The “fog of war” descended on Syria a long time ago.
That process began with a despotic and reactionary state eschewing talk with its challengers and leaping to air power to bomb the daylights out of its own constituents — city blocks, suburbs, towns, villages, schools — free of discrimination regarding noncombatants.
The same seems to have picked up with the fractured assembly of the Free Syrian Army and to have accelerated with the incursion of the Al Qaeda affiliates and their ability to steal The Revolution, redefine The Cause, and confuse the comparative loyalties and purposes of the patchwork of anti-Assad forces.
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The fighting in Maaloula is part of a wider struggle between Al-Qaeda linked fighters of the Nusra Front and the Syrian army for control of the strategic Damascus-Homs highway, which passes close by the town.
Maaloula was the scene of heavy fighting in September. It is considered to be one of the birthplaces of Christianity and is home to a number of shrines and monasteries, which are listed as UNESCO world heritage sites.
Activists and residents say Syrian rebels have again taken control of parts of Maaloula, an ancient Christian town near Damascus.
A spokesman for the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and a local resident said on Monday that rebels were steadily seizing swathes of the town which they have occupied on previous occasions as fighting has ebbed and flowed in the rugged Qalamoun region near Damascus.
In a statement relayed by the Lebanese National News Agency, Qabbani said that “kidnapping and physical abuse go contrary to the teachings of Islam, and are offensive to the essential teachings of tolerance especially at a time of conflict and war.”
It was not immediately clear whether the nuns had been kidnapped or merely evacuated for their own safety.
Oh, please, oh sponsored press: the Islamist front has retaken a critical position in the Syrian theater, picked up in the weird way of the religious world a dozen useful assets that it may use to forestall the next Assad airstrike, or, if the jets fly anyway, use as anti-regime PR (by way of their obliteration by the air force of the despot) even while a few of their own are dispatched to Paradise.
The Syrian terrorists abducted 12 nuns from Mar Takla monastery, which lies in the historic town of Maaloula in Damascus, and movedNuns them form to the nearby town of Yabroud.
While America’s lopsided right-side conservatives excoriate President Obama for this mess, it may dawn on some to take a second look at the weight and singularity of the emerging rebel arsenal. Neither the weapons launched in the above attack or very good zoom video used to record the attack arrived out of thin air. As with all film and television productions, especially today the real ones, there would seem to be a lot of treasure involved.
Whose?
When?
Through what channels?
I don’t think I’m going to find the answers to those questions on the World Wide Web.
In sum, Syria embodies multi-layered “spider web-like “ networks of Sunni and Shia militias and paramilitary forces, and this can only continue to plunge Syria into violence and chaos not unlike the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990), although Syria’s war is at least 100 times worse and intense and potentially will last a lot longer.
The supporters of these proxy rebel groups, like Saudi Arabia, the UAE , and other GCC states on the Sunni jihadists’ side, and Iran on the Shia side, have no regard for the innocent civilians suffering horrifically in Syria and also as refugees in neighboring countries. These proxy supporters are as guilty of atrocities as Bashar al-Assad. All sides are guilty of war crimes
In the order encountered in the above article: The Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS); Free Syrian Army; Ahrar al-Sham; Jaysh al-Islam; Suqour al-Sham; Liwa al-Tawhid; Liwa al-Haqq; Ansar al-Sham; Kurdish Islamic Front; Hezbollah; Revolutionary Guard Corps.
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“I want to say to the clerics to fear Allah. They have destroyed people. They have destroyed families. They have destroyed all people. They have destroyed young people. They lie to them and lure them. For what? For Jihad for the sake of Allah. All this is nothing but slander and brainwashing.”
We can thus say with high confidence that at least 1,200 European Muslims have gone to Syria since the start of the war. This is a remarkable figure; we are talking about the largest European Muslim foreign fighter contingent to any conflict in modern history.
Hey, guys, let’s put on a war and see who shows up!
The Mohammad Must Off Ya Club, partially invited by the Old Soviet Boys Network and the Shiite Propeller Beanies — everyone’s making money but the fighters, and some of those are making money too — have found their calling in Syria:
Explosive weapons, including bombs, killed seven in 10 of the more than 11,000 Syrian children under the age of 17 who have died in Syria’s brutal civil war, according to a report released on Sunday . . . Most often, they were killed by explosives, but also from executions and torture. Since March 2011, 113,735 civilians and combatants have been killed in the Syrian conflict.
