Recently in Syria Category

Why just two years? Do the Germans really think that by two years down the line, these battle-hardened warriors of Allah will have forgotten all about jihad? If they went to Syria to wage jihad in order to impose Sharia, they want it in Europe as well. They should not be allowed back at all.

"Germany calls for two-year ban on Europeans returning to the EU from Syria over fears suspected Islamists will come back as 'homegrown terrorists,'" by Kerry Mcdermott in the Daily Mail, May 17 (thanks to Block Ness):

Germany has called for Europeans fighting the Assad regime in Syria to be temporarily barred from re-entering the EU - amid fears they could return as 'homegrown terrorists'. The German government has claimed as many as 700 Europeans have joined opposition forces fighting President Bashar al-Assad's soldiers, and warned militant Islamists could pose a threat upon returning to the EU from the battlefields of Syria.

Now the country, which has said it is aware of up to 40 people who have left Germany for Syria since the summer of 2012, wants to see suspected Islamists banned from re-entering the EU from Syria for two years.

Germany's interior minister, Hans-Peter Friedrich, is expected to address the controversial suggestion at a meeting of EU governments next month, according to a report in the Guardian.

Officials at the ministry said that of 6,000 foreign militants believed to be fighting the Assad regime, between 400 and 700 are European.

Fighters could not be prevented from leaving Germany in the first place because it was impossible to prove they were going to Syria, the ministry said, adding that while passports could be confiscated, it was possible to travel to the Syrian border with just an ID card.

It is not clear how the proposed ban would be enforced, as the individuals involved would likely have EU passports as well as jobs and families in the countries concerned.

Up to 60 militants have also left Germany for Egypt, the interior ministry said.

'Most have joined the Islamists. The dangers are growing for us,' a senior official was quoted as saying.

A survey by King's College London found last month that up to 600 individuals from countries including the UK, Spain, Sweden and Germany had taken part in the Syrian conflict since the war erupted in 2011. The largest contingent was from the UK.

"There's really no such thing as just Sharia, it's not one monolithic Continuum - Sharia is understood in thousands of different ways over the 1,500 years in which multiple and competing schools of law have tried to construct some kind of civic penal and family law code that would abide by Islamic values and principles, it's understood in many different ways..." -- Reza Aslan

Not really: Muhammad said: "Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him" (Bukhari 9.84.57). The death penalty for apostasy is part of Islamic law according to all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence.

Some might arguing that fighting for Assad doesn't make these soldiers apostates according to Islamic law, but since Assad is an Alawite, the jihadists have a strong case: Islamic law forbids a Muslim to obey an Infidel ruler who is supposedly impeding Islam in some way. In any case, not in dispute is the death penalty for apostasy itself, however much Islamic spokemen in the West disingenuously deny it.

"Islamist rebels execute 11 Syrian soldiers for 'massacres,'" from Reuters, May 16 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

BEIRUT: Fighters of the Al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front in Syria executed 11 men they accused of taking part in massacres by President Bashar al-Assad's forces, a video published on Thursday showed.

A man whose face was covered in a black balaclava shot each man in the back of the head as they kneeled, blindfolded and lined up in a row in the eastern province of Deir al-Zor.

"The sharia court for the eastern region in Deir al-Zor has sentenced to death these apostate soldiers that committed massacres against our brothers and families in Syria," the executioner said on the video.

Islamist militants with black flags shouted "God is great" as each man was shot. The executioner returned to some victims, firing more bullets into them to make sure they were dead.

The video is the second in two days to show such executions by fighters who say they are from Al-Qaeda-linked groups.

A video posted online on Wednesday from the northern province of Raqqa, which is controlled by Islamist rebels, showed three blindfolded men sitting on the curb of a central roundabout before being shot in the head with a pistol.

A man speaking in the video said the executions were revenge for killings in the coastal town of Banias two weeks ago. Photos and videos of the alleged Banias massacre showed dozens of mutilated bodies, many of them children, lying in the streets.

Note that here again we see Islamic jihadists explain their killings as revenge. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev claimed that his Boston jihad murders were revenge; Islamic jihadists who fired mortars into Israel claimed they were doing it for revenge as well. This is because Islamic supremacists are apparently incapable of ever taking responsibility for anything they do; it's always someone else's fault. But more importantly, it's because in the absence of a caliph, the only jihad that is permissible according to Islamic law is defensive. Only the caliph, according to Sunni Muslim jurisprudence, can lawfully wage offensive jihad against non-Muslim states. So every jihad until the caliphate is restored has to be cast as defensive. This leads the jihadists to retail endless lists of grievances and alleged Infidel atrocities they're supposedly avenging, and foolish non-Muslim analysts to think that if they just redress the grievances and throw money at the jihadis, the jihad will go away. It won't. There will just be new grievances.

"And We ordained for them therein a life for a life, an eye for an eye, a nose for a nose, an ear for an ear, a tooth for a tooth, and for wounds is legal retribution. But whoever gives [up his right as] charity, it is an expiation for him. And whoever does not judge by what Allah has revealed - then it is those who are the wrongdoers." (Qur'an 5:45)

Gruesome video here. "Report: Syrian rebel defends gruesome video as revenge," from AFP, May 14:

A Syrian rebel who was filmed apparently cutting out and eating the organs of a soldier has defended his actions as revenge for regime atrocities, Time magazine reported on Tuesday.

The U.S. news weekly said it had talked by Skype with the fighter, identified as Khalid al-Hamad, who appeared in a video that sparked outrage and condemnation, including from the Syrian opposition.

Hamad claimed he was driven to the gruesome acts by footage on the dead soldier’s cellphone, showing him “humiliating” a naked woman and her two daughters.

The magazine said Hamad described participating in another acts of mutilating regime forces, including militiamen known as shabiha.

