Politically Unbalanced

Frank Crimi in FrontPage The Pakistani Taliban, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has declared war on Pakistani and Western news organizations after blaming unfair press coverage for the negative reaction to its failed assassination attempt on 14-year-old youth activist Malala Yousafzai. The shooting of Malala by a TTP death squad had generated immediate and widespread international condemnation, including outrage from large numbers of Pakistanis, many of whom had shown previous sympathy or fear toward the Islamist terror group. This Pakistani outrage found its form in numerous fatwas issued by Islamic clerics denouncing the attack as well as in million dollar bounties being offered by the Pakistani government for the capture of the Taliban members responsible for the shooting. As Muhammad Amir Rana of the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, said, “We (Pakistanis) have seen a similar public sentiment in the past, but this time it is quite unique. This case has provided a catharsis of the masses for all the grievances that have been building up for years.” For its part, however, the Taliban was stung by the negative public reaction, unable

Frank Crimi in FrontPage Malala Yousufzai, a 14-year-old girl who garnered international acclaim for having the courage to publicly speak out against the Pakistani Taliban, was shot in the head and critically wounded by the barbaric Islamist terror group. According to Pakistani police, Malala was riding home from school in the Pakistani city of Mingora when a man stopped the school bus and asked the students to point her out. Once identified, the assassin shot Malala as well as her friend who was seated next to her. Despite her young age, a Taliban spokesman said it had no choice but to eliminate Malala as she “was pro-West, she was speaking against Taliban and… she was promoting Western culture in Pashtun areas.” Both girls were fortunate to survive the cowardly murder attempt, in particular Malala, given that the bullet that entered her head had passed through her skull without causing any damage to her brain. However, Malala’s reprieve from death may be short lived as the Taliban has stated that it still intends to kill this “secular-minded lady” and thus finish

Frank Crimi in FrontPage One of the more loathsome horrors of Syria’s civil war has been the deliberate targeting of Syrian children by both pro-government and rebel forces, barbarity which includes imprisonment, rape, torture, sexual abuse, murder, and use as human shields. That gruesome reality has been chillingly documented in recently released reports by the United Nations and two British-based humanitarian groups working with Syrian refugees, War Child and Save the Children. While children in war zones are normally caught in the crossfire between opposing forces, the purposeful targeting of young children, according to the July 2012 War Child report, make the Syrian conflict “disturbingly unique.” A glimpse into that disturbing uniqueness can be seen in the acts of Syrian security forces and pro-regime militias abducting children and imprisoning them in former schools which have been converted into specially designed torture centers. There, according to a June UN report on children and armed conflict, the children are then “beaten, blindfolded, and subjected to stress positions, whipped with heavy electrical cables, and scarred by cigarette burns.” One of these victims was

Frank Crimi in FrontPage Islamists are creating a nightmarish Sharia-run state in northern Mali, complete with public floggings, group amputations, and death by stoning. The Islamist group Ansar Dine (Defenders of Faith), along with its other Islamist and al-Qaeda allies, is creating a terrifying Sharia-run state in northern Mali, complete with public floggings, group amputations, and death by stoning. Ansar Dine, along with the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (Mujao) and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), first gained control over northern Mali in April after it commandeered a rebellion originally launched by ethnic Tuareg separatists against the Mali government. Since then, as part of their consolidation of power in the region — an area roughly the size of Texas — the Islamist Ansar Dine and Mujao have been busily imposing Sharia law in the towns and cities of northern Mali, including the region’s largest cities of Timbuktu, Kidal, and Gao. To that end, the Islamists have issued edicts against a wide range of acts they deem to be “haraam” (forbidden), behaviors such as smoking or selling cigarettes; drinking or selling alcoholic beverages;

Frank Crimi in FrontPage While Christian churches are being destroyed on a near daily basis in Muslim countries throughout the world, the Obama administration is investing millions of dollars to rebuild overseas Islamic mosques and minarets. According to the State Department, the mosque restoration program, first reported on back in 2010, is a “cultural preservation” project designed to “fight Islamic extremism by building relationships with Islamic leaders.” To that end, the State Department, through the US Agency for International Development, is spending millions to preserve mosques and minarets in 27 different Islamic countries. While the State Department would not reveal the entire cost of its Muslim outreach program, it did acknowledge one restoration project, the refurbishing of Egypt’s 1,300-year-old Amr Ibn El-Aas Mosque, was part of a $770 million program to rebuild Cairo’s sewer system. Perhaps the State Department’s reticence in sharing the full fiscal details of its taxpayer-funded Islamic goodwill project centered on the fact that federal regulations prohibit USAID funds from being used for saving structures which are used for “inherently religious activities.” Of course, it should be noted, that