Exercise your imagination with this factoid from the above cited Al Jazeera piece:
Small arms fire from guns and rifles accounted for 2,806, or 26.5 percent, of the children killed, with 764 children who were executed and 398 killed by fire from a sniper. And among those children who were executed, 112 were tortured, including some infants.
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Upon arrival in Syria, the mercenaries were told that their employers were private individuals, not the Syrian government, and the weapons they were told they’d be given, including T-72 tanks, were replaced by antiquated tanks that didn’t run, and by makeshift armored vehicles with machine guns. Also, they soon learned that instead of guarding oil fields, they were supposed to be recapturing them from jihadists.
Oh what a tangled web we weave when what we do best is set out to murder and deceive.
For money.
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St Petersburg newspaper Fontanka interviewed some mercenaries who said that they were lured by a promise to get $4,000 per month and a solemn oath that the first salary would be transferred within days.
They were taken on a flight to Beirut, Lebanon and from there they were transferred by cars to Damascus. When they reached the Syrian border they traveled with a convoy of local guardsmen. In Damascus they were taken to a local hotel. The following day they were transferred by a plane to Latakia, and from there to a Syrian military base.
The Islamic Small Wars are no longer about infidels, Islam, or states: they’are about kinds of persons, sometimes the absolute autocrats one feels comfortable referring to as “malignant narcissists”; sometimes common bandits, murderers, psychos, and thieves taking the opportunity to cloak themselves in patriotism or religion; sometimes nothing more than young men in the hormonal sway of grandiose messianic delusions.
Perhaps it will turn out a good thing to have had them gathered so in one bloody place.
They’re all easier to see that way — and what a spectacle they make of themselves.
While the malignancies do the chop-chop and Kalashnikov war dances, Oxfam on Syria notes the following:
The UN estimates that almost 7 million Syrians inside of Syria are in need of assistance, including 4.25 million internally displaced.
Thousands continue to flee Syria daily.
The total number of refugees in neighboring countries is now more than 2.2 million.
It is estimated that the population of Lebanon has increased by more than 25% and the population of Jordan by 6%. This is putting extreme pressure on local infrastructure.
“One 24-year-old man, suspected of organising journeys to Syria, was in touch with several “fixers” who facilitated travel between Turkey and Syria, while another previously fought with an Islamist group in Syria, the sources said.”
In casual and often jocular language typical of messages on social media, the authors paint a rosy picture of life on the front, stressing the pious atmosphere and the sense of brotherhood-in-arms shared by the fighters. They note that recruits may come with their wives and children, and stress the practical advantages of joining the jihad community in Syria, such as the prospect of finding a bride and the low cost of living.
Perhaps Israel is keeping mum, neither claiming nor denying responsibility for the destruction of a Syrian air base between Wednesday evening and Thursday morning this week.
As suggested on this blog, there are so few (to none) of objective observers in the battle space that those following the war news in mainstream media and the more seasoned defense journals online needs must accept that the perception of events may be a part of the province of intelligence interests.
In the deeply paranoid and suspicious atmosphere attending the fighting in Syria, which has been overrun by spies and riven by the separate interests of small cabals, throwing a little more “not knowing” into the mix adds to the bloody mischief already in full swing.
—The Israeli government and military establishment have declined to comment on the reports, although one Israeli official told Reuters he thought Israel had carried out the strike, but wasn’t certain.—
It appears that not even general Israeli military staff know what happened.
Very hush hush.
I’m sure the spy novelists are having a field day with every facet of Syria’s continuing meltdown.
. . . the Syrian conflict has come to represent one involving (1) elements within the Syrian government; (2) Lebanese Hezbollah units and foreign fighter-dominated Shiite militias; (3) small remnants of genuinely nationalist and sometimes secular opposition rebel units; (4) Muslim Brotherhood-type rebel groups; (5) Salafist groups; and (6) al-Qaeda affiliates and similarly aligned units. Crucially, while 1 and 2 share a central goal of ensuring Assad’s survival and 3 through 6 aim to overthrow the Assad regime, all six can be said to individually retain their own unique ideological and operational objectives.
