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Theme Changer

 Topic: 'Islamic State' a.k.a. ISIL

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  • ISIS take Mosul
     Reply #60 - June 14, 2014, 04:04 PM

    ^ censoring the female interviewer wacko

    Allah has been generous with the number of smart phones for the glorious Islamic revolution:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR5cjO_FyUM







    Danish Never-Moose adopted by the kind people on the CEMB-forum
    Ex-Muslim chat (Unaffliated with CEMB). Safari users: Use "#ex-muslims" as the channel name. CEMB chat thread.
  • ISIS take Mosul
     Reply #61 - June 14, 2014, 06:50 PM

    I know... And in the long term it might be the best.... Christians moving out of the Middle East... Carving out Sunni and Shia states....

    For Iran the problem is that they are persecuting the Arab minority - and they are both Sunni AND Shia. Oh and then the Bahais and the Parsi Sunnis as well...

    What about just making a secular country for once? :S


    I am so sorry, I just have to add that you forgot the Lor and the Kurds and the scorched earth policies in Iran towards them. Also the humanists, the wealthy non-clerical, the intellectuals, the youth, and anyone not related to the Basij. Sorry. Getting a little bitter. Too much bad Memri.

    Don't let Hitler have the street.
  • ISIS take Mosul
     Reply #62 - June 15, 2014, 12:11 AM

    ISIS are publishing pictures on social media of them driving shias in trucks and shooting them in ditches.


    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • ISIS take Mosul
     Reply #63 - June 15, 2014, 12:49 AM

    ISIS fans. This is the consummation of decades of jihadi dreaming.



    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • ISIS take Mosul
     Reply #64 - June 15, 2014, 01:15 AM

    ISIS are publishing pictures on social media of them driving shias in trucks and shooting them in ditches.





    Anfal deux. I hate them.

    Don't let Hitler have the street.
  • ISIS take Mosul
     Reply #65 - June 15, 2014, 01:32 AM

    Iraqi Shiite Cleric Issues Call to Arms

    Quote
    BAGHDAD — The specter of sectarian war and partition of Iraq grew on Friday as the country’s top Shiite cleric implored his followers to take up arms against an insurgent army of marauding Sunni extremist militants who have captured broad stretches of northern territory this week in a sweep toward Baghdad.

    The exhortation by the cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, came as President Obama told the Iraqis they need to resolve the crisis themselves and vowed not to redeploy United States forces in Iraq, a country where nearly 4,500 American soldiers lost their lives and the United States spent more than $1 trillion in an eight-year war that Mr. Obama said was history when the last troops left in 2011.

    While Mr. Obama said he would offer some help, it would not include troops, and he asserted that “we’re not going to allow ourselves to be dragged back into a situation in which, while we’re there, we’re keeping a lid on things.”

    Heeding the call to arms by Ayatollah Sistani, Shiite volunteers rushed to the front lines, reinforcing defenses of the holy city of Samarra 70 miles north of Baghdad, and helping thwart attacks by Sunni fighters of the radical Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in some smaller cities to the east. The confrontations suggested that Shiites and Sunnis would once again engage in open conflict for control of Iraq, as they did during the height of the American-led occupation that ousted Saddam Hussein.

    That struggle between the sects has also helped shape the civil war in neighboring Syria and threatened to further destabilize the Middle East.

    While it was unclear from Mr. Obama’s remarks what he might be prepared to do militarily to help the Maliki government, administration officials said the options included airstrikes by warplanes or drones, improved intelligence sharing and deployment of small numbers of Special Forces members.

    The United States already has considerable military power deployed in the region, with 35,000 troops, in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and neighboring Gulf nations. In addition, the United States has an array of ships there, as well as the aircraft carrier George H. W. Bush with an accompanying Navy cruiser in the northern Arabian Sea. Two Navy destroyers from the Bush strike group have moved into the Persian Gulf, a Defense Department official said.

    The sharp deterioration in Iraq represents a significant security issue to both the United States and Iran, adversaries in a range of disputes, including the Syria conflict. Both were seeking ways to help avoid a collapse in the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite whose marginalization of Sunnis and other sects has been blamed by some critics for the dysfunction that has steadily worsened in Iraq since the American departure.

