Mohammed
Khalifa, a Canadian citizen who was a leading figure in the Islamic
State of Iraq, was recently transferred into FBI custody. In an
interview with CBC's Fifth Estate, Khalifa admitted to playing an
important role in producing and disseminating Islamic State propaganda
to Western audiences CBC
"As alleged, Mohammed Khalifa not only fought for ISIS on the battlefield
in Syria, but he was also the voice behind the violence."
"Through his alleged leading role in translating, narrating, and
advancing ISIS's online propaganda, Khalifa promoted the terrorist
group, furthered its worldwide recruitment efforts, and expanded the
reach of videos that glorified the horrific murders and indiscriminate
cruelty of ISIS."
Raj
Parekh, Acting U.S. Attorney, Eastern District of Virginia
"[Khalifa was] a deeply ideologically committed member of the Islamic State [until his capture]."
"The ISIS higher ups also saw value in him as a media personnel, and he
travelled with much of the leadership to the final holdouts."
"One of the key things he mentioned during our interview was that ISIS,
as it was losing territory, started to see consistent media releases as
strategically important."
"Because of all the Canadian prisoners being held in Syria, Ridwan [Mohammed Khalifa, aka Abu Ridwan Ai-Kanadi] is
probably the easiest to make a case against."
"There are literally hundreds of hours of ISIS audio that he put out
there, and has also admitted to multiple reporters that this was his
primary role with the Islamic State."
Amarnath Amarasingam, professor, terrorism, radicalization and extremism research, Queen's University
As
an adherent of the ideology of the Islamic State of Iraq and the
Levant, a Saudi-born Canadian citizen who travelled illegally from the
country of his citizenship to Syria to pledge allegiance to then-ISIS
leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, he was assigned to the ISIL media bureau,
where he excelled in the position, becoming one of the Islamist
fundamentalist group's most prominent public relations stalwarts,
actively producing and distributing videos for public consumption
extolling the virtues of the group and demonstrating its virtuous
loyalty to Islamist principles through heinous atrocities.
From
2013 to 2019 his outstanding work assisted hugely in the recruiting of
dedicated new ISIL members. His role as a publicity director helped
amplify the Islamic State's formidably fearful reputation and was
without doubt useful in convincing opposing militaries in Syria and Iraq
that they hadn't a chance in hell to defend the populations their
professional position demanded of them, ensuring they would melt away at
the first signs that Islamic State fighters approached, leaving
defenceless civilians to fend for themselves.
In
the invasion of Sinjar when Islamic State viciously targeted the
ancient Yazidi population, the merciless killing of men and boys, the
enslavement of women and girls exemplified the blood-curdling mission
the Islamic State gave themselves in their jihad against minorities
helpless before their onslaught. With Iraqi and Syrian military defence a
pipe dream, it was left to the Kurdish militias to oppose and defend
Christians and Yazidis and other groups fleeing the violent persecution
and threats to annihilate them.
The
US-led international coalition gave air cover to the Kurdish Peshmerga
who alone demonstrated the capacity to give shelter to fleeing civilian
populations, ethnic and religious minorities, in effectively countering
the burgeoning presence of the Islamic State caliphate, but it was
without doubt Kurdish valour and values and military acumen that
destroyed the expansionary plans of the Islamic State. When the
geographic gains of ISIL were destroyed, it was the Kurdish-majority
Syrian Democratic Forces that took upon itself the imprisonment of
Islamic State fighters and their women and children, freeing the
occupied towns and villages from their venomous presence.
A Syrian Democratic Forces fighter burns an ISIS flag on the front line
on the western side of Raqqa, northeast Syria, Monday, July 17, 2017.
(Hussein Malla/AP Photo)
Among
those imprisoned by the SDF in the prison camp established for that
purpose was Canadian ISIL member Mohammed Khalifa. The SDF has
repeatedly requested that foreign governments repatriate their citizens
who had joined ISIL to relieve their burden. Some have complied, others
have not. Some have taken back only female ISIL members and their
children. Some will stand trial for their offences against humanity. It
is the fate of the children for the most part that exercises the
compassionate mind.
