Mass shootings kill far more than Muslim American terrorism – research

Mass shooting fatalities by far exceed the number of those killed in Muslim-related terrorism in the US, new research says. The number of terrorist incidents involving Muslim Americans has shown a dramatic drop since 2009. ­Fourteen Muslim-Americans committed or were charged with terrorist crimes in 2012, down from 21 in 2011, 26 in 2010 and 49 in 2009, according to the fourth annual reportby North Carolina's Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security. (Image from tcths.sanford.duke.edu) Of the 14 offenders in 2012, only one was accused of executing a violent attack (the bombing of a Social Security office in Casa Grande, Ariz.). The other perpetrators were arrested at an early stage of their terrorist plots. The author of the research, sociology professor Charles Kurzman, who has been studying the issue for the past three years, concluded that"the number of Muslim-Americans indicted for support of terrorism — financing, false statements, and other connections with terrorist plots and organizations, aside from violent plots — fell from 27 individuals in 2010 to 8 in 2011, bringing the total to 462 since 9/11." Read More

Mass shootings kill far more than Muslim American terrorism – research

Mass shooting fatalities by far exceed the number of those killed in Muslim-related terrorism in the US, new research says. The number of terrorist incidents involving Muslim Americans has shown a dramatic drop since 2009. ­Fourteen Muslim-Americans committed or were charged with terrorist crimes in 2012, down from 21 in 2011, 26 in 2010 and 49 in 2009, according to the fourth annual reportby North Carolina's Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security. (Image from tcths.sanford.duke.edu) Of the 14 offenders in 2012, only one was accused of executing a violent attack (the bombing of a Social Security office in Casa Grande, Ariz.). The other perpetrators were arrested at an early stage of their terrorist plots. The author of the research, sociology professor Charles Kurzman, who has been studying the issue for the past three years, concluded that"the number of Muslim-Americans indicted for support of terrorism — financing, false statements, and other connections with terrorist plots and organizations, aside from violent plots — fell from 27 individuals in 2010 to 8 in 2011, bringing the total to 462 since 9/11." Read More

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'Islam is reviving British values', says former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams

Saturday 02 August 2014 Islam is rejuvenating “British values”, the former Archbishop of Canterbury has claimed while lambasting sections of the press for presenting Muslims as “un-British”. Rowan Williams was giving a speech at the annual Living Islam Festival in Lincolnshire on Friday, discussing what British values were and how Muslims could affect them. He said one of the greatest gifts to Britain had been bringing back “open, honest and difficult public discussion”, the Times reported. Asked if he thought Islam was restoring British values, he said: “Yes. I’m thinking of the way in which, for example, in Birmingham we have seen a local parish and a mosque combining together to provide family services and youth activities, both acting out of a very strong sense that this is what communities ought to do. ” Dr Williams was one of several speakers at the event organised by the Islamic Society of Britain, which saw thousands of people gather for four days of talks, debates, music, worship and bazaars. The now Master of Magdalene College in Cambridge praised both Christianity and Islam for working towards community cohesion and promoting a sense of duty. But in comments reported by the Guardian, he also objected to the notion of British values, saying they should be more universal. “The setting-up therefore of British values against any kind of values, whether Muslim or Christian, just won't do,” he said. Read More

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Gaza: How neutral is U.N? Washington Post

