How U.S. Foreign Aid to Iraq Funds Terrorism Against Americans
We send money to Iraq. Iraq funds Iran’s Jihadists attacking our embassy.
[Editor’s note: Make sure to read Daniel Greenfield’s masterpiece contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
In 2020 and 2021, the United States spent over $600 million on foreign aid in Iraq. That’s down from a high of over $2 billion in 2018 and $4.4 billion in 2016. But it still means that we have blown through over $10 billion on Iraq since 2016. That’s long since we officially withdrew.
Meanwhile, where was Iraq’s money going? Iraq’s latest budget dedicates $2.8 billion to Shiite PMU terror militias including Kataeb Hezbollah: an Iran-backed terror group that has been responsible for the deaths of numerous American soldiers.
At the height of the Iraq War, Kataeb Hezbollah was using Iranian IEDs to kill American soldiers. Kataeb Hezbollah is listed as a foreign terrorist organization which makes it a crime for Americans to fund it. But that hasn’t stopped the Biden administration from providing massive amounts of foreign aid to Iraq.
While some U.S. conflicts with Jihadists in the region are old news, Kataeb Hezbollah fired rockets at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad in 2019, and has bombed U.S. bases in recent years. Kataeb Hezbollah killed two American soldiers in 2020: Army Spc. Juan Miguel Mendez Covarrubias and Air Force Staff Sgt. Marshal D. Roberts.
Politicians and the media have mostly ignored the fact that Americans are continuing to be killed in Iraq, that the Iraqi government is funding their killers, and that we’re funding Iraq.
While Iraq funds Iran’s terror militias, the United States funds the UN Development Programme to “stabilize” Iraq and has invested over $100 million into “conflict, peace and security” funding.
The United States has spent over $1 billion financing the nation’s military while Iraq spends billions financing the Iranian PMU terror militias which are expected to approach a quarter of million Jihadis. The rise of ISIS provided the Shiite regime running Iraq with the perfect excuse for discarding the ISF military built by the U.S. and turning over security to Shiite terror groups.
The foreign policy establishment claims that we need to fund the Iraqi military as a counterbalance to Iran’s PMU militias, but that just allowed Iraq’s government to shift even more defense funding to the Shiite terror groups. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani and his government were backed by the PMU’s and are turning them into an even bigger army.
That’s not surprising since al-Sudani is a second generation member of a Shiite Islamist movement loyal to Iran’s Islamic Revolution. The Shiite Coordination Framework, which is behind the Sudani government, is filled with Shiite Islamists groups with their own militias. For example, the Badr alliance, created by Iran, controls both sizable chunks of Iraq’s military and police forces, as well as one of the larger militias, and has a sizable presence in Iraq’s parliament.
Iraqi democracy consists of Shiite blocs, some Islamists, some fronted by former leaders like Maliki, fighting each other for power and competing for Iran’s favor. Iran has helped them set up militias that, in imitation of Iran’s IRGC and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, also control large portions of the economy, running their own businesses, scoring construction contracts and oil deals.
The foreign policy establishment has refused to acknowledge that Iraq has long since become an Islamic terror state under the political control of Iran and that the only reason it isn’t more of a threat is the constant infighting between the Shiite majority which often turns violent. If Iraq’s Shiite Islamists were ever united under a single leader, like Muqtada Al-Sadr, a perennial player, it will become as much of a threat to the region and the world as Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Instead, we keep sinking more money into Iraq in the hope of a better outcome.
Iraq, until recently, was on the list of the top 5 recipients of U.S. foreign aid. And the Baghdad regime continues to come up with new ways to extract money from U.S. taxpayers.
Last month, Prime Minister Al-Sudani claimed that the Islamic terror state was going green and pleaded for foreign aid to save the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which according to media accounts, was blamed on “climate change”. In fact, the Tigris river is a filthy mess because Sadr City’s Islamists pour tons of filth into it. Five million cubic meters of waste are dumped daily into both rivers from sewage to corpses. That isn’t the work of climate change, but of Iraqis.
The United States provided military aid to the Baghdad regime and its military in order to defeat ISIS. But what we were actually doing was intervening in a Shiite-Sunni civil war while disregarding the fact that the side we were backing was just as much our enemy as ISIS.
While military aid has fallen under the Biden administration after the decline of ISIS, much as in Afghanistan, even humanitarian aid easily finds its way into the hands of Islamic terrorists.
Iran’s PMU militias control large swathes of territory, including farmland, own construction companies and demand payoffs from nonprofits who operate in the areas claimed by them. Humanitarian aid, no matter how seemingly benevolent, to people in terrorist areas, funds terror.
It’s a hard lesson that we have failed to learn in either Afghanistan or Iraq.
Like most failed Islamic terror states in the region, Iraq is perpetually on the verge of bankruptcy. In an effort to crack down on money from Iraq going to Iran, the Treasury Department restricted Iraqi banks from sending dollars to unknown parties. Since much of the Iraqi economy consists of moving dollars to Iran, this has become a real problem.
