STALKING THE ORIGINS OF JIHAD

We in America, don't yet feel the crushing impact of Jihad in much of our daily lives, but after removing our rose-colored glasses, a quick glance around the globe, and we can easily ascertain that there are parts of the world being eaten alive by the beast called sharia law (and we know who touts the stuff). So here is another Web site with enough insightful and courageous writing to keep even the most weary of anti-sharia soldiers burning the midnight oil. Basking in the light of truth is such a primer by Civilus Defendus.

And below is an analysis of jihad that bears mentioning, given the customary tactics using various arguments of moral equivalency Western apologists often make for Islam. In his article The Sociology of Jihad, How Rational People Commit Atrocities former FBI agent John Andrews seems to have nailed many of the exceptions that apologists use to defend Islam as the "Religion of Peace" instead of the pernicious totalitarian war ideology that was crafted by its warlord prophet and his immediate successors some 1400 years ago.

THE SALAFISTS BELIEVE that only Jihad can reestablish a true Muslim state that will abolish all injustice from the earth and bring people out of the servitude to others and into the servitude of God. It is the duty of Islam to destroy all political systems which prevent people from freely choosing it and experiencing universal freedom (56). The sword (Jihad) must clear the way for the preaching and destroy those elements which limit mankind to living in a world of evil and chaos (62). This sword would be carried by a restored Caliphate based on the traditions of the Prophet. The Caliphate would be a leader the masses could trust, understand and follow. He would provide a simple message well suited to Muslims, not well schooled in traditional Muslim teachings. This message is liberating the Umma from its external enemies, the infidels and Jews (al-Zawahiri, 2001: part 11).

It is difficult to generalize about the characteristics of the Salafist. Most of these individuals, approximately 80 percent, went to secular schools as children. Over 60 percent had some form of college, many attending in the West, and most were trained in the sciences, not philosophy or religion. However, a majority considered themselves religious as children; 73 percent were married and most had children. The majority were from overprotected families with doting parents and stable households. They did not suffer from any major mental disorders. If they had antisocial personalities, they would have been weeded out because of their inability to work well in an organization and their lack of dedication, perseverance and ability to sacrifice for the cause. The 9/11 hijackers are perfect examples. They were not hostile, violent or macho throughout their yearlong stay in the U.S. However, when the moment came they killed enthusiastically. They were able to do so because of their social networking and group morality, which was developed over years. These individuals were not predisposed to do harm individually, but did not hesitate to perform monstrous acts collectively (Sageman 2004: 74-82).

This original group joined the Jihad in their mid-twenties in a country where they had not grown up. Although they were, for the most part, religious as children, they became considerably more devout immediately before joining the Jihad (92). The subsequent group of Salafists were second- or third-generation Muslims living in the West. Many of these individuals felt excluded from the society they grew up in, had no discipline in their lives, and pursued petty crimes, drank and took part in drug use. They grew up with little or no religious training (100-101). We will go into greater detail later on this second group, but for now it is important to note a similarity between both groups prior to joining the Jihad. They felt alienated in their current society. This was true for the first group who had immigrated to another country and the second group who felt alienated in the country of their birth. They both sought a cause that would give them emotional relief, social community and spiritual comfort (97). They eventually drifted towards like-minded local individuals.

The original group sought out the mosque in the foreign country where people from their homeland were. These prospective converts may initially have had strong reservations about the group's doctrines, but began developing strong ties of friendship with members of the group. There they began to form networks of friendships that solidified over a period of time. Sub groups were formed within the mosque where the intensity of their beliefs spiraled upward in an apparent game of one-upmanship. They found rules and structure that went beyond religion and became psychological and personal (108-109). They became embedded in a socially disembedded network, which, because of its lack of anchor to any society, is free to follow abstract and apocalyptic notions of a global war between good and evil (151). Instead of a top-down process of recruitment, it became a bottom-up process of young people volunteering to join the organization. They joined as a group, not as individuals. The East African embassy bombings and the Lackawanna Six involved individuals were close friends prior to joining the Jihad. Most of these relationships go back to childhood or are familial in nature, including in-laws and spouses. The crucial element is that social bonds predated formal recruitment into the Jihad. (110-113)

This process is rarely a fully conscious one. These sub-groups do not start out as terrorist groups. They evolve in that direction as their mutual relationships deepen, in a spiral of greater loyalty, mutual devotion, self-sacrifice and intimacy. They begin to believe that their actions are taken on behalf of God. Although outsiders focus on their willingness to kill, the insiders focus on their willingness to die. Their awareness of their own readiness to transcend their own self- interest fosters a special view of themselves and others like them that increases the value of friendship within the group and diminishes outside relationships. These feelings may compete with, and even be stronger than, those of love.

