Glimpses of Sanity's Restoration in the UK

Al-Qaeda Member Turned MI6 Spy

‘Deradicalisation’ of Terrorists Doesn’t Work

Kurt Zindulka
Breitbart London


A former member of al-Qaeda turned MI6 spy said that there “is no such thing as a rehabilitated jihadist” and that efforts by the British authorities to deradicalise convicted terrorists will not work.

Aimen Dean, who joined the Mujahideen at the age of fifteen and was later recruited into al-Qaeda by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who helped mastermind the September 11th terrorist attacks in New York, said that he doesn’t “believe in deradicalisation”.

The former terrorist, who went on to work as a spy for the British intelligence service MI6, told The Telegraph that Islamist terrorists are “extremely treacherous” and that if they don’t confess and help to do “damage” to their jihadist cause of their own volition like he did, “you can’t trust them.”

“The only way [a jihadist] can demonstrate that they’ve renounced violent extremism is if they have sung like a canary and provided damaging intelligence on the networks that recruited them,” said Dean.

Amazing Grace Versus Stunning Disgrace

Bowing The Knee to Baal and Molech

The following provides an excerpt from a much longer piece, entitled Something Wicked This Way Comes: The de-Christianization of America and What a Post-Christian America Will Look Like Without Revival written by Larry Taunton.

The entire article is an excellent piece and warrants repeated reading.  The excerpt below gives a sense of the much longer piece.  We have reproduced the excerpt in part because of the arresting insights it gives to former British PM, Tony Blair vs Barack Obama.  Taunton writes:

In the secular European model, as in the Roman Pantheon, all religious “truths” are declared to be equally valid, provided all bend the knee to the ultimate truth, the State. And just as with Rome, Christianity, by its very nature, subverts any government with these ambitions. One finds this rebellious spirit in the Decalogue: “That shalt have no other gods before me.” As I explained in an interview with Fox News’ John Stossel, in the biblical worldview, the state is a temporal institution meant to serve man, an eternal being. In the progressive model, this is reversed: man, a temporal being, serves the eternal state.

Nowhere have I seen these two diametrically opposed worldviews on display more than at the National Prayer Breakfast (NPB) in 2009.

Islamic Foundations Shaking

Gamechange!

World’s largest Islamic organisation drops legal category of “infidel” in historic decision

The Barnabas Fund

Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the Indonesian Muslim political party and world’s largest moderate Muslim movement, has made a significant break with Islamic conservatism in an unprecedented decision to abolish the legal category of “infidel” (kafir) for non-Muslims.

The groundbreaking move, apparently aimed at sweeping away Islamic doctrines often used by extremists to justify terrorism, was first announced at the NU national conference in West Java earlier in 2019.

Around 20,000 Muslim scholars gathered to create and endorse a new Islamic legal framework (fiqh). The new rulings include a raft of changes embracing the modern definition of nation state, instead of a caliphate, and recognising all as “fellow citizens”, irrespective of their religion or ethnicity, with equal rights and obligation to obey modern national laws.

Kafir has become a very derogatory and insulting term for non-Muslims. In classical Islamic law they are to be killed. Christians and Jews, “the people of the book”, have dhimmi status which means they are not to be killed so long as they submit themselves to the Islamic authorities and follow a number of demeaning and humiliating regulations that show their second-class status.

The decrees speak of the obligation of Muslims to “foster peace rather than wage war” wherever there is conflict in the world between Muslim and non-Muslim populations.

Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim nation and the NU claims to have more than 90 million members. Its revisions of Islamic doctrine and legal rulings are expected to reverberate throughout the Muslim world.

Standing with Islam in New Zealand

Things Are Not Always What They Seem

There has been a lot of interest in Islam's presence in New Zealand, post the Christchurch massacres.  How may the people of God exploit this has become an interesting issue.  For one thing, it's a good opportunity for Christians to get their theology straight on a few issues.

It is helpful to distinguish "ordinary" Islam from "radical" or "conservative" or "extremist" Islam.  The fact is that "ordinary" Islam in New Zealand does not take the Koran, the hadith, or Sharia law all that seriously.  True, "ordinary" Islam may refer to the Koran and the hadith and recite texts as part of their rituals.  But in reality they do not call for, nor appear to believe in, marital polygamy, for example.  They do not appear to believe in cutting off the hands of thieves.  They do not practise Islamic divorce where the declaration of the husband  "I divorce you" is said to constitute a bona-fide divorce.  They do not practise genocide, nor wish to be associated with violent acts done in the name of Allah such as those seen in the Middle East and Central Africa.

