Dose of Truth: When Christians are Slaughtered, Look the Other Way

This Easter, Remember in fervent prayer the Christians ALL OVER THE WORLD who are persecuted and murdered for their Faith in Jesus Christ by muslim barbarians. -SF

Muslims Slaughter Over 10,000 Christians and Destroy 13,000 Churches in Nigeria

 

• Over 500 Christian villagers were slain in one night.” — Emmanuel Ogebe, Nigerian human rights lawyer, March 2, 2016.
• What Christians in Nigeria are experiencing is a live snapshot of what millions of Christians and other non-Muslims have experienced since the seventh century, when Islam “migrated” to their borders: violence, persecution, enslavement, and the destruction of churches.
• The Obama Administration refuses to associate Boko Haram — an organization that defines itself in purely Islamic terms — with Islam, just as it refuses to associate the ISIS with Islam.
• In all cases, the Obama Administration looks the other way, while insisting that the jihad is a product of “inequality,” “poverty” and “a lack of opportunity for jobs” — never of Islamic teaching.

Boko Haram, the Nigerian Islamic extremist group, has killed more people in the name of jihad than the Islamic State (ISIS), according to the findings of a new report. Since 2000, when twelve Northern Nigerian states began implementing or more fully enforcing Islamic sharia law, “between 9,000 to 11,500 Christians” have been killed. This is “a conservative estimate.”

In addition, “1.3 million Christians have become internally displaced or forced to relocate elsewhere,” and “13,000 churches have been closed or destroyed altogether.” Countless “thousands of Christian businesses, houses and other property have been destroyed.”

The report alludes to a number of other factors that connect the growth of the Nigerian jihad to the growth of the global jihad. The rise of anti-Christian, Islamic supremacism

“did not emerge in Northern Nigeria until the 1980s, when Nigerian scholars and students returned from Arabic countries influenced by Wahhabi and Salafist teaching. Each year, thousands of West African Muslims get free scholarships to pursue their studies in the Sunni Arab countries; this has had a major impact on Nigerian culture.”

This “major impact” is not limited to Nigeria. Saudi Arabia annually spends over $100 billion disseminating “Wahhabi and Salafist teaching” — or what growing numbers of Muslims refer to as “true Islam”. They also do so through European mosques and those in the United States. Behind the radicalization of ISIS, Boko Haram, and Lone Wolf Muslims, stand America’s best Muslim friends and allies.

Another important finding from the report is that,

“Not just radical Islam, Boko Haram being the most notable example, but also Muslim Hausa-Fulani herdsmen and the Northern Muslim political and religious elite are also major actors of targeted violence towards the Christian minority.”

Most recently, on March 2, Nigerian human rights lawyer Emmanuel Ogebe sent an email saying: “I arrived Nigeria a few days ago to investigate what appears to be the worst massacre by Muslim [Hausa-Fulani] herdsmen… Over 500 Christian villagers were slain in one night.”

Similarly, according to a West African source, “Once Boko Haram is defeated, the problem will not be solved. Christians living under Sharia law are facing discrimination and marginalization and have limited to no access to federal rights.”

The report finally finds that much of the anti-Christian violence derives from the historical “migration of Muslims into non-Muslim territories in northern Nigeria to promote the Islamic religious and missionary agenda in all parts of northern Nigeria.” In other words, what Christians in Nigeria are experiencing is a live snapshot of what millions of Christians and other non-Muslims have experienced since the seventh century, when Islam “migrated” to their borders: violence, persecution, enslavement, and the destruction of churches.

All of these findings contradict the Obama Administration’s official narrative concerning the unrest in Nigeria. For years, the administration refused to list Boko Haram — which has slaughtered more Christians and “apostates” than even ISIS — as a terrorist organization. It finally did so in November 2013, after several years of pressure from lawmakers, human rights activists, and lobbyists.

For years, the Obama Administration refused to list Boko Haram — which has slaughtered more Christians and “apostates” than even ISIS — as a terrorist organization. It finally did so in November 2013, after several years of pressure. Pictured above: Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau (center).

Even so, the Obama Administration refuses to associate Boko Haram — an organization that defines itself in purely Islamic terms — with Islam, just as it refuses to associate the ISIS with Islam. Although Boko Haram and its allies have yet to miss a year when they do not bomb or burn several churches during the Christmas or Easter celebrations, on Easter Day, 2012, after the organization had murdered 39 Christian worshippers, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson said: “I want to take this opportunity to stress one key point and that is that religion is not driving extremist violence” in the Muslim-majority north.

