Al Qaeda in Yemen has claimed responsibility for the attack on the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, saying it was ordered by the Islamist militant group’s leadership for insults to the Prophet Mohammad, according to a video posted on YouTube.

Gunmen killed 17 people in three days of violence that began when they shot staff in Charlie Hebdo’s offices last week in revenge for the publication of satirical images of the Prophet.

One Western source said no hard evidence of a direct operational link to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) had yet been found.

But it was the first time that a group had officially claimed responsibility for the attack, which was led by Cherif and Said Kouachi, two French-born brothers of Algerian extraction who had visited Yemen in 2011.

In Washington, a State Department spokeswoman said the United States believed the video was authentic but officials were still determining if the claim of responsibility is true.

“As for the blessed Battle of Paris, we…claim responsibility for this operation as vengeance for the Messenger of God,” Nasser bin Ali al-Ansi, an AQAP ideologue, said in the recording.

Ansi said the “one who chose the target, laid the plan and financed the operation is the leadership of the organisation”, without naming an individual.

“ZAWAHRI’S ORDERS”

He added that the strike had been carried out in “implementation” of the order of overall al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri, who has urged Muslims to attack the West using any means they can find.

Ansi also gave credit for the operation to slain AQAP propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki, a preacher cited by one of the gunmen in remarks to French media as a financier of the attack.

It was not clear how Awlaki, killed by a U.S. drone in 2011, had a direct link to the Paris assault, but he inspired several militants in the United States and Britain to acts of violence.

The purported claim of responsibility put a new spotlight on a group often cited by Western officials as al Qaeda’s most dangerous branch. AQAP has recently focused on fighting government forces and Shi’ite rebels in Yemen, but says it still aims to carry out attacks abroad.

AQAP mocked a huge rally of solidarity for the victims held in Paris on Sunday, saying the shock on display showed the feebleness of the Western leaders who attended.

“Look at how they gathered, rallied and supported each other, strengthening their weakness and dressing their wounds,” it said.

Al Qaeda offshoot Islamic State released a video that it said showed interviews with three French fighters in Syria praising the attacks, the SITE monitoring service reported.

One said: “I say to the French people who think that the Islamic State will not reach Europe: With permission from Allah the Almighty, we will reach Europe – all ofEurope.”

“JOY AT TORMENT”

SITE also said Nigeria’s Boko Haram group had released a video showing its leader welcoming the attacks. “We have felt joy for what befell the people of France in terms of torment, as their blood was spilled inside their country. Allah is Great!” Abubakar Shekau said in the recording, according to SITE.

One Western source described Ansi as an Al Qaeda hawk reputed to have advocated a merger with the even more hardline Islamic State.

Two senior Yemeni sources said Cherif and Said Kouachi had met Awlaki in Yemen and undergone weapons training in the eastern province of Marib. However, aMarib tribal leader denied that they had trained there in 2011 or that Awlaki had been based there.

AQAP’s Yemeni leader, Nasser al-Wuhayshi, was once a close associate of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, whose father was born in Yemen, a neighbour ofSaudi Arabia.

Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi complained on Wednesday that Yemen had been subjected to a politicised media campaign over the alleged 2011 visit.

“The person reported to have travelled to Yemen to learn in three days how to fire a pistol had been detained and under investigation for two years in France,” Hadi said, according to the state news agency Saba. Hadi asked why such suspicious elements had been allowed to travel to Yemen and return home without being questioned.

Source: Christian Today

Two climbers completed a historic 19-day ascent to the summit of Yosemite National Park’s El Capitan in California on Wednesday after scaling the rock formation’s 3,000-foot (900-metre) sheer granite face without climbing tools, representatives said.

Tommy Caldwell, 36, and Kevin Jorgeson, 30, made it to the top of El Capitan at 3:30 pm, said spokeswoman Jess Clayton of clothing company Patagonia.

The two men, who were the first to climb El Capitan’s so-called Dawn Wall without bolts or climbing tools but used safety ropes in case of falls, climbed the rock face in stages beginning on December 27. They had been expected to reach the summit on Wednesday afternoon.

The Dawn Wall of El Capitan is divided into 32 climbing pitches, which are varying lengths of rock that the climbers mastered with only their hands and feet. The wall has been scaled before, first by legendary climber Warren Harding in 1970, but never without climbing tools.

Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia’s founder and owner who climbed El Capitan in 1964, joked about attitudes toward evolution in a tongue-in-cheek statement celebrating the ascent. He said it “leaves Pope Francis with no choice but to admit our closest relative is the chimpanzee.”

Caldwell and Jorgeson reached the final 11 pitches on Tuesday after working their way past some of the toughest stretches on the rock.

Since the warmth of the day caused their hands and feet to perspire, the two often started climbing at dusk. They used ropes and other tools to move back and forth between the pitches they were attempting to master and their campsite, perched high on the rock.

Jorgeson struggled for several days last week on difficult pitch 15, at one point being forced to rest for two days while the skin on his fingers healed after being ripped off by razor-sharp ledges.

