One person rammed his explosives-laden vehicle into the gate of the Central Hotel in Mogadishu, and another suicide bomber then entered the hotel and blew himself up, police official Capt. Mohammed Hussein told The Associated Press. The country's deputy prime minister was also among some government officials wounded by the bombings, he said.
The latest reports have confirmed the murders of these committed Christians:
“Even under the blade, some were making their last prayers and as the blade came to their neck they all cried in unison ‘Ya Rabbi Yasou’ (O My Lord Jesus) the caption by ISIS stated ‘these insisted to remain in unbelief.’ In other words, they were given the option to convert or die and every one of them refused, even unto death.”This is the important part from one of the murdering Muslims:
"All crusaders: safety for you will be only wishes, especially if you are fighting us all together. Therefore we will fight you all together. The sea you have hidden Sheikh Osama Bin Laden's body in, we swear to Allah we will mix it with your blood."
Take Niger, for example. This West African country has a population of 17 million people. About 98 percent of Niger’s inhabitants are Muslims. The remaining 350,000 consists of Christians and animists.
In January, following the Charlie Hebdo incident a continent away, Muslims ravaged Christian communities from town to town. The mobs looted, burned, desecrated, and destroyed churches while unleashing violence—including lethal violence—on vulnerable Christians. In the capital city of Niamey alone, 45 churches were burned, 173 people injured, and five murdered.
Yet it wasn’t just churches that were destroyed.
An orphanage and a school were both torched as well.
A Christian from the town of Zinder conveyed the sense of terror that has overcome his community. “They are looking for Christians. They burned everything with any Christian symbols on it, whether Catholic or Evangelical.”
Another Christian said bluntly: “We are living in fear. Many Christians won’t sleep in their own homes for fear of being attacked.”
Those who witnessed the attacks are traumatized by the memories of hordes of people, particularly young boys, ransacking their places of worship before igniting them in flames.
The archbishop of Niamey explained that the Muslim marauders were “going around asking, ‘Are you Allahu Akbar or are you Alleluia’” in their attempts to “to identify Christians in the city.” He desperately asked: “What are they going to do next?”
...
The Christians in Nigeria can relate. Since the rise of Boko Haram, roughly 3.2 million residents have left their homes. According to Open Borders, an organization dedicated to “serving persecuted Christians worldwide,” a Nigerian official told the BBC last month that as many as 2,000 people may have been murdered in the northeastern town of Baga: bodies littered the streets and the entire town had been burned to the ground.
In the Borno State capital of Maiduguri, a suicide bombing claimed the lives of 16 people and injured 20 more.
The bomber turned out to be a 10 year-old girl.
As if the displaced citizens of Nigeria and Niger didn’t already have it rough enough, Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) has just launched an investigation into reports that the refugee camps are being used for purposes of raping and child trafficking.
According to a report published by the International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR), hundreds of girls have been delivered to the slave traffic. Quoted in the report is a nurse who says that many girls were brought to her hospital upon being raped. The ICIR report also mentions that not only are refugees being enslaved and sexually brutalized; they are as well tortured with knives and fire.
Christian minorities in Islamic nations the globe over are being made to endure merciless oppression. And yet for all of the constant chatter over “Islamism” that we hear from Americans and, for that matter, such representatives of Israel as its Prime Minister, we hear little to nothing about the untold numbers of Christians who find themselves at the mercies of their murderous Islamic persecutors.
All the best Liberals are murderers. John Wilkes Booth who fatally shot Abraham Lincoln was a Democrat and committed the assassination in furtherance of southern Democrat secessionist objectives. Joseph Stalin's butchery made another famous Leftist, Adolph Hitler, look like a Sunday school teacher. It is estimated that Stalin, and his Left-wing, communist policies, were directly responsible for the deaths of 34 to 49 million people. Margaret Sanger, the mother of Planned Parenthood, responsible for propagating the barbarous butchery of infanticide, hoped to control the size of the black family by encouraging black women to abort their babies. Her liberal sensibilities were unaffected by her genocidal aspirations. The “modern”atheism that Liberalism embraces is no different than the nihilism of Nietzsche’s perspectivism, the Will to Power, and the “death of God.”Hitler found all of those concepts quite convenient in support of his “Final Solution,”leading to the murder of tens of thousands of jews in concentration camp ovens.
