Amandeep Singh Bhogal is a former diplomat, has been a candidate for the London Assembly and is on the Parliamentary Candidates List.
Only a few hours after tweeting a cartoon of the ISIS Caliph Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi by controversial left-wing French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, a total of twelve people including its editor Stephane Charbonnier, four cartoonists, and two policemen were slaughtered in an appalling, brazen terror attack by daring home-grown Islamists. Global jihad had struck right at the heart of the French Republic.
Many Parisians, in a chilling parallel with Mumbai 26/11, witnessed on their streets a terror powered by a satanic ideology which sustains itself by barbarous acts such as the massacre of 132 children in Peshawar, the enslaving and raping of thousands of Yazidi women in Syria, and beheading Sikhs in the Khyber Agency who refuse to pay the ‘Jazia’ infidel tax.
When Cherif and Said Kouachi executed an injured Muslim policeman on the footpath, it marked the arrival in Europe of ‘ISIS style’ cold-blooded medieval savagery.
This was brutal barbarism, with military-style planning and execution, by two known Islamist extremists who dodged any surveillance in suburban safe-havens.
It and subsequent attacks on Paris yesterday clearly demonstrate that in Western Europe there exists a rapidly growing Islamist jihadi network which is supercharging the audacity, ferocity and ability of global jihad to strike European nations from within.
In France, over 1,200 French jihadists have travelled to Syria to fight for ISIS. There have been numerous arrests, most recently in November of more than ten Islamist extremists in Toulouse, Le Havre and Paris suspected of recruiting jihadists for ISIS whilst another four French jihadists were arrested in Morocco.
Meanwhile, here in Britain more than 200 British Islamist extremists were arrested for terror related activities in 2014 and hundreds more were on the ground spreading ISIS terror in Syria and Iraq.
In September 2014, within a month of the terror threat level being raised to ‘Severe’ – an increasingly regular occurrence – nine British Islamist extremists were arrested, including pro-Sharia hate preacher and leading advocate of global jihad, Anjem Choudary.
In October 2014 the Assistant Commissioner for Counter Terrorism at Scotland Yard, Mark Rowley, stated that officers were dealing with ‘exceptionally high’ numbers of terror related investigations and the police were taking down more than 1,000 pieces of jihadist extremist material from the internet each week. It was also revealed that on average five British jihadists were travelling to Syria every week.
The drumbeat of Islamist terror is fast gaining sophistication, tempo and volume across Western Europe. Especially seeing how, rather than being tried for treason, terrorism and war crimes against humanity, it has been reported that nearly 300 ISIS returned British Jihadists are being allowed to continue with their normal lives.
Many are being offered a referral to the Government’s soft-touch ‘de-radicalisation’ programme the ‘Channel Project’, which saw the number of jihadist referrals over 2014 rise from 748 to 1,281.
Yet despite this unprecedented increase in terror activity, leading Islamist extremists such as Anjem Choudary are out on bail, freely spreading their evil hatred, while the Stop the War Coalition continues apologising for terror and weak, duplicitous politicians such as Nick Clegg have highly misplaced ‘concerns’ about Theresa May’s plans to withdraw passports of returning British terrorist suspects.
Many would say that the response to this increased threat from Islamist extremism has been mediocre, ill-equipped and half-hearted.
The response that is needed is not the now usual weak answer of confused promises of action, short-lived statements of solidarity and weak counter-terrorism legislation that is outflanked by an increasingly sophisticated Islamist extremism, a deep rooted European Islamist terror network and a highly integrated global jihad.
It is about time that we mobilise a multi-polar ‘Axis of Good’, rejuvenating the war on terror to comprehensively challenge, defeat and dry up the three fountainheads of totalitarian Islamist jihadi terror – the brutally savage Islamic State with its Wahhabi backers, the continuing export of Al-Qaeda’s terrorism from Pakistan, and the hate preaching centres of Jihad in the West which continue to fuel it with funding, manpower and geo-strategic advantages.
With MI5 head Andrew Parker warning of intelligence of likely ‘mass casualty’ attacks in Britain by Al-Qaeda, which could soon be ‘operating beyond our reach’, a new ‘shock and awe’ is needed in the skies above ISIS, and international intervention to rescue Yemen and Pakistan from the quagmire of Al-Qaeda.
Only when Islamist terrorists find no hole to hide in, no rock to recover behind and no safe haven to find shelter in, can we ensure that we save the one world we have from the depredations of Islamist extremism.
This terror attack in Paris is not just an attack on the magazine Charlie Hebdo but, as in London on 7/7, New York on 9/11 and Mumbai on 26/11, an attack on the very concept of the free world – liberty. democracy, freedom of expression, and the rule of law. We need wisdom and action rather than just words and inaction – either we win our war on terror or the terrorists win their war on freedom.
