Report: Hamas Members Arrested in Ambush on Egyptian Police

Egyptian authorities reportedly have arrested 11 people suspected of killing 25 Egyptian police officers in an ambush last week. Five of the suspects are Hamas members, the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat reports.

The arrests took place several days ago but were kept secret for security reasons, the newspaper reported. Three foreign nationals were among the suspects.

A Hamas spokesman denied the allegation, calling it part of an Egyptian campaign to delegitimize the group and justify Egypt's recent closing of smuggling tunnels into Hamas-run Gaza.

The25 police officers were shot "execution style" while riding in two mini-buses in the northern Sinai. It came after the Egyptian army's crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood encampments left hundreds dead. The Asharq Al-Awsat report is based on an unnamed source.

It marks the latest example of Egyptian officials linking Hamas to attacks within Egypt since the army ousted President Mohamed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood leader, last month. Officials charged Morsi with involvement in a 2011 jailbreak they allege was orchestrated by Hamas.

The attack freed 30 Muslim Brotherhood members and left 14 security officers dead.

Tunisians Renew Protests Against Islamist Government

Tunisians launched a week of protests Saturday demanding the resignation of the Islamist-led government. The birthplace of the Arab Spring has been embroiled in turmoil ever since opposition politician Mohamed Brahmi was assassinated last month, allegedly by Salafist gunmen.

"We tried you, you failed, now leave," protesters chanted.

Opposition leaders say the Ennadha Party, which won 41 percent of the seats in Tunisia's Constituent Assembly, is incompetent and has done little to provide security. A third of the Constituent Assembly has withdrawn and its speaker has suspended the legislature's work since Brahmi's assassination.

Tunisia also faces severe economic difficulties similar to those in Egypt that led to mass protests prior to the toppling of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi. Standard & Poor's recently downgraded Tunisia's credit rating to near junk, citing economic and security problems.

Jihadists connected with Al-Qaida's North African franchise have targeted Tunisian soldiers in the Jebel Chaambi mountains of southwestern Tunisia. The unrest became so bad that Tunisian Gen. Rachid Ammar warned just before resigning as head of Tunisia's army in June that "Tunisia could become like Somalia."

"Other countries have the economic resources to fight terrorism but we have nothing," Ammar said in an Associated Press report. "I see in Tunisia today signs that make me afraid and keep me from sleeping."

The ruling Ennadha party condemned violence by the al-Qaida linked jihadists, but Tunisian secularists strain to see a difference between Ennadha and the jihadists. "Ennadha and the Salafists are on and the same," said Zied Miled, a leading opposition figure who once was part of Ennadha's coalition government.

The fall of Egyptian President Mohamed has emboldened Tunisia's opposition, which is calling for an independent group to run the country before new elections can be held.

"Since Ennadha came to power we have been suffering," protester Nejet Brissi told the BBC, echoing the concerns of Egyptian protesters who took to the streets against Morsi in June. "We have been crushed by the rising cost of living. There is no security anymore. We are living in fear of terrorists."

Ennadha shows no signs of giving in.

"The coalition government will not resign and will continue its duties until national dialog reaches a consensus agreement that guarantees the completion of the democratic transition and the organization of free and fair elections," party leader Rachid Ghannouchi said last week.

Berkeley Prof: Anti-Morsi Egyptians Are Islamophobic

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi's ouster has Hatem Bazian screaming "Islamophobia" in an Aug. 20 column published on Al-Jazeera's website.

His argument makes it clear that, to Bazian, director of the University of California, Berkeley's Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project, Islamophobia is not an irrational fear of Muslims and their faith. Rather, it is the mere opposition to the Islamist political agenda advanced by Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Since Morsi's ouster as president last month, Egypt's military "unleashed a deliberate 'Othering' campaign against the Brotherhood and its supporters that was highly Islamophobic, deploying a barrage of anti-Muslim tropes to achieve the desired outcome," Bazian wrote. "The state and the privately-owned press worked to magnify and project this otherisation message, and in a short period the protesters in the encampments were no longer Egyptians protesting the military's undemocratic actions but a 'terrorist' breeding ground."

None of this explains what drove 30 million Egyptians into the street to demand Morsi's ouster in the first place. To Bazian, protests of historic magnitude are signs of anti-Muslim bigotry. And what of Egypt's military and security apparatus, which responded to the people's wishes, and are dominated by Muslims? Islamophobes! How about Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the grand imam of Al-Azhar, the highest clerical authority in Sunni Islam, who blessed Morsi's removal? Muslim hater!