In many ways they may be be called "nominal" Muslims--in the same way that several decades ago, most New Zealanders considered themselves to be Christians.  They were Christians in name only, but who rarely practised their faith in the day to day.  Many professing Muslims are like this, we believe--when one considers what the Koran, the hadith, and Sharia Law actually teach.

Right On the Money!

Leading Muslim cleric says Islamophobia a result of Islamic extremism and not racism

---

3 April 2019

The senior member of the world’s biggest Muslim organisation has insisted that Islamophobia is not rooted in racism and that the distrust of Muslims in many countries is a result of Islamist extremism and terrorism throughout the world.

Yahya Cholil Staquf, the secretary-general of Indonesia’s Nahdlatul Ulama movement, which claims to have more than 90 million adherents, wrote in an article in Britain’s Daily Telegraph saying that the traditional Muslim mindset needed to change.

He called for a rejection of Islamic orthodoxy, condemning it as “obsolete and problematic” and “fuelling violence on both sides”.

Yahya Cholil Staquf, secretary-general of the world’s largest Muslim movement, believes Islamic extremism based on “obsolete” religious orthodoxy is fuelling Islamophobia

The influential cleric wrote that the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims was “factually incorrect” in linking the definition of the word “Islamophobia” to racism, and that it was “counter-productive” to do so.

“The truth, we recognise, is that jihadist doctrine, goals and strategy can be traced to specific tenets of orthodox, authoritative Islam and its historic practice. This includes those portions of sharia that promote Islamic supremacy, encourage enmity towards non-Muslims and require the establishment of a caliphate. It is these elements – still taught by most Sunni and Shiite institutions – that constitute a summons to perpetual conflict,” he wrote.

Staquf stated that Brenton Tarrant’s murder spree, which killed 50 people  at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on 15 March, was part of an “ancient cycle of violence” and that the killer shared a “historical framework” with many Muslims that went back almost 1,400 years. He explained the traditional Islamic teaching that “Muslims and non-Muslims are and shall remain in a state of permanent conflict, until the end of time (according to Islamists) or the disappearance of Islam (according to advocates of a ‘counter-jihad’).”

“If Muslims do not address the key tenets of Islamic tradition that encourage this violence, anyone – at any time – can harness them to defy what they claim to be illegitimate laws and butcher their fellow citizens, whether they live in the Islamic world or the West. This is what links so many current events, from Syria to the streets of London,” he added.

It Could Have Been Us . . .

Standing With Muslims

Much has been made of Brenton Tarrant's hatred of Muslims--a hatred that was so extreme, he just had to murder fifty men, woman and children just to make sure everybody got his depraved point.

But why this hatred of Islamic folk?  Is it because they worship on a Friday--thereby, unsettling Jews and Christians who worship on a different weekly holy day?  Or is it because Muslims prostrate themselves on the floor when worshipping, and Christians do not?  Or is it because they separate men and women in public worship, whereas Christians do not (although orthodox Jews do)? Or is it because Islamic women wear scarves, despite the fact millions of Christian women replicate the practice? 

None of the above.  In his manifesto, we are told, Tarrant hates Muslims because of their fecundity and large families.  It violates, he explains, the fundamental necessity of reducing the human population which threatens the ecosystem.  In order to save the planet Tarrant thinks Muslim families should be attacked and killed because there are just far too many of them with large families.

World's Apart

Christianity Versus Islam

True and False Disciples

A correspondent commenting on this blog observed recently that "there is no radical Islam; there is just Islam".

When we compare this to Christianity, most Christian folk would understand the following statement: "there are two types of Christians: genuine Christians and nominal Christians."  This statement is consistent with biblical teaching.  Nominal Christians (literally) are Christians in name only.  They are well represented by those who tick the "Christian" option on the national census papers.  Yet that tick is about the extent of their involvement with, faith in, and commitment  and loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Genuine Christians, on the other hand, are actual disciples of Christ and servants of Christ.  They hold Him as their highest authority.  They worship Him as God, follow Him as their Lord and leader.  They believe the Bible is His inerrant revelation and command-and-control centre for their life, faith, and service.  Genuine Christians live for His glory.  Genuine Christians are found in every Christian church and denomination on the planet, although not every adherent in every church is a genuine Christian.  Far from it, in some cases.

A similar, though different assessment can be made of Islam.

Australian PM Clear; Islamic Leaders Equivocate

Australian PM Calls out ‘Radical, Violent, Extremist Islam’

Muslim Community Demands Apology

William West
Breitbart News


Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison called out “radical, violent, extremist Islam that opposes our very way of life” the day after an Islamic State-inspired jihadist carried out a terror attack in Melbourne. He was immediately told to apologise by Muslim leaders.

