Suicide Bombing as Worship Dimensions of Jihad

by Denis MacEoin
Middle East Quarterly
Fall 2009, pp. 15-24

http://www.meforum.org/2478/suicide-bombing-as-worship

Many motives are cited for suicide bombings, from religious sanctification to revenge for Western foreign policy to hatred of Israel, but one thing ties them together: the boast that Muslims love death, whereas their enemies love life. From killing the infidel enemy through suicide attacks, to allowing the subordinate female to participate in suicide attacks, a pattern emerges. And just as honor killings are a perversion of the most basic of human ties, so love for martyrdom takes societies into a direct relationship with the darkest side of human nature. In trying to explain this, it may be feasible to identify routes to a possible solution.

Origins

Since the 1980s, killing oneself deliberately has become the most popular method of attacking and killing one’s enemies in countries including Iraq and Afghanistan, in territories such as Chechnya or the West Bank and Gaza, and even in Western countries such as the United States and Great Britain. It was a real-life Shi’i fanatic, a thirteen-year-old boy called Hossein Fahmideh, who set things moving in 1981 when he died with a grenade in his hand, throwing himself under a tank during the Iran-Iraq war. He was followed by thousands of young Iranians carrying “keys to paradise,” who walked and ran across minefields, ripping their bodies apart for God and the Islamic regime.[1] Two years later, the first suicide attack occurred against a Western target when a bomber drove a vehicle packed with explosives into the lobby of the American embassy in Beirut. Apart from himself, he killed 63 people: 32 Lebanese, 17 Americans, and 14 visitors. Iran denied all involvement in the attack, but its protégé, Hezbollah, soon claimed responsibility, and it was subsequently established that the killings had been approved and financed by senior Iranian officials. The Iranian role in many subsequent suicide bombings has been crucial, given the existence of a clerical elite that inherited a deeply-embedded Shi’i cult of martyrdom, whose traditions of flagellation, public weeping, passion plays, martyrdom sermons, and hagiographies of martyrs were pushed into overdrive after the revolution of 1979.

An Islamic Paradox

By 2008, 1,121 suicide bombers had carried out attacks in Iraq, killing on a massive scale. With the exception of Sri Lanka, where the Tamil Tigers used the tactic, suicide bombing has become an almost exclusively Islamic phenomenon. Whether religiously observant or driven by other motives, the bombers have been Muslims, regardless of their country of origin. Even Muslims raised and educated in non-Muslim countries (like Britain’s 7/7 bombers) and exposed to cultures without overt jihadi propaganda have put on explosive belts and gone to their deaths in order to kill nonbelievers. Apart from their Islamic roots, these terrorists display a wide range of characteristics. Many have been young men, some of whom were mentally disabled, while others were very bright, some uneducated, others university graduates; a growing number are women, mostly young, some old, some virgins, others pregnant or mothers. Many have belonged to terrorist groups such as Hamas and have been indoctrinated in Islamist thought, anti-Semitism, or general hatred of the West. Others have been volunteers seeking to expiate sins or retrieve the honor of their families.

Yet suicide bombing involves a paradox within Islam. On the one hand, laws relating to jihad unambiguously state that fighters must not take the lives of noncombatants, such as women, children, the sick, or the elderly. At the same time, anyone who dies while fighting non-Muslims is considered a martyr and guaranteed the highest rank in paradise. How do Islamists get round this problem? Some may shut their eyes and get on with it, but others come face to face with the paradox by dividing the problem into bite-size pieces. Clerics sanctify the bombers in their sermons, organizations including Hamas and Islamic Jihad identify and celebrate them as fighters in the jihad, and foreign donors provide aid that is siphoned off to the families of the martyrs.[2]

Whatever the private motivation of the suicide bomber, his or her action is rooted in much broader national, communal or, above all, religious demands, pressures, and desires. These range from religious convictions and edicts to concepts of holy war and martyrdom to conflicts over issues of shame and honor to social constructs of sexuality. Most importantly, the bombings have nothing to do with suicide. Nor are they described as such by those who send the bombers out and those who immolate themselves. To make it easier to understand what modern Islamist suicide bombing is about, we need to examine its historical background, its religious/nationalist role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and its psychological and cultural roots in the Arab and Islamic interpretation of women, sexuality, shame, and honor.

World of the Martyr

In a speech at his headquarters in Ramallah on December 18, 2001, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat proclaimed he was willing to sacrifice seventy martyrs to bring about the death of a single Israeli. [3] His audience replied “Millions of martyrs are already marching to Jerusalem.” They meant suicide bombers, of course. But nobody present used the term, since that is not how Arabic speakers refer to them.

Preeminently, the bombers are referred to as “martyrs” (shuhada’, sing. shahid) or “those who sacrifice themselves” (fida’iyun, sing. fida’i). These men and women—most in their teens and early twenties[4]—”die a martyr’s death” or “blow themselves up” or carry out “martyrdom operations” (‘amaliyat istishhadiya). They do not commit suicide for suicide is a sin.[5] But killing oneself in order to harm non-Muslims is an act of deep piety. This seeming contradiction has been examined by Daniel Pipes. “The Qur’an,” he writes, “does tell Muslims, ‘Do not kill yourselves’ and warns that those who disobey will be ‘cast into the fire.’ The Prophet Muhammad is reported to have said that a suicide cannot go to paradise. Islamic laws oppose the practice.” [6] He then points out that the prohibition against killing oneself has, in fact, been very effective, as is evidenced by the rarity of suicide in Muslim countries. There is, however, another side to this story, in that the same action, when performed as a means of furthering jihad, elevates the individual to the rank of martyr.

There have been such martyrs in Islam almost from the founding of the religion. Whereas Christian and Jewish martyrs without exception passively accepted death for their faith, most Muslim martyrs have given up their lives fighting as combatants in the holy war.[7] Even Sufis, members of the mystical fraternities in Islam, have embarked on jihad as individuals and groups. The warrior monk is a common figure in pre-modern Islam, and jihad scholar Michael Bonner has drawn attention to the important role played in war by religious leaders and scholars as preachers and as fighters.[8]

The figure of the martyr as a holy warrior (mujahid) who dies in battle and goes on to reap a heavenly reward above that of ordinary mortals is of central importance in the earliest period of Islam. Its ideal type is the fighter who engages in an action called inghimas, throwing himself recklessly at the enemy, even if he should be one man against a thousand. Doing this was seen as legitimate because the mujahid was seeking martyrdom and did not need permission from the leader of his army or unit.[9] Its legitimacy, even today, is derived from the fact that Muhammad himself often sent out individual fighters as “military expeditions” in and of themselves.[10] In the modern period, some scholars have argued that there is a close connection between inghimas and suicide bombing: “If, by immersing himself into enemy ranks, a fighter brings about his own death, such self-sacrifice is legally [in terms of Shari'a law] the same as bringing about his own death by his own hand. In this respect there is no legal difference between the direct hand of the self-detonating suicide fighter and the proxy hand of the outnumbered fighter entering the fray alone.”[11] Gibril Haddad, a hard-line Wahhabi sheikh, writes that inghimas “must not be viewed as reckless self-destruction but as the highest valor and courage. More than that, as Abu Ayyub [a companion of Muhammad] indicated with his tafsir [interpretation] of al-Baqara 195 [Qur'an 2:195] before entering the fray at Constantinople and fighting to the death, they viewed inghimas as life itself.”[12]

This again is a clear echo of the Islamist saying that Muslims “love death” whereas non-Muslims love life. This conceit seems to have begun during the great Arab conquests of the seventh century. In 633, just one year after the death of Muhammad, the Muslim general Khalid ibn al-Walid had entered Iraq in the first phase of the conquest of the Iranian Sassanid empire. Writing to Hormuz, the Persian governor of a frontier district, Dast Maysan, Walid proclaimed: “Submit to Islam and be safe. Or agree to the payment of the jizya [tax], and you and your people will be under our protection, else you will have only yourself to blame for the consequences, for I bring the men who desire death as ardently as you desire life.”[13]

It is a long journey from 633 to the modern era, but Walid’s boast still resonates in Islamist circles today. On May 25, 2001, the mufti of Jerusalem and “Palestine,” Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, stated: “We tell [our enemies]: As much as you love life—the Muslim loves death and martyrdom. There is a great difference between him who loves the hereafter and him who loves this world. The Muslim loves death and [strives for] martyrdom.”[14] Sabri is not alone. Hassan Nasrallah, secretary general of Hezbollah, has spoken in similar terms. In 2004, he said: “We have discovered how to hit the Jews where they are the most vulnerable. The Jews love life, so that is what we shall take away from them. We are going to win because they love life, and we love death.”[15] Others have spoken in much the same vein.[16] It is clear that the distinction is always religiously based and that Jewish love of life is transformed from a healthy and spiritual thing to an attitude to be disparaged.

This fixation with death as a state superior to life combines with martyrdom ideation to create the suicide bomber as someone who passes beyond traditional themes of death at the hands of the enemy to bring death to himself and the enemy in a single moment. In this unconventional form of fighting, the bomber no longer respects legal rulings that commit the mujahid to killing only enemy troops but makes death itself the arbiter of who should die or not. The innocent are not innocent; Muslim radicals are on record stating that non-Muslims are, by definition, not innocent.[17] The self-immolation of the martyr makes death universal. Yet the modern martyr is still deeply rooted in traditional typology.

