Videos show men training with explosives, Sweden threatened with 'suffering in the name of Allah'; former ambassador to Sweden says potential for terror infrastructure exists.
Yaakov Lappin Published: 09.01.05, 08:16 / Israel News
A group using the name of Iraqi jihad group Ansar al-Sunnah has released videos showing what it claims are members training for terror attacks in the Swedish countryside.
In one video, dated August 8 2005, the group says that viewers are about to see a “demonstration of the high explosives device, that we will use in the name of Allah.”
“This was recorded somewhere in Sweden,” says a message on the video in yellow letters against military camouflage colors.
A large explosion is then seen in a heavily wooded area. While it is not possible to verify the location of the explosion, the scenery does appear to be northern European.
A second video by the group, which is dated August 29, contains images of men with blurred out faces setting off mock suicide explosives and roadside car bomb attacks.
The video begins with a message which reads: “Demonstration of real high explosives device, that is filled with gas instead of ammoniate nitrate.” It goes on to show men standing in a clearing in a forest. They are seen pulling chords attached to devices, and setting off explosions of white smoke around themselves. In the same video, a red vehicle is seen driving along a forest path, before suddenly being engulfed in an explosion of white smoke.
The videos are available for download on infovlad.net, which frequently posts videos of jihad shooting and bomb attacks from around the world, along with documents containing bomb making manuals.
'Suffer in the name of Allah'
One user on the site, who identified himself as 'Dehex,' warned that “Sweden will suffer in the name of Allah.”
Referring to a well known Swedish reverend, Runar Soogard, who is reported to be under police protection after offending Muslims with a speech about Islam’s prophet, Muhammad, Dehex wrote: “Runar Soogard had a very bad and nasty speech about our greatest prophet Mohamed.”
“It's because he doesn't wan't to apologize to the Ummah Nation on at least television. That’s why they are giving out this videos as a warning! There will be one more warning, if he doesn't apologize on television…” wrote the user, in an ominous warning.
‘Dehex’ also posted an image showing a bloodied knife plunged into a map of Sweden, accompanied by the message: “We will slaughter all who dared to attack our prophet Mohamed.”
'Sweden has a problem'
Speaking to Ynetnews, Israel’s former ambassador to Sweden, Zvi Mazel, said he was not surprised by the presence of jihad movements in the Scandinavian country.
“Sweden is scene to violent demonstrations by radical Muslims, who are often joined by the far left,” said Mazel.
“In the middle of a talk I was giving in Stockholm, we were suddenly told by security personnel that there was an Islamist anti-Israel demonstration, in which members of the crowd were smashing windows with iron bars.”
“The Swedish press says that Sweden has immunity from terror due to its anti-Israel stance,” added Mazel.
The former ambassador also painted a grim picture of the situation for Sweden’s Jewish community. “There are harassments and physical attacks against Jews in Sweden,” he said. “There are many complaints about anti-Semitism among the Jewish community there.”
“There is a big problem in Sweden. Jihadist organizations certainly have a potential infrastructure there,” he added.
December 25, 2005
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1206/p07s02-woeu.htm
Home to one of Europe's most Muslim cities, the country may also be host to increasing radicalism.
By James Brandon | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
MALMO, SWEDEN - As a group of Swedish Muslims begin their midday prayers in a mosque still blackened by smoke from a recent Molotov-cocktail attack, Bejzat Becirov, director of Malmo's Islamic Center, is talking urgently.
"I'm afraid the same thing will happen here as in Paris," says Mr. Becirov, a Macedonian immigrant who opened Scandinavia's first mosque in this city in southern Sweden in 1984.
Malmo, which has one of the highest percentage of Muslims of any western European city, illustrates the challenges facing a continent whose native population is increasingly wary of a rapidly expanding and often discontented Muslim population.
But while the mosque has been a target for attacks since its founding, there is increasing evidence that Islamic militants are gaining a foothold in Sweden by successfully exploiting racial tensions and Muslim anger over economic underachievement, and ghettoization.