So what is? The administration attributes to Boko Haram the same motivation it attributes to the Islamic State — or as President Bill Clinton once memorably put it in a reference to Boko Haram’s murder campaign: “inequality” and “poverty” are “what’s fueling all this stuff.”

That assessment is similar to the Obama Administration’s claim that “a lack of opportunity for jobs” is what created ISIS; or CIA John Brennan’s claim that the jihadi ideology the world over is “fed a lot of times by, you know, political repression, by economic, you know, disenfranchisement, by, you know, lack of education and ignorance, so there — there are a number of phenomena right now that I think are fueling the fires of, you know, this ideology.”

Appeasing the jihadis has been the administration’s policy, or in the words of Clinton’s advice to the Nigerian government: “[I]t is almost impossible to cure a problem based on violence with violence.” Countless decapitated Christian heads later, when Nigerian forces killed 30 Boko Haram members in a particularly powerful offensive carried out in May 2013, Reuters reportedthat U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry “issued a strongly worded statement” to the Nigerian president: “We are … deeply concerned,” he said, “by credible allegations that Nigerian security forces are committing gross human rights violations, which, in turn, only escalate the violence and fuel extremism” from Boko Haram.

Christian life in Muslim-majority areas of Nigeria is merely a microcosm of Christian life in Muslim-majority nations around the world. Christians are being persecuted and killed, their churches banned, burned or bombed. Thanks to Saudi petrodollars, the men behind the persecution are almost always “influenced by Wahhabi and Salafist teaching,” and include not just “extremists,” but also the “political and religious elite.” In all cases, the Obama Administration looks the other way, while insisting that the jihad is a product of “inequality,” “poverty” and “a lack of opportunity for jobs” — never of Islamic teaching.

Read the Original Article at Gatestone Institute

 

 

Crusader Corner: The Spreading Cancer of Islam in West Africa

Côte d’Ivoire has become the latest country in West Africa to suffer a major terror attack. No fewer than 15 civilians and three special forces troops died when six attackers opened fire on the beaches in Grand-Bassam, a seaside town that’s popular with expats.

Thirty-three people were wounded.

 Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claimed responsibility. The Grand-Bassam assault is the latest in long string of attacks linked to Al Qaeda and its affiliates. Far from beaten, the terror group is spreading across West Africa.

 

On Jan. 15, gunmen opened fire in central Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. And on Nov. 20 last year, a similar attack took place at the Radisson Blue Hotel in Mali’s capital Bamako. AQIM and various linked groups have also claimed many smaller attacks, mostly in Mali.

Jihadi groups have operated in Mali and neighboring countries for decades. AQIM, West Africa’s local Al Qaeda branch, actually evolved from an Algerian terror group. In 2012, AQIM and associated groups were instrumental in the Islamist takeover of northern Mali, which prompted a French military intervention in 2013.

In contrast to Islamic State, Al Qaeda has always been a decentralized organization. AQIM and its affiliates are a perfect example of this.

AQIM is the “official” Al Qaeda franchise in the region, but it tolerates the existence of several other semi-autonomous terror groups within its sphere of influence — and in some cases AQIM purportedly facilitated their creation.

Case in point — the Macina Liberation Front, which took responsibility for the Radisson Blue attack. Officially dedicated to recreating the Macina Empire, the group is widely believed to be a local front for AQIM. Its leader Hamadou Kouffa has reportedly had great success in mobilizing members of his Pheul/Fulani community.

Another associated group, Ansar Dine is led by Ihad ag Ghali, a Tuareg with a long history of resistance against the Malian state. AQIM has also managed to survive several defections and splinter movements, the most prominent being that of Mokthar Belmokthar. Wrongly proclaimed dead on several occasions, Belmokthar is widely considered to be one of the region’s top terrorist masterminds, with an astonishing number of complex attacks to his credit.

That AQIM and its affiliates have now conducted two high-profile attacks outside Mali within a short period of time is interesting and worrying at the same time — and flies in the face of French efforts to deny terrorist groups the freedom to operate in the region. It almost certainly means that the group’s leadership judges itself to be strong and unified enough to handle the risks and demands associated with striking beyond its traditional area of operations.

Neither Burkina Faso nor Côte d’Ivoire has a significant local jihadi scene nor even great sympathy for AQIM’s cause among the population.