Muhammad’s Sayings and Actions

The Qur’an contains numerous exhortations to violent action[18] and promises a divine reward for those who die fighting in God’s path, but it does not make martyrdom into the religious goal it soon became. It is in the literature of Muhammad’s sayings and doings that warfare and martyrdom are emphasized together.

Both the Hadith—the vast corpus of “eyewitness” statements about what Muhammad did or said, second in holiness only to the Qur’an—and the earliest writings featuring the biography of Muhammad and his companions display a significant concern with fighting. The Hadith compilations invariably have a section entitled “The Book of Jihad,” in which snippets from actual combat with non-Muslims jostle with instructions on how to wage war. The books of biography are originally called Kitab al-Maghazi,[19] the Book of Raids, meaning the raids and battles in which Muhammad was personally involved or which he ordered carried out. In other words, we are in a realm far less abstract than that of the Qur’an, on a landscape in which real men fought in real encounters with real enemies.

This is the world of the martyr, the ever-present battlefield in Muhammad’s lifetime and in the years that followed when Arab armies clashed with their Byzantine, Persian, and other foes across North Africa, the Middle East, and far beyond. The warrior-martyr is born on these battlefields and in the martial deeds of Muhammad, not in the text of the Qur’an. The Qur’an prescribes violence against nonbelievers and sets jihad in motion, providing a context for the holy warrior; but that warrior only becomes flesh when riding out to battle beside Muhammad, and only takes on the mantle of martyrdom in death at the hands of the infidel and in the words of the prophet that confer that status on him and those that come in his train.

We read in the Sahih Muslim, one of the two most sacred texts after the Qur’an, of fighters picking up their swords and wading into battle:

The tradition has been narrated on the authority of ‘Abdullah b. Qais. He heard it from his father who, while facing the enemy, reported that the Messenger of Allah said: Surely, the gates of Paradise are under the shadows of the swords. A man in a shabby condition got up and said; Abu Musa, did you hear the Messenger of Allah say this? He said: Yes. (The narrator said): He returned to his friends and said his farewells. Then he broke the sheath of his sword, threw it away, advanced with his sword towards the enemy and fought with it until he was slain.[20]

This behavior is very different from that of the Norse berserkers,[21] who entered battle in a rage, foaming at the mouth and laying waste everyone in their path. The mujahid in this and other hadith reaches a decision based on confirmation of Muhammad’s promise of paradise. This echoes the cool, almost detached manner with which the modern suicide bomber goes to work. He or she may make a video in advance, in which a reasoned statement of justification and intent is provided for posterity. The sword has become a suicide belt, but the fighter is still a martyr. A famous hadith proclaims that “Paradise lies beneath the shades of swords” (al-Bukhari 4:73). Today, it lies beneath the shades of suicide belts.

Religion in the Jihad against Israel

Suicide bombers from Hamas or Islamic Jihad or the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades cannot be understood as creatures of Palestinian nationalism, as the spawn of the Palestine Liberation Organization or Black September. The religious war against Israel best explains the deep impulses that propel so many young Muslims to choose death for this cause. No other conflict engages international Islamic opinion like this one. “Palestine” has become a rallying cry for Muslims everywhere.

Benny Morris, a historian of the Arab-Israeli conflict, correctly argues that it was religion rather than nationalism that inspired the 1948 invasion of Israel. He considers it a mistake to ignore the religious rhetoric that accompanied the 1948 assault by Arab armies. “The 1948 War, from the Arabs’ perspective,” he writes, “was a war of religion as much as, if not more than, a nationalist war over territory.”[22] The Muslim Brotherhood, the mufti of Egypt, [23] Egypt’s King Farouk, King ‘Abdullah of Transjordan, and many others spoke of a holy war, a jihad against the Jews. It was not a purely nationalist struggle then, nor is it today. The “[violence] did not emerge only from ‘modern’ nationalist passions; it also drew on powerful religious wellsprings. Nothing, it seemed, could mobilize the Palestinian Arab masses for action more readily than Muslim religious rhetoric and symbols.”[24]

Little has changed since the 1940s. With the rise of radical Islam and the expansion of violent recourse, Arab irredentism has continued to have a religious focus, sometimes on “Palestine” and sometimes on the umma, the abstract nation of all Muslims. And it is as Muslims more than as Arabs (or Iranians or Afghans) that today’s leading enemies of Israel view the conflict.

Palestinian violence against Israelis is one of the earliest expressions of Islamic rage against modernity. Its most recent manifestation, Hamas, is, according to its 1988 Covenant, “an Islamic resistance movement.”[25] Hamas is, in fact, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, still one of the leading forces of Islamic radicalism on the planet. Article one of the covenant starts as follows: “The Movement’s program is Islam. From it, it draws its ideas, ways of thinking and understanding of the universe, life and man. It resorts to it for judgment in all its conduct, and it is inspired by it for guidance of its steps.” [26]

Female Suicide Bombers

In hard-line versions of the Islamic faith, unrelated men and women never meet, never so much as exchange glances. Islamic society is patriarchal and, like other patriarchal societies, it diminishes the energies and abilities of its women. Palestinian society links the repression of women to a male need for honor. The “core of gender inequality in [Palestinian] society resides in patriarchal control and repression of female sexuality. … The control of female sexuality maintains male power, privileges and prerogatives. … Control of women is the most important, if not the only, component of the honor code left to men.”[27] Sexuality and the honor code have played a major part in the recruitment of suicide bombers; but it is the emergence of the female bomber that is most intriguing, given that such women represent a challenge to conventional Islamic notions of female inferiority and Arab cultural demands for women to be restricted to their homes or dressed by Islamic standards.

A tiny number of women took part in jihad in the early years of Islam, but this practice seems to have been abandoned by the second generation or so. Nevertheless, some hadith do permit it, and Shari’a law rules that women may engage in jihad when, for example, the Muslim state comes under attack. In recent years, women have volunteered for membership in a range of terrorist outfits from the “black widow” bombers of Chechnya[28] to Kurdish rebels[29] to the “martyrs” of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.[30]

Every suicide attack by women from 1985 to 2000 was motivated by secular goals. Since 2000, however, as Hamas has grown in importance, religiously-motivated female terrorists have carried out more than two-thirds of the suicide attacks by women.[31]

The religious leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, had originally restricted or denied women the right to take part in jihad operations:

In our Palestinian society, there is a flow of women towards jihad and martyrdom, exactly like the young men. But the woman has uniqueness. Islam sets some restrictions for her, and if she goes out to wage Jihad and fight, she must be accompanied by a male chaperon. We have no need for suicide operations by women now because preserving the nation’s survival is more important.[32]

By 2004, however, Yasin had reversed his theological understanding of the matter, and stated: “Exactly when there is an invasion to the holy land, a Muslim woman is permitted to wage jihad and struggle against the enemy … the Prophet would draw lots among the women who wanted to go out with him to make jihad. The Prophet always emphasized the woman’s right to wage jihad.”[33]

Yasin was, in part, motivated by existing notions of honor and shame, according to which a woman who is deemed to have done something shameful (in the sexual sense) may be killed by members of her family in order to expunge that shame.[34] Even though issues of shame and honor may have their roots in communal psychology rather than faith, it is a constant justification of “honor” killings and related crimes that the Qur’an and Shari’a legislation already demand punishments such as flogging or stoning for sexual crimes. At some point it seems to have dawned on Yasin that a dishonored woman might be cleansed of her “wrongdoing” and at the same time be employed as a living bomb capable of passing unsearched through male-controlled checkpoints in order to detonate herself in the midst of as many Jews as possible. According to Mira Tzoreff, a Middle East history specialist at Tel Aviv University:

An intensification of the shahidat [female martyrs] phenomenon is represented by the [2004] suicide of Rim Riashi at the Erez check post, not only as the married mother of two small children, but also because of the sanction she received by Sheikh Ahmad Yassin. Indeed, it was not long before it became clear that Rim Riashi had requested Yassin’s sanction only after her relationship with a lover had … become a known matter. Thus, the act of istishhad [dying as a martyr] was the only way to remove the stain of dishonor from both herself and her family.[35]

How was the “stain of dishonor” manipulated to wear a religious stamp through the expiation of martyrdom?

Shame, Honor, and Martyrdom

Religious idealism cannot fully explain this desperation, this intense craving for a martyr’s death among so many young Palestinians. But without a religious framework, it is highly unlikely that any of these women would seek to kill others through their own deaths. There might be “honor” killings and beatings, and some women would run away from their families, but there would be no suicide bombings. There seems to be an affinity here with two related drives in the Arab psyche that not only puts female suicide bombers into perspective but demonstrates important links between them and their male equivalents. One of these drives is the acute awareness of shame mentioned above, an emotion sharply contrasted with honor. Muslim societies are shame societies. This is noticeable in Arab countries, Pakistan, Bangladesh and several other places where honor resides in the family above all, and, in particular, in the women of the family or, more accurately, their sexual probity.

