Tagged: al-qaeda

October 8th, 2018 Related News

Report: White House counterterrorism strategy dismantles terrorist networks, stops recruitment

(LAS VEGAS NOW) — The threat of terrorism and how to fight it is the topic of a 25-page report released by the White House this month.

The report states how counterterrorism isn’t just about killing or capturing terrorists; it’s also about dismantling terrorist networks and stopping recruitment for their groups, which is tough, considering they have a major tool in the internet that allows them to connect with people.

“We will continue to work with friends and allies to deny radical Islamic terrorists any funding, territory or support, or any means of infiltrating our borders,” President Donald Trump said.

According to the National Strategy for Counterterrorism, today’s terrorist landscape made up of radical Islamic terrorist organizations like ISIS and Al Qaida, along with domestic terrorism, is more fluid and complex than ever. The more technology advances, the more cyber threats increase.

“In cyber warfare or cyber terrorism, it can affect the entire United States,” said Shannon Wilkinson, Axiom Cyber Solutions. “It’s kind of like the new arms race if you think about it. Cybersecurity or cyber is like the new tenant of warfare.”

Axiom Cyber Solutions is a Las Vegas-based company that works with businesses and public agencies to help protect them from cyber threats, and at times to respond to them once they’ve already been hit.

“Cyber is really like the new frontier,” Wilkinson said. “They’re all nation-state actors from China, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Russia, of course, and Ukraine, all trying to break into not only businesses.”

Terrorists are also using the internet to recruit. Wilkinson does public outreach at locations like schools. Her advice on cyber safety continues to evolve, just like the threats do.

“Just being kind of aware if your children are online; what are they doing? Who are they talking to? If they get sucked into one of these schemes where somebody is trying to recruit them overseas,” Wilkinson said.

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October 4th, 2018 Breaking News, Related News

ISIS’s Second Resurgence

(Institute for the Study of War) — The Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) is reconstituting a capable insurgent force in Iraq and Syria despite efforts to prevent its recovery by the U.S. Anti-ISIS Coalition. The U.S. Department of Defense stated in August 2018 that ISIS retains nearly 30,000 fighters across Iraq and Syria and is “more capable” than Al-Qaeda in Iraq – ISIS’s predecessor – at its peak in 2006 – 2007. ISIS is waging an effective campaign to reestablish durable support zones while raising funds and rebuilding command-and-control over its remnant forces. On its current trajectory, ISIS could regain sufficient strength to mount a renewed insurgency that once again threatens to overmatch local security forces in both Iraq and Syria. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) is issuing a map update depicting ISIS’s current operating areas based on an analysis of its activity from January 1, 2018 to October 1, 2018.

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October 25th, 2017 Related News

Islamism is ‘an evangelical movement that seeks to destroy countries that are free’

(PJ MEDIA) — By Tyler O’Neil

Developed countries throughout the Western world are slowly realizing that radical Islamic terrorism is not limited to the Middle East. Even so, few realize just how aggressive the proponents of Islamist ideology really are. M. Zudhi Jasser, a Muslim who champions American freedom and separation of Sharia (Islamic law) and state, explained just how pernicious this ideology can be.

Islamism is “a forward aggressive offensive ideology, an evangelical movement that seeks to destroy countries that are free,” Jasser, founder and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD), told PJ Media. He used the word “evangelical” deliberately, not to connect Islamism with evangelical Protestantism, but to emphasize “evangelizing here as a verb.”

This evangelization is not limited to militant groups like the Islamic State (ISIS) or even the Muslim Brotherhood. Rather, it goes all the way to the top of the Middle Eastern power structure, and has spread into the West via their proxies. The most common Islamist ideology behind terror is Wahhabism, a “puritanical” reform movement which inspires radical acts.

“I met with the Saudi governments, they defend Wahhabi ideas, saying that the Al Qaedas of the world misinterpret Wahhabism,” Jasser, whose parents came to the U.S. from Syria and who has personally traveled the Middle East advocating for religious freedom, recalled. While Saudi government leaders attempt to distance themselves from terror, they are preaching the same message.

