Islam And The Undeniable Truth - Jihadists and Islamic State Say Death To America !

Undeniable Truth 1400 years of Islam history in a few minutes from Brigitte Gabriel was born in the Marjeyoun District of Lebanon to a Maronite Christian couple, a first and only child after over twenty years of marriage. She recalls that during the Lebanese Civil War, Islamic militants launched an assault on a Lebanese military base near her family's house and destroyed her home. Gabriel, who was ten years old at the time, was injured by shrapnel in the attack. She says that she and her parents were forced to live underground in all that remained, an 8-by-10-foot (2.4 by 3.0 m) bomb shelter for seven years, with only a small kerosene heater, no sanitary systems, no electricity or running water, and little food. She says she had to crawl in a roadside ditch to a spring for water to evade Muslim snipers.

According to Gabriel, at one point in the spring of 1978, a bomb explosion caused her and her parents to become trapped in the shelter for two days. They were eventually rescued by three Christian militia fighters, one of whom befriended Gabriel but was later killed by a land mine.

Gabriel wrote that in 1978 a stranger warned her family of an impending attack by the Islamic militias on all Christians. She says that her life was saved when the Israeli army invaded Lebanon in Operation Litani. Later, when her mother was seriously injured and taken to an Israeli hospital, Gabriel was surprised by the humanity shown by the Israelis, in contrast to the constant propaganda against the Jews she saw as a child. She says of the experience:

I was amazed that the Israelis were providing medical treatment to Palestinian and Muslim gunmen...These Palestinians and Muslims were sworn, mortal enemies, dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the slaughter of Jews. Yet, Israeli doctors and nurses worked feverishly to save their lives. Each patient was treated solely according to the nature of his or her injury. The doctor treated my mother before he treated an Israeli soldier lying next to her because her injury was more severe than his. The Israelis did not see religion, political affiliation, or nationality. They saw only people in need, and they helped.

Opinion editor Michael Young of NOW Lebanon and Franklin Lamb of Al-Ahram Weekly claimed that Gabriel over-simplifies the conflict in South Lebanon as a Muslim war against the Christians. Lamb alleged that she lived relatively normally during the Lebanese Civil War; Young, by contrast, described Gabriel's account of her experiences as "overdone" and described her persona and campaign as a "con act."

A lot of what most people think they know about Islam is found in the media, where tales of fundamentalism and violence are the norm. The five pillars – the declaration of faith (shahada), prayer (salah), alms-giving (zakat), fasting (sawm) and pilgrimage (hajj) – constitute the basic norms of Islamic practice. They are accepted by Muslims globally irrespective of ethnic, regional or sectarian differences.

Upholding the pillars is considered obligatory for all sincere followers of the Prophet Muhammad, male and female, Sunni and Shi‘a, but that doesn’t mean that all those who identify as Muslims keep them consistently. As in all religions, circumstances vary and some people are more committed than others. Such things as age, stage of life, work, family responsibilities, health and wealth all make a difference.

The pillars
The Shahada is the fundamental statement of faith and commitment made by Muslims: “There is no God but God (Allah), and Muhammad is His Messenger.” It distinguishes Muslims from those of other faiths. The Shahada is perhaps better known in the West as the Arabic phrase on the flags of ISIS, al-Shabaab and Boko Haram. However, the Shahada is by no means the preserve of violent groups, in fact reciting it three times in front of witnesses is a requirement of becoming a Muslim.

Salah is the ritual prayer of Islam through which all Muslims conform to the will of Allah. Prayer is performed in the direction of Mecca five times a day. Friday is set aside as the day for congregational prayer (Jum’a). The ready knowledge that large numbers of Muslims will be gathered together for communal prayer has frequently been exploited by terrorist networks such as Islamic State. In 2015 and 2016, Shi‘a mosques were bombed in Kuwait, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Boko Haram has also attacked mosques in northern Nigeria. Places of worship full of people at prayer represent easy symbolic targets for suicide bombers, where maximum damage and loss of life can be achieved.

The term zakat refers to the obligatory donation of a portion of a Muslim’s surplus wealth. Islamic charities encourage donors to use their services to relieve suffering and to help refugees, victims of environmental disasters, the urban poor and those in conflict zones and in recent years relief has been provided in Gaza, Syria, Yemen and Iraq. Whilst the majority of charities operate within the law, some have been banned following allegations that they have used their resources to fund terrorist activities.

