Knife Attacker ‘Wanted to Kill As Many Christians As Possible’

German prosecutors say a Palestinian man who fatally stabbed one person and wounded six others at a Hamburg supermarket in July wanted to kill as many Christians as possible to avenge what he considered injustices against Muslims worldwide.

 

Federal prosecutors say 26-year-old Ahmad A., whose last name wasn’t published due to German privacy rules, considered his actions a “contribution to a worldwide jihad.”

In a statement Friday, prosecutors said they were formally indicting the failed asylum-seeker, who was born in the United Arab Emirates, on one count of murder, six counts of attempted murder and six counts of serious bodily harm.

 

The man walked into a supermarket, grabbed a kitchen knife from a store shelf and started attacking people before he was subdued by passers-by and arrested.

 

Prosecutors said investigators found no “credible evidence” that A. was involved with or under the direction of a terrorist group such as the Islamic State.

 

Officials in Hamburg have said that he was known to authorities as a suspected Islamic radical but not as a “jihadist.” They also considered him psychologically unstable but decided he did not “pose any immediate danger.”

 

Federal prosecutors said he decided on the day of the attack to kill Christian Germans indiscriminately, and that he cited tensions over a contested Jerusalem holy site as his motivation.

written by Dale Hurd

Street Preacher Arrested for Offending Islam Released from Prison

A street preacher in the UK, who was arrested for criticizing Islam, has been released from jail. 

Ian Sleeper was arrested for holding up a sign in Central London that said “#Love Muslims Hate Islam Time For The Truth.” He was held for 13 hours for allegedly causing disorder. 

However, after being unable to charge Sleeper with an actual crime, prosecutors let the case go. 

Sleeper said his decision to hold the controversial sign came when he realized the Muslim employees at his restaurant knew very little about their religion. 

“After reading the Qur’an and observing the behavior of my Muslim staff, it became clear that they were not practicing much of their religion’s teachings,” he told Christian Concern. “I found this curious, and, after chatting to them about their belief, I realized this was due to their ignorance of the Quranic verses. They simply do not know what their religion teaches.”

“Their ignorance is almost on a par with the wider public’s, where the horrors and gross gender inequalities of Islam are not apparent to most people,” he added. 

That’s when he decided to publicly share his message about Islam even if it cost him his freedom.

While many people view Sleepe’s actions as hate-filled, he says that’s not the case. 

“As Christians we must hate sin, spread the gospel and love God. Through my actions I aim to achieve all three,” he says. 

In fact, he believes there is a strong distinction to be made between Muslims and the ideology of Islam. 

“I differentiate between Muslims the people and Islam the ideology”, he said. “I love my Muslim neighbor as the Bible commands, and I am friends with all my Muslim staff. But I hate the religion’s ideology. It is not Muslims we should be attacking, it’s Islam. Islam makes Muslims victims with a tight grip that holds them captive to an evil ideology.”

While his actions may have gotten him in trouble with police, Sleeper says he’s not quieting down any time soon. 

“Truth cannot be taken for granted in our modern world, and so I will be back out on the street soon,” he said. “Please pray for me and my brothers and sisters in Christ, as we all seek to expose deception and turn people to Christ.”

Muslim Man Who Beheaded Coworker Told Investigators: Allah ‘Wants Us to Get the Oppressors Out’

NORMAN, Okla. — A Muslim man from Oklahoma who beheaded his coworker three years ago after being suspended from the job told investigators that Allah “wants us to get the oppressors out,” as per recorded audio played during his trial on Wednesday.

He said that he acted out because he felt he was being treated differently by his coworkers because he is a follower of Islam. “I don’t feel regret, because you know what I’ve done,” Nolen stated. “That’s probably going to make Vaughan Foods a better place to work for a Muslim.”  

In Sept. 2014, days following his suspension from Vaughan Foods over alleged comments about Caucasians, Nolen entered the front office, where he encountered Colleen Huffort and began attacking her with a knife.

“He did kill Colleen and did sever her head,” police spokesperson Jeremy Lewis stated in a press release following the incident.

