Jihadi John

Most of the news media based in the UK and also elsewhere are covering stories about Jihadi John, the Internet personality associated with the ISIS/ISIL terror group. Jihadi John wearing a face-covering appeared in a series of high quality videos (with audio) showing him beheading, burning alive and cutting the throats of his victims (mostly made up of hostages) for fun or for whatever imaginary reasons he thinks people across the globe should be punished for.

Recently, the real identity of this personality has been uncovered by Washington Post and then BBC. Those who knew him or have worked with him are interviewed. Based on some of the glowing responses from the people who describe him as gentle, hard worker, honest, someone who keeps to himself and away from trouble, Jihadi John has been very busy throughout the years, building a common man persona.

Most people are a very bad judge of human character. Even when a psychopath like Jihadi John are revealed to them, they still, in the state of complete denial, cling to their level of comfort – of what they know about someone/something as opposed to seeing the reality that is right in front of them.

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.

Is mental disorder one of the leading causes of Islamic based terrorism?

Most of us have met folks who seemed somewhat strange and we think they are suffering from a psychological problem. But because we are not trained professionally in mental health science, we can at best guess or state inclusively when something isn’t right without the ability to go into specifics.

Yesterday, the Muslim man who attacked the civilians in France is believed to have a long history of mental illness.

On Sunday a driver screaming "God is great" in Arabic ran down pedestrians in Dijon, injuring 11, two seriously. The man who carried out Sunday's attack was arrested after targeting pedestrians in five different parts of the city in the space of half an hour. He is said to be "apparently imbalanced" and to have spent time in a psychiatric hospital. The driver has been known to police for minor incidents dating back 20 years, he added. The prosecutor in Dijon said the attacker had a long history of mental illness and the incident was not linked to terrorism.

The perpetrator of the Sydney attack last week was also someone who was certifiably insane according to the news sources: Australia cafe attacker: Terrorist or just a lunatic?

In the days since the deadly attack, debate has swirled across Australia about whether to term it an act of religious-inspired political terrorism or an aberrant action by a lunatic with a giant thirst for attention.

The other interesting point-of-view presented in the article is on how do you classify this sort of attacks against random civilians; A lone-wolf type of attack or part of a larger coordinated attack that falls under Islamic terrorism?

Security analyst Neil Fergus said in the Sydney Morning Herald that classifying the attack as terrorism "would only be feeding the propaganda machine" of Islamic State and other terrorist groups. Fairfax Media's Clementine Ford wrote that linking the attack to terrorism was racist.

But others call such attitudes "denialism" in an age when Islamist extremist groups are calling for lone-wolf attacks against "infidels" from Australia to America. "Terrorism is violence perpetrated for political purposes, and despite any personal, legal or mental problems Monis might have faced, he clearly intended this incident to be an act of terrorist theater," said security analyst Scott Stewart of Stratfor, a Texas-based security analysis group. "Just because Monis was more of a bumbling Kramer than a deadly Carlos the Jackal does not mean he was not a grass-roots terrorist operative. Indeed … most grass-roots operatives tend to be more like stray mutts than lone wolves."

In the future, I think it would also be interesting to look deeply into the life of the leaders of terror groups who could as well be as crazy as some of their followers.

References
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30580082
http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-australia-terrorism-20141222-story.html

Pakistan’s support for terrorism proven to be unwise

A few days ago, over a hundred school kids were massacre by gunmen from Taliban, the terror organization. Taliban claimed responsibility for the school attack as a revenge for the various deadly operations carried out against them by the Pakistan authority. Yesterday, Pakistani military carried out another ‘revenge’ attack against the Taliban.

Pakistani warplanes and ground forces killed at least 77 militants in a northwestern tribal region near the Afghan border, officials said Friday, days after Taliban fighters killed 148 people - most of them children - in a school massacre.

Pakistan has a long history of supporting domestic terrorists and terror organization working across its borders. When the Taliban hijacked Afghanistan to form an Islamic state between 1996-2001 and carried out ethnic-cleansing of its minority (the Hazara and others), Pakistan was among the three countries that choose to recognize them despite strong worldwide condemnation

Pakistan’s addiction to jihad eventually destroyed its own security. The policy was first used in the 1980s, when Pakistan, then with full U.S. backing, supported Islamist warriors against the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union. After the Soviet withdrawal, Pakistan turned the jihadists on long-term enemy India in the 1990s, especially in the disputed region of Kashmir. By the mid-1990s, Pakistan promoted the emergence of a new Islamist movement in Afghanistan, the Taliban.

When everyone in the world was searching for bin Laden, the leader of a terrorist organization, guess where he found a safe haven? Pakistan.

