Islam - This Day in History - Ottoman Advance Into Europe Halted in Extremely Bloody Siege of Malta

..

Muslims Turn Malta Into the 'Image of Hell'

BY RAYMOND IBRAHIM

MAY 18, 2021 1:03 PM ET

The Siege of Malta: Siege and Bombardment of Saint Elmo, 27 May 1565

On this day in history, May 18, 1565, one of the most symbolically important military encounters between Islam and Europe began: the Ottoman Turks besieged the tiny island of Malta, in what was then considered the heaviest bombardment any locale had been subjected to.

Around the start of the sixteenth century, Muslim pirates from Algiers began to terrorize the Christian Mediterranean. When Suleiman “the Magnificent”—better known among Muslims as Suleiman “the Ghazi” (jihadi/raider)—became Ottoman sultan in 1520, he instantly took the most notorious of these Barbary pirates, Khair al-Din Barbarossa, into his service and helped him prosecute the sea jihad on Europe. Over the following two decades, hundreds of thousands of Europeans were enslaved, so that, by 1541, “Algiers teemed with Christian captives, and it became a common saying that a Christian slave was scarce a fair barter for an onion.”

Despite the seaborne jihad’s successes, “You will do no good,” a seasoned corsair counseled Suleiman, “until you have smoked out this nest of vipers.”  He was referring to the Knights Hospitallers, who came into being soon after the First Crusade (c.1099) and were now known as the Knights of Saint John, headquartered in Malta. Suleiman had evicted them from Rhodes in 1522—whence for two hundred years they had frustrated all Ottoman naval attempts—and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V had bequeathed the island of Malta to the homeless Hospitallers in 1530. They were the emperor’s response to the sultan’s corsairs—and, for more than three decades, a thorn in Suleiman’s side.

In March 1565, after having finally decided to eliminate this “headquarters of infidels,” Suleiman dispatched one of the largest fleets ever assembled—carrying some thirty thousand Ottomans—to take the tiny island, which had a total fighting population of eight thousand. Pope Pius IV implored the kings of Europe to Malta’s aid, to no avail: the king of Spain “has withdrawn into the woods,” complained the pope, “and France, England and Scotland [are] ruled by women and boys.” Only the viceroy of neighboring Sicily responded, but he needed time to raise recruits.

Jean Parisot de Valette (1494–1568), the Grand Master of the Knights—“his disposition is rather sad,” wrote a contemporary, but “for his age [seventy-one], he is very robust” and “very devout”—made preparations for the forthcoming siege, including by explaining to his men what was at stake: “A formidable army composed of audacious barbarians is descending on this island,” he warned; “these persons, my brothers, are the enemies of Jesus Christ. Today it is a question of the defense of our Faith as to whether the book of the Evangelist [the Gospel] is to be superseded by that of the Koran. God on this occasion demands of us our lives, already vowed to His service. Happy will those be who first consummate this sacrifice.”

Four hundred and fifty-six years ago today, on May 18, the Ottomans commenced nonstop bombardment, first targeting St. Elmo, one of Malta’s key forts. “With the roar of the artillery and the arquebuses, the hair-raising screams, the smoke and fire and flame,” a chronicler wrote, “it seemed that the whole world was at the point of exploding.” The vastly outnumbered and soon wearied defenders, who were ordered to “fight bravely and sell their lives to the barbarians as dearly as possible,” did just that; and for every Christian killed defending the fort, numerous Muslim besiegers fell. After withstanding all that the Ottomans could throw against it for more than a month, on June 23, St. Elmo, by now a heap of rubble, was finally stormed and captured.

Virtually all 1,500 defenders were slaughtered. The same grisly fate Salah al-Din (Saladin) had centuries earlier consigned to Islam’s staunchest enemies—the Knights Templars and Hospitallers at the disastrous Battle of Hattin (1187)—was now meted out to their successors. The Knights of Saint John “were hung upside down from iron rings . . . and had their heads split, their chests open, and their hearts torn out.” Ottoman commander Mustafa ordered their mutilated corpses (along with one Maltese priest) nailed to wooden crosses and set adrift in the Grand Harbor in order to deride and demoralize the onlooking defenders.

It failed: the seventy-one-year-old Valette delivered a thundering and defiant speech before the huddled Christians, beheaded all Muslim prisoners, and fired their heads from cannon at the Turkish besiegers. The Ottomans proceeded to subject the rest of the island to, at that time, history’s most sustained bombardment (some 130,000 cannonballs were fired in total). “I don’t know if the image of hell can describe the appalling battle,” wrote a contemporary: “the fire, the heat, the continuous flames from the flamethrowers and fire hoops; the thick smoke, the stench, the disemboweled and mutilated corpses, the clash of arms, the groans, shouts, and cries, the roar of the guns . . . men wounding, killing, scrabbling, throwing one another back, falling and firing.”

Although the rest of the forts were reduced to rubble, much Muslim blood was spilled for each inch gained; for “when they got within arms’ reach the scimitar was no match for the long two-handed sword of the Christians.” Desperate fighting spilled into the streets, where even Maltese women and children participated.

