Former Islamist Extremist Describes His Escape From the Ideology and How to Help the Most Vulnerable

Mohammed Khalid, a former Islamist extremist, described what drew him to the radical ideology and why he left it at an event last month at The Heritage Foundation.

Khalid, now a scholar in cybersecurity studies at the University of Maryland, was born in the United Arab Emirates and lived in Pakistan before emigrating to the United States in 2010.

As a 14-year-old struggling to fit in at an American public high school, Khalid said he turned to the internet to make sense of what some saw as the negative connotation of his first name, “Mohammed.”

 He said he quickly became enthralled with the answers online extremists offered. He absorbed as much material as he could, Khalid said, watching propaganda videos that painted the West in a negative light. He said the ideology resonated with him because he remembered seeing the same clips on the news when he lived in Pakistan.

“One of the biggest things that I remember was that the Twin Towers, when they were falling down—I could not forget one of the comments,” Khalid said. “One of the commentators was like, ‘Well, maybe they had it coming.’ This was when it began to kind of make sense to me, that well, maybe what’s happening to me is reflective of a wider ideology that I’m not aware of.”

At 16, Khalid said he was spending 40 hours a week communicating with Islamists through password-protected online forums, translating Islamist propaganda videos into English to radicalize American Muslims. He confided in these Islamists, whom he considered closer than family.

“The more I confided in them, the more separated and secluded I became from my own family,” Khalid said. “My family could not figure out what was wrong with me; they did not know what was happening because I kept it very well hidden from them.”

Khalid was arrested in April 2014, charged with conspiracy to provide material to terrorists, and convicted. He says he spent five years in federal prison.

At 17, he was the youngest person to be convicted of terrorism-related charges in the U.S.

Slowly, with the help of officers at the juvenile detention center, he said, he began to emerge from the extremist mindset.

The officers “explained about their struggles, they explained about their dreams, about their journeys,” Khalid said.

“And so began a process of humanization, a process in which I was able to finally relate to these people whom I’d other-ized under the umbrella of Islamist ideology, and whom I finally, when I reached that beginning step, began to see as human beings,” he said.

When an audience member asked whether it is possible for Muslims to reject extremism without leaving their faith, Khalid, who remains a Muslim, answered yes:

I see … a lot of my friends actually struggling to reconcile [Islam] with the society they find themselves in. They want to be partakers of this American culture. At the same time, they want to hold on to a Muslim identity that unfortunately, you know, sometimes is collapsed together with a whole bunch of outdated traditions. … I think moving forward, a lot of people individually have to decide how they want to interpret the religion, instead of letting religion be this one-size-fits-all approach.

Maajid Nawaz, founder and chairman of the London-based counterextremism think tank Quilliam, also spoke at the event.

Nawaz said the most vulnerable groups in society are former Muslims. He suggested that Islamic theology should be updated to develop a “Western Muslim identity.”

Muslims have a responsibility to respect those who leave the religion, he added, rather than isolating or targeting them.

“If Muslims … want to explore other faith traditions, or none, we have to protect them and their right to do so,” Nawaz said. “Because in our communities still, that is a big to-do, and they are discriminated against.”

SOURCE 






Voter ID Opponents Lose Again. This Time in North Dakota

Opponents of election integrity lost the latest in a long string of cases recently when a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated North Dakota’s voter ID requirement and tossed out an injunction that had been issued by a lower court.

In Brakebill v. Jaeger, Judge Steven Colloton, writing for the 2-to-1 majority, concluded that the supposed burden of obtaining an ID by the less than 0.5% of all eligible voters who do not already have one did not justify a statewide injunction that prevented the state from implementing the ID requirement.

North Dakota is the only state in the Union that does not require citizens to register to vote. You can show up on Election Day and vote in North Dakota — as long you show identification.

The state Legislature passed a series of laws delineating the forms of identification that could be used to vote.

Effective Aug. 1, 2017, North Dakota required either a driver’s license, a nondriver’s identification card issued by the state Department of Motor Vehicles, or an “official form of identification issued by a tribal government to a tribal member residing in the state.”

The law requires the ID to provide the voter’s legal name, current residential address, and date of birth.

However, if a voter’s ID is missing any of those three items, the voter will still be able to cast a ballot if he provides the missing information with a current utility bill, bank statement, paycheck, or a check or other document issued by a federal, state, or local government agency.

Voters have up to six days after the election to present an acceptable ID or supplemental documents. Despite the fact that the lower court thought this provision would not be understood by the average voter, the appeals court noted that there was “no evidence of voter confusion over this provision.”

Six members of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians sued, claiming that the ID requirement restricted the ability of tribal members to register and exercise their right to vote, in violation of the U.S. Constitution, state law, and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The tribal members argued that “Native Americans often live on reservations or in other rural areas where people do not have street addresses; even if they do … those addresses are frequently not included on tribal IDs. Moreover … Native Americans in North Dakota are ‘disproportionately homeless.’”