Despite the existence of the Iraqi dinar, much of the country uses the dollar. And the United States provides pallets of dollars to Iraq that then go on to Iran. Earlier this year, an Iraqi banker warned that if the rules weren’t suspended, “Within one year, most banks will declare bankruptcy”. That says more about what Iraqi banks really do than about our rules.
And yet no amount of economic problems keep the regime in Baghdad from spending billions on its terror militias. That’s a choice and it should not be subsidized by American taxpayers.
Especially when it costs American lives.
Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
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Report Decries ‘Merciless Targeting of Christians’ Around the World
ROME — The Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) noted in its annual report Thursday that Christian persecution has been “sharply on the rise” and “its terrible impacts have only begun to be felt.”
“The merciless targeting of Christians — driven by hatred of Christians and the faith itself — emerges as a common denominator in hundreds of testimonies of persecution,” ACN declares in the report.
Today, “almost 340 million Christians around the world — or 1 out of every 7 — live in a country where they suffer some form of persecution, such as arbitrary arrest, violence, a full range of human rights violations and even murder,” the report states.
In its global efforts, ACN “is committed to chronicling and assessing the evolving phenomenon of the persecution of Christians around the world today,” it declares.
File/The body of a Christian resident killed in an attack by gunmen is moved to a hospital in Quetta on April 2, 2018. Four Christians were killed and a child injured in what officials say was a targeted attack against the religious minority group in the Pakistan. (BANARAS KHAN/AFP/Getty)
ACN also offers a definition of Christian persecution as “the mistreatment, discrimination, oppression, or violence directed towards individuals or communities who identify as Christians or follow the Christian faith.”
Such persecution “involves the infringement of their basic human rights, such as the freedom of worship, expression, and assembly, due to their religious beliefs and practices,” it adds.
Regarding the diverse drivers of Christian persecution worldwide, the report states that Christians are primarily persecuted “because of their faith” but economic and political situations “further deepen this problem.”
“In some countries, Christians are seen as a threat to the ruling government, and their persecution is a way to maintain control,” the report says, observing that some 4.5 billion people around the globe live under authoritarian regimes where religious freedom is not respected.
Moreover, in many countries, “cultural and religious intolerance fuel Christian persecution,” it states, noting that in particular 1.1 billion people live in 21 countries where Islamic extremism is the norm.
Finally, in some countries, Christianity “is seen as a foreign or Western religion, hence it faces hostility and violence,” the report finds, with some 1.5 billion people living in these circumstances in countries like India, where Hindu nationalism is on the rise.
As a continent, Africa is the most violent against Christians due to a rise in violent jihadist activity, the report states, Christians in Africa increasingly “confront extremist, Islamist violence.”
In Nigeria, for instance, there is a concerted effort to “wipe away Christianity,” and between January 2021 and June 2022, Islamist Fulani raiders “attacked Christian villages in Nigeria’s Middle Belt, resulting in the deaths of more than 7,600 Christians.”
At present, there are more than a million internally displaced persons in Burkina Faso, the report adds, “many of whom are Christians fleeing jihadist violence.”
Throughout Africa, “Christians face social alienation and persecution,” ACN observes. In countries like the Central African Republic, “some women are forced into marrying Muslims and end up separated from their children.”
In Sudan, a number of Christians were arrested last year and punished for apostasy, while Church leaders were detained. Meanwhile, in Algeria, “any kind of promotion or public display of Christianity is illegal,” the report states.
Thomas D. Williams is Breitbart Rome Bureau Chief and the author of The Coming Christian Persecution.
Massachusetts DA’s Office Suspends Allah for Anti-Semitism
They hired a former Nation of Islam gang member. What could go wrong?
[Editor’s note: Make sure to read Robert Spencer’s masterpiece contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
Allah has been suspended from the Suffolk County district attorney’s office in Massachusetts, and with good reason. Up until recently, he has been the director of the office’s Community Engagement/Strategic Partnerships Unit, but then Allah was discovered to have made offensive remarks in the past. How can Allah be expected to foster community engagement and strategic partnerships with everyone in the Boston area if he hates some of them? He may get his old job back, but right now Allah is on leave pending a review of the whole situation.
Boston.com reported Sunday that True-See Allah, an official in Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden’s office, is in hot water over “reports that he made antisemitic comments during a 2016 interview.” It seems that back in 2016, Allah appeared on the radio program of “The Allah Team Radio,” which Boston.com describes as “a group that promotes the Nation of Islam, a Black nationalist organization.”
The Nation of Islam is more than just a “Black nationalist organization.” It is one of the most hateful and racist organizations in America today. The Nation was founded in the early 1930s by Wallace D. Fard, an umbrella salesman who has been variously described as an Arab and a Pakistani, who began preaching in Detroit that Islam, or his own adulterated version of it (which included the claim that Fard was the incarnation of Allah), was the original religion of the black man.
