Former Justice Minister Ken Clarke: We should settle Islamic State jihadists back down in the UK.

 

Will returning jihadists really be met with this muddled response?

Former Justice Minister, Ken Clarke says “see what you can do to settle them down to stop them being seduced back into this kind of thing when they’re back in England”

 

Conservative MP Kenneth Clark was interviewed on the ‘World at One’ programme this lunchtime about the problems posed by the Islamic State and potential military intervention using British armed services. At the conclusion of the discussion, James Robbins asked Ken Clarke “Is it possible, desirable, legally possible to strip British jihadists of their citizenship?”. This was Ken Clarke’s reply:

“Countries cannot render their own citizens stateless and there are thousands of these people, there are more French than British, I think, a lot of Americans … all kinds of people there … if the reaction of the states of which they’re citizens is to start stripping them all of citizenship and somehow saying they should stay there, I’m sure the leaders of ISIS will be absolutely delighted

That far his argument made sense, though in reality no stabilising state wants those that are rebellious of nature as part of the mainspring of their new government, if indeed the Islamic State achieves an approach to stability. Equally, it is legally possible to rescind the British citizenship of a person who has dual-nationality, as many of the jihadists will possess two nationalities, the other being the country that they or their parents emigrated from.

What Ken Clarke said next, though, was quite disturbing ..

… what of course what you do have to do, when your citizens return, is firstly to decide if its safe to allow them to return if there is some legal way of temporarily delaying the worst ones, that is (er) worth looking at, if in fact there are people who have regretted it, had enough of it, want to get out of it, then you’ve got to make sure you know they’re coming back, see what you can do to settle them down to stop them being seduced back into this kind of thing when they’re back in England”

The interview can be heard on BBC iPlayer here. It begins 30′:03″ into the programme and the above quote can be heard between 34′:08″ and 35′:20″.

Where does Ken Clarke think these people have been? His response is more suited to football hooligans than those who have likely committed mass murder at the least. Islamic State atrocities include mass executions, ethnic cleansing, genocide, slavery, torture, sexual abuse, forced religious conversions – heaven knows what else – and Mr. Clarke’s response to such an abhorrent list of war crimes and crimes against humanity carried out by the jihadists is that we should see what we can do “to settle them down to stop them being seduced back into this kind of thing when they’re back in England”?

We are back in the Afghanistan situation again. You may remember that British Muslims who went to Afghanistan and were caught ans suspected of joining the Taliban or, worse still, al Qaeda, were imprisoned in Guantanamo Detention Centre and then we – the British public – had to pay them seven figure sums each after they returned here because of their ‘human rights abuses’. That having been said, how do we differentiate between the jihadists who went out solely to see if the Islamic State is a good Muslim country or those who committed appalling atrocities? 

Would YOU want to live near to these jihadists?

It is essential that the government makes an urgent statement to detail how they will prevent these men from returning to the UK and committing further bloodshed. It isn’t just white Christians (or atheists for that matter) who are potential targets. Ordinary, law-abiding Muslims will be at risk, especially their young men who will be considered traitors in the eyes of the men returning from their failed jihad. 

The government must respond to this threat – the British public deserve to know how these potential terrorists will be dealt with if they return to the UK.

Should Jihadists from the Islamic State be allowed back in the UK?

 

Western jihadists in training in Syria

Dual nationality jihadists may have UK nationality rescinded

Over the last week the media has been pondering – or should that be ‘pontificating’ – over what should be done about returnees from the Islamic State slaughterfest in Syria and Iraq. The Guardian online noted that

“many of the British jihadis want to return home, having grown disillusioned with the internecine warfare between rebel forces – which prompts the question of what or who inspired them to go in the first place.” Guardian, September 7, 2014.

Sorry? What inspired them? The prevailing inspiration would have been minimal, to be frank. Apart from the ‘we’re all Muslims together on a Jihad’ thing, clearly they had spent far too much time tweeting and texting each other with blood-curdling visions of not-so-derring-do and hadn’t really thought about the range of options that would be forced upon them, thereby shafting their psychology for the next decade or seven: They grew ‘disillusioned with the internecine warfare between rebel forces’? Hello, Jihadis? You scuttled off to the Middle East without doing any research, didn’t you? The Middle East is the home of internecine slaughter at strategic pinch-points in history. Let me put it into perspective: The Middle East is what Northern Ireland was, and those running the conflict in Northern Ireland took lessons, and semtex, from Middle Eastern war barons.

Internecine conflicts in the Middle East? Really?

What did you expect when you went there? Did you have Richard The Lionheart-like visions of righting wrongs or Muhammadan dreams of battling with Tagheet governments, with certain victory and afterwards sitting in Bedouin tents in the evening eating sheeps’ eyeballs washed down with camel’s milk while you gradually worked towards the utopian Islamic State? Not likely really, is it? 

You can be sure of one thing in the Middle East, as soon as you have a winning formula, someone else wants it. Just as you think you are winning, in comes another splinter group from somewhere or another that disputes your claim to your victory. It’s a bit like Monty Python’s People’s Front of Judea and their battles with the Judean People’s Front.

