A Sobering Top 10 List

Another 'Best of 2014' list. This one, unfortunately, is quite timely, given yesterday's attack on Charlie Hebdo.

Top 10 Jihad Stories of 2014

10. The abduction of the Nigerian schoolgirls

Abubakar Shekau, the leader of the Nigerian jihad group ... known as Boko Haram, disgusted and horrified the world last May, and even provoked a Michelle Obama hashtag (BFD...), by abducting over three hundred schoolgirls and selling them into sex slavery.

9. Britain’s capitulation on Muslim rape gangs

Britain’s Birmingham Mail reported in November that Birmingham’s City Council buried a report about Muslim cab drivers exploiting non-Muslim girls back in 1990.

 ... the report was shelved, buried, it was never made public. I was shocked to be told that copies of the report were to be destroyed and that nothing further was to be said. Clearly, there was something in this report that someone in the department was worried about.

Authorities were worried because (the) report illustrated that virtually all of the exploitative cab drivers were “Asians,” the British media euphemism for Muslims, and their victims were “white,” i.e., non-Muslim. The exploitation of these girls stems from Qur’an-based religious beliefs, but British officials were terrified because stopping this exploitation would appear “racist.”

8. The Bergdahl trade

The British weren’t the only ones capitulating. When he announced on May 31 the exchange of five Guantanamo detainees for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who had been held by Islamic jihadists in Afghanistan since 2009, Barack Obama declared that the swap was “a reminder of America’s unwavering commitment to leave no man or woman in uniform behind on the battlefield.” However, as ever more damning information came to light about both the deal and Bergdahl himself, it became increasingly clear that the prisoner exchange was actually a reminder of Barack Obama’s unwavering commitment to appeasing and aiding jihadis.

The freed jihadis included, according to the Associated Press, “Abdul Haq Wasiq, who served as the Taliban deputy minister of intelligence”; “Khairullah Khairkhwa, who served in various Taliban positions including interior minister and had direct ties to Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden”; and “Mohammad Fazl, whom Human Rights Watch says could be prosecuted for war crimes for presiding over the mass killing of Shiite Muslims in Afghanistan in 2000 and 2001.”

Even more disturbing were the questions swirling around Bergdahl himself. Former infantry officer Nathan Bradley Bethea, who served with Bergdahl, wrote in the Daily Beast that “Bergdahl was a deserter, and soldiers from his own unit died trying to track him down.” Refuting reports that Bergdahl got separated from his unit while on patrol, Bethea declared: “Make no mistake: Bergdahl did not ‘lag behind on a patrol,’ as was cited in news reports at the time. There was no patrol that night. Bergdahl was relieved from guard duty, and instead of going to sleep, he fled the outpost on foot. He deserted. I’ve talked to members of Bergdahl’s platoon—including the last Americans to see him before his capture. I’ve reviewed the relevant documents. That’s what happened.”

By the year’s end, the results of the investigation of Bergdahl’s conduct have – as the most pessimistic among us could have predicted – not been released.

7. The Islamic State beheadings

Bergdahl was one of the few captives of jihadis to come home alive. The Islamic State shocked and appalled the world as it carried out a series of beheadings of hostages and other prisoners, including Americans James Foley, Steven Sotloff, and Peter Kassig, and Britons David Haines and Alan Henning.

The White House response to these atrocities took on a clockwork predictability. Obama might as well have had a form ready for the next one: all he would have had to do would have been to fill in the blank and then take to the airwaves to say that the latest bloodshed had nothing to do with Islam.

6. The Oklahoma beheading

On September 21, the Islamic State’s spokesman, Abu Muhammad Al-Adnani, urged Muslims to murder non-Muslims in the West. “Rely upon Allah,” he thundered, “and kill him in any manner or way however it may be.”

Five days later, Jah’Keem Yisrael (formerly Alton Alexander Nolen) beheaded one of his coworkers and was shot while in the process of trying to behead another in Vaughan Foods, a food processing plant in Moore, Oklahoma. No one made the connection between his actions and al-Adnani’s call, despite the fact that Yisrael’s Facebook was full of admiring material about the Islamic State, the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The beheader even had a graphic photo of a beheading captioned with another Qur’anic beheading verse (8:12) on his Facebook page.

Authorities did not classify his action as terrorism...