Fard attracted a zealous follower in Elijah Poole, who, renamed Elijah Muhammad, took Fard’s message of race hate (most memorably summed up in the assertion that “the white man is a devil”) to black communities nationwide, ultimately converting such luminaries as Malcolm Little, who became Malcolm X, and the boxer Cassius Clay, who became Muhammad Ali.
The Nation is not any recognizable form of Islam that has ever existed in Islamic history, but it does share some of the core elements of Islam, including virulent antisemitism, which may indicate that Nation members hold to other tenets of Islam as well, and are sympathetic to the global jihad. Farrakhan has called in the past for 10,000 volunteers to stalk and kill white people.
Boston.com adds that “during the 2016 interview, Allah said he was introduced to someone who was involved in an effort to bring Reebok to Boston. He described the man as a ‘Jewish guy who’s got short arms and deep pockets.’” It then helpfully explains that “the myth that Jews are greedy and financially stingy has been a component of antisemitic beliefs since medieval times.”
True-See Allah may have a more immediate basis for his hateful beliefs. The Jews in the Qur’an are called the strongest of all people in enmity toward the Muslims (5:82). The Qur’an charges them with fabricating things and falsely ascribing them to Allah (2:79; 3:75, 3:181). It also says that they claim that Allah’s power is limited (5:64); love to listen to lies (5:41); and disobey Allah and never observe his commands (5:13). The Qur’an also says that the Jews are always disputing and quarreling (2:247); hiding the truth and misleading people (3:78); staging rebellion against the prophets and rejecting their guidance (2:55); being hypocritical (2:14, 2:44); giving preference to their own interests over the teachings of Muhammad (2:87); and wishing evil for people and trying to mislead them (2:109). There is much more beyond this as well, including the claim that they are under Allah’s curse (9:30), and the injunction that Muslims should wage war against them and subjugate them under the hegemony of Islamic law (9:29).
Despite making this antisemitic statement, True-See Allah moved steadily upward. When he made his reference to the “Jewish guy who’s got short arms and deep pockets,” he was Assistant Deputy Superintendent of Reintegration for the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department. Then he was named Director of Outreach and Reentry for Massachusetts’ Office of Public Safety and Security. He became a member of the Suffolk DA’s Community Advisory Committee in Feb. 2022.
Apparently no one knew, or no one cared, about his statement during all that time. Allah was just too good not to have around. Boston.com explains that he is “a former gang member who was convicted for playing a part in the 1989 shooting that left a man, MacArthur Williams Jr., paralyzed.” Despite the fact that “Williams later died due to bladder cancer, which his family believed was tied to his paralysis,” Williams’s widow forgave Allah, and in 2015, he was pardoned.
His image as an example of successful rehabilitation thoroughly established, Allah relaxed a bit: “In 2020, Allah reportedly posted an autographed photograph of Farrakhan with his arm around Allah to Facebook.” And now, three years later, he has been placed on leave. Once again we see how unwise it is to hire and promote people based on their identity rather than their ability. Massachusetts officials were so happy to have a Nation of Islam former gang member on staff that they turned a blind eye to years of questionable statements and associations. If Allah had been a white supremacist, he would have been long gone. But he will likely be back on the job at the Suffolk DA’s office before too long.
Robert Spencer
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 26 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad. His latest books are The Critical Qur’an and The Sumter Gambit. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.
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In the Sinai, Israeli Experts Say Weapons Smuggling is the Biggest Threat
And those weapons are intended for one purpose only.
The Egyptian policeman, Mohamed Salah, who recently murdered three Israeli soldiers serving at the security fence between Egypt and Israel, apparently acted alone. He was not a member of any terror group. But he was prompted by what he read in the Qur’an that he carried with him: a deep hatred of Jews, and a desire to slay the Infidels wherever they might be found. The Egyptian government, having first claimed, baselessly, that Mohamed Salah entered Israel in hot pursuit of smugglers, has abandoned that claim, as it now understands he crossed over expressly to kill Israelis. More on the situation at the border with Egypt, and what should worry Israel the most, can be found here: “‘Smuggling, Not Terror, Is the Real Border Threat,’” by Israel Kasnett, JNS.org, June 11, 2023:
The deadly June 3 attack on Israel’s southern border may have been an isolated incident, but highlighted the larger problem of cross-border smuggling, which is disrupting Israel’s efforts to maintain not only its border with Egypt but also with Jordan.
Efraim Karsh, emeritus professor at King’s College, London, and former director of the BESA Center, doesn’t believe there will be any repercussions from the attack, as Israel views it as an isolated case. He noted that Islamic State has taken responsibility for the incident.
