Yemen is Crumbling

Yemen has been a Zaydi strong hold for centuries. A lot of interesting Islamic ideas have been developed from here but unfortunately they didn't really become mainstream, mainly because most Muslims (in the past) seems to think and believe that Zaydis have been on the wrong side of the history. Zaydis were never able to achieve mass support from the people for a prolong period of time. Their ideology(Zaydism) was considered very militant at one time but of course that's very subjective now with the new wave of global jihad and terrorism of the 21st century using modern warfare techniques and propagation of extreme Sunni belief, even in Yemen.


I'm reading this news on why Yemen as a country was not able to progress much. Not surprising the main cause has to do with corrupt politicians.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Yemen's former president Ali Abdullah Saleh is alleged to have amassed assets worth between $32 billion and $60 billion, most believed to have been transferred abroad under other names, U.N. experts said in a report circulated Wednesday.

The experts, who monitor U.N. sanctions ordering all countries to freeze the assets of Saleh and two Houthi rebel leaders, said the ex-president's assets are believed to include property, cash, shares, gold and other valuable commodities in at least 20 countries.

"The origin of the funds used to generate Ali Abdullah Saleh's wealth is believed to be partly from his corrupt practices as president of Yemen, particularly relating to gas and oil contracts where he reportedly asked for money in exchange for granting companies exclusive rights to prospect for gas and oil in Yemen," the experts said.

The panel of experts said in the report to the U.N. Security Council that Saleh, his family and associates allegedly stole money from a fuel subsidy program which uses up to 10 percent of Yemen's gross domestic product, as well as other ventures involving extortion, embezzlement and abuse of power.

The report noted that Saleh had many years to hide his alleged assets — especially after the possibility of sanctions against him was raised nearly a year ago — using front companies or individuals acting on his behalf. The panel said five prominent Yemeni businessmen are believed to have helped him.

The experts said they are continuing their investigation into connections with these five people and other individuals believed to be assisting the Saleh family to remove funds from banks in Yemen and deposit them overseas. The panel said it is also conducting investigations into a number of private and publicly listed companies inside and outside Yemen where it is believed Saleh "may be the beneficial owner of investments."

Reference

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2015/feb/25/un-experts-yemen-ex-president-amassed-up-to-60/

Three school girls joining the Islamic Radical group

I'm following the news of the three school girls (two of them are 15 and one is 16 years of age) from UK who has travelled to Turkey and then onward to Syria to join the Islamic Terror group called ISIS/ISIL. [1]

These girls are believed to be influenced by social media and Internet personalities who are very supportive of the core message of ISIL. Most of us, who are sane, recognize ISIS/ ISIL as a terror group who has committed unimaginable horror acts indiscriminately in Syria and Iraq. However, many Muslims from various part of the world support this group by claiming that ISIS/ISIL are waging a Jihad or Holy War in Syria/Iraq and their activities are completely legal under Islam.

I was watching and reading news about pleas from the members of the families [2] who want these girls found and brought home. The girls' family didn't divulge a lot of private information about the girls. They just want them back. I'm certain that there's more to this story than what we have been told so far, but we won’t know much because generally Muslim families have a tendency to hide a lot of secrets and not talk about anything that may potentially bring the family a bad name or shame. If everything was going so well at home or school then these girls are running away for no reason whatsover? That’s very hard to believe.

Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, from the East London Mosque and a former teacher at Bethnal Green Academy, said all the parents "were shocked". "Children running away from home or disappearing is every parent's nightmare," he told BBC Breakfast. He said the girls were "talented and dynamic" but "impressionable" and that they could end up "with the most vile and dangerous group on earth" was "heartbreaking" for the parents.

Some folks are also pointing fingers at the authority for not doing enough to stop these girls from being contacted by those who are preying on young impressionable girls.

