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THE ISLAMIC STATE: AN INTERIM STATUS REPORT

The Islamic State: An Interim Status Report
The last two years have focused on the global fight against ISIS. Col (res.) Dr. Shaul Shai in an exclusive analysis of the state of the organization, its worldwide expansion methods and the options available to the members of the coalition fighting it
Dr. Shaul Shay
Israel Defense magazine
January 19, 2016

http://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/content/islamic-state-interim-status-report-future

The Islamic State organization had split from al-Qaeda owing to a personal dispute between its leader, Abu-Bakr al Baghdadi, and the leader of the Syrian affiliate of Al-Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra, Abu Mohammad al-Julani, and the leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who sided with al-Julani. Pursuant to this dispute, al-Baghdadi announced, in January 2014, his secession from the al-Qaeda organization and the establishment of an independent organization – the Islamic State in Iraq & Syria (ISIS). Al-Baghdadi considers himself as the true successor of Osama bin Laden, as according to his view, Al-Zawahiri had digressed from Bin Laden’s way, thereby losing his authority to lead the organization.

Since January 2014, a bitter conflict has been underway within the ranks of the Global Jihad movement between the leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the leader of ISIS, al-Baghdadi, over the leadership of the movement. For the time being, it seems that the Islamic State organization is gaining more sympathy and support among the activists and loyal supporters of the Global Jihad movement than al-Qaeda under the leadership of al-Zawahiri.

Over the two years since its establishment, the Islamic State organization succeeded in dominating substantial territories in western Iraq and eastern Syria, to establish within those territories a semi-state entity (the “New Caliphate”) and turn the movement into the richest terrorist organization that poses the greatest threat to the regional and international systems.

Observers note four primary processes in the evolution of the organization, as outlined below.

The military operation (the “blitz”) – through a series of fast, surprising attacks, the organization succeeded in dominating the major cities of the Al Anbar governorate in Iraq, including Fallujah and Ramadi, the city of Tikrit (birthplace of Saddam Hussein) and the highlight of its accomplishments in Iraq – the capturing of Mosul, the country’s second largest city. The organization also attempted, unsuccessfully, to capture the Kurdish-dominated city of Kirkuk. It succeeded, however, in capturing the strategically important Mosul dam on the river Tigris and holding it for a few weeks.

In the Syrian theater, the organization succeeded in capturing the al-Raqqa governorate and subsequently established the capital of the new caliphate in the city of al-Raqqa. The attempts by the organization to capture the Kurdish city of Kobani, close to the border with Turkey, failed. Later on, ISIS expanded its hold on the historic city of Tadmur (Palmyra) and spread into western Syria, the Damascus region, the northern part of the Qalamun Mountains (in the Syria-Lebanon border area) and southern Syria.

The establishment of the new caliphate – on June 29, 2015, ISIS announced the establishment of the “Islamic Caliphate” headed by the leader of ISIS, Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi, or in his official name “The Caliph Ibrahim”. The concept of re-establishing the caliphate and establishing the Islamic state has excited and attracted numerous youngsters to the organization, mainly owing to the combination between the vision and the actual success on the ground. Consequently, ISIS evolved into a challenge for competing Islamic organizations, including al-Qaeda, thereby intensifying the confrontation between the Sunni and Shi’ite Muslim factions.

In the Islamic Caliphate territories ISIS dominates, it established state-like administrative systems which include, among other things, judicial and law enforcement mechanisms (strictly according to Sharia law), education and health systems, oil and gas field operations, power stations and other elements.

The organization managed to substantially expand the caliphate’s areas of influence by recruiting radical Islamist organizations into its ranks. The leaders of those organizations pledged their allegiance to the Caliph and made the territories they dominate a part of the new Islamic Caliphate.

The two most notable success stories of ISIS are Libya and Egypt (the Sinai Peninsula). In Libya, the local ISIS affiliate has been taking advantage of the chaos and the disintegration of the state in order to dominate various parts of this country. ISIS affiliates in Libya are deployed close to oil fields they aspire to dominate. The organization regards Libya as a strategic asset owing to its proximity to Europe and the fact that it may serve as a springboard for inserting ISIS operatives into Europe and as a basis for the organization’s activities in other north African countries (notably Tunisia, which has already been the victim of a terrorist attack) and the countries of the Sahel region (including Nigeria, Sudan, Chad and others). In Egypt, the local security forces are having a difficult time putting an end to the terror campaign waged by ISIS, which focuses on the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula. In this campaign, the Egyptian security forces have already sustained hundreds of casualties (killed and wounded), and all of the attempts by the Egyptian Army to uproot the ISIS affiliate have failed. Recently, ISIS managed to down a Russian airliner over the Sinai, thereby inflicting a serious blow to Egypt’s tourism trade. The consolidation of the ISIS affiliate in the Sinai Peninsula (along with the presence of various other organizations identified with ISIS in the Gaza Strip) presents new terror threats to Israel, too, through its border with Egypt.

Additionally, ISIS succeeded in establishing terror infrastructures in other Middle Eastern countries (Yemen, Jordan and the Gulf States) and in Asia (Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia) and is even making inroads into the stronghold of al-Qaeda influence – Afghanistan and Pakistan. Its affiliates in these areas have not yet managed to consolidate their own areas of government as they did in Iraq and Syria, but in some areas, the potential for this occurring in the future does exist.

