In this mailing:
- Soeren Kern: Radical Islam Spreading in Spain
- Mudar Zahran: Egypt under Islamists
- Veli Sirin: Syrian Shoot-Down - And Erdogan's "Furious" Response
Radical Islam Spreading in Spain
by Soeren Kern
July 3, 2012 at 5:00 am
July 3, 2012 at 5:00 am
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The report,
which examines some of the main Islamist groups operating in Spain, shows that
the common thread linking all the groups together is their mutual desire to
establish an Islamic Caliphate.
Two Islamists have been arrested in Spain on
charges of torturing
and murdering two fellow Muslims for "abandoning radical Islam."
The arrests came just days after Spanish
newspapers reported that jihadists in Spain are travelling
to Syria to help overthrow the government there.
Spanish authorities say the incidents -- on top
of many others in recent months -- point to the accelerating spread in the
country of radical Salafi Islam, which Spain's National Intelligence Center,
the CNI, in a leaked secret report -- corroborated by the Spanish Institute for
Strategic Studies, an organization tied to the Spanish Ministry of Defense, in
its own recently published a 43-page report entitled, "Islamist
Movements in Spain" -- states is increasingly posing the greatest
threat to national security.
Rachid Mohamed Abdellah and Nabil Mohamed
Chaib, both of whom are Spanish citizens of Moroccan origin, were jailed after
being questioned by Judge Eloy Velasco at the National Court (Audiencia
Nacional) in Madrid on June 28.
Police say the two men, aged 25 and 30
respectively, are members of an Islamist cell based in the city of Melilla, a
Spanish exclave on the northern coast of Morocco. They are accused of torturing
and murdering two other members of the cell who "adopted Western behavior
and tried to disengage from radical Islam." Spanish authorities say the
murders were meted out according to Islamic Sharia law, which calls for the
killing of "infidels."
Spanish Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz
said the suspects are "capable of carrying out especially brutal
attacks," and share "the same radical orthodoxy" of the
Islamists who carried out the March 2004 Madrid train bombings in which 191
people were killed and 1,800 wounded.
At a news conference following the arrests, the
Director General of Spanish Police, Ignacio
Cosidó, said: "They were part of an extremely radical group, and had
committed a double murder of two members of their own organization who had
shown signs of wanting to leave. Their ideology is clearly jihadi and they
believe in terrorism as a means to achieve their objectives. Therefore, they
posed a threat of the highest order."
Abdellah and Chaib were arrested Melilla
neighborhood of Cañada de Hidum after an extended confrontation with police,
who, pelted with rocks and bottles by local Muslims, were forced to call for
reinforcements.
Spanish police further state that the cell was
composed mainly of Spanish citizens of North African origin living in Melilla,
and Moroccans living in Farkhana, Morocco. The suspects were engaged in
recruiting and indoctrinating Muslim youths for training in jihadist camps or
war zones in places such as Afghanistan. The cell was notable for its secrecy
and for the adoption of strong internal security measures aimed at keeping its
activities clandestine.
Members of the cell were forced to live a life
of submission to the Takfiri
branch of Islam, a violent offshoot of fundamentalist Saudi Salafism, that seeks to
establish an Islamic Caliphate [empire] in the Middle East and large parts of
Europe. Among other beliefs, Takfiris consider violence to be a legitimate
method to achieve their religious and political goals.
The arrests come just days after the Madrid-based
newspaper El País reported that jihadists from Ceuta, another
Spanish exclave in northern Morocco, have been travelling to Syria to help
overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad. The report states that one of the
jihadists, a 33-year-old taxi driver, Rachid Wahbi, was killed just days after
arriving in Syria.
Spanish police say the jihadists, many of whom
are Spanish citizens, have been travelling from Ceuta to Málaga and then on to
Madrid, from where they board flights to Istanbul. Once in Turkey, they make
contact with jihadists who facilitate their entry into Syria.
Police believe the jihadists from Ceuta involve
Takfiris who, in the Los Caracolas district of the city, attend a mosque
considered the most radical of the 33 mosques in Ceuta because of its links to
Salafism. Spanish police say the jihadists also meet regularly in homes in the
Condesa neighborhood of Ceuta, where they watch videos on jihad.
