ISIS and the West

Has ISIS recruited our Western

governments to support the ISIS agenda?

 

Sections:

Introduction

ISIS, ISIL or Daesh?

ISIS Media Campaign

The Funding of ISIS

ISIS and Saudi Arabia

Psychology and ISIS

Death and ISIS

The Caliphate and ISIS

Refugees and ISIS

Steps to resolve the war between ISIS and the West

Introduction

Like millions of others, I have walked along some of the streets where the ISIS recruits engaged in the merciless slaughter of people enjoying a Friday evening out in Paris. The streets are a short walk from Gare du Nord railway station. I make the train journey to this station regularly from London en route to and from Germany.  Once a year, I walk from the station to another station in Paris to catch a train. It is hard to imagine the slaughter that took place there this month.

The national flags of France, Egypt, Russia, Palestine, Lebanon, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Mali and elsewhere remain soaked in tears and blood as acts of war between a version of the West and a version of Islam rages on.

We, the citizens of the West, have to ask ourselves a painful question:

Has ISIS recruited our Western governments to support the ISIS agenda?

ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) has successfully launched killings of people in the Arab world, Africa and Western society. More than 97% of ISIS victims are Muslims though one hardly would think so given the extensive coverage to suicide attacks in Paris earlier this month. The tears, anguish and despair remain the same everywhere.

French president declared on television that France is now “at war” with ISIS. He told the people of France that his French government will respond “without mercy”.

The British Prime Minister described ISIS as “psychopathic, murderous, brutal jihadis” as his government prepares to join the USA, France and Russia in sustained bombing attacks on the ISIS Caliphate stretching over parts of north east Syria and north west Iraq. “We are facing an evil against which the whole world must unite. And, as ever in the cause of freedom, democracy and justice, Britain will play its part.” The Caliphate currently occupies an area greater than Britain.

ISIS, ISIL or Daesh?

Instead of saying ISIS or ISIL, some Western politicians use the Arab word Daesh, an acronym for the Arabic phrase al-Dawla al-Islamiya al-Iraq al-Sham (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant). ISIS reject the use of Daesh because of its similarity to daes – ‘one who crushes something underfoot’ and dahes, translated as ‘one who sows discord’

ISIS must surely welcome with outstretched arms the public statements of Western leaders and their influential supporters, who claim they will destroy ISIS. Western political statements of rage against ISIS will not give ISIS any sleepless nights.  They welcome the naivety and hubris of the moral self-righteousness of Western governments with our increasing willingness to launch more and more air raids and drone missiles on towns and cities that ISIS occupies. These daily air attacks appear liable to increase in the weeks and months ahead as Western governments imposes its will and might upon some of the poorest regions of the world in air raids upon ISIS. Western bombing offers justification to ISIS to engage  in further suicide attacks in Western cities.

Western countries engage in acts of war from Syria to Pakistan in Asia and Islamic-based countries in both Sahara Africa and sub-Sahara Africa.  Air raids serve as the best possible means for recruitment of angry young men and women, mostly from Muslim families, born and educated in Western countries, to go and join ISIS. The West’s war on Arab nations have left behind civil wars, intense social and religious conflict, untold numbers of deaths and suffering and a crumbling infrastructure. Millions of Muslims seek to flee their homelands to try and start a new life in the West.

The US President described the bombing on the streets of Paris as “an attack on all humanity.” Presumably, he would say the same of the West’s bombing of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen and Israel’s bombing of the city of Gaza. The total loss of life amounts to hundreds of thousands since 9/11.

An estimated 30,000 foreign fighters or more have poured into Syria to join ISIS in its determination to establish its Caliphate. These foreign fighters have come from an estimated 100 countries or more, including USA, UK, France, Germany and Australia.

Why? These foreign fighters have seen on social media the horror of bombing of Muslims cities, towns and villages throughout much of the Arab world. These recruits have seen the consequences of so called precision bombing on weddings, schools, mosques, hospitals, centres for pilgrimage, government offices, homes and social amenities. Disillusioned young men get information from family and friends in Muslim countries living in daily terror of bombs and have to endure wars waging on the ground, including numerous suicide bombers. Other young Muslims turn to social media, television coverage, news photographs and reports of the daily horror as Arabs fight each other for control over their destiny.

