It is often claimed that Islam is a religion of peace, but how is it substantiated looking at the pictures below?
(CNN) July 3, 2016
ISIS' Ramadan terror campaign
In
the past two weeks, ISIS has conducted lethal terrorist attacks in
Bangladesh, Iraq, Jordan, Yemen, and also, very likely, in Turkey. None
of this should be too surprising. After all, ISIS explicitly called for
terrorist attacks during the holy month of Ramadan, which commenced
four weeks ago.
Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the spokesman for ISIS, released an audiotape in late May in which he called
for attacks, saying, "Ramadan, the month of conquest and jihad... make
it a month of calamity everywhere for the non-believers."
Seemingly
a result of that call, ISIS or its affiliated groups started carrying
out multiple attacks across the Middle East. Suicide attackers blew themselves up in a Christian village in Lebanon close to the Syrian border, killing five people.
Also on Monday, a wave of ISIS suicide attacks in Yemen in the southeastern city of Mukalla killed more than 40.
On Tuesday, ISIS claimed credit for a suicide attack that a week earlier had killed seven Jordanian security personnel at a border crossing between Jordan and Syria.
The same day, the Istanbul airport was attacked by three suicide bombers who were almost certainly dispatched by ISIS.
In the past three weeks, ISIS-inspired
attackers also struck in the West, first in Orlando, Florida, where 49
people were killed in a gay nightclub -- the most lethal terrorist
attack in the United States since 9/11 -- and, the day after the Orlando
attack, an ISIS terrorist killed a police official and his partner in a
town outside Paris.
Unfortunately,
we may see more attacks. For Islamist terrorist groups such as ISIS,
the holy month of Ramadan -- a time of fasting and prayer for the vast
majority of Muslims -- is seen as a particularly auspicious time to
launch terrorist attacks.
This is
especially the case around the 27th day of Ramadan, the "Night of
Power," which is a particularly sacred day for the world's Muslims as it
was the time that the Prophet Mohammed started receiving the first
verses of the Koran.
On
the Night of Power in 2000, which that year fell on January 3, al Qaeda
militants attempted to launch a suicide attack against the American
warship USS The Sullivans off the coast of Yemen with a bomb-filled
boat. The attack failed.
This
year, the 27th day of Ramadan fell on July 2. This is the same day that
the ISIS attackers in Bangladesh completed their massacre at the
restaurant in Dhaka. The militants were all killed by Bengali forces.
The 27th day of Ramadan is also the same day that ISIS launched the attack that killed at least 125 in Baghdad.
If
indeed the attacks at Istanbul's airport are the work of ISIS, it would
fit into the terrorist organization's current strategy to attack
commercial aviation targets. In March, two ISIS suicide bombers launched the attacks at the Brussels airport that killed 15.
In
October, ISIS' Egyptian affiliate brought down a Russian commercial jet
leaving Sinai airport, killing all 224 people on board, the deadliest
attack on commercial aviation since 9/11.
ISIS also has ample motivation to want
to attack Turkey. Where the Turks once had a laissez-faire attitude to
the tens of thousands of "foreign fighters" who have transited Turkey to
join ISIS in neighboring Syria, now the Turks have substantially cut
down on ISIS recruits traveling though their country.
In 2015, ISIS, in one of its English language online publications, advised
would-be foreign fighters hoping to join the group that, "Turkish
intelligence agencies are in no way friends of the Islamic State
[ISIS]."
Turkey has also allowed the United States to fly bombing missions aimed at ISIS from airports on Turkish soil.
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