A Message From Fuel Freedom

Tuesday

Dear Friend,

My heart was filled with sadness when I read the morning news yesterday…yet another terror attack. I want to offer my deepest condolences to the victims of the tragedy in Brussels. But as I continue to read in dismay about the horrors of these attacks, not only in Brussels, but also the suicide bomber in Istanbul, and the ISIS rocket that killed U.S. Staff Sergeant Louis F. Cardin (age 28) in Iraq, I am more resolved than ever to stop them.

The best way to do that is to de-fund the terrorists and the violent ideology behind them.

A key source of funding for these terrorists is oil, and it’s clear that Fuel Freedom’s mission will make it much harder for them. Our goal is to open up the market to fuel competition, which will permanently drive down the cost of oil, leaving these terrorists without funding and without the ability to carry out their hateful carnage.

We have already proved our theory. You don’t have to scour the news for stories about how low oil prices are harming terrorists. CNN reported in January how ISIS, which has been reliant on oil as a major funding source, is now reported to be in financial trouble. Other examples are being published every day.

The way to stop these people from inflicting more death isn’t to send our sons and daughters in the military to fight them. Defunding the ideology of terrorism is something we can do by making fuel choice a reality. Offering American-made fuels at the pump can not only increase our security but stop these radicals from causing more harm.

Join us today and help us stop the terrorists.

Thank you,

Yossie Hollander, Chairman and Co-founder
Fuel Freedom Foundation

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Behead Those Who...

Saturday

Charles the Hammer wrote a very informative leaflet which can be printed on a single page, front and back. "The target audience," says the author, "is law enforcement officers and the politically powerful (if they did their job we wouldn't have to do what we're doing). If it is spread in a town, those whose job it is to serve and protect should become concerned enough to look into it and learn a thing or two along the way."

He suggests you hand them out to everyone, but especially to police officers and public officials.

"If someone is alarmed by the leaflet, the best thing the person handing them out can say is, 'If you're really concerned about this leaflet, give it to a police officer.' If the police start getting many copies of these leaflets from 'concerned citizens' we just might start getting through to those in power."

The leaflet can be shared online and there are many excellent links in it.

You can print or download the PDF file of the leaflet here: Behead Those Who...

A message from Charles Martel:

Islam causes terrorism no more than smoking causes cancer. Many people who smoke will not get cancer. And there are many other things that cause cancer other than smoking.

Perhaps you think this illustration is unfair. We are told that Muhammad said and did some good things. Let's assume that's true. Can we find out the truth about anyone by only look at the good things they've said and done?

If you do look at Muhammad, be sure not to just look at the good things he said and did, look at the questionable things as well. This is important because time and time again Muslim's are told by Islamic leaders and their most respected religious texts, to follow Muhammad's teaching and example. The following is a good place to start: http://youtu.be/5bB08L0VoAw

Charles the Hammer said: Someone recently wrote to me saying the leaflet was too big and because it was too big people wouldn't read it. I can understand how they might get that impression because it does look big when it is viewed as a spread. I wrote back with the following:

"The first and most important step in trying to get people to read anything is the attention step. It does not matter how accurate the information is if people do not read at least some of it.

So I highly recommend folding the leaflet in half, so that potential readers see either the title or the picture. Once they see either, the leaflet has definitely got their attention. Whether or not they read it then is up to them."

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BBC "Today Programme" ignores the cult-like nature of ISIS recruitment of young women in the UK

Sunday

The following was written by Babs Barron, a chartered psychologist in independent practice in the UK who writes under a pseudonym because she wishes to keep her work and her professional life entirely separate from her politics.

I should begin, perhaps, by declaring my own stance on this. From my professional experience, and given its behaviour towards others, even fellow-Muslims, I believe that ISIS bears all the first-order markers of a malignant, destructive cult. Consequently it is very worrisome that neither governments nor media have courage enough to name that aspect, let alone to act in an intelligent way to combat it. By failing to spell out the cult-like nature of ISIS and other similar closed-off Islamist organisations, media and governments are endangering their people, including the Muslims in the West who want nothing to do with ISIS.

On 30th December 2015, on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mishal Husain interviewed a young Muslim woman who had been targeted for recruitment on Twitter by ISIS but who had been rescued by an all faith group which appealed to her interest in football. As the interview unfolded it became clear that the BBC's questions were selective, and not once did Husain probe or ask questions of the woman which might indicate why she thought she might have been targeted. Also significant by its absence was any acknowledgement by Husain of the sense of alienation of such young Muslim women because of their inferior status in comparison to males among other things, accorded them by Islamic teaching.

I take most of my source material below from the excellent book by Steven Hassan, "Combatting Cult Mind Control" [1] which I have found useful to inform my work with people whose families approached me for help. Although one cannot map completely the effects of cult membership in general onto such a widespread belief system as Islam, I would argue that once Islam shades into Islamism, it takes on many of the psychological characteristics of other closed destructive cults.

Hassan says that cult recruiters are powerfully persuasive and seductive to newcomers. The BBC interview threw up one important nugget of information from the young woman Husain interviewed – about the pleasantness of the approach from the ISIS member. Hassan tell us that recruiters are taught to size up the newcomer, and to package the group in a way which will appeal. The young interviewee told us that ISIS promised to care for her and protect her, which of course begs the question of why this sense of being cared for and protected was missing in the life she already had.