This is not to say that men do not suffer dishonor, but for them this is projected outwards, towards rivals or enemies and, of course, towards the women and sometimes towards the men they believe have compromised their honor.[36] The honor/shame dichotomy is responsible for the widespread practice of “honor” killings, something found in many parts of the Islamic world from Morocco to Pakistan, and always committed against women. Though these killings form no part of Islamic law and are not exclusive to the Muslim world, the vast majority do take place in Muslim countries where killers are seldom prosecuted.[37] That the Islamic clergy rarely condemn these practices as anti-Islamic provides them with a religious cover. Should a girl become pregnant outside marriage, or a wife commit adultery, or a daughter refuse an arranged marriage or even be seen outdoors with an unrelated boy, it becomes the inescapable duty of her father, husband, brothers, or cousins to kill her in order to restore the family’s honor in the eyes of the local community. According to UNICEF, in 1999 more than two-thirds of all murders in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank were “honor” killings.[38]

By transcending ordinary emotional ties and by putting on a cloak of religiosity, the female suicide bomber sets out to expunge the shame she feels on behalf of family, community, or nation, both by accepting death as a martyr and by inflicting death on others as a holy warrior. The bomber’s victims may be non-Muslims who, by definition, have been “brought low” by Islam yet who persist in their arrogance by asserting equal status with Muslims or who surpass Muslims in one way or another. This humiliates the Muslim community, making it imperative that the non-Muslims be put back in their place or extinguished. In the past, this was done in conventional ways, through imprisonment, flogging, or decapitation. Similar punishments were used on deviant Muslims, apostates, and those who transgressed Shari’a law. But the use of suicide killing as a means of control is less easy to explain.

The idealization of sexual honor and sexual shame carries heavy symbolic weight outside the sphere of family relations. Jehoeda Sofer, author of Sexuality and Eroticism among Males in Moslem Societies, quotes a Palestinian Arab as follows: “If the Arabs would have had war with the Israelis using [their] ***s, we would have defeated them easily. The Israelis are a bunch of feminine males who want to be and should be *** by the Arabs.”[39]

Several years ago, Malise Ruthven, a British authority on Islam, pointed out that much Muslim outrage about The Satanic Verses was expressed in sexual language. Zaki Badawi, the late principal of the Muslim College and a moderate British Muslim, for example, wrote: “What [Rushdie] has written is far worse to Muslims than if he had raped one’s own daughter. … It’s like a knife being dug into you—or being raped yourself.”[40] Ruthven suggests that Rushdie’s crime was to enter the sacral space occupied by the Prophet: “That entry is perceived as a violation, as a kind of rape.”[41]

When first the Christians and later the Jews ventured to turn their status as protected but inferior peoples upside-down, Muslim societies felt shame at their own weakness, at the possibility that the old world had disintegrated, never to return. It is a shame akin to what is felt when a woman “gets above herself” and rejects the “protection” of father, husband, or brother. Beyond that, it is a shame akin to being raped, in this case by Jews and Christians, deemed “women” in relation to “masculine” Islam. In all cases, the only restitution is death.

The suicide bomber enters this sphere of shame like a rapist and in doing so invades sacral territory. The Jews, as protected people, constitute a sphere that should be inviolate to Muslims; instead, the fida’i goes directly into Jewish space and there commits an ultimate act of rape, thereby restoring the masculinity of Muslim people. Even the female martyr, by throwing off her inferiority as a weak-bodied woman and exercising the courage of a man, rapes the Jews she slaughters.

Conclusion

Since the Qur’an commends violence and the Hadith literature is steeped in the blood of martyrs, killing and dying violently are not breaches of the moral code or infringements of divine law. They are, on the contrary, regarded as some of the highest achievements of Islamic spirituality. Asked who was the best of people, Muhammad replied, the “believer who fights in the path of God with his self and his property.”[42] The martyr enjoys double the pleasure of paradise and dwells there in an abode superior to its other denizens.[43]

What can be done about this? For most Western countries, the Israeli option, to build a defensive barrier between us and the homes of the bombers, will not work. We can profile; we can infiltrate; we can discover and share intelligence; we can carry out targeted assassinations of terrorist leaders, trainers, and motivators; we can pinpoint and destroy terrorist training camps. Like the Israeli fence, constant vigilance will reduce the numbers of bombers, sometimes dramatically. But engaging the problem at the grassroots level is clearly more difficult because the phenomenon is so deeply entrenched in the cultures that produce the bombers, in the religious values, the sexual practices, and the shame and honor systems they inculcate. If we are to modify those cultures in a positive way, perhaps we have to introduce sanctions that punish countries dependent on Western aid every time a terrorist or suicide bomber from that country is identified. We have to make suicide bombing an affront to religion and a matter of great dishonor. Set beside a system of rewards for identifiable counterterrorism initiatives, above all, education programs designed to reject religious and social propaganda, this may set in motion new ways of altering the suicide mindset. But until such measures begin to bite and societies prone to this malaise start to shift toward moderation across the board, it is the intelligence and security services who will have to shoulder the burden of defense. There are no quick fixes, but there are long-term goals that we need to plan for now.

Denis MacEoin is editor of the Middle East Quarterly.

[1] “Children in the Service of Terror,” Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch 2455, July 2009.
[2] The New York Times, Mar. 20, 2006.
[3] The Jerusalem Post, Dec. 19, 2001.
[4] Vamik D. Volkan, “Suicide Bombers,” Virginia University, accessed July 17, 2009.
[5] “Committing Suicide Is Not a Way Out,” Islam Online, June 24, 2002.
[6] Daniel Pipes, “The [Suicide] Jihad Menace,” The Jerusalem Post, July 27, 2001.
[7] Michael Bonner, “Martyrdom,” Jihad in Islamic History: Doctrines and Practice (Princeton: Woodstock Publishers, 2006), chap 5.
[8] Ibid., chap. 7.
[9] Sheikh Gibril Fouad Haddad, “Inghimas In ‘Suicide’ Warfare,” citing Mansur al-Buhuti, Kashshaf al-Qina, 2007, p. 1.
[10] Ibid., p. 3.
[11] Ibid., p. 12.
[12] Ibid., pp. 12-3.
[13] Abu Ja’far Muhammad al-Tabari, G. H. A. Juynboll, trans., The History of al-Tabari: The Conquest of Iraq, Southwestern Persia, and Egypt, vol. 2, p. 554.
[14] “The Highest Ranking Palestinian Authority Cleric: In Praise of Martyrdom Operations,” Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch, no. 226, June 11, 2001.
[15] Marvin Hier, Abraham Cooper, and Leo Adler, “Waving the Flag of Hatred,” Calgary (Can.) Herald, Aug. 16, 2006.
[16] Steven Stalinsky, “Dealing in Death,” National Review Online, May 24, 2004.
[17] Daniel Pipes, “Can Infidels Be Innocents?” Daniel Pipes Blog, Aug. 7, 2005.
[18] “What Does the Religion of Peace Teach about … Violence,” accessed July 17, 2009; Bonner, “The Quran and Arabia,” Jihad in Islamic History, chap. 2.
[19] See, for example, Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah, A. Guillaume, trans. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1955); Abu ‘Abd Allah Muhammad “al-Waqidi,” ed., Kitab al-ta’rikh wa ‘l-maghazi (London: Marsden Jones, 1966).
[20] Ibn al-Hajjaj Muslim, Sahih Muslim (Cairo: Dar al-Kitab al-Misri, n.d.), chap. 41, hadith 4681.
[21] Benjamin Blaney, “The Berserker: His Origin and Development in Old Norse Literature,” Ph.D. diss., University of Colorado, 1972.
[22] Benny Morris, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008), p. 394.
[23] Ibid., pp. 394-5.
[24] Ibid., p. 12.
[25] The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Aug. 18, 1988, The Avalon Project at Yale Law School, accessed July 6, 2009.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Cheryl Rubenberg, Palestinian Women: Patriarchy and Resistance in the West Bank (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001), p. 253.
[28] Lorenzo Vidino, “How Chechnya Became a Breeding Ground for Terror,” Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2005, pp. 57-66.
[29] EU-Digest, July 17, 2005.
[30] Debra D. Zedalis, “Female Suicide Bombers,” Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, June 2004; Yoram Schweitzer, “Female Suicide Bombers: Dying for Equality?” Tel Aviv University, Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Memorandum 84, 2006.
[31] Paige Whaley Eager, From Freedom Fighters to Terrorists: Women and Political Violence (Aldershot, U.K. and Burlington: Ashgate, 2008), p. 172.
[32] Maria Alvanou, “Palestinian Women Suicide Bombers: The Interplaying Effects of Islam, Nationalism and Culture,” Strategic Research and Policy Center, National Defense College, Israel Defense Forces, Working Papers Series, paper no. 3, May 2007, pp. 26-7.
[33] Barbara Victor, Army of Roses: Inside the World of Palestinian Women Suicide Bombers (Emmaeus, Pa.: Rodale Press, 2003), p. 113.
[34] James Brandon and Salam Hafez, Crimes of the Community: Honor-based Violence in the UK (London: Centre for Social Cohesion, 2008), p. 41; Phyllis Chesler, “Are Honor Killings Simply Domestic Violence?” Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2009, pp. 61-9.
[35] Mira Tzoreff, “The Palestinian Shahida,” in Schweitzer, Female Suicide Bombers, p. 21.
[36] Daniel Pipes, “‘Honor Killings’ of Muslim Males in the West,” Daniel Pipes Blog, updated July 25, 2009.
[37] “Case Study: ‘Honour Killings’ and Blood Feuds,” Gendercide Watch, accessed July 17, 2009; Chesler, “Are Honor Killings Simply Domestic Violence?“
[38] “UNICEF Executive Director targets violence against women,” Information Newsline, Mar. 7, 2000.
[39] Arno Schmidt and Jehoeda Sofer, eds., Sexuality and Eroticism among Males in Moslem Societies (Binghampton, N.Y.: Haworth Press, 1992), p. 109.
[40] Malise Ruthven, A Satanic Affair: Salman Rushdie and the Rage of Islam (London: The Hogarth Press, 1991), p. 29.
[41] Ibid., p. 31.
[42] Muhammad ibn Isma’il al-Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari (Lahore: Kazi, 1979), hadith 2578; Al-Islam.com, Mawsu’a al-hadith ash-sharif, accessed July 17, 2009.
[43] Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 4, book 52, hadith 48.