“I have another video clip... In the clip I am sawing another shabiha with a saw. The saw we use to cut trees. I sawed him in small pieces and large ones,” Time quoted him as saying.

The magazine said Hamad, a Sunni like much of the opposition fighting against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, expressed hatred of member’s of the leader’s Alawite sect.

He also insisted that the rebel, identified as Hamad, had been “previously ejected” from his unit “because of his history of brutality.”

“Hopefully we will slaughter all of them,” he told the magazine,

“They were the ones who killed our children in Baba Amr and raped our women,” he said, referring to a neighborhood of the central city of Homs.

“We didn’t start it, they started it,” he added.

“Our slogan is an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”...

Yes, the video is graphic

Jihadist forum: "If we are forced to eat Americans, let's make them into a gunpowder-flavored kabsa with some hors d'oeuvres made of apostates...But the slaughtering needs to be according to the shari'a."

"Video Shows A Member Of The Syrian Opposition Cutting Flesh Of A Corpse, And Apparently Eating It," from Brown Moses, May 12 (thanks to AINA):

Frequently during the Syrian conflict there's been videos that claim to show either side committing some sort of war crimes or atrocity. As a general rule I avoid writing about these videos because there's always claims about fakery, a lack of detail beyond what's shown in the video, and so on.

However, a video has been posted today on pro-Assad channels which presents a rare occasion where it's possible gather much more information about the person involved.

The following video shows a man cutting a chuck of flesh, possible an organ, from a corpse, then biting down onto the chunk of flesh at the end of the video (GRAPHIC)

I've had the audio translated (thanks to @Syrian_scenes), rather than relying on the subtitles attached to the video

I swear by God, we will eat your hearts and your livers, you soldiers of Bashar the dog! Takbeer! Heroes of Baba 'Amr, [inaudible] cut out their hearts to eat them!

As I said before, generally I can't do much with these videos, but in this example I instantly recognised the man wearing that distinctive jacket as appearing in other videos produced by the Independent Omar Farouk Brigades, based around Homs

In the first video he gives a short speech, which I've translated, and also allows us to match the voices in both videos to the same person

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate: The Umar al-Faruq Battalion is striking the strongholds of the Shabbiha and the Assadist Army in the village of Abel. Takbeer!

Peter N. Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch has been able to confirm the name of the man in the videos as Abu Sakkar of Baba Amro, Homs, also known as Khaled Al Hamad, a former senior figure in Al Farouq Brigade....

Pamela Geller reminds us:

Will that stop Obama's funding the Syrian rebels, who are Islamic jihadists, or his move toward actively intervening? Probably not.

"UN: Rebels, not Assad, appear to have used chemical weaponsm" by Julian Pecquet at The Hill, May 5:

United Nations human rights investigators said Sunday they have gathered testimony from outside Syria suggesting rebels, not Bashar Assad's regime, may have used chemical weapons.

“Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals and, according to their report of last week which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated,” Carla Del Ponte, a member of the independent commission of inquiry on Syria, told Swiss-Italian television. “This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities.”

The allegations will likely make it harder for the Obama administration to justify taking a more active role in the two-year-old civil war on the side of the opposition. The administration has said in recent days that chemical weapons appeared to have been used in Syria, which would violate the “red line” Obama set for Assad's forces....

This is a demonstration of how effective the much-ballyhooed Saudi deprogramming of jihadists really is. Supposedly the Saudis show the jihadists how they're misunderstanding Islam -- yet Khalid al-Suwid is not the first recidivist to return to misunderstanding the Religion of Peace even after having been shown the Straight Path.

"Saudis Try to Quell Jihadists," by Ellen Knickmeyer in the Wall Street Journal, May 3 (thanks to Jerk Chicken):

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia—After spending two years in Saudi prison for fighting in Iraq, Khalid al-Suwid graduated in 2012, a free man, from the kingdom's well-regarded rehabilitation program for religious extremists, Saudi officials said. Mr. Suwid was a government-certified ex-jihadist.

Mr. Suwid turned up again in a photo released in mid-March, smiling, holding an assault rifle and wearing what appeared to be a bomb vest. It was a so-called martyrdom notice, announcing his death in Syria.

Mr. Suwid "killed a large number of Christians before his acceptance by God," said the notice, which appeared on a Facebook FB -2.27% page—"Foreigners in theSyrian [sic] Revolution"—that anonymously records and lauds foreigners killed fighting Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.

The battle by Syria's Sunni majority against the Shiite-linked Assad regime has drawn more men from Saudi Arabia to Syria than any country except Libya and Tunisia, said analyst Aaron Zelin of the Washington Institute, a think tank.

But for Saudi Arabia's monarchy, Syria's pull to jihad is creating tensions and risks linked to its recent past.

During the 1980s Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and later in Bosnia, Chechnya and other conflicts, Saudi Arabia encouraged jihad to promote the kingdom's legitimacy as a champion of Muslims world-wide. Some analysts said it also was aimed deflecting internal tensions at home.

That began to change by 2003, after Saudi members of al Qaeda returned home from foreign wars to launch a bloody campaign against the Saudi monarchy, which the jihadists saw as beholden to the West.

Within several years, the monarchy's security forces had crushed the insurgency. Now the Syria conflict is exposing rifts and contradictions within the kingdom over its tradition of aiding beleaguered foreign Muslims.

"There are tensions…between some elite decision makers over how best to deal with the Syrian issue," said Michael Stephens, a regional researcher at the British Royal United Services Institute think tank in Qatar. "It is clear some princes favor an activist approach that involves increased support for Islamist groups in Syria, while other princes remain concerned over the…undermining of Saudi's internal security."

Syrian rebels and Arab officials say Saudi Arabia has shipped arms and aid to the Syrian opposition, though the Saudi government hasn't confirmed or denied such reports.

