LONDON, December 23 -- Al Qaeda has been revitalised and is planning to commit new and spectacular attacks on the West, according to a senior British minister. The group, which committed the 9/11 hijackings in 2001 that killed almost 3,000 people in New York City, is now trying to plot attacks on airports and develop technology that can bring down airliners. British Security Minister Ben Wallace, in an interview with The Sunday Times, said Al Qaeda posed such a threat that it was keeping top ministers “awake at night”. Such technology may include drones with explosives attached or miniaturised bombs capable of being smuggled on to airliners. The group’s most powerful wing is in Yemen and is known as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, but it also has a presence in Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan and the Maghreb. His comments come only days after US President Donald Trump decided to withdraw US troops from Syria. Experts and diplomats have given warnings that the withdrawal may embolden militant groups such as Al Qaeda, which has used the chaos of the civil war to plot attacks on the West. The militant group, which has had a reduced profile in recent years after the growth of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, has long targeted aviation for spectacular attacks. In 2006, British police discovered a transatlantic Al Qaeda plot to bring down airliners using liquid explosives disguised as soft drinks. The result was increased security measures on flights regarding the carrying of liquids. Three years later, Al Qaeda’s top bomb maker Anwar Al Awlaki discussed a plot with a young Nigerian volunteer in Yemen, sending him on a mission to bring down an airliner with explosives in his underwear. His explosives failed to detonate when his underwear caught fire as the plane approached Detroit on Christmas Day. Awlaki would later become the first American citizen deliberately killed on the orders of a US President without charge because of the threat he posed to national security.
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ANKARA, December 22 -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that his country would postpone a military operation against Syrian Kurdish fighters in northeast Syria.
He "cautiously" welcomed Washington's decision to withdraw its troops in the area. Speaking during a speech in Istanbul, Erdogan said the US decision meant Turkey would "wait a little longer" before launching the operation. "Of course, this is not an open-ended waiting period," he warned, adding that Turkey was working on plans to "neutralise Daesh elements" that still exist in Syria. Daesh is the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS). Erdogan had announced on December 12 that Turkey would start an offensive in northern Syria in "the next few days", but on December 14, he spoke to US President Donald Trump in a phone call. According to Turkish daily Hurriyet on Friday, Trump decided to pull out of Syria during that call with Erdogan and ordered his national security adviser John Bolton to "start the work" to prepare withdrawing troops. Clear ISIL, Kurdish armed groups Erdogan also promised on Friday to clear Syria of US-backed Kurdish armed groups after the US decision to pull troops out. "In the next months, we will see an operational style aimed at removing the YPG (Kurdish People's Protection Units militia) and Daesh (ISIL) elements on the ground in Syria," Erdogan said. The Turkish government views the US-backed YPG as an extension of an armed group fighting inside Turkey. Although Erdogan welcomed Trump's decision to leave Syria, he said he remained "cautious" because of "past negative experiences", referring to Ankara's continued disappointment over the US administration's failure to stop providing military support to the YPG in their fight against ISIL. In November last year, Turkish officials said Trump had promised not to supply weapons to the YPG, although the White House was not as explicit about its intentions. American support of the YPG, which spearheaded Washington's battles in Syria to eliminate armed groups, has long been a source of tension between the NATO allies. Meanwhile, on Friday, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is made up of an alliance of Arab and Kurdish groups, said they may not be able to hold ISIL prisoners if the situation in the region gets out of control. Ilham Ahmed of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) warned that the Trump administration's decision to withdraw all of its forces would have dangerous repercussions and a destabilizing effect on the entire region. BERLIN, December 21 -- The German government said Friday that it would be appreciated if the U.S. negotiated with them before deciding to withdraw troops from Syria. Ulrike Demmer, the government’s deputy spokeswoman, told a news conference in Berlin that they were not consulted before the U.S. decision to pullout from Syria, even though they are allies in fight against Daesh terror group. She added that there was much more to be done for a final victory over Daesh. “The U.S. announcement that it will withdraw its troops from Syria can change the dynamics in the eight-year conflict,” Demmer said, adding that all parties needed to stay in a dialogue in the political process. U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday ordered all of the U.S. forces in Syria to withdraw from the country, saying Daesh's defeat was his sole reason for being in the civil war-torn country. The U.S. began its air campaign in Syria in 2014, deploying troops to the country to assist in the anti-Daesh fight alongside local partners the year after. Reports have suggested U.S. forces will leave within 60 to 100 days. The withdrawal comes on the eve of a possible Turkish military operation in the northeastern Syria against the YPG/PKK terrorist group. Since 2016, Ankara has carried out two similar military operations in the northern Syria. The attack came after the newspaper carried satirical depictions of the prophet Muhammad on its front page. Speaking about Cherif’s arrest, the French defence minister, Florence Parly, told RTL radio: “It shows the fight against terrorism is a long-haul action and if you stay committed then you obtain results.”
