Egypt: Sinai jihadists say all tourists must leave by Feb. 20 or be killed

The Qur’an suggests that ruins are a sign of Allah’s punishment of those who rejected his truth:

Many were the Ways of Life that have passed away before you: travel through the earth, and see what was the end of those who rejected Truth. (Qur’an 3:137)

This is one of the foundations of the Islamic idea that pre-Islamic civilizations, and non-Islamic civilizations, are all jahiliyya the society of unbelievers, which is worthless. Obviously this cuts against the idea of tourism of ancient sites and non-Muslim religious installations such as St. Catherine’s monastery. V. S. Naipaul encountered this attitude in his travels through Muslim countries. For many Muslims, he observed in Among the Believers, “The time before Islam is a time of blackness: that is part of Muslim theology. History has to serve theology.” Naipaul recounted that some Pakistani Muslims, far from valuing the nation’s renowned archaeological site at Mohenjo Daro, saw its ruins as a teaching opportunity for Islam, recommending that Qur’an 3:137 be posted there as a teaching tool.

“Sinai terrorist group targets Egypt’s tourist industry,” by Christa Case Bryant for the Christian Science Monitor, February 18 (thanks to Kenneth):

The most notorious Sinai terrorist group has now declared a new front: Egypt’s tourism industry.

Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis claimed responsibility for Sunday’s bus bombing at Taba, a popular crossing point for tourists headed from Israel to Egypt’s Sinai resorts, in a statement posted on jihadi forums late yesterday. The bombing, which marks the first attack on tourists since Egypt’s 2011 revolution, killed three South Korean tourists and their Egyptian driver.

The Al Qaeda-inspired group heralded the “hero” who carried out the bus bombing, and cast the attack as part of a broader attempt to undermine Egypt’s military leaders, who overthrew Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood last summer and stepped up cooperation with Israel to stamp out Sinai militant groups.

“This comes within our assault in the economic war on this traitorous agent regime,” said the statement attributed to Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis. “We will target [the Egyptian regime's] economic interests everywhere to paralyze its hands from what they do to the Muslims.”

In a December statement, the group said that it considered the Egyptian military “non-Muslim because it fights those who attempt to impose Islamic law, and protects a secular form of government… We are the most resolute and determined to carry out the command of (God) and his messenger to do jihad against you and fight you until all the religion is for (God),” it said, according to a translation by SITE Intelligence Group.

Israeli defense experts have labeled Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis whose name refers to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and surrounding sanctuary in Jerusalem as the most dangerous militant organization in Sinai, not least of all for its August 2011 attack on Israeli civilians near Eilat.

According to a tally by the Long War Journal, 305 attacks have been launched by Sinai militant groups since the July 3 overthrow of Mr. Morsi, and Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis was behind many of the worst attacks, including a Nov. 20 car bombing that killed 11 Egyptian security forces.

The group, founded in 2011, focused on targets in Israel and the Sinai until last summer, but it has now spearheaded a broadening of operations to mainland Egypt, including Cairo. Those attacks have included assassination attempts on top Egyptian security officials and a series of car bombings targeting security directorates. While civilians were among those injured in such attacks, Sunday’s bus bombing marks the first time that the Sinai insurgency has targeted tourists.

While Egypt’s tourism industry has been hard-hit by the political turmoil of the past few years, its Sinai beach resorts have still been able to attract significant tourist traffic; of the 9.5 million tourists in Egypt last year, nearly three-quarters of them vacationed in the Sinai, according to the Associated Press.

Tourism in the Sinai has been the target of militant attacks in the not too distant past. In October of 2004, 34 people were killed in coordinated bombings of the Hilton Hotel in Taba and a nearby beach camp popular with Israelis. In July of 2005, over 80 people were killed by coordinated car bombs in the resort town of Sharm al-Sheikh.

Now, Sinai militants are warning all tourists to leave by Feb. 20 or be killed….

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Egypt refuses to allow Israeli ambulances to aid at site of Sinai tourist bus bombing

Islamic antisemitism trumps all humanitarian concerns. And if you think there is something wrong with those priorities, then you’re obviously a bigoted, hatemongering Islamophobe. It is much better that people die than that they be aided by Zionist ambulances, Infidel!

Egypt upholds death sentence for 14 Islamic jihadists

These Islamic jihadists are from a group that calls itself Tawheed wal Jihad. Tawheed is the Islamic concept of absolute monotheism, and jihad is the Islamic doctrine of warfare against unbelievers. Yet the one thing that Western analysts routinely discount in their analyses of jihad terrorism is the religious motivation, despite the fact that the jihadists themselves constantly explain themselves in terms of Islam.

“Egypt upholds death sentence for 14 militants,” from Reuters, February 10:

CAIRO – The Egyptian presidency upheld the death penalty for 14 people convicted of attacking police in North Sinai in 2011, signalling the army-backed authorities’ determination to press a campaign against Islamist militants.

The condemned men, all from the Tawheed wal Jihad (“Monotheism and Holy War”) group, were sentenced in 2012 to hang for killing three police officers, an army officer and a civilian in attacks on a police station and a bank in the town of el-Arish in 2011.

Deposed president Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood did not sign off on the implementation of the sentences during his one year in office, which ended when the army deposed him after mass protests against his rule.

Mursi’s overthrow has triggered a wave of attacks on the security forces in North Sinai and further west in the towns of cities of the Nile Valley and Delta. The state has declared that it is in a war on terrorism.

Militant groups flourished in North Sinai in 2011, expanding into a security vacuum left by the collapse of state authority after the downfall of president Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

The army is waging a campaign there to reassert state authority. The military has said 16 hardline Islamists were killed in North Sinai air strikes last Friday….

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Egypt: New hijabbed comic superheroine fights Islamophobia

This is so great: now we have two Muslim comic book superheroines, Qahera and Kamala. Clearly some Muslims in the media business realize that Islam has a serious image problem; what they don’t realize is that comic book heroines fighting against “Islamophobia” won’t solve it. When will we get a Muslim comic book superheroine who fights against the “extremists” who have “hijacked” Islam? Or is it only the perceptions of non-Muslims that have to be adjusted, so that as soon as we all come to love jihad, all will be well?
The panels showing Qahera growing enraged by the Western feminists discussing how Muslim women need to be “rescued” are bitterly ironic, given that Western feminists generally make excuses for Sharia oppression of women, rather than speak out against it. What’s more, the Muslim women who really need to be “rescued” are not those who wear the hijab, but — in all too many Muslim countries — those who dare not to wear it.
“Introducing Egypt’s new superhero: Qahera, fighting everything from misogyny to Islamophobia,” by Shounaz Meky for Al Arabiya via Al Bawaba, February 2 (thanks to Maxwell):
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it is Qahera, a new web-based comic heroine who fights social problems affecting women in Egypt.

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