Ziad Jarrah's fiancé testified about her progressive loss of her fiance's love to the Hamburg terrorist cell which planned and carried out the 9/11 attacks. The loss of love to this type of friendship demonstrates its powerful bond. Positive emotions motivate people to carry out horrific acts more easily than negative emotions. Killing in defense of family, friends or country is acceptable and encouraged. Perhaps the 9/11 perpetrators carried out their horrendous actions out of in-group love rather than out-of-group hate (155-157). As was previously stated, the Jihad strives in the cause of God to abolish all injustice from the earth in order to bring people to the worship of God alone and to bring them out of servitude to others-to abolish those oppressive political systems, which prevented people from freely choosing Islam.

Islam is one of the most communal of all religions, with many orchestrated, shared rituals. Salafi Islam is very strict in its code of conduct and prescribes dress, diet and conduct. The elegance and simplicity of its interpretations attract many who seek a single solution devoid of ambiguity. Salafi Islam uses tactics developed by other totalitarian ideologies, such as fascism and communism. It promotes a visual apartheid to distinguish its adherents from the rest of society. The specific uniform consists of beards, shirts falling down to the knees, and baggy pants with a cloth cap. They also carry worry beads. Women cover their hair, avoid bright colors, and, in some instances, wear the burqa, which is head-to-toe covering. They have simple answers to complicated problems, and they divide the world into good Islam and bad non-Islam (116).

There is another subtle factor that makes Islam attractive. Traditional masculine roles are well preserved in Islam. Western men find it difficult to express their "manhood" in increasingly neutered societies. Islam possesses what are seen as masculine virtues from the seventh century when men walked the earth, sword in hand, accepting no insult, and conquering infidel neighbors. In comparison to Christianity, which states "turn the other cheek and pray for those who persecute you," Islam comports more closely with man's primordial lusts for war, booty and women (Ibrahim, 2006).

People will often seek a new religious or social affiliation after some significant change disrupts their old social networks, e.g., a new country, imprisonment, and alienation from friends and family. There is a period of social isolation in which the existing social and emotional ties are called into question and loosened until finally there is a total negation of everything that existed before (Sageman 2004:116). The religious revivalist organization possesses superior attractiveness over a secular political group. The Salafist emphasizes brotherhood, mutual sharing and spiritual support, which becomes the functional equivalent of an extended family.

New adherents progressively accept the new faith because it makes sense in their new interpretation of the world and their role in it. This learning process involves intense social interaction and introspection. The adherents distance themselves from their original network of friends and family or are rejected by them because of their new, highly visible behavior. The mastering of their friends' beliefs comes after a long period of intense day-to-day interaction with them. In many cases they begin living an isolated lifestyle, which intensifies the social bonds of the members. This leads to a spiral of further isolation from the outside world, the development of a collective identity, and total commitment to the group. Muslims may engage in the Jihad because they share certain norms, values and worldviews which are shaped under the guidance of a Salafi imam preaching the benefits of the global Jihad. Social interactions at these mosques build and reinforce ideological commitments to the Jihad, which these new friends further encourage (117-121).

This social jihadism has worked with second- or third-generation Muslims and new immigrants as well. This development is a paradox to many sociologists, who figured that radical Islam was confined to newcomers who brought it with them. With time, the theory went, immigrants and their children would moderate their views. Instead, it is Europe's second- and third-generation Muslims who are the most radical. Many of these individuals believe their European society is against them. They are growing up in a world of high unemployment and lack of integration in their homeland. Some begin drinking, doing drugs, becoming members of youth gangs and engaging in crimes with no moral compass or goal in life. They then become introduced to an individual who talks to them about the world, their place in it, and the religion of their ancestors. They are provided with audio and videotapes of preachers who advocate a stripped-down form of Islam that emphasizes the culture's past glories and a handful of simple religious regulations.