Cherif, one of France’s most-wanted terror suspects, had been on the run since 2011 when he escaped after handing himself in to French authorities in Syria. Born in Paris, Cherif moved from petty crime to armed robbery and drew the attention of French intelligence services in the late 1990s. Around this time he met the Kouachi brothers, who were also living in eastern Paris. They were all believed to have been part of a group known as the Buttes-Chaumont network, named after a local park, that was sending jihadis to fight in Iraq. When police rounded up the network, they discovered Cherif had already left. He was captured by the Americans in December 2004 after he was reportedly injured while fighting as part of an al-Qaida unit in Fallujah. In 2007, he escaped from prison and moved to Syria. Fearing he was about to be captured by Syrian forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad in Damascus in 2008, Cherif gave himself up to the French authorities. However, he escaped again in January 2011. He was last reported to be in Yemen, where French intelligence services say he invited the Kouachi brothers to train to shoot. They say he was in regular contact with the Kouachis before the Charlie Hebdo attack but admit his alleged role in the killings is still unclear. One day after the Charlie Hebdo killings, Amédy Coulibaly, a follower of Islamic State and another member of the Buttes-Chaumont network, as well as a close friend of the Kouachi brothers, killed a trainee policewoman. Twenty-four hours later, he took hostages at a Jewish supermarket in the south of the city, killing four of them before he was shot dead by police. Twenty people were killed and more than a dozen injured by the gunmen in three days of terror attacks. WASHINGTON, December 19 -- US President Donald Trump has apparently taken his own defence department by surprise, declaring victory over Islamic State and ordering a full withdrawal of US forces from Syria in a sharp reversal of American policy. The US military is working to quickly carry out Trump's order, according to the officials, but it wasn't clear how soon the approximately 2000 troops would be coming home and what the president's decision would mean for vulnerable Kurdish allies that they have supported. "We have defeated Isis in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency," Trump said on Wednesday morning (Thursday NZ Time) on Twitter. A withdrawal could leave America's Kurdish allies at the mercy of Turkish troops who have long wanted to pursue forces they view as terrorists. A US departure also would leave Russia and Iran, allies of President Bashar Assad, unchecked as prime influences in Syria. As recently as last week, administration officials disputed the idea that Islamic State is defeated and suggested US involvement would continue. "If we've learned one thing over the years, enduring defeat of a group like this means you can't just defeat their physical space and then leave," Brett McGurk, the administration's special envoy to for the global coalition to defeat Isis, said on December 11. "You have to make sure the internal security forces are in place to ensure that those gains, security gains, are enduring. So that will take some time." But Trump has long pressed the military to withdraw from Syria, saying in April that he would make a decision "very quickly." "I want to get out, I want to bring the troops back home, I want to start rebuilding our nation," Trump said at a news conference at the time. He added that "our primary mission" of fighting the Islamic State terrorist group is "almost completed." One of the president's close allies in Congress, who has at times criticised his foreign policy, sharply attacked the withdrawal decision. Pulling out US forces now would be a "huge Obama-like mistake," Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, said on Twitter. The Pentagon didn't announce the decision publicly, saying on that "at this time, we continue to work by, with and through our partners in the region," without giving more details. ERBIL, DECEMBER 19 -- The Netherlands will continue training Peshmerga forces loyal to northern Iraq’s Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok said Tuesday. Blok made the assertion at a joint press conference held with KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani in Erbil, the KRG’s administrative capital. The Netherlands, Blok confirmed to reporters, would continue training Peshmerga officers at Erbil’s Training Coordination Center. “We will also provide military advisers as part of our joint reform plan for the region’s security sector,” he said. Barzani, for his part, said