ZAATARI CAMP, Jordan: Largest camp for Syrian refugees becoming a city – World Wires – MiamiHerald.com – 11/1/2013: “ZAATARI CAMP, Jordan — The manager of the region’s largest camp for Syrian refugees arranges toy figures, trucks and houses on a map in his office trailer to illustrate his ambitious vision. In a year, he wants to turn the chaotic shantytown of 100,000 into a temporary city with local councils, paved streets, parks, an electricity grid and sewage pipes.”
Saudi Arabia funds Syrian rebels, splits with U.S. – UPI.com – 10/8/2013: “BEIRUT, Lebanon, Oct. 8 (UPI) — Saudi Arabia, exasperated with U.S. vacillation related to Syria’s chemical arsenal and now its effort to reconcile with Iran, Riyadh’s foremost adversary, is forging a new alliance of Islamist rebels in Syria under a pro-Saudi warlord to supersede the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army.”
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Obama’s bungling has enabled Russia’s chief autocrat to 1) seize leadership of the Christian position and leverage power and approval unto himself while supporting an essentially murderous dictator and 2) urged on Arab support and de facto Turkish allowance — either that or incompetence — for the Al Qaeda affiliates to produce a sustained presence and fill out their ranks in the theater.
Not only does “Syria” not end well . . . it doesn’t end.
The Assad regime long ago lost the ability to enforce its sovereignty out to the boundaries of its writ; substantial Syrian populations have been displaced internally or made refugee, many permanently, having no business or homes to which to return; for the west, Israel and Kurdistan mark the chief lines of containment while Jordan and Turkey flex to take in the stranger and resist losing themselves, or parts of themselves, in the chaos next door.
Channel 2 News reported that the attack’s target was a S-125 surface-to-air missiles battery.
Satellite images of the area obtained by Channel 2 show the Russian-made Neva missiles, as well as a SA-3 missile battery, that also includes a command center with a radar to track the missiles’ targets and broadcasting anthenas to track the missiles as they are launched. The missiles have a range of 35km. and a 70k. warhead.
The casual reader Syrian war news may be subject to many impressions from the media but can no longer “see” or sort the chaos involved in Syria’s agony.
RT and the alternative press of which it has become a part will probably get in its digs as it did back in July by accusing Turkey of enabling an Israeli-borne attack on a shipment of Russian Yakhont anti-ship missiles.
Syrian President Bashar al Assad has made no secret of his contempt for Israel or his intentions to target the Jewish state with the intent of deflecting attention from his own failings. A little more than a month again in the latest of rants, he had said, “We have weapons that could blindside Israel.” Indeed, it’s possible, but it’s possible too that he will find himself with fewer of them this afternoon, which is not to say Israel is the only party that could have or would have done it.
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In the murky period associated with Assad’s chemical weapons deployment, the British seem to have alternately prepared for a strike on Syria and reversed tracks on the same.
Did intelligence stand down? Were agents retrieved?
Back in July, MI6 seems to have been worried about Assad’s chemical weapons stocks finding their way to the Al Qaeda affiliates operating in Syria and with Chinese and Russian meddling on the high tech side of the stew.
I would think it doubtful that British military and security operations have backed off the theater at all but rather gone about their missions more quietly than during the potential run-up to a punitive strike in relation to the chemical weapons imbroglio.
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Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan faces a dilemma. He is invested in a peace process at home with the Kurdish Workers’ Party, or PKK, and its imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan. And Turkey has a flourishing relationship with Iraqi Kurdistan, whose oil and natural gas it needs desperately. Yet the permissive attitude of the Turkish state toward the jihadists battling the Syrian Kurds has been a source of trouble for Erdogan. He has gone a long way toward keeping the jihadists at arm’s length.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has had to navigate the slim channel between NATO’s interests and those of the Muslim Brotherhood, on whose behalf he appears to be struggling in the Egyptian quarter of the middle east mess, and outright affiliation with the Al Qaeda affiliates that have apparently slipped across his borders to badger Christians and Kurds in Syria’s northern regions.
Who is cooperating with whom in Syria?
Whatever the true state of affairs may be as regards each aspect of the fighting in Syria, one probably will not find it on the front pages of newspapers.
The desk analysts consigned to perusing clippings may have cause to believe they’ve been left with looking over the shell of a very rotten egg.