Was the Islamic State really responsible for Salah’s attack, as it now claims? There was nothing he left behind, no notes, no mention of the Islamic State by him on social media, nothing to link him to the terror group. It’s understandable that the Islamic State would wish to get credit for his murders of three IDF soldiers, but Salah looks as if he was a lone wolf.
For its part, Egypt has agreed to compensate the families of the victims.
The Egyptian government wants to do the right thing by Israel, and compensating the families of the soldiers Salah killed will certainly help. It doesn’t want anything to damage its decade-long security cooperation with the IDF. In the Sinai, Egypt relies on Israeli intelligence to help with its campaign against both the remnants of the Islamic State, and members of the Muslim Brotherhood (Hamas); at times, Cairo has even called on Israel to conduct airstrikes on ISIS in the northern Sinai.
In the early morning of Saturday, June 3, Mohamed Saleh Ibrahim, 22, shot dead Sgt. Lia Ben-Nun, 19, and Staff Sgt. Uri Iluz, 20, at an observation post near the border. In the ensuing manhunt, Staff Sgt. Ohad Dahan, 20, was killed in an exchange of gunfire with the terrorist, inside Israeli territory. Ibrahim, too, was killed in the exchange, and a fourth Israeli soldier sustained minor injuries….
Israel’s Army Radio reported on Sunday that six rifle magazines, a Koran and a knife were found on Ibrahim’s body. According to the report, the presence of the Koran has led the IDF to believe that Ibrahim was motivated by Islamic religious extremism.
However, Egypt claimed that Ibrahim had crossed the border to pursue drug smugglers following an earlier arrest….
The Egyptian government first claimed that Ibrahim had crossed over into Israel in pursuit of drug smugglers, but soon dropped that claim, once it became clear that — armed with a rifle, six rifle magazines cartridges, and a Qur’an — he had always meant to kill the IDF soldiers on duty at the border.
Eyal Zisser, a lecturer in the Middle East History Department at Tel Aviv University, agreed that the attack was an isolated incident that does not reflect the policies of the Egyptian regime.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, he said, “remains committed to the peace agreement with Israel, and the continued close relationship and military cooperation.”
“For Sisi, a policeman brainwashed by extreme Islam is a threat to his regime and not only to Israel, so we can calm down,” he added….
Zisser reminds Israelis that Sisi is just as, or even more, threatened by committed jihadis such as Mohamed Salah Ibrahim, than Israel, and therefore they need not worry about any breakdown in the security cooperation that benefits both Israel and Egypt.
The presence of ISIS on Israel’s southern border, coupled with the persistent smuggling problem, presents a unique challenge for both Egypt and Israel.
In the Sinai, ISIS, as well as local members of Hamas, try to smuggle weapons to terror groups — mainly Hamas, but also the PIJ — in Gaza. The money ISIS earns from such weapons transfers help it to pay its fighters in the Sinai who have been attacking Egyptian soldiers. There are also reports of drugs being smuggled into Gaza from the Sinai, where they are then transferred to Israel; the smugglers, helped by ISIS and Hamas to evade Egyptian and Israeli border guards, share their profits with both groups of terrorists. Both Egypt and Israel have their own good and sufficient reasons to halt the smuggling.
The problem is even worse on Israel’s eastern border.
In one of the most serious cases to date, in April, Israeli authorities arrested Jordanian parliamentarian Imad al-Adwan after finding 12 rifles and 194 pistols in his vehicle at the Allenby Bridge border crossing.
Further investigation revealed that since February 2022, al-Adwan had engaged in the illicit transportation of a diverse range of goods into Israel. This unauthorized activity took place on 12 separate occasions and was facilitated by the misuse of Adwan’s diplomatic passport. Among the items involved in this illegal operation were exotic birds, electronic cigarettes and gold….
There has been a great increase in the number of smuggling attempts from Jordan over the past few years, and weapons have been the main, though not the only, object of such smuggling. Imad al-Adwan, a member of Jordan’s parliament who apparently thought that would make him exempt from search – he thought wrong – made 12 trips into Israel with smuggled goods. On his last such trip, al-Adwan was discovered to have hidden in his car 12 rifles and 194 pistols which, had they not been discovered, would have been delivered to terrorists in the West Bank, and caused great harm to Israeli civilians and soldiers.
The smuggling of weapons into Gaza from the Sinai, and into Israel from Jordan, has reached such dimensions as to constitute a real security threat to the Jewish state. Israel needs to put more resources – both men and technology – into stopping the smugglers in the south and in the east. For those weapons are intended for one purpose: killing Israelis.
Syrian Refugee Stabs Toddlers in French Park
ANNECY, France—Four toddlers and two adults were stabbed in a knife attack in the tranquil French mountain town of Annecy on Thursday, and the government said the suspected assailant was a Syrian refugee.
Two of the children and one adult were in hospital in a life-threatening condition, while the other victims were less seriously hurt.
