Mullen’s visit underlined Washington’s intensifying effort to keep closely coordinated with Israel.
Talkbacks (1)

The visit to Israel this week by the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, underlined the growing urgency of the Iranian nuclear challenge, and the Obama administration’s intensifying effort to keep closely coordinated with Israel while grappling with that threat.

Mullen’s visit coincided with the announcement that Vice President Joe Biden will also come to Israel in the near future, again for high-level talks largely focused on the Iranian issue.The visit also came as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton toured Qatar and Saudi Arabia in order to shore up support for American diplomatic and military efforts in the region, ahead of visits by three of her top deputies and a reported upcoming trip by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel.

The rhetoric from Washington is firm: Clinton declared to Iran that the US would “not stand idly by while you pursue a nuclear program that can be used to threaten your neighbors and even beyond.” Mullen was more curt still: Iran “cannot have a nuclear weapon, [or] nuclear capability,” he said here.

At the same time, however, there is profound concern in Israel that the fine words, even backed up by a new seriousness in seeking more effective economic sanctions, will prove insufficient to deter the ayatollahs.

Clearly, the flurry of visits by high-level US officials marks a heightened era of dialogue between Washington and Jerusalem, as the US steps up its campaign to resolve the Iranian crisis without a resort to force.

Mullen warned Israel tellingly of the “unintended consequences” of a military strike. Biden, the former head of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, will doubtless also stress the administration’s conviction that there are still effective ways, and sufficient time, to force the Islamic Republic’s hand before we arrive at the stark choice: a nuclear Iran, or military intervention to prevent it.

FOR NOW, President Barack Obama has yet to add Israel to his travel plans. And eight months after his landmark visit to Cairo, and his outreach address to the Muslim world, his absence is keenly felt here. Obama the candidate received the usual rock-star treatment when he visited – and took time to tour Sderot – in 2008. Obama the president is a more suspect commodity – a friend of Israel and guardian of the strategic partnership, to be sure, but also a leader who has been publicly at odds with ours over the dimensions of a building freeze beyond the ’67 lines and over his assessment that progress on the Palestinian front can produce leverage on Iran rather than the other way round.

A presidential visit in the near future would certainly prove reassuring to many Israelis, and would disarm those critics who assert that our well-being is not a sufficiently high priority for hisWhite House.

But whether their face-to-face meetings take place here or in Washington, there can be no doubting that further direct consultations between Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu will be vital in the coming months – as the US president strives to force Iran to change course, and the possibility of this effort failing raises ever-greater concerns in Israel.

Israel has been publicly supportive of the American effort at engagement with Iran, even as it has privately complained about the lack of firm parameters guiding that engagement, the fudging of deadlines, the apparent capacity for Iran to exploit a well-meaning president’s desire for a diplomatic solution in order to buy time and close in on the nuclear weapons goal.

Ultimately, Israel must and will take the decisions it feels necessary to safeguard its basic security interests. Ultimately, Israel will gauge the risks, assess the consequences, and act accordingly.

Today, in mid-February 2010, the US and Israel remain shoulder-to-shoulder in seeking biting sanctions against Teheran, to obviate the recourse to the use of force. It is encouraging to see the succession of candid, straight-talking, high-level visits bolstering that coordination. It is a partnership that needs to be maintained at the very highest level as well.

To read more, click here
Partners against Iran

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — President Barack Obama is seeking increased funding for nuclear weapons research and security next year, even as his administration has pledged to reduce the world’s stockpile of nuclear arms.

Fox News Article

Well, we posted many articles from the open source (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) related to the following topics:

1. Terror

2. Terrorism

3. Islamic Terrorism

4. Motivations and Islamic Terrorism

We posted this article under the following categories: Terrorism and What-do-you-think

You can read those articles and get more details from (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) on this and other topics.

We would like to invite our readers to propose the solutions to the Terrorism and Islamic Terrorism, solutions which are meaningful, intelligent and thought provoking.

Your solution should be free from Hate,  terrorism for terrorism, kill-all type of solutions.