Although it should be pointed out that all six of these plaintiffs actually have residential addresses.

The majority rejected the plaintiffs’ contention that requiring voters to have a residential street address is discriminatory, citing former Associate Justice John Paul Stevens’ opinion in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board (2008), in which the Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s voter ID requirement.

A “residential street address furthers North Dakota’s legitimate interest in preventing voter fraud and safeguarding voter confidence, so unlike a poll tax, it is not invidiously ‘unrelated to voter qualifications.’”

The number of North Dakotans, just like the residents of other states, who already possess a photo ID is overwhelming. The court found that less than 0.5% of eligible voters in the state do not already have an ID or the supplemental documents that can be used to meet the ID requirement.

More importantly, the plaintiffs in the case presented no evidence whatsoever to detail how many of these “voters attempted to obtain a supplemental document and were unsuccessful.”

It was clear to the court that the state ID law did not place “a substantial burden on most North Dakota voters.” Thus, a “statewide injunction” was “unwarranted.”

The clamor around mythical claims of “voter suppression” over legislation like North Dakota’s ID requirement is misguided.

Such laws are designed and intended to shore up current deficiencies in the electoral system.

As pointed out in a recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, voter ID laws have no discernible effect on reducing the turnout of voters. Over the period 2008 to 2016, the researchers concluded that voter ID “laws have no negative effect on registration or turnout, overall or for any group defined by race, gender, age, or party affiliation.”

The purpose of North Dakota’s election laws is rooted in a desire to promote election integrity. Far from being a trivial concern, election fraud has been and continues to be an unfortunate part of American elections, as can be seen in The Heritage Foundation’s election fraud database.

Although election integrity measures such as voter ID requirements are often presented as a partisan issue, they should not be. Everyone has an interest in fair and secure elections.

As noted in a 2005 study by the Commission of Federal Election Reform, headed by former President Jimmy Carter and Secretary of State James Baker:

The electoral system cannot inspire public confidence if no safeguards exist to deter or detect fraud or to confirm the identity of voters. Photo IDs currently are needed to board a plane, enter federal buildings, and cash a check. Voting is equally important.

SOURCE 






California city denies Straight Pride rally permit

MODESTO, Calif. — A Northern California city has denied a request to hold a so-called Straight Pride rally at a park.

Modesto city officials on Friday denied an application by the National Straight Pride Coalition for an Aug. 24 event at Graceada Park.

Organizer Don Grundmann had estimated 500 people would attend. The group says it supports heterosexuality, Christianity and white contributions to Western civilization.

Opponents argued the rally would promote hatred of LGBTQ people and minorities.

City spokesman Thomas Reeves says the permit request was denied over safety concerns, because the group lost its liability insurance and the parks department determined the event wasn’t consistent with park use.

However, Reeves says the city would allow the rally at a downtown plaza if the group proves it has insurance by Tuesday.

SOURCE 






Australia's most radical abortion law will allow late terminations and to abort unwanted girls - and most bizarrely makes no mention of women, writes MARK LATHAM

This week the controversial New South Wales abortion bill goes to an upper house vote. With the Berejiklian Government ripping itself in two over attempts to rush the legislation through parliament, people are starting to see some of the more bizarre aspects of the bill.

In line with today's PC madness, it makes no mention of women. It constantly refers to 'a person' having an abortion, but never a woman. This echoes Greens MP Jenny Leong's wacky declaration in parliament two weeks ago that: 'There are people who have uteruses who are not women'.

Think of that the next time you are watching the footy or walking past a building construction site.

The Greens are always saying we need to 'respect the science' when it comes to  climate change but when it comes to biological science, they have invented the fantasy of men having babies.

In the common law, abortions in NSW have been permissible since an important court ruling in 1971. [The Heatherbrae case]

Those pushing the proposal now before parliament – a cross-party cabal of Greens, Independent, Labor and Left-wing National and Liberal MPs – want to remove abortion from the NSW Crimes Act.

This would have been a straightforward task if they had been open about it, engaged in public consultation and started with a moderate, commonsense bill.

Instead, they have tried to ram through Australia's most radically extreme abortion laws without adequate safeguards for late-term abortions, gender selection abortions (parents who only want boys) and medical mistake abortions (where the baby is born alive). The religious freedom of doctors and nurses not to participate in the process has also been wiped.

I'll be moving an amendment this week to ensure that no medico is made to do anything they regard as morally wrong.

Whenever governments coerce people to act against their religious and moral code, we move one step towards a police state.

The people of NSW, conservatives in particular, have every right to feel betrayed by Gladys Berejiklian.

She has allowed a bill to be rushed through parliament that has the Greens and Labor Left cheering on its extremism.

She knew the bill was coming, telling the media, she 'kicked it down the road because I didn't want to deal with it before the (March) election.'

She kept the voters and some of her own MPs in the dark. No wonder they are now calling her sneaky and counting the numbers to get rid of her.

SOURCE  

******************************

Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

************************************