“The Saudis are distributing ideas that are commensurate with ISIS,” the AIFD president explained. The Saudi leaders “discuss the defeat of the Jews and the Christians, that the Christians are no longer monotheists, but polytheists. The House of Saud defends the theological legitimacy of Wahhabi ideology.”

Jasser pointed out that the Saudi government will often arrest individuals who dare to criticize the government and charge them with apostasy against Islam. They can be even more ruthless than ISIS, and Jasser claimed that Saudi Arabia carried out more beheadings in the last twelve months than ISIS.

“The bottom line is the ideology is the same,” the AIFD president stated, bluntly. “Let’s say it was cocaine, the government distributes cocaine on the streets so that people get addicted and then they legitimize a police increase, and then martial law. That’s not a conspiracy theory, that’s the reality.”

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September 8th, 2017 Breaking News

Jihadis will continue terror attacks despite Isis defeat

(FINANCIAL TIMES) — By David Gardner

It is hardly news to the people of Barcelona and London, and before them the citizens of Paris and Brussels, Istanbul and Ankara, St Petersburg and Stockholm, or Nice and Berlin, that jihadis inspired and incited by Isis can terrorize their cities, even as an array of forces recaptures Isis strongholds in Mosul, Raqqa and, now, Deir al-Zor. The Islamic State caliphate, in all its monstrous vainglory, will perish. But jihadism, in all its blood-addled and doctrinal simplicity, would seem to have a fiery future.

Attacks like last month’s on Barcelona’s Ramblas, or at Westminster and London Bridge, are not, of course, new — nor purely a tactical riposte to territorial defeat in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. Isis may be the first modern, Sunni jihadist movement to have set up a proto-state. But it always urged its followers to use the full gamut of irregular warfare, from classic terrorism and hit-and-run guerrilla insurgency to vans and knives. The world will now see more of this as the jihadis melt back into local Sunni Arab towns and tribes, and build their global networks and regional franchises.

Getting a good sense of their numbers is hard. But it is worth remembering that the precursor to Isis, the Iraqi chapter of al-Qaeda created by the sanguinary Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was all but destroyed in 2007-09 by the US military “surge” and revolt of the Sunni tribes of central and western Iraq. Resurrected by Syria’s descent into sectarian carnage, and given new backbone by allying with the Sunni supremacist, residual power structure of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party and army, Isis stormed back into Iraq to set up its caliphate five years later. Can it repeat this phoenix trick?

The war in Syria, now in its seventh year, has made Isis — at its core, Iraqi — a much bigger phenomenon than its al-Qaeda predecessor. Yet the question goes beyond Isis. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the latest iteration of the Jabhat al-Nusra movement spawned by al-Qaeda, now fields one of the biggest armies in Syria.

Although much of Tahrir al-Sham’s estimated 30,000-strong force is bottled up in Idlib province in the north, it has successfully annexed most rival Salafist fighting groups, controls a long strip of Syria’s north-west border with Turkey, has a plentiful supply of suicide-bombers and demonstrable offensive capacity. Unlike Isis, as the French Syria scholar Fabrice Balanche remarks, this group “practices discretion in order to avoid antagonizing locals” and, crucially, “relies more on the potency of its network than on the accumulation of territory”.

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May 31st, 2017 Breaking News

Massive Kabul truck bomb kills 80, wounds hundreds

(AFT) — At least 80 people were killed and hundreds wounded Wednesday when a massive truck bomb ripped through Kabul’s diplomatic quarter, bringing carnage to the streets of the Afghan capital and blowing out windows several miles away.

Bodies littered the scene and a huge cloud of smoke rose from the highly-fortified area which houses foreign embassies, after the rush-hour attack tore a massive crater in the ground just days into the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan.

No group has so far claimed the powerful blast, which a Western diplomatic source said was caused by 1,500 kilograms of explosives packed inside a water tanker.

Rescue workers were digging bodies from the rubble hours after the explosion as anguished residents struggled to get through security cordons to search for missing relatives. Dozens of damaged cars choked the roads as wounded survivors and panicked schoolgirls sought safety.