He wasn't out to defend the Brotherhood or Morsi, Bazian wrote, acknowledging some of their numerous failures in power. But when the military responded to the people's demand for change, "an effective Islamophobic campaign [was] deployed to bring it about."

Morsi's ouster "will give a great ideological boost for the Islamophobes in many parts of the world and will immediately negate any efforts at remedying Muslim standing and image across the globe," Bazian wrote. "By declaring 'war on terror' and stereotyping Muslim political parties in negative ways, this will only complicate and prevent a normative political maturation and resolution of historical and contemporary religious contradictions."

Implicit in Bazian's analysis is the idea that only the Muslim Brotherhood represents authentic Islam, and those who acted against it are somehow un-Islamic. That goes for tens of millions of Egyptian Muslims.

But his argument is undermined by statements from Brotherhood leaders inciting their followers to violence after Morsi's fall, and Amnesty International citing the Islamist group for killing and torturing opponents in its encampments.

Bazian nevertheless rejects any linkage involving the Muslim Brotherhood and accusations of terrorism as inherently bigoted, concluding: "The Egyptian military and the elite have hitched its horse onto the Islamophobic wagon and will ride it into power, wealth and destruction."

Please. Egypt is a nation of Muslims with an officer corps dominated by Muslims. They aren't acting out of an unwarranted fear of Islam, but out of reasonable frustration after living under Islamist rule for a year. Bazian's column simply offers another example of invoking "Islamophobia" to stifle such critical assessments.

Australian Islamic Cleric Incites Violence

An online video of an Australian Islamic cleric calling for Hindus and Buddhists to be killed is under investigation by South Australian police.

"The YouTube clip is an edited version of a longer sermon. Police will examine the entire content of the sermon to gain the full context and determine whether any crime has been committed," a statement said.

The video, published last week by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), contains excerpts from a sermon by Australian cleric Sheikh Sharif Hussein. He attacks and curses Jews, Australian troops, former Prime Minister John Howard, and President Obama.

He calls Australian soldiers "crusader pigs" and accuses them of helping British and American troops rape women in Iraq, claiming that "The Australian participation in the Crusaders' war on Iraq is 6 per cent. This is out of approximately 365,000 Crusader pigs sent to Iraq, during the term of (Mr Howard), Allah's wrath be upon him."

He also threatens President Obama: "Listen, oh Obama, oh enemy of Allah, you who kiss the shoes and feet of the Jews. Listen! The day will come when you are trampled upon by the pure feet of the Muslims." Finally, he exhorts "Oh Allah, count the Buddhists and the Hindus one by one. Oh Allah, count them and kill them to the very last one."

The MEMRI clip is from a March 22 sermon, delivered during Friday prayers at the Islamic Da'wah Centre of South Australia. Wagdy Elgeezawy of the Da'wah center said Hussein's comments were not intended to incite violence but rather "were a call for Allah to exact revenge against those who commit war crimes against Muslims." He claims that the MEMRI video was "selectively edited by pro-Jewish elements and calculated to portray Islam in a bad light."

Hussein is certainly not the first Australian radical preacher to make such comments. Ibrahim Saddiq Conlan called for the overthrow of the Australian legal system, noting that "Democracy is evil, the parliament is evil and legislation is evil." Sheik Haron openly promoted jihad against the West and celebrated the deaths of Australians in war and in the Victorian bushfires. Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali claimed that women who do not wear the hijab are like "uncovered meat."

A 2007 report claimed that Australia had a larger percentage of Muslim youth at risk of turning to radical Islam than any other Western nation, noting that there were "3,000 in 'ideological sleeper cells' in Sydney alone."

Waleed Alkhazrajy, a spokesman for the Islamic Society of South Australia, added that he hopes the video does not provoke retribution. "We don't want people to misunderstood these remarks and believe this represents the wider Muslim community view, and then they start to attack members of our community…" In fact, the inevitable outcome is that the incitement issue is soon sidelined and the focus shifts to police fearing for Sheikh Sharif Hussein's safety.

Study Shows Radical Islamist Dominance in Terror Plots

With the guilty verdicts rendered today in the case of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan, we are reminded of the threat radical Islamic terrorism poses to the American homeland. A report filed by the Washington Free Beacon on Aug. 16 focused on the threat of domestic terrorism. That report cited research conducted by the CI Centre, a Washington, D.C.-area national security think-tank founded by retired FBI official David G. Major.

