Tony At 10: TERROR ON TOUR; BLOG # 166; JAN 16, 2015

THE MESSAGE:

We need to confront and impose limitations on the people in Europe who help to spread radical ideology, or who have created fertile ground for it to grow.

This is crucial because the terrorists’ accomplices are all those who have long been inciting hatred against the West and against people who exercise their freedom of speech or criticize religious dogma. They rail against those who hold onto the notion that asking questions or harbouring doubts is to be encouraged. We need to be able to defend our values and teach our children to be tolerant and caring.

We also need to be capable of recognizing radical tendencies early and to know where to seek help when we identify them. Young people do not wake up one morning and become radicalized.

What is absolutely vital is that we devote our energy to the young people we have not yet lost: to those who are susceptible to radicalization but can still be reached. We must focus on teaching youngsters to think critically. It is imperative that we recognize the evils that are inherent in a democratic society and develop effective ways of teaching our youth to avoid the pitfalls of greed and selfishness.

AFTER THE TERRORIST ATTACKS IN PARIS

JONATHAN S. TOBIN Senior Online Editor of Commentary magazine

MORE RHETORIC

President Obama did well to express solidarity with France and condemnation of the actions of the terrorists that he characterized as standing for “hatred and suffering.” However, rhetoric does not make up for the fact that there remains a reluctance on the part of Western leaders to identify this conflict as one between all Muslims and the rest of the world. These crimes are rooted in a form of 'Political Islam' that is supported by tens if not hundreds of millions of people around the globe. We must directly confront the corrupt and evil source of this violence within the spectrum of Islamic belief.

RUPERT MURDOCH
The 21st Century Fox Chairman and CEO

Murdoch tweeted:

> "Maybe most Moslems peaceful, but until they recognize and destroy their growing jihadist cancer they must be held responsible,"

> "Big jihadist danger looming everywhere from Philippines to Africa to Europe to US. Political correctness makes for denial and hypocrisy."

DIANNE FEINSTEIN California Senator

“I think there are sleeper cells not only in France but certainly in other countries and, yes, in our own,” she said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program. “This calls for vigilance. … Hopefully, we can be even more active in terms of doing those things which enable us to find terrorists, see who they’re communicating with and to track that.”

Her words come the same day a new Rasmussen poll shows that 65 percent of Americans believe terrorist attacks similar to those seen in France last week are likely to happen over the next 12 months.

PM HARPER:

BY Tonda MacCharles and Les Whittington Ottawa Bureau reporters for Toronto Star

OTTAWA— Islamist jihadists have “declared war” on Canada and other democratic countries leaving Canada no option but to “face that head on and deal with it,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Thursday.

In remarks that stepped up the political rhetoric and represent a change in the government’s characterization of the security threat posed by Al Qaeda, the Islamic State group and other extremist groups, Harper issued a blunt assessment of the significance of Wednesday’s attack in Paris, tying it to October’s attacks and past plots in Canada.

“The international jihadist movement has declared war. They have declared war on anybody who does not think and act exactly as they wish they would think and act,” Harper said Thursday in Delta, B.C. “They have declared war on any country like ourselves that values freedom, openness and tolerance.”

PEGIDA in Germany

German reaction
to Paris attacks

The leaders of the so-called "Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident" have asked marchers to wear black armbands and observe a minute's silence for "the victims of terrorism in Paris"."The Islamophobia syndrome, on the crest of which PEGIDA rides, could in fact gain strength."

Germany, Europe's most populous country with 80 million people, is home to about four million Muslims, mostly of Turkish origin.

Several German Muslim groups have called for a silent march in Berlin on Monday to denounce violence and the risk of division of society.

Germany's new anti-Islamic PEGIDA movement plans to rally again on Monday, with analysts expecting its ranks to swell by thousands following this week's bloody jihadist violence in France.

Their rhetoric seems to strike a chord with many voters, according to a poll published by Zeit weekly. In a survey conducted several weeks ago, 57 percent said they felt threatened by Islam, four points higher than in 2012. And 61 percent of non-Muslim Germans said Islam had no place in the West, according to the study released by the Bertelsmann Foundation think tank.

VIOLENCE FUELS THE DEBATE AMONG MUSLIMS OVER INTERPRETING THEIR FAITH.

CAIRO (AP) — After gunmen in Paris killed 12 people, Saudi Arabia's top body of Muslim clerics quickly condemned the attack and said it could have no acceptable justification. It was a signal from some of the Islamic world's strictest voices that cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad in the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo were not a reason to kill the artists.

The past year has seen increasing voices among Muslims saying their community must re-examine their faith to modernize its interpretations and sideline extremists. As much as recent attacks in the West, the rise of startlingly vicious violence by Sunni Muslim militants in the name of Islam against fellow Muslims, including Sunnis, brought it home for many Muslims that something must change in religious discourse.

The Arab world has seen decades of bloodshed and foreign intervention unlike any in any other region ... long entrenched dictatorships, regime suppression, two Iraq wars, the Syrian civil war and Libya's turmoil.... Those realities have stirred up hatred against the U.S. and the West, as well as against Shiites and other communities. This hatred rebounds back into religion.

Some youth angered by the conflicts find the answers in the version of "true Islam" touted by extremists like al-Qaida and the Islamic State group and promoted on the Internet. Those groups tell them Islam requires them to use violence to defend the faith, then provide whole networks to make it easy for them to do so.

Days before the Paris attack, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi gave a speech to Muslim clerics saying interpretations developed over centuries have made the Muslim world a "source of worry, danger, killing and destruction in the whole world." He called for a "religious revolution" to modernize the faith.

THE QUESTION:

WHEN IS ENOUGH TOO MUCH?

THE QUOTE:

"Terrorism has once again shown it is prepared deliberately to stop at nothing in creating human victims. An end must be put to this. As never before, it is vital to unite forces of the entire world community against terror".

-Vladimir Putin