Pakistan has also conveniently ignored act of terrors that are committed across the Indian borders

Lakhvi’s release on $5,000 bail triggered swift condemnations from India and raised questions about Pakistan’s pledges to crack down on militants following the siege of an army-run school earlier this week that killed 132 children and 16 staff members.
Lakhvi, the operations commander of the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, is one of seven Pakistani nationals facing trial for the attacks in India’s commercial capital that killed 166 people in November 2008.

Since the Pakistani authority could act fast when they choose to (like today), I sometimes wonder why they never act against domestic terrorism (violent acts) carried out within the country by shadowy groups such as the various attacks against the Shias, Christians and also the Sunnis and political assassinations.

According to this news report Pakistan seems to be moving away from supporting the Jihadist groups.

In the wake of the Peshawar school massacre, some U.S. and Afghan officials are beginning to express optimism that Pakistan may finally be changing its decadeslong policy of supporting jihadist groups. Pakistan’s military for several months has been moving away from the policy, under which these militant groups have long been used by the country’s spy agencies and security establishment against India and Afghanistan.

It isn’t clear, however, to what extent the military, which runs security policy independent of the civilian government, will adhere to the new zero-tolerance approach to jihadists.

In recent months, it seemed to apply only to many of the groups based on the western border with Afghanistan, including the Pakistani Taliban. The country hasn’t seen a move against militant outfits focused on India to the east, or some of the groups that target Pakistan’s own Shiite minority.

But many doubt that Pakistan would end its support for terrorism as long as they are not targeted

“There is no change,” said Christine Fair, an assistant professor at Georgetown University. “Pakistan defines its threat as coming from those militants who cannot be persuaded to kill in Afghanistan or India.”

References
http://www.latimes.com/world/afghanistan-pakistan/la-fg-accused-plotter-of-mumbai-attacks-ordered-back-to-jail-20141219-story.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pakistan-kills-dozens-of-militants-after-school-massacre/
http://www.wsj.com/articles/pakistan-moves-to-end-policy-on-good-taliban-1419013453

Age of conversion/changing your religion should be raised to 21

Undoubtedly, Islamic teaching has proven to be very attractive for the uninitiated (newbies/recent converts to Islam/born again Muslim). On the surface level, Islam is very appealing on history, rationality, practicality/implementation, universal value systems and the metaphysics is also not too crazy.

But that’s just the surface. Going into a deeper analysis of the faith, you’ll find many instances where Islam can also be proven to be theologically flawed just like any other religion. But no one (not many) goes deeper into that level where you start to critically examine the dogma. And perhaps that’s a major contributing factor of why you see so much of chaos, cruelty, corruption, low standard of living and ignorance among the Muslims.

I’m reading this heartbreaking story about a 17-year old German boy who converted to Islam without the knowledge of his family. He participates in the worthless war in Syria.

He’s dead now at the age of 19.

Karg says two young men with an "immigrant background" knocked on Alfons' mother's door to tell her of his death in Syria last summer. "When she opened up, they said: 'Congratulations, your son is now in paradise,' " he says. Karg adds they showed her a photograph of his bullet-ridden body and his goodbye letter, neither of which they let her keep for fear the police would use the items to track the young men down.

Most of these stories start with a secret conversion of a very young teen. He/she has to hide his religion because of the family dynamics that doesn’t allow the convert to be very open/frank with the parents.

He says Alfons grew more withdrawn after he secretly converted to Islam at age 17. The father says the lanky, insecure teen didn't grow a beard but cropped his blond hair short, stopped shaking hands with girls and women, and abandoned his apprenticeship. Karg says he found out about the conversion from his younger son, Leonard, who has a different mother. The boy caught his half-brother praying during a weekend visit. Leonard told Karg that Alfons' reaction was: "Don't tell Papa," just as he always hid things from his father.

The young convert who’s very idealistic and high for his new religion secretly visited places where he could be heavily indoctrinated (brainwashed). At this point, there’s no longer moderation or voice of reason or even adult supervision.

After that, when Alfons turned 18, he emptied his savings account and took a trip with two Turkish friends to Turkey. But before last Christmas, unbeknownst to his father, Alfon left for Turkey again. Karg says he heard through acquaintances that his eldest had called his mother and told her to give away his belongings."That was for me a crucial alarm bell," Karg says. "A young person, 18 years of age, buys himself a flat-screen TV and then we are suddenly allowed to throw away everything he has?"

In the past, I’ve been posting many blog posts questioning the wisdom of western countries that were conveniently turning blind eyes when their citizens travelled to fight in the Syrian war because of their mutual hatred of Assad regime. I’m seeing that both sides in this war as equally evil and no one should support one or the other.