A video of the attack, taken by a bystander and verified by Reuters, showed the assailant jump a low wall into a children's playground and repeatedly lunge at a child in a stroller, pushing aside a woman who tries to fend him off.
Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said the suspected attacker, who was in police custody, was a 31-year old Syrian national who was granted asylum in Sweden 10 years ago. He had entered France legally, she said, and was carrying Swedish identity documents and a Swedish driving license.
The local prosecutor leading the investigation said there was no indication that terrorism was the assailant's motivation. He was under investigation for attempted murder.
The four children were just toddlers, aged between 22 months and three years, Annecy prosecutor Line Bonnet-Mathis told reporters.
One of them was a British national, another was Dutch, Bonnet-Mathis said.
As the assailant, who wore a blue-chequered headscarf and sunglasses, slashed at his victims, one bystander tried to stop him by throwing his backpack at him, the video showed.
The incident took place at around 0745 GMT in Le Paquier park in Annecy, a town in the French Alps.
"The nation is in shock," President Emmanuel Macron said on Twitter, calling the attack "an act of absolute cowardice".
MOTHERS CRYING
"He clearly targeted the babies," a witness who gave his name as Ferdinand told BFM TV.
"Mothers were crying, everybody was running," said George, owner of a nearby restaurant.
Another video, also verified by Reuters, showed the assailant, who was shot at by police as they sought to detain him, being overpowered by officers. He was not injured, the prosecutor said.
Several witnesses described Le Paquier park as an usually tranquil place popular with tourists for its stunning views of Lake Annecy and the mountains.
"It's a place where babysitters and parents take young children to play. I often see around 15 toddlers there in the morning, and the atmosphere is fantastic," said Yohan, who works at an ice-cream parlour just opposite the park.
France has been shocked by a number of violent incidents over the past few months, including the fatal stabbing last month of a nurse in the northern town of Reims. Also last month, a drunk driver accidentally killed three policemen.
Macron has denounced what he calls a "de-civilisation process" in the country, while opposition lawmakers say his government has been too lax on law and order.
"Nothing more abominable than to attack children," National Assembly speaker Yael Braun-Pivet said on Twitter. Parliament observed a minute of silence to mark the incident.
That ‘Christian Terrorist’ in France Has Been Recognized
You'll never believe what he really is.
[Editor’s note: Make sure to read Robert Spencer’s masterpiece contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
The news was shocking beyond measure: a man went on a stabbing spree at a playground in the French city of Annecy last Thursday, stabbing four three-year-olds and an adult. The attacker shouted “In the name of Jesus Christ” as he did his stabbing and claimed to be a Christian. He even had a made-to-order Christian name: Abdelmasih Hanoun; “Abdelmasih” means “Slave of Christ.”It was suspicious and contrived, but it did seem to confirm the Leftist elites’ claim that the largest terror threat comes from right-wing Christians. There was just one catch: some people have recognized Abdelmasih Hanoun and say that he is actually a Muslim. I know, knock me over with a feather, right?
The French-language news site Resistance Républicaine reported Monday that “Syrians living in France and Germany” have recognized the attacker as a “madman of Allah,” and that the identification has been confirmed by others as well. The attacker, according to those who have recognized him, is actually a Muslim named Selwan Majd, “a refugee from Al-Hasakah in northern Syria.”The chain of events that culminated with the stabbing of the children was set in motion when he “traveled to Turkey with false papers.” Once there, “he met a Swedish tourist and made her believe he was a Muslim convert to Christianity.” Love, or something, blossomed, and Turkey was no place to hang around in when big, beautiful Europe was beckoning.The happy couple made their way to Sweden, where Majd married his Swedish bride, using the name “Abdelmasih Hanoun” and claiming to be a Christian. However, “the Swedish authorities doubted him,” with good reason as it turns out, “and refused to grant him citizenship.” Later, his Swedish wife left him, and he made his way to France. Once there, “he went to seek help in a church but the church also doubted him.”
Resistance Républicaine also notes that numerous refugees have given European authorities a great deal of false information. That’s certainly true. In Sweden several years ago, it was revealed that 5,460 of 7,000 Afghan “child migrants” were actually adults. In Britain, more than 2,000 adult migrants have been caught lying about their age and pretending to be children. Many migrants have claimed to be Christian, thinking that doing so would help their claim for asylum. Back in 2021, also in Britain, a man Enzo Almeni, who had converted to Christianity to get asylum in Britain, returned to Islam and became a jihad suicide bomber.
If the people who say they have recognized Selwan Majd are correct, it would certainly explain the anomalies of this peculiar case, which from the beginning seemed less like an actual case of Christian terrorism than a Muslim’s idea of what a Christian terrorist might be like. The attacker’s shout of “In the name of Jesus Christ” was all too obviously meant to be a parallel to the jihadis’ ubiquitous scream of “Allahu akbar.” But when has any Christian anywhere committed acts of violence while screaming this phrase? It was just too neat, suggesting not so much a Christian terrorist as someone who wanted very much to be thought of as a Christian terrorist.
