14 Islamist Incidents Since Tony Blair's Landmark Speech

5/18/2014

Just over two weeks ago, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair gave a landmark speech on the threat of global Islamism.

Iraqi elections saw renewed Sunni-Shiite violence. (Photo: © Reuters)

On April 23, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair gave akeynote speech in London in which he described Islamic extremism as a global phenomenon that threatens almost every region of the world. Since he gave that speech, there have been numerous atrocities and aggressions committed by Islamists across five continents.

1. In the U.S. in Pennsylvania, a Muslim man murdered his pregnant wife in a fight over her refusal to wear what he regarded as sufficiently Islamic dress. It is widely regarded as anhonor killing.

2. In Nigeria, 236 schoolgirls abducted by the terrorist group Boko Haram in Nigeria remain in captivity. They have been sold into sex-slavery, forcibly married to the mujahideen for the price of $12 each. An international grassroots campaign has been building to pressure the Nigerian government to do more to bring about their release. But, as Nick Cohen wrote in the Guardian, "Boko Haram is a vile manifestation, yet the liberal press stays silent, fearful of 'demonising the other.' " Maajid Nawaaz of the Quilliam Foundation tweeted his fury at this Guardian article that described "mass-marriages" rather than mass rape in its headline on the story.

3. While the girls remained in captivity and efforts to find them increased, Boko Haram took advantage of the situation and massacred 300 people in an undefended town. The soldiers that would normally have defended it were redeployed north to join the search.

4. Nor is kidnapping girls into sex-slavery a specific tactic of Boko Haram. A new study has revealed that every year hundreds of Christian and Hindu girls, mostly prepubescent, are abducted, beaten, raped and forced to marry their captors and converted to Islam. Over Easter, an eight-year old Christian girl was raped by three Muslim men. The girl's father was kidnapped and forced not to press charges about two of the attackers, while the third was released.

5. In China, a bomb and knife attack in the regional capital of Xinjiang province killed three and wounded 79. The Chinese government has said the attack was carried out by Islamic Uighur separatists. Tony Blair remarked in his speech that "radical influences are stretching across the whole of the central part of Northern Asia, reaching even the Western province of Xinjiang in China."

6. The Maldives have taken a radical step towards institutingsharia (Islamic) law, re-instating capital punishments. The law will apply to children as young as 10.

It follows in the footsteps of its regional neighbor Brunei, whichinstituted "phase one" of its Sultan's plan to institute sharia law at the beginning of April. Punishments will include amputation, flogging and, for certain crimes, death by stoning.

7. In the Middle East, Sunni-Shiite violence marred historic elections in Iraq. Dozens of people were killed in bombings across the country, including 37 people at an election rally in a triple-bombing by the Islamic State for Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which seeks to establish a breakaway Islamic state ruled by a Caliph in accordance with sharia.

8. In Syria, ISIS displayed the executed bodies of its enemies on crosses in the center of their stronghold Raqqa, to send a message to the subjugated population. (Warning: Pictures contain extremely graphic content.)

9. The Saudi government sentenced Raif Badawi, the imprisoned liberal blogger to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for running an online site which encouraged people to debate the appropriate role for religion in the kingdom. There is no civil code in Saudi Arabia. His sentence was decided according to the judges interpretation of sharia law alone.

10. International links to the Syrian war have spread as far as Australia, where yesterday a woman was arrested for supporting terrorism after allegedly trying to board a plane with supplies for her husband who is fighting in Syria. A group of hardline Muslims arrived outside the Sydney police station and clamored for her release. Police were forced to call for reinforcements.

While, the above incidents have all been violent, there have been other events that have taken place since Blair's speech that have been peaceful. That does not mean they are any less dangerous.

11.  In Britain, further evidence of the so-called "Trojan Horse" bid by Islamists to take over British schools in Birmingham shows the situation is far more widespread than previously believed. Senior sources from the Department for Education "said that coordinated attempts to undermine secular heads had occurred or were suspected in at least five places across the UK: Birmingham, Bradford, Manchester, and the London boroughs of Waltham Forest and Tower Hamlets."

12.  At the Congress of the Union of Islamic Organizations in France Hani Ramadan, a celebrated Islamic leader, said that "All the evil in the world originates from the Jews and the Zionist barbarism." The conference is one of the largest and most prominent Islamic events in France.

13. The Palestinian Al-Quds Teachers Union expelled one of its professors for taking students on a trip to Auschwitz.

14. Since this article was first drafted, eight more schoolgirls have been kidnapped by Boko Haram.

The Clarion Project has reported on many of these incidents separately. They differ in region, type, scale and almost every other metric. All of them have taken place since Tony Blair's speech, and no doubt there have been more we left uncovered. The only common denominator across all of these different incidents is the extremist Islamist ideology that has been the driving force behind each one of them.

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