The Reason this War is Being Lost

 

It is very difficult to fight a war against a determined foe when much of the population simply could not care less and do not believe that there is any war being waged and that everything can be set right if we just express our regrets for perceived offences and spread sufficient love mixed with heart-felt apologies. There will be a small difficulty getting the governments involved in defending a people who hold protests claiming that we need to accept the enemy as our friends because they are simply misunderstood and that is why they lash out and commit terrorism. When a large portion of the people think that terrorism is caused by our own policies and that if we could just explain that we have changed and are no longer oppressing them, then things could be worked out and all would be roses and daisies. The reality was expressed well by Sir Salman Rushdie who said in an interview with the magazine L’Obs last June, “I am in fundamental disagreement with these left-wing people who do everything to dissociate fundamentalism from Islam. Islam has been radicalized for fifty years. When the people of the Islamic State attack, they do it by saying ‘Allahu Akbar.’ So how can we then say that this has nothing to do with Islam? It must be stopped.”

 

The French government tried a program which was doomed for failure even before the ink dried on the printout. The program, as described by Giulio Meotti, where Islamists desiring to enter this program could be assisted in what was stated as deprogramming as if they had been brainwashed by some cult. The problem is that a Salafist Muslim does not desire to be deprogrammed because they are doing exactly what Allah has commanded of them. They believe everything which was taught them by their Imams who, as the majority of Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) believe, told them that they were to follow the Medina teachings of the Quran and those teachings which contradicted the softer words of the Mecca Quran were considered abrogated. Abrogated, for the unwashed, means they may as well never have been written, but they do have a purpose which is why they have never been removed, they are there to fool the fools who rely on Muslims to teach them what is written in the Quran. The soft, peaceful words of coexistence are there so they can be quoted by CAIR and other presumably respected Islamic organizations in the Western World. The kind worlds are used to put aside suspicions and to enable Islamic organizations to claim that Islam refutes terrorism and is no different than Christianity and only want to live in peace and tranquility with their neighbors. When somebody does quote something from their holy Quran which purports violence against non-Muslims, they quote a calming Quranic verse and in a soft and reassuring tone lecture how the other person is Islamophobic and that is why they are telling such lies that Muslims commit terror attacks, after all, there have been Christians who committed terrorism against abortion providers and other such attacks. That claim is supposed to make one believe that there are just as many Christians committing terrorism as Muslims. This is propaganda which is defined in the Quran as Taqiyya.

 

Taqiyya defined in plain and simple easy to understand terms

 

Here is something the citizens of the Western World need to understand, there is a war of civilizations which has been waged in stages for the last fourteen-hundred-years. It began when Muhammad finally decided that his Islamic army could do far more than just robbing caravans and sharing the bounty. The idea likely came to him after his Islamic Army decimated two Jewish tribes living in the vicinity of Medina. He then returned with his army to Mecca where he took out his revenge against the very people who had rejected his religion when he preached there in his youth. After he took Mecca, he then spread across the entirety of the inhabited areas of the Arabian Peninsula and broke out into the Middle East. Then his Islamic army spread taking over Persia and pushed the weakened and failing Byzantine Empire from the Holy Lands continuing until they hit Constantinople whose walls refused their assaults. The larger part of the Islamic army took the path of least resistance across northern Africa. Soon his Islamic Army had conquered the majority of the MENA areas and had crossed the Straight of Gibraltar into Spain, which the Muslims renamed Al-Andalus (see map below).

 

Expansion of Islam Across MENA and threaten Europe before Ottoman Rule

 