Côte d’Ivoire, a former French colony and home to one of the major deepwater ports in francophone West Africa, is a major logistical hub for France’s military. The rapid intervention in Mali in 2013 was possible only because French forces were already prepositioned in neighboring Côte d’Ivoire.

One attack won’t deny France this advantage, of course. But again in contrast to Islamic State, Al Qaeda’s ideology isn’t primarily geared towards holding territory. While both groups want to reestablish the Caliphate — and Islamic State has claimed to have done so — Al Qaeda sees this as a long-term goal, attainable only after a struggle of a century or more.

In that sense, the recent spate of attacks in West Africa is aimed at exhausting France, the main Western enemy of the Islamists in this particular theater. Without a doubt, AQIM’s leadership is banking on Paris doubling down on its military and diplomatic commitment to the region, thereby opening its military and citizens to even more attacks.

France won’t take this lying down, of course, and its special forces have been quite successful in eliminating Islamist fighters and leaders throughout the Sahel. But the military approach to combating terrorism has limits, as the United States has discovered in Iraq and Afghanistan. Still, so far France has refused to reconsider its approach to its former colonies.

After Ougadougou and Grand-Bassam, one doesn’t have to be a fortune-teller to predict more attacks against French interests in the region. The most likely targets are Niamey, France’s main military hub in Mali’s neighbor Niger — and Dakar, the capital of Senegal and a major economic and political hotspot in the region which is also home to many French nationals. Other high-profile targets could include Chad’s capital N’Djamena and the government of Mauritania.

While France lost four citizens in Grand-Bassam, the majority of the victims were, of course, Ivoirian. Destabilizing the politics and economiesof West Africa is beneficial to AQIM, as it relies on weak governments and badly-governed spaces to operate. But France’s intervention in Mali shows that to achieve the complete collapse of order in one of these states, AQIM first needs to eliminate the presence of France and other major powers.

Crusader Corner: Two Attacks and Two Terror Trends

Bottom Line Up Front:

• On March 13, a car bomb detonated in Ankara, Turkey, killing at least 27 people in the third such attack in months

• On the same day, an attack claimed by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb on several beachside resorts in Grand Bassam, Ivory Coast, left between 16-22 people dead

• The attacks are unrelated, but both stem from two trends that will continue in the near future as the reach of violent extremism expands

• Resorts and hotels in locations not known for extremism will face increasing risks; the security situation in Turkey is likely to deteriorate much further.

Places of work and play are now equal targets for terrorism. On March 13, two terrorist attacks, differing in style and location, are the latest indication that two trend lines will continue for the foreseeable future. The car bombing in Ankara, Turkey, that killed at least 27 people, and the armed assault on several resort hotels in Ivory Coast that killed at least 16, are connected, but not in the traditional sense. Rather, the two attacks show that hotels and resorts in tenuously stable locations are prime targets for terrorism, and that Turkey will continue to suffer an increase in attacks. These two trends stem from the overall rise in violent extremism across North Africa and the Middle East and the inability of states to effectively combat the threat. Most of the nations in this region are weaker or less stable than they appear or are assumed to be, including Turkey. The path from superficial stability to violent collapse is a short one, and terrorism accelerates the downward momentum.

For some time now, places of recreation have been at risk for unpredictable attacks. This is particularly true for places that are not specifically known for terrorism, but are in regions convulsed with conflict. Indeed, West Africa and North Africa are merging into a single expansive zone of concern. Last June, a gunman killed 38 people in a beach resort near the Tunisian town of Sousse; the so-called Islamic State claimed credit for the attack. In November 2015, gunmen affiliated with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb (AQIM) attacked the Raddison Blu hotel in Bamako, Mali, killing 18 people. In January 2016, AQIM attacked a hotel and restaurant in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, killing 30. The threat is not contained to West or North Africa; in January, gunmen from the al-Qaeda affiliate al-Shabaab killed 20 people at a Mogadishu beach.

On March 13, AQIM struck again. Six gunmen attacked several resort hotels in Grand Bassam, Ivory Coast. The attack killed at least 16, including locals and a French national enjoying the beach and amenities. The Ivory Coast has avoided terrorist attacks of this level until now. The persistent threat from neighboring countries is now proving too much for the country to defy; aid from France and other countries will likely increase in the aftermath of the attack. Assaults on local resorts strike at the economy of countries such as Ivory Coast, hurting local employment and cutting off international tourism revenues.