Establishment of an elaborate propaganda & communication system – since its establishment, ISIS has invested considerable resources in the development of an effective propaganda system, which relies on the social media and other modern communication channels. The organization operates through the media, on the one hand, by distributing horrific images of executions and other atrocities with the intention of terrorizing its enemies. On the other hand, it distributes messages that glorify the Islamic Caliphate and the lifestyle under its wings as a primary source for the recruitment of volunteers into its ranks.

The international campaign against ISIS has not only failed in diminishing the ideological attraction of the organization, but has apparently helped it reinforce the widespread support for it and contributed to the worldwide proliferation of its Salafist-Jihadist ideology. The Islamic State has received numerous expressions of solidarity within the Arab world, in Muslim communities in central and eastern Asia and in Muslim communities in the western world (notably Western Europe – mainly France and Britain). The coalition countries and moderate Islamist countries have thus far failed to come up with an ideological response to the ISIS phenomenon and to block the proliferation of its ideology. Even the al-Qaeda organization, which advocates a similar worldview, is having a difficult time coping with the increasing popularity of ISIS among the supporters of the Salafist-Jihadist ideology.

Establishment of global terrorism infrastructures – ISIS began establishing terrorism infrastructures around the world a short time after it had been established, concurrently with its military expansion in its main theater of operations, Iraq and Syria. ISIS activists in Europe had planned to execute terrorist attacks in early 2015, against targets in France, Britain, Turkey and other countries, but those plans were thwarted. The recruitment of tens of thousands of foreign volunteers – Europeans, Russians, Americans, Canadians, Australians, Chinese and others – into the ranks of the Islamic State over the last few years was intended to train those volunteers as warfighters for the various theaters where the organization operates: the operational theater of Iraq and Syrian as the top priority and subsequently, following a period of training and acquiring combat experience – for other theaters around the world, mainly in the countries from which those volunteers had hailed.

The terrorist offensive of November 2015 constitutes the greatest success of ISIS in Europe. The terrorist offensive, in the context of which six objectives in Paris were attacked and about 130 people were killed and hundreds more were wounded, had been planned in Syria and organized in Belgium. Two of the members of the perpetrating network returned from Syria to Europe through the Balkans, as part of the surge of immigrants currently flooding the continent. The terrorist network that executed the attacks consisted of at least nine members, of whom seven operated as suicide attackers. The leader of the network, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, probably attended the actual attacks and was subsequently killed when an explosive vest detonated in the safe house where he was hiding. An investigation into the activities of the network has revealed that its members had planned to execute another attack in Paris, but it was thwarted by the French security agencies.

THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE ISLAMIC STATE

On September 10, 2014, US President Barack Obama announced the launching of an all-out campaign against ISIS, with the intention of weakening the organization and eventually leading to its elimination.

The strategy at the foundation of this campaign is based on several elements: continuous air strikes in Syria and Iraq, assistance to local forces in Syria and Iraq through training, supply of materiel and the presence of instructors/advisors, and restricting the financing sources of ISIS – all without deploying substantial US military ground forces in Syria or Iraq. At the same time, the US government has recently authorized the inclusion of limited scale Special Forces units in the operations against ISIS.

To implement the operation against ISIS, the USA had consolidated, within a relatively short timetable, an international coalition made up of western countries and Arab countries whose military forces take an active part in the fighting (albeit symbolically), along with countries that support the coalition. Some of the western allies (notably France and Britain) joined the US air strikes in Iraq, and pursuant to the attacks in Paris – in Syria as well. According to sources in the Pentagon, the cost of the campaign against ISIS has thus far amounted to more than US$ 2.8 billion.

As a result of coalition air strikes, a few thousands of ISIS activists were allegedly killed, but the number of 10,000 killed cited by US sources appears to be overstated. The organization is undoubtedly sustaining painful losses, but apparently, they are not enough to subdue it and for the time being it manages to reinforce its ranks with new volunteers and recruits.

However, the air strikes succeeded, to a considerable extent, in curbing the organization’s territorial expansion, and since 2015 the organization has experienced several military defeats in Iraq, the most notable of which was the fall of the city of Tikrit into the hands of the Iraqi Army and the fall of the city of Sinjar into the hands of the Kurdish forces. At the same time, however, the campaign has thus far failed to substantially reduce the domination of ISIS in the territories it had occupied in Syria and in Iraq.

Following the terror offensive in Paris, the UN Security Council decided to back up the global offensive against the Islamic State. This decision provides legitimacy to the members of the coalition to step up and expand their activity against ISIS, including the option of staging ground operations if they so desire.

Over the course of the last few months, numerous moves were made worldwide in order to minimize the departure of volunteers from various countries and prevent them from joining the fighting on the side of the Islamic State. These moves reduced the scope of the phenomenon but so far have not succeeded in eliminating it completely. In this regard, the members of the coalition, and in particular the countries of Western Europe should enhance their security, intelligence and legislative solutions if they truly aspire to eliminate the phenomenon of foreign volunteers.

