We are getting a little far afield, but since we did report on Peter Kassig, the refugee worker being held by ISIS and reportedly scheduled to die by be-heading, I thought you should know that Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren has called upon “moderate” Muslim clerics to speak up and condemn ISIS—she calls it a test. Let’s see what happens.
Let’s all go “Off the Record.” This is a test for all Muslims in the United States, especially those who lead mosques and call themselves moderates.
ISIS says it will execute American Peter Kassig. He is next on their execution list. He is an aide worker from Indiana. He’s innocent. He himself is a Muslim, having converted to Islam, but he is also an American. ISIS kidnapped him in Syria and now ISIS plans to behead him, citing the Koran as justification.
So here’s my message to American Muslim leaders. You must condemn the ISIS interpretation of the Koran and demand the release of this innocent captive, loudly and now. This is an important test, an important test about you and about the content of the Koran and your interpretation of it.
We need to hear where Muslim leaders stand, and we need keep hearing it until ISIS has been wiped from the earth. Right now, an innocent American Muslim’s life is on the line, and time is running out. Silence is not an option.
There are over 2,000 mosques in America that we know of! I hope she prominently posts all those mosque leaders who do go on the record (if there are any).
Update October 14th: Greta Van Susteren calls out “moderate” Muslims in America and asks them to repudiate ISIS for being anti-Islam if they kill Kassig, here.
Update October 13th: More of Kassig’s family history in the peace and justice movement, refugee resettlement at USA Today.
Apparently ISIS has featured an Indiana refugee worker for its next possible beheading. Peter Kassig briefly served in the US Army, but came from a family “with a long history of doing humanitarian work.”
In fact, near the end of this AP storywe learn that Peter had earlier helped with the resettlement of Burmese refugees in Indiana before making the jump to helping refugees in Syria. Longtime readers know that some cities in Indiana, especially Fort Wayne, have been completely overloaded with mostly Burmese refugees. It is one of the first overloaded cities we learned about back in 2007 and the situation there prompted former Senator Richard Lugar to ask for a GAO study of the refugee program which concluded that communities are completely unprepared for the numbers the US State Department and their contractors are bringing in. But I digress…
Will ISIS care that he was a good person helping refugees? Or, that he converted to Islam?
Family photo of Kassig delivering aid to Syrian refugees.
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — The parents of an Indiana man threatened with beheading by the Islamic State group are pleading with his captors to free him, saying in a video statement Saturday that their son has devoted his life to humanitarian work and aiding Syria’s war refugees.
Ed and Paula Kassig’s video was released a day after the Islamic State group’s online video threatened to behead 26-year-old Peter Kassig next — following the beheading of British aid worker Alan Henning.
That video was a heartbreaking development for Kassig’s family and friends, who had stayed silent since his capture while working to secure his release.
In the family’s video, Ed Kassig says his son, who now goes by the first name Abdul-Rahman after converting to Islam during his captivity, was captured on Oct. 1, 2013, in Syria, where he was providing aid for refugees fleeing that country’s civil war.
He says his son has grown “to love and admire” the Syrian people, after growing up in an Indianapolis family with a long history of humanitarian work and teaching.
“Our son was living his life according to that same humanitarian call when he was taken captive,” says Ed Kassig, a teacher.
[….]
Kassig focused on humanitarian work after leaving the military. While attending Indianapolis’ Butler University, he worked to help refugees from Myanmar who had resettled in central Indiana, said family spokeswoman Jodi Perras.
In my opinion, that since Kassig converted to Islam it would be in the best PR interests of ISIS to spare him—to teach the Islamic lesson: convert or die. Why the hell say that if one converts and dies anyway!
This must be having a chilling effect on those considering “humanitarian” work in the Middle East.
Or at least he says he is Kenyan. We get a lot of “refugees” and other legalimmigrants who pass through Kenya, but are not really Kenyans. We don’t know how this one—Jacob Mugambi Muriithi—got here, but thought this needed to be posted.
3,972 supposed refugees came to us through Kenyathis fiscal year alone. Kenyans themselves are not considered eligible for refugee resettlement or asylum because their country is relatively stable (except of course if you are the Aunt and Uncle of President Obama!). Through what legal program did this Muslim get here?
In a bizarre coincidence, a fired Oklahoma City nursing home employee was arrested Friday after a co-worker reported he threatened to cut her head off.
Jacob Mugambi Muriithi
Jacob Mugambi Muriithi, 30, is being held in the Oklahoma County jail on a terrorism complaint. His bail is set at $1 million.
“We take these threats very seriously,” Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater said.