Eventually the Islamic army reached points where the resistance prevented their further conquest. From Spain that was at Tours where Charles “the Hammer” Martel won the war and sent the Islamic army retreating back into Spain. In Eastern Europe they were stopped twice at the gates of Vienna, the more noted time in history came when the siege of Vienna was relieved by King John III Sobieski of Poland who led his entire army after receiving assurances from his neighboring countries that his Poland would be safe and not invaded. Constantinople did fall once the invention of the siege cannon (see image below) which was utilized by Sultan Mehmed II to finally breach the formerly impenetrable and massive walls of Constantinople. The Muslims renamed Constantinople Istanbul and turned the great cathedral, the Hagia Sophia, into a mosque. This was a practice used often by Islamic conquerors when they took control of religiously significant places, they either changed the structures in question into mosques or built mosques upon these locations as in Jerusalem where they placed the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque atop the Temple Mount, which they renamed the Noble Sanctuary, as they were unsure of the exact location of the two Jewish Temples and so covered as much area as they could. They have since in the recent past used heavy equipment to dig down and destroy any and all evidence they are able in order to destroy evidence of the previous Jewish presence.

 

Great Turkish Bombard Siege Cannon
Utilized by Mehmed II in his Siege
and Breaking of the Impenetrable
Great Walls of Constantinople

 

So, why give this information about history as it is all behind us and nobody lives with such dreams of world conquest any longer. Well, that applies to the industrial and advanced Western World but not so much in the rest of the world. One example is North Korea’s Kim Jong-un who desires to take over South Korea and Japan, as a starter, and take down the United States so there will be nothing to prevent him and those he sees as friends, Russia and China, from conquering the world. The Muslims are of a different sort as the Quran tells them that Allah has commanded them to fight the unbelievers until none worship except those who worship Allah.

 

Qur’an (3:83) – “Are they seeking a religion other than Allah’s, when every soul in the heavens and the earth has submitted to Him, willingly or by compulsion?”
Quran (8:38-39) – “Say to those who have disbelieved, if they cease (from disbelief) their past will be forgiven… And fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief and polytheism: i.e. worshipping others besides Allah) and the religion (worship) will all be for Allah Alone [in the whole of the world]. But if they cease (worshipping others besides Allah), then certainly, Allah is All-Seer of what they do.”
Quran (9:29) – “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.”

 

There is even a special abrogation which speaks specifically about the need for the warriors of Islam to fight and kill Jews otherwise the end times would never come. This is particularly troubling because the majority of Muslims desire the coming of the end times and the perfection of earth as these times are when the armies of Islam will be led to their final conquest of all the peoples of the Earth. But they will not be permitted this time where all they see becomes theirs for the taking in conquest but as this time can only come while they fight the Jews, guess what many Muslims desire to do in order to facilitate the coming of the Mahdi, the coming of the end times, they desire fighting and killing Jews and listening hoping the rocks and trees call out to them, that would be the finest of events they could ever experience. The verse is below.

 

The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: “The Hour will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them. The Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will say: ‘O Muslim, O slave of Allah! There is a Jews behind me, come and kill him!’ (All the trees will say this except for the Gharqad (box-thorn), for it is one of the trees of the Jews.’” (Reported by Imam Ahmad; it is a Sahih Hadith)

 

But all too many of the political class will continue to speak of Islam as the “religion of peace” because to allow the truth to be known generally would then mean the populace would demand protection and that something be done to force Islam to go through a reformation such as the one Christianity experienced with the coming of the modern world and the obvious conclusion that they could never conquer the world, no single Christian sect could conquer the world and were finally tired of murdering one another. The Jews had that realization when the Judeans were conquered by the Babylonians who were conquered by the Persians who permitted the Jews to return to their lands and rebuild the Holy Temple but only as a Persian province paying their taxes. The Persians were conquered by Alexander and the Greeks who were conquered by the Romans who dispersed the Jews in two separate waves, the second including the renaming of their lands as the Romans were intent on erasing the Jews as they had the Carthaginians before them. The Jews crime was simply, revolts which cost Rome dearly, one of which actually cast the Romans from the lands of Judea for a brief period until the Romans arrived with sufficient legion to decimate any resistance. It is unknown how many tribes of peoples the Romans dispersed in such manner, as the history of the Roman period is incomplete. We know of the Carthaginians because of the Three Punic Wars which are well documented in history and we know about the Judeans because the Jews remain a distinct people to this day and actually managed to return to their ancient homelands under their own rule after more than two-thousand-years.