Liberal atheism spawned Craig Hicks and loosed him on his Muslim neighbors. His subhuman philosophy led him to value life so cheaply that he decided to murder three people, at least in part, over a dispute concerning a parking space. This incident juxtaposes a Godless philosophy of death with a theology of violent conquest. From this, a profound irony has emerged as the adherents of Muhammadanism now rally around the hashtag #MuslimLivesMatter. Since the days of the prophet, Islam has been spread by the power of the sword and by conquest. In fact, hundreds of years of Muslim incursions into the Holy Land and into the Byzantine empire sparked the Catholic Crusades. Contrary to popular history, the Crusades were both a defensive war and a pilgrimage. Two excellent articles treat this piece of Catholic history in detail here, and here. And, as Dinesh D’Souza has posited, “If the Muslim right to Jerusalem was solely by force of conquest, why wouldn't the Crusaders have the right to take it back by force?”
However, the history of Christendom, though besmirched by episodes of Catholic heresy, to include the inquisition, is one of peace, liberty, and evangelism by means of love, compassion, and intellectual engagement. Islam continues to be a religion of brutality and intolerance as any surviving Christian from Iraq or Syria can articulately attest. Not to mention the genocidal mania of Islamists regarding the annihilation of the state of Israel. Iran, an indisputably Muslim nation and a state sponsor of terror, perpetually militates for the extermination of Israel, a world-wide caliphate, and the ubiquitous application of prehistoric Sharia law. Even slavery is Muslim orthodoxy and is practiced today. All of this casts the #MuslimLivesMatter hashtag in a rather ironic light.
The triple homicide committed in Chapel Hill, North Carolina is tragic on many levels. It reveals the tragic nature of Liberalism’s atheism, which transforms rational man made in the image of God into an animalistic creature driven to barbarity by instinct and impulse. We shouldn’t feign surprise, God has revealed as much, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works…”(Psalm 14:1) It is tragic that three lives have been extinguished at the interstices of two of modernism’s great barbarities, Liberalism and Muhammadanism. Both systems are dehumanizing and produce the most abhorrent forms of violence. Calls for coexistence are simplistic and futile. Islam does not seek coexistence but only submission in matters of conscience and governance. Christianity, liberty, and democracy can no more coexist with tyranny, atheism, and Islam than can the lion lie down with the lamb—this is the ultimate irony of #MuslimLivesMatter.
To recap, Lars Vilks, a Danish cartoonist, had organized a free speech event at a café called Krudttønden. A gunman proceeded to open fire during the seminar. You can hear the shots being fired at during the event in this chilling audio clip. One man was killed in the attack; three police officers were wounded. A few hours later, shots were fired at a synagogue not far from the café. One victim was shot in the head and later died; two officers were wounded in the leg and arm. The second shooting was confirmed by Danish national police and ordered residents in Central Copenhagen to stay indoors, while the manhunt for the shooter began. The city was pretty much blocked off; no one was leaving.
In the wake of the Paris shootings, the horrors visited by ISIS upon Syria and Iraq, and the genocide being perpetrated by Boko Haram in North Africa, finally there seems to be an awakening, even among the western mainstream media and the politically correct, that there could be something endemic to Islam itself that accounts for violence occurring nearly everywhere Muslims abound. As catalogued by the website, www.religionofpeace.com, since 9/11, there have been 25,000 attacks by Muslims worldwide.
During a National Press Club address on how to combat Islamists, Admiral James A. "Ace" Lyons (U.S. Navy, Ret.), former Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet, said that under the administration of Barack Obama, the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated all of the National Security Agencies of the United States.
The 87-year-old, four star Admiral, who served the United States in the military branch of the Navy, told the National Press Club that "the transformation of America has been in full swing ever since 2008."
"President Obama's 'no show' was an embarrassment for all Americans," he continued. "But it also was a signal to the Islamic jihadis. It's one of many signals he sent over the years while he was in office."
Lyons said that there was a "hell of a job ahead of us."
And what job was he referencing? According to Admiral Lyons, it is the penetration of the Muslim Brotherhood in every single one of our national security agencies, including all of America's intelligence agencies.
He even referenced the head of the Central Intelligence Agency John Brennan as a Muslim convert, though he did not say his name.
Now, this isn't new information. We've been covering this for years. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) got raked over the coals for calling it out and specifically pointing out the Muslim Brotherhood agent Huma Abedin, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's chief deputy advisor.
Some of those we have exposed in the Obama administration are:
Additionally, Admiral Lyons said that Obama is deliberately unilaterally disarming the military and spoke to the need for the new GOP controlled congress and Military leaders to stand up to the administration and uphold their oaths.
