Germany vs. Radical Islamists
GATESTONE INSTITUTE: More recently, Salafists have issued death threats against German politicians, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "The groups aim to change our society in an aggressive belligerent way so that democracy would be replaced by a Salafist system, and the rule of law replaced by Sharia law." — Hans-Peter Friedrich, Ministry of the Interior, Germany

Germany has banned three ultra-conservative Salafist Muslim groups which the Interior Ministry says want to overturn democracy and install a system based on Islamic Sharia law.

The ban, which took effect in the western German states of Hessen and North Rhine-Westphalia on March 13, comes amid Islamist death threats against German politicians -- and just days after German intelligence announced that the number of Salafists in Germany has jumped over the past year.

The Interior Ministry said that it had banned the groups "DawaFFM" and "Islamische Audios," as well as "An-Nussrah," which is part of the "Millatu Ibrahim" group that was outlawed in June 2012.

In an effort to enforce the ban, hundreds of German police officers raided the homes of radical Islamists in Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Gladbeck and Solingen, and seized computers, cellphones and electronic storage devices, as well as money, documents and Islamic propaganda videos in Arabic and in German.

German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said: "Salafism, as represented in the associations that were banned today, is incompatible with our free democratic order. The groups aim to change our society in an aggressive, belligerent way so that democracy would be replaced by a Salafist system, and the rule of law replaced by Sharia law."

Salafism is a branch of radical Islam based in Saudi Arabia that seeks to establish an Islamic empire (Caliphate) across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe -- and eventually the entire world. The Caliphate would be governed exclusively by Islamic Sharia law, which would apply both to Muslims and to non-Muslims.

Also known as Wahhabis, Salafists believe -- among other anti-Western doctrines -- that democracy must be destroyed and replaced with an Islamic form of government.

Hans-Georg Maaßen, the head of Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), told the German newsmagazine Focus on March 10 that the number of committed Salafists in Germany had grown to 4,500 in 2012, compared with 3,800 in 2011.

Although Salafists make up only a fraction of the estimated 4.3 million Muslims in Germany, authorities are concerned that most of those attracted to Salafi ideology are impressionable young Muslims who are especially susceptible to committing suicide attacks in the name of Islam. » | Soeren Kern | Friday, March 15, 2013

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Saudi Youth Question Traditional Approach to Islam
AL MONITOR: On March 30, 2012, a little-noticed but remarkable document from young Saudis was posted online.

Beneath its cumbersome title — “Statement of Saudi Youth Regarding the Guarantee of Freedoms and Ethics of Diversity” — it challenged a central tenet of the kingdom’s ultraconservative religious establishment: That it has the right to impose its strict interpretation of Islam on all Saudis.

“No one can claim monopoly of truth or righteousness in the name of Islamic law (Shariah),” declared the statement, many of whose 2,600 signatories were in their 20s. “We are young citizens who seek to create a … community that follows the example of the prophet, peace be upon him, under pluralism of thought … [and] we reject this patriarchal guardianship which forbids us from practicing our God-given right to think and explore for ourselves, as we can listen and judge.”

The statement underscored the religious ferment brewing in the kingdom, especially among young people. Official religious orthodoxy has ruptured, religious attitudes are more fluid and diverse, and there is greater questioning of long-held assumptions.

How this youthful religious exploration plays out will be key to the kingdom’s governance in the years ahead because of the Saudi government’s close alliance with a clerical establishment that sees its primary charge as upholding — and spreading — the austere, anti-intellectual and inflexible version of Salafi Islam known as Wahhabism.

Young Saudis overwhelmingly want the kingdom’s commitment to Islam to remain firm and in their personal lives they remain devout, observant followers of their faith.

But increasingly, they demonstrate less willingness to accept their religious heritage without re-examination, as their parents did. They are more willing to question a fatwa or ignore it; some are daring to openly discuss taboo subjects like atheism. Increasingly too, they favor a religious practice that is more voluntary, less enforced by the state, and more respectful of differences among Muslims.