Somalian-born Hassan Khalif Shire Ali attacked bystanders with a knife on Friday, claiming the life of one person and injuring two others in an attack claimed by Islamic State.  One witness claimed Ali was yelling “allahu akbar” and is believed to be known to counter-terrorism agencies, the Melbourne Age reports.

SBS reports Mr. Morrison said while he supported religious freedom, religious extremism must be called out.  “Radical, violent, extremist Islam that opposes our very way of life,” he said in a speech on Saturday. “Religious extremism takes many forms around the world and no religion is immune from it.  But here in Australia, we would be kidding ourselves if we did not call out the fact that the greatest threat of religious extremism in this country is the radical and dangerous ideology of extremists.”

Support For Boko Haram Fading

Bitter Fruits

We have seen this pattern before.  Extreme (albeit doctrinally faithful) Islamic groups practising their religion end up turning many adherents and followers away from their faith.  The latest evidence is Boko Haram's declining support in Nigeria.

Brutal acts at the hands of Boko Haram jihadis are leading Muslims to abandon their faith in the capital of Nigeria’s Borno State, the birthplace of the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL)-linked terrorist group, an African media outlet reported on Wednesday.

“After a decade of fighting, many in Maiduguri are all the more horrified by the indiscriminate brutality that Boko Haram has committed in the name of Islam,” the African Argument news outlet reported.  “That violence is what led me to believe they were bad for religion,” Ibrahim Suleiman, a resident of the Borno capital of Maiduguri, told the media outlet. “They preached hatred and divided people … Their jihad has failed.   People are boycotting the mosques,” he added. “People are afraid of the bombs, but they also no longer trust religious leaders as before.””  [Breitbart News]

Islam is at root a religion of violence.

Law Over Culture

Forced Marriage Conviction

Awakening UK Courts Returning To The Rule of Law

BreitbartLondon


LONDON (AP) — A British jury has convicted a couple of attempting to force their teenage daughter to marry her first cousin in Bangladesh. 

The 19-year-old from Leeds in northern England said her parents used verbal and physical abuse to try to get her to marry the relative. The teenager eventually alerted British consular officials and was rescued days before the wedding.

A jury at Leeds Crown Court found the couple guilty Tuesday of forced marriage and of using violence, threats or coercion.  The parents, who can’t be named to protect their daughter’s identity, are due to be sentenced June 18.

Last week, a Birmingham woman was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison for forcing her teenage daughter to marry a relative in Pakistan —the first successful prosecution of its type in England.

Why Has Gaza Got All Wound Up Again?

Human Shields

Gaza is in the news once again.  It is not the first time.  It will almost certainly not be the last.  What we see on display--as we have so many times before--is the ruthless, hate-filled machinations of Hamas, using its own population as human shields.  

To be sure, when the citizens of Gaza get on the bus and ride to the border fence with Israel, then start storming the fence, they are face to face with deadly force that could well kill them.  But what you don't see is armed Hamas guerrilla fighters up front and centre.  That is not the objective.  Their objective has a propaganda point to make.  Their citizens are little more than "useful idiots".  The objective of Hamas is to isolate Israel and turn the rest of the world into an Israel-hating phalanx in the hope that Israel will be ultimately be destroyed.

Just how much the civilian bus-riders believe in Hamas and its violent extremism is hard to tell. What is clear us us is that Hamas could not care a fig for the citizens it is supposed to protect and nurture.  Using them as human shields and front-line cannon fodder does not really fit the bill of protecting and nurturing.

Too Good To Be True

Saudi Church-Building Deal Dismissed as “Fake news”

The Barnabas Fund


Claims that Saudi Arabia had agreed with the Vatican to allow the building of churches for the first time in its history were dismissed as “fake news” this week. News reports in the Egyptian press claimed on 4 May that Saudi Arabia had made a deal with the Vatican to construct churches for “Christian citizens”.

But the Vatican later denied any such deal had been made, and the Egypt Independent, the original source of the story, removed the article from its website.

The paper had originally stated that the Muslim World League, an organisation funded by the Saudi Government and which promotes Islamic teachings, had signed the deal with Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, President of the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue.

The report did not state whether any churches would potentially be built in Saudi Arabia itself.

The country follows a strict Wahhabi interpretation of Islam and it is impossible for anyone living in the country to openly practise Christianity. There are hundreds of thousands of Christians from other nations, such as the Philippines, other parts of Asia, or African countries, who are living and working in Saudi Arabia. But they must meet in private homes to worship, and risk harassment, arrest and deportation if they are caught doing so.