The Christian name that the attacker used, Abdelmasih, was likewise a bit too obvious as if its whole point here again was to make onlookers aware that this individual was a Christian. During pauses between the attacks, he ostentatiously fingered a cross he was wearing around his neck, as if he wanted to make sure that people noticed it. But try to think of another instance of a cross-wearing Christian shouting about Christ and fingering a cross while stabbing people. This has, of course, never, ever happened, while Muslims screaming about Allah while stabbing people is all too common.
We don’t know why, if this report is accurate, Selwan Majd decided to pose as a Christian and stab random children. He may have been angered and disappointed by the failure of his pose as a Christian to gain him asylum in Sweden and France. Or maybe this was his plan all along: Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, famously said “War is deceit” (Bukhari 4.52.268).
Ultimately, however, we may never know the full story of this case, because once it stopped being a case of Christian terrorism, it no longer fit the media paradigm. Another Muslim migrant in Europe runs around stabbing random people? That’s not news; that’s an all too familiar feature of life in the brave new multicultural Europe.
Robert Spencer
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 26 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad. His latest books are The Critical Qur’an and The Sumter Gambit. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.
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While We Were Watching Airports, Islamic Terrorists Won Our Children
Americans continue converting to Islam and joining ISIS.
[Editor’s note: Make sure to read Daniel Greenfield’s masterpiece contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
Cole James Bridges went to a high school in Clarkesville, Tennessee and worked at a Papa Johns pizza place near Akron, Ohio before joining the United States Army. Mateo Ventura was a high school student in Wakefield, Massachusetts.
Within a week of each other in June 2023, Bridges pled guilty to plotting to help ISIS kill American soldiers, while Ventura was arrested for trying to provide aid to the Islamic State.
Bridges and Ventura, 20 and 18 years old, like Trevor Bickford, 19, of Maine, who was hit with federal charges this year for attacking NYPD police officers with a machete in Times Square, and Xavier Pelkey, 18, also of Maine, who pled guilty in April after trying to recruit two underage teens for a terrorist attack in Chicago, show the rate at which ordinary American teens are converting to Islam and plotting terrorist attacks.
While we made everyone take their shoes off at the airport and labored to win hearts and minds in Afghanistan and Iraq, Islamic terrorists won the hearts and minds of our children.
Our national security establishment feverishly imagined vast Al Qaeda attack plots while ignoring the real attack. An attack so deep and so wounding that it is far more devastating than September 11. It was an attack aided and abetted by the government, our cultural establishment and entertainment industries which urged Americans to learn about and embrace Islam.
Teenagers like Bridges, Ventura, Bickford, Pelkey and many others did. While Muslim immigrants still make up a significant percentage of Islamic terror plots, they increasingly come from American teenagers who converted to Islam. And, unlike past Muslim terror converts who followed a familiar path from drug dealing to prison to terrorism, these are our boys.
Except they’re not ours anymore.
Bridges lyrically spoke of the Islamic terrorists of ISIS as “brothers who have been fighting to establish a khilafah” or caliphate, and “have inspired me a lot, they’re (sic) love for Allah.”
Ventura wanted to fight a “war on kuffar” or non-Muslims.
Bickford carried an Islamic text and had underlined the words, “fight in the Name of Allah and in the Cause of Allah. Fight against those who do not believe in Allah. Wage a holy war.” He wrote in his journal that he wanted a traditional Muslim burial and did not want to be buried “in the land of the kuffar”. If he died while killing Americans, he did not want to be laid to rest in America.
Pelkey, who changed his name to Abdullah, wrote that he wanted to “burst thru the door of Jihad in america and strike fear in the hearts of these kafirun nothing pisses these american kuffar off and scares em more than a term they use ‘homegrown terrorist.’”
Their plans for Islamic mass murder, Bridges wanted to attack the 9/11 memorial, Pelkey was going to burst into a synagogue separate the adults from the children, and then kill the adults, have received what little attention a broken country has to spare for the kind of story that people don’t even pay attention to anymore. We are so busy fighting each other that we hardly even look up when the next generation converts to Islam and signs up with Al Qaeda or ISIS.
Americans used to associate Islamic converts with black nationalist groups, but this is no longer the case. Latinos, like Bridges (raised by a stepfather, his mother’s last name was Gonzalez), are the fastest growing population of converts, but a quarter of converts to Islam are white.
In the UK, young white Muslim converts like 19-year-old Matthew King, whose mother turned him in after an attack plot on British soldiers, or Lewis Ludlow, who changed his name to Ali Hussain and pled guilty to scouting out targets like St Paul’s Cathedral and Madame Tussauds, are also becoming more commonplace.