But top Saudi government officials and religious leaders are ordering its citizens to stay home, telling them instead to send money and prayers to Syria's rebels.

"Involvement in the Syrian conflict is against Saudi laws," Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki told reporters in Riyadh in late March. Saudis will be arrested whether they are caught coming or going from fighting in Syria, he said.

But some Saudis say the government's message is mixed. "Sometimes the government says not to go fight, and acts on it," said Abdulrahman al-Talq, a resident of the religiously conservative central Saudi city of Buraidah. Other times, he said, the message is muddled.

Mr. Talq said his son traveled to Syria last year following the young man's arrest for taking part in a demonstration. A local judge had suspended the son's sentence then encouraged him to go to Syria, Mr. Talq said. The father said his son died there in December.

Buraidah has a reputation of sending its sons off for jihad to countries including Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. When local men go to Friday sermons these days, though, they hear conflicting messages from the clerics.

"Some say, 'Help the Sunni, and Syria, and destroy the Shias,' " said Fawzan al-Harbi, a Buraidah native.

In other mosques, Mr. Harbi said, he hears Buraidah's imans counsel Saudis to let Syrians fight among themselves....

Where is the international "human rights" community? "Syria Orthodox Easter marred by bishops in captivity," from AFP, May 3:

AFP - Syria's Greek Orthodox faithful bore a heavy cross on Friday as they marked the crucifixion of Christ, their country ravaged by two years of war and two of their bishops missing after being kidnapped by unknown gunmen.

Good Friday is a day when even the least pious tend to join in its solemn prayers and processions, but churches in Syria's capital, no longer safe from car bombings and mortar attacks, are unlikely to be full this year.

That was already the case on Holy Thursday, when streets leading to churches were blocked off and security forces out in numbers to protect the places of worship that one resident said were only sparsely visited.

"I won't dare go to church tonight," sighs Shaza, a mother who lives in the predominantly Christian and Druze neighbourhood of Jaramana, lamenting that her children will miss the traditional parade by Scouts, which has been cancelled....

As the war between the regime of Bashar al-Assad and rebels fighting to oust the president gains pace, Orthodox in Syria are also praying for the safe return of Boulos Yazigi, metropolitan bishop of the northern city of Aleppo and brother of Yuhanna X Yazigi, their patriarch.

Yazigi and Aleppo's Syriac Orthodox bishop, Yuhanna Ibrahim, were kidnapped by unknown gunmen on April 22 as they were returning home from a trip to Turkey. Their driver, a Syriac Orthodox deacon, and another passenger were forced out of the car and the driver murdered, shot in the head.

Their whereabouts and fate is still unknown in a country where Christian clerics have been murdered, but where kidnapping for ransom is also rife.

In October, Greek Orthodox Father Fady al-Haddad was seized and killed in Damascus province as he was trying to negotiate the release of a Christian doctor who had been kidnapped....

Patriarch Yuhanna has announced that this Easter he will not receive traditional greetings from the faithful.

Antoine, a 47-year-old doctor, said the "atmosphere is sad. For the third year we will be celebrating Easter with sadness, because the country is bleeding."

"We will pray for their return," he said, adding that Good Friday prayers would be dedicated to them.

"We believe in the resurrection (of Christ) and also that of Syria."...

While some may have fled the country and others are contemplating to leave, student Roula Salam, who lives in the central city of Homs, is defiant.

"Christians will remain despite all the hardships endured and everything used to chase us out," she said, pointing out that Christian roots in Syria date back to the beginning of the faith, 2,000 years ago.

The Iranians are boasting that Hizballah will obliterate Israel in the next round of jihad. Here is a bit of disconfirming evidence. "Israeli strike on Syria targeted weapons shipment," by Lolita C. Baldor and Ryan Lucas for the Associated Press, May 4:

WASHINGTON (AP) — An Israeli airstrike against Syria was targeting a shipment of advanced missiles believed to be bound for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, Israeli officials confirmed Saturday.

It was the second Israeli strike this year against Syria and the latest salvo in its long-running effort to disrupt Hezbollah's quest to build an arsenal capable of defending against Israel's air force and spreading destruction inside the Jewish state.

The strike comes as the U.S. considers how to respond to indications that the Syrian regime may have used chemical weapons in its bloody civil war. President Barack Obama has described the use of such weapons as a "red line," and the administration is weighing its options — including possible military action.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly warned in recent weeks that Israel would be prepared to take military action if chemical weapons or other arms that would upset the balance of power with Hezbollah were to reach the Islamic militant group.

The Israeli officials said the attack took place early Friday and was aimed at sophisticated "game-changing" weapons, but not chemical arms. One official said the target was a shipment of advanced, long-range ground-to-ground missiles but was not more specific.

They did not say where the attack took place, or whether the air force carried out the strike from Lebanese or Syrian airspace....

"Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of" -- New York Times, April 28, 2013

"Obama moving toward sending lethal arms to Syrian rebels, officials say," by Karen DeYoung for the Washington Post, April 30:

President Obama is preparing to send lethal weaponry to the Syrian opposition and has taken steps to assert more aggressive U.S. leadership among allies and partners seeking the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad, according to senior administration officials.

The officials said they are moving toward the shipment of arms but emphasized that they are still pursuing political negotiation. To that end, the administration has launched an effort to convince Russian President Vladimir Putin that the probable use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government — and the more direct outside intervention that could provoke — should lead him to reconsider his support of Assad.

But Obama, who spoke by telephone with Putin on Monday and is sending Secretary of State John F. Kerry to Moscow in the coming days, is likely to make a final decision on the supply of arms to the opposition within weeks, before a scheduled meeting with Putin in June, the officials said.

Confirmation that the Assad government has used chemical weapons, Obama said Tuesday, would mean that “there are some options that we might not otherwise exercise that we would strongly consider.”