If you are a Muslim experiencing poverty and discrimination in the West, and find repugnant the Western addiction to alcohol, online pornography, crass consumerism, police harassment and experience subtle and gross Islamophobia, then ISIS offers a violent rebellion against the decadence and indifference of the West to the plight of young Muslims.

ISIS Media Campaign

ISIS engages in a relentless and intense media campaign to trigger the wrath of young Arab men to leave the West and head straight for the ISIS strongholds to become ISIS fighters. Daesh has developed a massive media campaign to attract more and more disenchanted young Arabs resident in the West to form cells to plot mayhem, terror and suffering to as many Western citizens as possible.

With the fear of being perceived to do nothing against ISIS, Western governments then resort to bombing as a military solution rather than finding a political solution. ISIS seems to have successfully recruited Western governments to support the ISIS cause. They want Western bombs to fall on the Caliphate to ensure the Islamic propagation of their apocalyptic message. They need such compliance from the West to sustain their fundamentalist belief system of the global battle of “Rome and Islam” – a term employed in ancient times.

Embroiled in anger and desire for revenge, our leaders have adopted a similar war-mongering language as ISIS leaders use towards the West. Blinded with negativity. Western governments and Western media endlessly pour scorn on ISIS and its claims to an Islamic state. Western vitriol serves as music to the ears of ISIS. Western bombs inspire ISIS and their supporters to develop plots to harm the West.

ISIS relies upon the West to bomb Muslim countries. A French survey said that one in four young Muslims in the West currently feel sympathetic to ISIS. A front page headline in the UK claims “One in five British Muslims have sympathy for Jihadis” though other commentators dispute the figures. Western wars on Muslim countries have become the preparatory work on behalf of Daesh to enable and inspire a handful of home grown young men and women to plot to blow up as many Western citizens as possible, as well as themselves. We are left wondering whether ISIS and Western policy makers belong to the same death cult where ideology matters more than life, itself.

Countless newspaper columns try to make sense of the nightmare of the slaughter in Paris on Friday, 13 November. Judging from the response in the media, you get the impression that the deaths of Muslims from suicide attacks in other countries matter less than the attacks on Westerners. In alphabetical order, the top five countries that experience similar acts of suicide bombers are Afghanistan. Iraq, Pakistan, Nigeria and Syria. They are all Muslim countries.

Like other violent political organisations ISIS uses suicide bombers to spread fear and terror.  These attacks include Paris, Lebanon, Egypt (bomb on a Russian plane), Nigeria, Kenya, Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia (38 British tourists holidaying on a beach) and Boston, USA in the past couple of years.

When Russia started bombing ISIS positions, ISIS took revenge by blowing up a Russian plane full of tourists flying home from a holiday in Egypt. ISIS took revenge on France for its air attacks.

The Funding of ISIS

As with any other government, ISIS has to find the funds to pay for its religious/political and social ideology. Daesh has to pay for its arms, ammunition and uniforms, as well as cover the cost of the entire infrastructure of its army, including weekly wages. ISIS also has to ensure it can run the economy of its self-proclaimed Caliphate. Otherwise it will have a revolution on its hands when citizens no longer have any money to support their families.

ISIS cannot run a State without access to considerable sums of money flowing in on a daily basis. Without the money supply, the Caliphate’s infrastructure, as well as the cities and towns under occupation, will collapse as the economy disintegrates.

The Western superpowers resisting addressing the money supply to ISIS and how to block it. Political commentators suspect that the source for the weekly provision of hundreds of millions of dollars comes from ISIS selling oil to neighbouring Arab countries and the transference of large sums of money to ISIS through the banks from some of the Saudi billionaire backers who own oil wells.