    For Iran’s Shiite leaders, the Iraq crisis represents a direct Sunni militant threat on their doorstep. The commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, Gen. Qassim Suleimani, an architect of military strategy who has helped President Bashar al-Assad of Syria in his war against Sunni radicals, arrived in Baghdad this week and has been reviewing how Iraq’s Shiite militias are prepared to defend Baghdad and other areas.

    “The mobilization of the Shia militias, and Qassim Suleimani’s presence, is a very good indication of how seriously they’re taking this,” Hayder al-Khoei, an associate fellow at the London-based Chatham House research group, said in an interview with Iranwire, a website run by expatriate Iranian journalists. But reports that Iran had sent hundreds of Quds fighters into Iraq were not confirmed.

    Even with their shared interests in a stable Iraq, there was no overt sign of cooperation or communication between the United States and Iran on the crisis. Marie Harf, a State Department spokeswoman, told reporters on Friday that “we are not talking to the Iranians about Iraq.”

    Thousands of Iraqi Shiites responded to the call by Ayatollah Sistani, 83, a respected figure among Iraq’s rival sects, whose statements carry particular weight among the Shiite majority. The statement, read by his representative during Friday Prayer, said it was “the legal and national responsibility of whoever can hold a weapon to hold it to defend the country, the citizens and the holy sites.”

    The representative of Ayatollah Sistani, Sheikh Abdul Mehdi al-Karbalaie, spoke in Karbala, a southern city regarded by Shiites as one of Iraq’s holiest. The sheikh said volunteers “must fill the gaps within the security forces.”

    The statement stopped short of calling for a general armed response to the incursion led by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, which has emerged as one of the most potent opposition forces in the Syrian civil war and which now controls large areas of both Syria and northern Iraq.

    The insurgents have pledged to march on Baghdad, but seizing and controlling the sprawling Iraqi capital, with its large population of Shiites, is likely to prove much more difficult than advancing across a Sunni heartland with little sympathy for the central government. The sheikh emphasized that all Iraqis should join the fight, pulling together, so the country does not slide into all-out sectarian warfare. But in a time of mounting frictions and deepening distrust between the sects, it appeared unlikely that many Sunnis would answer the ayatollah’s call. Many Sunnis feel little sympathy either for the government or for the extremists of ISIS.

    Volunteers began to appear at the southern gate to Baghdad, which leads to the predominantly Shiite south of the country, within an hour after Sheikh Abdul broadcast Ayatollah Sistani’s call.

    For the first time since the Sunni insurgents routed the government security forces on Tuesday in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, their southward advance appeared to stall. The insurgents fanned out on Friday to the east of the Tigris River, and at least temporarily seized two towns near the Iranian border, Sadiyah and Jalawla. But security officials in Baghdad said government troops, backed by Kurdish forces, counterattacked several hours later and forced the insurgents to withdraw.

    Shiite militia leaders reported they had also collaborated with security forces to take back control of Dhuluiya, a town about 60 miles north of Baghdad — the southernmost point of the Sunni insurgent advance.

    Iraqiya, the state television channel, reported Friday night that a son of Ezzat al-Douri, one of the top leaders of the Hussein era who was never captured by the Americans and is collaborating with the ISIS fighters, was killed in an Iraqi Air Force strike on Tikrit. There was no immediate way to corroborate the report.

    In its language and tone, Ayatollah Sistani’s statement portrayed it as a religious and patriotic act to volunteer either for the Iraqi Army or for a Shiite militia, two forces that are becoming difficult to distinguish.

    When the ayatollah’s representative, Sheikh Abdul, said, “Whoever can hold a weapon has to volunteer to join the security forces,” the call was greeted with cheers and shouts of “It will be done!”

    People in Ayatollah Sistani’s office said the statement was a response to one issued by the leadership of ISIS threatening to seize not just the predominantly Sunni areas of northern Iraq, but also Baghdad and the cities of Karbala and Najaf, which are sacred to Shiite Muslims.

    “Iraq and the Iraqi people are facing great danger,” Sheikh Abdul said. “The terrorists are not aiming to control just several provinces. They said clearly they are targeting all other provinces, including Baghdad, Karbala and Najaf. So the responsibility to face them and fight them is the responsibility of all, not one sect or one party. The responsibility now is saving Iraq, saving our country, saving the holy places of Iraq.”