Sawm – Muslims are expected to fast during Ramadan – the ninth month in the Islamic calendar. During daylight hours (which vary depending on the time of year in which Ramadan falls), they abstain from food and drink, sexual activity and smoking, breaking the fast with a meal after sunset. Those who are elderly, ill, pregnant or breast-feeding are exempt, and children are not required to participate.

Completing the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, is a duty that every Muslim should perform during their lifetime. All pilgrims should be in good physical and spiritual health before they make the journey. Whilst in Mecca, they complete a series of individual and collective actions on the various days of their visit, following a pattern set by Muhammad.

Some two million Muslims from around the world went on Hajj in 2015. The 25,000 pilgrims who travelled from the UK joined thousands of Muslims from many other countries, all performing the same rituals irrespective of their many differences.

Knowing something about the five pillars and their significance for Muslims isn’t just important to correct misunderstandings about what Muslims believe, it is also important in the work environment and for good working relations. For example, Muslim colleagues may request breaks and a space for prayer as well as support whilst fasting during Ramadan or annual leave at the time of the Hajj. These are important issues for all Muslims, and not markers of fundamentalism. Understanding this better can help overcome prejudices about Muslims.

Recent research on gender and extremism has shown that women in terror networks are not necessarily the victims or passive actors that they are often portrayed to be. A recent workshop in London convened interdisciplinary academics and practitioners to discuss the role of gender in extremism. The workshop featured delegates from the fields of criminology, psychology, medicine, crime science, and international relations who, over the course of three days, learned from each other and identified future avenues for collaborative research.

The workshop’s presentations emphasised the important role played by gender in the operation of on and offline extremist social networks. Paul Gill, a senior lecturer in security and crime science at University College London, discussed the different degrees of centrality possessed by men and women in extremist networks. After examining the social networks of Provisional Irish Republican Army members, Gill and his colleagues discovered that men had a greater number of connections within the network than women; on the other hand, more women than men served as bridges of information and linked otherwise unconnected service units.

Elizabeth Pearson, an Associate Fellow at RUSI, discussed the ways in which the twitter community of ISIS supporters is gendered. Pearson found that different symbols were employed by male and female users. While men favoured photos of fighters, the profiles of women frequently featured images of the burqa. Pearson found that male ISIS supporters on Twitter had more online influence than their female counterparts as measured by the number of followers and retweets. However, tweets from women were favourited more often than male tweets.

Several of the speakers acknowledged that women are often wrongly understood as being subservient to men, victims rather than perpetrators, and apolitical. This misrepresentation is erroneous and dangerous because it encourages a gender stereotype that extremist groups can take advantage of and use to their tactical advantage. Cerwyn Moore spoke about the increased use of female suicide bombers that took place during the second phase of the Chechen conflict from 2002 to 2004. As a tactical response to the widespread arrest of Chechen men, the rebels began to deploy female suicide bombers who came under less scrutiny from law enforcement and were able to reach targets with greater ease.

The tactical advantage of female suicide bombers was reinforced by criminal psychologist Helen Gavin from the University of Huddersfield, who observed that women have less suspicion attached to them and that their use as suicide bombers increases an extremist group’s number of combatants and will boost publicity and media shock value.

Further dispelling the myth of the passive woman, Gemma Edwards, a senior lecturer in Sociology at the University of Manchester, contended that the suffragettes began to use violence because they believed it was the most effective strategy to win votes for women, and that coercion rather than persuasion would bring about the change they desired.

Edwards’s presentation revealed that social networks played a critical role in influencing individual suffragettes to embrace, or resist, militant strategies. Drawing on two suffragette case studies, Edwards found that Helen Watt’s membership of a homogenous network that supported violent action was an important factor in her decision to adopt militancy. By contrast, Mary Blathwayt was part of a heterogeneous network that included members who decried violence, and this militated against her utilisation of that strategy.

When it comes to extremism, gender matters. CREST researchers will maintain this focus and are funding a PhD studentship that examines the role played by gender in violent extremism; the interaction of gender with the ideological, political, and organizational features of militant groups; and the part played by women in terrorist group engagement and desistence.

Coronavirus has highlighted how anxiety, uncertainty, and the reordering of democratic state-citizen relations can breed susceptibility to violent extremist thinking and action. The COVID-19 pandemic has upended the normative social order of democratic societies in profound ways: lockdowns, public health mandates, a range of restrictions on movement and behaviour, and the rapid development of new-generation vaccines. This disruption has occurred amid an environment of risk and uncertainty that threatens peoples’ sense of security, stability, and resilience. The rise of pandemic-led conspiracy thinking has therefore been predictable.

