Monday, July 15, 2013

Gatestone Update :: Khaled Abu Toameh: Islamists' Scheme To Destabilize Jordan, and more



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Islamists' Scheme To Destabilize Jordan

by Khaled Abu Toameh
July 15, 2013 at 5:00 am
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Signs of the impending trouble awaiting King Abdullah emerged in the past few days as supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood recruited Syrian refugees in Jordan to take part in pro-Morsi rallies in Amman and other cities. Without massive and immediate financial and military aid from the US and the Gulf countries, Jordan will not be able to withstand the threat from the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies.
The downfall of the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt has raised fears in Jordan that the Islamists may try to export their crisis to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, one of the first Arab countries to voice support for the bloodless coup that toppled the regime of Mohamed Morsi.
Although King Abdullah appears to have been relieved by the collapse of the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt, he nevertheless has good reasons to be concerned about increased attempts to undermine his monarchy.
Signs of the impending trouble awaiting King Abdullah emerged in the past few days as supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood recruited Syrian refugees in Jordan to take part in pro-Morsi rallies in Amman and other cities.
Muslim Brotherhood supporters in Jordan protest, June 2013. (Source: Islamic Action Front of Jordan)
Like Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who is undoubtedly hoping that Morsi's ouster will undermine his rivals in Hamas, Jordan's King Abdullah sees the newest revolution in Egypt as a blow to his political foes in the Jordanian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Hamas and Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood indeed appear to have suffered a major setback as the result of the loss of their patrons in Egypt.
King Abdullah and his loyalists now apparently fear that Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood is currently working on a plan to stir unrest in Jordan in order to undermine, or possibly overthrow, the monarchy there in retaliation for the ouster of Morsi.
The ultimate and declared goal of the Islamists, of course, is to replace the monarchy with a radical Islamist state that would be a source of instability in the region and pose a threat to Israel, the US and moderate Arabs and Muslims.
Without massive and immediate financial and military aid from the West and oil-rich Gulf countries, Jordan will not be able to withstand the threat from the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies.
As a precautionary measure, the Jordanian authorities have strengthened security cooperation with Egypt's General Intelligence Service and army to thwart any attempt to destabilize the kingdom's security.
In the context of these efforts, King Abdullah this week dispatched his foreign minister, Naser Judeh, to Egypt's capital, Cairo, for urgent talks with Egypt's new rulers.
According to the Jordanians, Judeh travelled to Cairo to express Jordan's support for Egypt's "prosperity and progress."
Judeh also delivered a letter from King Abdullah to Egyptian Interim President Adli Mansour "affirming Jordan's support for Egypt in overcoming the circumstances it is going through and preserving its security and stability."
In addition to increasing security and political coordination with the new rulers of Egypt, King Abdullah has also unleashed a media campaign to discredit Jordan's Islamists.
Several Jordanian political analysts and columnists affiliated with the Hashemite monarchy have been recruited to the campaign.
One of them, Mahmoud Kraishan, wrote that Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood needs to "learn the lesson and reassess their policies."
He also called on the Jordanian security authorities to be on alert for "opportunists and blood lovers who seek to undermine the kingdom's stability."
Another columnist, Samer al-Khatib, accused Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood leaders of exploiting and inciting young men against the monarchy.
"Some of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan have displayed a radical and hostile stance against the kingdom through statements based on curses, vituperation, insults and calls for jihad and killing of people," al-Khatib wrote. "We all remember the fatwa [Islamic religious decree] issued by Sheikh Mohamed Abu Fares, who ruled that anyone killed during demonstrations held by the Muslim Brotherhood [in Jordan] is a shaheed [martyr], while those killed while confronting the protesters will go to hell."
Many in Jordan fear that the Islamists in their country are, at the behest of their patrons in Egypt, planning violent protests that could plunge the kingdom into a state of chaos and anarchy similar to the one prevailing nowadays in the Sinai Peninsula.
Related Topics:  Khaled Abu Toameh

