Headlines:
• French Ambassador: France is at War with Radical Islam
• Tony Blair: Force is Necessary in Struggle against Radical Islam
• America: Newt Gingrich Outlines 7-Step Plan to Defeat Radical Islam
• Muslims World Stages Protests Over Offensive Charlie Hebdo
French Ambassador: France Is At War With Radical Islam
Gerard Araud, France’s Ambassador to the US: What I want to say is as the French Prime Minister said we are at war and we are at war with radical Islam. It means that right now that Islam and in a sense Muslims, but Islam is breeding radicalism which is quite dangerous for everybody. So I think in the coming weeks or the coming months we have to define the global strategy. The part of the strategy is to work with the Muslim countries, to do that part of the job. [Source: RealClearPolitics]
The West has been plotting strategies against Islam for 1000 years, apart from a temporary respite they have failed each time. For Allah سبحانه وتعالى says:
وَإِذْ يَمْكُرُ بِكَ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُواْ لِيُثْبِتُوكَ أَوْ يَقْتُلُوكَ أَوْ يُخْرِجُوكَ وَيَمْكُرُونَ وَيَمْكُرُ اللّهُ وَاللّهُ خَيْرُ الْمَاكِرِينَ
“And [remember, O Muhammad], when those who disbelieved plotted against you to restrain you or kill you or evict you [from Makkah]. But they plan, and Allah plans. And Allah is the best of planners.”
(Al-Anfal: 30)
Tony Blair: Force is Necessary in Struggle against Radical Islam
Tony Blair has called for a US-led effort to confront the “substantial minority” of Muslims who support terrorism, during a meeting with top Republicans that reunited the former British prime minister with hawks in the party who believe the White House response to recent attacks has been too limited. According to a source present at a closed-door strategy session attended by nearly 300 Republican senators and congressmen, the former prime minister argued that force would be needed in what he called a “generational” struggle, but more important would be a “global alliance to teach tolerance” as millions of people in the Muslim world are systematically being taught to be intolerant. Blair, who was introduced by Senator John McCain, also reportedly argued that radical Islam and the terrorism associated with it had not been contained; that countries in the west “didn’t cause it but were caught up in it”; that it was neither isolated nor insignificant and that while the majority of Muslims opposed it, “a substantial and not a fringe minority” supported it. According to the witness, Blair said radical Islam was a perverted ideology that justified the use of force against those of other religions or Muslims who interpreted their faith differently. It was hostile to “us and our values”, he claimed, and though some want to negotiate with it or ignore it, neither of those approaches would work and it had to be confronted. The former prime minister also talked about the lessons of the post-9/11 era. He reportedly argued that the US and UK had learned that if you topple dictators, you release other forces that have to be dealt with. However, the Arab Spring demonstrated that many of those dictatorships would be swept away in any event. It was hard to be successful “unless you had allies within Islam itself”, he reportedly said, adding that the Middle East would continue to evolve away from what it is and that unless extremism was fought it would continue to grow. He was said to be “extremely concerned” about the emergence of the Islamic State (Isis) in Syria and Iraq. [Source: The Guardian]
Tony Blair is clearly advocating force against those Muslims who only use their tongues to protect Islam and the interests of the Muslim ummah. Intellectually bankrupt, the West can only use force to prevent the emergence of the true Islamic state.
America: Newt Gingrich Outlines 7-Step Plan to Defeat Radical Islam
The United States has been at war with radical Islamist terrorism for at least 35 years, starting with the November 1979 Iranian seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and taking of 52 American hostages. President Jimmy Carter, in his State of the Union address two months later, declared the American captives “innocent victims of terrorism.” For the next two decades, radical Islamist terrorism grew more powerful and more sophisticated. On Sept. 11, 2001, a remarkably sophisticated effort by Islamist terrorists killed nearly 3,000 Americans in New York City, Washington, D.C., and western Pennsylvania. In response to the worst attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor, President George W. Bush told a joint session of Congress: “Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”
We have clearly failed to meet that goal. After more than 13 years of war, with thousands of Americans dead, tens of thousands of Americans wounded, and several trillion dollars spent, the U.S. and its allies are losing the war with radical Islamism. The terrorists of Islamic State are ravaging Iraq and Syria, Boko Haram is widening its bloody swath through Nigeria, al Qaeda and its affiliates are killing with impunity in Somalia, Yemen and beyond, and the Taliban are resurgent in Afghanistan. The killings in Paris at Charlie Hebdo and at a kosher supermarket are only the most recent evidence of the widening menace of radical Islamism. Here is an outline of the sequence of topics that Congress should investigate:
1. The current strength and growth rate of radical Islamists around the world. We need a detailed sense of the total picture. The scale of the threat from this nihilistic global movement, I suspect, will be stunning.