It was now late August and the island was still not taken; that, and mass casualties led to mass demoralization in the Ottoman camp. Embarrassed talk of lifting the siege had already begun when Sicily’s viceroy Garcia de Toledo finally arrived with nearly ten thousand soldiers at St. Paul’s Bay. There, where the apostle was once shipwrecked, the final scene of this Armageddon played out as the fresh newcomers routed the retreating Ottomans, who finally fled on September 11—a day which, wittingly or unwittingly, would be avenged by the jihadi “descendants” of the Ottomans in 2001.

“So great was the stench in the bay,” which was awash with countless bloated Muslim corpses, “that no man could go near it.” As many as twenty thousand Ottomans and five thousand defenders died. After forty years of successful campaigning against Europe, Suleiman finally suffered his first major defeat. One year later he succumbed to death, aged seventy-one.

More importantly for Europe, a chink in the Ottoman armor was first perceived thanks to Malta’s spirited resistance; it showed that a tiny but dedicated force could hold out against what was till then deemed an unstoppable Ottoman war machine.

Accordingly, when in 1570 Ottoman forces invaded the island of Cyprus, the pope easily managed to form a “Holy League” of maritime Catholic nation-states, spearheaded by the Spanish Empire, in 1571. To everyone’s surprise—Christian and Muslim—the Holy League prevailed at the battle of Lepanto.  As Miguel Cervantes, who was at the naval clash, has the colorful Don Quixote say: “That day . . . was so happy for Christendom, because all the world learned how mistaken it had been in believing that the Turks were invincible by sea.”

But that sentiment was first realized six years earlier, by the heroic defense of Malta—when the tide of war between Islam and Europe first turned to the latter’s favor.

The above account was excerpted from the author’s book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West.

Raymond Ibrahim

Raymond Ibrahim, an expert in Islamic history and doctrine, is author of Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West (2018); Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians (2013); and The Al Qaeda Reader (2007). He has appeared on C-SPAN, Al-Jazeera, CNN, NPR, and PBS, and been published by the New York Times Syndicate, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, Weekly Standard, Chronicle of Higher Education, and Jane’s Islamic Affairs Analyst. Formerly an Arabic linguist at the Library of Congress, Ibrahim has guest lectured at many universities, including the U.S. Army War College, briefed governmental agencies such as U.S. Strategic Command, and testified before Congress. He has been a visiting fellow/scholar at a variety of Institutes—from the Hoover Institution to the National Intelligence University—and is currently a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a Judith Friedman Rosen Fellow at the Middle East Forum, and a Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute. His full biography is available here.  Follow Raymond at Twitter and Facebook.

Islam - This Day in History - The Religion of Peace Skins Christian Alive for Not Converting

The Battle of Lepanto: When Turks Skinned Christians Alive

for Refusing Islam

10/07/2020 

by Raymond Ibrahim 

Drawing of the torture and subsequent flaying of Marco Bragadin, for rejecting the invitation to Islam.

 

Today in history, on October 7, 1571, one of the most cataclysmic clashes between Islam and the West — one where the latter for once crushed and humiliated the former — took place.

In 1570, Muslim Turks — in the guise of the Ottoman Empire — invaded the island of Cyprus, prompting  Pope Pius V to call for and form a “Holy League” of maritime Catholic nation-states, spearheaded by the Spanish Empire, in 1571.  Before they could reach and relieve Cyprus, its last stronghold at Famagusta was taken through treachery.

After promising the defenders safe passage if they surrendered, Ottoman commander Ali Pasha — known as Müezzinzade (“son of a muezzin”) due to his pious background — had reneged and launched a wholesale slaughter.  He ordered the nose and ears of Marco Antonio Bragadin, the fort commander, hacked off.  Ali then invited the mutilated infidel to Islam and life: “I am a Christian and thus I want to live and die,” Bragadin responded.  “My body is yours.  Torture it as you will.”

Wow! Is your faith strong enough to do that?

So he was tied to a chair, repeatedly hoisted up the mast of a galley, and dropped into the sea, to taunts: “Look if you can see your fleet, great Christian, if you can see succor coming to Famagusta!”  The mutilated and half-drowned man was then carried near to St. Nicholas Church — by now a mosque — and tied to a column, where he was slowly flayed alive.  The skin was afterward stuffed with straw, sown back into a macabre effigy of the dead commander, and paraded in mockery before the jeering Muslims.

News of this and other ongoing atrocities and desecrations of churches in Cyprus and Corfu enraged the Holy League as it sailed east.  A bloodbath followed when the two opposing fleets — carrying a combined total of 600 ships and 140,000 men, more of both on the Ottoman side — finally met and clashed on October 7, 1571, off the western coast of Greece, near Lepanto.  

According to one contemporary:

The greater fury of the battle lasted for four hours and was so bloody and horrendous that the sea and the fire seemed as one, many Turkish galleys burning down to the water, and the surface of the sea, red with blood, was covered with Moorish coats, turbans, quivers, arrows, bows, shields, oars, boxes, cases, and other spoils of war, and above all many human bodies, Christians as well as Turkish, some dead, some wounded, some torn apart, and some not yet resigned to their fate struggling in their death agony, their strength ebbing away with the blood flowing from their wounds in such quantity that the sea was entirely coloured by it, but despite all this misery our men were not moved to pity for the enemy. … Although they begged for mercy they received instead arquebus shots and pike thrusts.

