Islamic State jihadists appear in video destroying ancient artefacts in Iraq's Mosul museum

 

Video: Video shows jihadists destroying ancient artefacts (ABC News)

Photo: An unverified video has appeared online purporting to show Islamic State shows fighters destroying museum exhibits dating back thousands of years. (Reuters)

Map: Iraq

Islamic State has released a video showing militants armed with sledgehammers and jackhammers destroying priceless ancient artefacts in the Iraqi city of Mosul.

Experts and officials compared the destruction to the 2001 demolition of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan by the Taliban.

Video showed the men knocking statues off their plinths and rampaging through the museum's collection, which included artefacts from the Assyrian and Hellenistic periods.

It also showed them using a jackhammer to deface an imposing granite Assyrian winged bull at the Nergal Gate in Mosul.

[It is] a terrible loss and an unbelievable act of cultural terrorism.

Iraqi professor of architecture Ihsan Fethi

"Muslims, these artefacts behind me are idols for people from ancient times who worshipped them instead of God," said a bearded militant speaking to the camera.

"The so-called Assyrians, Akkadians and other peoples had gods for the rain, for farming, for war ... and they tried to get closer to them with offerings.

"The prophet removed and buried the idols in Mecca with his blessed hands," he added, referring to the Muslim prophet Mohammed.

Experts said the items destroyed included original pieces, reconstructed fragments and copies.

The artefacts destroyed were from the Assyrian era and from the ancient city of Hatra, which lies in the desert about 100 kilometres south-west of Mosul.

The head of the United Nations' cultural agency demanded an emergency meeting of the Security Council following the mass destruction.

"This attack is far more than a cultural tragedy - this is also a security issue as it fuels sectarianism, violent extremism and conflict in Iraq," UNESCO chief Irina Bokova said in a statement.

Earlier this month, the UN adopted a resolution to curb trafficking in looted antiquities from Iraq and Syria, which have been a source of funding for IS.

Referring to the destroyed artefacts in Mosul, the man appearing in the video said "even if they are worth billions of dollars, we don't care".

But in his Conflict Antiquities blog, Dr Samuel Hardy, an archaeologist and criminologist, argued the jihadists were only destroying the bulky pieces that could not be smuggled out of the country.

"There is no doubt that the Islamic State [group] is profiting from the illicit trade in antiquities," he said.

"Although the criminals have destroyed some ancient artefacts, they have also destroyed a lot of modern reproductions.

"All this video really shows is that they are willing to destroy things that they can't ship out and sell off."

Iraq's Bamiyan moment, says scholar

The fate of the museum's Islamic collection remained unclear.

"This is kind of their Bamiyan moment," said Charles E Jones, a Pennsylvania University librarian and scholar who has worked for years to protect Iraqi heritage.

Photo: One of Afghanistan's Bamiyan Buddhas in 1963 and then after its destruction, at the hands of the Taliban, in 2008. (UNESCO/A Lezine, Carl Montgomery)

On Thursday, IS fighters also blew up the 12th-century Khudr mosque in central Mosul, witnesses and academics said.

Ihsan Fethi, an Iraqi professor of architecture based in Amman, described it as "a terrible loss and an unbelievable act of cultural terrorism".

He said the jihadists blew it up because the mosque also housed a tomb, something IS considered as amounting to idolatry.

The jihadists have controlled Mosul, Iraq's second city, since seizing it in a June offensive that saw them conquer large parts of the country.

They have systematically destroyed heritage sites, including several Sunni Muslim shrines.

The Mosul region was home to a mosaic of minorities, including the Assyrian Christians, who consider themselves to be the region's indigenous people.

Several Assyrian villages were seized by IS fighters in neighbouring Syria in recent days and at least 220 people kidnapped.

Islamic State jihadists appear in video destroying ancient artefacts in Iraq's Mosul museum - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Muslim Brotherhood “Cultural Invasion” of America is Underway!

 

Islamic invasion of America: The 20 Point Plan

This sums up the Muslim Brotherhood project in America quite succinctly. On November 7, 2001, international law enforcement authorities and Western intelligence agencies discovered a twenty-year old document revealing a top-secret plan developed by the oldest Islamist organization with one of the most extensive terror networks in the world to launch a program of “cultural invasion” and eventual conquest of the West that virtually mirrors the tactics used by Islamists for more than two decades.

Since that time information about this document, known in counter-terrorism circles as “The Project”, and discussion regarding its content has been limited to the top-secret world of Western intelligence communities. Only through the work of an intrepid Swiss journalist, Sylvain Besson of Le Temps, and his book published in October 2005 in France, La conquête de l’Occident: Le projet secret des Islamistes (The Conquest of the West: The Islamists’ Secret Project), has information regarding The Project finally been made public. One Western official cited by Besson has described The Project as “a totalitarian ideology of infiltration which represents, in the end, the greatest danger for European societies.”

Included in the documents seized during the raid of Nada’s Swiss villa was a 14-page plan written in Arabic and dated December 1, 1982, which outlines a 12-point strategy to “establish an Islamic government on earth” – identified as The Project. According to testimony given to Swiss authorities by Nada, the unsigned document was prepared by “Islamic researchers” associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

A refugee from the Muslim Middle East thinks he has discovered Islam’s 20-point plan for conquering the United States by 2020
Anis Shorrosh, author of ”Islam Revealed” and ”The True Furqan,” is a Christian Arab-American who emigrated from Arab-controlled Jerusalem in January 1967.

”The following is my analysis of Islamic invasion of America, the agenda of Islamists and visible methods to take over America by the year 2020,” Shorrosh says. ”Will Americans continue to sleep through this invasion as they did when we were attacked on 9/11?”

1. Terminate America’s freedom of speech by replacing it with state-wide and nationwide hate-crime bills.

2. Wage a war of words using black leaders like Louis Farrakhan, Rev. Jesse Jackson and other visible religious personalities who promote Islam as the religion of African-Americans while insisting Christianity is for whites only.

3. Engage the American public in dialogues, discussions, debates in colleges, universities, public libraries, radio, TV, churches and mosques on the virtues of Islam. Proclaim how it is historically another religion like Judaism and Christianity with the same monotheistic faith.

4. Nominate Muslim sympathizers to political office to bring about favourable legislation toward Islam and support potential sympathizers by block voting.

5. Take control of as much of Hollywood, the press, TV, radio and the Internet as possible by buying the related corporations or a controlling stock.

6. Yield to the fear of the imminent shut-off of the lifeblood of America – black gold. America’s economy depends on oil and 41 per cent of it comes from the Middle East.

7. Yell ”foul, out-of-context, personal interpretation, hate crime, Zionist, un- American, inaccurate interpretation of the Quran” anytime Islam is criticized or the Quran is analysed in the public arena.

8. Encourage Muslims to penetrate the White House, specifically with Islamists who can articulate a marvellous and peaceful picture of Islam. Acquire government positions and get membership in local school boards. Train Muslims a medical doctors to dominate the medical field, research and pharmaceutical l companies (Ever notice how numerous Muslim doctors in America are, when their countries need them more desperately than America?) Take over the computer industry. Establish Middle Eastern restaurants throughout the U.S. to connect planners of Islamization in a discreet way.

9. Accelerate Islamic demographic growth via:

• Massive immigration (100,000 annually since 1961)
• Use no birth control whatsoever – every baby of Muslim parents is automatically a Muslim and cannot choose another religion later.
• Muslim men must marry American women and Islamize them (10,000 annually). Then divorce them and remarry every five years 
• Convert angry, alienated black inmates and turn them into militants (so far 2,000 released inmates have joined al-Qaida worldwide).

10. Reading, writing, arithmetic and research through the American educational system, mosques and student centres (now 1,500) should be sprinkled with dislike of Jews, evangelical Christians and democracy.  There are currently 300 exclusively Muslim schools in the U.S. which teach loyalty to the Quran, not the U.S. Constitution. In January of 2002, Saudi Arabia’s Embassy in Washington mailed 4,500 packets of the Quran and videos promoting Islam to America’s high schools – free of charge. Saudi Arabia would not allow the U.S. to reciprocate.

11. Provide very size-able monetary Muslim grants to colleges and universities in America to establish ”Centres for Islamic studies” with Muslim directors to promote Islam in higher-education institutions.