There
can be no compassion wasted on psychopaths like Khalifa, both male and
female who were complicit in the atrocities committed by the Islamic
State, from their staged and videoed beheadings, crucifixions,
drownings, death-by-explosives and other malicious horrors they visited
on their many victims. All of which they gloried in, celebrated, proudly
exhibited. Which alternately gained them new recruits willing and eager
to join the death-dealing, or further burnished the dread in peoples'
minds of the terrorists.
It
can be seen as the responsibility of the government of Canada to have
taken the initiative to return this man and his ilk to Canada. Less
famous, as in infamous members of ISIL with Canadian citizenship are
known to have returned to Canada of their own volition, are not and have
never been imprisoned, nor faced trials with the reason being given
that evidence against them is too difficult to obtain, to mount a
criminal investigation to bring them to justice, and so supposedly they
are 'under observation' by intelligence services.
There
is more than ample evidence available for any jury to reach a decision
about Khalifa; his signature is on some of the most vile, vicious,
violent of Islamic State's videos and other publicity instruments meant
to enhance their reputation and create a lasting impression of sadistic
barbarity in the name of Islamism. Yet Canada's government has chosen to
do nothing. It has chosen to exhale a sigh of relief that the United
States has taken it upon itself to exact justice on behalf of the
victims of Islamic State's notorious inhumanity.
Thousands of videos, graphics and other images have been collected together to form a growing propaganda archive ISD
"It’s very interesting that the U.S. is going forward with this case
and not Canada."
"Ridwan
is probably our easiest case. There are literally hundreds of hours of
his voice recorded in ISIS media. Cases against other prisoners are
slightly more difficult."
"I suppose the U.S. sees him as important for reasons we probably don’t know yet."
Queen’s University professor Amarnath Amarasingam
"Those who left Canada to support the terror organization need to be
held accountable for their crimes before a court of law."
"I'm glad the U.S. had the political courage to do what the Canadian
government did not. He is a Canadian, he left from Canada. It should be
the responsibility of the Canadian government to hold him accountable
for his crimes."
"[Khalifa is] calm, cold, and indifferent."
"He had no remorse for what he had done and felt his actions were justified."
Leah West, professor, national security law, Carleton University
Syrian ambassador Hussam Edin
Aala, left, with Vladimir Gratchev, representative of Michael Møller,
Secretary-General of the UN Conference on Disarmament, Geneva, Sept. 3,
2014.
GENEVA, April 9, 2018 – Despite
accusations that it perpetrated yet another deadly chemical weapons
attack on Saturday, Syria will next month chair the United Nations
disarmament forum that produced the treaty banning chemical weapons,
sparking calls by an independent monitoring group for the U.S., the EU,
and UN chief Antonio Guterres to strongly protest, and for their ambassadors to walk out of the conference during the four weeks of the Syrian presidency.
"The Assad regime’s documented use of chemical weapons
remains the most serious violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention in
the treaty’s twenty-year history. We urge the UN to
understand that at a time when Syria is gassing its own men, women, and
children to death, to see Syria heading the world body that is supposed
to protect these victims will simply shock the conscience of humanity."
"A country that flagrantly violates the chemical weapons convention, and which was reported to the UN Security Council by the International Atomic Energy Agency for its covert construction of a nuclear reactor and found in breach
of the Nonproliferation Treaty, should be barred from any formal
positions in UN bodies dealing with the such vital matters as
biological, chemical and nuclear weapons disarmament."
"The Assad regime simply cannot be a
credible chair of this or any other United Nations body. Syria’s use of
deadly chemical weapons and its illegal pursuit of nuclear weapons, in
breach of its disarmament obligations, run counter to the objectives and
fundamental principles of the Conference on Disarmament itself. Syria’s
chairmanship will only undermine the integrity of both the disarmament
framework and of the United Nations, and no country should support
that." Hillel Neuer, Executive Director, UN Watch
Affected children wait to receive medical treatment after a poisonous gas attack.