The pivotal point came when the flagships of the opposing fleets, the Ottoman Sultana and the Christian Real, crashed into and were boarded by one another.  Chaos ensued as men everywhere grappled; even the grand admirals were seen in the fray, Ali Pasha firing arrows and Don Juan swinging broadsword and battle-axe, one in each hand.

In the end, “there was an infinite number of dead” on the Real, whereas “an enormous quantity of large turbans, which seemed to be as numerous as the enemy had been, [were seen in the Sultana] rolling on the deck with the heads inside them.”  The don emerged alive, but the pasha did not.

When the central Turkish fleets saw Ali’s head on a pike in the Sultana and a crucifix where the flag of Islam once fluttered, mass demoralization set in, and the waterborne mêlée was soon over. The Holy League lost twelve galleys and ten thousand men, but the Ottomans lost 230 galleys — 117 of which were captured by the Europeans — and thirty thousand men.

It was a victory of the first order, and Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestants rejoiced.

Ottoman commander Ali Pasha al-Müezzinzade engaging the Christian galleys

Practically speaking, however, little changed.  Cyprus was not even liberated by the Holy League.  “In wrestling Cyprus from you we have cut off an arm,” the Ottomans painfully reminded the Venetian ambassador a year later.  “In defeating our fleet [at Lepanto] you have shaved our beard.  An arm once cut off will not grow again, but a shorn beard grows back all the better for the razor.”

Even so, this victory proved that the relentless Turks, who in previous decades and centuries had conquered much of Eastern Europe, could be stopped.  Lepanto suggested that the Turks could be defeated in a head-on clash — at least by sea, which of late had been the Islamic powers’ latest hunting grounds.  As Miguel Cervantes, who was at the battle, has the colorful Don Quixote say: “That day … was so happy for Christendom, because all the world learned how mistaken it had been in believing that the Turks were invincible by sea.”

Modern historians affirm this position.  According to military historian Paul K. Davis, “More than a military victory, Lepanto was a moral one.  For decades, the Ottoman Turks had terrified Europe, and the victories of Suleiman the Magnificent caused Christian Europe serious concern. … Christians rejoiced at this setback for the Ottomans.  The mystique of Ottoman power was tarnished significantly by this battle, and Christian Europe was heartened.”

No matter how spectacular, however, defeat at sea could not shake what was first and foremost a land power — so that more than a century later, in 1683, some 200,000 armed Ottomans had penetrated as far as and besieged Vienna.

But that — to say nothing of Turkey’s many other jihads down to the present — is another story.

Historical quotes in this article were excerpted from the author’s Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West — a book that CAIR and its Islamist allies did everything they could to prevent the U.S. Army War College from learning about.

This Week's Global Terrorist Stories - 20-6 - 3 Stans; Russia; London; Singapore; Algeria; Turkey

US military confirms 2 troops killed & 6 injured in Afghanistan by ‘individual in Afghan uniform’

FILE PHOTO: US troops in Afghanistan ©  Reuters / Goran Tomasevic

At least two US service members were killed and six others injured after an individual in “Afghan uniform” armed with a machine gun opened fire on a joint patrol in Afghanistan, the US military has confirmed.

The incident took place in Nangarhar province earlier on Saturday as a combined US and Afghan force was returning from a "key-leader engagement," a spokesman for US forces in Afghanistan said in a late-night statement.

The wounded service members are receiving medical treatment at a US facility, Colonel Sonny Leggett added, sharing no details of their condition.

We are still collecting information and the cause or motive behind the attack is unknown at this time

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, but given the uniform, there’s a possibility it was an insider "green-on-blue" attack. In addition, both the Taliban and affiliates of Islamic State terrorists are active in Eastern Nangarhar province.

Nangarhar Prov., Afghanistan

Ethnic clashes in Kazakhstan leave 8 dead

By Danielle Haynes

A house lies in ruins in the village of Blas-Batyr after ethnic clashes between Kazakhs and Dungans in Kazakhstan on Saturday. Photo by Igor Kovalenko/EPA-EFE

(UPI) -- Ethnic violence in southern Kazakhstan left at least eight people dead and dozens others injured, local officials said.

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said local police and the national guard brought the violence under control Friday.

Ethnic Kazakhs fought with the Dungan, a minority group of Muslims originally from China. Those involved set fire to houses and overturned cars. BBC News reported about 30 houses and 15 commercial properties were destroyed during the violence.

RFE/RL reported the clashes sent hundreds of people fleeing across the border to Kyrgyzstan. Some sought medical care in the neighboring country.

Some Kazakh witnesses said there had been long-standing feuds between the two groups, especially in the town of Masanchi, where Dungan families control much of the businesses.

Interior Minister Erlan Turghymbaev said police arrested at least 47 people.

"It was scary. [I was worried] about the [safety] of my family," Kharsan Subakhunov, a truck driver who fled to Kyrgyzstan told RFE-RL. "We stood guard to defend them ... Someone had been spreading fake news -- people had been duped [into believing them], and innocent people ended up suffering."

Tokayev said he ordered security forces to target people spreading hate speech and "provocative rumors and disinformation."

