If Masood Farivar had been a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, would the Voice of America have hired him? If he were calling for members of the Aryan Nations to be “reintegrated” into Western society, would the New York Times have given him a platform? Islamic jihadists are no less violent, ruthless, and oppressive than the KKK or the Aryan Nations — indeed, more so. But they have a better PR arm.
If a Muslim from the United States returns from waging jihad in Syria and sets off a jihad mass murder attack in New York or Washington, will Masood Farivar and the New York Times issue an apology?
“The Foreign Fighters and Me,” by Masood Farivar in the New York Times, April 1:
WASHINGTON — We have heard a great deal recently about the “foreign fighters” flocking to take up arms against the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria’s civil war — and the threat they may pose if they eventually return to their home countries as battle-hardened jihadis.
The numbers certainly demand our attention. Of an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 foreign fighters in Syria, as many as 2,000 are said to be European nationals, as well as some 100 Australian citizens and several dozen American passport holders, according to published sources. While some are fighting alongside “moderate” rebel groups such as the Free Syrian Army, most have reportedly joined the ranks of the militant Jabhet al-Nusra and the formerly Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS.
I know the mentality of these nationless combatants. I fought beside them.
As a teenage Afghan refugee living in Pakistan in the 1980s, I joined the anti-Soviet resistance. I took up arms in a cause we called jihad, or holy war — but one focused on liberating our homeland, not exporting an ideology. War came to us through Soviet invasion: We hated it, and we wanted to live through it to see a free Afghanistan at peace.
Pitting a small, impoverished Muslim nation against an infidel invader, Afghanistan’s conflict attracted up to 20,000 foreign fighters in the 1980s, the largest contingent drawn to any Muslim country in modern history. Made up mostly of Saudis and Pakistanis, the army of volunteers also included Egyptians, Tunisians and Indonesians, among others.
Make no mistake: The Afghan mujahedeen, equipped with Western arms, won that war. International volunteers played a marginal role in sealing our victory, their numbers notwithstanding.
This was my fight, but I also found myself encamped with foreign fighters. I was curious about what motivated them. Many were well intentioned, driven by a sense of religious duty. Some were thrill-seekers, who wanted to experience the adrenaline of combat. Others were pure zealots; they sought not national liberation, as I did, but martyrdom. Some young Arab men, hoping to be martyred, chained themselves to trees in the waning days of the Soviet occupation. You can imagine how much this contributed to Afghan freedom.
It is said that war makes brothers out of strangers, but the foreign fighters and we native Afghans remained strangers to the end. While some bonds were formed, the foreigners could never shed their outsider’s baggage and win full acceptance.
Their foreign tongues, their strange garb and mien and, above all, their reasons for fighting kept them apart. Their novice’s clumsiness drew giggles; their religious dogmatism baffled us. And their suicidal embrace of martyrdom caused revulsion.
At best, we viewed them as uninvited guests; at worst, a nuisance imposed on us by jihadi leaders eager to win Saudi financial support. The divide hardly narrowed as the war drew to a close. While we yearned for the fighting to end, I heard more than one of the foreign fighters say how they looked forward to carrying on the jihad until they hoisted the green banner of Islam over Moscow and Washington.
As the instigator of global jihad, Al Qaeda has become a brand unlike any other terrorist organization in history. Hundreds of young Westerners have joined rebel forces affiliated with Al Qaeda and other militant groups, often doing stints in more than one battleground nation. Foreign fighters are active from Libya to Somalia.
While some Western officials, such as Britain’s counterterrorism chief, Helen Ball, have distinguished between “romantic freedom fighters” and “those who get themselves trained to use weapons or build bombs and engage in fighting,” the concern is that the young volunteers, radicalized and combat-trained, will wreak havoc on their return. That distant civil war in Syria “has become a matter of homeland security,” said Jeh C. Johnson, secretary of homeland security.
With an estimated 1,500 groups fighting in Syria, the conflict is clearly far more complex than the Afghan war. Europeans and Americans of Syrian heritage are fighting to liberate their homeland from the murderous Assad regime. Sunnis from Saudi Arabia and Libya have been drawn by their solidarity with coreligionists.