Hassan points up the difference between mind control (for our purposes as exerted by ISIS) and brainwashing. The latter is coercive from the beginning, rather than seductive. We are told that mind control as practised by destructive cults is a social process, enforced by large groups of people, in which the recruit is totally immersed in the cult environment and where, in order to function, he must shed his old identity and adopt the new identity desired by the group. Hassan tells us that hypnotic processes are combined with group dynamics to create a potent indoctrination effect. Destructive cults like ISIS also instil fears and phobias into their recruits in order to control them utterly.

ISIS manages the recruit's physical reality by behaviour control and the induction of phobias about the punishments meted out to transgressors against the group's norms beds this in effectively. Individualism is discouraged, if not punished. Ritual behaviours are also employed alongside lengthy sermons from the group's religious leaders about the necessity to spread Islam by violent means and to obliterate kufr.

Alongside that comes thought control, by which the members of the groups are so thoroughly indoctrinated with the group's doctrine that they internalise it. This may or may not put a slightly different slant on the mantra usually offered by the families of particularly sociopathic ISIS members such as Jihadi John – that these were good young people, non-violent, etc etc – but it certainly illustrates the success of ISIS indoctrination and those parents' own failure to form sufficiently strong attachments with their children to confer the necessary emotional resilience for them to be able to withstand such approaches or resist seeking them out.

In addition, there is the accompanying doctrine of absolutist, black and white thinking. There are no shades of grey, no nuanced approaches. Hassan says that destructive cults also employ "loaded language" of words and expressions. Certain words trigger emotional and cognitive responses and complex situations are condensed into cult clichés, all of which influence thought and behaviour.

ISIS probably inculcates thought stopping rituals so that its members can be taught to block out any information which is critical of it and/or does not tie in with its leaders' teachings. However, whereas in most destructive cults simple denial then kicks in when their beliefs are contradicted, ISIS and Islamist groups in general tend to ratchet up their violent reactions.

ISIS also controls its members by fear, of its own violence towards anyone who does not conform to its rigid teachings, including its own members. Islam in general is inclined towards a fortress mentality which, along the same lines as I have already described above, thrives in the rigid, dichotomous, black and white thinking which typifies Islamic teaching in general. Such a mentality predisposes to suspicion about outsiders and also makes reality testing difficult generally, but for an ISIS follower that becomes impossible, which means that ISIS leaders exercise information control too.

The controlling of information by leaders is the last component of mind control, according to Hassan. Deny a person the information s/he needs and you paralyse the ability to make decisions. It is likely that ISIS' behaviour is similar to that of other destructive cults in that it either actively lies to its followers and/ or withholds information. That it does lie is evidenced in the accounts of Muslims who have fled from it, particularly the women, who had joined because their recruiters had promised to take care of and protect them but then relegated them to slavery to the ISIS males.

The young Muslima interviewed by Husain was rescued by the interfaith group, and this indicates that ISIS' hold over her was minimal at the time of that intervention. However, rather than posit intelligent, analytical reasons for the success of online recruitment to ISIS, Husain could offer nothing beyond the usual "alienation from wider society" excuse for the young woman having been such a ready target for them. Instead we got the usual BBC default value – the implication that "alienation" was, as always, the fault of non-Muslims was allowed to continue unchallenged.

From my own literature searches, very few have addressed even in a rudimentary way, the ongoing emotional alienation of the young within Muslim families and Muslim societies. One thought-provoking article by Mohammed Ilyas in the Journal of Terrorism Research[2]  whilst it does attempt psychological analysis – at times comes close to the usual excuse making and fails completely to address what may well be one of the root causes of the radicalisation of Muslim young – the effects of emotional attachment difficulties on the young in the Muslim family and their possible role in radicalisation. All attachment difficulties, in all cultural groups, stem from negative childhood experiences and these may well be the drivers which predispose such youngsters from Muslim families to seek out ISIS or make them ideal targets for online recruitment. I single out ISIS simply because at present no other entity is as dangerous, as open in its aims or has gained so much publicity or is as sophisticated in its recruitment techniques.

The BBC, by failing to apprehend or address this at all, let alone honestly and in depth, has let its audience down yet again.

Postscript: In response to a friend to whom I sent this to be critiqued, I searched out the relevant BBC podcast on its webpage. I, of course, heard all the original interview, but the podcast gave us something from the young Muslima, but nothing at all of the questions asked her by Husain.

________________________

[1] Hassan, Steven, Combatting Cult Mind Control Rochester, Vermont 05767, 1990

[2] Ilyas, Mohammed, Islamist groups in the UK and recruitment. Journal of Terrorism Research, St Andrew's University Vol 4 Issue 2, September, 2013.

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Article Spotlight

One of the most unusual articles on CitizenWarrior.com is Pleasantville and Islamic Supremacism.

It illustrates the Islamic Supremacist vision by showing the similarity between what happened in the movie, Pleasantville, and what devout fundamentalist Muslims are trying to create in Islamic states like Syria, Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia (and ultimately everywhere in the world).

Click here to read the article.


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