Thursday, August 20, 2015
The Watchman: Sunni And Shia Jihadists Battle
North American Jews Return To Israel
Schwere Krawalle in Flüchtlingsheim
In einem Flüchtlingsheim im thüringischen Suhl ist es am Mittwochabend zu Ausschreitungen gekommen. Nach Angaben der Polizei attackierte eine Gruppe von 20 Asylbewerbern einen Mitbewohner wegen eines Streits um Glaubensfragen. » | syd/dpa/AFP | Donnerstag, 20. August 2015
Cairo Blast: Isis-linked Group Claims Responsibility
Isis-affiliated militants in Egypt have claimed responsibility for an explosion at a Cairo security building that left six police wounded.
The claim came in a message circulated on social media by the Sinai Province of the Islamic State, which has claimed a series of similar bombings in Cairo and elsewhere in Egypt.
The blast happened just before 2am close to the national security agency building in Shubra al-Khaima, a neighbourhood on the northern edge of the Egyptian capital. The sound of the explosion echoed across Cairo, rattling windows and waking residents miles from the blast.
Egypt’s interior ministry said in a statement that a car had exploded outside the security compound. The assailant fled the scene on a motorcycle, it said. » | Jared Malsin in Cairo | Thursday, August 20, 2015
Isil Murders Scholar Who Hid Treasures of Palmyra
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| Khaled Asad, the Director of Antiquities and Museum in Palmyra |
Militants from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) have killed a revered archaeologist in the Syrian city of Palmyra, after he refused to give up the secrets of its ancient treasures.
Syrian state antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim said on Tuesday that 82-year-old Khaled al-Asaad, longtime director of the Palmyra museum, was beheaded in a local square before his body was placed on display in public.
The archaeologist had been detained and interrogated for over a month by Isil, Mr Abdulkarim told Reuters. The jihadists had wanted to extract information about the whereabouts of precious Palmyra antiquities which had been removed as the extremist group advanced on the city. » | Louisa Loveluck | Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Pope Francis Poses with 'Dialogue for Malvinas' Sign
Pope Francis has posed with a propaganda poster backing Argentina's call for dialogue with Britain over the Falkland Islands.
The move risked angering residents of both the Falklands and Britain, which has always considered its sovereignty over the islands beyond question.
The Argentine pontiff, who has previously refused to get involved in the disagreement, was visited at the Vatican by an activist from the "Dialogue for Malvinas" campaign.
The activist presented the Pope with a sign reading: "It's time for Argentina and Britain to discuss the Falklands."
Britain and the Falkland Islanders have long rejected calls for dialogue, with the argument that there is nothing to discuss.
The islanders voted overwhelmingly to remain British in a March 2013 referendum. Read on and comment » | Harriet Alexander | Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Donald Trump to the Pope: 'Isil Wants to Get You'
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| Donald Trump |
Donald Trump says he would not allow the Pope to criticise capitalism if they were to meet face to face, and would scare him into silence by reminding him that violent jihadis of the Islamic State want to invade the Vatican.
It was a typically bombastic Trump moment delivered during a wide-ranging interview in which he took on Hillary Clinton, underlined his views on illegal immigrants and said he would allow women to fight in American special forces. » | Rob Crilly, New York | Thursday, August 20, 2015
The Crucial Role of Women within Islamic State
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| Manchester twins Zahra and Salma Halane travelled to join US in 2014; they both married IS fighters but were widowed by the end of the year |
Islamic State, also known as Isis, has a dual attitude to women.
On the one hand it treats those it considers heretics as almost sub-human, as commodities to be traded and given away as rewards to jihadist fighters.
Shocking footage from a modern-day sex-slave market in Mosul, Iraq, shows militants discussing prices for Yazidi girls, captured last year, many of them underage.
At least 2,000 Yazidi women are still being held, only a few have escaped.
'Corner stones'
"They put us up for sale," said one who did recently escape. "Many groups of fighters came to buy. Whatever we did, crying, begging, made no difference."
But on the other hand, IS has big plans for Muslim women who migrate to their territory to play a key role in building the so-called caliphate.
"They want women to join them," says Dr Katherine Brown, an expert in Islamic Studies at King's College London.
"They see women as the corner stones of the new state and they want citizens.
"What is really interesting is that people talk of IS as being a death cult, but that is the opposite of what they are trying to create... they want to create a new state... and they very much want women to join that as part of this utopian politics."
That utopia includes a treatise published in Arabic in February, setting out a code of conduct that harks back 1,400 years.
It is aimed primarily at Arab women in the Gulf states and the wider Middle East and includes passages that are incomprehensible to most people in the West:
"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," the treatise says. » | Frank Gardner, BBC Security correspondent | Thursday, August 20, 2015
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Slovakia Refuses to Accept Muslim Migrants
Slovakia has said it will not accept any Muslims under an EU scheme to share migrants more evenly between member states.