There is a well-established relationship between conspiracy narratives and the sense of threat, particularly concerning system identity threat, or the view that society is fundamentally changing. QAnon influencers, for example, quickly harnessed their conspiracy movement’s anti-government, ‘Deep State’ narrative of corrupt, shadowy elites to fit with how states around the world were responding to the pandemic’s public health threats.

However, QAnon’s dark prophesies of a New World Order that would upend civilisation is not new, drawing together a pastiche of familiar, pre-existing militant narratives based on anti-Semitism, white nationalism, anti-vaccination, and anti-technology discourse.

Some of these older militant narratives have long been associated with violent action against minorities and violent resistance to the state. It is, therefore, unsurprising that the rise of pandemic-inspired conspiracist movements has been escalated and capitalised on by violent extremist movements across the board.

Europol has warned that COVID-19 will continue to escalate violent extremist threats in various countries, increasing tolerance for violence in response to pandemic-induced stressors. This runs alongside evidence that ideologically diverse violent extremist networks are exploiting pandemic-related vulnerabilities through online propaganda and recruitment efforts.

As our AVERT Research Network submission to Australia’s parliamentary inquiry on extremist movements and radicalism argues, the extension of government authority and curtailing of individual liberties during a public health emergency have been consistently reframed by extremists as instruments of social control, government corruption, and state illegitimacy, accelerating what Ehud Sprinzak (1991) terms the ‘transformational delegitimating’ of democratic societies and institutions.

Egypt, now at the forefront of fighting ISIS, is warning it has intelligence revealing the global jihadist group is planning a worldwide offensive this spring or summer that could reach targets within the United States.

Interrogations of ISIS members captured in recent weeks in the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula Egyptian and information collected by Egyptian security forces indicate ISIS is planning ground offensives this spring and summer aimed at taking over more territory across the Middle Eastern and Persian Gulf, a senior Egyptian intelligence official told WND.

Some of the information indicates the new offensive will not be limited to the Arab world. Timed to coincide with its planned surge, ISIS is plotting possible attacks using cells abroad. ISIS and its jihadist allies could activate cells to carry attacks in Europe and possibly within the U.S., the senior Egyptian official warned.

The official advocated the deployment of significant ground troops acting on multiple fronts to stop ISIS’ progression. He complained the Obama administration and international community has been hesitant to take major action against ISIS advances. Egypt on Monday sent warplanes over the border into Libya to bomb ISIS targets after the terror group’s well-publicized, savage attack on Egyptian Christians.

Egyptian F-16 fighter jets reportedly struck ISIS training camps and weapons depots along Libya’s coast, including targets in Derna, where Islamic extremist groups have joined with ISIS. One day earlier, ISIS allies released a video that appears to show the execution of 21 Coptic Christian prisoners. The Coptic Church is headquartered in Egypt.

The Egyptian government reportedly dispatched its foreign minister to New York in a bid to rally international support for their military intervention in Libya. Last week, WND reported Egypt estimates ISIS and its allies currently boast an army of about 180,000 fighters.

An Egyptian intelligence document, the contents of which were obtained by WND, warns that while the U.S. has been attempting to maintain a coalition to fight ISIS, the Islamic terrorist organization has itself been hard at work building a sustainable coalition of jihadist gunmen.

The 180,000 figure is up to six times greater than a CIA estimate from last September, which placed the number of ISIS fighters at between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters.

According to Egypt, ISIS has created an umbrella army with the Taliban, Al Shabab, Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and local jihadist groups from Yemen, Mali, Gaza, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Egyptian Sinai.

Cells inside U.S.? There have been numerous claims of ISIS cells embedded in the U.S. Earlier this month, Michael Steinbach, head of the FBI’s counter-terrorism division, was asked by NWO whether or not there are ISIS cells in the U.S.

Steinbach said, “[T]here are individuals that have been in communication with groups like [ISIS] who have a desire to conduct an attack,” and those people are living in the U.S. right now. He conceded the FBI finds it extremely difficult to track every American traveling abroad who can join ISIS or receive training by foreign terrorist organizations.

“I’m worried about individuals that we don’t know about that have training,” Steinbach said. “We know what we know. But there is a number that’s greater than that that we don’t know.” “Once you get to Europe, you can easily get down to Turkey and into Syria,” he noted.

In August, former CIA officer Bob Baer told NWO he had been “told with no uncertainty there are ISIS sleeper cells in this country.” NWO cited two unnamed U.S. officials rebutting the claim but still expressing concern ISIS militants with passports might travel to the U.S. to launch attacks on American soil.

