Islamic terrorists have massacred at least 41 people and injured 102 in the first four days of the holiest month for Muslims, Ramadan, a time when some adherents of Islam believe jihad and martyrdom to be especially heroic and rewarded in paradise.
This year, Muslim leaders declared Thursday to be the start of the holy month, when most Muslims abide by Ramadan’s fasting tradition: abstaining from eating, drinking, smoking, having sex, and other physical needs each day, starting from before the break of dawn until sunset.
The various calls for jihadist groups to halt their campaign of terror has fallen on deaf ears, particularly in Afghanistan, home to the majority of attacks.
So far this Ramadan, the deadliest attack took place on Friday in Afghanistan, when the Taliban carried out an attack in Ghani province, killing nine and wounding seven.
The Afghan Taliban is also behind the attack with the most casualties (8 killed and 55 wounded).
The narco-jihadists targeted a cricket tournament dubbed the “Ramadan Cup,” drawing the ire of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who urged the terrorists to stop their attacks during the holy month, echoing the leaders from the U.S. and the United Nations.
In his Ramadan message, American Gen. John Nicholson, the top commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, urged the Taliban to accept Ghani’s offer of a ceasefire and recognition as a legitimate political group.
Tadamachi Yamamoto, the United Nations secretary general’s special representative for Afghanistan, called on the Taliban to “halt the fighting” during Ramadan.
On the first day of Ramadan alone, jihadists carried out at least six attacks, killing 12 people and injuring 30.
Friday has been the deadliest day so far with six attacks — mainly attributed to the Taliban — that killed 26 and wounded 69 others.
Despite the devastating blow the U.S.-led coalition and local forces have dealt the Islamic State’s (ISIS/ISIL) now former caliphate in Iraq and Syria, the terrorist group remains a menace.
ISIS has killed two people and injured one other in Iraq since Ramadan began.
A homemade bomb leftover by the jihadist group in Syria has also killed two people in the last four days.
Outside the group’s former caliphate, ISIS claimed responsibility for killing three and injuring three others at a church in Russia’s Muslim-majority Chechnya region.
Last year’s Ramadan marked the bloodiest holy month for Muslims in recent history, with 3,343 casualties (1,639 deaths, 1,704 injuries), according to a Breitbart News tally.
Breitbart News has primarily gleaned its Ramadan casualty count from the Religion of Peace website in coordination with other news reports. The tally mainly covers the death of civilians at the hands of jihadists.
All the terrorist attacks during Ramadan 2018, as documented by Breitbart News, include:
May 17—Farah, Afghanistan—Taliban kills three foreign engineers.
May 17—Kashmir, India—Terrorists kidnap, slit throat of 23-year-old man after Indian government declares first Ramadan ceasefire in 18 years.
May 17—Borno, Nigeria—Suspected Boko Haram jihadists detonated a bomb at camp for people displaced by insurgency, killing four and wounding 14.
May 17—Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan — Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA) terrorist group claims responsibility for a suicide bombing that kills one and injures 14.
May 17—North Sinai, Egypt — Sunni hardliners bombed an area, killing one and injuring another.
May 17—Uruzgan, Afghanistan — Taliban kill two civilians.
May 18—Raqqa, Syria — Leftover Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) improvised explosive device (IED) kills two civilians.
May 18—Diyala, Iraq — Suspected ISIS terrorist are behind a bomb blast that kills one and wounds another.
May 18 —Kirkuk, Iraq — Suspected ISIS terrorists kill a member of Kurdish Kakayi minority group with IED.
May 18—Kandahar, Afghanistan — Taliban attacked police security posts, killing five police officers and wounding six others.
May 18—Ghani, Afghanistan — Taliban attacked remote Ajristan district, killing nine security forces and wounding seven others.
May 18—Nangarhar, Afghanistan — Suspected Islamic State terrorists attacked “Ramadan Cup” cricket tournament in Jalalabad, the capital of the group’s stronghold, killing eight and wounding 55.
May 19—Chechnya, Russia — Islamic State claimed responsibility for an attack at church that kills two police officers and a worshipper and also wounds another police officer.
They do not show a picture of the peaceful Muslim who used his car as a damn bulldozer.
These guys seem like really great neighbors right?
21-year-old Mohammed Abdul, of McMillan Street, London, has appeared in court on charges of attempted murder after a car was driven into a crowd outside a nightclub in Gravesend, Kent.