Bosnian authorities arrested a Muslim Swede in Sarajevo in October for possession of explosives while Islamist websites published several inflammatory but unsubstantiated claims in late summer that a mujahideen training camp has been established in southern Sweden.
Meanwhile moderate Muslims like Becirov, whose progressive mosque is a place where Sunnis and Shiites praying side by side, are increasingly under fire from both Swedish nationalists who see them as dangerous representatives of radical Islam and Muslim fundamentalists who see them as selling out to Western ideas.
"It's been like hell on earth to deal with this whole process," sighs Becirov, displaying Swedish press accounts of the last firebombing of the mosque Oct. 21.
But although the attacks on Becirov's mosque have generated support from Muslims in Sweden and abroad, many Malmo Muslims are turning to increasingly radical forms of Islam - in some cases alienated by Becirov himself.
"This mosque is no good," says one Palestinian refugee who works nearby. "The imam, he is no good. He says one thing and he does another," he says, accusing him of un-Islamic activities, such as drinking alcohol.
Such suspicions may be pushing even mainstream Swedish Muslims toward radical street preachers, especially in the nearby suburb of Rosengaard where Muslim immigrants form a substantial majority.
"These neighborhoods are hunting grounds for Islamists but how many and how organized [they are] it's impossible to say," says Aje Carlbom, a Malmo University researcher who began studying Rosengaard society nearly ten years ago.
"Twenty years ago when the mosque was established they [its founders] had some political problems and pushed the different factions out," Carlbom explains. "These small factions established their own mosques in basements."
It is a pattern echoed across Europe. While moderate Muslims may disown extremists and bar them from mosques, they do little to challenge extremist ideologies and the radical preachers merely regroup elsewhere, out of sight of both mainstream Muslims and the authorities.
"I know for a fact that there are small extremist groups in Malmo," says Arjumand Carlstein, a social worker at Malmo Islamic Centre, attached to the mosque. "And apart from the organized groups, you also have the Internet and extremists can easily communicate with each other in other parts of the world."
This global phenomenon appears to be spreading to Sweden. In August, several short video clips appeared on the Internet purporting to show experimental detonations of explosives in a wooded valley, supposedly in Sweden.
In September, another Islamist website claiming to speak for Ansar Al-Sunna, the Iraqi terrorist group, said the group had established "a small isolated training camp in southern Sweden."
"We wish to inform the Ummah," said the website, referring to the global Islamic community, "that the Army of Ansar Al-Sunnah in Sweden are well-trained to defend our holy countries ... having established a Mujahideen training camp, located in Skane [the region in southern Sweden that includes Malmo] ... with the help from Allah."
The website's authors claimed that the camp would only be used to train fighters for combat abroad. However they also promised to "capture and punish" the Swedish Evangelist preacher Runar Sogaard who in March called Islam's Prophet Mohammad a "pedophile" for marrying a girl who, according to many Muslim traditions, was only 9 years old.
The website has since been closed down, and experts interviewed for this article were unaware of any such camps. However, the jihadists' claims suggest that problems lie beneath the placid exterior of Swedish society.
While lavish welfare payments have to some extent enabled Sweden to buy off Muslim discontent more effectively than France, some think this has also fomented other problems by preventing many immigrants from advancing economically or socially in Swedish society.
"The Swedish system is very pacifying," says Carlstein. "A lot of people feel you don't have to get a job or learn the language," adding that unemployment and social immobility can help fuel radicalism.
But so far there have been no terrorist attacks or Paris-style revolts in Sweden, and violence in Malmo has been largely between criminal gangs, together with some sporadic attacks against Jewish targets and municipal buses.
"France has a tradition of revolt and demonstration against the state," says Jonathan Friedman, professor of social anthropology at the nearby University of Lund. "But in Sweden it's almost as if the state has sided with the immigrants against the Swedish working class."