I’d rather turn “data” into “information” than turn out lists, but data for lists comes fast and quick and paints its own picture. This insert, another brief melange, might suggest how hot the spy games are getting around the mixed motivation fighting inside Syria.
For more than four decades, Syria’s ruling family — President Bashar Assad and his late father, Hafez — has depended on informants — or the fear of them — to help keep the population in line.
In America’s entertainment culture, the statement “Trust no one” has developed a life all its own, but also one largely in jest; of course, with the post-9/11 domestic black operations elephant of a budget, that good humored acceptance of some potential invasive probing may change; however, for war torn Syria, there’s no humor or good natured winks to be found: the spies would seem to have swarmed one another’s offices and outposts.
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Mr. Obama delivered what U.S. officials describe as an unusually blunt message: The U.S. believed Turkey was letting arms and fighters flow into Syria indiscriminately and sometimes to the wrong rebels, including anti-Western jihadists.
Seated at Mr. Erdogan’s side was the man at the center of what caused the U.S.’s unease, Hakan Fidan, Turkey’s powerful spymaster and a driving force behind its efforts to supply the rebels and topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
In unusually blunt public remarks, Prince Turki al-Faisal called Obama’s policies in Syria “lamentable” and ridiculed a U.S.-Russian deal to eliminate Assad’s chemical weapons. He suggested it was a ruse to let Obama avoid military action in Syria.
“The current charade of international control over Bashar’s chemical arsenal would be funny if it were not so blatantly perfidious. And designed not only to give Mr. Obama an opportunity to back down (from military strikes), but also to help Assad to butcher his people,” said Prince Turki, a member of the Saudi royal family and former director of Saudi intelligence.
Today’s alternative and blithely anti-Semitic Far Gone and Leftward Press seems to be conflating today’s explosion 30 minutes south of Latakia with Israel and the old “Davy Crocket” tactical nuclear weapon.
I’m not waiting on the radiation reports.
The one thing certain about today’s blast is the real journalists are absent, the politically venal are present and active, and whatever pictures and news reports make into the still news vetting mainstream media tell very little about what has happened or what is happening in combat inside Syria.
Additional and Cited Reference In Loosely Reversed Chronological Order
INTERNATIONAL – Turkish FM denies Israel used Turkish base in Syria attack – 7/15/2013: ““Turkey will neither be a part nor a partner of such ‘attacks.’ The ones who claim this want to damage Turkey’s power and reputation,” he said. “It is out of the question that Turkey and Israel are part of a joint military operation.”
As a result of their American-enforced protections until 2003, and later as a result of the weakened central government in Baghdad after Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Iraqi Kurds were left to govern themselves for 22 years, from 1991 to present. During this period, the Kurds have literally lifted their corner of Iraq from the ashes, establishing not only one of the most prosperous polities in the region, but also by far the best approximation of secular democracy that the Middle East can currently offer.
At least at the moment, “Syria Kurds fighting” isn’t bring up hours old reports and videos.
All may be tense on that front but, so far as the reality-to-news lag is concerned, it’s quiet, and that’s a good thing: in addition to fending off the AQTypal Out There, the Kurds in their camps and villages have a turn coming in the weather to be followed by winter.
It’s good, I’m sure, to have a few fair days ahead of what’s to come, winter being always certain.
This year may be different — different zone, relief planes instead of trucks, bands of marauders instead of Saddam Hussein’s military, etc.
The web may make a difference too.
What was barely out of the laboratory in 1992 has produced its own civilization and intelligentsia. However, while the newfangled global political system may prove responsive to those in distress and more than worthy of aid, it seems not to have really kicked in yet. In fact, the Internet’s Emerging Global Order (I-EGO) has at this point only to watch the world, take it in, set up its emotions, think about what it will do when it’s a little more capable of urging its own defense and better attending to the security of those it loves — and there will be those it loves.
Turkey and the Syrian Kurds: A little-noticed battle | The Economist – 9/25/2013: “A Syrian rebel fighting the Kurds told our correspondent that “Allah be praised, Turkey is giving us some weapons” though he added that the France and Saudi Arabia were “much more generous”.
These two are not even remotely “on topic” but they’re telling of the type of wars being fought, i.e., two wars of annihilation and enslavement and a smaller one about democracy.