Abdul is thought to have smashed into revellers in a Suzuki Vitara at Blake’s, Queen Street, injuring 13 people, KentOnline reports.
18-year-old Gravesend resident Elena Napoliello described how she and a friend were “standing in front of the bar in the marquee, waiting for our coats to be taken to the cloakroom [when] all of a sudden, I saw multiple people falling backwards onto us, and so I was confused as to what was happening.
“Then, I saw the headlights of the car coming towards me and my friend and we got pushed backwards by one of our friends to get us into safety.
“I could see everyone surrounding this 4×4, but there was nowhere for us to go, so we had to hide in the back of the marquee. Everyone was shouting to ‘get down and hide’, which is what we were doing.
“When I could see the car coming towards me, I could see everyone kicking and punching the car trying to stop it and then the next minute I could see the guy on the floor. I didn’t see him very clearly because everyone was surrounding him.”
Detective Chief Inspector David Chewter thanked “the security staff at the nightclub as well as those members of the public who helped” after what he described as “the collision”, and noted that “many people” were injured in “the incident”.
Injuries reported include a dislocated knee, a broken shin bone, and one woman whose pelvis was either shattered or dislocated, according to conflicting reports. Fortunately, none of the injured are thought to be in danger of death.
The attack is not being treated as terror-related.
A British sniper has killed a senior ISIS fighter with a ‘one in a million’ night-time shot from nearly a mile away, it has been claimed.
The unnamed SAS marksman is said to have killed the terrorist with a ‘head shot’ close to the Syrian border having been given a window of just 15 seconds.
He is understood to be a sergeant with the SAS G-Squadron and a veteran of operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan, where he is said to have recorded as many as 100 kills.
According to the Daily Star Sunday, he is believed to have used a US-made McMillan TAC-50 sniper rifle as he targeted the fanatic from more than 1,500m away as he arrived at a safe house in a village.
The trooper is reportedly part of a counterterrorism drive in Iraq and Syria, which has been operating since the beginning of the year.
A source told the newspaper that the village in question was under ISIS control making a more preferable ‘capture mission’ impossible. The exact location has not been revealed.
‘The SAS team had hoped that the ISIS commander would arrive during the day because a night shot was regarded as too dangerous,’ the source said.
‘But as evening approached the team realised that they were going to have to either abort or go for a night shot. The sniper said he wanted to take the shot and was given a “go order”.’
The sniper had 15 seconds to take his shot as the extremist pulled up in a car. The source said the extremist was killed instantly after being shot in the back of the head.
The Ministry of Defence declined to comment when contacted by MailOnline this morning.
The State Department announced a new $600,000 taxpayer-funded study that suggests “ideals of masculinity” in Kenya are contributing to terrorism.
The department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism is seeking a nonprofit group to “explore gender identities of boys and men in Kenya.” The grant proposal states that men being “tough, heterosexual, aggressive, unemotional, and achieving” can make them vulnerable to joining Islamic extremist groups.
“Gender is increasingly recognized as an essential aspect to understanding and countering violent extremism throughout the world,” the State Department said. “To date, research and interventions on gender in Kenya have predominantly focused on the role of women and girls in violent extremism. However, men and boys are disproportionately recruited by and join terrorist groups and carry out terrorist operations. In Kenya, there currently exists no CVE [countering violent extremism] programming dedicated to the role of gender of boys and men and vulnerability to violent extremism.”
To remedy this, the State Department will spend up to $592,500 on the “Masculinity and Violent Extremism” study, which will be awarded to an American nonprofit or nongovernmental organization later this year.
The study will “determine existing knowledge and gaps on male gender and violent extremism as well as explore gender identities of boys and men in Kenya.”
The grant proposal blames Kenya’s “patriarchal” society of “tough, heterosexual” men for problems facing the developing country.
“In Kenya, boys and men are disproportionately recruited by al-Shabaab and more likely to be both operators and victims of terrorist acts,” the State Department said. “Kenyan society, while diverse in its ethnic and cultural composition, is uniformly patriarchal and highly prescriptive of gender expressions and identities.”
“Kenyan males are expected to head the household as well as provide for, protect, and maintain the family,” the department continued. “Socially, males are expected to be tough, heterosexual, aggressive, unemotional, and achieving. The practical and social pressures to fulfill these expectations can be immense and create vulnerabilities that are exploited by violent extremist groups who appeal to these characteristics and offer the opportunity to fulfil [sic] these roles.”
