Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Governor Mitt Romney's Remarks At The Young Republican National Convention

from the Mitt Romney campaign

ROMNEY: All this talk of Jihadists, Salafi Muslims, and the War on Terror makes Democrats like John Edwards uncomfortable. Senator Edwards says there isn't a War on Terror - it's only a slogan. Tell that to the people in London and Glasgow. And to the people in Bali and Malaysia, Pakistan and Lebanon, Tanzania and Kenya, Saudi Arabia and Israel. Tell that to the people of New York and Boston and Washington, D.C. "One thing you can count on if I am President, if there is a war being waged by the terrorists, there will be war waged on the terrorists. And we will win! "This convergence of challenges is why I am convinced that America is at an inflection point in our history. Our over-spending, our dependence on foreign oil, the emergence of Asia, the Jihadist threat to world civilization – these challenges will force us to change. And that change will either make us stronger or it will make us weaker.

Commentary: 'Made in India' terrorists?

by Professor M.D. Nalapat from UPI Asia Online

The amalgam of groups loosely referred to as "al-Qaida" has had a significant presence in India since 1995. Recruitment moved beyond Kashmir to the hinterland after 1998, the year the Kashmir jihad began losing steam due to public disillusionment within the state's Sunni population. Since then, several hundred thousand Sunnis have migrated from Kashmir to other parts of India, setting up families and businesses that have erased their separatist impulses. However, less because of Pakistani influence than the presence of Palestinian students enrolled in engineering, medical and other professional colleges, several hundred Sunni youth in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai and New Delhi have secretly been recruited into the numerous front organizations of the Wahabbi International, in particular the Students Islamic Movement of India. A steady flow of mainly Saudi funds into Sunni groups, such as the Tablighi Jamaat, have resulted in the overshadowing of moderates by extremists. They are usually ignored by local police if they confine themselves to "foreign" causes such as Palestine, Chechnya or Iraq.

Responding to Lindh’s response

by Don Barrick from The Yemen Times

Mr. Lindh has chosen to respond to my criticism of his tirades exposing his hatred, with some interesting, yet flawed commentary ... My criticism of Mr. Lindh’s viewpoints are not directed at political issues, with which he may not understand that we have some common ground. My concern is for his hate-mongering, in which he would seem to feed the fear that the ignorant (including, at times, George Bush,) have used to fuel their own, private agendas. Wahabi philosophies are not endemic in the U.S., as far as can be told. They are the province of Islamist zealots, like you, Mr. Lindh.

Terror plot: Indian community in UK shocked

by Maya Mirchandani from NDTV.com

British Indians are also quick to point out that drawing the Indian connection in this terror plot is a mistake even though this is clearly the first time that any Indian Muslim has been connected to al-Qaida. ''I would be very careful about that. I would say those people who came - the doctors, medical people who came from Bangalore were schooled first in Saudi Arabia. They had wahabi backgrounds. ''I would be very careful of calling them Indian or Bangalori. I would call them British Muslims radicalised in universities and hospitals to which they went in Britain. The key part of it is not Indian and not Bangalori. The key part of it is Saudi Arabia and Britain,'' said Farrukh Dhondy, Writer.

The whys and whereofs of the mullah mutation

by Shahab Jafry from the Khaleej Times Online

Unfortunately for America, Afghanistan and Pakistan alike though, history would prove this withdrawal premature, with chilling, long-term repercussions. Having outlived their prime utility, elements of the Afghan resistance movement that did not stay behind to partake in the emerging civil war returned to Pakistan’s seminaries, which were by then being bankrolled by Saudi petrodollars. That the Wahabi tendencies of the chief-financiers found increasing influence in the madrassas may have been more than a mere coincidence initially. But soon the situation began to change, with numerous commanders from the old Mujahideen corps adding to the momentum of a rapid-rise in the madrassas’ popularity, along with an increasingly stiff tone towards the power that once turned them towards war–America.

Yemen violence raises nuclear questions

by Dominic Moran from ISN Security Watch

A recent attack on tourists near the Yemeni town of Marib underlines the ongoing threat posed by al-Qaida and tribal violence to stability and raises questions concerning the country's nuclear pretensions ... The country's Western allies agree that an inability to integrate Yemen into the Gulf Cooperative Council (GCC) could promote further instability on the country's border with Saudi Arabia while encouraging the burgeoning of Iranian influence amongst Yemen's Shia tribes ... Yemeni Shia largely follow the Zaydi and Ismaili schools. Dr Sheila Carapico, a Yemen expert at the University of Richmond, Virginia, explained that the spread of hard-line wahhabi tendencies into the Zaydis northern fiefdom from the 1980s led to conflicts between followers of the credos.

Kafeel's mother feared he was on wrong path

by Rakesh Prakash from The Times of India

Investigators working on the Bangalore connection to the UK terror plot have come across a startling disclosure: alleged Glasgow bomber Kafeel Ahmed's mother Dr Zakia Khan seemed to be aware of his fanatical inclinations and tried to stop him ... Sources close to the family said the mother lived in fear of her sons being "trapped" by terror groups. As most of Kafeel's formative years were spent in the Middle-East, where the couple worked, there was every likelihood that the boys could have been influenced by radical forms of Islam, like the ultra-conservative Saudi Wahhabi school.