Photograph: Fadi Abdullah/Anadolu/Getty Images
It is nothing short of surreal. Once again Syrian doctors and those desperately expending themselves to rescue Syrian Sunnis from the blighted attacks of their Shiite government found dozens of dead in Douma in eastern Ghouta, not far from Damascus after yet another chemical weapons assault. The Syrian-American Medical Society based in Washington reported 40, perhaps more people killed, with over 500 "brought to local medical centres with symptoms indicative of exposure to a chemical agent". The Syria Civil Defense first responders described patients with symptoms of respiratory distress, many foaming at the mouth, emitting a "chlorine-like odour". Unfortunate, shrugs the Syrian regime, but nothing to do with them. And they have the support of the Russian Foreign Ministry, that such absurd claims that Syrian troops were responsible have no basis in reality. The allegations are "designed to shield the terrorists ... who reject a political settlement", stated the Russian Foreign Ministry. It seems the American State Department isn't buying that casual brush-off of responsibility, that the "disturbing" and "horrifying" event requires an "immediate response by the international community". So far, the only member of that international community, the one that is forever the recipient of criticism for its attempts to secure its borders and defend itself from Islamist terror, is the only member that bothered to respond by sending a message that such flagrant disregard for innocent human life will not be tolerated. The initial attack appears to have targeted a hospital, according to reports from rescue workers. The chemicals spread to residential areas where bodies were later discovered inside family homes or slumped in stairwells, noses and mouths emitting foam. Field clinics desperately attempting to give aid to affected people experiencing breathing problems recalled other chemical weapons attacks in Syria, including the nerve agent sarin where a year ago a hundred people were killed in Khan Sheikhoun. More than a thousand people were killed in 2013 in eastern Ghouta in yet another sarin attack, the event that saw then-president Barack Obama muse about military action against the Syrian government crossing "red lines". A threat easily set aside when Vladimir Putin persuaded him it would make more sense to remove all chemical weapons from Syria. It is yet to be seen whether the current president Donald J. Trump has plans to make good on his hinted response to this latest attack. "We tried to send people to the area to rescue the injured, but even the rescue workers began suffocating", medical worker Mohamed Samer in Douma explained, while Syrian doctors and rescue workers showed images of men, women and children killed or wounded in the attack. According to a representative of the United Nations, Secretary General Antonio Guterres was "particularly alarmed by allegations that chemical weapons have been used against civilian populations in Douma". He added, unfortunately, that the United Nations was "not in a position to verify these reports". But it was prepared, quite obviously, to rubber-stamp the Syrian representative chairmanship of the UN forum for disarmament that just happened to produce the treaty banning the use of chemical weapons. How very appropriate. If the world body could imagine itself flagrantly flaunting its purpose for existence in a more cynical utterly hypocritical manner, it is this alongside the Secretary General's sanctimony that exemplifies its utter worthlessness.
Other than as a willing aid to the human-rights defiant among its not quite illustrious membership. Irony of ironies, the Conference of Disarmament which reports to the UN General Assembly, is described as "the
single multilateral disarmament negotiating forum of the international
community". Ample evidence that the 65-country Conference is nothing but distorted window dressing for an international agency incapable of committing itself to its very own reason for existence; a bulwark against global human rights abuses.
Smoke rises from shelled buildings in Douma on Saturday.