- Arif Alikhan - Assistant Secretary for Policy Development for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security
- Mohammed Elibiary – Former Homeland Security Adviser
- Rashad Hussain - Special Envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC)
- Salam al-Marayati - Obama Adviser and founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council and is its current executive director
- Imam Mohamed Magid - Obama's Sharia Czar from the Islamic Society of North America
- Eboo Patel - Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships
Lyons went on to recount that President Jimmy Carter could have "cut off Islamic fundamentalism at the knees" when the Iranians took over the US embassy.
"He rejected what could have been a very dramatic action with minimum involvement and it would have been dead," Lyons said, speaking of Carter. "But we did not act."
He also mentioned that marine barracks bombing under President Ronald Reagan.
"We could have changed the course of history then," he continued. "It became Osama bin Laden's rallying cry. So, here we are today… political correctness has neutralized all our military leadership."
King Abdullah of Jordan isn't dithering about how ISIS isn't Islamic or delving into the political or historical justifications for terrorism, and he certainly isn't pulling any punches any more.
After ISIS released a video of its soldiers burning a Jordanian pilot alive in an iron cage, he let it be known in a speech in Congress (that apparently was ignored by the media) that he wasn't going to put up with it any more, and he backed it up with some Clint Eastwood tough talk, quoting from the movie "Unforgiven."
The exact line he quoted wasn't officially given, but the rumor mill is saying it was this one: "Any man I see out there, I’m gonna kill him. Any son of a bitch takes a shot at me, I’m not only going to kill him, I’m going to kill his wife and all his friends and burn his damn house down."
Since that speech on Tuesday, Jordan has been raining fire on ISIS in the town of Raqqa, where ISIS had filmed cheering throngs, including children, watching the pilot's immolation on big-screen TVs.
By comparison, President Obama met with Abdullah on Tuesday and afterwards used milquetoast words like "bankrupt" and "vicious" to describe ISIS, while still refusing to even mention Islamic "extremism" or Islamic anything.
While Obama was at the National Prayer Breakfast comparing ISIS to Christian Crusaders, Abdullah was assuring his people that the only problem in going after ISIS was running out of fuel or bullets.
Unlike Obama, who clearly either doesn't take ISIS seriously or who actually wants ISIS to thrive, Abdullah seems very clear on his own feelings about the al-Qaida offshoot that has grown exponentially since Obama fled from Iraq.
"Our war will be relentless," Abdullah told Jordanian television, "and will hit ISIS in their own ground."
A government spokesman told reporters, "Jordan's response will be heard by the world at large."
It's hard to imagine a more clear-cut set of villains than ISIS, which has seemingly served as a magnet for many of the worst evil-doers of the Islamic world.
Not only do the orcs of ISIS slaughter men who fight against them, but they make particular targets of women and children. A United Nations report released this week says that ISIS regularly kidnaps, rapes, enslaves, crucifies, beheads and even buries alive children who fall into its clutches.
There are no words strong enough to condemn the monsters who swell the ranks of ISIS. The only rational response of civilized men is that which King Abdullah is expressing now.
So why is President Obama holding back, even protecting the hordes of ISIS?
In response to President Barack Obama drawing a parallel between the barbaric acts of the Islamic State today with actions by Christians during the Crusades, which ended 700 years ago, evangelist Franklin Graham said there was a difference between Jesus Christ who “taught peace “ and did “not take life” versus Mohammed, who “was a warrior and killed many innocent people.”
Now, now… let’s not start spouting historical facts and realities here, Franklin Graham… we’re talking about the blatherings of a President who never saw a fact that couldn’t be ignored or twisted to fit his desired policy goals. And as for the quoted scholars, well… until they learn to sweep distasteful history under the rug, they’ll never get tenure in the Ivy League institutions that train our leaders.
Bringing up the true story of Mohammad’s life, and the unfortunate fact that the Crusades (while certainly not justifying all they did) were a response to countless prior acts of murderous Islamic jihad… er… um… prior acts of the… the “death cult” (thank you, Mr. President, that’s good) which followed the example of Mohammad and claimed to be Islamic way back then, it’s just not… appropriate. We must always support our Dear Leader’s consummately self-assured view of things.
Seriously, we can only address what’s happening today if we will be honest about it. Obviously the White House resident is a long way from being able to address reality.
