Arsalan Iftikhar | BIO
AC360° Contributor
Founder, TheMuslimGuy.com
He is a lifelong Texan, registered Republican, die-hard Dallas Cowboys fan and professional Muslim ‘de-radicalizer’ all-in-one. Especially in light of both the recently-foiled Christmas day airline bombing plot in Detroit and earlier high-profile arrests of 5 young American Muslim men in Sargodha, Pakistan; the current debate within the chattering class of our political zeitgeist is revolving around ensuring that young impressionable Western Muslims are not radicalized within the dark recesses of cyberspace and the Internet.
This is where professional de-radicalizers like Mohamed Elibiary come into play.
As founder and president of The Freedom and Justice Foundation in Dallas, Mr. Elibiary has recently found himself serving the American Muslim community by helping to serve families and communities who are concerned about some of their youngsters naively falling prey to the lure of a ‘new jihadi cool’; a sociopolitical term coined by former CIA forensic psychiatrist Dr. Marc Sageman to categorize some of these young impressionable men who seek to perform acts of criminal vigilante terrorism contrary to every normative mainstream teaching of Islam.
Arsalan Iftikhar | BIO
AC360° Contributor
Founder, TheMuslimGuy.com
In light of the botched Christmas Day airliner bombing aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 en route from Amsterdam to Detroit, the Transportation Security Administration has announced new enhanced "guidelines" requiring airline passengers traveling from (and through) 14 different countries to undergo especially rigorous security screening before being able to fly into the United States.
Under these new TSA guidelines, security screeners will conduct "full pat-down body checks" and extensive carry-on luggage checks for all passengers traveling from a country which the U.S. considers to be a "security risk."
These 14 countries are: Afghanistan, Algeria, Cuba, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Additionally, passengers traveling from any other foreign country may also be checked at 'random' as well.
Arsalan Iftikhar
AC360° Contributor
Founder, TheMuslimGuy.com
Holy jihad, Batman!
Did Al-Qaeda just officially offer condolences to innocent civilians murdered by their stupid acts of terrorism?
Well, sort of…
According to CNN, Adam Gadahn- also known as ‘Azzam the American’- appeared in a 17-minute video released on Islamist online forums late Friday, offering condolences to the families of innocent people killed in Al-Qaeda attacks.
“We express our condolences to the families of the Muslim men, women and children killed in these criminal acts…” he says in the video.
Wait a minute. Did a member of Al-Qaeda just admit that their acts of terrorism are ‘criminal acts’?
Arsalan Iftikhar
AC360° Contributor
Founder, TheMuslimGuy.com
Dude…You have got to be kidding me…
With the recent arrest of five young American Muslims in Sargodha, Pakistan on alleged charges of terrorism by Pakistani authorities, many of the over 7 million American Muslims were collectively groaning and rolling our eyes whilst saying:
“Are you kidding me? Thanks a lot, you idiots…”
A recent CNN article noted that the potential radicalization of American Muslim teenagers has now become known as “jihadi cool,” a term coined by author/psychiatrist (and former CIA official) Dr. Marc Sageman.
“The path for a lot of these kids is essentially like at-risk gangbangers, who want to ’stand up’ for their community, to address grievances of the global Muslim community more effectively than they’ve seen the elder generation address them since 9/11.”
Many professional ‘de-radicalizers’ have said that the great majority of these young men have little sense of what they are doing. They are “extremely shallow theologically and even ideologically.”
Arsalan Iftikhar
AC360° Contributor
Founder, TheMuslimGuy.com
Arsalan Iftikhar
AC360° Contributor
Founder, TheMuslimGuy.com
Most of the world's 1.57 billion Muslims know that the Holy Quran states quite clearly that, "Anyone who kills a human being ... it shall be as though he has killed all of mankind. ... If anyone saves a life, it shall be as though he has saved the lives of all of mankind."
Accordingly, it should come as little surprise to any reasonable observer that when Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan recently committed his shocking acts of mass murder at Fort Hood, Texas, America's Muslim community of over 7 million felt an added sense of horror and sadness at this senseless attack against the brave men and women of the U.S. armed forces.
True to form, many conservative media pundits wasted little time in pointing to reports that Hasan had said "Allahu Akbar" (Arabic for "God is great") at the start of his murderous rampage. News coverage continuously showed the looping convenience store black-and-white videotape footage of Hasan wearing traditional white Islamic garb.