Turkey constitutes the primary axis for the foreign volunteers who join the ranks of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and the primary route for these activists when they return to their home countries. The fact that Turkey is a member of NATO and the coalition against ISIS notwithstanding, it does not seem to operate with sufficient determination against the Islamic State owing to the fact that Turkey prefers to tackle the Kurds within their own territory and in the neighboring countries, as well as owing to their desire to topple the Assad regime in Syria. These two opponents of Turkey are also opponents of the Islamic State, so to some extent the interests of Turkey and ISIS overlap, opposite Turkey’s explicit commitment to NATO and to the coalition against ISIS, led by the USA. The tension between Turkey and Russia pursuant to the shooting down of the Russian fighter aircraft has further complicated Turkey’s status and policy in the context of the coalition against ISIS.

THE THREAT TO ISRAEL

The Islamic State regards the State of Israel and Judaism as enemies of Islam and aspires to eliminate the State of Israel, but for the time being it concentrates the bulk of its activity against the countries that actually threaten its existence.

The Islamic State and its various affiliates have consolidated their position in several areas close to the borders of the State of Israel. In the south, the Ansar Bait al-Maqdis organization established itself in the Sinai Peninsula. Additionally, various Jihadist organizations identified with the Islamic State established themselves in the Gaza Strip. These organizations were recently involved in the launching of rockets toward Ashkelon and the Western Negev inside Israeli territory. The ISIS affiliate in the Sinai had already staged terrorist attacks against Israel and has recently threatened to operate against Israel again, with the emphasis on the area of the city of Eilat.

In the north, ISIS is not deployed close to the border with Israel on the Golan Heights, and it is the “competing” organization, Jabhat al-Nusra (an affiliate of al-Qaeda) that is the dominant organization among the rebel organizations occupying the central and southern parts of the Golan Heights. At the same time, the possibility that ISIS may gain a foothold in the area close to the Israeli border on the Golan Heights or cooperate with Jabhat al-Nusra should be taken into consideration.

Over the course of the last few years, a few dozen Israeli Arabs travelled to Syria and joined the ranks of the Islamic State. The number of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and the Judea and Samaria territories who volunteered to operate within the ranks of ISIS is estimated at a few hundred. These ISIS activists constitute a potential threat to the security of the State of Israel in the event that they attempt to return to Israel or to the territories of the Palestinian Authority. In the last year, Israeli security agencies uncovered several initiatives by Israeli Arabs who had attempted to establish ISIS-influenced terrorist cells and stage terrorist attacks inside Israel.

The Islamic State organization with its various worldwide infrastructures and affiliates has already staged terrorist attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets, mainly in France and Belgium. The organization might continue to operate against Israel in the future as well, mainly in the international arena.

BEATING AN IDEOLOGY IS DIFFICULT

The leader of ISIS, Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi, challenges and defies all of the world’s countries, including the USA, Europe and NATO, Russia, the Sunni Islamic countries headed by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, as well as Shi’ite Iran and her allies. Without a doubt, the Islamic State will not be able to withstand a prolonged campaign against all of the forces listed above, and will eventually lose the territories it currently occupies, which would put an end to the new caliphate – but not to the worldview the organization and its leader represent. This deterministic worldview is reflected in the apocalyptic vision of an “Armageddon” type war, which is to take place, according to tradition, in the city of Dabiq in Syria and will end with a decisive Islamic victory, which would lead to a worldwide Muslim hegemony.

The strategy of the USA currently relies on local forces, including the Iraqi Army and the Kurdish militia forces in Iraq, and the “moderate” rebel organizations and Kurdish militia forces in Syria. The Kurdish forces in Syria (YPG) and in Iraq (Peshmerga) have, admittedly, achieved several successful achievements opposite ISIS, but apparently, these forces are not capable of subduing the Islamic State. The USA is not interested in reinforcing the Assad regime or in the success of the Shi’ite militia forces in Iraq, which operate under the auspices of Iran.

The inherently conflicting interests among the various elements of the coalition against ISIS and the reluctance of the members of the coalition to deploy substantial ground troops have significantly undermined the coalition’s ability to subdue the Islamic State.

Russia’s increasing involvement in the fighting in Syria may have a significant influence on the future of the campaign against ISIS, but as it appears, Russia prefers, for the time being, to concentrate its efforts against the immediate threats faced by the Assad regime from the “moderate opposition” and Jabhat al-Nusra, and less on the Islamic State, against which the coalition led by the USA is operating anyway.

It may be estimated that the Islamic State will conduct a tenacious campaign, within the boundaries of the caliphate as well as in various focal points around the world, in an attempt to exact a heavy toll on its enemies and bring about a “reconsideration” of the desirability of pressing on with the fight against ISIS in public opinion and among decision makers. The activists of the Islamic State could operate in any way and through every means in their disposal, from terrorist attacks staged by “lone wolves” through elaborate, carefully-planned attacks by terrorist networks using suicide tactics, to attacks utilizing unconventional measures.

The fight against the Salafist-Jihadist worldview and ideology of the Islamic State constitutes one of the primary challenges for which no appropriate solution has been found yet. Moreover, even if the coalition manages to eliminate the new caliphate in the territories of Iraq and Syria, the ISIS ideology will live on, nourishing new generations of activists who will continue the fight through alternative modes of operation.