the KRG had also asked the Netherlands for assistance in the local food and agriculture sector. A delegation from the local private sector, he added, would soon visit the Netherlands to take part in a seminar. In September, the Dutch government announced plans to deploy 50 soldiers to northern Iraq to secure areas recently liberated from the Daesh terrorist group. The Dutch foreign minister arrived in Erbil from Baghdad earlier Monday as part of a tour of northern Iraq. According to Iraq’s federal system, all agreements between foreign states and the KRG must first be approved by Baghdad. WASHINGTON, December 15 -- Most consumers don't know about it, but Cloudflare is a tech giant that helps keep a huge portion of the internet running. According to a report from the Huffington Post, at least seven of its customers are under sanctions by the US Treasury Department, and six are on the US Department of State's list of foreign terrorist groups. One of the groups named in the report is the Taliban, which isn't on the State Department's foreign terrorism group list. Also named in the report are several Palestinian groups, al-Shabaab and the Kurdistan Workers' Party, all of which are on the list. The designation is meant to make things like international commerce and travel harder for the groups on the list. "Designations of foreign terrorist groups expose and isolate these organizations, deny them access to the US financial system, and create significant criminal and immigration consequences for their members and supporters," the State Department says on its website. What's more, the Treasury Department's sanctions, which apply to all seven groups, are meant in part to prevent US businesses from providing services to foreign terrorist groups. A Treasury Department spokeswoman said the department doesn't comment on individual matters that involve US companies doing business with sanctioned groups or any potential enforcement actions. The State Department didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Cloudflare's general counsel, Doug Kramer, told CNET the company has a process for checking whether a potential customer is sanctioned by the Treasury Department. What's more, if it finds any current customers are already on the sanctions list, it'll end services to them. Kramer declined to confirm whether the groups were clients, saying it's company policy not to name customers. The Huffington Post reported that it learned the groups were Cloudflare customers after asking independent experts to evaluate the groups' websites. "It's a very difficult task and one that a lot of tech companies have struggled with," Kramer said, "because there's not always a one-to-one correlation between a domain name and a specific group." Cloudflare manages requests by web users to visit its clients' websites, among other services. It doesn't host websites. If hackers want to take down a website by overwhelming it with requests, something called a DDoS attack, Cloudflare can stop them. The list of customers is one example of how major tech companies, as they take over more and more of the internet's infrastructure, can end up providing services for groups that promote violence and extremist ideas. It's an issue the company has faced in the past. Cloudflare faced scrutiny in August 2017 for providing -- and then ending -- services to the neo-Nazi site the Daily Stormer. The controversy started after other web service companies, like GoDaddy and Google, removed their support for the website a few days earlier, in the aftermath of the Charlottesville demonstration and death of counter-protester Heather Heyer. The Daily Stormer published an offensive article about Heyer, and tech companies began to stop providing the website with internet services. At the time, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said in a statement the company doesn't pick and choose its customers based on their ideological beliefs. However, the Daily Stormer had gone too far by spreading rumors that Cloudflare supported its neo-Nazi ideology, he said. "Our terms of service reserve the right for us to terminate users of our network at our sole discretion," Prince said. At the same time, Prince called his own company's decision "dangerous," saying it could open the door to a less free internet governed by large companies. "Without a clear framework as a guide for content regulation, a small number of companies will largely determine what can and cannot be online," he said. Kramer said Cloudflare still takes the same approach it did in the case of the Daily Stormer. The company won't pick and choose its customers based on content alone. "We've