Another major arrest, which will hopefully lead to more. "Morocco arrests Islamist suspected of bombings," from Reuters:
RABAT (Reuters) - Moroccan police have arrested the head of the military wing of the country's main Jihadist group, whom they suspect of involvement in bombings in Casablanca and Madrid, security sources said on Friday.
Saad Houssaini, 38, the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group's (MICG) military committee chief, was arrested late on Thursday in Casablanca and is being held for investigation, the sources said.
Houssaini is suspected of preparing 13 suicide bombs which killed 45 people in Casablanca, Morocco's commercial capital, in 2003. Moroccan authorities also suspect he played a role in the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people in 2004.
Morocco is on high alert after a string of bomb attacks last month in neighboring Algeria.
Governments in the region fear violence may spill over from Algeria after the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) renamed itself Al Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb with the aim of fusing similar Islamist groups together.
Terrorism experts believe the MICG is one of the small Jihadist factions in the Maghreb to join.
Security sources said Moroccan police were hunting for suspected al Qaeda members who may have infiltrated the country from Algeria.
But they added that Houssaini had been sought since 2002 as part of Morocco's role in the global fight against terrorism following the September 11 attacks on the United States.
I hope MOrocco has better judges than the US. Maybe the Moroccan judges know a terrorist when they see one....
I deeply appreciate the Algerians and Morrocans as they are the finest of people as related from Patton's time there to the modern era.
They have been just, advanced, tolerant and very accomodating to the west. Their leaders for the most part are western educated for a generation and they have not let kook Islam destroy their people.
The only hope for Morocco and Algiera is for those states to imitate Tunisia. Bourguiba, that intelligent man, and his Party, Destour, ran Tunisia and apparently managed to create enough of a ruling elite determined to strip Islam of as much of its social and political power as possible. Ben Ali runs a police-state, necessary to keep the gannouchis down, and a police-state is the best that Muslim countries whose elites want to keep Islam down can at this point endure.
Another, related way to limit the power of Islam is to 1) increase ethnic awareness, and therefore resentment of forced arabisation, amon g those who identify themselves as Berber in Algeria and Morocco. 2) to appeal to those who call themselves "Arabs" to investigate their own histories, and to encourage them to realize that most of them are merely the descendants of Berbers (or in some cases of other peoples who lived in North Africa before relatively small numbers of Arabs arrived), who were forcibly subject to religious, linguistic, and cultural imperialism. The more clearly Islam is perceived by non-Arab Muslims, including those who at present call themselves "Arabs" but can be made to recognize that they are not Arabs but the descendants of arabised non-Arabs, the more likely it is that the hold of Islam can be weakened. And that should be the goal, for it is Islam itself, nothing but Islam and its mind-forged manacles, that has done the greatest damage, and promises to do even more damage, to Muslim peoples. It is Islam that is thwarting political freedom (that locating of political legitimacy in the expressed will not of the people but of Allah), stifling economic development (that inshallah-fatalism), holding back free and skeptical inquiry without which no intellectual development can take place, throttling artistc expression, damaging the moral sense by legitimating the cruel mistreatment of non-Muslims and of women.
"... the more likely it is that the hold of Islam can be weakened. And that should be the goal, for it is Islam itself, nothing but Islam and its mind-forged manacles, that has done the greatest damage, and promises to do even more damage, to Muslim peoples. It is Islam that is thwarting political freedom (that locating of political legitimacy in the expressed will not of the people but of Allah), stifling economic development (that inshallah-fatalism), holding back free and skeptical inquiry without which no intellectual development can take place, throttling artistc expression, damaging the moral sense by legitimating the cruel mistreatment of non-Muslims and of women."
A superb summary of what Islam promises Muslims and the world at large.
Hugh, you suggest some excellent non-violent ways to dislodge Islam's death grip upon its hapless victims. For myself, these methods are too slow and unsure.
I view Islam as a clear and present danger that requires an immediate application of resolute military force against it. We need to start with Iran and work our way through the entire MME (Muslim Middle East). Were this even 50 years ago, the urgency would not be so dire. Instead, modern technology, specifically weapons of mass destruction, have made it imperative that disarmament and containment of the MME proceed apace.
While Islam is not entirely monolithic in nature, great danger lies in how its adherents feel a near universal compulsion to sacrifice everything so that "Islam emerges triumphant". Per Ayatollah Khomeini:
Far too many Muslims of any sect have already demonstrated a willingness to forfeit everything and all in the pursuit of Islam's triumph. The West would be insane to conclude anything but that Islam currently plans against it the most horrendous atrocities imaginable. That we are endowed with the capability of delivering a multiplicity of nuclear Armageddons in return would be cold consolation to the hundreds of thousands killed in a terrorist atomic strike.We must not and cannot let this hideous prospect come to pass. Centuries of hard won progress hang in the balance. Far too much is at stake and, regardless of what our spineless leadership tells us, this one is for all the marbles.