Revolution Muslim Shifting from Ideological to Operational

IPT News
November 2, 2010

Followers of the outspoken groups Revolution Muslim and the Islamic Thinkers Society are moving from ideology to violent action, a review of recent terror indictments by the Investigative Project on Terrorism shows.

U.S. counter terror agencies have traditionally paid little attention to those groups, presumably because they represent a safe and legal outlet for the frustrations of young, aspiring Jihadists. Similarly, Islamist groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) have minimized the danger of these individuals. CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper wrote off the RevolutionMuslim.com site as "an extreme fringe group that has absolutely no credibility within the Muslim community." "In fact, most Muslims suspect they were set up only to make Muslims look bad," Hooper added. "We just have very deep suspicions. They say such outrageous, irresponsible things that it almost seems like they're doing it to smear Islam." But the new indictments show that some overzealous participants in the groups are increasing their radical activity, resulting in the groups' heightened threat. Their influence is growing.
The case of Abdel Hameed Shehadeh is the most recent example. Shehadeh was arrested Oct. 26 in Hawaii on charges of lying about why he traveled to Pakistan and his attempts to join the Taliban. Shehadeh, who operated three websites hosting extremist material and Al-Qaeda videos, enjoyed a close relationship with Revolution Muslim.
According to the criminal complaint, a June 28, 2008 visit by a federal agent to one of these websites revealed a blog post "introducing www.civiljihad.com to the Revolution Muslim online community."
"It is time for the Muslims to start practicing our freedom of speech… My brothers of revolution islam [Revolution Muslim], I am with you as long as you keep struggling. Trust me there are many brothers and sisters in America that are ready to speak up. They just need a push," Shehadeh posted on his site. By August 03, 2008, www.civiljihad.com simply became a redirecting website, automatically sending viewers to Revolution Muslim's homepage.
Organizations like Revolution Muslim have been the "push" that many of these individuals needed to organize and act. These groups share a common belief in spreading their understanding of Islam through Da'wah [proselytizing]. They also promote a common narrative of a "War on Islam," and an identification with foreign terrorist organizations aimed at bringing down the West.
RM functions as one of the most visible English-language websites and organizations promoting al-Qaida's call to jihad. In addition to promoting the literature and videos of individuals like senior terrorist ideologue Anwar al-Awlaki, RM leaders have personally participated in all levels of the radicalization process, from identifying targets to providing advice about bombings.
For example, RM founder Yousef al-Khattab sparked heightened security at prominent Jewish sites by identifying them as sources of funding, spiritual guidance and material for Israel's January 2009 attack on Gaza. He also taunted law enforcement in his threat, noting that, "And Wallahi [really], New York City Police Department, CIA, and FBI, you can put me in jail for the rest of my life. As long as I got that information out there to people about what to do, I did something." The following picture on RM's website was linked to his threat.
An earlier posting featured a Jewish prayer book covered in what appears to be blood. Likewise, a posting concerning the Times Square Bomber stated, "I think people should be more careful when they plan operations. Try fertilizer, not firecrackers, Insha'Allah [Allah willing]."
Revolution Muslim has also been a stopover point for identification with larger terrorist groups like Hamas and al-Qaida, or an ideological breeding ground for homegrown jihadist sentiment. By giving would-be warriors a centralized place to review and discuss violent speeches by clerics such as Abdullah al-Faisal, RM gathers isolated individuals on varying levels of the radicalization process. It gives them "a push" to identify with the most violent extremes of Islamist theology and feeds the narrative that Muslims everywhere are the victim of a "War on Islam."
RM's efforts have registered with susceptible individuals, including Abdul Hameed Shehadeh, former RM leading member Zachary Chesser, and a host of other attempted terrorists.
Chesser, aka Abu Talhah al-Amreekee, recently pled guilty in Alexandria, VA federal court to providing material support to Al-Shabaab, an al-Qaida-affiliated terrorist organization. Chesser also echoed calls by Awlaki aimed at inciting violence against cartoonists for the animated show "South Park" and a journalist who initiated the "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day." In addition, he provided the personal information of several individuals involved with "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day" on a jihadist forum. Other accused or convicted terrorists with noted Revolution Muslim ties include Colleen LaRose, Bryant Neal Vinas, Tarek Mehanna and Daniel Maldonado. Even Samir Khan, the suspected editor of Al-Qaeda's English magazine and the author of its second edition article, "I am proud to be a Traitor to America," gradually moved from the organization's circles to al-Qaeda.
RM is not alone in its connections to individuals who have carried out acts of terror. The Islamic Thinkers Society, another radical Islamist forum, promotes an identical message about a "War on Islam" and violent solutions. Islamic Thinkers Society went well beyond providing ideological support and identifying potential targets. According to CNN, "followers of the Islamic Thinkers Society not only helped radicalize [convicted terrorist Bryant Neil] Vinas, but also helped him connect with militants in Pakistan." Other accused terrorists affiliated with the movement include Mahmood Alessa and Carlos Eduardo Almonte, both reportedly negotiating guilty pleas to attempting to fight alongside Al-Shabaab.