continued to take the position that we think there's much more harm than good to be done if we start to decide what content should be up and what shouldn't," Kramer said. The company will comply with sanctions from the Treasury Department, he said, adding, "We don't want to go beyond the determinations of what government officials and regulators think." Infowars and Silicon Valley: Everything you need to know about the tech industry's free speech debate. PARIS, December 13 -- The death toll in an attack on Strasbourg's Christmas market rose to three on Thursday as police searched through eastern France and manned checkpoints on the German border in a hunt for the fugitive gunman. Police issued a wanted poster for Cherif Chekatt, the main suspect in the attack, who was on an watchlist as a potential security threat. Authorities say the 29-year-old was known to have developed radical religious views while in jail. France has raised its security threat to the highest level in response to Tuesday evening's shooting rampage, which Strasbourg's mayor said was indisputably an act of terrorism. Two people were killed and a third victim who was hospitalised has now died, the Paris Prosecutor's office said. A fourth victim has been declared brain-dead. At least 12 people were wounded, several of them critically. More than 700 police were taking part in the second day of the manhunt in Strasbourg, which lies on the west bank of the Rhine river, and the surrounding region. Armed French and German police manned controls on either side of the Europe Bridge, which spans the frontier. Traffic on the French side was heavily backed up as officers inspected vehicles during the morning rush-hour. Police in the German town of Kehl, on the opposite riverbank, said they had received several reports of possible sightings on Wednesday but all were false leads. Asked if French police had been instructed to catch Chekatt dead or alive, government spokesperson Benjamin Griveaux told CNews: "It doesn't matter. The best thing would be to find him as quickly as possible." It took police four months to track down Salah Abdesalam, the prime surviving suspect from the November 2015 militant assault on Paris, in an apartment in Brussels. One hundred and thirty people were killed in that attack as well as seven gunmen and bombers. Religious symbolism The Christmas market, a hugely popular attraction in the historic city, remained closed on Thursday. Witnesses told investigators that the suspect Chekatt cried out "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greater) as he opened fire on the market, a target Paris Prosecutor Remy Heitz suggested may have been chosen for its religious symbolism. Chekatt's police file photo shows a bearded man of North African descent, with a prayer bruise on the centre of his forehead. He has 27 criminal convictions for theft and violence, and has spent time in French, German and Swiss jails. ANKARA, December 12 -- Turkey on Wednesday warned it will launch a new operation in Syria within days against US-backed Kurdish fighters in Syria, risking renewed tensions with NATO ally the United States. Addressing a defense industry meeting in Ankara on Wednesday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the target of the operation would be the Syrian Kurdish militia known as the People's Protection Units, or YPG - which Turkey views as a terrorist group linked to the insurgency within its borders. Washington's relationship with the YPG, seen as a key partner spearheading the fight against terrorists in Syria, is a major bone of contention between the US and Turkey. Ankara has repeatedly lambasted Washington for providing military support to the militia and threatened to attack areas held by the YPG. Erdogan announced the plans for a new offensive a day after the Pentagon said observation posts were in place on the Syria-Turkey border to prevent altercations between the Turkish army and the militia. "We will start an operation to free the east of the Euphrates from the separatist terrorist organization in the next few days," Erdogan said, referring to territory held by the YPG. Turkey says the YPG is a "terrorist offshoot" of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has waged an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984. The PKK is blacklisted as a terror group by Ankara and its Western allies. "The target is never American soldiers but terrorist organization members active in the region," Erdogan told the audience at a defense industry summit. The Pentagon on Tuesday announced the posts' establishment on the northeast Syria border region despite calls from Ankara not to go ahead