Islamist Wave 2013 - Overview & Updates

10 posts

Angocachi
Wonderful article by a policy head in Iran. Iran is pushing for an alliance with Morsi's Egypt very hard. Tehran needs an Ikhwani-Ayatollah Pact, and they're doing it on behalf of the wider Sino-Russian led camp. Iran is essentially telling the Muslim Brotherhood "Join us in the struggle against our common enemies; America, Israel, the UK, Arab Monarchs & Juntas, Secularists, and Salafists." A peace deal could come of it between the Syrian Baath and the Syrian Ikhwan, leaving Al Nusra, the GCC and NATO without a hand in Damascus... thereby preserving Syria as a Russo-Iranian client.

As long as Obama and Saud shit on Morsi, he might as well take a look at Persia.

" The January 2011 revolution in Egypt changed the nature of Iran-Egypt relations. Unlike the old Egypt under Hosni Mubarak, which perceived Iran as its main threat, the new Egypt seeks close relations with Iran in the broader context of regional cooperation in solving regional issues, such as that of the Syrian crisis . This development may create a new power equation in the region that can potentially redefine the role of global players in the greater Middle East, such as the United States and Russia.

Iran and Egypt enjoy a unique position in the region’s political makeup. Both have a strong historical and cultural background that enrich their national identity, providing them legitimacy and respective leadership roles in affecting new regional settings.

The two nations are also representative of a powerful political-security dimension in the region’s power equations. Each global player ultimately needs one of these two countries to enhance its influence in regional affairs. For instance, Russia has used its traditional ties with Iran to throw its weight in the region, while the United States was largely dependent on Mubarak’s Egypt for a similar role.

Iran and Egypt are also representing two important ideological trends that have roots in their domestic politics and foreign policy orientations: Iran being representative of Shiite Islamism and Egypt similarly through the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Azhar.

Egypt, during the time of Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak, had three features that kept it at a distance from Tehran:

First, it had no interest in employing Islamist ideology in affairs as it viewed Islamism as a challenge to the pillars of a secular government.

Second, Egypt was inclined to play its regional role in the context of the Arab world. For this reason, Egypt sought ownership of traditional Arab issues, such as the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict, and prevented other non-Arab regional players, such as Iran and Turkey, to enter what it perceived as its sphere of influence. Such a move would have simultaneously marginalized Egypt’s role. Consequently, Egypt for decades dealt with Iran as a primary rival.

Third, the Egyptian state was shaped within a security-militarized model. The army and security apparatus influenced the country’s domestic politics, such as opposing Islamists, as well as the foreign policy orientation in establishing close relations with the West and Israel.

But the Egyptian revolution is now changing that perception. The establishment of Mohammed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood government has introduced the factor of Islamist ideology into Egypt’s domestic politics and foreign policy.

Egypt’s traditional foreign policy, which was based on building close relations with the United States and Israel, is gradually shifting to a more nationalistic and independent approach. Morsi’s government is now showing more willingness to engage regional powers like Iran and Turkey. This tendency is clearly shown in mitigating regional problems, such as that of the Syrian crisis.

Meanwhile, the role of military and security apparatus on Egypt’s domestic politics and foreign policy orientation is diminishing, particularly following the forced retirement of army chief General Mohamed Hussein Tantawi.

These new dynamics have affected the nature of Iran-Egypt relations, providing a momentous opportunity for both states to strengthen comprehensive relations.
Enhancing relations with Egypt has been a constant priority in Iran’s regional policy, dating back to the shah’s reign and continuing into the Islamic Republic. From Iran’s perspective, improved relations with Egypt are essential to regional stability, and part of the need to push for a "regionalization" of Middle Eastern issues, and thus constraining the influence of global powers. As the cases of Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrate, the “internationalization” of regional issues only endangers regional peace, if the proliferation of jihadi movements from the two wars is any indication.

Iran and Egypt’s insistence to seek a political solution for the Syrian crisis also stems from a mutual desire to avoid Western military intervention, while simultaneously playing leading regional roles in solving the crisis.

