"The radicalisation happens in Sweden." And while "the agency stressed the 200 or so extremists were 'not a threat to the fundamental structures of society, Sweden's democratic system or central government'," the fact that such "radicalization" can and does occur within the country points to an equally urgent matter and a broader web of "extremists" across European borders. Indeed, the failed bombing in Stockholm demonstrated how easily jihadists can slip into whichever country they care to attack in spite of being based elsewhere in Europe.
For that matter, where strength and tactical capabilities for overt jihad are lacking, there are the many means of stealth jihad, and slow demographic conquest enabled by a welfare state insufficiently shielded from outright abuse. Then there are the Muslim-dominated "no-go" zones of Malmo where police and ambulances are afraid to enter.
In other words, the presence of 200 identified "extremists" is not the end of Sweden's troubles. Not by a longshot. "About 200 Islamic extremists in Sweden: intel," from Agence France-Presse, December 15 (thanks to JCB):
STOCKHOLM (AFP) - Swedish intelligence agency Saepo said Wednesday there were around 200 violence-promoting Islamic extremists in Sweden, days after the country's first ever suicide bombing missed wreaking havoc among Christmas shoppers.
Some "80 percent of the 200 can be linked to each other," Malena Rembe, the chief analyst at Saepo's Counter-Terrorism Unit told reporters, adding they were not part of one big network.
"The radicalisation happens in Sweden," but "the concrete threat is mainly directed at people in other countries," Rembe said, explaining that most of the violence-promoting extremists were men between the ages of 15 and 30.
The man suspected to have carried out this weekend's bombing was not among the 200 extremists the agency knows about, she said.
"Most of these networks focus on action and propaganda against foreign troops in Muslim countries and against governments they see as corrupt and not representing what networks consider to be the only true interpretation of Islam," Saepo said.
It explained in its 126-page report, which was commissioned by the government before the weekend's suicide attack, that the extremists focus on areas such as Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The agency stressed the 200 or so extremists were "not a threat to the fundamental structures of society, Sweden's democratic system or central government."...
The irony here is that the suicide bomber himself was never on this list of 200--
Almost there! Another hat-tip is imminent (and thanks again!).
The list of 200 is a sideshow. The real act is being played by a religion called Islam. And Sweden and Europe and America and Canada and... in the aggregate remain clueless about this.
Stunning to witness the ongoing refusal by free societies to properly identify a major enemy of, yes, free societies. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, about Islam which excudes liberty. Quite the contrary. Islam is a menace to freedom---and so is continued ignorance of Islam.
it only took 19 to kill over 2000 in New York...
to exsgtbrown - correction.
it only took 19 to kill nearly 3000 in New York...
200 extremists out of a population of 500,000 is about 1 in 2500. If 10% of these extremists ever engage in terrorism (the number is probably much lower than that realistically), that would mean that 1 in 25,000 Swedish Muslims will engage in terrorism at some point. It's tough to blame an entire religion when the numbers are that small.
Tough to blame an entire religion when numbers might (though probably not) be that small? No it isn't. Marxism requires violent revolution, i.e., the class struggle theory, to overthrow capitalism and the feudalistic order. Such struggle was meant to be bloody and brutal. The fact that the vast majority of Communist Party members during the Cold War in the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, East Germany, Italy, America, etc. were not themselves personally prepared to fulfill this Marxist dictate hardly exculpates Marxism. Ditto for Islam.
You see, theory is important, and the theory of all totalitarian ideologies is inimicial to liberty, in effect a standard that enthusiastic adherents of the totalitarian ideology du jour will abide by to the end, while the lazy/clueless adherents of this, that or the other totalitarian ideology will ignore for sundry reasons. You've missed all this. Big time.
How many other "unknown" radical militants are there in Sweden, that the Swedish intelligence agency is not aware of?
How many innocents victims will it take for them to become concerned enough to deport some (if not all) of these thugs?
It seems that as long as the Swedish government officials don't get blown up ("not a threat to Sweden's central government") it's no big deal.
Joseph McCarthy : It's tough to blame an entire religion when the numbers are that small.
