China: Jihad/martyrdom suicide bombing fails, eleven jihadists killed

Note Reuters’ use of sneer quotes around the word “terrorist,” as if there were reason to doubt the Chinese account despite the fact that Reuters itself records a leader of the Uighurs acknowledging that the incident happened: “A leading member of the ethnic Turkic Uighur community in exile said such attacks were a response to heavy-handed Chinese rule in the region.” Note also how Reuters highlights the Uighurs’ grievances and complaints, clearly favoring their side of the story over the Chinese side as the mainstream media always and in every case favors the Islamic supremacist version of events over that of defenders of freedom.

“China says 11 ‘terrorists’ killed in new Xinjiang unrest,” by Ben Blanchard for Reuters, February 14 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

(Reuters) – Eleven “terrorists” were killed during an attack in China’s far western region of Xinjiang on Friday, state news agency Xinhua said, in the latest violence to hit a part of the country with a large Muslim population.

A leading member of the ethnic Turkic Uighur community in exile said such attacks were a response to heavy-handed Chinese rule in the region and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, on a visit to Beijing, expressed concern over the state of human rights in Xinjiang, to the annoyance of his hosts.

“The terrorists, riding motorbikes and cars, attacked a team of police who were gathering before the gate of a park for routine patrol at around 4 p.m. in Wushi County in the Aksu Prefecture,” Xinhua said in an English-language report.

“Police said the terrorists had (an) unknown number of LNG cylinders in their car which they had attempted to use as suicide bombs. Several terrorists were shot dead at the scene,” it added.

Eight were killed by police and three died “by their own suicide bomb”, Xinhua said.

Wushi lies close to China’s border with Kyrgyzstan. Last month the Kyrgyz government said its border guards had killed 11 people believed to be members of a militant group of Uighurs.

Xinjiang, home to the ethnic Turkic, mainly Muslim Uighur people and strategically located on the borders of central Asia, has been dogged for years by violence, which Beijing blames on Islamist militants and separatists who want to establish an independent state called East Turkestan.

“SYSTEMIC REPRESSION”

Exiles and many rights groups, however, say the real cause of the unrest is China’s policies, including restrictions on Islam and the Uighur people’s culture and language, charges the government strongly denies….

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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 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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