    `But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
     `Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad.  You're mad.'
     `How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.
     `You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't have come here.'
  • ISIS take Mosul
     Reply #66 - June 15, 2014, 01:39 AM

    Seeing Their Gains at Risk, Shiites Flock to Join Militias

    Quote
    BAGHDAD — When he heard on Tuesday that Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, had fallen to Sunni militants, Abu Ali Alakabaie knew what he had to do.

    One of a number of Iraqi Shiite commanders who had been fighting on behalf of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria in recent years, he quickly packed his belongings and hit the road, racing to Baghdad, where he had heard that the militants were already reaching the northern suburbs.

    “After they occupied Mosul, we decided to come back from Syria to back the security forces here,” he said.

    He arrived in Baghdad later on Tuesday, joining a growing throng of Iraqi militia commanders and fighters eager to put to work here the finely honed skills they had accumulated in Syria in years of fighting some of the same Sunni militants who were now attacking Iraq. “We now have great experience in guerrilla fighting,” he said, adding diplomatically, “The Iraqi Army has no experience doing that.”

    As he spoke Friday evening, hundreds of young Shiite men streamed past him, massing in a basketball arena in eastern Baghdad, lining up before recruiters like college students at a job fair. The officials took their names and addresses, to run background checks before adding them to the militia ranks.

    It wasn’t just one Shiite militia group recruiting but at least four — and perhaps more. It was hard to tell in the confusion as Shiites responded by the thousands to the call to arms issued earlier in the day by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, to protect fellow Shiites and to prop up the Shiite government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

    It was only three weeks ago that Mr. Maliki was re-elected for a third term, and by a surprisingly strong margin. Yet his country now seemed in danger of slipping away from him. Sunni militants were in full control of Mosul and Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown, while the Kurds, ostensibly his allies, had taken over Kirkuk, an oil-rich city that they had long coveted.

    But it was more than that, as Iraq’s millions of Shiites knew very well. The United States invasion and occupation had handed them a once in a millennium opportunity to rule. And now, in a matter of five or six years, they seemed on the verge of squandering it. The sacred Shiite shrines at Samarra, Karbala and Najaf were threatened by the militants and their leaders in the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, who had sworn to level the sites.

    But the idea of bringing back Shiite militias sent a shudder through many, raising chilling memories of the sectarian war that raged in Iraq from 2005 through 2008, with torture chambers, ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods and bodies dumped in the Tigris with holes drilled in victims’ heads. Such a war, once unleashed, would be hard to quell, and Shiite leaders were well aware that the Sunni militants were willing to start one.

    Sheikh Abdul Mehdi al-Karbalaie, Ayatollah Sistani’s representative was cautious on Friday. Speaking from Karbala, he said the numbers of fighters and volunteers “must fill the gaps within the security forces.”

    For now the Shiite militias-in-formation are maintaining that they are not anti-Sunni. But distrust, if not unspoken loathing, is apparent — a mirror image of the Sunni militants’ views of the Shiites and a disturbing omen for the days ahead.

    “Of course it’s risky if you arm civilians, but people have to defend their communities and localities,” said a Maliki adviser, adding that the government welcomed the ayatollah’s support.

    That Shiites feel they have to turn to militias to guarantee their protection is testimony to the country’s slide into chaos. The Iraqi Army, which the Americans spent around $20 billion trying to rebuild as a multi-sect, multiethnic force, has been so riven by sectarianism that it is unable or unwilling to protect Iraqi citizens and fight enemies of the Iraqi state in an evenhanded way.

    Shiite militias today are somewhat different from those active during the worst days of the sectarian fighting, when they were largely attached to political and religious parties and operated separately and often in opposition to the Iraqi Army. Current militias, some of which have been around for several years, aim to work with the security forces in a semi-integrated fashion, said several militia commanders.

    One commander, reached by phone at an Iraqi Army base where he is helping train the soldiers and work with commanders on counterterrorism strategy, sounded almost patronizing as he spoke of the problems. This commander, who identified himself only as Mohammed, for security reasons, described something akin to a buddy system in which the militia members would embed with the troops and push them to stand their ground.

    “What’s going on now is just a copy of what we did in Syria, planning and suggesting the movement of the troops,” he said.

