Posted on 07/30/2012 12:56:40 PM PDT by NYer
"The long-term strategic objective of these Islamist organizations is to destabilize and democratically and liberally elected states and to influence political decision-making." — Report, German State of Lower Saxony
The German state of Lower Saxony has published a practical guide to extremist Islam to help citizens identify tell-tale signs of Muslims who are becoming radicalized.
Security officials say the objective of the document is to mitigate the threat of home-grown terrorist attacks by educating Germans about radical Islam and encouraging them to refer suspected Islamic extremists to the authorities.
The move reflects mounting concern in Germany over the growing assertiveness of Salafist Muslims, who openly state that they want to establish Islamic Sharia law in the country and across Europe.
The 54-page document, "Radicalization Processes in the Context of Islamic Extremism and Terrorism," which provides countless details about the Islamist scene in Germany, paints a worrisome picture of the threat of radical Islam there.
The document states: "The threat posed by Islamic terrorist organizations continues apace, and the risk of radicalization and recruitment by Islamists continues unabated. Young Muslims are being courted by Islamist propaganda. The threat level in Western countries has escalated to a higher level. A particular risk increasingly stems from self-radicalized individuals or small groups without formal networks of connections. This poses special problems for law enforcement. The long-term strategic objective of these Islamist organizations is to destabilize democratically and liberally oriented states and to influence political decision-making."
The document continues: "Islamist terrorism poses a significant threat to the internal security of Germany. National security authorities have identified at least 235 Islamists with German citizenship who have sought or received paramilitary training in places such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia. It is assumed that more than half of these individuals have returned to Germany. Of these, approximately ten are currently in prison. There is a very real danger that these individuals have returned to Germany with the aim of committing acts of terrorism."
According to the report, German security agencies estimate that approximately 1,140 individuals living in Germany pose a high risk of becoming Islamic terrorists. The document also states that up to 100,000 native Germans have converted to Islam in recent years, and that "intelligence analysis has found that converts are especially susceptible to radicalization…Security officials believe that converts comprise between five to ten percent of the Salafists."
The document provides a frank assessment of political Islam. It describes Islamism as "a political ideology that disputes the constitutional order of the Federal Republic of Germany. Unlike secular extremist ideologies like Communism or National Socialism, which are not based on religious ideas, Islamism is based on the religion of Islam. At the core, Islamists advocate a politicized form of Islam. Religion for them is not only an individual matter of faith, but Islam is seen as a comprehensive political-religious societal concept. Islamist organizations and movements, despite their differences, all seek to create societies based on the legal system of Sharia. This law divides people according to their beliefs, their gender and their relationship to the Islamic state in different legal categories. It rejects the idea of democratically legitimized governance, particularly by non-Muslims over Muslims, because only Allah is recognized as a sovereign. Thus Islamism, with its strict commitment to Sharia, is directed against the Constitution and the rights and freedoms guaranteed therein, equality and respect for human rights. The Islamic idea of a theocratic state and social system is also opposed to the principle of popular sovereignty and the separation of powers."
The document also includes a list of 26 "possible characteristics of radicalization processes" to help German citizens identify potential radicalization.
Some of the items on the list include: "critical questions about Islam are viewed as an attack on the addressed person or group; questioning certain views on the interpretation of Islam is interpreted as a betrayal of the group; increasingly stringent interpretation of religion; rejection or aggression against anything "Western;" Islam is the solution, the so-called Western world is seen as the cause for all the problems; dualistic worldview, applying a strict friend-foe schema; repeating Islamist slogans; religious strictness is required of the entire society; Muslims with different orientation (that is, Shiites) are called infidels."
Other items on the list include: "visiting radical mosques or Islamic or preachers; participating in religious seminaries with radical preachers; solidifying contacts with other radical extremists and individuals; visiting Islamist websites; watching films that promote violent jihad; increasing willingness to aggressively and violently enforce religious or religiously colored political claims on others (possibly by also increasing interest in weapons); potentially criminal activity against property and persons with reference to the inferiority of the so-called infidels and/or committed to harm the alleged enemies of Islam; implementation of survival training, combat training or similar paramilitary activities; frequent and/or lengthy trips to countries with majority Muslim populations, particularly language classes, visits to paramilitary training camps; preoccupation with life after death or martyrdom; changes in financial position (no verifiable income or sudden debt)."
