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In this mailing:
by Denis MacEoin
• September 6, 2016 at 5:00 am
- "If they
arrest me and put me in prison, I will carry on in prison. I will
radicalise everyone in prison." — Anjem Choudary, quoted by the
Daily Mail.
- One of the most
troubling factors is the vulnerability of fresh converts to
radicalisation. Starting out with minimal knowledge of their new
faith, converts are easily lured into adopting strict forms of
Islam, guided by existing radicals and by the extremist literature
freely available in prisons.
- "Political
correctness in prisons is allowing extremism to flourish because
guards are too afraid of confronting Muslims." Extremists are
"exploiting... staff fear of being labelled racist." — The
Telegraph, citing a report by Ian Acheson, a former British
prison governor.
- Said al-Shihri,
after his release from Guantanamo in 2007, completed and passed the
Saudi deradicalisation program, then became deputy leader of
al-Qaeda in Yemen, orchestrating the bombing of the U.S. embassy
there in 2008.
- A Labour MP,
Khalid Mahmood, pointed out that many of the mentors who are
supposed to guide young people away from becoming radicalised are
themselves non-violent radicals.
Anjem Choudary (center).
Great Britain is not short of irritating, scoundrelous, extremist
figures. One thinks of today's Labour party leader, the Trotskyite Jeremy
Corbyn, a 'friend' of Hamas and Hizbullah; the anti-Semitic far-left
former Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, recently suspended from the same
party for anti-Jewish remarks; or George Galloway, who defended and
lobbied for Saddam Hussein and called on the Iraqi leader to conquer
Israel and retake Jerusalem. We have had more than our share of
self-vaunting and holier-than-thou religious figures, too, notably the
string of Muslim hate preachers who tour our universities and mosques,
radicalising students and a host of other impressionable and
easily-angered young people.
by A.J. Caschetta
• September 6, 2016 at 4:00 am
- Unfortunately,
Afghanistan's neighbors were not about to let a democratic
government with Western influences flourish on their borders, so war
broke out.
- "[I]t was
Massoud and his followers who struggled to uphold human rights, and
his enemies who abused them." — John Jennings, Associated
Press.
- In 1998, the
same year Osama bin Laden released his Declaration of War Against
Americans with its "ruling to kill the Americans,"
Massoud wrote that Afghanistan had become "occupied by
fanatics, extremists, terrorists, mercenaries, drug Mafias and
professional murderers." Citing a "duty to defend humanity
against the scourge of intolerance, violence and fanaticism,"
he pleaded for American assistance, to no avail.
- In 2012,
Afghanistan's National Assembly declared September 9 "Massoud
Day. It should be "Massoud Day" in America too.
Left: Ahmad Shah Massoud in an undated photo. Right:
The tomb of Massoud in the Panjshir province of Afghanistan, under
construction in 2007.
Before the 15th commemoration of the 9/11 attacks this
Sunday, America might also do well to pause on Friday, September 9, to
reflect on the 15th anniversary of the assassination of Ahmad
Shah Massoud, an Afghan of Tajik ancestry from the Panshjir Valley, who
was our best ally in the fight against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Massoud's detractors say he was just another warlord, but this is
not correct. True, the Lion of the Panjshir, as he was known, was a
commander of forces. But in a land of warlords, he stood out as a
humanist who by all accounts practiced a tolerant, egalitarian version of
Islam. He played chess, read poetry, and traveled with hundreds of books.
Some called him the "warrior monk."
Massoud opposed forced marriages, child marriages, and other kinds
of widely-approved abuses of women. He signed and promoted the Declaration
of the Essential Rights of Afghan Women. That alone makes him more
than "just another warlord."
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