 

The Islamic armies, as noted in the first map spread over time reaching a maximum sometime between 1000 and 1250 depending on whether you are looking at the eastern or the western end of their empire, their Caliphates. Then came an uprising of a tribe in northeastern Turkey, the Ottomans who spread over the Islamic Caliphate making the new Islamic empire called the Ottoman Empire, which is the empire that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan desires reestablishing. For the record, President Erdoğan is another of those who dreams of empire and eventual world domination for him and his nation which would likely rename itself the Second Ottoman Empire. Below are the maps of the expansion of the Ottoman Empire. Their empire ascended from 1300 through almost 1700.

 

Ottoman Empire Ascending includes Golden Age of Islam

 

The Ottoman Empire stood while slowly shrinking until it met its final run when they allied with Germany and the Austria-Hungarian Empire in World War I. They were among the defeated and their remaining areas carved up via an agreement between France and Britain known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement. The slow shrinking of the Ottoman Empire up to World War I is shown in the map below.

 

Ottoman Empire in Decline 1800 through 1914 and Start of World War I

 

After World War I and through World War II and for years beyond until around 1962 the Europeans released their colonies leaving us with the current boundaries existing today. That map can be seen below with dates and whose colonies were whose. The two exceptions are Iran which had a revolution in 1979 and Syria which is in the process of dissolution presently. Another change is the dividing of the Sudan with South Sudan, the non-Muslim areas, breaking off in an attempt to end a civil war which had claimed numerous slaughters. Morocco is currently in conflict with Western Sahara and Iraq and Yemen are currently unstable.

 

Dates that the MENA nations received their independence after colonial rule many since the times of the Persians or even earlier

 

There are numerous other conflicts which can be traced around the MENA nations on virtually every from where Islam exists and in the majority of world conflicts from the Philippines to Europe and Western Sahara and as far south as Nigeria, Mali, Sudan, Somalia and even into northwestern China, Afghanistan, Chechnya, the Caucuses and the Balkans. But your leaders will claim that Islam is the religion of peace and it is their neighbors who must be responsible for these conflicts. The evidence is currently burgeoning throughout Europe where the same terrorist tactics which have plagued Israel since the 1920’s when the idea of a Jewish State was first mentioned in the Balfour Declarations and codified in the San Remo Conference and then the Treaty of Sèvres and finalized with the British Mandate with Israel finally receiving her independence in 1948. Look around the world, read the international news, search Boko Haram and Nigeria or the Philippines and Mindanao or just Islam and wars and allow your own mind figure things for yourself rather than believe the same politicians who lie and break promises like most of us change our socks. Trust yourself and not what you are spoon fed by a media which has been shown to promote an idea of their own making for what you need to know. Ronald Reagan said it best when he stated, “Trust but verify.” Why alter perfection.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Our Worlds Are in a Mess and Clashing

 

Part I

 

Link to Part II

 

The Western World is seemingly in a death spiral while the Eastern Worlds are struggling with ideas the West cast off at the end of colonialism and Israel is caught in the middle. The Eastern World and Developing World are easily assessed as they are at the beginning point the West has already progressed past. Africa, central and much of southern, are still living largely off resources and selling such on the world market and subsistence farming with small amounts of true agricultural farming. The greatest of harms has been done to Africa as they have received massive shipments of food in the forms of wheat and other crops which would have been more productive had they grown the crops themselves. As their economy was basically agrarian, shipping them food was starving their economy thus making investments impossible as there was no venture capital with which to develop further. Basically, the Western World, whether through neglect, ignorance or an actual attempt to impede development, took away the one industry which Africa was suited to utilize for their own development. This left them with their farmers starving having to farm for their own families’ existence instead of farming to feed their own cities and thus form a solid backbone from which their economies could base growth. This has left Africa as a vastly underdeveloped continent surviving by selling off their natural resources instead of developing their own infrastructure to ready themselves to introduce industrial economic development. So while they sell their ore, their gems, their precious metals and every other item they can mine or find, they are actually stealing their own future to pay for the society today and that is a recipe for ruin.