The most troubling aspect of the moral equivalence President Obama tried to draw in his speech last Thursday was that Christians cannot look at the disturbance in the Middle East and make valued judgments based on the faith of the Islamic radicals.
...I have many Muslim friends, all of whom look on ISIS with distain. But none of them claim ISIS is not practicing Islam. It is just a variant of Islam. Unfortunately, it is a rapidly growing part of Islam. Islam itself means "submission," and our president goes to great lengths to avoid pointing that out.
...Obama's Morally Confused Prayer Breakfast Lecture
The president and intellectual leaders in the United States are not people of faith. They reject deity, having constructed gods of their own from government or self-interest. Morals are passe, faith is mythology and everybody is ultimately the same. These people cannot give moral clarity to the causes of the day because it would require them to take a moral stand, which they are not capable of doing.
When in the Illinois State Senate, Barack Obama was the only senator to speak in opposition to legislation that would require life-saving treatment for a child born alive after an abortion. Our president took the position that a child, born alive, could still be killed. He is, perhaps, the last person we should let lecture any of us about faith, considering the only faith he seems to possess is in himself.
Journalist Jonah Goldberg, a Jew, writes, "When Obama alludes to the evils of medieval Christianity, he fails to acknowledge the key word: 'medieval.' What made medieval Christianity backward wasn't Christianity but medievalism." Mr. Goldberg continues, "President Obama can't bring himself to call the Islamic State 'Islamic,' but he's happy to offer a sermon about Christianity's alleged crimes at the beginning of the last millennium."
President Obama concluded his presentation with, "And so, as people of faith, we are summoned to push back against those who try to distort our religion."
Our religion? As one who, as president, still wears on the third finger, left hand, a gold ring with the inscription, "There is no God except Allah," one has to wonder just what religion he references.
In the most national prayer breakfast, Obama diverted the subject from ISIS and began to express his hatred against the Christian Crusades. The reason for this is because Obama hates Christians and Christianity, and is himself a Muslim jihadist. He continues to support Islam while hating Christianity, and heavily funds and supports the jihadists in Syria. His own family are Muslims and work with terrorists.
The Crusades go against everything Obama stands for....
This story, unto itself, explains why Obama would hate the Crusades: they go against everything that he is striving for now. He is supporting the jihadists, and if the Crusaders were alive today, they would not only fight against the jihadists, but they would also fight against him.
The Muslim Brotherhood has been defined as an Islamic terrorist organization by some, but not by Barack Hussein Obama. He supported them in their rise to power in Egypt back during the revolution that ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Obama supported the election of Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi as the new president of the ancient country.
Once the Muslim Brotherhood seized power, Morsi declared his intentions to establish an Islamic caliphate with Egypt being the central point of power. However, about 10% of Egypt’s population is Christian and you just can’t have a caliphate with that many Christians around. Initially, Morsi said that all of Egypt’s Christians and other non-Muslims would have three alternatives: convert to Islam, leave the country or pay a special high tax to remain in the country.
But less than a month after making his pronouncement, Morsi’s government troops and police began a genocidal assault on Egypt’s Christians. Women were raped, men and women were beaten and murdered, some being burned alive. Morsi’s henchmen also looted and burned the homes, business and churches belonging to Christians.
The whole time this was being reported to world, Obama continued to support the Muslim Brotherhood and their terrorist attacks on Egypt’s Christians and anyone who opposed Morsi and his gang. At one point, Congress had enough and froze millions of dollars of aid and weapons that were headed to Egypt. That wasn’t going to stop the White House’s resident Muslim as he illegally bypassed Congress and ordered the money and weapons released. Obama even authorized the sale of a number of jet fighters to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood leadership. Obama’s support helped the Muslim Brotherhood to continue their attack of Egypt’s Christians.
Fortunately for the people of Egypt, Morsi’s reign of terror lasted just under a year. His opponents staged a coup and arrested Morsi and many of his henchmen. Some Egyptian attorneys associated with the new government even file criminal charges in international court against Obama and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for their support of the Muslim Brotherhood’s terrorist actions.
