John Brennan, who is Deputy National Security Adviser – Obama’s chief adviser on counter-terrorism[!] –  instructs the  nation that the terrorist enemy should not be described as jihadist because, he says,  jihad” does not mean “holy war” but only “a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community”, and “there is nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children.” He  insists that “those plotting attacks on the United States should not be described in ‘religious terms’.”

Even if, like the Fort Hood jihadist for instance, they shout “Allahu Akbar” as they commit their mass murders?  (Enter Fort Hood massacre in our search slot for several posts on this Islamic atrocity.]

Is Brennan an idiot, or does he think everyone else is?

Here is today’s list of murderous terrorist attacks carried out in the name of Islam. It comes from that excellent, reliable, informative site The Religion of Peace, which publishes such a list every day:

2010.05.28 (Lahore, Pakistan) – Orthodox Sunni terrorists stage a bloody grenade and firearms assault on two mosques belonging to a minority sect. Over eighty worshippers are murdered.

2010.05.28 (Mogadishu, Somalia) – Two children are among three civilians blown to bits by Islamic militia bombers.

2010.05.27 (Mosul, Iraq) – Mujahideen gun down a civilian and mortar a factory, wounding eleven people.

2010.05.27 (Bajur, Pakistan) – A married couple and their son are brutally gunned down in their home by Islamic fundamentalists.

2010.05.26 (Mogadishu, Somalia) – Six people are counted dead following an al-Shabaab militia attack around a city square.

2010.05.26 (Mosul, Iraq) – Three policemen are murdered by Mujahideen.

These are all actions of Muslims pursuing jihad, a duty their religion lays on them.

We wonder what Brennan thinks the Taliban, with whom tens of thousand of American soldiers are engaged in battle, are all about?

Or – expert as he claims to be on counter-terrorism – what he thinks the motive was of the Muslims who carried out the attacks on 9/11?

Much as Brennan and Obama may hate the fact, that was a deeply religious act.

It’s another real African story.

The Wichita Eagle of Kansas reports:

Up to half the food aid intended for the millions of hungry people in Somalia is being diverted to corrupt contractors, radical Islamic militants and local U.N. workers, according to a U.N. Security Council report.

Only half?

The report blames the problem on improper food distribution by the U.N. World Food Program in the African nation, which has been plagued by fighting and humanitarian suffering for nearly two decades, according to a U.N. diplomat. …

Because of the instability in Somalia, transporters must truck bags of food through roadblocks manned by a bewildering array of militias, insurgents and bandits. Kidnappings and executions are common and the insecurity makes it difficult for senior U.N. officials to travel to the country to check on procedures. Investigators could end up relying on the same people they are probing to provide protection.

Strange that we hardly hear a word about this, though surely it’s a much discussed issue in the UN?

There are of course UN sanctions against Somalia:

[A] U.N. diplomat told The Associated Press that “a significant diversion” of food delivered by the U.N. food program is going to cartels that were selling it illegally, according to the report by the panel of experts monitoring U.N. sanctions against Somalia. …

Although WFP contracts are supposed to be subject to open tender and competitive bidding, “in practice the system offers little or no scope for genuine competition,” the diplomat quoted the report as saying.

The transportation contracts, with a budget of $200 million, constitute the single most important source of revenue in Somalia, the diplomat quoted the report as saying. … “On account of their contracts with WFP, these men have become some of the wealthiest in Somalia” …

Some 3.7 million people in Somalia – nearly half of the population – need aid. Earlier this year, the country’s main extremist Islamic [ie terrorist] group, al-Shabab, said it would prohibit WFP from distributing food in areas under its control because it says the food undercuts farmers selling recently harvested crops. [They have a point there – JB]

Omar Jamal, first secretary for Somalia’s U.N. Mission, told the AP on Wednesday that the problem is “the absence of law and order.”

We wouldn’t argue with that.

“Radicals, al-Shabab have to eat. And ever wonder where their foods come from? Of course, from WFP and UNDP,” said Jamal, also referring to the U.N. Development Program.

Someone really ought to do something about it –

“Empower the Somali government to deal with corrupt contractors, Islamists and war profiteers awash in the country.”