    “The militiamen will be at the front,” he said. “The Iraqi Army has no ideology, and because of this they let Mosul, Salahuddin and other areas fall into the hands of militants. We suggested to them to let every Iraqi soldier have a militiaman brother because we know the Iraqi soldier’s activity is not more than 50 percent. He’s just a man with a weapon, but if he saw a militiaman fighting with him, then he will be ashamed to withdraw.”

    Ali, another Shiite militia leader, described the militias more as a recruiting mechanism, and said the members would work full time for the army. “Now we have more than 14,000 volunteers in Muthanna Airport,” he said. “They came from all the provinces, but most of them from Baghdad. What we want is building a companion army from the volunteers, and this army will be supervised, equipped and run by the government. It’s similar to a public army.

    “All Shiite factions have pushed their disagreements away and decided to join this army to protect Baghdad,” he said, adding a note of urgency: “The militants are just outside Baghdad, and even the main road between Baghdad and Diyala is partially under their control.”

    Parallel to the recruitment effort by the militia, senior Iraqi Army commanders were going neighborhood to neighborhood to find replacements for those who had deserted. The day before at a stadium in the Husseiniya neighborhood, the commander of the Iraqi Army’s 11th Division, in charge of security for northern Baghdad, had addressed hundreds of sheikhs about the need to support the government.

    Maj. Gen. Abdul Jabbar asked each of them to prove their support for the government by providing 50 volunteers to join informal fighting units, which would be attached to the military and deploy with them.

    Sheikh Ali Jabbar al-Lani made his 50 by bringing out, among others, his 15-year-old son, Ahmad. “Not only can I shoot an AK-47,” said the boy, who is a high school student, “but I can fieldstrip it too.”

    Like many of the other “shabab” or youths who were pouring out in large numbers in Shiite neighborhoods throughout Baghdad and southern Iraq, Ahmad remembers the sectarian warfare that convulsed Iraq when he was a young boy, involved in duties like carrying messages under fire, replenishing ammunition and otherwise helping the older men fight.

    Now, his four older brothers are all in the Iraqi Army, two of them deployed to Samarra and one to Mosul, who had to flee when the army collapsed there.

    “I’m not worried about him,” his father said. “This is his country. If God will let them come to Baghdad, they will have to pass Husseiniya, and we consider ourselves as the shield of Baghdad.”


    `But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
     `Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad.  You're mad.'
     `How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.
     `You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't have come here.'
  • ISIS take Mosul
     Reply #67 - June 15, 2014, 08:57 AM

    Good post, Miss Alethia.


    I already know a few people who support them. I don't know if that would change if they saw some of the gruesome videos I've watched out of them...Likely not, I guess when it's a holy war the ends tend to justify the means. 


    Many don't support ISIS because they're religious fanatics who love shari'ah. They absolutely loathe the Islamist militia in Somalia for their brutality and insanity. Meanwhile, they loved Saddam. Some considers him an Arab hero and a martyr, and sees these ISIS guys as Sunni nationalists of sorts fighting Shi'a tyranny. I'm sure they'd support secular Ba'athist Sunnis fighting Maliki just as much. Tell them about what ISIS had been doing in Syria and they're like "no, no, these guys are different from the ones in Syria".Wonder if they change her mind when the beheadings, lashings, crucifixions, etc start in Mosul. 

    Sunnis will always back Sunnis and Shi'as will always back Shi'as regardless of ideology. That's why you have Islamist Iran and Hezbollah fighting for Alawite Ba'athists in Syria. And former Ba'athists fighting on the side of Islamists in Iraq. It's like a form of religious nationalism. 

  • ISIS take Mosul
     Reply #68 - June 15, 2014, 01:07 PM

    Rebels’ Fast Strike in Iraq Was Years in the Making

    Quote
    ERBIL, Iraq — When Islamic militants rampaged through the Iraqi city of Mosul last week, robbing banks of hundreds of millions of dollars, opening the gates of prisons and burning army vehicles, some residents greeted them as if they were liberators and threw rocks at retreating Iraqi soldiers.

    It took only two days, though, for the fighters of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria to issue edicts laying out the harsh terms of Islamic law under which they would govern, and singling out some police officers and government workers for summary execution.

    With just a few thousand fighters, the group’s lightning sweep into Mosul and farther south appeared to catch many Iraqi and American officials by surprise. But the gains were actually the realization of a yearslong strategy of state-building that the group itself promoted publicly.