What troubles Western observers is not the groups’ fighting prowess, however, but their shared vision of a jihad that extends beyond Assad’s ouster. While other rebels are fighting to remove the Syrian dictator, former and current U.S. and Middle Eastern officials say, the al-Qaeda groups are transforming the conflict into a symbolic struggle against the West and Israel, using words and images that resonate with like-minded Muslims from the Arab Peninsula to Western Europe.
The United States has had limited success cutting off funding to the al Qaeda-linked fighters and foreign jihadists flowing into Syria — in part because of a lack of cooperation on the part of Middle Eastern allies, Intelligence and national security community sources say.
Less well known is the sectarian strategy pursued by Sunni extremists, particularly the ultraconservative Salafis living in the Persian Gulf, who are sending “hundreds of millions” of dollars to ensure the worst factions of the revolt are ascendant — mostly under the guise of humanitarian relief.
Over the course of the operation, Human Rights Watch says the fighters killed 190 civilians. Residents and hospital staff in Latakia, the nearest city, spoke of burned bodies, beheaded corpses and graves being dug in backyards. Two hundred people from the area remain hostage.
Two opposition groups that took part in the offensive, the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham and Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar, are still holding the hostages, the vast majority women and children. The findings strongly suggest that the killings, hostage taking, and other abuses rise to the level of war crimes and crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said.
“We are collecting money to buy all these weapons, so that our brothers will be victorious,” hard-core Sunni Islamist Sheikh Shafi’ Al-Ajami announced on Kuwaiti television last month, listing the black-market prices of weapons, including heat-seeking missiles, anti-aircraft guns and rocket-propelled grenades.
U.S. and Middle Eastern officials describe the money as a small portion of a vast pool of private wealth being funneled to Syria’s warring factions, mostly without strings or oversight and outside the control of governments.
Excessive license and loss of boundaries and containment have long characterized the Islamic Small Wars. One may trace that back at least as far as the slaughter of the men of the Banu Quarayza who had surrendered to Muhammad expecting to keep their lives and their community intact. Instead, so goes the legend, males with even a single pubic hair for signal were beheaded and the wives, daughters, and sons taken as war booty. That Human Rights Watch should today be screaming about Al Qaeda-class war crimes comes as no surprise.
For the field, the image of the organics of the Islamist front becomes ever more clear as well as daunting as we learn that some middle east governments, as powerful and wealthy as they may be, cannot rein in their own rogues — or, perhaps, they are shielding the same from western powers. Either way, private bank accounts seem unhindered as regards collecting the kind of “charity” that becomes cash for the arms leveled at hapless and unarmed residents in the path of the coldly deranged and enraged.
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“We often see buses around with all their curtains drawn. I have no doubt that their passengers are Islamists on the road to Paradise,” says Mehmet with a sad smile. He criticizes the “silence of the Turkish media on Ankara’s dark moves,” as he puts it.
“Here it’s not about rebels fighting [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad, it’s Jabhat al-Nusra – an armed group close to al Qaeda – and Syrian Kurdish fighters engaging in brutal clashes.”
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Tuesday said “Turkey has never supported any units which have connections with Al Qaeda and never let them use our borders with Syria”, Anadolu Agency reported.
Remember: lies are told to hide something or to get something.
It was the first face-to-face between Mr. Erdogan and President Barack Obama in almost a year. Mr. Obama delivered what U.S. officials describe as an unusually blunt message: The U.S. believed Turkey was letting arms and fighters flow into Syria indiscriminately and sometimes to the wrong rebels, including anti-Western jihadists.
Seated at Mr. Erdogan’s side was the man at the center of what caused the U.S.’s unease, Hakan Fidan, Turkey’s powerful spymaster and a driving force behind its efforts to supply the rebels and topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Later, however, Muslim accused Turkey of facilitating the jihadists’ cross-border movements by clearing passages through minefields and removing barbed wire. During our September interview, he had strong words for Turkey. He said he wanted to continue the dialogue with Ankara, but could not understand Ankara’s support of extreme religious elements.
Whatever Syria was three years ago, it’s either gone today or is missing parts of its once constituted sovereignty. Death has taken more than 100,000 of its constituents; fighting has displaced more than three million once settled residents; the same has “forced” autonomy on the Kurdish community — ten percent of Syria’s population overall; entire cities lay in ruin; borders, checkpoints, and roads have been overrun but by God only knows what.