First of all, someone simply saying "Allahu Akbar" while committing an act of mass murder no more makes their criminal act "Islamic" than a Christian uttering the "Hail Mary" while murdering an abortion medical provider, or someone chanting "Onward, Christian Soldiers" while bombing a gay nightclub, would make their act "Christian" in nature.
Arsalan Iftikhar
AC360° Contributor
Founder, TheMuslimGuy.com
First of all, as an American, my heart broke into two pieces tonight when I heard of the tragic mass murder at Fort Hood, Texas earlier this evening when a U.S. Army soldier opened fire on a military processing center at Fort Hood in Texas on Thursday; killing at least 12 people and wounding at least 31 others, according to Army officials in a report to CNN.
Secondly, as a Muslim, my heart further broke into another two pieces when it was learned that the Fort Hood shooter was a Muslim mental health care professional medical doctor who (similar to the April 16, 2007 Virginia Tech massacre) used two handguns during his mass murder rampage.
Thus, with my heart currently broken into four distinct pieces right now, needless to say, I am completely speechless (and bumfuzzled) by this latest tragedy at Fort Hood.
According to CNN, the gunman (who was apparently captured alive by emergency personnel) was later identified as U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, 39.
Arsalan Iftikhar, creator of themuslimguy.com
CNN
From The Matrix to the Lord of the Rings to….a $150 million Hollywood biopic film about the Prophet Muhammad?
Yup, you read it correctly…
As reported recently by The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom, “[Academy Award-winning] producer Barrie Osborne cast Keanu Reeves as the messiah in The Matrix and helped defeat the dark lord Sauron in his record-breaking Lord of the Rings trilogy. Now the Oscar-winning American film-maker is set to embark on his most perilous quest to date: making a big-screen biopic of the prophet Muhammad.”
With a whopping estimated budget of around $150 million, the blockbuster film will chart Muhammad’s life and examine his teachings.
Mr. Osborne recently told Reuters that he envisions the movie as “an international epic production aimed at bridging cultures. The film will educate people about the true meaning of Islam.”
Arsalan Iftikhar
AC360° Contributor
Founder, TheMuslimGuy.com
Afghan Strategy to focus on major population centers: report.
According to The New York Times, the White House is settling on an Afghan strategy that would send more US troops to protect top population centers, recognizing that the insurgency cannot be completely eradicated from the country, the newspaper said late Tuesday evening.
It described the strategy as a blend of rival proposals put forward by Vice President Joe Biden and by the top military commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal.
“We are no longer thinking about just destroying the enemy in a conventional way,” an unidentified senior military officer told the newspaper, saying that the central tenet of McChrystal’s proposal would be adopted.
Well, it looks as though General Stanley McChrystal will be getting approximately 18,000 (of the 40,000 requested) additional troops that he seeks for the Afghanistan theater of war, according to a recent story in The New York Times.
It should come as little surprise to foreign policy observers that the Obama White House would take a middle ground approach between General McChrystal’s ‘full-court-press’ and Vice President Joe Biden’s ’spread defense’ strategies within Afghanistan.
The bottom line: It seems as though it will be ‘McChrystal in the city’ and ‘Biden in the country’…
Arsalan Iftikhar, creator of themuslimguy.com
CNN
In addition to the mighty Pearl Jam (led by legendary front-man Eddie Vedder) and the uber-hipster timeless classics known as REM (led by equally-legendary Michael Stipe), several prominent musicians from around are rallying together to ensure that their music is not being used to torture at Gitmo’s Camp X-Ray and that our American government lives up to its promise of closing the infamous lawless prison known around the world simply as ‘Guantanamo Bay’.
Additionally, Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails) and Tom Morello (Grammy-winning musiciain formerly of Rage Against The Machine and Audioslave) whose music with the bands Nine Inch Nails and Rage Against The Machine have “already been linked to interrogations at the prison”, according to previously released government records.
“Guantanamo is known around the world as one of the places where human beings have been tortured — from waterboarding to stripping, hooding and forcing detainees into humiliating sexual acts — playing music for 72 hours in a row at volumes just below that to shatter the eardrums,” said Tom Morello, formerly of Audioslave and Rage Against The Machine.
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