with the move. Erdogan claimed Turkey was not being protected from terrorists but "terrorists were being protected" from possible action by Turkey. In October, Turkey shelled YPG positions east of the Euphrates in the Kobane region. Youssef Hammoud, spokesman for a coalition of pro-Ankara rebels, said the aim of a new operation would be to remove the YPG from an area spanning Manbij to Tal Abyad. American forces have worked closely with the YPG under the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance against the ISIS terrorist group. US forces have joined the SDF east of the Euphrates as well as in the flashpoint city of Manbij, west of the river. In a bid to avoid any clash, the NATO allies agreed a "roadmap" for Manbij in June. In November, Turkish and American troops launched joint patrols in the northern city. Part of the agreement was that the YPG would leave Manbij and that the NATO allies would work together to establish a local security structure and decide who will govern. But Erdogan on Wednesday said Turkey "still not got the result it wanted" in Manbij. "There has been a delaying tactic undeniably used in Manbij, and right now it is still being used," he said, adding that the threat from ISIS no longer existed in Syria. ERBIL, December 3 -- The US-led coalition has confirmed it has killed a senior Islamic State (IS) member responsible for the murder of a US citizen in 2014. “Coalition forces conducted precision strikes against a senior [IS] member, Abu al Umarayn, and several other [IS] members on Dec. 2 in the Badiyah Desert, Syria,” coalition spokesperson Col. Sean Ryan said in a statement. “Al Umarayn had given indications of posing an imminent threat to Coalition Forces, and he was involved in the killing of American Citizen and former US Army Ranger, Peter Kassig,” he added. According to the US-led coalition, the jihadist has been linked to and directly involved with executing several other prisoners. “Coalition airstrikes continue to disrupt [IS] command and control on the battlefield as we remove key figures from their ranks,” the coalition statement further read. Kassig, a 26-year-old who provided aid to Syria, was captured in October 2013. IS militants beheaded him in 2014. He earlier served as a US army ranger until 2007. Kassig was not the only victim of kidnapping. Journalist James Foley, the first US journalist to be held captive, was also murdered by IS in 2014. Austin Tice, another journalist and former marine, disappeared while reporting in Syria in 2012. Some believe he is still alive. NEW YORK, November 28 -- The UN Council on Human Rights-linked Committee for the Protection against Racial Discrimination discussed the situation of religious and ethnic minorities in Iraq, Qatar and Honduras at a session held at the UN Geneva Office with the participation of international NGOs.
During the Iraqi debate, civil society group Minority Rights underlined how there are still religious and ethnic inequalities in Iraq. While the minorities in Iraq cannot benefit from the riches of the country, the group underlined that the religious and ethnic minorities in Iraq are in danger of attack. In a speech on behalf of the International Geneva Center for Justice, it was stated that the Iraqi government never obeyed international treaties to protect minorities. Emphasizing that the Iraqi government supports local militia forces that are violating human rights, the Geneva Center for Justice called on Iraqi government to ban violent videos in Iraq. Maat for Peace and Development and Human Rights, said that women in Iraq face great discrimination and violence. Iraqi government policies have actually strengthened attacks on women, and the two organisations called on the government to develop policies to protect religious and ethnic minorities, and particularly to protect women. It was also pointed out that everyone, especially women, targeted by DAESH should actually enjoy protection. Many international non-governmental organizations pointed out in their speeches that ethnic and religious minorities targeted by DAESH still live in a vulnerable situation. International NGOs said that the Yazidis who were specifically and violently targeted by DAESH, are still facing many dangers, and underlined that people who fled their houses due to DAESH attack still cannot return to them because of security reasons. The speeches also emphasized that Yazidis and women still live in a vulnerable situation of discrimination and called upon the Iraqi government to take action on this. BERLIN, Februari 8 -- A man has been arrested on suspicion of being an ISIS terrorist after entering Europe claiming to be a