THE UGLY TRUTH: DEFEATING THE ISLAMIC STATE WILL TAKE DECADES

The ugly truth: Defeating the Islamic State will take decades
By David Ignatius
Washington Post
January 19, 2016

There’s a scary disconnect between the somber warnings you hear privately from military leaders about the war against the Islamic State and the glib debating points coming from Republican and Democratic politicians.

The politicians fulminate about defeating the terrorists, but they don’t talk much about the costs or sacrifices that will be required. The generals and admirals, who have been at war for 15 years, know that success can’t be bought cheaply. Defeating this enemy will require a much larger and longer commitment by the United States than any leading politician seems willing to acknowledge.

My visit last week to the headquarters of Central Command, which oversees all U.S. military activities in the Middle East, came as part of a conference organized by the Center for Naval Analyses, which provides research to the Navy and other services. The ground rules prevent me from identifying speakers by name, but I can offer a summary of what I heard. It’s not reassuring.

Military leaders know that they are fighting a ruthless adversary that has adjusted and adapted its tactics as the United States and its partners have joined the fight over the past 18 months. The jihadists have lost about 25 percent of the territory they held in mid-2014, but they have devised innovative methods to compensate for their weakness.

Some examples illustrate the agility of Islamic State commanders: They have used tunnels and other concealment tactics to hide their movements; they have developed super-size car bombs, packing explosives in bulldozers and other heavy equipment and sending them in waves against targets; they have deployed small drones for reconnaissance and may be preparing armed drones; they have used chemical weapons, such as chlorine and mustard gas, on the battlefield and may expand use of such unconventional weapons.

U.S. commanders have learned how difficult it will be to create a Sunni force that can help clear and hold territory in Iraq and Syria that’s now controlled by the Islamic State. Sunni tribal leaders mistrust the United States and doubt U.S. staying power. U.S. efforts to avoid casualties and resist “boots on the ground” reinforce the sense that the United States is pursuing a strategy of containment, not victory.

One painful learning experience has been the Pentagon’s $500 million “train and equip” program to build a Syrian opposition force that can help assault the Islamic State and hold territory afterward. That effort collapsed last year because many expected recruits didn’t show up and the few who did were mauled on the battlefield. Among the lessons learned are the difficulty of finding and training mature fighters; the shifting and unsteady combat environment in Syria; and the difficulty of working with regional partners, such as Turkey, that have their own agendas.

The deeper lesson is that training a reliable military force that adheres to Western norms and standards is the work of a generation, not a few months. The U.S. desire for quick results is an exercise in frustration and disappointment. The sobering reality of this conflict that politicians – and the American public – seem least willing to face up to is that it will require a decades-long commitment.

Paradoxically, the United States’ determination to protect its troops can be self-defeating. Allies and adversaries see U.S. forces living in secure compounds, eating fancy chow and minimizing their exposure to potential terrorist assaults. The United States may say it’s fighting alongside its allies, but on the ground, it often looks different. Actually living and fighting alongside our partners in Iraq and Syria will be much more dangerous, but it may be the only way to build a solid alliance that can someday eradicate the extremists.

Contrast these stern admonitions from the commanders who have lived through the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts with the upbeat talk from political leaders. President Obama pledged that “priority number one is protecting the American people and going after terrorist networks” and then said a few moments later that these networks “do not threaten our national existence.” That sends a mixed message – one that Hillary Clinton has echoed in her campaign.

Republican rants about the Islamic State are even worse, in that they promise total victory without suggesting the level of commitment and sacrifice involved. The GOP responses sound tough, from Donald Trump’s “bomb the hell out of [the Islamic State]” to Sen. Marco Rubio’s (Fla.) assurance in last week’s debate that “the most powerful military in the world is going to destroy them.”

The next president is going to inherit an expanding war against a global terrorist adversary. The debate about how best to fight this enemy hasn’t even begun.

ISLAMIC STATE KIDNAPS 400 CIVILIANS IN DEIR AL-ZOR, SLAUGHTERS MANY

Islamic State kidnaps 400 civilians in Deir al-Zor
Syria’s state news agency reports massacre by ISIS during terror organization’s attacks on the city, at least 300 people killed, including women and children.
Reuters
January 17, 2016

Islamic State militants kidnapped at least 400 civilians when they attacked government-held areas in the eastern Syrian city of Deir al-Zor on Saturday, a monitoring group said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Sunday families of pro-government fighters were among those abducted.

“There is genuine fear for their lives, there is a fear that the group might execute them as it has done before in other areas,” said the Observatory’s head Rami Abdulrahamn.

Deir al-Zor is the main town in a province of the same name. The province links Islamic State’s de facto capital in the Syrian city of Raqqa with territory controlled by the militant group in neighboring Iraq.

Syria’s state news agency SANA said earlier that at least 300 people, including women and children, had been killed during the attacks in Deir al-Zor, but it made no mention of people getting kidnapped.

Syria’s government condemned the killings which it described as a “horrific massacre against the residents of Begayliya in Deir al-Zor.”

