Fire Hydrant of Freedom
Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities => Politics & Religion => Topic started by: Crafty_Dog on October 14, 2006, 09:10:59 AM
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All:
Posts on the good, not just the bad and the ugly belong here.
Marc
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http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006460631,00.html
RELATED STORIES
By JULIE MOULT,
JAMIE PYATT
and TOM REILLY
October 07, 2006
MUSLIM yobs who wrecked a house to stop four brave soldiers moving in after returning from Afghanistan sparked outrage last night.
The house in a village near riot-torn Windsor had BRICKS thrown through windows and was DAUBED with messages of hate.
Four young Household Cavalry officers who had planned to rent it were also the target of phone THREATS.
They were yesterday forced to look elsewhere to live ? after top brass warned them against inflaming racial violence near the Queen?s Windsor Castle home.
Last night furious Shadow immigration minister Damian Green said: ?This is a shocking development.?
Colleagues of the officers branded the vandalism a ?disgrace?. A source at the regiment said: ?These guys have done nothing but bravely serve their country ? yet they can?t even live where they want in their own country.? The ?3,000-a-month detached home in picturesque Datchet, Berks, is less than a mile from Windsor Castle. It was attacked as extra police were drafted into Windsor ? where battles have raged for days between Asian and white gangs.
On Wednesday a Muslim-run dairy was firebombed.
The young officers ? from the same regiment as Prince Harry ? had planned to use the four-bed house for rest and recuperation after months risking their lives on the frontline.
Louts struck two days after the four arrived in uniform in an Army Land Rover to view it.
The source said: ?A gang of local Muslims set about keeping them away. They hurled bricks through the windows and then wrote offensive graffiti across the front of the house.? The vile messages included one in 4ft letters on the drive ? warning: ?F*** off?.
Sources inside Windsor?s Combermere Barracks ? where the officers are based ? confirmed Muslims had made calls threatening the men.
NI_MPU('middle');NI_MPU('Embedded for DHTML');The scandal comes as Tony Blair today pledges the Army in Afghanistan can have ANYTHING it needs to hammer the Taliban. Writing exclusively in The Sun he declares that Our Boys are ?the best in the world?.
A Household Cavalry insider said of the Muslims? insult to Britain?s heroes: ?Everyone in the regiment is really upset. It?s one thing coming under attack in Helmand in Afghanistan but quite another getting this abuse in England. The officers were determined to face down the yobs and still move in ? but didn?t want a race riot on their hands.?
Police hunting the vandals confirmed: ?One line of inquiry is that it is racially aggravated.?
The house?s owner Johanna Ledwidge refused to comment beyond saying she was very upset. A shocked neighbour in the quiet street said: ?We pride ourselves in this neighbourhood that we welcome all cultures.?
Tory MP Philip Davies said of the attack: ?This is outrageous.
?If there?s anybody who should f*** off it?s the Muslims who are doing this kind of thing. Police should pull out the stops to track down these vile thugs.?
Sir Andrew Green, director of the think-tank Migrationwatch UK, said: ?Incidents like this are absolutely inexcusable and seriously undermine efforts by all sides to achieve integration. Those who choose to live in this country owe a loyalty to Britain.?
A spokesman for letting agency Kings, who are marketing the property, said: ?It was an isolated case of vandalism. We do not know the reasons behind it.?
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http://hotair.com/archives/2006/10/15/londonistan-calling-uk-headline-round-up/
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http://www.nisnews.nl/public/141006_2.htm
Union Federation Wants National Muslim Holiday
UTRECHT, 14/10/06 - The CNV trade union federation feels that a Muslim feast should be introduced as a bank holiday in the Netherlands. The Christian trade union federation is willing to sacrifice a Christian holiday.
CNV vice chairman Rienk van Splunder wishes "to offer Muslims the freedom to practice their faith". The federation is prepared to sacrifice Whit Monday or Easter Monday for a free day during the Sugar Festival. This is the feast day held to celebrate the end of Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting.
Van Splunder feels the feast days of other religions are insufficiently honoured in the Netherlands. By introducing official holidays on such feast days, he hopes to create "freedom and respect for one another".
Last year, CNV reported it was not yet prepared to sacrifice Whit Monday for a free day during the Sugar Festival. "But his can no longer be sustained in 2006," as Van Splunder stated Friday.
According to Van Splunder, Whit Monday and Easter Monday originate from the Christian tradition but the holidays have long lost their Christian meaning. "For most Dutch people, these two holidays have turned into extra shopping days". The CNV vice chairman denies that he is calling into question the Christian tradition of The Netherlands.
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16 October 2006
IF A MUSLIM CAN WEAR HER VEIL TO WORK WHY IS MY CROSS FORBIDDEN?
EXCLUSIVE: BA ROW WOMAN SPEAKS OUT..
By Julie Mccaffrey
IT is smaller than a 10 pence piece and all but invisible to people standing just inches away.
Yet Nadia Eweida's tiny white gold cross is at the centre of a huge legal row that has engulfed Britain's biggest airline and infuriated religious groups.
Check-in worker Nadia, 55, was forced to take unpaid leave by British Airways after refusing to remove the Christian emblem. But she claims it is a clear display of double standards as Muslims can wear head scarves and Sikh males their turbans.
"It seems that only Christians are forbidden to express their faith," she told the Mirror. "I am not ashamed to be Christian and shouldn't be made to feel that way. I want people to know I am a Christian when they meet me. Just like people know when they meet a Muslim."
The case echoes that of Fiona Bruce, the newsreader who has not worn her cross necklace on television since BBC governors debated whether it would cause offence to other religions. And it bears striking similarities to the Muslim teacher Aishah Azmi, from Dewsbury, Yorkshire, who is taking legal action after being suspended for wearing a veil in lessons.
It will only add to the row over religious clothing after Jack Straw asked Muslim women to ditch their veils.
Hundreds of Nadia's colleagues have demanded she be reinstated and yesterday Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain insisted:
"Frankly, I think the British Airways order for her not to wear a cross was loopy."
As backing for Nadia grows, BA is faced with rumours of staff strikes, Christian boycotts and a slump in ticket sales.
JOHN Andrews, communications officer for the diocese of Bath and Wells, said: "I think BA is being extremely offensive to members of the Christian faith.
"It is rather more than an ornament. It is more than an item of jewellery."
Meanwhile Nadia, from Twickenham, West London, is set to sue for religious discrimination.
She said: "My case shows a company so scared of upsetting a minority that it has swung too far to the other side and upset the majority.
"It is clearly not fair that I am prohibited from wearing my cross, when Muslim ladies are allowed to wear a hijab and Sikhs freely wear turbans.
"They immediately identify that person's religion. I imagine that's why the teacher in Dewsbury is fighting to wear her veil.
She should be allowed to wear it in the classroom. I respect her views but what I don't respect is one rule for some and another for others."
Ironically, the row started the day after Nadia, who has an exemplary seven-year record with British Airways and is based at Heathrow's Terminal Four, attended a training course on diversity and dignity at work.
"We spent the day learning how to integrate and understand different cultures, religions, sexual orientations and political allegiances," she recalled.
"The next day my duty manager asked me to take off my cross. I said it was an expression of my faith. But she refused to accept that.
"I'd worn it many times, but all of a sudden it was an issue. "I was sent to see the customer services manager, who then sent me home."
NADIA, who is single and looks after her elderly mother, was born in Egypt to an Egyptian father and English mother.
She believes that, instead of constantly trying not to offend a minority faith, employers should demonstrate equal consideration towards people of all faiths.
"As a Christian in a Muslim country, I was in the minority and held tightly to my faith," she explained. "I wear a cross because it reminds me what Jesus Christ did for mankind. I think I am within my rights to wear it."
Nadia, who attends church up to seven times a week, has the backing of her local MP Vincent Cable, deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, who called BA "disgraceful and petty". And she also has the backing of her union, the TGWU.
However Nadia, whose great grandfather Thomas Paine helped found the Salvation Army, claims to be overwhelmed by all the attention.
She said: "I didn't expect this to escalate. And it seems that the more people who know about my case, the angrier they become.
"But I am not getting angrier, I am growing more determined.
"My ultimate aim is firstly to win an apology from British Airways, saying sorry to me for their behaviour and sorry to all their Christian workers who wish to express their faith.
"Secondly, I want to return to the job I loved. I'm not ashamed of what has happened, and if I go back I won't have my tail between my legs.
"Sometimes it takes one person to make a change by putting their head above the parapet. And if that has to be me, then so be it. I am a loyal and conscientious employee of British Airways but I feel I must stand up for the rights of all Christians, and all citizens."
A BA spokeswoman emphasised that Miss Eweida has not been suspended and said an appeal was due to be heard some time next week.
She said BA recognised that employees may wish to wear jewellery including religious symbols. "Our policy states these items can be worn, underneath the uniform. There is no ban.
"This rule applies for all jewellery and religious symbols on chains and is not specific to the Christian cross."
julie.mccaffrey@mirror.co.uk
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Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Socialist Canada
Posts: 2,713
School bans Christian chastity ring but allows Muslim and Sikh symbols
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A secondary school has come under fire for banning Christian pupils from wearing rings symbolising a belief in chastity until marriage.
Millais School in West Sussex has banned the silver 'purity rings', arguing that they fall foul of the school's no-jewellery policy, which only allows pupils to wear simple single stud earrings.
But the school has been accused of double standards as it allows Muslim pupils to wear headscarves and Sikh pupils kara bracelets as a means of religious expression.
The ban is the latest in a series of episodes where organisations ban Christian jewellery. Earlier this week British Airways banned an employee from wearing a cross necklace. The Rev John Brown of Middleton-on-Sea argues that the ban should be lifted as it is 'discriminatory' against Christians.
Rev Brown, 78, a retired Church of England vicar said: 'The ban is totally discriminatory, compared with the way Muslim girls in that school are treated, they are allowed to wear head scarves, symbolising their faith.
'The girls are wearing rings to show their religious belief in abstaining from sex until marraige, it means a great deal to them, so I think it's quite wrong it should be banned.'
Heather and Philip Playfoot have been in dispute with the school in Horsham over the issue for two years.
Their 15-year-old daughter Lydia began wearing her ring - which is inscribed with a biblical verse - in June 2004.
The Playfoots claim Lydia and up to a dozen pupils have been punished for breaking the rules.
Lydia, who no longer wears the ring to school said she feels 'betrayed' by the school.
'My ring is a symbol of my religious faith. I think, as a Christian, it says we should keep ourselves pure from sexual sinfulness and wearing the ring is a good way of making a stand.''
Her parents Heather, 47, a housewife and Phil, 49, a minister in a nondenominational church, are considering taking legal action.
Mr Playfoot said yesterday: 'We hope the school will recognise the ring as a legitimate expression of the childrens' Christian beliefs.'
Mrs Playfoot added: 'The ring is a reminder to them of the promise they have made, much the same as a wedding ring is an outward sign of an inward promise.
'It's a discriminatory policy. We don't want her education to be disrupted because of it but we do want her to feel free to wear something that is very significant.'
Lydia's ring comes from Silver Ring Thing, an evangelical American Christian movement. It has encouraged a growing number of teenagers to make a 'pledge of chastity'. The silver ring demonstrates commitment to this pledge.
The movement was founded by father- of-three Denny Pattyn in Yuma, Arizona, in 1995. He launched it after discovering Yuma had the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Arizona.
Silver Ring Thing launched in Britain in 2004, promoting abstinence before marriage. More than 20,000 members have signed up at roadshows in the U.S. and Britain.
Leon Nettley, headmaster of Millais, said in a statement that the school's own sex education programme already stressed that underage sex is illegal, and encouraged pupils to discuss the issues.
He added: 'The school is not convinced that pupils' rights have been interfered with by the application of the school's uniform policy. 'The school has a clearly published uniform policy and sets high standards in this respect.' http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...n_page_id=1770
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Remember Oriana Fallaci? She had a hard time with the "politically correct" crowd with her last book, because it didn't toe the liberal line. Here's an excerpt from an interview with her on the occasion of her new book "The Force of Reason" (from http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/vidino200405040834.asp ).
In 1974, former Algerian President Houari Boumedienne said in a speech at the U.N.: "One day millions of men will leave the southern hemisphere to go to the northern hemisphere. And they will not go there as friends. Because they will go there to conquer it. And they will conquer it with their sons. The wombs of our women will give us victory." In other words, says Fallaci, what Islamic armies have not been able to do with force in more than 1,000 years can be achieved in less than a century through high birth rates. She cites as evidence a 1975 meeting of Islamic countries in Lahore, in which they announced their project to transform the flow of Muslim immigrants in Europe in "demographic preponderance."
The "sons of Allah," as Fallaci calls them, do not make a secret of their plans."A respected Muslim cleric told the crowd: "Thanks to your democratic laws we will invade you. Thanks to our Islamic laws we will conquer you." The full interview follows: May 04, 2004, 8:34 a.m.
Forceful Reason
Fallaci issues a wake-up call to Europe.
By Lorenzo Vidino
"Oriana Fallaci" is not a household name in the United States, but it cannot be uttered in Europe without generating a heated reaction. Even though her 2002 book, The Rage and the Pride, was translated into English (by Fallaci herself) and sold many copies in the U.S., it was on the other side of the ocean that intellectuals, politicians, and ordinary citizens passionately debated the views of the celebrated Italian journalist.
The Rage and the Pride is either loved or hated; the positions Fallaci takes in it leave no middle ground. Outraged by the events of 9/11, Fallaci criticizes both Muslims (bent, according to her, on conquering the West and annihilating its culture) and Europeans (described as spoiled, hypocritical, and blind to the mortal threat represented by Islamic expansionism). Fallaci's views as expressed in the Rage and the Pride caused an uproar in politically correct Europe, death threats and lawsuits included. Now, two years later, Fallaci has published a new book, entitled La Forza della Ragione (The Force of Reason), which continues the discourse she began in The Rage and the Pride.
As its title suggests, The Force of Reason is not dictated by the (sometimes excessive) fury that inspired The Rage and the Pride, but it gives a more accurate explanation of why Europe has decided not to defend its identity and to surrender to what she calls the "Islamic invasion." With the sarcasm and uniquely direct style that characterizes her work, Fallaci carefully examines the historic and political reasons that have led Europeans to vilify their own culture, consistently embrace anti-Americanism, and pander to every request from the increasingly powerful Muslim communities that populate the dying Old
Continent. Her analysis does not leave much hope for the future of Europe, although she takes a far more optimistic position on her adoptive country, the United States (Fallaci currently lives in New York).
The long introduction to The Force of Reason recounts the intellectual lynching to which Fallaci was subjected following the publication of The Rage and the Pride. The PC establishment, which she refers to as the "Modern Inquisition," crucified her, submerging her with lawsuits and accusations of being racist and fomenting a religious war. But all of this publicity just played into Fallaci's hands, as sales of The Rage and the Pride soared into the millions. But what has really struck Fallaci in the wake of The Rage and the Pride are the letters she has received from readers throughout the world.
One of the most significant was written by an Italian, who thanked her for "helping me to understand the things I thought without realizing I was thinking them." And this is Fallaci's goal: provoking Europeans into realizing what is going on right under their noses and getting rid of their fear to say something that goes against the PC dogma. According to Fallaci, the "Modern
Inquisition" has managed to keep individuals in fear of expressing what they believe: "If you are a Westerner and you say that your civilization is superior, the most developed that this planet has ever seen, you go to the stake. But if you are a son of Allah or one of their collaborationists and you say that Islam has always been a superior civilization, a ray of light...nobody touches you. Nobody sues you. Nobody condemns you."
Fallaci has her own interpretation of the massive Islamic immigration that is rapidly changing the face of European cities. She sees it as part of the expansionism that has characterized Islam since its birth. After reminding the reader how Islamic armies have aimed for centuries at the heart of Europe (a part of history that is not taught anymore in Europe, since it would offend
the sensitivity of Muslim pupils), reaching France, Poland, and Vienna, she lays out her case, claiming that the current flood of immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa is part of a carefully planned strategy. Fallaci uses the words of Muslim leaders to support this thesis.
In 1974, former Algerian President Houari Boumedienne said in a speech at the U.N.: "One day millions of men will leave the southern hemisphere to go to the northern hemisphere. And they will not go there as friends. Because they will go there to conquer it. And they will conquer it with their sons. The wombs of our women will give us victory." In other words, says Fallaci, what Islamic armies have not been able to do with force in more than 1,000 years can be achieved in less than a century through high birth rates. She cites as evidence a 1975 meeting of Islamic countries in Lahore, in which they announced their project to transform the flow of Muslim immigrants in Europe in "demographic preponderance."
The "sons of Allah," as Fallaci calls them, do not make a secret of their plans. A Catholic bishop recounted that, during an interfaith meeting in Turkey, a respected Muslim cleric told the crowd: "Thanks to your democratic laws we will invade you. Thanks to our Islamic laws we will conquer you." But what really makes Fallaci's blood boil is the West's inability to even
acknowledge this aggression. A large part of her book is dedicated to analyzing how the main European countries pander to the arrogant demands of radical Muslim organizations, how they are unable to defend their Jewish citizens from acts of Islamic militant violence (often blamed on neo-Nazis and almost never on the Muslim perpetrators, even when the evidence clearly proves otherwise), and said countries' unwillingness to be proud of their cultures and identities.
Amid Fallaci's bleak vision for Europe, however, a ray of hope comes from America. In a very emotional last chapter, Fallaci describes her admiration in witnessing the 2004 New Year's Eve celebrations in Times Square. In a sharp contrast with the fear-constrained Europeans, thousands of New Yorkers decided to defy the Code Orange terror alert and party hard in the face of the terrorists. Proud to honor itself, young and determined, America is perceived by Fallaci as the only hope for the West. In this unprovoked cultural war that has been waged on the West, America should lead the way, but it cannot do it alone. According to Fallaci, the West has not realized that it is under attack, and that this war "wants to hit our soul rather than our body. Our way of life, our philosophy of life. Our way of thinking, acting and loving. Our freedom. Do not be fooled by their explosives. That is just a strategy. The terrorists, the kamikazes, do not kill us just for the sake of killing us. They kill us to
bend us. To intimidate us, tire us, demoralize us, blackmail us."
Movingly passionate, The Force of Reason is a desperate wake-up call for the West and for Europe in particular. In Italy, despite a complete silence from the media (who have decided not to make the same mistake they made with The Rage and the Pride, when their criticism made the book's sales skyrocket) the book has sold a half million copies in just two weeks. A translation into English is imminent, making The Force of Reason readily accessible for those in the U.S. who want to learn more about the dire situation Europe faces.
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Hat tip to GM for this one too:
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The West's Self-Imposed Censorship
By Amir Taheri
Gulf News | October 13, 2006
In Communist-ruled East Germany, they had a term for it: pre-emptive obedience. This meant guessing the future orders of the politburo and obeying them before they were issued. East Germany was thrown into the dustbin of history a long time ago. However, "pre-emptive obedience" is making a comeback in re-unified Germany and several other European countries.
It was based on "pre-emptive obedience" that the German Opera in Berlin decided to cancel its production of Mozart's Idomeneo after the managers decided that it might anger Muslims. The opera had already been shown in 2003 without incident and no Muslim group had called for it to be withdrawn. Thus, the managers were obeying orders that had not been issued.
A few days after the Idomeneo scandal it was the turn of French philosopher Robert Redecker to do a bit of "pre-emptive obedience" by going into hiding after publishing a newspaper column that some of his friends feared might anger Muslims. The fact is that quite a few Muslim writers have published essays more daring than Redecker's without going into hiding under police protection, thus resisting "pre-emptive obedience" of orders that might come from "Islamofascist" groups.
"Pre-emptive obedience" was also at work when the Whitechapel Art Gallery, one of London's major art exhibition venues, decided to withdraw a number of paintings by the surrealist Hans Bellmer. The reason? The management decided that the erotic paintings might "hurt the sensibilities of the Muslim community" which is strongly present in London's East End of which Whitechapel is a part. Again, no Muslim had seen the paintings or would have been able to interpret them as "an erotic assault on the Quran", let alone demand that they be withdrawn.
Thanks to "pre-emptive obedience", a wave of self-censorship has also hit the traditionally bawdy world of German carnivals. The Dusseldorf carnival, for example, has banned any gear that might appear "Islamic" and thus designed to "hurt Muslim sensibilities". A work by the Swiss sculptor Fleur Boecklin was also withdrawn from public view in Dusseldorf after it was branded "a misrepresentation of Islam as an aggressive faith".
Self-censorship for alleged fear of Islamic revenge has hit other areas of life in Europe.
In Spain, folkloric ceremonies and carnivals marking the expulsion of the Moors from Andalusia have been cancelled in all but a handful of villages, ending a 400-year old tradition.
In Germany, France and Britain numerous illuminated manuscripts of Persian poetry and prose have been withdrawn because they contained images of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) and other historic figures of Islam.
In most European countries, an official black of list of books has emerged, containing works deemed to be "hurtful to Muslim sentiments". The list includes the names not only of such major European authors as Voltaire and Thomas Carlyle but also of Muslim writers whose work has been translated into European languages. For example, the novel Haji Agha by Sadeq Hedayat, translated into French and published in the 1940s, is no longer available. The novel Four Pains by Cyrus Farzaneh has also disappeared from French bookshops and libraries along with The Master by Darvish.
Last month a British publisher, acting on "pre-emptive obedience", cancelled plans to publish the translation of Twenty Three Years, a controversial biography of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) by the late Iranian author Ali Dashti. Literary agents and book publishers have no qualms about admitting that they would not touch any manuscript that "smells like stirring the Muslims into a rage". One editor tells me that he has rejected at least 10 manuscripts in the past year alone because he did not wish to "risk controversy or worse" with Muslims. "I don't want to live under police escort," he says.
The American author and feminist Phyllis Chesler is still trying to find a British publisher, while her colleague Nancy Korbin has just lost her American publisher. In both cases, fear of angering Muslims is cited as the excuse for what is, in fact, "pre-emptive obedience".
The practitioners of "pre-emptive obedience" often claim they are acting in accordance with the best principles of multiculturalism.
"We wish to show respect for our Muslim neighbours," says a spokesperson for the Whitechapel Art Gallery.
While museums in Germany and Britain are hiding works that show images of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), Turkish and Iranian museums continue to display their tableaux containing his images.
Sometimes the imagined threat of "Islamic anger" is used for settling of scores that have nothing to do with Islam. In the Russian city of Volgograd (former Stalingrad), for example, there are no more than a few hundred Muslims. And yet the Russian government has just closed down the local newspaper based on the claim that it had hurt "Muslim sensibilities" by publishing a cartoon that shows Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) along with Moses and Jesus, watching some people fighting on television. The truth is that the local branch of the United Russia Party, the political mouth piece of President Vladimir Putin, had been trying to shut the newspaper for years. The supposed feeling of "Muslim sensibilities" is nothing but an excuse for an attack on media freedom.
Ugliest evils
The truth, however, is that blaming Muslims for censorship, one of the ugliest evils in any civilised society, is an insult to a majority of Muslims. The adepts of "pre-emptive obedience" see Muslims as childish, irrational and incapable of responding to works of literature and art in terms other than passion and violence.
The party of "pre-emptive obedience" violates one of the basic principles of the western societies, that is to say freedom of expression. And, that makes it harder for Muslim democrats to persuade their co-religionists that, rather than fear freedom, they should learn to benefit from it.
The party of "pre-emptive obedience" hurts Muslim interests in another way. By presenting Muslims as agents of censorship and intolerance, it incites the non-Muslim majority against them while presenting the most reactionary fundamentalists as the sole legitimate representatives of Islam.
Self-censorship in Europe also provides the despotic regimes in Muslim countries with an excuse for their systematic violation of the right to free expression. While Muslim writers and artists are fighting and, in some cases, even dying to defend their freedom of creation it would be a sad irony to see that same freedom undermined by the party of "pre-emptive obedience" in the West.
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Fiddling While Europe Burns
By Aaron Hanscom
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 23, 2006
"It has become politically correct to attack Islam, and this is making it hard for moderates on both sides to remain reasonable.?
That?s the opinion of Imam Wahid Pedersen, a Danish convert to Islam, quoted this month in a New York Times article.
Where has Pedersen been these past few years? The truth is that today any criticism of certain aspects of Islam -- whether coming from a documentary film, Danish cartoons, the Pope, or the former British foreign secretary -- results in seething Muslim rage and feeble Western obsequiousness. Indeed, contrary to the laments of sensitive Muslims, recent events have shown that it has actually become politically correct to celebrate Islam at every opportunity.
There is no better time to celebrate than a holiday, which is why the CNV trade union federation in the Netherlands wants a Muslim feast to be introduced as a bank holiday. The free day would allow Muslims to celebrate the end of Ramadan during the Sugar Festival. By ?offer[ing] Muslims the freedom to practice their faith,? CNV vice chairman Rienk van Splunder wishes to ?create freedom and respect for one another.? Van Splunder seems to be unaware that the Dutch government already funds schools, mosques, and community centers where Muslims are able to practice their religion. The main barrier to the harmony Van Splunder seeks comes from the fact that a great many of the one million Muslims in the Netherlands desire the freedom to live under Shari?a law.
Taking a cue from Dutch politicians like Piet Hein Donner, who has said that he sees no objection to undemocratic Shari?a law in the Netherlands provided it is imposed by ?democratic means," the CNV apparently wants to speed up the process by creating a national Muslim holiday in the Christian nation. To make room for the Sugar Festival, the federation is willing to sacrifice Whit Monday or Easter Monday. Van Splunder may in fact have been correct when he said that these Christian holidays have lost their meaning in an increasingly secularized nation. But replacing them with the celebration of the Islamic month of fasting would be viewed by Muslims as nothing less than a complete rejection by the Dutch of their own traditions.
Spain is one county that knows a thing or two about sacrificing their traditions for the benefit of Muslims. The Spanish newspaper El Pais recently reported that several towns in the Valencia region have made some curious changes to their traditional festivals commemorating the liberation of Spain from more than 700 years of Muslim domination. Apparently, last year?s angry response by Muslims to the publication of the Danish cartoons spooked some Spaniards so much that certain customs practiced during the celebration of the Reconquista have been abandoned. Exploding Mohammeds -- made by packing the head of a wood-and-cardboard Mohammed dummy with fireworks -- will no longer be seen in the village of Bocairent. The mayor of Bocairent, Antonio Valdes, explained his reasoning: ?It just wasn?t necessary, and as it could hurt some people?s feelings, we decided not to do it.?
The mayor?s sentiments are not uncommon. Mayor Alfredo Sanchez Monteseirin of Seville has suppressed the festive character of the ?Feast of San Fernando? because a joyful celebration of the reconquest of the city in 1248 by King Ferdinand III of Castille might upset Muslims. Meanwhile, there has been opposition to the ?Toma de Granada,? which celebrates the arrival of the Catholic Kings to the last Muslim holdout on the Iberian Peninsula.
The Spanish town of Badajoz has figured out a politically correct way for festivals to be a blast without actually blasting Mohammed dolls: celebrating its founding by Arab invaders. At this year?s Al-Mossassa festival there was no suppression of traditions, perhaps because it featured veil dancing and not flamenco.
Former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar talked about the newest double standard in a speech last month at the Hudson Institute: ?It is interesting to note that while a lot of people in the world are asking the pope to apologize for his speech, I have never heard a Muslim say sorry for having conquered Spain and occupying it for eight centuries.?
Aznar might have added that the only apologies are coming from guilt-stricken individuals who believe that "Islamophobia" is the biggest threat to world peace. Explaining the genesis of the ?Venise et l?Orient? festival now running in Venice, organizer Marie George Nida told Islam.net: ?The exhibition highlights cross-fertilization between the West and Islam to counter war mongering clich?s that now make international headlines.? Nida?s premise is flawed: International headlines tell of countries like Italy continuing to arrest Islamic terrorists intent on attacking the West. An Italian city deciding to host an exhibition celebrating Islamic contributions to Western civilization and arts isn?t likely to change any holy warrior?s mind.
The real malleable minds are those of young children, which makes a story out of Nyssa, Oregon, so disturbing. A local school district has been teaching the ?five pillars? of Islam and having students learn Muslim prayers and dress as Muslims. Concerned parent Kendalee Garner told WorldNetDaily.com that her 13-year-old-son is being ?indoctrinated that Islam is a religion of peace, and being dressed up as a Muslim, being taught prayers, and scriptures out of the Quran.? Superintendent Don Grotting assured parents that students were learning about the ?contributions to math, science, medicine, and the arts by the Muslim population."
But it is the automatic celebration of all aspects of Islam that is so disturbing. Honest assessments of Islam, especially from Muslims and their Western apologists, are what will bring about a much-needed reformation in Islam. Until that day, the gulf between the West and the Muslim world will only widen.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Britain. The British government has long tried to win favor with Muslim minorities by celebrating their differences. According to the London Telegraph, multicultural favors like using tax dollars to fly Muslim scholars to Britain and encouraging financial institutions to comply with Islamic requirements are only deepening the rift. A document released by the Church of England revealed the effects of such policies:
Indeed, one might argue that disaffection and separation is now greater than ever, with Muslim communities withdrawing further into a sense of victimhood, and other faith communities seriously concerned that the Government has given signals that appear to encourage the notion of a privileged relationship with sections of the Muslim community.
Here is the uncomfortable truth facing Islam?s Western apologists: Politically correct concessions to the Islamic community, instead of encouraging moderates, have only empowered the extremists.
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It's Not Just Osama
By Carol Gould
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 23, 2006
It is admirable that British police foiled a spectacular terror attack this past summer, and equally noble that the United States has been so supportive to Britain in the war on terror.
But what is of concern is the hour-by-hour, obsessive rhetoric about al Qaeda, al Qaeda and al Qaeda.
We have an appalling situation in Great Britain, where the BBC and BAFTA-winning filmmakers like Adam Curtis use Dr Azzam Tammimi, an avowed enemy of Israel, as ?spokesman? on television programmes. I tell my stunned American colleagues about the proliferation of Muslim ?spokespeople? who pepper the airwaves from dawn until dusk, pontificating about every subject under the sun. In the past eighteen months these experts, ranging from Shami Chakrabarti, Faisal ?Israel Has No Right to Exist? Bodi, Sir Iqbal ?I boycott Holocaust Memorial Day? Sacranie, Mohammed Abdul-Bari, Ghada Karmi, Ahdaf Soueif, Abdul Bari-Atwan and many others have been particularly ubiquitous since July 7, 2005. This is because those in authority in Britain felt that ?reaching out to the Muslim community? would prevent further terror attacks.
To add to this, various liberal and left-wing activists, as well as mainstream politicians, have enjoyed unprecedented access to the media in their campaigns to blame George Bush and his Zionist neoconservative cabal for the ?Muslim rage? rampaging across Great Britain from Glasgow to Cardiff to Luton to London. The new head of the Muslim Council is said to want to see a limited degree of sharia law brought to Britain. The ?Father of the House of Commons,? Tam Dalyell MP, blames a cabal of Jews for American foreign policy that so enrages young British Muslims.
I attended the Islam Channel?s ?Global Peace and Unity Conference? at the ExCel Centre in London in December, 2005, thinking it would be a celebration of Islamic/Arab/Asian culture, food and literature. Since I cannot visit Pakistan, Libya, Sudan, Syria or other Muslim connubations because I would be detained and perhaps beheaded, I felt this was a way to enjoy Islamic culture in safety and security. Sadly I was in for a rude awakening.
Behind a large grey curtain was a crowd of 25,000 angry young Muslims being whipped up to a Jihadist frenzy all day by a succession of viscerally hostile white British agitators that included the keffieh-clad lawyer Michael Mansfield QC, Yvonne Ridley and George Galloway MP. Ridley described Israel as ?that vile little nation? and the British police as ?Jackboot Britain.? Galloway exhorted the crowd to express its hatred of the USA and Israel by taking to the streets. The former cricketer and avowed opponent of Gen Musharraf, Imran Khan, gave a bizarre speech about the poor Germans between the World Wars being like the Muslim world today, humiliated by the Western powers.
Not once in the entire day did anyone mention al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden. The hours and hours of rabble-rousing, mostly by British-born Muslims, concentrated on three basic enemies: the United States, Israel and Zionists, wherever they may be. The hatred and aggression of this group is something I will never forget. I felt I was in the midst of a Nuremberg-style rally and was terrified that someone would kill me if they discovered I was American-born and a staunch supporter of Israel.
I was the only non-Muslim writer and filmmaker to attend the event (my full reflection on the day may be found here).
Tonight?s al Qaeda-obsessed reporting on British and American networks is once again ignoring the point Melanie Phillips and other commentators have been trying to drive home for years: that Osama bin Laden does not need to open his mouth for British Muslims to be inspired to plan and stage horrifying atrocities.
The ?Global Peace and Unity? event at the ExCel centre in London in December 2005 left no doubt in my mind that a massive number of British Muslims, mostly young, have been inculcated with abject hatred of Americans and Jews and that Osama?s goading is not necessary to lead them to the ultimate martyrdom. I look at Michael Chertoff tonight and appreciate his vigilance, but he is not surrounded every day, as many of us in London are, by angry young men and women who have been born and educated in their country of domicile and who want to destroy as much as they can in the name of America-hatred and Jew-loathing.
The small community of Anglo Jewry has been at the receiving end of what Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks calls ?a tsunami of anti-Semitism.? This is a double-edged sword: I have met pin-striped-suited Englishmen who have told me they wish more Jews would be killed when suicide bombers attack Israel. I have met otherwise sensible Britons who become embarrassingly loud and abusive about everything under the sun in America, be it food, films, baseball or clothes. This quickly accelerates into a tirade about the Zionists bullying Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Blair into ?crusades? to destroy the Middle East. If sober, educated Britons can rail about Israel and the USA from one end of the British Isles to the other, this creates a lethal mix for the angry young Muslims. ?If the local population hates the bloody Yanks and Jews as we do,? they deduce, ?it is open season for our dream of martyrdom in our quiet houses in Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Hampshire.?
If the eminent historian and novelist An Wilson can rail against Israel and the USA in his weekly columns, does this not give reassurance to radicals? When Brian Sewell vents about, of all things, the ?greedy Jews? of Manchester wanting to build a Holocaust memorial, and the aforementioned Tam Dalyell laments the ?cabal of Jews? that drives Anglo-American policy, do extremists not feel comforted? When the New Statesman prints a cover showing a British Union Jack flag being impaled by a Jewish Star, is this not a partnership with terrorists? When streams of commentators flood television, radio and the print media denouncing the USA and Israel, do the potential airline-bombers not feel reassured they are in heaven on earth?
One day this past summer I was in my local ? Halal? ( this is not meant as a barb -- it is now a Halal- geared bank) branch of my bank when two young men became embroiled in a very public shouting match with one of the managers. She firmly told them that their account had been closed down because of ?large amounts of money going in and going out.? They argued that they had ?20,000 Pounds and will just open a new account? but she suggested they go elsewhere. It was indeed odd that the manager had been so indiscreet as to chastise these young men in public, but one had the impression these scenarios unfolded every day. I have watched young men withdraw massive amounts of cash and stuff it into their jackets or into black bags.
Should I have gone to the anti-terror police? Maybe so. But I did not, worried that I would be regarded as a paranoid Islamophobe. It is this very fear amongst the general population that also contributes to the environment of free-range terror planning.
At my local corner shop in London, run by cockney Jack for forty years, the new owners from Bangla Desh have emptied the shelves of bacon, sausages and even tinned ham and Kotex. They will no longer carry any goods that the majority local population had been buying for generations. Building societies think twice about displaying piggy banks and giving them away to children. Sir Iqbal Sacranie, the recent head of the Muslim Council of Britain, boycotts Holocaust Memorial Day and Muslim spokesman Inayat Bungalawala writes to the ?Jewish Chronicle? that the creation of the state of Israel was the great disaster of the last century. The Muslim Public Affairs Council UK (MPACUK) allows shocking rhetoric onto its website but is not proscribed and is opening new branches in Ilford and Birmingham.
These ?leaders? should be bringing their people together with other religious groups in Britain, but what I have seen in the past year has confirmed my worst fears: that the British Muslim community is moving farther and farther away from the tranquil assimilation that every other ethnic and religious group has enjoyed in the United Kingdom. When I first came to England over thirty years ago, brilliant professionals who had not been born here were storming the creative scene, Tom Stoppard, Herbert Wise, Ken Adam amongst them. Other fine minds who have contributed to the rich tapestry of British culture have come from Italy, Africa, the West Indies and America, and they have integrated with ease. From what I saw at the alarming ?Global Peace and Unity Conference,? British Muslim youth are not joining the ranks of the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, the Royal Ballet or the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
It is not Osama who is driving the spectacular rise of terror in Britain. It is the support from the white population, the Israel-bashing from public figures -- London Mayor Ken Livingstone being a prime agitator -- and the support the radicals feel they enjoy from a large swath of Britain that is creating this happy breeding ground. The church has obsessed about boycotting Israel, the media fixate on ?Zionist conspiracies? and the imams, many of whom do not speak English, exhort their young worshippers to anything but ballet lessons, football sessions or outings to the Natural History Museum.