The Middle East is the headiest mix of influences, geopolitical, tribal and sectarian warfare is the certain punctuation mark of the comings and goings of Asia Minor, driven by oil, or water or anything else that is deemed to be of strategical importance. The men who invented Islam knew it, that’s why it was so uniquely ‘are you one of us’ and if you were then you would die if you rebelled. It was meant to unify and in a sense it did, but when Muhammad died, guess what? No one could decide who should succeed him:

If a son had existed, perhaps the whole history of Islam would have been different. The discord, the civil war, the rival caliphates, the split between Sunni and Shia — all might have been averted.

Mohammed died ‘abtar’ (as they say in Arabic), meaning without male issue, ‘curtailed, cut off, severed’. That was the beginning of the long and bloody history of internecine sectarianism and division; and one that we see to this day.

In a western sense, armies are run on discipline but Middle Eastern armies are run on numbers of people – big numbers – they’re largely ineffective but there’s lots of them. The problem is always the arousal of tribal or sectarian loyalties and these have been behind the conflict in the recently wrecked Libya and now it is wrecking Iraq and Syria. Some of the recruits to the IS jihad may well regret going in the first place, especially when the dust settles and the rivers of blood dry up. 

The British Nationality Act grants the government authority to revoke the citizenship of any dual national or naturalised citizen whose presence in the U.K. isn’t “conducive to the public good.” Many such exuberant but misguided Muslim youths, although possibly second or third generation immigrants, may well have dual nationality, the second nationality stemming from their ancestral origins. If that is the case, the Geneva Convention will not apply in terms of repudiated UK statehood, as they won’t be stateless if the UK authorities decide that these people are not welcome back, and I for one wouldn’t blame our government for doing just that.

 

#BurnISISFlagChallenge is upon us, just in time for Bonfire Night

                                          Burning the IS flag in Sassine Square, Beirut

Flag-burning in the Middle-East, surely not? Islamic State Lebanon Flag Burn

An extremely daring social media campaign has emerged from the Middle-East that sets out to reject the very existence of the Islamic State.

This new Arab spring involves burning the IS flag, in a protest that resembles the Ice Bucket Challenge as it appears you have to nominate the next flag burner. It would go down well in Pakistan but for the fact that the flag has “There is no god but God and Muhammad is his Prophet” written right across it.

Three Lebanese youths uploaded photos of themselves burning the flag of the Islamic State in Sassine Square in Beirut. This was followed by an anonymous YouTube user, again from Lebanon, who posted a video clip in which he also burnt the flag. He then invited others to take part in the #BurnISISFlagChallenge.

Criticism of the protest BurnISISFlagChallenge.

However, there has been criticism of the campaign, not least from the Minister of Justice in Lebanon, Ashraf Rifi, who accused the participants of the flag-burning in Sassine Square of insulting Islam because the flag contains words that express the Islamic faith, words from the Qur’an. Rifi was quoted as saying in Asharq Al-Awsat “this has nothing to do with IS and its terrorist approach.”

A number of Lebanese MPs also criticized Rifi’s statement. Ibrahim Kanaan, a member of the Change and Reform parliamentary bloc, came forward to say he will represent the three boys accused of burning the flags if a case against them makes it to court.

Nabil Naqoula, a Change and Reform member, rejected Rifi’s call concerning the incident and begged him to withdraw the request he had made to the state prosecutor. “The youths who burned the ISIS flag did not mean to insult the Islamic religion,” Naqoula said, adding that “this flag does not represent Islam in the slightest.”

Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, asked the Prime Minister Tammam Salam to “be wary of sectarian conflict and from taking any decisions which could lead to it.” He implored Lebanese Christians to “not confuse IS with Islam, nor the Prophet’s flag with that of IS, because Islam is the furthest thing possible from IS”.

Another, Emad Bezi, tweeted sarcastically: “Ashraf Rifi is asking for those who burned the ISIS flag to be brought to justice—since the embassy from [Abu Bakr] Baghdadi’s state [the “Caliphate” declared by IS in Iraq] might resent this, and this might cause a diplomatic crisis between us.”

Criticism of Rifi also filled social media websites, with many calling for the minister to resign or be sacked, and others calling for mass protests to burn the militant groups’ flags, using a hashtag in Arabic meaning “Burn it.”

How about you? Do you fancy posting your video of the IS flag in flames?

Go on – you know you want to

Lewes Bonfire Society Guy Fawkes 5th November

 

Islamic State pussies are frightened of women combatants

 

Cracks are appearing in the Jihadists’ invincibility in the guise of female soldiers intent on hunting them down

 

It appears that the Islamic State terrorists have an achilles heel. Apparently they believe that if they are killed in battle, they will not go to Jannah (Heaven)

This was found in a British newspaper article:

Now hundreds of women from the Turkish PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ party) have crossed into Iraq to help push the IS fighters out of the north of Iraq. They are striking fear into the hearts of the Jihadist thugs who believe if they are killed by a woman in battle they will not reach heaven.

The PPK are currently aiding the other Western ally in Iraq, the Peshmerga forces of the autonomous region of Kurdistan.

The irony of this would serve up real justice to the terrorists. Let’s hope that the women of the PKK army advance on these cowards while screaming: “I’m sending you to hell!”

Methinks they doth protest too little