“We want to help Europe with the migration issue. We could take 800 Muslims but we don't have any mosques in Slovakia so how can Muslims be integrated if they are not going to like it here?” Ivan Metik, an interior ministry spokesman, said.
Slovakia is to host 200 migrants under an EU plan to redistribute 40,000 away from Italy and Greece, which are overwhelmed with the numbers arriving across the Mediterranean.
The Slovakian government said it plans to ask the migrants their religion on arrival.
The European Commission expressed its displeasure at the Slovakian plans. “We act here in the spirit of the treaty, which prevents any form of discrimination,” Annika Breidthardt, a spokesman, said.
While it is legal to prioritise Christians who are at extra risk of persecution because of their religion, turning away Muslims because there are no mosques would be discriminatory and of dubious legality, according to one EU source. » | Matthew Holehouse, Brussels, and Justin Huggler, Berlin | Wednesday, August 19, 2015
IS-Extremisten köpfen Chef-Archäologen von Palmyra
Die Terrormiliz Islamischer Staat (IS) hat nach Angaben des staatlichen Leiters für Antiquitäten, Mamoun Abdul Karim, den 82-jährigen Chef-Archäologen der antiken Wüstenstadt Palmyra in Syrien geköpft. Khaled Asaad hatte seit mehr als 50 Jahren die Forschungsarbeiten an den Ruinen des Unesco-Welterbes geleitet.
Nach Angaben seiner Familie wurde er vor über einem Monat von den Dschihadisten verschleppt. Zur Machtdemonstration wurde sein enthaupteter Leichnam an einer Straßenkreuzung der Stadt zur Schau gestellt und ein Foto davon im Internet veröffentlicht. » | Reuters/rct | Mittwoch, 19. August 2015
Left for Dead: Afghan Translator 'Abandoned' by UK Killed Trying to Escape Taliban
‘It’s a Real Massacre, But the World Is Silent’: Up to 200 People Killed by ISIS in Sirte, Libya
Germany to Receive 750,000 Asylum Seekers This Year, Reports Claim
The number of people seeking asylum in Germany is predicted to soar to 750,000 this year according to reports, amid warnings by the United Nations that it and Sweden are unfairly bearing the brunt of Europe’s refugee burden.
Government sources told the business daily Handelsblatt the figures, which are due to be released by the interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, on Wednesday, are far higher than previously expected.
The leak came as the EU’s border agency, Frontex, said 107,500 migrants were detected at its frontiers last month, three times as many as in July 2014. » | Kate Connolly in Berlin | Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Muhammad Really Is the Single Most Popular Boys’ Name in England and Wales
Muslim Drag Queens: Stars of Channel 4 Show Brave Death Threats to Appear in Film
“I’m gay, I’m Muslim, I’m a drag queen, I’m British and Pakistani,” said Asif Quraishi, Britain’s first out and proud Muslim drag queen who performs under the glamorous alter ego, Asifa Lahore. “People say these things shouldn’t fit together but hey, here I am.”
Now Quaraishi and his fellow artistes have been promised police protection amid fears that a Channel 4 documentary shining a spotlight on the “hidden” community of gay British Asians could provoke a violent response.
Quraishi, 33, from Southall, West London, performs a provocative act in which he strips off a Burka and has received death threats from fellow Muslims.
The winner of the LGBT award at Attitude magazine’s Pride ceremony, Quraishi estimates that there are 150 drag queens across Britain who, are devout Muslims, like himself.
The documentary, Muslim Drag Queens, broadcast on 24 August, follows three members of a largely clandestine gay Asian community who are challenging taboos within Islam through their embrace of cross-dressing exhibitionism. » | Adam Sherwin | Media Correspondent | Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Isil Calls On Supporters to Fight 'Traitor' Turkey
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| The Turkish-speaking jihadist, flanked by two others, accuses Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan of permitting the U.S. to "bombard the people of Islam" |
Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil) has publicly called on its supporters to attack Turkey for the first time, after Ankara allied itself with Washington against the jihadist group.
In a video issued on Monday, an Isil spokesman calls Turkish president Recep Tayep Erdogan a "tyrant traitor" and exhorts its followers inside the country to rise up “wherever they are and however they can” against the government.
In the video, entitled “A Message to Turkey”, Isil accuses Mr Erdogan of being allied to the “American Crusaders, the caretakers of the Jews,” and the “criminal atheists” of the Kurdish militant faction the Kurdistan Workers’ Union, or PKK. » | Nabih Bulos | Tuesday, August 18, 2015
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