There are certain common denominators among Muslim converts as there are among school shooters. Bickford was being raised by a stepfather while Ventura had been bullied in school. Bickford’s father had died of a drug overdose, and Pelkey was living with his mother and an autistic younger brother.
Like most cults, the new mosque recruits are lost and looking for somewhere to belong. Missing fathers and a general sense of alienation are a common theme. America no longer provides a sense of identity and even institutions like the U.S. Army don’t offer any real purpose. Falling through the spreading cracks of an imploding culture, they join gangs, movements and Islam.
What too few Americans understood after the September 11 attacks was that this was a culture war. Foreign Muslim terrorists could kill us by the thousands and perhaps even one day the hundreds of thousands, but even at expanding immigration rates it would take generations for them to demographically conquer us. Unlike Europe, America has a more robust birth rate, in part because of migration from south of the border. We would have to conquer ourselves.
The Bush administration responded to 9/11 with an ambitious effort to democratize the Muslim world, unaware and uncaring of the Muslim world’s parallel effort to Islamize America. The withdrawal from Afghanistan, like the failure of the Arab Spring and the rise of ISIS, collapsed the project to democratize the Muslim world. But the Islamization of America is succeeding.
What does Islam offer that we don’t? Patriarchy for fatherless boys, the illusion of belonging to a global Islamic Ummah, the promise of a system of moral order with the creation of the Caliphate, and the escape from a culture that no longer stands for much except comic book movies and politics.
Pop culture and politics have become the religions of a declining nation. In the midst of the culture war, many Americans from both sides have developed hostility and contempt for their own country. Others retreat to imaginary pop culture universes to debate the ins and outs of their devotion to Marvel, Star Wars or Taylor Swift with the intensity once reserved for theology.
Americans are becoming less patriotic and religious and the falloff is most pronounced among the young. It is no coincidence that Islamic recruitment of American teens is booming in areas where traditional organized religion is declining. Is it surprising that Maine, the third least religious state where barely a quarter described themselves as Christians, produced two Islamic terror converts? A decade ago, only 34% of people in the state believed religion was very important. But just because people abandon traditional churches, doesn’t mean that teenagers and twenty-somethings will give up on religion. They will find people who really believe.
And the Jihad really believes.
We are not just losing the military and demographic wars, but the even more important cultural war. America’s political and cultural establishment embraced Islam. And this is the result.
All the episodes of ‘24’ envisioning complicated plots of mass murder were off the mark. What happened instead was that the plotters got on planes, landed and moved here. They set up mosques and schools, they became reporters, executives and members of congress. Like their leftist allies, they fought the war from the inside and we did not so much lose as surrender.
A generation of young men, born after 9/11 and the end of the War on Terror, were urged to learn about Islam, the way they’re encouraged to learn about sex changes. Some castrated themselves and pretended to be women, others joined ISIS instead.
When life looks senseless and meaningless, each day filled with mechanical routines and hollow entertainments, the human soul needs to reach for something that promises more.
America is not becoming irreligious, it is losing its religions and finding new gods. Some of those gods tell their followers to kill the infidels, attack the 9/11 memorial and kill until America is Islamic.
As we take off our shoes at the airport, a new generation is losing its soul.
[Editor’s note: Make sure to read Daniel Greenfield’s masterpiece contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
Cole James Bridges went to a high school in Clarkesville, Tennessee and worked at a Papa Johns pizza place near Akron, Ohio before joining the United States Army. Mateo Ventura was a high school student in Wakefield, Massachusetts.
Within a week of each other in June 2023, Bridges pled guilty to plotting to help ISIS kill American soldiers, while Ventura was arrested for trying to provide aid to the Islamic State.
Bridges and Ventura, 20 and 18 years old, like Trevor Bickford, 19, of Maine, who was hit with federal charges this year for attacking NYPD police officers with a machete in Times Square, and Xavier Pelkey, 18, also of Maine, who pled guilty in April after trying to recruit two underage teens for a terrorist attack in Chicago, show the rate at which ordinary American teens are converting to Islam and plotting terrorist attacks.
While we made everyone take their shoes off at the airport and labored to win hearts and minds in Afghanistan and Iraq, Islamic terrorists won the hearts and minds of our children.
Our national security establishment feverishly imagined vast Al Qaeda attack plots while ignoring the real attack. An attack so deep and so wounding that it is far more devastating than September 11. It was an attack aided and abetted by the government, our cultural establishment and entertainment industries which urged Americans to learn about and embrace Islam.
Teenagers like Bridges, Ventura, Bickford, Pelkey and many others did. While Muslim immigrants still make up a significant percentage of Islamic terror plots, they increasingly come from American teenagers who converted to Islam. And, unlike past Muslim terror converts who followed a familiar path from drug dealing to prison to terrorism, these are our boys.
Except they’re not ours anymore.