12. Let the entire world know through propaganda, speeches, seminars, local and national media that terrorists have hijacked Islam, when in truth, Islam hijacked the terrorists.

13. Appeal to the historically compassionate and sensitive Americans for sympathy and tolerance towards Muslims in America who are portrayed as mainly immigrants from oppressed countries.

14. Nullify America’s sense of security by manipulating the intelligence community with misinformation. Periodically terrorize Americans with reports of impending attacks on bridges, tunnels, water supplies, airports, apartment buildings and malls.

15. Form riots and demonstrations in the prison system demanding Islamic Sharia as the way of life, not America’s justice system.

16. Open numerous charities throughout the U.S., but use the funds to support Islamic terrorism with American dollars.

17. Raise interest in Islam on America’s campuses by insisting freshman take at least one course on Islam.

18. Unify the numerous Muslim lobbies in Washington, mosques, Islamic student centres, educational organizations, magazines and papers by Internet and an annual convention to coordinate plans, propagate the faith and engender news in the media.

19. Send intimidating messages and messengers to the outspoken individuals who are critical of Islam and seek to eliminate them by hook or crook.

20. Applaud Muslims as loyal citizens of the U.S. by spotlighting their voting record as the highest percentage of all minority and ethic groups in America.

Sorta makes you think twice about YOUR (not my) President doesn’t it? 

A disturbing video appeared on a popular conspiracy theorist website alleging that Barack Obama had deep ties to radical Islam and was planning a ‘takeover’ of the United States.

The video, running just over 55 minutes, drew Obama’s past associations with Marxists, Communists, terrorists, and radicals together to paint a disturbing picture of a radical Islamic fundamentalist who had been carefully concealing his true nature through staged appearances, rigid talking points and a complicit media.

The theory had been discussed by various critics in the weeks and months leading up to the election, but only recently gained steam as more information was brought to light on the questionable connections Obama had to violent extremists like Raila Odinga, whose supporters were responsible for the massacre of a Christian congregation.

The author of the video describes Obama as a ‘Trojan Horse’ for radical Islam and asserts that Obama has been concealing his extremist Muslim faith in order to fulfil the ‘takeover’ of America. He says that Obama is in reality a hard-core Muslim fundamentalist whose sole goal is the conquer of America by Muslim forces.

Critics lent credence to this argument, pointing to his anti-Israel adviser Samantha Power, and his lengthy relationship with terrorist spokesman Rashid Khalidi. They also point to his friendship with Louis Farrakhan, a noted Israel hater, and admiration of the Black Panther party, another noted anti-Israel advocacy group.

Others have noted his controversial pastor of 20 years, Jeremiah Wright, who came under fire for hateful and seditionist sermons against the United States. Although Wright made several baseless allegations such as the government inventing AIDS as an attack on African-Americans and justifying the 9/11 attacks, Obama supported him, saying he “didn’t believe he was particularly controversial”.

Muslim extremists have been waging a war against the United States and Israel for several decades, with attacks ranging from the USS Cole to the Beirut bombings, with the latest being the World Trade Centres.

However, evidence shows they also have a long term, rather sinister strategy to infiltrate the highest offices of power in the United States. Barack Obama “won” the American presidency, through fraud and ACORN intimidation which resulted in a historic victory for Muslim terrorists in many observers eyes.

“They’ve pulled the wool over so many Americans’ eyes. They have fully deceived them. And by the time the American people realize it, it will be too late. Obama will be too powerful.”

That bolstered the supposition that Obama was a radical Muslim who harboured extreme anti-American views. Some voters clung to the facade that Obama had carefully cultivated. For others, however, it marked a historic turning point in American history.

“Just like Rome, the United States will fall from the inside and nobody will be able to stop it.”

PRAY FOR AMERICA !

Muslim Brotherhood “Cultural Invasion” of America is Underway! | AMERICAN Patriots Awaken!

Behold Greeks bearing pledges of tax compliance

By the Monitor's Editorial Board February 24, 2015

Europe's future depends in large part on Greece's recovery, and in turn Greeks no longer avoiding taxes. A new government's pledge gives hope for a shift in civic virtue.

 

People buy seafood at the Athens' main fish market Feb. 23. Greece promised a list of reforms including measures to tackle tax evasion and corruption with international partners on Monday.

For five years, Greece has lived in a sort of debtor’s prison, or a severe austerity imposed by its European partners to atone for financial sins that threatened the Continent’s unifying project. The greatest sin was a culture of tax evasion and fraud. On Monday, however, a new government led by youthful leftists made a credible pledge to European creditors that Greece will “turn the fight against corruption into a national priority.”

This promise, which will require a huge shift in civic virtues among Greeks, remains crucial to the country winning an extension of a $270 billion bailout program. Two previous governments made limited progress in tax compliance. But their efforts only helped expose the depth of crony politics and tax dodging that first led to giant (and hidden) deficits and a nearly unrepayable national debt.

“The great struggle is the struggle against tax evasion, which is the real reason our country reached the brink,” Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras told Parliament on Feb 8.

Tax collection, as book author and journalist Yannis Palaiologos explains, is something the “modern Greek state has never quite mastered in almost two centuries of existence.” Yet Greece now has its first anticorruption minister and the credibility that a new government can persuade Greeks to see a common interest in paying taxes. Too many small businesses and professionals still live in a cash-only economy or fail to keep honest records.

Greeks must also see that paying taxes will lead to less austerity and better government services. And Mr Tsipras must crack down on the smuggling of fuel and cigarettes, raise the number of tax collectors, and end the practice of special tax favors before elections. One analysis of tax evasion over decades found it goes up substantially around election time.

Perhaps unplanned, Tsipras’s promise to the European Commission came on “Clean Monday.” That is the first day of the Orthodox Church’s period of Lent leading up to Easter and which requires the leaving of old sins behind. It is a day when this passage from Isaiah is commonly read: “Come then, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: Though your sins be as scarlet, I will make them white as snow.”

If taken to heart, those words might convince more Greeks that, despite a scarlet legacy of tax corruption, they can quickly become model citizens.

Behold Greeks bearing pledges of tax compliance - CSMonitor.com

Greek-Russian Cooperation: Another Thing Europe Has To Worry About

Guest post written by Andy Langenkamp

Mr Langenkamp is a senior political analyst for ECR Research.

The freedom and openness that have done so much for Europe are being undermined by the threat of extremism, unrest at its geographical edges, and the rise of populism. There are times when Europe appears to be stuck in a glorious past. However, now the EU has little choice but to get its hands dirty. It cannot just safeguard exports and supply agreements. It needs to combine geopolitical action with its economic interests.

Countries that combine authoritarian leadership with capitalism are able to strike fast and hard. Russia’s occupation of Crimea is a case in point. Putin’s style is applauded in some areas of Europe. He makes adroit use of such channels to change Europe’s clenched fist into a flabby hand. Marine Le Pen’s Front National receives large sums from Russia and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has done some wheeling and dealing with Putin on the sly to foster closer collaboration. These are but a few examples of how the Kremlin inveigles itself into European populism, thus weakening Europe and undermining the attempts to address the Ukraine crisis. In any case, many European businesses are far from happy with the sanctions. Should Moscow manage to ‘infiltrate’ European politics in a big way, the already shaky front against Russia could crumble.

The planned Russian-Greek cooperation is worrying because Greece is a geostrategic hotspot. It’s located in a restive corner of the Mediterranean, near the Balkans, Turkey – with which it has a dismal relationship – and Syria. Since the start of the civil war in the latter country, and in the aftermath of the Arab revolutions/revolts, Greece has become even more important. Especially now that there is a chance of new eruptions in the Balkans as Bosnia, in particular, is politically unstable. From a maritime perspective, too, Greece is important. The Aegean Sea is pivotal to the shipping industry, to telecommunications, and also from a defensive angle. Meanwhile, Russian has one naval base in the Mediterranean, namely in Tartus (Syria) while the NATO has a base in Crete. A Greek collapse would also be a disaster if the country turns its back on the NATO. Finally, natural gas has been found in the waters surrounding Greece, which has aroused the interest of many players. Overall, it is no surprise that Moscow, Beijing, Washington and Brussels want to curry Greece’s favour. Of course, the austerity program imposed by Brussels means that the EU is its own worst enemy – even if the tough economic stance against the new government is justified in itself.