 

The area known as MENA (Middle East and North Africa) is not in much better shape economically. Their economies are based on oil and drugs depending on the country. The few which are not able or willing to rely on either of those resources are living off base level industry, tourism, the good graces of an oil rich sponsor or some combination thereof. Egypt is such an example, as are many of the North African nations, has meager industrial base, a natural tourist industry with the Pyramids of Giza and other ancient wonders and a small oil market which also provides sufficient energy for the country to operate. Egypt could develop an industrial fishing economy and does receive funds from passage of commerce through the Suez Canal but still relies largely on the United States and Saudi Arabia to keep her solvent. The rest of the North African nations are at some level of poverty or worse, in complete melt-down as is Libya where tribal forces compete for the right to claim they rule the country when in reality it is nothing more than tribal influences vying for land and terrorist training areas taking advantage of the lack of governmental military force to prevent such. Along the entirety of the border with Central Africa there is a low level warfare going on with the most notable area being split between the war by proxy the Sudan is waging against the separative South Sudan and the regions being torn apart by terrorist violence by Boko Haram centered upon Nigeria where a little over a week ago at least twelve people were killed following two suicide blasts in the Maiduguri area of northeastern Nigeria and at the start of this month Boko Haram militants killed nine and abducted dozens more in southern Niger where attackers rode camels into the village of Ngalewa, about fifty kilometers north of the border with Nigeria. Such violence goes all but unreported in Western news as if this area of extreme and brutal violence is not important when the nations fighting these struggles cannot develop properly in such an atmosphere. This zone is known euphemistically as the African Transition Zone (pictured below). This zone also is the demarcation line between the Islamic World and that of Christian and African Traditional Religion. This is a war which deserves recognition beyond that of the Coptic Christians though they are an important segment of this struggle of non-Islamic faiths which are bordering the Islamic World.

 

African Transition Zone

 

The Middle East has its share of difficulties starting with the focal point of Syria. Syria, along with Yemen, defines the main struggle in the area, Sunni Islam against Shiite Islam. This battle has raged off and on since the death of Muhammad and is once again coming to the foreground. The main impetus behind Shiite Islam is Iran which currently includes much of southern Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. This area can be referred to as the Shiite Crescent (pictured below) and connects the Indian Ocean with the Mediterranean Sea granting an overland route which circumvents the Suez Canal. Such is important as should Iran take full control of Yemen they will control both choke points, the Straights of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, the main oil route from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and the Bab el Mandeb which controls the exit from the Red Sea through the Gulf of Aden into the Indian Ocean which also cuts off the Suez Canal and the Israeli southern port of Eilat. Blocking these two choke points is what makes a land route to the Mediterranean Sea so important. Saudi Arabia could benefit from an oil pipeline across her width to the Red Sea but they would need to build a port capable of handling tankers or they could use the Israeli ports which have such capabilities if only they recognized that such an entity existed. The Saudi Port of Jeddah would also suffice but such would be susceptible to Egyptian control of the Suez Canal where using Israel would likely cost recognition and Saudi pressure to end the Arab-Israeli conflict and end the Arab Palestinian war to eliminate Israel through all means usable. For the meantime, Saudi Arabia is more than happy to keep the pressures on Israel preventing her from developing even faster. All the while, we have the heart of the Islamic World across MENA which saw itself go from the leaders in the world to the losers in the world with the Industrial Revolution in the Western World. What is most interesting is the Islamic World refuses to believe that they fell behind and hold the West as responsible for their lost primacy and have sworn to bring the Western World down, and are making great headway as the West does little or actually aid the Islamic World in this endeavor.

