We celebrate birthdays and anniversaries. We celebrate holidays. We celebrate victories in sports, business and……in wars. But sometimes, victories are hollow because someone was absent or in the case of war….premature. In the past few days we have celebrated the liberation of Raqqa, Syria by Iraqi military supported by U.S. special troops. Reports indicated that there were celebrations in the streets when the city of Raqqa was almost totally cleared of ISIS terrorist fighters.
Warning signs became commonplace in communications around the Globe. ISIS has lost Raqqa, but ISIS is not beaten and remains an adversary of world freedom lovers. Here are some important considerations. In the second week of October, there have been 211 deaths by Islamic terrorists across 13 nations. In September of this year, there were 155 attacks by Islamic terrorists that killed 878 and injured 760. On October 17th, 74 people were killed in Afghanistan and more than 200 were wounded by Taliban ‘insurgents.’ In Mogadishu, capital of Somalia, 358 people were killed in two explosions carried out by Islamic terrorists in the past week. Since 9/11 (Twin Towers & Pentagon) there have been 31,970 attacks worldwide attributed to Muslim ‘terrorists.’
This awesome problem has been shaping up for many years and innocent people are dying daily at the hands of some of the most fierce and merciless maniacal assassins that have ever been recorded in history. And yet the United Nations and any consortium of nations have never been able to slow the constant flow of destruction wrought by these distributors of torture, mayhem and death.
The problem boils down to this sad comment: world leaders in all religious faiths and cultures especially those among us who are dedicated to the Muslim faith and culture have taught us to believe that those who commit all these atrocities are a small fraction of their number and perhaps we don’t understand these ‘insurgents.’ The flaw in this logic is that there are about 2.14 billion Muslims among the 7.4 billion of earth’s inhabitants and growing at about 1.84% each year; far greater than any other religion or culture.
Suppose that just 1% of the Muslim population is insurgents/terrorists; their number could reach as high as more than 21 million. If only 1/10th of 1% are terrorists or potential terrorists, there could reasonably be just a few more than 2 million blood-thirsty men ready to commit mass atrocities.
In the Philippine Islands the population in 2015 totaled about 92 million people. The country is guided by a constitution that respects all religious faiths. In the city of Marawi on the island of Mindanao, Islamic militants who had followed the jihadist actions of ISIS in other parts of the world took over this city of 200,000 in May of this year. When Raqqa fell, these terrorists in Marawi took hostages and decapitated a Christian laborer who tried to escape as other hostages were threatened. Marawi in the Philippines is now in ruin with more than 1,000 dead, neighborhoods in shambles and a few militants remain in hiding in the city. Apparently the peaceful Muslim population in the Philippines offered no assistance in preventing this situation from exploding into pandemonium and death.
Contemporaneous with the return of Raqqa, Syria to Iraqi forces and the crushing of the rebellion in Marawi, Mindanao, Philippines, an ISIS branch located in the Sinai Peninsula mounted two deadly attacks in Egypt. The offshoot branch of ISIS self-proclaimed ‘Sinai Province’ consists of about 1,000 Jihadists that pledged allegiance to ISIS in late 2014 using the name Ansar Beital-Maqdis. In the two attacks in the Sinai Peninsula area at least five police officers were killed along with several civilians. In the small town of Al Arish, ISIS militants robbed the local bank of between 1/4th and ½ million dollars (5 to 10 million Egyptian £).
It is almost impossible for the human mind to understand the malevolence dished out by these savage demons of death and demolition. It is time for ‘moderate Muslims’ to unite with other civilized humans against these monsters and exterminate this ghastly threat.
And here in the USA, it is time to sweep up the broken eggshells of divided loyalties and put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
Dick Baynton
