Tag Archives: Islamism

An Update On The Anti-Assad Imam Killed In London

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on April 13, 2015

Abdul Hadi Arwani

Abdul Hadi Arwani

In Brent, northwest London, in the evening of April 12, a 46-year-old man was arrested as part of the ongoing investigation into the April 7 murder of the Syrian-born imam, Abdul Hadi Arwani, a long-time opponent of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.

Writing about the murder of Arwani last week, I noted that the available evidence suggested the motivations of the murderer(s) could be:

  • Financial: related to Arwani’s business dealings as the owner of his construction company
  • Other local or personal
  • Far-Right anti-Muslim
  • Intra-Islamist: Arwani had been the director at the Salafist An-Noor Mosque and was himself clearly an Islamist, but Arwani was against the Islamic State (ISIS), for example, which might have made him enemies among some congregants
  • Agents of the Assad regime, conceivably with the complicity of Iran and Russia

Those options still stand, but some important updates over the weekend have helped alter the relative likelihood of each. Continue reading →

Further Evidence of Mohammed Emwazi’s Radical Ties—And CAGE’s Meltdown

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on March 7, 2015

Asim Qureshi; Mohammed Emwazi (

Asim Qureshi; Mohammed Emwazi (“Jihadi John”)

Earlier this week I wrote of the unmasking of “Jihadi John,” the Islamic State’s (ISIS) video-beheader, as 26-year-old British citizen Mohammed Emwazi. I had two purposes. One was to gloat over the implosion of CAGE (formerly Cageprisoners), an Islamist terrorist-advocacy group that had gotten itself called a “human rights organisation”. And the second was to point out that the narrative peddled by CAGE and other apologists, that Emwazi had been radicalised by heavy-handed British security methods, was plainly absurd.

Emwazi had been associating with al-Qaeda agents and sympathisers and was part of a London-based network that dispatched fighters to al-Qaeda’s Somali branch al-Shabab years before he came into contact with the security services—indeed the security services had only taken an interest in Emwazi because he was already radicalised. In the last few days both of these trends have continued: CAGE’s total collapse moves closer and Emwazi’s known nefarious associations are multiplying. Continue reading →

From Kessab to Cannibals: Syria’s Media War

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on January 5, 2015

Mother Agnes Mariam on RT. An agent of the regime, she dismissed Syria's rebels as a foreign conspiracy.

Mother Agnes Mariam on RT. An agent of the regime, she dismissed Syria’s rebels as a foreign conspiracy.

Fouad Ajami once said Syria was the “first YouTube war“. An academic study called Syria “the most socially mediated civil conflict in history“. From the start of the Syrian war, the media and propaganda dimension has been of immense importance, impacting the course of the war on the ground and affecting the policy of foreign States who could make a decisive difference in the conflict. Continue reading →

Iraq Is Still Suffering The Effects Of Saddam Hussein’s Islamist Regime

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on December 17, 2014

Throughout his entire trial, Saddam Hussein was never without a Qur'an

Throughout his entire trial, Saddam Hussein was never without a Qur’an

In June, Samuel Helfont published a paper for the Middle East Institute entitled, ‘Saddam and the Islamists: The Ba’thist Regime’s Instrumentalization of Religion in Foreign Affairs’. Relying on “newly released Iraqi state and Ba’th Party archives,” Helfont’s central argument is:

“Saddam maintained deep reservations about Islamism until the end. However, this did not prevent his regime from working extensively with Islamists and Islamic activists outside Iraq. Indeed, religion played a leading role in the country’s foreign policy throughout the 1990s.”

Continue reading →

Has Hillary Clinton Become A Hawk?

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on September 21, 2014

The next American President?

The next American President?

Last month, Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic published an interview with Hillary Clinton. At 8,000 words it can be off-putting to plough through, but I have now finally got around to it, and it is rather interesting. The interview focusses on the three areas where President Obama’s foreign policy has so conspicuously failed—Syria, Iran, and Israel—and also includes sections on Egypt and Libya, where the administration’s failure has been somewhat less in the news. Continue reading →

Snatching Defeat From the Jaws of Victory

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on August 9, 2014

Released on December 21, 2007, twenty-eight years to the month after the Soviet Union launched Operation STORM 333, decapitating the Afghan government and plunging the country into a decade-long war, Charlie Wilson’s War tells a story centred on Representative Charles Wilson of Texas (Tom Hanks), a conservative Democrat, Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts), a Right-wing Christian socialite in Houston who has taken the Afghans to her bosom because of her hatred for communism, and Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a blue-collar case officer at the CIA who is the epitome of the adage that one can get anything done in Washington so long as one does not care who gets the credit. Between them they cajole Congress into moving its appropriations from $5 million to $500 million, which will be matched dollar-for-dollar by the Saudis, to help the Afghan resistance combat the Red Army’s occupation of their country. Continue reading →

Good Riddance To Sayeeda Warsi

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on August 5, 2014

Sayeeda Warsi, gone at last

Sayeeda Warsi, gone at last

Sayeeda Warsi should long ago have been ejected from the British Cabinet. It is to David Cameron’s eternal shame that he has allowed Ms. Warsi to pick the timing of this, announcing her resignation this morning over the government’s stand on the Israel-HAMAS war. Continue reading →

After Elliot Rodger We’re Agreed That Ideas Kill. Let’s See This Applied To ISIS In Brussels.

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on June 2, 2014

Flowers left outside Jewish Museum in Brussels after ISIS holy warrior murdered three people last week

On the evening of May 23, a deranged 22-year-old boy, Elliot Rodger, went on a shooting spree in California and murdered six people. Continue reading →

Why The Coup In Egypt Was The Worst Outcome

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on May 12, 2014

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While the Sisi regime presents itself to the West as a barrier against Islamism, its internal propaganda delegitimizes the Islamists by presenting them as the cat’s paw of the United States, playing on the widespread anti-Americanism in Egypt

David Kirkpatrick on The New York Times front-page brought the news everyone following Egypt already knows: the putschists in Cairo have reneged on their promises of pluralism and religious tolerance, which was part of their sell in bringing off the coup last July. Continue reading →

In Advancing Turkey Toward Democracy The Army Is Not The Answer

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on May 10, 2014

Mustafa Kemal. He added the name Atatürk as part of his reforms of the Turkish language to the Latin script from the Perso-Arabic form.

It’s easy to see why Westerners admire Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. He abolished the Caliphate, led a quixotic campaign for female emancipation (a grizzled soldier at the head of a feminist campaign!), and, in my view correctly, identified the theocratic rule of the Caliphate as the primary cause of the Ottoman Empire’s decline. Continue reading →