Islam - Africa > Muslim Jihad doubles territory in Mali in One year; Shabaab Terrorizing Kenya; African Gov'ts Deny Jihadist Elephant in the Room

 

Islamic State group nearly doubled its Mali territory

in under a year, UN says

Islamic State extremists have almost doubled the territory they control in Mali in less than a year, and their al-Qaida-linked rivals are capitalizing on the deadlock and perceived weakness of armed groups that signed a 2015 peace agreement, United Nations experts said in a new report.

Issued on: 26/08/2023 - 11:18Modified: 26/08/2023 - 11:22

2 min

File photo: Malian women look on in Gao, December 4, 2021. © Thomas Coex, AFP

By:NEWS WIRES

The stalled implementation of the peace deal and sustained attacks on communities have offered the IS group and al-Qaida affiliates a chance “to re-enact the 2012 scenario,” they said.

That’s when a military coup took place in March and rebels in the north formed an Islamic state two months later. The extremist rebels were forced from power in the north with the help of a French-led military operation, but they moved from the arid north to more populated central Mali in 2015 and remain active.

The panel of experts said in the report that the impasse in implementing the agreement — especially the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of combatants into society — is empowering al-Qaida-linked Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin known as JNIM to vie for leadership in northern Mali.

Sustained violence and attacks mostly by IS fighters in the Greater Sahara have also made the signatories to the peace deal “appear to be weak and unreliable security providers” for communities targeted by the extremists, the experts said.

JNIM is taking advantage of this weakening “and is now positioning itself as the sole actor capable of protecting populations against Islamic State in the Greater Sahara," they said.

The panel added that Mali’s military rulers are watching the confrontation between the IS group and al-Qaida affiliates from a distance.

The experts cited some sources as saying the government believes that over time the confrontation in the north will benefit Malian authorities, but other sources believe time favors the terrorists “whose military capacities and community penetration grow each day.”

In June, Mali's junta ordered the U.N. peacekeeping force and its 15,000 international troops to leave after a decade of working on stemming the jihadi insurgency The Security Council terminated the mission’s mandate on June 30.

The panel said the armed groups that signed the 2015 agreement expressed concern that the peace deal could potentially fall apart without U.N. mediation, “thereby exposing the northern regions to the risk of another uprising.”

The U.N. force, or MINUSMA, “played a crucial role” in facilitating talks between the parties, monitoring and reporting on the implementation of the agreement, and investigating alleged violations, the panel said.

The 104-page report painted a grim picture of other turmoil and abuses in the country.

The panel said terrorist groups, armed groups that signed the 2015 agreement, and transnational organized crime rings are competing for control over trade and trafficking routes transiting through the northern regions of Gao and Kidal.

“Mali remains a hotspot for drug trafficking in West Africa and between coastal countries in the Gulf of Guinea and North Africa, in both directions,” the experts said, adding that many of the main drug dealers are reported to be based in the capital Bamako.

The panel said it remains particularly concerned with persistent conflict-related sexual violence in the eastern Menaka and central Mopti regions, “especially those involving the foreign security partners of the Malian Armed Force” – the Wagner Group.

“The panel believes that violence against women, and other forms of grave abuses of human rights and international humanitarian law are being used, specifically by the foreign security partners, to spread terror among populations,” the report said.

(AP)

Kenya: Muslims slit throats of two truck drivers,

torch eight houses and a church

AUG 29, 2023 11:00 AM BY ROBERT SPENCER

“When you meet the unbelievers, strike the necks…” (Qur’an 47:4)

Two killed in latest Shabaab attack in Lamu

by Kalume Kazungu, Nation.Africa, August 22, 2023 

A lorry driver and his co-driver were killed on Tuesday morning following an ambush by suspected al-Shabaab militants near Lango La Simba area on the Lamu-Witu-Garsen road.

Lamu West Deputy County Commissioner Gabriel Kioni said the vehicle was waylaid by the heavily armed militants between 6.30am and 7am.

After stopping them, the attackers slit their throats, killing them on the spot.

Mr Kioni said the terrorists had earlier torched eight houses and a church at Salama village in Lamu West at night.

The militants, believed to be between 30 and 60, raided the villages between 8.30 pm and 11pm on Monday night and stole household items including television sets, solar panels, lamps, maize flour and goats….

Salama Redeemed Gospel Church Pastor Peter Muthengi said, “I had speakers, chairs and many other items inside my church, all of which have been reduced to ashes. I lost property worth Sh300,000 (About $2,000 USD). I appeal to the government to find a permanent solution to the insecurity incidents in this place. We’re tired of these recurrent attacks.”