Soon they are meeting with like-minded contemporaries, getting rid of jeans, t-shirts, drugs and alcohol and wearing the white gowns, skullcaps and beards. They become indoctrinated into political Islam, which preaches a Utopian view of society where all citizens are part of a just and fair Umma. There is no separation of church and politics. Life centers on the mosque not just for religious instruction, but for everything. Society should be founded on Islam, and all those who are different are held in contempt. Inside the mosque talk isn't of integration, but rather how to protect oneself from harmful European society. Those members of the mosque who do not agree with this political Islam are shunned or forced out. The group dynamics change alienated young men into terrorists.

Basically, these individuals, with the help of their friends, recruit themselves. They do not necessarily attend terrorist camps or have experience on the battlefields (Johnson and Carreyrou: 2005). Their source of knowledge and indoctrination comes from the Internet. The Internet both appeals to and fosters disembeddedness. On the one hand, it appeals to isolated individuals by easing their loneliness through connections to people sharing some commonality. On the other hand, it leads them to spend more time with this virtual community at the expense of interaction with the immediate social environment. The chat rooms are egalitarian and appeal to those with limited theological background. It is a perfect compliment to the elegant simplicity and clarity of Salafism. The virtual community is not tied to any nation but to the abstract concept of the mythical umma of Salafism. This community is just, egalitarian, full of opportunity, unified in Islam, purged of national peculiarities, and devoid of corruption. It is the ideal world that Jihad strives for (Sageman, 2004: 161-163).

"He is a great guy, one of the nicest people I've ever met. He is a loving husband and he has a wife and parents in town. They are a great family. He is a very kind person. You would meet him on the street and he would want to hug you. He was a normal guy always laughing. We went partridge hunting together. He was into partying. We hit some pretty wild clubs in Hollywood." These are all quotes from people who knew individuals convicted of killing hundreds of people in suicide attacks or conspiring to provide money, recruits and equipment to the international Jihad.

Were they really decent fellows? They would never commit a murder or crime of any kind for personal gain or self-interest. Their ideology convinced them that the murders were committed for a good purpose. They were committed for the sake of a societal vision of building a good and just world. They are not unlike the SS during the Third Reich. Heinrich Himmler told a group of SS leaders:
"Most of you know what it means to see a hundred corpses lying together, five hundred or a thousand. To have gone through this and yet-apart from a few exceptions which are examples of human weakness-to have remained decent fellows, this is what has made us hard. This is a glorious page in our history that has never been written and shall never be written ... "

These people are not raving maniacs. We must go beyond calling them terrorists and examine their ideology. They do not perform these acts in a vacuum. They are building a society and will use any means to achieve it. They do so not because they are sociopaths who hate people, but because they are true believers who want to save people. And so we are continually surprised when they turn out to be nice guys after all. Decent fellows. Like the SS (Spenser, 2007).

REFERENCES
Al-Zawahiri, Ayman. (2001) "Knights Under the Prophet's Banner." Serialized in eleven parts in Al-Sharqal-Awsat (London) December 2.

Ibrahim, Raymond. (2006) "Islam's Appeal or Boys Will Be Boys." www. victorhanson.com. September 19.
Johnson, Ian and Carreyrou, John. (2005) "In France, Political Islam Preaches Intolerance, Challenge to Secularism." Wall Street Journal, July 11.

Qutb, Sayyid. "Milestones." N.D.
Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Mother Mosque Foundation.
Sageman, Mark. (2004) "Understanding Terror Networks." University of Pennsylvania Press, Philedelphia.