Related Topics: Radical Islam, Suicide terrorism |  Denis MacEoin |  Fall 2009 MEQ

Nobel Peace Prize: Barack Obama

That Nobel Peace Prize: Bashes Bush, Handcuffs Obama

By Daniel Pipes

October 9, 2009

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDgzZGQxNjkzNzBkZDBmY2ZkYmVkZDFkMGRlMjFkMjI=

“He won what?” is the universal first reaction.

And second, at least on the Right: “Why did they do that?”

Even the Nobel committee’s citation does not pretend Barack Obama has actually achieved anything. Rather, it was given to him “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” That’s efforts, not achievements.

Reading carefully through the entire citation suggests that Obama is being celebrated for two reasons. Its chatter about “a new climate,” the United Nations, a “vision of a world free from nuclear arms,” and “great climatic challenges” points to his being the anti-George W. Bush.

Second, the prize committee hopes to constrain Obama’s hands vis-à-vis Iran. It lauds him for not using force: “Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts.” This is obviously gibberish: whereas Bush did not use force against North Korea, Obama does not rely on dialogue in Afghanistan. But the statement does pressure Obama not to use force in the theater that counts the most, namely the Iranian nuclear build-up.

So, from the Leftist Norwegian point of view, it’s a twofer – bash Bush and handcuff Obama.

My prediction: The absurdity of the prize decision will harm Obama politically in the United States, contrasting his role as international celebrity with his record devoid of accomplishments. Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, notes that Obama “won’t be receiving any awards from Americans for job creation, fiscal responsibility, or backing up rhetoric with concrete action.” Expert to hear much more along those lines.

African-American Islamist Movement

Black Nationalism Provides Foundation for African-American Islamist Movement

by Brendan Goldman
American Thinker
October 11, 2009

http://www.islamist-watch.org/2412/black-nationalism-provides-foundation-for-african

“America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem,” Malcolm X wrote in 1964 during his pilgrimage to Mecca. Though Malcolm’s anti-white rhetoric was moderated after his conversion from the Nation of Islam (NOI) to orthodox Sunni Islam, his disdain for the West, rooted in extremist black nationalism, remained integral to his Muslim identity.

Malcolm’s words now appear on countless Islamist websites dedicated to finding black, English-speaking converts. The assumption that all African-American Muslims broke their ties with the anti-Western, anti-white, and anti-Semitic worldview of the NOI is a naive one. Though Warith Deen Muhammed, who led the majority of the members of the NOI to Sunni Islam in the mid-1970s, was more interested in alleviating domestic problems like crime and poverty than in creating an Islamic political movement, many of his followers were loath to abandon their radical ideology.

Islamists have harnessed these radicals’ anti-Western black nationalism for their own purpose: establishing an indigenous Islamist movement in the United States that can advocate their political agenda in the foreign and domestic policy spheres. The Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA) and the As-Sabiqun movement are proof that their efforts have not been in vain.

Imam Siraj Wahhaj, the founder of the primarily African-American MANA, is a product of the volatile intersection of black nationalism and politicized Islam. A former member of the NOI, Wahhaj often has been portrayed as a “moderate” by the mainstream media. However, his words speak for themselves: “In time, this so-called democracy will crumble, and there will be nothing, and the only thing that will remain will be Islam,” Wahhaj has predicted.

Imam Abdul Alim Musa of the As-Sabiqun movement is even more overt about his Islamist worldview. As-Sabiqun, founded in the early 1990s, advocates the establishment of an Islamic caliphate in place of America’s democratic system. Though officially a Sunni Muslim, Musa’s views echo those of the NOI.

“Who ran the slave trade?” Musa asks rhetorically. “You’ll study and you will find out: the Jews.” His words suggest the influence of the NOI’s The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, which first outlined this conspiratorial distortion of history.

Another prominent leader of the African-American Islamist movement is Jamil Abdullah al-Amin, the former H. Rap Brown, who is now incarcerated for murder. Like his colleagues, Imam al-Amin has only disdain for his country of origin, saying, “[The main essence of the U.S. Constitution] is diametrically opposed to what Allah has commanded.” At al-Amin’s mosque in Atlanta, attendees sported combat uniforms and long robes, reflecting the influence of both Black Panther-style nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism.

African-American Professor Robert F. Reid-Pharr, in his article “Speaking through Anti-Semitism: The Nation of Islam and the Poetics of Black (Counter) Modernity,” ascribes the susceptibility of African-American Muslims to anti-Western and anti-Semitic rhetoric to their rejection of modernity and capitalism. According to Reid-Pharr, many African-Americans view Western modernity as flawed from its inception because it was built on the foundation of slavery.

This distrust for the modern world is evident in the words of Malcolm X, who said, “Show me a capitalist and I’ll show you a bloodsucker.” Many African-American Muslims have therefore embraced the Islamist agenda as a means to overcome inequalities they see as inherent to the modern Western system.

The irony of this situation is that the argument that politicized Islam inherently improves the position of racial minorities is entirely untenable from both a historical and a modern perspective. Though many Islamist websites make claims like “only … through Islam has this idea ['of racial equality and of human brotherhood'] ever been realized in action,” reality tells a different story.

According to historian Bernard Lewis in his book Race and Slavery in the Middle East, slavery was an established practice in the lands of Islam from the time of Muhammad. The Islamic states later hosted an extensive slave trade network that rivaled that of the Europeans. A look at the modern world is even more telling: in the Arab Islamic states of Mauritania and Sudan, black slavery is still so pervasive that the word “black” in the local Arabic dialect has become synonymous with “slave.”

Mainstream Muslims have begun to realize that Islam is not a cure-all for society’s racial ills. They have subsequently started to address the prejudice of immigrant Muslim groups against African-Americans. For instance, Altaf Husain, a former president of the Muslim Students Association, said at a 2007 MANA conference, “It is a shame that in the 21st century, the problem in the Muslim-American community is the color line.”

However, fringe elements of the African-American Muslim community still identify with Islamist causes, because, from their myopic perspective, it is more important to impose the hijab or combat the “Zionist media” than to address issues like prejudice, drug abuse, or crime. This distorted set of priorities provides a catalyst for African-American Islamists’ disregard for U.S. laws, expressed in numerous violent crimes and terrorist plots. These plots include those most recently against a U.S. military recruiting center in Little Rock, Arkansas, a Jewish community center in Riverdale, New York, and Jewish and U.S. government targets in Los Angeles.

Today, many African-American prisoners are turning to radical Islam. The government has neglected its oversight responsibilities, allowing men like Imam Warith Deen Umar to become influential Islamic chaplains in the prison system. Umar has noted the utility of prisons for terrorist recruitment and made such reassuring statements as, “Even Muslims who say they are against terrorism secretly admire and applaud [the 9/11 hijackers].”

Under the supervision of men like Umar, Saudi-funded programs have introduced the most intolerant Salafi and Wahhabi interpretations of Islam to convicts. These interpretations, claiming that an Islamic caliphate will alleviate racism and societal strife, support the radical doctrines of imams like Wahhaj and Musa over the moderate positions of W.D. Mohammed.

Since abandoning the NOI and turning to orthodox Sunni Islam, most African-American Muslims have mitigated their anti-Western and anti-Semitic ideology. However, the danger of Islamists who seek to take advantage of black nationalism’s legacy of intolerance remains. It is therefore imperative to marginalize fringe Islamist elements of the African-American Muslim community and empower those who seek personal fulfillment, not political dominance, in their Islamic faith.

Brendan Goldman is a senior at New York University, majoring in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies, and an intern at the Middle East Forum.

CAIR’s Inner Workings Exposed

by Daniel Pipes
WorldNetDaily.com
October 15, 2009

http://www.danielpipes.org/7689/cair-inner-workings-exposed

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has, since its founding in 1994, served as the Islamist movement in North America’s most high-profile, belligerent, manipulative, and aggressive agency. From its headquarters in Washington, D.C., CAIR also sets the agenda and tone for the entire Wahhabi lobby.