The mortar shells that struck a United Nations-run schoolin Gaza on Wednesday, killing at least 20 Gazans — including children — and injuring dozens of others, marked the sixth time that U.N. facilities have been hit during this conflict. U.N. officials have presented these incidents as attacks on the international community as a whole. “This is an affront to all of us, a source of universal shame,” said Pierre Krähenbühl, a senior U.N. refugee official. “Today the world stands disgraced.” While Israeli officials have never admitted intentionally targeting the United Nations, many Israelis contest the notion that the United Nations is a benign and impartial actor in Gaza, devoted only to ensuring the well-being of refugees in the territory. The Israeli government and the U.N. refugee organization for Palestinians — the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) — regularly trade accusations: U.N. officials have criticized Israel’s economic blockade of the territory, while Israeli officials have routinely accused UNRWA of parroting Hamas’s arguments and even being complicit in some of its activities. The United Nations’ struggles in Gaza are an extreme version of a dilemma the global body faces in hot spots around the world: how to preserve its prized neutrality as it becomes involved in bitter conflicts with very little middle ground? In Gaza, the bad blood has some history. During the 2008-2009 Gaza incursion, UNRWA reported that Israeli strikes damaged dozens of its facilities. In one strike, Israeli shells set fire to a U.N. warehouse, and Israel eventually paid compensation. For its part, Israel has accused the United Nations of specific misconduct, including transporting Hamas rockets in a U.N. ambulance — a charge Israeli officials later retracted. The broader Israeli critique is that UNRWA nurses Palestinian grievances and has acquiesced to the militarization of the territory by extremists such as Hamas. In 2002, a spokesman for then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called for an investigation of what he described as “30 years of abuse of refugee camps by the Palestinians” and the United Nations’ “bond of silence” toward it. Animated by similar concerns, the U.S. government has conducted investigations of UNRWA’s operations on its own, and Canada recently redirected some of its funding from UNRWA to other channels. The discovery of Hamas rockets in several UNRWA schools during the current conflict — quickly condemned by U.N. officials — has only deepened the suspicions of Israel’s supporters that UNRWA is, in effect, aligned with Hamas. The controversy surrounding the United Nations is particularly intense in Gaza but not unique to it. In some conflict zones, the United Nations has come to be seen as a proxy for one side or as the embodiment of an international policy that certain combatants reject. In these cases, the organization serves as a tempting target for extremists looking to make a point and generate headlines. Two U.N. aid workers were shot and killed in Somalia in late 2011. Earlier that year, Boko Haram militants detonated a bomb outside a U.N. building in Abuja, Nigeria, killing 21. In 2009, Taliban operatives killed five U.N. workers in Afghanistan. And most notorious, Iraqi insurgents bombed the U.N. compound in Baghdad in August 2003, an attack that claimed the lives of top official Sergio Vieira de Mello and more than a dozen others. Of course, all humanitarian actors face challenges in maintaining wartime neutrality. But the agencies of the United Nations, including UNRWA, carry an additional burden. They are attached to a global organization that is, in fact, highly political. U.N. humanitarian operations fall under the very loose purview of the organization’s General Assembly, comprising more than 190 often fractious states. Its peacekeeping operations are directed by the 15-member Security Council. For Israelis, in particular, it is difficult to separate the United Nations’ role as a relief agency in Gaza from the hostility it perceives in the organization as a whole. Every year, the assembly and several of its subsidiary bodies pass a sheaf of resolutions criticizing Israel for its occupation and various other practices. American and Israeli diplomats have regularly complained about what they describe as a skewed and unbalanced view of Israel prevailing in Turtle Bay and Geneva. If the United Nations struggles to maintain an image of impartiality and neutrality in its humanitarian operations, those qualities can be even more elusive when its personnel don helmets and pick up rifles. Since the late 1940s, generations of U.N. peacekeepers have patrolled conflict areas in an effort to tamp down violence. Sometimes they manage to win the trust of the key parties.

Israeli newspaper invokes biblical verses to justify genocide

1 Samuel 15:18-Samuel said, “Is it not true, though you were little in your own eyes, you were made the head of the tribes of Israel? And the LORD anointed you king over Israel, 18and the LORD sent you on a mission, and said, ‘Go and utterly destroy the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are exterminated.’ 19“Why then did you not obey the voice of the LORD, but rushed upon the spoil and did what was evil in the sight of the LORD?”… Saul was anointed king of Israel by G-d and given the mission to join the tribes of Israel as one nation and to protect them against their enemies. This has been the primary job of leaders from the beginning of time-to defend their citizens and national rights before any other obligation. For without security, without the power to protect what is basically, the lives of one’s charges and the land that sustains the people, all else is of less than secondary interest or importance. A nation that will not defend itself, in whatever manner that the “king”, or the president or the prime minister is empowered to do, is not a civilization that will be sustainable nor credible. There are religious folks that place everything that happens to some esoteric or supernatural dimension, but I, a rather secular man, believe that much of what is in the Hebrew Bible (except for much of the already evidentiary history) as allegorical, and in some manner, presented in order to teach us how to live as a society. However, the passage from Samuel is an admonishment on the primary duty of a leader. To me, Samuel represents the people of Israel today, questioning and redressing a grievance to the “king,” or, in this case, our prime minister. One might say that the right to redress of grievances as written in many modern constitutional documents, is one of the fundamental rights of a free people in a republic-the inherent obligation of citizens to make their voices heard when their government either fails to carry out a particular policy or fails to adhere to the voice of the electorate that placed them in position of power. G-d might be meant to illustrate that voice of the people-the vox populi. In this case, G-d had demanded that Saul (or the “prime minister”) enter into battle with the Amalekites (Hamas and its savage partners) and destroy them utterly even if that means to the last child, cow and goat. As cruel as this appears, it is a lesson that teaches a nation in terrible danger that it has a legitimate obligation to put a definite end to a substantial threat. The end of such a conflict must make it impossible for that enemy to rebuild and continue to vex one’s nation forever. Time and again, throughout Jewish history, we have been told that Amalek will arise in every generation to try to destroy this people. Saul refuses to kill Agag, the king of the Amalekites. In his disobedience, his defying of G-d, is equivalent to our present leadership attempting to fight Hamas while refusing to employ the means to destroy it entirely. By discovering and exploding all the tunnels, or seizing all their arms, is inadequate to assure the utter destruction that is necessary in this war against the Amalekites of today. There must be no quarter given, no “humanitarian ” ceasefires, but a resolute combat without the words and demands of a hateful, hypocritical cabal barking like angry dogs, at our heels.. Because, just as the Amalekites fell upon the rear of the Israelites as they passed through their lands on the way to Canaan, the terrorists will violate every ceasefire, every truce and every politically machined halt to the fighting to retreat and bind their wounds waiting for the next opportunity to attack us