Free Republic

BOSTON - A pharmacy college graduate conspired with two other men on a terror plot to kill two prominent U.S. politicians and carry out a holy war by attacking shoppers in U.S. malls and American troops in Iraq, prosecutors said Wednesday. But their plans — in which the men used code words like "peanut butter and jelly" for fighting in Somalia and "culinary school" for terrorist camps — were thwarted in part when they could not find training and were unable to buy automatic weapons, authorities said. Tarek Mehanna worked with the men from 2001 to May 2008 on the...

~~~snip~~~ ....Men caught repeatedly smoking have their index fingers rammed into metal pipes and then snapped, while cigarette shops have been torched. The rules have often been taken to absurd extremes. Greengrocers in the “caliphate” told The Times that they had been ordered not to sell bananas in public because they were deemed obscene, while cucumbers could not be sold next to tomatoes, which are deemed to represent femininity. At the most extreme, shepherds have been ordered to cover the nether regions of their goats to avoid offending strict Salafist sensibilities. ~~~snip~~~

In an article titled "Al Qaeda finds new partner: Salafist group finds limited success in native Algeria" (The Washington Post, October 5, 2006) by Craig Whitlock, Western sources, including French and American, assert that the Salafist Group for Call and Combat (originally a local Algerian group) has become global by joining with al Qaeda. While the article is very interesting and informative, the analysis of the International Salafi movement by Western sources and expertise shows a continuous misunderstanding of Jihadism and its strategies. For in the essence of the article there is an assertion that the Algerian Salafists were restricted...

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iraqi security forces killed 15 terror suspects and arrested nine in a raid on Haifa street in central Baghdad, Defence Minister Hazem al-Shaalan told reporters. "You have all heard about the notorious Haifa street, where there are criminal cells of salafists (Islamists) and those loyal to the previous regime," said Shaalan, flanked by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib. "A joint operation by the national guard and elements of the defence ministry led to the killing of 15 people and the arrest of nine." He said those arrested provided information and intelligence which "led...