There are no statements from the West to answer such questions as:

• What countries buy oil from ISIS?
• How does the oil reach these countries from the Caliphate?
• What banks transfer the money to ISIS?
• What banks does ISIS use?
• Who sends money to ISIS?
• How much money is transferred?
• Who provides the weapons and all other equipment for lSIS?
• How do the providers of weapons and other materials get paid?
• Which banks outside the Caliphate receive money from ISIS to pay for imports?
• How much money is coming from billionaire backers based in Saudi Arabia?
• How much money is coming from Western countries?
• What country (s) makes the arms for ISIS?
• Why do Western governments avoid addressing such issues knowing ISIS depends on a sustainable economy for its very survival?

The West claims to have the most sophisticated intelligence networks in the world. It has control over thousands of satellites with supposed pinpoint accuracy of movements on the ground. Supported with corporate search engines and corporate software used worldwide, the major surveillance agencies in the USA can listen in on the telephone conversations of Presidents and Prime Ministers in other Western countries but cannot answer any of the above questions. There seems to be a singular lack of Western intelligence or willingness to:

• cripple the ISIS economy
• bring about a collapse of the ISIS oil industry,
• engineer a collapse of the ISIS capacity to buy all the necessary equipment to wage war
• organise financial ruin of the Caliphate.

Instead, the West drops bombs. ISIS could not have a more co-operative enemy than the West. The West submits to the bidding of Daesh. ISIS is winning the war at a psychological, strategic and military level. While hiding behind notions of superiority and civilisation, Western leaders can only come up with the crudest solution to the threat of ISIS. Bomb ISIS. Bomb the Caliphate. Democracy has elected the dumbest of leaders. We get what we deserve and give ISIS what they want – an international showdown with endless suffering and punishment.

ISIS and Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia quietly supports ISIS since ISIS promotes a new kind of Islamic state with its strict puritanical ideology, somewhat similar to the same interpretation of Islam used in Saudi Arabia. Daesh and Saudi Arabia hate Iran and uphold much of the Shiite identity within Islam. Wahhabism, the extreme Islamic cult, reject all symbols of religious sentiments from religious festivals for the saints to banning of prayers for the dearly departed. Abd al Wahhab, the 19^th century founder, said those Muslims who failed to give all of their devotion to Allah should be killed and their possessions confiscated. He condemned other Muslim sects, including Sufis.

ISIS and Saudi Arabia both follow various interpretations of the Wahhabi branch of Islam with its selective references and interpretations of violent extracts found in the Koran. ISIS ignores the numerous thoughtful and compassionate concerns in the Koran (“There must be no coercion in matters of faith” 2:256) to enable Islam to become associated with violence in the eyes of the world community. ISIS can then make stronger claims to uphold the one true version of Islam.

The Saudi Arabian government funds fresh translations of the Koran according to the Wahhabi interpretation that permitted severe, mediaeval punishment of alleged wrongdoers, including beheading, cutting off hands, stoning to death of adulterers and public lashings of a 1000 strokes upon citizens said to have ignored Sharia law. The Wahhabis give out heavy punishment for criticism of any articles of faith or questioning of Sharia law. For decades, the Saudi government has built Wahhabi schools, indoctrinated the young, marginalised women, and demanded total religious conformity, both in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries.

Formed out of this narrow, dogmatic and intolerant cultural climate, Al Quaeda took the demands of the Wahhabis one step further through fostering a jihad against the West, Al Quaeda leader, Osama bi Laden, son of an elite Saudi family, rebelled against the Saudi Arabian government for permitting US military bases on Muslim soil. Fifteen citizens of Saudi Arabia, under the direction of bin Laden, engaged in the suicide attack on 9/11 resulting in the deaths of 2900 citizens in New York. Fearful and angry, the USA and other Western countries lost the plot and waged systematic war on one Muslim country after another. The West and Arabs started their global jihad. A network of Saudi citizens, who joined Al Quaeda, triggered the jihad.

The West and Saudi Arabia has entered into a Faustian pact. Saudi Arabia spends billions of dollars buying the most sophisticated weapons, bombers and fighter planes from the USA, UK, France and elsewhere while the West buys billions of barrels of oil from Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Arabian government will issue a nominal condemnation of ISIS, while the same government engages in uninterrupted bombing of Yemen and orders more beheading of its citizens per year than ISIS.