Bridges lyrically spoke of the Islamic terrorists of ISIS as “brothers who have been fighting to establish a khilafah” or caliphate, and “have inspired me a lot, they’re (sic) love for Allah.”
Ventura wanted to fight a “war on kuffar” or non-Muslims.
Bickford carried an Islamic text and had underlined the words, “fight in the Name of Allah and in the Cause of Allah. Fight against those who do not believe in Allah. Wage a holy war.” He wrote in his journal that he wanted a traditional Muslim burial and did not want to be buried “in the land of the kuffar”. If he died while killing Americans, he did not want to be laid to rest in America.
Pelkey, who changed his name to Abdullah, wrote that he wanted to “burst thru the door of Jihad in america and strike fear in the hearts of these kafirun nothing pisses these american kuffar off and scares em more than a term they use ‘homegrown terrorist.’”
Their plans for Islamic mass murder, Bridges wanted to attack the 9/11 memorial, Pelkey was going to burst into a synagogue separate the adults from the children, and then kill the adults, have received what little attention a broken country has to spare for the kind of story that people don’t even pay attention to anymore. We are so busy fighting each other that we hardly even look up when the next generation converts to Islam and signs up with Al Qaeda or ISIS.
Americans used to associate Islamic converts with black nationalist groups, but this is no longer the case. Latinos, like Bridges (raised by a stepfather, his mother’s last name was Gonzalez), are the fastest growing population of converts, but a quarter of converts to Islam are white.
In the UK, young white Muslim converts like 19-year-old Matthew King, whose mother turned him in after an attack plot on British soldiers, or Lewis Ludlow, who changed his name to Ali Hussain and pled guilty to scouting out targets like St Paul’s Cathedral and Madame Tussauds, are also becoming more commonplace.
There are certain common denominators among Muslim converts as there are among school shooters. Bickford was being raised by a stepfather while Ventura had been bullied in school. Bickford’s father had died of a drug overdose, and Pelkey was living with his mother and an autistic younger brother.
Like most cults, the new mosque recruits are lost and looking for somewhere to belong. Missing fathers and a general sense of alienation are a common theme. America no longer provides a sense of identity and even institutions like the U.S. Army don’t offer any real purpose. Falling through the spreading cracks of an imploding culture, they join gangs, movements and Islam.
What too few Americans understood after the September 11 attacks was that this was a culture war. Foreign Muslim terrorists could kill us by the thousands and perhaps even one day the hundreds of thousands, but even at expanding immigration rates it would take generations for them to demographically conquer us. Unlike Europe, America has a more robust birth rate, in part because of migration from south of the border. We would have to conquer ourselves.
The Bush administration responded to 9/11 with an ambitious effort to democratize the Muslim world, unaware and uncaring of the Muslim world’s parallel effort to Islamize America. The withdrawal from Afghanistan, like the failure of the Arab Spring and the rise of ISIS, collapsed the project to democratize the Muslim world. But the Islamization of America is succeeding.
What does Islam offer that we don’t? Patriarchy for fatherless boys, the illusion of belonging to a global Islamic Ummah, the promise of a system of moral order with the creation of the Caliphate, and the escape from a culture that no longer stands for much except comic book movies and politics.
Pop culture and politics have become the religions of a declining nation. In the midst of the culture war, many Americans from both sides have developed hostility and contempt for their own country. Others retreat to imaginary pop culture universes to debate the ins and outs of their devotion to Marvel, Star Wars or Taylor Swift with the intensity once reserved for theology.
Americans are becoming less patriotic and religious and the falloff is most pronounced among the young. It is no coincidence that Islamic recruitment of American teens is booming in areas where traditional organized religion is declining. Is it surprising that Maine, the third least religious state where barely a quarter described themselves as Christians, produced two Islamic terror converts? A decade ago, only 34% of people in the state believed religion was very important. But just because people abandon traditional churches, doesn’t mean that teenagers and twenty-somethings will give up on religion. They will find people who really believe.
And the Jihad really believes.
We are not just losing the military and demographic wars, but the even more important cultural war. America’s political and cultural establishment embraced Islam. And this is the result.
All the episodes of ‘24’ envisioning complicated plots of mass murder were off the mark. What happened instead was that the plotters got on planes, landed and moved here. They set up mosques and schools, they became reporters, executives and members of congress. Like their leftist allies, they fought the war from the inside and we did not so much lose as surrender.
A generation of young men, born after 9/11 and the end of the War on Terror, were urged to learn about Islam, the way they’re encouraged to learn about sex changes. Some castrated themselves and pretended to be women, others joined ISIS instead.
When life looks senseless and meaningless, each day filled with mechanical routines and hollow entertainments, the human soul needs to reach for something that promises more.
America is not becoming irreligious, it is losing its religions and finding new gods. Some of those gods tell their followers to kill the infidels, attack the 9/11 memorial and kill until America is Islamic.
As we take off our shoes at the airport, a new generation is losing its soul.
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