A substantial body of criticism about CAIR exists, some of by me, but until now, the group’s smash-mouths and extremists have managed to survive all revelations about its record. The publication today [if published on October 15; or "this week" if published subsequently] of Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America (WND Books) may, however, change the equation.

Written by P. David Gaubatz and Paul Sperry, the investigation is based largely on the undercover work of Gaubatz’s son Chris who spent six months as an intern at CAIR’s D.C. headquarters in 2008. In that capacity, he acquired 12,000 pages of documentation and took 300 hours of video.

Chris Gaubatz’s information reveals much that the secretive CAIR wants hidden, including its strategy, finances, membership, and internal disputes, thereby exposing its shady and possibly illegal methods. As the book contains too much new information to summarize in small compass, I shall focus here on one dimension – the organization’s inner workings, where the data shows that CAIR’s claims amount to crude deceptions.

CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad and undercover intern Chris Gaubatz at CAIR’s national headquarters in 2008.

Claim 1: According to Ibrahim Hooper, the organization’s communications director, “CAIR has some 50,000 members.” Fact: An internal memo prepared in June 2007 for a staff meeting reports that the organization had precisely 5,133 members, about one-tenth Hooper’s exaggerated number.

Claim 2: CAIR is a “grass-roots organization” that depends financially on its members. Fact: According to an internal 2002 board meeting report, the organization received $33,000 in dues and $1,071,000 in donations. In other words, under 3 percent of its income derives from membership dues.

Claim 3: CAIR receives “no support from any overseas group or government.” Fact: Gaubatz and Sperry report that 60 percent of CAIR’s income derives from two dozen donors, most of whom live outside the United States. Specifically: $978,000 from the ruler of Dubai in 2002 in exchange for controlling interest in its headquarters property on New Jersey Avenue, a $500,000 gift from Saudi prince al-Waleed bin Talal and $112,000 in 2007 from Saudi prince Abdullah bin Mosa’ad, at least $300,000 from the Saudi-based Organization of the Islamic Conference, $250,000 from the Islamic Development Bank, and at least $17,000 from the American office of the Saudi-based International Islamic Relief Organization.

Claim 4: CAIR is an independent, domestic human rights group “similar to a Muslim NAACP.” Fact: In a desperate search for funding, CAIR has offered its services to forward the commercial interests of foreign firms. This came to light in the aftermath of Dubai Ports World’s failed effort to purchase six U.S. harbors in 2006 due to security fears. In response, CAIR’s chairman traveled to Dubai and suggested to businessmen there: “Do not think about your contributions [to CAIR] as donations. Think about it from the perspective of rate of return. The investment of $50 million will give you billions of dollars in return for fifty years.”

CAIR Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper and Chris Gaubatz work CAIR’s booth at the Islamic Society of North America meeting in Columbus, Ohio, in 2008.

Combining these four facts reveals a CAIR quite unlike its public image. Almost bereft of members and dues, it sustains itself by selling its services to the Saudi and U.A.E. governments by doing their ideological and financial bidding.

This in turn raises the obvious question: should CAIR not be required to register as a foreign agent, with the regulations, scrutiny, and lack of tax-deductible status that the designation implies? Data in Muslim Mafia certainly suggests so.

Looking further ahead, I expect CAIR’s days are numbered. It’s a dirty institution, founded by Islamic terrorists and with many subsequent ties to terrorists. Over the years, it has established a long record of untrustworthiness that includes doctoring a photograph, fabricating anti-Muslim hate crimes, and promoting suspect polling. It has also intimidated critics via libel suits, boasted of ties to a neo-Nazi, and allegedly paid hush money. Eventually, close scrutiny of this outfit will likely lead to its demise.

That’s the good news. Less happy is my expectation that CAIR’s successor will be a more savvy, honest, respectable institution that continues its work of bringing Islamic law to the United States and Canada while avoiding the mistakes and apparent illegalities that render CAIR vulnerable. In that sense, the fight to preserve the Constitution has just begun.

Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

Related Topics: Council on American-Islamic Relations

Islamisation: Da’wa Ads in the West

Da’wa Ads in the West

by Daniel Pipes

I’ve become aware over the years that Islamist groups have taken out advertisements in Western countries to promote Islam (known in Arabic as da’wa). This weblog entry occasionally notes these efforts, their sponsors, texts, and responses.

For starters, the Islamic Circle of North America plans and Siraj Wahhaj, a Brooklyn imam, plan to place ads during the month of Ramadan on 1,000 of the New York City subway system’s roughly 6,200 cars at a a cost of about $48,000. Each ad will feature a black panel on the left and a white panel on the right. The left poses questions such as “Q: Islam?” “Q: Prophet Muhammad?” or “Q: Head Scarf?” and the right replies with “A: You deserve to know, 877-WHY-ISLAM or www.WhyIslam.org.”

In a letter to Metropolitan Transit Authority officials, U.S. Rep. Peter King (Republican of New York) wrote “I have no problem with the ad itself, but I have a very, very real problem with those behind it,” a reference to ICNA and Wahhaj. King described him as “a known Islamic extremist” who would be gaining “credibility and stature” through the bus promotion. King called on the MTA “not to have these ads, not to go forward with them, and I don’t see this as a free speech issue at all.”

 

The “New York Post” front page.

 

The New York Post broke news about the ad yesterday with a screaming front page headline titled “Jihad Train” and an inside article titled “Train-ing Day for Jihadists: Muslim Subway Ads Have Terror Tie-In.” (July 22, 2008)

Sep. 15, 2008 update: Some ten members of the Seattle chapter of the Islamic Circle of North America paid nearly $5,000 to sponsor 6 ads on the outside of Metro buses and about 25 on the inside of them. The text on the outside ads reads: “Q: Islam? A: You deserve to know, 877-WHY-ISLAM or www.WhyIslam.org.” One of the funders, Bilal Aijazi, a software developer, says the ads, which are scheduled to run until November, are meant to stir conversation and steer people toward information on Islam. “We feel often Muslims don’t have a voice. This is just a way to present the community with a source of information about Islam that comes from Muslims themselves.”

A Seattle bus with the pro-Islam ad.

Jan. 15, 2009 update: For the controversy over ads in Broward Country, Florida, proclaiming “ISLAM: The Way of Life of Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad,” see my weblog entry “CAIR claims Abraham, Moses, and Jesus for Islam”

A Ft. Lauderdale bus with an ad claiming Abraham, Moses, and Jesus as Muslims.

 

Feb. 19, 2009 update: A previously unknown group, the Islamic Circle of the Bay Area, has taken out advertising on about 170 “Muni” buses and 10 cable cars in the San Francisco area with a text that states that Islam is “The message of Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad.”

 

A San Francisco cable car with an ad for Islam.

Mar. 4, 2009 update: “Zombie” took pictures of the San Francisco buses, including one that proclaims “ISLAM, Submission to God, 1-877-WhyIslam www.WhyIslam.org.” Zombie notes that there has been “nary a peep of comment or protest about these ubiquitous in-your-face ads” from denizens of what is “famously amongst the most secular and non-religious cities in the nation.”

July 5, 2008San Francisco’s secular residents seem to accept the pro-Islam ads.

http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2008/07/dawa-ads-in-the-west.html

ICNA’s New York City ad.

Insult : Face Criminal Charges

Israelis Insult Muslims, Face Criminal Charges

by Daniel Pipes

In 1997-98, the Israeli government, with Washington’s encouragement, arrested and jailed a young woman, Tatiana Soskin, who put up posters in Hebron that depicted the Muslim prophet, Muhammad, as a pig, A Jerusalem court convicted her of various crimes and sentenced her to two years in prison, plus a one-year suspended sentence. I covered the case at the time in an article, “[Hebron Pig Poster Incident:] How Clinton Adheres to the ‘Rushdie Rules’” but then forgot the topic: that seemed to be that, a one-time incident without consequences over the next decade.

 

 

But now a similar court case is taking place, as a poet goes on trial in Israel, explains Sultan Knish. Gershon (Gregory) Trastman writes for Vesti, a conservative Russian-language newspaper in Israel, and a recent poem by him, with references to Arab demographics as a weapon against Israel, has him in trouble. Here is a rough translation of his poem:

 

 

 

 

Today however in Israel it is
A Nightmare, the number of Arabs passes a Million
And increases without weakness or respite
Look upon them and your vision grows dark
I will tell the Jews without offense
At night they farm and form is filled
By the eclipse of the moonlight’s beam,
The breath of death, what way is found?
The hare, the cat, the locust cannot match
And whether through Ill Luck or Prophecy
We already pave the way to the Tomb of Night
The Tomb of Night, an Arab woman’s womb

 

 

 

 

In addition, Sergei Podrazhansky, the Vesti oped page editor, is on his way to court.

 

 

Comments:

(1) Two such cases suggest the Soskin episode was not aberrant but part of something larger.

(2) Dhimmitude appears to be flourishing in Israel.

 

Feb. 25, 2009 update: The slogan “No Arabs – No terrorism” emerged during the post-September 2000 violence and in 2002 was deemed racist by Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein. Nonetheless, Neria Ofan, 37, had a bumper sticker on his car with the slogan as he drove in 2004 through the West Bank to his residence in Yitzhar. In a February 18 ruling, Judge Shulamit Dotan of the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court found Ofan guilty of incitement to racism. She explained why: the slogan is

tainted with racism because it connects the entire Arab population, without any differentiation among its members, and the execution of heinous terror acts. It thus shows hostility and enmity toward an entire populace, only because of its national-ethnic origin. The slogan also suggests a solution to the “problem” in the form of collective punishment of the Arab population by making it disappear, either by expulsion of by other means, which the reader need only imagine, as long as the country remains “clean” of Arabs.”