via docstalk.blogspot.com

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Nation's first female Hispanic governor elected

Another piece of history made tonight: New Mexico has elected the first female Hispanic governor in American history.
NBC News projects that Republican District Attorney Susana Martinez has won the governorship over Democrat Lt. Gov. Diane Denish.

via firstread.msnbc.msn.com

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Caterpillar, Rachel Corrie and Israel

Previously, the Corrie family sued Caterpillar in U.S. court, but a federal court of appeals ruled that the company "cannot be held legally liable for the use of its bulldozers in Israeli military operations because the equipment is paid for with American government funds and represents an extension of American foreign policy, a federal appeals court ruled," reported the New York Sun.

via israelmatzav.blogspot.com

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Christians flee Iraq, UPI faults Israel as much as Muslims

UPI does a story on the increased pace of Christian flight from Iraq in light of a massacre in a Roman Catholic church on Sunday in which 52 Christians were murdered. They go on to point out that this is a widespread trend throughout the Middle East, and throughout all Muslim countries. Then, they come up with this gem.

But Iraq's Christians aren't the only ones on the run. Across the Middle East, and indeed in the wider Muslim world as far east as Indonesia, Christians are in retreat and often under fire.
In the West Bank town of Bethlehem, reputed to be Jesus' birthplace, Christians once comprised 85 percent of the population. They're now 20 percent.
Land belonging to Arab Christians, along with other Palestinians, is seized by Israel in the name of security, then handed over to Jewish settlers.

What a lie! Christians have fled and continue to flee Bethlehem and its environs, but it's not because Israel is seizing 'Palestinian' lands. Christians are fleeing because of the manner in which they've been brutalized by Muslims (like the priest in the picture at the top who was being held hostage in the Church of the Nativity in 2002 when the picture was taken).

Compare that with this description of Christian - Muslim relations which appeared in the JPost earlier this week:

In an 2005 interview with the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JPCA), Steven Khoury, of Bethlehem's First Baptist Church, reported that the church had been attacked by Muslims from a nearby refugee camp "…with Molotov cocktails 14 times. Our church vans have been burned. The church was broken into and defaced with graffiti five times." Others have reported the shooting of the Baptist Church's pastor.
In 2006, the UK's Daily Mail reported on the struggle of two Christians from the Bethlehem suburb of Beit Jala who were facing continuous persecution for their faith. George Rabie, a cab driver, said that he had been beaten by a gang of Muslims visiting from nearby Hebron, angered by the crucifix hanging on his windshield, and that he experiences persecution "every day." Jeriez Moussa Amaro told the Daily Mail that his two sisters Rada, 24, and Dunya, 28, had been shot dead by Muslim gunmen. "Their crime was to be young, attractive Christian women who wore Western clothes and no veil…" A terrorist organization, al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades, claimed responsibility for Amaro's sisters' murder.
OVERT violence isn't the only difficulty faced by Christians in areas under the Palestinian Authority. In recent weeks, Ramallah pastor Isa Bajalia, an American Christian of Arab descent, stated publicly that he has been threatened by a Palestinian Authority official, who demanded he pay $30,000 in protection money to ensure his safety. On November 11, Fox News reported, "Pastor Isa Bajalia is legally blind, yet he was also told by the official he would be crippled for life. The trouble started after church members held a prayer session for several Palestinians. Bajalia says he has been under surveillance and receiving threats." Isa Bajalia has since fled Ramallah.
Among the compiled JCPA interviews of West Bank Christians are reports of extortion by Arab Muslims, demands for protection money, seized properties, vandalized homes and shops, widespread rape of Christian girls, honor killings, and murders of converts to Christianity from Islam.