English translation of Isis women’s manifesto is published by all-female al-Khanssaa Brigade Girls can marry at the age of nine, should ideally have husbands by 16 or 17 and should not be corrupted by going to work, according to a treatise published by female Islamic State supporters in Iraq and Syria.

The document, Women of the Islamic State: Manifesto and Case Study, says women must stay behind closed doors and leave the house only in exceptional circumstances.

“It is always preferable for a woman to remain hidden and veiled, to maintain society from behind this veil,” the English translation says. Fashion shops and beauty salons are denounced as the work of the devil.

The semi-official Islamic State manifesto on women – believed to be the first of its kind – was published on a jihadi forum in Arabic last month and is purported to be by the media wing of the al-Khanssaa Brigade, an all-female militia set up by Islamic State (Isis).

It has now been translated into English by the London-based counter-extremism thinktank Quilliam Foundation.

The introduction to the treatise says it has not been sanctioned by “the state” – meaning Islamic State – or its leadership but is a document to “clarify the role of Muslim women and the life which is desired for them” and “to clarify the realities of life and the hallowed existence of women in the Islamic State”.

The manifesto says: “From ages seven to nine, there will be three lessons: fiqh (understanding) and religion, Qur’anic Arabic (written and read) and science (accounting and natural sciences).

“From 10 to 12, there will be more religious studies, especially fiqh, focusing more on fiqh related to women and the rulings on marriage and divorce. This is in addition to the other two subjects. Skills like textiles and knitting, basic cooking will also be taught.

“From 13 to 15, there will be more of a focus on sharia, as well as more manual skills (especially those related to raising children) and less of the science, the basics of which will already have been taught. In addition, they will be taught about Islamic history, the life of the prophet and his followers.

“It is considered legitimate for a girl to be married at the age of nine. Most pure girls will be married by 16 or 17, while they are still young and active. Young men will not be more than 20 years old in those glorious generations.”

The western model for woman has failed, the treatise says, with women who go to work taking on “corrupted ideas and shoddy-minded beliefs instead of religion”. “The model preferred by infidels in the west failed the minute that women were ‘liberated’ from their cell in the house,” it says.

The manifesto includes a lengthy condemnation of the culture of the “disbelievers of Europe”, urging its readers to disavow “falsity and materialism in civilisation” and to devote oneself instead to religious knowledge.

The ideal Islamic community, it says, should not be caught up with “trying to uncover the secrets of nature and reaching the peaks of architectural sophistication”. They should instead concentrate on the implementation of sharia law and the spreading of Islam.

In a section entitled: “How the soldiers of Iblis [the devil] keep women from paradise”, the authors take aim at the western lifestyle that encourages both men and women to gain an education and employment. The manifesto denounces the wearing of fashionable clothes and piercings, concluding: “This urbanisation, modernity and fashion is presented by Iiblis [the devil] in fashion shops and beauty salons.”

It is the “fundamental function” of a woman to be in the house with her husband and children, the jihadi guide says, adding that they may leave the house to serve the community only in exceptional circumstances – to wage jihad when there are no men available, to study religion, and female doctors and teachers are permitted to leave but “must keep strictly to sharia guidelines”.

“Yes, we say: ‘Stay in your houses’, but this does not mean, in any way, that we support illiteracy, backwardness or ignorance,” the English-language translation reads. “Rather, we just support the distinction between working – that which involves a woman leaving the house – and studying, as it was ordained she should do.”

More than 10,000 jihadists have been killed in air strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria over a nine-month coalition campaign, the US says.

"We have seen enormous losses from Daesh [IS], more than 10,000 since the beginning of the campaign and this will end up having an impact," deputy secretary of state Antony Blinken told French radio, using an Arabic acronym for the group. Blinken was speaking a day after an international conference in Paris in which about 20 representatives of the anti-IS coalition pledged support for Baghdad's plan to claw back territory from the jihadists who have conquered large parts of Iraq and Syria.

The coalition's strategy has been criticised for relying on air strikes without committing boots on the ground, but Blinken stressed there had been "significant progress". Islamic State now controls "25 per cent less of Iraq after nine months, a lot of their equipment has been destroyed and many Daesh [IS] members have been eliminated," said Blinken.

He nevertheless acknowledged the "resilience" of IS after the coalition had launched about 4000 air strikes on them.

In a separate French radio interview, Iraq's ambassador to France, Fareed Yasseen, said the allies had heeded Baghdad's calls for more weapons to combat the group.

"The Americans have promised us and will shortly deliver missiles that will make the difference against these truck bombs which made us lose Ramadi," the ambassador told Europe 1 radio.