Increased relations with Egypt are based on a mutual strategic need, and mostly on these two countries’ geopolitical significance in the Middle East.
Iran is the dominant power in the east of the Middle East, in an area that stretches from Iraq and the Persian Gulf to Afghanistan, South Asia, and the Caspian basin. These regions are the center of the world’s energy production, economic and financial exchanges, labor force and commerce. The main theme in this part of the Middle East is development, prosperity, and energy security. In this respect, Iran is a good source for connecting Egypt to the hub of energy and economic activities in the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea, and through Iraq and Syria, to the region’s key security issues, outweighing other regional rivals like Israel.

Similarly, Egypt is the dominant power in the west side of the Middle East. Egypt is the gate to north and central Africa and the south Mediterranean. It has access to strategic regions, such as the Suez Canal and Red Sea, which are all vital to Iranian interests. Egypt’s decision to permit Iranian battleships to cross the Suez Canal and access the Mediterranean increased Iran’s regional power status, and remains an important gateway for Tehran. Egypt also provides Iran with an avenue to access key Arab issues, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and bypass Tehran’s main regional Arab rival, Saudi Arabia.

In addition, Iran and Egypt share common strategic interests in other regional issues such as comprehensive nuclear disarmament in the Middle East, combatting extremist trends and civil wars — particularly in the Levant — and preventing further international military intervention in the region. Furthermore, the two countries are interested in expanding economic relations. Egypt recently agreed to allow $5 billion worth of Iranian investments, which will create at least 6,000 jobs.
Although some secular remnants of Egypt’s previous regime still believe that improved Iran-Egypt relations will favor Tehran more than Cairo – and are subsequently sabotaging any attempts to establish close relations with Iran — signs show that this view is inevitably changing and the new Egypt gradually believes that strengthening relations with Iran will preserve its geopolitical interests.

The two nations are at probing to finding the best approach to the points of difference in their relations, and have so far avoided any serious ideological clashes. This was evident in the Morsi government’s watering down of Al-Azhar’s public criticism of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during the latter’s recent visit to Egypt. Likewise, Iran largely ignored the highly publicized rhetorical statements against the Syrian regime during Morsi’s visit to the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Tehran last year. Neither side, it seems, wants to get bogged down in any ideological rift, and prefer to focus on mutual strategic interests.

With increased Iran-Egypt relations at state level, a new power equation could emerge in the region that will shape the future balance of power in the greater Middle East. This relationship will strengthen the nation-state system in the Middle East against threats of fragmentation — as seen in the Levant. An Iranian-Egyptian regional partnership could also diminish the role of global actors while enhancing regional cooperation under the principles of regionalism. This will strengthen regional approaches to solving regional issues, and consequently encourage peace and stability in the Middle East.

Kayhan Barzegar is director of the Institute for Middle East Strategic Studies in Tehran and former research fellow at Harvard University. He is also chairman of the
Department of Political Science and International Relations at Science and Research Branch of the Islamic Azad University in Tehran."


Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/ori...al-ties-regional-stability.html#ixzz2NbYv6ad3

Roland President Camacho Stubby rust O'Zebedee niccolo and donkey Asterion Thomas777
Thomas777

What this comes down to is a cultural/theological/historical problem, by which Moslems (primarily the Sunni obviously) are charged with creating both a new form of government that can 1) abide democracy while protecting the people from foreign subversion, 2) can sustain and deter Jewish military aggression without upsetting the strategic balance to such an extreme degree that Arab lands are availed to another unprovoked attack as was the case against B'athist Iraq, 3) and that is able to subjugate discreet and petit nationalist ambitions in favor of a geostrategic concord with Turkey under a 'neo-ottoman' regime.

Of course, the big losers in this scheme will be the Syrian Alawites, Iran, and to a lesser degree Hezbollah - although the latter will remain an essential counterweight to Israel's levantine ambitions and thus is likely to retain much of the gains it has made as per political legitimacy over the last 30 years.

The only way that this vision can or will be realized would be for Egypt to attach its fortunes to Turkey and to begin unreservedly (though not overly provocatively) demanding an end to Jewish apartheid, by developing a civic society that remains robustly committed to the Islamic prohibition on usury (so as to preclude ingress by foreign capital and electioneering NGOs as well as more traditional capital sources) and by reaching a diplomatic commitment to peaceable coexistence with Iran at least until the Israeli problem is resolved. Only then can Arabs participate on the world stage in a serious capacity, and only then can they discredit Judeo-American hostility by forcing the Americans to choose between Israel and the Ottoman/Arab political condominium.