Photograph: Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock
"The group seized Mosul, Iraq, last June, and already rules an area
larger than the United Kingdom. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been its leader
since May 2010, but until last summer, his most recent known appearance
on film was a grainy mug shot from a stay in U.S. captivity at Camp
Bucca during the occupation of Iraq. Then, on July 5 of last year, he
stepped into the pulpit of the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul, to
deliver a Ramadan sermon as the first caliph in generations—upgrading
his resolution from grainy to high-definition, and his position from
hunted guerrilla to commander of all Muslims. The inflow of jihadists
that followed, from around the world, was unprecedented in its pace and
volume, and is continuing." The Atlantic
The confidence of representing the Almighty himself who has instructed his faithful how they must act, and in so doing there is no action they will engage in that will not reflect his divine message of ultimate conquest to capture the world in the tentacle of obedience and submission to Islam, motivates and emboldens and entitles the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant to their enterprise. In the process horrifying the civilized world by their fearsome lack of moral inhibitions of humane constraints.
Intelligence experts point to the vacuum created when Middle East and North African states fell into disarray with the brief and aborted advent of secular, socialist and moderate Muslims attempting to bring some civil accountability to the governments that ruled them and misruled them, oppressing and disentitling them. The reaction to these mass appeals was uniform, immediate and violent, leading to the breakdown of any agreement between oppressed and oppressor.
Resentment, anger and violence created greater divisions between Islamic sects. What was left was tribal and clan imperatives. Endemic poverty gave opportunity to Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic State to make inroads in popular Muslim opinion when they delivered basic civic necessities of life, giving them a springboard to authority and a support from the base. The dysfunction of non-state militias creating their own legitimacy followed.
What the civilized world tends to forget, to overlook, to purposefully not notice is that actual states, totalitarian in nature and expressing their full dedication to the same kind of Islamist ideals formally enact very similar acts of grotesque punishment toward those who dare to question their authority. If there is one positive aspect in the upheaval within Islam of factions and sects and tribal wretchedness it is that while Islam is at war with the world, it is also at war within itself, seeing apostates and assaults to its legitimacy as the voice of Islam on the part of deviants and heretics.
ISIL came to vibrant, malign life in the swamp of the Middle East's corrupt, tyranny-laden nations ruled by uncompromising tyrants. It has branded itself as the new Islam, the Islam reborn in the image of the original introduced by the Prophet Mohammad whose battlefield exploits, conquests, mass slaughters and sermons to the faithful through direct command from Allah, give legitimacy to the Caliphate of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. It is not that ISIL came into being as an antidote to the desolation of oppressed and debased Muslims.
ISIL exists to force its own reflection of the purity of Islam upon an unprepared world. The dissolution of Syria, a quasi-functioning dictatorship that oppressed the majority of its population and when that majority implored they be viewed more favourably, spurring the regime to favour arrests, torture, rape, and slaughter represented a full demonstration of Muslim dysfunction, the sects raging in hatred toward one another, each declaring the other invalid, assaulting Islam's principles.
If Islam ever did truly exist as a civilization in its golden glory years of European occupation when the arts and sciences were explored and Muslims were capable of creative leaps into the future, they collided with the reality of the immutability of a religion whose rigid immobility resisted enlightened mutations in step with the future. That Islam was and remains hostile to the very concept of human rights since only Allah is entitled to any rights; mere mortals must serve unquestioningly at the whim of a 7th Century progenitor.
It is that Islam that Islamic State exemplifies and glories, and attracts to its side honour- and martyrdom-seeking Muslims bored with life as a convention reflected by the normalcy of civilizational ideals.
The Crusades -- gruesome as they
were -- were not some early outbreak of "Islamophobia." They were an
effort, by Christian nations in Europe, to defend Christians in the
Middle East who were being slaughtered by Muslim tribes, and
specifically to take back the city of Jerusalem from the Muslim armies
who had invaded it.
It is a very strange interpretation of history to put the blame for
slavery on Christians, but to ignore William Wilberforce, Abraham
Lincoln and other Christians who led the world in fighting to abolish
it. Slavery is still practiced by Muslims in Mauritania and, as recently
seen, by Boko Haram.
Barack Obama is the President of the United States, but to judge from
his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast last Thursday morning, one
might get the impression that he thinks himself far more than that.