These sorts of ‘incidents’ are happening rampantly in western countries. Even though it’s too late to do anything for Alfons, perhaps there’s still a chance to save many other youths just like him whose attraction to Islam are making them so vulnerable that at the end they become prey to those who wished to exploit them.

Preventing young Germans from heading to Syria or Iraq — whether they are the fewer than 10 percent who are converts like Alfons, or the rest who come from an immigrant background — is something German authorities say is a top priority. In nearby North Rhine Westphalia, the head of the state's domestic intelligence, Burkhard Freier, says his government has launched three pilot programs called "Signpost" to reach out to at-risk youth.

Sadly, the more I read testimonials of young recent converts to Islam who are dragged into this unnecessary war, the more I asked myself of why there’s no age for religious conversion/changing your religion? We set age limit for when someone can get a driver’s license, vote in election, legal age of drinking, join the military, get married or be held responsible for criminal acts.

Reference

http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/12/03/368049116/from-german-teen-to-isis-jihadist-a-fathers-struggle-to-understand

End of the Islamic State?

Nowadays, the whole world is very much focused on the militant radical Islamic organization called the Islamic state; tracking the growth of the organization, the source of funding, their immediate and also long term goals, group movements, their supporters, the key players (internal and external to the organization) and the fights against them.

Many of the arm-chair supporters of the Islamic state on social media have gone quietly in recent times; perhaps some have lost interest after realizing that the much-hyped concept of a glorified worldwide ‘caliphate’ may not materialize in their lifetimes.

I’m reading this article about the demise of the Islamic State.

Suddenly, Islamic State just can’t fall fast enough. All summer, the press has been saying IS will soon be accepting the keys to every city on earth, an unstoppable jihadi juggernaut.

And now, after six weeks stalled out against a local militia in Kobane and going exactly nowhere in the over-hyped drive on Baghdad, even the mainstream press, represented by America’s paper of record, the New York Times, is saying what I said months ago: IS is just a Sunni Arab militia that will never take serious turf from the other powerful groups in the region, the Kurds of the north or the Shia of the south.

After being shown up in Kobane, IS has now been truly humiliated by US airstrikes that hit a meeting on the Syria/Iraq border and a big convoy near Mosu

Even without nonstop decimation via air attack, a universal caliphate is a doomed, dumb idea. Remember what Al Baghdadi said: “Syria does not belong to the Syrians, and Iraq does not belong to the Iraqis”? You know who would beg to differ? The Syrians. And the Iraqis. And it’s not even that simple, because the territories in which this war is being fought are fractal as sci-fi dream scenes, which means that “Syrians” devolves into dozens, maybe hundreds, of groups that hate each other and will fight to the death for their local turf. Kobane is a part of one turf, “Rojava” or Syrian Kurdistan; but it’s also a local turf on its own, and you can bet that the Kobane people have a few stereotypes of their Kurdish neighbors in the other evolving cantons like Afrin. You can bet that not all of Assad’s Alawites are fond of each other, either, even if they’re forced to stick together now against the Sunni who want to annihilate them. And those Sunni have never managed to make common cause for any length of time, even against a common enemy.

The rest of the article is also equally interesting, so please consider reading all.

Another related article is this" Study: Westerners join Islamic State because of peer pressure, not social media "

Today, the Guardian reports on an upcoming study from the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Science (ICSR) which finds that British Muslims who join Islamic State fighters in Syria do so more often because of peer pressure than social media propaganda.

“While online recruitment plays a role, people go because they know people who are in Syria,” ICSR director Peter Neumann told the Guardian. “It’s all about networks in the real world.”

References

http://pando.com/2014/11/10/the-war-nerd-farewell-islamic-state-we-hardly-knew-ye/
http://pando.com/2014/11/06/study-westerners-join-islamic-state-because-of-peer-pressure-not-social-media/

Online recruitment

I was reading this article yesterday - Jihadi Recruiters Tailor Their Message To Online Trends

HARAS RAFIQ: By using names, by using hash tags - and they're actually quite popular. For example, they were using the recent World Cup hash tag as one way of people actually saying, oh, OK, let me have a look at what's going on there and going onto the hash tag and finding lots of ISIS recruitment material. For these guys, it's really about looking at what drives youngsters to go down that path.