The American and British authorities need to get real about the threat from Britain and Europe and stop concentrating all of their attentions on the madrassahs of Pakistan. The elderly white Highlander and war hero who gave me a lift from the train station to my Scottish holiday hotel spent the entire trip berating me about the evils the Jews, Yanks and Zionists have inflicted on the world. If he is so full of rage, what is the Muslim population feeling, when they know his ilk will give them succour?
What has happened in Britain in this turbulent year did not surprise me. Those of us who live there, in the ?coming Caliphate,? know that the threat is huge, is massively supported and may never be extinguished. I am not hopeful.
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European Muslims worry about frank new Islam debate
Mon Oct 23, 2006 10:29 AM BST
By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor
PARIS (Reuters) - Britain's heated debate about Islamic veils reflects a growing frustration with Muslims in Europe that risks further isolating these minorities rather than integrating them, leading European Muslim activists say.
The new tone in Britain, which Muslims on the continent long saw as a model of tolerance where criticising minorities was politically incorrect, marks a watershed in the way Europeans talk about Islam, they told Reuters.
Islamist radicalism, ethnic segregation and clashes of values must be discussed openly, they agreed, but the increasingly polarised debate squeezes out moderates on both sides.
Former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw sparked off the British debate this month by saying the full facial veils some Muslim women wear hindered integration. Some Muslim leaders called his remarks offensive and accused him of whipping up Islamophobia.
"Intolerance is growing in Europe," said Dalil Boubakeur, president of France's Muslim Council, who saw the new mood as a response to security fears and the radicalisation of a small minority of Muslims who do not accept European values.
"There is a sense we are living in a different time," said Dilwar Hussain, head of policy research at the Islamic Foundation in Britain.
"With all the security concerns, people feel they can be more frank," Hussain said. "The reaction from Muslims is to recede further and further into a sense of victimhood."
The activists said politicians and the media blamed religion for problems that are really economic and social, such as unemployment and discrimination.
"Before, we were just immigrants from Turkey or Morocco or other places, but then they found something to combine us," said Famile Arslan from the Dutch group Islam and Citizenship.
"All immigrant problems have been Islamised. All Muslims have been criminalised," she said.
"NEW OPIUM OF THE PEOPLE"
European policies towards Muslim minorities have ranged from the tolerant British and Dutch "multicultural" path to France's strict ban on Muslim headscarves in state schools.
But the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh and the bombings in Madrid and London have deepened concerns about whether Europe's 15 million Muslims all accept European values.
"Europeans were stunned to see that even people who were quite integrated could do these things," Boubakeur said.
Ali Kizilkaya, head of Germany's Muslim Council, said Muslims were now seen "as a kind of security problem".
Yazid Sabeg, France's most successful Muslim businessman, accused the media of tarring all Muslims with the terrorist brush. "Demonising Islam by confusing it with Islamism is the new opium of the people," he complained.
One reflex by politicians and the media -- to call on Muslim leaders to denounce violence any time Islamist radicals strike -- was misguided because it identified the peaceful majority with crimes they did not support, the activists argued.
"Muslims in Europe feel the need to apologise for deeds they didn't contribute to," Arslan explained.
DANISH WAKE-UP CALL
The activists agreed the disarray of Muslim communities, which are often split by differences of ethnicity, dogma and politics, frustrated efforts to respond constructively and left radical voices to be the ones most frequently heard in public.
"Muslims are not a homogenous group," said Arslan. "There is no Muslim community. Maybe that is our biggest problem."
Hussain agreed: "There isn't anything like a coherent group of people you can tell what to do or what not to do."
While most activists said public clashes could degenerate into anti-immigrant campaigns, one Danish Muslim leader said the uproar over caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad there earlier this year had helped calm tensions by promoting a dialogue.
"The cartoon crisis did function as a wake-up call for both Danish politicians and Muslim leaders," said Yildiz Akdogan, spokeswoman for the Democratic Muslims group.
When more such cartoons surfaced this month, the government promptly denounced them and Muslim leaders avoided exploiting the issue, she said. "The final outcome is good."
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http://www.breakingnews.ie/2006/10/19/story281662.html#
Extremist lawyer wants flag of Islam on Leinster House
19/10/2006 - 5:49:00 PM
The flag of Islam should be flown over Leinster House, an Islamic extremist said tonight.
Speaking in Dublin before addressing a Trinity College debate, Anjem Choudray also reiterated controversial views that Muslim violence is justified in certain circumstances.
The British-born lawyer, 39, angered the Irish Government last year when he said that Ireland risked becoming a target for a 9/11 style attack because it allowed US war planes to refuel at Shannon Airport.
Mr Choudray said: ?As a Muslim, I believe Islam is superior to every other way of life and that it can resolve all the social and economic problems that Ireland suffers from.
?And as a symbol of that, the flag of Islam should be flown over the D?il.
?This is symbolic of the fact that all societies will be run better according to God?s law.?
Mr Choudray, who has visited Ireland several times, was invited by the Philosophical Society at Trinity College to debate Islamic violence with other speakers.
He added: ?I think it is quite important that violence is defined and the Islamic context is presented because it is not as simple to say Muslims can never use any force or violence or fight to defend themselves.
?There is a context where Muslims have a right to defend their lives, their honour and their property.?
Referring to the US military stopovers at Shannon Airport, he said tonight: ?If US warplanes are using Irish soil, then Ireland is seen as aiding and abetting the war on so-called terror.
?Ireland says it has a position of neutrality but I don?t think it is seen that way in the Muslim world at all.?
Mr Choudray also warned that the Pope must be careful with his public statements so that he doesn?t offend Islam.
He said: ?He has enough advisers to tell him that this is a sensitive issue and that Muslims take their religion very seriously.?
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France's Permanent Intifada
New York Sun Editorial
October 27, 2006
Only days after the violence in the Paris suburbs erupted onto the world's front pages a year ago, these columns described the battles between the Muslim youths and French police, in a November 4, 2005, editorial,"Intifada in France." We wrote: "If President Chirac thought he was going to gain peace with the Muslim community in France by taking an appeasement line in the Iraq war, it certainly looks like he miscalculated. Today the streets of the French capital are looking more like Ramallah and less like the advanced, sophisticated, gay Paree image Monsieur Chirac likes to portray to the world, and the story, which is just starting to grip the world's attention, is full of ironies. One is tempted to suggest that Prime Minister Sharon send a note cautioning Monsieur Chirac about cycles of violence."
The "Intifada" label was dismissed in many quarters. On November 5, John Lichfield in Britain's Independent wrote "from the centre of the world's most beautiful city" that "despite the inflammatory rubbish written by some right-wing commentators in the French press about a ?Paris intifada', this is not an Islamic insurrection or a political revolution of any kind." He predicted that the riots "will burn themselves out in a few days, just as they have before." The Washington Post editorialized on November 8 that "? It's not the European version of an intifada: Islamic ideology and leaders play no role in the disturbances." Bernard-Henri Levy wrote on November 9 in the Wall Street Journal that "this is not, thank heaven, a matter of an Intifada wearing French colors."
Well one year later, the riots are still going on, and the French themselves are now calling it an intifada. France's Interior Ministry reported that almost 2,500 police officers were "wounded" in the first six months of the year. Rescue workers need police escort in the Muslim dominated suburbs. The AP recently reported from Paris: "On a routine call, three unwitting police officers fell into a trap. A car darted out to block their path, and dozens of hooded youths surged out of the darkness to attack them with stones, bats and tear gas before fleeing. One officer was hospitalized, and no arrests were made. The recent, apparently planned ambush was emblematic of what some officers say has become a near-perpetual and increasingly violent state of conflict between police and gangs in tough, largely immigrant French neighborhoods."
The head of a police trade union Action Police, Michel Thooris, recently told the interior minister, Nicholas Sarkozy, that the situation in the slums can be described as a "permanent Intifada." Almost every day police cars are pelted by, among other objects, Molotov cocktails. Mr. Thooris told journalists that "We are in a state of civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists." He said that "Many youths, many arsonists, many vandals behind the violence do it to cries of ?Allah Akbar' (God is Great) when our police cars are stoned," the AP reported.
We recount this not out of any schadenfreude. But all our lives, we have thought of France in a certain way, as Charles of Gaulle once said. We would actually like to see the Fifth Republic come to its senses and see that its interests are with the rest of the Free World and that appeasement is not an answer, not in France, not in Israel, and not in Iraq. We are not with the anti-immigration movement.
One of France's faults is what we, in one of last year's editorials, called its "failure to integrate its immigrant Muslim community." It's a community that "lives in areas rampant with crime, poverty, and unemployment, much the fault of France's prized welfare system ? Immigration into a country with a dirigiste economy is a recipe for trouble, which is why supporters of immigration into France have long warned of the need for liberalization."
But there has been no liberalization. The French labor market is as inflexible as ever. Unemployment still is in the double digits, and it's highest among the immigrants and minority populations. All this, as we noted, "is compounded by the image France projects of itself to its Muslims, which one can surmise is the reason why Muslims see rioting as the solution to any grievance." Monsieur Chirac didn't join the war in Iraq out of fear of his domestic Muslim population. And so, "unsurprisingly when faced with some unhappiness they believe they can pressure the French state into submission."
The way out for France is two-fold. Firstly to reform its welfare state and allow the Muslim dominated slums to integrate into French society. The second is to send a signal to the French Muslim community that France doesn't buckle under threats, that it sees itself as part of the West, allied with America, Israel, and the Free World. On a domestic level, that means employing Mayor Giuliani-style "zero-tolerance" policing in the suburbs. On a national level, France would do well to send troops to fight the Islamists in Iraq and prove themselves to be true members in the coalition in the war on terror. As it is, France is learning the profound truth of which President Bush has begun speaking in respect of Iraq ? if we retreat, the enemy will follow us home.
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City Journal
The Avant-Garde of the Apocalypse
The Dutch and their Muslims
Theodore Dalrymple
25 October 2006
Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance, by Ian Buruma (Penguin Press, 288 pp., $24.95)
Whatever the other effects of the murders of Pim Fortuyn and Theo Van Gogh, they have certainly raised the Dutch profile in the global press. A country whose stability, prosperity, and tolerantly pragmatic response to social problems long raised a yawn of ennui among newspaper editors suddenly found itself not only at the forefront of the news but also as emblematic of all the problems of the modern, complex, interdependent, and highly confused world. The Netherlands was suddenly in the avant-garde of the apocalypse, experiencing the coming clash of civilizations. Not since the seventeenth century had Holland been so important.
Ian Buruma seems uniquely placed to explain the Dutch situation to the rest of the world. He is a prolific writer who lived the first half of his life in Holland. Completely fluent in Dutch, he knows his country?s history but has also lived in many other nations and therefore can see his own with an outsider?s, as well as an insider?s, eye. Above all, he focuses on the influence of recent history, and how it is taught and remembered, upon present politics. For example, he wrote a book comparing the ways in which Germany and Japan (both of whose languages he speaks) have dealt with their war records.
The recent Dutch past hampers them in responding to Islamic extremism. The Dutch war record is not glorious: a greater proportion of Dutch Jews wound up deported and killed during the German occupation than of any other Western European country?s. Buruma does not mention that the Dutch also contributed more men to the SS than most other occupied nations. No sooner was the occupation over, moreover, than they engaged in a brutal but hopeless war to retain the East Indies as a colonial possession.
A bad conscience, then, bubbled under the calm, prosperous surface of Dutch life, waiting to emerge at precisely the wrong moment?when Dutch society faced the genuine challenge of Islamic extremism among large numbers of Moroccan immigrants. Frankness then became impossible, and intellectuals drew false analogies between anti-Islamist opinion and the anti-Semitism that had led to the inglorious war record. The Dutch then had to fight with at least one, and sometimes two, hands tied behind their back.
Where self-censorship exists on a large scale, eventually a maverick will arise who breaks the collective silence, often in a rather vulgar and unattractive way. Theo Van Gogh was such a maverick. Coming from a secure background in Holland?s haute bourgeoisie, he felt privileged and safe enough to mock, deride, and insult his society?s conventions: indeed, from an early age, no doubt because of inherent temperament, he felt compelled to do so. For example, he started a scatological magazine, The Dirty Paper, at his primary school. He seems to have come into the world with a desire to shock and get seen doing so.
He thought he was a licensed jester. His ability to shock depended, of course, upon the persistence in Dutch society of the Calvinist mentality of purse-lipped moralism, now as frequently employed against those who dare suggest that the rank, and deeply ideological, hedonism of Amsterdam is not only unattractive but morally reprehensible as against those, such as fornicators, traditionally regarded as sinners. Scratch a Dutch liberal, and you will find a Calvinist moralist not far beneath the surface.
This Calvinism, however, was tolerant to the extent that it did not prescribe slaughter in the streets for those deemed to have insulted it. Its worst sanction was disapproval?precisely what Van Gogh sought. Van Gogh hid under so many layers of rather crude irony that it became impossible to know what he really believed, if anything; and it was beyond his comprehension that anyone would take anything so seriously, or perhaps literally is a better word, as to kill for it.
Van Gogh could be funny. For example, at one public forum, he remarked on his surprise that an Islamist who was taking part in the discussion needed the protection not only of Allah but of bodyguards as well. There may be disagreement about the socio-cultural and psychological roots of Islamism, but a sense of humor certainly isn?t among them. The Islamist left the forum in a rage, with Van Gogh exclaiming, ?Allah knows best! Allah knows best!?
Buruma is good at depicting the crosscurrents of Dutch society. Its political class is?or at least until recently was?a self-selected elite, whose members sought office without ever wishing to change policies. It required its members to be gray and featureless, without flamboyance or ostentation: observing and listening to one ex?prime minister, for example, I thought I was seeing a better-than-averagely-dressed member of an eastern European politburo. He spoke fluently but said nothing; his fleshy face suggested years of official luncheons and dinners in banqueting halls without natural light; I doubt that he had paid for a sandwich for decades.
Meanwhile, back in le pays r?el, pressures and discontents have mounted. The original idea of Dutch employers was that Moroccan men from desperately poor villages would come for a time to provide cheap labor (they liked their immigrants poor and illiterate, because they would be easier to control and less likely to organize and cause trouble), and then go home again once the sweeping or assembling or whatever menial task they were to perform was done. Instead, the men stayed and their families joined them. The assumption was that they would eventually assimilate, once they perceived the full beauty of the Dutch way of life.
The native Dutch population increased arithmetically, that of the immigrants geometrically, until whole neighborhoods, usually of public housing, became in effect Moroccan colonies. As Marx might have put it, the colonizers found themselves colonized.
Three factors retarded the newcomers? integration into Dutch society. The first was a social security system that allowed large numbers of people to subsist without working and therefore without engagement in the wider society, so that the creation of mental ghettoes soon followed the creation of physical ones; the second was the ideology of multiculturalism, which was born of a combination of liberal guilt and indifference to the real fate of immigrants; and the third was the permission given to second generation immigrants to seek their spouses back in Morocco, so that the most retrograde aspects of their parents? native culture could survive.
Interestingly, Dutch-Moroccan young men seek sexual liaisons with European-Dutch girls, whom they regard as being ?easy in the sexual sense,? but prefer Moroccan women (from Morocco) as wives. Village girls, they believe, are compliant, undemanding, obedient, and easily cowed. When you are at the bottom of the social pile, domination of women can seem particularly important and rewarding, and it compensates for all manner of other humiliations. Unfortunately, it is a primitive compensation that inhibits genuine social advance.
Buruma does not disguise from us the unattractive side of a modern and extremely liberal western society such as Holland?s. Returning to live a few months in Amsterdam, he stays in a house in the famous, or infamous, red-light district:
The virtually naked ?window prostitutes,? from all the poor countries in the world, pose in their dimly lit rooms along the canal, in old houses decorated with gracefully carved seventeenth- and eighteenth-century gables and neon signs offering live sex shows. It is easier in that part of town to buy a large electric dildo than a newspaper.
This is not attractive, to say the least; and it is hardly surprising that some reflective young men, with the normal frustrations of youth as well as the difficulties of being not fully at ease in either society, Dutch or Moroccan, turn to a doctrine that seems to them to solve all social and personal problems at once and gives them besides a powerful sense of mission and purpose.
Buruma is quite clear about the absurdity of Islamism as a doctrine. Its intellectual nullity is patent. He lets Islamists and their sympathizers speak for themselves, and perhaps the most startling moment comes when one of his interlocutors, by no means the most stupid, objects to the slaying of Van Gogh because it was done during Ramadan.
However, he is much less clear about what part Islam itself plays in the situation. The subtitle of the book leads us to expect an answer as to whether Islam is now compatible with liberal democracy and the kind of religious tolerance that we took for granted until recently.
Optimists might point to India, for example, which has the second largest population of Muslims in the world, but which has maintained the highest standards of democratic freedom of any country in the Third World. However, pessimists might reply that it is the memory and very real threat of intercommunal violence, from which the Muslims must emerge the overall losers because they are so much in the minority, that keeps freedom alive in India and Muslims loyal to, or at least compliant with, the democratic order. If they scented weakness in the Indian state, they?or rather the Islamists among them?would go on the offensive.
You sense reluctance on the author?s part to tackle the really difficult questions, for fear of being too offensive. He is so judicious that he arrives at no judgment. At the book?s end we are no nearer knowing what the limits of tolerance are or should be than we were at the beginning. For instance, the author treats Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Dutch-Somali woman who made the offending film, Submission, with Van Gogh and now lives under permanent threat of death, with a certain disdain, as if he fears to identify with anyone too closely, and he underscores her privileged background, as if it somehow vitiated her argument that Islam has at the heart of its doctrine and way of seeing the world the justification for oppression and intolerance. This is not to say that all Muslims are oppressive or intolerant, any more than that all people of democratic or egalitarian sentiment treat their social inferiors with deep respect. Hirsi Ali may be wrong in what she says, but it is important to prove her wrong, not merely mildly deprecate her as the scion of privilege and a person given by temperament to extreme positions.
The smell of political correctness wafts gently through the book. We read, for example, that all doctrines have the potential for violent extremism. Is this really true? Quakerism, for example? Does one really expect Christian Scientists to turn politically violent after reading Mary Baker Eddy? On another occasion, Buruma permits a young man of Moroccan origin, who turned out badly though his two brothers did well, to explain without challenge his persistent failure in life, despite his intelligence and obvious ability, by reference to discrimination. Why should he have faced such incapacitating discrimination, and not his two successful brothers? It is possible, of course, that a reason exists, but Buruma does not seek it out.
That said, his book is highly readable, and it is not as if readers of English are well-supplied with books about the cultural and political situation of Holland. Since both Holland and Belgium are now very important, not perhaps in the statistical sense, but in a symbolic sense, since both experience with particular acuteness pan-European problems, this book is welcome. I would have preferred it to be harder-edged, but perhaps that is because I have the makings of a fanatic.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/rev2006-10-25td.html
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=0TBMNM00S0QNBQFIQMFSFFWAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/news/2006/11/02/wfrance02.xml
Youths challenge the French state
David Rennie in Paris
Last Updated: 2:17am GMT 02/11/2006
Symbols of the French state, including policemen, firemen and postmen, are under intensified attack from disaffected youths as the country faces the worst race relations crisis in its history.
Hardly a night passes without gangs ? many of them from immigrant families ? attacking police cars, buses and emergency rescue teams.
Firefighters attempt to extinguish a burning city bus
Yesterday, the weekly magazine Le Nouvel Observateur published a confidential report drawn up by a public service trade union, the CGT, containing scores of eye-witness accounts of brutal attacks on public servants who work in the worst suburbs, or "banlieues", from gas board workers to staff from the electricity company.
Its publication follows the revelation that attacks on police have soared this year, with some 14 a day, and a growing number of incidents in which officers have been lured into ambushes.
This has prompted a warning that the day France witnesses the lynching of a policeman is not far off.
The CGT report painted a graphic picture of violence: blocks of cement dropped on paramedic crews; washing machines pushed off balconies on to fire engines; electricity company agents too scared to cut off customers who have not paid bills, after being attacked with knives, guns and fists.
On the Right and Left, politicians have accused youths of singling out symbols of the state, in an attempt to show that they, and not the French republic, are the law in their run-down neighbourhoods.
Shortly after three weeks of rioting that gripped French suburbs last November, Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister and favourite to be the Centre-Right candidate for the French presidency next year, said the violence, which left scores of businesses in ruins and nearly 10,000 cars burned, was above all "territorial". Gangs were trying to seize control of a piece of territory, "and rule it by force", Mr Sarkozy said in an interview with Le Point magazine.
Mr Sarkozy is admired and loathed in equal measure for his vocal pledges to crack down on such "scum", as he called rioters last year, and his policies of sending heavily armed police units into the worst neighbourhoods, in a show of force.
This week, a year later, Le Nouvel Observateur found a clear echo in the views of a politician on the opposite end of the spectrum, the Communist mayor of Sevran, a poor north-eastern Paris suburb. Youths who burned buses or attacked firemen were only hurting their own families and neighbours, who would be deprived of the few remaining public services, said the mayor, Stephane Gatignon. "For them it's a way of showing they exist, that this is their home, their territory."
The banlieues' inhabitants include millions of immigrants. Some police representatives, notably the small, fringe trade union Action Police, squarely blame radical Muslim imams for whipping up the violence, talking of an "intifada" in the banlieues. But a leaked report by the French police intelligence service, the Renseignements G?n?raux (RG), concluded last year that Islamists had "no role in setting off the violence", which it described as a "popular revolt" against the authorities.
A more recent report by the RG, leaked to Le Figaro last month, also reported, in a tone of some relief, that rumours of angry youths in different suburbs linking up in organised networks were not true.
A close study of the CGT trade union report also revealed a less than political motivation for attacks. Many workers from the gas board, electricity or telephone companies reported being attacked after accidentally witnessing drug deals, or stumbling on caches of drugs or weapons belonging to criminal gangs.
Crime in the banlieues is described as a part of life, and while billions of pounds have been spent on some estates many remain grim concrete widernesses with unemployment at 20 per cent, or double the national average, with youth unemployment still higher.
david.rennie@telegraph.co.uk
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Sorry for the lack of URL. This came to me on 10/24/06 from a usually reliable source:
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Police Tuesday near Osnabrueck, in western Germany, arrested a 36-year-old terrorism suspect, identified only as Ibrahim R., after they had searched his apartment and computer.
The Iraqi man, described by his landlord as "helpful but crazy," had administered an Internet chat room where he supported terrorist ideologies and even tried to recruit new personnel for al-Qaeda.
Police had surveyed him for more than a year and found that he downloaded and disseminated audio and video messages by al-Qaida bosses Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. Officials said he likely didn't have direct contacts to al-Qaida, but what he shared with the terror network was a profound hatred against the United States and the West, hatred that he discharged onto the Web.
Rolf Tophoven, a German terrorism expert, recently told United Press International that the Internet, used for "propaganda and inciting purposes," has become the Islamists' most important recruitment tool.
"The Web has turned into something like the University of Jihad -- it has become a virtual self- service shop of Islamist terror," he said. Officials in Berlin agree. Wolfgang Schaeuble, Germany's interior minister and thus the top security chief, has long called for closer monitoring of the Internet.
Last week's arrest was preceded by a failed train bombing, when two men placed homemade bombs on two regional trains. They had found the plan to build the explosive devices on the Internet, and although the bombs failed to detonate, the attempt shook Germany's intelligence community to the core, as both individuals had not previously appeared as terror suspects.
In recent months, more and more videos have popped up online that have German subtitles, to spread the jihadist messages for converts with little to zero knowledge of Arabic, but a large potential for violence.
In an update of the country's anti-terror laws, lawmakers gave Schaeuble some $165 million to improve the war against online terrorism. Observers say this funding was much needed: While federal police and intelligence agents already comb through the Web on the lookout for terror propaganda, the number of Islamist Web sites has grown exponentially in recent months. The money, the German news magazine Der Spiegel writes in its latest issue, may result into new computers and the creation of an additional 50 jobs assigned to survey the Web.
According to Spiegel Online, Schaeuble as early as the beginning of this year has asked his experts to develop a concept for a new department of Berlin's Anti-Terror Center, a federal institution designed to combat terrorism in Germany. The new department will be called Center for Internet Monitoring and Analysis and will go live in 2007, the magazine wrote. Germany reportedly wants to cooperate with other countries (mainly with the United States and its western European partners) to fight online terrorism.
"More than before and at best round the clock we have to know what happens in Islamist forums, analyze hints for developments and try to arrest possible disseminators of propaganda in Germany," August Hanning, the deputy interior minister, told the magazine.
Some lawmakers even want to go a step further. Uwe Schuenemann, the conservative interior minister of Lower Saxony , wants Web site providers to sign guarantees that they take terrorism-related material off their servers. He also calls for outlawing the download of terrorism videos.
Ingo Wolf, the Free Democrat interior minister of North-Rhine Westphalia, wants to enable law enforcement agents to not only survey terrorism suspects who go online, but also access their hard drives, according to Der Spiegel, via spy ware or similar programs.
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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/10/10/ap/world/mainD8KLPNSO0.shtml
Germans Nab Iraqi in al-Qaida Web Case
Iraqi arrested in Germany for allegedly spreading al-Qaida messages on Web
BERLIN, Oct. 10, 2006
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(AP) An Iraqi man suspected of spreading messages by al-Qaida leaders on the Internet in the past year was arrested Tuesday in Germany, prosecutors said.
The 36-year-old, who was identified only as Ibrahim R., was arrested near the western city of Osnabrueck, and his apartment was searched, the prosecutors said.
He was accused of spreading audio and video messages by leaders of al-Qaida and al-Qaida in Iraq on the Internet from his home "in several cases since Sept. 24, 2005," _ and "in doing so of having supported these groups in their terrorist activities and aims."
The prosecutors said the messages were from Osama bin Laden, his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri and former al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike north of Baghdad in June.
Prosecutors did not elaborate on the man's alleged activities or say how he got the messages.
It was unclear whether the man was suspected of posting the messages on the Web himself or of having circulated messages already online, and there also was no word on whether he was believed to have acted alone.
Prosecutors gave no details of the contents of the messages.
The top security official in Lower Saxony state, Uwe Schuenemann, said the man had been under observation for a year because he had been accused of involvement in another crime, of which he gave no details.
The Iraqi had applied for a residence permit, but it had not yet been approved, Schuenemann said.
The man was to be brought before a federal judge Wednesday for a decision on whether he could be held pending possible charges of supporting a terrorist organization _ a charge that falls short of membership in a terrorist group.
Germany introduced legislation designed to prosecute supporters of foreign terrorist groups on its soil after it emerged that three of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers had lived and studied in Hamburg.
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Terrorist threat to UK - MI5 chief's full speech
Following is the full text of a speech delivered on November 9, 2006 by Eliza Manningham-Buller, Director-General of MI5, on the terrorist threat facing the UK:
The International Terrorist Threat to the UK
I have been Director General of the Security Service/M15 since 2002. Before that I was Deputy Director General for five years. During that time, and before, I have witnessed a steady increase in the terrorist threat to the UK. It has been the subject of much comment and controversy. I rarely speak in public. I prefer to avoid the limelight and get on with my job. But today, I want to set out my views on:
the realities of the terrorist threat facing the UK in 2006;
what motivates those who pose that threat
and what my Service is doing, with others, to counter it.
I speak not as a politician, nor as a pundit, but as someone who has been an intelligence professional for 32 years.
2. Five years on from 9/11, where are we? Speaking in August, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, the head of the Anti-Terrorist Branch of the Metropolitan Police, described the threat to the UK from Al-Qaida-related terrorism as ?real, here, deadly and enduring?. Only last week the Home Secretary said the threat will be ?enduring ? the struggle will be long and wide and deep.? Let me describe more fully why I think they said that. We now know that the first Al-Qaida-related plot against the UK was the one we discovered and disrupted in November 2000 in Birmingham. A British citizen is currently serving a long prison sentence for plotting to detonate a large bomb in the UK. Let there be no doubt about this: the international terrorist threat to this country is not new. It began before Iraq, before Afghanistan, and before 9/11.
3. In the years after 9/11, with atrocities taking place in Madrid, Casablanca, Bali, Istanbul and elsewhere, terrorists plotted to mount a string of attacks in the UK, but were disrupted. This run of domestic success was interrupted tragically in London in July 2005. Since then, the combined efforts of my Service, the police, SIS and GCHQ have thwarted a further five major conspiracies in the UK, saving many hundreds (possibly even thousands) of lives. Last month the Lord Chancellor said that there were a total of 99 defendants awaiting trial in 34 cases. Of course the presumption of innocence applies and the law dictates that nothing must be said or done which might prejudice the right of a defendant to receive a fair trial. You will understand therefore that I can say no more on these matters.
4. What I can say is that today, my officers and the police are working to contend with some 200 groupings or networks, totalling over 1600 identified individuals (and there will be many we don?t know) who are actively engaged in plotting, or facilitating, terrorist acts here and overseas. The extremists are motivated by a sense of grievance and injustice driven by their interpretation of the history between the West and the Muslim world. This view is shared, in some degree, by a far wider constituency. If the opinion polls conducted in the UK since July 2005 are only broadly accurate, over 100,000 of our citizens consider that the July 2005 attacks in London were justified. What we see at the extreme end of the spectrum are resilient networks, some directed from Al-Qaida in Pakistan, some more loosely inspired by it, planning attacks including mass casualty suicide attacks in the UK. Today we see the use of home-made improvised explosive devices; tomorrow?s threat may include the use of chemicals, bacteriological agents, radioactive materials and even nuclear technology. More and more people are moving from passive sympathy towards active terrorism through being radicalised or indoctrinated by friends, families, in organised training events here and overseas, by images on television, through chat rooms and websites on the Internet.
5. The propaganda machine is sophisticated and Al-Qaida itself says that 50% of its war is conducted through the media. In Iraq, attacks are regularly videoed and the footage downloaded onto the internet within 30 minutes. Virtual media teams then edit the result, translate it into English and many other languages, and package it for a worldwide audience. And, chillingly, we see the results here. Young teenagers are being groomed to be suicide bombers. We are aware of numerous plots to kill people and to damage our economy. What do I mean by numerous? Five? Ten? No, nearer??. thirty that we know of. These plots often have links back to Al-Qaida in Pakistan and through those links Al-Qaida gives guidance and training to its largely British foot soldiers here on an extensive and growing scale. And it is not just the UK of course. Other countries also face a new terrorist threat: from Spain to France to Canada and Germany.
6. A word on proportionality. My Service and the police have occasionally been accused of hype and lack of perspective or worse, of deliberately stirring up fear. It is difficult to argue that there are not worse problems facing us, for example climate change... and of course far more people are killed each year on the roads than die through terrorism. It is understandable that people are reluctant to accept assertions that do not always appear to be substantiated. It is right to be sceptical about intelligence. I shall say more about that later. But just consider this. A terrorist spectacular would cost potentially thousands of lives and do major damage to the world economy. Imagine if a plot to bring down several passenger aircraft succeeded. Thousands dead, major economic damage, disruption across the globe. And Al-Qaida is an organisation without restraint.
7. There has been much speculation about what motivates young men and women to carry out acts of terrorism in the UK. My Service needs to understand the motivations behind terrorism to succeed in countering it, as far as that is possible. Al-Qaida has developed an ideology which claims that Islam is under attack, and needs to be defended. This is a powerful narrative that weaves together conflicts from across the globe, presenting the West?s response to varied and complex issues, from long-standing disputes such as Israel/Palestine and Kashmir to more recent events as evidence of an across-the-board determination to undermine and humiliate Islam worldwide. Afghanistan, the Balkans, Chechnya, Iraq, Israel/Palestine, Kashmir and Lebanon are regularly cited by those who advocate terrorist violence as illustrating what they allege is Western hostility to Islam.
8. The video wills of British suicide bombers make it clear that they are motivated by:
perceived worldwide and long-standing injustices against Muslims;
an extreme and minority interpretation of Islam promoted by some preachers and people of influence;
their interpretation as anti-Muslim of UK foreign policy, in particular the UK?s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Killing oneself and others in response is an attractive option for some citizens of this country and others around the world.
What Intelligence can do
9. As I said earlier, I have been an intelligence officer for some 32 years. And I want again to describe what intelligence is and is not. I wish life were like ?Spooks?, where everything is (a) knowable, and (b) soluble by six people. But those whose plans we wish to detect in advance are determined to conceal from us what they intend to do. And every day they learn. From the mistakes of others. From what they discover of our capabilities from evidence presented in court, and from leaks to the media. Moreover intelligence is usually bitty and needs piecing together, assessing, judging. It takes objectivity, integrity and a sceptical eye to make good use of intelligence: even the best of it never tells the whole story. On the basis of such incomplete information, my Service and the police make decisions on when and how to take action, to protect public safety. Wherever possible we seek to collect evidence sufficient to secure prosecutions, but it is not always possible to do so: admissible evidence is not always available and the courts, rightly, look for a high standard of certainty. Often to protect public safety the police need to disrupt plots on the basis of intelligence but before evidence sufficient to bring criminal charges has been collected. Moreover we are faced by acute and very difficult choices of prioritisation. We cannot focus on everything so we have to decide on a daily basis with the police and others where to focus our energies, whom to follow, whose telephone lines need listening to, which seized media needs to go to the top of the analytic pile. Because of the sheer scale of what we face (80% increase in casework since January), the task is daunting. We won?t always make the right choices. And we recognise we shall have scarce sympathy if we are unable to prevent one of our targets committing an atrocity.
And the Service?
10. As I speak my staff, roughly 2,800 of them, (an increase of almost 50% since 9/11, 25% under 30, over 6% from ethnic minorities, with 52 languages, with links to well over 100 services worldwide), are working very hard, at some cost to their private lives and in some cases their safety, to do their utmost to collect the intelligence we need. The first challenge is to find those who would cause us harm, among the 60 million or so people who live here and the hundreds of thousands who visit each year. That is no easy task, particularly given the scale and speed of radicalisation and the age of some being radicalised. The next stage is to decide what action to take in response to that intelligence. Who are merely talking big, and who have real ambitions? Who have genuine aspirations to commit terrorism, but lack the know-how or materials? Who are the skilled and trained ones, who the amateurs? Where should we and the police focus our finite resources? It?s a hard grind but my staff are highly motivated: conscious of the risks they carry individually; and aware that they may not be able to do enough to stop the next attack. We owe them a tremendous debt of gratitude and I thank them. On July 8 last year I spoke to all my staff. I said that what we feared would happen had finally happened. I reminded them that we had warned that it was a matter of when, not if, and that they were trained to respond ? indeed many had been up all night, from the intelligence staff to the catering staff. I told them that we had received many messages of support from around the world, and that we, along with our colleagues in the police and emergency services, were in the privileged position of being able to make a difference. And we did. And we have done so since.
11. My Service is growing very rapidly. By 2008 it will be twice the size it was at 9/11. We know much more than we did then. We have developed new techniques, new sources, new relationships. We understand much better the scale and nature of what we are tackling but much is still obscure and radicalisation continues. Moreover, even with such rapid growth, we shall not be able to investigate nearly enough of the problem, so the prioritisation I mentioned earlier will remain essential but risky. And new intelligence officers need to be trained. That takes time as does the acquisition of experience, the experience that helps one with those difficult choices and tough judgements.
What else can others do?
12. That brings me on to my final point. None of this can be tackled by my Service alone. Others have to address the causes, counter the radicalisation, assist in the rehabilitation of those affected, and work to protect our way of life. We have key partners, the police being the main ones and I?d like today to applaud those police officers working alongside us on this huge challenge, those who collect intelligence beside us, help convert it into evidence for court, and face the dangers of arresting individuals who have no concern for their own lives or the lives of others. The scale and seriousness of the threat means that others play vital roles, SIS and GCHQ collecting key intelligence overseas, other services internationally who recognise the global nature of the problem, government departments, business and the public.
13. Safety for us all means working together to protect those we care about, being alert to the danger without over-reacting, and reporting concerns. We need to be alert to attempts to radicalise and indoctrinate our youth and to seek to counter it. Radicalising elements within communities are trying to exploit grievances for terrorist purposes; it is the youth who are being actively targeted, groomed, radicalised and set on a path that frighteningly quickly could end in their involvement in mass murder of their fellow UK citizens, or their early death in a suicide attack or on a foreign battlefield.
14. We also need to understand some of the differences between non-Western and Western life-styles; and not treat people with suspicion because of their religion, or indeed to confuse fundamentalism with terrorism. We must realise that there are significant differences between faiths and communities within our society, and most people, from whatever origin, condemn all acts of terror in the UK. And we must focus on those values that we all share in this country regardless of our background: Equality, Freedom, Justice and Tolerance. Many people are working for and with us to address the threat precisely for those reasons. Because: All of us, whatever our ethnicity and faith, are the targets of the terrorists.
15. I have spoken as an intelligence professional, describing the reality of terrorism and counter-terrorism in the UK in 2006. My messages are sober ones. I do not speak in this way to alarm (nor as the cynics might claim to enhance the reputation of my organisation) but to give the most frank account I can of the Al-Qaida threat to the UK. That threat is serious, is growing and will, I believe, be with ? us for a generation. It is a sustained campaign, not a series of isolated incidents, It aims to wear down our will to resist.
