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Jihad Tag

France, home to one of the Europe’s largest Muslim population, is facing an uphill battle against Islamic terrorism. According to France's Prime Minister Manuel Valls, security forces have been foiling terror plots “every day” and warned of more terrorist attacks in the near future. French officials estimates that around 15,000 radical Islamists reside in the country -- and going by the current EU-wide trends -- these numbers were only expected to go up. “We have nearly 700 French jihadists and residents, who are currently fighting in Iraq and Syria,” Valls told French media, adding that this number included “275 women and dozens of children.”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was a KGB spy in the 1980s, recently surfaced Soviet documents reveal. Abbas, who was a long-time aide to Yasser Arafat -- the notoriuos Godfather of Arab terrorism -- was appropriately code-named the “mole” (krotov) by his Russian handlers. Abbas was most likely recruited by the Soviet spy agency back in the early 80s when he was a Ph.D. student at a Moscow university where he was polishing his credentials as an antisemitic conspiracy theorist, needed to rise through the ranks of Arafat’s Palestinian terrorist group PLO. Abbas, leader of PLO's main faction 'Fatah', took office in 2005 and appointed himself as the 'President for Life' of the Palestinian Authority -- refusing to call for any further elections -- very much in keeping with the democratic best-practices of fellow Arab despots.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s policy of ‘Refugee Welcome' is a gift that keeps on giving. On Wednesday morning, German police carried out series of raids in several cities in the states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony. The raids were concentrated around the network of three prominent Muslim preachers suspected of working as recruiters and backers for the Islamic State (ISIS). The large-scale police operation comes just a day after German police in North Rhine-Westphalia arrested a man suspected of being a high-ranking member of the Islamic State.

While President Obama and his administration have spent more than a year assuring everyone that Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIS) is ‘on the run’, the reality has been doggedly telling us something else altogether. While Obama administration would like us to believe that its strategy -- or rather lack thereof -- has somehow ‘contained’ ISIS, the self-proclaimed Islamic Caliphate has been spreading like an ugly rash, with new terrorist bases and strongholds popping up across the map. NBC has obtained a copy of a classified ‘heat map’ showing the global expansion of ISIS. The document dated August 2016 is reportedly part of the White House briefings prepared by National Counterterrorism Center. According to the report, ISIS now has bases in 18 countries. The map shows branches of ISIS extending wide over Middle East, Africa and Far-East Asia. If the document is to be believed, ISIS now has a bridge head in continental Europe with its base in Russia's North Caucasus.

A Paris-based publishing house has revised its decision to publish a French version of the German bestseller “Der Islamische Faschismus” (The Islamic Fascism). Written by German-Egyptian author Hamed Abdel-Samad, the book was due to hit the French bookstores in September. Piranha Edition reportedly changed its mind after this month's ISIS-inspired terror attack in Nice that killed 84 people and injured more than 300. If the objective of Islamist violence in Europe had been to force the continent into submission, it is well on its way to achieving them. Piranha Edition justified the decision of not going ahead with the publication by citing the threat of Radical Islam as well its desire of not wanting to strengthen the right-wing French groups critical of Islam. Interestingly, the head office of the Piranha Edition is just within a few minutes of walk from Bataclan, the theatre where 89 people were murdered by Islamic terrorists in November 2016.

With three major terror attacks in less than a week, Germany has been rudely awoken to a harsh new reality. Two of the attackers, Afghan (17) and Syrian (27) with refugee status, had pledged allegiance to Islamic State before embarking on their terrorist mission. Chancellor Merkel's government is responding to the rising threat of Islamist terrorism by proposing to tighten gun ownership laws and giving greater powers to the army in matters of domestic security. Germany’s Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière called for tightening firearms laws, while Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen wants a greater role for German Army (Bundeswehr) in domestic situations.