A source close to the Syrian government side said on Saturday that some of those killed had been beheaded.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which documents all sides of the Syria conflict through activists on the ground, said late Saturday that at least 135 people were killed. It said around 80 of them were soldiers and pro-government militiamen and the rest civilians.

The Lebanon-based Al-Mayadeen TV, which is close to the Syrian government, also reported a massacre and said ISIS killed dozens of people, including women and children, and threw their bodies in the Euphrates River. It said the group took more than 400 civilians hostage.

Reuters was unable to independently verify the reports.

Islamic State has previously carried out mass killings following military assaults in Iraq and Syria, including the slaughter of 200 soldiers captured from the Tabqa airbase in Raqqa province, and hundreds of members of the al-Sheitat tribe in Deir al-Zor in 2014.

The group, in control of most of Deir al-Zor province, has laid siege since March on remaining government-held areas in the city of Deir al-Zor.

Residents are facing severe food shortages and sharply deteriorating conditions. Of those under siege in the city, 70 percent are women and children, and many have been displaced from their homes elsewhere and are living in temporary shelters.

ARTICLES

SHAME ON THE LIBERALS WHO RATIONALISE TERROR

Shame On The Liberals Who Rationalise Terror
By Nick Cohen
Standpoint magazine (London)
January/February 2016 edition

http://standpointmag.co.uk/features-january-february-2016-nick-cohen-charlie-hebdo-paris-attacks-shame-on-liberals-who-rationalise-murder

After the massacres in Paris on November 13, the US Secretary of State John Kerry made a statement so disgraceful you had to read it, rub your eyes, and read it again to comprehend the extent of his folly: “There’s something different about what happened from Charlie Hebdo, and I think everybody would feel that,” Kerry began in the laboured English of an over-promoted middle manager.

“There was a sort of particularised focus and perhaps even a legitimacy in terms of – not a legitimacy, but a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, OK, they’re really angry because of this and that. This Friday was absolutely indiscriminate. It wasn’t to aggrieve one particular sense of wrong. It was to terrorise people.”

Did you get that? Then allow me to translate. Kerry believes the satirists Islamist gunmen killed at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris’s 11th arrondissement on January 5 had it coming. It is not that they deserved to die. John Kerry is a New England liberal, after all, and does not endorse the death penalty for journalists. But liberalism is a two-faced creed. It can mean that you believe in individual freedom and abhor every variety of prejudice, including the prejudice that allows men to shoot journalists dead for producing a magazine they disapprove of. Or it can mean that you go to such lengths to take account of your enemy’s opinions you become indistinguishable from him.

John Kerry’s liberalism, and the liberalism of millions like him, ignores Chesterton’s warning not to be so open-minded that your brains fall out. Kerry wanted to understand radical Islam and to seek the root causes of its apparently psychopathic violence. Not for him the knee-jerk condemnations of a red-state redneck. When Kerry applied his nuanced and expensively educated mind to the corpses in the magazine office, he discovered that the dead had provoked their own murders. The assassins had, well, if not quite legitimate reasons, then certainly a “rationale” which explained why they were “really angry because of this and that”.

Charlie Hebdo mocked the prophet Muhammad, Islamic State and Boko Haram. Its editor Stéphane Charbonnier (aka Charb), the cartoonists and columnists who wrote for him, and the police officers who died protecting their freedom (and ours) knew the risks and paid the price. They went looking for trouble and we should not be shocked that they found it.

All the rest of us had to do was to moderate our behaviour. If we were careful not to make terrorists “really angry” about “this and that”, we would be safe.

Perhaps I am being too kind to Kerry. But I assume even he must have had one doubt buzzing around his empty head like a dazed bluebottle. An associate of the Islamist gang that pumped bullets into the staff of Charlie Hebdo also took hostages at the Hypercacher supermarket at Porte de Vincennes in the 20th arrondissement. There he murdered Philippe Braham, a sales executive, Yohan Cohen, a student, Yoav Hattab, another student, and François-Michel Saada, a pensioner. The dead had provided no “rationale” and created no “particular sense of wrong”. They were ordinary citizens, shopping for food, as we all do.

But when Kerry and those like him looked at their bodies closely perhaps they noticed that appearances deceived. They were not like the rest of us, after all. Hypercacher was a kosher supermarket and the dead were Jews. Few people were prepared to say what they were thinking openly, but a BBC reporter, Tim Willcox, showed no restraint. A Jewish woman in the crowd near the crime scene told him, “The situation is going back to the days of 1930s in Europe. Jews are the target now.” Willcox could not let the suggestion that Jews were innocent victims go unchallenged. “Many critics of Israel’s policy would suggest that Palestinians suffer hugely at Jewish hands,” he said, interrupting her.

If you were a Jew, it was Israel’s fault that you were murdered, and possibly your fault too for not trying to pass as a gentile, or avoiding synagogues, and Jewish shops and restaurants, or changing your name and ditching your kippah.

If you are a freethinker satirising Islam, you are a “this” and there is a “rationale” to your murder. If you are Jewish, you are a “that” and there is a “rationale” to your murders too. Most people in the rich world are not satirists or Jews. They are neither “this” nor “that”. Indeed most satirists, who boast of their iconoclasm, are very careful never to become a “this” or a “that”. For all their poses as courageous men and women who tell it like it is, they do not follow Hebdo and mock targets who might respond by shooting them dead.

