EU institutions do not do God. But for some religious leaders in EU-aspirant countries, member states’ Christian origins are still politically important.

The morning call to prayer at the Blue Mosque in Istanbul means different things to different people.

For Muslims, it is an invitation to muster spiritual energy for the working day. For some Western visitors it is a sign that they are on the edge of an exotic world.

With regular news about Islamic extremism – Spain this week charged two al-Qaeda suspects, Denmark in June charged four Muslims for plotting to murder a cartoonist who made fun of Mohammed – it is a world that many see as hostile to the West.

The voice among the Blue Mosque minarets often belongs to Metin Balci.

When EUobserver spoke to the muezzin and imam at the famous site in a recent interview, he said what some Turkish diplomats privately believe: EU opposition to Turkish membership is based, in part, on Islamophobia.

“What we hear and what they are telling us is that they are not a Christian club. But if you look at their approach to us, then we see and we feel that it is such a club,” Balci said.

The imam’s view of EU-Turkish relations is of two competing civilisations trying to come together.

He noted that Islamic societies in medieval times led Europe in terms of science, women’s rights and even “personal hygiene.”

“The West has the power now. But the history of the world is not 100 years. It is a longer span. Things change … I believe that Islam in the future can take the lead once again,” he said.

He added that EU countries have no moral superiority because colonialists in modern times pillaged Africa and the Middle East.

Quoting South Africa’s bishop Desmond Tutu, he said: “When missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.”

Balci’s idea of a “Christian club” is anathema to EU policy.

Despite Vatican lobbying, the EU Treaty does not mention the word “Christian” on any of its 403 pages.

It begins by saying the Union “[draws] inspiration from the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe.” Later on, it says that any “European state” can join.

When asked by this website what “European” means, the European Commission said it means respect for “universal” values, such as “democracy, equality and the rule of law.”

When commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso recently met religious VIPs, he dutifully invited all kinds of hats: imams, rabbis, bishops and Bahai (an Iranian sect).

The EU is already home to 13 million Muslims, over 1 million Jews and 370 million people who tell polsters they are Christian. Apart from Turkey, two other majority Muslim places – Albania and Kosovo – are in line to join.

For rabbi David Rosen, a leading Jewish thinker, the EU really has left its past behind.

Referring to a 17th century accord between Roman Catholic and Protestant countries, he told this website in a written note in July: “The treaty of Westphalia and the adaptation of Christianity to a world in which a particular denomination did not have absolute power, and ultimately its ability to see this as good for its own needs, facilitated acculturation to diversity, individuality.”
Clash of civilisations?

Rosen believes there is no clash of civilisations, but that there is a clash between antiquity and modernity.

“It is … between the enlightened (who embrace the good things of modernity – science, individual autonomy, human rights) and the reactionary (who feel threatened by those things). The enlightened are those who do not claim a monopoly on truth and the reactionary are those that do,” he said.

“Muslims from ‘Europeanized’ (e.g. Balkan) societies, which can even include some Arab societies (e.g. the educated elite in Morocco), are able to be part of European society as well as anyone else.”

Balci is not alone in thinking that the Union is still more Christian than it says, however.

“With all due respect to the strong presence of Muslims in Europe, I think every single person in Europe thinks that Europe is a Christian continent, not Muslim,” bishop Hovakim Manukyan, an ecumenical officer at the Armenian Apostolic Church, told EUobserver in an interview in May.

Contrasting Armenia to Turkey, he said: “We are also Christian and we have much more in common [with EU member states]. I would say the same about our Christian neighbour Georgia.”

He noted that the old Armenian-Turkish conflict still has a religious side.

When Armenians last year sang mass in Akdamar, in eastern Turkey, Manukyan said that Turkish Muslims held a ritual “against” them in an old Armenian church-turned-mosque in Ani to show who is boss.