Barely 4 days after the deadly attack in Nice, France that killed 84 people and left more than 300 injured, Germany has been hit by a terrorist attack. A 17 year-old Afghan ‘refugee’ went on a stabbing spree inside a commuter train near the southern German city of Würzburg. According to eyewitnesses, the attacker shouted “Allahu Akbar” as he attacked passengers with knife and axe -- critically injuring four people. The attacker was killed by Special Forces just 500 meters from the crime scene, as he tried to flee. German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung reports:
On Monday evening, a 17 year-old man injured 4 people critically and another one slightly in a commuter train. A man attacked passengers in the train, armed with a knife and an axe. After the train was stopped by the passengers in Heidingsfeld [near Würzburg], the 17 year-old escaped on foot. He was shot down by Special Forces as he tried to attack a police officer.

According to a latest intelligence report, Germany harbours an alarmingly large number of Islamic terror operatives on its soil. Germany is home to about 300 Hamas and 950 Hezbollah members, the annual report of Germany's domestic intelligence agency -- the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) -- reveals. The report was released last week by German interior Minister Thomas de Maizière and President of BfV, Hans-Georg Maassen. “The supporters of Islamist-terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, who aim is to destroy the Jewish State of Israel, are focused on their region of origin [Middle East] and primarily conduct acts of terrorist violence there [Authors translation],” says the 317-page long annual intelligence report.

Despite massive security measures, dubbed by the French news agency AFP as a “State of Emergency”, the authorities in France remain fearful of a new wave of Islamist terror during the European soccer tournament Euro 2016 -- due to start this week. Over a million soccer fans from all across Europe are expected to visit France during the month long sporting event. France’s President Francois Hollande admitted the likelihood of fresh terrorist attacks during Euro 2016, saying that the Islamist threat “will unfortunately be there for a long time,” even as he refused to be “intimidated” by it. The European soccer championship is being held just six months after a group of suicide bombers tried to enter a stadium in Paris packed with thousands of fans during a soccer match between Germany and France. Despite the foiled attempt, terrorists, owing allegiance Islamic Caliphate (ISIS), killed around 130 people in Paris, arguably one of the most deadly Islamist attacks Europe had ever witnessed.

Islamic State (ISIS) is getting logistical and military support from Gaza-based terrorist group Hamas, a senior official of the Israel Defense Force (IDF) told the press. IDF’s Major General Yoav Mordechai revealed that terrorists belonging to Hamas and ISIS were now conducting joint military exercises in Gaza -- along the southern border of Israel. Islamic terrorist group Hamas, founded in 1987, calls for the destruction of Israel and annihilation of Jewish people in its official charter. Hamas Charter makes it clear that the Gaza-based terrorist group does not see itself as a separate entity fighting Israel, but instead is a part of the worldwide Islamic jihad. The newly-exposed alliance between ISIS and Hamas should not come as a surprise to anyone. Both of these Islamist groups not only subscribe to the same doctrine of global Jihad, but are offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood movement that first started in Egypt around 1920s. Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden also belonged to the same theological school of thought.

Infiltration of German Army by Islamic State (ISIS) and other Jihadists has reached an alarming level, German media reports suggest. Some 29 former German Army soldiers have joined the ranks of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, reveals a newly surfaced German military intelligence report. Additionally, the military is investigating 65 suspected jihadist serving as active duty German soldiers. According to German newspaper Handelsblatt, since 2007 German Military Counter-Intelligence Agency (MAD) has investigated 320 active duty soldiers for having suspected links to Jihadist circles. The newspaper also confirmed that until recently no backgrounds checks were done on soldiers handling sensitive combat equipment. The screening was only limited to soldiers accessing classified material. German government is trying to downplay the level of Islamist infiltration of country’s defense establishment. According to Parliament's commissioner for the military, Hans-Peter Bartels, there is no clear evidence of ‘Islamist organisation attempting to systematically infiltrate’ the German military.