Syrian refugee. The 34-year-old man was arrested at a refuge centre after police raided a number of locations in Germany this week. Here, he is pictured surrounded by a cache of heavy weaponry including automatic rifles and grenades. The picture shows the suspect knelt next to his haul of Ak47s , possibly loaded magazines, hand grenades, camouflage and protective gear. He smirks as he holds a hand gun towards the camera. Police believe the man, who hasn't been identified, was planning to massacre civilians in Germany after receiving training from IS thugs in Syria. The proposed attack comes as a top German spy warned ISIS was planting fighters disguised as refugees in Europe. German cops in Attendorn said the man arrived in the country at the end of 2015, claiming to be fleeing the civil war. It is now believe he is part of the terror cell. His wife, who has not been named, has also been taken into custody. They were taken as 450 heavily-armed police stormed properties across the country on Thursday. SIRTE, January 31 -- Related local sources confirmed the death of one Islamic State commander, last night, in Sirte, Sudanese national called Hamad Abdel Hady, nicknamed Abu Anas Al-Muhajer. Sources said, to Al-Wasat website, that a sniper inside the city managed to kill the Sudanese, an official in the IS sharia court, upon his arrival to medical facility opposite to a park in Sirte. “State of terror prevailed among the IS ranks after the death of Al-Muhajer, they randomly shot in the air to scare inhabitants, while searching for the sniper” one source said. On another side, source inside the common security chamber in the Central Region of Libya said that the military planes flied over Sirte, Hawara, Bin Jawad and Nufalya to monitor movements and positions of the IS elements, and according to sources, the airplanes are affiliate to chief staff of the General National Congress (GNC). Inside Bin Jawad, sources said that IS elements confiscated number of Salafist houses and wrote slogans as “property of IS”. Banning of pants The IS elements detained many citizens affiliate to police and army, accused them of Infidelity giving them time till the end of October. Some displaced citizens from Sirte in Ajdabiya said that the IS banned youth from wearing tight pants. At Bin Jawad, the group stormed many houses, and announced it will revenge detainees, who were arrested last week, for different reasons including cooperation with the army, Libya Dawn, Operation Dignity, and others fled the city. The IS control Bin Jawad since the 4th January after retreating from Al-Sedra and Houroj oil ports. ROTTERDAM, November 29 -- Mainstream Muslim scholars must engage with reinterpreting passages of the Qur'an that seem to support ISIS' treatment of women. From where we are positioned, the refugee camp appears enormous. Big, heated tents are situated next to each other in rows. Bread is made in a traditional earth oven, several metres beneath the ground. The dough is stuck to the clay walls and baked with the lid attached to the top of the oven. When the bread is done, it plunges downwards and hits a grate placed inside the oven. We run into girls on their way to school. A girl wearing a pink sweater and leopard-patterned corduroys plays football with a tin can. Two girls sit behind a tent, one of them combing the other's hair. Next to a man who sells clothing, children in army sweatpants play. They smile and fool about while I take their pictures, and they communicate with signals, which, for a split second, recall the sign gesticulated by ISIS fighters pointing towards the sky and Allah. The impression I get is similar to that of a visit to a Christian refugee camp in Erbil, a few hours south of the Yezidi camp in Dohuk. Tens of thousands of Christians fled the village of Qaragosh, which was seized by ISIS in August 2014. The residents ran out of water and electricity supplies following the arrival of ISIS in the province capital of Mosul. Still, the 50,000 Christians believed they were safe. Women and men reveal the sense of horror that proliferated as ISIS drew closer to their village. One of the refugees recounts: “ISIS approached the town and laid out the options: to die, to convert, to flee or to pay a Christian tax to continue to live under their regime. So we left all our possessions, for we had heard what happened to the Yezidis in Sinjar. Some old men did not leave, either because their health did not allow them to, or because the news reached them too late. They stayed behind. I do not know what happened to them.” This camp, too, is characterised by its placidity. Some girls sit on a bench and do their homework. Another