Western nations will express a nominal concern about the public beheading and misogyny in Saudi government policy. Successive British Prime Ministers, members of the British Royal Family and British arms salesmen will regularly fly out to Saudi Arabia. Members of the Saudi Royal Family will attend a state banquet hosted by the Queen in London. Both ISIS and Saudi Arabia cling tenaciously to the imposition of sharia law written in the 7^th century, which they regard as the infallible word of Allah.

While Saudi Arabia administers Sharia law and supports religious extremism, the British government remains close allies of Saudi Arabia. Deals between Britain and Saudi Arabia amount to $17.5 billion with 30,000 British citizens working in the Arab state. The British government has stated that it “welcomes the close relationship that exists between the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabian Governments.: The relationship offers opportunities for forging closer links between our armed forces and industries, which will benefit both nations.” Daesh have engaged in terror attacks in Riyadh, th capital of Saudi Arabia for its close links with the West.

Psychology and ISIS

With its ongoing bombing policy, the West continues to promote the ISIS campaign for conflict and war. Western leaders have no grasp of the psychology of ISIS, nor of their own psychology.  Fear and blame serves as the backbone for Western and ISIS policies. ISIS welcomes the massive public relations support that the West gives to ISIS through adopting the very direction that ISIS dictates – namely a bigger and bigger chasm between the West and Muslims on a worldwide basis.

Via the media, our governments and Western experts have firmly implanted in the minds of millions of citizens that Islam endorses violence. They refer to certain passages in the Koran, as well as public utterances over the centuries of fanatical Islamic preachers. ISIS believes that Jihadi violence expresses the true Islam and the West support ISIS more and more in this view.

Daesh rejoices to hear the constant barrage of association of Muslims with violence. They know about the endless condemnations in the West of Muslim values, Muslim history, Muslim culture and Muslim views on law, justice, women, education, dress and way of life. ISIS knows that the stereotyping of their religion brings despair to Muslims. Anger eventually follows the despair. The West makes the job of promoting the ISIS version of Islam much easier to spread among Muslims.

Islam and ISIS are slowly becoming synonymous in the Western mind. ISIS runs a systematic media campaign to show violent clips, violent short films and photographs of ISIS administration of Sharia law including collective shooting in the back of the head prisoners of war, beheadings of aid workers and journalists and public crucifixions.

“You are either with us or against us,” said former President George Bush a few weeks after 9/11. ISIS could not have stated their view more clearly themselves. The USA and Daesh share the same view of each other.

ISIS employs a whole network of supportive documentary filmmakers, photographers and journalists championing ISIS to film, photograph and report on their programs. They also have films and photographs showing the devastation and deaths of Muslims owing to bombing, drone missiles and foreign armies on Arab soil. The combination of Western wars on Arab countries and ISIS determination to punish the “infidels” acts as a recruiting tool to bring in more recruits to ISIS. The use of the media serves as a feature of the psychological campaign for ISIS to get sympathy from the hearts and minds of Muslims.

ISIS exploits through film and pictures the horror that the NATO has inflicted upon Muslims. ISIS deliberately shows films and photographs of the killing of prisoners of war and the beheadings of prisoners, as well as suicide attacks in the West. Daesh proudly promotes their success at inflicting suffering on the West. They know these films, clips and photographs will ramp up the rage of the West to inflict more suffering on ISIS through aerial attacks and assassinations of ISIS personnel. The West’s bombing of ISIS maintains the raison d’etre of the organisation for its vision of a global jihad.

The ISIS campaign with Western collusion becomes more and more effective to exacerbate the gap between the West and the Arab nations and puncture the West’s picture of itself as a tolerant, liberal and humane society.

Western government and Western media regularly refer to ‘Islamic terrorists’ and ‘Islamic militants.’  Such terms give immense support to the strategic aims of ISIS to establish Islam as religion of violence. A whole host of scientists, atheists, religious commentators and experts help develop the prevailing view of associating terrorists, extremists and militants with Muslims. The experts have adopted wholeheartedly the ISIS view of Islam. Their disgust with ISIS and Islam provokes the very response that ISIS pursues. ISIS has successfully ‘recruited’ these experts to perpetuate a dark mythology around Islam. These experts engage in a war of words and weapons against ISIS that serve to support ISIS and its violent version of Islam.