The bishop, who used to work with Comece, a Brussels-based Christian lobby, added that Armenian communities in, say, Belgium or France have “fully assimilated,” while Muslims are “a challenge” in terms of integration.

Laying aside the bogeyman of al-Qaeda, Islamic antipathy toward the West is on show in the heart of the EU.

On an everday level, a recent film by a British student in the EU capital documented insults hurled mostly by Arab men at skirt-wearing women in the street.

One EU security expert told this website that the Grand Mosque in the Parc Cinquantenaire in Brussels, next door to Barroso’s headquarters, “has some of the most radical preachers you will hear anywhere in Europe.”

Meanwhile, a few hours by plane from Brussels – in Egypt, Iraq or Syria – the clock is turning backward on the EU’s post-modern values.

The US invasion of Iraq and the Arab Spring have prompted fresh waves of sectarian violence in the home of the world’s oldest Christian, Muslim and Jewish communities.

Up to 1 million Iraqi Christians have fled the country since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Dozens of Egyptian Copts have been killed since the fall of Hosni Mubarak.

Israel’s EU-and-US-endorsed ethnic cleansing of occupied territories also acts as a “lightning conductor” – in Rosen’s phrase – for anti-Western feeling.
‘Enlightened’ Islam

Going back to Balci in the Blue Mosque, the imam voiced the kind of “enlightened” ideas which Rosen described.

Balci said Turks want to join the EU for the sake of good governance.

“I trust the EU will make decisions about Turkey according to its democratic rules … We would like to join the Union not because we want its money or its technology, but because we would like to have the same democratic system,” he said.

He noted that Muslim societies have their own form of enlightenment, however.

Contrasting the Islamic culture of family values and social welfare to the EU’s economic and technological rat-race, he said: “We have things to take from Europe and things to give to Europe. Europe needs more humanity … Western technology has put a man on the moon. But nobody goes upstairs to the top floor to visit their sick neighbour, to ask if they’re OK.”

He criticised people who say Islam breeds terrorism and puts down women.

“Whoever thinks this should read more history … It is not fair to take Iran or Saudi Arabia as the example of all Islam or of all Arab lands,” he said.

Turning to the Danish cartoon controversy, he said the newspaper was wrong back in 2005 to insult Muslim sensibility.

But he showed his own brand of Islam in saying that Muslims were wrong to react with anger.

Balci noted that Islam follows the teachings of Christian “prophets” – such as Moses, Abraham and Jesus – as well as Mohammed. He quoted Jesus in saying that Muslims should have “turned the other cheek.”

Showing again a gentle face of Islam, when asked by EUobserver what he feels when he sings the morning call to prayer, he answered with humour.

“Mostly, I feel sleepy,” Balci said.

By: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad – Guardian News and Media Limited

As they stood outside the commandeered government building in the town of Mohassen, it was hard to distinguish Abu Khuder’s men from any other brigade in the Syrian civil war, in their combat fatigues, T-shirts and beards.

But these were not average members of the Free Syrian Army. Abu Khuder and his men fight for al-Qaida. They call themselves the ghuraba’a, or “strangers”, after a famous jihadi poem celebrating Osama bin Laden’s time with his followers in the Afghan mountains, and they are one of a number of jihadi organisations establishing a foothold in the east of the country now that the conflict in Syria has stretched well into its second bloody year.

They try to hide their presence. “Some people are worried about carrying the [black] flags,” said Abu Khuder. “They fear America will come and fight us. So we fight in secret. Why give Bashar and the west a pretext?” But their existence is common knowledge in Mohassen. Even passers-by joke with the men about car bombs and IEDs.

According to Abu Khuder, his men are working closely with the military council that commands the Free Syrian Army brigades in the region. “We meet almost every day,” he said. “We have clear instructions from our [al-Qaida] leadership that if the FSA need our help we should give it. We help them with IEDs and car bombs. Our main talent is in the bombing operations.” Abu Khuder’s men had a lot of experience in bomb-making from Iraq and elsewhere, he added.