Apart from flirting with Russia, the Greek PM is accusing Europe of a myopic fixation on the economy. However, in all likelihood assorted defence and foreign policy advisers will make Angela Merkel and the other European leaders face the geopolitical facts. Eventually we could see a bridging deal between the ECB, the EU, the IMF on the one hand and Greece on the other, but not without the EU and Eurozone having incurred significant political damage as Putin and others continue to stir up trouble and won’t hesitate to pour salt into the wounds.

Because politicians are preoccupied with Greece, they have less time and political capital at their disposal to address the Ukrainian problems. Some countries view the problem from an economic perspective. That is to say, they want to safeguard their trade relationships with Russia. Others fear there will be no stopping Putin once the West lets him get away with murder; other countries could be waiting in the wings to seek confrontation with the West.

Putin does not want to wreck Ukraine completely; a failed state on his borders is no use to him. His main goal is to keep Ukraine out of the western camp and he may be willing to  openly invade the Donbas to guarantee that outcome.

In addition to the Greek and Ukrainian problems, Europe faces rising populism alongside threats of extremism. Following Syriza’s victory, there is a chance that left-wing populists will come into power in Spain. In France, it is a real possibility that the right-wing Marine Le Pen will be addressed as Madame la Presidente in the not too distant future. Particularly populists on the right will benefit from fears of extremism. Electoral gains on this side will fuel tensions while attempts to tackle extremism are undermining liberties. Moreover, populists do not tend to make good team players. This will render it difficult to fight the euro crisis and come up with a communal strategy to face Russia.

Populism, geopolitical confrontation with Russia, and reactions to extremism are putting a lot of pressure on Europe; precisely at a time when the euro crisis could erupt again. A problem is that Europe is in the habit of defining every issue and every threat in financial terms while ignoring the geopolitics and it is out of practice when it comes to power politics. Unless politicians hone their skills in this area, Europe will remain an easy target for the likes of Putin.

Greek-Russian Cooperation: Another Thing Europe Has To Worry About - Forbes

Islamic 'radicals' at the heart of Whitehall - Telegraph

By Andrew Gilligan 22 February 2015

Baroness Warsi gave official roles to people with links to Islamist groups

Lady Warsi arrives in Downing Street on July 6, 2010 Photo: Getty Images

Entryism, the favourite tactic of the 1980s’ Militant Tendency, is when a political party or institution is infiltrated by groups with a radically different agenda. Since Militant’s Trotskyites were expelled from the Labour Party, the word has rather fallen out of fashion.

But now, according to one Muslim leader, Islamic radicals are practising entryism of their own — into the heart of Whitehall – courtesy of a woman who was until recently a government minister.

Baroness Warsi, the first Muslim woman to sit in Cabinet, handed official posts to people linked to Islamist groups, including a man involved in an “unpleasant and bullying” campaign to win planning permission for the controversial London “megamosque” proposed by a fundamentalist Islamic sect.

He sits – alongside other radicals or former radicals and their allies – on a “cross-Government working group on anti-Muslim hatred” set up by Lady Warsi and Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister.

Some members of the group are using their seats at the table to urge that Whitehall work with Islamist and extremist-linked bodies, including one described by the Prime Minister as a “political front for the Muslim Brotherhood”. Some are also pressing to lift bans on foreign hate preachers from entering Britain, including Zakir Naik, who has stated that “every Muslim should be a terrorist”.

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Fiyaz Mughal, a former member of the working group, told The Telegraph that he had resigned in protest at its activities. “I was deeply concerned about the kinds of groups some of the members had connections with, and some of the groups they were recommending be brought into government,” he said. “It seemed to me to be a form of entryism, by people with no track record in delivering projects.” Mr Mughal is head of Tell Mama, the national organisation for monitoring anti-Muslim attacks.

Another member said: “The working group was Sayeeda [Warsi]’s personal project and she was responsible for the appointments. There was very little transparency about who was put on.”

The working group, set up in 2012, has continued after Lady Warsi’s resignation last summer in protest at the Government’s “morally indefensible” policy on the Gaza crisis. It is based in Eric Pickles’s Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) and includes officials from there, the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office, the Department for Education, the Foreign Office and the Crown Prosecution Service.

Among its most prominent non-government members is Muddassar Ahmed, a former senior activist in the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC), an extremist and anti-Semitic militant body which is banned from many universities as a hate group.

 

Unitas CEO Muddassar Ahmed speaking as chair of John Adams society at parliament

During Mr Ahmed’s time, MPAC campaigned heavily against “Zionist” MPs, in particular Jack Straw, the former foreign secretary, and Lorna Fitzsimons, the former Labour MP for Rochdale. She lost her seat after MPAC sent thousands of leaflets to local Muslim voters saying they should sack her because she was “Jewish”. She is not Jewish. MPAC has stated that Muslims are “at war” and that “every Muslim who does not participate in that war is committing a major sin”.

Mr Ahmed said that his “regrettable” MPAC activities were “many years in the past” and he was now a “very different person from what I was then”. He had not been involved in the racist campaign against Ms Fitzsimons, he said, but had concentrated on Mr Straw. The Government also insisted that Mr Ahmed had “dissociated himself” from MPAC and its “approach” to politics.

More recently, Mr Ahmed and his PR company, Unitas Communications, have played a role in a body called the Newham People’s Alliance (NPA), which was created to demonstrate “community support” for plans to create Britain’s biggest mosque near the Olympic Park in the east London borough of Newham.

The NPA blockaded Newham Town Hall after councillors refused planning permission for the mosque. It has run a virulent campaign against Sir Robin Wales, the borough’s mayor, calling him “Dirty Robin”, a “Zionist” and a racist and saying that no Muslim should vote for him.

It fiercely supports Lutfur Rahman, the extremist-linked mayor of the neighbouring borough, Tower Hamlets, saying Newham should be more like Tower Hamlets. “It was a very vicious campaign, with a lot of lying and making things up, and they were close allies of Lutfur,” said Sir Robin last night.

“Muddassar Ahmed wanted to stand as candidate for us [Labour], but we blocked him because of his background.”

The mosque applicant, Tablighi Jamaat, a conservative Islamic sect accused by some of being a gateway to radicalism, is appealing against the refusal of planning permission.

Mr Ahmed and others from Unitas Communications represented the Newham People’s Alliance at the planning inquiry last June. “The NPA were very unpleasant and bullying people to deal with,” said Alan Craig, a former Newham councillor who led a rival campaign, MegaMosque No Thanks, at the inquiry.

The planning appeal will be decided by the Department for Communities and Local Government, the same ministry which runs the working group on anti-Muslim hatred on which

Mr Ahmed sits, although it reports to the Deputy Prime Minister. The decision will be announced next month.

Also on the working group is Iqbal Bhana, who has repeatedly praised the work of a body called the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC). The group has defended Abu Hamza, saying he has been “demonised” and claiming his recent terrorism conviction in America was an example of the “double standards of the British justice system in relation to Muslims”.

Other members include Iftikhar Awan, a former trustee of Islamic Relief, a charity with links to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, and Sarah Joseph, a former spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), with which the current and previous governments have broken ties over its links to Islamism.

 

Iftikhar Awan

Some members of the working group have tried to get the Government to rebuild ties with the MCB and also to open new links with the IHRC and the Cordoba Foundation, a body described by David Cameron as a “political front for the Muslim Brotherhood”.

One working group member opposed to these attempts said: “Civil servants in the DCLG resisted strongly. They kept saying that there was nothing showing a change in the voice and opinions of these groups. But they were under tremendous pressure from Warsi.”

The working group was set up after Lady Warsi claimed in 2011 that Islamophobia had “passed the dinner-table test” and was “widespread and rising”. According to police figures at the time, anti-Muslim crime had been falling. Since the murder of Lee Rigby, the soldier, in 2013 such crime has risen, but still does not appear widespread. According to the Home Office, faith hate crimes, not all of which would be anti-Muslim, account for 5 per cent of hate crimes reported in England and Wales.

The Metropolitan Police, the only force that reports numbers for anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic and homophobic crime, reports that per head in London, gay people and Jews are about four times more likely to be victims of hate crime than Muslims.