We are looking forward to your posts and comments.

~Muslims Voice of America

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Islamic terrorism is inspired by media and numerous Quranic verses that justify or encourage the attacking of infidels. Robert Pape, has argued that at least terrorists utilizing suicide attacks — a particularly effective^[9] form of terrorist attack—are driven not by Islamism but by “a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland.”^[10]

However, Martin Kramer who debated Pape on origins of suicide bombing, countered Pape’s position that reason for suicide terrorism is not just a strategic logic but also terrorist’s reinterpretation of Islam to provide a moral logic. For example, Hizballah initiated suicide bombings after a complex reworking of the concept of martyrdom. Kramer explains that the Israeli occupation of Lebanon raised the temperature necessary for this reinterpretation of Islam, but occupation alone would not have been sufficient for suicide terrorism.^[11]. “The only way to apply a brake to suicide terrorism,” Kramer argues, “is to undermine its moral logic, by encouraging Muslims to see its incompatibility with their own values.”

In particular, scholar Scott Atran, research director and involved in NATO group studying suicide terrorism, points out that there is no single root cause of terrorism. Greatest predictors of suicide bombings, Atran concludes, is not religion but group dynamics: “small-group dynamics involving friends and family that form the diaspora cell of brotherhood and camaraderie on which the rising tide of martyrdom actions is based”.^[12]

Former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer‘s states that the Al Qaeda Islamic terror attacks against America are motivated not by a hatred of American culture and religion but by the belief that U.S. foreign policy is a threat to Islam,^[13] condensed in the phrase “They hate us for what we do, not who we are.” U.S. foreign policy actions Scheuer believes are fueling Islamic terror include

• Unconditioned US support to Israel
• U.S. troops on Muslim holy ground in Saudi Arabia (See: United States withdrawal from Saudi Arabia)
• U.S. support for “apostate” police states in Muslim nations such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Algeria, Morocco, and Kuwait^[14]
• The invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq
• U.S. support for the creation of the Christian state of East Timor from territory previously held by Muslim Indonesia.
• Perceived U.S. approval or support of counterinsurency against Muslim insurgents in India, Philippines, Chechnia, Uyghur separatists in western China, Palestine.^[15]

Some other academics argue that terrorism should be seen as a strategic reaction to American power,’ – that America is an empire, and empires provoked resistance in the form of terrorism. The Russian, Ottoman, and Habsburg Empires, for example, all suffered from terrorist attacks and had terrorist organisations – the Black Hand, Young Bosnia, Narodnaya Volya – spawned from their multiple ethnic, religious, and national peoples (Serb, Macedonian, and Bosnian).^[16]

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The neutrality of this article’s title and/or subject matter is disputed. This is a dispute over the neutrality of viewpoints implied by the title, or the subject matter within its scope, rather than the actual facts stated. Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page.(December 2009)

The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. (December 2009)

Islamic terrorism is the common term for violence,^[1] rooted in Islamism, and aimed at propagating Islamic culture, society, and values in opposition to the political, allegedly imperialistic, and cultural influences of non-Muslims, and the Western world in particular (cf. “Dar al-Harb“).^[2]

There are also political dimensions to the ideology, and the history of Western influence and control after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, is the common stated reason used within the ideology to justify and explain its use of violence as resistive and retributive against western influences.

The term, (or discourses using the term), have been attacked as “counter-productive”, “unhelpful”, “highly politicized, intellectually contestable” and “damaging to community relations”.^[3]

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Terrorism, despite considerable disagreement about a precise definition,^[1][2][3][4] is often considered to be deliberate^[5] violence^[6] or the threat of violence^[7] directed at innocent^[8][9] non-combatants^[8] and governments^[7] to cause fear^[6] systematically^[10] to attract media attention^[11] for causes which may be political^[5][3][6] or ideological^[7] or religious^[7] and which are viewed as coercive.^[7][10][12] An act which meets many or all of these criteria is often considered to be terrorism. There is considerable disagreement about whether the term can describe government or religious leaders and whether the term should be extended to include wartime acts. Further, the distinction between terrorism and crime is hard to specify.^[13][14]