    “What we see in Iraq today is in many ways a culmination of what the I.S.I. has been trying to accomplish since its founding in 2006,” said Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism researcher at the New America Foundation, referring to the Islamic State in Iraq, the predecessor of ISIS.

    Now that President Obama is weighing airstrikes and other military aid to block the militants’ advance in Iraq, an examination of its history through its own documents indicates that the group has been far more ambitious and effective than United States officials judged as they were winding down the American involvement in the war.

    The Sunni extremist group, while renowned for the mayhem it has inflicted, has set clear goals for carving out and governing a caliphate, an Islamic religious state, that spans Sunni-dominated sections of Iraq and Syria. It has published voluminously, even issuing annual reports, to document its progress in achieving its goals.

    Under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who spent time in an American detention facility, the group has shown itself to be unrelentingly violent and purist in pursuing its religious objectives, but coldly pragmatic in forming alliances and gaining and ceding territory. In discussing its strategy, Mr. Fishman has described the group as “a governmental amoeba, constantly shifting its zone of control across Iraq’s western expanses” as its forces redeploy.

    In 2007 the group published a pamphlet laying out its vision for Iraq. It cited trends in globalization as well as the Quran in challenging modern notions of statehood as having absolute control over territory. Mr. Fishman referred to the document as the “Federalist Papers” for what is now ISIS.

    Under this vision, religion is paramount over administering services. Referring to citizens under its control, the pamphlet states, “improving their conditions is less important than the condition of their religion.” And one of the most important duties of the group, according to the pamphlet, is something that it has done consistently: free Sunnis from prison.

    “When you go back and read it, it’s all there,” Mr. Fishman said. “They are finally getting their act together.”

    More recent annual reports, including one that was released at the end of March and ran more than 400 pages, list in granular detail the group’s successes, through suicide attacks, car bombs and assassinations, on the battlefield.

    The group’s recent annual report, wrote Alex Bilger, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, makes clear that, “the ISIS military command in Iraq has exercised command and control over a national theater since at least early 2012,” and that the group is “functioning as a military rather than as a terrorist network.”

    Though the group got its start battling the Americans in Iraq, its success after the occupation ended was largely missed — or played down — by American officials. In the middle of 2012, as the group strengthened and United Nations data showed civilian casualties in Iraq on the rise, Antony J. Blinken, the national security adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., wrote that violence in Iraq was “at historic lows.”

    That is partly because its prospects initially appeared limited at the end of the American occupation. During the sectarian war that began in 2006, Sunni jihadists antagonized the public with their brutality and attempts to impose Islamic law, and suffered defeats at the hands of tribal fighters who joined the American counterinsurgency campaign, forcing them to retreat from western Iraq to areas around Mosul.

    But with the outbreak of civil war across the border in Syria three years ago, the group saw new opportunities for growth. The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria “invaded Syria from Mosul long before it invaded Mosul from Syria,” Mr. Fishman said.

    The group gained strength in Syria through a two-pronged approach of launching strategic attacks to seize resources like arms caches, oil wells and granaries, while avoiding protracted battles with government forces that ground down Syria’s other rebels. In Iraq, government resistance crumbled in many areas it seized.

    As stunning as the move on Mosul was, the group had been solidifying its control of Raqqa, in Syria, for more than a year, and of Falluja, in western Iraq, for the last six months.

    In congressional testimony in February, a top army intelligence official, Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, said the group, “probably will attempt to take territory in Iraq and Syria to exhibit its strength in 2014.”

    Now that the spotlight has shifted to Iraq, the decision by the Obama administration not to arm moderate Syrian rebels at the outset is coming under scrutiny by critics who say the hands-off policy allowed the extremists to flourish.

    Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who argued in favor of arming Syrian rebels, said last week at an event in New York hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations, “this is not just a Syrian problem anymore. I never thought it was just a Syrian problem. I thought it was a regional problem. I could not have predicted, however, the extent to which ISIS could be effective in seizing cities in Iraq and trying to erase boundaries to create an Islamic state.”

    An American counterterrorism official said on Friday that “the group appears to be benefiting from a regional strategy that looks at Syria and Iraq as one interchangeable battlefield, allowing it to shift resources and manpower in pursuit of military objectives.”