Ofan will be sentenced at a later date. He is the second person to be convicted for using the slogan, the first having been David Ha’ivri, who was sentenced to six months of community service for distributing T-shirts with the slogan on them.

Ofen responded by calling the judgment both “a bit illogical” and “a selective enforcement of the law.”

Itamar Ben-Gvir also accused the police and the courts of a double standard: “We see that when the Arabs chant ‘Death to the Jews’ as they did recently in Umm el-Fahm, neither the police nor the State Attorney’s Office do anything.” He also held that “No Arabs – No terrorism” does not amount to a direct call to violence.

Barak Medina, a law professor at Hebrew University agreed, noting that there is no uniform approach in such cases, which are influenced by the public mood and the general political circumstances. He also noted that Israeli law enforcement is more sensitive to remarks directed against a minority.

 

Comment: In contrast, a bumper sticker with “No Muslims – No Terrorism” was for sale in 2003 at a Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., and no one was arrested.

 

Mar. 2, 2009 update: On learning that “a cast member on the Israeli version of the reality show Survivor said he had named one of his shoes Muhammad,” I wonder if jail awaits him. So far, the only reaction I find is that GCC Secretary-General Abdul Rahman Al-Attiyah yesterday, as paraphrased by the Saudi newspaper Arab News, “called on the international community and the United Nations to take immediate measures to stop the defamation of prophets and religions.”

 

 

Related Topics: Dhimmitude, Freethinking & Muslim apostasy, Israel

Related Posts

Further Converts to Terrorism

A CAIR Miscellany

Muslim Hours at Municpal Swimming Pools in the West

 

 

 

Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11

The Looming Tower
Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11

by Lawrence Wright

Wright’s book may be the most important volume written about terrorism since 9/11. Aside from his eloquent writing (a rarity in the genre) and painstaking research, Wright, a staff writer for The New Yorker, brings to life the personalities that have animated the jihadist movement and helps the reader to understand how their ideas have had such violent force.

Wright’s narrative begins with the influential Muslim Brotherhood ideologue Sayyid Qutb, who is introduced as a confused, middle-aged man aboard a ship in 1948 bound for New York, struggling with whether he should cling to his Islamic faith once he reaches America or “indulge those temptations all around me.” Having resolved to adhere strictly to Islam, Qutb responded with disgust to the overt sexuality he found in the United States, seeing even a church dance as lascivious. Though his American travels radicalized Qutb, his most significant experience was imprisonment under Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egyptian regime. Qutb’s prison writings would shape Muslim militants’ thinking, and Wright shows how the harsh prison conditions Qutb suffered at the hands of fellow Muslims shaped his idea of takfir—leading him to conclude that his “jailers had denied God by serving Nasser and his secular state.”

Today Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri are the most recognizable faces of the jihad, and Wright offers a fascinating study of their personal histories. As a teenager, Zawahiri once refused a car ride from the Egyptian vice president; referring to Egypt’s roundup of Islamists in 1954, Zawahiri told his brother, “We don’t want to get this ride from a man who participated in the courts that killed Muslims.” Bin Laden was also pious early in life, though he tried “not to be too much of a prig.” Believing that musical instruments were haram, bin Laden “organized some of his friends into an a cappella singing group,” even recording tunes about jihad.

Just as Wright brings Al-Qaeda’s most influential leaders to life, he also illuminates the U.S. officials charged with thwarting their efforts—men such as the FBI’s John O’Neill, a womanizer who “favored Chivas Regal and water with a twist, along with a fine cigar,” and the CIA’s driven, obsessive Michael Scheuer, whose response when the agency expected him to retire was, “Stick it in your ass.” Personal conflicts, exemplified by the rivalry between O’Neill and Scheuer, would seriously hamper U.S. efforts.

The book culminates with 9/11, which occurred on O’Neill’s second day as the World Trade Center’s head of security. He was one of the approximately 3,000 victims that day. After walking outside in the chaos and calling both of his lovers, O’Neill was last seen alive entering the tunnel to the south tower.

Though Wright makes no policy recommendations, he shows that—contrary to the flawed assertions of some analysts—personalities matter, and a small group of people can profoundly change the course of history. He draws on a wealth of information derived from rare documents and interviews with sources that range from the lowest ranks of the jihadist movement to the highest echelons of U.S. government. His book provides an invaluable tool for understanding Al-Qaeda’s origins and evolution.

 

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006. 469 pp. $27.95 ($15.95, paper).

Reviewed by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross
Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Middle East Quarterly
Winter 2009
http://www.meforum.org/2080/the-looming-tower

PAKISTANI GUNMEN HAVE ASSAULTED SRILANKAN CRICKETERS

 

 

SHAME PAKISTAN! DENYING AND DIPLOMACY IS NOT THE ANSWER

 

Gunmen have attacked a bus carrying the Sri Lankan cricket team on its way to play in the Pakistani city of Lahore.

 

6 Sri Lankan cricketers were reported injured including wicketkeeper batsman Kumar Sangakkara, Tilan Samaraweer and Ajantha Mendis in a shootout at Lahore in Pakistan this morning (March 3).The visiting Sri Lankan cricketers were on their way to the Gaddafi international stadium minutes before the commence 3rd day’s of play of the second test between Pakistan and Sri Lanka. 

 

INJURED PLAYERS

Thilan Samaraweera (hospital)

Tharanga Paranavitana (hospital)

Mahela Jayawardene

Kumar Sangakkara

Ajantha Mendis

Suranga Lakmal

Chaminda Vaas

Assistant coach Paul Farbrace

 

 

Reports suggest 12 gunmen ambushed the team coach and its accompanying police detail on the Liberty Square roundabout in the heart of Lahore, as the convoy was on the way to the Gaddafi stadium for a Test match.

 

According to available information, gunmen who had arrived in a white car had opened indiscriminate small arms and RPG grenade attacks at the  bus and the escort vehicles that was transferring the Sri Lankan cricketers to the stadium. 

Security fears

Islamist insurgents who have staged high-profile attacks on civilian targets before are out of control, they are threat to all nation.

 

Pakistani terrorists had a plan to kidnap all players and keep hostage for their big benefit and demand. The lawless country is run by corrupted leaders have become a safe haven for terrorist organization. They attacked India time and again. And Pakistan has supported.

Eight people including five policemen were killed in the shoot out.

Sri Lankan tour has been called off after the attack. Intense trade of fire occurred between police and unknown attackers. CCPO Lahore Habibur Rehman said there were 12 attackers carrying rocket launchers; hand grenade, Kalashnikovs and Mousers who reportedly reached the site in rickshaws.

 

 

 

 

In a coordinated attack, the assailants ambushed the convoy carrying the squad and match officials at a traffic circle 100 yards (meters) from the main sports stadium in the eastern city of Lahore, triggering a 15-minute gunbattle with police guarding the vehicles.

None of the attackers was killed or captured at the scene, city police chief Haji Habibur Rehman said. Authorities did not speculate on the identities of the attackers or their motives.

The attack reinforced perceptions that nuclear-armed Pakistan is veering out of control under militant attack and will end hopes of international cricket teams — or any sports teams — playing in the country for months, if not years. Even before the incident, most cricket teams choose not to tour the country because of security concerns.

 

 

Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Sherry Rehman told

Attack on Sri Lankan team is an attempt to spoil Pak reputation . In an exclusive chat with Geo News, Sherry said president and prime minister have strongly denounced the attack and prime minister has ordered immediate enquiry of the incident and a report would be compiled soon.

She said security forces took the control of the area and there is no need to be panic. Foolproof security arrangements were made for the team. Governor Punjab Salman Taseer was also reached the scene soon after the attack.

 The TV news says the way the Pakistan authority is investigating the location and used arms it is apparent that they are destroying the evidence of crime.  Without wearing gloves and precaution measure they are handling   arms , used articles and everything  arbitrarily in the crime location. This evidence show Pakistan authority will not arrest and book the perpetrators to justice. 

 

Some interesting fact:

Pakistan is the center or link of most terror activities in the past  occured in South Asia , Middle East even in America and Europe .

Most terrorism done by Taliban, Al-quida, Laskar-e-Taiba etc. and ISI linked

Most terrorists are Muslim and their faith is Islam.

Most Muslim countries have some terrorism support, they say jehad or sharia law.

Most Muslim are religious they think  Koran is their only book of knowledge, so they don’t care for education and knowledge. But they are jealous of western lifestyle and well-off condition.

The most places Muslim dominate turn into hell, they ruin the economy, they ruin political stability, they ruin education and science ,freedom, freedom of expression, civilization, human rights etc.

Most Muslim try to turn a country into an Islamic country whenever they get majority.

Most Muslim show religious and bigot when others show secular and tolerant.

Pakistan and other Muslim countries speak a lot lies they call it a diplomacy.

