Terrible Advice for Muslim Women Panicking about ISIS

by Tarek Fatah
The Toronto Sun
October 27, 2015

http://www.meforum.org/5589/dyer-vs-hassan

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^{Originally published under the title “Gwynne Dyer vs. Farzana Hassan.”}

Military historian Gwynne Dyer (left) thinks ISIS does not pose a risk to the West. Toronto Sun columnist Farzana Hassan (right) begs to differ.

The Toronto Reference Library hosted a talk by author Gwynne Dyer about his new book on Monday, but it quickly turned into an animated discussion on Islamism.

In Don’t Panic: ISIS, Terror and Today’s Middle East, Dyer argues the birth of ISIS and the creation of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria does not pose any substantial risk with regard to terrorist attacks on Western countries.

Facing the London-based author on the panel was Toronto Sun columnist Farzana Hassan. She not only disagreed with Dyer’s surprising analysis of the lack of an Islamist threat, but suggested it was based on naivety and a lack of recognition that the doctrine of armed jihad is endemic to orthodox Islam, to which many Muslims adhere.

Hassan held her own, despite hisses from a largely partisan crowd when she said she was proud to write for the Toronto Sun and that she considers the current rise of the international jihadi movement as a “civilizational struggle” against medieval forces, who envision a worldwide caliphate and are serious about their goal.

It was excruciating to sit in the audience and watch Toronto’s literati and intellectual class cheer Dyer as he defended the right of Islamist women to wear the niqab, as if it was some sort of liberating symbol.

Toronto artist and graphic designer Charles Fisch best expressed my frustration when he tweeted: “What’s wrong with White liberals? Cultural Relativism, Political Correctness, Naiveté.”

It seemed Dyer was surprised to face a critique of his work at the hands of a Muslim woman instead of the usual “we are victims of Islamophobia” rhetoric.

Notwithstanding the fact that most Islamists in the West are second generation and born here, Dyer suggested the next generation of Muslims in the West will reinterpret Islam and the doctrine of jihad to suit the West.

While not losing her smile, Hassan appeared livid. “We do not have to reinterpret the doctrine of armed jihad as you would like us Muslims to do,” Hassan said. “We have to repudiate this doctrine.”

For a moment, the nearly 500 people sat in stunned silence. Then a handful clapped in a feeble display of solidarity with the brave Muslim woman on the stage.

When the question and answer session began, the president of the Muslim Canadian Congress, poet and author Munir Pervaiz, asked Dyer if he had visited a single mosque in Canada and heard what was being preached to the congregation.

A nonplussed Dyer answered that 50% of the mosques in Canada were under the influence of Saudi Arabia, without answering whether he had ever been in a mosque or not.

Pervaiz later told me he was alluding to a Friday congregation just last week in Mississauga, where an Arab cleric told the congregation, “Liberalism, secularism and modernism need to be disavowed as they are equivalent to the three pagan goddesses Prophet Muhammad destroyed when he conquered Mecca.”

“Dyer should know ISIS is not a pussy cat; it’s a man-eating tiger,” he added.

The event ended with Dyer walking away in a huff, so I didn’t have a chance to ask him a question for this column. Here it is:

“How does it feel to tell a Muslim woman who has faced death threats by Islamist thugs inside Canada that she should ‘not panic’ as ISIS is no threat to the West?”

Tarek Fatah, a founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress and columnist at the Toronto Sun, is a Robert J. and Abby B. Levine Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

A chickpea in a pot leaps from the flame, out from the boiling water, Crying, “Why do you set fire to me? You chose me, bought me, brought me home for this?” The cook hits it with her spoon into the pot. “No! Boil nicely, don’t jump away from the one who makes the fire. I don’t boil you out of hatred. Through boiling you may grow flavorful, nourishing, and united with vital human spirit. I don’t inflict this suffering out of spite. Once green and fresh, you drank rain in the garden; you drank for the sake of this fire.

God’s mercy precedes His wrath;
by God’s mercy the sick ones suffer.
It has always been so; this is how God creates all that exists.
Without pleasure, no creatures would come into being.
Without creatures,
what could the burning love of the Friend consume?
Such sorrow may come that you might wish
to be free of this life.
yet the Grace of God will overtake His wrath,
once you are washed clean in the river of suffering.

Chickpea, you fed in the springtime;
now pain has become your guest.
Entertain him well, that he may return home grateful,
and speak of your generosity to the King.
Instead of your vision of good fortune,
the One Who Bestows Favor may come to you;
then all true blessings may be drawn to you.

