“Dealing with what’s happening requires going back to the root causes, which means tackling the ideology,” said Ghanem Nuseibeh. That is true, but in the U.S., John Kerry, Joe Biden, Barack Obama and everyone else in positions of political power and influence assure us that the ideology that inspires attacks such as these is absolutely benign and doesn’t really inspire these attacks at all. The implications of the fact that the bomber screamed “Allahu akbar” will not be considered — in fact, this small, salient detail was even assumed to be so insignificant, or so embarrassing to moderate Muslims, or both, that it was removed from a later iteration of this Bloomberg story.
“Dozens killed in attacks by Islamic militants in four countries,” by Alaa Shahine, Bloomberg, June 26, 2015 (thanks to Anne Crockett):
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — It was the day when Islamic extremists struck terror in four countries.
As French police pieced together what happened in an attack at a factory near Lyon where one man was decapitated, at least 27 beachgoers were gunned down in Tunisia. A suicide bomber at a Shiite mosque in Kuwait left 25 people dead, while al-Shabaab militants killed 30 peacekeepers in Somalia.
There’s no suggestion the attacks were coordinated, yet they all bore similar hallmarks. They also come a year after Islamic State officially declared its caliphate in Syria and Iraq and has renewed its push to take more territory. The deaths underscore the difficulty security services face in tackling what’s become a franchise as the extremist group lured thousands of fighters from the Middle East and Europe.
“You should expect more of these attacks unfortunately,” said Ghanem Nuseibeh, founder of Cornerstone Global Associates, which advises clients on risk in the Middle East. Most of the attacks over the past year “have been carried out by lone individuals or small groups and that’s the difficulty here. Dealing with what’s happening requires going back to the root causes, which means tackling the ideology,” Nuseibeh said.
Yes, but that’s the last thing anyone in the West wants to do. Western authorities are instead busy ignoring, denying, and downplaying the ideology that motivates these attacks.
The deadliest attack was in Tunisia, where gunmen opened fire on a beach in the Mediterranean tourist town of Sousse. It follows the murder of a group of foreign tourists at a museum in the north African country in March.
In Kuwait, a bomb ripped through a Shiite mosque during Friday prayers, echoing recent incidents in Saudi Arabia.
One person was decapitated and two others were injured in an attack on a gas plant near Lyon in southeastern France. The attackers beheaded a man and posted the severed head at the factory’s entrance with an inscription in Arabic pinned to it before driving at high speed into gas cannisters.
The bombing in Kuwait was claimed by Islamic State, according to regional television channel Arabiya. In addition to the death toll, the Interior Ministry also said more than 200 people were injured. Al-Shabaab said it carried out the assault in Somalia. There was no statement of responsibility for the attacks in Tunisia and France….
A survivor of the Kuwait attack, the first in the emirate in at least a decade, said a bomber had detonated his explosives after shouting “Allahu Akbar,” the Arabic phrase meaning “God is Great.”
Fully veiled women could be heard weeping outside the mosque, where shattered glass covered the entrance. Shiites gathered outside called on the government to stand with them and shouted that it was time to wage war against “extremism” in the country.