Portending a crisis of religious authority in Saudi Arabia, young people complain that state-employed clerics are too negative, always stressing what’s forbidden, and that they focus too much on trivial matters without addressing the problems of youth and morally perplexing issues of modern life. » | Caryle Murphy for Al-Monitor | Monday, February 04, 2013

Wahhabi Vandalism Reaches Timbuktu
GATESTONE INSTITUTE: Now the extremist rage has reached sub-Saharan Africa.

At the beginning of July, Ansar Al-Dine (Volunteers of Faith), a Wahhabi Islamist group previously allied with Tuareg (a Berber group) rebels in Timbuktu, Mali, began systematically demolishing centuries-old Sufi shrines and mosques.

Timbuktu is known as the "City of 333 Muslim Saints," and has been the depository of hundreds of thousands of manuscripts and documents in libraries and private collections.

In 1988, the United Nations added the three main mosques in the city, and 16 cemeteries and mausoleums, to its World Heritage registry.

Wahhabi ideology, however – the official interpretation of Islam in Saudi Arabia – is destructive of Islamic heritage. Wahhabi doctrine holds that the preservation of sacred funeral monuments and prayers at them are a dilution of Islamic monotheism and a prohibited form of idol worship.

In Saudi Arabia, Islamic heritage, including houses and mosques associated with the prophet Muhammad, have been destroyed or damaged.

Elsewhere, Wahhabi devastation was mainly seen in raids on Shia holy sites in Iraq during eighteenth and nineteenth-century Wahhabi forays into that country, as well as in the recent Iraq war. Fundamentalist assaults on Sufi sanctuaries then spread in Pakistan. Wahhabi violence against Sufi installations also appeared in the Muslim Balkans. With the political changes in Egypt and Libya, Sufi shrines have been targeted by so-called "Salafis" (a cover term for Wahhabis).

Now the extremist rage has reached sub-Saharan Africa. » | Irfan Al-Alawi | Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Saudi Got Talent Has No Women or Music
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: A Saudi city known for its ultraconservatism has created its own version of the "Arabs Got Talent" television reality show, but with no music and women banned from taking part.

Instead, competitors will be permitted to perform religious chants, recite poems and engage in sports events.

The contest is being held north of the capital in the city of Buraydah, known as a centre for Wahhabism – a strict interpretation of Islam that is followed in the desert kingdom. » | Sunday, June 10, 2012

Pierre Vogel (Abu Hamza) bei Kerner in Sat 1 (Oktober 2010)


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Egyptian Philosopher Murad Wahba: The Muslim Brotherhood and Wahhabism Have Made Us Develop "Antibodies" against the 21st Century | CBC TV (Egypt) - March 8, 2012

David Cameron: I Will Banish Extremists from Britain

THE JEWISH CHRONICLE: Hate preachers will not reach these shores and campuses will be safe, says David Cameron

A Conservative government would ban extremist Islamist groups, refuse visas to hate preachers and insist that universities identify and root out radicals promoting violence, antisemitism and other racial intolerance on campus.

In an exclusive interview with the JC, Conservative leader David Cameron said his party would "drain the poison" of extremism. He said recent visitors to Britain such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the influential Egyptian cleric who supports suicide bombing against Israeli targets, and Ibrahim Moussawi, Hizbollah's "media relations officer", would never again be allowed into the country.

He also confirmed that a Tory government would ban the virulently anti-Zionist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir, which calls for the re-establishment of the caliphate (Islamic state).

While defending the principle of academic freedom, he said universities had a responsibility to root out extremism, even if this meant fingering individual students for their beliefs: "That means making clear to university authorities and student unions that they need to help identify those who are vulnerable to influence from extremists or show they are willing to promote hatred, just as they would in relation to any other suspected crime," he said. » | Martin Bright | Thursday, March 11, 2010

So that was then, and this is now. You’ve been in power for two years. So how are we doing on the banishing front, Mr. Cameron? Not too well by the looks of things. You haven’t been able to get rid of Abu Qatada, and they don’t come much more radical than he is. Or were these just empty words, Mr. Cameron? – © Mark

You could take some lessons from Sarkozy, Mr. Cameron. He doesn’t seem to have any problem banishing the preachers of hate »

France Launches Raids to Arrest 10 Suspected Islamist Suspects

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Elite police arrested 10 Islamist suspects in early morning raids across France on Wednesday ordered by President Nicolas Sarkozy after seven people were killed by an al-Qaeda-inspired gunman last month.