At a news conference, he emphasized the need to “make sure I’ve got the facts. . . . If we end up rushing to judgment without hard, effective evidence, we can find ourselves in a position where we can’t mobilize the international community to support” additional action. Administration officials have made repeated reference to the George W. Bush administration’s inaccurate claims of weapons of mass destruction to justify its 2003 invasion of Iraq....

Or we can find ourselves in a position where we're aiding the jihad that aims to destroy us. But hey, who cares about that?

These are the people Obama wants to support. "The situation in the city is terrible; no one is safe, not even the Christians." Apparently these bishops are still being held, contrary to the Irish Times report here. "Aleppo: two Orthodox bishops still captive, Christian neighbourhood shelled," from Asia News, April 29 (thanks to C. Cantoni):

Aleppo (AsiaNews) - The two Orthodox bishops kidnapped in Aleppo are still in the hands of kidnappers, Mgr. Jean-Clement Jeanbart, Greek Melkite bishop of Aleppo, told AsiaNews. "The Catholic and Orthodox Churches are doing their best to mediate with the kidnappers," the prelate added, "but at present no one understands the reasons for this act and who is behind these criminals."

Archbishop Yohanna Ibrahim, Syrian Orthodox bishop of the diocese of Aleppo, and Boulos Yaziji, Greek Orthodox archbishop of the diocese of the same city, were abducted on 22 April in Kafr Dael, ten km from Aleppo, on the Turkish border. Their driver, a Syrian Orthodox deacon, was killed.

This morning, mortar rounds hit one of the city's main Christian neighbourhoods. The shelling killed four people and several houses have collapsed.

"The situation in the city is terrible; no one is safe, not even the Christians," said Archbishop Jeanbart.

Christians have not taken sided with either the rebels or regime. "I do not know who fired at Christian homes or why," the prelate explained, "but it sure was not a ballistic mistake."...

Indeed.

If Obama intervenes, he will be aiding the jihadis and enabling the creation of yet another Sharia state that will be unshakably hostile to the U.S. Of course, that doesn't mean he won't intervene.

Andrew Bostom has some illuminating historical background here.

"Islamist Rebels' Gains in Syria Create Dilemma for U.S.," by Ben Hubbard in the New York Times, April 28 (thanks to Andrew Bostom):

CAIRO - In Syria's largest city, Aleppo, rebels aligned with Al Qaeda control the power plant, run the bakeries and head a court that applies Islamic law. Elsewhere, they have seized government oil fields, put employees back to work and now profit from the crude they produce.

Across Syria, rebel-held areas are dotted with Islamic courts staffed by lawyers and clerics, and by fighting brigades led by extremists. Even the Supreme Military Council, the umbrella rebel organization whose formation the West had hoped would sideline radical groups, is stocked with commanders who want to infuse Islamic law into a future Syrian government.

Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.

This is the landscape President Obama confronts as he considers how to respond to growing evidence that Syrian officials have used chemical weapons, crossing a "red line" he had set. More than two years of violence have radicalized the armed opposition fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad, leaving few groups that both share the political vision of the United States and have the military might to push it forward.

Among the most extreme groups is the notorious Al Nusra Front, the Qaeda-aligned force declared a terrorist organization by the United States, but other groups share aspects of its Islamist ideology in varying degrees.

"Some of the more extremist opposition is very scary from an American perspective, and that presents us with all sorts of problems," said Ari Ratner, a fellow at the Truman National Security Project and former Middle East adviser in the Obama State Department. "We have no illusions about the prospect of engaging with the Assad regime - it must still go - but we are also very reticent to support the more hard-line rebels."

Then don't.

Good thing the U.S. is sending them money, eh? "Hundreds of European Muslims fighting Assad," by Ariel Ben Solomon in the Jerusalem Post, April 25 (thanks to Jerk Chicken):

European intelligence agencies are worried that European Muslims fighting in Syria will return to carry out terrorist attacks because of their contacts built with al-Qaida, the BBC reported on Wednesday.

The UK, Ireland and France are the Western countries believed to have the most fighters in Syria, according to the report, which quotes EU anti-terror chief Gilles de Kerchove as saying that about 500 Muslims from Europe are fighting with the rebels.

However, according to Soeren Kern, a senior fellow for the New York-based Gatestone Institute, and a longtime observer of Islam in Europe, more than 1,000 European Muslims are fighting in Syria. In an article for Gatestone in March titled “European Jihadists: The Latest Export,” he wrote that Syria “has replaced Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia as the main destination for militant Islamists seeking to obtain immediate combat experience with little or no official scrutiny.”

In an interview with The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday, Kern related to the debate: “Although there is no consensus among analysts on the exact number of European jihadists fighting in Syria, I believe the number 1,000 is about right based on a compilation of intelligence estimates and media reports from across Europe.”

He added that “it is relatively easy for Europeans to travel to Turkey and then cross over the border into Syria undetected, making it difficult to determine the true number, which could presumably be even higher than 1,000.”

Kern finds the figure of 500 mentioned by the EU to be too low and believes that it “may be an effort not to alarm the public.”...

Qaradawi is the most popular and influential Islamic preacher in the world. His endorsement of the rebellion against Assad as a jihad will mean that many more jihadis will stream into Syria.

Qaradawi was on the Board of the Islamic Society of Boston, as I pointed out at Jihad Watch back in March 2004. If anyone in Boston had been paying attention to the implications of that fact back then, the Boston Marathon bombings may never have happened.

Qaradawi has said on al-Jazeera: “Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the [Jews] people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them – even though they exaggerated this issue – he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers….”

Qaradawi continued: “I’d like to say that the only thing I hope for is that as my life approaches its end, Allah will give me an opportunity to go to the land of Jihad and resistance, even if in a wheelchair. I will shoot Allah’s enemies, the Jews, and they will throw a bomb at me, and thus, I will seal my life with martyrdom.”