"Security services have been criticised after it emerged that - before leaving the UK - Shamima sent a Twitter message to Aqsa Mahmood, who left Glasgow for Syria in 2013 to marry an Islamic State fighter." "According to a lawyer for Ms Mahmood's family, her Twitter account has been "monitored" by police since she left Britain - and he said authorities should have seen Shamima's message and taken action before she and her two friends followed."

I'm generally supportive of authorities who are investigating extremists who are known to use violent means to achieve their objectives. Extremists can be from any religious background and from any segment of society. But it is completely unrealistic to demand and expect that the authority watch and monitor each and every twitter messages or Facebook posts so they can be analyzed in-depth. No one can babysit your children or teenagers for you, especially silly teenage girls who are looking for 'Islamic' husbands on Internet.

You would think that it would be very hard to enter a war-torn-area controlled by Islamic Extremists, but it’s actually ridiculously simple based on this news report[3].

intelligence sources in Turkey said Shamima Begum, 15, Kadiza Sultana, 16, and Amira Abase, 15, appeared to have travelled by car to the border on Friday, from where they crossed into the Isil-controlled town of Tal Abyad. They were travelling with a Syrian male in a private car. They were using Syrian identity cards. “We understand that after arriving in Istanbul the girls met an Isil member who is charged with helping foreigners who want to join the group.” The source said the girls stayed in Istanbul for two days before travelling to the border.There is someone co-ordinating with them. A smuggler. They can’t move by themselves.”

References

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31575908

[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31589762

[3] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/11427505/Schoolgirls-have-already-crossed-Syrian-border-say-sources.html

Debate: Islamic Terrorism or Extremism with no connection to Islam?

In the last couple of days, folks are having a conversation about radical groups professing their Islamic faith.
A large number of Muslim (let’s call them mainstream) believes that the terrorist group like ISIS/ISIL has nothing to do with Islam. These extremists may claim to be Muslims but their actions show otherwise.

"There's no such thing as radical Islam," Awad said. "There's no violent extremist ideology within Islam. Islam is one. Some people become extremists, but it's not because of the religion — it's because of themselves as individuals. I think people get entangled in terminology when, in fact, we are dealing with criminality. Criminals are criminals." [1]

Obviously the terrorist group ISIS/ISIL would disagree. According to ISIS/ISIL, most of the mainstreams Muslim are not really Islamic based to their own interpretation and legal judgment (theology). Only the ones who join their cause and accept their hardcore version of Islam can truly be considered a true believer of Islam.

The main dilemma is that both sides think they have the correct version of Islam worthy of representing all Muslim while the other sides are misguided.

Yesterday, I was watching this discussion on TV [2]. David Brooks get invited to a lot of these programs. You cannot always believe what he says because a lot of time his opinions are flatly wrong, but sometimes he makes an interesting point, like yesterday

DAVID BROOKS: Well, are we allowed to called the Islamic State Islamic?

They are. In some sense, it’s a stupid debate, because is it true Islam, is it perverted Islam? The fact is, religion is all interpretation. God doesn’t come down here and tell us exactly what he means. We have interpretations within Christianity, within Judaism and within Islam. If you call yourself a Muslim, you’re a Muslim.

They have different interpretations, but it’s all interpretations. So, one is a perverted or a sick form of Islam. A lot of people fortunately have a much more peaceful form of Islam, but it’s all an interpretation of a faith. What’s the real one? It’s all a matter of interpretation.

I think they should probably call it Islamic extremism. It is Islamic extremism. The second, I think, and more important issue is how we diagnose the problem. And there are three elements to this sort of terrorism, as we just saw in the segment about that Egyptian young man.

First, there’s economic and political dysfunction. So that young man wanted to be a personal trainer and he couldn’t. So he was alienated from that and marginalized from society.

But, second, there’s a spiritual ardor. A guy wants to be a hero. The guy wants to be seen as strong and a hero, like that young man.