The attacks were believed to be in the vicinity of Almaty, on the southern border

6 dead, 12 injured in Kabul suicide bombing

By Clyde Hughes

Afghan security forces carry a damaged vehicle from the site of a suicide attack that targeted the entrance gate
of Marshal Fahim Military Academy in Kabul, Afghanistan Tuesday. Photo by Hedayatullah Amid/EPA-EFE

(UPI) -- At least six people died and 12 others were injured in a suicide bomb attack outside of a military academy in Kabul Tuesday morning, Afghanistan's Ministry of the Interior said.

The suspected suicide bomber detonated the device while the employees and cadets were entering the Marshal Fahim Military Academy building. Early reports said that at least four of the dead were military personnel.

No group so far has claimed responsibility for the bombing. The Islamic State has targeted the same military academy in the past.

The United States and the Taliban have been in peace talks for months, coincided with a drop off in violence over that time. Military operations had also slowed fighting conducted by the Islamic State.

Those talks were postponed in December by U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad after the Taliban attacked a U.S. military base in Bagram.

No one took responsibility for a previous attack in November when 13 people were killed and 20 injured.

Russian military court convicts 7 anti-fascists
of terrorism in very suspect trial

By Sommer Brokaw

General view of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) in Moscow, Russia.

File Photo by Sergei Ilnitsky/EPA

(UPI) -- A Russian military court Monday convicted seven young anti-fascist and anarchist men on terrorism charges an international human rights group said were fabricated.

The seven men standing trial in Penza are among 11 the Federal Security Service (FSB) accused in 2017 of planning bomb attacks at the 2018 World Cup soccer tournament in Russia and other attacks leading up to the 2018 presidential election. Four other defendants are still awaiting a verdict from a St. Petersburg military court.

Defendants convicted on terrorism charges, ranging in age from 23 to 31, included Dmitry Pchelintsev, Arman Sagynbaev, Vasily Kuskov, Mikhail Kulkov, Maxim Ivankin, Andrey Chernov and Ilya Shakursky.

They were enthusiasts of airsoft, a game similar to pinball. The FSB, a successor agency to the KGB, said the games were a form of training for the men they accused of organizing a terrorist group called "Network."

Investigators said Pchelinstev and Shakursky were leaders of a group accused of terrorism-related attacks, and they received the longest sentences of 18 and 16 years respectively, in maximum security, with overall prison sentences ranging from six to 18 years.

Prior to the verdict, Amnesty International said in a statement that the charges were made up to silence dissent.

"These terror charges are a figment of the Russian security services' imagination that was fabricated in an attempt to silence these activists," Natalia Prilutskaya, Amnesty International Russia's researcher, said in the statement. "The trial has been a sham -- the men say their confessions were extracted by torture and the so-called evidence contradicted by the facts."

Prilutskaya added that the terrorist group was nonexistent.

"It is clear from the trial that no criminal organization called 'Network' has ever existed," she said. "What has probably existed is a loose group of young like-minded people interested in playing airsoft. There is no evidence linking them to terrorism-related activities."

"This case is the latest politically-motivated abuse of the justice system to target young people," she added. "The allegations of torture and ill-treatment must be investigated, the men must be released, and the Russian government must stop resorting to fabricating criminal charges to silence all dissent."

Pakistan court sentences accused terrorist who masterminded the Mumbai massacre

By Don Jacobson

Hafiz Saeed, the alleged mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai terror attack that killed 166 people, has

been slapped with a prison sentence of more than five years in Pakistan in a terrorism financing case.

File photo by Rahat Dar/EPA-EFE

Feb. 12 (UPI) -- Hafiz Saeed, the alleged mastermind behind the 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai that killed more than 165 people, was sentenced Wednesday to more than five years in jail by a Pakistan anti-terror court.

The presiding judge in the Lahore court handed down a prison term of five years and six months to Saaed and an associate in a terrorism financing case unrelated to the Mumbai attack, his lawyer said.

That works out to 12 days for each person killed in the attack. Shows you how seriously Pakistan is tackling terrorism.

Saeed, 69, is the founder of the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has blamed by India and the United States for the deadly 2008 incident. Both have designated him as a terrorist and had long advocated for his arrest.

He had escaped punishment in Pakistan, however, until July 2019, when he was arrested by the Counter-Terrorism Department of the Punjab Police near Lahore. He and more than a dozen accomplices were charged with financing terrorism in two separate cases.

Saeed had pleaded not guilty and claimed the Pakistan government was being pressured by India and the United States to file "false" cases against him.

The sentencing came shortly before the international Financial Action Task Force watchdog group was to meet in Paris.

Pakistan is seeking to avoid being blacklisted by the task force as a country that tolerates financing for terrorism, a designation that would result in its isolation from the international banking system and a strict regime of checks and safeguards.

North London man published terrorism-related material on an extremist website

One man from North London and another from Rochdale appeared in court

My London

Mohammed Abdul Ahad and Muhammad Abdur Raheem Kamali (Image: Met Police)

A north London man has been sentenced for his part in publishing terrorism-related material on an extremist website.

Working together, the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command (CTC), Counter Terrorism Police North-East (CTPNE) and North-West (CTPNW) disrupted an Islamist propaganda website for Daesh supporters.

