“Good Muslims” Are Quietly Looking Out For Us

(John Crudele’s Article direct from The NEW YORK POST on 27 April 2016.)

Two Pakistanis now working as cabbies. A Sudanese guy who fixes flat tires for a living. A Palestinian woman, formerly married to a guy involved in credit card fraud. A Lebanese woman who works in a hotel but once made excellent money catering to all the needs of Middle Eastern royalty when they visited New York. And a Somali guy — perhaps the most daring person I know — who scrounges out a good living doing this and that.

What do these six people have in common? They are, you might say, “good Muslims” who spy on bad Muslims and any other troublemakers who might cross their paths. They live and work in the New York area and regularly tip off law enforcement to wrongdoing. And they aren’t the only ones.

One of the cabbies — who is a Hindu posing as a Muslim — says he personally knows of at least 10 Muslims who have been keeping their ears and eyes open for potential problems and reporting them to various US government agencies.

Fighting Naga Insurgency On India-Burma Border

(Rahul Mishra’s Article direct from The EAST ASIA FORUM on 21 April 2016.)

Naga Insurgents on India-Burma border.

On 31 March 2016, a tribunal set up by the Indian government upheld a ban on the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Khaplang) (NSCN(K)) for five years. The case pertains to the 4 June 2015 attacks carried out by NSCN(K) insurgents on Indian military personnel, which claimed the lives of 18 Indian soldiers.

NSCN(K) is a factional offshoot of the NSCN, a group formed in 1980, dedicated to creating a sovereign nation for the Naga people carved out of Indian and Myanmar territories. It came into existence in 1988 under the leadership of Sangwang Sangnyu Khaplang, a Myanmar national. The tribunal’s decision is another step forward in meeting the strategic objective to cap and eliminate the cross-border insurgency affecting the northeastern states of India.

On 6 November 2015, the Indian government declared NSCN(K) a terrorist organisation. That September, the government had banned NSCN(K) as an ‘unlawful organisation’ under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967. The group has been involved in as many as six attacks on civilians and security forces, including the deadly June 2015 attacks.

Islamist Machete Murders Of Writers In Bangladesh

(Mary Chastain’s Article direct from The BREITBART NEWS on 26 April 2016.)

Islamist murder victim Tanay Mojundar.

Al-Qaeda Claims Bangladesh Machete Murders, Including LGBT Editor. The banned group Ansar-al Islam, the Bangladeshi branch of al-Qaida on the Indian subcontinent, has claimed responsibility for the killings of gay rights activist Mannan and his friend in the capital, Dhaka.

The Ansar al-Islam, the Bangladesh branch of the al-Qaeda in Indian Sub-Continent (AQIS), has claimed responsibility for the death of at least three secular writers hacked to death in the past year, including the murder this week of the editor of an LGBT magazine.

BDNews24 conveyed that an email allegedly sent from Mufti Abdullah Ashraf, the spokesman for the branch, to Bangladesh media said that AQIS committed the murder of Niladry Chattopadhya, a secular writer. His widow told The Guardian she lives in hiding. “I cannot lead a normal life. I am afraid of traveling alone,” explained Asha Mone. “Each new killing is only increasing the sense of fear.”

The Imperiled Bloggers Of Bangladesh

(Joshua Hammerdec’s Article direct from The NEW YORK TIMES on 29 December 2015.)

In support of gender equality, human rights and civil liberties, a group of bloggers is doing battle with Islamists online — and paying dearly for it.

Until he was stabbed multiple times with a kitchen knife and forced to flee to Europe two years ago, Asif Mohiuddin was a leading member of Bangladesh’s ‘‘freethinker’’ movement and the country’s best-known secular provocateur. We met last June at a cafe on a pedestrian promenade around the corner from his apartment, a sunlit space in a shabby-­chic neighborhood in northern Germany. (He asked me not to name the city.)

Mohiuddin, dressed that day in jeans and a green T-shirt that proclaimed ‘‘American Atheists Convention, Memphis, April 2-5, 2015,’’ was still getting used to the tranquillity of his new surroundings. Shortly after he secured a fellowship at a German institute and left Bangladesh, extremists serially murdered four of his friends — all secular bloggers who had criticized fundamentalist Islam and whose names appeared on ‘‘hit lists’’ assembled by hard-­liners and disseminated on social media.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s Sanctions Conundrum

(David Steinberg’s Article direct from The NIKKEI ASIAN REVIEW on 25 April 2016.)

ASSK met Obama and Hilary Clinton.