Abu Khuder spoke later at length. He reclined on a pile of cushions in a house in Mohassen, resting his left arm which had been hit by a sniper’s bullet and was wrapped in plaster and bandages. Four teenage boys kneeled in a tight crescent in front of him, craning their necks and listening with awe. Other villagers in the room looked uneasy.

Abu Khuder had been an officer in a mechanised Syrian border force called the Camel Corps when he took up arms against the regime. He fought the security forces with a pistol and a light hunting rifle, gaining a reputation as one of the bravest and most ruthless men in Deir el-Zour province and helped to form one of the first FSA battalions.

He soon became disillusioned with what he saw as the rebel army’s disorganisation and inability to strike at the regime, however. He illustrated this by describing an attempt to attack the government garrison in Mohassen. Fortified in a former textile factory behind concrete walls, sand bags, machine-gun turrets and armoured vehicles, the garrison was immune to the rebels’ puny attempt at assault.

“When we attacked the base with the FSA we tried everything and failed,” said Abu Khuder. “Even with around 200 men attacking from multiple fronts they couldn’t injure a single government soldier and instead wasted 1.5m Syrian pounds [£14,500] on firing ammunition at the walls.”

Then a group of devout and disciplined Islamist fighters in the nearby village offered to help. They summoned an expert from Damascus and after two days of work handed Abu Khuder their token of friendship: a truck rigged with two tonnes of explosives.

Two men drove the truck close to the gate of the base and detonated it remotely. The explosion was so large, Abu Khuder said, that windows and metal shutters were blown hundreds of metres, trees were ripped up by their roots and a huge crater was left in the middle of the road.

The next day the army left and the town of Mohassen was free.

“The car bomb cost us 100,000 Syrian pounds and fewer than 10 people were involved [in the operation],” he said. “Within two days of the bomb expert arriving we had it ready. We didn’t waste a single bullet.

“Al-Qaida has experience in these military activities and it knows how to deal with it.”

After the bombing, Abu Khuder split with the FSA and pledged allegiance to al-Qaida’s organisation in Syria, the Jabhat al Nusra or Solidarity Front. He let his beard grow and adopted the religious rhetoric of a jihadi, becoming a commander of one their battalions.

“The Free Syrian Army has no rules and no military or religious order. Everything happens chaotically,” he said. “Al-Qaida has a law that no one, not even the emir, can break.

“The FSA lacks the ability to plan and lacks military experience. That is what [al-Qaida] can bring. They have an organisation that all countries have acknowledged.

“In the beginning there were very few. Now, mashallah, there are immigrants joining us and bringing their experience,” he told the gathered people. “Men from Yemen, Saudi, Iraq and Jordan. Yemenis are the best in their religion and discipline and the Iraqis are the worst in everything – even in religion.”

At this, one man in the room – an activist in his mid-30s who did not want to be named – said: “So what are you trying to do, Abu Khuder? Are you going to start cutting off hands and make us like Saudi? Is this why we are fighting a revolution?”

“[Al-Qaida’s] goal is establishing an Islamic state and not a Syrian state,” he replied. “Those who fear the organisation fear the implementation of Allah’s jurisdiction. If you don’t commit sins there is nothing to fear.”
Religious rhetoric

Religious and sectarian rhetoric has taken a leading role in the Syrian revolution from the early days. This is partly because of the need for outside funding and weapons, which are coming through well-established Muslim networks, and partly because religion provides a useful rallying cry for fighters, with promises of martyrdom and redemption.

Almost every rebel brigade has adopted a Sunni religious name with rhetoric exalting jihad and martyrdom, even when the brigades are run by secular commanders and manned by fighters who barely pray.

“Religion is a major rallying force in this revolution – look at Ara’our [a rabid sectarian preacher], he is hysterical and we don’t like him but he offers unquestionable support to the fighters and they need it,” the activist said later.