Pakistan: Violations against Christians Soar

by Mohshin Habib
July 15, 2013 at 4:00 am
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She is on death row for a comment that Jesus Christ is not dead but that the Prophet Mohammed is dead. Pakistan is now one of the most dangerous places for Christians to live.
Rimsha Masih, a young Pakistani Christian girl, who was arrested in August 2012 by Pakistan's police for alleged blasphemy, has escaped the country with the direct help of Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and AVAAZ, a civic organization. Local media and her parents said she was as young as 11 at the time of her arrest; medical reports classified her as an "uneducated" 14-year-old with a mental age younger than her years. Accused of burning pages of the holy book for Muslims, the Quran, Masih, under Pakistan's "blasphemy laws," faced the death penalty.
Masih fled with her family members to Canada, where Immigration Minister Jason Kenney instructed officials to process the family's applications for permanent residency on humanitarian grounds.
While Masih and her family are fortunate, no one knows what will happen to the rest of the Christians of Pakistan. Even though they make up only about two percent of the population -- or precisely because of it: there are so few, they may appear invitingly vulnerable -- they suffer beatings by their neighbors, murder by the police and imprisonment by the courts.
Last month, three Christian women, Arshad Bibi, Sajida Bibi and Sauriya Bibi (Bibi means a lady or girl) were brutally beaten and forced to parade naked by the armed henchmen of a landlord, who happens to connections in ruling party PML(N).
According to reports, the incident occurred on the night of June 3, as the male members of the family were at work. The armed men entered the house by jumping the boundary wall, then unlocked the gate from inside. The women, along with two elderly relatives, were asleep. The attackers looked for the men; when they could not find them, they began to beat the three women. They then took the young Christian women into the street, tore off their cloths and forced them to parade naked.
Aasia Bibi, another Pakistani Christian woman who was the Pakistani court, has now been imprisoned for four years under the country's blasphemy law. After having been given a death sentence, she is on death row for a comment that Jesus Christ is not dead but that the Prophet Mohammed is dead. For this statement, she was brutally beaten by her Muslim co-workers and arrested by the police.
Aasia Bibi's family members campaign for her release in Span, December 13, 2012. (Source: HazteOir.org)
Killing, oppression and humiliation are more and more frequently taking place in Pakistan. In addition to the well-known cases of Martha Bibi, Younis Masih, Rifaqaat Masih, Sawan Masih, Samuel Masih [Masih, meaning "messiah", is a very common name among Pakistan's Christians] and many others are also being subjected to killings, imprisonment with long sentences, beatings, and burnings. In just the past few months, for instance, Pakistani police killed three Christian boys for love affairs with Muslim girls. Afzal Masih 20 and Iftekhar Masih 20 were killed on Aprl 29, and Adnan Masih was tortured, then killed, by the police on June 10.
In August 2012, an 11-year-old Christian boy was found dead, with his lips and nose sliced off, his stomach removed and his legs mutilated. Police said he had also been subjected to sodomy.
The Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child reports that as many as 2,000 girls and women from various minority sects have, through rape, torture and kidnapping, been forcibly converted to Islam; and in 2011 alone, 161 people were charged with "blasphemy." According to reports, in 2009, eight Christians were burned to death in Pakistan's province of Punjab after rumors spread of a desecration of the Quran.
In April, 2013, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom warned that the risk to Pakistan's minorities has reached a crisis level. The Commission said that the blasphemy laws, and others, are used to violate religious freedoms and foster a climate of impunity.