Separately, nine Islamists accused of planning
terrorist attacks aimed at "liberating" Spain for Islam were found
not guilty by the National Court in Madrid in April 2012.
Spanish public prosecutors had said the men --
Salafi-Jihadists who belonged to an Islamist cell known as the "Army
of the Messiah" (Ansar al-Mahdi) -- sought to "free" the
cities of Ceuta and Melilla from Spanish rule to begin the Islamic re-conquest
of Spain.
Spanish prosecutors said the jihadist cell
operated out of the Darkawia
mosque in the El Príncipe Alfonso neighborhood of Ceuta. The ringleader of
the group, a Moroccan imam named Mohammed Abdessalam, was alleged by
prosecutors to have "preached the most extreme version of Islam."
Prosecutors said the jihadists had been
plotting a series of bombings in Ceuta -- in the city's main port, in churches
and in other infrastructure.
In its ruling, however, the
court said that although prosecutors proved that the Islamists were
"jihadists who worshiped martyrdom," there was a lack of
incontrovertible proof that the men were "planning to attack Spanish
interests." The ruling added: "Terrorism is more than the expression
of radical ideas. Freedom of expression and dissemination of ideas, thoughts or
doctrines is a feature of the democratic system which we must protect even for
those who disagree and advocate changing it."
The ruling came on the heels of the CNI's
leaked secret report, which warned of "alarming symptoms" of the
presence in Spain of members and cells of the Islamist group Takfir wal-Hijra,
which subscribes to the "most radical and violent version of
Salafi-Jihadism."
Takfir wal-Hijra doctrine promotes "jihad
without rules" by condoning non-Muslim practices, such as drinking alcohol
and drug trafficking, as a cover for extremist activities. According to CNI,
the group aspires to subjugate the entire planet under a "global caliphate
ruled exclusively by Islamic Sharia law." Members of the group are now
firmly established in Barcelona, Madrid, Málaga and Valencia, among other
Spanish cities.
The CNI document further states that police
have detected Takfir activities in four mosques in Barcelona and two mosques in
Valencia. The mosques are "led by radical imams from Algeria and
Morocco," and are centers for "proselytization and recruitment of new
members using religious instruction as a decoy."
The report of the Spanish Ministry of Defense
examines some of the main Islamist groups operating in Spain, such as Takfir wal-Hijra, Tablighi Jamaat, and
the Muslim
Brotherhood, Justice
and Charity from Morocco, concludes that radical Islam is on the rise in
Spain. It also shows that the common thread linking all the groups together is
their mutual desire to establish an Islamic Caliphate.
The document also states: "The wide range
of freedoms in countries like Spain, such as the freedom of expression and
association, and the extensive judicial protections, paradoxically represent an
advantage for Islamist movements to disseminate messages opposed to democracy
or messages that promote radicalization…Jihadist groups can disseminate a range
of principles contrary to our democratic and constitutional values, or contrary
to the integration into the society of residence, in addition to implementing
feelings of marginalization or victimization, that could serve as a breeding
ground for jihadist recruitment."
A recent survey conducted by the Spanish Ministry
of the Interior provides additional insights into the beliefs of Muslims in
Spain. Entitled "Values, Attitudes and
Opinions of Muslim Immigrants," the report shows that more than half
the Muslims in Spain consider themselves to be "very religious." Only
12% say they are non-practicing.
More than 80% are opposed to banning the burka
and only 39% say they are opposed to establishment of Islamic Sharia law courts
in Spain. More than 60% of those surveyed say they obey instructions from the
imams at their local mosques.
In March, Spanish authorities arrested a
radical Islamic preacher for calling on Muslims to use physical and
psychological violence to "discipline" errant wives who refuse to
submit to Islamic Sharia law or obey their husbands.
Spanish public prosecutors say Abdeslam
Laaroussi, a charismatic imam from Morocco who preaches at a large mosque
in Terrassa, an industrial city 30 kilometers north of Barcelona, is guilty of
"incitement to violence against women" for "providing concrete
examples of the manner in which wives should be beaten, how to isolate them
inside the family home and how to deny them sexual relations," the last of
which would not appear to require extensive instruction.