While there is no doubt that anti-Muslim hatred is real and is disgraceful, the charge of Islamophobia has also been abused by Muslim wrongdoers and their allies to smear critics and deter scrutiny. Another former member of the working group, Chris Allen, an academic, claimed that the “Trojan Horse” scandal – where schools were taken over by hard line Islamists – was a “hoax” and an example of Islamophobia in the UK.

Not all members of the working group are Islamist or radical sympathisers and there is no suggestion that any member is a supporter of violent extremism. Another member, Matthew Goodwin, the associate professor of politics at Nottingham University and an expert in hard-Right political movements, said he was not aware of any attempt by the group to push an Islamist agenda. He said that he and others had been frustrated at the group’s lack of progress.

Mr Ahmed said he was not responsible for the behaviour of the Newham People’s Alliance. He said they were a “very loose group, a group of guys we grew up with who asked us to help them out at the planning inquiry. Tablighi Jamaat have never been linked to any sort of extremism and we have got to be careful not to alienate them from mainstream discourse.” He said he and Unitas had not been paid by the sect or anyone else.

A DCLG spokesman said: “We are very clear that we will not fund or engage with groups which promote violent or non-violent extremism.

“All individuals represented on the cross-government working group on anti-Muslim hatred are committed to the peaceful integration of all communities.”

Lady Warsi was unavailable for comment. Last month, she fiercely criticised the Government for “defining many groups and individuals as beyond the pale,” saying: “We needed to bring more people into the fold rather than increasingly adopt positions which pushed groups and individuals out to the fringe.”

Islamic 'radicals' at the heart of Whitehall - Telegraph

The Earth revolves around the Sun… and absurd Fatwas too!

Faisal J. Abbas Saturday, 21 February 2015

Whether or not you believe the Earth orbits the Sun, it almost seemed like the planet stood still a few days ago when this website broke the story in English about the cleric who infamously doubted the long-held astronomical belief.

Indeed, global news outlets - all the way from Japan to the United States - quoted the story and embedded the video we subtitled showing Saudi Sheikh Bandar al-Khaibari using a plastic water cup as a prop and explaining that a plane leaving an airport in the UAE would never be able to reach China, because – if the Earth was truly rotating all the time – then China’s geographical location would keep changing as well.

When people in positions of power or authority make such statements, then in my opinion, they should most definitely be held accountable for them

Faisal J. Abbas

Now, let us get one thing straight; there are highly-questionable beliefs all over the world and each person is entitled to his/her own view. In fact, a recent ABC News report reveals that a quarter of Americans are actually convinced that it is the Sun that revolves around the Earth, not the other way around!

However, when people in positions of power or authority make such statements, then in my opinion, they should most definitely be held accountable for them; particularly in this cleric’s case, where he was commenting on astronomy, an area we can fairly assume he has little knowledge in whatsoever.

A bigger story eclipsed!

It is a pity that the above-mentioned Earth rotation story has eclipsed a much more important story relating to a much more important Saudi cleric.

Very few media outlets paid attention to a statement by Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti Sheikh Abulaziz al-Sheikh. According to Saudi daily, al-Watan, he advised the Kingdom’s religious clerics to stay away from “murky” politics and focus on Islamic preaching.

Clerics should go back to their role of focusing purely on religious/spiritual matters, which resembles the way they used to be before new agendas, ideas and political aspirations sought to take advantage of them

Faisal J. Abbas

Such a remark, coming from the most supreme religious figure in Saudi Arabia (the Grand Mufti is also the head of the Kingdom’s Council of Senior Scholars), should be applauded and taken seriously given all the damage political Islam has caused both the region and the religion itself.

I believe clerics should go back to their role of focusing purely on religious/spiritual matters, which resembles the way they used to be before new agendas, ideas and political aspirations sought to take advantage of them. The result of the intermarriage of the purist Salafist ideology with the more modern political/militant ideologies was the birth of the likes of al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Of course, one wishes that the Grand Mufti added to his guidelines that it would also be preferable if clerics didn’t venture into giving their profound views on scientific matters, such as astronomy or biology (e.g. the cleric who infamously declared that driving harms women’s ovaries two years ago.)

Without forgetting that absurd edicts are not exclusive to the Muslim faith, one could also suggest that some sort of new regulation or peer-review mechanism should be introduced at the likes of al-Azhar and the Council of Senior Scholars to prevent un-carefully thought-through Fatwas from emerging, and to guide scholars on how to preach more carefully.

__________
Faisal J. Abbas is the Editor-in-Chief of Al Arabiya English, he is a renowned blogger and an award-winning journalist. Faisal covered the Middle East extensively working for Future Television of Lebanon and both Al-Hayat and Asharq Al-Awsat pan-Arab dailies. He blogs for The Huffington Post since 2008, and is a recipient of many media awards and a member of the British Society of Authors, National Union of Journalists, the John Adams Society as well as an associate member of the Cambridge Union Society. He can be reached on @FaisalJAbbas on Twitter.

The Earth revolves around the Sun… and absurd Fatwas too! - Al Arabiya News

The prophecy of ideological wars comes true

Samar Fatany Saturday, 21 February 2015

Saudi Arabia has condemned the heinous terrorist acts that killed and injured innocent people in Copenhagen and North Carolina.

In an official statement, the Kingdom urged the need for respecting religious beliefs and halting incitement against Muslims.

Targeting innocent Muslims and labelling all as terrorists has reached dangerous levels in the West. Many Muslims today believe that the West is at war with Islam.

Others are convinced that 9/11 was orchestrated to demonize the religion and make an enemy of all Muslims around the world.

The neo-cons and a large segment of the American media that is under Zionist control continue a malicious campaign to incite hatred against Muslims and they deliberately destroy any attempt to create harmony and respect between the American people and law-abiding Muslims.

The American public is made to believe that Arabs and Muslims are out to destroy Western civilization. While the truth is that it is Israel which is intent on destroying the Palestinian culture and is working politically, militarily, economically and culturally to remove Palestine from the map.

The strong Zionist control of the media and Congress in the United States does not allow this ugly truth about Israel to come out.

Refusal

Since its occupation of Palestine in 1948, the terrorist state of Israel has refused to define its borders and it continues to rob Palestinians of their land, evicts them from their homes, kills innocent children, puts women behind bars, and bullies and starves the helpless inhabitants applying the tactics of genocide to illegally create Greater Israel.

Demonizing Islam and Muslims remains largely unchallenged and peaceful coexistence is becoming impossible to achieve

Samar Fatany

In the meantime, anyone attempting to support a Palestinian State who dares to speak out against Israeli aggressions is viciously targeted and accused of being anti-Semitic.

Any American citizen questioning the Holocaust is harassed, honourable Jews who are critical of Israel are shunned and accused of treason, and innocent American Muslims are condemned for being Muslims.

The majority of those in the Muslim world have no doubt that terrorist operations carried out in the West are cleverly plotted and encouraged by Zionists and malicious pro-Israeli elements in the US.

However, no one can prove it yet. Many believe that ignorant, disgruntled Muslims are manipulated and used as foot soldiers, guided and supported by Mosaad tactics and funds.

Meanwhile, it is not only Arabs and Muslims who are weak and unable to stand up against Israel “the world’s most formidable foe”.

The international community at large remains incapable of maintaining world peace and providing just solutions to end conflicts and wars that are ignited to serve Israeli interests.

“Muslims are the enemies of the Judeo-Christian civilization” is the discourse that is encouraged in the US and elsewhere in the West by the Israeli lobby.

Gullible

For too long the gullible American public has been convinced that Muslims are the enemies of the Jewish state and, therefore, they are the enemies of the Christian world.

What is more frustrating is the helplessness of Arab and Muslim countries and their inability to counter this narrative against Muslims in the West and particularly in America.

Meanwhile, the narrative of the so-called Islamic State is also a threat to all Muslims. The ideology of this group of impostors is a blatant distortion of all Islamic principles whether misinformed non-Muslim people believe it or not.

The horror that is spread by this terrorist organization in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and elsewhere is beyond any human comprehension.

The gruesome videos of mutilated bodies of Muslims, Christians, Sunnis and Shias does not reflect any sane human ideology.