Obama's first year in office was a busy one as he worked tirelessly to hinder the government's ability to identify, locate, track, or make common sense connections between Islamists and terrorism. In April of 2009, the DHS released a now-infamous report entitled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment" and in which conservatives were labeled potential terrorists not because they are radical militants but because they are pro-life, support the Tenth Amendment, or are veterans. Michelle Malkin wrote at that time:
It is no coincidence that this report echoes Tea Party-bashing left-wing blogs (check this one out comparing the Tea Party movement to the Weather Underground!) and demonizes the very Americans who will be protesting in the thousands on Wednesday for the nationwide Tax Day Tea Party. From the report, p.2: Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.

On the first weekend in May I attended a conference held in Boston entitled "GenerationCaliphate: Apocalyptic Hopes, Millennial Dreams and Global Jihad." The conference was organized by Richard Landes, millennial scholar, inventor of the term "Pallywood," blogger at The Augean Stables, exposer of the suspect nature of the claims about al Durah's death, author of the book Heaven on Earth, brilliant and original thinker, and a person I'm glad to call my friend. One of the strongest impressions I got from the conference is how many people there are who have dedicated their lives to studying the history of Islam and Islamic thought and how much information they have gleaned about how that thought informs the motives and expectations of modern terrorists. Many non-experts tend to think of terrorists as more grounded in the present than they apparently are, to minimize what seem to be their wild fantasies about the end of the world, and to fail to appreciate how very much those apocalyptic dreams are informed by Islam and its history. Something else that struck me about the conference was how it illustrated that although many of us tend to think everyone fighting terrorism is on the right, there are some people on the left who are very concerned about terrorism and take it very seriously, but that there are some rather large rifts between those of the right and left who share this common cause and common interest in combating terrorism. There were too many erudite and engrossing speakers at the conference to describe each one, but some highlights (in addition to the aforementioned Richard Landes) were, in no particular order:

What is wrong with this picture? Neil Munro of The Daily Caller reports that Obama is planning to use his influence as president to run interference in the media on behalf of Jihadists. Naturally, he's doing it for the troops:
White House: Obama Will Fight Media To Stop Anti-Jihad Articles President Barack Obama has a moral responsibility to push back on the nation’s journalism community when it is planning to publish anti-jihadi articles that might cause a jihadi attack against the nation’s defenses forces, the White House’s press secretary said Jan. 12. “The president … will not now be shy about expressing a view or taking the steps that are necessary to try to advocate for the safety and security of our men and women in uniform” whenever journalists’ work may provoke jihadist attacks, spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters at the White House’s daily briefing. The unprecedented reversal of Americans’ civil-military relations, and of the president’s duty to protect the First Amendment, was pushed by Earnest as he tried to excuse the administration’s opposition in 2012 to the publication of anti-jihadi cartoons by the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
Here's a video report:

On June 25, 2014, 19 year-old Brendan Tevlin hopped into his car to return home after spending the evening at a friend's house. Minutes later, Ali Muhammad Brown approached the vehicle as it was stopped at a red light and fired ten rounds into the car, killing Brendan. Originally, the teen's murder was labeled an attempted robbery, allowing the media to remain silent. Now, court documents have revealed that Brown's motivation for killing Tevlin had less to do with thievery, and more to do with America's pushback against Jihadist terrorism in the Middle East. Via the New York Daily News:
According to court documents, Ali Muhammad Brown described his June murder of 19-year-old Brendan Tevlin as a "just kill" and said it was an act of "vengeance" meant to compensate for U.S. military killings in the Middle East.
Brown is a devout Muslim, and has been extremely vocal about his opposition to U.S. intervention in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan.
"All these lives are taken every single day by America, by this government. So a life for a life," he told investigators, according to the documents. Brown further justified killing Tevlin by claiming the shooting was a "just kill," meaning he targeted an adult man and did not put any women, children or elderly people in danger. In police interviews, Brown described the U.S.'s military campaign in the Middle East as evil and said if a "man sees evil, then he must take action against that evil," the court papers show.