Dominos. "Al-Shabaab rebels seize town close to Kenyan border," from the Daily Nation, November 29 (thanks to Maxwell):
Somalia's al-Shabaab insurgents have captured a key town close to the border with Kenya. The al Qaeda linked rebels are said to have driven out combatants of Hizbu-Islam, another Islamist group opposing the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia (TFG), to take control of Dhobley, the border town.Sheikh Hassan Yakoub Ali, a resident, said that Hizbu-Islam fighters had crossed the border into Kenya, adding that the rebels held talks with Kenyan officials. With this victory, al-Shabaab appears to have consolidated its presence in the strategic Juba region....
So far, Hizbu-Islam has not issued a statement on the issue. Meanwhile, al-Shabaab leader Sheikh Mukhtar Abdurahman Abu Zubayr has rejected any reconciliation offers by the government.
He said that unless foreign forces leave the country and an Islamic state is established, his movement would intensify attacks. Over 5,000 African Union peacekeepers, made up contingents from Uganda and Somalia, are in the country.
This is a much bigger war than we can imagine, and I think we're losing.
OT
I found this document signed by Prophet Muhammad to the Saint Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_of_Privileges
Where does this fit in to Islamic jurisprudence concerning relations with Christians?
Making threats and attacking are what Muslims do when they are strong enough to do so...
Al-Shabab are not the only group seeking a theocratic government in Africa. The Lord's Resistance Army headed by Joseph Kony in Uganda hopes to create a Bible-based Christian theocracy. Its activities have been far more devestating than al-shabaab. The LRA insurgents are not restricted to Uganda but have spread to the DR of Congo, CAR and Sudan. They have since their inception abducted tens of thousands of children (normally killing their parents on the way), displaced millions, attacked villages and burnt properties. Reading jihadwatch one would get the impression the only conflicts in Africa are the Algerian AQIM, Darfur and al-Shabab conflict which has together perhaps resulted in the deaths of half a million people. However, the LRA's theocratic intentions and terrorist means are ignored. And more importantly "Africa's world war" (the conflict pitting government forces, supported by Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe, against rebels backed by Uganda and Rwanda) which has resulted in the deaths of nearly five million people is also ignored. This is partly a continuation of the church backed genocide in 1994 that resulted in the murder of nearly a million people (and in which Muslims saved thousands of Christians: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53018-2002Sep22.html )
Somalia, however, is a classic case of the effects of neo-colonialism. The colonialist powers ensure a non-democratic authoratarian government is in place in order to secure their own interests. Which is why, for example, the Syrian and Tunisian governments were backed by the US when they were involved in the murder of tens of thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members whose "moderate" Islamism represented the majority (see their website: http://www.ikhwanweb.com/ ). Similarly in Egypt and Jordan the dictators are favoured over the Muslim Brotherhood, although with less violent consequences. In Iran too, the US ensured the brutal shah was installed in the early fiftees, and now it is involved in a smear campain probably to justify a future attack. The European colonialists created false borders in the Muslim world, and installed authorotarian pro-Western governments; but when the power struggle emerged, the US and Britain intervened to back the dictators.
In Somalia, the moderate ICU (Islamic Courts United) were gaining strong ground, when a US backed Ethiopian coup to install the TFG created a strong reaction (sounds familiar). Al-Shabaab are an extremist splinter group of the ICU, but they are reactionary. Just like al-Qaeda is reactionary. And AQIM. They do not represent genuine Islamic movements like the Muslim Brotherhood. In fact, they are normally devoid of ulama e.g. AQIM leader Abu Musab Abdel Wadoud has a mathematics degree, but no Islamic qualification; even jihadist "thinkers" like Abdu Salam Faraj and Sayed Qutb were engineers and literary crtics; the Iraq based Zarqawi was an engineer; etc. The jihad ideology does certainly play a part, but without US invasion and intervention (and "genocidal sanctions" in Iraq in the ninetees; backing Israel and Arab dicators; "civilian drone attacks" in Afghanistan; Fallujah and Abu Ghuraib in Iraq; secret Blackwater assassinations in Pakistan etc.) the terroristic jihadists would have no leg to stand on.
" History of Jihad against Nigeria, Mauritania, Chad, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Central Africa "
http://www.historyofjihad.org/nigeria.html
Muzammil
"The jihad ideology does certainly play a part.."
It certainly does.
This is Ibn Warraq's Foreword to Andrew Bostom's book, 'The Legacy of Jihad: Islam's Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims"
http://www.andrewbostom.org/loj//content/view/61/1/
Kenya, Obama, Jihadis? Impossible!
Kenya, Obama, Jihadis? Impossible!
An important concept to understand:
" ISLAMIC IMPERIALISM "
Efraim Karsh has written an important book with this title, and here he explains Islam's imperial ambitions:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/federation/feature/?id=110008181
I wish all those Somalis currently residing in the USA that we rescued from that hellhole would go back and finish their jihad. We would be free of their attitude and their free-loading once and for all. Women and children included.
Al-Shabaab is now fighting, and apparently defeating, Hizb-ul-Islam, another group called "Islamist" (i.e., merely Muslims on stilts), and it is members of the latter group who are seeking refuge in still non-Muslim-dominated Kenya. This may remind some of how Arabs -- the ones who are called "Palestinians" (Western Palestinians who, in this case, were living in Eastern Palestine, or Jordan)-- sought refuge in Israel when being attacked by still other Arabs, the ones called "Jordanians" (Eastern Palestinians). Too bad, in both cases, non-Muslim lands offer, out of short-sighted moral scrupulosity, any refuge at all. When Muslims fight Muslims, all the portcullises in the non-Muslim world should come crashing down.