The team brought to justice its two main administrators and contributors, 38-year-old, Mohammed Abdul Ahad, from north London, and 31-year-old, Muhammad Abdur Raheem Kamali, from Rochdale, Manchester.

Ahad and Kamali recorded and transcribed extremist speeches they then typed and edited them to be uploaded to the website. A significant number of these speeches glorified terrorist organisations, such as Al-Qaeda and Daesh, and encouraged both the support and act of terrorism.

The pair came to the attention of police in 2016, when CTPNE investigated a 20-year-old woman who shared terrorism-related documents on the website and on a linked Facebook page. She was convicted in 2017 for dissemination of a terrorist publication.

During this investigation, it was discovered Ahad and Kamali were administrators who had edited and published a number of these and other documents on the website.

The investigations into the two men meant both were simultaneously arrested on March 1, 2017 on suspicion of terrorism offences in a coordinated operation.

They were interviewed and bailed pending further enquiries. A search of their home addresses recovered a number of digital media devices which identified that Ahad and Kamali had been the website administrators.

On June 21, 2018, Ahad was further arrested for possession of an article from a terrorism propaganda magazine which gave instructions on how to assemble an AK47 automatic rifle. Again he gave a no-comment interview and was released on bail. Then on July 10, 2018, Ahad was charged with four counts of dissemination of a terrorist publication, contrary to Section 2 of the Terrorism Act (TACT) 2006 and one count of possession of a document or record likely to be of use to a terrorist, contrary to Section 58 of the TACT 2000.

On August 9, 2018, Kamali was charged with seven counts of dissemination of a terrorist publication, contrary to Section 2 of the TACT 2006.

Following a trial, Ahad was convicted on December 10, 2019 on all the counts of terrorism for which he was charged. Kamali was convicted on the same day of four counts of dissemination of terrorist publications. The jury did not reach a verdict in relation to the remaining three counts.

Ahad was today (Wednesday, February 12) sentenced at the Old Bailey to four-and-a-half years’ imprisonment for the charges of dissemination of a terrorist publication and three years’ imprisonment for possession of a document or record likely to be of use to a terrorist, to run concurrently - making a total of four-and-a-half-years’ imprisonment. Once he is released, he must serve a further year on licence and will be subject to a 10-year Part 4 Notification Requirements Order, meaning he must notify the police of particular changes in his circumstances.

Kamali was sentenced to four-and-a-half years’ imprisonment in total for the four counts of dissemination of a terrorist publication of which he was found guilty. He must then serve a further 12 months on licence. He is also subject to a 10 year Part 4 Notification Requirements Order.

The judge ordered that the remaining three counts on which the jury did not return a verdict should remain on file.

So, they will both be out next year and back in business. Radical Muslims need to be separated from sane western societies, permanently.

Two Indonesian maids jailed for terrorism

financing offences in Singapore

Shaffiq Alkhatib, Court Correspondent 
Straits Times

Two Indonesian maids were jailed yesterday after pleading guilty to terrorism financing offences.

The separate court cases, under the Terrorism (Suppression of Financing) Act, involved Turmini, 31, and Retno Hernayani, 37.

Turmini was sentenced to three years and nine months in jail for her role in remitting cash totalling $1,216.73 to a man in Indonesia who supported the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorist group.

Retno's jail term is 11/2 years. She had collected $100 in donations from her friends in Singapore and added $40 from her own pocket before remitting the monies to her fiance, Fikri Zulfikar, a known supporter of terrorist entities.

TURMINI'S CASE
Turmini, who goes by one name, is from a village in Cilacap in Central Java and arrived in Singapore in 2012 to be a domestic worker.

Yesterday, Deputy Public Prosecutor Nicholas Khoo told District Judge Christopher Tan that the $1,216.73 she had donated for terrorism financing is so far the largest amount before the courts.

The donations were made through her unsuspecting employer who was duped into remitting the monies into a bank account belonging to a man called Edi Siswanto, who supported ISIS and its Indonesia-based affiliated group, the Jemaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD). The employer had thought it was a joint bank account belonging to Turmini's mother and brother.

DPP Khoo said cash was remitted on five occasions, "which was the most number of occasions any offender has donated to terrorism".

The maid pleaded guilty to three charges involving more than $800. Two similar charges linked to the remaining amount were considered during sentencing.

The court heard from DPP Tan Hsiao Tien that Turmini met Edi, whom she also knew as "Zubair", in 2018 via Facebook. He was a member of a purported religious charity called Aseer Cruee Centre (ACC) and told her that if she wanted to go to heaven, she must support organisations like ISIS and JAD that were "trying to uphold Islamic law".

Later that year, she befriended on Facebook one Rozaliany Rozz who asked her to download messaging app Telegram to learn about ISIS.

Turmini was exposed to many articles on ISIS and JAD, DPP Tan said. From 2018 until the middle of last year, she chatted with Edi almost daily on WhatsApp and their conversation included ISIS matters.

As part of an arrangement, the court heard, Turmini's entire salary was held by her employer for safekeeping. Her employer would help her remit money to her family whenever she needed to do it.