It is more like a projection of Hollywood horror movies starring robotic soldiers who are led by remote control or humans who are under the influence of drugs and ordered to carry out missions that can only serve the selfish agendas of Israel or corrupt and merciless powers wanting to control the world.

Imposters

The terrorist impostors disguised as Muslims do not have the authority or the legitimacy to represent the one billion Muslims of the world.

They are a group of criminals who have very few followers. The majority of Muslims openly condemn their heinous inhumane acts.

According to the prophecy of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), there will come a time when certain individuals and sects will rise in his Ummah who will cause dissension, mischief and tribulation.

They will spread among Arabs and many will die because of this fitnah or conflict. The holy Prophet (pbuh) has prophesied that the Arab and Muslim world will be threatened with fitnah because of the rise of false leaders, a group of so-called Muslims who will recite the Holy Quran in melodious voices but will not understand its meaning.

Under the pretext of inviting masses to the Holy Qur’an and Sunnah, they will actually take them far away from Islam.

Unfortunately, Arabs and Muslims have been complacent and have not been able to counter the ideological war that our Prophet (PBUH) has warned us about.

Time for support

It is time we support media savvy professionals and train our young journalists to counter the anti-Muslim narrative and the distorted terrorist version of Islam propagated by the “terrorist State” and its supporters.

Muslim media professionals should have been more alert and should have strongly rejected the popularized name of the so-called “Islamic State” and should have labelled them with a name that truly describes their criminality, such as: “ the State of Al-Khawarij, “the outsiders who have deviated from the faith, “the State of “Al-Safaheen”, the butchers, or “the State of Al-Muhtaleen”, the impostors.

Demonizing Islam and Muslims remains largely unchallenged and peaceful coexistence is becoming impossible to achieve.

The worldwide climate of terror continues and there are futile efforts to end the destruction and ruin. Is this the end of time?

This article was first published in the Saudi Gazette on Feb 21, 2015.

___________________
Samar Fatany is a Chief Broadcaster in the English section at Jeddah Broadcasting Station. Over the past 28 years, she has introduced many news, cultural, and religious programs and has conducted several interviews with official delegations and prominent political personalities visiting the kingdom. Fatany has made significant contributions in the fields of public relations and social awareness in Saudi Arabia and has been involved in activities aiming at fighting extremism and enhancing women’s role in serving society. She has published three books: “Saudi Perceptions & Western Misconceptions,” “Saudi Women towards a new era” and “Saudi Challenges & Reforms

The prophecy of ideological wars comes true - Al Arabiya News

Yanis Varoufakis: ‘If I weren’t scared, I’d be dangerous’

Helena Smith Saturday 14 February 2015

With the world’s gazed fixed on Athens, a former academic with a penchant for leather jackets has taken centre stage. With no plan B and nothing to lose, he’s ready for battle — and if it all goes wrong, he says, he’ll just get back to his book

Yanis Varoufakis …’We’ve lost everything, so we can speak truth to power, and it’s about time we do.’ Photograph: Panagiotis Moschandreou

Yanis Varoufakis, it is fair to say, was barely known not that long ago. True, he was a bit of a celebrity in the arcane world of austerity economics. His vivid views, conveyed through blogs, books, tweets and talks, were the focus of some animation whenever Greece careered in and out of its seemingly endless debt crisis. In Athens, the town where he was born and bred, the economics professor enjoyed a cult following among austerity’s opponents in Syriza, the far-left party that recently surged to power.

When the crisis broke – and before he departed for the ivory towers of the University of Texas at Austin – he was a regular in the boisterous talk shows that dominate Greek television. But beyond that, Yanis Varoufakis was just … Yanis Varoufakis. In a wider arena, he was not a name to conjure with. So my first question when we meet in his office on the sixth floor of the finance ministry, which every finance minister has inhabited since Europe’s great Greek debt drama began, is: how does he feel? Is Yanis Varoufakis, the academic turned neophyte politician, entirely comfortable with his new star status?

After all, the bar has been raised rather high. In the space of three short weeks, he’s been christened Europe’s man of the moment, compared to heroes great and small, likened to a rock star, hailed as a sex icon, feted by fashionistas, and in Germany, no less, portrayed as the greatest action man to bestride planet earth since Bruce Willis set Hollywood alight in Die Hard 6. Few have had their demeanour and dress code so dissected; when he posed with George Osborne in Downing Street, his tieless, leather-jacketed look standing in stark contrast to the Chancellor’s, the press was as breathless as if a supermodel had blown in. “Britain,” declared no less venerable an authority than the Daily Telegraph, “is crying out for a politician who looks like Yanis Varoufakis.

It’s quite a change in lifestyle. Has it gone to his head? The response is immediate. “I can assure you, Helena, I did not engineer it in any way. I am not promoting it. They go on about me riding a bike, but I have been riding a bike since I was 15. I just am who I am.”

Who Varoufakis is, of course, is a dynamite question that those in high places may well be forgiven for asking. As the politician tasked with saving Greece in this, its most difficult hour, what the radical, shaven-haired economist thinks, how he comports himself and what he says are not without consequence. Linked as it is to that of the Eurozone, his country’s fate is intrinsically connected to the global economy. Is he fearful? “A bit,” he says. “If I weren’t scared, I’d be awfully dangerous.”

George Osborne and Yanis Varoufakis outside 11 Downing Street in London. Varoufakis’s relaxed look was in stark contrast to the British chancellor’s. Photograph: Justin Tallis/Getty

Varoufakis is muscular, fit, amiable, slightly off-centre, everything he seems on camera. But what film does not capture is his energy, focus and intensity. An hour in his company will take you places; in our case, from Marxist theory to the joys of jazz; the Eurozone and its incomplete architecture; sartorial tastes; Nazism; the bigness of America; austerity politics; debt traps; poetry; exercise and Varoufakis’ tendency to keep his hands in his pockets (the result of a shoulder injury).

The academic, who had a faithful following on the lecture circuit, despite being a self-described accidental economist, subscribes to the view that one should have an opinion about all and sundry. It is, he says, something he picked up long ago. “I was told, once, by a left-wing scholar that as a Marxist you have to do two things: always be optimistic and always have a view about everything. That advice still sounds good to me.”

At 53, Varoufakis is still clear that he “understands the world better” as a result of having read Marx. But he no longer considers himself a diehard leftie, whatever others may think. Rather, he says, he is a libertarian or erratic Marxist, who can marvel at the wondrousness of capitalism but is also painfully aware of its inherent contradictions, just as he is “the awful legacy” of the left. “It is a system that produces massive wealth and massive poverty,” proclaims the economist who taught at the universities of East Anglia, Cambridge, Glasgow and Sydney after gaining his doctoral degree at the University of Essex. “I don’t think you can understand capitalism until and unless you understand those contradictions and ask yourself if capitalism is the natural state. I don’t think it is. That’s why I am a left-winger.”

 

Greece calls for bridging loan; anti-austerity protests in Athens - as it happened Rolling coverage as finance minister Yanis Varoufakis meets Wolfgang Schäuble, after the ECB hits Greece with the news it will no longer accept its junk-rated debt as collateral Read more

More than that, Varoufakis is an iconoclast, a self-styled “contrarian” who is also an idealist, “because if you are not an idealist, you are a cynic”. And he has, he laments, lost a lot of friends on the left who believe that Grexit, Greece’s exit from the currency bloc, would be the country’s best course.

“It’s one thing to say you shouldn’t have gotten into the euro, it’s quite another to say you should get out of the euro. If we backtrack, we fall off a cliff. This is my argument to everyone.” Europe, he insists, is stuck with Greece because Athens is never going to ask to leave the euro. Fittingly, perhaps, the new MP, who has dual Greek-Australian citizenship, is not a signed-up member of Syriza, the party he now represents in the rambunctious Athens parliament. Syriza’s militant wing wants nothing more than to get out of the monetary union.

When we meet, Varoufakis has just got back from a whistle-stop tour that has taken him to London, Paris, Rome, Frankfurt, Brussels and Berlin. It is 10pm and he arrives at his office with a bottle of cola and chocolate bar in hand. The luggage of his close friend, the renowned economics professor Jamie Galbraith, who has flown in from Austin where Varoufakis has spent the past three years as a visiting professor, are spread across the room. It’s been a long day, one that started at 6am with a few weights and stretching in the gym.