RAFIQ: Well, I was part of the government task force after the bombings. And we came up with a strategy called preventing violent extremism which has evolved over the years. And there were really two parts to the strategy. The sharper part of it was intervening and providing interventions when youngsters have been identified as supporting violence or supporting terrorism. The bigger part of it and what we used to call the softer part of preventing violent extremism is really helping to build resilience with in communities - countering the narratives, countering the ideas - so that when youngsters have these messages, this lens created in front of them, they have the ability to push back.

Britain has finally came to her senses

We’ve been reading a lot of news about British residents travelling to middle-east countries like Iraq and Syria to cause havoc and promote instability. A lot of them have been radicalized by Internet Mullahs who are encouraging young men to go there and fight. Women are also encouraged to join the cause (only god knows for what).

Recent news from England

Assistant Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley said arrests for suspected fanatics heading to or from Syria as well as fund-raisers are running at five times the rate of last year.

The warning came as he said “significant progress” was being made in the hunt for “Jihadi John”, the Briton who is believed to have beheaded American journalist James Foley.

Intelligence and security agencies in the UK and US are said to be close to identifying the man who was seen apparently murdering Mr Foley in a video broadcast by the terror group Islamic State.

It is believed the murder took place in Syria and had reignited concerns over the level of involvement by young British extremists in the conflict there and in Iraq as well as the risk they pose if they return.

It is estimated that at least 500 Britons have travelled to Syria to fight alongside extremists there, of who around half are thought to be from London.

In one of my post, I asked why the western governments (like France and UK) are not doing more to stem or stop these radicalized individuals. It’s as if the authorities in those (western) countries are turning blind eyes because violent/terror acts are committed in someone else’s backyard.

Perhaps, some may think that these men are doing everyone a favor by fighting Assad of Syria even though extremely brutal tactics (which are sadistic and completely against human nature) are employed against civilians and many innocents are deliberately targeted/killed in revenge.

One of the things I find lacking the most, not only in Muslim but also in western communities, is ethics. Everyone is looking after their convenience and their self-interest with no regards to greater good of humanity. And every method, no matter how unethical, is okay (halal) and can be used as long as it for our self-interest, goal and objective…

For the past three years, these same people have been committing extreme brutality against Syrians and Iraqis but the world has just started to notice it now? Did no one take note of the barbaric human-liver eating man?

If you read some of the profiles of some of the Jihadists, they all seem to be very sinful people and complete losers.

Choudhruy in 2010;he conned them (family) out of £25,000, under the false pretence of needing treatment for cancer, to go to Singapore, not once but twice for surgery. Once there, Choudhury, who was in perfect health, spent the money on prostitutes costing £200 a night, his penchant for young women revealed in text messages discovered by police. Back in Portsmouth, he resumed the habit. He went on what he called “lads’ holidays” to Morocco three times and twice more to Singapore in 2011 and 2012, while at the same time downloading lectures by extremist preachers, extolling the virtues of an Islamic caliphate. To atone for his sins, Choudhury decided to embark on a holy war.

One key figure was missing: Jaman, a former worker in a Sky customer service call centre, whose parents owned an Indian takeaway restaurant in Portsmouth. He had studied at an Islamic boarding school in London, but life in a call centre proved boring and un-demanding. In May last year, he went to Syria and began recruiting his eager friends. In messages posted on Twitter and other internet sites, he painted a romanticised version of life on the front line, boasting of a “five star jihad”.

References
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/11053444/Portsmouth-jihadists-from-Primark-worker-to-enemy-of-the-state.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/11057026/Arrests-of-would-be-British-jihadis-increase-five-fold.html

Islamist schizophrenic or a pretender?

Recently, a western psychiatrist made the claim that Religious Fundamentalism is a Mental Disorder. By this if someone become influenced by Islamic extremism then that is a mental disorder just like any other disorder.

I felt that the idea was interesting enough to be pursued and made a post on my blog. However, I was also doubtful if these sorts of statements (someone’s mental state) can even be evaluated or validated objectively especially when you don’t have access to that person as a patient or his/her medical record.

Islamic teaching (at least the ancient form of it) only recognizes schizophrenia, mainly because the signs from people afflicted by it were clear enough and recognizable. We have rules and regulations on how to deal with schizophrenics and societal expectation of them. Islamic literatures also contain stories about a number of pretenders who had to fake their mental state in order to avoid severe punishment for having opinions that were against the conventional wisdom of the time.

Information about the brain and how it’s wired was not available back then and still not available in many of the Muslim communities because a lot of people are still living a very basic and primitive life. Hence people are mostly not aware that mental disorder can span a whole big spectrum

Secondly, it’s not easy for lay person to deal with mental issues (if he is suffering from it or has family members affected by it) because it requires expertise not available to most of us hence this area should be deal professionally (or in a professional manner by well trained professionals).