Even though Morsi and a number of other Muslim Brotherhood leaders were jailed In Egypt, the organization is still alive and growing in power, but not in Egypt. According to a report by Tim Brown on BarbWire.com:
"With Barack Obama in office, you knew this was eventually going to be true. Just prior to the dissolving of the Muslim Brotherhood as a political party in Egypt and the declaration of the group to be a terrorist organization last year, the Muslim Brotherhood decided start flexing their muscles in the United States. Last year, the US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), an open Muslim Brotherhood front group, began to build a political party straight out of Barack Obama’s stomping grounds of Chicago, Illinois. Now, it’s in full swing.The organization that established the political framework is composed of the designated terror group Hamas-CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) and six other terrorist tied organizations. The groups involved in the USCMO are as follows:Obviously the recent political aspirations of the Muslim Brotherhood have Barack Hussein Obama’s full support. Why else would they have chosen Chicago as their starting point? That is Obama’s political home and he still has a lot of support and connections in the Windy City.
The organization’s website states, “COMMUNITY BUILDING IS a core commandment for all Muslims, everywhere. Love of God forms its foundation. Its framework is broad inclusion. Its design is unity of purpose not opinion. Its motive is a disposition to act together on knowledge for the good of all people, not in the interest of a party or group.”
- Muslim American Society (MAS)
- American Muslims for Palestine (AMP)
- Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
- Islamic Circle of North American (ICNA)
- Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA)
- Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA)
- Muslim Ummah of North America (MUNA)
Muslims already have control of Dearborn, Michigan and are well on their way to taking control of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Muslim judges here in the US have already made rulings based upon sharia law instead of US law and we now have Muslims serving in Congress. Will Chicago become the first major city to succumb to Muslim rule and if so, I’m sure it will be dominated by the terrorist group known as the Muslim Brotherhood.
It was Jan. 16 and by the week’s end Muslims had set fire to at least 45 churches and looted the homes of a number of Christian ministers. Ten people were killed. Followers of Christ fled for the lives.A bible survived one of the church burnings.
The protests were over the cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad that were published by the French magazine Charlie Hebdo.
The horrors of that weekend did not generate all that much press coverage. There were no solidarity marches for Niger’s tiny Christian community. There was no wall-to-wall cable news coverage. Nor could I find any mention of the burnings on the White House website.
The Associated Press account was a mere four paragraphs.
The New York Times published a dispatch from Reuters that appeared sympathetic to the mob. The story included quotes from a Muslim explaining why they were angry — but there were no quotes from the Christian victims.
Likewise, USA Today’s coverage lacked any commentary from pastors or priests. But they did find an imam who reminded the newspaper’s readers that the Islamic faith is peaceful.
“Don’t forget that Islam is against violence,” he told USA Today as the ruins of 45 Christian churches smoldered across the nation.
[Franklin] Graham posted the photograph of the Bible on his Facebook page, along with a sobering thought.
“Can you imagine the international outcry if this were the Koran?” he asked.
“I read that,” Neal told me. “That would be huge if it had been a Koran.”
Could you imagine the international outcry if Christians had burned 45 mosques?
But that’s not what happened in Niger. The Christian community did not retaliate. They did not respond with angry voices.
“That’s because we are people of mercy and grace and faith,” Neal told me. “We don’t react in the flesh and we don’t react out of anger.”
Indeed, Christian leaders in Niger held a press conference and announced they forgave those who burned down their churches.
People can call the Muslim Brotherhood and their front groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Islamic Society of North America and others as "harmless" and "peaceful" all they want. However, the reality is quite different. Following a meeting with the Obama State Department, the Muslim Brotherhood declared an open jihad in Egypt.
The State Department hosted a delegation of Muslim Brotherhood-aligned leaders concerning their opposition to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. One of those delegates, Waleed Sharaby posed for a picture, which he posted on his Facebook page. Note the infamous four finger R4BIA he flashes for the camera, the same hand sign put up by Obama's former Homeland Security advisor Mohamed Elibiary.
What's the Obama administration strategy against an enemy his denial help to build? Operation fetal position. Waiting for Allah's soldiers.
NBC News buries the lede, of course. Enemedia practices. Here is what the media never says: under President Obama the global jihad has grown to proportions unseen after the defeat of the Ottoman caliphate.
"ISIS Escapee: They Are Planning To Do Something Bigger Than 9/11," Western Journalism by Justin Koski, Western JournalismIslamic State (ISIS) Escapee: ISIS Plotting Something Bigger Than 9/11
A British medical student – who went looking for ISIS on a search for a friend's twin daughters who left home to marry terrorists – lived with ISIS, earned their trust, and managed to escape to Turkey. He said that ISIS, or Daesh, are planning something bigger than 9/11.
"They want to be more better than al-Qaeda," Ahmad Rashidi said to NBC's Richard Engel on Meet the Press. "They want to do something more better than the World Trade Center."