Spenser, Robert. (2007) "Why's a Nice Guy Like You Doing a Terrorist Act Like This?". www.FrontPageMagazine.com. April 18. 8

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mr. Andrews served as a Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for twenty-three years. He conducted international terrorist investigations for nine years, serving as a national case agent and coordinating with the United States Foreign Intelligence Court in order to initiate extraordinary investigative techniques in complicated terrorist investigations. He operated numerous Middle-Eastern assets. Mr. Andrews currently serves as an Adjunct Professor at Florida State University and Troy University conducting seminars on Islamic Fundamentalism and International Terrorism and Conducts police training throughout the United States for Benchmark Professional Seminars and Unitech on Homeland Security and Terrorism.

Reprinted from: The Counter Terrorist-July/August 2008

HISTORICAL UNDERPINNING OF KORAN

SEPTEMBER 26 marked the 20th anniversary of Viking Penguin's publication of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. While generally well-received by the critics, its treatment of Islamic themes in a series of narrative subplots was quickly deemed blasphemous and Viking Penguin's refusal to heed demands for its withdrawal led to an international furor, culminating in an Iranian fatwa sentencing Rushdie to death. His crime? Responsibility for a book which was "compiled, printed and published in opposition to Islam, the prophet and the Koran" and "dared to insult the Islamic sanctities."

That Rushdie was forced to spend 10 years in hiding (and still lives under threat of execution) on the grounds that The Satanic Verses, a work of fiction, represented a "total distortion of the historical facts" about Islam is deeply ironic, given that a genuine critico-historical assault on "Islamic sanctities" had been under way for more than a decade with no repercussions.

Spearheaded by scholars at London University's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), it focused largely on the Koran, which these so-called new historians of Islam subjected to modern historical and philological analysis. Their findings flatly contradict the Islamic account of its origins.

According to this account, the Koran represents the uncorrupted word of God, "constant, immaculate, unalterable and inimitable." It was transmitted to man through Muhammad, a prosperous Meccan merchant who received it via the angel Gabriel as a series of verse revelations between 610 and his death in 632. Uneducated and illiterate, Muhammad committed these revelations to memory before reciting them to his followers, who memorized them verbatim in turn. The killing of hundreds of these "memorizers" in the battle of Yamama in 633 alerted his successor as Muslim leader, the first caliph, Abu Bakr, to the danger that the revelations could be lost. He therefore gathered all available sources into a loose compilation called the suhuf which was then used by the third caliph, Uthman, to produce in the mid-650s a standardized text of the Koran. Copies were sent to Islamic communities with orders that all other versions be destroyed. Muslims believe this Uthmanic recension is the Koran as we have it today.

But according to the New Historians, there is no evidence that the Koran was compiled by Muhammad or canonized under Uthman; in fact, there is no proof it existed in any form before the end of the seventh century, and the first signs of a standardized codex date from the early 800s, 150 years after Uthman's death. In his 1977 survey Qur'anic Studies, the late professor of Semitic studies at SOAS, John Wansbrough, applied to the Koran "the instruments and techniques of biblical criticism" developed in the 19th century by German biblical scholars such as Friedrich Schleiermacher and Julius Wellhausen - i.e., treating it as a literary construct and comparing it to contemporary devotional works.

Read it all.

ISLAM ONLY BEFRIENDS ITSELF

IN JUST A FEW DAYS, Professor Hans Kung’s lecture on “Challenges to Islam, Christianity and Judaism” will be broadcast on Sky Arts. Kung is a leading Catholic theologian and the author of Islam: Past, Present and Future. He is President of the Foundation for a Global Ethic. He is also a touted professor of Ecumenical Theology at the University of Tubingen. He knows almost as much about God as St. Francis of Assisi and twice as much about structural steel as Bill Maher and Rosie O’Donnell combined and in his own field is just as controversial about the doctrine of Papal Infallibility and celibacy.

Thus strikes, like a bolt of lightning returning to the scene of its last evidence, the opening paragraph in which Denis Schulz introduces this formidable but enemy-appeasing lecturer. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, we, who dare point out these same rather self-evident distinctions between these two earlier Abrahamic cults that give the lie to the shameful treachery of Islam in a world that refuses to acknowledge them, are exasperated as the supposedly great learned ones betray us. One can only hope that the expected awakening from this nightmare of disinformation comes before it is too late. Read it all...