Another FSA commander in Deir el-Zour city explained the role of religion in the uprising: “Religion is the best way to impose discipline. Even if the fighter is not religious he can’t disobey a religious order in battle.”

Al-Qaida has existed in this parched region of eastern Syria, where the desert and the tribes straddle the border with Iraq, for almost a decade.

During the years of American occupation of Iraq, Deir el-Zour became the gateway through which thousands of foreign jihadis flooded to fight the holy war. Many senior insurgents took refuge from American and Iraqi government raids in the villages and deserts of Deir el-Zour.

Osama, a young jihadi from Abu Khuder’s unit with a kind smile, was 17 in 2003 when the Americans invaded Iraq, he said. He ran away from home and joined the thousands of other Syrians who crossed the porous border and went to fight. Like most of those volunteers, at first he was inspired by a mixture of nationalistic and tribal allegiances, but later religion became his sole motivation.

After returning to Syria he drifted closer to the jihadi ideology. It was dangerous then, and some of his friends were imprisoned by the regime, which for years played a double game, allowing jihadis to filter across the borders to fight the Americans while at the same time keeping them tightly under control at home.

In the first months of the Syrian uprising, he joined the protesters in the street, and when some of his relatives were killed he defected and joined the Free Syrian Army.

“I decided to join the others,” he said. “But then I became very disappointed with the FSA. When they fought they were great, but then most of the time they sat in their rooms doing nothing but smoke and gossip and chat on Skype.”

Fed up with his commanders’ bickering and fighting over money, he turned to another fighting group based in the village of Shahail, 50 miles west of Mohassen, which has become the de facto capital of al-Qaida in Deir el-Zour. More than 20 of its young men were killed in Iraq. In Shahail the al-Qaida fighters drive around in white SUVs with al-Qaida flags fluttering.

The group there was led by a pious man. He knew a couple of them from his time in Iraq. One day, the group’s leader – a Saudi who covered his hair with a red scarf and carried a small Kalashnikov, in the style of Bin Laden – visited Mohassen. He gave a long sermon during the funeral of a local commander, telling the audience how jihad was the only way to lead a revolution against the infidel regime of Bashar al-Assad, and how they, the Syrians, were not only victims of the regime but also of the hypocrisy of the west, which refused to help them.

“They were committed,” said Osama. “They obeyed their leader and never argued. In the FSA, if you have 10 people they usually split and form three groups.” The jihadis, by contrast, used their time “in useful things, even the chores are divided equally”.

Osama joined the group. “He [the Saudi] is a very good man, he spends his days teaching us. You ask him anything and he will answer you with verses from the Qur’an, you want to read the Qur’an you can read. You want to study bomb-making he will teach you.”

In the pre-revolutionary days when the regime was strong it would take a year to recruit someone to the secret cause of jihad. “Now, thanks to God, we are working in the open and many people are joining in,” said Osama.

In Shahail we interviewed Saleem Abu Yassir, a village elder and the commander of the local FSA brigade. He sat in a room filled with tribal fighters and machine-guns. The relationship with al-Qaida had been very difficult, he said, with the jihadis being secretive and despising the FSA and even calling them infidel secularists. But now they had opened up, co-operating with other rebel groups.

“Are they good fighters?” he threw the question rhetorically into the room. “Yes, they are, but they have a problem with executions. They capture a soldier and they put a pistol to his head and shoot him. We have religious courts and we have to try people before executing them. This abundance of killing is what we fear. We fear they are trying to bring us back to the days of Iraq and we have seen what that achieved.”

Osama had told me that his group was very cautious about not repeating the Iraq experience – “they admit they made a lot of mistakes in Iraq and they are keen to avoid it”, he said – but others, including a young doctor working for the revolution, were not convinced. The opposition needed to admit Al-Qaida were among them, and be on their guard.

“Who kidnapped the foreign engineers who worked in the nearby oilfield?” he asked. “They have better financing than the FSA and we have to admit they are here.