He and his speechwriters presumably realised with the news in
America, as in the rest of the world, dominated day in and day out with
atrocious news stories from Muslim communities in the Middle East, the
President would probably have to make a reference to Islamic violence.
President Obama described ISIS as "a brutal, vicious death cult that,
in the name of religion, carries out unspeakable acts of barbarism."
That "religion." rather than "Islam," was a notable nicety. Elsewhere,
when he got into specifics, he indulged in a line of
spread-the-blame-around-a-bit. He went on to say:
"We see sectarian war in Syria, the murder of Muslims and
Christians in Nigeria, religious war in the Central African Republic, a
rising tide of anti-Semitism and hate crimes in Europe, so often
perpetrated in the name of religion."
President
Barack Obama, speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 5,
2015. (Image source: White House video screenshot)
The Nigeria point is a neat one, suggesting that the religious
conflict there is very much a "six of one and half a dozen of the other"
problem, rather than a problem of Muslims slaughtering Christians. And
who is to cast blame if both sides are doing it? But the point on rising
anti-Semitism in Europe is avoidance and avoidance-blaming at its very
best. They are not, it is important to state, just "often perpetrated in
the name of religion." Because although people may be shocked to hear
it, Europe is not going through a "rising tide of anti-Semitism and hate
crime" because we have all become a bit too Christian, Jewish or
secular in recent years . It has happened because post-war immigration
into Europe has brought very large Muslim communities amongst whom
anti-Semitism is, in the words of British Muslim journalist Mehdi Hasan,
"routine and commonplace... our dirty little secret." It is from these
communities that the upsurge in anti-Semitic hate-crimes -- which were
at an all-time high in the UK last year -- has come.
As eminent historians are so famous for doing, President Obama also
chose to lecture on religious history, and do so as glibly and
inaccurately as possible. As many another aspirant historian does,
President Obama went in by way of the Crusades. He hadn't actually
singled out Islamic extremism as a particular problem at the moment --
because he will not even name it -- but he did decide to say that
everybody else could be just as guilty as the religion that must not be
named:
"Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique
to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the
Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In
our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in
the name of Christ."
Since it was President Obama who brought these up, you might have
thought he would have had the information to know a little about the
background. In particular that the Crusades -- gruesome as they were --
were not some early outbreak of "Islamophobia." They were an effort, by
Christian nations in Europe, to defend Christians in the Middle East who
were being slaughtered by Muslim tribes, and specifically to take back
the city of Jerusalem from the Muslim armies who had conquered it. The
question of whom Jerusalem ought to have belonged to is a long and
interesting one, but unless you think that Muslim armies should have
been allowed to conquer Jerusalem and wipe out Christians across the
Middle East a millennium ago, it is hard to see why the Crusades should
be regarded as a particular sin of Christians. And Christian Americans
in particular might rightly wonder what guilt they are meant to feel for
a religious war that took place centuries before America as a country
even existed.
As for slavery, do we really need to keep going around this one?
Because while it is true that you can find religious people who endorsed
slavery -- in the Bible and elsewhere -- any historian would find it
hard to deny that the movement to abolish slavery was also led by
Christians. Slavery is still practiced
by Muslims in Mauritania and, as recently seen, by Boko Haram. It is a
very strange interpretation of history that is willing to put the blame
for slavery (a worldwide practice at most times in history) on
Christians, but to ignore William Wilberforce, Abraham Lincoln (a
Republican) and other Christians who led the world in fighting to
abolish it.
Only someone ignorant would claim that Islam is the only religion in
whose name bad things have been done. But only a historian with an
agenda would try to kick over the actual complexities to invent his own
set of facts. In Britain, this effort to manipulate the facts in order
to come to a pre-ordained conclusion is known as the "Whig
interpretation of history." Perhaps Americans might rename it the "Obama
interpretation of history."
But in all of that -- these roles that show President Obama seems to
think the office of President of the United States may not be quite good
enough for him -- there was one further role that Obama also sought.