“I don’t have much time,” he mutters before lurching into how his wife, the installation artist Danae Stratou, is still in Austin packing up the couple’s belongings. “You can’t imagine the pressure. It’s incredible.” Then he is off and hard to stop.

Varoufakis’ academic speciality, appropriately, is game theory. Galbraith, with whom he co-authored A Modest Proposal – a tract that proffered various ideas to end the euro crisis, has been quoted as saying that Varoufakis is so sharp he will “be thinking more than a few steps ahead” in negotiations with Athens’ creditors. The subtext is that his Eurozone colleagues will underestimate him at their peril. That Varoufakis is self-assured – and guided by the convert’s conviction that he is right – cannot be denied. Alone among finance ministers, he has his own Facebook page dedicated to supporters and called V for Varoufakis.

Without a hint of self-deprecation or doubt, he tells me early on that he is “moved by” an internationalist agenda and thus motivated by the concerns of Europe and the world. “I cannot possibly separate the fate of this country from the fate of Europe. For some reason, lots of terrible things start here and then spread. The cold war was one. It didn’t start in Berlin, it started in Athens in December 1944; the contagion in the Eurozone started here in 2010. We are perfectly capable as Europeans of messing things up unnecessarily.”

 

Profile: Greece’s new finance minister Yanis Varoufakis The self-proclaimed ‘accidental economist’ is expected to adopt a constructive approach to tough debt negotiations Read more

Little Greece will say it as it is: five years on, the medicine prescribed by Germany, Europe’s paymaster, to mend the ills of run-away profligacy hasn’t worked. Instead, the nation has become an echo of its former self; its economy slashed by almost a third, one in four out of work, one in three facing the prospect of living in abject poverty.

“We’ve lost everything,” he says. “So we can speak truth to power, and it’s about time we do.”

As soon as he assumed office, he set about doing that. It was not business as usual, he declared, and Athens would not be liaising with the “rotten troika” of creditors at the EU, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund that have monitored Greek finances since the country’s brush with bankruptcy in 2010. At that point many began to wonder whether Greece had lost it, and Varoufakis was pursuing what in game theory is known as the madman strategy. Act crazy and your enemy eventually gives you what you want. “I respect him, but do worry that he sees all this as a giant experiment to verify his theories,” sighs Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the minister of administrative reform in the former conservative-led government. “That’s all right for him. He’ll probably go on to get a job as a star economist. For the country, though, it would be a disaster.”

But coming face-to-face with the raw reality of governmental responsibility has also had a calming effect. Varoufakis, whose linguistic gymnastics have included phrases such as “fiscal waterboarding” – used to describe the devastating effects of austerity – has toned down his rhetoric. He’s not looking for a fight, he claims. He’s looking for justice. And justice does not mean Greece’s new left-dominated government signing a declaration that disavows its own critique of the rescue programme the country has been forced to implement so disastrously.

“We are a party of the left, but what we are putting on the table is essentially the agenda of a reformist bankruptcy lawyer from the City of London,” he says. “The bailout was not a bailout of Greece in 2010, it was a bailout of the German and French banks. The German public was misled into thinking that this was money going to the Greeks, the Greek public was misled into thinking that this was our salvation.”

• Yanis Varoufakis: Confessions of an Erratic Marxist

But he also recognises that despite all the brinkmanship and posturing, the time has come to find face-saving solutions. Greece just needs “a little bit of time,” a bridging loan that would give it the fiscal space to devise the best plan possible for where to go next. Lenders can call that whatever they like. “If we were a corporation, wouldn’t it be logical at this point to have a review of our business plan?” he asks. “Lets find a face-saving phraseology, a face-saving [way out]. We are good in Europe at that. Euphemisms are our strength … alas, the answer is ‘no, there is a process and if you don’t sign on the dotted line, all hell will break lose.’”

Even by the standards of those who have occupied the sixth floor of the finance ministry before, Varoufakis’ tenure comes at an unusually onerous time. With the country’s €240bn bailout – the biggest in global history – set to expire at the end of February, and the Greek electorate having overwhelmingly rejected austerity, Greece is at a crossroads.

In a climate of high-octane pressure – though her language was more emollient, the German chancellor Angela Merkel showed little sign this week of giving in anytime soon – the possibility of political blunder, or accident, grows with each day. Athens owes some €25bn in repayments, this year alone, and what is certain is that it does not have that kind of money.

When I ask Varoufakis if he has a plan B, for all negotiators surely have a credible alternative, he looks at me wide-eyed. “We constantly hear, ‘if you don’t sign on the dotted line there is going to be Armageddon’. My answer is ‘let it happen!’ There is no fall-back plan. That is my plan B.”

What if it does happen, I ask, as images of the chaos bankruptcy would surely entail flicker across my mind. “Well, that is like asking me what happens if a comet strikes planet Earth. I have no idea. None!” he shoots back.

Varoufakis is the first to say that no one should grow too fond of power. He has no desire to be on the sixth floor of the finance ministry longer than necessary. He has dispensed with the policemen assigned to protect him, the army of advisers that come with the job (let go to make way for the rehiring of the ministry’s sacked women cleaners), and each of the three cars deployed to him. If he lost the job, he says, he wouldn’t mind. “When interlocutors threaten me with the fall of this government, because they do, I say: ‘Make my day,’” he smiles. “I mean, I really don’t want to be in this office … I will go back to my book about Europe, which is half-finished. It’s very difficult to find an ending when I am still in this job.”

A few days later I pass Varoufakis and Galbraith outside the ministry in Syntagma Square. It is late and both are walking in the pouring rain towards a taxi rank. I hear the Greek politician, rucksack on back, enthusing about the surge in his book sales. Despite it all, he is happy. And not very far from being the Yanis Varoufakis he always was.

Yanis Varoufakis: ‘If I weren’t scared, I’d be dangerous’ | World news | The Guardian

Islamism has many faces. We must learn to read them all

HA Hellyer Friday 20 February 2015

If we are to understand the role Islamists play around the world we need to move beyond generalisation

Rachid Ghannouchi (right), leader of the Islamist Ennahda movement. ‘Islamists are not equivalent to al-Qaida, but neither are they all natural allies for progressive, democratic politics.’ Photograph: Zohra Bensemra/Reuters

Four years after the Arab spring, the region and the world are still grappling with the aftermath, including the rise – and fall – of different Islamist movements. On Wednesday, in the midst of a summit on extremism, Barack Obama said: “We are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam.” After the Charlie Hebdo attacks, the French prime minister, Manuel Valls, said his country was engaged in a war “against terrorism, against jihadism, against radical Islamism”.

But while western leaders have been very clear they are not at war with “Islam” – the religion of more than a billion people – there has been far less clarity about what “Islamism”, let alone “radical Islamism”, actually means.

Islamism incorporates a wide range of viewpoints. It includes the Muslim Brotherhood and other political groupings that engage in public life, as well as extremist organisations such as Daesh (ISIS) that rely solely on violence. In Britain, two broad approaches to Islamism have been in evidence. The first views all Islamist groups as more or less the same as al-Qaida in terms of their beliefs, seeing only differences in tactics. An increasing number of political figures in the Arab world share this view.

At the other end of the spectrum, there are those who see Islamists as broadly pluralistic and progressive. They put their faith in reformist moderates winning through.

Both of these approaches are short-sighted, and wrong.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the largest Islamist movement, is a broad church, as it were. And then there are other versions of Islamism, embodied by the Salafis of the Nour Party in Egypt, the Islamist-leaning AKP in Turkey and the Shia Muslims of Hezbollah. Lumping them all together is not simply to ignore nuances. It diverts our attention and resources away from groups that carry out brutal attacks like the ones in Paris, in Yemen – where more than 30 were slaughtered on the same day as the  Charlie Hebdo attack – as well as insurgents in the Sinai peninsula aligned with Isis who have killed dozens of Egyptians, and Libyan affiliates of Isis who killed almost two dozen Christians earlier this month.