Their attempt on El Capitan was closely watched in the climbing world and drew worldwide news headlines and attention on social media as they made progress toward the summit.

Caldwell, 36, who is sponsored by Patagonia and is one of National Geographic’s “adventurers of the year” for 2015, conceived of the climb in 2007, the company said. Jorgeson spent five years preparing for the climb, his website said.

Source: Christian Today

Iraq’s Chaldean Catholic Patriarchate has denied claims said to have been circulated online that its Patriarch Louis Sako “approved” mass emigrations of Christians to safe havens in Canada and Germany.

A response seen by the Fides news service said that the claims are “completely unfounded”. According to Fides, it says that “the Patriarchate endorses the position already expressed on other occasions: whoever decides to leave the Country torn by sectarian conflicts and destabilised by the creation of the Islamic Caliphate, does it in full freedom. The Patriarchate does not bind anyone to the moral obligation to stay, nor does it encourage anyone to go away. The path of emigration always represents a personal decision, which cannot be justified with references to non-existent approvals by the ecclesiastical authority.”

The Patriarchate’s sensivity about suggestions that the Patriarch might be encouraging emigration are accounted for by his uncompromising opposition to attempts by Westerners to increase the number of Christians allowed to flee the country, which he regards as misguided. In an interview in September last year in Rome, he said the priority was “to encourage people to persevere and remain steadfast in their faith, without leaving their land. Staying put … Those who leave must be aware that the West is not a promised land, let alone Paradise.”

He criticised people who encouraged Iraqis to leave, “As if the migration of thousands of Iraqi Christians to the US was something to ask God’s blessing for. That’s a strange thing to do and only confuses people’s faith.”

He urged Iraq Christians to “Ask themselves what the Lord is asking from them in that moment and maybe realise that we have a future here in this devastated and blessed land of ours. And that the whole country represents our mission.”

In October last year Patriarch Louis suspended a group of monks and priests who fled Iraq for the US without consulting their superiors, saying a priest’s primary duty is to serve his flock wherever he is asked.

He referred to priests who had stayed with their people despite the dangers, saying: “I remind you, brothers, of Jesus’ saying, ‘He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.'”

Source: Christian Today

With Islamic extremist attacks seemingly happening throughout the world on a regular basis, the president of Egypt, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, delivered a groundbreaking New Year’s Day speech at the highly-prestigious, 1000-year-old Al-Azhar University and urged Muslim imams to change radical rhetoric and lead a “religious revolution” that embraces peace.

With extremists groups like the Islamic State, Boko Haram, and Al Qaeda killing thousands of innocent people in addition to the increase of radical attacks in other parts of the world, most in the international community no longer view Islam as “religion of peace,” al-Sisi stated.

“Is it possible that 1.6 billion [Muslims] should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants – that is 7 billion—so that they themselves may live? Impossible!” al-Sisi asserted. “I say and repeat again that we are in need of a religious revolution. You, imams, are responsible before Allah. The entire world, I say it again, the entire world is waiting for your next move… because this umma [international Muslim community] is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost – and it is being lost by our own hands.”

Islam is not the only religion with a history of killing in their God’s name — as Christianity had its Crusades from the 1000s to the 1200s – but extremist Islam has never been completely able to break away from the ancient violent rhetoric of killing those whom they disagree with or those who insult their prophet. Al-Sisi claimed this kind of violence is only “antagonizing the world.”

“It’s inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire umma (multinational community of Muslim believers) to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible!,” Al-Sisi said. “That thinking – I am not saying ‘religion’ but ‘thinking’ – that corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the years, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world. It’s antagonizing the entire world!”

It will take more than just the clerics who attended Al-Sisi’s speech to end extremists violence. It will take the whole muslim world standing up and saying, “Not in our names, and not in the Name of Allah!” he said.

“May Allah bear witness on Judgment Day to the truth of your intentions, regarding what I say to you today,” al-Sisi said. “You cannot see things clearly when you are locked [in this theology]. You must emerge from it and look from outside, in order to get closer to a truly enlightened theology.”

Giving a speech of that magnitude and conviction is a courageous move by Al-Sisi and it could be met with lethal consequences, Washington Post Columnist George Will said on Fox News Sunday.

“As head of the Egyptian state, Al-Sisi occupies an office once occupied by Anwar Sadat, who was murdered by Muslim extremists for his opening to Israel,” Will said. “This was an act of tremendous bravery by Al-Sisi and if the Nobel Peace Prize committee is looking for someone who could plausibly deserves it, they could start there.”

Following his words for a change in the violent Islamic rhetoric and intolerance, al-Sisi made more history last Tuesday when he became the first Egyptian president ever to attend a Coptic Christian mass. Al-Sisi attended the mass on the day of they celebrated Christmas.

“Let no one say, ‘What kind of Egyptian are you?'” al-Sisi said. “It’s not right to call each other anything but ‘the Egyptians.’ We must only be Egyptians … We will love each other for real, so that people may see. A happy year for your and all Egyptians!”

Source: Christian Post