So, far I’ve noticed that even in western countries people don’t really get the help they need when they need until it’s too late. In Muslim society, sometimes a lot of people who are suffering from mental disorders or depressions have been crudely ‘misdiagnosed’ as suffering from a possession (usually by Jinns).


I was reading this news: Australian jihadist who posted decapitated head image is 'paranoid schizophrenic'


I’m quoting the relevant parts (or what I find interesting) here:

An Australian Islamist who proudly published a photo of his seven-year-old son holding a severed head in Syria is – according to psychiatrists who treated him – a paranoid schizophrenic who has hallucinated for years.

Days after he was widely described in Australia as "a lunatic", convicted terrorist Khaled Sharrouf was confirmed as a paranoid, schizophrenic depressive who has suffered mental illness since the 1990s by Dr Olav Nielssen, a leading Australian psychiatrist.

Following Dr Nielssen's assessment, a court sentenced Sharrouf to four years in prison and concluded his condition "predicated him towards
extremism and radicalisation by others".

Sharrouf, 33, a high-school dropout and former drug user, posted a photograph on Twitter of his son in northern Syria which was described by United States secretary of state John Kerry this week as one of the worst, most stomach-turning photos the world had ever seen.

Justice Anthony Whealy, the former Supreme Court judge who sentenced Sharrouf, said this week that the former defendant was "very" mentally ill and was unable to understand the court proceedings.

"His symptoms were quite severe, he was quite delusional," he told ABC News.

"He was overheard talking to other people when no one was there. This was observed on quite a few occasions and it was a state of mind that persisted for some time. He was unfit to plead and that means in legal terms that he was simply incapable of understanding what the court case would be about."

I’d really like to read more on this topic in the future. Some of the questions I have so far are

• Does Islamic radicalism/extremism attract people who have mental disorders?
• Does any form of radicalism/extremism make you lose your sanity (because we know that not all radicals are Muslim)
• The allegation in the newspaper was that this man already had a prior mental health situation and incarceration only made it worse. Did his lower functioning mental state made him embrace ideas (pushed by Islamic radicals)?
• Can we say that folks like us who are not interested in silly radicals’ ideas are at least very stable mentally?
• The judge dismissed the claim that somehow this man got away from the law system by pretending to be a mentally insane individual. Is the judge mistaken and is now trying to save himself or is the law system designed to let the criminals and the criminally insane walk away freely?

Reference
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/11036230/Australian-jihadist-who-posted-decapitated-head-image-is-paranoid-schizophrenic.html

Is ISIS just a hype?

I believe so and will disappear eventually, sooner I hope.

Just because they are making headlines in the world today, doesn’t mean that they are significant or what they are doing is important. Islamic caliphates come and go. They are never sustainable and impractical for governing.

This article that I’m currently reading has correctly pointed out why the ISIS will never be able to take over any of the land it promised nor will it be able to form a caliphate/empire not in Iraq and not anywhere else in the world.

Reference
[1] http://pando.com/2014/07/14/i-s-i-s-and-the-western-media-groping-each-other-in-public-like-a-kardashian-thanksgiving/

The Sunni love triangle

The love triangle between the ISIS (Islamic State) jihadist and Saddam’s ex-Bathists and with the Arab Iraqi Sunni will not last very long. All of the groups mentioned above have a very contradictory ideology and aspiration.

ISIS Jihadist is made up of mainly foreign fighters, indoctrinated with hard-core Wahabi ideology who wishes to establish a fantasy caliphate stretching from east to the west using extreme military force.

The ex-Bathists are a bunch of secular socialists who has preferred Saddam’s dictatorship in the past and don’t really have a strong religious inclination (most of them are atheist anyway). Ex-Bathists want to destabilize the current government and by doing so, they hope to gain back most of the political and military powers which was lost in the second gulf war.

The Iraqi Arab Sunnis who don’t at all share the ISIS interpretation of Islam wants to preserve wealth, power, and the way of life which has further deteriorate under Maliki government.

Apart from the clear differences in ideologies among these groups, Iraqis are also very proud people. They would never listen to this fake caliph or submit to his foreign fighters. ISIS also doesn't believe in power sharing. They have their own religious-politico hierarchy.

This love relationship will probably not last very long.

Silly Girls Joining the Jihadist Movement

I’ve been reading a lot of news lately about western Muslim/converts girls joining/planning to join the rebels/jihadist in Syria. These girls have been inspired by books/images/videos/audios that are calling worldwide Muslim to join what they term as a ‘holy war’. When you read report of the incident, you always find that these youths are never interested in doing anything useful/uplifting for the community that they are living in. It is always some aspiration to kill people or bring significant damage to the society because either a score needs to be settled or an example needs to be made.