Seemingly a world away, Ankara, Turkey, witnessed its third mass casualty terrorist attack in recent months. Just hours after the Ivory Coast attack, a car bomb exploded in the center of the Turkish capital, killing at least 27. Unlike in Grand Bassam, there were no immediate claims of responsibility for the Ankara attack, with early blame centering on Kurdish extremist groups, or perhaps the Islamic State. Turkey, a NATO member, is experiencing a rising threat from the civil war in Syria, not just from the Islamic State, but also from the fighting to the south which has reignited the dormant conflict between Ankara and Turkey’s Kurdish population. Turkey appears unable to address the terrorism threat in a manner that will not lead to greater open conflict, and so the threat will persist.

The two attacks in two very different locations have their own local sparks, but the fuel comes from the wider rise in violent extremism that is the inevitable result of persistent conflicts from Libya to Syria, and other points north and south. Most states in this zone are not sufficiently stable to dismiss concerns that terrorism could lead to greater instability and worse.

Read the Original Article at Soufan Group

Crusader Corner: Terrorist Strike Ivory Coast Beach resort in Africa, Death Toll at 16

“Ivory Coast shooting: ’12 dead including four Europeans’ in gun attack on Grand-Bassam beach resort popular with Western tourists,” by Samuel Osborne, Independent, March 13, 2016 (thanks to Steve):

Several people are feared dead after at least four heavily armed gunmen attacked a beach resort in the Ivory Coast.

At least 12 people are reported dead including four Europeans near the Hotel Etoile du Sud, in the coastal city of Grand-Bassam, which is popular with Western tourists.

In a now-deleted post on social media, the Ivory Coast government confirmed there were at least 11 casualties, including a five-year-old child.

Witnesses reported hearing the gunmen shout “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) as they opened fire.

There are varying reports of both the number feared dead and the number of attackers.

A government spokesperson told Bloomberg at least five attackers had been killed and another five were on the run.

Local media reports the gunmen had entered the Hotel Etoile Du Sud, taking guests and staff hostage.

The shooting started at the hotel Koral Beach and continued in nearby establishments, according to the website Ivorian Connection.

Images of the attack on social media show dead bodies on the beach, which has now been evacuated by the army….

Read the Original at Jihad Watch

Update: Death Toll Now at 16 Dead

Crusader Corner: Boko Haram Female Suicide Bomber Kills 58 in Nigerian “Safe Haven”

 

A camp that was supposed to be a shelter from terrorism and violence instead became an instant death zone for dozens in Nigeria this week.

At least 58 people were killed and another 78 injured when two female bombers detonated their suicide vests, according to emergency relief officials. The victims were in a camp for people who had been displaced by Boko Haram violence in Nigeria’s Borno State.

As horrendous as the attack was, it could have been worse. One of the bombers backed out at the last minute.

“There were three female bombers who entered the camp around 6:30 a.m. (local time) disguised as displaced persons. Two of them set off their explosives in the camp while the third refused after realizing her parents and siblings were in the camp,” said Satomi Alhaji Ahmed, head of the Borno State Emergency Management Agency.

The bombers struck Tuesday at the camp in the town of Dikwa, Ahmed said. Dikwa is in northeastern Nigeria, near the border with Cameroon.

More than 53,000 people fleeing Boko Haram attacks from six districts are sheltering under military protection.

Warnings of more bombers on the way

The suspect confessed she and the two bombers were sent by Boko Haram to attack the camp, warning more bombers were on their way, Ahmed said.

“She told the military officers who interrogated her that they were among several women detailed by Boko Haram to attack the camp. She warned more attacks were underway as the female bombers would sneak into the camp in different guises,” Ahmed said.

The attacks are believed to be reprisals for the recent military offensive against Boko Haram in strongholds along the border with Cameroon, a military source said.

Last week, troops raided the three Boko Haram strongholds, killing more than 100 fighters and freeing more than 1,000 people — including more than 100 women kidnapped and used as sex slaves by the insurgents, said the military source on anonymity.

The source said the freed women were brought to the Dikwa camp and that Boko Haram terrorists “are pained by that, and hence their decision to send in suicide bombers in revenge.

A growing legacy of terror and death

Boko Haram is a militant Islamic group working out of Nigeria and in the border areas of Chad and Cameroon; its purpose is to institute Sharia, or Islamic, law. Boko Haram militants mainly inhabit areas in the northern states of Nigeria, including Borno.

The group has received international condemnation and notoriety for its brutality and mass kidnappings of women and girls.

On Saturday, motorcycle-riding militants from Boko Haram riding at night killed 65 people in a raid.

Read the Original Article at CNN