Hans Kung is 80 years old. He’s been around a while. He says Islam is stuck in The Middle Ages. Could that be? Maybe mired would be a better word. How about frozen in time? If he means the 10th Century he could be crediting Islam with a 400-year advance that didn’t take place, an Islamic Transubstantiation from the Pleistocene Age to Richard the Lion-Hear without expunging the dinosaurs and jinni that ceaselessly prowled the Prophet’s mind searching for victims to feed his monumental ego and never-ending hatred of those who disagreed with him even as Salman Rushdie’s houris were coming to cart him away.

The challenge for Christianity and Judaism is how to survive the 21st Century; for Islam it is how to come to grips with an ongoing insanity. Christianity had the Protestant Reformation and Judaism had its own reform movement albeit on a smaller scale. Islam boasted the Andalusian Caliphate, a never-ending source of pride for all Muslims, a 10th Century beacon of enlightenment that pierced the haze of ignorance and superstition that befogged the rest of Europe.

Literature! Science! Technology! A Thousand and One Nights! Freedoms that had never been thought of! Everything but Disneyland! And this was 700 years before Jefferson and Adams! Seven hundred years before that silly Declaration of Independence! Surely, the millennium had been achieved!

Anyway that is the story the Imams and the Muslim professors and their dhimmi running dogs preach at the Cairo University and at Berkeley and Columbia and Oxford and at a thousand lesser schools of learning while students ill-equipped to determine fact from fiction sit and listen as if in the presence of Plato and Aristotle. But what is the truth? Was it the first casualty in the war of religions? There is much evidence that it was—enough to warrant a revision.

According to a legal opinion offered by Ibn Abdun in 1100 AD—from the greatest civilization that never was—the Andalusian Caliphate appears to be more of a mirage than Shangri-La or Duffy's Tavern. “No Jew or Christian,” said the opinion, “may be allowed to wear the dress of an aristocrat, nor of a jurist, nor of a wealthy individual, on the contrary they must be detested and avoided. It is forbidden to (greet) them with the (expression) ‘Peace be upon you’ In effect, Satan has gained possession of them, and caused them to forget God’s warning…a distinctive sign must be imposed upon them in order that they may be recognized and this will be for them a form of disgrace.”

This is the so-called dignity contemporary Islamic supremists and their western apologists insist was Islam's golden rule of mutual prosperity, the so-called era of peace! But these people were Jews and Christians—People of the Book! Yes, they were Jews and Christians but no one was to take them for friends! Could this have been the catalyst for the Inquisition which followed?

Other legal opinions forbade the selling of scientific books to non-Muslims because the non-Muslims—again Jews and Christians—would translate them into their own languages and take credit for them. The origins of these scientific books are debatable. Some of them predated Islam. In the 400 years since Mohammed had emerged from the desert Muslim invaders had looted and destroyed Christian and Jewish libraries. But day-to-day life in the Andalusian Caliphate was more than legal opinions. Jews were frequently massacred and Christians were regularly deported to Morocco. On that, the record appears to be clear.

The difference between what Nathan Bedford Forrest did at Fort Pillow and what Reinhard Heydrich did in Bohemia-Moravia and what went on in the Caliphate is minimal. Yet college professors throughout Europe and America accept the Wahhabi version and hanker for the days of Ibn Abdun when peace and tolerance were the order of the day.

“In the face of the deadly threat to all humankind,” says Kung, “instead of building new dams of hatred, revenge and enmity, we should tear down the walls of prejudice stone by stone and thus build bridges of dialogue, bridges particularly towards Islam.”

Yes, heaven forbid, anyone should have the temerity to ask Islam to build bridges towards democracy, human rights and religious freedom. What an embarrassment that would be! It might anger them—make them strike out! Neville Chamberlain built bridges toward Nazi Germany and it would have worked had it not been for the warmongers at home and a handful of obstreperous politicians in Poland.

James Buchanan built bridges towards the antebellum South and was much revered by Jefferson Davis and Wade Hampton. And then old Abe Lincoln came along and ruined Old Buck’s good work by opposing the extension of slavery into the Territories. He believed in gradual emancipation—in Colonization—and would not disturb the South’s ‘Peculiar Institution’ in the States where it already existed. But he would not establish it elsewhere.