At the forefront of this effort must be a demand that 1) Nuclear Israel is intolerable and precludes peace in the region and 2) Jewish racial apartheid must be abolished if Arab governments are to be expected to reign in terrorism.

Just my .02

Stubby

I'm inclined to agree with Thomas and articles like this: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/...cool-despite-ahmadinejads-visit-to-cairo?lite

I think Iran needs Egypt far more than Egypt needs Iran. I don't know if this is actually what they've wanted, but the pig headed American hatred of Iran has done much to ensure that the power in the Mideast become more and more unipolar as Israel decays and all Shi'a enclaves are eliminated one by one.

If an Ikhwani Egypt does end up compromising the way Angocachi has said is the tendency, they may find themselves in greater accord with the Gulf states than the Brotherhood's history there might suggest. This is not taking Turkey into consideration, who despite their non-revolution have some sharp similarities with Egypt.



















http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=9107152354

Angocachi

-Netanyahu has apologized to Erdogan and says that Israel will compensate the families of the 9 Turks killed in the Gaza flotilla. This comes following Obama's visit to Israel. This indicates that an IDF action against Iran is nearing.

-Buddhists and Muslims had a race war in Myanmar, burning everything down and killing a bunch of people... this week.

-Other recent Jihadist actions include Patanni attacks on Buddhists in South Thailand, a massive attack on Christians in Northern Nigeria, another massive string of attacks on Shia in Iraq, some anti-Indian incidents in Kashmir, anti-Shia attacks in Pakistan, Al Qaeda vs druglords in Yemen, and so forth. The fields of Jihad represented in red in the map in the first post of this thread haven't changed.

-Al Qaeda is in Gaza firing some rockets at Israel as of late, which means that they must have a solid presence in the Sinai.

-A Southerly Governorate of Egypt is becoming a Gamaa base. This spells immigration for the Copts.

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The Gamaa Islamiya once waged a bloody insurgency here, attacking police and Christians in a campaign to create an Islamic state. Now a political force, the former jihadis say they are setting up their own parallel police and are determined to ensure law and order in this southern Egyptian province.​

Their declaration has set in motion a spiral of tensions in Assiut province, raising fears that hard-line Islamists who call for a strict version of Shariah, or Islamic law, will take the law into their own hands, threatening the delicate sectarian balance of Muslims and Christians here. Opponents warn that if they succeed here, hard-liners elsewhere in Egypt will try to take advantage of the country's lawlessness to increase their power.​

Worries over vigilante action, whether Islamist or not, are already high in Egypt, which has been shaken by months of political turmoil.​

Protests and strikes have been boiling nationwide against the Islamist president and the Muslim Brotherhood, from which he hails. The police and security forces have themselves been caught up in the political struggles, often not doing their job. The result is a rise in crime, sometimes prompting a backlash from the public. Residents of a town in northern Egypt this week killed two alleged thieves and hung their bodies by the feet from the rafters of a bus station.​

The Gamaa says its move was in response to a strike last week by some police in Assiut, the capital of the southern province of the same name. The group declared it would set up "popular committees" to carry out security duties in the police's absence. Riding on motorbikes and waving banners, hundreds of Gamaa supporters toured the city last week to show they could keep order. ​

Since then, police have returned to work. But the Gamaa, which is allied to President Mohammed Morsi, says it is pressing ahead with its plans. A sign plastered on the wall near the entrance of an Assiut mosque used as the Gamaa's headquarters guides volunteers to where they can register to join the committees. ​

"We don't need anyone's permission to send our popular committees to the streets if the police abandon their role to protect the nation," said Hussein Abdel-Al, a senior Gamaa leader in Assiut. The Gamaa's political arm, the Construction and Development Party, said it planned to submit to parliament a draft legislation to legalize the creation of popular committees nationwide. ​

So far, the Gamaa's popular committees do not appear to have taken any strong action in the street. ​