Open-minded liberals thus found the lesson of the Hebdo attacks was clear and surprisingly reassuring: the only people in danger were a few satirists “who went too far” and Jews who carried a new version of their ancient curse. The rest of the West could find a modus vivendi, a chance for life in the midst of death. “OK,” they thought, “terrorists are really angry because of this and that. But we are neither ‘this’ nor ‘that’ and the Islamist ‘other’ won’t harm us.”

The comforting illusion did not last more than 10 months. As even Kerry acknowledged, the mass murders in Paris on November 13 showed that it was not just satirists or Jews in the firing line but everybody and anybody. Islamic State targeted young fans at a rock concert, diners eating at restaurants, and spectators at a football game.

I have written before that the period after 9/11 has been a strange and neurotic time in Europe and North America. On the one hand, everyone knew that a murderously reactionary ideology mandated vast slaughter. On the other, actual Islamist slaughters were rare. Until the two assaults on Paris this year, there were just two large attacks since 9/11 on the rich world: in Madrid and London in 2004 and 2005. Fear of violence without the experience of violence produces the ideal conditions for appeasement. You can imagine your own deaths and the deaths of those you love. But death never comes. You are not provoked into retaliation, but instead are overwhelmed by the desire to avoid danger by excusing and indulging. No one in Pakistan or Nigeria could engage in the wishful thinking of John Kerry. Only the nervous peace of a phoney war could produce the thought that we could have it all ways. We could carry on being good liberals respecting the rights of women and homosexuals, believing in freedom of speech and of religion, while conceding miles of ground to men who were against every liberal and democratic principle we avowed. As much as the admirable and essential desire to prevent our fellow citizens suffering anti-Muslim bigotry, as much as the narcissistic desire to indulge in Western guilt, the basic desire to save our skins and calm our fears has shaped contemporary culture.

In her new book “In Praise of Blasphemy: Why Charlie Hebdo is not Islamophobic,” Caroline Fourest wanted to show how much ground we have conceded. Instead, the treatment of her work by the publishing industry shows how much has been lost. No Anglo-Saxon publisher would touch it, and only fear can explain the rejection letters. The author is not an unknown. Fourest is an established writer and one of the few French intellectuals prepared to think for herself rather than parrot a party line. She worked at Charlie Hebdo, so she can provide a first-hand account of its struggles and thinking. An English translator has done her proud. Her book has an endorsement from Salman Rushdie on its cover, which any publisher would kill for: “Now more than ever this is a vitally important book.”

So it is, and readable too. To top it all, Fourest was offering the English translation to publishers as IS was preparing to attack Paris. Its topicality was beyond doubt. Publishers normally want topical books, but their refusal to publish Fourest shows that you can be too topical, particularly if your topicality incites a paranoid fear in a publisher’s mind that men in balaclavas might burst into his offices. All the cries of “Je suis Charlie” have turned out to be so many lies, as they were always going to be. The murder of Charlie Hebdo’s journalists reinforced the silent determination of every editor and publisher in the West that Charlie was the last thing they were going to be.

In Praise of Blasphemy is now available as an ebook on Amazon. This is an important book because it goes to the heart of a distinction between anti-Muslim bigotry and Islamophobia that hypocrites who pose as anti-racists and religious sectarians who want to protect their oppressive theology from criticism have deliberately blurred.

Anti-Muslim bigotry must be fought, as must the denial on the Right that anti-Muslim bigotry even exists. If contemporary culture just asked us to fight it, I would not have a difficulty. Instead, it asks us to bite our tongues and mute our criticism of religious belief or risk being accused of Islamophobia.

After Islamists murdered the staff of Charlie Hebdo, elements of the British and American intelligentsia sank lower than even the severest critics imagined possible as they failed to insist on the distinction. They talked as if the cartoonists were the real criminals and the Islamists their victims. I remember sitting at King’s College London and listening as an academic – not some spotty student with hormones for brains, but a tenured professor with pretensions to intellectual integrity – explained that a Hebdo cartoon of Boko Haram’s captured sex slaves demanding benefits was racist. I pointed out that it was perfectly obvious to anyone who could read French that Hebdo was satirising French conservatives so lost in racist fears they imagined enslaved Nigerian women were threatening to come to France and steal their taxes. He would not retract. Because Hebdo criticised religious extremism it had to be racist. No other explanation was acceptable to him or to most of the multicultural Left.

When PEN in New York honoured the surviving journalists, Francine Prose, a former president of PEN American Center, denounced it for feeding “cultural prejudices”. Peter Carey said that a free-speech organisation should not be “self-righteous” about journalists who were murdered for speaking freely. The late Gore Vidal said the three saddest words in the English language were “Joyce Carol Oates”. Oates proved him right when she joined other “dissenting” Anglo-Saxon authors in repeating the lie that Hebdo mocked black African women for being black African women.

