Netanyahu to Trump: Let’s Vanquish ‘Militant Islam’

JEWISH TELEGRAPHIC AGENCY: WASHINGTON (JTA) – Echoing the language favored by President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told AIPAC that Israel would work with the United States to defeat the “forces of militant Islam.”

“We must be sure that the forces of militant Islam are defeated,” Netanyahu said in a video address Monday morning to the Israel lobby AIPAC’s annual conference in Washington, D.C. “I’m confident the United States and Israel will stand together shoulder to shoulder to ensure light triumphs over darkness.”

Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, drew criticism from Republicans and Trump for not naming Islam as an element in the threat faced by the United States in the Middle East and domestically. Trump, in turn, has drawn criticism for unnecessarily alienating moderate Muslims for emphasizing Islam in phrases like “radical Islamic terrorism.” » | JTA | Monday, March 27, 2017

Inside Story: The Next Osama
Osama bin Laden became the face of militant Islam following the September 11 attacks in New York, and it was these attacks that propelled his organisation to the world's attention. So without bin Laden, what happens to al-Qaeda?

Inside Story, with presenter Darren Jordon, discusses with Imtiaz Gul, a political analyst and author of several books on al-Qaeda including The most dangerous palce; Paul Rogers, a professor of peace studies at the University of Bradford; and Mahan Abedin, director of research at the center for the study of terrorism.

This episode of Inside Story aired from [sic] Wednesday, May 4, 2011.

Recruits Seek Out Al-Qaeda's Deadly Embrace Across a Growing Arc of Jihadist Terror
THE TELEGRAPH: Just two years ago al-Qaeda was believed to be on the back foot. Now the jihadist group is attracting ever more recruits across a growing arc of terror.

Bored, depressed and stuck in a dead-end job, Khaled al-Bawardi. spent just a few hours watching jihadi videos to convince himself that he wanted to fight for militant Islam.

It took another six years in Guantanamo Bay, plus a year in religious rehab in Saudi Arabia, to realise there might be better career options.

“When I was young, I thought these people were angels and we had to follow them,” said Mr Bawardi, formerly Inmate 68 at Guantanamo and one of hundreds of Saudi al Qaeda suspects arrested after the US invasion of Afghanistan. “Now, though, I can see between right and wrong.”

Quietly-spoken, and dressed in a traditional Arab robe and keffiya, Mr Bawardi is an alumnus of the Prince Mohammed bin Nayef Centre for Counselling and Care outside Riyadh, where for the last two years, batches of former Guantanamo inmates have undergone religious “deprogramming” in exchange for their liberty.

With its swimming pool, games rooms and therapy courses such as “10 Steps Toward Positive Thinking”, it resembles a jihadist’s version of London’s Priory clinic. Yet like any rehab programme, it also has its recidivists - and Batch 10, to which Mr Bawardi belonged, is a case in point.

The tenth group of Saudis to be flown back from Guantanamo Bay, no less than five of the original 14 who passed through the programme absconded to neighbouring Yemen to re-embrace terrorism. To the embarrassment of their mentors, and the dismay of Washington, one Batch 10 member, Said al-Shihri, has since re-surfaced as no less than deputy leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the movement’s new Yemen-based branch. The group opened up the latest frontier in the war on terror last month, when it claimed to have groomed the so-called Detroit “Underpants Bomber”, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

Such “relapses” show how, more than eight years since 9-11, al-Qaeda has confounded its doomsayers with both its resilience and its ever-spreading presence. >>> Reporting team: Richard Spencer in Riyadh, Adrian Blomfield in Sana'a, Mike Pflanz in Nairobi, Ben Farmer in Kabul, Colin Freeman in London, and Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent | Sunday, January 31, 2010

Can Barack Obama's Soothing Rhetoric Douse the Muslim Militants' Flames?
THE TELEGRAPH: The President's plea for a new beginning will face formidable obstacles, says Con Coughlin

Metrosexual Barack Obama in Egypt. Photo courtesy of The Telegraph
Short of declaring his intention to convert to Islam, it is difficult to imagine what more Barack Obama might have said during his speech yesterday to demonstrate his seriousness about healing the poisonous rift between the West and the Muslim world.

After invoking the traditional Muslim welcome – "Assalaamu alaykum" or "Peace be upon you" – the President proceeded to explain how, despite his being raised a Christian, his father's family came from generations of Muslims. He acknowledged the enormous debt Western civilisation owes to Islam, from the development of algebra to the elegant refinement of calligraphy, and stressed the Islamic faith's espousal of religious tolerance and racial equality. He reminded his audience at Cairo University that John Adams, one of America's founding fathers, wrote that "the United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquillity of Muslims".