This is a rare report of jihadist terror from Kenya, but obviously, they are a lot more numerous than we are hearing about.  It also appears that these jihadists support themselves and their cause by stealing what they need.

Governments blame Africa massacres on economic factors,

but ‘victims were Christians, targeted for that reason’

AUG 29, 2023 4:00 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER

The governmental and media elites in the West have decided there is no jihad. Meanwhile, the jihad advances, particularly in Africa.

Report: Islamist Massacres of Christians a ‘Regular Occurrence’ in Sub-Saharan Africa

by Thomas D. Williams, Breitbart, August 26, 2023:

The slaughter of Christians has become a regular occurrence in sub-Saharan Africa, the Barnabas Fund reports on Saturday, and the “cause is Islamism.”

Hotspots of Islamic terrorist activity include the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), northern Mozambique, and northern and Middle Belt Nigeria, the Christian aid and persecution watchdog group asserts, and the perpetrators “are not just rebels or militants, but jihadists.”

The report notes that Islamic terrorists from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) are affiliated with the Islamic State and together with Islamic State Mozambique, they form the Islamic State Central Africa Province.

The violence in Nigeria and across West Africa “is carried out by the Islamic State West Africa Province, jihadi group Boko Haram, and other Islamist extremists,” the document states.

Terrorist groups affiliated with the Islamic State or al-Qaeda “have proliferated across sub-Saharan Africa,” the group observes, leading some observers to make “sobering predictions of an African caliphate stretching from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.”

Many secular governments and international bodies have condemned violence such as the recent atrocious massacre of Christian schoolchildren in Uganda but downplay the vital religious element in these attacks.

Massacres like that in Uganda are often blamed on “economic downturns, marginalization and lack of opportunity, corrupt or authoritarian government, or environmental problems that reduce the supply of arable and pastoral land,” but the simple fact is: “the victims were Christians who were targeted for that very reason,” the report points out….

For its part, the Islamic State has called its slaughter of Christians and the burning of church buildings across Africa a “Harvest of African Christians.”

Islamic State Claims Responsibility for Russia Church Shooting

Chechnya's Kadyrov in denial of reality

By Sara Shayanian  

Doctors examine a man injured in an attack on a Russian church Sunday in Kizlyar Dagestan, Russia. Photo by EPA-EFE/Str

UPI -- The Islamic State terror group claimed responsibility Monday for an attack that killed five at a church in the Dagestan region of Russia.

Authorities said the gunman was Khalil Khalilov and that he was a member of an IS sleeper cell.

Five people were killed in the shooting Sunday as worshipers left a traditional pre-Lent celebration in the city of Kizlyar, capital of the Republic of Dagestan.

"An unidentified bearded man ran toward the church yelling 'Allah Akba,'" Father Pavel, dean of the church, told RBC.

"When we heard the shots, we quickly closed the doors so that he couldn't get inside. He had a gun and a knife."

Several others were injured in the attack. The gunman was shot dead by police.

RBC reported that Khalilov, 22, joined the Islamic State last year and intended to target the attack on the Christian holiday.

Head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov, though, disputed the shooter's Islamic ties.

"One can say with certainty that the bandit and his patrons, in case he had any, do not have any direct or indirect connection to Islam," Kadyrov wrote on Telegram.

"The North Caucasus has always been a region of close cooperation and mutual understanding between Muslims and Christians. So today, it is our duty to deter assaults on our heritage that instigators and Russia's enemies may make."

Obviously, if shouting Allah Akba means he wasn't an Islamic adherent, I wonder what it does mean? Are there other religions that worship Allah? 

French Muslims: Jews Are Behind Paris Attacks!

BY MICHAEL VAN DER GALIEN 

After the terrorist attacks in Paris, Canadian journalist and entrepreneur Ezra Levant hopped on a plane to France. His mission? To interview French Muslims about the attacks. He wanted to know their views: Who committed these horrific attacks, does it have anything to do with Islam, and does this mean France is at war? If so, a war against whom?

Now, Levant has published a 20-minute video with highlights of these interviews. Although the conversations are in French, his organization, Rebel Media, put English subtitles below them. The results are both troubling and, in some way at least, reassuring.

Let me start with the reassuring part. Most French Muslims Levant talked to condemned the attacks. They made clear they don't want to have anything to do with ISIS and don't share the organization's views and goals.

This has nothing to do with Muslims

So far, so good.

