Islamist Threat Arrives in Switzerland

[Guest chilipeppers]

The Islamist Threat Arrives in Switzerland, time to take heads out of the sand and take a closer look at what is going on around the world.

" Salman bin Fahd Al-Odah is a preacher of global influence and is one of the senior figures of the fundamentalist Islamic Wahhabi movement in Saudi Arabia as well as a close associate of Osama bin Laden. He was imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for his extremist ideologies from 1994 until 1999. Even after his imprisonment, he adopts the call to armed struggle against the infidel Western countries in his writings."

- A report filed by the Ministry of Justice in Switzerland, May 2007

In another sign of the spread of Islam within Europe, last month, Swiss Muslims announced their plan to open " Europe's biggest Islamic center" in the capital city of Bern. The center is estimated to cover 84 acres and to cost as much as $66 million to build.

Switzerland seems to be an unlikely locus for a battle over jihadist Islamism, but according to reports, its Muslim citizens, who make up about 5% of the total population, increasingly look to radical Middle East clerics for spiritual guidance. The country is also home to a controversial professor, Tariq Ramadan, whose visa to come to America was revoked by the State Department, and reports indicate there has been a rising tension between Muslims and non-Muslims there. In what could be considered pouring fuel on a fire, two weeks ago, the League of Swiss Muslims invited Sheik Salman bin Fahd Al-Odah of Saudi Arabia to participate in their annual conference. cont. http://www.nysun.com/article/55439

good read here too

http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/gre...r_of_words_too/

Extremists winning war of words, too

SIX years after the 9/11 terror attacks that destroyed the World Trade Centre in New York and killed almost 3000 people, a majority of American Muslims do not believe the attacks were carried out by Arabs. And more than one-quarter of young US Muslims believe suicide bombings can be justified in some circumstances.

These shocking and tragic findings, which come from the Pew Research Centre, tell us much about why the war against Islamist terror is going to last for generations.

The West is losing the information and propaganda war against Islamist extremism. It is not losing because it is being insufficiently kind to Muslims at home or in the Middle East.

As Britain’s Tony Blair wrote in The Sunday Times: “Extremism will be defeated only by recognising that we have not created it ... pandering to its sense of grievance will only encourage it.”

[jbg]

Got to get down to it, Islamists are cutting us down, should have been done long ago.

Neil Young, Paraphrase of "Ohio".