Exactly how?

The terrorists who are doing so well out of all this misplaced philanthropy and endemic corruption have a complaint to make:

Al-Shabab [which] controls 95 percent of WFP’s areas of operation … accused the agency of handing out food unfit for human consumption and of secretly supporting “apostates,” or those who have renounced Islam.

Approximately 30 percent of the food goes to the distributors or “implementing partners,” between 5 and 10 percent goes to the armed group in control of the area, and 10 percent to the ground transporter, the diplomat quoted the report as saying.

The rest – about 50 percent of the food aid – is distributed to the needy population.

If they say so.

A couple of footnotes:

The U.S. reduced its funding to Somalia last year after the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control feared aid could be diverted to al-Shabab, which the U.S. State Department says has links to al-Qaida. The issue remains unresolved.

Finance Minister Abdirahman Omar Osman … said the Somali government would investigate the allegations of diverted food aid.

Sure it will. And what a difference it will make.

THE UN MUST BE DESTROYED!

Al-Qaeda may soon have Somalia as a secure home from which to continue its jihad by terrorism.

Will Obama, who said he would ‘pursue bin Laden to the gates of hell’, consider using force against his power base on the Horn of Africa?

Somehow we doubt it.

This comes from the BBC, and is all the more believable for that, it being an organization that only reluctantly reports anything that might offend Islamic terrorists, or prove that Islam is waging war on the rest of the world:

Somali Islamist rebel group al-Shabab has confirmed for the first time that its fighters are aligned with al-Qaeda’s global militant campaign.

The group said in a statement that the “jihad of Horn of Africa must be combined with the international jihad led by the al-Qaeda network“.

Meanwhile, several people have died in fighting in Mogadishu after government troops shelled militant positions.

Islamist insurgents control much of southern and central Somalia.

The government, which is backed by the UN and African Union, holds sway only in a small part of Mogadishu.

Despite repeated accusations by the US that al-Shabab is linked to al-Qaeda, the group denied the connection in a recent interview with the BBC…

The group’s statement also announced that its militants had joined forces with a smaller insurgent group called Kamboni…based in the southern town of Ras Kamboni … previously allied to Hizbul-Islam – another militant group fighting the government.

Kamboni is led by Hassan Turki, a militant the US accuses of being a “financer of terrorism”.

Al-Shabab said it was trying to unite all Islamist forces to create a Muslim state under its hard-line interpretation of Sharia law.

The group, which controls swathes of Somalia, has carried out public beheadings and stonings…

Meanwhile in Mogadishu reports said at least eight civilians were killed in fighting overnight.

“Our team collected eight bodies of civilians who were killed in the shelling and 55 others who were injured, some of them seriously,” health official Ali Musa told the AFP news agency.

Militants had launched an artillery attack on the presidential compound, and government and African Union forces responded with several mortar shells.

AFP quoted an unnamed police official accusing the rebels of hiding in civilian areas and using “human shields”. [The normal way for Muslims to conduct hostilities – JB]

Somalia has been wracked by violence for much of the past 20 years. It has not had a functioning central government since 1991.

A British Muslim journalist, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, wrote this yesterday in the Evening Standard, in an incoherent article on how middle-class English women are converting in droves to Islam and marrying Muslim husbands, but should avoid ‘romanticizing’ Islam, although Muslim wives – she assures us – are free and happy:

Islam gives women … the right to sexual pleasure within marriage … Most Muslim women I know are blissfully happy and able to be what they want.

She provides us with a reason to post again our view of the fate of most Muslim women:

Genitally-mutilated, secluded, wrapped in a black tent, forced into marriage, illiterate, frequently beaten, liable to lose her children at any time, not permitted to go out to work, and not allowed to have medical treatment because doctors are male and may not even see her, let alone examine her. If ever a life was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short – and full of pain and sorrow – it is the life of this woman.

She can be divorced by her husband at his whim, and if she has no family to return to, can be abandoned to starvation.

Because of her clitorectomy and enfibulation, it is agony to menstruate and copulate, and childbirth for her is even more excruciating than it is for most women.

