Posted on 11/14/2004 12:26:17 PM PST by No Blue States
ATHENS, Greece - The same day Dutch mourners gathered outside a crematorium for a final goodbye to slain filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, police on the other side of the world made a horrific discovery in a hut: the decapitated body of a Thai laborer.
The two events - in settings as different as tidy and prosperous Holland and a tropical rubber plantation in southern Thailand - bear similarities that suggest new flash points in the global struggle against radical Islam.
A note impaled on Van Gogh's body by the alleged Muslim killer threatened further attacks against Dutch politicians in the name of Islam. The body of the 60-year-old Buddhist worker in Thailand also was found last week with a message: "More will be killed" in revenge for the deaths of 85 Muslim protesters last month in a region with a mounting Islamic insurgency.
"The fault lines are growing," said Fawaz Gerges, a professor of Middle Eastern and International Affairs at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y. "It's not just between the Muslims and non-Muslims. It's also within Islam itself. It's a battle between moderate Muslims and extremist forces that threaten to hijack Islam."
The most recent hot spots zigzag around the atlas - from Liberia in West Africa to the Netherlands to Southeast Asia. They join a growing roster of places already feeling the strains of religious conflict and terrorism along the edges of the Islamic world - regions as diverse as Chechnya, Nigeria, Spain, Central Asia and the Philippines. Even China is worried about separatist sentiment in its vast and mostly Muslim western province of Xinjiang.
"The militant voices on the street are gaining credibility in more and more places," said Gerges. "That's a worrisome trend."
Part of the reason, many Islamic experts say, can be traced to global communications that forge common points of reference such as al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden's defiance or the guerrilla attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq. But even more powerful rallying cries come from firebrand imams and opinion-shapers: that Islam is under threat and it's the duty of followers to take a stand.
In Amsterdam, a moderate imam, Abdel Eillah, feared the scales were tipping in a troubling direction among Muslim immigrants in Europe who fail to adapt.
"When I hear young men praise violence in the name of Islam, I fear for my faith and I fear for the world. We must fight it before it's too late," he said after the Nov. 2 slaying of Van Gogh, whose work included harsh commentary against traditional Islam. "I didn't like what Van Gogh said, but he should not pay with blood."
Dutch police moved sharply against suspected Islamic radicals following the murder. Last Wednesday, special forces stormed a house in The Hague following a 15-hour armed standoff. The two suspects captured - among more than a dozen detained since the Van Gogh slaying - are under investigation for possible links to terrorist cells accused of plots in Morocco and elsewhere.
New laws were proposed to give Dutch authorities greater powers to hold and investigate suspected terrorists.
"Extremism is reaching the roots of our democracy," the Netherlands' prime minister, Jan Peter Balkenende, said last week in Parliament.
Or as former U.S. ambassador Richard Parker terms it: "The common language of Islamic militancy is growing louder."
"This is not something that happened overnight. It's a feeling of injustice among Muslims that goes back decades," said Parker, who served as a diplomat in Lebanon, Algeria and Morocco. "But now it's become much more legitimate to say that violence and 'holy war' is the proper way."
The Van Gogh killing and backlash has captured headlines. But the bloodshed in southern Thailand could mark a resurgence of a long-simmering Muslim insurgency and, some officials fear, fertile ground for Islamic terrorists.
Thailand's Muslim minority has complained for decades about economic and social discrimination by Buddhist authorities. Violence subsided in the 1990s after government concessions for greater funds and Muslim political representation. But the calm began to erode in recent years.
In April, more than 100 Islamic militiamen were killed in raids on security posts. On Oct. 25, at least 85 Muslims died when security forces dispersed a demonstration outside a police station. Most of the victims suffocated or were crushed after being packed into army trucks.
More than 500 people have been killed this year in three southern Thai provinces, including attacks targeting Buddhists in possible bids to drive out non-Muslims. On Friday, suspected Islamic insurgents gunned down a non-Muslim boxing instructor.
