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Nathan Craig: “Fears that Mozambique terror could cross SA border”.

The article in the Sunday Independent by Nathan Craig (May 31st), has two inaccuracies in its first statement, that must be corrected. First of all the term “Jihadist” implies Muslims are involved in the insurgency referred to. He has not provided one iota of evidence that the Insurgents are Muslims. Secondly the border he refers to is far south between Mozambique and South Africa. The insurgency is being played out in Northern Mozambique, in the Province of Carbo Delgado, close to Zimbabwe and Malawi.

The suggestion that the so-called “Jihadist” want to establish a Caliphate under Islamic law is a myth and has long been discredited. The foreign policy designers of the western powers and engineered by the international intelligence networks used this ploy in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria and during the Arab Spring. It has long lost its glitz and glamour.

Jasmine Opperman, widely quoted in the Article, has on a number of occasions suggested that ISIS is using South Africa to recruit Muslims to join its ranks. The ISIS terrorist groups are created with the aid of the western powers to form a proxy army. They were deployed in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Iran amongst other countries to destabilise and destroy the infrastructure of these countries. In the wake of these senseless and mindless invasions and wanton devastation and demolition left many thousands psychologically impaired for life, dead or homeless.

Isis has also killed Christians, Yezidis and other communities. However they have killed many more Muslims than any other group. They have destroyed countless number of Mosques. Many innocent men, women and children have been maimed, tortured and killed.  All in the name of establishing a caliphate under Islamic Law. There is nothing Islamic about ISIS. In fact ISIS is an open enemy of Islam.

Islamophobes and the intelligence community has had numerous opportunities to confront and apprehend agents of ISIS and to crush them once and for all. For reasons best known to them, they have failed to do so. In fact, under the Obama Administration, returning ISIS representatives were reintegrated into American Society.

To label all Islamophobes as mindless bigots and hatemongers would be unfair. Though some maybe but many others are simply ill-informed.

Muslims have been blamed for 9/11, for giving the world ISIS and therefore Islam is the enemy.

If this simple statement was the whole story then the Islamophobes would be correct in adopting their anti-Muslim attitude.

It must be made clear that there is widespread opposition in the Muslim world, to the behaviour of ISIS. The history of the patronage that radicalism enjoy, from various western nations going back to WW1 and before, and of the tactical and logistical support, funding and arms that Al Qaeeda and ISIS have received from western military establishments should make the diehard Islamophobes think objectively and help them change their minds.

In the post-9/11 era, it has been well documented that, in many countries Muslims have risked their lives to protect the lives and property of non-Muslim communities including members of the Christian and Jewish communities when attacked by ISIS.

Muslims in the City Karbala, in Iraq, provided refuge for Christians fleeing the city when attacked by ISIS; Kurdish Muslims provided refuge to the Christians fleeing from ISIS in Mosul and Hizbullah defended the Christians and Christian Holy Sites in Syria.

After Churches were vandalised and burnt in the United States and Canada, Muslims raised funds to assist in the reconstruction program. The same generosity was extended to the Jewish Community of Pittsburgh after the recent massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue. In France Muslims formed Human Chains around Synagogues to protect the holy sites from the bigotry of the Far Right.

I hasten to add that there are many instances when members of the Christian and Jewish faiths have assisted Muslim communities. Recently, Christian organisations in Europe, offered Muslims the use of their facilities for congregational prayers.

In an article published in The STAR newspaper in 2015, Robert Fisk wrote and I quote: “I was struck by how deeply the ‘Islamic Caliphate’ has stabbed the world of journalism. ……………….I am talking of the insidious, dramatic way in which Islamic State and its propagandists have invalidated and in many ways erased one of the prime duties of journalism: to tell “the other side of the story”.

By:

Ibrahim Vawda

Media Review Network

Jahannesburg

0722950088

 

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