Religious fundamentalists may be driven by a desire to revive the Caliphate. Others couldn’t care less where they’re fighting — as long as the battlefield affords them an opportunity for martyrdom. Whatever their motives, they see the Syrian conflict as a just cause. As one British Sunni convert fighting in Syria commented on a social networking site: “what motivates me is that the Muslims of sham” — meaning Syria — “are being killed, tortured and raped and as Muslims we must believe that they are also family.”
In an attempt to understand the foreign fighters, some Western experts have crafted caricatures — the revenge-seeker, the status-seeker, the identity-seeker and so on — but the legion of fighters with varied and often overlapping motives defy easy stereotypes….
The homeland security threat may be an issue of needing better intelligence about disaffected homegrown radicals, rather than foreign fighters bringing mayhem home. The young men behind the 2010 Times Square car bombing attempt and the Boston Marathon bombing seem to have had as much in common, psychically, with the Columbine shooters as with veterans of foreign wars.
Except for one inconvenient fact: the Times Square bomber justified his actions by reference to Islamic teaching: “Jihad, holy fighting in Allah’s course, with full force of numbers and weaponry, is given the utmost importance in Islam….By jihad, Islam is established….By abandoning jihad, may Allah protect us from that, Islam is destroyed, and Muslims go into inferior position, their honor is lost, their lands are stolen, their rule and authority vanish. Jihad is an obligation and duty in Islam on every Muslim.” — Times Square car bomb terrorist Faisal Shahzad
The Columbine shooters didn’t say anything like that.
Before summarily prosecuting the fighters upon their return from Syria, as Britain is considering, or revoking the United States citizenship of fighters with dual citizenship (as some have called for), we should determine their guilt by more than association. For most, a deradicalization program, such as those run by Saudi Arabia, could help reintegrate them into civilian life.
In Afghanistan, hundreds of veterans stayed behind and followed in Osama bin Laden’s footsteps to later infamy. Others, gripped by religious fervor and martial wanderlust, went on to cause mayhem in places like Algeria and Egypt during the 1990s.
But not all did, of course. For some, their adventure concluded, quiet civilian lives beckoned. I befriended a young Arab-American from New York who was happy to be heading home at the end of the war. A Harvard-educated British convert I knew went on to become a distinguished war correspondent. I, too, became a writer and journalist. You might say that in the end, we were more closely allied in peace than we had been in war.
Indeed — no one is a better friend of jihad terrorists than “journalists” such as Christiane Amanpour, Bob Smietana, Niraj Warikoo, Lisa Wangsness, etc. etc. etc.
Mohammed's pink swastika says
there’s an open shooter at Fort Hood right now!
fair_dinkum says
yup..
richard Sherman says
Farivar reveres the sociopath MUHAMMAD who PERSONALLY decapitated 900 unarmed Jews…just like Obama does…no surprise here
fair_dinkum says
Fort Hood II
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/02/fort-hood-shooting/7225399/
fair_dinkum says
it seems it was a returned serviceman with no links to terrorism.
Mohammed's pink swastika says
I have I noticed an uptick in false flag posting all over the internet. From Muslims but mostly from leftist tools, claiming to be the white supremacist tea party bomber, that the media is so desperately trying to find.
PJG says
“…but the legion of fighters with varied and often overlapping motives defy easy stereotypes….”
Oh well then. As we simply can’t condone any “stereotyping” whatsoever, let’s just forgive and forget, and go back to sleep.
Curious Teenager says
Funny thing about this stereotyping… its not exactly stereotypical. This website proves it! I’m doing a research project for a class of mine and I read some articles and can’t help but wonder what people think for real. People are falling over themselves to not be offensive to anyone, yet they miss the things that are happening around the world! Rape, murder, destruction; this is real, people! Jihad isn’t a joke.
Salah says
“..this is real, people! Jihad isn’t a joke.”
No, it isn’t, thanks to the Perfect Man of Islam. By practicing the political act of Jihad, Muhammad and his followers caused the death of about 270 million non-muslims…and counting.
http://crossmuslims.blogspot.com/2010/12/perfect-man-of-islam.html
Will Doohan says
Keep Reading, Keep Studying, and question everything. Remember to look at the assumptions that those who are arguing in favor of something start with, and critically analyze their logic. And your Own too ! It’s ok to change your mind when you learn about new facts and it is also ok to disagree with what the majority thinks. Also, read the opinions of those you disagree with. If they are wrong, it will help you to refine your arguments. If they are right, you will be further enlightened.
dumbledoresarmy says
Welcome!