During the revolutionary uprisings in the Arab world I was living in Cairo, where I saw the Brotherhood’s rise to power after the deposition of Hosni Mubarak. From 2011 to 2013, western governments found themselves engaging with a sectarian and reactionary political force; the Brotherhood’s Libyan counterpart refused to recognise the results of Libya’s election in 2014 and remains aligned in a broad coalition that includes extremely radical groups. But over a similar period the Tunisian Islamist party, Ennahda, showed itself profoundly committed to that country’s democratic experiment. Many hoped the Brotherhood and other Islamists would follow the lead of relatively open-minded figures such as Rachid Ghannouchi in Tunisia. But that tendency did not dominate, and it was naive to believe that movements based on reactionary ideas, raised in environments of oppression, would automatically be reformist or progressive once in power.

In Britain, after the 7 July 2005 bombings, investment in nurturing more temperate Islamists initially paid off. We saw engagement with pro-Islamist non-violent, groups, which countered far more radical influences such as Abu Hamza al-Masri. But are such groups genuinely progressive? On a number of issues some of them are not, but to prevent them contributing to civil society is not the right strategy either.

The flaw in both approaches is that they generalise far too much. Islamists are not equivalent to al-Qaida – but nor are all Islamists automatically natural allies for progressive, democratic politics. Just as there is a variety of strands of communism and socialism, which have produced peaceful as well as violent outcomes, so there is a complex set of political ideologies within Islamism.

The forces of Bashar al-Assad have taken far more lives than all the Islamists combined

Consistency also demands we recognise that challenges to a more progressive, democratic future in the Middle East are not solely borne of Islamist movements. Indeed, in Syria, the forces of Bashar al-Assad have taken far more lives than Islamists everywhere. Different types of authoritarianism continue to exist across the region – some in hard line opposition to Islamism.

Consistency is not easy, but it is possible. In 2002, Edward Said and others formed the Palestinian National Initiative – an effort to carve out a third way that rejected both the radical reactionaries of Hamas and the corrupt Fatah movement. Likewise, political upheaval in Egypt produced many faux liberals but it also gave rise to principled voices, some of whom were at the heart of the 25 January revolutionary moment. Before the widespread brutal crackdown on the Brotherhood, public intellectuals such as Ibrahim El Houdaiby and human rights defenders including Heba Morayef engaged with and criticised Islamists. Groups that tended towards sectarianism and flirted with vigilantism needed to be critiqued, but with nuance, without automatically equating them to al-Qaida.

The world faces a continual challenge to uphold fairness and justice. To meet that challenge we must refrain from generalisations that encourage us to mark groups down as enemies or friends without considering their unique origins, conduct and relationship to others.

As the lines are drawn more narrowly in the region and elsewhere, that principle may become harder to hold on to – but it remains the right thing to do.

Islamism has many faces. We must learn to read them all | HA Hellyer | Comment is free | The Guardian

Islamic charity under spotlight after being accused of promoting extremism

By Martin Evans, Crime Correspondent 18 February 2015

The Charity Commission is now investigating after an undercover reporter found staff praising terrorists

The chief executive of an Islamic charity has stepped down and an investigation launched after the organisation was accused of supporting extremism.

Global Aid Trust, which claims to raise money to educate the underprivileged and alleviate poverty around the world, was launched in 2004 and has an annual income of more than half a million pounds a year.

Global Aid HQ (ITV)

But the Charity Commission is now investigating after an undercover reporter found its staff praising terrorists and even offering advice on how to become a jihadist in in Syria.

There is also an ongoing fraud investigation by the National Terrorism Financial Investigation Unit.

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Footage obtained by ITV’s Exposure documentary also found a speaker invited to address a Global Aid Trust even making anti-Semitic remarks and offering jihadists his blessing.

The charity’s chief executive officer, Rizwan Hussein, has now stepped down.

It is one of a number charities exposed by ITV1’s Exposure programme for allegedly spreading extremism, including the Steadfast Trust.

Posing as a volunteer, an undercover reporter begins working at Global Aid Trust’s headquarters, where he is introduced to a worker called Shaffiq Shabbar, who quickly confesses an admiration for hate preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, who has inspired a string of terror attacks.

Saffiq Shabbar has now left Global Aid Trust (ITV)

Mr Shabbar tells the reporter: “They spread loads of lies about him…He’s a scholar and basically he was imprisoned and after he came out of prison he started to incite hatred and telling the Western Muslims to bomb.

“He incited bombings basically. Bruv, he was a brilliant guy though.”

When asked if it is still possible to travel to Syria, Mr Shabbar replies: “You go to Turkey and jump over the border and when I say jump over the border I mean literally. You’ll probably have al Qaeda on the other side to help you, so it is very easy to go in.”

In another section of the documentary the charity books a preacher called Dawah Man to speak at an event on a boat on the River Thames.

Preacher Dawan Man denies making anti-Semitic comments (ITV)

He was recently banned from speaking at the University of East London after referring to homosexuality as a “filthy disease”.

In his speech he makes a series of anti-Semitic comments, telling those gathered: “America, European countries, whatever you call it, these countries are controlled by Zionists.

“If you look at the biggest bankers in the world, that fund these countries, they are Zionists, and Zionists run Israel. So we can safely say that at any time there was an American, or English or whatever, invasion of the Muslim lands, it is all a problem coming back to the Children of Israel.

“Allah it would seem is punishing the greatest ummah [community] alive by the worst ummah [community] alive.”

In a statement a spokesman for Global Aid Trust said: “We firmly condemn and reject the comments made by Shaffiq and the external speakers. We express our great regret at these incidents, which were the result of a process failure in the organisation.”

The spokesman said Rizwan Hussain had now stepped down as CEO of Global Aid Trust and added: “We apologise to our supporters and those for whom distress is caused, and we will do our utmost to ensure no such situations occur again.”

Rizwan Hussein has now stepped down as CEO of Global Aid Trust (ITV)

But a spokesman for the Charities Commission said what had they had seen had raised “serious regulatory concerns”.

The spokesman added: “In the case of Global Aid Trust, we were already dealing with issues of a similar nature and the new evidence will be added to our own.”

Islamic charity under spotlight after being accused of promoting extremism - Telegraph

How the European Central Bank could now finally pull the trigger on a Grexit

By Mehreen Khan 17 February 2015

The 'sword of Damocles' is hanging over Greece's banks and the impasse with its creditors could now bring it down for good

Greece and its lenders are playing poker over its future in the Eurozone Photo: Reuters

Greece's stand-off with its creditors shows little signs of abating.

After the latest, unpromising round of talks between the new Greek government and the euro's finance ministers, both parties have hardened their negotiating positions in anticipation of yet another showdown, which is now temporarily pencilled in for Friday.

But even before we get to the end of the week, the prospects of a disorderly exit for Greece could be heightened significantly.

On Wednesday, the European Central Bank will have its say on events.

The ECB will be meeting to discuss whether or not it should continue to provide the emergency funds that are helping keep Greece's banks alive.

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This Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) is the last remaining link between the country's lenders and the Eurozone.

For that very reason, ELA now hangs like the "sword of Damocles" over Greek banks, according to Lorcan Roche Kelly of Bloomberg.

The lenders themselves have no control over whether they will remain eligible for this vital source of assistance. It is the politics that will decide that.

Should no extension of a bail-out agreement be reached before Friday, the plug may well be pulled at the end of the month, effectively dumping Greece out of the euro.

Here's how it all could potentially play out:

Why ELA is so important

In a surprise move earlier this month, the ECB said it would stop accepting Greek bonds as collateral for cheap loans. The decision was taken as Mario Draghi and his colleagues thought the prospects of Syriza reaching a new bailout arrangement with its lenders was pretty slim.

But Greece's banks are still being propped up by ELA, which is designed to help banks facing liquidity problems. Lenders will continue to receive the funds as long as Athens remains in some semblance of a bail-out programme.

The main sticking point now emerging between Syriza and the 'Institutions' (formerly known as the Troika), is whether the current deal will be extended after it expires at the end of the month.

This is the preferred option of the Eurozone's leaders, notably Germany. The Greeks however are demanding some form of "bridging" loan which would allow them to keep the country solvent while it negotiates better bail-out terms.

All of this puts the ECB in a bit of a bind. The central bank reviews its ELA decision every two weeks and will do so again on Wednesday. The current hiatus between Syriza and its creditors means any potential extension of the funds into March is looking very unlikely.