Our Western intelligentsia on Muslim affairs seem to share a single trait – a lack of intelligence. They have fallen completely into the psychological trap that ISIS set up. Sadly, it is not a game. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost through years and years of Western exploitation of natural resources in Arab countries. The West build up and destroys Arab nations and repeats history again, and then again. Far too many Western citizens treat Muslims as inferior. ISIS holds a similar view towards Westerners.

ISIS also produces for worldwide consumption short films showing a so-called happy life in the Caliphate with smiling families. ISIS soldiers fraternise with the local population to convince viewers of the integration of ISIS into the local community. ISIS members from the West frequently send home positive messages of the benefits of their Islamic way of life in the Caliphate to encourage more Westerners to move to ISIS territory.

We can compare these short films to tourist films generated for international consumption in every Western country. “Come to see the USA (or UK, France, Spain, Australia and elsewhere) for a wonderful time.” These tourist films never mention the crime rate (e.g. 11,800 gun killings alone in the USA last year), racism, Islamophobia and the stress and depression in society. ISIS has adopted the same kind of film to show the blessings and the benefits of life under the Caliphate.

Daesh magazine, titled Dabiq, shows also photographs, stories of friendship and co-operation in the Caliphate as Daesh markets a positive spin on their organisation. The magazine show ISIS members engaged in duties of running a small state including repairs to the infrastructure, home building and development of public services. Daesh runs schools, clinics and hospitals to make the Caliphate function.

Death and Isis

The Islamic State desperately wants the rest of the world to believe that the Islamic faith endorses holy wars, savage punishments and a promise of eternal life in heaven after death. The ISIS leaders and executioners yearn for martyrdom. They want the West to deliver them martyrdom, such as a shoot to kill policy, a bullet in the back of the head from a Western assassination squad or the dropping of bombs on their home or office.

They seek an instant death with no time to feel pain. Our police and snipers have agreed to provide potential ISIS martyrs with their request, who obediently comply with these expectations.

An extract from an ISIS statement on the slaughter in Paris said: “This group of believers were youth who divorced the worldly life and advanced towards their enemy hoping to be killed for Allah’s sake, doing so in support of His religion, His Prophet (blessing and peace be upon him), and His allies.”

On missions, committed ISIS wear suicide vests to avoid arrest, imprisonment, a trial and a lifelong sentence for war crimes against humanity. They pursue martyrdom and instant death, not years of incarceration, interrogation, solitary confinement and a life in prison. The West once again complies with their request rather than arrest these killers and make them face the rule of international law and hear the voices of the families who have suffered from their murderous intent.

The ISIS military dress in the colour black from head to socks with a black balaclava to hide their identity. Many in the military wear masks just as police and military in the West pursuing militants. Both the Daesh and the Western military personnel fear retribution through showing their faces. The black code of dress of the men impacts upon impressionable young Muslims, disaffected and unemployed in the West and Arab countries. There is dark glamour about ISIS as they parade the streets of conquered cities and towns. ISIS offers a fresh narrative for the lives of Muslims brought upon in the West. The West can only offer the young an x-box and IPhone.

Thousands want to join ISIS as jihadis in a holy war on the Western war machine and Western decadence. ISIS activists no longer have to spend months working on one or two vulnerable young Muslims to get them to join the Caliphate or form a cell plotting death and destruction in a Western city. Their film clips ensure a steady flow of new recruits every day of every week.

Every xenophobic attack on Muslims, every demand to block entry to the West to Muslim refugees and every act of surveillance legislation creates more vexation and stress for millions of Muslims. ISIS exploits the gap in order to provoke widespread conflict in Western countries between non-Muslims and Muslims. ISIS despises the Muslims who flee to the West but see their growing presence in the West as part of the crusade to cripple the Western economy and Western values. It could appear that ISIS directly recruited for their campaign Western politicians demanding a halt to the presence of refugees in their country. The West can tear itself apart from those who offer hospitality to refugees and those who reject the presence of refugees.

Organised in the suburbs of our cities, home grown terror cells will become the inevitable outcome of a growing intolerance towards Muslims, whether they believe in the plurality of religious/secular faiths or the ISIS brand, where others deserve death because of apostasy.