And, third, there’s theological conviction. And Islamic State has theology to it, real, substantive theology. We’re comfortable talking about the economics and the politics because we live in a secular society and we’re comfortable talking about that stuff.
But if we don’t talk about the spiritual call that they feel and the theological content, then we’re missing the core of the thing. And if we’re going to fight it, you can’t just say we’re going to give you a higher standard of living. You don’t need to go to the Islamic State. That isn’t going to work. You have to have a spiritual, better alternative. [2]

References
[1] http://www.npr.org/2015/02/20/387611455/more-muslim-groups-voice-willingness-to-combat-extremism-in-their-faith
[2] http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/shields-brooks-fighting-islamic-extremism-giuliani-obama/

Yazidi girls taken into slavery

I was watching this news segment on TV yesterday about how a group of young Yazidi girls were taken into slavery by the radical Islamic group known currently as ISIS/ISIL. You can watch the video or read the transcript here. The interview is very grim and also graphic.

I'm reproducing a portion of the interview report entitled "Freed but not free: Yazidi girls who escaped Islamic State are trapped by trauma" which I think is noteworthy. You can also watch the video interview.

The Yazidis are a small community of less than a million people, found primarily in Northern Iraq. A private and conservative community, they practice an ancient religion. Last August, members of the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, attacked the Yazidis, whom they consider heretics.

These pictures of Yazidis trapped on Sinjar Mountain stunned the world. Hundreds of thousands fled for their lives after I.S. fighters executed many of the men and took thousands of women and girls as slaves.

GIRL (through interpreter): They brought everyone to a school and put the women upstairs and drove the men away. I didn’t want to let my mother go, but they were pulling us from our mothers and beating us. The children were all put in cars. They said, “We’re going to sell you to others and you will have sex with them.”


MARCIA BIGGS: This video, which went viral last fall, appears to show an I.S. fighter bragging about the selling of girls.

KRG envoy Dr. Nouri Othman told us about two girls who escaped their captors in Raqqa and ran to a nearby house, but were turned away by the owner, too scared to take the chance.

DR. NOURI OTHMAN, Envoy to Internationally Displaced Persons, Kurdish Regional Government: I called the person, said, listen to me. Please keep these two girls at your home for a couple of days. He said, no, I can’t. I said, I’m going to pay you. Nobody is going to make an adventure with his life without doing something for you. You have to pay them.

MARCIA BIGGS: As many as 400 Yazidi women and girls are now free and living in camps like this one, but their nightmare is not over. Most of them have been raped repeatedly. And in a culture where a woman’s virginity is her badge of honor, no one wants to talk about it.

But we found one brave girl who told us her whole story. Just 15 years old, she and her siblings were captured, separated, and, for four months, she was shuttled between towns and cities hundreds of miles apart, even being sent to Syria.

In that first month, she and another girl were handed over to a man she calls the sheik.

GIRL (through interpreter): He took us to his house, and for the night, he forced us to have sex with him.

MARCIA BIGGS: He raped you?

GIRL (through interpreter): Yes. He raped us together. We were together, the three of us, for the night. He told us: “You don’t have religion. I’m marrying you to make you the people of God.”

MARCIA BIGGS: What else did he say to you?


GIRL (through interpreter): He said: “We are married. You are mine. We will stay together and have children. If you try to escape or run away, you will get hurt and we might sell you.”

MARCIA BIGGS: They escaped through the help of a local mechanic, who was able to get them a taxi. They were discovered out at an Islam checkpoint and returned to the city of Mosul, where she was bought and sold again to a man who she says raped her over and over.

GIRL (through interpreter): He said bad words, ugly words. He told me: “If you don’t let me have sex with you, I’m going to sell you again. I will send you to Syria, where 10 men will be doing the same. And he beat us.”

MARCIA BIGGS: She says she attempted suicide twice, the first by drinking bleach, and the second by strangling herself with her scarf.

During those dark days, she used a razor and a pen to tattoo herself with the words which is Arabic for “Mommy and daddy, I love you.” She says that’s what kept her going.

You hadn’t seen them for four months and you didn’t know where your sisters were.

GIRL (through interpreter): No, I hadn’t heard anything about my sisters.