"Sweden thinks of itself as immune from terrorism because of its foreign policies," adds Magnus Ranstorp, an analyst at the Swedish National Defence College.
"But one has to be worried about issues like in Holland," he continues, referring to the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh, "although it would take a lot for something like that to happen in Sweden."
Originally posted at Frontpage Magazine:
By Robert Spencer
Front Page Magazine
In a crushing blow to the freedom of speech worldwide, the United Nations Human Rights Council last Thursday approved a resolution calling upon member states to provide legal “protection against acts of hatred, discrimination, intimidation and coercion resulting from defamation of religions and incitement to religious hatred in general.”
While the resolution speaks of religion in general, the proposal came from Pakistan and had the backing of the powerful 57-government Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the UN’s largest voting bloc – so it was clear that Islam was the only religion the drafters of the resolution had in mind. This is underscored by the fact that Muslim states have worked energetically to make “Islamophobia” the focus of Durban II — the UN’s upcoming second World Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. A draft declaration declares that “defamation of Islam” should be a criminal offense, even when it takes place under the “pretext” of “freedom of expression, counter terrorism or national security.”
In other words, if the OIC and the drafters of the Durban declaration get their way, any honest examination of how jihadists use Islamic texts and teachings to make recruits will be illegal. So not only does this herald the death of free speech, but it also leaves us mute and defenseless before the advancing global jihad.
This has been a long time coming. The UNHRC resolution and the Durban II draft are part of an international agenda agreed upon at the March 2008 meeting in Senegal convened by the OIC. At that convocation the OIC developed what the Associated Press called “a battle plan” to defend Islam – but not from the terrorists who, as we hear all the time, have “hijacked” their religion. Rather, the OIC declared its intention to craft a “legal instrument” to fight against the threat to Islam they perceived “from political cartoonists and bigots.”
The OIC was referring, of course, to the “notorious” Danish cartoons of Muhammad that appeared in 2005, touching off riots and murders all over the Islamic world. “Muslims are being targeted by a campaign of defamation, denigration, stereotyping, intolerance and discrimination,” explained Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the OIC’s secretary general. The AP reported that OIC “delegates were given a voluminous report by the OIC that recorded anti-Islamic speech and actions from around the world. The report concludes that Islam is under attack and that a defense must be mounted.”
The offensive would take the form of a “legal instrument” that would criminalize what the OIC and other Islamic entities perceive as criticism of Islam. “Islamophobia,” Ihsanoglu declared, “cannot be dealt with only through cultural activities but (through) a robust political engagement.” This is a careful euphemism calling for restrictions on freedom of speech. Abdoulaye Wade, the President of Senegal and chairman of the OIC, made this point explicit: “I don’t think freedom of expression should mean freedom from blasphemy. There can be no freedom without limits.”
The OIC’s campaign against free speech met with its first big success at the UN Human Rights Council. In June 2008, Council President Doru-Romulus Costea explained that religious issues can be “very complex, very sensitive and very intense. . . . This council is not prepared to discuss religious matters in depth, consequently we should not do it.” Henceforth only religious scholars would be permitted to broach such sensitive issues.
“While Costea’s ban applies to all religions,” the AP explained, “it was prompted by Muslim countries complaining about references to Islam.” The ban came after a heated session in which David G. Littman, speaking for several non-governmental organizations (NGOs), denounced the practices of female genital mutilation (FGM), execution by stoning, and child marriage as sanctioned by Islamic law. Egypt, Pakistan, and Iran angrily protested, interrupting Littman over a dozen times and eventually forcing the proceedings to be suspended.
With council president Costea ultimately prohibiting all discussion of “religious issues” from council meetings, the Islamic delegates can rest assured that there will be no more discussion of the fact that Islamic theology provides the basis for human rights outrages ranging from female genital mutilation to stonings. Thus, an international body ostensibly dedicated to promoting human rights voluntarily renounced any study of one of the leading sources of international human rights violations.