Blasphemy laws are, at present, the most significant tool for persecution against the Christian community. These laws, however have also often been used to settle personal disputes or just to make Pakistan into a Christian-free state. These trends sharply escalated when, in 1986, Pakistan's late military ruler, General Zia-ul-Haq, harshly amended the British-era blasphemy laws in Pakistan's penal code, with sections 295-C, 298-A, 298-B, and 298-C the most dire:
Section 295-C: "Use of derogatory remarks, etc., in respect of the Holy Prophet…shall be punished with death or imprisoned for life…"
Section 298-A: "Uttering words, etc, with deliberate intent to wound religious feelings…."
Section 298-B: Misuse of epithets, descriptions, titles reserved for certain holy personages or places…"
Section 298-C: "A person who poses himself as a Muslim…. or in any manner whatsoever outrages the feelings of Muslims." [Emphasis added.]
No later government has since dared to re-amend them.
Since 1986, more than 1200 people have been charged under blasphemy laws. The Asian Human Rights Commission has cited the Islamabad-based institute Center for Research and Security Studies in a report which says that more than 1,000 people have been charged in Pakistan for committing offences against the blasphemy law. Since 1990, 52 people have been extra-judicially murdered for being implicated in blasphemy charges. Among them, 15 were Christians.
Nasir Khan, a Pakistani who resides in Dhaka, Bangladesh, has said that no evidence is required before the court; just the verbal statements of two or three persons are enough to punish a non-Muslim for blasphemy.
The Urdu newspapers Insaf and Khobrain both reported on 28 August 2000 that a Justice of the Lahore High Court, Nazir Akhtar, said that "Anyone accused under blasphemy charges should be killed on the spot by Muslims as their religious obligation and that there is no need for legal proceedings for a blasphemer." Justice Akhtar continued: "We shall slit every tongue that is guilty of insolence against the Holy Prophet."
The Christians of Pakistan are also being scapegoated during national and local elections. A provincial assembly candidate Mehr Abdul Sattar has instigated calls from mosque loudspeakers for attacks on Christians, whom he blames for his May 11, 2013 election loss.
According to Younus Iqbal, the chairman of the Anjuman-e-Mazareen, a peasant movement fighting for land rights, what blares from the village mosque is: "Burn their homes to the ground…Punish them such that they forget Gojra and Joseph colony."
On March 9, about 3,000 Muslims attacked Christians in the Joseph Colony and destroyed 175 houses after the rumor spread of a remark against Islam by a Christian. In 2009, eight Christians were burned alive after a blasphemy accusation. More instances of young Christian girls raped, abducted, kidnapped and murdered include:
  • Nisha, a nine-year-old Christian girl, abducted by Muslims, gang raped, murdered by repeated blows to her head, and dumped into a canal (May, 2009).
  • Gulfan, nine-year-old Christian girl, raped by a Muslim man. During her ordeal, the rapist told her not to worry because he had done the same service to other young Christian girls (December, 2010).
  • Lubna, a 12-year-old Christian girl, kidnapped, gang raped, and murdered by a group of Muslims (October, 2010).
  • Anna, a 12-year-old Christian girl, gang raped for eight months After she escaped, her Christian family was in hiding from both the rapist and the police (October, 2011).
  • After a gang raping a 13-year-old Christian girl, Muslims came to her house and beat her pregnant aunt. The police then accused the girl of committing adultery with the three men (June, 2012).
  • Amirah, a teenage Christian girl, murdered during an attempted rape (December, 2011).
  • Mehek, a 14-year-old Christian girl, abducted at gunpoint in broad daylight from her parents' house. One of her abductors declared he would "purify her" by making her Muslim (August, 2011).
  • Shazia, a 12-year-old Christian girl, raped and murdered by a rich Muslim lawyer, who was then acquitted (November, 2010).
  • A powerful Muslim businessman kidnapped two Christian sisters, whom he forced to convert to Islam and then marry him (May, 2011).
Although Rimsha Masih and her family fled to Canada to escape death threats, they left behind hundreds of "Rimshas," captive in their own land and facing death, rape and abduction, just due to their religion.
The Islamic Republic of Pakistan is now one of the most dangerous places for Christians to live.
Related Topics:  Pakistan  |  Mohshin Habib