In Islamic theology, jihad warfare is fard kifaya, an obligation of the community as a whole but not of every individual believer. Jihad becomes fard ayn, obligatory on every individual Muslim to aid in some way, when a Muslim land is attacked.

"Leading Sunni Scholar Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi: No Parental Consent Needed to Wage Jihad in Syria," from MEMRI, April 7:

Following are excerpts from an interview with leading Sunni Islamic scholar Sheik Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi, which aired on the Al-Jazeera network on April 7, 2013:

Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi: The Jihad in Syria is now a personal duty incumbent upon all Muslims. This Jihad is no longer a collective duty. There is a type of Jihad that constitutes a collective duty, which, if waged by some, is not incumbent upon the others. On the other hand, there is a type of Jihad in which everybody must participate – each according to his capabilities. The Jihad in Syria is a duty incumbent upon the entire people. There is a group that has been fighting for two years and has just entered the third, and whoever is capable must help this group. Parental consent is not required in this case.

Islamic jihadists from the Caucasus have been busy lately.

Kidnapping infidels and releasing them for ransom or killing them, as well as freeing them if that option is deemed most advantageous for the Muslims, is fully sanctioned in Islamic law: "As for the captives, the amir [ruler] has the choice of taking the most beneficial action of four possibilities: the first to put them to death by cutting their necks; the second, to enslave them and apply the laws of slavery regarding their sale and manumission; the third, to ransom them in exchange for goods or prisoners; and fourth, to show favor to them and pardon them. Allah, may he be exalted, says, 'When you encounter those [infidels] who deny [the Truth=Islam] then strike [their] necks' (Qur'an sura 47, verse 4)" — Abu’l-Hasan al-Mawardi, al-Ahkam as-Sultaniyyah (The Laws of Islamic Governance), trans. by Dr. Asadullah Yate, (London), Ta-Ha Publishers Ltd., 1996, p. 192.

"Christian bishops released by Chechen rebels in Syria," by Michael Jansen in the Irish Times, April 24 (thanks to Jerk Chicken):

Two Christian bishops kidnapped near the northern Syrian city of Aleppo were freed yesterday and arrived safely at St Elias church in the city.

Sources in the Aleppo dioceses said the city’s Greek Orthodox bishop Boulos al-Yazigi and Syrian-Orthodox Metropolitan Yuhanna Ibrahim had been held by Chechen fundamentalists.

The clerics had been on a mission to negotiate the release of two priests taken two months ago when their car was stopped and the driver killed.

The rebel Free Syrian Army condemned the kidnapping and launched a search while the government, which is not in control of the area where they were abducted, said the Chechens were attached to Jabhat al-Nusra, a group affiliated to al-Qaeda.

The bishops were the most senior Christian clerics to be abducted during the two-year conflict although both Christian and Muslim religious figures have been kidnapped and slain.

These are the people to whom Obama is sending millions of dollars of taxpayer money. "Islamist Ultimatum to Syrian Christians: Convert, Leave, or Die," by Matthew J. Thomas for AINA, April 18:

(AINA) -- Syria's Christians fear an Islamist takeover should the current government be overthrown. During the ongoing civil war there has been a well-documented rise in the number of salafi-jihadist groups operating in Syria that pose a direct threat to Syria's Christian community.¹ These militant opposition forces espouse an Islamist ideology, which incorporates elements of Wahhabism² and Salafism³ and whose stated goals and objectives are by definition hostile towards Christians. Firsthand accounts from Syrian Christian refugees in Lebanon reported by award winning investigative journalist Nuri Kino detail the horror in which they described kidnappings, rapes, harassment, theft and other violent reprisals at the hands of Islamist groups.

Those who survived reported "just being Christian is enough to be a target,"⁴ disproving theories that violence and kidnapping directed towards Syrian Christians is purely incidental or for economic reasons. One individual openly declared "We're not poor. We didn't run from poverty [...] we ran from fear."⁵

There are several dozens of armed Salafi-jihadist groups both foreign and domestic currently operating in Syria that explicitly advocate Islamist agendas and possess the intentions and capabilities to commit violent persecution towards Syria's Christians. Most notably from the global Sunni jihadist milieu is al-Jabhat al-Nusra lil-Ahl al-Sham min Mujahedin al-Sham fi Sahat al-Jihad (The Front for Supporting the People of Greater Syria by the Mujahedin of Syria on the Battlefields of Jihad) A.K.A. Jabhat al-Nusra, which in December 2012 the U.S. government officially listed as a terrorist organization.⁶ Also, on April 9 of this year the leader of Tanzim Qai'dat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn (Organization of Jihad's Base in Mesopotamia) A.K.A. al-Qaeda in Iraq released an audio announcement that officially declared the unification of al-Qaeda in Iraq and Jabhat al-Nusra including the establishment of an Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, effectively expanding the threat to Syria's Christians.⁷ The other notable militant Islamist group is al-Jabhat al-Islamiya al-Suriya (Syrian Islamic Front), a large armed coalition force comprised of several interdependent blocs and alliances organized throughout Syria.⁸ Even the relatively less hardline al-Jaysh al-Suri al-Hurr (Free Syrian Army) and al-Majlis al-Watani al-Suri (Syrian National Council) are by no means monolithic entities, rather both exist as umbrella organizations comprised of several independent and competing ideological currents and sub-currents including Islamism.