 

 

 

 Drawing attention and sympathy  from International community Pakistan made it a regular practice . Every time it promises to curb terrorism and welfare of Pakistanis, as soon as the resource reaches them they use the money/resources  via ISI for terrorism and islamisation, because they believe They can have a share in Kashmir in the pretext of Azad Kashmir.

International community knows well India and Pakistan was created out of British India. And princely state Kashmir has legally and willfully has joined India. Pakistan has to free the part of Kashmir they illegally occupied.  They think only proxy war by terrorist outfit can materialize their unborn dream.

It has been noticed the more civilized nation want to avoid war and pamper  Muslim, the more Muslim countries think they are expanding and winning. It should be checked.

 

Are UN, International Communities and US so fool that for last sixty years a country become so fragile and weak it is ruled sometimes by civilian Government and some time  by military dictator it is always demanding money and resources and promising all false.

 

The Indian government, which had ordered its players to steer clear of Pakistan, said the incident proved Islamabad was doing nothing to combat known militant networks.

‘It reminds us it is the responsibility of the incumbent government to take all precautions and all steps, particularly when the international community wants member countries to take certain positive steps to fight against terrorism,’ Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee told reporters.

India’s Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma said the attack underscored ‘the enormity of the threat’ emerging from Pakistan, while India’s governing Congress party branded Pakistan ‘the epicentre and fountainhead of terror.’

‘Every country in the world must unite against this scourge by isolating the country and demanding immediate concrete results,’ Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi said.

 

After joining the so-called “war on terror” following the attacks on the United States in September 2001, Pakistan saw a significant rise in attacks by tribal movements and groups linked to the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

The security forces have borne much of the brunt of the violence but hundreds of civilians have also been killed.

PAKISTAN CRICKET TIMELINE

Sept 2001: New Zealand pull out of Pakistan tour following US military action in Afghanistan after 9/11 attacks; West Indies and Australia move games to neutral venues.

 

May 2002: New Zealand cancel tour of Pakistan after explosion outside team’s Karachi hotel

2007

July 10: More than 100 people are killed as Pakistani security forces storm the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) and a neighbouring religious school in Islamabad. The military operation came at the end of a long siege prompted by students seizing a number of police officers.

The crackdown at the mosque followed an anti-vice campaign by administrators in which students harassed music and video shop owners and abducted a number of women accused of being prostitutes.

The bloody end to the siege undermined the reputation of the security forces and led to an upsurge in attacks.

July 14: At least 23 paramilitary troops die and 27 others are wounded when a suicide bomber rams an explosives-packed car into their convoy in the town of Miranshah in North Waziristan region near the border with Afghanistan.

July 15: Another 49 people are killed and hundreds injured in a suicide attack and a number of car bombings across the North West Frontier Province in an apparent retaliation for the Lal Masjid operation.

More than half the deaths came in a suicide attack on the Dera Ismail Khan police recruitment centre.

July 27: A suspected suicide bomber kills at least 13 people at the Muzaffar hotel in Aabpara, Islamabad, after hundreds of stone-throwing protesters clash with police as the Lal Masjid reopened.

About 140 people in total lose their lives to suicide attacks in the month following the mosque raid.

 

Two suicide blasts in Rawalpindi injured at least 66 people [EPA]

September 4: At least 25 people are killed and 66 injured in two suicide bomb blasts in high security areas of Rawalpindi during morning rush hour.

The first blast took place near Qasim Market where a defence ministry bus carrying about 38 civilians and uniformed officials was hit, killing 18 people.

Five minutes later, a second blast took place behind the military’s general headquarters killing seven people.

October 18: The convoy of Benazir Bhutto, a former prime minister and leader of the opposition Pakistan People’s Party, is attacked by a suicide bomber shortly after she returns from self-imposed exile.

Bhutto survives the blast in Karachi, but about 140 people are killed and more than 450 injured.

October 30: A police checkpoint in the high security zone of Rawalpindi, less than one kilometre from Musharraf’s camp office, is hit by a suicide bomber killing seven people, three of them policemen, and injuring 31 others.

November 24: Thirty people are killed in two suicide attacks in Rawalpindi.

In the first incident, a suicide bomber crashed his car into a bus carrying Inter-Services Intelligence officials to work, killing 28 officials and a bystander.2008

January 10: A suicide bomber walks up to police officers outside the high court in Lahore and detonates his explosives. Nineteen people die, including 16 police and three passers-by.

In the second attack another suicide bomber attempted to enter the General Headquarters (GHQ), blowing himself up when he is asked to identify himself.

December 21: A suicide bomb blast targeting Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao, head of Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party, kills at least 57 people and injures more than 100 at Jamia Masjid Sherpao, in Charsadda District.

December 27: Bhutto is killed in a second suicide bombing after a rally in Rawalpindi. More than 20 other people are also killed in the blast.

Another 47 people die in riots following the attack as protesters blame Musharraf’s government for failing to provide adequate security for the opposition leader.

 

An explosion at an election rally in Charsaddain northwestern Pakistan leaves at least 25 people dead. The attack is believed to be targeting members of the secular ANP party, the leader of which was assassinated two days earlier. 

February 9: An explosion at an election rally in Charsaddain northwestern Pakistan leaves at least 25 people dead. The attack is believed to be targeting members of the secular ANP party, the leader of which was assassinated two days earlier.

February 18: Aaj TV reports that at least 24 people are killed and nearly 200 injured in election-related violence.

February 29: About 38 people are killed and 75 injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up in Mingora in Swat District  during the funeral of a senior police officer who had been killed just hours earlier. 

March 2: At least 40 people die when a suicide bomber attacks a traditional tribal meeting in the Darra Adam Kheil region, near the city of Peshawar.

March 11: Twin suicide car bomb strikes in Lahore kill 24 people, most of them in an attack on a government security office in the eastern city.

March 15: A bomb is thrown over the wall of an Italian restaurant in Islamabad, a favourite hangout for foreigners.

A Turkish woman is killed and several others, including four FBI agents, are hurt.

 

The Marriott blast was said to have the ‘hallmarks’ of an al-Qaeda attack [AFP]

May 18: A bomb attack on the Army’s Punjab Regimental Centre market in the city of Mardan kills at least 13 people, including four soldiers.

This was the second attack in Mardan, a month after a car bomb on April 25 killed three and injured 26 people.

June 2: A suicide bomber blows up a car outside the Danish embassy in Islamabad killing at least six people and wounding about 20.

A message purporting to be from al-Qaeda claims responsibility for the blast and suggests it was a response to the re-publication of cartoons portraying the Prophet Muhammad.

July 6: A suspected suicide blast targets police officers deployed to provide security for a rallly marking the one-year anniversary of the Lal Msjid siege.

August 21: At least 59 people are killed by two suicide bombings as they arrive for work at an arms factory in the town of Wah, 30km west of Islamabad.

The Pakistani Taliban claim the attack which takes place just days after Pervez Musharraf steps down as president.

September 3: Snipers fire at Prime Minister Gilani’s motorcade in a failed assassination attempt.

September 20: Over 50 people killed and hundreds injured in suicide bombing at Islamabad’s Marriott hotel. The Taliban denied a role in the blast, but US intelligence said the attack had the “hallmarks” of an al-Qaeda operation.

November 2: At least eight Pakistani soldiers killed in suicide attack in South Waziristan, close to Afghan border, hours before arrival in Pakistan of David Petraeus, the head of US Central Command.

December 5: A car bomb kills 20 people and injures at least 45 others in Peshawar. The attack destroyed a hotel, a mosque and set fire to several shops.

Police officials said that chemicals intented to spread the fire were contained in the bomb.

December 28: At least 30 people are killed in a suicide car bomb blast at a polling station near Buner, a town in the North West Frontier Province during a by-election for a provincial assembly.

2009

February 5: At least 24 people are killed and 50 others injured in a suspected suicide bombing near a Shia mosque in Dera Ghazi Khan, a town in central Pakistan.

February 20: At least 30 people killed and more than 60 others wounded in a suicide bomb attack on a funeral procession in the city of Dera Ismail Khan in North West Frontier Province.

March 3: At least five policemen killed and six members of the Sri Lankan cricket team injured in attack in eastern city of Lahore.

Bring architects of 26/11 attacks to justice: India tells Pak.

 

 

 

The leaders and officials of Pakistan,  and most Pakistani news media are liars. Since Mumbai attacks 26/11/08 they have proven their potentiality in lying. Perhaps no islamic country can claim to become a liar like Pakistan. It is very good sign for the people of Pakistan that they have chosen the right leaders to take them hell.

 

Since the formation of Pakistan, most leaders were either corrupted or misfit. They have ruined this country. This is a document and history that its leaders were toppled time and again by the military coup. It has taken loan from countries never repay. Its leaders beg and show ungratefulness to their donors.

 

They think lying can make them winners. So, most news media cater false news to their buyers and try to keep common people in dark. From the very beginning of Mumbai attack they are denying their involvement – the militants, their military, ISI and the part of the government. India accuses they deny. When International community – Europe and America kicked on their rear they admitted.  The outer appearance  is very smart with charity and voluntary services and inside all are rogues looting the funds meant for poor. Jamat ud dawa is an example. It’s a slap when UN security council accuse them and enlist as terrorist and criminals.