Shortly after this incident, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Secretary General of Organization of the Islamic Conference, declared victory in clearly supremacist terms: Muslims had dictated to the West the “red lines that should not be crossed,” and the West was complying. He said that OIC initiatives against “Islamophobia” had resulted in “convincing progress at all these levels mainly the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, and the UN General Assembly. The United Nations General Assembly adopted similar resolutions against the defamation of Islam.” He added: “In confronting the Danish cartoons and the Dutch film ‘Fitna’, we sent a clear message to the West regarding the red lines that should not be crossed. As we speak, the official West and its public opinion are all now well-aware of the sensitivities of these issues. They have also started to look seriously into the question of freedom of expression from the perspective of its inherent responsibility, which should not be overlooked.”
The attempt to compel Western states to ban insults to Islam is quickly picking up speed, and bodes ill for the ability of those states to defend themselves against the global jihad in all its forms – since Islamic supremacists and their allies routinely characterize all investigation of the Islamic roots of the jihadist agenda as “hate speech.”
This campaign represents the international dimension of the stealth jihad. It does not consist of attacking western countries with guns or bombs, or even threatening to do so. Instead, we’re pressured to accommodate Islam by placing the religion off-limits to critical discussion. It’s presented as an act of “tolerance,” but the deliberate result is the erosion of core Western concepts of free expression. Think about the extent to which that single value defines western civilization: for one thing, it is an indispensable foundation of the American Revolution and the American system of republican government. And we are surrendering it, gradually and voluntarily, to those who seek to impose on us a value system that elevates the sanctity of Islam over freedom.
In order to Islamicize the West, stealth jihadists need to convince us to relinquish our attachment to our traditional freedoms. One would have never thought that westerners would give up free speech of their own accord, but we are now in the process of carving out a major exception for Islam. Yet the freedom to criticize religion, of course, is the very cornerstone of the right to free expression. Once we surrender that right, can surrender of the freedom of religion be far behind?
Islam is a religion of peace, we are told. And anyone who argues otherwise better watch out – if the UN, with which Obama wants to work so closely, gets its way, he may soon face legal action.
The only victors can be the jihadists themselves: Western authorities, already mired in politically correct myopia, will grow even more afraid to speak openly about what they’re trying to do and what we can do to stop it. The losers can only be those who value freedom of speech and understand why it is so important in a genuinely pluralistic society. The UN measure moves the West one step closer to submitting to the hegemony of Islamic norms.
Two recent articles in the Gulf press discussed the attitudes of European Muslims towards the West. On December 2, 2008, Bahraini liberal Shi'ite cleric Dhiya Al-Mousawi published an article in the liberal Kuwaiti daily Awan on the Mumbai terrorist attacks, some of the perpetrators of which were Muslims who were naturalized British citizens. The second article, by liberal Kuwaiti columnist Khalil 'Ali Haidar, was published October 5, 2008 in the UAE dailyAl-'Ittihad. Both writers criticized Muslim groups in Europe for harming the West while at the same time enjoying Western freedoms and services. Haidar treated the subject more broadly, criticizing all Islamic movements and parties in Europe on the grounds that they are promoting Islamic extremism, that they have taken control of the lives of the European Muslims, and that instead of attempting to bridge the gap between the East and the West, they have consciously brought about isolation, alienation, and, ultimately, jihad-motivated terrorism against the West.