But the police are pushing back. Provincial security chief Abul-Qassim Deif ordered police to take action against anyone other than the police attempting to carry out security duties. He stepped up police patrols in Assiut, a city of some 1 million, and elsewhere in the province. ​

"We will take all legal measures against them if they appear," Deif told The Associated Press. ​

In an apparent attempt to reduce the Gamaa's influence, he also ordered his officers not to allow the group's members to act as mediators in "reconciliation sessions" — police-backed mediation by prominent sheikhs that is often used to settle local disputes. ​

Assiut's governor, who is a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice party, said creating popular committees is "not suitable from a political or security perspective." ​

"Any attempt to take away from the capabilities or rights of the Interior Ministry amounts to a reduction in the state's prestige," Gov. Yehya Taha Kishk, a British-trained heart doctor, told the AP. "The state does not encourage that civilians take over police duties to maintain security. This is a red line." ​

But some in the Brotherhood have appeared sympathetic to the Gamaa's motivation. Ahmed Aref, a Brotherhood spokesman, told the AP, "We don't call for or promote the idea of popular committees." ​

"But we have to say this: The responsibility (for security) rests with the police and it cannot be transferred, unless the responsible party abandons it," he said. ​

Assiut, 400 kilometers (235 miles) south of the capital Cairo, is a particularly sensitive area for the Gamaa to carry out its experiment. It is Egypt's poorest province, with more than 60 percent of its 4.2 million people living in poverty, according to the governor. It also has the second highest percentage of Christians, estimated at 32 percent of the population — and even higher in Assiut city — compared to an estimated 10 percent nationwide. ​

The province was a stronghold for the Gamaa during its incarnation as a violent militant group. The Gamaa and the Islamic Jihad, another hard-line group, were behind the October 6, 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat. Days afterward, it attacked Assiut's security headquarters, prompting a battle with the military. ​

In the 1990s, it waged a bloody insurgency that killed more than 1,000 people, and the group systematically attacked Christians, their churches and businesses. Then-President Hosni Mubarak ruthlessly crushed the insurgency with a security crackdown notorious for human rights violations, including extrajudicial killings, abductions and torture. During the last years of Mubarak's rule, Gamaa leaders renounced violence — though they still advocate rule by a hard-line version of Islamic law. After Mubarak's ouster two years ago, the Gamaa formed a political party. ​

Sectarian tension is never far below the surface in the province. Church leaders claim that Islamists in the province have been emboldened by Morsi's election in June, with incidents of discrimination against or harassment of Christians on the rise. ​

Father Banoub, a priest who is the Coptic Orthodox Church's point man on relations with local authorities and Islamist groups in Assiut, warned that a Gamaa move to take up policing duties could spark a backlash from Christians. ​

"We will not accept, under any circumstances, that a group takes over the streets," he told the AP. ​

Christian dialogue with Islamists has established a "fragile sectarian peace" in Assiut, he said. "But the intimidation of Christians makes the potential for an eruption of Christian anger a real possibility," he told the AP. ​

A senior leader of the liberal Wafd Party's youth wing in Assiut, Mahmoud Moawad, said in a statement that, "We just cannot imagine that the Gamaa Islamiya killed all those innocent people and police officers and now wants to assume the role of the police." ​

The potential for vigilante action adds yet a new layer to Egypt's turmoil since Mubarak's ouster. The country has become deeply polarized between Morsi and his Islamist backers on one side and the opposition made up of moderate Muslims, liberals and Christians on the other. Amid wave after wave of political unrest and violence, the economy has fallen into dire straits. Calls for the military to seize the reins of power have grown. ​

Mistrust is high among all sides. ​

Father Banoub said he believed Islamists themselves fomented the police strikes to have an excuse to take control of the province. ​

The Gamaa, in turn, has depicted a wave of police strikes around the country the past weeks as a plot aimed at causing chaos so the military will move in to take power and remove the Islamist Morsi. ​

"If the partial police strike in Assiut and elsewhere succeeded, it would have spread nationwide. Our action has foiled an attempt to bring down the state," Tareq Bedeir, the Gamaa's leader in the city of Assiut, told the AP, speaking in the group's main mosque. ​