It was not immediately clear what the target was. But the attack suggests a major security failure and underscores spiraling insecurity in Afghanistan, where the NATO-backed military, beset by soaring casualties and desertions, is struggling to beat back insurgents.

Over a third of the country is outside government control.

“Unfortunately the toll has reached 80 martyred (killed) and over 300 wounded, including many women and children,” said health ministry spokesman Waheed Majroh, adding the figures would continue to climb as more bodies are pulled from the debris.

President Ashraf Ghani slammed the attack as a “war crime”.

The Taliban — currently in the midst of their annual “spring offensive” — tweeted that they were not involved and “strongly condemn” the blast. The insurgent group rarely claims responsibility for attacks that kill large numbers of civilians.

The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for several recent bombings in the Afghan capital, including a powerful blast targeting a NATO convoy that killed eight people earlier this month.

The sound of the bomb, which went off near Kabul’s busy Zanbaq Square, reverberated across the Afghan capital, with residents comparing it to an earthquake. Most victims appear to be civilians.

“The vigilance and courage of Afghan security forces prevented the VBIED (vehicle-borne improvised explosive device) from gaining entry to the Green Zone, but the explosion caused civilian casualties,” NATO said in a statement.

– Embassies damaged –

The BBC said its Afghan driver Mohammed Nazir was killed and four of their journalists wounded. Local TV channel Tolo TV also tweeted that a staff member Aziz Navin was killed.

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September 3rd, 2016 Related News

2021: The United Shariah States of America

(WND) — A note from the year 2021:

The Jordanian journalist Fouad Hussein warned us. Spelled it all out, albeit it in Arabic, for us all to read. Told us all that this was the plan. Back in 2005 he penned the warning shot in his book “Al-Zarqawi: The Second Generation of Al Qaeda.”

What exactly did he warn about?

That damn 20-year plan.

The evil, ambitious, prescient plan that led us to where we are now, here in 2021, where ISIS has Islamized America.

Where Christians, Jews, homosexuals, atheists, and moderate Muslims have been choked out of their right to conscience.

Where the sight of a beautiful woman’s hair is a faded, distant memory now covered by a hijab in perpetuity.

Where the surviving remnant of yesterday’s Western elite now cower in submissive fear to their newfound Islamic power brokers.

Where rock ‘n’ roll, as AC/DC once deeply protested was patently untrue, has now been outlawed and legally deemed noise pollution.

The 20-year plan has unfolded with terrifying precision in accordance with its blueprint.

Phase 1 (2000-2003): Poke, irritate and provoke the West. USS Cole. 9/11. DONE.

Phase 2 (2003-2006): Normalize apocalyptic Islamism throughout the Muslim world. Establish Iraq as a centerpiece of operations for jihad. Create an army there. Establish contingent bases firmly placed in other Arabic states. DONE.

Phase 3 (2007-2010): Expand the fight and target those with secular governments averse to Islamism. Hyper-focus on Syria. But also Jordan, Turkey and, of course, Israel, the little Satan. DONE.

Phase 4 (2010-2013): Dismantle the infidel regimes of the Middle East through popular revolts and revolution. Stoke the flames of insurgencies. The Arab Spring. Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, Libya, Yemen. Continue cyber-attacks on the U.S. Intensify the cyber propaganda campaigns.DONE.

Phase 5 (2013-2016): Formally declare an established caliphate. The one that the Western media mocked any commentator for warning about. Exploit the weak Western will and re-create the first caliphate in nine decades. This is the first step in creating the Islamic New World Order in which a clear divide exists between a united Muslim community of believers (dar al-Islam) and the unbelievers (dar al-harb), or house of war. ISIS, ISIL, IS. Whatever the iteration, it has now been placed firmly on the to-done list. DONE.

Phase 6 (2016-2019): Move toward total confrontation. Use the caliphate as a catalyst for a focused instigation of the West. Through continued attacks, force the West to muster their last long-drawn effort to attempt to confront the inevitable growth of the caliphate. Orlando. Paris. Brussels. Nice. DONE.