Nolen then began attacking coworker Traci Johnson who caught the attention of others in the building with her screaming. One of those who heard Johnson’s cries for help was Chief Operating Officer Mark Vaughn, who also served as an Oklahoma county reserve deputy. Being armed at the time, he shot Nolen, saving Johnson’s life.  

“This was not going to stop if he didn’t stop it,” Lewis remarked. “It could have gotten a lot worse.”

Others in the building locked themselves in their offices and called 911. Police arrived on the scene minutes later.

Nolen was hospitalized and was interviewed by police while in the hospital.

On Wednesday, Johnson was one of those who testified in court for the prosecution. She explained that she heard Huffort screaming like bloody murder and hurried to see what was wrong.

“When I saw the defendant, I was frozen,” she said. “I couldn’t move. And I saw the knife with the blood, … and he made a mad dash toward me and pushed me up against the wall and held me up with his forearm against the wall and just started splicing my neck.”

“He wouldn’t stop,” Johnson recalled. “He was just going back and forth like he was cutting a piece of meat.”  The trial is scheduled to resume on Monday, when the defense will be provided the opportunity to make their case. They believe Nolen should be found not guilty by reason of insanity.

“It’s all in the context of what legally insane means. And that is [if Nolen] didn’t know the difference between right and wrong, and didn’t know the consequences of his actions,” Cleveland County District Attorney Greg Mashburn told News9. “And clearly he knew what he did was wrong.”

Reports state that Nolen has a criminal past as he was convicted in 2011 on drug charges and for assaulting a police officer. He spent two years behind bars for his crimes before being released on probation. His Facebook page also was stated to contain “provocative” content that is Islamic in nature and critical of the United States.

[written by Heather Clark]

Indian government tells Supreme Court Rohingya pose ‘serious threat’

After an appeal from two Rohingya, India’s top court is considering PM Narendra Modi’s plan to deport some 40,000 Rohingya in India. The government said intelligence data showed links between some Rohingya and terrorism.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government told the Supreme Court of India on Monday that the Rohingya were “illegal” immigrants.

The hearing is taking place as Rohingya face severe violence in their native Myanmar. More than 400,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh in the past few weeks to escape military and civilian reprisals that the United Nations has described as “ethnic cleansing.” Later on Monday, Myanmar’s national security advisor said that his government was willing to welcome the refugees who had fled to Bangladesh back to their native Rakhine state, but that the details of the process still had to be worked out.

“We will make sure that everybody who left their home can return to their home but this is a process we have to discuss,” Thaung Tun told Reuters news agency after a meeting with British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

It was unclear how this would affect the estimated 40,000 Rohingya believed to have settled in India, including 16,000 of whom are registered with the UN’s refugee agency.

Read more: Myanmar’s Rohingya – A history of forced exoduses

The Indian government told the court that it had intelligence data that showed links between some Rohingya Muslims and Pakistan-based terror groups and other international terror organizations. It argued that such links made them a “serious threat to national security.”

The government also said there was a “serious possibility of eruption of violence against Buddhists in India by radicalized Rohingya.”

Lawyer Colin Gonsalves, who in a separate case is representing about 7,000 Rohingya living in the northern Indian city of Jammu, countered the government’s assertions.

“We just want to know: 40,000 people have been here, many of them for the last five years. Have you [the government] filed a single charge sheet, is anyone being prosecuted in the criminal court for being a terrorist? The answer is: no,” he told DW.

The court has adjourned the hearing in the matter to October 3.

Lack of evidence

India says it is not bound by the UN convention on refugees as it is not a signatory to the accord, but human rights activists disagree.

“The principle of non return of a person to a place where he will be executed or tortured has become a principle of customary international law which India follows,” Gonsalves told DW. “And it has attained the status of ‘jus cogens,’ which is a principle of law that no country can say is not applicable to it, such as torture and genocide.”

In a communication sent to all states in August, the Home Ministry [interior ministry] said the illegal migrants were more susceptible to terrorist recruitment efforts.

But an investigation by Indian broadcaster NDTV found “little evidence of the government claim.” The investigation that was carried out at major Rohingya settlements in the country showed little involvement in criminal wrongdoing by the refugees.

Lack of any evidence to support the government claim has led to speculations that the Rohingya were being targeted for their religion by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist government.