16. My Service is dedicated to tackling the deadly manifestations of terrorism. Tackling its roots is the work of us all.
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Dutch seek ban on burqas in public
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP)-- The Dutch government, facing re-election next week, said Friday it plans to draw up legislation "as soon as possible" banning the head-to-toe garment known as burqas and other clothing that covers the entire face in public places.
The announcement puts the Netherlands, once considered one of Europe's most welcoming nations for immigrants and asylum seekers, at the forefront of a general European hardening of attitudes toward Muslim minorities.
"The Cabinet finds it undesirable that face-covering clothing -- including the burqa -- is worn in public places for reasons of public order, security and protection of citizens," Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk said in a statement.
"From a security standpoint, people should always be recognizable and from the standpoint of integration, we think people should be able to communicate with one another," Verdonk told national broadcaster NOS.
Basing the order on security concerns apparently was intended to respond to warnings that outlawing clothing like the burqa, worn by some Muslim women, could violate the constitutional guarantee against religious discrimination.
The main Dutch Muslim organization CMO has been critical of any possible ban. The idea was "an overreaction to a very marginal problem" because hardly any Dutch women wear burqas anyway, said Ayhan Tonca of the CMO. "It's just ridiculous."
"This is a big law for a small problem," he said. Tonca estimated that as few as 30 women in the Netherlands wear a burqa and said the proposed law could be unconstitutional if it is interpreted as targeting Muslims.
He also said that the security argument did not stand up.
"I do not think people who have bad things in their minds would wear a burqa," he said.
In the past, a majority of the Dutch parliament has said it would approve a ban on burqas, but opinion polls in advance of national elections on November 22 suggest a shift away from that position, and it is unclear if a majority in the new parliament would still back the government-proposed ban.
Amsterdam's mayor, Job Cohen, of the opposition Labor party, said he would like to see burqas disappear, though he did not advocate a ban.
"From a viewpoint of integration and communication, naturally it's very bad," he told reporters. "You can't speak with each other if you can't see each other, so in that sense, I'd say myself the less (it's worn), the better."
The issue has resonance throughout Europe, Former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw recently caused a stir by saying he wants Muslim women to abandon the full-face veil -- a view endorsed by Prime Minister Tony Blair. In France, the center-right's leading presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy has increasingly been adopting some of the rhetoric of the extreme-right.
Germany, which also has a large Muslim immigrant community, has a law banning teachers in public schools from wearing head scarves, but no burqa ban.
In Holland, policies associated with the nationalist fringe in 2002 have been co-opted by the center: holding asylum-seekers in detention centers, more muscle for the police and intelligence services, and visa examinations that require would-be immigrants to watch videos of homosexuals kissing and of topless women on the beach. Everyone must learn to speak Dutch, and Muslim clerics must mind what they say in their Friday sermons for fear of deportation.
The Netherlands is deeply divided over moves by the government to stem the tide of new arrivals and compel immigrants to assimilate into Dutch society. The issue was given added urgency with the 2004 slaying of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh by a Muslim fanatic and the failed attempt to expel a Somali-born critic of Islam.
Around 1 million Muslims live in the Netherlands, about 6 percent of the population of 16 million.
After France banned the wearing of head scarves in public schools, the Dutch government decided to leave that question up to individual schools. Most allow head scarves.
The city of Utrecht has cut some welfare benefits to unemployed women who insist on wearing burqas to job interviews. The city claimed the women were using the burqa to avoid working, since they knew they would not be hired.
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Ser Spiegel, Nov. 17, 2006
Germany's Struggle To Prosecute Terrorists
By Dominik Cziesche
Germany has had little success in jailing suspected accomplices of Mohammed Atta, largely for lack of evidence. A risky foreign mission launched by its security services went badly awry.
On that fateful morning of September 11, 2001, Mohammed Haydar Zammar and Mamoun Darkazanli must have known that their lives were about to change forever. The moment the first images of the blazing World Trade Center hit the screens, Zammar, considered a mentor to the attack's ringleaders by Germany's security services, and Mamoun Darkazanli, long suspected of supporting al Qaeda, were speaking on the phone. Shortly afterward, they met up. For about an hour, Darkazanli later recalled, he and Zammar followed the coverage on TV.
DPA
Mzoudi on trial (before Hamburg's Higher Regional Court, 2003): Sharing quarters with Mohammed Atta
It was to be their last meeting. For almost five years, Zammar has been languishing in a Middle Eastern prison cell. Darkazanli still lives in his Hamburg apartment, despite the authorities' best efforts to indict him. The fate of these two Islamists epitomizes the dilemma faced by Western democracies in their war against terror. Can it be won without impinging on civilians' constitutional rights? And can a state governed by the rule of law afford to cooperate with countries that use torture in their interrogations?
Zammar was abducted by CIA officers during a trip to Morocco at the end of 2001 and taken to Syria, a country that practices torture. That made Syrian-born Zammar, who had acquired German citizenship in 1982, one of the first victims of "rendition," a U.S. practice that rides roughshod over fundamental legal principles. He is now incarcerated in a 6x3 foot cell, a gaunt shadow of his former 300-pound self.
The German authorities have long been aware of Zammar's circumstances. Back in November 2002, officials from Germany's federal investigative agencies embarked upon a top-secret mission to interview him in Damascus. Their superiors had stipulated in their brief that "under no circumstances may German agencies and their personnel take part, either actively or passively, in torture." If at any time they discovered that a detainee was being treated "inappropriately," they were to halt the mission immediately.
Back in Germany, just after the 9/11 attacks, Zammar had mocked a judge at his trial, saying: "The law obligating me to testify here is not an Islamic law. As a consequence, I do not feel bound by it." But in Damascus, he was proving almost garrulous. Clad in a dark-gray jalabiya and a green army anorak, he chatted to his visitors over pistachios and tea about things that had never passed his lips in Germany. He volunteered, for example, how he had encouraged the 9/11 attackers to enroll at a terrorist training camp.
But Zammar also bemoaned being left to vegetate in his tiny cell. The German officials noted that he looked emaciated, but could discern "no visible sign of infirmity."
The dubious Syrian jaunt did little to further the Germans' 9/11 investigation. Evidence obtained through the efforts of Syrian torturers is inadmissible in a German court. Details of the trip leaked late in 2005 placed Merkel's fledgling government in an embarrassing bind - and left ministers groping for explanations: "It was the unanimous view of all the officials involved" that proper interviewing conditions were "not violated," a spokesperson for the country's new grand coalition said.
In fact, the previous coalition - comprising the Social Democrats and Green Party - had struck a very questionable bargain to secure permission for the interrogation in the first place. In return for access to the prison, the German authorities suspended espionage proceedings against some Syrian intelligence agents. "We wouldn't do that again," says one official today.
The government got itself into trouble of a different kind over Zammar's associate, Darkazanli. In his case, the German investigators played it strictly by the book, but an entire army of German and American experts were unable to produce enough evidence to indict him in Germany.
Probably no other case has damaged Germany's reputation as much as this one, especially in Washington. Intelligence services had to explain why they had not monitored Darkazanli more closely in the build-up to 9/11, while the German federal prosecutor's office was accused of doing too little too late. For weeks on end, the government faced a barrage of media accusations that top suspects had nothing to fear in Germany.
But Darkazanli is by no means the only suspected terrorist to escape prosecution, compounding the impression of legal lethargy. The state's attorneys failed to build cases against most of the hijackers' associates. A handful have quit the country in the interim; some left voluntarily, others were deported. Only one - Ramzi bin al-Shibh - is being held by the U.S. at an undisclosed location.
But many continue to live in Germany - because they are married to German nationals, or still enrolled at universities. And above all because nobody can prove they were complicit in Mohammed Atta's plans.
In the wake of 9/11, the Federal Prosecutor launched proceedings against just two of the terrorists' associates: Abdelghani Mzoudi and Mounir al-Motassadeq, known in Hamburg's department of interior affairs simply as "M & M."
Hamburg's higher regional court sentenced al-Motassadeq to 15 years for being a member of a terrorist organization and an accessory to 3,066 counts of murder. The conviction was then quashed by the country's Supreme Court. In a second trial, the sentence was reduced to seven years. But Germany's Federal Court of Justice this week affirmed his conviction and extended the charges to include 246 counts of abetting murder for the deaths of the passengers and crew members of the airlines used by the hijackers. The court said the evidence proved that al-Motassadeq had been aware that attacks were being planned. It turned the case back to the lower court and said the thousands of deaths in New York and Washington could be taken into consideration when al-Motassadeq is sentenced.
In the original trial - an attempt to convict al-Motassadeq of belonging to a German-based terrorist organization - the courts resorted to sleight of hand. Since supporting foreign terrorist groups was not punishable before September 11, the judges simply reversed the sequence of events. In the court's version, a terror cell based in Germany had decided to carry out attacks in the U.S., before its members traveled to Afghanistan to drum up support. In other words, bin Laden hadn't recruited henchman Atta. Atta was the global mastermind and bin Laden his loyal follower.
Continue to Part 2
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Germany's Struggle To Prosecute Terrorists (2)
Return to Part 1
The German Supreme Court rejected this theory as implausible, and overturned the sentence. The lack of statements from key witnesses, including that of Chalid Sheikh Mohammed, also affected their ruling. The strategist behind the attacks is being held by the Americans at an undisclosed location - outside the range of normal jurisdiction, and beyond the reach of even the longest arm of the law. Although German intelligence is privy to some of his testimony, German courts are not - as is also the case with Zammar's statements to the Syrians.
Klaus Tolksdorf, the presiding judge at Germany's Supreme Court, warned that terrorism did not justify "barbarous, uninhibited war." In doing so, he clearly rejected the strong-arm methods advocated by Washington, which former CIA antiterror chief Cofer Black once euphemistically referred to as "taking off our kid gloves." Tolksdorf's words expose the (self-imposed) limitations of the German state, but leave its prosecutors on the horns of a dilemma.
Knut M?ller / DER SPIEGEL
Islamist Zammar (2001 in Hamburg): "The law is not an Islamic law; as a consequence, I do not feel bound by it"
Like his friend al-Motassadeq, Abdelghani Mzoudi also underwent weapons training at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan. He even spent some time living at Marienstrasse 54 in Hamburg, the house where the student terrorists hatched their plot. But Hamburg's higher regional court was forced to acquit him, too - again for lack of evidence.
At the trial, the federal prosecution service and representatives of the country's security services had entangled each other in a web of contradictions. While one was insisting that Mzoudi had been in Hamburg when the attacks were planned, the other was claiming the terrorists had hatched their conspiracy in Afghanistan in his absence. Mzoudi was acquitted, and now lives in Morocco, where he unfailingly sings the praises of Germany's legal system.
According to the Hamburg judge Ernst-Rainer Schudt, Germany's criminal law is designed to handle clubs and associations, but is powerless to stop "sporadic fundamentalist cells springing up," organizations that fail to elect treasurers and submit regular reports.
This plays into the hands of men like Mohammed B. and Abderrazek L., just two of scores of students from Islamic fundamentalist circles.
Mohammed B. was an electrical engineering major who flunked his exams twice as long ago as 1995. After that he reported sick before each further test, to avoid being thrown off his degree program. He was friends with two of Atta's alleged accomplices, Said Bahaji and Zakariya Essabar, both of whom are still at large. In March 2000, his Internet connection was used twice to access a website containing information on U.S. flying schools. But not by him, he claims.
He once wrote to his uncle in Morocco that the Germans were waging war on Islam, but would never win. In the fall of 2003 he returned to Morocco of his own free will; there was no evidence to justify deportation.
Abderrazek L., a short, stocky man, once shared an apartment with Mzoudi. Among his possessions the police found one video showing Chechen Mujahideen beheading a captive. And another in which imams encourage good Muslims to "kill the children of the unbelievers ... drag off their women and destroy their homes."
Once again, the authorities hit a brick wall. "I'd like to stress that being someone's acquaintance doesn't necessarily mean 'knowing' them," said Abderrazek L., detailing his links with the hijackers' associates. "We are all Muslims, and at the mosque we are all brothers." He knew most of those involved in the attacks, but without knowing much about them, he claimed.
And what about the videos? "I didn't watch them all from beginning to end," he professed. And anyway, who's to say he shares the imam's views? He didn't think the attacks of 9/11 were "all that good" - given all the innocent victims, he says.
Abderrazek L. has at least left the country: one of the first from the wider group of people linked with the terrorists. But in the war on terror, his case neither raises the German judiciary's profile nor enhances its image.
In the beginning, things had looked so different. Immediately after September 11, the Germans seemed on the brink of dramatic breakthroughs. Within days the police had made rapid progress, documenting the key information and major participants. They searched Darkazanli's apartment just 48 hours after the attacks, confiscating papers and instructing him to report for questioning two days later. Which he did: the following Saturday Darkazanli duly turned up and was interrogated from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
AP
Convicted terrorist al-Motassadeq: Accomplice in the murder of 246 passengers and crew members
"How long have you known Said Bahaji?" he was asked about a man who continues to evade capture. "Does the name Mohammed Zammar ring a bell?" And: "Do you know Abdelghani Mzoudi?" They questioned him about the hijackers and about bin al-Shibh, one of the plotters.
They also quizzed Darkazanli about his business connections. "Don't you find it strange that your business partners in the United States are all in jail for their parts in bomb attacks?"
His answer: "No. I was just looking to make some money with these people. In my line of business, I can't be expected to know what everyone else is up to."
The authorities first took an interest in Darkazanli's unusual connections as early as 1993, when they intercepted a wire transfer from his wife's bank account to the suspected head of an Afghan training camp. The alleged purpose of the payment: "child support." Then there was the discovery of a photo showing Darkazanli wielding a submachine gun in Afghanistan's mountainous Hindu Kush region. And then there was his alleged involvement in the purchase of a ship for al Qaeda, contributing - according to Spanish investigators - 152,000 deutschmarks toward the total price of 760,000 deutschmarks. Darkazanli insists that none of these transactions are connected to terrorism.
In 1998, Mamduh Mahmud Salim - Osama bin Laden's purported financier - was arrested in Bavaria. Since that day Darkazanli, who had power of attorney for one of Salim's accounts in Frankfurt, has been eyed as a major catch.
Federal investigators twice asked prosecutors to institute legal proceedings against Darkazanli prior to 9/11. But they refused.
And so he stayed in his home on a leafy side street in Hamburg's Uhlenhorst quarter, a few steps from the Alster Lake. In the days following the attacks, local joggers were joined by hordes of camera crews, journalists and investigators - all demanding an explanation for the crime. But as he has repeatedly done, Darkazanli denied any links with al Qaeda.
Today, the crowds have disappeared. It looks as if Darkazanli is living happily ever after, having yet again slipped through the prosecution's net, unlike his friend Zammar. And at first glance it seems as if the authorities have suffered yet another setback in their war against terrorism.
But appearances can be deceiving. Before the German parliament retired for its summer recess, it ratified new legislation on EU arrest warrants, allowing the extradition of German nationals to other EU states. This could prove crucial to the Spanish authorities who have long been demanding Darkazanli's handover. Unlike their German counterparts, Spanish prosecutors believe they have the evidence to prove Darkazanli's membership in al Qaeda. They see him as an accomplice of the Islamic fundamentalist Imad Yarkas, who was given a 27-year sentence for his role in the 9/11 attacks.
Darkazanli appealed successfully against the attempted deportation at Germany's Constitutional Court. He was due to be put on an Iberia Airlines flight from Berlin's Tegel Airport to Madrid's Barajas Airport, but the judges suspended the extradition order minutes before take-off. The court requested increased safeguards for German citizens against extradition, which should only be permitted, they ruled, "in cases where the offense has a typical cross-border dimension from the outset and shows a corresponding gravity, as is the case with international terrorism or organized trafficking in drugs or human beings." The government lawyers returned to the drawing board.
It was a convoluted process, they say - unlike the case of Zammar, who was simply blindfolded, bundled onto a plane, and spirited away to a torture chamber. With Darkazanli, the legislation had to be meticulously worded, reworded and reworded again; there were thirty-odd drafts in all. The final law represents the German civil servants' riposte to the mob-like methods of the war on terror. Darkazanli, they say, has yet to fully appreciate the danger he faces.
But - they suspect - that will soon change.
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A German friend shares these two articles with me about prosecuting Islamofascists in Germany
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The Spiegel is Germanys largest and most famous magazine for politics, economics and social matters. It also is very critical. You may be interested:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,448921,00.html
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,449003,00.html
My friend's comments on these two articles:
Ever since the attempted bombings on two trains in Germany, people have become more aware that they could be a potential target for terrorists. As the German government strictly abides torture any kind of illegal action to gather information, they have had a hard time to collect evidence. As you may read as an example in the second story, evidence obtained by the Syrians were not admissible in the German court. Despite the struggle for a verdict, this trial will be the first of many to come. Germany already expelled some radical muslim leaders (one was brought back to Turkey to face trial there). It's a slow development, but Germany wil have more expierence next time and be able to handle such a case more quicker in compliance with german civil law or as the articles closing statement goes "The final law represents the German civil servants' riposte to the mob-like methods of the war on terror."
Motasseq has now been arrested to await the final verdict.
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In its online-edition the Spiegel magazine has dedicated a website to the topic of Muslims in Europe, collecting all its english articles. You may be interested:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,k-6817,00.html
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Several very interesting articles in the final URL.? Very valuable to get the perspective of a major mainstream German publication -- all in English!
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Here is one of the articles in that final URL:
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http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,442180,00.html
PRINCE KARIM AGA KHAN IV.
Prince Karim Aga Khan IV is considered to be the direct descendant of the Prophet Mohammad and, as the 49th imam, the spiritual leader of the Ismaili Muslims. A minority community within the Muslim faith, the Ismailis include some 20 million members scattered across 25 countries in Central Asia, Europe and Eastern Africa. The Aga Khan himself lives near Paris in Aiglemont Palace. Born near Geneva, the prince grew up in Kenya, Switzerland and London before being educated at Harvard. At the age of 20, he succeeded his grandfather as the Aga Khan, thus becoming a religious leader and the administrator of billions in assets. Fed by his family inheritance and a 10 percent tithing fee from Ismaili Muslims, the Aga Khan channels much of the money into the Aga Khan Development Network, one of the world's most important private development aid organizations. The Aga Khan has two sons from his first marriage - - Rahim, 34, and Hussein, 32. He also has a son from his second marriage to the German princess Gabriele zu Leiningen - - six- year- old Ali Mohammed. The Aga Khan must name one of his sons as his successor, but that choice will remain a secret until his death.
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SPIEGEL: Your Highness, in a lecture Pope Benedict XVI quoted Emperor Manuel as saying: "Show me just what Muhammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as a command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." This quotation from the 14th century has caused great uproar in the Muslim world. Why? And what was your reaction?
Aga Khan: From my point of view, I would start by saying that I was concerned about this statement because this has caused great unhappiness in the Islamic world. There appears to be momentum towards more and more misunderstandings between religions, a degradation of relations. I think we all should try not to add anything to worsen the situation.
SPIEGEL: Benedict XVI did explicitly dissociate himself from the emperor's quoted statement. The pope's own position with regard to his lecture is that he wanted it to promote a dialogue; and since then, several times, he has expressed his respect for the world religion that is Islam. Was it just an unfortunate choice of words? Or was he deliberately misunderstood?
Aga Khan: I do not wish to pass judgement on that, nor can I. And it might also be unreasonable for me to presume that I know what he meant. But that (medieval) period in history, to my knowledge, was one of the periods of extraordinary theological exchanges and debates between the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim world. A fascinating time. The emperor's statement does not reflect that, so I think it is somewhat out of context.
SPIEGEL: The theme of Pope Benedict's lecture was different, it was one of his favorites: the link between faith and reason which, he said, implies a rejection of any link between religion and violence. Is that something you could agree on?
Aga Khan: If you interpret his speech as one about faith and reason then I think that the debate is very exciting and could be enormously constructive between the Muslim world and the non-Muslim world. So I have two reactions to the pope's lecture: There is my concern about the degradation of relations and, at the same time, I see an opportunity. A chance to talk about a serious, important issue: the relationship between faith and logic.
SPIEGEL: If the pope were to invite you to take part with other religious leaders in a debate about faith, reason and violence, would you accept?
Aga Khan: Yes, definitely. I would, however, make the point that an ecumenical discussion at a certain stage will meet certain limits. Therefore I would prefer to talk more about a cosmopolitan ethic stemming from all of Earth's great faiths.
SPIEGEL: Does Islam have a problem with reason?
Aga Khan: Not at all. Indeed, I would say the contrary. Of the Abrahamic faiths, Islam is probably the one that places the greatest emphasis on knowledge. The purpose is to understand God's creation, and therefore it is a faith which is eminently logical. Islam is a faith of reason.
SPIEGEL: So, what are the root causes of terrorism?
Aga Khan: Unsolved political conflicts, frustration and, above all, ignorance. Nothing that was born out of a theological conflict.
SPIEGEL: Which political conflicts do you mean?
Aga Khan: The ones in the Middle East and in Kashmir, for example. These conflicts have remained unresolved for decades. There is a lack of urgency in understanding that the situation there deteriorates, it's like a cancer. If you are not going to act on a cancer early enough, ultimately it's going to create terrible damage. It can become a breeding ground for terrorism.
Now to the issue of spreading faith by the sword: All faiths at some time in their history have used war to protect themselves or expand their influence, and there were situations when faiths have been used as justifications for military actions. But Islam does not call for that, it is a faith of peace.
SPIEGEL: It's true that horrible crimes were committed in the name of Christianity, for example by the crusaders. That was long ago, that's the past. But jihadists commit their crimes now, in our times.
Aga Khan: It is not so far in the past that we have seen bloody fights in the Christian world. Look at Northern Ireland. If we Muslims interpreted what happened there as a correct expression of Protestantism and Catholicism or even as the essence of the Christian faith you would simply say we don't know what we are talking about.
SPIEGEL: "The West (will stand) against the Rest" wrote Professor Samuel Huntington in his famous book "Clash of Civilizations." Is such a conflict, such a clash inevitable?
Aga Khan: I prefer to talk about a clash of ignorance. There is so much horrible, damaging, dangerous ignorance.
SPIEGEL: Which side is responsible?
Aga Khan: Both. But essentially the Western world. You would think that an educated person in the 21st century should know something about Islam; but you look at education in the Western world and you see that Islamic civilizations have been absent. What is taught about Islam? As far as I know -- nothing. What was known about Shiism before the Iranian revolution? What was known about the radical Sunni Wahhabism before the rise of the Taliban? We need a big educational effort to overcome this. Rather than shouting at each other, we should be learning to listen to each other. In the way we used to do it, by working together, with mutual give-and-take. Together we brought about some of the highest achievements of human civilization. There is a lot to build on. But I think you cannot build on ignorance.
SPIEGEL: Nonethless, it is striking that a particularly large number of Muslim-dominated states figure among the most backward and undemocratic states in the world. Is Islam in need of an era of enlightment? Is the faith even incompatible with democracy as others claim?
Aga Khan: As I said before, one has to be fair. Some of the political leaders have inherited problems that are in no way attributable to the faith. New governance solutions have to be tested and validated over time. Nor do I believe Muslim states are systematically economic underperformers. Some of the fastest growing economies and some of the most successful newly industrialized countries are in the Islamic world. Now concerning democracy: My democratic beliefs do not go back to the Greek or French (thinkers) but to an era 1,400 years ago. These are the principles underlying my religion. During the prophet's life (peace be upon him), there was a systematic consultative political process. And the first imam of the Shiites, Prophet Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law, Hazrat Ali, emphasized: "No honor is like knowledge, no power is like forbearance, and no support is more reliable than consultation."
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SPIEGEL: If pluralism, civil society and Islam can coexist harmoniously, as was proven in the past, then why is this so seldom achieved nowadays?
Aga Khan: I think we have a very diverse situation in the Islamic world. Wealthy countries with enormous ressources, newly industrialized countries, extremely poor ones.
SPIEGEL: Not many are functioning democracies.
Aga Khan: People speak about failed states. I do not think that states can fail, but democracies certainly can. The failure of democracy is not specific to the Islamic world. Indeed, about two years ago, the United Nations carried out an in-depth analysis of democracy in South America. About 55 percent of the population in South American states said that they would prefer to live under a paternalistic dictatorship instead of an incompetent or corrupt democracy that is not improving their living condition.
SPIEGEL: Most of your Ismaili constituency lives in states that cannot be called perfect democracies: Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria and Iran. What makes democracies fail?
Aga Khan: I ask myself every day what we can do to sustain the multiple forms of democracy, to make these forms of government work, whether it is in Latin America, Africa or the Middle East.
SPIEGEL: And what do you believe to be the answer?
Aga Khan: I admit that I live in a mood of frustration. What is the point in these areas of the world of carrying out a referendum in a population that essentially cannot read and write? What is the point in testing a constitution with a population that knows no difference between a presidential regime or a constitutional monarchy? Elections, constitutions -- all this is necessary, but not sufficient. I think we have to accept that countries have different histories, different social structures, different needs, so we have to be a great deal more flexible than we have been.
SPIEGEL: Nor is democracy monolithic. The American model of democracy is no panacea for the rest of the world. Has George W. Bush aggrevated the situation with his particular way of bringing democracy to the Middle East? Can the United States still win the war in Iraq?
Aga Khan: I am very, very worried about Iraq. The invasion of Iraq had an impact across the world like nothing before in modern times. The invasion has unleashed every force in the Islamic world, including the relations between the Arabs and non-Arabs and the relationship between the Shia und the Sunni.
SPIEGEL: You mean the war created a new terrorist base and radicalized people?
Aga Khan: Indeed. It mobilized a large number of people across the Islamic world, who before then were not involved, and indeed I think they did not want to be.
SPIEGEL: Do you share the view of the American professor and Islam expert Vali Nasr that the balance of power in the Muslim world is undergoing a decisive shift, that Shiites could become the most influential force from Baghdad to Beirut, that the future of the Middle East will be shaped by wars between different Muslim factions?
Aga Khan: When the invasion of Iraq took place, we were told two things: (that there would be) regime change and democracy. Well, anyone who knew the situation in Iraq, as you did, I did, but what did that mean? That meant a Shia majority; it could not have been otherwise. Anyone who then concludes that the next issue is a Shia majority in Iraq is going to start thinking, What does that mean in the region, what does it mean in the Islamic world, what does it mean in relation to the West? All that was as clear as daylight, you didn't even have to be a Muslim or a scholar to know that.
SPIEGEL: In your opinion, was it pure ignorance and naivete that made the Bush government start the war? Was it really about introducing democracy or a strategic decision about conquering oil fields and military bases?
Aga Khan: I wish I could answer that question.
SPIEGEL: Are you in contact with the religious leaders in Iraq, like Grand Ayatollah Sistani? And with the religious leaders of Iran as well?
Aga Khan: We have frequent contacts with important personalities in both countries.
SPIEGEL: What would it take to get you to go to the region as a mediator?
Aga Khan: This is, at the moment, not one of my priorities. One day maybe, we might consider (participating in the) reconstruction (effort).
SPIEGEL: When you compare the invasion in Iraq with the one in Afghanistan, where the Taliban and al-Qaida worked hand in hand ...
Aga Khan: ... there I see a completely different picture. First of all, the Afghan regime at the time was quasi totally detested by the people; it was equally unpleasant for Sunnis as it was the for Shias and it was totally unacceptable I think just in terms of overall civilized life.
SPIEGEL: Afghanistan is currently being confronted with major problems and the situation seems to be deteriorating by the hour. What went wrong? And what can the West do to make the situation more stable?
Aga Khan: The security situation is indeed very worrying -- it is getting worse, especially in the south. Most of our projects are in the capital and in the north where (the situation) is better but not satisfying. We can supply energy from Tajikistan, we can provide civil services. We try to avoid the danger that certain areas in Afghanistan will be rehabilitated more quickly than others. If this development overlaps with ethnic divides you have another problem. But the main problem is that most people in Afghanistan have not seen an improvement in their daily lives. The process of reconstruction does not seem to be penetrating. We have not succeded in bringing a culture of hope to this country. One of the central lessons I have learned after a half century of working in the developing world is that the replacement of fear by hope is probably the most powerful trampoline of progress.
SPIEGEL: President Karzai is a personal friend of yours. Many people see him as a weak leader, and some call him "Mayor of Kabul" because he is unable to control large parts of the country.
Aga Khan: We should do everything to help him. He has an enomously complex agenda to deal with. He is our best hope. And besides, he is the elected leader and we have to work with the parliament.
SPIEGEL: Even if warlords and a former members of the Taliban are represented in Afghanistan's parliament?
Aga Khan: You either accept the results of democracy or you don't. Otherwise you talk about qualifying democracy.
SPIEGEL: That means the West should deal with the radical Islamist Hamas as well?
Aga Khan: You have to work with whoever the population has elected as long as they are willing to respect what I call cosmopolitan ethics. Now, it's true that Hamas has a record of conflict ...
SPIEGEL: ... of outright terror ...
Aga Khan: ... but it would not be the only time that movements that have such a record make it into parliament, and even end up in charge of government later on. Can I remind you of Jomo Kenyatta and his Mau Mau movement in Kenya, for example, or the ANC in South Africa? Take away the causes of extremism and extremists can come back to a more reasonable political agenda. That change to me is one of the wonderful things about the human race.
SPIEGEL: You know Syria's president, Bashar Assad, very well. You recently visited him again in Damascus. In contrast to the American administration, the German government is trying to get him involved in the Middle East peace process.
Aga Khan: I would like to compliment the German government and others in Europe who have taken the decision to invite President Assad to be a party to the peace process. The process of change from decades of political directionalism is something that needs time, as you saw in East Germany. I think there are many reasons to go out of our way to assist Syria in making the transition from the past to the future.
SPIEGEL: If you look back at the years that have passed since World War II -- the Cold War between the East and the West, the ideological conflict with communism -- would you ever have thought that this conflict could be replaced by one between the West and radical Islamists?
Aga Khan: I beg you, please get away from the concept of a conflict of religion. It is not such a conflict. Nobody will ever convince me that the faith of Islam, that Christianity, that Judaism will fight each other in our times -- they have too much in common. That's why I am talking about this global ethic which unites us all. That's why we are trying to work with the Catholic Church in Portugal on a program aimed at immigant minorities. I am aware of a sense of disaffection with the society that many young Muslims feel because they think that the Western society has the intention of marginalizing or damaging them.
SPIEGEL: The German government just organized a conference with many different Muslim groups and personalities who live in Germany. Do you consider such a forum useful or is it just window dressing?
Aga Khan: We can avoid misunderstandings by having such a forum where people from different faiths consult each other so they understand what really affects them. Once you have committed an offense all you can do is to try and reverse it. Anyone who knows the faith of Islam, for example, would have known that the caricatures of the prohet were profoundly offensive to all Muslims.
SPIEGEL: Again, this whole affair was misused by radical Islamists. They added caricatures much more offensive than the original ones to incite the masses.
Aga Khan: But I am told that there was an internal debate between the editors of that publication and they actually knew what they were doing. They took a risk and somebody should have said to them, Why get into that situation? Now we are talking about civility, which is a completely different concept. If we are talking about civility in a pluralist society, then how do you develop that notion of civility, particularly where there is ignorance. And that's the thing that's worrying. And that's why I get frustrated when I see these situations that go on and on and on. Because I'm not willing to believe that they are all inspired by evil intent.
SPIEGEL: Provocative, sad and distasteful. But the freedom of the press is one of the highest values in our democracy. We have to balance one thing against the other and we will allow non-believers to express even outrageous opinions.
Aga Khan: I think that you are now referring to one of the most difficult problems that we have and I don't know the answer. The industrialized West is highly secularized; the Muslim world is much less secularized and that stems largely from the nature of the faith of Islam, which you know and I know has an intrinsic meshing with everyday life. And that is a scenario where people of goodwill need to think very, very carefully.
SPIEGEL: In some of your speeches you mentioned Kemal Atat?rk in a positive context. Turkey followed his path and is one of the very few countries with a predominant Muslim population where there is separation of church and state. Would you like to see others go the same way?
Aga Khan: I am not opposed to secularism as such. But I am opposed to unilateral secularism where the notions of faith and ethics just disappear from society.
SPIEGEL: Your Highness, we thank you for this interview.
Interview conducted by Stefan Aust and Erich Follath.
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Hope I'm not overloading everyone's reading time this morning!? Here's more from Germany:
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http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,446120,00.html
More than 70 Muslim workers have been stripped of their security clearances at Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport for alleged links to terrorist organizations. Now the unions representing the workers are threatening to strike.
When French nationalist politician Phillipe de Villiers decried the "Islamization of France" in his book "The Mosques of Roissy" this spring, he was called xenophobic, extremist, paranoid -- and a best-selling author. Indeed, despite some heavy criticism of his views, the French were snatching up his book in droves, and the government started heeding his warnings.
"Islamists and criminals from the housing projects are working in concert to put the airport under Shariah law, threatening managers and the rare employees of French origin," he wrote. Two months after de Villiers' claims that "Allah's workers" had access to sensitive security zones at Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy ordered all unofficial prayer sites in the airport closed. Now, as a result of an anti-terrorism investigation, 72 Muslim airport employees have been stripped of their security clearances.
The workers -- who are mainly baggage handlers and aircraft cleaners -- are accused of having visited terrorist training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan. One is thought to have been close to a senior figure in an Algerian terrorist group with links to al-Qaida, and another is thought to have been a friend of "shoe-bomber" Richard Reid. Reid is currently serving a life prison sentence in Colorado for attempting to blow up a flight from Paris to Miami in 2001 with explosives hidden in his shoe.
Charles de Gaulle airport -- also called the "Roissy" -- is located north of Paris, and many of its employees are Muslims of north-African descent who live in the rundown suburbs nearby. De Villiers claims in his book that clandestine mosques line the tunnels beneath the airport's runways and that some luggage handling companies employ members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Workers and unions complain the suspensions amount to religious discrimination. Legal suits and labor strikes are on the table. France's largest trade union, the CFDT, filed a discrimination lawsuit in mid-October over the revocations, while 10 affected workers are taking legal action in individual capacities. Now the unions representing the airport workers have announced that they are meeting next Tuesday to consider strike action. On the following Friday, a court in Cergy-Pontoise will hear the case for unfair dismissal brought by six men who were sacked.
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Jacques Lebrot -- the French government official who oversees the airport -- insists that religion is not the issue. "Monsieur or Madame X who goes to pray in a mosque and travels to Mecca for the pilgrimage is not the problem for us. But we will ask questions if we find someone who has spent holidays several times in Pakistan," he told reporters. Eric Moutet -- a lawyer for the suspended workers -- told the New York Times: "We have not seen any objective evidence against our clients. The only common denominator we see today is that they are all Muslim."
For de Villiers, though, that may be reason enough. As head of the far-right party, Movement for France, he's basing his 2007 presidential bid on an anti-immigrant platform. His campaign is unlikely to garner any significant proportion of the vote, but he's sure to sell a few more books.
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http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,445757,00.html
AFTER HEADSCARF COMMENTS
Police Protection for German Parliamentarian
A German parliamentarian of Turkish origin has called for Muslim women to throw off their headscarves and embrace Western values. After receiving death threats for the remarks, she is under police protection. Politicians are defending her right to free speech.
With the increased focus on immigrants in Germany, it sometimes seems like integration success stories don't exist. They do. And Ekin Delig?z is one of the country's finest. A Turkish-born German citizen, she now serves in the seat of German democracy, the Bundestag. But, cultural emissaries like Delig?z don't only build bridges, they also sometimes expose the vast differences that make their existence so crucial.
That, in fact, is why Delig?z is now kept company by a police detail. The Green party member has received death threats for calling on Muslim women to take off their headscarves and to embrace German society and values two weeks ago. "You live here, so take your headscarf off," Delig?z was quoted by the Bild am Sonntag newspaper as saying.
In addition to the threats, she has also been the victim of a negative media campaign in Turkey with tabloid stories comparing her to the Nazis. In a letter of complaint written to the Turkish Ambassador by the head of the Green Party Renate K?nast, she indicated that Delig?z had been "insulted in writing, by telephone, and also in person ... overwhelmingly by Turkish men."
Delig?z sees the headscarf as a symbol of female oppression and patriarchy. If it were just a fashion accessory, she says, "then I wouldn't now be under police protection."
A number of Muslim organizations in Germany have accepted an invitation from K?nast and the Greens to discuss the threats and to talk about "behaving with respect toward each other."
Meanwhile, a number of German politicians are vociferously denouncing the threats and defending Delig?z's right to freedom of speech. "It is absolutely legitimate that a woman who is Muslim herself ... makes this appeal, said German Interior Minister Wolfgang Sch?uble. In an interview with the German radio station RBB, he continued, "What we lawmakers must decisively support is that someone can voice these opinions and that one doesn't need police protection to do so."
Norbert Lammert, president of the Bundestag and a close ally of Chancellor Merkel, called the threats "a severe attack on the core values of our constitution."
Delig?z is pleased at the support the German government has provided. "Most threats were supposed to intimidate me," she said, "but in a democratic society it should be possible to also express a critical opinion."