The CI Centre identified 148 domestic terror plots since 2001. Of those, 114 were motivated by the radical Islamist "Salafist doctrine." That's the CI Centre's terminology for those "motivated by Caliphate doctrine." So among the nearly 150 domestic terrorist plots, 77 percent were motivated by radical Islam.

The CI Centre research identified 398 suspects involved in those 148 plots. Among them, the CI Centre culled out four that arguably could have been included in the "Salafist" group but they chose to consider separately. Those were the DC snipers, the Liberty City Seven (Miami), a "state sponsor" case (the suspect was Manssor Arbabsiar) and the LAX El-AL shooting. Including those four additional plots increases the 77 percent to nearly 80 percent of the domestic based terror plots involving some variant of radical Islam.

The CI Centre research essentially parallels the research conducted by IPT more than two years ago from available Department of Justice (DOJ) records concerning terrorism related prosecution cases. At the time, we found more than 80 percent of all convictions tied to international terrorist groups and homegrown terrorism since 9/11 involved defendants driven by a radical Islamist agenda.

These studies clearly show that, while not all terror plots against the U.S. and terrorists and their supporters arrested within the U.S. involve radical Islamists, the significant majority do. To ignore factual reality is foolhardy and risky.

9/11 Group Pushes Support for Terror Finance Legislation

A petition urging Congress to pass new terror financing legislation is being circulated by a group of 9/11 victims' families and survivors of the attacks.

Three New York lawmakers plan to introduce the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act when Congress returns after Labor Day. The bill would allow American victims to sue foreign people and entities for financing terrorist attacks. Courts have blocked such claims against Saudis alleged to have aided the 9/11 plot.

It has a bi-partisan group of co-sponsors, including Democrat Charles Schumer in the Senate, Republican House member Peter King and Democrat Jerrold Nadler, all from New York. While Americans widely support law enforcement actions to prevent terror attacks and curb terror financing, this is at least the third time the bill is being offered.

"No individual or country should be shielded from being held accountable for their role in the most heinous act of terrorism to ever occur in the United States," Schumer said in announcing a similar 2011 effort. "This bill will send a clear message to Saudi Arabia and other sponsors of terror: if you attack the United States, you will be held accountable. It will also allow the families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks to receive some justice for the losses they experienced on that fateful day."

The petition drive by 9/11 Families United for Justice Against Terrorism aims to show Congress a broad base of support for the bill.

"Never in our history has it been more important for us to end the flow of money to terrorists whose dangerous ideology led to the attacks of 9/11 and the murder of almost 3,000 innocent souls," the petition says. "We know al Qaeda and other terrorist networks are still active and receiving funding as demonstrated by the recent closing of U.S. Embassies across the Middle East in the wake of terror threats and reportedly 3 al Qaeda-assisted prison breaks in Iraq, Pakistan and Libya that freed over 1,500 dangerous prisoners. We need this bill and urgently need your help."

Click here to sign the petition.

Muslim Brotherhood memo blesses Egyptian church burnings

A memo posted on the Facebook page of a local office of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party obtained by the Investigative Project on Terrorism shows a clear call to incitement against Egypt's Coptic Christian population, giving its blessing to the burning of churches.

Over 40 Coptic churches have been burned by Muslim Brotherhood supporters since the Egyptian police cleared demonstrators protesting the overthrow of former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi on Tuesday. Brotherhood supporters also reportedly blocked the road between Cairo and Aswan in southern Egypt looking for Copts, taking seven Copts hostage Thursday. They were later released after a ransom of 150,000 Egyptian pounds, roughly $21,500, was paid.

Muslim Brotherhood rioters who torched St. George Cathdral in Sohag were heard screaming "Allahu Akbar!" as they carried out their deed.

Coptic leaders say the Muslim Brotherhood's violent onslaught against Christians has been unprecedented.

"It never happened before in history that such a big number of churches were attacked on one day," Bishop Thomas, a Coptic Orthodox bishop in Assiut told Al Jazeera. "We normally used to have attacks once a month or so."

The memo's discovery comes a week after leading Freedom and Justice Party politician Abdul Mawgoud Dardery appeared at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. and said that Egypt was a model for Christian-Muslim relations.

"The Pope of the Church (Coptic Pope Tawadros II) took part in the ouster of the first elected Islamist president. The Pope of the Church charges Islamic Sharia with underdevelopment [and] stagnation," the memo from the Freedom and Justice Party's branch in Egypt's Helwan Governorate, near Cairo, said amid other accusations. "After all of this do people wonder why they burn churches? Burning houses of worship is a crime.