The term is charged politically and emotionally and has strong negative connotations.^[15] Its meaning often depends on the ideology of the user and the context of its use. Studies have found more than one hundred definitions of the term.^[16][17] At present, there is no internationally agreed-upon definition. Governments have described opponents as terrorists to delegitimize them.^[18][19] Some suggest that the term terrorist is so fraught with conceptual problems that a better term would be violent non-state actor.^{[20][5][citation needed]} Terrorism has a long history and has been practiced by both right-wing and left-wing political parties, nationalistic groups, religious groups, revolutionaries, criminals, and others.^[21]

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Terror may refer to:

• Fear, an emotional response to threats and danger
• Horror and terror, standard literary and psychological concepts, especially as applied to Gothic literature
• Terrorism, a policy or act intended to intimidate or cause terror, usually for the furtherance of ideological goals
• State-sponsored terrorism, terrorism sponsored by nation-states
• State terrorism, acts of terrorism conducted by governments
• Political repression, persecution of individuals or groups for political reasons, often a policy of some states towards their own citizens

The evil of suicide bombings must be defeated by Muslims, as it violates every tenet of Islam. In the past week, at least 150 people were killed in Iraq in a wave of suicide bombings which have torn apart any illusion of security in that tragic country.

As a Muslim, as a human begin, I am filled with horror at images of men, women and children torn to shreds by the madness of people who turn themselves into incendiary devices. And I am filled with outrage and fury at the diabolic forces that seek to present this monstrous, murderous, terrorist activity as somehow sanctioned by my faith.

Let me put this in as simple terms as possible. Suicide bombings, indeed all forms of terrorism, are rejected by mainstream Islam, and always have been.

The Holy Qur’an says it in very clear, without any ambiguity:

“Do not kill yourselves, for truly God is merciful. And if any do that in rancor and injustice, soon shall We cast them in the Fire. ” (Surah 4:29-30)

The Qur’an makes it clear that there are rules to human conflict and limits that must be followed:

“And fight in the way of God against those who fight you. But do not transgress the limits. Truly God does not love transgressors.” (Surah 2:190)

As I discuss in my new novel Mother of the Believers, traditional Islamic law established very clear rules of war based on the practice of Prophet Muhammad and his early followers: Do not kill civilians. Do not kill women and children. Do not harm priests of of other religions. Do not destroy the environment.

Abu Bakr, the first leader of Islam after Prophet Muhammad, gave these commandments when Muslims were fighting the forces of the Byzantine Empire, which had sought to destroy the new religion and killed the Prophet’s ambassador:

“Stop, O people, that I may give you ten rules to keep by heart: Do not commit treachery, nor depart from the right path. You must not mutilate, neither kill a child or aged man or woman. Do not destroy a palm tree, nor burn it with fire and do not cut any fruitful tree. You must not slay any of the flock or herds or the camels, save for your subsistence. You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services; leave them to that to which they have devoted their lives. You are likely, likewise, to find people who will present to you meals of many kinds. You may eat; but do no forget to mention the name of God.”

Muslims always took great pride in the fact that they acted honorably, even in war. They looked with contempt upon the warriors of Europe, who slaughtered civilians mercilessly during the Crusades. When Saladin defeated the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem and took the holy city, he spared its Christian populace and pointedly said: “We will not do to you what you did to us.”

His comment was in reference to the First Crusade, where Christian “holy warriors” massacred tens of thousands of civilians upon taking Jerusalem in 1099. Muslims were slaughtered en masse, the Jews of Jerusalem were locked into its main synagogue and set on fire. And Arab Christians were murdered by their co-religionists for the sin of having dark skin and looking like the enemy. The Gesta Francorum, a Crusader chronicle of their activities, proudly notes that the “the slaughter was so great that our men waded in blood up to their ankles.”

In the town of Ma’arra in Syria, the Crusaders committed the ultimate atrocity — cannibalism. As Crusader chronicler Radulph of Caen wrote: “In Ma’arra, our troops boiled pagan adults in cooking-pots; they impaled children on spits and devoured them grilled.”