Today, they arrested a young Muslim convert girl who wanted to join the Syrian Jihadist.

DENVER - The FBI says a 19-year-old Colorado woman has been arrested while trying to board a flight at Denver International Airport with the goal of meeting with a terrorist group called the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, also known as ISIS.

A federal criminal complaint states that between Sept. 7, 2013 and April 8, 2014, Shannon Maureen Conley, together with others, tried to provide material support and resources, including personnel and expert advice, to a foreign terrorist organization.

Conley, a Muslim convert, was arrested April 8 at DIA after telling FBI agents she was traveling to Syria to use her American military training from the U.S. Army Explorers to aid Islamic militants waging jihad -- or holy war -- even though she knew that it was illegal, according to federal court records released Wednesday.

She said "legitimate targets of attack" included U.S. military bases, government employees and public officials, the documents say.

The brainwashing seems to be very strong in this case. Even when she was asked if she wished to do some humanitarian work, she declined.

The agents repeatedly asked Conley if she'd consider helping Muslims by doing humanitarian work, like using her nursing skills with the Red Crescent Society.

"Conley stated she has no interest in doing humanitarian work. Conley felt that Jihad is the only answer to correct the wrongs against the Muslim world. Conley said she preferred to wage Jihad overseas so she could be with Jihadist fighters," the affidavit said.

And then we found out that there’s also a secret online boyfriend that might have influenced her decision:

Conley and her parents told FBI agents that she planned to travel to the Middle East to meet her "suitor," a 32-year-old Tunisian man who is an ISIS fighter in Syria. The teen said a one-way airline ticket had already been purchased for her

The father said he found Shannon talking with her Tunisian suitor on Skype. At the time, Shannon and the man asked John Conley for his "blessing" for them to marry and for her to travel to Syria to marry the man as soon as possible.

The father told the FBI he denied both requests and Shannon and the man appeared surprised.

This seems to be very typical of the converts. Not having a solid foundation of Islam, they are grasping at anything and everything people are telling them.

"Conley explained to her father she felt conflicted with what she thought Islam required of her. Conley believed she, as a Muslim, needed to marry young and be confrontational in her support of Islam. She conceded her knowledge of Islam was based solely on her own research that she conducted on the Internet," the affidavit said.

Last year, we read this news about two young teenagers who also disappeared in Turkey and reappeared with the Syrian Jihadist.

The father of two Norwegian sisters who said they were leaving to wage jihad in Syria has told the Telegraph of his heartbreak as his daughters have now "been seen" with the rebels.

As he learned of the their plan, the father rushed to the Turkish border with Syria, hoping to catch his daughters, aged 16 and 19 and of Somali origin, before they crossed into the war-torn country.

The family first heard of the two sisters’ intentions one week ago via email, which said: “Muslims are currently under attack from all fronts and something needs to be done. We want to help the Muslims, and the only way to do so is to be with them in their pains and their joy.”

For years this moderate Muslim family lived a calm life in Norway. The girls were both students and seemed happy, he said.

However, in recent months the older sister had become more conservative in her practicing of Islam. She reportedly started to wear a full black niqab, covering her head, body and face in public.

Some local activists in Syria said they feared the girls may have come into online contact with some of the foreign jihadists now fighting in Syria, and been lured by them to “join the jihad”.

“This has happened many times before,” said Ahmed, one local activist in touch with foreign fighters who have come to fight for al-Qaeda in Syria.

“A woman would not be allowed to fight on the front line; for a women they interpret jihad to mean they must cook and clean, and sometimes have intercourse with the fighters”.

References
[1] http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/19-year-old-colorado-woman-shannon-maureen-conley-charged-with-aiding-terrorist-group-fbi-says07022014

[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10406351/A-fathers-heartbreak-as-his-daughters-leave-Norway-to-join-jihad-in-Syria.html

The mess in Iraq

I’ve been following the messy situation in Iraq closely since last week after the Islamic Extremists (ISIL) announced the takeover of the city of Mosul. I think this was not entirely unexpected. Most people would agree that Iraq is not only a failed state but that the politicians over there are mostly sell-out.

Most of us would probably not care about the mess in Iraq…(something bad is happening in Nigeria, something bad is happening in Pakistan, something bad is still happening in Syria, something bad is always happening somewhere..)

except Iraq has something everyone loves…oil and lots of it. So the situation in Iraq becomes extremely serious and requires global intervention.