"And for the Church to adopt a war against Islam and Muslims is the worst crime. For every action is a reaction."

The memo also attacked Pope Tawadros II for having supported the June 30 Tamarod demonstrations that led to the military's toppling of Morsi.

He was not alone among Egypt's religious leaders in backing the military's decision to topple Morsi. Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the grand imam of Al-Azhar, the highest clerical authority in Sunni Islam, also supported Morsi's ouster.

The Brotherhood's political arm also suggested Pope Tawadros was complicit in the deaths of the over 600 Muslim Brotherhood demonstrators, some of whom were armed with guns, after police cleared them from their encampments.

The phrase "war against Islam" has consistently been used by Islamic extremists to recruit terrorist fighters and to encourage terrorist attacks.

Al-Qaida leader Zayman al-Zawahiri, himself an Egyptian and former Brotherhood member, attacked Pope Tawadros and the Copts last week, blaming them for Morsi's downfall.

Brotherhood supporters in the city of al-Saff have been drawing check marks on houses owned by Copts to mark them for arson.

Christians say the Muslim Brotherhood wants to see all of them exiled from Egypt, where they have lived for almost 2,000 years. Analysts suggest that the Brotherhood sees the Copts, who comprise between 10 and 20 percent of the population, as easy scapegoats in the Brotherhood's attack on Egypt's military rulers.

Islamists rationalize their attacks on the largely defenseless Coptic community, saying they are counterattacking the Copts for having allegedly endorsed the crackdown.

"When Pope Tawadros comes out after a massacre to thank the military and the police, then don't accuse me of sectarianism," Mamdouh Hamdi, a Brotherhood supporter, told the New York Times.

These actions increasingly support the conclusion that the Copts' fear that the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist organization and not the benign political force its defenders have made it out to be.

Dr. Morad Ali, a spokesman for the Freedom and Justice Party, denied the authenticity of the memo and others like it on the Internet in a statement published by NBCNews.com, saying they were fakes intended to stir up sectarian violence.

"(The party) stand firmly against any attack -- even verbal -- against churches," Ali said in a statement. "Our revolution is peaceful."

Egypt Warns Hamas Over Jihadi Threats

An Egyptian official has warned Hamas that Egypt will take "the appropriate measure" in response to its "silence" following calls by the Gaza-based Jaishal-Ummah (Army of the Nation) to wage "jihad" against Egypt's military rulers.

The Egyptian media has accused Hamas of conspiring to support the Muslim Brotherhood since Egyptian Defense Minister Gen. Abdul Fattah al-Sisi deposed Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi on July 3, an accusation which Hamas has denied.

"We condemn Hamas's decision to allow extremist groups in Gaza to announce jihad against Egypt, and we believe that this decision to allow such Gaza-based groups to publicly attack Egypt verifies the Egyptian allegations that Hamas allows [groups] from Gaza to pose a threat to Egyptian national security," the official was quoted by the Palestinian Ma'an News Agency as having said.

Just last month Egyptian troops intercepted what they said was a shipment of Hamas rockets intended for Muslim Brotherhood fighters in Cairo.

Abu Hafs al-Maqadisi, the group's leader, made his call Thursday in the wake of the Egyptian military's move to liquidate the Muslim Brotherhood's sit-ins in Cairo that left over 600 dead. Maqadisi called on Egyptians to overthrow "the tyrant" and establish an Islamic state and expressed his hope that one of al-Sisi's bodyguards would kill him, according to The Long War Journal.

Abu Muhammad al Maqdisi, a former mentor of the late jihadist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood by the military showed that al-Qaida's bullets rather than ballots strategy had been vindicated.

Posters on jihadist bulletin boards have suggested that now was the time for jihadists to go to Egypt to exact revenge against the Egyptian military.

"It is no longer possible to turn a blind eye to the obvious fact that they [secularists and the idolatrous disbelievers] are hostile to Islam and they wage war against it and they hate it," Abdullah Muhammad Mahmoud of the jihadi group Dawa'at al-Haq Foundation for Studies and Research wrote in a jihad forum, the Long War Journal reported. "If jihad isn't declared today to defend the religion, then when will it be declared?!" He continued: "Will Muslims wait until they are prevented from praying in mosques?! Will they wait until the beard becomes a charge that is punishable by imprisonment?! Will they wait until their sons enter prisons in the tens of thousands to be tortured and spend tens of years of their lives in their depths?!

"O Muslims of Egypt, if you don't do jihad today, then only blame yourselves tomorrow."