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**On the whole, the western born/western educated jihadists tend to be from middle class, even upper class socioeconomic backgrounds. So we know they aren't "depraived because they are deprived".**
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/world/europe/26crevic...epage&pagewanted=all
British Terror Trial Traces a Path to Militant Islam
In 2004, the British authorities received a tip from a suspicious employee of a storage warehouse outside London, above, that Nabeel Hussain, one of the defendants in the conspiracy trial, was storing a large amount of fertilizer there.
By ELAINE SCIOLINO and STEPHEN GREY
Published: November 26, 2006
LONDON, Nov. 25 ? More than half a ton of ammonium nitrate fertilizer suitable for making bombs was locked in a rented storage warehouse. A cookie tin of aluminum powder was hidden behind a garden shed. Young British Muslims underwent military training at guerrilla camps in remote parts of Pakistan. Suspects, surreptitiously taped by the police, talked about bombing targets in Britain.
At the storage site, the police found more than half a ton of ammonium nitrate fertilizer which could fuel a blast.
A search at a defendant?s home turned up a cookie tin of aluminum powder, another possible bomb ingredient.
Omar Khyam and Salahuddin Amin, defendants linked to an alleged bomb plot; Mohammed Junaid Babar, a prosecution witness; and Mohammed Momin Khawaja, awaiting trail in Canada in connection with same case.
Enter a computer technician in Canada experimenting with remote-controlled detonation devices and a collaborator-turned-informer from Queens testifying about secret meetings with operatives of Al Qaeda.
For eight months, the tale of the Operation Crevice Seven has been unfolding in a cramped, windowless courtroom in the Old Bailey in London.
On trial are seven men, ages 19 to 34, six of them with family roots in Pakistan. Arrested in 2004, they are charged with involvement in a criminal conspiracy to make explosives to commit murder, allegations that they all deny. Their target, the authorities say, was unclear ? a nightclub, perhaps, or a shopping mall, public utilities, a British airliner or even the House of Commons.
But investigators say the evidence reveals the workings of the kind of cell most feared by officials in Europe. Young Muslims, radicalized by local imams and trained at military camps in Pakistan with vague connections to Al Qaeda, plan an attack at home with help from outside terrorists.
The July 7, 2005, London transit bombings and the alleged London-based plot uncovered last August to blow up airliners also involved disaffected British youths of Pakistani descent, some of whom had traveled to Pakistan for family visits, study and perhaps training.
In a speech this month, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the director general of the British security service known as MI5, disclosed that intelligence officers were watching 1,600 people ?who are actively engaged in plotting, or facilitating, terrorist acts here and overseas.?
She said they had identified nearly 30 plots that ?often have links back to Al Qaeda in Pakistan and through those links Al Qaeda gives guidance and training to its largely British foot soldiers here.? She said other countries ? Spain, France, Canada and Germany ? faced similar threats.
Dame Eliza?s comments echo concerns among intelligence officials throughout Europe that remnants of Al Qaeda?s network, disrupted after Sept. 11, were reconstituting in the tribal areas on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The Crevice defendants deny they were a conspiratorial cell. Some admit to training in Pakistan but insist they had a goal other than attacking Britain, notwithstanding the fertilizer stored near London. They said they supported jihad in Afghanistan and the liberation of Kashmir, a disputed area between Pakistan and India.
One defendant, Salahuddin Amin, a 31-year-old part-time taxi driver from Luton, testified Tuesday that he started donating money to help Kashmir in 1999. Then he moved to Pakistan in 2001 and became a conduit directing assistance from Britain to Afghan refugees in Pakistan, he said.
But prosecutors charge that Mr. Amin, who knew some of the other Crevice defendants from Britain, became a link between them and militants in Pakistan. They said he and others attended a two-day course in Pakistan to learn to make fertilizer-based explosives. In videotaped confessions to the British police after his arrest in 2005, he admitted being ?mixed up with terrorists? and said he provided a formula for explosives to one of his co-defendants through an Internet chat room.
On the witness stand, Mr. Amin proclaimed his innocence, saying he confessed only after being jailed for 10 months in Pakistan, where he said he was beaten and threatened with a whirring electric drill. ?I would never take part in plots like that,? he testified.
Heeding the Call to Jihad
Omar Khyam, 24, considered by prosecutors to be the ringleader of the group, began his journey to extremism as a teenager in Crawley, just south of London.
Mr. Khyam, a standout cricket player, planned to study electrical engineering in college, but when he was 16 he began spending time with members of Al Muhajiroun, a radical group active in Crawley and dedicated to a global Islamic community under Shariah, the legal code based on the Koran. The group, led by Omar Bakri Mohammed, is now banned in Britain.
Two years later, instead of preparing for his high school exams, Mr. Khyam ran away, leaving a note saying he was off to join Islamic freedom fighters in Kashmir.
His uncle told a British newspaper that ran an article in 2000 about Mr. Khyam?s sudden departure that his nephew had been indoctrinated by Al Muhajiroun. Mr. Khyam?s family persuaded him to return home, but not before he had attended a training camp.
?They taught me everything I needed for guerrilla warfare in Kashmir, AK47s, pistols, RPGs, sniper rifles, climbing and crawling techniques, reconnaissance and light machine guns,? Mr. Khyam testified in the Crevice trial in September.
After enrolling in college in Britain, Mr. Khyam returned to Pakistan in 2001 for a friend?s wedding and crossed into Afghanistan to meet members of the Taliban movement before it was overthrown after 9/11. ?They were soft, kind and humble, but harsh with their enemies,? he recalled in court.
Meanwhile, in Luton, a town on the other side of London and another center of Al Muhajiroun recruitment, Mr. Amin also heeded the call to jihad.
His videotaped confessions to the police tell the story of his rejection of his Western way of life, his turn to prayer and the rules of Islam and his political radicalization.
It was in a Luton prayer center that he first met some of the men accused of being Crevice conspirators, including Mr. Khyam and a man accused of being a Qaeda operative, Abu Munthir, who was visiting from Pakistan.
Videos showing the slaughter of Muslims in Chechnya and Bosnia jolted Mr. Amin into sending money to ?freedom fighters? in Kashmir to buy arms and ammunition. The lectures of the radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri at the Finsbury Park mosque in London shortly before 9/11 and the American-led invasion of Afghanistan helped persuade him that he should join the Afghan fight.
Two months after 9/11, Mr. Amin sold his house in Luton and went to Pakistan in search of training with militants, according to his confessions. The prosecution argues that over the next three years, Mr. Amin, Mr. Khyam and their associates entered a hidden world of terrorism with tentacles on three continents.
Secrecy was maintained by using aliases and coded language. Cellphone conversations were avoided. Rather than using e-mail messages, communications were passed through Internet chats or by electronic messages stored for others to pick up later with passwords. Computer hard drives and cellphone SIM cards were discarded and replaced often.
The prosecution?s guide through that world was a Pakistani-American named Mohammed Junaid Babar, who said he worked for the New York chapter of Al Muhajiroun.
Defense lawyers portray Mr. Babar as a fabricator and possibly an agent for the United States government. ?You are a liar, a deceitful, self-centered, arrogant fantasist,? Michel Massih, a lawyer for one of the defendants, told Mr. Babar during cross-examination last April.
Mr. Babar acknowledged having lied when first questioned by the F.B.I. He pleaded guilty in New York in June 2004 to providing material support for terrorists, and he said in court that he was testifying against the Crevice suspects to reduce his sentence.
Yet during 17 days on the witness stand, Mr. Babar, the star witness for the prosecution, told a riveting story.
A militant networker, Mr. Babar said he moved to Pakistan in November 2001 with money and instructions from Al Muhajiroun. A year later, on a fund-raising trip to London, Mr. Babar said, he first met members of what he called the ?Crawley lot,? including Mr. Khyam and Anthony Garcia, an Algerian-born aspiring fashion model who had changed his name and is now accused of purchasing the secreted fertilizer.
Mr. Babar said Mr. Khyam told him that he and other ?brothers? from Crawley were not just a local operation but reported to a man called Abdul Hadi, described by Mr. Khyam as the ?No. 3? in Al Qaeda.
In mid-2003, the prosecution said, the Crevice suspects began coming together in Pakistan where Mr. Babar?s home in Lahore was a haven for young, radical Britons of Pakistani descent.
Bomb-related equipment like detonators, fertilizer and aluminum powder that can be used to fuel an explosion, and beans to make the poison ricin were stored in a bedroom cupboard, he said. The backyard was used for small-scale experiments with explosives, including the detonation of a spice jar packed with chemicals.
Mr. Amin, meanwhile, was living close by. He said in his police confessions that he had been collecting money and materials for fighters in Afghanistan and passing them on to the man accused of being a Qaeda operative, Abu Munthir, who had once visited the Luton prayer center.
When Mr. Khyam arrived in Pakistan in 2003, hoping to train to fight in Afghanistan, he was told there were enough fighters there, according to Mr. Amin?s confessions. Instead, Abu Munthir sent word that if he was really serious, he should ?do something? in Britain, Mr. Amin told the police.
Later that year, Mr. Khyam, Mr. Amin and another man traveled to a safe house in Kohat, Pakistan, for two days of training in making explosives, including fertilizer bombs, Mr. Amin said. Mr. Khyam then organized a session in the mountains around Malakand near the Afghan border, allegedly to teach others what he had learned.
Mr. Khyam and a core group of three other Crevice suspects, including Mr. Babar, made their way there by posing as Western tourists looking to visit lakes and glaciers.
Mr. Babar said one of the men he brought along was a Canadian named Mohammed Momin Khawaja, a computer engineer, now 27, who is accused of being the detonator-maker in the plot.
Mr. Babar recalled in court that the first test with fertilizer-based explosives failed; the second was moderately successful.
?It created a U in the ground,? Mr. Babar testified. ?It went down, sideways and back up the other way.? The group videotaped the scene, he added, hoping to produce a ?a minimovie-type thing? with Koranic verses or songs, to inspire others.
If Mr. Babar is to be believed, Mr. Khyam became so determined to carry out an attack in Britain that during this time he also took a 10-day trip to seek more guidance from Qaeda operatives.
Mr. Babar said Mr. Khyam told him that the instructions from Abu Munthir were for ?multiple bombings,? either ?simultaneously or one after the other on the same day.?
Mr. Babar recalled Mr. Khyam saying that Britain was as responsible as the United States for what was happening in the Middle East and should be attacked. ?He said we need to hit certain spots like pubs, nightclubs and trains,? Mr. Babar said.
An Undercover Investigation
Precisely how and when the authorities learned of the group?s activities is unclear, but by early February 2004, they had begun one of Britain?s largest antiterrorist undercover investigations. Operation Crevice, aided by the United States, Canada and Pakistan, involved round-the-clock human surveillance, audio wiretaps in cars and homes and video surveillance.
On Feb. 20, investigators got an extraordinarily lucky break: a suspicious employee at a self-storage warehouse outside of London called the police to report that someone named Nabeel Hussain was storing a large amount of fertilizer.
The police inserted an undercover officer called Amanda as the receptionist and secretly replaced the fertilizer with a benign substance. A hidden camera was installed and filmed Mr. Khyam when he showed up to check the contents.
The police continued to watch and listen, and their 3,500 hours of surveillance tapes are at the core of the prosecution case. Some of the most chilling conversations played in court are between Mr. Khyam, whose Suzuki sport utility vehicle and apartment had been bugged, and Jawad Akbar, 23, a college student whose apartment had been bugged.
In a conversation recorded in February 2004, Mr. Akbar talked of an ?easy? target, like a nightclub, ?where you don?t need no experience and nothing and you could get a job.? In such a place, he said, ?no one can even turn round and say, ?Oh, they were innocent,? those slags dancing around,? using a slang term for loose women.
When Mr. Khyam asked what he would do if he got a job at a place like the Ministry of Sound, London?s largest nightclub, Mr. Akbar replied, ?Blow the whole thing up.?
In March, Mr. Khyam talked about a simultaneous attack of Britain?s gas, electricity and water systems.
?The electrics go off so it?s a blackout, and then the gas lot move in and bang,? he said. ?Then something goes wrong with the water, a simultaneous attack.?
In late March, when Mr. Khyam and his younger brother, Shujah Mahmood, 19, also a defendant, bought tickets to fly to Pakistan on April 6, the police feared that an attack in Britain was imminent.
On March 30, 700 police officers raided two dozen locations, shutting down what they suspected was a cell and arresting six of the defendants.
They found the cookie tin containing aluminum powder behind a shed at Mr. Khyam?s family home in Crawley. They also found a dozen CD-ROMs giving detailed plans of Britain?s electricity and gas systems that they charged had been stolen from the National Grid Transco utility company by an employee, Waheed Mahmood. At 34, Mr. Mahmood, a father of four, is the oldest Crevice defendant.
The police seized a list of British synagogues and computer video files containing parts of an explosives handbook and a military training manual. Investigators also found instructions for how to react if contacted by counterterrorism authorities.
Meanwhile, Mr. Khawaja, who had recently returned from visiting Crevice suspects in Britain, was arrested in Canada. Electrical equipment, described by British authorities as remote-control devices that could be connected to bomb detonators, as well as guns and ammunition, were found at his home. He is awaiting trial in Canada, the first suspect to be tried under Canada?s 2001 Antiterrorism Act.
The Prosecution?s Case
Prosecutors acknowledge that they have not been able to identify either a fixed target or a date for an attack, but they do not have to. To win convictions, they only have to prove that the seven defendants conspired to cause an explosion ?likely to endanger life? in Britain.
Mr. Khyam, Mr. Garcia and Mr. Hussain are also charged with possessing 600 kilograms, or about 1,320 pounds, of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, and Mr. Khyam and Mr. Mahmood with possessing aluminum powder, in both cases with the intent to use the ingredients to commit an act of terrorism.
In considering the surveillance tapes, defense lawyers argue that their clients may have been doing a lot of talking about deadly chaos, but that it was nothing more than talk. Some of the schemes seemed like fantasy, like injecting poison into beer cans at soccer games. Others were more frightening, if true: Mr. Amin is accused of making inquiries about buying a radioactive ?dirty bomb? from the Russian mafia in Belgium.
As in other criminal cases in Britain, some of the evidence against the suspects is not permitted to be disclosed ? either to the jury or the public ? until the trials are over for fear that juries will be improperly swayed. Even the news media is under a strict order by the judge to avoid revealing certain information about the case.
The evidence presented shows that the radicalization of the defendants began years ago, raising questions about how well the British security services monitored militants in their midst before last year?s transit bombings. The authorities continue to investigate any links between the Crevice defendants and the 2005 bombers, one of whom, the government says, had visited a training camp in Pakistan before the attack.
Investigators closely watch traffic between Britain and Pakistan. But that is a significant challenge with nearly 400,000 visits by residents of Britain to Pakistan in 2004, of an average length of 41 days. And it is even more difficult to determine which, if any, of those visitors are militants following the dangerous route of traveling to Pakistan for indoctrination and training.
?Counterterrorism efforts haven?t been able to penetrate the process of radicalization and recruitment,? said Sajjan M. Gohel, director for international security at the London-based Asia-Pacific Foundation. ?For every individual captured or killed, there are at least five more coming down the assembly line.?
Ariane Bernard contributed reporting.
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**On the whole, the western born/western educated jihadists tend to be from middle class, even upper class socioeconomic backgrounds. So we know they aren't "depraived because they are deprived".**
IMO not quite true. If you would be well educated, studied, and coming from a somewhat secular background and you'd still have to face racial discrimination because being coloured or muslim, then you'd most probably feel even more depraved than someone who comes from a lower social class and is used to being discriminated. Some of these muslims are highly educated but get no job because they're muslim. Of course this discrimination is being fueled by people who think Eurabia is coming. Its a vicious circle in its own - Thomas theorem coming true. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_theorem)
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**And the european converts to islam become suicide bombers because.....**
SPIEGEL ONLINE - May 30, 2006, 04:01 PM
URL: http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,418783,00.html
War on Terror
German Women Vowed to Mount Suicide Attacks in Iraq
By Matthias Gebauer and Holger Stark
German authorities may have thwarted suicide bomb attacks in Iraq by German women. According to intelligence sources, three women were prevented from travelling to Iraq after one of them had announced she planned to blow herself up in Iraq.
AFP
Car bombs and suicide bombs remain a daily feature of life in Iraq. On Monday, some 39 people were killed in multiple bombings in the country.
SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned that German intelligence agencies have prevented three German women from travelling to Iraq in recent weeks. The women, who have close contacts to the Islamist scene in Germany and at least one whom has converted to Islam, came to the attention of intelligence agencies after one of them had announced on an Internet site that she intended to blow herself and her child up in Iraq.
After the Web posting were spotted, Germany's domestic and foreign intelligence agencies mounted an intense search for the three women. One of them was located in Berlin, the other two are believed to come from southern Germany. The Berlin woman's child was taken away from her and she has been put in a psychiatric clinic. The two other women were also prevented from leaving Germany. One of them is also believed to have a child.
It's not clear yet how serious the women were about their claims and how far their plans for an attack had progressed. There has been no official confirmation. Well-informed sources say the women have had contacts with sympathizers of Ansar al Islam, a militant group linked to al-Qaida and suspected of smuggling suicide bombers from Germany to Iraq. The group is also suspected of raising money for the resistance to the US-led forces in Iraq.
There have been several such cases in the past and German security officials have long been worried that Islamic militants are increasingly recruiting young Muslims with German passports for suicide attacks.
It has become almost routine for foreign bombers to be used in Iraq. But the use of European citizens could be a new and dangerous trend. Last November a female Belgian convert blew herself up near Baghdad.
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Posted September 13, 2006 03:31 PM Hide Post
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20408791-2703,00.html
Western-born Muslims seen as biggest threat
Richard Kerbaj, Herzliya, Israel
September 14, 2006
YOUNG Western-born Muslims recruited in universities, mosques and on the internet are increasingly being turned to jihad by terrorist networks, which train them in Islamic countries to support and conduct attacks on their homelands.
The return of brainwashed sleeper agents trained in counter-intelligence and covert fundraising, as well as the use of explosives, was the "biggest threat to humanity in modern times", said Boaz Ganor, founder of the Israeli-based Institute of Counter-Terrorism.
"They are looking for them in mosques ... in the youth centres ... on the web ... relying on social acquaintances and also family ties and universities," Dr Ganor told a conference hosted by the institute in the resort city of Herzliya yesterday.
He said terror organisations used psychological strategies to win the hearts of "specific" young Muslims through either indirect recruitment platforms such as the internet, and direct ones such as combing radical mosques and prayer halls.
Extremists looked for recruits who were not integrated into Western society and wanted to reinvent themselves.
"They are looking for people who are alienated from society, they're looking for people that have religious devotion, they're looking for those who believe that they are discriminated against," Dr Ganor said.
Converts to Islam with a proclivity for violence and fanaticism were also considered good recruits. "They are using this idea of divine command, saying 'we are just messengers and it is God that demands you to do this job ... we have to save Islam'.
"(But) when you spread a network like that, sometimes you get fissures that you don't expect to get because these alienated, frustrated youngsters are not just in the Muslim society, and therefore we see another phenomenon, which are converts."
Last month, The Australian revealed that dozens of violent criminals in Sydney were being brainwashed by hardliners and converting to radical Islam in jail, creating a serious national security time bomb.
Dr Ganor said of the recruits: "They are usually being trained in other countries - it could be Pakistan or another place - and then they are infiltrated again into the old society as an indoctrinated, trained sleeper that are just sitting and waiting for the order.
"Some of them are being used for fundraising missions, some of them are being used for collection of intelligence and for recruiting others. But we have to understand ... that some of them are being used for this mission of launching a terrorist attack on Western society."
Another expert on Islamic terrorism who spoke at the conference, Steven Emerson, told The Australian that terrorist organisations were increasingly shifting towards training their recruits on how to become better intelligence agents and expose the weaknesses of their enemies.
"It's in al-Qa'ida's manual to do better counter-intelligence, to do observation, surveillance, reconnaissance," he said. "That's critical to any good terrorist apparatus. You always have to have a reconnaissance man.
"Hezbollah excels in reconnaissance - sending back to Tehran videos that they have witnessed in terms of the vulnerabilities."
Dr Ganor said Muslim communities worldwide needed to take the initiative in exposing and thwarting the actions of radicals.
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Al Qaeda exploits 'blue-eyed' Muslim converts
12 October 2005
PARIS/BERLIN: What prompts someone to convert to Islam and to sign up for global "holy war" in the name of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda?
Security agencies are asking that question with increasing urgency as they confront a growing catalogue of actual or attempted attacks in which Muslim converts are suspected of playing prominent roles.
Christian Ganczarski, a German suspected of involvement in a 2002 bombing in Tunisia, converted at 20 before embarking on a jihadist career in which, investigators believe, he became a close associate of bin Laden's.
Other high-profile militant converts include Jamaican-born Germaine Lindsay, one of four suicide bombers who killed 52 people in London in July, and Briton Andrew Rowe, jailed for 15 years last month for possessing terrorist materials.
Frenchman Lionel Dumont, a suspected Rowe associate and another convert, will go on trial in December accused of a series of attacks in the 1990s, including an attempt to bomb a Group of Seven summit in Lille.
"It's striking, the number of converts engaged in terrorist activities," said Michael Taarnby, a researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies who has studied the recruitment and radicalisation of Islamist militants.
Jean-Louis Bruguiere, France's top anti-terrorism judge, told the newspaper Le Figaro in an interview: "The converts are undeniably the toughest. Nowadays the conversions happen more quickly and the commitment is more radical."
The phenomenon is not confined to Europe.
John Walker Lindh, dubbed "the American Taliban", was convicted and jailed in 2002 for fighting alongside the Afghan militia, and US citizen Jose Padilla has been held for more than three years as a suspected enemy combatant in connection with an alleged "dirty bomb" plot.
In Australia, British-born Muslim convert Jack Roche was jailed for nine years in 2004 for conspiring to bomb the Israeli embassy in Canberra.
In interviews with Reuters, European experts said the vast majority of those who converted to Islam did so for legitimate personal reasons. Some convert in order to marry Muslims.
Many converts were drawn, the experts said, by the appeal of a universal faith that transcended national and ethnic barriers, offered a sense of belonging and brotherhood and provided a new identity, including the choice of a Muslim name.
However, a small fraction were extremists who saw in radical Islam a vehicle to challenge and overthrow the existing world order, said Olivier Roy, research director of the French National Centre for Scientific Research.
The advantage for militant groups and the problem for security agencies is that converts can often move more freely and attract less suspicion than people of obviously Middle Eastern appearance.
"If you are a youngster in the French suburbs, your mates are second-generation Muslim immigrants and you want to wage war against society, the system, where do you go?" said Roy.
"Thirty years ago, you joined the Maoists, the Trotskyists, the far left, the Baader group, Action Directe. Today, where do you go? Bin Laden." A German intelligence official cited cases where radical foreigners had acquired residents' status by marrying local women, complicating authorities' attempts to kick them out.
"It gives them more security in their legal status. If they're married to a German woman, it's very hard to expel them," he said.
Some of the best-known extremist converts whose cases have come to trial were drifters on the margins of society.
David Courtailler, a Frenchman convicted last year of abetting terrorists, was drawn into radical circles when he converted to Islam at a British mosque and was approached by a stranger there who gave him money and an air ticket to Pakistan.
Reid, Rowe and Ganczarski all had records as small-time thieves or drug dealers.
"They are people who feel devalued, despised and by becoming terrorists they suddenly become supermen, heroes," said Roy.
Once they converted, the experts said, such people often moved towards violence quickly, driven partly by a need to prove themselves. They might also be more easily manipulated by extremists because they lacked the cultural grounding to distinguish between true and distorted versions of Islam.
"Basically, you can tell them just about anything and they're willing to believe it," Taarnby said. "They're not asking the right questions. They're just accepting what they're being told at face value."
The advantage for militant groups ? and the problem for security agencies ? is that converts can often move more freely and attract less suspicion than people of obviously Middle Eastern appearance.
"Thanks to their physical appearance they can penetrate targets in Europe much more easily without being spotted," said Roland Jacquard, head of the International Terrorism Observatory in Paris.
In theory, white Europeans attending radical mosques would be easy for intelligence services to identify. "But when they are taken on by terrorist organisations, they are asked to ensure they don't draw attention to themselves in that way," Jacquard said.
Such individuals are insiders who understand perfectly the nature of the Western societies they are trying to subvert, Jacquard said. "They know the mentality, the lifestyle that the terrorist organisations want to strike." He said al Qaeda's recruitment of "blue-eyed" Europeans dated from the Bosnian war.
"Now, when you take Muslim converts whose mother and father are French, English, Spanish or Italian and who live in society normally, with society's habits, they are absolutely undetectable."
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Well, that doesn't really contradict to what I'm saying...
Quoted from one of your articles:
The phenomenon is not confined to Europe.
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Quijote:
The Thomas principle you cite has considerable merit of course. Of course the flip side is sticking one's head in the sand or up one's butt when there really is a problem has its own drawbacks. These are challenging times we live in.
I am reminded of mathematician Nash's prisoner's dilema game theory here and subsequent evolutions thereof. In Nash's original thought experiement, the players play one time. Do they choose win-win or zero sum? Subsequent theoreticians of these things then researched what happens when the same players play each other repeatedly. It turns out that the best strategy is "tit for tat" i.e. I treat you as you treat me. In an environment where the cultural context tends to assume win-win, then the first time the game is played, people tend to choose win-win. Conversely, someone who plays win-win repeatedly in a zero sum environment tends to get fcuked.
For good people used to win-win mindset, the Thomas thereom you site seems self-evident. But to repeatedly apply it with those who live by zero sum presents some real survival questions.
Marc
PS: I would also add to the mix the economic policies that IIRC the French call "dirigiste" meaing a government directed quais-socialist economy. IMHO these policies, such as extreme job security laws, high unemployment benefits, high mandated benefits, etc tend to be very destructive of job creation. If I have my facts right, unemployment rates in countries such as France and Germany are over 10%, more than double that of the US. (IIRC you are German, yet live in Switzerland (which is not part of the EU) because of the lack of job opportunity?) In an environment lacking opportunity, exclusionary attitudes on the part of some are hard to avoid.
(A plausible case can be made that a part of the Paristinean Infitifada has much of its roots in these economics.) Conversely, here in the US where job creation is much higher and unemployment much lower, Muslims are much better integrated. Coincidence? I suspect not.
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In my opinion the Eurabia theory is detriment to our efforts in Europe to integrate the muslims. Also if everything Europe does to take a step to approach our muslim population at the very instant is considered to be dhimmitude, this is very unproductive.? IMO the Eurabia theory is anti-european and counter-productive to our efforts. Bat Ye'or as educated as she may be (she's a studied archeologist, maybe she should keep away from politics), is fueled by hatred against muslims. Unfortunately she has made quite an impact in the US with her awkard theorem, while she remains mostly unknown in Europe.
If I have my facts right, unemployment rates in countries such as France and Germany are over 10%, more than double that of the US.
Yes, they are. Many countries in Europe have economic problems. See my WW for Wealth thread.
Conversely, here in the US where job creation is much higher and unemployment much lower, Muslims are much better integrated.? Coincidence?? I suspect not.
Partly yes, sure. In most parts of Europe muslims are discriminated and not welcome - simply because they're foreigners. Therefore they're not being integrated into society. In France muslims as studied as they may be, get no job, French are preferred.? The Eurabia theorem fuels the hatred against muslims. So we create our own little pond of sharks for radicals to fish in. Therefore I oppose the Eurabia theory and I warn that we have to look out for those muslims who want to integrate as they will give a good signal for others to follow. Considering the muslim population in Europe to be part of a bigger plan to seize Europe is not only paranoid, it's useless. It only adds up to the problem.
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IMHO the Eurabia theory cannot simply be wished away-- there does seem to be rational basis for it. Yes it does make things harder for bringing Muslims into the mainstream-- just as ignoring certain realities does not make them go away. Its a tough problem.
Anyway, here's this Quijote, which complements some of the points you are making.
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U.S. tour offers visitors lessons on tolerance
Eastern Europeans meet with community leaders in L.A. and across the nation as part of a program to foster ethnic relations at home.
By Teresa Watanabe, Times Staff Writer
November 26, 2006
If you think ethnic conflict is bad in Los Angeles, listen to the stories of recent visitors Aleksandar Milovanovic, Edin Colic and Gjylnaze Syla.
Milovanovic, a Serbian Christian, said Albanian Muslims expelled him from his land, decapitated his uncle and burned his family homes. Syla, a member of the Kosovo parliament in Serbia, said mobs burned her family homes and expelled her sister. Colic of Bosnia-Herzegovina said he went without sufficient food, healthcare, schooling and electricity for three years while Serbian military forces surrounded his native Sarajevo.
Having survived the terrors of ethnic cleansing, war and raging hatred as the former Yugoslavia broke up in the 1990s, the three Eastern Europeans came to Los Angeles recently to learn how this city manages its dizzying ethnic diversity and promotes pluralism and tolerance.
Among the lessons learned: Dialogue makes a difference. Networking among ethnic community groups to promote common interests is vital. And ducking the problems makes them worse."What I found out is that you have your problems here, but the U.S. addresses them," Syla said. "You see it. You face it. That's what makes America great. Europe is much slower to react."
The 10-day visit to a total of seven cities, co-sponsored by the American Jewish Committee, included meetings with city officials, Hollywood players, religious leaders and community activists from Latino, Asian American, black, gay and Jewish groups.
The committee's Rabbi Andy Baker said he began organizing the "Promoting Tolerance in Central and Eastern Europe" program in 1992 in collaboration with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation of Germany to help the region's developing democracies learn from U.S. experiences with diversity.
Jewish communities, which had suffered repression under the region's Communist rule, were beginning to see what Baker called populist anti-Semitism after the end of the Cold War. New press freedoms, for instance, opened the door to the republication of Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" and other biased publications, Baker said.
"Freedom didn't suddenly bring understanding and appreciation of ethnic relations, as we saw in the former Yugoslavia," Baker said. "The challenge for us was what could we take from our experiences in America to benefit what was going on in these societies."
The program's 18 participants visited Capitol Hill and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.; toured Little Italy and the Jewish Lower East Side in New York City; and explored Olvera Street and Chinatown in Los Angeles. They also visited the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles and experienced Shabbat at the homes of local families.
Several participants, most of them young political leaders, said their meetings with ethnic and charitable organizations left some of the deepest impressions. In Washington, for instance, the group discussed race and ethnic issues with representatives from the Congressional Hispanic Leadership Institute, Japanese American Citizens League and the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.
At the Skirball Center, a panel about Hollywood's effect on pluralism was a "big hit," according to Steve Addison, the American Jewish Committee's director of international relations in Los Angeles.
Vic Bulluck, executive director of the NAACP's Hollywood office, said he outlined how his organization serves as a watchdog over media portrayals of African Americans and works with other ethnic groups to push minority hiring.
And at the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center, Chief Executive Lorri L. Jean described the organization's successful legal fight more than three decades ago to win nonprofit status, which the federal government had denied, and its collaborative work with other groups to protest bias against immigrants, ethnic minorities and others.
To Julia Leferman, a National Liberal Party of Romania member, the dynamic role of U.S. nonprofit and community organizations in promoting tolerance was particularly instructive. In Romania, where the government officially recognizes 18 minority groups, people depend on the state to solve their problems, she said. She wondered aloud if the nation's Gypsies, formally known as Romas, might become more integrated into society with stronger networking among private minority organizations.
"In Romania, people depend on the state to solve their problems, including minorities," she said. "Here, communities are working together to better promote their interests without necessarily relying on the federal and state governments."
Milovanovic, a legal assistant at the Democratic Party of Serbia's Education Center, said he was impressed by discussions about common values and beliefs between Muslim and Jewish youth in Chicago.
"This is something we could do between Serbians and Albanians," he said. "We have so many common issues: unemployment, the pain we share on both sides. "It would require a lot of energy and strength to do this," he added, "but if we don't deal with it we'll be in constant danger of another cycle of violence."
And Colic, a political science student and Liberal Democratic party board member of Bosnia-Herzegovina, said he gained hope for the future between Bosnians and Serbs after seeing how the Jewish committee and German foundation had paired up to produce the tolerance program. He also was inspired by the educational power of the Holocaust Memorial, he said.
"We definitely need something like that so we can teach the next generation of kids what people can do to people ? so they can learn from the mistakes of their parents," he said. "I don't think it will happen soon, though, because everything is still fresh."
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What a great program!
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IMHO the Eurabia theory cannot simply be wished away-- there does seem to be rational basis for it.
I do not wish it away. But I also don't have the time to write a book to disproof its theories.
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Let me know what you think of the Steyn book when it arrives and you read it :-)
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Well, that doesn't really contradict to what I'm saying...
Quoted from one of your articles:
The phenomenon is not confined to Europe.
Yes, but please explain to me how you take a european muslim convert (Or American, Canadian, Australian convert) and then get a jihadist. You don't have the "victim" status you claim is what is fueling the jihad with middle eastern, south asian, african ethnicities that face discrimination in europe.
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Why are there youngsters packing a buchload of guns and going into their high school on a rampage?
Hard to say. I guess its many components playing together;
- lack of cultural identity
- self hatred
- feeling of exclusion (from society, friends, family)
- suicical tendencies
- depression
I'd say these convert jihadist are an exception and no rule.
What do you think?
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You don't have the "victim" status you claim is what is fueling the jihad with middle eastern, south asian, african ethnicities that face discrimination in europe.
This is not what I'm saying. I'm saying that we have to beware of generalizations and that we have to look for the causes to seek Jihad within the muslim population differently within the different groups.
Turks and Arabs hate each other. The French muslims tend to seek radical ideals mainly due their discrimination (they are french!), while for example the Pakistani immigrants of London certainly carry the idea of Jihad from their motherland.
The muslims in Europe are not one big corps and far from being ever united. That also is their weakness which we have to use.
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Why are there youngsters packing a buchload of guns and going into their high school on a rampage?
Hard to say. I guess its many components playing together;
- lack of cultural identity
- self hatred
- feeling of exclusion (from society, friends, family)
- suicical tendencies
- depression
I'd say these convert jihadist are an exception and no rule.
What do you think?
I think there is a massive body of evidence to correlate violence to islam. Not every muslim, but as a rule the more religiously observant, the more likely to engage in jihad, or at least support it due to islam's core theology. Those that might have joined the Brownshirts 70 years ago or the Red Army Faction or Bader-Meinhof 30 years ago are converting to islam and becoming jihadis today. The commonality between the various groups is the endorsement, even sanctification of violence to meet their communal goals.
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I think there is a massive body of evidence to correlate violence to islam.
Unfortunately yes, I have to agree. Elias Canetti, one my favourite authors, considered Islam to be a religion of war.
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Here's Ralph Peters take on things. Quijote, if you are not familiar with RP, he is a retired Army Colonel who worked intel matters in the mid-east. He is regarded as a bold thinker, willing to take chances, and there is never any doubt what he thinks. :-D
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The piece by Ralph Peters was linked from RealClearPolitics yesterday. I saved it, didn't keep link. Should be in recent archives of NY Post or RCP. But another interesting counter conventional wisdom point of view about Europe. (Which I find compelling since I thought this in the late '90's when the skinheads were firebombing Turkish slums in Germany back then.)
THE 'EURABIA' MYTH
By RALPH PETERS
November 26, 2006 -- A RASH of pop prophets tell us that Muslims in
Europe are reproducing so fast and European societies are so weak
and listless that, before you know it, the continent will become
"Eurabia," with all those topless gals on the Riviera wearing veils.
Well, maybe not.
The notion that continental Europeans, who are world-champion
haters, will let the impoverished Muslim immigrants they confine to
ghettos take over their societies and extend the caliphate from the
Amalfi Coast to Amsterdam has it exactly wrong.
The endangered species isn't the "peace loving" European lolling in
his or her welfare state, but the continent's Muslims immigrants -
and their multi-generation descendents - who were foolish enough to
imagine that Europeans would share their toys.
In fact, Muslims are hardly welcome to pick up the trash on Europe's
playgrounds.
Don't let Europe's current round of playing pacifist dress-up fool
you: This is the continent that perfected genocide and ethnic
cleansing, the happy-go-lucky slice of humanity that brought us such
recent hits as the Holocaust and Srebrenica.
THE historical patterns are clear: When Europeans feel sufficiently
threatened - even when the threat's concocted nonsense - they don't
just react, they over-react with stunning ferocity. One of their
more-humane (and frequently employed) techniques has been ethnic
cleansing.
And Europeans won't even need to re-write "The Protocols of the
Elders of Zion" with an Islamist theme - real Muslims zealots
provide Europe's bigots with all the propaganda they need. Al Qaeda
and its wannabe fans are the worst thing that could have happened to
Europe's Muslims. Europe hasn't broken free of its historical
addictions - we're going to see Europe's history reprised on meth.
The year 1492 wasn't just big for Columbus. It's also when Spain
expelled its culturally magnificent Jewish community en masse - to
be followed shortly by the Moors, Muslims who had been on the
Iberian Peninsula for more than 800 years.