That was the role of moralizer-in-chief. Because it remains fairly
shocking to some of us that President Obama -- not least in a speech in
which he talked about the importance of upholding "the distinction
between our faiths and our government" -- should endeavor not only to
lead the American people, but to tell them how to think and what to
think.
Never mind that in his present-day analysis in the Prayer Breakfast
Speech, the President was unable even to name what it was he was trying
to analyse. And never mind that the historical references in the speech
were based on misreporting history. Most shocking is what the President
obviously intended his audience to take away and learn from the speech.
That lesson can be boiled down to: "Who are we to judge?" The answer, I
trust, is obvious to readers, even if it is not obvious to President
Obama. We are able to judge ISIS because there is every difference in
the world between the United States and ISIS. The American people should
of course be aware -- as everybody should be -- that nobody has a
monopoly on virtue, just as nobody has a monopoly on vice. But if you
look at the current global playing field, we do have the right to judge
ISIS because we are not like them.
What President Obama gave last week was not just a wrong analysis of
the past and present. It was a justification for the argument that
America does not have the legitimacy for doing anything meaningful
against the great evil of our time, because we have "all been evil." It
is probably not ahistorical to point out that the great men who have
inhabited the President's job would, to a man, have been ashamed of him.
Originally published under the title, "Obama: Christianity No Different Than the Islamic State."
President Obama, speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 5
As the world reacts with shock and horror at the increasingly savage
deeds of the Islamic State (IS)—most recently the immolation of a
captive—U.S. President Obama's response has been one of nonjudgmental
relativism.
Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 5, Obama
counseled Americans to get off their "high horse" and remember that
Christians have been equally guilty of such atrocities:
Unless we get on our high
horse and think this [beheadings, sex-slavery, crucifixion, roasting
humans] is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades
and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of
Christ.
There is so much to be said here. First, the obvious: the wide gulf
between violence and hate "justified in the name of Christ" and violence
and hate "justified in the name of Muhammad" is that Christ never justified it, while Muhammad continuously did.
This is not just a theoretic point; it is the very reason that Muslims are still committing savage atrocities.
Every evil act IS commits—whether beheading, crucifying, raping,
enslaving, or immolating humans—has precedents in the deeds of Muhammad,
that most "perfect" and "moral" man, per Koran 33:21 and 68:4 (see "The Islamic State and Islam" for parallels).
The wide gulf between violence
"justified in the name of Christ" and violence "justified in the name of
Muhammad" is that Christ never justified it, while Muhammad continuously did.
Does Obama know something about Christ—who eschewed violence and told
people to love and forgive their enemies—that we don't? Perhaps he's
clinging to that solitary verse that academics like Philip Jenkins habitually highlight,
that Christ—who "spoke to the multitudes in parables and without a
parable spoke not" once said, "I come not to bring peace but a sword."
(Matt. 10:34, 13:34).
Jesus was not commanding violence against non-Christians but rather predicting
that Christians will be persecuted, including by family members (as,
for example, when a Muslim family slaughters their child for
"apostatizing" to Christianity as happens frequently).
Conversely, in its fatwa
justifying the burning of the Jordanian captive, the Islamic State
cites Muhammad putting out the eyes of some with "heated irons" (he also
cut their hands and feet off). The fatwa also cites Khalid bin al-Walid—the heroic "Sword of Allah"—who burned apostates to death, including one man whose head he set on fire to cook his dinner on.
Nor is the Islamic State alone in burning people. Recently a "mob accused of burning alive a Christian couple in an industrial kiln in Pakistan allegedly wrapped a pregnant mother in cotton so she would catch fire more easily."
As for the Islamic "authorities," Al Azhar—the Islamic world's oldest
and most prestigious university which cohosted Obama's 2009 "New
Beginning" speech—still assigns books that justify every barbarity IS commits, including burning people alive. Moreover, Al Azhar—a religious
institution concerned with what is and is not Islamic—has called for
the cutting off of the hands and feet of IS members, thereby
legitimizing such acts according to Islamic law.