Indeed, regardless of the means employed whether violent or non-violent to achieve the stated goals and objectives of these Islamist movements, the future is unfortunately no less hostile towards Christians. Within an Islamic State governed by Shari'a (Islamic Law), Jews and Christians, known colloquially as ahl al-Kitaab (People of the Book), are afforded a certain protected status called dhimmi, but only if they willingly submit to a tribute or coercive tax known as jizya.⁹ Based on Islamist interpretation, which is strictly literal and employs the "doctrine of abrogation" promulgated by the 13th century Islamic scholar Ibn Taymiyyah,¹⁰ the later and more belligerent suras (chapters) of the Qur'an take precedence over the earlier and more tolerant suras.¹¹ As a result, the salafi-jihadists frequently reference Sura al-Tawba (The Repentance) otherwise known as Sura al-Bara'a (The Ultimatum), which is the 9th chapter of the Qur'an, to justify their violent actions. Numerous internationally recognized translations of Verse 29 of Sura al-Tawba explicitly state,

Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.¹²

Ultimately, Syria's Christians as well as Jews will be forced to suffer persecution at the hands of Islamists unless they convert to Islam, submit to Shari'a and pay the jizya, emigrate or die.

Guilt by Association: Syria's Christians Labeled Pro-Assad

The question of who would protect the Syrian Christians after the fall of Assad has historically led many Christians to support the status quo out of fear.¹³ A Congressional Research Service report from August 2012 accurately portrays the dilemma of Syrian Christians who are "caught between their parallel fears of violent change and of being associated with Assad's crackdown."¹⁴ According to a September 2012 report by the Institute for the Study of War, President Assad has "used the threat of jihadists within the opposition to galvanize support for the regime among the Alawite and Christian communities."¹⁵ Similarly, the U.S. State Department's 2011 International Religious Freedom Report for Syria also recognizes the rising level of animosity towards Syria's Christians as well as Assad's attempts to translate their fears into political support by sponsoring pro-government demonstrations in predominantly Christian neighborhoods and violently rebuffing those viewed as undermining this effort.¹⁶ Consequently, even individual Christians who have neither professed nor shown any inclination of support for the regime may still be identified as pro-Assad and thereby targeted for violent persecution by the Islamists and other opposition forces, or by government security forces for being perceived as unsupportive.

"Arab Spring" is "Christian Winter" -- Persecution of Christians is a Regional Issue

Christian persecution is prevalent not only throughout Syria but also the entire region. Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Virginia) has consistently published reports testifying that Christians throughout the Middle East, specifically in Syria, Egypt and Iraq, have been suffering persecution at an alarming rate, including a sustained campaign of violence, discrimination, mass emigration and internal displacement -- all of which too often go unrecognized and unreported.¹⁷

In an urgent attempt to bring attention to and spur action from policymakers, Congressman Wolf recently traveled to the region and met firsthand with Christian refugees from several Arab nations, including Syria, and reported "In fact, it often appears that there is an anti-Christian bias at the State Department. For years the department refused to recognize that Iraqi Christians were being targeted, insisting instead that they were simply victims of generalized violence."¹⁸ Unfortunately, the same can now be said of Syria's Christians, as Western naivety falsely assumes that anti-Assad opposition forces are automatically pro-democracy, pro-secular, and pluralist and Christians are merely victims of incidental violence. However, a recent report from the British newspaper The Guardian reveals that until recently hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Christians sought refuge in neighboring countries like Syria, but now they are once again forced to flee due to rampant religious persecution. The report continues by stating the majority of Christians have been emptied from the broader Middle East, and while the "Arab Spring" may have sprung new life for Islamists in the region, it has most certainly brought death to Christianity in places like Syria.¹⁹

By Matthew J. Thomas

Matthew Thomas is a graduate from the M.A. program in Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in Monterey, CA. He previously worked as an intern with the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya, Israel, and as a research assistant with Naval Postgraduate School and Howard's Global Solutions. His primary research interests are on militant Islamic organizations and the Arab World. He possesses advanced foreign language proficiency in Arabic and Assyrian (neo-Aramaic), and holds a B.A. in International Relations with a Concentration in Muslim Studies from Michigan State University.

What is a "moderate form" of Sharia? Wherever Sharia is implemented, it is markedly similar in form, contrary to the dissembling claims of Islamic supremacist spokesmen in the U.S. like Imam Faisal Rauf and Reza Aslan, who claim that it is so amorphous as to defy characterization. Moaz Al Khatib gives a hint of the kinder, gentler Sharia that he has in mind when he says: "Some in Al Nusra have told women they must wear hijab and that is not right, if you want to preach, do it well, you can talk, you cannot command, there is no compulsion in Islam."

However, the legal code that is circulating among the Syrian opposition just says that "governing justice will be in accordance with the provisions of Sharia law," apparently with no mitigation or caveat. All the talk about justice and equality in the quotations from the code below resembles similar language in the Afghan constitution, which also states that Sharia is the law of the land and interprets justice and equality through the prism of Sharia -- witness the capital trial for apostasy of Abdul Rahman a few years ago.

"Syrian opposition to establish moderate form of Islamic law," by Phil Sands for The National, April 18:

ISTANBUL // The main opposition to Syrian President Bashar Al Assad will begin establishing what it calls a moderate form of Islamic law in all rebel-held areas of the country, as part of an effort to prevent chaos and stop hardline interpretations of Islam from becoming entrenched.

The legal code was drawn up by Muslim scholars, judges and top anti-Assad politicians in advance of meetings this week in Istanbul convened by the Syrian National Council (SNC), where transitional justice arrangements are being discussed.

The opposition hopes that an interim government, as yet unformed, will apply a version of the new legal system nationwide, after it goes into effect in areas currently controlled by the insurgents.

Different systems of Sharia now govern pockets of Syrian territory controlled by the rebels. Some are enforced by Jabhat Al Nusra, a militant group affiliated with Al Qaeda, prompting fears that its interpretation of Islamic law is filling the legal vacuum.

Launching the initiative on Monday, Moaz Al Khatib, president of the SNC and himself a widely respected Islamic cleric, appealed for a moderate, fair legal system, which would meet demands for justice and head off the growing influence of extremists.