A spokesman for the Gamaa's Construction and Development Party, Khaled el-Shareef, warned of a conspiracy by "the counter-revolution" for the police to strike, forcing the public to choose between chaos and the return of the military. ​

Some in Assiut feared the Gamaa's plans are a recipe for chaos. ​

"If every faction in the country forms a popular committee, then the country will have to deal with gang warfare," said Assiut tax officer Ahmed Fathi Abdel-Hamid. ​

Khaled Mehanny, a 22-year-old Islamic law student, said the Gamaa wants to impose itself on the city. ​

"We completely reject this. And if the police disappear one day, we will protect ourselves as we had done in the past," he said. ​

-associated press ​

Stubby
Angocachi what do you think the odds are that whatever authority the Maliki government has will collapse if serious cross-border fighting begins/Assad collapses? And does anyone know the religious demographics of Baghdad?
Angocachi
My Iraqi friend is a Sunni refugee from Baghdad, it's about as Shia as Detroit is Black.
The Shia clerics will have whoever they like in Baghdad.
The danger the Shia in Iraq face is that the Sunni in Syria will take Damascus and Aleppo. If that happens the Sunni in Iraq will completely throw off Baghdad's administration in Sunni majority provinces. We will have two Sunnistans in the Mashriq, some towns and neighborhoods under FSA control, Sahwa control, and Salafi control, with Ikhwanis running against former-Baathists for votes and support from the local tribes. Shia writ will be restricted to the Syrian coast and the Iraqi south. All the while it moves into Lebanon.
Angocachi

Bangladesh is chimping hard for Shariah!

"One person has been killed as hundreds of thousands of people continued protests in Bangladesh to demand that the government introduce an anti-blasphemy law that would include the death penalty for bloggers who insult Islam.

Nowsher Khan, a local leader of the Awami League was killed in Bhanga, a town south west of Dhaka on Saturday, when Hefazat-e-Islami party supporters clashed with Awami League supporters.

The protest on Saturday, called the "long march", with many travelling from remote villages, was sparked after a group of bloggers allegedly began criticising conservative religious parties that are widely popular despite Bangladesh's secular constitution.

Allegedly backed by Jamaat-e-Islami party, Hefazat-e-Islam, an Islamic group which draws support from tens of thousands of seminaries, organised the rally in support of its 13-point demand including enactment of a blasphemy law to prosecute and hang atheist bloggers.


Dhaka has been virtually cut off from the rest of the country since Friday afternoon, after secularists called a 22-hour nationwide strike to obstruct the march.

Both secular and Muslim protesters have taken to the streets over the war crimes trials of leaders of the Jamaat-e-Islami party in cases related to the 1971 war against Pakistan in which three million people were killed and many thousands of women were raped.

Abdul Quader Mollah was sentenced to life in prison in February spurring youth protests calling for a death sentence for him instead. This led to counter-protests by religious parties in the country.


Clashes erupted days later when well-known protester and blogger, Ahmed Rajib Haider, was killed, followed by more deaths in ensuing violence.

Response to death penalty calls

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Shakil Ahmed, the head of output for Ekattor television in Bangladesh, said that the protests on Saturday were peaceful and had been fuelled by misinformation on both sides.

"Wrong information has been spread out by some of the activists," said Ahmed.


Al Jazeera's correspondent, who cannot be named for safety reasons, speaking from Dhaka on Saturday, said that very huge crowds had gathered.

She confirmed that protests were peaceful but said that one death had been reported on Friday night and another on Saturday morning.

An activist from the ruling Awami League was reportedly shot dead after the secularists clashed with hundreds of seminary students holding a rally in support of the march, local police chief Yasir Arafat told AFP news agency.

"Authorities have become more and more experienced in dealing with the protests ... Right now they are trying to contain the crowds and are making sure that it does not get violent."

Our correspondent said that while there was a lot of support for the march from the countryside where Hefazat-e-Islam is good at mobilising people from, the country is very divided.

Zafar Sobhan, the editor of the Dhaka Tribune , speaking to Al Jazeera's via skype from Dhaka, said that while the government was had maintained a "neutral line" and was "scrambling" to prevent an "explosive" situation, he thinks it was unlikely that a blasphemy law would be introduced.