Authorities are investigating possible links between separatist groups and Islamic terrorist organizations such as Jemaah Islamiyah, which seeks a pan-Islamic state in Southeast Asia. It's blamed for attacks including the 2002 bombing in Bali that claimed 202 lives.
Hambali, accused of being Jemaah Islamiyah's operations chief and bin Laden's alleged point man in Asia, was arrested in Thailand last year and it's unclear how much the group has rebounded.
Thitinan Pongsudhirak, an assistant professor of international relations at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University, believes the strong retaliation from authorities "can only galvanize the Muslim insurgency in the south."
"We have not yet seen escalation," he said. "But I still think we may be headed from bad to worse."
He speculated that the attacks could move out of the south to hit Thailand's vital tourism industry.
"The gruesome fashion of these (beheadings) by presumably Muslim assailants ... is not normal violence," said Pongsudhirak. "It is driven by deep animosity and hatred."
In West Africa, a rare outbreak of Christian-Muslim violence in Liberia last month stunned authorities and drew comparisons to nearby Nigeria, where more than 10,000 have been killed in sectarian clashes since 1999.
At least 16 people were killed and more than 200 others injured in Liberia's capital, Monrovia, where five churches and two mosques were set ablaze. U.N. troops stepped in to restore order.
"We are seeing more tears in the fabric between Muslims and non-Muslims," said Mohammad Khalil, who researches Islam and modern society at the Middle East Institute in Washington. "In too many minds, violence has replaced dialogue; calls for separation have replaced efforts at coexistence. These are not good signs."
Maybe elections and freedom in Iraq could have a positive impact on the overall problem.
Maybe people with freedom, jobs and money would rather enjoy living life as opposed to killing and to die for allah. I have much to learn on the subject, just speculating.
That is certainly a positive step...but it sounds a lot like pulling up weeds one at a time from a thousand acre farm.
Like Churchill said:
A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants.
Well, it looks like the truth is about to put its pants on...one way or another.
There is no global interest in this (the left does not mind the oppression of people in Islamic nations but is fearful of Christians in elected office in America) but the only way to be able to crack down on violent muslims is to out them. The only way to convert muslims away from Islam is to permit the open practice of other faiths.
Nobody said this was going to be easy or quick but it is NECESSARY for safety around the globe. The 21st Century Crusades do not have to be fought violently but there should be no reluctance to push back. The end goal is the same; the erradication of this death cult that made a serious stab into Europe hundreds of years ago.
Imam today still believe that slavery is legal (and cannot BE outlawed as it is permitted by the Koran). Slaves must be seized in jihad though and doled out in an Islamic terroritory (thus the distinction that Islam IS a political system and not strictly a religion).
Spain was a Western Islamic capital although it is no longer. I WILL NOT see them stake out more empires in the West.
It's called infiltration. It happened while the rest of us weren't even aware that it was happening (which means they had a plan). Muslims are now in every country in the world. How do you fight the enemy when he is everywhere and in all countries? The thing to do would be to stop it NOW. Deport all Muslims from all countries. That's the only sane thing to do. But, of course, we won't. No country will. And so, the future looks pretty bleak.
10/25/2004
The following are excerpts from an interview with Saudi cleric Saleh Al-Munajid
Interviewer: The Muslims are unhappy with democracy because of its form in Western societies. Liberty and human rights make some Muslims angry. Why does this term make them angry?
Saleh Al-Munajid: If you compare Un-Islamic regimes, some of them would be bad and the others would be worse. It is a known fact. For instance, if you compare between a tyrannical, evil, oppressing regime and Western democracy – which is better? Western democracy is better. But is it our dream come true? No!
Take the issue of elections, for instance. What do you think of a voting system like the American one that gives a physician, an intellectual, an astronaut, an intelligent person and the head of the family, a vote that has the same weight as the vote of an ignorant, a fool, an idiot, an imbecile, a hippy, a bum, an unemployed man, who has no diploma, culture, or brains. What is this?!
Interviewer: What should we do then? This globalization influences (Muslim) identity and imposes the English language, for example. Should we resist this globalization? Must we reject this globalization altogether?