The DCRI domestic intelligence service, supported by elite police commandos, carried out arrests in the southern cities of Marseilles and Valence, two towns in the southwest and in the northeastern town of Roubaix, a police source said.

The raids follow the arrest of 19 people on March 30, a week after police snipers shot dead al-Qaeda-inspired gunman Mohamed Merah, who killed three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and three soldiers in a spate of attacks around Toulouse.

"Those arrested have a similar profile to Mohamed Merah," a local police source said. "They are isolated individuals, who are self-radicalised."

He said the suspects were tracked on Islamist forums expressing extreme views and said they were preparing to travel to areas including Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Sahel belt to wage jihad (holy war). » | Source: Reuters | Wednesday, April 04, 2012

Islamic Militants Detained in France 'Planned to Kidnap Jewish Magistrate'
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Some of the 16 suspected Islamic militants detained in France allegedly planned to kidnap a Jewish magistrate and other people, according to reports.

A source close to the investigation told the AFP news agency: "It looks like some of them planned to carry out kidnappings including that of a magistrate who has a Jewish-sounding name."

Another source confirmed that a Jewish magistrate from Lyon in central France was to be targeted.

The head of France's Central Directorate for Domestic Intelligence (DCRI), Bernard Squarcini, said on Saturday that those arrested the previous day were French nationals involved in "warlike training, linked to violent religious indoctrination".

Some of those arrested belonged to a suspected extremist group called Forsane Alizza, he said, and had been involved in paintball gun games.

Forsane Alizza chief Mohamed Achamlane was on Monday transferred to Paris where he was to appear before anti-terror magistrates who already extended the custody of the 15 other suspected Islamists arrested on Friday. » | AFP | Tuesday, April 03, 2012

Tip of the Iceberg – The Beginning of the End for Britain
This is a CULTURE CLASH. The problem with this specific subpopulation of people is that their culture and beliefs never have, and never will, be in harmony with those values that are European. This is what this VERY RAPIDLY INCREASING subpopulation of the UK want for Britain....Sharia law, Sharia courts, death for gay men and women, death for adultery, death for unbelievers, death for apostasy, amputation for theft, subjugation of women, animal cruelty and child cruelty.

HT: Always on Watch »

French Police Arrest 'Islamic Radicals'
French commandos carry out raids across France, a week after gunman Mohamed Merah was killed. President Sarzozy vowed to crackdown on what he called "Islamic radicals". The operation began before dawn. Police raid homes in cities including Nantes, Toulouse and Paris, detaining 19 suspects and seizing a number of weapons. Al Jazeera's Jacky Rowland reports from Paris.

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How to Stop Putting Gasoline in Islamist Tank
STANDARD EXAMINER: Islamists are a diverse lot. Some are what diplomats like to call "violent extremists." They want to kill you. Others are less eager to shed blood, more confident that by mastering electoral politics, manipulating international organizations and designing effective public relations campaigns they can achieve their objectives. What are those objectives? Islamism implies a commitment to the imperative of Islamic power. Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood articulated the basic idea succinctly:

It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.

If those championing Islamism were only stateless terrorist groups and tin-pot dictators, their geo-political significance would be minimal. But the regime that rules Iran is dedicated to waging what it calls a global Islamic revolution. And in Saudi Arabia, the state religion is Wahhabism, a strain of Islam that preaches the inferiority of infidels and the rejection of Muslims who do not share Wahhabi ideals.

These regimes float atop an ocean of oil, a commodity that is valuable thanks to those the Islamists despise. It was the Western mind that figured out how to pump oil out of the ground and refine it into fuels, including those used in internal combustion engines, another history-bending Western invention.

If there were even one oil-rich, Muslim-majority nation solidly committed to liberal democratic values, to freedom of religion and speech, to tolerance and minority rights, the challenges of the 21st century would not be so formidable. But there is no such nation. Read on and comment » | Clifford D. May* | Scripps Howard News Service | Thursday, March 08, 2012

* Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on national security and foreign policy. Email cliff@defenddemocracy.org.

