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By : Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor

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These days I find myself in a permanent state of shock, horror and confusion. We live in a world where human life is devalued, where barbarism, racism and bigotry are the new norm. Watching the news is depressing. Desperate people fleeing conflicts finding all doors barred. Women enslaved and abused and children’s bodies seen mangled by shrapnel.

And who would have thought that Paris, the City of Lights, would ever go dark, the army would be deployed in the streets or that a government decree would be issued silencing anyone who disseminates theories at odds with the government line as “a conspiracy theorist”. I won’t be surprised if an Orwellian-type ‘thought police force’ is established. People have questions, but aren’t getting answers and that’s the problem.

I’m angry too that so many fingers in western capitals are pointing at Islam as the cause of all evils when my faith, one of peace and tolerance, has been hijacked by creatures without souls. When I listen to statements from the mouths of American politicians I can hardly believe what I’m hearing.

Donald Trump has vowed to close all mosques and force Muslim Americans to carry special identity cards. What next? Will they be told to pin green crescents on their lapels in the same way the Jews of Germany had to sport yellow stars? Many of his Republican rivals are using the vilification of Muslims as a vote-getting ploy.

Likewise Britain, France and Belgium are planning the closure of certain mosques and community centres. Muslims are being asked to disassociate themselves from terror although they are the ones who’ve suffered most from terrorism over the years. Also, Syrian refugees risking their lives to reach Europe have become pariahs overnight.

Rather than falsely blame Muslims for the rise of ISIS, there may be other shoulders on which at least some of the blame should fall

Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor

A Rhode Island state senator, Elaine Morgan, is calling for Syrian refugees to be placed in camps “segregated from our populace”. “The Muslim religion and philosophy is to murder, rape, and decapitate anyone who is non-Muslim”, she says. Presidential hopeful Ben Carson compares the refugees to “rabid dogs”. All of this hate on the part of politicians merely because fake Syrian passports were deliberately planted close to the bodies of suicide bombers in Paris.

A few questions

In all honesty, I don’t know what to believe any more. Like so many others, I need answers to these perplexing and very troubling questions:

• Why was ISIS permitted to expand over great swathes of Syria and Iraq? According to Fox News, declassified Pentagon documents dated 2012 obtained by Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act “predicts the rise of ISIS and the establishment of a caliphate”. In this case, why did Obama say in September 2014 that its rise took the U.S. by surprise?

• Is there any truth to statements from the President of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to the effect that the self-ascribed ISIS Caliph Baghdadi, alleged to be formerly known as Simon Elliot , was trained by the Mossad? It wouldn’t be the first time. Morten Storm, a convert to Islam, reveals in a book that he was formerly undercover agent for western intelligence agencies tasked with infiltrating Islamist organisations.

• Why was ISIS’s de facto capital Raqqa permitted to carry on business as usual under U.S.-led coalition airstrikes? And as was quoted in the Washington Free Beacon and elsewhere, Rep. Ed Royce, the Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee complained that “the pilots come back to talk to us, they say ‘three-quarters of their ordnance we can’t drop, we can’t get clearance even when we have a clear target in front of us’?” Is he right?

• Why did it take so long for the U.S. to bomb convoys transporting ISIS stolen oil? And when they were following Russia’s intervention, why, according to the Wall Street Journal, were fliers dropped alerting the drivers to abandon their trucks before they were hit? Which states are buying that oil via third parties? Are there banks laundering the group’s income from oil, gold and stolen artefacts?

• When the British terrorist “Jihadi John” and the head of ISIS in Libya, Wissam Najm Abd Zayd Al-Zubaydi, were so easily pinpointed by surveillance satellites and assassinated, why is it that Baghdadi is so hard to locate and why weren’t highly visible convoys of the terrorists’ SUVs struck?

• Which country or countries are supplying ISIS with heavy weapons? And why are the Kurds and the recognized Libyan government battling ISIS being deprived of such weapons?

• There is a video of President Putin telling journalists at the recent G20 summit that ISIS is being financed by businessmen from 40 countries including those from G20 member states, adding that he provided examples “based on our data”. If he’s correct then, why aren’t those concerned being tracked down and arrested?

• Why did Israel open its hospitals to treat injured Al-Qaeda and Nusra Front fighters, as revealed by the Wall Street Journal? Similarly, the Turkish newspaper Sunday’s Zaman quotes a nurse working in a hospital in Mersin saying she’s sick of treating ISIS fighters. The Washington Post asserted it was told by ISIS commander, “We used to have some fighters – even high level members of ISIS – getting treated in Turkish hospitals.” If that’s so, what was the reason for treating monsters, who execute children, bury women alive and place men in a wire cage to be drowned, with such compassion?

• Who are the so-called ‘moderate rebels’ the Obama administration is backing after they’ve been grouped together under the new banner “Victory Army” and are reports that they are fighting alongside Al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Al-Nusra accurate?

Why is it that President Obama and David Cameron shirk from branding the Muslim Brotherhood – the ideological forerunner of all Takfiri groups – as terrorist?

Early last year, an alleged British lobbyist for the Muslim Brotherhood was invited to meet President Obama at the White House. In February this year, a Muslim Brotherhood Judge was pictured making the four-fingered Rabaa sign at the State Department following his meeting with officials and when White House spokeswoman Jan Psaki was questioned by reporters she appeared to show that she had no issue with the photograph – a poke in the eye to the Egyptian government.

This month, however, lawmakers in both the House and the Senate are pushing for a bill to be passed that would declare the Brotherhood a terrorist organization.

I don’t have access to insider intelligence but let me put it this way. When the pieces of the jigsaw are fitted together something doesn’t smell right.

After Paris, the world is gung ho to exterminate ISIS. France is cooperating with Russia to bomb them mercilessly. Yet Obama says they are contained and his strategy is working even as they threaten to turn the White House black, announce New York and Washington are next and are believed to be developing chemical weapons. You couldn’t make this up!

Charles Krauthammer writes in The Telegraph that while France is creating a coalition to destroy ISIS, Obama “responded to Paris with weariness and annoyance. His news conference in Turkey was marked by a stunning tone of passivity, detachment and lassitude, compounded by impatience and irritability at the very suggestion that his Syria strategy might be failing.”

Rather than falsely blame Muslims for the rise of ISIS, there may be other shoulders on which at least some of the blame should fall. It’s time they were exposed.

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Khalaf Ahmad al-Habtoor is a prominent UAE businessman and public figure. He is Chairman of the Al Habtoor Group – one of the most successful conglomerates in the Gulf. Al Habtoor is renowned for his knowledge and views on international political affairs; his philanthropic activity; his efforts to promote peace; and he has long acted as an unofficial ambassador for his country abroad. Writing extensively on both local and international politics, he publishes regular articles in the media and has released a number of books. Al-Habtoor began his career as an employee of a local UAE construction firm and in 1970 established his own company, Al Habtoor Engineering. The UAE Federation, which united the seven emirates under the one flag for the first time, was founded in 1971 and this inspired him to undertake a series of innovative construction projects – all of which proved highly successful.

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Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in the Column section are their own and do not reflect RiyadhVision’s point-of-view.

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