"I want to talk frankly. When there is injustice, there is a revolution against that injustice. In the same way there should be a revolution in religious thought," he said.

"The goal of religion is to liberate human beings, all of the prophets came to liberate the people."

Extremists, including groups such as Al Nusra, one of the most powerful rebel factions, should not be allowed to spread their ideas, Mr Al Khatib said.

"We do not need ignorant people coming to Syria and teaching us the meaning of religion," he said, chiding members of Al Nusra for trying to enforce an uncompromising version of Islam on a country with traditions of greater religious tolerance.

"Some in Al Nusra have told women they must wear hijab and that is not right, if you want to preach, do it well, you can talk, you cannot command, there is no compulsion in Islam," he said.

Since the revolt against Mr Assad began in March 2011, central government control has collapsed across vast swathes of Syria.

Local courts, often headed by respected members of the community and delivering a rough-hewn frontier justice, have sprouted in rebel-held areas, meeting a demand of communities to prevent crime and deal with offenders in the absence of a functioning state legal system.

Al Nusra has won respect in zones under its command for an uncompromising attitude towards justice, and its willingness to investigate complaints made by civilians against its own fighters and harshly punish them if found guilty.

Senior Syrian clerics allied to the more moderate SNC, as well as judges and lawyers who have sided with the rebels, have been working on their own legal guidelines for months.

According to internally circulated opposition documents, the first clause of the legal code states that "justice and equality are the basis of governance, as are the rights of litigation and defence, which are all guaranteed and will not be compromised".

Further clauses assure that all people are to be treated equally before the courts, with no discrimination permitted and no exemption from prosecution for anyone on the basis of their position.

Clause three of the code, as presented in documents circulated among opposition legal experts, states that "governing justice will be in accordance with the provisions of Sharia law".

Note that there is nothing in that clause about a "moderate form" of Sharia.

An opposition activist familiar with the closed-door discussions on the legal system said it had been widely agreed on pragmatic grounds that it would be an Islamic legal system.

And in response to this, Obama is forking over more of your taxpayer dollars: "U.S. providing Syrian rebels $123 million more in aid," from the Associated Press, April 20:

ISTANBUL — The United States is providing Syrian rebels with $123 million in new nonlethal aid that may include armor and other types of supplies that haven't been part of the assistance package in the past.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry says the additional money will double the nonlethal assistance to the Syrian opposition as well as increase humanitarian aid.

Speaking Saturday in Istanbul, Kerry says the situation in Syria is at a critical moment and that the bloodshed needs to stop.

Foreign ministers from the main supporters of the rebels trying to topple the Syrian government are meeting in Istanbul over the weekend to increase pressure on Syrian President Bashar to step down.

The United Nations estimates that the fighting in Syria has killed more than 70,000 people....

Assad is a scoundrel, but he is right about this. "Assad says West will pay for backing al Qaeda in Syria," by Mariam Karouny and Dominic Evans for Reuters, April 17:

President Bashar Assad accused the West on Wednesday of supporting al Qaeda militants in Syria's civil war and warned they would turn against their backers and strike "in the heart of Europe and the United States."

Assad also launched his strongest criticism yet of neighboring Jordan for allowing thousands of fighters to cross the border to join a conflict he insisted his forces would win and save Syria from destruction.

"We have no choice but victory. If we don't win, Syria will be finished and I don't think this is a choice for any citizen in Syria," the defiant president said in a television interview.

Assad's forces have been fighting back across the country against rebels who have taken control of much of rural Syria and seized a provincial capital in March for the first time in two years of fighting.

The conflict started with mainly peaceful demonstrations but descended into a civil war in which the United Nations says at least 70,000 people have been killed. Islamist militants have emerged as the most potent of the anti-Assad rebels.

Drawing parallels with Western support for anti-Soviet fighters in Afghanistan in the 1980s, some of whom later formed the al Qaeda organization which attacked the United States in September 2011, Assad said Washington and Europe would regret supporting rebels in Syria.

"The West paid heavily for funding al Qaeda in its early stages in Afghanistan. Today it is supporting it in Syria, Libya and other places, and will pay a heavy price later in the heart of Europe and the United States," he told al-Ikhbariya channel.

"The truth is, what is happening is that we are mainly facing extremist forces," Assad added.

He was speaking a week after Syria's rebel al-Nusra Front, one of the most effective rebel forces battling his troops, formally pledged allegiance to al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri....

"The raids, the result of an investigation that began last year, reflected Syria’s growing allure to militant Islamist fighters who see Syria as a prime battleground." "Belgian Police Arrest 6 on Charges of Recruiting for Syrian Insurgency," by James Kanter and Rick Gladstone for the New York Times, April 16 (thanks to Alexandre):

BRUSSELS — The authorities in Belgium raided 48 homes nationwide on Tuesday and detained six men implicated in what prosecutors described as a jihadist recruitment drive for the insurgency in Syria, where an increasingly international array of rebels is fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad.

Activist groups reported the discovery of at least 31 bodies, some burned or handcuffed, in a suburb of Aleppo.

The raids, the result of an investigation that began last year, reflected Syria’s growing allure to militant Islamist fighters who see Syria as a prime battleground. The foreign jihadist element in the insurgency has alarmed Western powers that want to see Mr. Assad step down but do not want him replaced by an Islamist militant government or stateless mayhem.

Some of the most fearless jihadist groups in Syria have foreign fighters, most notably the Nusra Front, which last week publicly confirmed its alliance with Al Qaeda’s Iraqi branch and pledged fealty to the Qaeda leadership.

The Belgian authorities said their investigation focused on a group known as Sharia4Belgium and whether it constitutes a terrorist group. The prosecutor’s office said in a statement that it was aware of 33 people apparently with links to the group from Antwerp and Vilvoorde, a community north of Brussels, who were either in Syria or en route.