MARCIA BIGGS: She finally managed to escape once more, through a small kitchen window. A family took her in until a taxi driver, paid by the local government, drove her north towards the town of Dohuk. She says she walked the final hours on a road littered with bombs.

And she’s still missing. And she’s still missing as well.

Her four sisters and brother are still missing. Her mother can barely speak as we swipe through the pictures on her phone of her missing children. It’s too dangerous for us to show you their faces. She may be back with her family, but, like all the girls we met, she is suffering severe trauma, with very few resources.


MARCIA BIGGS: Dr. Derek Farrell is a British psychotherapist working with a foundation that aims to open a trauma center for Yazidi girls. He told us some of the horror stories he’s heard.

What has struck you the most?

DEREK FARRELL: Well, one is the level of sexual violence, which is horrific. These are the members of the Yazidi community, where their faith is very important to them. And it’s the fact that, within their trauma, their faith is in some way being used against them, in a way which is very dehumanizing.

A number of them felt that they wanted to kill themselves. And some of the women were given a gun by their ISIS captor and were offered that they could kill themselves, but, when they pushed the trigger, the gun was empty, you know. And it was the sheer, you know, humiliation and ridicule that went with that. These are girls who can’t sleep. They’re having bad nightmares. They are having flashbacks.

MARCIA BIGGS: So many of the girls are afraid to admit that they were raped. They use the words honor and virginity interchangeably. This woman told me she had gone to a doctor who performed a test to prove she was still a virgin.

MARCIA BIGGS: Some girls have had their hymens repaired, a sort of revirginization surgery provided by the government for those that want it.

Did you have any kind of a surgery?

GIRL (through interpreter): I had surgery to become a virgin.

MARCIA BIGGS: Did you feel like you had to have that surgery?

GIRL (through interpreter): Yes.

MARCIA BIGGS: Why?

GIRL (through interpreter): To return to that time when I was a virgin.

DR. NIZAR ESMAT: The priority is to provide good medical care, but some of them are hopeless, because, they say we lost our virginity, so we cannot marry again, for example. We cannot make a family. And we don’t want to disclose this to any one of our family.

They are really in a situation that is really a barrier for us to treat her or to overcome her traumas and depression.

MARCIA BIGGS: Dr. Nizar wouldn’t confirm reports of underground abortions, but said that he is working with the court to try to find a way to make abortion legal for girls returning from captivity.

Throughout the camp, we notice the older women and the little girls, but very few young women. They prefer to stay inside.

Do you think that you will some day marry and have a family?

GIRL (through interpreter): No. Because of what happened to me, I can’t. I don’t want to marry again. I can have a family, but I don’t want to

Reference
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/freed-free-yazidi-girls-escaped-islamic-state-trapped-trauma/

A new kind of terrorist

I was watching the 60 minutes segment about the shooting at Charlie Hebdo office in France by the Jihadist. How did the French authority missed the shooters since all three were well known to the authority due to their criminal background?

All three assailants were raised in harsh environment in Ghettos. Mostly immigrants live a life of segregation and cannot integrate well so they are left to the side.

The terrorism expert said that these men were known criminals because they have served jail time. From hardened criminals they turned into terrorist. These are the new type of hybrid: petty criminals turned into Jihadist. Because of their criminal background and experience, they were able to outsmart the police and procure weapons to carry out their attack.

They brought up the story of one of the brother who lived the life of drinking beer, smoking pot, music/rap, chasing girls and the next day he was at the mosque. These are the typically characteristics of many like him who lived an utterly sinful life and then found religion. They are mad dogs and morons. They had no instruction from outside terror organization. It was their own initiatives.