Police say witnesses provided them with
recordings of sermons Laaroussi preached in downtown Terrassa at the Badr
Mosque,where more than 1,500 people attend prayers services each Friday, and
where he instructed his listeners to "hit women with the use of a stick,
the fist or the hand so that no bones are broken and no blood is drawn."
Laaroussi has refused to cooperate with police
or provide evidence: he says he does not recognize the legitimacy of the
Spanish state.
Soeren
Kern is Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based
Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.
Related Topics: Spain
| Soeren
Kern
Egypt
under Islamists
The Trouble Has Just Begun
by Mudar Zahran
July 3, 2012 at 4:00 am
July 3, 2012 at 4:00 am
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Since the
US Administration insisted early on that the Muslim Brotherhood be invited to
the Cairo speech and presented with the choicest seats there – all in direct
violation of the wishes of then-President Hosni Mubarak, who ultimately refused
even to attend the speech – all options but surrender seem to have been off the
table, not only in the Middle East, but in Russia, China and South America as
well.
When Mohammad Morsi, a leader in the Muslim
Brotherhood, won the presidential elections in Egypt on June 24, he addressed
the Egyptian nation, promising he would "be a president for all Egyptian,
Muslims and Christian, men and women." As the Muslim Brotherhood has a
history of double-talk and hostility against all forms of opposition, however,
why would the Muslim Brotherhood president act any differently from the
organization with which he is affiliated?
The Muslim Brotherhood is not only financially
capable, but, according
to Egyptian researcher Nadine Farag, has provided social services, such as
food to the poor, in exchange for public support.
The same pattern might have continued as well
during Morsi's campaign: according
to CNN, Morsi's contender, Shafik, and his campaign members filed several
complaints with Egypt's Supreme Presidential Election Commission, alleging that
the Muslim Brotherhood's supporters had been bribing voters with "large
sums of money and food" to back Morsi; accused him of using
"intimidation, threats and violence" against supporters of the
candidate Ahmed Shafik, and accusing the Brotherhood of ballot fraud.
Shafik and his friends are not the only campers
unhappy with Morsi's victory; there are also the leftists, or Nasserists,
(dogmatized by the ideas of the late President Gamal Abdel Nasser) who saw
their presidential candidate, Hamadeen Sabahi, equally defeated by the
Brotherhood. The Qatari TV network Al
Jazeera reported that Hamadeen Sabahi had appealed for Egypt's presidential
election to be suspended over alleged voting irregularities. Although the
Nasserists share with the Muslim Brotherhood a hatred of Israel, they
nonetheless do not want to see an Islamist state in Egypt, and hold an
ideological enmity against the Muslim Brotherhood that goes back to the days of
Nasser. While outnumbered and out-powered by the Islamists, the leftists of
Egypt are still hold some political
weight.
While nobody can judge Morsi's sincerity at
this early stage, a look at the Muslim Brotherhood's record in credibility
might help. A year ago, for example, Sobhi Saleh, a Muslim Brotherhood leader
and member of the constitution amendment committee, called on Muslim
Brotherhood men strictly to marry Muslim Brotherhood women; they are, he said,
"superior" to other Muslim women in Egypt as they can "produce
little Brotherhood kids." He also described
Egyptian secularists as atheists and Egyptians opposing the Brotherhood as
the "People of Lot," (who practiced homosexuality and, according to
the Quran, were punished by God). In other words, the Muslim Brotherhood looks
down even on fellow Muslims, so how will the Muslim Brotherhood president treat
all of his citizens with equality as he promises, and how will he maintain the
civil rights of the Christian minority?
As to the millions of Copts, or Christian
Egyptians, the Muslim Brotherhood leaders has been clear: as explained by the
Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide, Mustafa Mashhur, in an interview with
Al-Ahram newspaper back in 1997: the Egyptian Christians must pay a "Jizya"—an
extra tax that, according to Islam, non-Muslims must pay to the Muslim
state—and they must be excluded from all senior government and military jobs.