In recent weeks, the ECB has had to raise the ELA ceiling available for Greece's lenders to €65bn as deposits have started being withdrawn.

Does this mean there's a run on Greece's banks?

Not yet. Deposit withdrawals have accelerated since the new Greek government was elected at the end of January and amount to around €2bn a week.

If the pace of these outflows continues, Greek banks would eventually run out of money in just over three months, according to calculations from JP Morgan.

But the recent deterioration in talks between the two sides means more people are likely to start withdrawing their money as fears of a Grexit escalate.

The ECB has been here before

During Cyprus's crisis in 2013, the government's rejection of a bail-out deal led to the ECB threatening to withdraw the emergency cash that was propping up its stricken banks.

The ECB also raised the prospect of pulling the plug on Ireland if it did not accept an international bail-out back in 2010.

Can they really pull the trigger?

The rules around ELA are tricky. The ECB officially states that it will continue to provide emergency funding to banks as long as they remain solvent.

In Greece's case, the decision is likely to come down to the state of the bail-out negotiations. Having already banned Greek bonds as collateral, the ECB has shown it is willing to dip its toes into political waters in a bid to get both sides closer to reaching an agreement.

Any decision to withdraw ELA would however require a two-thirds majority in the 23-man governing council.

But the ECB may not even have to resort to such drastic action.

"A more explicit statement around when and how ELA usage would be capped by the ECB would be an additional means of raising the pressure on the Greek government," according to George Saravelos at Deutsche Bank.

It is this kind of signalling that is likely to help tighten the screws on both sides, and the ECB will hope, prompt them into ceding some ground in order to prevent Greece from becoming the first member to leave the euro.

How the European Central Bank could now finally pull the trigger on a Grexit - Telegraph

Islamic State 'planning to use Libya as gateway to Europe'

By Ruth Sherlock, Beirut and Colin Freeman Tuesday 19 February 2015

Exclusive: Jihadists hoping to use Libya as a "gateway" to wage war across the whole of southern Europe, plans by ISIL supporters reveal

The jihadists hope to flood Libya with ISIL militiamen who will then pose as migrants on people trafficking vessels heading to Europe Photo: Marcello Paternostro/AFP

Islamic State militants are planning a takeover of Libya as a "gateway" to wage war across the whole of southern Europe, letters written by the group's supporters have revealed.

The jihadists hope to flood the north African state with militiamen from Syria and Iraq, who will then sail across the Mediterranean posing as migrants on people trafficking vessels, according to plans seen by Quilliam, the British anti-extremist group.

The fighters would then run amok in southern European cities and also try to attack maritime shipping.

The document is written by an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) propagandist who is believed to be an important online recruiter for the terror in Libya, where security has collapsed in the wake of the revolution that unseated Colonel Gaddafi in 2011.

The group has already established Libyan-based cells, who on Sunday released a video showing a mass beheading of 21 Egyptian Christian guest workers.

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The video, which prompted Egypt to launch retaliatory bombing raids on ISIL positions in Libya, included footage of a khaki-clad militant pointing a bloodstained finger northwards, declaring: "We will conquer Rome, by Allah's permission."

The ISIL propagandist, who uses the alias Abu Arhim al-Libim, describes Libya as having "immense potential" for Isil. He points out with relish that it is awash with weapons from the Libyan civil war, when large quantities of Col Gaddafi's arsenals were appropriated by rebels. Some of those weapons came from Britain, which supplied the Gaddafi regime with machine guns, sniper rifles and ammunition during his final years in power, when he was seen as an ally against Islamist terrorism.

Mr Libim also points out that Libya is less than around 300 miles from parts of the nearest European mainland.

He writes: "It has a long coast and looks upon the southern Crusader states, which can be reached with ease by even a rudimentary boat."

He also cites "the number of trips known as 'illegal immigration' from this coast, which are huge in number ... if this was even partially exploited and developed strategically, pandemonium could be wrought in the southern European states and it is even possible that there could be a closure of shipping lines and targeting of Crusader ships and tankers."

The propagandist's comments come amid growing concerns in the West about the collapse of security in Libya, which has a large diaspora population in the UK.

On Monday, Sir John Sawers, the former head of MI6, said that Britain should debate whether or not to put ground troops there to stop the country "being exploited by fanatics".

 The document outlines Libya's "geographic dimensions"

Security officials also share ISIL's view about the possibility of using people trafficking boats to smuggle fighters into Europe.

Thanks to its vast, porous desert borders with Sub-Saharan Africa, Libya has long been a key operating hub for trafficking boats heading into Europe, but numbers have escalated dramatically since the collapse of the Gaddafi regime.

Italy's interior ministry estimates that at least 200,000 refugees and immigrants are poised to make the crossing from Libya to Sicily or the tiny island of Lampedusa, Italy's southernmost territory.

Last year more than 170,000 arrived in Italy by boat, including tens of thousands of Syrians fleeing the civil war in their home country.

Search and rescue efforts entered a dangerous new phase this week when an Italian coast guard vessel rescuing migrants 50 miles off the Libyan coast was threatened by smugglers armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles.

While the gang were concerned only with retrieving their boat for another smuggling trip, the incident demonstrated the potential threat were Isil to adopt similar smuggling tactics.

There are also fears that an increased Isil presence in Libya would encourage existing migrants there to flee north in far greater numbers.

Egypt's army has posted a video of the jets taking off on their Facebook account

Nasser Kamel, Egypt's ambassador to London, warned Britain brace itself for 'boats full of terrorists' unless action was taken in Libya. He spoke after 2,164 migrants were rescued at sea in a 24-hour period over the weekend in what has been described as an 'exodus without precedent'.

"Those boat people who go for immigration purposes and try to cross the Mediterranean ... in the next few weeks, if we do not act together, they will be boats full of terrorists also," he said.

Security in Libya has been on the slide due to the inability of the various militias that helped oust Col Gaddafi to agree a shared agenda. Its internationally recognised government is currently operating from the eastern city of Tobruk after being forced out of Tripoli by a rival government loosely allied with a range of Islamist factions.

Most of these groups do not share ISIL's extremist vision, although some are believed to have links to the al-Qaeda faction that killed the US Ambassador, Chris Stevens, during an attack on a diplomatic compound in the eastern city of Benghazi in 2012.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (AFP)

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ISIL's leader, has since laid claim to Libya as part of his "Caliphate".

Whilst on the whole that remains more rhetoric than reality, support for the group in this war ravaged state is growing.

In September, Abu Nabil, an Iraqi and key leader within Isil, travelled to the country to build support for the group. His men took control of much of Derna, a traditionally conservative city in the east of the country, that is now being run according to the extremist group's strict Shariah law.

Hundreds of Libyans who had travelled to fight alongside ISIL in Syria have started to return to fight for the group on home turf, residents say. They have expanded the group's influence into the east of the country, taking controlling of parts of Sirte, a former Gaddafi stronghold.

In late January, a group of gunmen invoked ISIL's name in an attack on the Corinthia, a five-star hotel in downtown Tripoli, killing at least eight people.

Smoke rising in front of the Corinthia hotel in Tripoli after gunmen stormed it (AFP)

Whilst The Telegraph cannot independently verify the identity of Mr Libim, the propagandist, analysts believe that his writing on Libya is widely read and influential online.

"Twitter has shut down Libim's accounts several times and each time he starts a new one he gets thousands of followers very quickly, which is typical of an influential Isil affiliate," said Charlie Winter, a researcher with the Quilliam Foundation.

Mr Winter added: "In terms of the demographics of Isil support in Libya, we see a lot in common with its base of support in Iraq and Syria – many of its fighters are young, disfranchised men who have only bought into ISIL's brand of Islamist zealotry because they are looking to forcibly empower themselves in the penetrating absence of the state.

"The risks Europe faces from ISIL pre-eminence in Libya are substantial."

David Cameron has condemned the "barbaric" executions of the Egyptian Christians, who were kidnapped by Isil while working in Sirte. He added that he did not regret British efforts to oust Col Gaddafi, despite the threat from terrorists, insisting that it was the 'right thing to do".

President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi of Egypt called for an international coalition to defeat Isil in Libya on Tuesday, saying: "We will not allow them to cut the heads off our children".

Islamic State 'planning to use Libya as gateway to Europe' - Telegraph