    The group’s rise is directly connected to the American legacy in Iraq. The American prisons were fertile recruiting grounds for jihadist leaders, and virtual universities, where leaders would indoctrinate their recruits with hard-line ideologies. The group’s leader, Mr. Baghdadi, who is believed to have earned a doctorate in Islamic studies from a university in Baghdad, relocated to Syria, according to the American government, which has offered a $10 million reward for information leading to his capture.

    The group was formally rejected from Al Qaeda earlier this year after that organization’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, ordered it to withdraw to Iraq and leave operations in Syria to the local Qaeda affiliate, the Nusra Front. The split led to a bitter rivalry between the two groups, with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria competing with Al Qaeda for resources and standing in the wider international jihadist community.

    Perhaps the best indication of how the group sees itself these days is a recent promotional video called “The Rattling of the Sabers.”

    The hourlong video is a slickly produced, hyperviolent propaganda piece that idolizes the group’s fighters as they work for two of their main goals: founding an Islamic state and slaughtering their enemies, mostly the Iraqi security forces and Shiites.

    Some scenes show bearded, armed fighters from around the Arab world renouncing their home countries and shredding their passports. Other scenes show them preaching at mosques and soliciting pledges of allegiance to Mr. Baghdadi. Still other scenes emphasize attacks. Its fighters carry out drive-by shootings against men they accuse of being in the Iraqi army, in some cases chasing them through fields before grabbing and executing them.

    The group has calibrated different strategies for Syria and Iraq. In Syria, it has mainly focused on seizing territory that has already fallen out of government hands, but had been poorly controlled by other rebel groups. In Iraq, though, it has exploited widespread disenchantment among the country’s Sunnis with the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, to align with other Sunni militant groups, such as one organization that is led by former officers of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party.

    Though many of these groups, including the Baathists and other tribal militias, seemed to have joined with ISIS because of a common enemy, its organization and resources could lure them to a more durable alliance that could make it even more difficult for Mr. Maliki’s government to reassert control.

    “What is very dangerous is that all these forces now have the same goal,” said Hassan Abu Hanieh, a Jordanian expert on Islamist groups. “ISIS has been able to take advantage of widespread anger and to base their identity on fighting Shiites.”


    `But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
     `Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad.  You're mad.'
     `How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.
     `You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't have come here.'
  • ISIS take Mosul
     Reply #69 - June 15, 2014, 03:34 PM

    Many don't support ISIS because they're religious fanatics who love shari'ah. They absolutely loathe the Islamist militia in Somalia for their brutality and insanity. My mum also really dislikes AQAP in Yemen. Meanwhile, they loved Saddam. My mum considers him an Arab hero and a martyr, and she sees these ISIS guys as Sunni nationalists of sorts fighting Shi'a tyranny. I'm sure they'd support secular Ba'athist Sunnis fighting Maliki just as much. I told her about what ISIS had been doing in Syria and she's like "no, no, these guys are different from the ones in Syria". I guess I'll just have to see if she changes her mind when the beheadings, lashings, crucifixions, etc start in Mosul. 


    If we are to assume the video I watched was authentic (I had the husband translating all of the Arabic and all of the cheesy graphics that rolled over the screen after every kill "justifying it" with a hadith, and he was telling me that it was all ISIS and all in Iraq), they're already doing that. The intro to the video was them pulling up alongside cars on the highway and riddling them with holes and then climbing out and videotaping the bodies inside and saying, "These people were definitely shias/traitors/militants/apostates," and then shooting people in the open street, breaking into people's houses and having them and their children dig their own graves, et cetera et cetera.

    This is kind of gruesome, but I lost my translator before the end came, at this one part where they went into the house of an old man at night who was supposedly some officer or something. One of the ISIS guys had this short little combat knife, and eventually pounced on the man's back like a lion and tore his shirt, trying to get around to the front of his neck with the knife. My husband looked away, like he did whenever someone got killed, and said, "He's going to slit his neck," but I have seen enough of these videos to know that when they're in a frenzy like that, they're going to behead him. The husband kept saying no, stupid, they have a little knife, they're not going to, and I stayed quiet and just watched it, and he looked up when it got quiet to see the body and saw that, of course, they got carried away.