“They are stealing the revolution from us and they are working for the day that comes after.”

Hamas Television and another Arab anti-Israel group have created video responses to the successful “The Children are Ready” video released by the Temple Institute in Jerusalem for Tisha B’Av.

The Arab versions also show children surprising their father with a sand structure they created on the beach. In Hamas’s version, the structure is in the shape of the state of Israel – which they claim is “Palestine.”

Both Muslim versions also respond to what they perceive as an intended slight of Egypt’s president Mohammed Morsi. Morsi’s photo appears on the newspaper that the father drops to the sand when he sees the Temple the children built, in the Temple Institute video.

In the Hamas version, the Israeli flag drops to the ground with the newspaper, and Morsi’s face proudly adorns the map of “Palestine.” In the other video response, the newspaper describes Morsi’s victory and remains on the father’s beach table. The father writes the Muslim call “la illaha ila Allah” on a note, which later adorns the “Dome of the Rock.”

The Temple Institute made clear on Thursday that there was no intention to refer to Morsi: “The issues that have been raised concerning the image on the newspaper in the movie are baseless,” it said. “This is totally irrelevant to the message of the movie and the image is purely coincidental.”

Rabbi Chaim Richmanת International Director of the Temple Institute, told Arutz Sheva Sunday: “The irony is that this video, aimed at the Jewish world, has succeeded in moving many people towards a deeper feeling about this period of mourning, and the Temple. This whole thing that has angered the Arab world and plunged us into international intrigue, is simply a red herring…”

“The irony is that Hashem has used the international media, focusing on Morsi’s imagined insult, to bring the idea of the Holy Temple to the attention of people the world over. So actually there is no coincidence even though we didn’t plan for the paper to fall on any particular page…that is just what happened to be in the news that day — but min hashaymaim [from the Heavens, ed.] the video got much more exposure, and thus the idea of the Temple got more exposure.”

Arab media reaction to the Temple Mount video has boosted its popularity; it has passed 300,000 views.

Western Wall, which was part of retaining wall of Herod’s reconstruction of Second Temple, remains a place of prayer and pilgrimage.

Tisha Be’av, which we will commemorate tomorrow night and Sunday, is a time of mourning and lamentation for the two great calamities resulting in the destruction of the Temple, the desolation of Jerusalem and the exile of our people, the first in 586 BCE by the Babylonians and the second in 70 CE by the Romans.

Although the book that gives the tone to the day is Lamentations, which was written in response to the Babylonian destruction, these days our minds are more likely to be focused on the war against the Romans, since the ruins of that destruction are still visible to this day. The Western Wall, which was part of the retaining wall of Herod’s reconstruction of the Second Temple, remains a place of prayer and pilgrimage. Indeed, the period of exile and loss of Jewish independence that began then was only brought to a close in the founding of the State of Israel, 64 years ago.

The tragic events of those days remain vivid in our minds and we still mourn them even though nearly 2,000 years have passed. We can sit at the promenade in Jerusalem, as hundreds of us will Saturday night, look at the Old City and imagine the scenes of death and destruction that caused the stones to lie at the foot of the Wall and the burning of the houses that we can still see when we visit archeological sites. But in our mournful recollections, what we seldom think of is the fact that this might have been averted. That is the true tragedy. Perhaps – no one can be certain because no one can second-guess history – it did not have to happen.

We are all aware of the way the sages tried to find a reason for the destruction. They looked for the “sin” that the people may have committed, that might have caused God to allow this to happen.

The most well-known answer they gave was “baseless hatred.” But this is a case of after-the-fact moralizing, which teaches a good lesson but does not really explain historical events. The sages were aware of that as well, and recount that when Vespasian came to destroy Jerusalem he offered that if the Jews would “send me one bow or one arrow” as a sign of capitulation, he would leave, but they refused. When Rabban Yohanan Ben-Zakkai heard of the offer, he said to the people, “My children, why are you destroying this city? Why do you want to burn the Temple? All he has asked of you is one bow or one arrow and he will leave you!” But they would not listen. This led Ben-Zakkai to his famous escape from Jerusalem in a coffin and his founding of the yeshiva in Yavne (Avot de Rabbi Natan 4. See also Gittin 56b). According to this tale, at least, the destruction could have been avoided.