Not surprisingly, the document has been greeted with outrage by Muslims, who have accused the government of Lower Saxony of "scare-mongering." The opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD) has described it as "absurd" and "outrageous."
Interior Minister Uwe Schünemann has rejected the criticism; he says he has no intention of withdrawing the document, which is part of a concerted strategy by German officials to step up their monitoring of Salafist groups after a series of violent clashes with police.
In May, for instance, more than 500 Salafists attacked German police with bottles, clubs, stones and other weapons in the city of Bonn, to protest cartoons they said were "offensive."
The clashes erupted when around 30 supporters of a conservative political party, PRO NRW, which is opposed to the further spread of Islam in Germany, participated in a campaign rally ahead of regional elections in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW).
Following the fights -- in which 29 police officers were injured, two of them seriously -- a video surfaced on the Internet by a known terrorist, the German-born Yassin Chouka, a member of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.
In the German-language video, Chouka calls for members of PRO NRW and German media to be killed. He also urges the Salafists to move away from street confrontations, where the risk of being arrested is great, and instead to target PRO NRW members in their homes and workplaces.
In nation-wide raids on June 14, over 1,000 German police searched about 70 Salafist homes, apartments, mosques and meeting places in seven of Germany's 16 states in search of evidence that would enable the German government to outlaw some of the dozens of Islamist groups operating in the country.
Announcing the crackdown, Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said he had banned a Salafist group called Millatu Ibrahim, based in the western city of Solingen. "The Millatu Ibrahim group works against our constitutional order," he said, "and against understanding between peoples." Among other things, Millatu Ibrahim teaches its followers to reject German law and to follow Islamic Sharia law, and that "the unbelievers are the enemy."
Friedrich also said that the raids in Bavaria, Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg and North Rhine-Westphalia, among other locations, may unearth evidence that would allow outlawing two other Salafist groups, the DawaFFM and "Die Wahre Religion" [DRW, "The True Religion"].
In a June 8 interview with the newspaper Die Welt, Interior Minister Friedrich said: "Radical Salafism is like a hard drug. All of those who succumb to her become violent."
Friedrich also said the recent Salafist attacks on German police show "that the threshold for violence has decreased in an alarming way. There can be only one answer: The government must make it clear with all the force of the law that our democracy is fortified. Salafists fight the liberal-democratic legal system and in its place want to introduce their radical ideology in Germany. But we will not let that happen. We will defend our freedom and our security with all our might."
Soeren Kern is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.
The following is a description (slightly modified) from Dr. Peter Hammond's book: Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat.
As long as the Muslim population remains around 1% of any given country they will be regarded as a peace-loving minority and not as a threat to anyone. In fact, they may be featured in articles and films, stereotyped for their colorful uniqueness.
At 2% and 3% they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs [Europe, Australia, USA and Japan]. Six percent of US prison inmates are Muslim. Like any other minority, they won’t integrate, but work to build their own separate community.
From 5% on they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population. South Africa's Muslim population is 2%, but they control 35% of the businesses, a large percentage of the banks and have five Cabinet seats while Christians (77% of the population) have none.
They will push for the introduction of halaal (clean by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature it on their shelves (along with threats for failure to comply).
At this point, they will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves under Sharia; Islamic Law. The ultimate goal of Islam is not to convert the world, but to establish Sharia law over the entire world.
When Muslims reach 10% of the population, they will increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions. (Ei: car-burnings in France last October.) Any non-Muslim action that offends Islam will result in uprisings and threats.
After reaching 20% expect hair-trigger rioting, jihad militia formations, sporadic killings and church and synagogue burning (India, Mindanao, Philippines).
At 40% you will find widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks and ongoing militia warfare [Indonesia].
From 60% you may expect unfettered persecution of non-believers and other religions, sporadic ethnic cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a weapon and Jizya (infidel tax). (Sudan, Kosovo, Lebanon and Egypt).
After 80% expect State run ethnic cleansing and genocide [Western Papua (New Guinea), Iran, Biafra, Turkey and North Nigeria].
100% will usher in the peace of "Dar-es-Salaam" - House of Peace - as in Saudi Arabia, Libya and Yemen.