The number of Saudi citizens who are Christians is known only to God. As converts from Islam they are liable to execution for apostasy, and therefore most are secret believers.

Islamic, Secular, and Christian Marriage

A Cultural Lightning Rod

Islam has problems.  Lots of them.  If any want an easy-to-read account of Islam, we recommend Patrick Sookhdeo's A Pocket Guide to Islam.  [Ross Shire: Christian Focus Publications, 2010]  A chapter is dedicated in that brief book to "Women in Islam". 

Since Muhammad had fifteen wives and a number of concubines, it is reasonable to expect that Islamic doctrines on marriage and the family would turn out to be not just unreliable, but wretched.  Not that the secular West has any grounds upon which to criticize Islamic doctrines on marriage and the family.  After all, the secular notion of marriage and family is now so meaningless it has come to include two females and a budgie.

Marriage in Islam is not primarily a man and a woman leaving the homes of their childhoods, and cleaving to each other for life.  Islam permits a man to have up to four wives--and if any displease him, they can be divorced at whim and will, simply by formally uttering to the wife, "I divorce you" three times. So there!  Go tell that to the Registrar of Births, Deaths, and Marriages.

When an Islamic marriage is contracted, it is almost always due to arrangements being made between two families, not two individuals.  Sookhdeo writes:

Muhammad's Hypocrisy

Revelations of Convenience 

According to revelations Muhammad claimed to receive, a Muslim was "entitled" to four wives at a time, and no more.  Except Muhammad, of course, who had special dispensation from Allah to have as many as thirteen.  

To prevent jealousy (in his harem) he spent one night with each of them in turn.  One day it was his wife Hafsa's turn.  She was away visiting her father but then returned unexpectedly.  She was furious to find the Prophet in bed with Mary, the Coptic maid and concubine.  Hafsa reproached him bitterly, threatening to tell the other wives.  Muhammad promised to stay away from the hated Mary if she would keep quiet.  Hafsa, however, confided in Aisha, who also hated Mary.  [Vishal Mangalwadi, The Book That Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 282.]

The scandal spread through the whole harem and Muhammad found himself ostracized.  But not to worry.

Enslaved

Suicide Bombing Is An Attractive Option

Islam ranks as one of the heaviest works-religions in the world.  Consequently, it reduces its acolytes to a form of pervasive slavery.

It is full of duties and instructions on virtually everything.  In order to achieve salvation one is obligated to follow the live out the Five Pillars of the faith.  These are:

• Confession of the faith
• Prayer
• Fasting
• Giving alms
• Pilgrimage to Mecca (at least once in adult life)

These are said to be obligatory duties.  There is no escaping the obligation to perform them.  On top of these there is a long list of other practices said to be necessary and expected to be done.  But they are not said to be obligatory.

There are lots of additional rules, regulations, and practices laid down, for example, as to how each of the Five Pillars are to be performed.  One has to be faithful in carrying all these out because salvation comes by doing them.  Adherents are told they will be saved only if the balance of good deeds outweighs their bad deeds.

When Political Correctness Meets Islamic Schools

Ignoring the Obvious

The UK Government--riddled with political correctness--lumps all faith-based (religious) schools together.  A Christian school falls in the same category as an Islamic school.  No distinctions are made between the two religions.  To make any distinctions would be discriminatory.  Discrimination is a big No No.

When Islamic schools are found to be in breach of government educational guidelines or standards, all schools, including Christian schools, are brought under stricter and stricter controls from the state.  And some (if not many) Islamic schools are way off the mark.

School Teacher  Planned Attacks Against Parliament, Shopping Centres

Obsessed With Islamic State
Oliver J J Lane
BreitbartLondon

A faith school teacher worked to radicalise his students and obsessed over plans to attack major landmarks in the British capital, a London court heard Tuesday.  A self-confessed “Loyal follower” of the Islamic State, 25-year-old Islamic radical Umar Ahmed Haque is standing trial for plotting to attack civilians and officials in London and targeted the Palace of Westminster and its Queen Elizabeth bell tower, and Westfield shopping centre, reports the BBC.

Among his significant list of potential targets were soldiers of the Guards, the iconic troops which protect the monarch in London, members of the police, diplomats, journalists, members of street protest groups Britain First and the English Defence League, and even other Muslims from the Shia denomination.  The Old Bailey also heard his physical targets included the London transport system, court buildings, and banks.