On three occasions, between September 2018 and January last year, Turmini asked her boss to remit cash to Edi's bank account. It was not mentioned in court how her offences came to light but she was arrested last Aug 22.

Her lawyer Mohamed Muzammil Mohamed asked for a one-year jail term, saying Turmini had been "easily influenced" to support the terrorist groups owing to her "shallow knowledge and exposure to the real teachings of the Islamic religion".

He also told Judge Tan that after serving her sentence, she plans to enrol herself in a mainstream religious school in Indonesia to "learn more about the true teachings of the religion".

RETNO'S CASE
Retno, who is from a village in Lampung, Sumatra, came to work in Singapore in 2006.

Yesterday, she pleaded guilty to two charges .

In 2012, she befriended a fellow Indonesian called Tuning Ambarwati while on an MRT train.

Two years later, she found out about ISIS after reading Tuning's Facebook posts on the group.

In 2018, she developed an interest in ISIS and in April that year, Tuning introduced her to Fikri, an ISIS sympathiser who wanted to join the terror group in Syria.

Fikri became her fiance and she wanted to go with him to Syria.

On March 10 last year, she met three other Indonesian maids in Paya Lebar. The trio, all aged 33, were Anindia Afiyantari, Yulistika and Nurhasanah.

During the meeting, the women agreed to donate to ACC to help the families of JAD members who had died or were in prison. They also wanted to support JAD's activities, which included violent causes.

All contributed cash and Retno remitted the monies to Fikri in Indonesia. She was arrested on Aug 20 last year.

The case involving Anindia is pending while Tuning, Yulistika and Nurhasanah left Singapore last year before investigations started.

For each charge under the Terrorism (Suppression of Financing) Act, offenders can be jailed for up to 10 years and fined up to $500,000.

Seems like a modest start, but, it's a start.

Egypt condemns deadly terrorist attack on

border army barracks in Algeria

CAIRO, Feb. 12 (Xinhua) -- Egypt condemned on Wednesday a recent terrorist attack that targeted an Algerian army barracks near its border with Mali and left one soldier dead.

In a statement, the Egyptian foreign ministry expressed Cairo's solidarity with the Algerian people and government, extending condolences to the family of the deceased soldier.

The ministry also highlighted Egypt's rejection of terrorism and extremism of all forms.

On Feb. 9, a bomb-laden car raced to a military barracks in the Algerian town of Timiaouine before exploding at the entrance, killing a soldier.

In 2019, the Algerian army killed 15 terrorists and arrested 25 others, while 44 surrendered to authorities.

The North African nation deployed tens of thousands of troops along the border with Mali and Libya to thwart intrusion of terrorists and arms.

Turkish prosecutor indicts Assyrian priest

on terrorism charges

By SCF - February 12, 2020

A Turkish prosecutor has drafted an indictment against Sefer (Aho) Bileçen, an Assyrian priest who was arrested and released pending trial in January, charging him with membership in a terrorist group, the Gazete Karınca news website reported.

The Assyrian Church is called the Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East.

The indictment included accusations based on an informant’s testimony and a 2018 gendarmerie report claiming that Bileçen’s monastery was visited by alleged members of terrorist groups.

During his four days under arrest in January, Bileçen had been questioned with regard to allegations.

While he has not denied claims that he offered food to the militants, he insisted that he only did it as a requirement of his faith, and not by a motivation to aid the group.

The prosecutor’s indictment on the other hand pointed out that the priest did not report the militants to law enforcement, asserting that his statement makes it clear he was aware of the visitors’ identity.

Bileçen’s monastery is located in the country’s predominantly Kurdish Southeast, which for decades has been the scene of armed clashes between security forces and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Turks consider PKK to be terrorists. 

The Assyrians are an autochthonous (indigenous rather than descended from migrants or colonists) Christian group who were the victims of massacres and forced displacement at the beginning of the 20th century in what is today recognized by many as genocide by the Ottomans against Christians, during WWI.

The atrocity lead to God's judgment on the Ottomans and they were overthrown by Ataturk, who promptly established a secular government that stood for nearly 100 years until Erdogan purged the high ranks of the military of anyone who wasn't a devout Muslim. Since then, he has been slowly trying to establish his own Caliphate. At least, IMHO.

/turkishminute.com

Erdogan: Christianity’s Iconic Hagia Sophia Might Be Active Mosque Again

Is Erdogan the Abomination of Desolation?

Once the very centre of Christianity, the first church on this site was built by Constantine the Great. But in 404, John Chrysostom was exiled by another Emporer's wife. Riots ensued and the church was burned to the ground. 

Another church was erected in 415 by Theodosius II, but a revolt in 532 resulted in it being burned down. Within weeks, Justinian I began planning the Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom) which stood as the largest building in the world for nearly a thousand years. 

The Ottomans turned it into a mosque in the 15th century and Attaturk secularized it in 1935 turning it into a museum. President Erdogan is a devout Muslim and, so, it was just a matter of time before it was profaned again.

FILE PHOTO © AFP / Yasin AKGUL

Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia, originally a Byzantine Christian church, might be turned into a mosque again – a potential back-down from the legacy of Turkey’s secular government that turned the site into a museum in 1935.

“This is not unlikely,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said during a live interview with Turkish television on Monday, adding, “We might even change its name to Ayasofya Mosque.”