Jeff Davis insisted upon the right of every Southerner to carry his ‘property’ into the territories held in common by all the states even as Islam insists on its right to extend its version of slavery into the dar al-Harb—a slavery more encompassing than that of Dixieland because it was chosen for them by Allah and where women are told to ‘stifle’ and can be beaten for ‘disobeying’ their husbands and where male chauvinism reigns uncontested.

There were more free blacks in the antebellum south in 1860 than there are free women in Islam in 2007. In 1899, after having viewed Islam up close, Winston Churchill wrote the following:

“The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men…No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.”

Kung stresses what the three Abrahamic religions have in common—charity, respect for life, injunctions against murder. Most Muslims, he insists, do not hold extremist views. But what of the Qur’an—certainly more Muslims have read the Qur’an and believe what it says than Germans read Mein Kampf. What do the Muslim scriptures say?

Qur’an 2:191 “And kill them wherever you find and catch them. Drive the out from where they have driven you out for Al-Fitnah (polytheism, disbelief, oppression) is worse than slaughter.”

Tabari: IX:69 “Killing disbelievers is a small matter to us.”

Qur’an 33:26 “Allah made the Jews leave their homes by terrorizing them so that you killed some and made many captives. And He made you inherit their lands, their homes, and their wealth. He gave you a country you had not traversed before.” (Could that be Israel?)

These are not injunctions against murder. These are extremist views. There has been no rush by moderate Muslims to renounce these verses. They are no more willing to oppose Jihadism than the average German was to oppose Hitler and the Nazis in the 1930s and less willing than many southerners had been to condemn slavery in the 1850s.

The Jihadists are relying on people like Kung and Robert Edgar to run interference for them, to mesmerize the dhimmis with endless proposals for Interfaith Dialogues while work on the new Caliphate continues apace. Kung sees little difference between the beheadings, car bombings and suicide attacks of the Jihadists and the air strikes, tank patrols and the 10,000 dead civilians in Iraq that he attributes to the United States. Little does he care or even understand that the vast majority of civilian casualties in Iraq are the result of the actions of al-Qaeda and the Shiite and Sunni militias.

Saddam Hussein killed more civilians—Kurds and Shiites—in an average year than are dying today in Iraq. More civilians are killed each year by Muslim terrorists than in the entire 350-year history of the institution that succeeded the Andalusian Caliphate in Spain—the ‘dreaded’ Inquisition!

Kung’s lecture will be aired on June 23.

THE COMING BALKAN CALIPHATE

We have been telling you for months about the news that has been seeping out of the Balkans concerning the Clinton's intervention on the wrong side of Kosovo-Serb conflict back in the 1990s, and now here have a definitive book detailing why we have come to this conclusion. Now we offer Julia Gorin of the Jewish World Review with her analysis of the new book by respected journalist and noted Balkans expert Christopher Deliso. The details of this exposé are riveting.

In September 2001, George W. Bush admonished the world, "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." But how will the world know where to stand when America itself is with the terrorists?

Such is the America that operates in the Balkans, and such is the question underlying Christopher Deliso's new book, "The Coming Balkan Caliphate", which tells the most terrifying story never told in the War on Terror. An American journalist based in Macedonia, Deliso has been investigating radical Islamic trends in the region for the better part of a decade. He's the director of the independent Balkan news website and a field analyst on Macedonian politics for the Economics Intelligence Unit, London.

His book examines the repercussions of the free world's alliance with radicals in Kosovo and Bosnia, one of which surfaced just this month with the attempted bombing of the U.S. embassy in Austria. The vivid picture Deliso paints, one that is corroborated by daily reports that have been streaming out of the region since the Clinton administration rallied NATO countries to the side of "moderate" Muslims against Yugoslavia, is more disturbing than anything that even the most vigilant Jihad-watchers can imagine.

On the first page of the first chapter, Deliso dispels the unanimous, carefully crafted and guarded script that the Bosnian Muslims were innocent, hapless victims of genocidal Serbian aggression:

It would not be until the watershed events of September 11, 2001, that the role of Bosnia as an incubator and catalyst for international terrorism would become impossible to ignore. This embarrassing truth had long been suppressed by the many Western diplomats, journalists, and public relations hacks who had built large fortunes and careers on protecting this myth of their own making…Preliminary to any historical debate, therefore it must be acknowledged that high-powered Washington lobbyists and much of the Western media purposefully distorted, omitted, and concealed key facts on the ground.