The Caliphate and ISIS

ISIS has learnt a lot from the occupation by Western nations of other countries. Some of the senior figures in ISIS were educated, trained and worked in the West where they learnt how to keep the population submissive to the political will through a largely compliant media. They employ the same methods to instil fear and insecurity to win people over along with threats.  Several ISIS leaders spent years in US prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan where they had the opportunity to discuss and develop their ideology of perpetual conflict in the name of Islam. They endured in prison Western psychological and physical torture, solitary confinement and methods to induce fear and terror. ISIS also employs similar methods upon those they arrest and worse.

As political fear and insecurity grows in the West, the majority of citizens will rally behind their leaders until they believe only their leaders have the solution to the violence and the conflict. ISIS also generates fear among millions of Muslims to keep them subservient.

ISIS sees their Caliphate as the doorway to salvation. They say any attempt to destroy the Caliphate will provoke an unbearable cost on their enemies, such as the West, the Kurds, the Shiah militia, Iran and Hezbollah. The apocalyptic vision of ISIS, like certain Christian fundamentalists, believes there will be a final war between Muslims and the West with the Muslims triumphant. Daesh believe the battleground will be Dabiq located in the Caliphate. The West will not stop bombing ISIS alone and ISIS will not stop plotting death and destruction where citizens in the West gather together. The conflict has become an intractable situation.

A handful of committed ISIS followers, out of millions of Muslims, can inflict immense harm upon the many – just like a bomb dropped from a plane manned by two or three people, or a drone guided by a single operator, can inflict suffering on the many. Millions of Muslims have become traumatised by these ongoing wars, between nations, civil wars and religious wars. Some of the traumatised, children and adults, have adopted the ideology of Al Qaeda and now ISIS to heap revenge on the West for their suffering. Is it surprising? Perhaps it is more surprising that so few violent operatives work undercover in the West given that millions of Muslims live here. If we continue bombing Muslims that situation could change for the worse.

Western governments deny that their bomb attacks supports Daesh and increases the desire for suicide attacks on Westerners. The evidence refutes the denial. The list of suicide attacks worldwide continue to grow year by year. More and more air strikes provide a core reason for Daesh to hurt the West. Western bombs have traumatised millions of civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, along with the bombing of ISIS and civilians living occupation. Some of the traumatised want revenge; ISIS sympathisers will see Daesh as a force that fights back.

Western governments, Western experts and Westerners who condemn Islam are saying and doing exactly to the letter what ISIS wants them to do. The utter inability of the United States government and its citizens to pause and reflect contribute to one of the conditions for the current nightmare. Around 93% of US citizens supported the bombing, invasion and occupation of Afghanistan soon after 9/11. Western governments continue the same bombing policies that have caused such devastation in Muslim countries producing the rage that eventually led to the organisation of ISIS.

US air strikes have been launched on more than 7000 ISIS targets. US military claims to have killed more than 1000 fighters every month. One might think these attacks would rapidly weaken and destroy ISIS. It seems to be having precisely the opposite impact. The number of new sympathisers for ISIS now runs into thousands every month worldwide. ISIS needs these bombing attacks to attract more supporters for their Caliphate, expand its army and pursue its end of the world vision.

Our politicians tells us that the West will never give in to ISIS. Our bombing of the Caliphate shows our politicians have given into ISIS. We claim we will never engage in the wilful killing and maiming of citizens through our attacks on Arab nations. Our leaders make a nominal one line public apology for any ‘collateral damage’ – civilian deaths. It is hardly likely that Muslims who have lost their loved ones, suffered wounds, maiming and trauma will take comfort in Western wars on Muslim countries, whether from the air or ground or both, because of a brief apology for collateral damage by a Western president or prime minister.

These apologies serve as empty rhetoric since the bombing of the Caliphate and surrounding areas, as well as widespread use of drone missiles in Arab countries, continue on a daily basis in various parts of the Muslim world.