Phase 7 (2020): Push through into definitive victory. The caliphate crosses the line into victory over the West. The West’s effort to use supreme technology to defeat the caliphate is impotent as the nimbleness of jihad proved to be more of an asset than the West’s supreme technological power. The caliphate attracts more followers exponentially, leaving it as the world’s lone remaining superpower with the strength of 1.5 billion Muslims. Borderless and asymmetrical as hell. DONE.

Today is Thursday. The last one in September. The autumn leaves are as beautiful as they ever were this time of year, except for the light, consistent layer of soft ash that floats down on them periodically throughout the day. The ash that comes from the incinerator just down the street. Thursdays are their biggest production day. Wednesdays are drop-off days for that week’s collection activity, so Thursday is when most of the burning happens. Hence, more ash. I escaped the incinerator by pledging my life to Islam. A coward I am. Those who are brave, the collected ones – all the infidels – Christians, homosexuals, atheists and especially the Jews, they get the fire. Some days I wish I chose to be with them.

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April 7th, 2016 Breaking News

2,800 U.S. mosques called ‘ticking time bombs’

(CHRISTIAN ACTION NETWORK) — By Jonah Hicap

The estimated 2,800 mosques in the United States are “ticking time bombs” for Islamic terrorism, according to experts.

All U.S. states have at least one mosque each with California and New York topping the list with more than 500 mosques followed by Texas with more than 300, WND reported.

The report said as the number of mosques increases, Islamic terrorist acts also increase in the U.S.

The problem lies in the mosque, experts said.

According to Dr. Mark Christian, president and founder of the Global Faith Institute, about 80 percent of the 2,800 U.S. mosques are under the supervision of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose goal is to make nations comply with Shariah law.

“You have a new mosque opening every week in America,” said Christian, a former Muslim who converted to Christianity.

Christian, living in Nebraska under the threat of a fatwa, explained that FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies don’t understand the source of Islamic violence.

For years, he said, they study links between Muslims and al-Qaeda or Islamic State when they should be looking into mosques and learning about Quran and hadiths.

Christian said what is being taught in majority of Muslim nations is spiritual salvation.

“The problem is you have law enforcement agents walking into a mosque but they are looking for the wrong thing,” he said. “They are trying to monitor mosques (back when they were allowed to do that before President Obama) to try to find dirt and what they will find [are] people seeking spiritual salvation, something all of us will look at as an honorable thing, but they are missing the ticking bomb.”

He said the key is how a Muslim finds his salvation.

Christian said the common thing among the 9/11 hijackers, the Boston bombers, the Chattanooga shooter, the attackers on the Charlie Hebdo magazine, and the Paris and Brussels’ attackers, is that they are a group of young men whose lifestyles were not pious.

They were not practising the five pillars of Islam which all good Muslims must observe.

He said there are Muslims who have fallen away from the faith and are considered sinners looking for a way out.

Christian said the mosque provides the vital link “from sinner to salvation” for the Muslim and their imam will offer two choices.

He said the facial expressions of the suicide bombers who targeted the Brussels airport provided clues to their motivation.

“The confidence you see of those guys walking calmly to their own death as they push their carts, they are not trying to blow up the airport to make the ISIS leader proud any more than the 9/11 terrorists were flying their planes into a building so they can make Osama bin-Laden proud,” he said. “They are doing it to please their own Allah so they can gain salvation.”

He said the mosque is the central part in the cycle of terrorism as it links the sinner and terrorist.

“He walks in as a sinner who has neglected his spiritual duties under Islam and is told this is what you need to do,” he said. “The imam does not tell him to go blow himself up, he just shows him the life of Muhammad and says this is what you need to emulate.”

http://www.christianaction.org/news/2016/4/7/2800-us-mosques-called-ticking-time-bombs

December 4th, 2015 Related News

FBI expert: ‘Vast majority’ of US mosques and Islamic centers part of ‘jihadi network’

(BREITBART via TEA PARTY) — On Friday’s Breitbart News Daily (6AM-9AM EST) on Sirius XM Patriot channel 125, former FBI counter-terrorism Special Agent John Guandolo argued that the “vast majority” of the 2,200 Islamic organizations, centers, and mosques in the United States are a part of a broader “Jihadi network” intent on imposing Sharia Law in America.