Here (just in case you come back to this thread) are four classic articles on Islam and Jihad, worthy of being copied and kept, and then shared, either in digital form or as printouts.
The first is by an Irishman called Conor Cruise O’Brien (google his name, look him up, he was one of a kind, a scholar, an old-style journalist, a historian, an iconoclast, and a magnificent writer). He wrote it in the early 1990s.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/the-lesson-of-algeria-islam-is-indivisible-1566770.html
CONOR CRUISE O’BRIEN
Friday 6 January 1995
The lesson of Algeria: Islam is indivisible
The second is by a Frenchman, Jacques Ellul (he died in 1994; again, google his name, look him up, he was one of a kind; his life spanned most of the 20th century; he was in the Resistance in World War II and for his actions in saving the lives of Jews from the Nazis he has been honoured with a tree in the Avenue of the Righteous at Yad Vashem in Israel; he is, by the way, author of one of *the* definitive works on propaganda, the English title is “Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes” – well worth a read; and his other classic is “The Technological Society). He too was a bit of a gadfly, very independent-minded.
*His* little essay on Jihad was written in the early 1990s, just before his death, and served as foreword to a book by his friend Bat Yeor, “The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam”.
http://www.dhimmi.org/Foreword.html
My third item is by an American, one Patrick L Moore. It, too, was written before September 11 2001. It covers pretty well everything you need to know; the footnotes and bibliography span the field. He called it “From Cold War to ‘Guerra Fria'”.
I’ll give two links, because the first will take you to another excellent website where jihad, Islam, and sharia are discussed – “New English Review”.
http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/26087
Monday, 22 February 2010
From The Annals Of Serendip: Patrick L. Moore
And a more printer-friendly link here:
http://www.ewtn.com/library/ISSUES/GUERRA.HTM
FROM “COLD WAR” TO GUERRA FRIA?
Patrick L. Moore
And here is the fourth article – one Andrew Bostom, discussing what one of America’s greatest early statesmen, John Quincy Adams, knew about Islam and Jihad. The passages from John Quincy Adams that are quoted in that article are simply brilliant.
http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=11283
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS KNEW JIHAD
By Andrew G. Bostom
FrontPageMagazine.com | Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Curious Teenager says
Wow, thank you so much for the links! I can’t wait to read them. I look forward to furthering my knowledge.
Saleem Smith says
Why is Masood Farivar still a Muslim?
He must know the extent of Muhammad’s insanity and depravity. He must know of the abundant evils contained within Islam’s canonical texts (the Quran, hadith and sira).
We ex-Muslims living with Islam’s formal and informal death penalty for apostasy know that jihad is only a small part of what is wrong with Islam.
If Masood Farivar is truly a pious Muslim, he should have no problem with the laws of Sharia. The laws of Sharia are, after all, nothing more that the commands of the Islamic god “Allah” clearly spelled out in Islam’s canonical texts.
Shariah law is essentially Islam applied. Or applied Islam.
Islamic Law, The Shariah:
Islamic Laws are made up of Sharia and Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh). Shariah is seen as sacred and constitutes the Qur’an and Muhammad’s Sunnah (way), which is found in the Hadith and Sira. Islamic jurisprudence is a complimentary expansion of the former by Islamic jurists.
Shariah not only governs public life, but also many facets of ones personal life. It has laws covering Muslim interactions with non-Muslims, sexuality, food, rituals, leisure activities, dress, hygiene etc. This is due to Muhammad’s pivotal role in both the practice of Islam and the formation of Islamic law. He is considered by all Muslims, in Islamic theology, as the uswa hasana (perfect example). As both are based on the same source, they are inseparable from one another.
Separation of ‘Church’ and State:
It is a generally accepted fact among Muslims, that there is no concept of “separation of ‘Church’ and State” in the Islam faith. We have already touched upon why Shariah is inseparable from the public and the personal aspects of practising Islam, so once again, we need to look to the example set forth by Muhammad. Islam, unlike many other faiths, was a theocracy from its very beginning. As the founder and Head of the first Islamic state, Muhammad most certainly did not believe in the concept of rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and this is reflected in Muslim thought. The results of a survey released in November of 2009 found a massive 67 percent of Turks said ‘they would continue acting in accordance with their religious beliefs if the Parliament passed a law that contradicted religious laws.’ and only ‘Twenty-six percent said they would obey the country’s law in this case’. As is evident; even in ‘moderate’ ‘secular’ nations like Turkey, we find that the majority of its population (in accordance with Sahih Bukhari 9:89:258) refuse to accept the authority of its government when they deem its man-made laws contrary to that which is prescribed in the Shari’ah.