However, many of them also said some things that are extremely troubling. For example, almost every single one of them said ISIS can't possibly have anything to do with Islam. Muslims can't kill innocent people, they say, so ISIS terrorists aren't Islamic.

That is circular reasoning that defies any form of common sense and reality.

Although that may make them feel better about their faith, the problem with that attitude is that it denies reality. If radical Islam is to be defeated, non-extremist Muslims have to be honest with themselves about the problems within their faith. Sadly, many of them clearly aren't prepared for that.

What's more, while condemning the attacks and claiming the terrorists can't possibly be Islamic, many of the interviewees put the blame on... Jews.

And it's not just Jews who are responsible for ISIS, say these "moderate" French Muslims. No, when push comes to shove, it's actually an American organization:

In other words, ISIS isn't Islamic at all! Nope, as far as these enlightened adherents of the Islamic faith are concerned, the group is nothing more or less than a cabal of "really sick" Jews and their capitalist American friends:

As Levant points out in his video, the most troubling part of this is that the interviewee who made this statements doesn't look like a radical Muslim at all. He's not wearing traditional Arabic clothes, nor does he have a long beard. "He looks like a hipster": an average guy and active participant in French society.

Yet his views are anti-American, anti-Semitic and, dare I say it, downright fundamentalist.

It would be one thing if the man who said this was the exception, but Levant's video proves that not to be the case. Many other French Muslims -- men who appear to be completely normal -- share his ideas.

All in all, Levant says about half of the French Muslims he spoke to told him that ISIS was created by "the Jews" and America.

Their reasoning is simple: Muslims don't kill other people, and especially not fellow Muslims. ISIS kills innocent people -- and especially Muslims (in their eyes) -- and so the group can't possibly be Islamic. It's as simple as 1+1=2.

On the other hand, these people are convinced that Jews do kill innocent people -- and Muslims most of all.

Amazing! 1.6 billion Muslims in the world and 16 million Jews - 100 Muslims for every Jew and Muslims are perpetual victims! How pathetic! That in itself should be enough to renounce Islam.

To summarize: ISIS "is an organization that follows the United States and the Jews."

So at best, French Muslims are in denial about ISIS' Islamic views, and at worst, they blame "the really sick Jews and Americans" for the rise of the organization and its attacks in Paris last year.

If it proves one thing it is that France has a massive Islamic problem on its hands.

This reveals that at least half of all French Muslims are living in Fantasyland, in complete denial of reality and 1400 years of history. They are also illiterate when it comes to the Quran. The scary problem is that such people are extremely vulnerable to radicalization when someone actually does teach them the Quran. Right now, they are only being taught to deny reality and hate Jews.

Berlin Head of Polish Culture Institute Fired for Promoting ‘Too Much Jewish Content’

    Polnisches Institut Berlin © wikipedia.org

The director of the Polish cultural institute in Berlin, Katarzyna Wielga-Skolimowska, has been fired by Poland’s Foreign Ministry because she allegedly promoted too much “unwanted content”, particularly concerning Polish-Jewish relations.

Wielga-Skolimowska was “dismissed immediately” last week, the institute’s spokesman, Marcin Zastrożny, confirmed to Germany's TAZ daily on December 2. According to Der Tagesspiegel, she was fired without any explanation or prior notice.

She was also ordered to leave the office immediately and depart her flat in Berlin at the end of December. She was not allowed to say goodbye to her subordinates in the institute, Der Tagesspiegel reported.

According to German media, it was the institute’s cultural program that led to her dismissal as it contradicted the cultural policy of the Polish government ruled by the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party that came to power in 2015.

The Polish ambassador to Germany, Andrzej Przylebski, sharply criticized Wielga-Skolimowska in an internal report in October, which was seen by dpa news agency. The dpa report stated that he particularly rebuked the former head of the Polish cultural institute in Berlin for “excessively covering ... topic[s] related to Polish-Jewish relations” and inviting what was called “unwanted” guests to events staged by the institute.

So, it appears Poland's new government wants to rewrite history and remove all shame from Nazi collusion during WWII. But that is not how you deal with shame - you accept your responsibility, repent, ask forgiveness, and then move on. You don't pretend it never happened or try to diminish the significance of the whole thing - you learn nothing that way; you just develop a shallow and false pride and leave yourself open to recommitting the same atrocities.

One has to wonder if growing antisemitism in Poland and the rest of Europe is contributing to this revisionism. Is another Holocaust possible in the not too distant future? As hard as it is to believe, I think it is not only possible but almost inevitable.