Of course throwing off the yoke of Roman rule was a worthy, heroic, goal. What people would not want to be free? Yet the question of realism and of weighing the consequences also begs to be asked. What if that enterprise was doomed from the start? Would it not have been wiser to listen to Yohanan Ben-Zakkai and avoid all that death and destruction, even if it meant continuing to live under Roman rule? This seems to be the message of the sages. The defeat of the Jews changed the course of human history. Prior to that time, Judaism and its message had been popular throughout the Roman world and many proselytes and semi-proselytes had given up paganism and looked to Jewish monotheism for their religious and spiritual needs. After the defeat, that was no longer the case. The time was ripe for religious revolution, and Christianity came to fill that need while Judaism went into a 2,000 year exile in more ways than one.

It is a lesson worth pondering.

On July 6, after much speculation, the Presbyterian Church (USA) narrowly rejected a proposal to divest its portfolio from companies that supply equipment to Israel, which, it alleges, enforce Israeli control in the “occupied territories.”

What was largely overlooked, however, was that the at the end of their biennial national General Assembly in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the commissioners overruled a vote by the membership and voted with a 71% majority to boycott “all Israeli products coming from the occupied Palestinian Territories.”

While the initial vote, by a margin of 333-331 with two abstentions, rejected the motion to divest from Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola Solutions, the later decision, called for the boycott of all Israeli products made over the green line.

“Be it planned or inadvertent, the news coverage about the Presbyterian Church (USA), as related to the divest-from-Israel overtures, focused on the July 6^th press release rejecting all aspects of the divestment activity,” asserts Fred Taub, President of Boycott Watch and author of Boycotting Peace.

”News reports of the July 7^th press release were not reported for two reasons: 1) reports about the Presbyterian Church (USA) accepting divestment would appear blatantly wrong considering the news a day earlier and therefore would be dismissed by the media, and 2) the wording about apartheid was awkward, which I believe was not an accident but deliberate, meant to soften the change of policy,” Taub claims.

“In addition to having a corrupt leadership, the preponderance of the overtures, the committee responses thereof and the actions of the commissioners after a narrow rejection of the decidedly one-sided anti-Israel proposals, indicates a very strong anti-Israel bias within the Presbyterian Church (USA),” he goes on to state.

“Overtures routinely quote anti-Semitic sources and even use word manipulation to make an Israeli government official appear to have said the Iranian threat against Israel is false,” he adds. “They blame Israel for Muslim attacks on Christians in Palestinian Authority controlled areas and moderate proposals were quickly struck down and every mention of companies to divest from and to boycott were completely consistent with the lists put forth by the official Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) campaign – which was created by the Palestinian Authority and is the official policy of the Arab League.”

Sheikh Yusuf Salameh, a preacher at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, denounced on Thursday a statement by Israel’s Attorney General that Israeli law must be applied to the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex in Jerusalem.

Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein has said that the Temple Mount in Jerusalem is part of Israeli territory so Israeli law applies there, including antiquities laws and laws regarding building and planning.

At the same time, he said, the law had to be applied with extra sensitivity and pragmatism, due to its unique nature.

In response, Sheikh Salemeh said that “Al-Quds” (the Arabic name for Jerusalem) is an Islamic city, as determined by the creator of the world and as indicated in the Koran.

He said that no decision by one person or another will be able to change this reality, stressing that “Al-Quds” will remain Islamic until the end of time. “Al-Quds threw up its occupiers in the past and it will throw up this occupier, too,” he said.