Saleh Al-Munajid: Globalization stems from our religion. Allah sent Muhammad out of mercy. He sent him for all mankind. Therefore, it is our duty to globalize the world around Islam and call the world to join Islam: "you may warn the Mother of Cities and those around her." This means the entire world. This religion was sent to the entire world. Globalization, in principle…
Interviewer: We are the source of globalization.
Saleh Al-Munajid: We are the source of it. The problem is that globalization now comes from the others to us. Therefore, we are being globalized, and not globalizing others. We want to turn the tables.
My brother, there is the crab haircut, the lion haircut, the mouse haircut… They didn't leave out a single haircut. Nowadays, we hear amazing things. It's no longer just the barbershop chair. They are leisure salons and coiffure – coiffure which is explicitly for men. They dye hair and put on makeup, as the viewer had mentioned, and there is the third sex, and the fourth... Westernization is very clear. Today when a young man leaves a barbershop you can't tell which planet or country he came from, because of the haircuts and makeup. Some leave the barbershop with hair that looks like a thorn-bush, others look like a jinn. Allah said about the Zaqoum tree (in hell) that it looks like the heads of demons, and this young man's head also looks like the head of demons. This is Westernization and the loss of identity.
Let them try that in an American red state. Unlike the blue states, we're armed.
...thx
Either Allah dies or civilization dies; that's becoming clearer each year. These 7th-century morons are unable to get a clue about anything beyond their own brainwashing. Either they stop their crap, or it's Crusades 2.0; I don't think they're going to stop.
I highly urge you to read "The Prophet of Doom," available to read free on the net or to purchase at Amazon.com. It is very telling and examines/evaluates Islam and where 'the prophet' stole and manipulated writings from the Talmud and the Bible. Islam only wants one thing: elimination of the Jews (Israel). The U.S. and her allies are the only nations in the way. Old Europe, except for Britain, and who knows how long Tony Blair can stand against the tide, is dead. The European Union will emerge (the 10 original lead members + others) stronger as they have embraced secularlism and socialism. The signs are here, the signs are here. Thank God Bush is in office, and we will FIGHT!
Yeah, shining a light on the sub-human treatment of women by the extremist element of Islam is harsh commentary according to the AP. Yeah, whatever....
So for all the idiots who said 9/11 happened because we "deserved it" should obviously think again. This is heppening all around the world and people better wake up.
There are some surveys that show that 10% of muslims identify themselves as islamists. So that would up the number tenfold.
There are 4 kinds of muslims:
`1. Murderers/terrorists - These are the soldiers of islam, the ones who go out and do the bidding of the clerics, who teach hatred in the schools.
2. Enablers - These are the muslims who finance terrorists, who finance madrassas, who provide fake documents, who provide shelter and transport.
3. Apologists - These are the muslims who say that the terrorist acts were justified because everyone treats muslims so badly.
4. Deny-ers - These are the muslims that deny that muslims commit terrorist acts and claim that islam is a religion of peace.
99.999% of muslims fit into these categories. The few who do not fall in these categories are too insignificant to make a difference. This is all part of an orchestrated effort to present islam as a religion when in fact it is a terrorist cult intent on destroying all that is not muslim.
China's in the catbird seat.
We're praising the "religion of peace", and China's singin' "I wanna be aroun' to pick up the pieces".
Islam needs reform and more non-Arabic influence. It is too Arab oriented. To read the Koran, you have to know Arabic and not everyone speaks it. Many Muslims probably have never read the Koran. Sadly, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin are probably very happy about this.
Says it all does it not.
But China is about to get right in the middle of things if they cut a deal with Iran for oil.
I wouldn't let go of worrying over China just yet.
Once China is in Iran, any action by Israel or the US to stop the development of nuclear weapons could be seen as an attach on the interests of China.
Nukes...a sure cure against radical Islamist extremism...
Yup.
Make that a "k" in attach
Sorry for the delay, I drove home from work.
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