 

Recently, Their foreign minister Mr Qureshi went to fool Obama, he wanted obama to handover the drone technology to fight Taliban and terrorists. America refused flatly, actually it’s a ploy to own the technology and hit back again America through ISI and terrorists outfits.  Pakistani democracy is good for under cover terrorists and religious fanatics.

WASHINGTON : The Obama administration has rejected Pakistan’s plea that the US end its drone operations in the badlands in its lawless frontier  region, much less let Islamabad in on the action as a participant or give it predator technology to go after terrorist targets by itself.http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/US-ignores-Paks-plea-to-end-drone-attacks/articleshow/4198020.cms

The drone issue figured prominently in talks between Pakistan’s top political and military establishment this week, but Washington has decisively dismissed any change in policy despite Islamabad’s complaints about its diminishing credibility because of “collateral damage” from predator attacks in the Frontier region.

 

 

 India’s wound will not heal so easily. Indian people are not as mean as Pakistan. So it will wait till it thinks the befitting punishment have been inflicted on Pakistan.

So, never India will think to walk side by side as neighbour.

 

 The Pakistani news agency says its buyers Foreign secretaries of Pakistan and India will hold bilateral talks on the margins of the Saarc standing committee meeting in Colombo on Wednesday in a bid to break the ice between the two estranged neighbours, well-placed diplomatic sources in Islamabad and New Delhi have confirmed. http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=164357

Bring architects of 26/11 attacks to justice: India tells Pak.

We do not doubt the sincerity of the civilian government in Pakistan but a lot needs to be done.”

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?sectionName=Cricket&id=c65443d0-5ee8-42d1-9792-9385d71a7ebe&Headline=Bring+architects+of+26%2f11+attacks+to+justice%3a+India+tells+Pak

 

 

 

http://counterterrorismblog.org/2008/11/jamatuddawa_let_political_wing.php

http://www.ustreas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/sdn/sdnew06.pdf

Jamaat ud Dawa (JuD) is a wahhabi organisation, which was founded in Lahore, Pakistan in 1985. At the time of its inception, the organisation was called Markaz Daw’a wal Irshad. It changed its name after the US declared Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) a terrorist organisation, and consequent ban imposed by the Pakistani government. Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, who was an Islamic Studies professor at the University of Engineering and Technology in Lahore and founder of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, is the leader of the outfit.

In April 2006, the US State Department announced the inclusion of Jamaat-ud-Dawa to the Specially Designated Global Terrorist Designation (SDGT).
http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/mumbaiterrorstrike/Story.aspx?ID=NEWEN20080076123&type=News

The United Nations Security Council has added Pakistan-based terrorist group and four of its leaders to the list of entities and organizations known to support al Qaeda and the Taliban. The declaration came the same day that Pakistani officials said they would act against the Jamaat-ud-Dawa if the United Nations declared it a terrorist group as part of Resolution 1267, which also known as the al Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee.

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/12/un_declares_jamaatud.php

 Pakistan talks more rhetoric  never honours its words, it has lost credibility and credentials.

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/001200902270933.htm

Obama advised to avoid falling into ‘Kashmir trap’

A leading South Asia expert, Lisa Curtis, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank said: “Washington should avoid falling into the trap of trying to directly mediate on the Indo-Pakistani dispute over Kashmir.”

The US should instead encourage the two sides to resume bilateral talks that had made substantial progress from 2004 to 2007, Curtis said suggesting “recent assertions that the US should try to help resolve the Kashmir issue so that Pakistan can focus on reining in militancy on its Afghan border is misguided.”

 

 

 

 

 

NATO expressed concern after Pakistan signed a pact

BRUSSELS, NATO’s chief, Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said on Thursday that Militants fighting NATO forces in Afghanistan are also trying to destabilize Pakistan. “We should increase military-to-military engagement in Pakistan and deepen the political dialogue,” “I can say again that I believe the Pakistani government is serious about fighting extremism. What we need in NATO is to stop seeing Afghanistan in isolation and to start seeing it in a more regional approach.”

“That is why we deepen our cooperation with Pakistan because the same people are trying to destabilize the situation in Afghanistan and in Pakistan,” Scheffer added.
NATO expressed concern after Pakistan signed a pact with Islamists to introduce Islamic law in the northwestern Swat valley in an effort to take the steam out of a Taliban uprising there.
http://www.thenews.com.pk/updates.asp?id=69048

The problem, insurgency, militancy, fanaticism, and terrorism etc. all hostile elements of mankind.. I don’t see will reduce unless they realize the outer world and the freedom of human soul. The people in Middle East, Africa and Part of south Asia and where Islam has domain are mostly, maybe three fourth are ignorant, illiterate. They have no idea at all what life means and how to achieve it. From the very beginning religious leaders who see Islam as a means of military warfare and are greedy to find them as supreme power had made common people bereaved of knowledge and information. They have succeeded in doing so. They know how to use people as grass grazing lamb. They want them keep in dark and a ready human tool to be used.

 

One can see easily the mullahs are on their own indigenous way to spread Islam and they believe the only easiest way to reach their goal is making population, and grip the majority, wherever they live. They don’t follow family Planning or birth-rate-control, (you would find Muslim population growth is faster than any others, and in India also) everywhere in lower income group and upper income group their children are many. In lower income group they are not bothered also how their children will live. (to them Allah will feed, or they can earn and live how they can, no matter through trade and shedding labour). They are not bothered about the quality of living standard. The more number they produce the more number seeds of Islam are spread beyond their nation. At present Islam is superseding Christian population in this planet. Now westerners are fighting against Islamic fanaticism and terrorism, when Muslim majority will supersede there will not be left any chance to fight at all.  As soon as they will get majority they turn a country into an Islamic state. They are bold enough to apply Shariat law and other Islamic doctrines. Islam is a big threat to this age and non-islamic people. It has gone out of proportion to curb and control.

And grave problem is the Muslims are not taking it for granted that Islam is a threat to their future and dream also. And it is never possible to scale the danger that Talibans are posing.

 

Suppose this planet turns 100% Islam what the benefit Islam will give?  Will all Muslim be happy? No stealing , no adultery, No disquiet? No commotion? The contents what they preach. At present many countries are Islamic. They follow rules of Islam. Do they think they are happy?  Do Islamic jakat  and material contribution feed the Muslim  in dire basic need?

If you say ‘yes’, Muslims are happy in Islamic countries, and there are no stealing, deception, robbery, adultery, etc. what are mullahs content of preaching, than you are lying and evil.

 

The Muslims have seen the freedom and well-off position of European and American people. Every Muslim dream it. They ape their language, life style. Their freedom; They feel  jealous. They want to hijack it, destroy it by any means, by hook or crook.

 

It is not so easy! If you are not worthy and deserved for any position you can not keep it maintained far from improving. American and Europeans were not given readily their better position over a day and night, they have earned it by their reason of justification, knowledge and information throughout many generations. They were not stuck in religious scriptures. They had to come out breaking their fence of old, age worn religious scriptures and laws. They are not out to Christianize the whole world.  And other religious leaders also are not after the hype to convert the whole world and start a barbaric religious order that is thousand years old.

Look at the Islamic countries in comparison with western countries.  Violence, bloodshed and human killings are constant picture or phenomena in Middle East, Africa and south Asia where Islam dominates. Standard of living also worst of its nature. They live on the money of westerners and still they show their hatred towards westerners, such bigot and ungrateful.

Unless Muslims are not properly educated, abandon their religious obsession and do not deserve for better off position they will never improve their life. They will remain in misery. And this kind of misery or standard life is a threat to all who live among them and around them.

 

Pakistani Muslims are gradeing talibans  good, bad and worst. But Poison is poison, its actions are not acceptable. The people of Swat demands the imposition of sharia. They say that the peaceful and progressive people of Swat want to live under a Taliban interpretation of sharia – one that runs on terror, deprives girls of education and women of dignity, does public executions without trials, blows up schools and takes away livelihoods of the people.

By this scenario the civilized people understands the mentality of Muslim in that region how farthest level lowered.

 

Some thing we miss in understanding and realizing when we remain in contact with our close relatives. When one changes to be a criminal in work and deed day by day, Perhaps we deny to notice or think trivia and unimportant. Finally when we find him or her involved in worst crime on then we just regret. The same situation is with Islam. Muslims are in denial mood and though everyday almost Pakistan is bleeding by their own created monster still they are under such impression and influence that Taliban is not danger to them.   And they will never learn lessons till it becomes whole Taliban country.

This pact of peace treaty maybe a diabolic conspiracy against India, and USA covertly helping them.  Their (Taliban and covertly Pakistan) aim is Kashmir, They think it is possible to influence Kashmiris and thus the head of India would be theirs. And this is the way Islamists are spreading and occupying lands. The legal analysis say princely state  is been included in Indian sovereignty through legal process and channel. India should reoccupy PoK  and close this chapter. India is not  an unstable country with terrorist elements. Westerners  have been watching it and so, taking advantage out of it in Middle East and South Asia. First it was Afghanistan now it is Pakistan. They do it by money and creating a fight among neighbours.  So, tension will not reduce rather ignite a more gruesome war and killings. Rational Muslims should rethink about what is going on  and save their back