The worst thing may be the latent Somali-like sub-state anarchy evident in the transfers of arms, cash, and Al Qaeda-type fighters from one location to another across numerous borders and boundaries. Rather than running their separate parts of the show in Syria, it appears that governments and their intelligence agencies have been reduced to searching for ways to benefit from or leverage the activities of a largely unremarked class of private persons with the connections and wherewithal to exert their own will through young proxies.
Moscow’s and Washington’s posturing around chemical weapons and peace talks would seem to gloss over the anarchy and the prospect, which one may as well interpret as the reality, that all civil and responsible government has fled northern Syria and what remains are armed bands in various stages of collusion and contest left to mayhem, murder, and making themselves comfortable.
Rebel-on-Rebel Violence Seizes Syria – WSJ.com – 9/18/2013: “ISIS fighters recently raided a council arms depot filled with lights weapons and ammunition, funded by the Gulf states and funneled to the council with the guidance of the Central Intelligence Agency, council members said.”
By labeling the acts of radical Islamists as mere “terrorism” we imply that there is an Achilles heel to expose — a political demand or a territorial gain with which they might barter, with which we might naively appease.
The reality is completely different. Their goals are nihilistic and non-negotiable: they want the total elimination of all who are not with them. Nairobi was possibly the most explicit demonstration of such.
Someone raised expectations, perhaps; someone provided explicit instruction; someone’s words were received amplified, heightened, deified, perhaps; and someone challenged The Wisdom, saying in effect, “Prove it – it is either of the stars or not.”
Along the line of the Christian anti-Jihad, there is no way away from elements of scripture delivered in practical and literal terms. Their experience of what on this blog I call “shimmer” starts with their examination of the Quran plus impression from history plus, finally, an acquaintance with Hadith. None of that ends well, and less for Christian pride than its basis in Jewish thought after Hillel.
For the Jews, the noise starts somewhere beyond the arguments and themes inspired by — but seldom stated explicitly in — the Torah. Even with something as simple as “The Binding of Isaac”, the reader is never told whether the test is of Abraham’s obedience, which is the common interpretation, or one given to children by their parents, or of conscience, which is a little bit more incisive and likely to arrive as epiphany with sufficient fascination and reflection.
The Jews long ago formed a culture apart and have learned a great deal about themselves and others. Credit the Torah for that. Or credit the necessity of separation given the humanity that must have gathered in the ancient desert appalled with the world, and, later, with Pharaoh. Muslims, by comparison, have formed of the seduced or the conquered of the world, and whatever spirit predated Muhammad would seem to persist in expression now conflated with Islam.
Whether what is in Qanta Ahmed to grasp as a modern Muslim woman a progressive and humanist Islam is actually in Islam, I don’t know, for there are many forces in the Ummah — the “Islamists” but a facet, the “sword verses” another, the conflations with child marriages and honor killings producing yet additional self-slander and fuel for critics, and the history of conquest (start with the wholesale slaughter of the men and rape of daughters and wives of the Banu Qurayza) — that would belie the assertion.
For the Kurds fighting Al Qaeda today in northern Syria, nothing has changed: they know their old enemy.
Additional Reference
Concerns with terrorist atrocities in Christian or western states may overlook the inkblot spread of Al Qaeda-defined conflict in ungoverned or autonomously governed spaces. That context tells of a format in warfare as familiar to the 7th Century as it is to the morning news sifted by foreign affairs wonks.
The Kurdish community in northern Syria hasn’t to care about the modern humanist assertion, reformation, or survival of Islam: a Muslim army, self-appointed, self-defined, has arrived on their doorstep to convert or annihilate them, and they know it and have taken up defensive positions and initiated diplomatic efforts congruent with that.
Abdul Hakim Quick – a preacher from the Islamic Education and Research Academy, who has called upon God to “clean and purify Al-Aqsa from the filth of the Yahood [Jews]” and to “clean all of the lands from the filth of the Kafirun [non-believers].” He has also stated: “They said ‘what is the Islamic position [on homosexuality]?’ And I told them. Put my name in the paper. The punishment is death. And I’m not going to change this religion.”
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