Kidnapped for ransom: ex-hostages describe melted plastic, electrocution sessions

Freed captive:  “Death would have been a relief”

Grisly report from Sinai mortician:  corpses from Bedouin kidnappers always show signs of torture to get their families to pay ransoms

Thousands of dollars are demanded for each Eritrean kidnapped as they attempt to cross borders in search of a better life.  When the tribes, terrorists, and criminal syndicates that abduct them don’t get the money they demand, they begin torturing their victims.  In some cases, they do this even while the victim’s families are forced to listen on the telephone.

Please listen to just five minutes from this BBC radio report (sound begins after a few seconds):

The human tragedy is the most shocking element of this story, but keep in mind the equally dangerous result of how kidnappers use ransom money to help buy weapons and perpetrate further acts of violence or terrorism.

The BBC’s Mike Thomson has since followed up with this additional report worth listening to.

Khan gave money, advice on lethal attack

Following in the ignoble tradition of Al Haramain, another jihadist has transferred funds from Oregon overseas to fund terrorism.  Portland’s Reaz Qadir Khan allegedly contributed $2,500 toward a suicide bombing in Pakistan that killed 40, injured 300.  Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Kristian Foden-Vencil has this one-minute Mar. 6 report:

Under attack from Iran, banks seek federal help

Having spent millions of dollars to defend themselves from a hostile foreign power, American banks are now asking the federal government for assistance.  U.S. officials say that all options are being weighed including retaliation.  Here’s a two-minute interview on the subject with reporter Siobhan Gorman on the radio program The Wall Street Journal This Morning last month:

Hopefully they won’t have to use it, but the Pentagon would have good reasons for keeping a cyber-counteroffensive plan on its shelf.

View previous Money Jihad coverage of the allegedly Iranian-based technological assaults here, here, and here.

Syria: funding an Islamist rebellion through theft

Free Syrian Army steals flour from Aleppo’s main warehouse

Al Qaeda seizes monopoly control of bread distribution

The BBC is reporting that flour heists by the FSA has led to long bread lines and volatile crowds at bakeries in Aleppo.  Daily life in areas under FSA control is turning out to be a disaster for the locals.  One FSA officer tells the reporter, “We are all thieves.”

Western foreign aid to Syria looks increasingly ill-considered.  Take a listen to two minutes of the BBC’s report:

But the FSA’s corruption, greed, and accusations of “theft, looting and kidnapping for ransom,” aren’t the only problems.  The BBC and NPR have also reported that al-Nusra Front, the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, has wrested control of flour distribution out of the hands of the FSA.  This ensures that bakers and the hungry are loyal to Al Qaeda exclusively rather than corrupt “moderates” of the FSA.

Either way, the Syrian flour situation is a recipe for disaster.

Following the money in early Islam

The Koran dictates that 20 percent of the booty or spoils of war, known as khums, belongs to Allah and Muhammad.  As Iraqi expatriate I.Q. al-Rassooli points out in this talk entitled “Allah’s Share of the Plunder,” does it really make sense that Allah needs a cut of the spoils?  What’s the exact breakdown between Muhammad and Allah—10 percent for each?  The only logical explanation is that Muhammad got it all.  What kind of religion would devise such a system?  As al-Rassooli points out, the kind of religion that attracted other men who believed that they too could become very wealthy from plundering and looting non-believers.  This is about 5 minutes long:

Revisit another great analysis from Mr. Rassooli here.

Audio: the first rich Arab patron of jihad

Abu Bakr sponsored the military campaigns in the early days of conquest by Muhammad.  Khadija gave Muhammad enough money to help him attract followers, but it was the even wealthier Abu Bakr who helped buy the weapons and horses of Islam’s holy war against unbelievers.

A new recording from the British Islamic studios of Al Baseera highlight’s Muhammad’s praise for Abu Bakr’s role in funding the “deen” (or “dīn,” which can be translated from Arabic to English as “religion”).

It’s just 80 seconds long—take a listen:

Abu Bakr famously contributed all of his money to fund the Battle of Tabuk, an opening salvo in the Byzantine-Arab wars.  The implicit theme of messages like this is for rich Muslims to follow suit and fund jihad today.

Government funds go to halal slaughterhouse

The state government of Victoria has given a halal abattoir a half million dollars to put more sheep to death under the knife of the Muslim slaughter man.  Along with the funding, an export license granted to the abattoir to ship halal meat to the Middle East has helped double the number of sheep it exports, according to ABC.  Surely, Australian taxpayers will be delighted to learn that their money is being given away to subsidize halal butchery:

Abattoir upgrades for halal sheep processing

By Lucy Barbour

Tuesday, 20/11/2012

A Victorian abattoir has received half a million dollars in funding from the State Government to expand its facilities at Stawell, in the state’s west.