The arrest came on the same day police in Moore revealed fired Vaughan Foods worker Alton Alexander Nolen beheaded a co-worker after he was fired Thursday. Nolen is a Muslim convert.
Muriithi was identified as a native of Kenyawho is living in Oklahoma City. He worked at Bellevue Nursing Home in northwest Oklahoma City, police reported.
The co-worker reported Muriithi threatened her while they were both working at the nursing home Sept. 19, a police detective wrote in an arrest warrant affidavit.
The woman was not identified.
She said Muriithi identified himself as a Muslim and said he “represented ISIS and that ISIS kills Christians,” the detective told a judge in the affidavit. The two had not worked together before.
If anyone finds out more about Muriithi’s immigration status, let us know!
By the way, we do take a lot of refugees with mental health issues as we have documented in our “health issues category.”
“We’ve become the visa clearinghouse for the world.“
Every time I see a news program where the talking heads are going on about our “porous Southern border” I want to shout at the TV—it’s not just the border that is a threat to our security. There is no screening on earth that will keep Islamic terrorists out if they want to get in here on a visa of some sort, or as a refugee.
Bartlett (the Refugee Admissions Director at the US State Department) assures us that we screen for terrorists hidden in the refugee population. http://www.c-span.org/video/?309771-1/terrorists-refugee-programs
By the way, when you hear a government official (or a contractor) say that refugees are thoroughly screened, don’t believe it! How do you screen someone from a country in complete chaos like Syria, Iraq or Somalia?
Do you think those countries have any sort data base on terrorist wannabes, especially those who have become radicalized only recently?
Or, do you think when interviewed a would-be Islamic supremacist is going to tell the truth? Yeh, we are coming to take you over from within!
Kenneth Palinkas, the head of the union that represents more 12,000 officials from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) bureau, says that terrorists from ISIS and other extremists are likely to try to exploit the immigration system that President Barack Obama has systematically weakened for over the past several years.
Palinkas, an immigration official himself, speaking on behalf of those other immigration officials, said it is a serious threat that ISIS “has already or will soon slip across our porous southern border” but also may “exploit” the weakened interior enforcement of immigration laws to get in and attack the U.S.
[….]
Palinkas noted that the president’s changes in immigration policy that essentially prohibit immigration agents like the ones he represents from enforcing interior immigration laws mean that USCIS, the agency he works for, is like a “rubber stamp” for illegal immigration. He concluded:
Many millions come legally to the U.S. through our wide open immigration policy every year – whether as temporary visitors, lifetime immigrants, refugees, asylum-seekers, foreign students, or recipients of our ‘visa waiver program’ which allows people to come and go freely. Yet our government cannot effectively track these foreign visitors and immigrants. And those who defraud authorities will face no consequence at all in most cases. Our caseworkers cannot even do in-person interviews for people seeking citizenship, they cannot enforce restrictions on welfare use, and they even lack even the basic office space to properly function. Applications for entry are rubber-stamped, the result of grading agents by speed rather than discretion. We’ve become the visa clearinghouse for the world.
When I pulled up the photo of Lawrence Bartlett, I came across a discussion (a kind of press pep talk) in New York City a couple of years ago where David Robinson, then acting Asst. Secretary for Population, Refugees and Migration, and Bartlett were talking to reporters about how the refugee program works. It strikes me as a good summary for those newly following this program. Click here for the interview.
Daniel Greenfield had the story yesterday, here, and thanks to reader Ed for sending it to us.
Photo from a demonstration in Sydney in 2012. http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/children-with-beheading-signs-an-outrage-says-scipione-20120916-2602v.html
Here is Greenfield at Frontpage magazine (with lots of photos):
Islamic terror doesn’t stay in Iraq. It doesn’t stay in Afghanistan. It follows the trail of Muslim migrants and settlers.
And here is the full story at Australia’s ABC News:
Police say a large-scale anti-terrorism raid in Sydney this morning has foiled a plot to “commit violent acts” in Australia, including a plan to behead a member of the public.
Police said 15 people had been detained in Sydney as part of the operation between NSW officers, the Australian Federal Police and ASIO.
Court documents are expected to reveal that the raids, at 25 different properties, were aimed at a cell which planned to behead a member of the public in Sydney.
The documents are expected to say that the plan involved snatching a random member of the public in Sydney, draping them in an Islamic State group (IS) flag and beheading them on camera.
There is more….
Regular readers know that Australia is having the same problem as Europe with illegal migrants—mostly from Muslim countries—attempting to break into the country.
But, they also have a growing Muslim ‘community’ from years past as they opened their doors to “refugees.” The Abbott government is trying to get it under control now and Australia is one of only a few countries in the world at least seriously attempting to save itself.