Hamas for its part condemned the Egyptian military's assault on the Muslim Brotherhood encampments, but has stopped short of publicly calling for its people to fight against the Egyptian military. Hamas has also called on the Arab League and the United Nations to intervene in Egypt to "stop the bloodshed."

Another Hamas figure described the Egyptian military's action as "a U.S.-Zionist conspiracy."

Report: Iran, Hamas Trying to Sneak Syrian Arms into West Bank

While there's obvious concern about radical Islamists smuggling weapons into Syria as part of the fight against dictator Bashar al-Assad, an intelligence analysis agency says Iran may be funneling dangerous arms in the opposite direction.

A recent analysis from Stratfor cites the arrest of five Syrian arms and drug smugglers in Jordan last Tuesday. They carried anti-tank and surface-to-air missiles and assault rifles. Jordan has been used as a supply route for arms meant for Syrian rebels. But Stratfor notes that the suspects were picked up heading south, away from Syria.

It cites unnamed sources who say the smugglers were trying to take weapons out of Syria and give them to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) in the West Bank. The PFLP-GC has close ties to Syrian intelligence, and the report offers a theory that the secular terrorist group was working in service of the Islamists in Hamas.

Confusing the matter is a series of conflicting alliances over Syria. Shia Iran and its Lebanese terrorist proxy Hizballah are propping Assad up with weapons and troops. The Sunni Hamas, however, has sided with the rebels. This has put a chill in relations among the parties, with Iran dramatically cutting its financial support for Hamas and Hamas moving its operations out of Syria.

But Stratfor theorizes that necessity is bringing the parties' interests back into alignment. The failure of the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt has left Hamas isolated, and Iran "is trying to compensate for the sectarian challenges confronting its allies in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq by widening its militant proxy network wherever it can. Part of this strategy involves building up a presence in the West Bank to threaten Israel. This strategy also falls in line with Hamas' interest in undermining Fatah," which rules the West Bank.

If correct, the development is troubling for Israel, which already faces rocket fire targeting civilians from Gaza and now from Sinai. The arms could be used to ambush Israeli soldiers. Jordan already is on high alert for weapons smuggling, and observant officers intercepted the West Bank-bound cargo, so the terrorists will not have an easy time making their deliveries. But, Stratfor finds, these "quiet efforts are worth noting, particularly as Hamas and Iran are now finding reasons to repair their relationship after a period of strain."

Read the full analysis here.

Political Injection at the Royal Albert Hall

In the sentiment of Laura Ingraham's famously penned "Shut up and Sing," the injection of politics onto ill-prepared audiences who naively assume they will be entertained is both offensive and highly divisive. Music is music, and there is a largely misplaced assumption made by entertainers and musicians that their fans look to them for political guidance rather than simply enjoying their musical talents.

Violin virtuoso Nigel Kennedy and his quartet performed Vivaldi's Four Seasons last Thursday at the Royal Albert Hall. They were joined by the Palestine Strings in a concert broadcast live as part of the BBC Proms series. The Palestine Strings are comprised of young students attending the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music.

There's a statement implicit within the collaboration, but it must have been too subtle for Kennedy. "Ladies and gentlemen, it's a bit facile to say it, but we all know from experience in this night of music tonight that, given equality, and getting rid of apartheid, gives beautiful chance for amazing things to happen." Just a week earlier, Kennedy pontificated on a BBC Radio4 broadcast on the topic of "apartheid" in Israel, and how it should be dealt with similarly to South Africa.

One could dissect the illogic of Kennedy's argument, that if apartheid did actually exist in Israel, those Palestinian musicians would not have been present, but that would be asking a lot. One could address the glaring fallacy of his comment, since Israeli law guarantees Arab citizens equal rights and they are well represented in higher offices and political parties; but the simpler point is that an evening of classical music is not the environment for political statements, fallacious or not. Moreover, the BBC has aired the broadcast on BBC 3 with the comments intact, and plans to rebroadcast the concert in its entirety on BBC on Aug. 23, thus exposing an even wider unsuspecting audience tuning in to hear Kennedy's music.

Madonna famously received boos and jeers following a bizarre political rant during an election season concert, replete with curse words and admonitions. Her audience wanted to hear her sing, not rant. Perhaps in his next concert, Nigel Kennedy will choose to highlight a current event and just as sincerely address the massacres of innocents in Syria, the brutal treatment of the citizens of Sudan, Nigeria, or Mali, or perhaps even Egypt. Perhaps he will undertake a new political cause with every concert and even donate his proceeds to such worthy causes.

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