Pope Urban II ordered the first crusade in response to the same kinds of atrocities being committed by the Islamic State today.
On the other hand, does Obama know of some secret document in the
halls of the Vatican that calls for amputating, beheading or immolating
enemies of Christ to support his religious relativism?
As for the much maligned Crusades, Obama naturally follows the
mainstream academic narrative that anachronistically portrays the
crusaders as greedy, white, Christian imperialists who decided to
conquer peace-loving Muslims in the Middle East.
Again, familiarity with the true sources and causes behind the
Crusades shows that they were a response to the very same atrocities
being committed by the Islamic State today.
Consider the words of Pope Urban II, spoken almost a millennium ago,
and note how well the portions in italics perfectly mirror IS behavior:
From the confines of
Jerusalem and the city of Constantinople a horrible tale has gone forth
and very frequently has been brought to our ears, namely, that a race
from the kingdom of the Persians [i.e., Muslim Turks] … has invaded
the lands of those Christians and has depopulated them by the sword,
pillage and fire; it has led away a part of the captives into its own
country [as slaves], and a part it has destroyed by cruel tortures; it
has either entirely destroyed the churches of God or appropriated them
for the rites of its own religion …. What shall I say of the abominable
rape of the women? To speak of it is worse than to be silent…. On
whom therefore is the labor of avenging these wrongs and of recovering
this territory incumbent, if not upon you? You, upon whom above other
nations God has conferred remarkable glory in arms, great courage,
bodily activity, and strength…
If the crusaders left their own lands and families to come to the aid
of persecuted Christians and to liberate Jerusalem, here is Obama
portraying them as no better than the Islamic State—which isn't
surprising considering that, far from helping persecuted Christians, Obama's policies have significantly worsened their plight.
As for the Inquisition, this too took place in the context of
Christendom's struggle with Islam. (Isn't it curious that the European
nation most associated with the Inquisition, Spain, was also the one
ruled longest by, and heavily populated with, Muslims?) After the
Christian reconquest of Spain, Muslims, seen as untrustworthy, were
ordered either to convert to Christianity or go back to Africa whence
they came. Countless Muslims feigned conversion by practicing taqiyya
and living as moles, always trying to subvert Spain back to Islam.
Hence the extreme measures of the Inquisition—which, either way, find no
support in the teachings of Christ.
Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, called
for the murder of his enemies, incited his followers to conquer and
plunder non-believers, and kept sex slaves.
Conversely, after one of his jihads, Muhammad had a man tortured to
death with fire in order to reveal his tribe's hidden treasure and
"married" the same man's wife hours later. Unsurprisingly, the woman,
Safiya, later confessed that "Of all men, I hated the prophet the most—for he killed my husband, my brother, and my father," before "marrying" her.
In short, Obama's claim that there will always be people willing to
"hijack religion for their own murderous ends" is patently false when
applied to the Islamic State and like organizations and individuals.
Muhammad himself called for the murder of his enemies; he permitted
Muslims to feign friendship to his enemies in order to assassinate them;
he incited his followers to conquer and plunder non-believers,
promising them a sexual paradise if they were martyred; he kept sex
slaves and practiced pedophilia with his "child-bride," Aisha.
He, the prophet of Islam, did everything the Islamic State is doing.
If Muslims are supposed to follow the sunna, or example, of
Muhammad, and if Muhammad engaged in and justified every barbarity being
committed by the Islamic State and other Muslims—how, exactly, are they
"hijacking" Islam?
Such is the simple logic Obama fails to grasp. Or else he does grasp it—but hopes most Americans don't.
This represents a general opinion site for its author. It also offers a space for the author to record her experiences and perceptions,both personal and public. This is rendered obvious by the content contained in the blog, but the space is here inviting me to write. And so I do.
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