Radical Muslims 'Target Young Inmates in Prison’
THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: Jailed terrorists are radicalising vulnerable young Muslims in prison, a report by MPs discloses today.

Despite being sent to maximum security jails, extremists are preaching hate to new inmates, breeding a fresh generation of radicals willing to launch terror attacks.

A nine-month inquiry by the home affairs select committee into the roots of violent radicalisation found that, in some cases, inmates were being persuaded to carry out suicide missions within days of entering prison.

The findings are published as four radical Islamists are due to be sentenced for plotting a major terror attack before Christmas on the London Stock Exchange, the London Eye and other important landmarks.

Mohammed Chowdhury, 21, Shah Rahman, 28, Abdul Miah, 25, and Gurukanth Desai, 30, will be sentenced at Woolwich Crown Court today for the Mumbai-style terror plot. It is believed Miah was radicalised in prison after being sentenced for drugs and weapons offences.

A former neighbour of his in Cardiff said he had “gone into prison as a petty criminal and came out spouting extremist views”.

Today’s report, “Roots of Radicalisation”, identified prisons as one of the major breeding grounds for terrorism-related extremism.

It also recognised the dangers posed by the internet and the role played by universities, where it was claimed radical preachers were often invited to speak without being “robustly challenged”. » | Martin Evans and Duncan Gardham | Sunday, February 05, 2012

Former Saudi Wahhabi Radical Takes on the Koran

Somali Militants Ban Handshakes Between Men and Women
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Islamic militants in southern Somalia have banned unrelated men and women from shaking hands, speaking or walking together in public.

Somali women holding banners reading 'Allah is Great' during a mass demonstration in support of the recent merger between Islamist group Hizbul Islam and al-Shabab. Photo: The Daily Telegraph
People who break the rules could be imprisoned, whipped or even executed.

Al-Shabab, the Islamic extremists, have already banned women from working in public, leaving many mothers with a terrible choice: risk execution by going to sell some tea or vegetables in the marketplace, or stay safely at home and watch the children slowly starve.

"It's an awful rule. I feel like I'm under arrest. I've started to ignore the greetings of the women I know to avoid punishment," said Hussein Ali, a resident of the southern Somali town of Jowhar. The edict is also being enforced in the town of Elasha.

Gunmen are searching buses for improperly dressed women or women travelling alone, said student Hamdi Osman in Elasha. She said she was once beaten for wearing Somali traditional dress instead of the long, shapeless black robes favoured by the fighters.

The Islamists' insistence that women wear the long, heavy robes also forces many women to stay at home because they can't afford the new clothing. >>> | Saturday, January 08, 2011

Saudi Wahhabis Infiltrate USA Through Chicago Nation of Islam

WikiLeaks Cables: Reading Between the Lines
THE GUARDIAN: One message, often buried, comes out loud and clear from the embassy cables: the US should choose its allies more carefully

President Obama with King Abdullah in Riyadh, during an official visit in 2009. The Obama administration has since concluded a $60bn arms deal with Saudi Arabia. The WikiLeaks US embassy cables have revealed that the king has urged the US to attack Iran. Photograph: The Guardian
Among the most arresting lines in the trove of diplomatic cables made public this week was one from King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. "Cut off the head of the snake," he advised his American friends. Any herpetologist would agree that this is good advice in dealing with a threatening viper. But who is this snake? King Abdullah was referring to Iran, obliquely arguing for a military attack.

Yet, there was another tantalising detail in the trove of cables that suggests the larger threat comes from inside King Abdullah's own country. "Saudi donors remain the chief financiers of Sunni militant groups like al-Qaida," the New York Times reported in its first article on the leaked documents.

That is a huge, though not unsurprising, revelation. It reflects how complex and sometimes self-defeating America's foreign alliances have become. Saudi Arabia is an intimate ally of the United States, yet Saudi money supports the world's most violently anti-American terror network.