I, like Wellington, have to take issue with the math on that one.
1 in 25,000 are active and vocal, the other 24,999 are enabling the 1 and are just as complicit once they embrace a hateful ideology which islam clearly is.
OK, I'll give you the possibility that a few thousand are 'convenience' moslems and don't want any part of the actual religious aspect. Probably the women.
Of course, that's a garbage number; you can't count what you're not looking for, and you really can't find those who will commit a crime, a la "Minority Report", now, can you?
You miss the big picture, my friend. Why would a government somehow create some report with a teeny narrow scope showing "only" 200 "extremists", and then say that one shouldn't fret because it's not like they're a threat to the government anyway?
For Pete's sake. It's hard to know where to begin.
If I live in a quiet suburb in Minneapolis of 90,000 people, should I look forward to 3 or 4 disastrous, murderous, rampages in the next couple years?
Or, if I live in a community of 90,000 with no enclaves of rabid, extremely devout, professional victim Muslims (neighborhoods that don't exist any more, in other words), can I look forward to any terrorist mass murders there?
It's tough to blame the Nazi ideology when the Nazi Party roster is so very small. It's tough to blame NAMBLA when the number of men who profess pedophilia is so very small.
If you could possibly find the rosy, society-building, productive, progressive (small "p"), liberal (small "l"), Islam of which no blame should be cast, be sure to let us know. We've been waiting for it for years.
I can see not one whit of Islam that is a benefit to humankind. There is not one mildly useful thing in its texts that isn't found in other, already established, faiths. And the fallback position of all Islam is to blame the Jews and infidels, and to excuse (literally) all foibles of one's Muslim brothers. Do good, until it doesn't suit you any more. Then do what is necessary to grow Islam.
The holidays are meaningless and derivative, not to mention vague and vapid, celebrating nothing of the elevation of the soul. The charity is qualified, the scholars are constantly at odds, the women are vanquished as valid souls, the children are raped, the intellectual bounds are fossilized rather than stretched, the neighbors are brutalized and vandalized, and the men are fragile, raging piss-ants.
Nominal Christians will freely admit their level of devoutness or belief. Nominal Muslims will always claim they are as devout as Osama bin Laden, but they would just never do what he has done. Care to venture which Muslim knows his catechism more accurately?
This "small numbers" business is meaningless, and buying into that is shush-shushing your fears while the knife is being thrust up your ribs. It is the ideology, not the numbers. Do we put up with the KKK because they're just a small group? Do we put up with anarchists because there aren't that many? Do we say pit bulls aren't dangerous because not all of them bite children?
Do you not see the logical fallacy of that position?
Swedish intelligence agency Saepo said Wednesday there were around 200 violence-promoting Islamic extremists in Sweden.
What'd they do, go over to the Welfare and do a hand count?
*** 33:21 ***
The radicalisation happens...
... at about 7 or 8 yrs of age. Radicalization of Moslems is a non sequitur.
What these Swedes need to be looking at is the moment of activation.
... you can't count what you're not looking for.
You got that rat on, Wino. I'm sure the art of willful ignorance has been practiced down through the annals of manking, but playing that game with Moslems is like handling sticks of dynamite.
How many innocents victims will it take for them to become concerned enough to deport some (if not all) of these thugs?
4 or 5 yrs ago Osama bin Laden appealed to the Saudi clerics for a fatwa Islamic law ruling, and got one authorizing him to use an nuclear device to destroy a Western city. So that's how many, a few million Infidel souls.
And who knows how Infidel "leaders" would react even then? After the Big Blast happens, it wouldn't surprise me if they do what Dubya did the last time, with our "leaders" going all Ummah defense lawyer and fake history spouter, and move on to deal with the Blast by prostrating themselves at the local mosque, with TV cameras granted entry by the Moslems so as to have broadcast the spectacle of a president doing what the word Islam means: Submit, Surrender.
The fatwa was granted, btw, before Prez Osama bowed to the King under whose nose this transaction took place. But Obama is a Columbia trained historian, so he probably hasn't heard the big news.