The issue of Polish-Jewish relations should not be promoted “especially in Germany, which should not take the role of mediator” in this field, the report, written by Przylebski said, adding that the institute should instead emphasize the importance of dialog between Poland and Ukraine or Poland and Lithuania, as reported by dpa.

“A blind imitation of nihilist and hedonist trends leads to nothing good in civilizational sense,” the report added, referring to Wielga-Skolimowska’s work.

    Katarzyna Wielga-Skolimowska

The ministry already expressed its discontent with Wielga-Skolimowska’s work for similar reasons. In early 2016, the Foreign Ministry negatively assessed the institute’s performance and appointed conservative Malgorzata Bochwic-Ivanovska to deputy head.

In April 2016, Poland’s Culture Minister, Piotr Glinski, called for "an end to the culture of shame” in relation to the Polish role in Holocaust and WWII. At the time, the Polish cultural institute in Berlin showed the Academy-Award winning film ‘Ida’ (2015) that tells the story of a young woman living in 1960s Poland, who found out that she was Jewish and her parents had been murdered by their Polish neighbors during WWII.

At the same time, the Polish Foreign Ministry insisted on showing another Polish film – a propaganda movie ‘Smolensk’, which suggested that the Polish presidential plane crash in Russia in 2010, which claimed the lives of all passengers aboard, was an act of terrorism orchestrated by Russia.

No German cinema agreed to show the movie, even though it was actively promoted by the institute’s deputy head, Bochwic-Ivanovska.

‘One cannot find better person to promote Polish culture’

– German artists

The decision of the Polish Foreign Ministry has caused a wave of criticism and indignation among German artists and cultural figures and even prompted them to write an open letter to Polish authorities.

The artists expressed their “embarrassment and irritation” over what they called “an unjustified and inexplicable decision” in a letter to the Polish ambassador in Berlin and Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski.

The initiative was put forward by Cilly Kugelmann, the program director of the Jewish Museum in Berlin and supported by the head of the Berliner Festspiele arts center, Thomas Oberender, the director of the Maxim-Gorki-Theater, Shermin Langhoff and the head of a museum of modern art, photography and architecture in Berlin, Thomas Koehler, who signed the letter.

“One could not possibly find a better person to promote Polish culture,” the letter said, as cited by Der Tagesspiegel. “She [Wielga-Skolimowska] has an exceptional talent for communication,” Kugelmann told Der Tagesspiegel, adding that the former Polish cultural institute’s director promoted “an image of a young intelligent country that is ready to face its history.”

“So far, Poland’s culture was presented in the best possible way at different levels [in Germany],” Marcin Piekoszewski, who works for the German-Polish book store ‘Buchbund’, told TAZ, commenting on Wielga-Skolimowska’s work.

Wielga-Skolimowska worked as the head of Berlin’s Polish cultural institute for three years from 2013. Her contract was due to expire only in summer 2017.

She established a cultural exchange program between Poland and Germany, particularly in cooperation with the German Goethe-Institute promoting German culture in foreign countries.

She also created a forum for German and Polish artists, where they could discuss the modern art, architecture, music and journalism, TAZ reported.

The former director of Berlin’s Polish cultural institute also promoted the ‘Film Polska’ film festival in Berlin.

However, she was not the only one reportedly fired due to the inconsistency of her ideas with the Polish government’s policy.

One of many

According to Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza daily, 13 out of 24 directors of Polish cultural institutes across Europe were fired this summer.

This means that it is government policy to revise history. It's probably an attempt to build Polish pride, but humility wears much better.

Many of them were also criticized for inviting “unwanted” guests to their events, such as Austrian author and journalist Martin Pollack, who criticized the PiS party, or Olga Tokarczuk, a Polish writer and recipient of the German-Polish International Bridge Prize, who was accused of “tarnishing the good name of the Polish nation.”

Where was God in the Armenian 'Genocide' by Ottoman Turks?

Armenia became the first state in the world to adopt Christianity as its official religion, around 301 AD, becoming the first Christian nation.

The Armenian Church has canonised the 1.5 million people it says were killed

Commemorations are due to begin in Armenia to mark the centenary of the killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks.

Tens of thousands are expected to march to a memorial on the outskirts of the capital, Yerevan, to lay flowers.

Later, the presidents of Russia and France will be among foreign leaders attending a ceremony.

Turkey strongly objects to the use of the term genocide to describe the killings and the dispute has soured relations between Turkey and Armenia. Were they ever good?

Turkey argues that there were many deaths on both sides during World War One.

