The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant Megathread

[CountDeMoney]

Would Saddam have been that much better?  I mean post first Gulf War.

No, Syria is today what Iraq would have been if Uday and Qusay had had to organize the running of that country.

Disagree.  Saddam would still be alive right now, large and in charge.

[The Brain]

Would Saddam have been that much better?  I mean post first Gulf War.

No, Syria is today what Iraq would have been if Uday and Qusay had had to organize the running of that country.

Disagree.  Saddam would still be alive right now, large and in charge.

wut

[jimmy olsen]

This is the kind of story that makes shit like the "White man's burden" not seem so fucking racist after all.

At some point can't we just say "You know what? Your fucking culture sucks, and I do NOT have to respect it".

I've been saying this for years..  Now imagine immigrants from the same barbarian cultures coming in droves in our own countries; imagine the problems in a few years.  And yet when I mention this I get derided by Malthus and others as a racist and a bigot. 



G.

I think they're doing fine in the U.S.

http://news.msn.com/us/muslim-movement-accepts-once-taboo-causes

Muslim movement accepts once-taboo causes

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Omar Akersim prays regularly and observes the dawn-to-dusk Ramadan fast. He is also openly gay.

Akersim, 26, is part of a small but growing number of American Muslims challenging the long-standing interpretations of Islam that defined their parents' world. They believe that one can be gay and Muslim; that the sexes can pray shoulder-to-shoulder; that females can preach and that Muslim women can marry outside the faith — and they point to Quran passages to back them up.

The shift comes as young American Muslims work to reshape the faith they grew up with so it fits better with their complex, dual identity, with one foot in the world of their parents' immigrant beliefs and one foot in the ever-shifting cultural landscape of America. The result has been a growing internal dialogue about what it means to be Muslim, as well as a scholarly effort to re-examine the Quran for new interpretations that challenge rules that had seemed set in stone.

"Islam in America is being forced to kind of change and to reevaluate its positions on things like homosexuality because of how we're moving forward culturally as a nation. It's striving to make itself seen and known in the cultural fabric and to do that, it does have to evolve," said Akersim, who leads a Los Angeles-based support group for gay Muslims. "Ten or 15 years ago, this would have been impossible."

The shift doesn't end with breaking obvious taboos, either. Young American Muslims are making forays into fashion, music (Islamic punk rock, anyone?) and stirring things up with unorthodox takes on staples of American pop culture. A recent controversial YouTube video, for example, shows Muslim hipsters — or "Mipsterz" — skateboarding in head scarves and skinny jeans as Jay-Z's "Somewhere in America" blasts in the background.

Nearly 40 percent of the estimated 2.75 million Muslims in the U.S. are American-born and the number is growing, with the Muslim population skewing younger than the U.S. population at large, according to a 2011 Pew Research Center survey.

Advocates for a more tolerant Islam say the constraints on interfaith marriage and homosexuality aren't in the Quran, but are based on conservative interpretations of Islamic law that have no place in the U.S. Historically, in many Muslim countries, there are instances of unsegregated prayers and interfaith marriage.

"I think it's fair to say the traditional Islam that we experienced excluded a lot of Muslims that were on the margins. I always felt not very welcomed by the type of Islam my parents practiced," said Tanzila Ahmed, 35, who published an anthology of love stories by Muslim American women in 2012 called "Love Inshallah."

Many second-generation American Muslims still practice their faith in traditional ways, but others are starting to see the Islam of their parents as more of a cultural identity, said Dr. Yvonne Haddad, a Georgetown University professor who has written extensively about Islam's integration into U.S. society.

As a result, there's a new emphasis on meeting for prayer and socializing in neutral spaces, such as community centers, instead of mosques, and on universal inclusion.

"Some of them still want a mosque, they still want to belong and to pray and others are shifting and they are very comfortable being non-religious," Haddad said. "These people feel that they can get rid of the hang-ups of what the culture has defined as Muslim and maintain the beliefs and values, the spiritual values, and feel very comfortable by shedding all the other restrictions that society has put on them."

In Los Angeles, a religious group called Muslims for Progressive Values has been pushing the boundaries with a female imam who performs same-sex and interfaith marriages, support groups for gay Muslims and a worship style that includes women giving sermons and men and women praying together. The group has chapters in half a dozen major U.S. cities and at least six foreign countries and last year was recognized by the United Nations as an official non-governmental organization.

Founder Ani Zonneveld, a Muslim singer and songwriter of Malaysian descent, started the group in 2007 after she recorded some Islamic pop music that generated a backlash because it featured a Muslim woman singing.

"For us, the interpretation of Islam is egalitarian values — and by egalitarian it's not just words that we speak. It's practice," she said. "It's freedom of religion and from religion, too."