    The husband snapped his laptop screen shut and scrunched up his face, his hands over his head, and after a long silence just left, and I haven't been able to talk to him about it since. He actually liked these people once for the sharia state thing, and also his support of the Sunnis, but whenever the violence starts, even something totally prescribed like ISIS in Syria cutting off a guy's hand for thievery, he just can't take it. I wish more of their supporters were like that, where if they saw this stuff they'd dislike them immediately, but something makes me doubt it. Maybe the cynic in me.  wacko
  • ISIS take Mosul
     Reply #70 - June 15, 2014, 03:40 PM

    ^

    Wait why does your hubby support the sharia state ?

    I thought quranists were against it ?

    In my opinion a life without curiosity is not a life worth living
  • ISIS take Mosul
     Reply #71 - June 15, 2014, 03:53 PM

    For him, he just has this romantic idea of Spain back in the old days, and when push comes to shove, he's supporting the Sunnis over the Shia still.

    We recently had a conversation where I tried to suggest that maybe some of the history books he's read over the years painted a glossy, flattering picture of early Islamic societies, but he is very doubtful. But he always imagined this society where no one would ever get their hands chopped off, since it was such a strong deterrent (although recently he's been trying to explain away the hand chopping part with flimsy apologist tricks). Therefore, no stealing, no punishment, everyone happy. Same with all the other punishments under sharia. Everyone would be satisfied, and it would never be necessary. He thinks that's attainable.  wacko
  • ISIS take Mosul
     Reply #72 - June 15, 2014, 03:56 PM

    somebody seriously needs to write a book about Islamic obsession with Spain.

    Its a bit like a stalker to be honest

    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • ISIS take Mosul
     Reply #73 - June 15, 2014, 04:00 PM

    I definitely have found it to be very troublesome, especially with converts. As long as they believe there's at least one example where sharia "worked" and everything was peaceful, all of the problematic sharia societies can be overlooked and even condemned as not true Islam.
  • ISIS take Mosul
     Reply #74 - June 15, 2014, 04:41 PM

    Back to Iraq for a moment - what's up with there being a Naqshbandi army? A Sufi/Ba'athist armed wing sounds pretty surreal, as these things go.
  • ISIS take Mosul
     Reply #75 - June 15, 2014, 05:17 PM

    ISIS fans. This is the consummation of decades of jihadi dreaming.





    And this will tooootally make me more comfortable with it, and it will definitely strengthen my faith in Islam. Not who, but WHAT are these people??!!  finmad

    "The healthiest people I know are those who are the first to label themselves fucked up." - three
  • ISIS take Mosul
     Reply #76 - June 15, 2014, 05:20 PM

    They follow the example of their god. It doesn't matter if their actions make sense to anyone. They will attempt to rule through fear.

    how fuck works without shit??


    Let's Play Chess!

    harakaat, friend, RIP
  • ISIS take Mosul
     Reply #77 - June 15, 2014, 05:27 PM

    somebody seriously needs to write a book about Islamic obsession with Spain.

    Its a bit like a stalker to be honest


    Apart from Constantinople, Spain was one of the most beautiful and prosperous places the Muslims ever conquered. There is a beautiful Arabic poem called ritha al andalus, or, the eulogy of Spain, that laments all the beautiful places that were lost in the inquisition. I reckon it would be like America losing California.
  • ISIS take Mosul
     Reply #78 - June 15, 2014, 05:28 PM

    What would think if exmuslim or other non-muslim, in a neutral and 'non-offensive' way, tried to debate them on socialmedia,on whether Islam is the truth or not.  Do you think it would raise enough doubt in some of them that they stop murdering people?
  • ISIS take Mosul
     Reply #79 - June 15, 2014, 05:40 PM

    Better question, what if we conquered Mecca and established a kaffir/murtad caliphate.

    `But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
     `Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad.  You're mad.'
     `How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.
     `You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't have come here.'
  • ISIS take Mosul
     Reply #80 - June 15, 2014, 05:42 PM

    Back to Iraq for a moment - what's up with there being a Naqshbandi army? A Sufi/Ba'athist armed wing sounds pretty surreal, as these things go.


    the Naqshbandi sect has been violent and responsible for persecutions in the past. Sufism has dark elements. The image of Sufism just being like Hare Krishnas and New Age love and peace is a modern construct. There are elements of genuine thinkers and Sufis who were genuinely ecumenical (so much so that they were essentially expressing non Islamic ideas), and there are Sufis who are genuinely (or relatively) tolerant so there is an element of truth to that when compared to other schools of Islam.