To this day, the Crusaders are referred to in the Muslim world as “the cannibals of Ma’arra.”

The Muslims looked at this kind of atrocity committed in the name of God as unworthy of any great religion, and held themselves above such monstrous behavior.

So how is it possible that its modern equivalent, the mass murder of civilians through suicide bombings, should now be done in the name of Islam?

In Dying to Win, Robert Pape, a scholar at the University of Chicago, analyzes the history and motivation of suicide bombers. Many people who read the book will be surprised to learn that suicide bombing was a tactic that was first used regularly by Hindu terrorists known as the Tamil Tigers. One of the most prominent victims of this tactic, Rajiv Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India, was killed on May 21, 1999 by a female suicide bomber from the Tamil Tigers. According to Pape, Gandhi’s murder marks the first use of the “suicide vest” which has become the tool of suicide bombers throughout the world today.

A full chronology of the history of suicide bombing among Tamil extremists can be found at:

http://www.spur.asn.au/chronology_of_suicide_bomb_attacks_by_Tamil_Tigers_in_sri_Lanka.htm

(A warning that the link contains graphic photos of the carnage caused by suicide bombers.)

One of the greatest tragedies of modern Islam is that Muslim extremists began to adopt this horrific tactic of suicide bombing over the past two decades. Palestinian militants, arguing that they had no other effective way to combat Israeli oppression, began to adopt these tactics, and the image of the “Muslim suicide bomber” began to take hold in the media .

I remember at the time most Muslims I spoke with expressed disgust at these horrific acts, but some added the caveat — “What else can these poor people do? They have no tanks or jets to take on Israeli tanks and jets. This is their only way to fight.”

My response then and now is that Islam is a religion that has established rules of war for a reason. Human conflict is perhaps inevitable, but unless there is a sense of morality among warriors, even among the warriors of the oppressed, human beings will descend into monstrosity. The nobility of a cause is forever tainted when dipped in the blood of innocents. The argument that Israeli military activities kill countless Palestinian civilians, so Muslims are free to target their civilians in response, is not an argument that is supported by the noble spirit of Islam. As Saladin pointed out, the Muslims would not inflict on the Christians the atrocities that the Crusaders had inflicted on their victims, simple because we as Muslims were better than that.

And I warned those who would excuse the suicide bombers as long as they targeted “the enemy,” that in Islam all human beings are brothers and sisters and have rights before God and man. I predicted that once some Muslims turned their back on Islam’s strict rules of war and went beneath themselves in order “to win,” the wrath of Allah would be unleashed upon us. If we allowed suicide bombings against non-Muslims, then soon would God punish our sins by unleashing the same horror on Muslims.

Tragically, my prediction came true. Suicide bombers in Iraq and Afghanistan now kill thousands of Muslims a year, innocent people going to pray or shop in the marketplace. Their only crime being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This kind of monstrous behavior is not Islam. It never has been Islam. And it will never be Islam, no matter what kind of self-serving justifications the terrorists use.

For those who wish to learn more about mainstream Muslim positions about war, terrorism and suicide bombing, I refer you here:

http://islam.about.com/cs/currentevents/a/suicide_bomb.htm

http://www.harunyahya.com/terrorism3.php

It is time for Muslims and people of all faiths to stand together in love and justice and end this horrific scourge of terrorism and suicide bombing on humanity.

I look forward to the day that the world will no longer associate such monstrosity with my beloved faith. And that one day, mankind will believe that Islam represents what its name stands for: “Peace.”

Author : Kamran Pasha
Kamran Pasha is a writer and producer for NBC’s highly anticipated new television series Kings, which is a modern day retelling of the Biblical tale of King David. Previously he served as a writer on NBC’s remake of Bionic Woman, and on Showtime Network’s Golden Globe nominated series Sleeper Cell, about a Muslim FBI agent who infiltrates a terrorist group.
http://www.kamranpasha.com/index.php