Indian government views Rohingya refugees as a national security threat

“It is really unfortunate that the government is going back on its commitment to refugees which it has reiterated several times in the past merely because these Rohingyas are Muslims,” said lawyer Prashant Bhushan, who filed the plea on behalf of two Rohingya men.

“I mean this is clearly a case of religious discrimination and an attempt to arouse a sort of feeling of… an anti-Muslim feeling or try and communalise the situation,” he told reporters outside the courthouse.

The UN’s human rights chief last week deplored Indian government’s move to deport Rohingya refugees.

“India cannot carry out collective expulsions, or return people to a place where they risk torture or other serious violations,” Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said.

The Rohingya are an Indo-Aryan people, the vast majority of whom are Muslims. They usually migrate to India through a rather porous border to escape persecution in their native Rakhine state in Myanmar, where they have been denied citizenship rights.

They are viewed by the local authorities as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Myanmar’s Buddhist majority is often accused of subjecting them to discrimination and violence.

The ongoing violence follows an insurgent attack on security forces on August 25 in Rakhine state that sparked off a brutal military counteroffensive.

Hundreds of people, the majority of them Rohingya, have been killed in the violence that has seen many homes destroyed and several villages burned down. Myanmar’s government maintains the crackdown is part of a counter-terrorism drive, while the UN’s al-Hussein has said that it “seems a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

[written by Ashutosh Pandey]

CHRISTIAN ANALYST: YOU CAN CONDEMN JEWS BUT NOT JIHADISTS?

“Offend the sensibilities of Islamists and you might get killed,” says CAMERA’s Van Zile.

Christians’ condemnation of Israel – and not jihad – have turned themselves into dhimmis, non-Muslims who have already submitted to Muslim rule, a Christian media analyst said. Writing for the Gatestone Institute in an essay titled “Jihadism: The fear that dare not speak its name,” Dexter Van Zile, the Christian media analyst for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), said that although Christian groups occasionally blame the perpetrators of violence and terrorism, such as the Assad regime, Islamic State and Boko Haram in West Africa, it is never nearly close to the way they blame Israel.  “Yes, they issue condemnations, but their statements are lamentations that really do not approach in ferocity the ugly denunciations these institutions target at Israel,” he said.

Van Zile said the root of the issue is knowing that Israel and the Jewish people do not react the same way that the extreme, jihadi terrorists act.

“One source of the problem is that it is simply a lot easier and safer to speak out about the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians than it is to confront the violence against Christians in the rest of the Middle East,” he said.  Israel has been allowing the entry of boycott supporters and detractors of the state, and only during the summer did the government begin preventing these activists from entering the country. Never did Israel do what other Middle East countries – and much more so terrorist groups – did to their critics.

“If you fly to Israel, you can participate in a protest against the IDF at the security barrier in the morning and be eating in a nice restaurant in Tel Aviv that afternoon without having to worry about getting shot,” he said. “Protesting against ISIS or the misdeeds of the Iranian government, which puts Westerners in jail, is another, rather more courageous, thing altogether.”

Van Zile said that one of the worst responses an attacker of Israel may get is a letter from his organization.

“Another factor is fear – fear of Islam. The threat of violence that comes with confronting the impact of Sharia law and jihadism on human rights and national security has been significant, but it has remained doggedly unstated in the witness of churches in the United States,” he said. “Condemn Israel unfairly or engage in Jew-baiting and you get a letter from CAMERA, the ADL [Anti-Defamation League] or the local board of rabbis. Offend the sensibilities of jihadists and you might get killed.”  Van Zile traced the Presbyterian Church USA’s anti-Zionist platform back to the election of Benjamin Weir, a former missionary who was kidnapped by Hezbollah in Lebanon, who had a significant influence on the church’s proceedings. Upon his release, while he did criticize Hezbollah, he used American support for Israel as his punching bag.

“Israel was a safe target for the rage he felt over being kidnapped and having a year of his life stolen from him,” Van Zile said. “The jihadists who kidnapped him were not a safe target.”

The analyst said that now is the time for Christians to speak out.

“In this time of trial, during which the very foundations of our moral and intellectual order are under assault, it is time we find our voice to address this problem while we still can.”

[written by BY BENJAMIN GLATT]