Among the many virtues of Fourest’s book is that she identifies the compromises behind the smears. Charlie Hebdo was a part of an honourable strain on the Western Left which is all but dead now. It opposed racism and fundamentalism at the same time, and, as I am fond of saying, for the same reasons. Racism is a superstition. You judge a man or a woman on the colour of their skin or the country of their birth, and adjust your behaviour accordingly. Sectarian religion is a superstition. You judge a man or woman by whether they share your taboos. One might have thought that a liberal intelligentsia that is loud in its determination to fight bigotry and lachrymose in its sympathy for the demonised “other” would oppose religious prejudice and ally itself with its victims. But a stand on principle would make dangerous men “really angry because of this and that”, as John Kerry so ineptly explained. Better to avoid “this and that”. Better to cover your conscience by condemning all who condemn religious oppression as “racists” or the possessors of a pathological anti-Muslim phobia.

Fourest shows what an honourable Left looked like before the hypocrites took it over:

“By naming things wrongly we add to the misfortunes of the world,” wrote Albert Camus. And the word “Islamophobia” does precisely that. Peddling the idea that the struggle against fanaticism is a form of racism has created one of the most dangerous political and semantic confusions of our time. What exactly is the issue here? Semantically this word does not signify a “phobia” towards Muslims but towards Islam: “Islamophobia” and not “Muslim-phobia”. Some people use it in perfectly good faith and others in totally bad faith. The fundamentalists use it to condemn all criticism of Islam, its dogma or abuses as being “phobic”, therefore problematic. Anti-racists use the same term to signify phobia towards Muslims, thus playing into the hands of the fundamentalists.

To put it another way, if opposing “Islamophobia” meant arresting the men who attacked women in the street for wearing a hijab, or arguing with the loudmouth who said that all Muslims were potential terrorists, there would be no difficulty. None at all. But fighting Islamophobia has come to mean banning criticism of religious beliefs and myths, including those myths that incite oppression and murder.

You would never guess it from the hatred it inspired, but only 4 per cent of Hebdo covers featured Islam. The satirists’ stock targets were the French National Front and the Catholic Church. But, as Fourest says, how could Hebdo use a cover picture of the Pope when Islamists were threatening to impose religious law in Libya, Tunisia and Egypt, or were beheading people in Syria? And, she might have also asked, where lay the bravery in savaging the beliefs of Catholics who would not murder you or anyone else while giving a pass to Islamists who would do both?

The cartoons themselves were mild by the savage standards of French satire. To take one example, intellectuals and journalists said during the Arab Spring that there was no need to worry because “moderate Islamists” would come to the fore. Charlie Hebdo replied by asking what moderate Sharia would look like: stoning to death using fair-trade rocks? A religious law authorising homosexuality but forcing gays to wear the veil? For that, its offices were firebombed.

Although Fourest has many criticisms of French intellectuals, she reserves a special scorn for Anglo-Saxon journalists. Fourest describes an encounter between her friend and ally Fiammetta Venner and a “particularly vehement” BBC presenter. The BBC man damned her for failing to respect the taboo on producing likenesses of Muhammad. Venner replied that if he was so keen on respecting everything that is prohibited by Islam then he should also remove all the crucifixes and pictures of Jesus in churches in England, given that Jesus is also considered a prophet of Islam and that according to the Koran the crucifixion never took place. “The presenter thought he’d found the way to keep the peace, namely by respecting the taboos of each community. There was just one detail he had forgotten: the beliefs of some are nearly always considered blasphemous by others.”

After the November attacks on Paris, I doubt that these attitudes can continue. Europe’s free pass from the global terror wars feels as if it has reached its expiry date. It is impossible to see the future, but the relative peace that produced appeasement has been broken twice in Paris alone in 2015. If the assaults continue, we should look back on the years after 9/11 with some shame. Western countries fought radical Islamists with the most advanced weapons systems the human race has invented. They broke human rights law and the rules of war with a prison camp at Guantánamo Bay. They engaged in torture to an extent that even hardened observers found shocking. But they would not fight the religious ideas that inspired their enemies for fear of seeming insensitive, Islamophobic or racist.

To duck arguments while starting wars was the most extraordinary inversion of priorities. Instead of encouraging Muslims to break with extremism, we left liberal Muslims and ex-Muslims isolated. We adopted the language of the extremists, and censored the very arguments they needed to use against fundamentalism. Instead of damning religious totalitarianism, we invented rationales that obscured rather than enlightened.

As John Kerry showed, anyone can play the game. You can say the attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon were a rational response to American support for Saudi Arabia and Israel. If America wanted to be safe, it should stop supporting Saudi Arabia and Israel. The British Left claimed that the 7/7 attacks on London were a rational response to British involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It wasn’t true: Mohammad Sidique Khan, the terrorist cell’s leader, was training in Islamist camps long before the Iraq war. Nevertheless, the point still held: you can suppose that Western foreign policy provides a “rationale” for Muslims who become terrorists. You can say, as John Kerry implied, that if Charlie Hebdo had steered clear of Islam, it would never have been bombed. You can say that Jews would not be targets if they renounced Judaism. You can say that Islamic State would not have attacked Paris if the French had stayed out of Syria. You can say that the existence of Israel explains Hamas. You can say that IS would not treat Yazidi women as sex slaves if they had embraced its version of Sunni Islam. You can say there is a rationale for the Iranian subjugation of its Sunni minority and the Saudi subjugation of its Shia minority, for both are potentially dangerous to their respective states. You can say that Muslim countries would not persecute homosexuals if they went straight, or order the death of apostates if they remained good Muslims. There is no limit to the number of reasons you can find. Every time you rationalise, however, you miss the obvious and ignore an often openly fascistic ideology whose appeal lies in its supernatural certainties and totalitarian promise of a new heaven on earth.