Amandeep Singh Bhogal is a former diplomat, has been a candidate for the London Assembly and is on the Parliamentary Candidates List.
Only a few hours after tweeting a cartoon of the ISIS Caliph Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi by controversial left-wing French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, a total of twelve people including its editor Stephane Charbonnier, four cartoonists, and two policemen were slaughtered in an appalling, brazen terror attack by daring home-grown Islamists. Global jihad had struck right at the heart of the French Republic.
Many Parisians, in a chilling parallel with Mumbai 26/11, witnessed on their streets a terror powered by a satanic ideology which sustains itself by barbarous acts such as the massacre of 132 children in Peshawar, the enslaving and raping of thousands of Yazidi women in Syria, and beheading Sikhs in the Khyber Agency who refuse to pay the ‘Jazia’ infidel tax.
When Cherif and Said Kouachi executed an injured Muslim policeman on the footpath, it marked the arrival in Europe of ‘ISIS style’ cold-blooded medieval savagery.
This was brutal barbarism, with military-style planning and execution, by two known Islamist extremists who dodged any surveillance in suburban safe-havens.
It and subsequent attacks on Paris yesterday clearly demonstrate that in Western Europe there exists a rapidly growing Islamist jihadi network which is supercharging the audacity, ferocity and ability of global jihad to strike European nations from within.
In France, over 1,200 French jihadists have travelled to Syria to fight for ISIS. There have been numerous arrests, most recently in November of more than ten Islamist extremists in Toulouse, Le Havre and Paris suspected of recruiting jihadists for ISIS whilst another four French jihadists were arrested in Morocco.
Meanwhile, here in Britain more than 200 British Islamist extremists were arrested for terror related activities in 2014 and hundreds more were on the ground spreading ISIS terror in Syria and Iraq.
In September 2014, within a month of the terror threat level being raised to ‘Severe’ – an increasingly regular occurrence – nine British Islamist extremists were arrested, including pro-Sharia hate preacher and leading advocate of global jihad, Anjem Choudary.
In October 2014 the Assistant Commissioner for Counter Terrorism at Scotland Yard, Mark Rowley, stated that officers were dealing with ‘exceptionally high’ numbers of terror related investigations and the police were taking down more than 1,000 pieces of jihadist extremist material from the internet each week. It was also revealed that on average five British jihadists were travelling to Syria every week.
The drumbeat of Islamist terror is fast gaining sophistication, tempo and volume across Western Europe. Especially seeing how, rather than being tried for treason, terrorism and war crimes against humanity, it has been reported that nearly 300 ISIS returned British Jihadists are being allowed to continue with their normal lives.
Many are being offered a referral to the Government’s soft-touch ‘de-radicalisation’ programme the ‘Channel Project’, which saw the number of jihadist referrals over 2014 rise from 748 to 1,281.
Yet despite this unprecedented increase in terror activity, leading Islamist extremists such as Anjem Choudary are out on bail, freely spreading their evil hatred, while the Stop the War Coalition continues apologising for terror and weak, duplicitous politicians such as Nick Clegg have highly misplaced ‘concerns’ about Theresa May’s plans to withdraw passports of returning British terrorist suspects.
Many would say that the response to this increased threat from Islamist extremism has been mediocre, ill-equipped and half-hearted.
The response that is needed is not the now usual weak answer of confused promises of action, short-lived statements of solidarity and weak counter-terrorism legislation that is outflanked by an increasingly sophisticated Islamist extremism, a deep rooted European Islamist terror network and a highly integrated global jihad.
It is about time that we mobilise a multi-polar ‘Axis of Good’, rejuvenating the war on terror to comprehensively challenge, defeat and dry up the three fountainheads of totalitarian Islamist jihadi terror – the brutally savage Islamic State with its Wahhabi backers, the continuing export of Al-Qaeda’s terrorism from Pakistan, and the hate preaching centres of Jihad in the West which continue to fuel it with funding, manpower and geo-strategic advantages.
With MI5 head Andrew Parker warning of intelligence of likely ‘mass casualty’ attacks in Britain by Al-Qaeda, which could soon be ‘operating beyond our reach’, a new ‘shock and awe’ is needed in the skies above ISIS, and international intervention to rescue Yemen and Pakistan from the quagmire of Al-Qaeda.
Only when Islamist terrorists find no hole to hide in, no rock to recover behind and no safe haven to find shelter in, can we ensure that we save the one world we have from the depredations of Islamist extremism.
This terror attack in Paris is not just an attack on the magazine Charlie Hebdo but, as in London on 7/7, New York on 9/11 and Mumbai on 26/11, an attack on the very concept of the free world – liberty. democracy, freedom of expression, and the rule of law. We need wisdom and action rather than just words and inaction – either we win our war on terror or the terrorists win their war on freedom.