Sheikh Salameh added that the Al-Aqsa Mosque is spread over 144 dunams of land and includes the entire area within the walls, buildings, roads, terraces, and domes of the mosque. He said the mosque is land belonging to the Waqf both above the ground and below it. Salameh called on UNESCO to bear the responsibility and preserve the historic Islamic sites in the holy city.

This week, Abdul Rahman Abbad, the head of the Muslims’ scholars council in Jerusalem, said that “Muslims are the only ones who own this mosque.”

He insisted that religious authorities are not bound by Israeli decisions, and warned of Israel’s intentions in issuing such a statement ahead of the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims flock to the compound.

The Temple Mount was left in the hands of the Waqf following Jerusalem’s reunification in 1967, a decision of then-Defense Minister Moshe Dayan. The Waqf has taken advantage of this and removed every sign of ancient Jewish presence at the Jewish holy site. At the entrance, a Waqf sign says, “The Al-Aqsa Mosque courtyard and everything in it is Islamic property.”

Police, in an attempt to appease the Waqf, discriminate against Jews. They limit the number of Jewish worshippers allowed on the Temple Mount at one time in order to prevent conflict with Muslim worshippers. They often close the Mount to Jews in response to Muslim riots – despite evidence that Muslim riots have been planned in advance for the specific purpose of forcing Jews out.

Waqf officials recently told a young Jewish man to remove his kippah on the Temple Mount. The young man was visiting the Mount, Judaism’s holiest site, as part of a tour group from Europe. When Waqf officials saw his kippah, they ordered him to remove it, saying, “This is a holy place.”

An Israeli security firm says an ongoing cyber attack aimed mainly at Iran uses Persian language communications and is named after Mahdi, the “Muslim Messiah.”

Seculert, based in Israel, and Russia’s Kaspersky Lab said on Tuesday that they identified more than 800 victims of the operation, Reuters reported. “The targets include critical infrastructure companies, engineering students, financial services firms and government embassies located in five Middle Eastern countries, with the majority of the infections in Iran,” according to the news service.

The cyber attack malware is believed to have begun approximately eight months ago, and whoever is behind it is “for sure somebody who is fluent in Persian,” said Seculert Chief Technology Officer Aviv Raff.

Scarlet and Kaspersky say the Trojan is called “Madhi,” a word that refers to the ultimate redeemer of Islam, because the cyber attackers used a folder with that name.”In Islamic eschatology, the Mahdi is the prophesied redeemer of Islam who will rule for seven, nine or 19 years before the Day of Judgment and will rid the world of wrongdoing, injustice and tyranny. In Islam Ahmadiyya, the terms ‘Messiah’ and ‘Mahdi,’” according to Wikipedia.

“The Mahdi Trojan lets remote attackers steal files from infected PCs and monitor emails and instant messages,” according to Reuters, which quoted the two companies. “It can also record audio, log keystrokes and take screen shots of activity on those computers.”

It is not certain whether individuals or countries are behind the malicious software, while the Flame virus discovered last year was attributed to a country or countries. Israel and/or the United States frequently has been considered the source.

Seculert said that is was able to track variants of malware last December. “The malware communicated with the same domain name, but the server was located in Tehran,” the firm stated on its website.

After Kapersky announced in May it had discovered the Flame virus, Seculert contacted the Russian company.

“We collaborated in the weeks that followed [and] we were able to identify over 800 victims,” the Israeli security firm added. “While we couldn’t find a direct connection between the campaigns, the targeted victims of Mahdi include critical infrastructure companies, financial services and government embassies, which are all located in Iran, Israel and several other Middle Eastern countries.”

Kaspersky explained in a blog post that one of the PowerPoint variants displays “a series of calm, religious themed, serene wilderness, and tropical images, confusing the user into running the payload on their system….

“[W]hile PowerPoint presents users a dialog that the custom animation and activated content may execute a virus, not everyone pays attention to these warnings or takes them seriously, and just clicks through the dialog, running the malicious dropper.”