This deeply troubling contradiction has its roots in Saudi history and tradition. The regime's survival is based on a deal with the Wahhabi clerics who dominate religious practice in Saudi Arabia – and whose austere brand of Islam is among the world's most reactionary. Clerics agree to support the regime, ignoring both its alliance with infidel America and the notoriously unIslamic lifestyles of its thousands of princes. In exchange, the regime gives these clerics billions of dollars, much of which they use to run mosques and religious schools across the Islamic world. More than a few of these mosques and schools, often run by Saudi clerics or others they have trained, are incubators of terror, where generations of lost boys learn to chant the Qur'an and hate America.

The deal is, as former CIA director James Woolsey once described it, "for the Wahhabis to be given all of the money in the world they could ever remotely dream of needing or wanting to spread their sect's beliefs, and for them to leave the House of Saud alone." Read on and comment >>> Stephen Kinzer | Wednesday, December 01, 2010

Extremist Muslim Schools: Islamism's Most Worrying Manifestation of All
TELEGRAPH – BLOGS – ANDREW GILLIGAN: I’ve just finished watching John Ware’s excellent BBC Panorama about what’s being taught in some Muslim schools: a subject which I, and others, believe is the single most worrying aspect of Islamist and radical activity in Britain.

At present the vast majority of British Muslims have little or no truck with Islamist ideas. But in some Muslim schools – not in all, but in a significant and growing number – a new generation is being raised to be much more radical than its parents.

The BBC’s film is another encouraging sign of the growing pressure under which Islamism now finds itself. But the Telegraph has been following this story for a while. As I’ve reported in the paper over the last couple of years, some British schools (most but not exclusively Muslim) are teaching impressionable children to suspect, even despise, the society in which they will have to live. Other schools are teaching an overly narrow, Islamic-focused curriculum, turning out students ill-equipped for life in anything other than a Muslim ghetto. This is, quite simply, a betrayal of the children involved and a recipe for social conflict.

The most shocking and headline-grabbing aspect of the film was, understandably, the Saudi-sponsored weekend schools which teach children racism, anti-Semitism and Sharia punishments. It was fun watching the Islamists’ usual transparent wriggling and lies – the Saudi government trying to deny responsibility for its own textbooks, and so on. Read on and comment >>> Andrew Gilligan | Tuesday, November 22, 2010

Panorama: British Schools, Islamic Rules


Or watch the programme on a BBC iPlayer here if you are a resident of the UK.

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THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: A plan to tackle extremism in the classroom: Those who wish to set up schools in Britain should have to commit to core British values, argues Ruth Dudley Edwards. >>> Ruth Dudley Edwards | Tuesday, November 23, 2010

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Saudische Islamschulen: Judenhass und Handabhacken im Lehrplan
BBC-Web-Seite (Screenshot): Anleitung für das Abhacken von Körperteilen. Screenshot: Spiegel Online
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Hand ab für Diebe, Steinigung für Homosexuelle: Derart drakonische Strafen werden in saudi-arabischen Schulbüchern erklärt und mit dem Koran begründet. Antisemitismus steht ebenfalls auf dem Lehrplan - auch in Islamschulen in Großbritannien. Die Regierung in London ist empört.

Aus Saudi-Arabien kommen immer wieder Meldungen über die archaische Strafjustiz des Landes. Enthauptung mit dem Schwert, Amputationen als Strafe für Diebstahl, Steinigung bei Ehebruch oder homosexueller Liebe - in kaum einem Land der Welt sind die Strafen drakonischer und grausamer als in dem Königtum auf der Arabischen Halbinsel.

Dass dieses Rechtsverständnis offenbar auch in saudischen Wochenend- und Abendschulen in Großbritannien unterrichtet wird, empört derzeit die britische Regierung. Rund 5000 Schüler zwischen sechs und 18 Jahren besuchen eine der etwa 40 muslimischen Religionsschulen, die Kinder und Jugendliche in religiösen Fragen und in saudi-arabischer Kultur unterweisen.

Wie man Dieben Hände und Füße amputiert und dass sich Juden in Schweine oder Affen verwandeln - derart bizarrer Lehrstoff wird nach Recherchen des Fernsehsenders BBC auch in Großbritannien muslimischen Kindern beigebracht, die in den saudi-arabischen Einrichtungen lernen. Antisemitismus und Schwulenfeindlichkeit "absolut unangemessen" >>> cht/AFP/dpa | Montag, 22. November 2010

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