I’m summarizing what I saw/read on the news and what I think about it:

Maliki’s right-hand man embarrassed himself (and possible his boss) by whinnying about how the US was still responsible for Iraq’s safety and should at least help in sending a few missiles towards the terrorists’ hideout. I was actually happy when Obama said No. Whatever messy situation Iraqis find themselves in, they need to learn to take care of it. If you can’t do it then it’s probably time to leave the office and let someone else do the job.

The US wanted Iraqi politicians currently dominated by the Shias to be more insular and less sectarian. The timing of the request is a little bit late because now, after seeing what the barbaric Sunni Extremists are capable of, most of the Iraqis will naturally gravitate towards sectarianism. If someone was not sectarian before, he/she is now. I also think the US had ten years to do something useful in Iraq (in regards to Nation Building) but they didn’t/couldn’t do much. Now, that the US is out, I don’t think they are in a position to order someone to do what they want; furthermore they should not even expect the Iraqi to listen or obey them, unless the US can provide Iraqi some incentives..which I can’t think of any.

Saddam’s daughter was cheering the terrorist takeover of Mosul and Tikrit and praised one of her father’s ex-general. Lots of angry ex-Baathists still sees violence as a mean to show their dissatisfaction. That’s how things used to work in Saddam’s Iraq. Regime change doesn’t really change the psychology of the people.

The ISIL (Sunni Extremists Group) has unleased unimaginable horrific violence. Thanks to technology, you can now watch human getting dismembered and butchered in high definition and almost real time.

I’m again reading about this stupid suggestion about how Iraq should be divided into three segments: one for the Shiites, one for the Sunni Arab and the last segment for the Kurds who are mostly Sunni. I don’t think the Sunni Arabs would like to be ‘contained’ in rat-holes like Tikrit and Fallujah. How about Baghdad? Who gets it? Both Sunni and Shia live there. What about many of the Iraqis who are in mix-marriages like a Sunni Arab married to a Shia Arab, a Sunni Arab married to a Sunni Kurd or a Shia Arab married to a Sunni Kurd– how do you resolve such situations? And what if someone has in them 1/2 Shia Arab blood, 1/4 Sunni Arab and 1/4 Kurd blood..so what are you and which segment of Iraq do you get to live?

I’m also observing Sunnis on social networks; trying to see their reaction and what they think about the latest takeover of some of the Iraqi cities by the Sunni Jihadist. A lot of people are surprisingly silent! The same bunch of people who used to cheer the Syrian Jihadists (the exact same folks of the ISIL) for their ‘bravery’ in fighting Hafeez al-Asad is strangely quiet. Is this Sunni hypocrisy at play here? Yes, No?

I believe the difference in attitude is because most of the propagandas video was able to point Hafeez al-Asad of Syria as a Kafir Shia Dictator (he’s not actually Shia by the way) who is running a country of a majority of the Sunni population and oppressing them.

Saudi Arabia the biggest supporters of the Syrian Jihadists who hates the Shias and their leadership in Iraq and Iran are okay with seeing ISIL mischiefs here and there but they are also not keen to see ISIL becoming a powerful entity. After all, the ISIL fantasy of a global Islamic Caliphate would probably get rid most of the Sunni dynasties of many of the Arab kingdoms in the Gulf including Saudi Arabia.

I was reading something interesting today about how Iraq may never become a stable democracy. :(

I hope the author of the article is wrong, unfortunately most of the things he's saying about Iraq can be corroborated. I'll talk about this in the future, time permitting.

Reference

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2014/06/20/war-without-end-why-iraq-can-never-be-a-stable-democracy/

What to do about fools dying for Allah?

Finally, we have a bit of encouraging news about a new initiative headed by the government of the UK and France to curb the brainwashed young local Muslims (mostly men) from travelling abroad to die for Allah.

France and the UK will work together to prevent young Muslims travelling to Syria for jihadist fighting, French President Francois Hollande says.

He was speaking at a news conference after talks with UK Prime Minister David Cameron in Oxfordshire.

"We are going to set up co-operation to avoid young people being affected by this propaganda and to monitor their comings and goings," he said.

British police have arrested at least 16 people, who are alleged to have travelled between Syria and the UK, on suspicion of terror offences. Last year there were 24 such arrests.

Mr Hollande said that between 600 and 700 Britons or UK residents had travelled to Syria to fight in the conflict which began in March 2011.

Well...duh, of course something needed to be done. Why do western governments think that it is okay for the citizen of their countries to travel abroad to fight ideological wars and cause havoc, mischiefs and miseries in someone's else backyards?

We don't have any specifics at this point so we'll have to wait and see. Also, we need to remind ourselves that David Cameroon is up for re-election soon and Hollande could probably use some popularity himself, so while the idea is interesting and merit-able, this could all be gimmicks for election.