Regarding the more contemporary conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the President articulated a very different set of objectives to those of the previous administration, which had regarded the forceful transformation of Iraq from Ba'athist dictatorship to Western-style democracy as a template to be replicated throughout the Muslim world. Mr Obama has no desire for American troops to be kept abroad a day longer than necessary. While conceding that Iraq was a far better place without Saddam Hussein – an admission he struggled to make during last year's presidential campaign – the president made it clear that he wants to leave Iraq to the Iraqis, and has no desire to establish a permanent presence in Afghanistan.

By any test, Mr Obama's attempt to reverse decades of mounting contempt, anger and violence within the Muslim world towards the West left no stone unturned. It was a skilful attempt to persuade his sceptical audience that America is not, and never will be, at war with Islam. But try telling that to the mullahs in Iran, or the leadership of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, or the millions of other Muslims who have no desire to be dissuaded from their visceral hatred of the West and all that it stands for. >>> By Con Coughlin | Thursday, June 04, 2009

Ian McEwan: I Despise Militant Islam
THE TELEGRAPH: The award-winning novelist Ian McEwan has launched an outspoken attack on militant Islam, accusing it of "wanting to create a society that I detest".

The author said he "despises Islamism" because of its views on women and homosexuality.

But predicting a backlash against his comments, which were made in an Italian newspaper, he insisted he was not a racist.

The writer of Atonement and Enduring Love condemned religious hardliners as he defended his friend, the writer Martin Amis, against charges of racism.

Amis was accused last year of being Islamaphobic after he said that "the Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order".

In an essay written the day before the fifth anniversary of the bombing of New York's Twin Towers, the novelist suggested "strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan", preventing Muslims from travelling, and further down the road, deportation.

In The Age of Horrorism, Amis argued that fundamentalists had won the battle between Islam and Islamism.

McEwan, 60, said it was "logically absurd and morally unacceptable" that writers who speak out against militant Islam are immediately branded racist.

"As soon as a writer expresses an opinion against Islamism, immediately someone on the left leaps to his feet and claims that because the majority of Muslims are dark-skinned, he who criticises it is racist," he said in an interview in Corriere della Sera.

"This is logically absurd and morally unacceptable. Martin is not a racist. And I myself despise Islamism, because it wants to create a society that I detest, based on religious belief, on a text, on lack of freedom for women, intolerance towards homosexuality and so on - we know it well." Ian McEwan: I Despise Militant Islam >>> By Nicole Martin, Digital and Media Correspondent | June 22, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Dust Jacket Hardcover, direct from the publishers
The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Paperback, direct from the publishers

The Problem of Militant Islam in Europe

Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)

Militant Islam in Belgium


Mark Alexander (Hardback)
Mark Alexander (Paperback)

Struggle for the Soul of Pakistan
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC: If there is an address, an exact location for the rift tearing Pakistan apart, and possibly the world, it is a spot 17 miles (28 kilometers) west of Islamabad called the Margalla Pass. Here, at a limestone cliff in the middle of Pakistan, the mountainous west meets the Indus River Valley, and two ancient, and very different, civilizations collide. To the southeast, unfurled to the horizon, lie the fertile lowlands of the Indian subcontinent, realm of peasant farmers on steamy plots of land, bright with colors and the splash of serendipitous gods. To the west and north stretch the harsh, windswept mountains of Central Asia, land of herders and raiders on horseback, where man fears one God and takes no prisoners.

This is also where two conflicting forms of Islam meet: the relatively relaxed and tolerant Islam of India, versus the rigid fundamentalism of the Afghan frontier. Beneath the surface of Pakistan, these opposing forces grind against each other like two vast geologic plates, rattling teacups from Lahore to London, Karachi to New York. The clash between moderates and extremists in Pakistan today reflects this rift, and can be seen as a microcosm for a larger struggle among Muslims everywhere. So when the earth trembles in Pakistan, the world pays attention. Struggle for the Soul of Pakistan: The nation's efforts to straddle the fault line between moderate and militant Islam offer a cautionary tale for the post-9/11 world

Mark Alexander

The Jihad Must Be Stopped, But Time Is Tight
FINANCIAL TIMES: Editorial - It was perfectly forseeable, and indeed predicted, that the US-led invasion of Iraq, far from striking a decisive blow against terrorism, would proliferate militant Islamism all over the Arab and Muslim worlds, from where a new generation of jihadis would strike into Europe and the west. The roll-call of atrocities, from Casablanca to Istanbul, Bali to Mumbai, Riyadh to Amman, London to Madrid, is bloody indeed. Now, however, jihadi extremism is sprouting like poisonous mushrooms in the darkness enveloping the Middle East.

It is not just that all America’s enemies – al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Iran, Hizbollah and Hamas – have been strengthened by the policies of the US and its allies. The totalitarian jihadism peddled by Osama bin Laden and his growing following is emerging in new chapters all over the Middle East, including in places it has never before been seen. Time is short to halt spread of Jihadism (more)

Mark Alexander