Guandolo told host and Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon that the San Bernardino terrorist, the UC Merced stabber, the Chattanooga shooter, and the Boston Bombers can all be traced back to such Islamic Centers where “they were supported and trained.”

Guandolo said that the San Bernardino terrorists attended the Islamic Center of Riverside, which he said was a “a Muslim Brotherhood Center.” He noted that the Boston Bombers attended the Islamic Society of Boston, which he said was a subsidiary of the Islamic Society of North America that was founded by an al-Qaeda guy who used to advise former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore and is now in prison.

He said there are over 2,200 Islamic Centers and mosques in America and the “vast majority of them are a part of this network — they’re hostile.”

He said “over 75%” of these centers, based on their property records, are a part of the “Muslim Brotherhood network” since they are “owned by the North American Islamic Trust, which is the bank for the Muslim Brotherhood here.”

He said “in 2006, I put together the first training program inside the government on the jihadi network in the United States… and was able to sneak a second one in in early 2007.”

Guandolo trained “quite a number of agents from a variety of agencies,” including the Department of Justice, before the government shut down the programs. He mentioned that the “most prominent Muslim Brotherhood Organizations like the Islamic Society of North America, Muslim Public Affairs Council, and the Hamas organization called the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) — complained to the White House about the training inside the government at the FBI.”

Guandolo said he “came to understand very deeply the massive jihadi network we have in the United States” and discovered that “the leaders of the Islamic organizations… were actually interfacing with government leaders and advising them with how to proceed in the war on terror, as it was called.”

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August 14th, 2015 Breaking News

Al Qaeda leader threatens: ‘The U.S. doesn’t know what’s coming its way.’

(BROOKINGS INSTITUTE via NEWSWEEK) — After an unprecedented 11 months of silence, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the emir of Al Qaeda, this week issued a video message proclaiming his loyalty to the new head of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Mansoor. The almost 10-minute long message dramatically reaffirms the alliance between Al Qaeda and the Taliban, a setback for efforts to bring the Taliban into a political process.

The video was released by Al Qaeda’s media arm As-Sahab, meaning “in the clouds” or an allusion to the jihadi symbolism that Al Qaeda operates in the mountains of the Hindu Kush.

According to the Pakistan newspaper Dawn, As-Sahab recently relocated its real ground game from Pakistan (where it has been operating since 2002) back to Afghanistan in Helmand province. The Afghan Taliban supported the move and provides safe haven for Al Qaeda, which means 14 years after Operation Enduring Freedom began, Al Qaeda is again running operations out of Afghanistan.

Al-Zawahri’s message underscores that Al Qaeda remains close to the Taliban. According to Dawn, a senior As-Sahab official, Qari Abu Bakr, said “the bond between us and our Taliban brothers is a solid ideological bond. The Taliban opted to lose their government and family members just to protect us. There is no question of us moving apart now after going through this war together.” In a warning to the United States, he says, “Our common enemy does not know what is coming its way.”

In his new message, al-Zawahri eulogizes Mullah Mohammad Omar, the founder of the Taliban, as a hero of the global jihad along with Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Mullah Omar is lauded by al-Zawahri for creating the first true Islamic emirate since the fall of the Ottoman Empire a century ago. He makes no mention of reports Mullah Omar died two years ago in a Pakistan hospital in Karachi under the protection of the Pakistani intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

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June 23rd, 2015 Related News

The Koran: The terrorist manifesto

By Pete Parker/CLASH DAILY — There is no doubt that Islam’s so-called holy book (the Koran) is the quintessential Terrorist Manifesto. Its pages are littered with barbaric and odious passages demanding the violent demise of all things non-Muslim.

Even a cursory view of this treacherous tome will leave one with the sense that Islam is a psychotic ideology spawned in the bowels of hell. Its misogynistic and anti-Christian/ Semitic screeds have created untold mayhem and misery for millions.

Terrorist organization such as ISIS, al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, Boko Haram and Islamic Jihad use the Koran as a playbook to determine each and every bloody advance.

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