There's only one country in the entire Middle East where the Christian population increases year in and year out. Yes, you guessed it. Israel.

via israelmatzav.blogspot.com

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Islamic Skinheads and Hudaybiya

Sirat p. 505

When the peace was concluded, Muhammad slaughtered his victims and sat down and shaved his head. When the men saw what Muhammad had done, they leapt up and did the same. Shaving the head was part of the traditional pagan pilgrimage rituals. We saw this shaving in connection with the raid on Nakhla, where the Muslims laying in wait had shaved their heads in order to look like pilgrims and make the caravan guides relax. One may wonder why Muhammad had not done this earlier. But at least he gets it in order now. The Muslims, as always, follow the example of their leader. Some men shaved their heads on the day of al-Hudaybiya, while others cut their hair. Muhammad said: "May Allah have mercy on the shavers." They said: "The cutters, too, Oh messenger?" Three times they had to put this question until finally he added: "and the cutters." When they asked him why he had repeatedly confined the invocation of Allah's mercy to the shavers, he replied: "Because they did not doubt." While this story may seem odd at first glance, Muhammad has an important point to make: Doubt about himself or Islam is wrong. Doubt will keep the mercy of Allah from reaching you. Related: Quran 5:101: O you who believe! Ask not about things which, if made plain to you, may cause you trouble. But if you ask about them while the Qur'ân is being revealed, they will be made plain to you. Allâh has forgiven that, and Allâh is Oft-Forgiving, Most Forbearing.
Quran 5:102: Before you, a community asked such questions, then on that account they became disbelievers. That's clear enough. Those who questioned the Quran lost their faith. Therefore, don't do this.