Following are excerpts from Al-Mousawi's and Haidar's articles:
European Muslims Are Spitting Into the Well from Which They Drink
In an article titled "When the Terrorist is British Born," Al-Mousawi wrote: "…It is sad that in Western countries there are thousands of Muslims who receive citizenship for themselves and their families after having been expelled from their respective homelands. [The West] gives them asylum, work, shelter, and health insurance - [yet] they are the first to turn their backs on their second homeland. Worse, some of them think nothing of committing suicide in the squares, in the very countries that have granted them and their families protection… It is odd that some sheikhs curse and revile the West from the pulpits of the Western [mosques,] and wish for the destruction of the [Western] countries, as the police of those countries guard them…" [1]
The Islamists Have Taken Control Over the Lives of the Muslims in the West
Al-Haidar wrote, in a similar vein: "The problem of Europe and the U.S. is neither the Arabs nor the Muslims. It is the Islamists, both parties and groups, who have taken over the political, religious, social, and cultural life inside and outside Islamic and Arab countries. [These parties and groups] have influence over the Muslim minorities of the Western countries… They have focused on imposing restrictions on the first generation [of immigrants], on brainwashing the second generation, and on excommunicating unions, organizations, and mosques. For many years - in fact, since the end of the Second World War - Western countries have been welcoming Arabs and Muslims, and providing [them] with extensive opportunities for preaching and [other] activities. They have treated them with amazing kindness. With time, the Muslims grew in power, and tightened their grip on the very heart of these societies.
"The presence of Islamists [in the European countries], with all their different parties, groups, and schools of thought, has been a testing ground for relations between their Muslim minority, which has been influenced by the indoctrination [carried out by different] parties, and these democratic societies. For many years, Islamists, and especially the Muslim Brotherhood, have complained about the oppressive [policies] of Arab regimes, the freezing of freedoms, surveillance, etc. [Abu A'la] Al-Mawdoudi's [2]writings, [originally in Urdu], have gained popularity in the Arab world, corrupting the youth and distorting their outlook. [Al-Mawdoudi] proclaimed to the entire world, and especially to [his] liberal European opponents, the advent of a new social order superior to Western democracy on every count - in liberty, flexibility, religious tolerance etc. - that will be introduced under the leadership of Muslim youth uncontaminated by the filth of Western civilization and its materialist [values]."
The Islamists Have Wrought Alienation and Terrorism
"The ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Al-Tahrir party, [3] and Egyptian, Pakistani, and other Islamic groups has cast the Arabs and the Muslims in Europe into darkness and confusion. With their books, films, and extreme separatist ideas, they have paved the way for the proliferation of different forms of extremism, and hence to overt terrorism.
"The unceasing attacks on Western civilization, on man-made laws, and on Oriental studies, as well as on [what they regarded as] the cultural invasion and Western conspiracies - have made it difficult for [Muslims] to integrate into the new environment to which they migrated while hating it. [However, his integration] as far as his material interests or the aims of his party were concerned [was never impeded]…"
The Absence of a Culture of Revival and Innovation
"The Islamic party movement has not embraced the idea of revival and innovation; as a consequence, it has failed to see a positive side to Western society or to study Western literature, art, and culture so that it could create a model of modern culture, literature and art that combines Western and Islamic [elements]. Even the Muslim Brotherhood leaders, along with others who are proud of the Islamic civilization and profess to be heirs to the Baghdad and Andalusian civilizations - [even they], during the half century [of their sojourn] in Paris, London, or Germany, have not produced a [single] new idea, [let alone new] art or culture worthy of notice...
"True, they have established publishing houses to circulate their parties' books and publications; they never let up in improving their media weaponry, such as the press, television, and other [media outlets]; they developed their own financial institutions and banks [and called them] 'Islamic: no interest'; they established private schools, which only further isolated Muslim boys and girls from their European environment and thus enhanced the Islamic parties' control of their [lives] - and this is only a partial list. But what they have failed to do is to act as a bridge between East and West, as have, say, the poets of the [Muslim] diaspora. They also never helped plant seeds of modernization, democracy, and creativity - cultural, artistic, and literary - in the Arab and the Islamic worlds.
"Most reports on [Muslims in Europe], produced with great enthusiasm by the media, are about fights between [different] mosques, family honor murders, or extremist religious discourse. Not a single one of their associations has ever sponsored a useful cultural program, nor has any of their parties ever translated an encyclopedia or organized a study group to explore an aspect of culture, education, or ties between East and West. Neither have any of these circles invested effort [in a project] - not even to reexamine the writings of Islamic parties and modernize them by removing extremist ideas and the ideology of heresy accusations."