Jews got the boot elsewhere in Europe, too - if they weren't just
killed on the spot. When Shakespeare wrote "The Merchant of Venice,"
it's a safe bet he'd never met a Jew. The Chosen People were
long-gone from Jolly Olde England.
From the French expulsion of the Huguenots right down to the last
century's massive ethnic cleansings, Europeans have never been shy
about showing "foreigners and subversives" the door.
And Europe's Muslims don't even have roots, by historical standards.
For the Europeans, they're just the detritus of colonial history.
When Europeans feel sufficiently provoked and threatened - a few
serious terrorist attacks could do it - Europe's Muslims will be
lucky just to be deported.
Sound impossible? Have the Europeans become too soft for that sort
of thing? Has narcotic socialism destroyed their ability to hate? Is
their atheism a prelude to total surrender to faith-intoxicated
Muslim jihadis?
The answer to all of the above questions is a booming "No!" The
Europeans have enjoyed a comfy ride for the last 60 years - but the
very fact that they don't want it to stop increases their rage and
sense of being besieged by Muslim minorities they've long refused to
assimilate (and which no longer want to assimilate).
WE don't need to gloss over the many Muslim acts of barbarism down
the centuries to recognize that the Europeans are just better at the
extermination process. From the massacre of all Muslims and Jews
(and quite a few Eastern Christians) when the Crusaders reached
Jerusalem in 1099 to the massacre of all the Jews in Buda (not yet
attached to Pest across the Danube) when the "liberating" Habsburg
armies retook the citadel at the end of the 17th century, Europeans
have just been better organized for genocide.
It's the difference between the messy Turkish execution of the
Armenian genocide and the industrial efficiency of the Holocaust.
Hey, when you love your work, you get good at it.
Far from enjoying the prospect of taking over Europe by having
babies, Europe's Muslims are living on borrowed time. When a third
of French voters have demonstrated their willingness to vote for
Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front - a party that makes the Ku Klux
Klan seem like Human Rights Watch - all predictions of Europe going
gently into that good night are surreal.
I have no difficulty imagining a scenario in which U.S. Navy ships
are at anchor and U.S. Marines have gone ashore at Brest,
Bremerhaven or Bari to guarantee the safe evacuation of Europe's
Muslims. After all, we were the only ones to do anything about the
slaughter of Muslims in the Balkans. And even though we botched it,
our effort in Iraq was meant to give the Middle East's Muslims a
last chance to escape their self-inflicted misery.
AND we're lucky. The United States attracts the quality. American
Muslims have a higher income level than our national average. We
hear about the handful of rabble-rousers, but more of our fellow
Americans who happen to be Muslims are doctors, professors and
entrepreneurs.
And the American dream is still alive and well, thanks: Even the
newest taxi driver stumbling over his English grammar knows he can
truly become an American.
But European Muslims can't become French or Dutch or Italian or
German. Even if they qualify for a passport, they remain
second-class citizens. On a good day. And they're supposed to take
over the continent that's exported more death than any other?
All the copy-cat predictions of a Muslim takeover of Europe not only
ignore history and Europe's ineradicable viciousness, but do a
serious disservice by exacerbating fear and hatred. And when it
comes to hatred, trust me: The Europeans don't need our help.
The jobless and hopeless kids in the suburbs may burn a couple of
cars, but we'll always have Paris.
Ralph Peters' latest book is "Never Quit the Fight."
Home
NEW YORK POST is a registered trademark of NYP Holdings, Inc. NYPOST.COM,
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**Mark Steyn responds.**
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/print/016028.php
November 26, 2006
They Report, You Decide (with update from Mark Steyn)
Most of our readers are aware of Mark Steyn's "Demography is Destiny" theme, which he has elaborated in much of his recent writing. Steyn thinks that low birth rates among Europeans, in particular, will inevitably lead to their replacement on the European continent by Muslims who are reproducing at a far faster rate. Steyn pursues the theme in today's article in the Chicago Sun-Times, Quartet of Ladies Shows Where We're Headed. He contrasts Fatma An-Najar, the 64-year-old Palestinian grandmother who became a suicide bomber, with Katharine Jefferts Schori, the new Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church:
An-Najar gave birth to her first child at the age of 12. She had eight others. She had 41 grandchildren. Keep that family tree in mind. By contrast, in Spain, a 64-year old woman will have maybe one grandchild. That's four grandparents, one grandchild: a family tree with no branches.
Meanwhile, what of the Episcopalians?
Bishop Kate gave an interview to the New York Times revealing what passes for orthodoxy in this most flexible of faiths. She was asked a simple enough question: "How many members of the Episcopal Church are there?"
"About 2.2 million," replied the presiding bishop. "It used to be larger percentage-wise, but Episcopalians tend to be better educated and tend to reproduce at lower rates than other denominations."
This was a bit of a jaw-dropper even for a New York Times hackette, so, with vague memories of God saying something about going forth and multiplying floating around the back of her head, a bewildered Deborah Solomon said: "Episcopalians aren't interested in replenishing their ranks by having children?"
"No," agreed Bishop Kate. "It's probably the opposite. We encourage people to pay attention to the stewardship of the earth and not use more than their portion."
Is that a death wish, or what? As Steyn points out, "Here's the question for Bishop Kate: If Fatma An-Najar has 41 grandchildren and a responsible 'better educated' Episcopalian has one or two, into whose hands are we delivering 'the stewardship of the earth'? If your crowd isn't around in any numbers, how much influence can they have in shaping the future?"
Steyn's logic is persuasive to me, but Ralph Peters isn't buying it. He thinks that, far from taking over Europe, that continent's Muslims "will be lucky just to be deported:"
Have the Europeans become too soft for that sort of thing? Has narcotic socialism destroyed their ability to hate? Is their atheism a prelude to total surrender to faith-intoxicated Muslim jihadis?
The answer to all of the above questions is a booming "No!" The Europeans have enjoyed a comfy ride for the last 60 years - but the very fact that they don't want it to stop increases their rage and sense of being besieged by Muslim minorities they've long refused to assimilate (and which no longer want to assimilate).
Far from enjoying the prospect of taking over Europe by having babies, Europe's Muslims are living on borrowed time. When a third of French voters have demonstrated their willingness to vote for Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front - a party that makes the Ku Klux Klan seem like Human Rights Watch - all predictions of Europe going gently into that good night are surreal.
I have no difficulty imagining a scenario in which U.S. Navy ships are at anchor and U.S. Marines have gone ashore at Brest, Bremerhaven or Bari to guarantee the safe evacuation of Europe's Muslims. After all, we were the only ones to do anything about the slaughter of Muslims in the Balkans.
It's true that the Europeans have historically been willing to act much more harshly that Americans when they have felt threatened. But I wouldn't start sending the Marines to Brest just yet.
To comment on this post, go here.
UPDATE: Mark Steyn comments:
I don?t know whether Mr Peters is referring to my book, because, as usual when this particular columnist comes out swinging, he prefers to confront unnamed generalized opponents: thus, he refers to ?a rash of pop pundits? predicting Europe will become Eurabia. Dismissing with airy condescension ?a rash? of anonymities means you avoid having to deal with specific arguments.
Had he read America Alone, for example, he would know that I do, indeed, foresee a revival of Fascism in Europe. He concludes: ?All predictions of Europe going gently into that good night are surreal.? Which of us predicted anything about ?going gently?? As I write on page 105 of my book: ?It?s true that there are many European populations reluctant to go happily into the long Eurabian night.? What I point out, though, is that, even if you?re hot for a new Holocaust, demography tells. There are no Hitlers to hand. When Mr Peters cites the success of Jean Marie Le Pen?s National Front, he overlooks not only Le Pen?s recent overtures to Muslims but also the fact that M Le Pen is pushing 80. As a general rule, when 600 octogenarians are up against 200 teenagers, bet on the teens. In five or ten years? time, who precisely is going to organize mass deportations from French cities in which the native/Muslim youth-population ratio is already ? right now - 55/45?
As I?ve said innumerable times, the native European population is split three ways: some will leave, as the Dutch (and certain French) are already doing; some will shrug and go along with the Islamization of the continent, as the ever-accelerating number of conversions suggests; and so the ones left to embrace Fascism will be a minority of an aging population. It will be bloody and messy, as I write in America Alone, but it will not alter the final outcome. If you don?t breed, you can?t influence the future. And furthermore a disinclination to breed is a good sign you don?t care much about the future. That?s why the Spaniards, who fought a brutal bloody civil war for their country in the 1930s, folded instantly after those Madrid bombings. When you?ve demographically checked out of the future, why fight for it?
Ralph Peters is late to this debate. If he?s going to join the discussion, he might do better to tackle the facts. But that would require him to acknowledge real specifics rather than ?a rash of pop pundits?. You?ll notice that his column and mine differ not just in their approach to worldviews but in their approach to argument: mine cites four specific persons, their actions and assertions; his boldly batters anonymous generalizations. I know which I regard as more effective.
Thanks to Mark Steyn for this addition to the discussion.
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http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2006/11/europes_ineradicable_viciousne.html
November 27, 2006
Europe's Ineradicable Viciousness?
Steven M. Warshawsky
Yesterday in the New York Post, Ralph Peters wrote a strongly-worded piece challenging the "pop prophets" who argue that, as a result of demographic and cultural forces, Europe is rapidly turning into a Muslim-dominated continent -- what Bat Ye'or has termed "Eurabia." Presumably Peters is thinking of fellow commentator Mark Steyn, whose best-selling book, America Alone, is based on this exact thesis. (For my review of America Alone, see here).
Peters argues that reports of Europe's demise are greatly exaggerated, and that once Europeans "feel sufficiently threatened" by the increasing numbers of Muslims in their midst, they will "over-react with stunning ferocity." According to Peters, there is an "ineradicable viciousness" at the core of European civilization, and he strongly suggests that a genocide of Europe's Muslim population is a likely eventuality. To support his analysis, Peters points to Europe's historical mistreatment of Jews, the massacres committed by the Crusaders in 1099, the expulsion of the Moors from Spain in 1492, and the growing popularity of Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front party in France. Peters' argument is not remotely persuasive.
To begin with, societies obviously change over time. For example, the United States no longer permits slavery or segregation. No serious person would argue, based on these historical practices, that black Americans are in danger of experiencing similar treatment in the future. Similarly, while European countries certainly have had a "vicious" past (even the Scandinavians have their Viking ancestors), Peters offers absolutely no reason to believe that either the governments or a majority of the people living in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, et al., retain such intolerant and warlike impulses. On the contrary, as Steyn and others have extensively documented, the available evidence points in the opposite direction. (See, e.g., the Madrid bombings that caused the Spanish electorate to vote out the conservative government that had supported the war on terror.)
Significantly, Peters does not question the demographic trends that underlay the Eurabia thesis. Steyn reports that Western women in Europe have an average of 1.4 children (well below the "replacement level" of 2.1 children per woman), whereas Muslim women have an average of 3.5 children. This means that the Western population in Europe will shrink with each new generation, while the Muslim population explodes. Already in France, for example, it is estimated that the numbers of Western and Muslim youths are roughly the same. This means that the numbers of potential "warriors" available to each demographic group are at parity. Hardly the situation that confronted European Jews before World War Two.
There are other problems with Peters' article, and I am sure it will spark many more rebuttals. But his main argument that Europeans are "world-champion haters" who are poised to slaughter their Muslim neighbors is devoid of evidence, and ignores the very real problems posed by an increasingly Muslim Europe.
Steven M. Warshawsky
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http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/999jpabw.asp
The Veil Controversy
Islamism and liberalism face off.
by Olivier Guitta
12/04/2006, Volume 012, Issue 12
IN 1989, the first hijab incident in Europe took place in Creil, a suburb of Paris, when three high school girls tried to go to class wearing the Islamic headscarf. The students were expelled. Fifteen years later, with the hijab spreading fast among Muslims in France, the government formally banned the wearing of religious symbols in public schools. At the time, most European countries criticized French "intolerance" and deemed the issue a uniquely Gallic problem. But it wasn't. Today most European countries--and a number of Muslim countries--are debating what to do about this increasingly problematic sign of Islamization.
The British were among the most vocal critics of the French ban--back when they were still quite pleased with their own multicultural model. But on October 5, ex-foreign minister Jack Straw revealed that he regularly asked women who came to see him wearing face veils to take them off. Straw pointed out that veils are bad for community relations, and Prime Minister Blair added that the veil is a "mark of separation." This debate coincided with the decision of a British principal to fire an assistant teacher who refused to remove her full-face veil, or niqab, while teaching. Joining the fray was author Salman Rushdie, whose elegant contribution was the statement, "Veils suck." Tensions are rising, fueled by accusations of Islamophobia from some Muslim officials. There is fear that race riots could break out in some British suburbs.
Then there is Germany, where four states have barred public school teachers from wearing the hijab. Some brave female politicians born in Turkey spoke out on the issue in an October 15 interview with Bild am Sonntag. One of them, Ekin Deligoz, a Green party member of parliament, advised fellow Muslim women: "You live here, so take off the headscarf." She added that the headscarf is a symbol of female oppression. Because of her comments, Deligoz has received death threats and is now under police protection.
Finally, in Italy, where the niqab is banned, the controversy has reached new heights since the broadcast of a heated exchange on a television talk show. Right-wing member of parliament Daniela Santanche clashed with the imam of a mosque near Milan, Ali Abu Shwaima. Said Santanche: "The veil isn't a religious symbol and it isn't prescribed by the Koran." Retorted Shwaima: "The veil is an obligation required by God. Those who do not believe that are not Muslims. You're ignorant, you're false. You sow hatred, you're an infidel."
Coming from an imam, this rant carried almost the weight of a fatwa, or religious edict, in certain quarters, where it could be seen as a death sentence. Santanche has been given 24-hour police protection. She says she is speaking out because Muslim women forced to wear the veil have asked her to. She told the Sunday Times, "It's time to turn our backs on the politically correct. It's a question not of religion but of human rights."
And not only in Europe. Muslim countries are not immune to the controversy over the veil. In Egypt--where some 80 percent of women are now veiled, according to sociologist Mona Abaza--the dean of Helwan University has recently expelled female students for wearing the niqab. Interestingly, Soad Saleh, a former dean of the female faculty and Islamic law professor at the most prestigious Islamic university in the world, Cairo's Al-Azhar, confirmed that the niqab is not an obligation. Gamal al-Banna, brother of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, goes further: "Neither the Koran, nor the hadith require women to wear a headscarf."
But the country whose government is currently going after the hijab most vigorously is Tunisia. The wearing of the hijab has been spreading rapidly in Tunisian towns, prompting President Ben Ali recently to reactivate a 1981 decree banning the wearing of the hijab in government offices, schools, universities, and public places in general. His government views the hijab as one more sign of the unwelcome but growing influence of Islamists in Tunisian society. This past Ramadan, in a reversal of the standard pattern for Muslim religious police, Tunisian police were seen tearing headscarves off women in the streets.
The authorities consider the hijab unacceptable in a country that enshrined women's rights as long ago as 1956, with the banning of repudiation (male-initiated casual divorce), polygamy, forced marriage, and the granting of women's rights to vote and sue for divorce. Ben Ali sees women "as a solid defense against the regressive forces of fanaticism and extremism."
Interestingly, the Tunisian author and feminist Samia Labidi, president of A.I.M.E., an organization fighting the Islamists, recounts that she personally started wearing the veil before puberty, after Islamists told her the hijab would be a passport to a new life, to emancipation. After a few years, she realized she had been fooled and that the veil made her feel like she was "living in a prison." At first, she could not bring herself to stop wearing it because of the constant psychological pressure. But the 1981 ban on the hijab in public places forced her to remove it, and she did so for good.
Labidi's experience suggests that in both Tunisia and France the recent banning of the hijab has actually helped Muslim women who are subject to Islamist indoctrination.
For Islamists, the imperative to veil women justifies almost any means. Sometimes they try to buy off resistance. Some French Muslim families, for instance, are paid 500 euros (around $600) per quarter by extremist Muslim organizations just to have their daughters wear the hijab. This has also happened in the United States. Indeed, the famous and brave Syrian-American psychiatrist Wafa Sultan recently told the Jerusalem Post that after she moved to the United States in 1991, Saudis offered her $1,500 a month to cover her head and attend a mosque.
But what Islamists use most is intimidation. A survey conducted in France in May 2003 found that 77 percent of girls wearing the hijab said they did so because of physical threats from Islamist groups. A series in the newspaper Lib?ration in 2003 documented how Muslim women and girls in France who refuse to wear the hijab are insulted, rejected, and often physically threatened by Muslim males. One of the teenage girls interviewed said, "Every day, bearded men come to me and advise me strongly on wearing the veil. It is a war. For now, there are no dead, but there are looks and words that do kill."
Muslim women who try to rebel are considered "whores" and treated as outcasts. Some of them want to move to areas "with no Muslims" to escape. However, that might not be a solution, as Islamists are at work all over France. The Communist newspaper L'Humanit? in 2003 interviewed two Catholic-born French women who said they had converted to Islam and started wearing the niqab after systematic indoctrination by the Muslim Brotherhood.
In light of this, wearing the hijab may or may not be a manifestation of the free exercise of religion. For any individual, it may reflect the very opposite--religious coercion. In fact, millions of women are forced to wear the veil for fear of physical retribution. And the fear is well founded. According to Cheryl Benard of RAND, every year hundreds of women in Pakistan and Afghanistan alone are killed, have acid thrown in their faces, or are otherwise maimed by male fanatics.
Given the Islamists' ferocious determination on this point, it is worth asking: Why exactly is covering the female so important to them? The obvious answer is that it is a means of social control. Not coincidentally, it is one of the only issues on which Sunni and Shia extremists agree. It's not by chance that use of the hijab really took off after Iran's Islamic regime came to power in 1979. Some Shiite militias in Iraq have actually started forcing women--Muslim or not--to wear the veil or face the consequences.
If this issue were not vital for Islamists, how can one explain their reaction when France banned the hijab in public schools? Al Qaeda's number two, Ayman al Zawahiri, "strongly condemned" President Chirac's decision and threatened actions against France. Likewise, Sheikh Fadlallah, founder and spiritual leader of Hezbollah, wrote to Chirac threatening "likely complications" for France. Mohammad Khatami, former president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, called on the French government to "cancel this unjust law."
Commenting recently on the veil and the Islamists' strategy, Professor Iqbal Al-Gharbi, from the famous Islamic Zaytouna University in Tunis, explained: "The veil is just the tip of the iceberg. Behind the veil, there is the regressive interpretation of the sharia [Koranic law]. There are the three essential inequalities which define this interpretation: inequality between man and woman, between Muslim and non-Muslim, between free man and slave."
"Islam is the solution" is the motto of the Muslim Brotherhood. Instead, the real solution to the veil problem in Europe and in modern countries elsewhere is the defeat of radical Islam, making possible the peaceful integration of normal Muslims into Western societies on Western terms.
Olivier Guitta is a foreign affairs and counterterrorism consultant in Washington.
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Once I read Peters I couldn't quite agree with him (don't remember the topic), but now he has my sympathies... :-D
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Europe's quiet integration
Zachary Shore
International Herald Tribune
Lately European leaders seem seized by acute Islamophobia. First President Jacques Chirac perceived a threat to French identity posed by schoolgirls decked in head scarves. Then Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain spoke of outlawing the veil from public view. Now, after calling for a nationwide burka ban, Christian Democrats in the Netherlands have won the most seats in Parliament.
Most Western European nations are tightening their immigration laws while fretting over free speech in cartoons, plays and print. All the while, right-wing xenophobic parties are on the rise across the Continent. One year after riots set French housing projects ablaze, Europe appears to be shifting sharply to the right.
Just below the news media's radar screens, however, a countertrend is under way, which promises a kinder, gentler and potentially more successful approach to Europe's Muslim quandary.
While right-leaning ministers at the national level are talking tough to Muslims, progressive officials and private citizens at local levels are spearheading innovative programs to aid Muslim integration.
In Berlin, Ren?e Abul-Ella runs Al- Dar (The Home), an organization dedicated to helping Arabic women and their families integrate into German society. Al-Dar provides language, typing and computer training to Muslim women and counsels them on issues they cannot discuss in most contexts. Abul- Ella told me that nearly every family she knows has had some incidence of domestic violence.
Al-Dar works with fathers, too, some of whom have prevented their daughters from attending school. "We don't make the people who come to us feel ashamed about their culture," Abul-Ella said. "Instead, we show them that what is appropriate in one country may not be appropriate in another.
At the other end of Germany, Michael Blume is at work in Stuttgart pushing through a series of radical policy shifts in the state of Baden-W?rttemberg. Blume had not even finished his doctoral thesis on comparative religion when he received a call from the state's minister-president. It was just after the 9/11 attacks, and the minister-president was repeatedly being asked about his government's policies toward Muslims, who comprise 5.7 percent of Baden- W?rttemberg's population, and whose numbers are swelling fast. He had no policies, and there was no one on his staff to handle it.
Having heard about Blume's provocative research, the minister-president invited the young Ph.D. student to tea, and in the course of their discussion asked Blume to join his staff. Since then, Blume has initiated a pilot program in 12 public schools serving large concentrations of Muslim children. With the schoolteachers' and parents' consent, these schools now offer classes in Islam as well as the usual courses on Christianity. Religion has always been taught in German schools, but the study of Islam had never been part of the curriculum. The aim is to encourage a sense of Muslim inclusion within German society and discourage the all-too- common development of a parallel society existing outside the mainstream.
Further west, the French city of Strasbourg is also experimenting with new integration strategies. Here sits the European Parliament, with its ornate marble stairways and plush voting chambers, and the Council of Europe, devoted to ensuring human rights and social cohesion throughout the continent. But travel just a few minutes to the other side of Strasbourg, to the neighborhood of Neuhof, and you will see dilapidated housing, shattered windows and crumbled streets.
Drugs have plagued the neighborhood, but the city is attempting to revitalize it, not just by constructing decent housing. Outside the Ecole Maternelle Reuss, scores of immigrant children play tag with all the boisterous energy you would find in any playground. Behind the playground, a more serious course is under way inside a prefab concrete two-room structure where the mothers are learning French. Many came from Bangladesh, Turkey, Morocco or Algeria with little education. All say they are grateful to learn the language, and their courses are paid for by the city if they cannot afford to pay themselves.
These are just a few of Europe's smart steps toward Muslim integration. There are many others. In Berlin, the Aziz Nesin Europa elementary school is completely bilingual. Half of all courses are taught in German; the other half in Turkish. Most policy makers insist that only by mastering European languages can immigrants and their children prosper. The Aziz Nesin school is proving that early bilingual education enhances cognitive ability, fosters curiosity about other cultures, and may even improve academic performance. And the school is not just for Turkish children. It is mixed between Turkish-German and German kids, fostering bonds between cultures at a very early age.
Tough talk and burka bans may win votes at the national level, but municipal governments cannot afford to let their Muslim residents remain closed off from the community and open to extremism. If any of the progressive local projects succeed, they will eventually be adopted nationwide. Europe's leaders have no other choice. If they keep fiddling with the politics of exclusion, Paris will again be burning.
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**I'd agree that integration is taking place. The question is, who is integrating who?**
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=Y3UZA1RZGTHK5QFIQMFSFGGAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/news/2006/11/29/nsharia29.xml
Sharia law is spreading as authority wanes
By Joshua Rozenberg, Legal Editor
Last Updated: 2:03am GMT 29/11/2006
Islamic sharia law is gaining an increasing foothold in parts of Britain, a report claims.
Sharia, derived from several sources including the Koran, is applied to varying degrees in predominantly Muslim countries but it has no binding status in Britain.
The Koran is one of the sources that Sharia derives from
However, the BBC Radio 4 programme Law in Action produced evidence yesterday that it was being used by some Muslims as an alternative to English criminal law. Aydarus Yusuf, 29, a youth worker from Somalia, recalled a stabbing case that was decided by an unofficial Somali "court" sitting in Woolwich, south-east London.
Mr Yusuf said a group of Somali youths were arrested on suspicion of stabbing another Somali teenager. The victim's family told the police it would be settled out of court and the suspects were released on bail.
A hearing was convened and elders ordered the assailants to compensate their victim. "All their uncles and their fathers were there," said Mr Yusuf. "So they all put something towards that and apologised for the wrongdoing."
Although Scotland Yard had no information about that case yesterday, a spokesman said it was common for the police not to proceed with assault cases if the victims decided not to press charges.
advertisementHowever, the spokesman said cases of domestic violence, including rape, might go to trial regardless of the victim's wishes.
Mr Yusuf told the programme he felt more bound by the traditional law of his birth than by the laws of his adopted country. "Us Somalis, wherever we are in the world, we have our own law," he said. "It's not sharia, it's not religious ? it's just a cultural thing."
Sharia's great strength was the effectiveness of its penalties, he said. Those who appeared before religious courts would avoid re-offending so as not to bring shame on their families.
Some lawyers welcomed the advance of what has become known as "legal pluralism".
Dr Prakash Shah, a senior lecturer in law at Queen Mary University of London, said such tribunals "could be more effective than the formal legal system".
In his book Islam in Britain, Patrick Sookhdeo, director of the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity, says there is an "alternative parallel unofficial legal system" that operates in the Muslim community on a voluntary basis.
"Sharia courts now operate in most larger cities, with different sectarian and ethnic groups operating their own courts that cater to their specific needs according to their traditions," he says. These are based on sharia councils, set up in Britain to help Muslims solve family and personal problems.
Sharia councils may grant divorces under religious law to a woman whose husband refuses to complete a civil divorce by declaring his marriage over. There is evidence that these councils are evolving into courts of arbitration.
Faizul Aqtab Siddiqi, a barrister and principal of Hijaz College Islamic University, near Nuneaton, Warwicks, said this type of court had advantages for Muslims. "It operates on a low budget, it operates on very small timescales and the process and the laws of evidence are far more lenient and it's less awesome an environment than the English courts," he said.
Mr Siddiqi predicted that there would be a formal network of Muslim courts within a decade.
"I was speaking to a police officer who said we no longer have the bobby on the beat who will give somebody a slap on the wrist.
"So I think there is a case to be made under which the elders sit together and reprimand people, trying to get them to change."
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Indeed very interesting. I think the British have larger problem than they'd like to admit. Again, in Britain the Pakistani muslims are very strong, but they're not found anywhere else in such larger numbers. Still, sharia courts will not have any importance upon British civil law ever and I trust the British stubborness to never allow this.
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Well, I have my fingers crossed. Just keep in mind that much of the middle east was once very christian in it's makeup. Now it's the heart of the muslim world.
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The British have centuries of expierence with their Empire of how to handle foreign folks. In the commonwealth the British have learned a lot how to appease its population and still keep it under their strict rule. Sure, their Empire is no more, but in Iraq and Afghanistan the British have clearly shown just how well they get along with other cultures and still be a hard bite.
I have a profound trust, especially in the Brits (in opposition to the French), that they know what they're doing and can handle some sharia-wannabe-courts.
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Very interesting.
The current real time application of the magnificent tradition of Anglo-Saxon common law, which originated in UK and of which US is an off-shoot, has serious problems and the response here of the Somalis is not without its logic.
Unfortunately, the rise of a parallel legal system based along these lines has some profound dangers to it. Yet it is precisely because of its merit, that nipping it in the bud could accentuate divisions as well. Does tragedy lie ahead?
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Quijote,
I don't have the faith in the Brits you have. I fear political correctness will be the death of them.
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Today I had an interesting talk with a Turk. I asked him about the differences between Sunnites, Shiites and Wahabits. He himself is a Sunnite which also has four distinctions. He isn't someone who would be very talkative, but his comments were very much on point. For him the Shiites are simply wrong when claiming Ali to be descendant of Mohammed. And when I asked about Wahabits he just said; "Saudis are Wahabits, aren't they? Well, they're just utterly stupid." I didn't ask him any further because he started to get upset about Shiites and Wahabits. Once more a personal affirmation for how different the muslims here in Europe are.
I fear political correctness will be the death of them.
I fear you don't know the Brits, because 'political correctness' and 'britishness' are two extremes.
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Quijote,
Muslims have been fighting over their theological divisions since the death of Muhammad. That doesn't mean they can't unite against the dhimmi and kufar under the banner of jihad. If I recall correctly Khomeni started out as a Sufi, which tends to be the hippy-dippy, new-agey version of islam. Having said that, there have been sufi jihads in history as well.
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Having said that, there have been sufi jihads in history as well.
Which ones?
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**This covers a bit of it.**
December 6, 2002, 9:55 a.m.
A Wahhabism Problem
Misleading historical negationism.
By Andrew G. Bostom
n his recent writings on NRO (here and here) and elsewhere, and in his new book, The Two Faces of Islam, Stephen Schwartz appropriately draws the attention of policymakers and the public at large to the dangerous, unsavory interactions between the Saudi royal family, Wahhabi Islam, and international terrorism. Unfortunately, however, Mr. Schwartz identifies Wahhabism as the source of all Islamic terror and injustice. He does not mention that the twin institutionalized scourges of Islam at the crux of the violent, nearly 1,400-year relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims — i.e., jihad and dhimmitude — were already well-elaborated by the 8th century, 1,000 years before Wahhabism arose in the 18th century.
Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406), perhaps the preeminent Islamic scholar in history, summarized five centuries of prior Muslim jurisprudence with regard to the uniquely Islamic institution of jihad:
In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the [Muslim] mission and [the obligation to] convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force... The other religious groups did not have a universal mission, and the holy war was not a religious duty for them, save only for purposes of defense... Islam is under obligation to gain power over other nations.
In "The Laws of Islamic Governance," al-Mawardi (d. 1058), a renowned jurist of Baghdad, examined the regulations pertaining to the lands and infidel (i.e., non-Muslim) populations subjugated by jihad. This is the origin of the system of dhimmitude. The native infidel population had to recognize Islamic ownership of their land, submit to Islamic law, and accept payment of the poll tax (jizya). Some of the more salient features of dhimmitude include: the prohibition of arms for the vanquished non-Muslims (dhimmis), and of church bells; restrictions concerning the building and restoration of churches and synagogues; inequality between Muslims and non-Muslims with regard to taxes and penal law; the refusal of dhimmi testimony by Muslim courts; a requirement that Jews and Christians wear special clothes; and their overall humiliation and abasement. Furthermore, dhimmis, including those living under "enlightened" Turkish and Bosnian Muslim domain, suffered, at periods, from slavery (i.e., harem slavery for women, and the devshirme child levy for Balkan Christian males), abductions, deportations, and massacres. During the modern era, between 1894-96, the Ottoman Turks massacred over 200,000 (dhimmi) Christian Armenians, followed by the first formal genocide of the 20th century, in 1915, at which time they slaughtered an additional 600,000 to 800,000 Armenians. Contemporary accounts from European diplomats confirm that these brutal massacres were perpetrated in the context of a formal jihad against the Armenians who had attempted to throw off the yoke of dhimmitude by seeking equal rights and autonomy. For example, the Chief Dragoman (Turkish-speaking interpreter) of the British embassy reported regarding the 1894-96 massacres:
…[The perpetrators] are guided in their general action by the prescriptions of the Sheri [Sharia] Law. That law prescribes that if the "rayah" [dhimmi] Christian attempts, by having recourse to foreign powers, to overstep the limits of privileges allowed them by their Mussulman [Muslim] masters, and free themselves from their bondage, their lives and property are to be forfeited, and are at the mercy of the Mussulmans. To the Turkish mind the Armenians had tried to overstep those limits by appealing to foreign powers, especially England. They therefore considered it their religious duty and a righteous thing to destroy and seize the lives and properties of the Armenians…"
The scholar Bat Yeor confirms this reasoning, noting that the Armenian quest for reforms invalidated their "legal status," which involved a "contract" (i.e., with their Muslim Turkish rulers). This
…breach…restored to the umma [the Muslim community] its initial right to kill the subjugated minority [the dhimmis], [and] seize their property…
Schwartz extols the ecumenism and tolerance of Sufi Islam. Sufism was derivative from Hinduism, in addition to strains of mysticism borrowed from Judaism and Christianity. However, Sufi Islam as practiced in the Indian subcontinent was quite intolerant of Hinduism, as documented by the Indian scholar K. S. Lal (The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India [1992], p. 237):
The Muslim Mushaikh [Sufi spiritual leaders] were as keen on conversions as the Ulama, and contrary to general belief, in place of being kind to the Hindus as saints would, they too wished the Hindus to be accorded a second class citizenship if they were not converted. Only one instance, that of Shaikh Abdul Quddus Gangoh, need be cited because he belonged to the Chishtia Silsila considered to be the most tolerant of all Sufi groups. He wrote letters to the Sultan Sikandar Lodi, Babur, and Humayun to re-invigorate the Shariat [Sharia] and reduce the Hindus to payers of land tax and jizya. To Babur he wrote, "Extend utmost patronage and protection to theologians and mystics... that they should be maintained and subsidized by the state... No non-Muslim should be given any office or employment in the Diwan of Islam... Furthermore, in conformity with the principles of the Shariat they should be subjected to all types of indignities and humiliations. They should be made to pay the jizya...They should be disallowed from donning the dress of the Muslims and should be forced to keep their Kufr [infidelity] concealed and not to perform the ceremonies of their Kufr openly and freely… They should not be allowed to consider themselves the equal to the Muslims."
Sadly, both Schwartz's recent NRO contributions and his book reflect two persistent currents widespread among the Muslim intelligentsia: historical negationism and silent hypocrisy. To these two trends, Schwartz adds a third: misleading reductionism. If we would only neutralize "Wahhabism," he claims — presumably by some combination of military means, promoting the "true Islam," and perhaps having the world switch to a hydrogen-based fuel economy — all Islamic terror and injustice will disappear. But the reality is that, for nearly 1,400 years, across three continents, from Portugal to India, non-Muslims have experienced the horrors of the institutionalized jihad war ideology and its ugly corollary institution, dhimmitude. Post hoc, internal disputes among Muslim scholars, including Sufi scholars, about the theological "correctness" of "lesser" versus "greater" jihad are meaningless to the millions of non-Muslim victims of countless jihad wars: Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, and Buddhists. What is important is that after well over a millennium, Muslims finally acknowledge the suffering of these millions of victims of jihad wars, as well as the oppressive governance imposed on non-Muslims by the laws of dhimmitude. Thus far this brutal history has been completely denied, and even celebrated, as "enlightened" conquest and rule.
Moreover, it is critical to understand that there were never organized, mass progressive efforts within Islam comparable to the philo-Semitic movement by European Christendom that lead to the emancipation of European Jewry, or the European Judeo-Christian movement that led to the abolition of slavery. Indeed, it took European military (primarily naval) power to force Islamic governments, including the Ottoman Empire, to end slavery at the end of the 19th century. Beginning in the mid-19th century, treaties imposed by the European powers on the weakened Ottoman Empire also included provisions for the so-called Tanzimat reforms. These reforms were designed to end the discriminatory laws of dhimmitude for Christians and Jews living under Muslim Ottoman governance. European consuls endeavored to maintain compliance with at least two cardinal principles: respect for the life and property of non-Muslims, and the right for Christians and Jews to provide evidence in Islamic courts when a Muslim was a party. Unfortunately, the effort to end the belief in Muslim superiority over "infidels," and to establish equal rights, failed. Indeed, throughout the Ottoman Empire, particularly within the Balkans, emancipation of the dhimmi peoples provoked violent, bloody responses against any "infidels" daring to claim equality with local Muslims. Enforced abrogation of the laws of dhimmitude required the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire. This finally happened only after the Balkan Wars of independence, and in the European Mandate period after World War I.
Today, the Muslim intelligentsia focus almost exclusively on debatable "human-rights violations" in the disputed territories of Gaza, Judea, and Samaria, while ignoring the blatant and indisputable atrocities committed by Muslims against non-Muslims throughout the world. The most egregious examples include: the genocidal slaughter, starvation, and enslavement of south Sudanese Christians and animists by the Islamist Khartoum government forces; the mass murder of Indonesian Christians by Muslim jihadists, with minimal preventive intervention by the official Muslim Indonesian government; the imposition of sharia-sanctioned discrimination and punishments, including mutilation, against non-Muslims in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan, and northern Nigeria; the brutal murders of Copts during pogroms by the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists, as well as official Egyptian government-mandated social and political discrimination against the Copts; murderous terrorist attacks and the return of such heinous institutions as bonded labor, and punishment for "blasphemy," directed against Pakistani Christians by Pakistani Muslims.
There is a dire need for some courageous, meaningful movement within Islam that would completely renounce both dhimmitude and jihad against non-Muslims, openly acknowledging the horrific devastation they have wrought for nearly 1,400 years. Nothing short of an Islamic Reformation and Enlightenment may be required, to acknowledge non-Muslims as fully equal human beings, and not "infidels" or "dhimmis." It is absurd and disingenuous for Schwartz to pretend that Islam's problems are centered solely within Wahhabism.
— Andrew Bostom, M.D., an associate professor of Medicine at Brown University Medical School, has spent the past 15 months researching the history of jihad and dhimmitude. He has written for NRO previously, coauthor of a piece with dhimmi historian Bat Yeor.