The lawyer for cherif said his client was a bit of coward. He was happy to go to the prison rather than going to Iraq to support his Muslim brothers because he was a coward. In prison he met a teacher who feed him radical Islamic propaganda. They didn’t know anything about Islam. They just follow this leader like a kid following his mummy who is always asking his mummy “What if I do this..what if I do that”

The segment also showed a happy picture of Amedy Coulibaly and his girlfriend/partner Hayat Boumeddiene who was wearing the skimpiest bikini at the beach. In the next picture the partner (Hayat) was fully covered in a black cloak and a face covering. No surprise here, many of the women/girls joining the Jihadist movement are of very loose characters (just like their men) or extremely gullible and naive teenagers.

Valentine day police in India patrolling the streets

Valentine day is glorified in the West and elsewhere because it is very profitable for businesses (such as restaurants, cinemas, stores, florists, bakeries and others). The biggest harm is perhaps only to your wallet/purse and stress level if you are in a relationship with these sort of expectations.

I’m not really into things that are very superficial so I’m completely indifferent to the idea of having a day for your loved ones, not saying that only people who are superficial celebrate this day. Everyone may have their own thinking style and motive for whatever it is that they do for themselves. However, one thing we can all perhaps agree on is that if you don’t celebrate or treat Valentine day as something special then why would you care what others are doing on this day?

Blind faith and fanaticism is very dangerous. Religions unfortunately promote both by boxing you inside a belief system that is always against everything else without providing a good explanation and reasoning as to why approach A is better than approach B.

I’m reading this news article about a group of hardcore Hindu fanatics being obsessed about what others are doing of February 14.

Right-wing Hindus in India are offering white roses, free counselling and a chance to get married for couples caught kissing or hugging in public places on Valentine's Day.

Roving three-person teams of volunteers from the Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha will fan out across India on Feb. 14, scanning parks and public spaces for couples exhibiting "inappropriate behaviour."

"We'll explain the meaning of love to them," said Chander Prakash Kaushik, the group's president. "We are against any vulgarity, not against love."

"Suhaag raat should be in the bedroom, not on roads," he said, using the Hindi term for the consummation of a marriage.

Wait a second. Isn’t this the country (India) that mass produce and release massive amount of cheesy movies, almost every single one centered or revolves around love and relationship with very silly plots?

Kaushik said the Hindu Mahasabha volunteers would distribute white roses to signify they come in peace, and then advise the couples to get married if they are really in love.

This guy doesn’t seem to get it. Love is free buddy, marriage is a very expensive business.

The Hindu Mahasabha, which is not affiliated to the ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, is among groups seen as self-appointed moral guardians of younger Indians who increasingly seek the right to choose their own partner, independent of caste and other traditional rules.

Public displays of love and live-in relationships are viewed as a cultural threat in India, where conservative attitudes coexist with high rates of violence against women.

Reference
http://in.reuters.com/article/2015/02/13/india-valentine-idINKBN0LH1QK20150213

What's so scary about any plan to establish the caliphate or Islamic Government?

I'm reading this news over here about a radical Islamic group in a western country that wishes to establish a caliphate or Islamic government.

The court in Antwerp sentenced the Sharia4Belgium group's "charismatic leader," Fouad Belkacem, to 12 years' imprisonment and gave dozens of other members lower sentences. Belkacem, who was led into court in handcuffs by police in body armor, smiled as he listened to the judgment. Other senior leaders of the group were sentenced to 15 years because judges said that, unlike Belkacem, they were actively involved in terrorism in Syria. The verdicts came in one of Belgium's biggest ever terror trials — 46 Muslims were originally indicted, though only a handful appeared in court. Others are believed to be fighting with Sunni armed groups in Syria or to have died in its civil war.

Muslims and non-Muslims have every right to fear loud-mouthed idiots who think they can implement a Utopian styled-Islamic government forcefully anywhere on planet Earth. This short sentence below (from the news article) highlights everything that is wrong with a faith based government, namely Islamic government, but it can also be easily extended to Christian, Hindus or other belief systems.

The written judgment said that in the "totalitarian" Islamic state Sharia4Belgium wanted, "there is no freedom, no human rights, no place for personal development, science or culture. Their state is based on violence and fear.

Reference
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/court-islamic-group-terror-organization-28882299