via realmuhammad.info

The perpetual nature of jihad is highlighted by the fact that, based on the 10-year treaty of Hudaybiya (628), ratified between Muhammad and his Quraysh opponents in Mecca, most jurists are agreed that ten years is the maximum amount of time Muslims can be at peace with infidels; once the treaty has expired, the situation needs to be reappraised. Based on Muhammad's example of breaking the treaty after two years (by claiming a Quraysh infraction), the sole function of the truce is to buy weakened Muslims time to regroup before renewing the offensive:[33] "By their very nature, treaties must be of temporary duration, for in Muslim legal theory, the normal relations between Muslim and non-Muslim territories are not peaceful, but warlike."[34] Hence "the fuqaha [jurists] are agreed that open-ended truces are illegitimate if Muslims have the strength to renew the war against them [non-Muslims]."[35]
Even though Shari'a mandates Muslims to abide by treaties, they have a way out, one open to abuse: If Muslims believe—even without solid evidence—that their opponents are about to break the treaty, they can preempt by breaking it first. Moreover, some Islamic schools of law, such as the Hanafi, assert that Muslim leaders may abrogate treaties merely if it seems advantageous for Islam.[36] This is reminiscent of the following canonical hadith: "If you ever take an oath to do something and later on you find that something else is better, then you should expiate your oath and do what is better."[37] And what is better, what is more altruistic, than to make God's word supreme by launching the jihad anew whenever possible? Traditionally, Muslim rulers held to a commitment to launch a jihad at least once every year. This ritual is most noted with the Ottoman sultans, who spent half their lives in the field.[38] So important was the duty of jihad that the sultans were not permitted to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca, an individual duty for each Muslim. Their leadership of the jihad allowed this communal duty to continue; without them, it would have fallen into desuetude.[39]
In short, the prerequisite for peace or reconciliation is Muslim advantage. This is made clear in an authoritative Sunni legal text, Umdat as-Salik, written by a fourteenth-century Egyptian scholar, Ahmad Ibn Naqib al-Misri: "There must be some benefit [maslaha] served in making a truce other than the status quo: 'So do not be fainthearted and call for peace when it is you who are uppermost [Qur'an 47:35].'"[40]
More recently, and of great significance for Western leaders advocating cooperation with Islamists, Yasser Arafat, soon after negotiating a peace treaty criticized as conceding too much to Israel, addressed an assembly of Muslims in a mosque in Johannesburg where he justified his actions: "I see this agreement as being no more than the agreement signed between our Prophet Muhammad and the Quraysh in Mecca."[41] In other words, like Muhammad, Arafat gave his word only to annul it once "something better" came along—that is, once the Palestinians became strong enough to renew the offensive and continue on the road to Jerusalem. Elsewhere, Hudaybiya has appeared as a keyword for radical Islamists. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front had three training camps within the Camp Abu Bakar complex in the Philippines, one of which was named Camp Hudaybiya.[42]

via meforum.org

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image via hebitchinthemiddleeast.blogspot.com 

Potential War over Sea Riches like Oil and Gas

The recent discoveries of massive gas fields off the coast of northern Israel, tantalizingly close to Lebanese coastal waters, has stirred cash-strapped Lebanon to accelerate efforts to begin its own oil and gas exploration.

Last year, a US-Israeli consortium discovered the Tamar gas field 55 miles off the coast of northern Israel, which contains an estimated 8.4 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas – the largest natural-gas find in the world in 2009. Earlier this year, a field called Leviathan was discovered in the same area with an initial estimate of 16 trillion cubic feet of gas.

But there are likely more untapped fields; the US Geological Survey (USGS) said in March that the Levantine Basin, which includes the territorial waters of Lebanon, Israel, Syria, and Cyprus, could hold as much as 122 trillion cubic feet of gas – and 1.7 billion barrels of oil.

According to the article, Lebanon is strapped for cash and heavily in debt--and would love to have access to these reserves, not to mention others that may be just waiting to be discovered. More to the point, it is not yet known whether the gas field extends into Lebanon's territorial waters.
However, that question is complicated by the fact that since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Lebanon and Israel have officially been at war and so the two countries have never sat down to establish agreed upon maritime borders.
As a result, Israel might claim the “right of capture”, according to which a country can extract oil or gas from its side of the border, even if those reserves extend into the territory of another country’s territory. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea does offer guidelines for establishing maritime borders, but Israel is not a signatory to the convention. In any case, again--this would require both sides to sit down and talk.
So we are left with Lebanese officials accusing Israel of stealing Lebanese resources, while Hezbollah threatens to use its weapons to defend them.
As for the UN, how much help can they be? The "Blue Line" the UN established in 2000 was not supposed to be a legal border, but just a way to measure the pullout of Israeli troops. It has become a 'border' only because the two sides cannot agree on the land border either.

via daledamos.blogspot.com

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Syrians and Iran plans to take control of Beirut if indictment by international Tribunal

The report said that Hizbullah, Amal and other pro-Syrian groups were in close contact and coordination relating to a plan to take control of Beirut, the road to the south of the city, and neutralizing Christian and Sunni areas. The sources said that the groups were already plotting zones of who would control which areas, in a day-after scenario.

Hattit concluded that "if this scenario does take place, Hizbullah would be able to seize power in three days, or a week at most," and that the "era of Hariri in Lebanon" would end forever.

via jpost.com

Here's the latest from Naharnet:

The Syrian-backed Opposition reportedly plans to take control of Beirut in the event an indictment by the international Tribunal was issued.