Hadith, Sahih Bukhari, Vol.9, Bk.89, No.258:
Narrated ‘Abdullah:
The Prophet said, “A Muslim has to listen to and obey (the order of his ruler) whether he likes it or not, as long as his orders involve not one in disobedience (to Allah), but if an act of disobedience (to Allah) is imposed one should not listen to it or obey it.
Islamic Laws: Criminalized Personal Matters:
1 Adultery
2 Intoxicants and Recreational Games
3 Apostasy (rejection of Islam)
4 Free Speech/Blasphemy
5 Fornication between two consenting adults
6 Homosexuality
7 Lack of hijab/un-Islamic dress
8 Mingling of un-related men and women
9 Pornography and Prostitution
10 Music and Art
Islamic Laws: Legalized Crimes:
1 Domestic violence against women
2 Gender disparity
3 Lying
4 Polygamy
5 Pedophilia
6 Rape
7 Religious discrimination
8 Slavery
9 Terrorism
10 Assassination and Murder
http://www.wikiislam.net/wiki/Islamic_Law
Here is a recent statement from a group of Bangladeshi apostates living in the UK explaining the reasons why they have abandoned Islam:
“One who claims to be a messenger of God is expected to live a saintly life. He must not be given to lust, he must not be a sexual pervert, and he must not be a rapist, a highway robber, a war criminal, a mass murderer or an assassin. One who claims to be a messenger of God must have a superior character. He must stand above the vices of the people of his time. Yet Muhammad’s life is that of a gangster godfather. He raided merchant caravans, looted innocent people, massacred entire male populations and enslaved the women and children. He raped the women captured in war after killing their husbands and told his followers that it is okay to have sex with their captives (Qur’an 33:50). He assassinated those who criticized him and executed them when he came to power and became de facto despot of Arabia. Muhammad was bereft of human compassion. He was an obsessed man with his dreams of grandiosity and could not forgive those who stood in his way…
The statement continues,
Muhammad was a narcissist, like Hitler, Saddam or Stalin. He was astute and knew how to manipulate people, but his emotional intelligence was less evolved than that of a 6-year-old child. He simply could not feel the pain of others. He brutally massacred thousands of innocent people and pillaged their wealth. His ambitions were big and as a narcissist he honestly believed he is entitled to do as he pleased and commit all sorts of crimes and his evil deeds are justified.”
fair_dinkum says
wishy washy concessions..
if you went to Syria, no passport for you. otherwise it will be a convoluted, protracted exercise in nothing.
mortimer says
Spencer’s comparison to the KKK is a good one. How should we feel if Nazi supremacists or KKK organizers were being given a fast-track for immigration?
Yet the MB and Al Qaeda are offshoots of European fascism with a similar agenda with Sharia law added.
These jihadists he roots for are some of the most intolerant people on the planet and should not be welcomed to any free Western country.
Hummer says
So what’s he doing on VOA?? The only former jihadists are deceased jihadists-Americans had better wake up to this fact. Jihad is also through propaganda and infiltration of politics of a country-a historical fact.
45charlie says
I just received a 6 page high gloss promotion of Islam in the mail today espousing the virtues of Islam.
email: themosque@gmail.ca
I sent an email asking why they are slaughtering Christians in Muslim countries?
They are having an open house Sunday May 25 2014 at the Mosque on Geneva St St Catharines Ontario Canada. I wonder if Robert could get in ?
voegelinian says
It’s becoming a noticeable phenomenon — a subset of the stealth jihad Good Cop/Bad Mop M.O. (Mohammedan Operandum): namely, the clever infiltration of “former” terrorists into our intel ops and/or our war of ideas ops. Maajid Nawaz is another, one so clever, he even fools many in the Counter-Jihad.
gravenimage says
Senior broadcaster for VOA is former Afghan jihadist; says West should “reintegrate” Syria jihadists
………………………………….