Just as Abraham commanded his son:
‘Lay your head before my knife
I see in a dream that I must sacrifice you,’
lay your head before God’s knife,
that He may cut your throat like that of Ishmael.
He may cut off your head,
but only the one that is immune to death.
Such submission is the fulfillment of God’s purpose
— seek this submission.

Chickpea, continue to boil in suffering,
so that no self may remain in you.
Though once you laughed in the garden of earth,
you now are the rose of the garden of spirit,
you now are the eye of spirit.
Once you are torn from the garden of water and earth,
you may become food, and thereby enter the living world.
Become nourishment, strength and thought!
Once you were sap; now become a lion in the jungle!

You were born from God’s attributes;
return eagerly to them.
You came from the cloud and the sun and sky,
then scattered and ascended to heaven.
You came as rain and heat;
you will return into the Divine attributes.
You were part of the sun and the cloud and the stars.
You became soul and action and speech and thoughts.

Our victory after the checkmate of death
gives truth to the words,
‘Verily, in being slain there is life.’
Action, speech and sincerity become food for angels;
they climb this ladder to heaven.
A morsel of food becomes food for humanity,
rises from its inanimate state and obtains a soul.

The caravan of spirit travels constantly between earth and heaven.
Join it gladly and freely,
not bitterly and full of hatred, like a thief.
I speak bitter words to you so you may be washed clean of bitterness.
The frozen grape thaws in the cold water
and leaves its coldness and hardness behind.
When you endure bitterness,
your heart will fill with blood like the grape,
and you will be freed from all bitterness.
A dog not kept for hunting wears no collar;
the raw and unboiled are nothing but insipid.”

The chickpea speaks, “If this is so, then help me to boil! By this boiling you elevate me. Hit me with the spoon; delight me! Like the elephant, strike me and brand my head, that I may not dream of the gardens of Hindustan. Let me gladly submit to this boiling that I may be embraced by the Beloved. Men and women, imagining themselves free, grow insolent and hostile, like the dreaming elephant. When the elephant dreams of Hindustan, he disobeys the driver and becomes vicious.”

The cook says, “I was once like you, part of the earth.
I drank the fire of self-discipline, fasting and prayer,
and became worthy and acceptable to God.
I boiled long in the world of time, and long in the pot of this body.
From these boilings I grew capable of strengthening the senses;
I became animal spirit, and then became your teacher.
While inanimate, I said to myself,
‘You are running about in agitation
so that you might be filled with knowledge
and the qualities of spirit.’
Now that I have become animal spirit,
let me boil again and pass beyond that state.”

Pray unceasingly to God that you might not be misled by these words, and that you might arrive at your journey’s end. For many have been misled by the Qur’an; by clinging to the rope of words, many have fallen into the well. The rope is faultless, O perverse ones — it is you who lack desire to reach the top.

UK Commander: World’s Weak Response to ‘Human Shields’ Encourages Terrorists to Use Them

by Michel Gurfinkiel
PJ Media
October 27, 2015

http://www.meforum.org/5590/interview-kemp

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^{Originally published under the title “UK Commander Slams World’s Weak Response to ‘Human Shields’ for Causing Terrorists to Use Them More.”}

French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian: “We pay as much attention to the targets we select as to the need to combat Daesh [Islamic State].”

French Minister of Defense Jean-Yves Le Drian recently made an essential statement about the war against terror and the difficulties it involves for Western countries. In an interview with Europe 1 focusing on the French air strikes against the Islamic State, he remarked:

Daesh [ISIS] is organized in such a way that children, women, civilians are being put on front lines. Its leadership is hiding in schools, mosques, hospitals, making the action of the coalition in Iraq and the action of France and other partners in Syria difficult, because we don’t want civilian casualties. We pay as much attention to the targets we select as to the need to combat Daesh.

This is a frank admission of the human shield tactic practiced by Islamists and its crippling effect on Western fighting.

Undoubtedly, Le Drian is aware that the United States and other Western partners in the coalition against ISIS are facing the same challenge, and that Israel faces similar difficulties when counter-attacking organizations like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and Fatah-affiliated terror groups.

What remains to be seen is whether he and the French government, now having this experience with human shields, will reconsider their foreign policy regarding Israel.

We asked Colonel Richard Kemp, the former British commander in Afghanistan and an expert about war ethics, to comment on Le Drian’s no-nonsense statement.

———————-

Colonel Richard Kemp (ret.)

PJM: Do Le Drian’s remarks come as a surprise to you?