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http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-bostom120602.asp
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**Another response to Ralph Peters.**
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=25774
The Reality of Eurabia
By Aaron Hanscom
FrontPageMagazine.com | December 1, 2006
More than a few thinkers have posited that, should demographic trends hold, Europe is destined to become a cultural and political province of the Arab/Muslim world -- “Eurabia,” as the author Bat Ye’or has famously dubbed it. But Ralph Peters will have none of it. Eurabia, he seems to think, is just a myth perpetuated by Islamophobic Cassandras.
In a recent New York Post op-ed, the columnist does acknowledge the possibility of impending doom on the continent but with a twist. While there’s “no chance” Europe will be taken over by Muslims, Peters believes that “Europe’s Muslims are living on borrowed time.” And why should those young Muslim Swedes who don the popular “2030—then we take over” T-shirts believe him? Peters explains: “From the French expulsion of the Huguenots right down to the last century's massive ethnic cleansings, Europeans have never been shy about showing ‘foreigners and subversives’ the door.”
Not the least noteworthy of Peter’s errors is the assumption that modern Europeans are as ready to fight for the continuation of their way of life as the burgeoning Muslim populations in their midst are prepared to destroy it. Unwilling to admit the inconvenient truth that Europeans have grown lethargic due to cradle-to-grave state welfare and utopian pacifism, Peters is forced to seek out dates far back in history—such as 1492 when Spain ended 800 years of Muslim rule on the Iberian Peninsula—to try and make his point that the inherent brutality of Europeans will ensure their survival. A more sober analysis of the troubling situation in Europe comes from America Alone author Mark Steyn in a response to the Peters’ column:
As I’ve said innumerable times, the native European population is split three ways: some will leave, as the Dutch (and certain French) are already doing; some will shrug and go along with the Islamization of the continent, as the ever-accelerating number of conversions suggests; and so the ones left to embrace Fascism will be a minority of an aging population. It will be bloody and messy, as I write in America Alone, but it will not alter the final outcome. If you don’t breed, you can’t influence the future. And furthermore a disinclination to breed is a good sign you don’t care much about the future. That’s why the Spaniards, who fought a brutal bloody civil war for their country in the 1930s, folded instantly after those Madrid bombings. When you’ve demographically checked out of the future, why fight for it?
It’s worth taking a closer look at Spain to assess the validity of Peters’ Eurabia-as-myth thesis. With the average Spanish woman having 1.32 children and the average Muslim unwilling to renounce the increasingly loud calls for the Islamic reconquest of Spain, the country’s future is in great jeopardy. Indeed, the process of repossessing land that is viewed as illegitimately occupied is well underway.
In his book The Jihad in Spain: The obsession to reconquer Al-Ándalus, Spanish politician Gustavo de Arístegui describes the policy of the “foot in the threshold,” which is a clearly designed strategy to reconquer land that was once under the domain of Islam. Patience and determination are the prerequisites for success: Before the reconquest of the entire country can take place, it is first necessary to conquer neighborhoods, towns, cities, provinces and regions—in that order.
Arístegui details how Muslims in Spain are buying land, houses and businesses in the cities most emblematic of Al-Ándalus. Captured Al-Qaeda leader Mustafa Setmariam, who lived in Granada for two years, has verified Arístegui’s claim. He described in detail to the Spanish National Police the activities of the Moroccan radical organization Justice and Charity in the Spanish town of Tecla: “They have a plan of obtaining Spanish nationality, buying houses and goods and having children. Many of them are married to Spaniards and all of it is done with the goal of conquering the town in any possible way.”
This goal is also evident in Albaicín, a prominent neighborhood in Granada. Interviews with Muslims living in Albaicín reveal a group all but convinced that Spain will belong to them in the future. In recent interviews conducted by the Spanish television station Telecinco, many Muslims stated that because they had been able to conquer Albaicín they would now be able to conquer Granada and then all of Al-Ándalus. An Imam of a mosque in Albaicín who was profiled on a National Public Radio program last year predicted that all of historic Al-Ándalus would become Muslim again. As he explained, “Islam is resurgent from within the land.”
Meanwhile, less than 20 percent of Spaniards declare themselves to be practicing Roman Catholics; that’s down from 98 percent fifty years ago. So while mosques and madrasahs are popping up across Spain, the Catholic Church is being forced to close monasteries and convents. It doesn’t help matters that Spain’s Socialist government saw no problem in canceling the reintroduction of compulsory religious classes while later financing the publication of a textbook for Muslim first graders to learn about Islam. Spain’s leading archbishop, Cardinal Antonio María Rouco, is understandably concerned about the future: “Some people wish to place us in the year 711," he has said. "It seems as if we are meant to wipe ourselves out of history."
Indeed, it is the self-destruction of European civilization that should most concern doubters like Ralph Peters. Instead, in his article he writes that he has “no difficulty imagining a scenario in which U.S. Navy ships are at anchor and U.S. Marines have gone ashore at Brest, Bremerhaven or Bari to guarantee the safe evacuation of Europe’s Muslims.” Were that ever to occur, however, the US would most likely be rescuing Muslims from the hands of other Muslims, intent on imposing their unforgiving brand of Islamic Shari’a law. A report issued last month claims that Islamic Sharia law is gaining an increasing foothold in parts of Britain. In his book Islam in Britain, Patrick Sookhdeo, director of the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity, writes, “Sharia courts now operate in larger cities, with different sectarian and ethnic groups operating their own courts that cater to their specific needs according to their traditions.”
Far from being irrational, the “pop prophets” that Peters criticizes are using reasoned observation when they warn of the coming of Eurabia. In her book The Force of Reason, the late Oriana Fallaci, perhaps the bravest of the “prophets” Peters scorns, described Albaicín in the following way:
[The Brothers in Prophet Mohammed] moved to Granada where they settled in the historical quarter of Albaicin, and this is the point. Because despite the naïve anti-clericalism spit up during the Holy Week Procession, those Brothers in Prophet Mohammed were not naïve at all. In Granada they created a situation similar to the one which at the time was engulfing Beirut and which now is engulfing so many cities of France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, etcetera. Ergo, today the quarter of Albaicin is in every sense a State within a State. An Islamic feud, an apostatic domain, which lives with its own laws. Its own institutions, its own hospital, its own cemeteries. Its own abattoir, its own newspaper: La Hora del Islam. Its own publishers, its own libraries, its own schools. Schools that exclusively teach how to memorize the Koran. And its own shops, of course. Its own markets, its own banks. Even its own currency, given that in Albaicin all is bought and sold with the gold and silver coins struck on the model of the dirham in use at the time of Boabdil Lord of old Granada. (Money coined in Calle San Gregorio that for the usual reasons of «public order» the Spanish Ministry of Finance pretends to know nothing about).
Fallaci understood something that Peters seems unwilling to contemplate. "Eurabia" is not merely a possibility for the future. In some ways, indeed, it may already have arrived.
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Islam and the Problem of Rationality
The American Thinker | December 01, 2006 | Patrick Poole
In the run-up to Pope Benedict's current visit to Turkey, TIME Magazine opened its pages to Tariq Ramadan, Europe's favorite Islamist and perhaps the most influential Muslim figure in the West today. Ramadan chided the Pope and Europe for ignoring the positive contributions of Islam to the development of rational thought in the West.
Writing in response to Benedict's now-famous Regensburg speech (which prompted outrage in the Muslim world) and the Pope's first visit to a predominantly Muslim country, Ramadan's article, "And He's Still in the Dark", offers a back-handed compliment to Benedict's attempt at dialogue with Muslims, warning that the Pope's efforts actually threatens the West, and directs Muslims in the West to their point of apologetic attack:
As I have written before, this profoundly European Pope is inviting the people of his continent to become aware of the central, inescapable character of Christianity within their identity, or risk losing it. That may be a legitimate goal, but Benedict's narrow definition of European identity is deeply troubling and potentially dangerous. This is what Muslims must respond to: the tendency of Westerners to ignore the critical role that Muslims played in the development of Western thought. Those who "forget" the decisive contributions of rationalist Muslim thinkers like al-Farabi (10th century), Avicenna (11th century), Averroes (12th century), al-Ghazali (12th century), Ash-Shatibi (13th century) and Ibn Khaldun (14th century) are reconstructing a Europe that is not only an illusion but also self-deceptive about its past.
But in fact, it is Ramadan who is operating under an illusion and is self-deceived about Islam's supposed prominent role in shaping the rationalist tradition of Christendom. As an article ("The Pope and the Prophet") by Robert Reilly in the current issue of Crisis Magazine ably notes, Western Christianity's rational tradition developed in the Medieval era precisely as a result of the outright rejection of the irrationalism inherent in Islamic philosophy, not the embracing of it.
Any hope of the development of a rational tradition within Islam was dashed with the rise of Caliph Ja'afar al-Mutawakkil (847-861). Prior to al-Mutawakkil's rule, a rationalist philosophy had begun to develop under the Mu'tazilite school of interpretation, which advocated for a created, as opposed to an uncreated, Quran. But Caliph al-Mutawakkil condemned the Mu'tazilite school, which opened the door for the rival Ash'arite interpretation, founded by al-Ash'ari (d. 935), to eventually take preeminence within Sunni Islam - a position of dominance it has retained over the centuries. By 1200 A.D., any hope of recovering a semblance of rational Islamic philosophy was seemingly forever lost.
It was the work of the very Islamic philosophers that Ramadan cites that prompted Europe Christian thinkers to make a break with their Muslim counterparts. Historically, the views of the Ash'arite school were rooted in the theological dogma of "volunteerism", which holds that rather than created objects having inherent existence, Allah constantly recreates each atom anew at every moment according to his arbitrary will. This, of course, undermines the basis for what Westerners understand as natural laws.
From volunteerism sprung another irrational idea amongst Muslim thinkers - occasionalism - that further prevented the development of rationalism within the Islamic tradition. Occasionalism is the belief that in the natural world, what is perceived as cause and effect between objects is mere appearance, not reality. Instead, only Allah truly acts with real effect; all seemingly natural observances of causation are merely manifestations of Allah's habits, for Allah simultaneously creates both the cause and the effect according to his arbitrary will. This view is best expressed by one of the Islamic philosophers cited by Ramadan, al-Ghazali (1059-1111), in his book, The Incoherence of the Philosophers:
The connection between what is habitually believed to be the cause and what is habitually believed to be the effect is not necessary for us. But in the case of two things, neither of which is the other and where neither the affirmation nor the negation of the one entails the affirmation or the negation of the other, the existence or non-existence of the one does not necessitate the existence or non-existence of the other; for example, the quenching of thirst and drinking, satiety and eating, burning and contact with fire, light and the rising of the sun, death and decapitation.... On the contrary, it is within God's power to create satiety without eating, death without decapitation, to prolong life after decapitation and so on in the case of all concomitant things. (quoted in "Causation in Islamic Thought" from the Dictionary of the History of Ideas)
Using al-Ghazali's own analogy of decapitation, according to the occasionalist view, when a sword struck off a person's head causing death, it only merely appeared that the sword was the cause of the decapitation: the real and primary cause of the decapitation and the death was the will of Allah, not the sword. The sword, in fact, played no part at all. Had Allah willed it so, the sword could have cut through the neck without decapitation or death. To believe otherwise, Islamic occasionalism held, would be a limitation of the omnipotence of Allah. As with volunteerism, the consequences of occasionalism had catastrophic effects for the development of empirical science in the Islamic world.
Occasionalism was rigorously opposed by the two great philosophers of Medieval Europe, Albert Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, along with the great medieval Jewish philosopher, Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), who lived and wrote in Muslim-occupied Spain. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) also addressed the threat posed by Islamic occasionalism by affirming the ancient Christian truth that God created the universe ex nihilo (from nothing). This prevented the volunteerist view from gaining ground in the West, and thus occasionalism, merely by stating that God had actually created, and that objects in the natural world created by God have an actual inherent existence and do not need to be constantly recreated.
Other problems developed within Islamic philosophy which prevented the rise of rationalism. Perhaps the most notable following volunteerism and occasionalism is the "dual-truth" theory advanced by Averroes, who with Avicenna is considered one of the two most important Islamic philosophers in history.
In an attempt to navigate between faith and rationality, Averroes argued that what may be true in the realm of religion may be contrary to what is true in nature. Thus, the Quranic maxim, "there is no compulsion in religion," (Sura 2:256) can be entirely true from a religious sense; but in the real world and in the course of jihad, compulsion may not only be required, but entirely justifiable. The dual-truth theory was vigorously rejected by Aquinas, and eventually both Roman Catholic, and later, Protestant theology acknowledged both the authoritative nature and the necessary agreement between special revelation (Scripture) and general revelation (nature).
Aquinas also refuted Averroes on his denial of the personal element to the human soul in the classic treatise, De Unitate Intellectus Contra Averroistas. The implication of Averroes' belief was an ultimate denial of the individual and the rejection of personal immortality - an inseparable component to historic Christian theology.
Neoplatonism and its associated ideas were also commonplace to Islamic philosophy, particularly the recurrent eternal cycles of history (Ibn Khaldun), which stands opposed to the linear view of history that is integral to the development of modern science. But science and rationalism were not the only victims of the problems of Islamic philosophy: free will and ethics also became targets. Islamic occasionalism led to fatalism and ethical positivism, as articulated in recent centuries by Muhammad as-Sanusi (b. 1780):
It is impossible for the Most High to determine an act as obligatory or forbidden... for the sake of any objective, since all acts are equal in that they are his creation and production. Therefore the specification of certain acts as obligatory and others as forbidden or with any other determination takes place by his pure choice, which has no cause. Intelligibility has no place at all in it rather it can be known only by revealed-law shar?a. (quoted in Joseph Kenny, Islamic Monotheism: Principles and Consequences)
Again, this is standard Ash'arite doctrine, which is the predominant view of Sunni Islam, not an obscure element within Muslim thought. Because there are no objective standards of good or evil, even with Allah, the only resort to maintain ethics is shari'a; and as-Sanusi makes clear, there is no role at all for rationality in ethics. Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328), the favorite medieval theologian of Wahhabis and jihadists alike, contended that there was no role or ability for man to understand Allah; man's sole response was to obey shari'a, making any use of rational faculties irrelevant (see Reilly's article on this point). This is why the reinstitution of shari'a is so critical to the current Islamist project - there are no other alternatives except a complete reconstruction of Islam itself.
Tariq Ramadan is well aware of these problems within Islamic philosophy, as evidenced by his vocal appeals to reopen the "doors of ijtihad" to allow for new interpretations of Islam to escape the irrationalism of the principal ancient schools of belief. But instead of acknowledging those problems and ignoring the insurmountable philosophical obstacles posed by his own Islamic tradition, Ramadan shamelessly attempts to claim for Islamic traditions a commonality with the fruits of Western rationality.
Rather than focus on differences, the true dialogue between the Pope and Islam, and between secularized societies and Islamic ones, should emphasize our common, universal values: mutual respect of human rights, basic freedoms, rule of law and democracy.
The reality is that none of these values - human rights, basic freedoms, rule of law, or democracy - actually exists anywhere in the Muslim world (even in "secular" Turkey) to the degree that they are practiced in or are recognizable to the West, nor are they identifiable in the 1,400 years of Islamic history. (In subsequent essays I hope to show that Islamic theology itself negates these very concepts, making any rapprochement between Islam and Western values impossible without abandoning the most basic tenets of Islam itself.)
As Robert Reilly notes in his article, this acknowledgement of the intrinsic problems of Islamic theology and its incompatibility with Western values is not just a view exclusive to just infidels, but honest Muslim intellectuals as well. He quotes the Iranian thinker Abdolkarim Soroush, who admits:
Some of the understandings that exist in our society today of the Imams . . . or even of the concept of God are not particularly compatible with an accountable state and do not allow society to grow and develop in the modern-day sense.
If Tariq Ramadan is really serious about a dialogue between Islam and the West and cultivating Western values amongst Muslims (and there is some reason to believe that he isn't serious), it must not only be open, but honest as well. Relying on an invented and purely mythological Islamic history and ignoring the problems of Islamic philosophy are not the place for Muslims to initiate the dialogue. Pope Benedict's starting point is clearly much better.
Patrick Poole is an occasional contributor to American Thinker. He maintains a blog, Existential Space.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/12/islam_and_the_problem_of_ratio.html
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**As usual, VDH is right on the money.**
http://www.opinionjournal.com/federation/feature/?id=110009312
Losing the Enlightenment
A civilization that has lost confidence in itself cannot confront the Islamists.
BY VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
Wednesday, November 29, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
Our current crisis is not yet a catastrophe, but a real loss of confidence of the spirit. The hard-won effort of the Western Enlightenment of some 2,500 years that, along with Judeo-Christian benevolence, is the foundation of our material progress, common decency, and scientific excellence, is at risk in this new millennium.
But our newest foes of Reason are not the enraged Athenian democrats who tried and executed Socrates. And they are not the Christian zealots of the medieval church who persecuted philosophers of heliocentricity. Nor are they Nazis who burned books and turned Western science against its own to murder millions en masse.
No, the culprits are now more often us. In the most affluent, and leisured age in the history of Western civilization--never more powerful in its military reach, never more prosperous in our material bounty--we have become complacent, and then scared of the most recent face of barbarism from the primordial extremists of the Middle East.
What would a beleaguered Socrates, a Galileo, a Descartes, or Locke believe, for example, of the moral paralysis in Europe? Was all their bold and courageous thinking--won at such a great personal cost--to allow their successors a cheap surrender to religious fanaticism and the megaphones of state-sponsored fascism?
Just imagine in our present year, 2006: plan an opera in today's Germany, and then shut it down. Again, this surrender was not done last month by the Nazis, the Communists, or kings, but by the producers themselves in simple fear of Islamic fanatics who objected to purported bad taste. Or write a novel deemed unflattering to the Prophet Mohammed. That is what did Salman Rushdie did, and for his daring, he faced years of solitude, ostracism, and death threats--and in the heart of Europe no less. Or compose a documentary film, as did the often obnoxious Theo Van Gogh, and you may well have your throat cut in "liberal" Holland. Or better yet, sketch a simple cartoon in postmodern Denmark of legendary easy tolerance, and then go into hiding to save yourself from the gruesome fate of a Van Gogh. Or quote an ancient treatise, as did Pope Benedict, and then learn that all of Christendom may come under assault, and even the magnificent stones of the Vatican may offer no refuge--although their costumed Swiss Guard would prove a better bulwark than the European police. Or write a book critical of Islam, and then go into hiding in fear of your life, as did French philosophy teacher Robert Redeker.
And we need not only speak of threats to free speech, but also the tangible rewards from a terrified West to the agents of such repression. Note the recent honorary degree given to former Iranian President, Mohammad Khatami, whose regime has killed and silenced so many, and who himself is under investigation by the Argentine government for his role in sponsoring Hezbollah killers to murder dozens of Jewish innocents in Buenos Aires.
There are many lessons to be drawn from these examples, besides that they represent a good cross-section of European society in Denmark, England, France, Germany, Holland, and Italy. In almost every case, the lack of public support for the threatened artist or intellectual or author was purportedly based either on his supposed lack of sensitivity, or of artistic excellence.
Van Gogh, it was said, was obnoxious, his films sometimes puerile. The academic Pope was perhaps woefully ignorant of public relations in the politically correct age. Were not the cartoons in Denmark amateurish and unnecessary? Rushdie was an overrated novelist, whose chickens of trashing the West he sought refuge in finally came home to roost. The latest Hans Neuenfels's adaptation of Mozart's "Idomeneo" was apparently as silly as it was cheaply sensationalist. And perhaps Robert Redeker need not have questioned the morality of Islam and its Prophet.
But isn't that fact precisely the point? It is easy to defend artists when they produce works of genius that do not challenge popular sensibilities--Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" or Montesquieu's "Spirit of the Laws"--but not so when an artist offends with neither the taste of a Michelangelo nor the talent of a Dante. Yes, Pope Benedict is old and scholastic; he lacks both the charisma and tact of the late Pope John Paul II, who surely would not have turned for elucidation to the rigidity of Byzantine scholarship. But isn't that why we must come to the present Pope's defense--if for no reason other than because he has the courage to speak his convictions when others might not?
Note also the constant subtext in this new self-censorship of our supposedly liberal age: the fear of radical Islam and its gruesome methods of beheadings, suicide bombings, improvised explosive devices, barbaric fatwas, riotous youth, petrodollar-acquired nuclear weapons, oil boycotts and price hikes, and fist-shaking mobs, as the seventh century is compressed into the twenty-first.
In contrast, almost daily in Europe, "brave" artists caricature Christians and Americans with impunity. And we know what explains the radical difference in attitudes to such freewheeling and "candid" expression--indeed, that hypocrisy of false bravado, of silence before fascists and slander before liberals is both the truth we are silent about, and the lie we promulgate.
There is, in fact, a long list of reasons, among them most surely the assurance that cruel critics of things Western rant without being killed. Such cowards puff out their chests when trashing an ill Oriana Fallaci or a comatose Ariel Sharon or beleaguered George W. Bush in the most demonic of tones, but they prove sunken and sullen when threatened by a thuggish Dr. Zawahiri or a grand mufti of some obscure mosque.
Second, almost every genre of artistic and intellectual expression has come under assault: music, satire, the novel, films, academic exegesis, and education. Somehow Europeans have ever so insidiously given up the promise of the Enlightenment that welcomed free thought of all kinds, the more provocative the better.
Yes, the present generation of Europeans really is heretical, made up of traitors of a sort. They themselves, not just their consensual governments, or the now-demonized American Patriot Act and Guantanamo detention center, or some invader across the Mediterranean, have endangered their centuries-won freedoms of expression--and out of worries over oil, or appearing as illiberal apostates of the new secular religion of multiculturalism, or another London or Madrid bombing. We can understand why outnumbered Venetians surrendered Cyprus to the Ottomans, and were summarily executed, or perhaps why the 16th-century French did not show up at Lepanto, but why this vacillation of present-day Europeans to defend the promise of the West, who are protected by statute and have not experienced war or hunger?
Third, examine why all these incidents took place in Europe, where more and more the state guarantees the good life even into dotage, where the here and now has become a finite world for soulless bodies, where armies devolve into topics of caricature, and children distract from sterile adults' ever-increasing appetites. So, it was logical that Europe most readily of Westerners would abandon the artist and give up the renegade in fear of religious extremists who brilliantly threatened not destruction, but interruption of the good life, or the mere charge of illiberality. Never was the Enlightenment sold out so cheaply.
We on this side of Atlantic also are showing different symptoms of this same Western malaise, but more likely through heated rhetoric than complacent indifference--given the events of September 11 that galvanized many, while disappointing liberals that past appeasement had created monsters rather than mere confused, if not dangerous rivals. The war on terror has turned out to be the torn scab that has exposed a deep wound beneath, of an endemic Western self-loathing--and near mania that our own superior education and material wealth have not eliminated altogether the need for force and coercion.
Consider some of the recent rabid outbursts by once sober, old-guard politicians of the Democratic Party. West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller insists that the world would be better off if Saddam were still running Iraq. Congressman John Murtha, of Pennsylvania, rushed to announce that our Marines were guilty of killing Iraqis in "cold blood" before they were tried. Illinois Senator Richard Durbin has compared our interrogators at Guantanamo Bay to Nazis and mass murderers, while Massachusetts Senator John Kerry said our soldiers have "terrorized" Iraqi women and children. The same John Kerry warned young Americans to study or they would end up in the volunteer army in Iraq--even though today's soldiers have higher educational levels than does the general public. But furor as well as fear, not logic, drives us in West to seek blame among the humane among us rather than the savagery of our enemies.
Billionaire leftist philanthropists seem to be confused about the nature of American society and politics that gave them everything they so sumptuously enjoy. Ted Turner of CNN fame and fortune said he resented President Bush asking Americans, after 9/11, to take sides in our war against Islamic terrorists. George Soros claimed that President Bush had improved on Nazi propaganda methods. Dreaming of killing an elected president, not a mass-murdering Osama Bin Laden, is a new national pastime. That is the theme of both a recent docudrama film and an Alfred Knopf book.
What are the proximate causes here in America that send liberal criticism over the edge into pathological hysteria? Is it only that George Bush is a singular polarizing figure of Christian and Texan demeanor? Or is the current left-wing savagery also a legacy of the tribal 1960s, when out-of-power protestors felt that expressions of speaking bluntly, even crudely, were at least preferable to "artificial" cultural restraint?
Or does the anger stem from the fact, that until last week, the Democrats had not elected congressional majorities in 12 years, and they've occupied the White House in only eight of the last 26 years. The left's current unruliness seems a way of scapegoating others for a more elemental frustration--that without scandal or an unpopular war they cannot so easily gain a national majority based on European-based beliefs. More entitlements, higher taxes to pay for them, gay marriage, de facto quotas in affirmative action, open borders, abortion on demand, and radical secularism--these liberal issues, at least for the moment, still don't tend to resonate with most Americans and so must be masked by opponents' scandals or overshadowed by a controversial war.
Just as the Europeans are stunned that their heaven on earth has left them weak and afraid, so too millions of Americans on the Left are angry that their own promised moral utopia is not so welcomed by the supposedly less educated and bright among them. But still, what drives Westerners, here and in Europe, to demand that we must be perfect rather than merely good, and to lament that if we are not perfect we are then abjectly bad--and always to be so unable to define and then defend their civilization against its most elemental enemies?
There has of course always been a utopian strain in both Western thought from the time of Plato's "Republic" and the practice of state socialism. But the technological explosion of the last 20 years has made life so long and so good, that many now believe our mastery of nature must extend to human nature as well. A society that can call anywhere in the world on a cell phone, must just as easily end war, poverty, or unhappiness, as if these pathologies are strictly materially caused, not impoverishments of the soul, and thus can be materially treated.
Second, education must now be, like our machines, ever more ambitious, teaching us not merely facts of the past, science of the future, and the tools to question, and discover truth, but rather a particular, a right way of thinking, as money and learning are pledged to change human nature itself. In such a world, mere ignorance has replaced evil as our challenge, and thus the bad can at last be taught away rather than confronted and destroyed.
Third, there has always been a cynical strain as well, as one can read in Petronius's "Satyricon" or Voltaire's "Candide." But our loss of faith in ourselves is now more nihilistic than sarcastic or skeptical, once the restraints of family, religion, popular culture, and public shame disappear. Ever more insulated by our material things from danger, we lack all appreciation of the eternal thin veneer of civilization.
We especially ignore among us those who work each day to keep nature and the darker angels of our own nature at bay. This new obtuseness revolves around a certain mocking by elites of why we have what we have. Instead of appreciating that millions get up at 5 a.m., work at rote jobs, and live proverbial lives of quiet desperation, we tend to laugh at the schlock of Wal-Mart, not admire its amazing ability to bring the veneer of real material prosperity to the poor.
We can praise the architect for our necessary bridge, but demonize the franchise that sold fast and safe food to the harried workers who built it. We hear about a necessary hearing aid, but despise the art of the glossy advertisement that gives the information to purchase it. And we think the soldier funny in his desert camouflage and Kevlar, a loser who drew poorly in the American lottery and so ended up in Iraq--our most privileged never acknowledging that such men with guns are the only bulwark between us and the present day forces of the Dark Ages with their Kalashnikovs and suicide belts.
So we are on dangerous ground. History gives evidence of no civilization that survived long as purely secular and without a god, that put its trust in reason alone, and believed human nature was subject to radical improvement given enough capital and learning invested in the endeavor. The failure of our elites to amplify their traditions they received, and to believe them to be not merely different but far better than the alternatives, is also a symptom of crisis in all societies of the past, whether Demosthenes' Athens, late imperial Rome, 18th-century France, or Western Europe of the 1920s. Nothing is worse that an elite that demands egalitarianism for others but ensures privilege for itself. And rarely, we know, are civilization's suicides a result of the influence of too many of the poor rather than of the wealthy.
But can I end on an optimistic note in tonight's tribute to Winston Churchill, who endured more and was more alone than we of the present age? After the horror of September 11, we in our sleep were also given a jolt of sorts, presented with enemies from the Dark Ages, the Islamic fascists who were our near exact opposites, who hated the Western tradition, and, more importantly, were honest and without apology in conveying that hatred of our liberal tolerance and forbearance. They arose not from anything we did or any Western animosity that might have led to real grievances, but from self-acknowledged weakness, self-induced failure, and, of course, those perennial engines of war, age-old envy and lost honor--always amplified and instructed by dissident Western intellectuals whose unhappiness with their own culture proved a feast for the scavenging Al-Qaedists.
By past definitions of relative power, al-Qaeda and its epigones were weak and could not defeat the West militarily. But their genius was knowing of our own self-loathing, of our inability to determine their evil from our good, of our mistaken belief that Islamists were confused about, rather than intent to destroy, the West, and most of all, of our own terror that we might lose, if even for a brief moment, the enjoyment of our good life to defeat the terrorists. In learning what the Islamists are, many of us, and for the first time, are also learning what we are not. And in fighting these fascists, we are to learn whether our freedom can prove stronger than their suicide belts and improvised explosive devices.
So we have been given a reprieve of sorts with this war, to regroup; and, in our enemies, to see our own past failings and present challenges; and to rediscover our strengths and remember our origins. We can relearn that we are not fighting for George Bush or Wal-Mart alone, but also for the very notion of the Enlightenment--and, yes, in the Christian sense for the good souls of those among us who have forgotten all that as they censor cartoons and compare American soldiers to Nazis.
So let me quote Winston Churchill of old about the gift of our present ordeal:
"These are not dark days: these are great days--the greatest days our country has ever lived."
Never more true than today.
Mr. Hanson is a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution, a distinguished fellow of Hillsdale College, and author most recently of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War." This article is adapted form a speech he delivered at the Claremont Institute's annual dinner in honor Sir Winston Churchill.
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From another forum
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December 5, 2006
Belgium: Muslims Stone Jewish Children
A story I found in Expatica News caught my attention. It described how Jewish children, who were visiting Beringen, in Limburg province, Belgium, were set upon by "local residents of foreign origins." I tried to think which people "of foreign origins" would want to attack a group of Jewish schoolchildren.
Being of a suspicious mind, I Googled, and eventually found more information, care of Islam in Europe, backed up by reports in Dutch from HLN.be and Eyes and in English from JTA News. Their attackers were, unsurprisingly, Muslim youths of Turkish origin. What is bizarre is why Expatica bothered to report the ethnicity of the victims, but not their assailants.
About 60 Jewish children had gone to stay at a youth hostel on an excursion on Thursday, November 30. They had come to visit the Beringen mines, which include the Vlaams mijnmuseum, a mine which had closed in 1992 but has been preserved, with a museum. Other former coal mines, such as the Charbonnages de Beringen (pictured) which closed in 1989 lie deserted in the area, as historical sites of interest.
The Jewish children had come from Antwerp, and were aged from 12 to 15 years, expecting a stay which would be an educational holiday. The children were Hasidic, and wore their traditional black attire and hats, with long sideburns. As soon as they reached the youth hostel where they were to stay, they came under attack from 10 Turkish Muslims, who pelted them with stones. Once the children had gone into the hostel, the Muslims continued to throw stones and concrete blocks, smashing windows of the building. The Muslims were shouting anti-semitic abuse. The children had to shelter from the missiles and flying glass in an inner corridor of the hostel.
The leaders of the school group called the police, but even after the arrival of police, the youths continues to throw stones and shout insults for about an hour. Once the aggression had subsided, the Muslims continued to stay in the vicinity of the hostel. As a result, police decided that they could not guarantee the schoolboys' safety, and escorted them to the highway for them to return to Antwerp.
Four adults and six youths under the age of 18 were arrested, and at the weekend they were brought before a district court. All were sentenced to 30 hours' of community service, and were ordered to pay compensation to the youth hostel. The commune (district authority) issued an apology to the schoolchildren. It may press charges once all information on the case is clarified.
Already, charges have been filed by centre against racism and for equal chances. Claude Marinower, a Jewish member of parliament, said he will "raise the issue with the ministers of justice and the interior."
Forum, an Antwerp-based Jewish group demanded "drastic measures to guarantee the safety of all youth throughout Belgium. A failure to do so would endanger our democracy."
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There's an article in the Spiegel about Jewish pupils being hunted down by both, Nazis and Muslims in Germany. I grind my teeth about news like that. I'm furious. I'm waiting for it to appear in the english version. Maybe I have to change my standpoint...
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Quijote:
I'd like to see that when it comes out.
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Here it is:
SPIEGEL ONLINE - December 8, 2006, 06:32 PM
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,453402,00.html
ANTI-SEMITISM AT GERMAN SCHOOLS
Insults Against Jews on the Rise
By Björn Hengst and Jan Friedmann
Right-wing adolescents and young Muslims are displaying levels of anti-Semitism that were long considered unthinkable in Germany. At many German schools, the word "Jew" is becoming an insult again. German politicians don't seem to know how to respond.
The Jewish High School in Berlin's central Mitte district resembles a high-security ward. Those who want to access the imposing old building on Grosse Hamburger Strasse have to pass through a meticulous security check. The building is surrounded by a fence several meters high and video cameras register every move. Policemen stand guard in front of the building.
"We're no ghetto," school director Barbara Wittig clarifies. "We offer those children protection who have to fear discrimination at other schools," she adds. And such cases have increased dramatically in the past two years. "I always though Jews were integrated into German society," says Wittig. "I would never have thought it possible for anti-Semitism to express itself as virulently as it has recently."
As of this week, Wittig's students have included two girls who previously attended the public, non-confessional Lina-Morgenstern High School in Berlin's Kreuzberg neighborhood. Their woes attracted considerable public attention. For months, one of the two girls, who is 14 years old, suffered anti-Semitic insults from adolescents with an Arab background. They also beat her and spat on her. Walking to school became like running the gauntlet for her. Her tormentors would hide in wait for her and chase her through the streets. In the end the girl had to be given police protection on her way to school.
Anti-Semitism on the rise
These events in Kreuzberg represent an especially drastic example, but they're not the exception. Berlin's state parliament lists 62 reported cases under the category "(right-wing) extremism" in its study "Indicators of Violence at Berlin's Schools, 2004/2005." That's a steep increase in comparison with the previous year, when only 39 cases were registered. The category "(right-wing) extremism" includes "anti-Semitic, racist / xenophobic and right-wing extremist remarks" by children and adolescents, in addition to remarks that "incite racial hatred or express fundamentalist / Islamist fundamentalist views."
One high school student in Berlin's Steglitz-Zehlendorf district said in class: "All Jews must be gassed." Students in the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district locked another student inside the chemistry lab and said: "Now we'll turn on the gas." A non-German child at an elementary school in Treptow-Köpenick insulted his teacher by calling her a "Jew," a "witch" and a "sea cow." When a teaching aid in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg tried to settle an argument between students, he was told: "Piss off, Jew!"
And the surge of anti-Semitism seems to be growing. In November, Berlin's public authorities had already registered more cases of anti-Semitism than during the entire previous year. A recent study by the European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) also criticized cases of anti-Semitism, racism and right-wing extremism at German schools.
Right-wing extremists take up Nazi slogans
This week, in the town of Grimmen in West Pomerania, right-wing adolescents mobilized against an exhibition on Anne Frank, disparaging her diary as a forgery. In October, several adolescents in Parey, a town in Germany's Saxony-Anhalt region, forced their 16-year-old classmate to walk across the school yard wearing a large sign during lunch break. The sign read: "In this town I'm the biggest swine / Because of the Jewish friends of mine." It's a phrase from the Nazi era, used to humiliate people with Jewish friends.
A teacher intervened, took the sign away and called the police. The students responsible for the incident, who are aged between 14 and 16, are under criminal investigation. The charges are incitement of racial hatred, coercion and defamation. One of the students is also accused of assault.
Berlin's Jewish community has already issued warnings about "a new dimension of anti-Semitism." Jewish children increasingly face the hatred of Muslim adolescents in addition to aggression from right-wing extremists. The Jewish community advises parents to send their children to Jewish schools in case of conflicts, pointing out that there they will at least be safe.
Skullcaps hidden out of fear
But the protected zone ends outside the school walls. A school class from the Jewish High School was exposed to massive anti-Semitic insults by another Berlin school class while riding the subway. Religious Jewish adolescents hide their skullcaps under a hat whenever they venture onto the street.
The incidents prompted Peter Trapp, a member of the Christian Democrat Party (CDU) in Berlin's parliament, to submit a formal query: Trapp wants to know how many such incidents have occurred recently. He also wants to know how many of those incidents can be attributed to "the right-wing extremist camp" and how many can be traced to adolescents "of non-German origin." Trapp has yet to receive a reply -- indeed, the CDU complains that it is taking unusually long.
And yet school director Wittig insists that politicians are very much making an effort to respond to the problem. It's just that she rarely gets through to them with her projects and appeals, she says. Wittig also complains that many Arab adolescents are so pig-headed it's hard to get through to them. "And the teachers allow their students to tell Jewish jokes," she adds.
"Jew" -- a popular insult
"Students are increasingly using the word 'Jew' in a pejorative sense. It's climbed up a long way on the ranking of popular insults," reports Peter Wagenknecht from the Kreuzberg-based project "Educational Building Blocks Against Anti-Semitism." Wagenknecht and his associates educate adolescents about anti-Semitism in specially organized workshops and classroom talks. The project still receives financial support from the German government.