one is seated on the ground. A woman, who wears sweatpants embroidered with characters from the Disney movie Frost, prepares tomatoes and eggs in a frying pan. Nissar Potnus, 58, says: "They pillaged our homes, robbed them of valuables. They broke into houses and took everything. Even refrigerators. They took our livestock. Everything. My car was left behind. Everything we built over the whole course of our lives is gone. Nonetheless, we fear nothing but the loss of our women. We are aware of what happened to the Mosul women. Many young, Christian women were kidnapped from their families, and the Christian families received life threats when attempting to retrieve the women...Before Daesh arrived, we co-existed peacefully with Muslims. Then, everything changed.” “ISIS fighters are sexually frustrated losers.” Those were the words of London mayor Boris Johnson. It is a simplistic and banal statement, although there is no doubt that ISIS wields women and sex as draw cards to recruit western men. This assertion is also reflected in the numerous stories about western men who have travelled to IS occupied areas. One of them, Raphael Hostey, 22, who travelled to Syria from Manchester in 2013, is part of ISIS’ recruitment team, which assists newly arrived fighters from the west across the border. He was believed to be an ordinary chap from the UK who attended John Moores University in Liverpool prior to his departure to Syria, where he gained the nickname “Al Britani Afro”. Raphael left both his wife and children in Manchester. Now he is accused of “stealing” girls from fellow fighters, and of demanding from prospective female travellers to Syria, with whom he chats online, to remove their hijab and niqab so he can determine which of them are the prettiest. Where Boris Johnson is right is that ISIS is a state established by men, for men, in order to cater to men obsessed with weapons, murder and torture, and who have an urge to rape and abuse women and children. The regime provides them with a religious legitimacy with no basis in Islam. They misuse religion to fulfil sadistic fantasies involving children and women. They exploit the fact that imams and Muslim theologians lag behind in efforts to answer important questions concerning women and gender equality in a modern world. The imams not only fall short of providing answers on the position of women in society, but also on the issue of homosexuality. Out of fear of discomfort, and due to uncertainty in tackling these kinds of universal debates, they remain silent. It yields mullahs the power to define these issues. ISIS throws living people off tall buildings in Raqqa, just because they are gay, and does so in the name of Islam. They abuse children and women while appealing to the Qur'an. Western Muslims feel stripped of explanations when these issues are up for debate, because their alleged fellow believers have nothing in common with their religion.
Salah Abdesalam, a Belgian national, is suspected to be hiding in the Brussels area and carrying what might be an explosive device. Charles Michel, Belgium's prime minister, moved to increase the state of alert in Brussels to the highest level early on Saturday in response to the threat. Metro services and major events have since been suspended as hundreds of police officers and soldiers fanned out across the city. Residents have been asked to stay indoors and avoid crowded areas amid the alert, which is in force only in Brussels. Emergency phone lines have been set up to report suspicious activity, as well as sightings of Abdesalam. Ongoing threat Belgium has been at the forefront of efforts to track down those involved in helping execute the November 13 attacks in Paris, which targeted a concert hall, football stadium, cafe and shopping mall. On Thursday, the country's security services launched raids in the Molenbeek and Jette neighbourhoods of Brussels and made further arrests on Saturday. The attacks were blamed on the Islamic State (IS) group, and several of the attackers are believed to have received training in Syria. The apparent ringleader, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was a Belgian national who fought with IS and is suspected of helping to inspire or direct previous attacks targeting France. Since the start of October, IS has launched a number of attacks against targets outside the territory it primarily operates in, including in France, Lebanon, and Turkey. The group has also claimed credit for bringing down on October 31 a Russian airliner in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula by smuggling a bomb on board. |
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