A memorial service will also be held in Turkey on Friday and its prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, has said the country will "share the pain" of Armenians.

However, he has reiterated Turkey's stance that the killings were not genocide.

On Thursday the Armenian Church canonised the 1.5 million people it says were killed in the massacres and deportations.

March by Armenians in Jerusalem. 23 April 2015
Armenians around the world, as in Jerusalem, insist the killings were genocide

It said it wanted to proclaim the martyrdom of those who died for their faith and homeland.

After the ceremony, bells tolled in Armenian churches around the world.

Also on Thursday, German President Joachim Gauck described the killings as genocide, on the eve of a debate in the German parliament on the issue. You have to like Gauck, he's a gutsy guy, getting the word genocide out there before parliament could block him.

Earlier this month, Turkey recalled its envoy to the Vatican after Pope Francis also used the word genocide while referring to the killings at a Mass at St Peter's Basilica.

Friday's commemorations will be attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin and France's President Francois Hollande.

France has been a strong advocate of recognising the killings as genocide and President Hollande has pushed for a law to punish genocide denial.

The issue has strained Franco-Turkish relations.

What happened in 1915?

Hundreds of thousands of Armenians died in 1915 at the hands of the Ottoman Turks, whose empire was disintegrating.

Many of the victims were civilians deported to barren desert regions where they died of starvation and thirst. Thousands also died in massacres.

Armenia says up to 1.5 million people were killed. Turkey says the number of deaths was much smaller.

Most non-Turkish scholars of the events regard them as genocide - as do more than 20 states, including France, Germany, Canada and Russia, and various international bodies including the European Parliament.

Turkey rejects the term genocide, maintaining that many of the dead were killed in clashes during World War One, and that many ethnic Turks also suffered in the conflict.

From Daily Mail:

“Genocide of the Christians: The blood-soaked depravity exceeded even today’s atrocities by Islamic State – now, 100 years on Turkey faces global disgust at its refusal to admit butchering over a MILLION Armenians

She was in bed when the soldiers came in the middle of the night and dragged her father out of the family home in Diyarbakir, a city in eastern Turkey.

The last thing little Aghavni (her name means ‘dove’ in her native Armenian) heard as she cowered in her room was his shout of defiance: ‘I was born a Christian and I will die a Christian.’

Not until first light did Aghavni dare to creep downstairs on that morning 100 years ago. ‘I saw an object sticking through the front door,’ she later remembered. ‘I pushed it open and there lay two horseshoes nailed to two feet.

‘My eyes followed up to the blood-covered ankles, the disjointed knees, the mound of blood where the genitals had been, to a long laceration through the abdomen to the chest.

‘I came to the hands, which were nailed horizontally on a board with big spikes of iron, like a cross. The shoulders were remarkably clean and white, but there was no head.

‘This was lying on the steps, propped up by the nose. I recognised the neatly trimmed beard along the cheekbones. It was my father.’

The year was 1915. In the sprawling, beleaguered Ottoman Empire — an ally of the German Kaiser in the world war that had engulfed Europe and parts of Asia for nine months — the ruling Turks had turned their hatred on the 2 million men, women and children of Armenian extraction who lived within their borders.

The Armenians — who lived on the eastern edge of the empire ruled from Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) — were Christians and had been since the year 301, making theirs the first nation officially to adopt Christianity, even before Rome.

But here, among the Islamic Turks, they had long been second-class citizens, a persecuted minority. Now, as power in the land was seized by a junta of nationalist officers known as the Young Turks, persecution turned to unbridled savagery.

Over the next six months, there was to be a systematic uprooting and slaughter of perhaps as many as 1.5 million Armenians — on the grounds that they were infidels, racially inferior ‘dogs’ and traitors who were siding with Russia against Turkey.

Those who weren’t put to death on the spot, their faith cruelly mocked — such as Aghavni’s father, a mild-mannered, cultivated spice merchant who spoke five languages — were hounded in columns, eastwards, into the deserts of Syria and Iraq to die.

Their remains are long turned to dust, but the controversy that surrounds those terrible events is as alive as ever.

There is a great lessen to be learned here by Islam, if it were capable of learning. The slaughter of Christians by the Ottomans was followed almost immediately by God's raising up Ataturk to overthrow the Ottomans and turn Turkey's government into a largely secular organism. It remained such until the current president Erdogan began slowly reverting to a Muslim government. 

This is not a good thing for anyone. Neither Erdogan, nor any significant Muslim leader can see God's hand in that timing. But they will see it again, soon.