The Hagia Sophia became a museum under Turkey’s secularist government back in 1935, but “we may as well take a step and change that,” he said.

Erdogan hinted that the change in status would benefit tourists. “Tourists come and go at the Blue Mosque. Do they pay anything?” he asked, referring to another popular site in Istanbul. “Well, we will do the same with the Hagia Sofia.”

The Hagia Sophia was first built as a church by the Byzantine Empire in the 6th century and served as the main Orthodox Christian church. Following the conquest of Constantinople, now Istanbul,  by the Ottomans in 1453, it was immediately converted into a mosque.

It was the world’s largest cathedral surpassed only in the 16th century by  the Catholic Seville Cathedral was erected in Spain and later by St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican. 

The idea of turning the Hagia Sophia into an active mosque has been around for several years. Some high-ranking politicians and Muslim clerics suggested that the place be opened to worshippers, triggering backlash in Greece, Turkey’s historic rival.

That aside, in 2016, the traditional Muslim call to prayer, the adhan, was chanted from a prayer room, not from inside the historic landmark.

In 2015, thousands of worshippers performed a morning prayer in front of the Hagia Sophia on the 562nd anniversary of the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople.

Matt 24:14-16

"This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.

"Therefore when you see the ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains.

Is it possible this refers to Erdogan standing in the Hagia Sophia? It's a remote possibility, but, it could be the signal that Turkey will invade Israel. Perhaps he will announce the invasion from the pulpit just as the invasion is happening. 

Suicide Attack Kills 3 at Christian Massacre Memorial in Syria

Found this story in the Manila Times

QAMISHLI, Syria: Three people were killed in northeast Syria on Sunday when a suicide bomber attacked an event commemorating the massacre of Christians more than a century ago, state media and a security source said.

The attack in the city of Qamishli took place as locals gathered at a hall to commemorate the deaths of tens of thousands of Christians by the Ottoman army starting in 1915 in what is known as the Sayfo (“Sword”) massacre.


Armenian Massacre, Turkey 1915

The Sayfo massacre was decidedly the Ottoman's (read Islam's) genocide of Assyrian Christians in southeast Turkey and northwestern Iran. It amounted to between 150,000 and 300,000 dead. It was done concurrently with genocides of Greek and Armenian Christians.

The Greek genocide was instigated by the government of the Ottoman Empire against the Greek population of the Empire and it included massacres, forced deportations involving death marches, summary expulsions, arbitrary execution, and the destruction of Christian Orthodox cultural, historical, and religious monuments. According to various sources, several hundred thousand Ottoman Greeks died during this period.

The Armenian Genocide, also known as the Armenian Holocaust and the Armenian Massacres, was the Ottoman government's systematic extermination of up to 1.5 million of its minority Armenian subjects inside their historic homeland, which lies within the present-day Republic of Turkey.

The Armenian community was made up of three Christian denominations: the Armenian Apostolic to which the overwhelming majority of Armenians belonged, and the Armenian Catholic and Armenian Protestant communities.


More Armenian Genocide, Turkey 1915

A photographer working with Agence France-Presse and attending the event said he heard the blast and saw pieces of flesh lying next to damaged cars.

“The suicide attacker tried to enter the hall where people were gathered but was stopped by local security forces, and he detonated himself among them,” a security source at the scene told AFP.

The security forces belonged to the Sotoro, a Christian militia based in Syria’s northeast.

“Three Sotoro members were killed and five wounded,” the security source said.

One Sotoro member told AFP that the suicide bomber “detonated himself near our checkpoint after he couldn’t reach his real target, Patriarch Ignatius.”

Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II is the head of the Syriac Orthodox church and was leading the commemoration.


More Armenians massacred by Ottomans, Turkey 1915-1919

Syria’s state news agency SANA also reported three people killed in a “terrorist suicide explosion” in Qamishli but did not specify whether they were civilians or security forces.

Situated along the border with Turkey, Qamishli has been regularly targeted by suicide bombings, many of which have been claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group.

Control of the Kurdish-majority city is split between Kurdish militia and pro-government fighters.

Syriac Christians belong to the eastern Christian tradition and pray in Aramaic. They include both Orthodox and Catholic branches, and constitute around 15 percent of Syria’s 1.2 million Christians. 
AFP

    Qamishli, Syria

Where Islam is involved, some things don't change!

Europe’s Migrant Crisis Is Simply Muslim History vs. Western Fantasy

This guy has it exactly right!

Progressive Europe erased or rewrote its own history. Now they can't recognize 

an invasion by people to whom history is everything

by Raymond Ibrahim
PJ Media

The world as understood by Islamic nations varies wildly from the Western nations’ understanding of the world. Whereas Muslims see the world through the lens of history, the West has jettisoned or rewritten history to suit its ideologies.

This dichotomy of Muslim and Western thinking is evident everywhere. When the Islamic State declared that it will “conquer Rome” and “break its crosses,” few in the West realized that those are the verbatim words and goals of Islam’s founder and his companions as recorded in Muslim sources — words and goals that prompted over a thousand years of jihad on Europe.