 

Strait of Hormuz and Bab-el-Mandeb Strait

 

The Far East has one eight-ton gorilla and some interesting, in a warped way, other actors. The main force emerging from the Far East is China. What is mostly ignored is right behind China we have India. India is simply working quietly in harmony with all around her with the exception of Pakistan (border with Islam) and a conflict over border claims around the region of Doklam, where Chinese and Indian forces remain locked in a stand-off sparked by a road construction project in a disputed border area shared with Bhutan. This is an old rivalry going back long before modern history with these two being the central powers in this region for much of human history. What will make this more interesting is that India is expected to surpass China as the most populous nation sometime this century. Also in this area is our favorite nut-job, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un who, as we have reported over the past two weeks, is developing missiles and well on his way to ICBM’s capable of striking anywhere on the planet and the nuclear warheads to place atop these missiles. North Korea is a menace which China appears unwilling or unable of reining in which could lead to open warfare if one side blinks at the wrong time or is caught winking when they should have been eyes front. Any misreading by either side, and especially the mentally less than stable Kim Jong-un, could result in a nuclear war whose expanse will be determined by that which the North Korean dictator can reach with his missiles. North Korea is suspected of working with Iran which means that Kim Jong-un could have a fleet of ballistic missile carrying freighters ready to launch at coastal cities leaving them mere minutes if not seconds to react before being struck by a nuclear warhead. And, of course, both South Korea and Japan, two of North Korea’s main enemies after the United States, are both within striking distance already and are obviously nervous.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Islamic Intents: Israel, India, Nigeria, Europe, United States and Beyond

 

Islam is directed by the Medina Quran according to all the scholars mainly because that is what is taught in Cairo in the Al-Azhar University, and what is taught there will be taught throughout Islam. Here are a few select verses from the Quran as written by Muhammad well after his disgrace of being chased from Mecca where his preaching led to his banishment. In Medina, Muhammad started anew as he became a warlord and fashioned the new writings of the Quran to make all that his new life would demand, would be also in the name of Allah and further himself as the ruler and leader of the Muslims. They would soon follow these teachings and break out of the Arabic Peninsula and following his words of conquest. spreading across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and on into Europe in Spain, into France where in the battle of Tours his forces were finally defeated and to the gates of Vienna twice only to be spurned and sent back to Istanbul (formerly Constantinople). So, now for the verses which drive Islam today, not the peaceful ones which they spout to gullible Westerners who gobble whatever they are told up unverified and do no investigation themselves or they know the Quran and care little for what their Islam is the religion of peace and quotes of excepts of the Mecca Quran, the abrogated verses used only as Taqiyya.

Quranic verse 8:39
وَقَاتِلُوهُمْ حَتَّىٰ لَا تَكُونَ فِتْنَةٌ وَيَكُونَ الدِّينُ كُلُّهُ لِلَّهِ فَإِنِ انتَهَوْا فَإِنَّ اللَّهَ بِمَا يَعْمَلُونَ بَصِ
The Clear Quran, Dr. Mustafa Khattab: Fight against them until there is no more persecution—and devotion will be entirely to Allah. But if they desist, then surely Allah is All-Seeing of what they do.

Quranic verse 9:5
فَإِذَا انسَلَخَ الْأَشْهُرُ الْحُرُمُ فَاقْتُلُوا الْمُشْرِكِينَ حَيْثُ وَجَدتُّمُوهُمْ وَخُذُوهُمْ وَاحْصُرُوهُمْ وَاقْعُدُوا لَهُمْ كُلَّ مَرْصَدٍ فَإِن تَابُوا وَأَقَامُوا الصَّلَاةَ وَآتَوُا الزَّكَاةَ فَخَلُّوا سَبِيلَهُمْ إِنَّ اللَّهَ غَفُورٌ رَّحِي
The Clear Quran, Dr. Mustafa Khattab: But once the Sacred Months have passed, kill the polytheists ˹who violated their treaties˺ wherever you find them, capture them, besiege them, and lie in wait for them on every way. But if they repent, perform prayers, and pay alms-tax, then set them free. Indeed, Allah is All-Forgiving, Most Merciful.

Quranic verse 9:14
قَاتِلُوهُمْ يُعَذِّبْهُمُ اللَّهُ بِأَيْدِيكُمْ وَيُخْزِهِمْ وَيَنصُرْكُمْ عَلَيْهِمْ وَيَشْفِ صُدُورَ قَوْمٍ مُّؤْمِنِينَ
The Clear Quran, Dr. Mustafa Khattab: ˹So˺ fight them and Allah will punish them at your hands, put them to shame, help you overcome them, and soothe the hearts of the believers.