5. The Canadian jihad strikes

In October, Canada experienced two murderous jihad terror attacks in three days. Ahmad Rouleau, a convert to Islam, hit two Canadian soldiers with his car, murdering Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent. Then he led police on a high-speed chase, during which he called 911 and explained that he was doing it all “in the name of Allah.” The chase, and Rouleau’s jihad, ended when he flipped his car and then, brandishing a knife, charged police, who shot him dead.

Two days later, another Muslim, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, went on a shooting rampage in Ottawa, murdering military reservist Corporal Nathan Cirillo and engaging in a gun battle inside Canada’s Parliament building. He had threatened to strike “in the name of Allah in response to Canadian foreign policy.”

4. The Australian chocolate shop jihad attack

On December 15, a Muslim cleric, Man Haron Monis, took hostages inside the Lindt Chocolate Café in Sydney, Australia’s central pedestrian mall, Martin Place. He forced some of the hostages at gunpoint to hold up the black flag of Islamic jihad against a window of the café. The flag says in Arabic, “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet” – the Islamic confession of faith. Ultimately, he and two hostages were killed.

Man Haron Monis was on bail for involvement in the honor murder of his ex-wife. He was charged with sexual assault. He had pleaded guilty to sending harassing letters to the families of Australian servicemen slain in Afghanistan. He had also pleaded guilty to sending offensive letters to the families of Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

But none of that rose to any significant level of concern for Australian authorities — he was not on the terror watch list. After all, Australian officials knew Islam to be a Religion of Peace, and too much scrutiny of its more unsavory adherents could well be “Islamophobic.”

3. The New York City cop killing

When Ismaaiyl Abdullah-Muhammad, aka Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley, murdered NYPD Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu as they ate lunch in their patrol car on December 20, the only people who could possibly have been surprised were those who have not realized how assiduously leftist and Muslim activists have worked – long before the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner — to demonize the NYPD and law enforcement in general. The advent of the killer was only a matter of time.

It has been only lightly reported that Brinsley was a Muslim, and generally when it was mentioned it has been dismissed as a motive in favor of his statements about wanting to kill police officers to avenge Garner and Brown. But these two motivations – revenge for the perceived racist killings of two black men and Brinsley’s Islamic faith – are not mutually exclusive. Brinsley’s Facebook page featured a photo of the Qur’an open to the eighth chapter, where Allah exhorts the believers to “strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah” (8:60).

2. The vilification of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Bill Maher

Brandeis University had planned to award an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali (she is a Somali-born American activist, writer and politician known for her views critical of female genital mutilation and Islam ... Hirsi Ali was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. She has also received several awards, including a free speech award from the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, the Swedish Liberal Party's Democracy Prize, and the Moral Courage Award...) at its commencement ceremony this year, but after a smear campaign led by the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other Islamic supremacist groups last April the university issued a statement announcing the predictable result: the honorary degree would not be given.

Bill Maher was scheduled to give the fall commencement address at the University of California-Berkeley, but Muslim students there have begun an ultimately unsuccessful petition drive to get him canceled.

The campaign against Maher was called “Free Speech, Not Hate Speech.”

The fact that this happened to Bill Maher, despite his impeccable leftist credentials, shows that it can and will happen to anyone who dares to criticize Islam.

1. The Islamic State’s declaration of the caliphate

The biggest jihad news of 2014 came when the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) renamed itself as the Islamic State and declared that it constituted the restoration of the caliphate ... The restoration of the caliphate has for decades been the central goal of jihad groups worldwide.

The Islamic State’s claim of restoring the caliphate has proven so compelling that thousands of Muslims from the West have gone to Iraq and Syria to join it, and others in Western countries have heeded its calls to wage jihad against non-Muslims right at home.

Meanwhile, Western government and media elites persist in denying and ignoring the problem. That only means that 2015 promises to be even bloodier than 2014.

In related news, as I said yesterday, the media has begun blaming the victims of the attack because they crossed some imaginary line.

Reporting live on CNN, Wolf Blitzer accused Charlie Hebdo of occasionally going “over the line” in their satirical criticisms of current events.

The comment came as Blitzer was detailing the Islamic terrorist attack against the Charlie Hebdo office, which resulted in the deaths of 10 staff members and two police officers.

Asshole...

Here's a quote I wish the media would take to heart.