Akersim, the gay Muslim, knows first-hand how hard this shift will be.

Last year, he fled his parents' home in the middle of the night after they called him at work and demanded to know when he was going to get married. He stays in touch with his mother, but hasn't spoken to his father in a year and a half.

Now, he avoids mosques but prays privately. He has no regrets about coming out, he said.

"All these struggles that I've had to endure have only brought me closer to God," Akersim said. "Within that storm, I feel like I've been able to persevere because of my faith, because of this strength from God."

[Grallon]

I think they're doing fine in the U.S.


....

And I think these few souls aren't representative of the majority that wishes, openly or not, the destruction of the West, or were dancing in the streets when 9-11 happened.  Nor are they those who will use dirty bombs or whatever means may fall into their hands in order to destroy us.

Islam is a gangrene that must be purged from this world.



G.

[The Minsky Moment]

Hmm majority of the US Muslim population would be in the range of 3 million.
I personally don't recall 3 million people dancing in the streets calling for the annihilation of their own homes, while firing off dirty bombs; perhaps its on YouTube?

[grumbler]

Hmm majority of the US Muslim population would be in the range of 3 million.
I personally don't recall 3 million people dancing in the streets calling for the annihilation of their own homes, while firing off dirty bombs; perhaps its on YouTube?

You didn't see the acts of The Grallonic State of Syrian and Iraq.  They were pretty anti-Western, as you'd expect.

I find it hilarious that Grallon, of all people, should screech so loud against people who, changing just a noun, believe exactly as he does.

[Admiral Yi]

Hmm majority of the US Muslim population would be in the range of 3 million.
I personally don't recall 3 million people dancing in the streets calling for the annihilation of their own homes, while firing off dirty bombs; perhaps its on YouTube?

I think Grallon means that Arabs in the US aren't representative of Arabs as a whole.

[Razgovory]

Odd that he talks about Arabs who would destroy the West while he advocates the destruction of a major western power.

[Eddie Teach]

Odd that he talks about Arabs who would destroy the West while he advocates the destruction of a major western power.

[Tamas]

On a Hungarian comment section, when somebody was upset that the world "doesn't listen to Gaza", I replied that it is funny because all news are full of Gaza while ISIS quietly creates a new country.

Counter-reply: ISIS is supported by the Jews, that's why.

[Iormlund]

Well, isn't it?

[jimmy olsen]

They're already to the north and west of Baghdad aren't they? I wonder if their long term is to encircle the city and then use the dam to cut of water.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/04/us-iraq-security-south-insight-idUSKBN0G41CO20140804?utm_source=twitter

Tunneling through triangle of death, Islamic State aims at Baghdad from south

By Michael Georgy and Ahmed Rasheed

BAGHDAD Mon Aug 4, 2014 10:41am EDT

(Reuters) - Using secret tunnels built by Saddam Hussein and rough terrain to outfox Iraqi troops, Islamic State insurgents are getting dangerously close to Baghdad with the support of heavily-armed Sunni tribesmen, Iraqi security and intelligence officials said.

The al Qaeda offshoot, which poses the biggest security threat to Iraq since the fall of Saddam in 2003, has made new bold advances in the north, reaching a major dam and seizing a fifth oilfield and three more towns after routing security forces from the Kurdish autonomous region.

But some Iraqi intelligence and security officials are far more alarmed by the Islamic State's less heralded campaign in rural areas just south of the capital, rugged Euphrates valley terrain once known to U.S. forces as the "triangle of death".

While the Islamic State's march on Baghdad from the north has been halted near the town of Samarra 100 km (60 miles) from the city limits, the fighters have more quietly building up their forces on the capital's southern outskirts.

"We told the government that urgent military operations are essential to prevent the Islamic State from taking over further towns south of Baghdad; otherwise they will be very close to the capital," said Falah al-Radhi, head of a security panel in the provincial council of Hilla, the province just south of Baghdad.

For several weeks, the Sunni insurgents have been moving fighters, weapons and supplies from strongholds in western Iraq through secret desert tunnels to the town of Jurf al-Sakhar, about 60 km (40 miles) south of Baghdad.

Built by Saddam in the 1990s to hide weapons from U.N. weapons inspectors, the tunnels are also ideal hiding places that allow fighters to avoid military helicopters.

Islamic State militants occupying the city of Falluja and parts of Ramadi, where U.S. troops once faced a stubborn al Qaeda insurgency, access the tunnels from an area near military facilities once used by Saddam's troops.

"It makes it impossible for us to control this area," said an intelligence official, describing Jurf al-Sakhar and nearby towns just south of the capital.

