The Dhaka, Bangladesh Terror Attack.

At around 18:20 local time (13:20 GMT) yesterday (1/7/16) six armed attackers stormed an Italian owned bakery/restaurant in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka starting a siege that lasted for the next 12 hours. 

Although details still remain sketchy it appears that 20 of the hostages were murdered almost immediately while 13 were rescued during a police raid before finally 5 of the 6 attackers were killed bringing the siege to an end.

This seems to be the almost follow up chapter to the terrorist attack that occurred at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, US on June 12th (12/6/16).

In the immediate aftermath of the Pulse terror attack US President Barack Obama came under immense pressure over his refusal to use the term "Radical Islam" either in talking about that attack or the wider war against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and their associates. Obama has repeatedly insisted that using the term "Radical Islam" would have no material difference on the war against ISIL or reducing the global threat from terrorism.

On this point Obama could not be more wrong. 

If Obama were able to distinguish between radical Islam and moderate Islam it would have an immediate and positive effect on the battlefield in Syria. It would force Obama to back the moderate Muslim Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) rather than the radical Islamist forces of Al Qaeda, the Islamic Movement of the Freemen of the Levant/Harakat Ahrar ash-Sham al-Islamiyya (Ahrar al-Sham) and the Army of Islam/Jaish al-Islam (JAI). Although mercifully much smaller Jaish al-Islam in particular have this habit of making ISIL seem moderate by comparison.

Obama's inability to distinguish between radical and moderate Islam also presents a much wider, global problem that is less immediate but no less serious.

On this planet there are currently around 1.7bn Muslim with almost as many different interpretations of Islam. However the big ideological split is between Shia Islam and Sunni Islam. Running across this faultline there is another distinction between the Sufis who are really considered the Hippies of the Islamic world and the Salafis who are the headbanging lunatics who want to drag the world back to Medieval times when the Prophet Muhammad was alive. 

At the Salafi end of the spectrum you have two particular sects; Wahhabist and Deobandis. These are so similar in ideology that the lesser known Deobandis often refer to themselves as Wahhabists rather than having to explain the differences to outsiders.

The problem is that as Hillary Clinton well knows it is in the promotion of radical Islam where the money is. 

As such the Wahhabists and Deobandis spend vast amounts of money building Mosques and religious schools across the World to make sure their radical interpretation of Islam is the only accepted version of Islam. If brainwashing the population doesn't work they simply kill Muslims who disagree with them.

The military government of Pakistan actually long viewed the promotion of radical Deobandi Islam as part of their sacred duty in ruling the country. Prior to 1971 Bangladesh was simply East Pakistan. So while there are certainly differences between the two parts of the partioned nation there are certainly still a lot of similarities.

Largely due to the problems caused by radical Islamist terror groups in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) - particularly the December 16th 2014 (16/12/14) Peshawar School Massacre - the Pakistani military has very much backed off from its promotion of radical Islam. However the practice still very much persists within Bangladesh.

This has created an extremely hostile environment within Bangladesh both for non-Muslims and even moderate Muslims. 

On an almost weekly basis non-Muslims and secular Muslims - particularly bloggers and gay-rights activists are being shot or hacked to death with machetes on the streets by radical Islamist terrorists. Following one recent attack the Bangladeshi Interior Minister Asaduzzaman Khan declared that there was not an extremism problem in the country and the victims were responsible for their own deaths by insulting Islam.

Last night's attack was significantly more sophisticated than all previous attacks suggesting that it was planned and organised from outside of Bangladesh. 

While I'm still trying to gain a clear picture of what happened the fact that the attackers seem to have taken hostages rather than immediately massacring all those in the restaurant along with the fact they seem to have divided Muslim and non-Muslim hostages suggests to me that they were closer to Al Qaeda than ISIL in ideology. Apart from ISIL murdering the son of a senior Al Qaeda commander it was the issue of violence against Muslims that saw ISIL spilt from Al Qeada. However the fact that ISIL have claimed the attack demonstrates that the division between ISIL and Al Qaeda is nowhere near as significant as Obama likes to pretend.

As for why this particular restaurant was targeted on this particular day. Well it turns out that I am just that important apparently.

At around 13:20 GMT yesterday I was sitting down to lunch with my lesbian mother in a restaurant chain called; "Pizza Express." As the name suggests this is an Italian-style pizza restaurant. However their big selling point is the amount of work they put into their dough. So it is impossible to order a pizza there without answering a series of questions about what type of dough you would like making up the pizza base. As I don't think Pizza Express have yet expanded to Bangladesh the Italian owned Holey Artisan Bakery seems close enough.

What I did find strange about lunch yesterday is that without any knowledge of the Dhaka attack during a lull in conversation I found myself wondering what I would do if the restaurant was suddenly attacked by terrorists. I then immediately found myself questioning why I was wondering what would happen if the restaurant was attacked by terrorists.

Obviously I need to complete the Pulse chapter before I'm able to fully explain this chapter. However I think it is safe to assume that if your culture holds that women are the property of men and that homosexuality should be punished by death lesbianism is going to absolutely blow your mind.

While events in Dhaka were still unfolding there was another restaurant shooting this morning. This time in Zitiste, Serbia where five people were shot and killed in an incident which was non-terrorist related.

As I mentioned during the recent Eurovision Song Contest the Balkan region where Serbia is located actually has an extremely high Muslim population. Being located close to the Alps Mountain range it also has a climate that lends itself to winter sports such as skiing. As such it has become a growing destination for rich Muslims from the Gulf states that want to enjoy skiing holidays in an Islamic environment.

This increase in tourism has led to massive inflow of money from Turkey and the Gulf states to build Wahhabist Mosques and religious schools in the Balkans. The recent opening on May 7th 2016 (7/5/16) of the Turkish funded Ferhat Pasha Mosque in Bosnia & Herzegovina being just one case in point.

Given the problems that Serbia has had with Muslims - particularly Albanian Muslims - in the past this is obviously the sort of trend that we need to keep a close eye on.

15:50 on 2/7/16 (UK date).