    One of the most genuinely frighteningly bigoted and supremacists Muslims I ever met was a follower of the Nashqbandi tariqa. The hate he had for non Muslims was profound. But he expressed it all as love for the prophet, and expressing contempt for non Muslims was part of that.

    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • ISIS take Mosul
     Reply #81 - June 15, 2014, 05:51 PM

    Better question, what if we conquered Mecca and established a kaffir/murtad caliphate.

    Lol I was thinking about that earlier today. Since the survey i posted suggest lots atheists in Saudiarabia, one day almost every Saudi maybe a murtad and going around thinking they're the only ones :p...(watch out though to all Saudis who might read this and go tell everyone or tweeting about it)
  • ISIS take Mosul
     Reply #82 - June 15, 2014, 06:02 PM

    Apart from Constantinople, Spain was one of the most beautiful and prosperous places the Muslims ever conquered. There is a beautiful Arabic poem called ritha al andalus, or, the eulogy of Spain, that laments all the beautiful places that were lost in the inquisition. I reckon it would be like America losing California.

     

    I'm not knowledgeable about islamic history so when you say muslims conquered does that always mean the ottoman empire ?

    In my opinion a life without curiosity is not a life worth living
  • ISIS take Mosul
     Reply #83 - June 15, 2014, 06:14 PM

    Nope, Umayyad Caliphate.

    "I'm standing here like an asshole holding my Charles Dickens"

    "No theory,No ready made system,no book that has ever been written to save the world. i cleave to no system.."-Bakunin
  • ISIS take Mosul
     Reply #84 - June 15, 2014, 06:57 PM


    I'm not knowledgeable about islamic history so when you say muslims conquered does that always mean the ottoman empire ?

    please go through the link TheDarkRebel  Chronological History of Islam

    Do not let silence become your legacy.. Question everything   
    I renounced my faith to become a kafir, 
    the beloved betrayed me and turned in to  a Muslim
     
  • ISIS take Mosul
     Reply #85 - June 15, 2014, 10:38 PM



    I'm not knowledgeable about islamic history so when you say muslims conquered does that always mean the ottoman empire ?


    Every Middle Eastern nation was conquered by Muslim armies, that is how they became Muslim. None of them chose it through peace. in fact most of the conquests happened under Muhammad's companion, Caliph Umar. During his reign in conquered Egypt, Syria, Jerusalem, Iraq, and Persia for Islam.
  • ISIS take Mosul
     Reply #86 - June 15, 2014, 10:44 PM

    I know of the Mongol/Mughal intrusions in and finally conquest of India but how about Indonesia and Malaysia? it is my impression that Malaysia and Indonesia got the blunt end of the Islamic sword? Also vast parts of Africa were converted by Sufi missionaries - or so it is told. Which is why the North African Al-Qaeda destroyed a lot of old cultural stuff in Timbuktu when there were in power there for a few months.

    Danish Never-Moose adopted by the kind people on the CEMB-forum
    Ex-Muslim chat (Unaffliated with CEMB). Safari users: Use "#ex-muslims" as the channel name. CEMB chat thread.
  • ISIS take Mosul
     Reply #87 - June 16, 2014, 12:40 AM

    Spain was one of the most beautiful and prosperous places the Muslims ever conquered.

    And is beautiful, peaceful and relatively prosperous still.

    Had it remained Muslim it would be this way, Only better.
  • ISIS take Mosul
     Reply #88 - June 16, 2014, 12:45 AM

    Every Middle Eastern nation was conquered by Muslim armies, that is how they became Muslim. None of them chose it through peace. in fact most of the conquests happened under Muhammad's companion, Caliph Umar. During his reign in conquered Egypt, Syria, Jerusalem, Iraq, and Persia for Islam.

     

    I've always wanted to know.  So because of the lack of historical evidence to paint a picture of muhammad's life I am surprised that historical evidence exists for his caliphs like umar and abu bakr   


    In my opinion a life without curiosity is not a life worth living
  • ISIS take Mosul
     Reply #89 - June 16, 2014, 01:14 AM

    Iraq is a mess and it's worse than what you see on the news. My ex is from Iraq (shia). He is down there at the moment. There are so much tension going on that I'm afraid it's going to explode into a civil war.

    We are all born atheists until someone start telling us lies.
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