The towns south of Baghdad and the surrounding lush, irrigated fields - a religiously mixed area where the mainly Sunni upper Euphrates valley meets the river's mainly Shi'ite lower reaches - formed one of the most violent parts of Iraq under U.S. occupation.

The territory, with its canals, ditches and thick vegetation, provides ideal cover for insurgents.

U.S. military and Iraqi security officials estimate the Islamic State has at least 3,000 fighters in Iraq, rising towards 20,000 when new recruits since June's advance are included.

In the north, Iraq's army virtually collapsed when the Islamic State staged a lighting advance in June, capturing the cities of Mosul and Tikrit and a number of towns. The group also controls much of the west. It has declared a caliphate in areas it controls in both Iraq and Syria, vowing to march on Baghdad.

Capturing Baghdad would be difficult: the capital is home to thousands of elite forces as well as a vast number of Shi'ite militia fighters. But seizing towns on the southern perimeter would let the Islamic State step up suicide and car bomb attacks in the capital and perhaps restart the urban warfare of 2006-07 when Sunni and Shi'ite militia battled street by street.

ASSAULT ON JURF AL-SAKHAR

In late July, 400 Islamic State fighters arrived in Jurf al-Sakhar for an assault on the Euphrates riverside town, described by a senior official in the provincial capital Hilla.

Two-hundred mortars were fired at the town. Suicide bombers driving captured U.S.-made Humvees blew themselves up. Several police stations and the mayor's office were taken over.

Six Islamic State gunmen who were captured told interrogators that the insurgents planned to open new fronts in the nearby towns of Mussayab, Yusufiya and Jbala, the official said.

Fighters in the area are using rough terrain to evade death and capture: swamps, high reeds, bushes and irrigation canals that military vehicles can't traverse.

Desperate to gain an upper hand, the army has started to pound the terrain with "barrel bombs" - drums filled with explosives or fuel dropped from the air.

"Islamic State fighters swept the town and kicked out security forces, and to regain control we need to deal with around 10,000 acres of farmland area," said a military colonel."We have stared to follow a scorched earth policy. This is tough, we know, but army helicopters should have clear vision to chase and destroy them."

Officials fear that further gains by the Islamic State will give the group control of key roads linking Baghdad to southern cities in the Shi'ite heartland, including the holy cities of Kerbala and Najaf, which the fighters have declared targets.

Shi'ite families in towns south of Baghdad are not taking any chances. Hundreds have already fled. Islamic State fighters, who consider all Shi'ites infidels deserving of death, have made their intentions clear.

"It was a horrible day when I saw the threatening leaflet with the Islamic State logo. Leave your house or we will slaughter anybody we catch," said Kadhum al-Yasiri, a Shi'ite who fled his fish farm fearing his family would be beheaded.

"It took me only an hour to flee Jurf al-Sakhar with my wife and four sons. The horrible fear of getting my head decapitated stopped only when I reached a safe haven."

While Shi'ites live in fear of the Islamic State, Sunnis in towns near Baghdad are growing increasingly resentful of government forces backed by Shi'ite militias they accuse of kidnapping and killing.

In the town of Yusufiya, just 20 km (12 miles) south of Baghdad, government forces are fighting what they say are Islamic State sleeper cells.

Sunni residents say troops who have set up checkpoints and watchtowers have completely alienated residents, including a group of 50 tribesmen armed with rocket-propelled grenades, roadside bombs and even anti-aircraft machineguns.

Local tribal leader Abu Shakir said Sunnis had tried to improve relations with the army, sending a small delegation to tell officers that the townspeople had no problem with the military, just the sectarian policies of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shi'ite-led government. Relations only deteriorated.

"Tribes started to form armed groups to fight the government forces and all groups have one objective: marching toward Baghdad to bring down Maliki's government," he said.

Abu Tabarak, from the nearby town of al-Rasheed, said he would be happy to work with the Islamic State.

"We are confident when we look to the facts on ground that Maliki's forces will not be able to keep fighting on more than one front and that is what is happening now," he said.

"At a certain point there will be a sudden collapse on one of the fronts, which will be the chance that tribal fighters will never miss to approach Baghdad."

(Writing by Michael Georgy; Additional reporting by Raheem Salman; Editing by Peter Graff)

[derspiess]

Looks like they took the dam. 

http://news.yahoo.com/islamic-state-captures-iraqi-town-oil-field-witnesses-075411716.html

Now will the Iraqi army seek an alliance with the Great Khans to retake the dam?

[KRonn]

Is the US doing anything to substantially help Iraq? Giving any weapons, intel, equipment? Still flying recon sorties but if so that's been going on for weeks but doesn't likely seem to be accomplishing anything much.

[Grey Fox]

Well, isn't it?

It's self-supported. They captured so much money when the western world wasn't looking.