The State Department added that the research would involve fathers and community leaders in Kenya in the hopes to “shape existing cultural narratives on masculinity, gender, and violent extremism.”
“Funds will support male-to-male dialogue and training on issues of gender and encourage stronger social and familial support structures,” the department said.
I’m sure it is okay because Allah told him to do it.
CLEVELAND, Ohio — A man was sentenced Thursday to 25 years in prison after admitting to strangling his ex-wife in 2016, then stuffing her body into a duffel bag and burying her remains as their 3-year-old son watched.
Fahad Saeed, 28, showed little remorse before Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Pamela Barker imposed the sentence.
“Things happen,” Saeed said through an Arabic interpreter.
Cuyahoga County prosecutors and Saeed’s lawyers struck a deal on Thursday that would see him plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter, kidnapping and burglary charges, and serve the maximum time in prison on each charge for a total of 25 years.
Prosecutors agreed not pursue an aggravated murder charge that would put Saeed behind bars for life.
The court hearing offered details into Al-Dhannoon’s October 2016 disappearance from her apartment on Lakewood’s Gold Coast, and the months-long search that ended when investigators found her body in May 2017.
Prosecutors noted for the first time that Saeed took the couple’s toddler son with him to bury the mother’s remains in a patch of thick woods near the apartment where Saeed once lived, across the street from the Memphis Kiddie Park.
The toddler told FBI agents in a November 2016 interview that “daddy put mommy in the pickies near the horses,” an apparent reference to the park’s carousel, Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Blaise Thomas said.
Five months would pass before a tipster from the county jail came forward with a detailed map that Saeed drew while serving a sentence on charges dating back to before Al-Dhannoon’s disappearance.
Saeed, an Iraqi national in the U.S. on a green-card visa, will be subject to deportation once he is released from prison.
Al-Dhannoon and Saeed married in 2011. She filed for the protection order in November 2015 after he became increasingly violent, according to court records.
Investigators say Saeed broke into Al-Dhannoon’s apartment in August 2016 and took cellphone video as he commented about the state of the house, Al-Dhannoon’s weight and her mothering capabilities.
Two months later, Saeed again went to the home, where he attacked Al-Dhannoon.
Surveillance cameras caught him and a friend, Ammar Sami, buying shovels from a Walmart the night of Al-Dhannoon’s disappearance. The next day, he took his son to a Home Depot and bought a small hand digging tool, prosecutor said.
Investigators focused on Saeed early and learned that he had been to Al-Dhannoon’s Gold Coast apartment building in the days before she disappeared.
Saeed was arrested, charged and eventually sentenced to six months in Cuyahoga County Jail for violating a restraining order that Al-Dhannoon took out against him.
A community college professor in Texas frightened several of his students when he walked into class Tuesday night with his face covered and incoherently mumbled about the Koran, the moon and the dark night.
Students attending a lecture at Tarrant County College called the police after adjunct professor Daniel Mashburn walked into his astronomy class and started acting out of character.
Students told FOX4 that Mashburn walked in about 20 minutes late and promptly turned off the lights. He was wearing a baseball hat, a beanie, a scarf over his face and gloves.
“The kid next to me had said he was acting very strange, and I looked over at the girl next to me and she seemed very scared,” student April McLeod said.
The students said Mashburn then started talking about the Muslim holy book the Koran and the moon and the dark night.
“Mostly he was talking about different things of the Muslim faith,” McLeod said. “I was in class for about five minutes. He kept messing with his pocket and you could tell there was an object in the right-hand pocket. And whenever he went to pull out his hand, I started having this really bad feeling and jumped up and ran out of the classroom.”
She added: “At one point he stood face-to-face with the board of the classroom and was just talking to the board.”
Eventually campus police arrived and searched Mashburn, who didn’t take off the scarf or baseball hat. Police found no harmful or illegal objects on the professor.
McLeod filmed police searching Mashburn outside the classroom. He was not arrested.
When reached by FOX4 News, Mashburn seemed to deflect many questions and said several times his teaching of astronomy goes hand-in-hand with Islam.
“I keep it secret. I keep it safe. I do my best, but I am tired of hiding in the shadows,” he said when asked if he explained his teaching philosophy when he interviewed for the position. “I am tired of fearing their law. I fear Allah.”