Her children can be taken from her at any time. Her boys, even when they are little, can be sold into slavery, made to fight and kill, or to walk over minefields. Her daughters too can be taken as slaves, for a life of perpetual labour and sexual exploitation; or forced into marriage well before puberty, to endure the same sort of existence that she endures.

If she is raped she will be killed by her own male relatives in an ‘honor killing’; or, if condemned to be executed by the state, she will be buried in earth up to her shoulders and stoned to death.

If Muslim women in Britain have better lives than their sisters in Africa and Asia it’s because of British law and culture. This should persuade them to do all they can to keep sharia law out of Britain. But were they heard to protest when it was admitted as a parallel system of family law? We didn’t hear them. Now sharia can be enforced on them, yet they’re still blissfully happy?

 From Awdal News Network, Somalia:

The first reports were that Aisha Ibrahim Kuhulow was 23 year old, but her father now confirms for Amnesty International that she was only 13.

The girl’s young age, combined with the fact that she herself contacted the Shabab-militia who controls the town, in order to report the rape, failed to protect her from being sentenced to death by the Islamists for breach of Islamic law in having sex outside of marriage.

This child suffered a terrible death as demanded by the armed opposition forces that control Kismayo, says David Copeman who is responsible for Amnesty’s Somalia-department, to the news office, AP.

Hole in the ground

Thousands of people witnessed the grotesque execution of Aisha at a football stadium in the port town of Kismayo on Monday.

The 13-year old was led in and forced into a hole in the ground. The hole was then filled so that only her head was showing. About 50 men then started to throw stones at her, according to Amensty’s information.

After a while, nurses were called to check whether Aisha was still alive. The thin body was then brought out of the hold and examined. When it was established that she was still alive, she was again placed in the hole so that the stone-throwers could continue.

Shot

When some of the spectators tried to storm the stadium to save Aisha, the militia opened fire on the crowd, and a young boy was killed.

A spokesman for the Shabab-militia expressed regret for the boy’s death and assured that the soldiers who had opened fire would be punished.

However, it would seem that the men whom13-year old Aisha tried to report for rape have little to fear. None of them have been arrested.

 

 

The United Nations said Tuesday that a Somali stoned to death by Islamist militants after she had been accused of adultery was a 13-year-old girl who had been raped while visiting her grandmother.

In the first such public killing by the militants in about two years, she was placed in a hole and stoned to death on Oct. 28 in a rebel-held port city, Kismayu, in front of a crowd, after local leaders said she was guilty under Shariah, the legal code of Islam based on the Koran.

“Reports indicate that she had been raped by three men while traveling on foot to visit her grandmother in the war-torn capital, Mogadishu,” Unicef, the United Nations children’s agency, said in a statement.

“Following the assault, she sought protection from the authorities, who then accused her of adultery and sentenced her to death,” Unicef added. “A child was victimized twice — first by the perpetrators of the rape and then by those responsible for administering justice.”

The human rights group Amnesty International has identified the girl as Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow and said she was killed by 50 men who stoned her in a stadium in Kismayu in front of about 1,000 spectators.

When the family tried to report the rape to the Shabab militia that controls Kismayu, the girl was accused of adultery and was detained. None of the men she accused of rape have been arrested.

A Somali news agency adds more disturbing details:

Thousands of people witnessed the grotesque execution of Aisha at a football stadium in the port town of Kismayo on Monday.

The 13-year old was led in and forced into a hole in the ground. The hole was then filled so that only her head was showing. About 50 men then started to throw stones at her, according to Amnesty’s information.

After a while, nurses were called to check whether Aisha was still alive. The thin body was then brought out of the hold and examined. When it was established that she was still alive, she was again placed in the hole so that the stone-throwers could continue.

When some of the spectators tried to storm the stadium to save Aisha, the militia opened fire on the crowd, and a young boy was killed.

A spokesman for the Shabab-militia expressed regret for the boy’s death and assured that the soldiers who had opened fire would be punished.

However, it would seem that the men whom13-year old Aisha tried to report for rape have little to fear. None of them have been arrested.