Quranic verse 47:4
فَإِذَا لَقِيتُمُ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا فَضَرْبَ الرِّقَابِ حَتَّىٰ إِذَا أَثْخَنتُمُوهُمْ فَشُدُّوا الْوَثَاقَ فَإِمَّا مَنًّا بَعْدُ وَإِمَّا فِدَاءً حَتَّىٰ تَضَعَ الْحَرْبُ أَوْزَارَهَا ذَٰلِكَ وَلَوْ يَشَاءُ اللَّهُ لَانتَصَرَ مِنْهُمْ وَلَٰكِن لِّيَبْلُوَ بَعْضَكُم بِبَعْضٍ وَالَّذِينَ قُتِلُوا فِي سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ فَلَن يُضِلَّ أَعْمَالَهُ
The Clear Quran, Dr. Mustafa Khattab: So when you meet the disbelievers ˹in battle˺, strike ˹their˺ necks until you have thoroughly subdued them, then bind them firmly. Later ˹free them either as˺ an act of grace or by ransom until the war comes to an end. So will it be. Had Allah willed, He ˹Himself˺ could have inflicted punishment on them. But He does ˹this only to˺ test some of you by means of others. And those who are martyred in the cause of Allah, He will never render their deeds void.

Quranic verse 61:4
إِنَّ اللَّهَ يُحِبُّ الَّذِينَ يُقَاتِلُونَ فِي سَبِيلِهِ صَفًّا كَأَنَّهُم بُنْيَانٌ مَّرْصُوصٌ
The Clear Quran, Dr. Mustafa Khattab: Surely Allah loves those who fight in His cause in ˹solid˺ ranks as if they were one concrete structure.

Quranic verse 61:9
هُوَ الَّذِي أَرْسَلَ رَسُولَهُ بِالْهُدَىٰ وَدِينِ الْحَقِّ لِيُظْهِرَهُ عَلَى الدِّينِ كُلِّهِ وَلَوْ كَرِهَ الْمُشْرِكُو
The Clear Quran, Dr. Mustafa Khattab: He is the One Who has sent His Messenger with ˹true˺ guidance and the religion of truth, making it prevail over all others, even to the dismay of the polytheists.

Quranic verse 66:9
يَا أَيُّهَا النَّبِيُّ جَاهِدِ الْكُفَّارَ وَالْمُنَافِقِينَ وَاغْلُظْ عَلَيْهِمْ وَمَأْوَاهُمْ جَهَنَّمُ وَبِئْسَ الْمَصِي
The Clear Quran, Dr. Mustafa Khattab: O Prophet! Struggle against the disbelievers and the hypocrites, and be firm with them. Hell will be their home. What an evil destination!

 

The Quran contains at least one-hundred-nine verses that call Muslims to war with nonbelievers for the sake of Islamic rule. We will not suffer to list all of them and hope our brief sampling will suffice. If you wish them all, then our advice is to read the entire Quran and Hadiths for yourself and remember that there were the Mecca verses of coexistence and peace, which were followed and abrogated by those written in Medina. We can offer a short article we wrote describing this titled “<href=http://wp.me/pIou8-3B target=blank>Which Quran, Mecca or Medina?” but also advise this page as in the comments there are numerous links to actual Quranic texts with some in chronological order and others divided by subject matter or which city, Mecca or Medina, in which they were written.

 

This is the face of Islam that many people all over the globe face daily as the majority of wars are fought all along the borders of Islam, everywhere the Muslims reside. These wars are being conducted from Mindanao in the Philippines, where the Maute group also known as the Islamic State of Lanao, through the most obvious, which is Israel where Hezballah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Palestinian Liberation Organization which calls itself the Palestinian Authority to Palestine depending on with whom they are dealing, and continuing on onto the Horn of Africa and to Nigeria where Boko Haram is attempting to destroy the Christian and Animists and take over the government and then they will move to the neighboring states where they already are disrupting the societies of Mali, Cameroon, Burkina and the other nations in the region.