Every step you take explaining radical Islam away is apparently rational and liberal. Each takes you further from rationalism and liberalism. In your determination to see the other side’s point of view and to avoid making it “really angry about this or that”, you end up altering your behaviour so much that you can no longer challenge the prejudices of violent religious reactionaries. As you seek rationales for the irrational and excuses for the inexcusable, you become a propagandist for the men you once opposed.

REVOLT OF THE POLITICALLY INCORRECT

Revolt of the Politically Incorrect
Donald Trump and Ben Carson popped the valves on decades of pent-up PC pressure.

By Daniel Henninger
The Wall Street Journal
Jan. 7, 2016

Soon we’ll all be camped in the fields of primary politics, as that great threshing machine called the American voter methodically separates the contender wheat from the candidate chaff. Let’s not go there, though, without recording 2015 as the year that political correctness finally hit the wall.

Many thought political correctness lived on in our lives now as permanently annoying background noise. In fact, it has been more like a political A-bomb, waiting for its detonator.

On Dec. 7, Donald Trump issued his call for a ban on Muslim immigration into the U.S. – “until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” It’s hard to recall a statement by a public figure that was met, instantly, with almost universal condemnation, including from most of the Republican presidential candidates.

Between that day and the end of 2015, Donald Trump’s support in the national opinion polls went up to nearly 37%, a substantial number by any measure.

Welcome to the revolt of the politically incorrect.

Forget the controversy over Donald Trump’s Muslim ban. This unique political campaign is about more than that. Donald Trump and indeed Ben Carson popped the valves on pressure that’s been building in the U.S., piece by politically correct piece, for 25 years. Since at least the early 1990s, a lot of the public has been intimidated into keeping its mouth shut and head down about subjects in the political and social life of the country that the elites stipulated as beyond discussion or dispute. Eventually, the most important social skill in America became adeptness at euphemism. It isn’t an abortion; it’s a “terminated pregnancy.”

Some keywords in PC’s history:

Identity, gender, gender-neutral, diverse, inclusive, patriarchy, workplace harassment, multiculturalism, dead white males, sexism, racism, organic, “privileged,” hate speech, speech codes, prayer in schools, affirmative action, respecting our differences, microagressions, trigger warnings. That’s just the tip of the iceberg – which political correctness slammed into with the Trump and Carson campaigns.

Ben Carson especially made PC an explicit tenet of his campaign. In a 2014 essay for the Washington Times, Mr. Carson wrote: “Political correctness is antithetical to our founding principles of freedom of speech and freedom of expression. Its most powerful tool is intimidation. If it is not vigorously opposed, its proponents win by default, because the victims adopt a ‘go along to get along’ attitude.”

The left found Mr. Carson’s PC concerns almost quaint. But the email traffic I was seeing last summer suggested the Carson anti-PC critique was a big reason for his surge among middle-class voters. My favorite Carsonism: When asked in the Fox News debate if he’d resume waterboarding, he replied, “There is no such thing as a politically correct war.”

When Donald Trump’s mostly working-class voters repeatedly said that “he tells the truth,” this is what they were talking about – not any particular Trump outrage but the years of political correctness they felt they’d been forced to choke down in silence.
American society has never been static. A fair-minded person would concede that many of these controversial subjects involve legitimate and complex issues. Politics exists to mediate them.

Mediation? We should have been so lucky. The left never modulated its PC offensive. The 2006 Duke University lacrosse scandal, a travesty of PC trampling on individuals, should have been a red flag. Instead the Obama Education Department imposed what are essentially kangaroo courts on American campuses to enforce Title IX sexual-abuse cases.

Policies like that don’t emerge from the marketplace of ideas, much less political debate. They come from a kind of Americanized Maoism. The left goes nuts when anyone suggests political correctness has totalitarian roots. But the PC game has always been: We win, you lose, get over it, comply.

But people don’t get over it, and they never forget. For a lot of voters now, possibly a majority, their experiences with enforceable, politically correct behavior, speech and thought have bred a broad mistrust of elites.

Average people think individuals in positions of leadership are supposed to at least recognize the existence of their interests and beliefs. The institutions that didn’t do that or were complicit include the courts, Congress, senior bureaucrats, corporate managers, the press, television, movies, university administrators.

Somehow, the standard model of political comportment – represented by most of the GOP’s presidential candidates – just isn’t up to dealing with a degree of voter social alienation that isn’t particularly rational at this point. So voters turned to “outsiders” – people more like them.

The election’s two big issues remain: a weak economy and global chaos. But for many voters, the revolt against political correctness is on. Hillary Clinton, hostage to a PC-obsessed base, must mouth politically correct pabulum. Donald Trump joy-rides the wave. An opening remains for an electable candidate who can point this revolt toward what it wants – a political win, at last.