Abusing Tolerance
"Western tolerance towards Muslims in Europe and in the U.S. on freedom of religion in general, and its respect for Christian and Jewish converts to Islam in particular, has not been used as a model by any Islamic party. It didn't teach them religious tolerance; it didn't lead them to acknowledge that religious choice is a personal matter; it did not prompt them to protect non-Muslims in the Arab and Muslim world. On the contrary, they became increasingly offensive, since they perceived that the West was conceding to their demands and treating them with tolerance. Thus, they gained ground and popularity, and their arrogance was became boundless …
"The Islamist literature, publications, and sermons, even in the heart of Europe, have essentially retained the conceptual structure of ancient [Muslim] writings, in that they continue to treat any input from civilization as refuse, all the amazing technological innovations as purely material development, and the life and values of the West as decadence and degradation."
The Connection to Violence and Terrorism
"It has often been said that moderate Islamic groups have nothing to do with violence and terrorism. But this is an illusion. All the ideas of terrorist groups fit the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, of the Al-Tahrir [party], of Al-Jama'a Al-Islamiyya in Pakistan, and others. Ideas like idol worship, the rule of God, the establishment of shari'a, and others, which have assumed new fundamentalist connotations associated with new ruling parties, were not invented by Al-Qaeda or Fath Al-Islam. The notions of cognitive isolation, the invalidity of man-made laws, and serving God; the undermining of the values of homeland and citizenship, as well as all facets of political realism; proclamations such as the Muslim Brotherhood's motto 'Death for the sake of Allah is our highest aspiration,' and numerous other [slogans] - all these have not been invented by Al-Zarqawi, bin Laden, or [Sheikh Abu Muhammad] Al-Maqdisi…
"What can we expect of a youth who encounters [the following] idea, [which appears] in a book frequently discussed by the Muslim Brotherhood: 'Today we live in a jahiliya [the pre-Islamic era of idol worship], akin to idol worship in [Muhammad's] time and worse. We are surrounded by idol worship. Human achievement and beliefs, people's traditions and customs, their traditional sources, their arts and literature, their laws and regulations, and even most of what we regard as aspects of the Islamic culture, Islamic authorities, and Islamic thought and philosophy - all these are products of idol worship."
"This is a simple passage from the book Milestones by Sayyed Qutb. This book has been translated into all the languages of the Islamic countries: Turkish, Persian, Urdu, Malaysian, Indonesian, and others, as have hundreds of other Muslim Brotherhood books. These books are brainwashing thousands of youths in the Muslim world, and drawing [many of them] towards extremist terrorist organizations.
"Is not this passage, which has been read [and reread] by Islamists for over 40 years, the main reason for the Muslim's deepening sense of alienation from both his own society and from the society in Europe, America, or Australia to which he emigrated?…
"There is no doubt that it is these ideas, texts and doctrines - some of which seem innocuously 'moderate' [to us, after] they have poisoned our souls - that have shaped the views of many Muslims, men and women, worldwide, and have brought forth a generation of jihadi terrorists.
"It is this [phenomenon] that has precipitated the clash between the Islamists and Western societies in America and Europe." [4]
Endnotes:
[1] Awan (Kuwait), December 2, 2008.
[2] Sayyid Abul A'la Mawdoudi (1903-1979)(1903-09-25), also known as Mawlana (Maulana) or Sheikh Sayyid Abul A'la Mawdudi, was a Sunni Pakistani journalist, theologian and political philosopher, and a major Islamist thinker. He was also a political figure in his home country of Pakistan, where he founded the Jamaat-e-Islami Islamic revivalist party.
[3] Hizb Al-Tahrir (Liberation Party) is a radical Islamic group whose agenda is to rally Muslims with a call for a new Caliphate.
[4] Al-Ittihad (UAE), October 5, 2008.
Inlägg
Alla kommentarer