Indeed, Caliphate affirms what the 9/11 Commission itself found: that "the Bosnian jihad had essentially created a global empire for terror." It served as a finishing school for terrorists bent on killing Americans and Europeans, but who cut their teeth on the Serbs. The indictment for the 2004 Madrid bombing mentions Bosnia 300 times, and a planned rocket attack on major world leaders at the 2005 funeral of Pope John Paul II, which was summarily unreported, was hatched in a backwater Bosnian village—and thwarted by a tip to the Italians and Croatians from Bosnia's Serb Republic.

Further, "a number of key figures associated with the 9/11 plot," writes Deliso, "were veterans of the Bosnian jihad…Bosnia had become one of al Qaeda's most important European assets..." As well, Deliso mentions that the 7/7 bombings in Britain netted the arrest of several Balkan Muslims and British Muslims radicalized by the Balkan jihads. But Caliphate also reminds us of a less known Balkan connection:

Although almost forgotten by now, in the immediate aftermath of the [9/11] attacks, tight-lipped U.S. government sources disclosed an explosive fact: that there was a definite connection between the 9/11 plotters and Albania-based Islamic terrorists. Further, these officials attested that KLA [Kosovo Liberation Army] members had indeed been trained at al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan…

Deliso's main focus is Kosovo, which saw the Clinton administration repeat its deadly Bosnian mistake rather than admit it. Regarding Kosovo and the surrounding areas that, like clockwork after our intervention, curiously fell victim to near carbon-copy conflicts of Kosovo (Macedonia, Montenegro and southern Serbia), Deliso again makes quick work of the principal objection one encounters when pointing to how NATO directly Islamicized the Balkans:

Albanians, whether from Albania, Kosovo, or Macedonia, have scoffed at the idea of a major religious fundamentalist incursion in their midst. So have their Western yes-men. The West heavily backed the Kosovo Liberation Army during the NATO bombing, despite the presence of mujahedin in its ranks, and for Western publics to suspect that this cause has been muddled up with an Islamist one would amount to a public relations disaster for both Clinton-era political veterans and for the Albanians themselves. Indeed, it would call into question the entire rationale for Western intervention in Kosovo.

The Islamist cause that Deliso refers to is the prevalence of Saudi Arabia, UAE and others who have been active in the Balkans since even before Western interventions there but for whom the interventions were a major boon—and downright coup. Wahhabi groups and "charities" entice Albanians in Kosovo and Macedonia with hundreds of dollars per month for every family member who adopts the strictest form of fundamentalist Islam. To that end, the Balkan landscape has been changing, not only with the new, Saudi-style mosques now dotting the formerly Christian lands, always taller than the nearest (and usually vandalized) church, but also with the increasing prevalence of Wahhabi dress and worship.

No apologist for the Serbs, Deliso engages in the standard scolding of the Serbian lobby for its alleged exaggeration of Albanian-connected terror, though he doesn't go on to debunk any specific exaggeration. Rather, his book demonstrates a terror-laden Balkan reality beyond what even the wildest exaggeration could conceive. Among the revelations in the book is that terror-connected, Saudi-based charities were pulling at least some of the strings behind the big Kosovo pogrom of March 2004, in which 35 churches were dynamited, hundreds of Serbian homes burned, 1,000 people injured and 19 killed.

Insider revelations about this episode, however, include that "19" was just the "agreed" number, with the actual death toll at more than 30 (indeed, initial, pre-damage-control reports had the number at 31). Two other unreported facts are that the rioters killed six NATO peacekeepers and slashed the throats of Serbian farmers' pigs. Most embarrassing for UNMIK (UN Mission in Kosovo) authorities, reports Deliso, is that the U.S.—and UN-supported Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku's officers "actively aided the mobs."