*** 33:21 ***
Miss Piggy, I've been waiting for somebody like you to come along. It gets lonely up here on my hog farm. You should drop by and we can have a rap session on Moslems and the Ulema and all that rot. It'd be fun!
And how many Lutherian killers are there? So, maybe there aren't any. Still Islam has nothing to do with it.
tanstaafl:
How many Luthernan killers are there? Probably more per capita than Muslims killers. There aren't any Catholic killers either. I wonder who killed all 3000 of the murdered people in Ciudad Juarez then. Who is killing people in the American inner cities and Rio slums? Are those Muslims too? It's safe to walk in Dubai, Amman, Cairo, Damascus after dark. Can you say the same about Detroit or Mexico City?
Dear Joseph McCarthy : Neither Lutherans nor Catholics are killing people in Ciudad Juarez and Detroit.The people who are doing these evil deeds are simply evil do'ers. Christianity DOES NOT ALLOW violence in the name of God unlike Islam where violence against unbelievers is/maybe encouraged in the name of Allah. There are no passages in the new testament which sanction it. "We wage war Not against flesh and blood but against spirtual forces in high places" Paul said referring to demons who are behind the evil done by people.
From the article:
"Swedish intelligence agency Saepo said Wednesday there were around 200 violence-promoting Islamic extremists in Sweden".
They should have said, " they were aware of *at least* 200 violence-promoting Islamic extremists in Sweden".
which would have allowed for the existence of those they were *not* aware of, and the fact that there are quite probably *more* than 200...because, after all, what if these numbers *increase* as perceived Muslim power and impunity increases?
McCarthy's claim that "it's safe to walk in Dubai, Amman, Cairo, Damascus after dark" is surely to be queried.
What if one is a visibly identifiable *Jew* in Amman or Damascus...or even in Dubai? Or a Filipino Catholic housemaid/ (domestic slave-by-any-other-name) in Dubai? Or a lone Coptic Christian girl, anywhere from about ten years old and upwards, in Cairo?
http://markdurie.blogspot.com/2009/11/abduction-and-islamization-of-christian.html
http://www.csi-int.org/pdfs/csi_coptic_report.pdf
"A pioneering new report released by Christian Solidarity International and The Coptic Foundation for Human Rights details the abduction, rape, forced marriage and forced islamization of Coptic women and girls in Egypt."
I recall a story of a French teenager who was stabbed to death in broad daylight in the street in a tourist district of a north African Muslim country.
I recall the story of another expat lad who was abducted - in broad daylight - and raped in one of the Gulf Arab Muslim states, and received no justice whatever from the authorities.
There are quite a lot of Mohammedan colonies in non-Muslim countries where even in daylight it is not safe or pleasant to be a visibly non-Muslim persons of either gender, or even a Muslim female if not wearing whatever form of the Slave Rag allah's enforcers currently think proper.
Typo.
I do miss one thing about Intensedebate - the Edit function.
Correction to my posting above:
"There are quite a lot of Mohammedan colonies in non-Muslim countries where even in daylight it is not safe or pleasant to be a visibly non-Muslim person of either gender, or even a Muslim female if not wearing whatever form of the Slave Rag allah's enforcers currently think proper."
I'm sorry to say this, but you're a complete fool. No one is killing people in Ciudad Juarez, America's inner cities or Rio in the name of Christianity. And yet thousands upon thousands throughout the world kill, or attempt to kill, on virtually a daily basis completely innocent human beings in the name of Islam. Your mind is so weak it should be a subject of study.
You are either a superdhimmi or a Muslim in thin disguise. I'm bettin' it's the latter. Regardless of which it is, one thing is not in doubt and that is the weakness of your mind. You're pathetic and you reveal far more about yourself than you realize.
dumbedoresarmy:
A Jew or Filipino or any other race in Dubai would not be an issue. An unveiled Egyptian woman (Coptic or Muslim) would probably not be an issue in Cairo either. If she was attractive, she might get hassled a bit but anything more serious is highly unlikely . An obvious Jew in Damascus on Amman? It's really hard to know. There is a large Palestinian population in Amman. My guess is that it would increase the risk but that chances are still very high that nothing would happen. As a White American, I have had no issues in those places (I have been to all except for Damascus). The crime rates are extremly low and probably on par with rural Iowa and the probability of running into a crazed Jihadist is miniscule. I would feel much much safer at night in any of those places than a typical American city.