Pan-Arab Asharq al-Awsat newspaper on Tuesday quoted a well-informed Lebanese source as saying reports were being circulated among Lebanese security authorities that Hizbullah and AMAL Movement as well as other forces allied with Syria have been holding extensive, periodic meetings to discuss "coordination" in the presumed battle for the control of Beirut.

It said the meetings discussed "zoning" of the areas such as each group will have its own confrontation zero hour map.

via elderofziyon.blogspot.com

It's been five years since the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister and billionaire Rafik Hariri by a truck bomb in downtown Beirut. In the aftermath, a United Nations tribunal has puttered and sputtered but finally appears poised to hand down indictments, which could explode the combustible Lebanese political scene, perhaps, new reports suggest, even leading to a Hezbollah coup.
All signs point to a high level of Syrian involvement in the hit, which killed 22 others along with Hariri. In late 2005, Syria's top intelligence officer in Lebanon, Ghazi Kanaan, "killed himself" (many believe he was either killed or ordered to carry out the suicide) after he was questioned by a U.N. investigator. However, Hariri's son, Saad Hariri, who is now Lebanon's prime minister, has already acquitted Syrian President Bashar Assad in statements that recall an earlier act of supplication -- when Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt forgave Syrian President Hafez Assad (Bashir's late father) for killing his father, Kamal Jumblatt.
But if Syria is let off the hook -- as appears likely -- that still leaves Hezbollah, the civil-war era Shiite militia group that has morphed into the country's strongest political party and a proxy warrior (for Iran and Syria) against Israel. Hezbollah is planning a coup if its members are charged in the assassination, according to a report in the Arabic international newspaper Asharq Alawsat, which was picked up by Haaretz, an Israeli daily.
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Nasrallah has called on Lebanese not to cooperate with U.N. investigators, since reports last year that the investigation was likely to indict several Hezbollah members.

via aolnews.com

Investigators Violently Attacked in Lebanon While Probing 2005 Hariri Assassination

The investigators were "unexpectedly and violently attacked" by a group of angry, screaming "women wearing niqabs and veils". It is also believed that "men in women’s garb among them."

(CNSNews.com) – An attack on international investigators probing the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri is seen as part of a campaign by Hezbollah to obstruct the inquiry before it indicts members of the Shi’ite terrorist group.

The controversy surrounding the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) has sparked fears that Lebanon’s fragile U.S.-backed government could collapse, and that a fresh outbreak of Shi’ite-Sunni violence could allow Hezbollah to tighten its grip on the small country, with serious implications for the wider region.

The United States and France, two of the Western countries most heavily invested in Lebanon’s stability, have reiterated their support for the politically explosive investigation, which Hezbollah and Syria actively are trying to sabotage.

Two STL investigators accompanied by a Lebanese interpreter were attacked Wednesday by scores of screaming women as they sought medical records at a clinic in a Hezbollah-controlled suburb of south Beirut.

Lebanon’s Murr Television reported that the group included women wearing niqabs and veils, and that there were likely men in women’s garb among them.

The Hague-based STL said in a statement that “a large group of people showed up unexpectedly and violently attacked the investigators and their female interpreter.”

“The Lebanese army extracted the three staff members and brought them back safely to the STL Beirut Office where they were provided with medical attention,” it said, adding that the violence would not deter the tribunal from its mission.

During the melee, a briefcase belonging to one of the team was snatched. The tribunal did not say what documents it contained.

A senior member of Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s March 14 alliance, Farid Makari, issued a statement saying the “method of using ordinary people” to carry out such attacks was a “registered trademark” of Hezbollah.

More... pucker up!

via eye-on-the-world.blogspot.com

Asked if Cameron had expressed any fears regarding the repercussions of the indictment of the STL, Hariri answered: "We did not tackle this issue.

via noah.simonstudio.com