He added that the U.S. bombings are making Daesh 'happy' because they elevate the group's status to that of al-Qaeda.
Rashidi said that he found the women he was looking for, but ran into their husbands along the way. They thought he was a spy – or worse, a journalist – and proceeded to torture him. Miraculously, he managed to earn their trust by saying he wanted to join their cause. They allowed him to wander through the facilities, and he quickly learned of their hatred and intentions.
"They are full of hate. You can see the fire in the eyes," he said. "If you smell like European, they are going to kill you."
The West is being dismantled. And not with the permission of those who built and maintain it. It’s being destroyed from within, by a tyrannical system parading as a religion. But how is this possible living under freedom, with free expression enshrined in our foundational documents?
It’s made possible by those IN the West: Who have our Enemy’s back.
Those elected and privileged enough to be granted the position of protecting freedom for all, have instead …because of political expediency/myopia, selfish goals, and the loss of ALL testicular fortitude…become the advocates for tyranny.
Islam apologists…or as Allen West (and friend Greg Mosing) coined it: Islamapologists, are those who ignore the heart of Islamic terrorist behavior…and immediately jump to the defense of this violent ideology, while implicating the victims or ANYONE who questions the integrity of Islam.
Some Islamapologists know EXACTLY what they’re doing, like John Esposito, Nathan Lean, Barack Obama…and anyone at CAIR. And others defend Islam out of sheer ignorance of the ideology, simply parroting the erroneous reports they’ve received in the mainstream media. Yet others…like Western leaders…do it out of political expediency, so they are careful not to publicly know TOO much about Islam, or they will be forced to do what’s right for the people they serve.
Islamapologists are some of the most dangerous people living under freedom today. They are as culpable as the Jihadists themselves, because they are the gatekeepers of freedom. Instead of aiding in the preservation of the freedom so many died to protect, they have chosen to give access to those who long to kill, steal and destroy all that has made free people rejoice in safety.
And they roll out this “welcome” mat (prayer rug)…with every lie they disseminate, that polishes the image of Islam.
Thanks to Allen West…we can now identify Islamapologists, like President Obama: They’re the ones with the muddy prayer rugs.
Shalom through strength…
Sen. Kelly Ayotte pressed ahead Sunday with calls to get the Obama administration to declare war against radical Islam, as groups such as the Islamic State and Al Qaeda gain strength across continents, following the purported beheading by ISIS of a Japanese journalist.
“It very much matters because you have to define your enemy,” Ayotte, R-N.H., told “Fox News Sunday.” “The administration should spend less time on political correctness and more time on a strategy."....
Twice last month, the White House struggled with trying to define terrorism.
In the days after a deadly terror spree last month in France, President Obama was criticized for purposely avoiding calling the attacks an example of “Islamic extremism,” settling for the more generic “violent extremism.”
DAMASCUS, Syria – A bomb exploded on a bus near Damascus' medieval city center on Sunday, killing at least seven people, including Lebanese Shiite pilgrims, according to Syrian activists and Lebanese media.
Another 20 people were wounded in the blast, which occurred near the Damascus citadel and the centuries-old Hamidiyeh bazaar, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists inside Syria....
The broadcaster said the explosion was caused by a bomb planted on the bus.
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria – Nigerian troops Sunday repelled Islamic extremists who attacked from four fronts on Maiduguri, the biggest city in northeast Nigeria, with several civilians killed by aerial bombs and grenades and mortar shells on the ground.
Soldiers said hundreds of insurgents died.
Terrified residents fled homes shaking from five hours of heavy artillery fire and streamed in from the outskirts of the besieged city of 2 million, already crowded with another 200,000 refugees from the fighting.
For weeks Boko Haram has been closing in on Maiduguri, the groups spiritual birthplace....
In Maiduguri, a senior army officer said the militants were "everywhere," attacking from all four roads leading into the city.
Another officer said hundreds of insurgents, as many as 500, were killed before they took flight Sunday and many weapons were recovered including artillery guns and rocket-propelled grenades....
The government declared a state of emergency in three northeastern states in May 2013 after Boko Haram took control of dozens of villages and towns. Troops quickly drove the insurgents out but since then, ill-equipped and demoralized, have been losing ground.
In August, Boko Haram declared an Islamic caliphate and now holds about 130 towns and villages.
The uprising killed about 10,000 people last year, compared to about 2,000 in the first four years, according to the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations.
