Dr. Mohammad Bin Abdulkarim Al-Issa, Secretary General of Muslim World League, has been one of the most outstanding Muslim leaders; he has recognized the brutality of the Holocaust and criticized any denial of it.
„Mossad-ul este ca gâdele oficial sau ca medicul din Camera Morţii care administrează injecţia letală. Acţiunile voastre sunt toate aprobate de Statul Israel. Când ucideţi, voi nu violaţi legea. Voi executaţi o sentinţă aprobată de primul ministru în exerciţiu.” Meir Amit (Director General al Mossad 1963-1968)
U.S. President Donald Trump’s unexpected decision to pull U.S. troops from Syria (and Afghanistan) was music to Turkish ears. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called it “the clearest and most encouraging statement” from Washington.
Foreign Minister Mevlüt Cavuşoğlu welcomed Trump’s abrupt decision to withdraw all 2,000 U.S. troops from northern Syria. Defense Minister Hulusi Akar vowed that that Syrian Kurdish fighters whom Turkey considers as top regional security threat, would soon be “buried in the trenches that they dig.”
When Turkey first applied for full membership in the European Union in 1987, the world was an entirely different place — even the rich club had a different name: the European Economic Community. U.S. President Ronald Reagan had undergone minor surgery; British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had been re-elected for a third term; Macau and Hong Kong were, respectively, Portuguese and British territory; the Berlin Wall was up and running; the demonstrations at the Tiananmen Square were a couple of years away; the Iran-Contra affair was in the headlines; the First Intifada had just begun; and what are today Czech Republic and Slovakia were Czechoslovakia.
The Palestinians’ major ruling groups, Fatah and Hamas, are now saying they are done with each other: that the divorce is final.
Recent days and weeks have witnessed the two groups maligning each other beyond anything previously seen. Fatah and Hamas have reached a new level of mutual loathing. At times, it even seems as if Fatah and Hamas hate each other more than they hate Israel.
At a recent conference in Cologne on the future of Europe’s Muslims, Ali Erbaş, the head of Turkey’s state religious authority, the Diyanet, railed against what he called the “increase in anti-Islamic discourse and actions… [that] threaten European multiculturalism.”
In his keynote address to the conference, hosted by Turkey’s main Islamic body in Germany, DITIB — based in the Cologne Central Mosque, which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan inaugurated during a visit to Germany in September — Erbaş declared:
Pour raconter son histoire, Fayçal prend ses précautions. Il n’accepte de parler qu’en-dehors de son quartier, dans un café discret. Le jeune homme n’a pas encore 30 ans. De forte corpulence, il a un visage doux et arbore un sourire gêné. Méfiant, il regarde constamment autour de lui. Après avoir passé plus d’un an en Syrie, il est retourné chez ses parents. Depuis, il ne sort presque plus de chez lui et se sent surveillé en permanence.
Né au sein d’une famille assez aisée de la classe moyenne, Fayçal grandit dans un quartier populaire. Employé dans l’entreprise de ses parents, il est indépendant financièrement et a une vie stable.
Après la révolution, son “entourage” qu’il juge conservateur, l’incite à se tourner vers la religion. Il se met à fréquenter la mosquée du quartier et assiste aux “dourous”, des cours de théologie prodigués par l’imam. Comme dans les médias ou sur les réseaux sociaux, le conflit syrien y est constamment abordé et Fayçal commence à s’y intéresser. “Des femmes, des enfants massacrés, c’est impossible de rester insensible”, se souvient-il. “Beaucoup de jeunes sont partis, persuadés de devoir aider leurs frères sunnites”.
The Syrian jihad presented invaluable opportunities for
al-Qa`ida to establish what it had always sought: a popular,
broadly representative jihadi resistance movement
that could support the creation of an Islamic government
presiding over an expanse of important territory. Jabhat
al-Nusra assumed the mantle of responsibility in seeking
to achieve this grand goal. And it did remarkably well, up
to a point. As conflict dynamics evolved, however, the goal
of transforming into a mass movement with social and political
He was a dreamer, with Che Guevara looks — a jet-black beard and eyes — who built a new persona online, as a Muslim warrior riding into battle in the back of an open-bed truck, dressed in black, his long hair blowing in the breeze, with an AK-47 hanging from his shoulder, strapped to his back. He had just turned 22 — the product of British private schools, a computer aficionado working in customer service at Sky News — when he decided to turn his dream into reality.
On October 24, The Soufan Center and The Global Strategy Network released the collaborative report “Beyond the Caliphate: Foreign Fighters and the Threat of Returnees” on the global threat posed by Islamic State foreign fighters returning from Iraq and Syria. According to the report, at least 5,600 men, women and children from 33 countries have already returned home. Returnees have varying reasons for going home, but all represent a major security concern for countries of origin, residence, and even third-countries. Globally, states have yet to find adequate ways to address the threat of returnees, the report says. Women and children represent a more difficult subset for states.
The Beyond the Caliphate report also draws on a manual, Responses to returnees: Foreign terrorist fighters and their families, issued by the Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN) in July 2017. The manual outlines practical responses for states to address foreign fighters and their families returning from conflict zones in Iraq and Syria. The following are excerpts from both the reports.