But not everyone who uses the word "Jew" as an insult is automatically an anti-Semite, Wagenknecht says. Many people just act thoughtlessly, in his view. "Many students no longer have a sense of how charged the word 'Jew' is when it's used as an insult. They just want to break a taboo." Wagenknecht points out that some students similarly use the word "victim" as an insult intended to stigmatize someone as weak.
When he started to work with young people during the early 1990s, anti-Semitism wasn't a problem, Wagenknecht explains. He traces much of today's anti-Semitism to two sources: Students from Arab or Turkish families have been politicized by the conflict in the Middle East such that their "anti-Israeli" attitude sometimes crosses over into open anti-Semitism. German adolescents with extreme right-wing tendencies, on the other hand, have often been exposed to right-wing ideology and hence dispose of a correspondingly distorted knowledge about Jews and Jewish culture.
Wagenknecht worries that more and more Jewish students are too afraid to openly stand up to their background: "They don't want to present themselves as Jewish. In such cases, the class often doesn't know about their background, and the teachers keep mum." Wagenknecht adds that the students are often acting on advice from their parents, who want to spare their children conflicts and exposure to aggressive behavior.
School director Wittig says: "We're now the only school in Berlin where Jewish children can stand up to their identity. Elsewhere, most of them have to adapt to the majority."
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A new documentary is coming out on this topic. "Ever Again". http://www.hollywood.com/movies/detail/id/3490832
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Hide Post
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/061231/8denmark.htm
Culture Clash in Denmark
The close-knit Danes find their liberal ideals tested by a growing, alienated Muslim population
By Thomas Omestad
Posted Sunday, December 31, 2006
COPENHAGEN–This, a recent study concluded, is the happiest country on Earth. With Denmark's cradle-to-grave social welfare, highly regarded healthcare and education, prosperity, and small-country ethnic cohesion, the land that gave us Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales also excels at producing a good life in reality.
And yet, over the past year or so, the contented Danes have been forced to face both their greatest international crisis since World War II and the rise here of separate Muslim communities where many are unable or unwilling to enter the Danish mainstream. The international uproar over publication of 12 prophet Muhammad cartoons in a Danish newspaper triggered violence that left at least 139 people dead, Danish diplomatic outposts torched in Lebanon and Syria, and Danish goods boycotted. Suddenly, Denmark felt dangerously exposed–a country of just 5.4 million people facing the wrath of an Islamic world exceeding a billion people.
The violence outside Denmark ultimately quieted down, though the country's security-threat level remains elevated. At home, the bitter disputes over the cartoons have highlighted an unhealed–and potentially hazardous–rift between the dominant Danes and the Muslim immigrants living in what are being called "parallel societies." Ask Danes and Muslim immigrants alike, and many will say there is something a bit rotten in the Kingdom of Denmark.
The legacy of the cartoon uproar is not all bad. Private efforts at building bridges between Muslims and non-Muslim Danes have accelerated. Secular Danish Muslims condemned the violence overseas and appealed for dialogue. That, say Danes, has encouraged a greater appreciation of the differences–political and otherwise-among Muslims here.
"Time bomb." Still, the cartoon crisis itself did not prompt any basic rethinking of how to integrate Muslims more deeply into Danish society. And the country is now preoccupied with things Muslim. Attention is riveted on any controversy linked to its Muslim residents–so-called honor killings of female relatives, street crime, terrorism probes, unemployment, forced marriages, use of veils, and so on. Denmark is pondering the specter of ever more young Muslims–unemployed and undereducated–finding their identities not as coolly secularized Danes but as fervent or even radical Muslims. "We are sitting on a time bomb," warns Eva Smith, a law professor and racism expert at the University of Copenhagen.
The ferment in Denmark is especially striking because of its progressive traditions, but it also reflects the broader tremors rattling western Europe, where tangled issues of national identity, culture, religion, and security arising from Muslim immigration have bolted to the fore. Old, ethnically grounded societies are being roiled by the presence of Muslim newcomers–or at least by the reaction to them. "There's kind of an unspoken assumption that they're not really Dutch, not really Danes, and so forth," reasons one senior U.S. official who follows the phenomenon. "Europeans are uncomfortable with Islam, and they see it as an alien body in their midst. ... Europe's got a huge problem, and they're just getting their minds around it now."
The cartoon controversy, along with frustration over the slow pace of Muslim integration, is leading some Danes to question their prized image as an open and tolerant nation. This, after all, is a people who under Nazi occupation spirited nearly all of their 7,000-some Jews to safety in Sweden. In the 1960s and 1970s, Denmark sought to offer one of Europe's most liberal immigration policies. Many came as guest workers and were later joined by family members and asylum seekers. Even so, Denmark remained remarkably mono-ethnic; only about 4 percent of the population is Muslim. Coming mostly from Arab states, Iran, and Pakistan, the immigrants have clustered in a few neighborhoods in Copenhagen and other cities.
Yet as the preoccupation with Muslims has deepened in recent years, Denmark has swung in the opposite direction, erecting perhaps Europe's most restrictive set of rules. A rightist, anti-immigration party sits not in government but at its side; the ruling coalition relies on its votes to govern. The mood toward immigrants has, with exceptions, soured. The share of Danes who view Islam as incompatible with democracy has shot up. And Muslims are often portrayed as troublemakers who sup at the table of Danish generosity–all the while rejecting what makes Denmark special. "They create ghettos. ... There are a lot of criminals," says Henrik Pedersen, a Dane who runs a Copenhagen trucking business. "Muslim people should be in a Muslim country."
More sophisticated immigration skeptics worry that "Danish values" are under threat by politicized Muslims who resist assimilation. These values include democracy, far-reaching personal freedoms, equality between the sexes, and the trust born of unusually strong social bonds. One government minister frankly called the Danes a "tribe" in describing their group identity. "The whole quality of Danish life stands or falls with this community of values," adds Ralf Pittelkow, a newspaper columnist and coauthor of a bestselling book on the Islamist challenge. "Danes need to feel reassured that the main features of Danish society remain unchanged. ... We are at a crunch point."
Some Danes argue that evading the impact of immigration is impossible. "Some people want to keep Denmark as a kind of museum," says Helle Stenum, the chairwoman of MixEurope, a pro-integration group. "We are a rich, safe society that is scared." Adds Copenhagen schoolteacher Maia Lisa Petersen as she rushes to a subway station, "These other cultures, other values force us to wake up. ... We can't hide anymore in this nice, perfect little Scandinavian world."
Nor can the Muslim immigrants easily hide in enclaves that insulate them from the culture that surrounds them. They say that the political and media atmosphere has turned against them–particularly since the cartoon crisis. "It totally changed my view of Danish society," says Mustafa Kucukyild, 26, who came from Turkey as a 1-year-old boy. "The spotlight is on Muslims. I'm much more cautious about what I say." As the kebab and pizza restaurant where he works fills up with blond-haired college students, he is talking about his estrangement from the Danes. Kucukyild is asked if, having spent nearly all his life here, he feels Danish. "Definitely, no," he replies. "No matter how much you want to be, you always have this black hair," he says, grabbing at a lock of his own. "I will always be a foreigner."
The alienation is pervasive, and it goes well beyond the discomfort some Muslims feel toward Denmark's permissive atmosphere. "Danish people are very hard people, very cold," claims Hassan, a middle-aged, Iraqi-born businessman in the Copenhagen district of Norrebro, where Danes often mix with immigrants. Hassan says that his children are adapting better than he is, though his 15-year-old daughter has faced problems in class–a teacher has chided her about her head scarf. Other immigrants report occasional hassles of other sorts: snide comments or being bumped on buses, being barred from nightclubs or followed by department store security officers–or the "what are you doing here?" stares in coffee shops. (Some Danes counter that Muslims are being overly sensitive, playing up an image of victimhood.)
A young doctor of Palestinian descent–fluent in Danish as well as Arabic and English and a fan of the country's famed pastries–describes tensions that have ensued from being overtly Muslim. A radiologist colleague turned to Suher Othman one day and announced, "I don't like scarves." One patient refused to be treated by her; another resisted until a fellow patient intervened. Othman, 27, says immigrants are routinely seen as "a burden." Still, she adds, "this is the only society I've ever known. They have to face that we're going to stay here."
Stay indeed, but many without jobs. In a country with an aging workforce, negligible unemployment overall–and even labor shortages–joblessness among non-European immigrants is shockingly high: Barely half work. Employers say that discrimination is not to blame but rather language barriers, scant job experience, and lack of motivation to work. Jobless benefits rival the wages of entry-level positions. Companies even cite immigrants' inability to understand the ironic Danish sense of humor.
The depth of alienation between ethnic Danes and the Muslim newcomers is, in one respect, surprising. Denmark has long been one of Europe's bastions of tolerance and openness. Part of the Danish mentality is an outsize will to do good in the world. The country ranks fifth in the share of income donated to overseas development aid. Especially in the past, newcomers to Denmark received generous benefits, including three years of free instruction in Danish–a perk that continues. It is an impressive record that might encourage some Danes to feel that nothing more is required of them–perhaps even create some blind spots. "We are so sure we are good," says Smith of the University of Copenhagen.
Close-knit. The closeness of the Danes, though, leads Muslims to conclude that the Danish club is a hard one to join. Othman has the education and language skills to fit in. Yet, she says, "it is very difficult to break into this culture." Other Muslims contend that too many Danes lack respect for them and their cultures. "They have a picture of the Muslim immigrant as a parasite," says Mahmoud Alsaadi, who runs a sweets shop in Norrebro and has worked as a carpenter. Alsaadi, 37, is a Palestinian from Lebanon who arrived here in 1990. "We appreciate a lot about Denmark, but we feel that they could also learn from us"–particularly about close-knit families, he says. "I don't want to impose my ways on them, and I don't want them to impose their ways on me."
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The sheer religiosity–and signs of devotion are said to be growing–of some Danish Muslims is itself a source of worry in Denmark. The Danes generally take a relaxed approach to their leading religion, Lutheranism. A mere 3 percent of Danes attend church at least weekly, the lowest such rate in a recent survey of 21 countries. Secularism is celebrated, and religion, in a typical Danish view, is a strictly personal affair that should be kept out of the public eye as much as possible. Some Danes are offended by demonstrative manifestations of Islam, including the veil. Concerns also arise from the growing number of Muslim parents who are opting to send their children to private, religiously oriented schools. The government's culture minister has publicly commented on the inferior status of a "medieval Muslim culture." Says Tim Jensen, a religious historian at the University of Southern Denmark, "There is a sense of threat by an antimodern, medieval force [Islam]." Pressures from immigration, globalization, and the European Union all "make Danes feel more insecure. We are constantly being asked what you are, constantly being confronted with people who behave differently."
Against this backdrop of clashing cultures came the Muhammad cartoons on Sept. 30, 2005, in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. The impetus for publication, says the paper's cultural editor, Flemming Rose, was to stir a debate about self-censorship after he learned that illustrators refused to work on a children's book about Muhammad for fear of offending Muslims. Muslims regard any depiction of Muhammad as sacrilegious. Danish Muslims protested the publication, albeit peacefully, contending that the cartoons mocked their prophet. One cartoon showed a turban in the shape of a lit bomb.
Their complaints met with a stiff response from the paper, which saw the issue as a fundamental test of freedom of speech. The paper eventually expressed regret for any offense caused-but not for publishing the caricatures. Rose, who has received death threats and was working from Washington until recently, says that demands for observing such taboos amount to "asking for my submission." He adds, "You should not allow special treatment of religion."
"Smearing." Islamic activists also pressured the Danish government to rein in the paper. There, as well, they got nowhere. Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he could do nothing that might erode freedom of speech. He also rejected a request to meet with Muslim-country ambassadors who complained about a "smearing campaign" against Islam and Muslims by Danish politicians and media.
Lacking clout in Denmark, some of the local imams decided to export the controversy. Two missions were dispatched to the Middle East to publicize the cartoons and the Danish government's uncompromising response. Some Arab ambassadors in Copenhagen also played up the controversy. Within weeks, violence flared on the streets of the Middle East, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Indonesia–some of it orchestrated by national governments and Islamists, according to both Danish and U.S. officials. "The Danes didn't know what hit them," says a senior U.S. official. The Bush administration at first reacted cautiously, hoping not to do anything that might align itself with religiously offensive drawings and further harm its own standing in the Islamic world. Then the shaken Danes complained to their American allies that they were not getting enough public support. They got it.
Though Denmark itself saw no violence, the images of deadly mobs burning Danish flags deepened the sense of threat from Islamists, wherever they may be. But the crisis did not lead to any rethinking of the government's strategy for integrating Muslims. "We have to agree on some fundamental values," says Rikke Hvilshoj, the integration minister. "Denmark is not just a piece of geography where we live side by side." In power since 2001, the current government has tightened the immigration rules that affect many Muslims, slicing arrivals in the categories of family reunification and asylum from more than 17,000 that year to fewer than 5,000 in 2005. A foreign spouse must now be at least 24 before legally coming to live in Denmark; benefits for newcomers were reduced, and collateral was required for their support. At the same time, overall immigration, especially from within Europe, is rising.
The government's moves, at the least, have sought to give Danes a breather from rapid immigration. After years of policy neglect, Hvilshoj says, "the number [was] too high. ... we needed to get control of immigration." The government is stepping up efforts to reduce immigrant unemployment and emphasizing success stories, sending "role models" into Muslim communities.
The governing coalition has a persuasive reason not to soften its stand on immigration: It needs the tacit backing of the right-wing Danish People's Party to stay in power. With 13 percent of the seats in parliament, it appears to wield more influence than any other such party in Europe. Critics accuse it of outright xenophobia, a charge it rejects. But Danes know where the group stands in the culture wars. Its party chairwoman has called Islamic leaders here the "Trojan horse in Denmark," and another lawmaker's website referred to Muslims as "cancer tumors." The party aims to keep Denmark the way it is. "We don't want to change our ways. They [immigrants] have to adapt their ways," says Soren Espersen, a prominent People's Party lawmaker. Espersen likens political Islamists to communists and Nazis and says they aim to limit Denmark's democracy. "There are people now who want to tell us what we can laugh at," he says. "I don't want to respect Islam. Why should I respect the prophet Muhammad?"
There is political combat within Denmark's Muslim communities as well. Ahmed Abu Laban, an imam who leads Copenhagen's Muslim Faith Society, tells U.S. News that he helped organize the foreign missions publicizing the Muhammad cartoons in order to counter "an anti-Islamic campaign." Says Laban, "We have been demonized for six, seven, eight years–then the cartoons." Laban adds, "The Danes don't like religion, and they don't like Islam. ... I see nothing bad in this country except the spirit itself." Many Danes now loathe Laban as a virtual traitor for having promoted the controversy overseas.
Bodyguards. Laban dismisses a recent political initiative by moderates to form the group Democratic Muslims, calling it a "fake approach." The leader of the new group, a secular Muslim lawmaker named Naser Khader, needs 24-hour-a-day bodyguards. His effort is popular with Danes, but hard-line Muslims like Laban call Khader a "shield" for the Danes and vilify him. The group makes it "very difficult to say, 'You Muslims,'" says Khader. "We are democratic without any reservations. ... We are Danes first and Muslims second." Naser says that the Islamists consider secular Muslims like himself as their principal enemy. "They are seen as more dangerous than Christians and Jews," he says. Still, only 14 percent of Danish Muslims back his group, according to a recent poll.
Meanwhile, Danes are edgy about growing Muslim radicalism–a development that is not quantified but is almost universally suspected. The primary threat to Denmark may be external: Its sturdy support for the Bush administration, including troop commitments to Iraq and Afghanistan, along with the cartoon case has raised its profile in the Muslim world–in a most unwelcome way. A poll of Egyptians rated Denmark as the second-most-hostile country after Israel. Officials have tallied some 200 threats against Denmark, including one from al Qaeda during the cartoon crisis.
Yet there are worries about what is happening inside Denmark as well. Two terrorism cases are headed for trial. One involves arrests in October 2005 of alleged militants in a Copenhagen suburb said to be connected to a Sarajevo-based plot against European forces in Bosnia or elsewhere. The other case emerged from police raids into an immigrant neighborhood near the city of Odense last September. Investigators uncovered supplies of ammonium nitrate, metal shavings, and the explosive TATP. Five of the nine arrested are still jailed for allegedly planning attacks that authorities say would have been "the most severe ever in Denmark."
Security agents enjoy wide latitude for spying on suspected extremists, and they employ that most Danish of practices: the "preventive visit." According to Hans Jorgen Bonnichsen, the former head of operations at the Danish Security Intelligence Service, the "knock on the door" sometimes leads to tense conversations, but more often they are "friendly." "It's a way to tell him, 'Be careful. We know what you're doing now,'" Bonnichsen says. The visits can serve to neutralize a suspect because his cohorts then cannot know whether he has turned informer. The Intelligence Service has more than doubled its size since 9/11, adding Arabic speakers and analysts.
Still, Danes talk as though it is only a matter of time before they are hit, and the alienation Muslims feel from unemployment, discrimination, and being portrayed as radicals may be feeding the danger. The government's philosophy is "always pushing these immigrants away," argues Fatih Alev, a moderate imam. "The government says it wants integration, but what it does is anti-integration." Adds Jensen, the religious historian, "They are constantly put under suspicion of being fifth-column people." He asks, "Are we contributing to the production of terrorists?" For the happy but wary Danes, it is a question as essential as it is grating.
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Rome, 10 Jan. (AKI) - Italian conservative MP Daniela Santanche has received death threats over her opposition to the Muslim veil, Italy's leading paper Corriere della Sera reported in a front-page article on Wednesday. Santanche reportedly received a letter in Arabic and English at her lower house office Tuesday night with pictures of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, murdered in 2004 by an Islamist fundamentalist for his movie Submission, which denounced violence on women in Muslim countries, and Dutch MP Hirsi Ali, the film's author, who has also received death threats.
"This is the hour of my liberation...your time has come," the note said. The message also carried a paragraph from the BBC World website on 23 October, describing Santanche as an MP who "has said the veil is not required by the Koran" and has been described as "an infidel by an imam."
Santanche, a leading member of the right-wing National Alliance Party in Italy's opposition, has been under police escort since late October last year, when her criticism of the Muslim veil led to threats which were considered serious by security officials, including those of Muslim cleric Aby Shwaima, the imam of the mosque of Segrate in Milan and one of the founders of Italy's largest Muslim group UCOII, who slammed her as an "infidel" during a television show on Sky Italia on 20 October.
Shwaima's outrage was sparked by two television interviews given by Santanche in which she had said that the Muslim veil "is not a religious symbol and it is not required by the Koran" and that "it is not a symbol of freedom."
http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level_English.php?cat=Politics&loid=8.0.374 993235&par
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maHSOB2RFm4&mode=related&search
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http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1990069,00.html
Dublin imam takes on the fanatics
A Muslim cleric is taking a stand against those who preach Islamic extremism in Ireland and think that the cult of the suicide bomber is noble
Henry McDonald
Sunday January 14, 2007
The Observer
Beneath a basketball net in a freezing sports hall, a Muslim cleric is waging war on Islamic extremism.
Imam Shaheed Satardien is taking a stand against those Muslims in Ireland whom he claims are too sympathetic to Osama bin Laden and the cult of the suicide bomber. At Friday prayers in the sports hall in north-west Dublin, the South African-born former anti-apartheid activist warns his multinational congregation against blaming other religions and the West in general for all Muslims' ills.
Cast out by the majority Islamic community in Dublin for his outspokenness, the 50-year-old preacher says he has received death threats. 'I am standing firm in my beliefs,' Satardien says. 'The truth is more important than being popular or living a quiet life. Extremism has infected Islam in Ireland. It's time to get back to the spiritual aspect of my religion and stop it being used as a political weapon.'
The imam from Cape Town fled his native country following death threats, he says, from Islamic extremists in South Africa. His younger brother, Ibrahim, was shot dead in 1998 following a row with Islamic radicals in the city. When Satardien was told he would be next, he travelled to Ireland, the birthplace of his maternal grandmother, and pleaded for asylum.
'I never, ever, expected that Muslims would come under the influence of extremists in Ireland when I arrived here with my family. So I was shocked to find support for Osama bin Laden, to discover the presence of the Muslim Brotherhood and even al-Qaeda here in Dublin.'
Satardien fell out with the main Dublin mosque at Clonskeagh, singling out the influence of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian born sheikh who has spoken openly in support of suicide bombers and issued fatwas on gays.
According to Satardien, al-Qaradawi's European headquarters is based at the Clonskeagh mosque in south Dublin. Its own website refers to al-Qaradawi and to Clonskeagh as the headquarters of the sheikh's European Council for Fatwa and Research. The authorities at the Clonskeagh mosque and at the South Circular Road mosque, the other main establishment in Dublin, angrily deny the extremist accusation. They point out that these mosques attract thousands of mainstream Muslims to their doors each week.
Satardien, however, is adamant that extremist Wahhabi sects have infiltrated the republic's 40,000-strong Muslim community, especially in Dublin. 'Young, impressionable Muslims in Ireland are being raised to think that suicide bombers are cool. I know for a fact that when the Americans killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi [al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq who died after an airstrike in June last year] there were prayers for him in this city. This was for a man who slaughtered other Muslims. What I am trying to do is convince the young people that such practices are un-Islamic, that there is another way,' he says.
Although his mosque is tiny, Satardien has attracted a loyal following from 20 nationalities of Muslims now living in Ireland. Haris Puskar, 19, fled from Bosnia to Ireland with his family while he was still at primary school. A victim of Serb ethnic cleansing in Banja Luka in the early 1990s, Puskar now speaks English with a Dublin accent and is an ardent Gaelic football fan.
'The imam preaches the same kind of tolerant Islam that my family grew up with back in Bosnia. He is a moderate voice against the extremists. I also like him because he preaches in English, which is the language I have grown up speaking since I came to Ireland at the age of eight,' he says.
Moshin Khan, a 35-year-old shopkeeper, originally from Lahore in Pakistan, agrees. 'I like the message this imam gives us. I don't like extremism - here, in this mosque, there is the teaching of true Islam.'
Satardien has applied to the local schools around Blanchardstown, which has the largest concentration of Muslims in the republic, to speak to students. 'I want to tell the kids from all faiths about true Islam, not the radicalised, false version they hear about in the media.'
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Muslims in police will rise up, Bakri insists
By Mike Hirst and Adam Lusher, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:02am GMT 21/01/2007
Moderate British Muslims in the police, Armed Forces and Civil Service will one day revolt against the system to "crush it from within", according to Omar Bakri Mohammed, the notorious Islamic extremist.
In claims condemned as a cynical attempt to create division, the co-founder of the extremist al-Muhajiroun group said that Britain was "digging a deep hole" for itself by allowing Muslims into the Services and Whitehall.
Speaking exclusively to The Sunday Telegraph in Lebanon, where he moved in August 2005 — at about the time it emerged the British authorities might charge him with incitement to treason — he claimed police officers, soldiers and civil servants would one day become radicalised.
"When you start to ask Muslims to join your Army and your police you are making a grave mistake. That British Muslim who joins the police today will one day read the Koran and will have an awakening," he said.
"Those moderates are one day going to be practising Muslims. Now what happens if they are British police or in the Army and they have weapons? How much information do they have about you that they will use to serve the global struggle?
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"They will revolt against the system if they have been failed by your foreign policy which is oppressive against Islam, or have been contacted by people who believe Britain is a domain of war."
In remarks almost certain to cause widespread anger among the survivors and relatives of victims, he also claimed that the world was a better place after the July 7 bombings in London. "I believe it is a better place for Islam and Muslims… but not for non-Muslims. What's happening around the world is good and positive for Islam."
The comments were condemned by moderate Muslim leaders. Ibrahim Mogra, the chairman of the Interfaith Relations Committee of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: "This is part of an attempt to create divisions both within the Muslim community and the wider society.
"On the contrary, the more a Muslim police officer becomes a practising Muslim, the more loyal he will become, the more he will realise his duty to his country and the need to contribute to its well-being."
He added: "People are entitled to their views, but we actually have our own scholars and imams, who are still in this country, not abroad, and who talk about contributing to Britain and the responsibilities that we have to it."
Bakri Mohammed came to Britain in 1985 after being expelled from Saudi Arabia. He was rapidly derided as "the Tottenham Ayatollah". His inflammatory pronouncements have included calling the September 11 terrorists the "Magnificent 19". He disbanded al-Muhajiroun in 2004. Shortly after the July 7 attacks Tony Blair announced the group would be banned as part of a series of measures against condoning or glorifying terrorism. After Bakri Mohammed left for Beirut he was banned from returning to Britain. The Government deemed his presence "no longer conducive to the public good".
In Beirut last week, a relaxed Bakri Mohammed sipped freshly-squeezed strawberry juice in an upmarket restaurant overlooking the Mediterranean. He took pleasure in hearing media reports about Abid Javaid, 41, of Thornton Heath, Surrey, a civil servant in the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, who was exposed late last year as a leading member of the extremist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), which Mr Blair had wanted to ban.
This was despite Bakri Mohammed's admission: "I left HT in 1996 and they condemn what I stand for."
Bakri Mohammed readily confirmed that he had officiated at the wedding of Pc Alexander Omar Basha, his relative by marriage.
In October, however, when the diplomatic protection officer faced controversy after being excused guard duties at the Israeli embassy, Bakri Mohammed admitted Pc Basha's views were far more moderate than his own and even complained: "If I'd have known [he was a policeman at the time of the wedding] I would never have married them. My advice to all Muslims in the police is to leave their jobs."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...21/nhate21.xml
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A remarkable poll and conversation on British TV:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=24225_Sharia_Law_and_British_Muslims&only
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A Horror Travelogue
by Srdja Trifkovic
Thousands of young Muslims, armed with clubs and sticks and shouting, “Allahu akbar!” riot and force the police to retreat. Windows are smashed; stores are looted; cars are torched. Europeans unlucky or careless enough to be trapped by the mob are viciously attacked, and some are killed.
The scene could be Mogadishu in the aftermath of Pope Benedict’s Regensburg address; or Tripoli during the Danish-cartoons fury; or Karachi, Kabul, Gaza, and countless other cities in Dar al-Islam’s heartland, on any number of occasions. Yet a year ago, such scenes were unfolding, for weeks on end, in places with such names as Clichy-sous-Bois, Argenteuil, and La Courneuve. The trouble in the banlieus finally ended, as various Muslim “community leaders” had claimed it would, only when various levels of French officialdom quietly accepted that there were de facto no-go areas within the country, mini-Islamistans run by the dominant local majority. “Mon Clichy à moi, c’est ça!” just about sums it up, on the official website of Clichy-sous-Bois, whose population is 80-percent Muslim.
In practice, this means that local groceries refrain from selling wine, and young Muslim men feel emboldened to use violence against “sluts”—women who do not follow Islamic ways. Many more French-born Arab girls wear the hijab today than did so a year ago: It is their protection against mutilation and gang rape. Failing to do so makes them fair game for both: A knife slash across the scarfless girl’s cheek from the lip to the ear is especially common and known as a “smile.”
The demand for communal self-rule is not new, and it will be made with increasing frequency in the years to come. Of some 25 million Muslims in Western Europe, the majority already consider themselves autonomous, a community justifiably opposed to the decadent host society of infidels. This demand is but the first step: It will lead to the clamoring for the adoption of sharia within segregated Muslim communities and, finally, for the imposition of sharia on the society as a whole.
Europe’s elite class is prepared for this challenge. Dutch Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner—a Christian Democrat—sees the demand as perfectly legitimate and argues that sharia could be introduced “by democratic means.” Muslims have a right to follow the commands of their religion, even if that included some “dissenting rules of behavior”: “It is a sure certainty for me: if two thirds of all Netherlanders tomorrow would want to introduce Sharia, then this possibility must exist. Could you block this legally? It would also be a scandal to say ‘this isn’t allowed’! The majority counts. That is the essence of democracy.”
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The same “essence” was reiterated in similar terms last July by Jens Orback, the Swedish Integration [sic] Minister, who declared in a radio debate, “We must be open and tolerant towards Islam and Muslims because when we become a minority, they will be so towards us.” Yes, when we become a minority; the fact that, four months later, both Orback and his Social Democratic government remain in power aptly illustrates Sweden’s political and cultural scene.
Until a generation ago, Sweden used to be one of the safest and most law-abiding countries in the world. Today, in the southern city of Malmö, the authorities are no longer able to deal with the problem of crime among Muslim immigrants, 90 percent of whom are on welfare. They make up one third of the city’s 300,000 people; at the city’s Rosengrad School, of 1,000 students, only 2 were Swedes last year. “If we park our car it will be smashed—so we have to go very often in two vehicles, one just to protect the other,” says policeman Rolf Landgren. Both vehicles are needed to escort Swedish ambulance drivers into certain neighborhoods. Robberies of all sorts increased by 50 percent in 2004 alone, with gangs of young Muslims specializing in mugging old people visiting the graves of relatives. Thomas Anderberg, head of statistics for the Malmö police, reported a doubling of “rapes by ambush” in 2004. Almost all of the increase is attributable to Muslim men raping Swedish women.
Next door in Norway and Denmark, two thirds of all men arrested for rape are “of non-western ethnic origin”—the preferred euphemism for Middle Eastern and North African Muslims—although they account for under five percent of their residents. The number of rapes in Oslo in the summer of 2006 was twice that of the previous summer. All “gang rapes” in Denmark in 2004 were committed by immigrants and “refugees.”
The victims are overwhelmingly Scandinavian women, yet only one in twenty young Muslim men say they would marry one. Their reluctance is explained by an Islamic scholar, Mufti Shahid Mehdi, who told an audience in Copenhagen that European women who do not wear a headscarf were “asking to be raped.” His view is shared by Unni Wikan, a professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo and a self-described feminist; she holds that “Norwegian women must take their share of responsibility for these rapes” because Muslim men found their manner of dress provocative: “Norwegian women must realize that we live in a multicultural society and they must adapt themselves to it.”
Swedish courts are adapting by introducing sharia principles into civil cases. An Iranian man divorcing his Iranian wife was ordered by the high court in the city of Halmestad to pay Mahr, Islamic dowry ordained by the Koran as part of the Islamic marriage contract.
In the judicial sphere, Britain has gone even further, legitimizing sharia compliance even in criminal cases. A key tenet of sharia is that non-Muslims cannot try Muslims, or even testify against them; and this has been upheld by Peter Beaumont, QC, senior circuit judge at London’s Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey. Before the trial of Abdullah el-Faisal, a preacher accused of soliciting the murder of “unbelievers,” Justice Beaumont announced that, “[f]or obvious reasons, members of the jury of the Jewish or Hindu faith should reveal themselves, even if they are married to Jewish or Hindu women, because they are not fit to arbitrate in this case.” (One can only speculate what would be the reaction if equally “obvious reasons” were invoked in an attempt to exclude Muslims from the trial of BNP Chairman Nick Griffin for “Islamophobia.”)
The legitimization of sharia has also penetrated culture—both high and popular. In the fall of 2005, British audiences enjoyed a widely acclaimed production of Tamburlaine the Great, Christopher Marlowe’s 16th-century classic. Few noticed, however, that several irreverent references to Muhammad had been deleted. An essential scene in the play, in which the Koran is burned, became the destruction of “a load of books” relating to any culture or religion. Director David Farr and Simon Reade, Old Vic’s artistic director, said that, if they had not altered the original, it “would have unnecessarily raised the hackles of a significant proportion of one of the world’s great religions.” Both agreed that, in any event, the censored version—produced partly with public funds—was better than the original, making the play more powerful and relevant.
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The British Council, another taxpayer-funded organization that sponsors cross-cultural projects, sacked one of its press officers, Harry Cummins, for publishing four articles in London’s Sunday Telegraph. British Muslims took exception to his observation that Muslims had rights to practice their religion in the United Kingdom that were not enjoyed by Christians in the Islamic world, “despite the fact that these Christians are the original inhabitants and rightful owners of almost every Muslim land.” His cardinal sin was to note that “it is the black heart of Islam, not its black face, to which millions object.” Abdul Bari, deputy secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, welcomed Cummins’ firing but expressed “dismay” that the publishing company had not taken action against the editor of the Sunday Telegraph as well.
Public funds were also used to build state-of-the-art senior housing in London’s East End. This housing is to be reserved strictly for Muslim “elders”: English and other white pensioners need not apply. Sirajul Islam, in charge of social services at the local borough of Tower Hamlets, responded to the journalists’ questions about racial and religious equality by stating that a “one size fits all” approach to public services was no longer acceptable in 21st-century Britain: “Tower Hamlets is fortunate to have a diverse mix of communities, and the council strives to ensure that its services are responsive to the differing and changing needs of its residents.”
That these and other fortunes are befalling Britain under “New Labour” is perhaps to be expected, but the revamped Tory Party hardly offers an alternative. Determined that out-Blairing Blair is the only way to regain power, it has, under David Cameron, jumped on the multiculturalist bandwagon and come out in support of retaining and expanding racial, ethnic, and sex-based quotas. Cameron’s colleague, Conservative Party Chairman Francis Maude, claims that immigration has been “fantastically good” for the United Kingdom.
Such inanities are light years away from Churchill’s warning, over a century ago, that “no stronger retrograde force exists in the world” than Islam:
Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science—the science against which it had vainly struggled—the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.
Churchill’s prescience could not envisage the possibility that the invader would find his best friends and allies at No. 10, Downing Street, at the European Community Headquarters in Brussels, and in dozens of chancelleries and palaces across the Old Continent. Their joint efforts are helping change the face of Europe. Its southern maritime frontier is as porous as that on the Rio Grande. Boats packed with thousands of migrants from Africa and Asia land somewhere along Europe’s coasts every day. Their numbers are unknown, but the cumulative effect is not in doubt: By 2050, these people will account for one third of Europe’s young residents.
In Germany, mostly Muslim immigrants already account for about one quarter of all teenagers and ten percent of the population as a whole. But mention “integration” to Evelyn Rühle, a teacher in Wedding, a predominantly Turkish suburb of Berlin, and she will murmur, “disintegration, more likely,” with a sad smile. Her students’ Muslim parents routinely demand the separation of girls and boys in sports and take their children out of biology classes. Most students speak poorer German than immigrant children did 20 years ago. Their extracurricular activities are limited to attending Koran classes, and many speak only Turkish or Arabic at home.
The growth of digital television has made a host of Turkish and Arabic-language channels available, intensifying language problems and nurturing identities that are informed more by the situation in Lebanon, Gaza, or Iraq than by the events in Paris, Berlin, or London. Millions of Muslim youths all over Europe live in a parallel universe that has very little to do with the host country, toward which they have a disdainful and hostile attitude.
The elite class responds to hostility with ever-greater inclusiveness. Giuseppe Pisanu, Italy’s former minister of the interior, who is responsible for controlling the country’s borders, declared three years ago that the high fatality rate of North African illegals on the high seas en route to Sicily was “a dreadful tragedy that weighs on the conscience of Europe.” His reaction was paradigmatic of the utopian liberal mind-set. If “Europe” should feel guilty that people who have no right to come to its shores are risking their lives while trying to do so illegally, then only the establishment of a free passenger-ferry service between Africa and Southern Europe—with no passport or customs formalities required upon arrival, and a free shuttle to Rome or Milan—would offer some relief to that burdened conscience. Now that Sr. Pisanu and his boss, Silvio Berlusconi, have been replaced by a leftist government even more deeply committed to tolerance and diversity, this solution may finally become a reality.
The tangible results in Italy are as devastating as the moral and spiritual ones. In Venice, the invaders have taken over the Piazza San Marco. In Genoa, the marvelous palazzi that Rubens so admired have been seized by them “and are now perishing like beautiful women who have been raped.” In the late Oriana Fallaci’s native Florence, a huge tent was erected next to the cathedral to pressure the Italian government to give immigrants “the papers necessary to rove about Europe,” and to “let them bring the hordes of their relatives” to Italy. As Fallaci described it:
A tent situated next to the beautiful palazzo of the Archbishop on whose sidewalk they kept the shoes or sandals that are lined up outside the mosques in their countries. And along with the shoes or sandals, the empty bottles of water they’d used to wash their feet before praying. A tent placed in front of the cathedral with Brunelleschi’s cupola and by the side of the Baptistery with Ghiberti’s golden doors . . . Thanks to a tape player, the uncouth wailing of a muezzin punctually exhorted the faithful, deafened the infidels, and smothered the sound of the church bells . . . And along with the yellow streaks of urine, the stench of the excrement that blocked the door of San Salvatore al Vescovo: that exquisite Romanesque church (year 1000) that stands at the rear of the Piazza del Duomo and that the sons of Allah transformed into a shithouse.
Europe is increasingly populated by aliens who physically live there but spiritually belong to the umma. They do not want to “adapt” to Florence or any other new abode they conquer; offended and intimidated by beauty and order, they instinctively want to remake it in the image of Anatolia, Punjab, or the Maghreb. Their influx, made possible by the Pisanu malaise, is making the transformation irreversible.