Most foreign jihadists in Syria are believed to come from Turkey, Jordan and Iraq, as well as from the Sahel region of northern Africa. According to the International Center for the Study of Radicalization, a partnership of academic institutions based in London, 140 to 600 Europeans have gone to Syria since early 2011, representing 7 percent to 11 percent of the total number of foreign fighters.

The police raids were in cities that included Antwerp and Brussels and in a number of smaller towns and suburbs in an operation involving 225 officers, the statement by the prosecutor’s office said. They seized cellphones, money and computers.

The investigation showed that recruitments were carried out by directly contacting youths in the street and inviting them to private meeting places in Antwerp, according to the statement.

“The prosecutor’s office regards it as important to attack the structures and the groups that allow young Belgians to go to Syria,” the statement said, adding that the main concern was youths who had Jihadist ideologies rather than those who wanted to help create a democratic Syria....

He states that Syrians are turning to "jihadism" to free themselves from the oppressive Assad regime -- he doesn't seem to have any illusions about the Syrian rebels being some kind of democratic force. He also says that there is a strain of "jihadism" that is "open to dialogue." I have no idea what he means by that or to whom he could be referring, as generally Muslims who are waging jihad against non-Muslims are interested only in implementing Islam's theological imperatives of subjugating those non-Muslims and imposing Sharia restrictions upon them. But he does seem to be calling for an honest recognition with that jihad imperative, and for attempts to deal with it openly and honestly -- and those things are sorely needed among Catholic leaders and non-Muslim leaders in general. Instead, they seem intent on ignoring the jihad and the Muslim persecution of Christians in the pursuit of an illusory and empty "dialogue" that appears to be more directed toward making all parties involved feel good rather than to making real headway on any actual problems.

I discuss the problem of "dialogue" at length in my new book, Not Peace But A Sword.

"Syria: jihadism cannot be ignored, Father Dall'Oglio says," by Luciana Borsatti for ANSAmed, April 12 (thanks to Insubria):

ROME, MARCH 12 - Jihadism is a cultural, political and military reality that is growing stronger by the day and cannot be ignored, not even on the theological level, according to Father Paolo Dall'Oglio, an Italian Jesuit who lived in Syria for 30 years before being expelled by Damascus authorities in 2012.

The jihadist galaxy is ''a considerable cultural, religious, political and military subject'', he told ANSAmed in an interview, stressing the weight of jihadism ''in its local and transnational expressions'' within the current ''geo-strategic'' framework.

''It is a political and military actor whose weight must be reckoned with, given that is has won in Iraq, is winning in Afghanistan, will not be defeated in Mali, and is making a solution for Somalia impossible'', he added.

What is to be done? ''First of all, operating on an intelligence level to prevent even graver consequences and to bring about the downfall of its projects to universalize terror''.

But action must also occur on the social level, continued the Jesuit, a recent guest at the Anna Lindh Foundation Euro-Mediterranean Forum in Marseille.

This means ''helping Islamic civil societies take their responsibilities on the ground'', he added in reference to areas that have fallen under the control of Islamist forces, which have until now been excluded if not banned from power. ''They have lived off criticism, but now must begin to live on assumed responsibility, and to work to organize their societies''.

The founder of the Mar Musa monastic community for interfaith dialogue north of Damascus, the Jesuit has the Syrian civil war uppermost in his mind.

''It's important to protect the democratic diversity of the Syrian people, which, feeling abandoned, turned to jihadism to free themselves of the regime'' of President Bashar al-Assad.

Diversity within the Muslim world must also be protected, he added, in order to ''defend the pluralism that exists within Islam, which is also an ethnic pluralism''. But in order to do this, the three monotheistic religions must make ''a theological effort'' to analyze ways to stand up to Islamism and political jihadism, Dall'Oglio said, inviting their intellectual communities to ''listen in order to foster mutual understanding''. There are two types of jihadism, he stressed. ''One that is open to dialogue'' and another that is rigidly dogmatic, ''harder to manage, a swamp in which all sorts are crawling, from secret services to mafiosi to extremists. A swamp which we must pull our youth, our children out of: religious youth, that need religious discourse, which they certainly do not find in prisons like Guantanamo''.

As far as Syria, Dall'Oglio concludes, ''in the first phase I fought for a diplomatic intervention'' to prevent the great international conflicts ''from being fought on the living bodies of Syrians''. Then he supported a non-violent NGO presence ''when everything was still possible, that is, until the summer of 2011''. But now the time has come, he concludes, for ''the right to self-defense and the obligation to rescue a people in great adversity''. (ANSAmed).

And in other news, Obama has authorized $10 million in additional aid to these Syrian rebels. "Prominent Jihadi Cleric: Jabhat Al-Nusra – 'A Link In The Ongoing Chain Of Global Jihad': Influx Of Foreign Fighters To Syria Will Increase," from MEMRI, April 7 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

The second issue of the jihadi online magazine Fursan Al-Balagh features an essay by prominent jihadi cleric Abu Sa'd Al-'Amili titled "The Conflict in Syria – A Harbinger of War between the Ummah and Its Enemies." In it, Al-'Amili expounds on the unique nature of the civil war in Syria, and on the role of Jabhat Al-Nusra (JN) in this war and in what will follow it.

Although JN itself, in its official releases, does not emphasize its affiliation with Al-Qaeda, Al-'Amili acknowledges this affiliation, describing JN as an integral part of the global jihad movement that has been fighting the "forces of falsehood" since the war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. He also stresses that this movement is fighting a war between Islam and its enemies that has been ongoing for many generations and will only end with the ultimate victory of Islam. He explains that this movement, which is a single organic body, benefits greatly from the mobility of its members: since fighters move freely from front to front, they bring their accumulated experience and personal connections to each new fighting arena.