Further, while the presidential elections were
still boiling, then-presidential-candidate Morsi, threatened by a confrontation
with Egypt's Military Council, faced down Egypt's ruling generals and vowed to
give away his life for the cause if the Council conducted a constitutional coup
against him. Such a vow suggests that the usually non-violent Brotherhood is now
willing to use violence to acquire power. Only time will tell if the Muslim
Brotherhood will threaten its current opposition with violence.
Morsi has also promised that the peace treaty
signed with Israel more than 30 years ago will stand -- a retraction of what
the Brotherhood leaders said a year ago, when they called for the treaty to be
re-examined. The Muslim
Brotherhood's mission statement, however, for the last 80 years, has
remained unchanged: "God is our objective; the Quran is our law, the
Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and death for the sake of God is the
highest of our aspirations."
While Egypt's military council has dissolved
the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated parliament and limited the president's power,
still, Samer
Shehata, an assistant professor of Arab politics at Georgetown University,
says it is "still unclear if Morsi's hands will be completely tied."
The Muslim Brotherhood has waited for decades
to take control of Egypt, and now it has a president in office, who might
simply feel as the Turkish President , Recep Tayyip Erdogan put it, that
democracy is like a streetcar: you stay on it until you reach your destination
and then you get off.
The very hard days ahead for both Egypt and the
region could have been less severe if the U.S. administration and its Western
allies had chosen to support the seculars and non-Islamists; still the U.S.
administration seems determined to continue
its communication with Islamists and Muslim Brotherhood offshoots in other
Arab countries such as Syria and Jordan. The US might think, wrongly, that if
the US is nice to the Brotherhood now, the Brotherhood will be nice to the US
later. Or the US may not want to admit the damage that pan-Islamist rule might
do to the free world, let alone to the people – especially the women – who have
no choice but to continue living there. If the US did admit there was a
problem, it might then even have to do something about it. Since the day the
administration insisted that the Muslim Brotherhood be invited to President
Barack Obama's Cairo speech, and be presented with the choicest seats there –
all in direct violation of the wishes of then-President Hosni Mubarak, who
ultimately refused even to attend the speech – all options but surrender seem
to have been off the table, not only in the Middle East, but in Russia, China
and South America as well.
Related Topics: Egypt
| Mudar
Zahran
Syrian Shoot-Down - And Erdogan's "Furious" Response
by Veli Sirin
July 3, 2012 at 3:00 am
July 3, 2012 at 3:00 am
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As he has
before, Erdogan employs bluster and intrigue simultaneously, with one single
aim: the expansion of Turkish regional power.
The Syrian military shot down an unarmed
Turkish Air Force RF-4E Phantom fighter plane on June 22, killing its two
pilots, captain Gokhan Ertan and lieutenant Hasan Huseyin Aksoy. According to
Turkish authorities, the Syrians also fired on a search-and-rescue aircraft
attempting to find the wreckage of the destroyed jet, which eventually was
located on the Mediterranean sea floor, 3,300 to 4,300 feet (1 to 1.3
kilometres) below the surface.
Turkish officials assert that the aircraft was
targeted without warning while inside international airspace, and after
straying briefly into Syrian skies. Syrian government sources claimed the
shoot-down took place while the plane was inside Syrian airspace and may have
been caused by "mistaken identification." Syrian functionary Omran
Al-Zubi insinuated on June 2 that the Turkish fighter was mistaken for an
Israeli jet: as he said, "they both are from the same factory, from the
U.S., maybe Syria thought it was an Israeli plane."
The response of Turkey's Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, the neo-fundamentalist leader of the Justice and Development
Party, or AKP, has been characteristic: combining harsh rhetoric with limited
performance. On June 25, Erdogan denounced the downing of the Turkish warplane
as a "hostile act" and said that Turkey would react with military
force to any further aggression by Syria. Turkey has since moved tanks and
artillery to the Turkish-Syrian frontier
Turkish-Syrian relations however, are
complicated by the violent conflict between the Syrian government of Bashar
Al-Assad and its opponents. Some 30,000 Syrians have already sought refuge in
Turkey. After promising the Syrian protestors publicly that he would support
their struggle, Erdogan reportedly has allowed the main anti-Assad group, the Free
Syrian Army, to recruit and train on its soil.