The United States maintains certain sanctions in Myanmar against many individuals, military-led institutions, and other organizations for their involvement in the Southeast Asian nation's unpleasant past.

Although the most basic sanctions have been lifted and the country is in the process of moving from military to civilian rule, in order to continue the remaining sanctions regimen, each May the U.S. president must issue an order indicating that "the actions and policies of the Government of Burma continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States."

This is bizarre considering that the U.S. has opened a trade office, encouraged responsible investment, and is actively engaged in an economic aid program in the country formerly known as Burma. If one were to take the U.S. statement seriously, its government is encouraging its citizens who are involved in these programs to put their safety in jeopardy by operating in Myanmar. Although this is simply a U.S. bureaucratic requirement, how the Burmese or foreign investors may feel about it raises other issues.

Muslims Hacked Secular Bangladeshi Professor To Death

(Pokhrael & Bloom’s Article direct from The CNN on 23 April 2016.)

Extremist Muslims burning Buddhists in Bangladesh.

(CNN) BANGLADESH: Once again, a secular Muslim is hacked to death for his un-Islamic views. Muslim assailants hacked to death a Bangladeshi professor early Saturday near his home in Rajshahi city, authorities said.

Rezaul Karim Siddique, 58, was an English professor at Rajshahi University. He was waiting for a bus to take him to campus when two or three people attacked him from behind and stabbed him in the neck, according to Sadhir Haider Chowdhury, a city police commissioner.

The professor died on the spot. It's unclear whether his attack was related to the recent hacking deaths of bloggers in the nation. An investigation is ongoing.

ISIS Using Bangladesh To Capture India And Burma

(News Article direct from The NEWSGRAM on 16 April 2016.)

Bangladeshi ISIS Cell in Singapore.

ISIS has expressed several times that Hindu India is at its radar for attack and conversion. The Islamic State (IS or ISIS) militant group says it wants to use Bangladesh as a launching pad to gain a foothold in neighboring Hindu-majority India and Buddhist-dominated Myanmar.

The plan was revealed by the alleged chief of ISIS in Bangladesh, named as Sheikh Abu Ibrahim al-Hanif, in an interview with the IS mouthpiece magazine, Dabiq. It was immediately dismissed by Bangladesh’s Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan, who insisted that IS has no presence in his country and that the South Asian nation would never allow IS to use it as a base to expand its influence in the region.

The IS had claimed responsibility for a series of killings and attacks of bloggers, writers, foreigners and non-Sunni Muslim minorities. Khan said however that some local militants had been using the “IS brand to add value to their names.”

‘Stepping-Stone’

In his interview, al-Hanif said that Bangladesh was “an important region” for the IS and its “global jihad” due to its “strategic geographic position.” “[Bangladesh] is located on the eastern side of India, whereas the [Pakistan-Afghanistan region] is located on its western side,” he noted.

Veiling Women: Islamists’ Most Powerful Weapon

(Giullio Meotti’s Article direct from The GATESTONE INSTITUTE on 20 April 2016.)

Female Oppression imposed by Islamists all over the world

The first victim of the Islamist war in Algeria was a girl who refused the veil, Katia Bengana, who defended her choice even as the executioners pointed a gun at her head. In 1994, Algiers literally awoke to walls plastered with posters announcing the execution of unveiled women.

In April 1947, Princess Lalla Aisha gave a speech in Tangiers and people listened astonished to that unveiled girl. In a few weeks, women throughout the country refused the scarf. Today Morocco is one of the freest countries in the Arab world.

In the mid-1980s, sharia law was implemented in many countries, women in the Middle East were placed in a portable prison and in Europe they resumed the veil to reclaim their "identity," which meant the refusal of assimilation to Western values and the Islamization of many European cities. First veils were imposed on women, then Islamists began their jihad against the West.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s Workaround Revolution

(Priscilla Clapp’s Article direct from The DAILY BEAST on 20 April 2016.)

So-called State Counselor of Burma & her proxy president.

Despite her party’s electoral triumphs in Myanmar, it looked as if the Nobel laureate’s executive powers were blocked. But no.

Through the endless years of house arrest, through the celebrity of the Nobel Peace Prize, through personal tragedy and through steady, determined confrontation with the military and quasi-military powers that be in Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), Aung San Suu Kyi mastered the subtle art of the workaround. When any one path to her goal was blocked, she found several others.

Last month, as her National League for Democracy (NLD) government was being installed in Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi took a number of bold steps to translate her decisive victory in the November 2015 elections into a clear message that civilians are now in charge after more than half a century of military-dictated government.