Iran's Mullahs Learn from Lenin

by Lawrence A. Franklin
July 15, 2013 at 3:30 am
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The regime is definitely shrewder than the people it governs, as well as the West's leaders who seek to isolate it.
Old Iran hands will tell you that the Islamic Republic's ruling mullahs learned much from having been imprisoned with their Communist Tudeh [Masses] Party contemporaries, as underscored by their masterful manipulation of the political scene in the recent presidential selection.
The Office of the Leader apparently instructed the Guardian Council to select several hard-line candidates and one with a less obnoxious public persona. This playbook guaranteed the election of the perceived more moderate candidate, Hassan Rouhani. That maneuver reduced the chances of another voters' revolt, which followed the discredited 2009 presidential results. Rouhani's victory also acted as a safety valve, releasing some of pent-up anti-regime sentiment. Some Rouhani voters believing they had scored a victory over the regime, foolishly celebrated after the results were announced. Moreover, this sordid process burnished a bit Iran's international image. The regime is definitely shrewder than the people it governs, as well as the West's leaders who seek to isolate it.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani during an election campaign stop in Mashad, June 12, 2013. (Source: Morteza Ansari via Wikimedia Commons)
In the two decades before the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, the alliance between the United States and the Shah's government was viewed by Americans through the prism of the Cold War. Consequently, no tears were shed when the Shah's secret police swept up members of the pro-Moscow Communist Party of Iran, the Tudeh. However, like inhabitants of prisons everywhere, they impart to each other "the tools of the trade." Many of the most prominent clerics of the Islamic Republic spent years of cohabitation with Iran's Communists. Khomeini, Rafsanjani, and Khamenei are some, to name a few. The Shia revolutionaries now ruling Iran adopted many of Lenin's political tactics from their fellow Communist inmates inside the archipelago of the Shah's prison system.
In the years immediately preceding the 1979 revolt, the Islamic People's Revolutionary Party (IPRP) and the Tudeh were part of a "United Front From Below."[1] Communists in many countries employed this political vehicle to help remove a common "enemy of the people." In Iran, cooperation between these two political opposites was intimate and complex -- so much so, that following the Shah's overthrow, Khomeini named Rafsanjani the liaison to the Tudeh as part of a "United Front From Above".[2] However, in 1982, soon after their consolidation of power, IPRP leaders betrayed their erstwhile Communist allies in a "night of the long knives."
All other non-Islamic factions in Iran were eventually eliminated from the ruling coalition. The jettisoning of non-Islamic political groups accelerated following the population's approval of an Islamic Constitution -- an action analogous to the Bolsheviks' purge, once they had attained power, of all democratic and non-Communist socialist parties. The Shia Islamists, like the Bolsheviks, before them, created a "Popular Front"[3] government, which portrayed the illusion of a multiplicity of parties. These groups, however, were mere factions of the same party.
Another political lesson-learned from the Tudeh was the Islamic regime's checkmate of nationalist parties. Iran's mullocrats have been able to "capture the flag" by insisting on Iran's right to develop nuclear energy. They also have championed Iran's right of ownership of disputed islands in the Persian Gulf. The regime has taken a nationalist stance on the issue of the body of water sometimes referred to as "Arabian Gulf," insisting on the appellation, the "Persian Gulf." Additionally, there are indications that the regime is successfully exploiting existing international sanctions on Iran by referring to them as a conspiracy led by the "Great Satan" (USA) to punish the population of Iran. This policy is an adaptation of the Leninist tactic of forming a "Patriotic Front"[4] against Fascism.
Perhaps the most obvious similarity between Leninism and the Islamic regime is the parallel structure of government and party. Iran's external face to the world, like that of the Soviet Union before it, maintains an administrative structure of government that appears quite conventional. In reality, it is of superficial significance and has little influence over policy. What holds the real power is the ideological vehicle. In Soviet-style regimes, the Communist Party's Politburo and Central Committee dictated policy. In the Islamic Republic, it is the ménage of mullahs. Ironically, the former espoused atheistic materialism; the latter, Shia fundamentalism. Lenin's principle of "Democratic Centralism"[5] is another political concept that Iran's theocratic government appears to have adopted. The Leader's office permits various groups that are part of the regime to argue vociferously, even in public. The factions form fleeting alliances depending upon the issue and the latest whim of the clerical leadership. However, once the Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Khamenei) makes a policy decision, all elements of the regime are expected to support it.
The prime directive of both totalitarian regimes is not to disturb the political equilibrium or provide counter-revolutionaries an opportunity to threaten the existing order -- the reason the Guardian Council permitted both Khatami and Rouhani to run for the presidency. Both are revolutionary clerics who support the regime leadership concept of "valiyat-e-faqih" -- the union of religious and political authority in the hands of one deserving Imam.
Iran's theocrats, similarly to Lenin, learned how to remain in power once the bloom dissipated: they muzzled the media. Lenin banned all publications except for the Party's revolutionary organ, Iskra.[6] The Islamic Republic's newspaper which reflects the Leader's policy directives is Kayhan.[7] Other independent publications have been banned.
Finally and perhaps most significant is the effective employment of terror to intimidate opposition into silence or grudging support. Lenin established the CHEKA [8], the acolytes of which struck a paralytic fear into the hearts of all. The Islamic Republic also has used terror against its population to divide and confuse the opposition, as well as to suppress the population of Iran. Like all totalitarian regimes, the Islamic Republic has created a surveillance network to monitor its population, a mission executed by Iran's Ministry of Information and Intelligence (MOIS).
Since the demise of the Soviet Union, the Mullahs have sought counsel on the monitoring and suppression of their citizenry from other enduring totalitarian Communist regimes. They have dispatched delegations from their intelligence services to both China and North Korea.
Tehran's theological tyrants are not doing too badly. They already have lasted half as long as did the Bolsheviks of Moscow.
Dr. Lawrence A. Franklin is a Former Iran Desk Officer for the Secretary of Defense, and a Former Air Force Reserve Colonel to the U.S. Embassy in Israel.
Notes:
[1] A United Front From Below was tactic used by the Bolsheviks to gain power in Russia. The Lenin-led Bolsheviks were a small minority. However, by joining a coalition of anti-Tsarist parties, they became an important part of the post- monarchial government in Russia. Lenin's political genius is revealed in his "State and Revolution."
[2] A United Front From Above assumes power immediately after the success of a revolution or political election. As a consequence of superior organization, deception, and ruthlessness, the Mullahs, like the Bolsheviks, were able to eclipse and eliminate all other political factions, a process Lenin describes in "What is to be Done?"
[3] Spain's Communists used the Leninist idea of a Popular Front in the1936 elections. The Communists submerged their identity within a winning coalition of leftist parties.
[4] Patriotic Front was artfully exploited by pro-Moscow parties all over Europe to mobilize maximum popular support against the Nazis and their fascist allies.
[5] Democratic Centralism was the phrase coined by Lenin that insured absolute obedience to the party line once a decision was made by the Communist leadership.
[6] Iskra (the Spark) was the official organ of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Communist Party) managed by Lenin.
[7] Kayhan (the Universe) is the official media mouthpiece of the Office of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. The chief editor Hossein Shariatmadari is the most influential journalist in Iran.
[8] CHEKA is an acronym for the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage. It was the first of many terror organs which helped the Communists remain in power in the Soviet Union for over 70 years.
Related Topics:  Iran  |  Lawrence A. Franklin

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