Where to start? *This* is the face of Voice of America in these dark days? Madness. And do you “reintegrate” people who want to kill you?
Is he trying to pretend that their only concern was the Jihad in Syria, or is he just out-and-out urging us to completely roll over for Jihad and accept our new status as oppressed dhimmis?
And how many people will even ask these questions?
More:
I know the mentality of these nationless combatants. I fought beside them.
As a teenage Afghan refugee living in Pakistan in the 1980s, I joined the anti-Soviet resistance. I took up arms in a cause we called jihad, or holy war — but one focused on liberating our homeland, not exporting an ideology. War came to us through Soviet invasion: We hated it, and we wanted to live through it to see a free Afghanistan at peace.
………………………………….
And how did this fine fellow enjoy the bloody Shari’ah “peace” of the Taliban? I doubt many will be asking *that* question, either…
And notice the way he describes the fight against the Soviets—it is indistinguishable from the presence of Americans and other coalition forces there.
What does this representative of Voice of America think about—well—Americans? Another likely unasked question…
More:
Make no mistake: The Afghan mujahedeen, equipped with Western arms, won that war.
………………………………….
Many Americans will take this to mean, “we drove out the Soviets”. But what about the savage “winners”—the sanguinary Taliban? Still no clue…
More:
I was curious about what motivated them. Many were well intentioned, driven by a sense of religious duty.
………………………………….
And what, exactly, was their “intention”? What was their “religious duty”? Might it have been the imposition of Shari’ah law? Who knows…
More:
Some were thrill-seekers, who wanted to experience the adrenaline of combat. Others were pure zealots; they sought not national liberation, as I did, but martyrdom. Some young Arab men, hoping to be martyred, chained themselves to trees in the waning days of the Soviet occupation. You can imagine how much this contributed to Afghan freedom.
………………………………….
Is he actually opposed to “Martyrdom”, or was he just disgusted that this form of “Martyrdom” was ineffective in achieving Islam’s goals? If these young Muslims had been blowing themselves up along with governmental sympathizers rather than chaining themselves to trees, would he approve? Again, who knows?
More:
It is said that war makes brothers out of strangers, but the foreign fighters and we native Afghans remained strangers to the end…
………………………………….
So what? This has more to do with provincialism than actual differing goals.
More:
The divide hardly narrowed as the war drew to a close. While we yearned for the fighting to end, I heard more than one of the foreign fighters say how they looked forward to carrying on the jihad until they hoisted the green banner of Islam over Moscow and Washington.
………………………………….
Interesting. While many Westerners still like to believe that this was a principled fight against Communism, this slip of the mask makes it clear that these Jihadists regarded Westerners in just the same way as they did the Soviets—just as powerful Infidels to be conquered and oppressed.
More:
In an attempt to understand the foreign fighters, some Western experts have crafted caricatures — the revenge-seeker, the status-seeker, the identity-seeker and so on
………………………………….
Crazed Jihadist zealots are being “caricatured”? Oh, no—say it ain’t so! How can we understand these “rage boys” without ‘nuance’? sarc/off
More:
The homeland security threat may be an issue of needing better intelligence about disaffected homegrown radicals, rather than foreign fighters bringing mayhem home. The young men behind the 2010 Times Square car bombing attempt and the Boston Marathon bombing seem to have had as much in common, psychically, with the Columbine shooters as with veterans of foreign wars.
………………………………….
What *absolute crap*. Faizal Shahzad was no disaffected kid, but a thirty-year-old married professional who had trained at Pakistani terror camps.
His whole stated intent was to “kill Americans”. Moreover, he had previously considered waging Jihad abroad, as well.
More:
Before summarily prosecuting the fighters upon their return from Syria, as Britain is considering, or revoking the United States citizenship of fighters with dual citizenship (as some have called for), we should determine their guilt by more than association. For most, a deradicalization program, such as those run by Saudi Arabia, could help reintegrate them into civilian life.
………………………………….
Hilarious. Will finger painting be part of the program?
Moreover, the Saudis *do* support the waging of Jihad—they just try to deflect Jihadists from waging Jihad against themselves.
Whereas, the nations of the West are—except for those Mohammedans making Hijira—nothing but filthy Kuffars…
And what will happen when these now battle-hardened Jihadists really do start waging violent Jihad in the West? Will that change the Voice of America”? I wouldn’t hold my breath…