He said that the march was less about a blasphemy law but was more of a reaction to calls for the death penalty for political party leaders being tried for war crimes.

"The march is more of a, if you [the bloggers] are going to demand the death penalty against us [the political party leaders, then we are going to demand a death penalty against you."

Our correspondent said that the real pressure would be felt in the country's economy.

"Every time there is a strike it shuts down the economy ... Economic issues are likely to put pressure on the ruling Awami party."

Bloggers arrested

Last week, four online writers were arrested on charges of hurting religious sentiment through their Internet writings against Islam.

Sobhan said the arrests were being seen as a "heavy-handed measure" to appease Islamists.

Operators of top Bangladeshi blogs blacked out their sites on Thursday to protest against the government move.

They say the government has been kowtowing to the religious activists.

Home Minister Muhiuddin Khan on Wednesday said the government had identified 11 bloggers, including the four detainees, who had hurt the religious sentiments of the nation's majority Muslim population.

The government has blocked about a dozen websites and blogs to stem the unrest. It has also set up a panel, which includes intelligence chiefs, to monitor blasphemy on social media.
Under the country's cyber laws, a blogger or Internet writer can face up to ten years in jail for defaming a religion."

Byssus

The anti-Shiite violence in Balochistan Province and especially Quetta (like the stupendous bomb spree that Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a Deobandi Punjabi outlet, authored in January and February 0f this year) is powerfully motivated by race, something that's predictably poorly articulated in Western media coverage. The prime (though not sole) targets are Hazaras, who immediately stand out against the backdrop of local faces because of their mongoloid features. The sectarian line isn't the only edge on this knife, and the obligatory Iranian expressions of concern about their coreligionists can't be taken at face value (while many Sunnis both here and in Afghanistan allege that the Hazaras, apart from practicing a pre-Islamic Iranian kaffir religion, are obedient agents of Iran, and Tehran probably wishes the second were really the case, the Hazaras themselves are actually very much soured on the relationship – in large part due to pervasive mistreatment, again racially conditioned, by the police and other state apparatuses of Hazara refugees in Iran ... where they're just "Afghans").

Stubby
Al Qaeda merger in Iraq, Syria shows militant group’s rising confidence
BEIRUT—Al Qaeda’s branch in Iraq said it has merged with Syria’s extremist Jabhat al-Nusra, a move that shows the rising confidence of radicals within the Syrian rebel movement and is likely to trigger renewed fears among its international backers.
A website linked to Jabhat al-Nusra confirmed on Tuesday the merger with the Islamic State of Iraq, whose leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, first made the announcement in a 21-minute audio message posted on militant websites late Monday.

Jabhat al-Nusra has taken an ever-bigger role in Syria’s conflict over the last year, fighting in key battles and staging several large suicide bombings. The U.S. has designated it a terrorist organization.

The Syrian group has made little secret of its ideological ties to the global jihadist movement and its links across the Iraqi border, but until now it has not officially declared itself to be part of Al Qaeda.

Al-Baghdadi said that his group — the Islamic State of Iraq — and Syria’s Jabhat al-Nusra will now be known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.
“It is time to announce to the Levantine people and the whole world that Jabhat al-Nusra is merely an extension and part of the Islamic State of Iraq,” he said.
He said that the Iraqi group was providing half of its budget to the conflict in Syria. Al-Baghdadi said that the Syrian group would have no separate leader but instead be led by the “people of Syria themselves” — implying that he would be in charge in both countries.

The formal merger of such a high-profile Syrian rebel group to Al Qaeda is likely to spark concerns among backers of the opposition who are enemies of the global terror network, including both Western countries and Gulf Arab states. It may increase resentment of Jabhat al-Nusra among other rebel factions. Rebels have until now respected the radical group’s fighters for their prowess on the battlefield, but a merger with Al Qaeda will complicate any effort to send arms to rebels from abroad.

A website linked to Jabhat al-Nusra known as al-Muhajir al-Islami — the Islamic emigrant — confirmed the merger.
The authenticity of neither message could be independently confirmed, but statements posted on major militant websites are rarely disputed by extremist groups afterward.