2. The country-by-country danger. Americans simply don’t realize how dire the situation is in specific areas. Boko Haram has killed thousands more people in Nigeria alone than Ebola has in all of Africa, according to data compiled by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Centers for Disease Control. One or more hearings should focus on each center of radical Islamism, including Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
3. The role of the Muslim Brotherhood. The group is vital to the global radical Islamist movement, yet so little understood by Washington elites that it deserves its own set of hearings.
4. The primary sources of radical Islamist funding, especially Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Iran.
5. The Arab countries—including Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria—that have successfully contained and minimized radical Islamists. We must learn how this was accomplished and what aspects should be replicated.
6. Radicalization in mosques and on social media. How are young Muslims being drawn into terrorism? What can be done to counter a seductive message that has reached deep into Europe and the U.S. and inspired jihadists by the thousands to travel to the Middle East for terrorist training that can be exported back home?
7. The Islamist cyberthreat. The hacking of the U.S. Central Command’s social-media accounts this week apparently didn’t inflict serious damage, but the episode was evidence of a new front in the fight against terrorism. [Source: Wall Street Journal]
Allah سبحانه وتعالى says:
يُرِيدُونَ أَن يُطْفِؤُواْ نُورَ اللّهِ بِأَفْوَاهِهِمْ وَيَأْبَى اللّهُ إِلاَّ أَن يُتِمَّ نُورَهُ وَلَوْ كَرِهَ الْكَافِرُونَ
“They want to extinguish the light of Allah with their mouths, but Allah refuses except to perfect His light, although the disbelievers dislike it.”
(Al Tawba: 32)
Muslims World Stages Protests over Offensive Charlie Hebdo
The new issue of Charlie Hebdo has sparked heated condemnation from some Muslim-majority countries. In Jordan, where around 2,500 protesters took to the streets of the capital Amman amid tightened security, while demonstrations also took place in east Jerusalem and Khartoum. Hundreds of Palestinians demonstrated at Jerusalem’s flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound Friday, some with banners reading “Islam is a religion of peace!” and “Our leader will forever be Mohammed”. Egypt’s premier religious institution, the Al Azhar Mosque, has also publicly expressed its dismay at the cover. The image was a “blatant challenge to the feelings of Muslims who had sympathised with this newspaper” Abbas Shumann, the deputy to the mosque’s Grand Sheikh said, according to AP. However, Muslims should ignore the cover and respond by showing tolerance as an angry reaction “will not solve the problem but will instead add to the tension and the offense to Islam.” In Pakistan, dozens of lawmakers chanted “death to blasphemers” at a march in front of parliament in Islamabad on Thursday. “All political parties are with us … All Muslim countries should condemn these blasphemous cartoons, “Religious Affairs Minister Sardar Yousaf said.
The response of the Muslim world is clearly shameful and adequate. What is required is a response that forces the West to change its behavior completely. This happened at the time of Sultan Abdul Hameed II. During his reign there was a French theatre which was planning on making an insulting drama about the Messenger of Allah, Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم. This drama would be played out not only in France, but in all of Europe. The Sultan stood up, and mobilized his army and followers, and they all wore the uniform of war. He then demanded that the ambassador of France (in Turkey) come to his presence immediately. He demanded that France stop the theatre drama against the Prophet (saws) immediately. When the French ambassador arrived, he was shocked to see the Ottoman army prepared, and even the Sultan himself in an army uniform! The Sultan said to the French ambassador: Send your letter. Straightaway, the ambassador of France sent a letter to the French government saying: “This State is preparing to enter into a state of war for this play… end it now ..!” And they stopped the play (in all of Europe).