As Deliso explains, the UN (in concert with the U.S.) "has allowed former KLA leaders and the mafia to control society…Today, this chaotic situation has moved from the unfortunate to the scandalous, with the CIA, MI6, BND [German intelligence], and others eager to build 'special relationships' with Islamic extremists bent on killing Christians, attacking Western targets, and creating a fundamentalist caliphate…Indeed, longtime UNMIK employees in Kosovo who have watched the process disintegrate over the years express disbelief at how the Western media and politicians can get away with calling the intervention a success."

Deliso details the bizarre arrangement by which we've allied ourselves with "nominally Muslim" Albanian mafiosos to feed us information about the Islamists they do heroin and weapons business with, while Albanians, some at the highest levels of Kosovo's U.S.-supported officialdom, moonlight as terrorists themselves. "

Read it all.

SECOND DRAFT DECLARES WAR

WHY ARE THERE SO many anti-Zionist Jews? Why do so many Westerners hate Israel and America? Why do so many people assume that our government is always wrong, fundamentally bad? Why do the media always seem to ignore, make excuses for or gloss over the actions of terrorists, hateful Imams and extremist Mullahs who spread virulent hatred and the violence it inspires?

Israel’s fight for survival is a microcosm of the conflict between Caliphate Islam and Western democratic Civilization. This is a complex and deadly conflict, made more deadly than necessary by lack of inter-cultural understanding. Among the major contributors to this incomprehension, the mainstream media plays a critical role. The media’s failure to realize how our enemies systematically exploit them in the asymmetrical war on democracy makes them easy dupes in that war. The media are not alone as dupes though, as westerners, we are all hobbled by many cultural blind spots.

These are a few Key Western Blind Spots (what psychologists call cognitive egocentrism)

Believing they (the Islamists) are just like us. (tolerant and open)

Thinking they want the same things we want (peace, liberty and autonomy in a civil society).

Hoping that we can find a “win-win” co-survival arrangement with them (positive-sum).

Supposing that if we extend the hand of friendship they will return the favor.

Feeling that if they are angry at us, we must have done something to make them angry.

In order to apprehend the true nature of the conflict we need to:

See how these blind spots render us incapable of understanding the conflict

Understand how our mainstream media, sharing those same blind spots, are particularly vulnerable to exploitation by the enemy in this asymmetrical warfare.

Develop simple reality testing exercises to reveal these misconceptions.

Improve our own and our media’s ability to detect and challenge the distortions introduced by the Jihadi PR machine.

Reaffirm that our highest values; the democratic social and political rights of tolerance, liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of religion are sacred but are a two-way street and must only be granted to those who honor them in return. Those who use them to undermine the society (e.g. seek to curtail freedom of speech to prevent hurt feelings), degrade the culture (e.g. allow honor-killing, wife-beating, female circumcision, and the burkha) and to mortgage the future (e.g. stop teaching the superiority of western democratic values in schools) must be denied those very rights.

When a group aims to degrade the rights and liberties of others, as does Caliphate Islam, we must find civil and lawful ways of recognizing and neutralizing that threat. If we do not, our blind spots will remain breeding places for political-correctness, cultural relativism and moral equivalence—all of which are corrosive of the ability of our democratic culture to sustain itself in a battle with the pre-modern forces of religious imperialism.

At Second Draft we go beyond the daily identification and fixing of inaccuracies, to identify the fundamental sources of the problem and, targeting them, help to build a more alert, effective cultural response. Our research and communications reveal the blind spots and restore clear cultural vision.

The Jihadis use the mainstream media as a theater of war (where they are, till now, consistently successful), our first step in building that cultural defense, and Second Draft’s highest priority, is to not only challenge our journalists to inform us more accurately but to understand that real accuracy requires knowing where the blind spots are and learning what is in them.

END

Important: Join us in our Declaration of War!

Understanding is the key but having the morale and financial support to act on that understanding is just as important. If you ( or someone you know) are interested in helping us in this crucial battle for the very survival of western values, we will be happy to send you a copy of our full plan. We have been approved as a 501 (c) 3 Tax deductable organization and donations can be made via PayPals (on the left side of this screen) or sent to:

Second Draft
P.O. Box 590591
Newton Centre, MA 02459

Thank You,

YBM