Reference

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25981278

New convert to Islam turning to violence

I was reading news about the trial of a British officer (Lee Rigby) killed by a recent convert of Islam (Michael Adebolajo). The answers in the trial from this convert are very shocking and chilling. I’m not even able to fathom how someone would start killing in the name of a new religion he just professed a few years ago. Is there a deficiency in his understanding of the Islamic faith or is violence so deeply rooted (ingrained) in the Islamic religion that it’s almost inseparable?

Here’s the court room exchange.

When he was later asked what his defence to the charge of murder was, he said: "I am a soldier. I'm a soldier of Allah".

He also told the Old Bailey he loved extremist network al-Qaeda.

Adebolajo said: "Al-Qaeda I consider to be Mujahideen. I love them, they're my brothers. I have never met them. I consider them my brothers in Islam."

He said he had been brought up as a Christian by his family and his parents had taken him to church every Sunday.

"The memory that sticks in my mind... is probably every New Year's Eve in the evening around 11 o'clock we would gather around in candlelight and read passages from the Bible," he said.

He converted to Islam in his first year as a student at Greenwich University.

Last week, CCTV footage of him running towards the police car with a meat cleaver raised was shown to the court. He said he should be ransomed back to other jihadi fighters, set free or killed if he was found guilty.

Dzhokhar (Jahar) Tsarnaev

Jahar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, scrawled a note at the wall of the boat while hiding at WaterTown, MA before he was captured by the authorities.

His message was

"When you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims." He also penned that he was not mourning the death of his brother because he (Tamerlan) was a "martyr in paradise."

His message is pretty standard; something you would expect from someone who has been radicalized with Jihadism.

There also seems to be a new entry about Islamic terrorism on Wikipedia.

A few days ago, I was reading this interesting blog entry about Tsarnaev brothers global Jihad against what they perceive as Islam's enemy.

Tsarnaev's quote seems to be based on the idea of a global Muslim community, called the ummah, that has always been aspirational. The Tsarnaev brothers clearly felt that they were being marginalized, and the fact that they did not belong to an American Muslim community further reinforced that belief. So the brothers turned to the idea of the ummah, a historical fiction that has not existed in practice in all of Muslim history. Muslims are too varied to connect to one way of being a community.

What we are witnessing in Syria, what we saw in Egypt or in Iran during the Green Revolution, is that Muslims kill other Muslims for political gain, and the idea of the ummah is broken. There is no sense from the brothers that they would have been able to understand or choose sides in these conflicts.

Not only does the Muslim Ummah not exist in the current time, but it also has never existed in the past/historical. And then, it gets really interesting.

There is no universal, binding legal command for all Muslims to support each other at all times. Even if there were, throughout Islamic history, it has been observed in its breach rather than in practice. Prophet Mohammed’s son-in-law, Ali, was assassinated while praying, and Mohammed’s favorite grandson, Husayn, was murdered after being denied food and water for days. Both of these acts were committed by people who considered themselves Muslim.

The above are just some examples. Of course you can view all the wars that Muslim fought against each other in the past and also at the establishment of unjust governments (kings or sultans via dynastic rulers/monarchy). This just goes to show how corrupt the Muslim society have been throughout the ages. Not much different than what you have now.

Syrian Rebel Eating a Human Heart

I’ve seen the video. Click to play the video at this link only if you are not weak at heart. It’s very graphic. It shows a man standing over a dead body, cutting out the heart (or lung) and consuming it while chanting derogatory statement about Bashar al-Assad and his supporters.

The BBC Middle East page has this news on its front page.

A video which appears to show a Syrian rebel taking a bite from the heart of a dead soldier has been widely condemned.

US-based Human Rights Watch identified the rebel as Abu Sakkar, a well-known insurgent from the city of Homs, and said his actions were a war crime.

"The mutilation of the bodies of enemies is a war crime. But the even more serious issue is the very rapid descent into sectarian rhetoric and violence," HRW's Peter Bouckaert told Reuters news agency.

The side note at the BBC site has this quote

This gruesome episode.... highlights - in stark terms - some of the problems facing those Western powers eager to support the opposition

I’ve never been able to figure out why the West is supporting this barbaric group of Syrian Rebels. Don’t they know you cannot spread democracy in Middle East by supporting the Muslim Jihadist/fundamentalist? Those scumbags are totally against the very idea of democracy itself. If they succeed in collapsing the Assad Regime, then they’ll bring their fundamentalists ideas and leadership who will trample the rights of people left and right.