No, this is not to excuse the misogyny of men in our society – the extremists had to already exist for Americans to fund and arm them against the Soviets – but rather to redirect the bulk of this racist blame to the actual culprits. The religious extremism and sex-based apartheid would not be oppressing and murdering us today if they hadn't been funded and supported by the United States of America thirty years ago. And despite all the abuses and restrictions, many Afghan women prefer the Taliban's current government to another American occupation. I felt safer walking in Taliban-controlled Kabul than I did being 'randomly searched' (sexually assaulted) by American military police in my village as a child.

Imperialism is inextricably linked with patriarchal violence and women's oppression. You cannot talk about the deterioration of Afghanistan without talking about the true cause of said decline: The United States of America. Americans of all political views, including leftists and feminists, are guilty of reducing or outright ignoring Western responsibility for female oppression in the Global South, finding it much easier to place all blame on the foreign brown man or our supposedly backwards, savage cultures, when the most responsibility belongs with Western governments and their meddling games that forced the most violent misogynists among us into power.

(Most of this information comes from my own experience living as an Afghan Hazara woman in Afghanistan, but Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords and the Propaganda of Silence covers this in much more detail. If you want more on the Soviet-Afghan war and Afghanistan's socialist history, Revolutionary Afghanistan is an English-language source from a more leftist perspective)

[mariacallous]

Even if Israel and Hamas agree to a cease-fire and it holds, normalcy will not return to Gaza anytime soon. For the Palestinians living there, the biggest long-term danger they face may not be Hamas or Israel—it could be a lack of government altogether. A postwar Gaza may join the ranks of Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and other states that suffer near-constant low-level strife, endemic crime, and humanitarian crisis after humanitarian crisis. Such states tend to produce waves of desperate refugees and can fuel further violence.

In Gaza’s modern history, different regimes have ruled the strip, rarely doing so for the benefit of its residents. After the British colonial presence ended in 1948 and a war commenced over Israel’s independence, Egyptian troops advanced into Gaza as part of their attack on Israel, and they kept control of the region in the 1949 armistice agreement between Egypt and Israel. In the years after, Egypt sought to both suppress and exploit Palestinian activism and political Islam. Palestinian cross-border raids were an instrument against Israel, but they could create an escalatory spiral. In the 1950s, repeated cross-border raids contributed to Israel’s decision to go to war against Egypt in 1956.

When Israel took power after conquering Gaza in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, it also feared Palestinian activism, though it was more permissive than Egypt in allowing political Islam to develop. Under Israeli rule, Gaza’s economy improved, but the enclave remained poorly governed, with Israel less concerned about the well-being of Palestinians and more worried about their support for Palestinian nationalism.

The Palestinian National Authority, a forerunner of the Palestinian Authority (PA), took over the governance of Gaza and portions of the West Bank as part of the Oslo Accords, assuming control in 1994 under Yasser Arafat’s leadership. Although finally under Palestinian rule, the Palestinian leaders were primarily from the diaspora, not Gaza, and the PA focused more on the West Bank. Again, Gaza remained neglected.

Israel reoccupied Gaza during the Second Intifada, which began in 2000, and it withdrew in 2005. Although Israel’s campaign against Hamas weakened its terrorist capabilities, Hamas won a parliamentary election in 2006 and then seized power in Gaza in 2007. Finally, a Gaza-based organization was running Gaza. In some ways, life for Palestinians in the enclave improved—despite Hamas’s repressive ideology. It cracked down on crime, crushed local warlords, provided health and educational services, and was less corrupt than the PA.

At the same time, Israel and much of the international community rejected Hamas’s legitimacy. The group continued waging sporadic attacks on Israel, and Israeli governments placed severe limits on Gaza’s economic development and regularly engaged in destructive military campaigns in the enclave. Israel tried to balance this with limited economic concessions to Gaza, such as issuing more worker permits and offering greater fishing rights, and allowing millions of dollars in aid from Qatar to go to Gaza if Hamas stopped military attacks—a policy that Israel thought was working until the attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, dispelled this illusion.

Whatever limited gains Palestinians in Gaza may have made under Hamas rule have been shattered by Israel’s military response to the attacks committed by Hamas on Oct. 7. The Israeli campaign has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians and displaced 1.9 million people—85 percent of the enclave’s population. More than half of Gaza’s buildings had been damaged or fully destroyed by late January. The United Nations estimates that Gaza will need decades to recover at the cost of tens of billions of dollars—money that may never be provided. And U.N. officials warn that famine and disease will soon sweep the strip.

Some aid does get in, but much of it does not go to the neediest. Hamas has blended in with the population, and much of the day-to-day governance of Gaza, including policing, is gone as Israel continues to target what it considers to be Hamas’s infrastructure in Gaza. Criminal gangs now regularly rob unprotected aid convoys, selling what they steal to desperate Gazans.

Although a cease-fire would reduce some of the suffering, it does not resolve the most important political question: Who will rule Gaza? Israel understandably does not want the Hamas regime that murdered around 1,200 of its citizens to return to power and vows to destroy Hamas. Yet all the other contenders for power are weak, including the PA.

Any non-Hamas government has to worry about two sets of armed actors. Israel is likely to continue at least limited operations against the remnants of Hamas, assassinating its leaders and otherwise trying to prevent the group from reconsolidating. Hamas, for its part, might attack any interim government in order to ensure its political preeminence, and this is especially true if that government cooperates with Israel on security.

As for Gaza’s economy, even massive aid would not restore conditions that existed before Oct. 7—tenuous as they were. Although initial reports claiming that Palestinians from Gaza who worked in Israel had aided the Oct. 7 terrorists appear to be wrong, suspicion toward Palestinians among Israelis will remain high. Israel has accused the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)—which for decades has provided education, health care, food, and other services in Gaza—of being penetrated by Hamas. More broadly, the Oct. 7 attacks discredited Israel’s carrot-and-stick approach of offering limited economic concessions backed up by the threat of force to encourage moderation from Hamas. The future will see few carrots and far more sticks.

Foreign aid, while necessary for daily survival in Gaza, also comes with its own long-term risks for any government in the enclave. Aid from outsiders could have a corrupting effect, making any government less accountable to its own people; ordinary Palestinians in Gaza would have no way to stop officials from siphoning off aid and abusing their power.

This mix of chaos, privation, and conflict poses long-term risks not just for Palestinians, but also for Israel and the rest of the regional states. Many of Gaza’s people will try to leave if they can, with next-door neightbor Egypt being the most likely destination, should Cairo allow it. These conditions are also natural feeders for violent groups, which can easily recruit young men who need a paycheck and are bitter toward Israel and the international community for their role in Gaza’s desperate condition.

The Israel-Hamas war’s end would only mark the end of a chapter in the book of Palestinian suffering: The next chapter may be about the chaotic postwar period. Too often, U.S. and international policy in the region is focused on establishing a cease-fire or beginning negotiations, and not enough on lessening the suffering of ordinary people.

To reduce the risk of long-term state failure, the United States, European Union members, and others hoping for a solution to the conflict should focus on who will rule Gaza and how that entity’s rule will be enforced in the long term.