 

Map of Nigeria with Africa

 

Nigeria has been one of the regions that have not received the media it unfortunately should, considering the level of the violence committed by the terror group Boko Haram. We all remember possibly Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping. On the night of April 14–15, 2014, Boko Haram invaded the Government Secondary School in the town of Chibok in the Borno State, Nigeria and kidnapped two-hundred-seventy-six young women. They raided the school dressed and pretending to be guards taking the young women away in trucks, possibly into the Konduga area of the Sambisa Forest where Boko Haram were known to have fortified camps. Some of the young women, more like teenaged girls, managed to escape over time and some were released. It was reported by one of the young women who escaped that six of the kidnapped students had died. A large number were forced into marriages after forcibly being converted to Islam, almost all of the girls were Christians, with a number suspected of being moved to neighboring countries, largely Cameroon and Chad where Boko Haram has secure camps. A video was released on May 5, 2014, in which Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau took responsibility for the girls’ kidnapping and further stated, “Allah instructed me to sell them…I will carry out his instructions.” As well as additionally stating, “Slavery is allowed in my religion, and I shall capture people and make them slaves.” The Royal Air Force special operations division offered to launch an attempted rescue but the Nigerian government refused permission. First Lady Michelle Obama holds a sign with the #BringBackOurGirls hash tag, posted to her official Twitter account, helping to spread the awareness of the kidnapping. Some wonder if perhaps the United States might have offered a modicum more assistance considering their intelligence capabilities, satellite world coverage and the finest military on the planet, but we all do what we are willing to do and get as involved as we believe required.

 

 

A joint U.S.-Israel project, which modified the Beechcraft C-12 Huron aircraft for electronic warfare and reconnaissance, was being used and “may prove decisive in finding the girls,” according to one source. The other important take away from this one horrific incident is that it took this level of terror from Boko Haram for Nigeria to even break the level for international news coverage. This has not been the sole time that women and young girls have been kidnapped by Boko Haram and is far from the only attack. According to the The Christian Post quoting a report from the youth wing of the Christian Association of Nigeria, “At least 900 Christian churches have been destroyed at the hands of Boko Haram in northern Nigeria, as part of the Islamic radical group’s campaign to drive out all Christians from the north.” Their attacks have included raiding Christian churches during services and barring the exits then setting the building on fire shooting anyone attempting to escape in any manner. Some of the worst of such attacks have taken place on Christmas Eve and Easter Sunday. Boko Haram has also raided villages shooting as many people as possible and leveling as much destruction as possible in a lightning attack where shooting and firebombings are the norm. Their entire methodology is to spread fear and terror hoping to force the Christians, according to the experts, from the northern areas of Nigeria such as Borno, Yobe, Bquchi, Yobe, Jigawa, Gombe, Kano, Katsina and others in that region. We unfortunately cannot agree with the experts as their desire in Nigeria is little different than it has been in Israel; the Palestinian Areas where close to ninety-percent of Christians that have been driven out of Bethlehem, Gaza and the rest of the areas under their control, in Lebanon where over half the Christian population has fled the country, and the remainder of the MENA nations.

 

What is being permitted in Nigeria and across the MENA area as well as in the South Sudan, the Balkans, the areas of Kenya and Ethiopia closest to the Horn of Africa and closest to Somalia and Eretria, with the Coptic Christians in Egypt who are also being targeted by Libyan terrorist gangs now, which Egypt, to the credit of President Sisi, has struck at for their attacks, and soon to come to many localities throughout Europe. We believe that we can promise that once these type of events happen in European capitals with the regularity that they have to our friends in Nigeria, then those attacks will make the news. Unfortunately, attacks in northern Africa, which includes Nigeria, and Israel are not considered newsworthy. Why that is we will leave up to our readers to figure out, we’re too busy here complaining often about Israel being ignored and have also not been as up on things in Africa as perhaps we should. May we take this opportunity to our readership in the MENA area and have them perhaps use our mail-to (in the right column) feature and send us news and links from time to time and we will try our best to incorporate some as we are able. Thank you ahead of time.

 

Beyond the Cusp