Most recently, the Islamic State released a map of the areas it plans on expanding into over the next five years. Not only are Mideast and Asian regions included, but the map includes European lands: Portugal, Spain, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Greece, parts of Russia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Romania, Armenia, Georgia, Crete, and Cyprus.

The reason for this is simple. According to Islamic law, once a country has been conquered (or “opened,” as the euphemistic Arabic words it), it becomes Islamic in perpetuity.

This, incidentally, is the real reason Muslims despise Israel. The motivation is not sympathy for the Palestinians — if it was, neighboring Arab nations would’ve absorbed them long ago, just as they would be absorbing all of today’s Muslim refugees. No, Israel is hated because the descendants of “apes and pigs” — according to the Koran — dare to rule land that was once “opened” by jihad and therefore must be returned to Islam. (Read more about Islam’s “How Dare You?” phenomenon to understand the source of Islamic rage.)

All of the aforementioned European nations are seen as being currently “occupied” by Christian “infidels” and in need of “liberation.” This is why jihadi organizations refer to terrorist attacks on such countries as “defensive jihads.” One rarely hears about Islamic designs on European nations because they are large and blocked together, altogether distant from the Muslim world. Conversely, tiny Israel is in the heart of the Islamic world, hence it has received most of the jihadi attention: it was a more realistic conquest. But now that the “caliphate” has been reborn and is expanding before a paralytic West, dreams of reconquering portions of Europe — if not through jihad, then through migration — are becoming more plausible, perhaps more so than conquering Israel.

Because of their historical experiences with Islam, some central and east European nations are aware of Muslim aspirations. Hungary’s prime minister even cited his nation’s unpleasant past under Islamic rule (in the guise of the Ottoman Empire) as a reason to disallow Muslim refugees from entering. But for more “enlightened” Western nations — that is, for idealistic nations that reject or rewrite history according to their subjective fantasies — Hungary’s reasoning is unjust, inhumane, and racist.

To be sure, most of Europe has experience with Islamic depredations. As late as the 17th century, even Iceland was being invaded by Muslim slave traders. Roughly 800 years earlier, in 846, Rome was sacked and the Vatican defiled by Muslim raiders.

Some of the Muslims migrating to Italy vow to do the same today, and Pope Francis acknowledges it — yet he still suggests that “you can take precautions, and put these people to work.”

We’ve seen this sort of thinking before: the U.S. State Department cited a lack of “job opportunities” as reason for the existence of the Islamic State.

Perhaps because the UK, Scandinavia, and North America were never conquered and occupied by the sword of Islam — unlike the southeast European nations that are rejecting Muslim refugees — they feel free to rewrite history according to their subjective ideals. Specifically, they stress that historic Christianity is bad and all other religions and people are good. Indeed, books and courses on the “sins” of Christian Europe from the Crusades to colonialism abound. (Most recently, a book traced the rise of Islamic supremacism in Egypt to the disciplining of a rude Muslim girl by a Christian nun.)

This “new history” – which claims that Muslims are the historic “victims” of “intolerant” Western Christians — has metastasized everywhere, from high school to college and from Hollywood to the news media, institutions which are becoming increasingly harder to distinguish from one another. When U.S. President Barack Obama condemned medieval Christians as a way to relativize Islamic State atrocities — or at best to claim that religion, any religion, is never the driving force of violence — he was merely being representative of the mainstream way history is taught in the West.

Even good, authoritative books of history contribute to this distorted thinking. While such works may mention “Ottoman expansion” into Europe, the Islamic element is omitted. Turks are portrayed as just another competitive people, out to carve a niche for themselves in Europe with motivations no different than, say, the Austrians, their rivals. That the “Ottomans” were operating under the distinctly Islamic banner of jihad, just like the Islamic State is today, is never made clear.

Generations of this false history have led the West to think that being suspicious or judgmental of Muslims is unacceptable, and that Muslims need to be accommodated. Perhaps then, they’ll like the West.

Such is progressive wisdom.

Meanwhile, in schools across much of the Muslim world, children are being indoctrinated into glorifying and reminiscing about the jihadi conquests of yore — conquests by the sword and in the name of Allah. While the progressive West demonizes European/Christian history — when I was in elementary school, Christopher Columbus was a hero, when I got into college, he became a villain — Mehmet the Conqueror, whose atrocities against Christian Europeans make the Islamic State look like boy scouts, is praised every year in “secular” Turkey on the anniversary of the savage sack of Constantinople.

The result of Western fantasies and Islamic history is that today Muslims are entering the West unfettered in the guise of refugees. They refuse to assimilate with the “infidels,” and form enclaves — in Islamic terminology, ribats – that serve as frontier posts to wage jihad against the infidel one way or another.

This in not conjecture. The Islamic State is intentionally driving the refugee phenomenon, and has promised to send half a million people — mostly Muslims — into Europe. It claims that 4,000 of these refugees are its own operatives:

Just wait. … It’s our dream that there should be a caliphate not only in Syria but in all the world, and we will have it soon, inshallah.

It is often said that those who ignore history are destined to repeat it. What happens to those who rewrite history in a way to demonize their ancestors while whitewashing the crimes of their ancestors’ enemies? The result is before us. History is not repeating itself; sword-waving Muslims are not militarily conquering Europe. Rather, they are being allowed to walk right in.