The Frewstal abattoir will use the money to build a freezer room in the hope of increasing halal sheep meat exports to the Middle East.

General manager Greg Nicholls says most abattoirs are now using halal slaughter methods for both export and domestic product.

“You’ve got to be halal to be able to get rid of all your offal, and even though not all our meat goes to the Middle East, a lot of the offal does,” he said.

“To be able to find a market for those products, you’ve got to go down that track.”

What’s worse, as an accompanying radio report from ABC points out, is that about 80 percent of the meat sold domestically in Australia is halal, unbeknownst to consumers.  Without labeling or other disclosure requirements on the halal industry, Christians are unwittingly eating meat killed under recitation of a Muslim prayer, and animal rights advocates unknowingly eat the meat of animal killed in a brutal procedure.

Take a listen:

The halal food industry is a lot like the sharia finance sector and the Islamic charitable sector.  These sectors are used as vehicles to deepen the Islamization of Western cultures, and the profits are siphoned off for mysterious causes.

Hezbollah credit card fraudster re-arrested

Rafic Labboun, a.k.a. Wilhelm Dick, has been arrested with fellow Hezbollah operatives in the Yucutan peninsula, Mexico.  Labboun had previously been convicted in federal court for a $100,000 credit card scheme.  Take a listen to the report from CBS radio’s San Francisco affiliate:

An imam no less!  Who would know better Islam’s call to defraud the West of its wealth for the cause of jihad?

By the way, isn’t this further evidence of Hezbollah’s presence in Mexico?

The fairy tale of Muhammad dying in poverty

The would-be heirs of Muhammad’s wealth: Ali (left) and Fatima (right), with their children on Muhammad’s lap

Why would Fatima and Abu Bakr engage in a protracted dispute over the inheritance of the estate of Muhammad (see the Sahih Muslim, Book 19, No. 4354) if, as Muhammad’s wife Aisha (“Mother of the Believers”) described, Muhammad died a poor man with his armor mortgaged to a Jew in Medina?  What happened to the enormous wealth of Khadija, Muhammad’s first wife, after she died?  Would he not have inherited it?

These provocative questions are raised and answered in an excellent 10 minute lecture by Iraqi exile I.Q. al Rassooli, author of Lifting the Veil and blogger at the-koran.blogspot.com and inthenameofallah.org.

This talk also covers many issues which we have highlighted over the past few years about Muhammad’s personal accumulation of wealth through taxes (particularly khums and fai) that he claimed were mandated by Allah.

We don’t normally post audio that’s longer than five minutes, but it is worth the time:

Holton to Congress: Currently no disclosure or transparency standards for zakat, sharia products

Chris Holton, vice president at the Center for Security Policy and editor of Shariah Finance Watch, recently briefed staff members from ten Congressional offices on sharia-compliant finance.  During a question and answer period, staffers showed particular interest in the lack of disclosure and transparency requirements on Islamic finance.

One questioner asked Mr. Holton whether, even after all the new financial regulations of Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank, there are still truly no reporting requirements for banks to disclose whether they have sharia portfolios and where their zakat expenditures are directed.  You’ve got to listen to the answer during three minutes of powerful audio from the the briefing:

In an era where nearly every single aspect of the U.S. financial sector is taxed, regulated, and scrutinized, it is remarkable that banks are not required to tell investors whether the products marketed to them as “ethical” are actually sharia products, that the banks do not have to disclose what charities receive zakat from the Islamic bank divisions and sharia boards, and or even such basic information as whether the bank has a sharia division.

Publishers, editors profit from Taliban poems

London’s C. Hurst & Co. Publishers Ltd. and co-editors Felix Kuehn, Faisal Devji, and Alex Strick van Linschoten are profiting from the publication of a new anthology of poetry by the Taliban.  Kuehn says the poems provide “a different window” to “understand the Taliban better,” van Linschoten says “the poetry shows that the Taliban are people just like we are,” and the co-editors say that the poems “provide a fascinating insight into the minds and hearts of these deeply emotional people.”

True, it’s worth examining all the statements of Taliban members, but their poems should not be embraced for showing the supposed humanity of the Taliban.  The Taliban are not people just like we are—they are people very far different from what we are.

Here’s one of the great “human” poems from a Taliban soldier, as read aloud during a BBC 4 broadcast:

The editors and publishers should do nothing less than donate 100 percent of the profits to British war veterans.