Now, at first glance, one may have assumed that this teacher was rogue and that his terrorist plots were clandestine, in no way integrated with his day job.  But no.  This teacher was openly promoting eschatological Islamic violence to his students.

Islam: Forcing Children to Marry; Authorities Complicit

Girls as Young as Nine Are Trafficked into Forced Marriages in Australia

Following the Example and Teaching of Muhammad

Victoria Friedman
Breitbart London

More than 50 girls in New South Wales were trafficked into forced marriages to older men, with some ‘brides’ being as young as nine years old.

Australia’s Seven News obtained documents from the Australian Federal Police on child marriage in the country. In just two years, a total of 57 children were victims of forced marriage in Australia, with almost all, 51, being from the Sydney area.

The AFP documents included: references to an email from a girl who wrote she was being held against her will and being forced to marry; a situation report with allegations of a forced marriage at the end of the school year; and a human trafficking referral of a girl who was forced to travel outside of Australia and then exploited.

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Muslim Cleric Convicted for Marrying Child Bride in Australia http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/06/08/muslim-cleric-convicted-marrying-child-bride-australia/ …

5:00 AM - Jun 9, 2017

Muslim Cleric Convicted for Marrying Child Bride in Australia

Ibrahim Omerdic has been convicted for marrying a child bride to a much older man under laws prohibiting forced marriage in Melbourne

breitbart.com

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Family and Community Services Minister Pru Goward said that children were under “enormous pressure” from their parents to marry.  The minister said ‘the community’ “does know” that child brides do exist, but they choose to “turn the other cheek”, and ignore it.

My Imam is Better Than Yours

The Crisis of Authority Within Islam

One of the most profound differences between the Christian faith and Islam has to do with the doctrine of perspicacity.  The Christian faith declares that God's revelation to His people is, at root, simple and clear.  The plough-boy can discover understand the core, essential messages of the Scriptures--on his own.

For Islam this is not so.  The believer has no hope of understanding or interpreting the Koran, the hadith, and Sharia without an imam, a teacher.  This explains why it is that what is being declared or taught at particular mosques by particular imams is so significant.  Islam is not a perspicacious faith: it is a hidden and complex religion in which there is no certainty, and no universal clarity.

Can one "get by" in Islam without being tied in to a particular mosque and teaching tradition?  Only if one is content to be nominally Islamic; the fervent believer needs a chosen teacher to make things clear.  Otherwise, all is fog.

The Power of Ancient Doctrines

Islamic Anti-Semitism is "Congenital"

A feature of contemporary Islam is its reflexive hatred of Jews.  Some prominent Islamic political  declare that the Holocaust never happened, or that it did happen and a good thing it was too.  Others get fulfilment by drawing maps of the Middle East, with Israel being emphatically erased off the map.  Still others call for the annihilation of Israel to be a central foreign policy plank and summon the umma to arms to achieve it.

The Left in the West, still addled with long-obsolete notions of Marxist class warfare, find themselves aligned with the Islamic cause because it represents the current "little guy" struggling against "big guy" Western imperialism.  The Left is increasingly showing its solidarity with Islamic ideology.  It increasingly espouses its own form of anti-semitism so as to stand with its Islamic brothers.  Elements in the UK Labour Party provide one example.  President Obama's genuflections and considerateness toward Islam provide another.

And on it goes.  But, why the hatred of Israel and the Jewish people in Islamic doctrine, rhetoric, and eschatology?  According to Efraim Karsh, anti-semitism has deep historical roots, stretching all the way back to Muhammad.

Useful Idiots

It Was Taken For Granted

Author, Doris Lessing who died a few years ago in 2013, at the age of 94 was a celebrated lady-of-letters.  Like many of the "intelligentsia" in Britain, Lessing went through a stage in her early professional life--in her twenties, early thirties--when she joined the Communist Party in the UK.   

Towards the end of her life, she wrote (in Volume 2 of her autobiography, Walking in the Shade) how she rationalised this allegiance at the time.

I decided to join the Communist Party.  And this at a time when my "doubts" had become something like a steady, private torment.  Separate manifestation of the horror that the Soviet Union had become were discussed, briefly, in lowered voices--the equivalent of looking over one's shoulder to see if anyone could hear.  I do not remember one serious, sit-down, in-dept discussion about the implications of what we were hearing.  Rather, sudden burstings into tears: "Oh, it's so horrible."  Sudden storms of accusation: "It's just anti-Soviet propaganda, anyway."  Marital quarrels, even divorces . . . .

The first and main fact, the "mind-set" of those times, was that it was taken for granted capitalism was doomed, was on its way out.