My point was that, even though the Middle East produces more terrorists, it doesn't necessary produce more violent people overall. Has anyone ever compared the risk of Middle Eastern terrorism or the total number of casualties with the risk of crime and number of casualties from crime in Christian countries? If more Muslims are killing for religious reasons and more Christians are killing for money, it seems to all equal itself out.
Of course you cannot justify crime with Christian texts but a lot of Christians are committing crime anyways. You cannot justify terrorism with Islamic texts. The violence in the Quran is all in the context of war. There is not one passage that advocates butchering innocent women and children or even non-combatant men. If Muslims were encouraged to murder innocent civilians, Muslims men would not be allowed to marry Christian and Jewish women.
You are a whitewasher of evil. Your moral equivalency reasoning is beyond pathetic. Devout Christians don't kill for money while devout Muslims in large numbers do kill, or support those who kill, in the name of Islam. Your arguments are ridiculous.
As another example, your extremely silly assertion that, because Muslim men are permitted to marry Christian and Jewish women, this constitutes ipso facto evidence of the fact that Muslims don't kill innocent civilians. Could you be more dense? First of all, why not mention that Muslim women are not permitted to marry non-Muslim men? Second, Muslim men who marry non-Muslim women will expect subservience from those women, as much, if not more so, than they expect from Muslim women. Third, and most important, Muslims play all kinds of word games, such as what constitutes an "innocent" person. Anyone who criticizes Islam or Mohammed or who impedes the spread of Islam or who doesn't acknowledge the superiority of Islam over all other religions is no longer "innocent" and can be killed. This runs DIRECTLY contrary to American and Western ideas of free speech, freedom of religion and liberty in general. You know all this or should know it.
Wellington:
"Devout Christians don't kill for money" -- How do you know this? Latin America and the American ghettos are very religious and there is a lot of killing for money. I'm sure some of the people doing this are religious.
You cannot deny the fact that TOTAL VIOLENCE (criminal violence plus religious/nationalistic violence) is probably at least as high in Christian countries, no matter what reason people kill for. There is no "moral equivalence" as you put it. Violence is violence and violence committed by Muslims is not worse than violence committed by everyone else.
You're also talking about a small extreme and portraying it as the norm. A great majority of Muslims believe Islam is peaceful and tolerant and act in that way. I have met many Muslims both on our side of the world and their side of the world and 99.9% of them act that way. Islam, of course, has its problems. I'm not saying it is perfect. Everywhere in the world has its problems. But I can guarantee you that Robert Spencer and this blog's take on Islam and Muslims is very very far from reality.
"It's safe to walk in Dubai, Amman, Cairo ...."
Two men holding hands and walking down a street in any of these cities are as good as dead. Two men holding hands and walking down a street in many parts of Holland are guaranteed a severe beating from the practitioners of the religion of peace. I recommend Joe McCarthy read While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying The West From Within by Bruce Bawer. Mr. Bawer makes a good argument for Islam as a religion of hate and death.
David Square:
Men regularly hold hands and walk down the street in those cities. Arab men often hold hands and walk arm-in-arm with their male friends and it is not considered an indication of homosexuality.
There is very little education and knowledge on this website about what the real Muslim world and average Muslims are really like.
I don't believe that "Joseph McCarthy" is dense, or is even just displaying a particularly extreme form of "politically correct" moral equivalence.
I believe that "Joseph McCarthy" is practicing full-blown Taqiyya here, in the hopes that some of the newer or more naive readers might pay attention to his meretricious posts.
David Square:
A movie that I think you should check out is "Where in the world is Osama Bin Laden?". It definitely is juvenile and attemps to simplify a very complicated problem but its portrayal of average Muslims, how they live and their real beliefs is more accurate than not.