Many of our leaders display weak minded tendencies. They seem filled with concern about how they see themselves, how their peers see them, their public image and their place in history. From this psychological posture of weakness, they wish to appear strong to themselves, other leaders and the wider public. As a result, they advocate making war on their enemies. Being afraid to appear weak, they rush to the opposite psychological extreme to appear strong employing a violent language of death and destruction upon ISIS. They sound just like their enemies. Being caught up in fear and blame, they show a singular lack of capacity to reflect and to inquire to make different decisions to resolve the conflict.

Refugees and ISIS

The orders of our governments to bomb ISIS places more and more of our lives at risk. Fear of failure and subsequent violence upon external threats exacerbates the collective crisis between the West and Arab nations. Fear and blame among politicians and more and more of the public expels right action and compassion from the mind of our leaders, the media and the public.

For example, the US government has permitted a total of 2200 Syrian refugees out of 4.3 million Syrian refugees into USA. These refugees find themselves spread out over 38 states. It means the White House has accepted around one refugee in every 2000 Syrian refugees. The US visa department takes between 18 months to three years to process a single Syrian application for refugee status in the US. In other words, the White House has issued a virtual block on granting Syrians asylum in America. More than half of the US state governors have publicly stated they will not permit any Syrian refugees into their state. They also have the power to cut funding and aid for any refugees in their state.

Britain claims to have accepted around 5000 Syrian refugees. Syrians can only seek asylum in Britain once they have landed in Britain. The British government has made it virtually impossible for any penniless Syrian family to get into Britain. The British government has agreed to allow 20,000 refugees into the country with vetting of their applications likely to take years. NATO countries and Russia have created a massive humanitarian crisis while fear and blame inhibits our hospitality and compassion.

Steps to resolve the conflict

Far too much of the debate in the West has been between those who claim Islam is a violent religion and those who claim Islam is a religion of peace. This debate lacks merit since it distracts us from the main issue, namely resolving the conflict, offering practical support for the victims of war in the Muslim word and hospitality in the West for those who flee the civil wars and Western and Saudi bombing.

We need to step back from these wars. We need to bring a halt to the bombing. The bombs give ISIS the upper hand, since the bombs serve as a recruitment tool. To repeat, ISIS has persuaded Western governments to support its apocalyptic campaign. We need to consider and develop a range of options, such as

• We need a political solution.
• We need international co-operation.
• We need UN peacekeeping troops in the region.
• We need to develop various means for conflict resolution.
• We need international diplomacy.
• We need citizens to end corrupt political and corporate practices profiting from war.
• We need to stop the international arms trade.
• We need to stop oil sales.
• We need to offer substantial aid.
• We need to follow the money supply to and from ISIS.
• We need to name the governments, banks and the businesses selling arms and goods to ISIS.
• We need a radical change in our relationship to Muslims worldwide.
• We need to make a huge public apology for the suffering we have inflicted on Muslims.
• We need to take new steps to give Muslims in the West opportunities for a worthwhile life.
• We need to offer Muslims a respectful and creative narrative that upholds and develops the human spirit.
• We need to welcome refugees and asylum seekers to the West and fully address their needs.

We read of heart-warming reports of citizens in the West and Arab countries opening their hearts and homes to asylum seekers and refugees. More than a million refugees have taken refuge in Turkey and another million refugees from Syria are based in the Lebanon. The population of the Lebanon has increased by 20%.

Citizens throughout the European Union have found accommodaton for refugees, jobs and offered health care. They have explained to refugees the ways and means to develop a new life. They have explained to them how our social system works. These noble citizens help refugees with the form filling. Certain cities in Britain have declared themselves Cities of Sanctuary.

There is a small army of management in social services working alongside social workers, community care workers, psychologists, religious clergy of various faiths and supportive police officers to enable the refugees to settle into a new way of life.

Citizens offer rooms, furniture, clothes, toys, food and money to refugees to make them feel totally welcome. People will load up trucks of goods offered in markets and the suburbs to take to the refugees trapped on European borders. Such kindness and goodwill confirms our common humanity.

We have to keep faith in such noble actions, protest at any political or social violence, and work together to make everybody feel respected, loved and understood.

May all beings be free from suffering

May all being resolve their conflicts

May all beings live with wisdom and compassion