It is time to put an end to the charade of “moderate Islam.” There is no such thing as moderate Muslim. Muslims are either jihadists or dormant jihadists – moderate, they are not.
Ali Sini
ex-Muslim
Originator of Faith Freedom International
http://www.faithfreedom.org/
http://sheikyermami.com/2010/03/16/ali-sina-the-myth-of-moderate-islam/
Start with wide spectrum anti-biotics and once the cultures are back from microbiology, tailor-make just the right countermeasure for system wide application and eradication.
To start out by looking for "radicalized" Islamists is the wrong tactic and will fail.
“The German state of Lower Saxony has published a practical guide to extremist Islam to help citizens identify tell-tale signs of Muslims who are becoming radicalized.”
If they are breathing, they are in danger of being radicalized.
Exposing the Myth of Moderate Islam
By Dr. Ali Sina
Islamic Scholar and Historian
Exposing the True Nature and History of Islam
June 2, 2010
I have always maintained that “Moderate Muslim” is an oxymoron. We have two kinds of Muslims: Terrorist Muslims and Ignorant Muslims. The former are those who know Islam well and live by its dictums. The latter have no clue about their religion and have an idealized image of Islam that has no basis in fact.
Mr. Tarek Fatah’s editorial
published in the National Post on March 12, 2010 confirms my view. Fatah attended a debate between Dr. Wafa Sultan,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wafa_Sultan
the courageous ex-Muslim woman that shook the Arab world when in an Aljazeera televised debate she pointed out that the problem with the Muslim world is Islam, and Dr. Daniel Pipes, a scholar of Islamic history and the director of the Middle East Forum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East_Forum
In this debate Pipes argued that Islam is not essentially an intolerant religion and that there have been instances when Jews who were persecuted in Christian countries had sought refuge in Muslim lands. Sultan disagreed and reminded her audience that Muhammad had raided several Jewish tribes who lived in Arabia, massacred their unarmed men and allowed his marauding band to rape their women, while always reserving the prettiest for himself.
Upon hearing these comments, Fatah was “traumatized”. “Even a hardened secular Muslim such as myself was deeply hurt by what I heard that evening,” wrote Fatah.
While acknowledging the validity of Sultan’s criticism of Islam, Fatah repined that “instead of using her newfound fame to challenge the established theocracies and corrupt kingdoms of the Middle East, Sultan veered off the deep end and could not resist the temptation of becoming the poster child of Islam haters, joining their ranks with the fervour of a convert.”
Why should Sultan challenge the established theocracies and corrupt kingdoms when these are the rotten fruits of the poisonous tree of Islam? As a medical doctor she is trained to look at the cause of the disease and not the symptoms.
Fatah accused Sultan of fear mongering and telling to a predominantly Jewish audience, that Muhammad was a Jew killer. He wrote “Wafa Sultan delivered an astonishing account of how the Prophet had slaughtered Jews and then raped the wife of the defeated Jewish tribe.”
Astonishing account? These accounts were reported by early Muslim historians. If Fatah is astonished it is because he, like most Muslims, has not read the history of Islam. Few Muslims care to investigate their religion. The references to Muhammad’s raids, rapes and lootings can also be found in the Quran.
Muslims chant the Quran for thawab (reward), but they don’t study it and often don’t understand what they read.
The hatred of the Jews is in the Quran. The first sura of this book is a prayer where Muslims supplicate to Allah, “Show us the straight path. The path of those whom Thou hast favored; not the (path) of those who earn Thine anger nor of those who go astray.”
Muslims agree that “those whom Allah has favored,” are Muslims, “those who earn Allah’s anger,” and “those who go astray” are Jews, and Christians, respectively.
Jews are stereotyped as greedy in all Muslim countries. This is due to quranic verse that says Jews “cling to life more eagerly than any other people. ...every one of them would love to live a thousand years,” but they will burn I hell. (2:96)
Many verses of the Quran portray the Jews as evil doers, wicked, transgressors, prophet killers, and despised by God. Because Muhammad hated the Jews, Muslims will always hate the Jews. This hatred is inseparable from Islam.