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2..._shows_militant_groups_rising_confidence.html
Angocachi
Roland niccolo and donkey Thomas777 Stubby

Thrilling!

Muslim Women Against Femen (MWAF) has provoked a strong response from Femen.

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Femen leader Inna Shevchenko
“The letter is obviously written not in feminist rhetoric at all, they are making accusations of racism.
“Being born in a post USSR country [Ukraine] I know it's a common trait of dictatorial countries to promote the official position of the government pretending that it's backed by the people.
“I don't deny the fact that there Muslim women who will say they are free and hijab is their choice and right.
“So, sisters, (I prefer to talk to women anyway, even knowing that behind them are bearded men with knives). You say to us that you are against Femen but we are here for you and for all of us, as women are the modern slaves and it's never a question of colour of skin.
“You say you live the way you want. Being the fifth wife in a harem, the maximum you can be is the favourite wife…right?
“You say we talk about you because we are irritated only by bearded men who pray five times per day.
“We have enough bearded bastards in our part of the world, the beard of Russian patriarch Kirill [a Russian Orthodox bishop who is a supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin] would win a competition of 'holy beards' and some people even say that he is so connected to the God so he is praying 30 times a day.
“Sisters, we don’t care how many times your men are praying, but we care a lot what do they do in between.
“We care a lot about violence and aggression, we care when your fathers, brothers and husbands are raping and killing, when they call to stone your sisters, we care a lot when they burn embassies and all that for Allah!
“In our actions the people we are attacking are the one who are constantly oppressing women, covering them, disrespecting them, raping them, beating them whether they are religious or not. But if they do it in name of religion then we can do nothing but tell them their religion is worth nothing.
“We would never talk about Allah or Jesus and other fantasies if those fantasies did not affect human rights.
“You claim that we bring you our idea from our part of the world and you don't need it.
“The idea of freedom doesn't have anything to do with nationality or colour of skin.
“There is no set of human rights for Europeans and another for Arabs or Americans, it’s universal. And we are going to keep fighting for all of us, for our right for freedom.
“We are going to fight with you, with Arab women, like Aliaa Elmahdy, [Egyptian internet activist], like Amina and I hope like you.
“And you can put as many scarves as you want if you are free tomorrow to take it off and to put it back the next day but don't deny millions of your sisters who have fear behind their scarfs, don't deny that there are million of your sisters who have been raped and killed because they are not following wish of Allah!
“We are here to scream about that.
“You say we are Islamophobes, just recently we heard from anti-gay Catholics that we are Christianophobes.
“Yes, I’m scared of all your religions because all of them are bleeding. I’m an Atheist and I cannot say that you are an Atheistophobe as there is nothing that you can be scared of.
“ You personally have rights to believe in whatever you want, the same as me but until the moment there are no stones, bullets and blood in your religion we are going to fight it.
“Often, I dream about a world with religions that are only in your houses or churches and don't appear in other places.
“And do you know what I see? I see a world without Serbs, Croats and Muslims being massacred, without 9/11, without witchhunts, without 7/7, a world without suicide bombers and without the Taliban, without Israeli-Palestinian wars, without persecution of Jews as ‘Christ-killers’, without Northern Ireland troubles, without Crusades, a world where are no public beheadings of blasphemers and no flogging of female skin for the crime of showing an inch of it.
“See you on the battle lines!” ​
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From the Femen website;

FEMEN Topless Jihad frightened to death of islamists regimes in North Africa. In some countries of the region (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia) the propaganda against FEMEN is conducted at the State level. FEMEN are presented as "agents of the West", "colonialists" that are carrying the threat of moral and cultural degradation of women. In the attack on FEMEN thrown women's organizations that are also controlled by the Islamists, even children assure us of the advantages of hijab over bikinni.
Women of the Maghreb, lets resist isalamists propaganda, we have a common enemy-the SHARIA! We must stop them! If we do not, in the name of Allah, tomorrow they will start to hammer you with stones and burned with acid facial! We can hear you even when you keep silent! Women, many centuries we have been slaves, Islamists are scared and hate us, those who are free and keep fighting!
Long live the new womens ' Arab spring! Death to Sharia!