The downed RF-4E Phantom raised tensions
between the two countries to a new and dangerous level. Ankara was allied with
Damascus until the callous nature of Al-Assad's recent terror against his
subjects became obvious to the world. Turkey and Syria, however, have
previously approached open war. In 1998, Turkey, then firmly secular, pressured
Syria, under threat of direct military intervention, to expel Abdullah Ocalan,
leader of the radical Kurdish Workers Party, PKK. Syria expelled Ocalan, but
did not hand him over to the Turkish government. Ocalan instead travelled via
Russia eventually to Kenya, where, after being sheltered by the Greek Embassy,
he was arrested in 1999 at Nairobi's international airport.
How successful Erdogan's employment of military
pressure will now be is uncertain. His speech on June 26 to AKP parliamentary
deputies was broadcast live by the pan-Arabic news channel Al-Jazeera. In the
speech, he declared that Turkey would not accept, with hands tied, an attack on
its air force. He went on to say, "However valuable Turkey's friendship
is, its wrath is just as strong."
In the same discourse, Erdogan denied any
legitimacy to the Al-Assad hierarchy. Erdogan emphasized, "We will offer
all possible support to liberate the Syrians from dictatorship… a tyrannical
regime that kills its own people" and which is also "a clear and
present danger" to Turkish security. He warned that the Syrian rulers
would suffer Turkey's "furious anger," and announced that "any
military element that approaches the Turkish border from Syria, posing a
security risk or danger, will be regarded as a threat and treated as a military
target."
Erdogan has sought international support for
Turkey's posture on Syria. NATO, of which Turkey is a member, assailed Syria's
attack on the Turkish plane. The secretary-general of the Atlantic alliance,
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said, "We consider this act to be unacceptable and
condemn it in the strongest terms." Rasmussen referred to it as
"another example of the Syrian authorities' disregard for international
norms, peace and security and human life."
Unanswered questions surround the episode: as
the Turkish RF-4E jet is a reconnaissance craft, Ankara has been accused of
testing Syrian air defenses. The Turkish academic Hasan Koni, who is critical
of Erdogan's administration, noted on the Turkish television network NTV that
the plane, one of the oldest models in Turkey's air arsenal, was brought down
near the Syrian city of Latakia, 44 miles (70 kilometres) from the Russian navy
base at Tartus, Syria -- the last Russian military facility outside its
territory, and the sole refueling station for Russian naval forces in the
Mediterranean. Koni suggested that the plane could have intended to observe the
Russian installation.
The Turkish public has been, as it has been so
often, swept by conspiratorial rumors about the Syrian shoot-down. Many Turks
are convinced that the United States wishes to use their country as a proxy
against Syria in a war that could deeply harm Turkey. Anti-war sentiment is
high, and supported by many in the secular opposition's Republican People's
Party, or CHP. In a statement after a meeting with Erdogan on June 25, CHP
leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu called the Syrian attack "intolerable," and
said, "Nobody should dare test Turkey's deterrence and strength. Turkish
foreign policy, at the same time, should not pursue a line that would lead to
such incidents." Still, according to the authoritative daily, Hurriyet,
Refik Eryilmaz, a CHP deputy for Hatay, the Turkish province on the boundary
near where the plane was downed, "reportedly said at his party's
closed-door parliamentary group meeting, 'We have to believe our foreign
minister. But our past experiences show that we have to be cautious. The [AKP]
initially denied secret talks with the PKK, but later they admitted it. That is
why we should be very careful.'"
Erdogan projects himself as a patron of the
Muslim world. This is the danger in his position. Isolated operations by Turkey
against Syria will not resolve the situation. Erdogan appealed to NATO only for
talks with its other members based on Article 4 of the 1949 North Atlantic
Treaty, which provides for mutual consultations when a member is threatened. He
did not invoke Article 5, which describes an attack on one NATO member as an
attack on all, in which the entire body must mobilize to defend the member
under assault. As he has before, Erdogan employs bluster and intrigue
simultaneously, with one single aim: the expansion of Turkish regional power.
Related Topics: Turkey
| Veli
Sirin
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