Fatah continued, “I left the synagogue deeply disturbed. In the fight against Islamofascism, Wafa Sultan’s hatred of Islam was cultivating the very forces she claims to be exposing. When a questioner asked her ‘What is the solution?’ she just shrugged her shoulders. Perhaps the answer she had in mind was too outrageous even by her own standards: Force Muslims to convert or die.”
Sultan has all the reasons to hate Islam. Former Muslims hate Islam because we hate discrimination against women, violence against non-Muslims, dictatorship and imposition of faith that characterizes the true Islam, and because we know the damage that his overgrown cult has done to our people, our culture and our countries. We don’t shrug our shoulders when asked for the solution. Obviously this “hardened secular Muslim” was so traumatized that he could no longer hear what Wafa Sultan was saying.
Former Muslims propose telling the truth as the solution. We believe that truth can set us free. Former Muslims do not advocate violence and hate against our own kin, brothers, sisters, parents, and loved ones. We strive for their freedom and their right to know the truth. We oppose censorship and political correctness that have enslaved the truth. Truth can hurt our feelings, but lies will kill us.
I do not dispute with Dr. Pipes’ historic account that sometimes Jews who were persecuted by Christians sought refuge among Muslims. However, I respectfully disagree with him when he presents this as evidence of the tolerance of Islam.
Islam is not tolerant because Muhammad was not tolerant. This does not mean all Muslims are intolerant. There have been many Islamic rulers who were tolerant, but they went against the canons of Islam, as many do today. That is why the jihadists who follow the true Islam are attacking these Muslim rulers.
Unlike the crusaders who wanted to convert everyone to Christianity, the jihadists don’t want to convert everyone to Islam. They want to establish the Caliphate and dominate the world. In an Islamic state, ruled under the Sharia, non-Muslims, particularly the people of the Book, (Jews and Christians) are protected, as long as “they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.” (Q: 9:29). This is no different from Nazism. Hitler did not want everyone to become Arians, nor did he want to exterminate all mankind. He wanted to dominate the world.
By drawing a distinction between Islamic terrorists and “moderate” Muslims Dr. Pipes is treading a dangerous path. One is either a Muslim, therefore emulates Muhammad and is a terrorist, or he is not a Muslim. Moderate Muslim makes as much sense as moderate Nazi. A Muslim who does not practice Islam or believes Islam means peace is not a moderate Muslim, but a wishy-washy Muslim or an ignorant Muslim.
Lies always come back to haunt us. It is this myth that allows Glenn Beck to malign Geert Wilders and call him a “fascist,” or Jacqui Smith and other British officials to bar him from entering the U.K. There are countless good people who are harassed, prosecuted and called racists because of this myth.
I respectfully urge Dr. Pipes to stop promoting the myth of moderate Islam. I also cordially invite him to a written debate on this topic. Getting to the bottom of this matter goes beyond academic interest. This myth is endangering the lives of the critics of Islam and is violating their right to free speech. Good people are called islamophobe, bigot, racist and fascist because the world prefers politically correct untruths to the inconvenient truth. It is thanks to this myth that telling the truth has become the new hate speech.
Mr. Tarek Fatah proves my point that there is no such thing as moderate Muslim. He calls himself hardened secular, but fractures when he hears a historic truth about his prophet. So much for his hardness! When he says, “Wafa Sultan’s hatred of Islam was cultivating the very forces she claims to be exposing,” he is talking about himself. Many honest Muslims prefer not to hide their heads in the sand; they face the truth and deal with it in a rational way.
I would like to remind the readers that virtually all Muslim terrorists come from a secular background. At one point they were just as “liberal” as Mr. Fatah is today until something happened in their lives and they turned to their faith.
Every “moderate” Muslim is a potential terrorist. The belief in Islam is like a tank of gasoline. It looks innocuous, until it meets the fire. For a “moderate” Muslim to become a murderous jihadist, all it takes is a spark of faith.
It is time to put an end to the charade of “moderate Islam.” There is no such thing as a moderate Muslim. Muslims are either jihadists or dormant jihadists — moderate, they are not.
Islam Index http://iranpoliticsclub.net/islam/index.htm
Library Index http://iranpoliticsclub.net/library/index.htm
Ali Sina Index http://iranpoliticsclub.net/authors/ali-sina/index.htm
http://iranpoliticsclub.net/islam/moderate-islam/index.htm
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