Kemp: Not in the least. The Islamic State (ISIS) is adept at using human shields and locations protected under the Geneva Conventions. They are war criminals. The comments by Jean-Yves Le Drian are understandable and it is right that so-called collateral casualties are avoided as far as possible; but his comments also indicate the danger of the Western response to Islamist terrorist use of human shields, which often serves to encourage greater use of this tactic and leads to more and more civilian deaths.

PJM: Is the use of human shields common practice among Islamist terrorists?

Kemp: Islamist terrorists everywhere use innocent men, women, and children from their own population as human shields. They also use protected buildings such as hospitals, mosques, and schools to shelter their fighters in, to store munitions, to locate command centers, and to attack from. All of this is illegal under the Laws of Armed Conflict (LOAC). Islamist terrorists have no interests in LOAC except to the extent that they can exploit their enemy’s — such as French, British and Israeli forces — adherence to it.

Islamist terrorists have no interest in protecting their civilian populations. They are happy to use them as human shields, to terrify them, to risk and to sacrifice their lives. Whatever happens, the terrorist who uses human shields wins. If he deters Western forces from attacking his terrorists and his munitions, then he scores a tactical victory. He can attack our troops with impunity.

On the other hand, if we attack him and kill or wound his human shields, then he exploits this in the world media and there is an outcry. He has gained a strategic victory.

PJM: Did you witness such use in Afghanistan or other places?

Kemp: The Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and other terrorist groups in Afghanistan frequently use human shields. They drive innocent local people between NATO forces and the terrorists who are attacking them. They force them to stay in place when they know Western forces will counter-attack into that location. They use young boys of 14 years old to throw grenades at NATO troops knowing that we will be reluctant to shoot a child. They have killed British soldiers by booby-trapping mosques and schools, and by attacking them from protected locations and from behind human shields.

PJM: The Israelis say that Hamas constantly resorted to similar tactics in Gaza in the 2009 and 2014 wars, and that most Palestinian civilian casualties were killed in such a context. Is that correct?

Kemp: Hamas have become the masters of human-shield use. Many other terrorist groups have learned from their effectiveness. Hamas know that they cannot do significant damage to Israel by firing rockets at their civilian population or by attacking them from tunnels.

These tactics, combined with extensive use of human shields, are merely designed to force an Israeli defensive response which will inevitably result in Palestinian civilian deaths. They then exploit these deaths in the media to bring international condemnation down onto Israel.

This is the only way they can inflict damage on the State of Israel — and it works.

It works through the isolation of Israel in the world community, the branding of Israeli soldiers and leaders as war criminals, pressuring international bodies such as the UN and International Criminal Court to launch damaging investigations, economic harm to Israel through the BDS movement, worldwide demonstrations against Israel, and increased anti-Semitism around the world which hurts Israel and hurts Jews everywhere.

PJM: What is the appropriate response to such tactics?

Kemp: The international community — national governments, world bodies such as the EU and UN, human rights groups and the media — all take precisely the wrong response to the use of human shields. This has been nowhere stronger or more damaging than in relation to Israel and the Gaza conflict.

Instead of condemning the use of human shields by Hamas, the international community and media condemn Israel out of hand and often without any investigation or consideration of the reality. This plays absolutely into the hands of Hamas.

And the consequence of the international community’s response? To further encourage the use of human shields by Hamas and by terrorists everywhere.

Hamas increased their use of human shields after each conflict when they saw the consequences of doing so.

Hezbollah has learned from Hamas’s success, and has embedded 100,000 missiles pointed at Israel in the civilian communities of southern Lebanon.

By condemning and pressuring Israel rather than Hamas — who are actually responsible for the vast majority of civilian deaths — the international community has blood on its hands. This approach ultimately results in more human misery, suffering, and death.

The proper response to human shields is strong condemnation and sanction against anyone who uses them. The international community should not allow the use of human shields to pay.

In military terms, forces should not allow themselves to be deterred by the use of human shields. To do so again plays into the hands of the terrorists and encourages their further use of human shields, ultimately resulting in greater numbers of casualties. Of course they can’t attack without consideration of civilian casualties and they have a duty to minimise civilian casualties in every situation. Under LOAC they must only ever risk inflicting civilian casualties when proportionate to the overall military gain.

If armed forces and politicians continue to allow themselves to be deterred from effective action by human shields, then their use will expand even further, and it will become impossible for Western forces to prosecute military conflict and to defend their countries and their interests. This is, of course, the terrorists’ objective as well as the objective of many activists and supporters in the West.

Michel Gurfinkiel, a Shillman-Ginsburg Fellow at the Middle East Forum, is the Founder and President of the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute, a conservative think thank in France.