A century ago, Pisanu’s class shared social commonalities that could be observed in Monte Carlo, Carlsbad, or Paris, depending on the season. Their lingua franca was French. Englishmen, Russians, and Austrians shared the same outlook and sense of propriety, but they nevertheless remained rooted in their national traditions, the only permanent vessels in which Weltanschauung could be translated into Kultur. Today’s “United Europe,” by contrast, does not create social and civilizational commonalities—except on the basis of wholesale denial of old mores, inherited values, and “traditional” culture. It creates a cultural similarity that has morphed into the dreary sameness of antidiscriminationism. The Continent is ruled by a secular theocracy focused on the task of reforming and reshaping the individual consciences of its subjects.
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The fruits are greeted with haughty arrogance by Tariq Ramadan, professor of Islamic studies at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, and a grandson of Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Ramadan insists that Muslims in the West should conduct themselves not as hyphenated citizens seeking to live by “common values” but as though they were already living in a Muslim-majority society and were exempt on that account from having to make concessions to the faith of others. Muslims in non-Muslim countries should feel entitled to live on their own terms, Ramadan says, while, “under the terms of Western liberal tolerance,” society as a whole should be obliged to respect that choice.
If such respect continues to be extended, by the end of this century, there will be no “Europeans” who are members of ethnic groups that share the same language, culture, history, and ancestors and inhabit lands associated with their names. The shrinking populations will be indoctrinated into believing—or else simply forced into accepting—that the demographic shift in favor of Muslim aliens is actually a blessing that enriches their culturally deprived and morally unsustainable societies.
The “liberal tolerance” and the accompanying “societal obligation” that Tariq Ramadan invokes are key. “No other race subscribes to these moral principles,” Jean Raspail wrote a generation ago, “because they are weapons of self-annihilation.” They need to be understood and discarded. The upholders of those principles must be removed from all positions of power and influence if Europe is to survive.
Foreign-affairs editor Srdja Trifkovic is the author, most recently, of Defeating Jihad.
This article first appeared in the December 2006 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.
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Sorry I don't have the URL for this, and yes it is argumentative. That said, it will be very interesting to see how this plays out.
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http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/cgi-bin/magazine.cgi/Yr%202006/December/Views/Eurabian_Nights.html?seemore=y
I assume this is the URL you were looking for....
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An Upside-Down World
The British far left makes common cause with Muslim reactionaries.
BY NICK COHEN
Sunday, February 25, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST
WSJ
LONDON--The other day Ken Livingstone, the mayor of my hometown of London, organized a conference on Islam and the West. It was a carefully rigged affair in which handpicked speaker after handpicked speaker stood up and announced that the democracies were to blame for the tidal wave of murder sweeping the world. To provide a spurious air of balance, the organizers invited a few people who dissented from the line of the Muslim Brotherhood and its British allies. Agnès Poirier, a French feminist, was one of them, but she pulled out because although there were no special facilities for Christians, Hindus and Jews, Mr. Livingstone had provided separate prayer rooms for Muslim men and Muslim women.
She wanted to know: Does Ken Livingstone's idea of multiculturalism acknowledge and condone segregation? It clearly does, but what made this vignette of ethnic politics in a European city worth noting is that commentators for the BBC and nearly every newspaper here describe Mr. Livingstone as one of the most left-wing politicians in British public life. Hardly any of them notice the weirdness of an apparent socialist pandering to a reactionary strain of Islam, pushing its arguments and accepting its dictates.
Mr. Livingstone's not alone. After suicide bombers massacred Londoners on July 7, 2005, leftish rather than conservative papers held British foreign policy responsible for the slaughters on the transport network. ("Blair's Bombs," ran the headline in my own leftish New Statesman.) In any university, you are more likely to hear campaigns for the rights of Muslim women derided by postmodernists than by crusty conservative dons. Our Stop the War coalition is an alliance of the white far left and the Islamist far right, and George Galloway, its leader, and the first allegedly "far left" member to be elected to the British Parliament in 50 years, is an admirer of Saddam Hussein and Hezbollah.
I could go on with specific examples, but the crucial point is the pervasive European attitude to the Iraq catastrophe. As al Qaeda, the Baathists and Shiite Islamists slaughter thousands, there is virtually no sense that their successes are our defeats. Iraqi socialists and trade unionists I know are close to despair. They turn for support to Europe, the home of liberalism, feminism and socialism, and find that rich democrats, liberals and feminists won't help them or even acknowledge their existence.
There were plenty of leftish people in the 20th century who excused communism, but they could at least say that communism was a left-wing idea. Now overwhelmingly and everywhere you find people who scream their heads off about the smallest sexist or racist remark, yet refuse to confront ultra-reactionary movements that explicitly reject every principle they profess to hold.
Why is the world upside down? In part, it is a measure of President Bush's failure that anti-Americanism has swept out of the intelligentsia and become mainstream in Britain. A country that was once the most pro-American in Western Europe now derides Tony Blair for sticking with the Atlantic alliance. But if Iraq has pummeled Mr. Blair's reputation, it has also shone a very harsh light on the British and European left. No one noticed it when the Berlin Wall came down, but the death of socialism gave people who called themselves "left wing" a paradoxical advantage. They no longer had a practical program they needed to defend and could go along with ultra-right movements that would once have been taboo. In moments of crisis, otherwise sane liberals will turn to these movements and be reassured by the professed leftism of the protest organizers that they are not making a nonsense of their beliefs.
If, that is, they have strong beliefs to abandon. In Europe and North America extreme versions of multiculturalism and identity politics have left a poisonous legacy. Far too many liberal-minded people think that is somehow culturally imperialist to criticize reactionary movements and ideas--as long as they aren't European or American reactionary movements. This delusion is everywhere. Until very recently our Labour government was allowing its dealings with Britain's Muslim minority to be controlled by an unelected group, the Muslim Council of Britain, which stood for everything social democrats were against. In their desperate attempts to ingratiate themselves, ministers gave its leader a knighthood--even though he had said that "death was too good" for Salman Rushdie, who happens to be a British citizen as well as a great novelist.
Beyond the contortions and betrayals of liberal and leftish thinking lies a simple emotion that I don't believe Americans take account of: an insidious fear that has produced the ideal conditions for appeasement. Radical Islam does worry Europeans but we are trying to prevent an explosion by going along with Islamist victimhood. We blame ourselves for the Islamist rage, in the hope that our admission of guilt will pacify our enemies. We are scared, but not scared enough to take a stand.
I hope conservative American readers come to Britain. But if you do, expect to find an upside-down world. People who call themselves liberals or leftists will argue with you, and when they have finished you may experience the strange realization that they have become far more reactionary than you have ever been.
Mr. Cohen, a columnist for the Observer and The New Statesman, is the author of "What's Left?: How Liberals Lost Their Way" (Fourth Estate, 2007).
WSJ
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http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1976
Ondiep, a working class neighbourhood in the Dutch town of Utrecht, is in turmoil. After the death last Sunday of Rinie Mulder, a 54-year old indigenous Dutchman who was shot by a police officer, non-immigrant citizens went on a rampage, burning cars, looting shops and arsoning a community centre in “inverted Paris style riots.” According to our sources the police officer who killed Mulder is a woman of Moroccan origin.
The Ondiep residents have been complaining for months about harassment and intimidation by immigrant youths of Moroccan origin. The Dutch mainstream media do not go into much detail about what is going on. Most of them do not mention the ethnicity of the victim and the police officer, though the riots clearly have an ethnic nature.
Apparently Mulder intervened when Muslim youths harassed a pregnant native Dutch woman. He was able to grab the knife of one of the youths. When the police arrived Mulder was shot because he had raised the knife. Witnesses say Mulder was indicating to the police that he had called for them.
Locals claim the police has failed to protect them for years. They say the authorities are afraid of the immigrants and tolerate their criminal behaviour. After the death of Mulder the indigenous Dutch decided they had had enough and started riots which went on for two continuous nights. The police made 130 arrests: 60 of them are Ondiep residents. According to the mainstream media the others are mainly “football hooligans” from other parts of the country. Annie Brouwer-Korf, the Socialist mayor of Utrecht, has ordered Ondiep to be sealed off from the rest of town to keep non-residents out. She expressed some sympathy for the frustrated Ondiep residents. “I understand that residents are sometimes upset about the nuisance around their own house and neighbourhood. That does you no good whatsoever.”
The riots are no surprise. As I wrote last January:
The Netherlands are bracing themselves for more [Parisian style] incidents this year. An official report published last week states that the Government has seriously underestimated “tensions between various ethnic and cultural groups of youths.”
The report says that the Dutch authorities fail to grasp the gravity of the problem. If nothing is done the country will soon witness situations similar to the French riots of 2005 and 2006 which led to the police abandoning immigrant suburbs to gangs of Muslim youths. The result of the French ambivalence is that the same gangs have now taken over effective control of more than 750 French urban neighborhoods.
Ondiep is one of the Dutch urban neighbourhoods which seem to have been abandoned by the authorities. It is hardly a surprise that the natives are beginning to fight back. The same thing happened recently in Britain.
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http://www.expatica.com/actual/artic...story_id=37643
14 March 2007
AMSTERDAM – Seven of the people arrested on Tuesday in Utrecht will be brought before the court on Thursday. The other 128 will be released with a fine.
As the municipality braces for another night of disturbances, and police close off the neighbourhood of Ondiep for another evening, the question remains of why such violent riots broke out on Monday in response to a shooting by police on Sunday.
Several neighbourhood residents spoke to the Volkskrant on Tuesday.
It is clear that there is more going on than just rage and sadness over the death of Rini Mulder, the 54-year-old man shot dead on Sunday. "They just don't do anything about the creeps that are ruining this neighbourhood," says resident Ali Kwarten. "That is frustration number one."
That was the case on Sunday as well, says the man talking with Kwarten. He had been friends with Mulder for "almost 30 years." They were involved in a fight on Sunday against a group of 20 young Dutch-Turks that were hanging about the streets. Rini Mulder had left the house determined to "teach a lesson" to the group hanging out there, playing loud music and intimidating local residents.
He says Rini put his hand in the air when police finally arrived. "But he wasn't threatening them. He wanted to indicate that it was he that had called police."
The officer thought he was being threatened and shot Mulder in the chest. "He should have shot into the air, the bastard," says Kwarten.
"Those cops don't know what they're doing," says Mulder's friend. "They never come when you need them. Just call 112 if things get serious, they say. It's obviously too late then."
The neighbourhood of Ondiep, with a primarily native Dutch population, has been designated by the state as a disadvantaged neighbourhood and there are urban renewal plans in the works that will result in the demolition of most of the homes. Many of the area residents have already moved out.
The neighbourhood is not enthusiastic about the renewal plans. They complain that the new homes planned for the area will be unaffordable for them. "They want richer people here in the neighbourhood," says Willem de Graaf, another resident.
"The neighbourhood is at a difficult point in the renewal," says Rinda den Besten, alderwoman for the neighbourhood." "One in three houses is standing empty at the moment, soon that will be two in three. The situation is going to last for a few months."
Den Besten admits that the neighbourhood will be a mess in the meantime. There is little social control, precisely the kind of situation that plays into the hands of the group that was hanging about the intersection of the Boerhaavelaan and the Thorbeckelaan on Sunday.
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http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archive...ht_streets.php
The Utrecht neighbourhood of Ondiep is to be sealed off to outsiders for a second night on Wednesday, following two nights of clashes between youths and riot police, a city council spokesman confirmed.
The area has been ringed with fences which will be pulled across all roads later today, closing the area to non-residents. At least 130 people were arrested on Tuesday following a number of incidents in both in the city centre and on the fringes of Ondiep.
Police said the arrests included a number of football supporters from FC Utrecht, Rotterdam’s Feyenoord and Amsterdam’s Ajax who had come to the city looking for trouble. Some 60 people were arrested in Ondiep itself for breaking the ban on public gatherings.
The trouble began on Monday following the arrest of two people when youths went on the rampage after a 54-year-old man was shot dead by police. The police officer said he had felt threatened by the man who had a knife.
However, local residents told TV reporters that the man himself had called for police help after being harassed by a gang of youths.
Ondiep is a largely white, working-class neighbourhood and is the focus of the city council’s urban renewal efforts. Mayor Annie Brouwer is to meet local people again this afternoon.
A police spokesman told ANP that the area will probably be kept under tight control until after Thursday’s march (stille tocht) in memory of the dead man.
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http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1980
Native Revolt: A European Declaration of Independence
From the desk of Fjordman on Fri, 2007-03-16 07:52
After the death last Sunday of Rinie Mulder, a 54-year old indigenous Dutchman who was shot by a police officer, non-immigrant citizens went on a rampage in Utrecht. Apparently Mulder intervened when Muslim youths harassed a pregnant native Dutch woman. Locals claim the police has failed to protect them for years. They say the authorities are afraid of the immigrants and tolerate their criminal behavior.
This issue is not just about Utrecht or Holland. Similar resentment against Muslim immigrants, but at least as much against their own authorities, is quietly brewing among the natives all over Western Europe.
It is insulting that two thirds of the Dutch, one of the founding members of the European community, voted against the proposed EU Constitution, and yet EU leaders will apparently just ignore this and force their massively undemocratic Constitution down people's throats anyway. The German Presidency wants EU leaders to agree on a text for a new treaty by February 2008. The label 'Constitution' is to be dropped, in order to avoid further referendums.
European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso expressed unease with the prospect of a second Dutch constitution referendum. "Referendums make the process of approval of European treaties much more complicated and less predictable," he said "If a referendum had been held on the creation of the European Community or the introduction of the Euro, do you think these would have passed?"
Although the EU warns against "Islamophobia," those who live in the real world know that there has been an explosion of violent infidelophobia in Western Europe staged by Muslim immigrants. This wave of violence especially targets Jews, but the attacks against Christians that are going on in the Middle East are increasingly spreading to Europe as well. In more and more cities across the continent, non-Muslims are being harassed, robbed, mugged, raped, stabbed and even killed by Muslims. Native Europeans are slowly becoming second-rate citizens in their own countries.
This violence by Muslims is usually labelled simply as "crime," but I believe it should more accurately be called Jihad. Those who know early Islamic history, as described in books such as The Truth About Muhammad by Robert Spencer, know that looting and stealing the property of non-Muslims has been part and parcel of Jihad from the very beginning. In fact, so much of the behavior of Muhammad himself and the early Muslims could be deemed criminal that it is difficult to know exactly where crime ends and Jihad begins. In the city of Oslo, for instance, it is documented that some of the criminal Muslim gangs also have close ties to radical religious groups at home and abroad. As Dutch Arabist Hans Jansen points out, the Koran is seen by some Muslims as a God-given "hunting licence," granting them the right to assault and even murder non-Muslims. It is hardly accidental that while Muslims make up about 10% of the population in France, they make up an estimated 70% of French prison inmates.
In the city of Antwerp, Belgium, Marij Uijt den Bogaard from 2003 to 2006 worked as a civil servant in the immigrant borough of Berchem. She noted how radical Islamist groups began to take over the immigrant neighbourhoods, but was fired when she warned against this danger in her reports to the authorities:
"Many victims of burglaries in houses and cars, of steaming and other forms of violence, can testify that aggression by Muslims is not directed against brothers and sisters, but against whoever is a kafir, a non-believer. Young Muslims justify their behaviour towards women who do not wear the headscarf, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, by referring to the Salafist teaching which says that these women are whores and should be treated as such. They told me this. I wrote it down in my reports, but the authorities refuse to hear it."
Filmmaker Pierre Rehov tells how a friend of his is a retired chief of police who used to be in charge of the security of a major city in the south of France. According to him, 80% of the rapes in the area were made by Muslim young men. In most cases, the parents would not understand why they would be arrested. The only evil those parents would see, genuinely, was the temptation that the male children had to face from infidel women.
The wave of robberies the increasingly Muslim-dominated city of Malmö is witnessing is part of a "war against Swedes," this according to statements from the immigrant youths themselves. "When we are in the city and robbing, we are waging a war, waging a war against the Swedes." This argument was repeated several times. "Power for me means that Swedes shall look at me, lie down on the ground and kiss my feet."
Jonathan Friedman, an American living in Sweden, mentions that the so-called Integration Act of 1997 proclaimed that "Sweden is a Multicultural society." The Act implicitly states that Sweden doesn't have a history, only the various ethnic groups that live there. Native Swedes have been reduced to just another ethnic group in Sweden, with no more claim to the country than the Somalis who arrived there last Thursday. As Friedman puts it: "In Sweden, it's almost as if the state has sided with the immigrants against the Swedish working class."
Pierre Schori, Minister for immigration, during a parliamentary debate in 1997 said that: "Racism and xenophobia should be banned and chased [away]," and that one should not accept "excuses, such as that there were flaws in the immigration and refugee policies." In other words: It should be viewed as a crime for the indigenous population not to assist in wiping themselves out. The state is turned into an enemy of the very population it is supposed to protect. Swedes pay some of the highest tax rates in the world, and for this they get runaway crime rates and a government that is actively hostile to their interests.
Exit the People's Home of Sweden is a book from 2005 about immigration and the Swedish welfare state model. According to the authors, the Multicultural elites see themselves first of all as citizens of the world. In order to emphasize and accentuate diversity, everything that smacks of "native culture" is deliberately disparaged. Opposition to this policy is considered a form of racism:
"The dominant ideology in Sweden, which has been made dominant by powerful methods of silencing and repression, is a totalitarian ideology, where the elites oppose the national aspect of the nation state."
Researchers Gert Tinggaard Svendsen og Gunnar Lind Haase Svendsen have written the book Social Kapital. When general levels of trust were measured in 86 countries, the Nordic nations Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland came out on top. According to the authors, the trust between citizens and the trust between citizens and the state is very high in these countries, and this "social capital" is highly profitable and accounts for up a to a quarter of these countries' wealth.
However, they also warn that such trust is vulnerable. A society can lose its social capital and trust rather quickly, but it can take centuries to rebuild it. This social capital is now being squandered a matter of official state policy all over Western Europe, accompanied by wild cheers from the media and the intelligentsia.
Although such high levels of trust are in many ways attractive and desirable, they also contain some potential pitfalls. People's trusting nature may make them easy targets for outsiders from more cynical cultures, who view them as gullible fools. However, it also makes them vulnerable to threats from within.
In the 1990s, Swedish authorities decided that native Swedes and their culture had no more claim to the country than Kurds. At the same time, the country became a member of the EU. Mass immigration to Sweden started years before EU membership and wasn't caused by this, but the EU certainly didn't help. Now suddenly, as with other EU members, Swedes have most of their laws passed by unelected EU bureaucrats rather than their own elected national representatives.
Swedes were used to that laws were passed with their consent and with their best interests in mind, because by and large they had been. Within a few years, all of this has changed. Laws are now passed by EU bureaucrats who don't give a damn about their interests, and by elites who don't care about their own people, in fact view them as potential stumbling blocks for the new Multicultural society. Yet most Europeans still follow these laws. Why? I can see at least two reasons.
Germany's ex-president Roman Herzog pointed out that between 1999 and 2004, 84 percent of the legal acts in Germany stemmed from Brussels, and warned that "EU policies suffer to an alarming degree from a lack of democracy and a de facto suspension of the separation of powers. The question has to be raised of whether Germany can still unreservedly be called a parliamentary democracy."
Why is this pan-European EU dictatorship still functioning? Because seeing is believing. Most Europeans still don't know that EU leaders are using their money without their consent to merge Europe with the Arab world because their media don't tell them this. Due to the common Euro currency and the lack of national borders they can move around most of Europe at ease, which seems convenient. They don't physically see, however, that the EU has also usurped the power of their national parliaments. The latter appear to be working just as always, but have now been reduced to implementing the policies of unelected Eurocrats.
The second reason is because ordinary European citizens are held hostage by their own law-abiding nature. Abiding by rules and regulations used to serve them well in the past, but things have changed. Even the laws that are in their interest are no longer upheld. Their nations have vacated their national borders and the ensuing uncontrolled mass immigration is creating rampant urban insecurity.
For Dutchmen, in what once was a peaceful and orderly country, to go against decades of indoctrination to stage something like the recent uprisings in Utrecht, they have to feel an extreme amount of repressed frustration and anger. Perhaps they watched the media reactions to the Muslim riots in France, which were sympathetic and were followed by promises from political leaders to listen to the "legitimate grievances" of the rioters. Perhaps the native Dutch in Utrecht thought that hey, we are quiet and peaceful and yet we get only contempt from our so-called leaders. Muslims burn stuff and get concessions. Perhaps we should start burning stuff, too. What have we got to lose? We're already losing our country.
The excellent Chinese blogger Ohmyrus has warned against precisely this:
"While it took a long time for Europeans to learn to settle their differences peacefully through the ballot box, this important lesson is slowly being unlearned. The lesson learned from the Danish cartoon affair is that violence pays. Most Western governments caved in by issuing apologies or condemning the cartoons instead of defending free speech. Soon groups that oppose immigration will turn to violence too. If European democracies cannot manage their ethnic tensions, democracy will break down, ushering in dictatorial rule."
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In a British poll from January 2007, a massive 82% disagreed (57% strongly) as to whether the government was in control of immigration. When asked if the government was "open and honest" about the scale of immigration into Britain, 80% disagreed. Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch, said: "After a decade of efforts to stifle debate, there is now a fundamental lack of trust between the Government and the public on this issue." The numbers also "reflect a deep underlying resentment among the public that they have not had any opportunity to express their views – still less to be consulted - on a matter of major importance to them and to the future of our country."
According to Theodore Dalrymple, "For the last 40 years, government policy in Britain, de facto if not always de jure, has been to render the British population virtually defenseless against criminals and criminality. Almost alone of British government policies, this one has been supremely effective: no Briton nowadays goes many hours without wondering how to avoid being victimized by a criminal intent on theft, burglary, or violence."
He fears that "the failure of the state to protect the lives and property of its citizens, and to take seriously its duty in this regard, creates a politically dangerous situation, for it puts the very legitimacy of the state itself at risk. The potential consequences are incalculable, for the failure might bring the rule of law itself into disrepute and give an opportunity to the brutal and the authoritarian."
In Norway, local politician Bengt Michalsen had a tape from a surveillance camera clearly identifying two youths as doing damage to a van at a car park. He delivered the tape to the police, and months later received a note that the case had been dismissed because the police didn't have the capacity to prosecute it. According to the local police chief, the public "just had to get used to" the fact the police wouldn't spend time on petty crime.
So, that means that Scandinavians will have to protect our own property, right? Not exactly. The authorities just want us to take it lying down and do nothing.
In Denmark, at least one of three would-be robbers shot by a watchmaker plans to file for compensation over wrongful injury, loss of work time and loss of the ability to work. The three threatened the watchmaker by putting a fake pistol up to his chin, but he had a real pistol behind his counter and managed to fire it. He was charged with unlawful possession of a firearm and taken into police custody. Attorney Svend Raether said that it is possible for the thief to receive compensation, despite having been injured while committing a crime.
Citizens in Western European countries pay high taxes to a state that is totally incapable of protecting our most basic rights, and is frequently unwilling even to try. With hate speech laws we are deprived of the right to protest against being swamped by immigration that will eventually render us minorities in our own countries. The law is used to punish the law-abiding while the criminals rule the streets.
If the authorities refuse to uphold the laws designed to protect us and keep passing new laws that threaten the freedom of our children and the survival of our nations, we will sooner or later have to decide when civil disobedience becomes not just a right, but a duty. And I fear what will happen once we reach that point, which may not be too far off. Judging from the recent uprisings in Utrecht, this process has already begun.
Vladimir Bukovksy, a former Soviet dissident, fears that the European Union is on its way to becoming another Soviet Union:
"The sooner we finish with the EU the better. The sooner it collapses the less damage it will have done to us and to other countries. But we have to be quick because the Eurocrats are moving very fast. It will be difficult to defeat them. Today it is still simple. If one million people march on Brussels today these guys will run away to the Bahamas. If tomorrow half of the British population refuses to pay its taxes, nothing will happen and no-one will go to jail. Today you can still do that."
Mr. Bukovsky is right. Europeans should launch tax rebellions and stage street demonstrations in every major European city until Muslim immigration is ended. We should stage a Million Man March to Brussels, for instance on September 11th this year, to demand that the pan-European dictatorship called the European Union is dismantled. We need to get angry and squeeze our so-called leaders into doing this, since they obviously understand nothing else.
Here is what Thomas Jefferson wrote in the American Declaration of Independence from 1776:
"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. [...] It is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
Europeans are currently subject to worse insults from our governments than the Americans were at that time, being persecuted in our own cities and subject to a government-supported program of gradual cultural eradication. We need a European Declaration of Independence, calling for our emancipation from the bureaucratic feudalism of Brussels and the totalitarian ideology of Multiculturalism. Allow me to write the first draft:
A European Declaration of Independence
We, the citizens of the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland, Hungary, (fill in the blanks) demand that the following steps are taken immediately:
We demand that our national governments should immediately and without delay pull their countries out of the European Union, which should be dismantled entirely. European citizens pay up to half of their salaries in direct or indirect taxes to their nation states. If these nations do not control their own borders nor their policies, and they don't as long as the EU exists, those taxes are a scam. National taxes require national borders. If our national borders are not enforced, we have no obligation whatsoever to pay national taxes.
We demand that all documents regarding the Euro-Arab Dialogue and the creation of the Eurabian networks for "Euro-Mediterranean cooperation" between European countries and Arab countries since the 1970s, as documented by Bat Ye'or's work on Eurabia, are published and explained in their full significance to the general public. Those chiefly responsible for this - one of the greatest betrayals in the history of Western civilization - should stand trial, followed by a period of general de-Eurabification of our laws and regulations.
We demand that all financial support to the Palestinian Authority should cease immediately. It is proven beyond any doubt that this has in the past been used to finance campaigns of Jihad terrorism against Jews in Israel and against Christians in territories under PA control. A public statement in support of Israel against Muslim aggression should be issued, and the money that has previously been awarded to Palestinians should be allocated partly to Israel's defense, partly to establish a Global Infidel Defense Fund with the stated goal of disseminating information about Muslim persecution of non-Muslims worldwide.
We demand that the ideology of Multiculturalism should immediately be removed from all government policies and school curricula, and that the state should adopt a policy of supporting the continuation of the cultural heritage and traditions of the indigenous populations. Multiculturalism has never been about tolerance. It is an anti-Western hate ideology championed as an instrument for unilaterally dismantling European culture. As such, it is an evil ideology bent on an entire culture's eradication, and we, the peoples of Europe, have not just a right, but a duty to resist it and an obligation to pass on our heritage to future generations.
We demand that all Muslim immigration in whatever form should be immediately and completely halted, and that our authorities take a long break from mass immigration in general until such a time when law and order has been reestablished in our major cities. We will not accept any accusations of "racism." Many European nations have for decades accepted more immigration into our countries in a shorter period of time than any other people has done peacefully in human history. We are sick and tired of feeling like strangers in our own lands, of being mugged, raped, stabbed, harassed and even killed by violent gangs of Muslim thugs, yet being accused of "racism and xenophobia" by our media and intimidated by our own authorities to accept even more such immigration.
Europe is being targeted for deliberate colonization by Muslim states, and with coordinated efforts aimed at our Islamization and the elimination of our freedoms. We are being subject to a foreign invasion, and aiding and abetting a foreign invasion in any way constitutes treason. If non-Europeans have the right to resist colonization and desire self-determination then Europeans have that right, too. And we intend to exercise it.
If these demands are not fully implemented, if the European Union isn't dismantled, Multiculturalism isn't rejected and Muslim immigration isn't stopped, we, the peoples of Europe, are left with no other choice than to conclude that our authorities have abandoned us, and that the taxes they collect are therefore unjust and that the laws that are passed without our consent are illegitimate. We will stop paying taxes and take the appropriate measures to protect our own security and ensure our national survival.
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Lessons for Britain as Fearful Dutch Turn Their Backs on Multi-Cultural Society
David Paul – The Sunday Express December 20, 2004
Beside a giant Christmas tree in Amsterdam's Dam Square last night a Rastafarian was cheerfully selling lumps of cannabis to passers-by.
A few hundred yards away dozens of almost naked girls from all around the world were standing in floodlit shop windows selling their bodies to any man with £30 in his wallet.
Drugs and sex openly on sale are familiar scenes to anyone who has visited Amsterdam, whose residents have long adhered to the maxim "Leven en laten leven" or "Live and let live".
But beneath the surface, Dutch society, hailed for many years as a model of liberalism and racial tolerance, is in crisis.
And there are some disturbing lessons for Britain in the alarming breakdown in the social order of a European nation just a one-hour flight from London or Manchester.
Rising religious and ethnic violence has erupted across Holland, with attacks on immigrants and revenge attacks by them in response.
In just one week last month, more than 20 mosques, churches, Islamic and Christian schools were either petrol bombed or vandalised.
Half a dozen Dutch politicians accused of being "enemies of Islam" have received death threats. Two are deemed to be in such danger they are living in police safe houses.
The Speaker of the Dutch parliament, Jozias van Aartsen, said: "Holy war has come to the Netherlands."
Holland's educated, white middle class fear for the future, despite having an income per head that is higher than in any major country in Europe, and they are leaving their homeland in droves.
Last year, more people left The Netherlands than arrived as migrants or asylum seekers, for the first time since the end of the Second World War. In the first six months of this year, the net loss to Holland's population was 13,313 people.
Those leaving are engineers, nurses, computer experts, lawyers, accountants and businessmen.
They have had enough of the multiculturalism of Holland and are heading for the wide open - and, though few will publicly admit it, almost exclusively white-populated - lands of Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Just last month, Dutch immigration and integration minister Rita Verdonk, who is one of those to have received a death threat, admitted: "We were naive in thinking people would exist in society together." The chairman of the independent MigrationWatch UK pressure group , Sir Andrew Green, believes the Dutch "white flight" phenomenon may already have also begun in Britain, but because we have more space, people here still have the option to settle in different areas of the country, rather than move abroad.
"There is clear evidence from a recent survey by the London School of Economics that people are moving out of London at the rate of 100,000 a year, and people are leaving other city centres, " said Sir Andrew.
"It could be that this is a pattern similar to that developing in Holland.
We need more research into the reasons for these very significant movements."
The Office of National Statistics last month predicted a population boom in many areas of Britain, caused by immigrants. Numbers living in London and the South-east are forecast to swell by 15 per cent, to about 30million by 2028. The population of East Anglia will rise the most - by 16.8 per cent - with a 16.5 per cent increase in the South-west.
"Immigration now accounts for 85 per cent of our population growth, " Sir Andrew said. "These figures confirm there will be still further pressure on the south of England. London and the South are already twice as crowded as Holland, the most crowded country in continental Europe."
Home Office officials are monitoring the situation in Holland closely, while scores of British MPs have visited the Netherlands in recent months to see for themselves what has happened.
The wave of anti-Islamic violence in Holland is also being watched nervously in Germany, which is home to more than three million Muslims, most of them Turkish. Former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, caused outrage last month by saying that allowing the Turks who arrived in Germany as "gastarbeiter" or guest workers, to prop up the economy in the 1960s, had been a mistake.
The present Chancellor, Gerhard Schroder, has recently adopted a much tougher line on his country's immigrants, warning they must integrate better into German society.
But in the sleepy Dutch town of Alphen Aan Den Rijn, employment office worker Ibolya Fransen is not particularly interested in the debate about European states and multiculturalism. She just doesn't like having two mosques near her home.
"In some places 'white flight' is happening, " said Ibolya, a 35-year-old mother of two. "I don't live in an ethnic neighbourhood, but when you go to our big cities you think to yourself 'Where am I? I am the only person who speaks Dutch'.
"In Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague or Utrecht, there are places where immigration is out of hand.
They recreate their own country
They have their own shops, their own schools, their own places of worship.
"In my town, we have a population of 70,000, but we already have two mosques. In five years time it will be three or four. They will take over."
The facts back up Ibolya's argument to some extent. Dutch Government experts believe that by 2010 Rotterdam, Amsterdam, The Hague and Utrecht will have Muslim majorities.
Holland has a population of 16.2million, of which almost one in five is of foreign origin. White Dutch children are already the minority in four Dutch cities.
Fearful for their safety and convinced there is a better life to be had away from Holland, Ibolya, her oil engineer husband Marc, 37, and their two daughters Kinga, five, and eightmonth-old Odett, are emigrating to Alberta, Canada, in May next year.
Experts from the Buysse Immigration Consultancy are helping the Fransens to move abroad.
Last month the Buysse website had 13,000 inquiries from Dutch people seeking information on how to leave their country for good.
"I have seen what has happened to a civilised country like ours, and I think I will be happier somewhere else, " said Ibolya.
"If people in England believe they have the same problem, they should do the same as us.
"There is a growing intolerance of immigrants in Holland. It's a shame - the good ones will suffer because of the bad ones.
"The perception in Holland is that the immigrants are responsible for the increased violence."
The events of one Tuesday morning early last month convinced Ibolya she is right to quit her homeland.
Dutch artist and TV personality Theo Van Gogh, great-grandnephew of the painter Vincent Van Gogh, was cycling to work through the centre of Amsterdam when a Muslim extremist shot him eight times. As Van Gogh pleaded for his life, his attacker tried to chop off his head with a knife. The murder had seemingly been provoked by a film Mr Van Gogh had made, highlighting the treatment of women under Islam.
IBOLYA said: "After Van Gogh was murdered there were revenge attacks on mosques and Muslim schools. It has developed into a hate campaign.
"I don't want my daughters to end up in the middle of this fight.
The killers are attacking people in the streets, people are on the streets with knives and guns."
Van Gogh's murder followed the May 2002 assassination of Holland's firebrand homosexual politician Pim Fortuyn.
He was shot by a left-wing activist after denouncing the Netherlands' 30-year "experiment" with multiculturalism as a "disastrous error".
Mr Fortuyn launched a mass movement he said was to defend Holland's tolerant way of life from the radical Muslim clerics based in his country, who are often subsidised by Dutch taxpayers. He was killed just nine days before an election that might well have seen him become Prime Minister.
"When Pim Fortuyn was shot everyone said it was just a one off, " Ibolya said. "Now it's happening more and more. These Muslim extremists want their 15 minutes of fame. We've already got Dutch MPs living in hiding - this is crazy."
Ibolya is excited about the future she believes her family will enjoy 6,000 miles away from Holland.
"When you go to live in Canada as an immigrant you become part of the rest of the population there, " she said.
"But in Holland and elsewhere in Europe there is an Us and Them mentality. I think this is happening in England and Germany as well.
"People say we are turning our back on our country of birth, but we can't change things on our own.
The Netherlands has too many people and not enough space."
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=2693
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SPIEGEL ONLINE - March 21, 2007, 04:16 PM
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,473017,00.html
JUSTIFYING MARITAL VIOLENCE
A German Judge Cites Koran in Divorce Case
By Veit Medick and Anna Reimann
He beat her and threatened her with murder. But because husband and wife were both from Morocco, a German divorce court judge saw no cause for alarm. It's a religion thing, she argued.
AFP
The Koran seems to have become the basis for a court decision in Frankfurt.
The case seems simply too strange to be true. A 26-year-old mother of two wanted to free herself from what had become a miserable and abusive marriage. The police had even been called to their apartment to separate the two -- both of Moroccan origin -- after her husband got violent in May 2006. The husband was forced to move out, but the terror continued: Even after they separated, the spurned husband threatened to kill his wife.
A quick divorce seemed to be the only solution -- the 26-year-old was unwilling to wait the year between separation and divorce mandated by German law. She hoped that as soon as they were no longer married, her husband would leave her alone. Her lawyer, Barbara Becker-Rojczyk agreed and she filed for immediate divorce with a Frankfurt court last October. They both felt that the domestic violence and death threats easily fulfilled the "hardship" criteria necessary for such an accelerated split.
In January, though, a letter arrived from the judge adjudicating the case. The judge rejected the application for a speedy divorce by referring to a passage in the Koran that some have controversially interpreted to mean that a husband can beat his wife. It's a supposed right which is the subject of intense debate among Muslim scholars and clerics alike."The exercise of the right to castigate does not fulfill the hardship criteria as defined by Paragraph 1565 (of German federal law)," the daily Frankfurter Rundschau quoted the judge's letter as saying. It must be taken into account, the judge argued, that both man and wife have Moroccan backgrounds.
"The husband can beat his wife"
"The right to castigate means for me: the husband can beat his wife," Becker-Rojczyk said, interpreting the judge's verdict.
In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, Becker-Rojczyk said the judge indicated to her that it makes no sense to insist on an accelerated divorce. The judge's advice? Wait for the year-long waiting period to elapse.
The fax from the Frankfurt court granting the conflict of interest claim.
The lawyer and her client were shocked. Immediately, they filed a claim alleging that the judge should have recused herself due to a conflict of interest. They felt that, because of the point of view presented by the judge, she was unable to reach an objective verdict. In the reply sent to Becker-Rojczyk, the judge expressly referred to a Koran verse -- or sura -- which indicates that a man's honor is injured when his wife behaves in an unchaste manner. "Apparently the judge deems it unchaste when my client adapts a Western lifestyle," Becker-Rojczyk said.
On Tuesday evening, Becker-Rojczyk expressed amazement that the judge was still on the bench, given that the controversial verdict was handed down weeks ago. Becker-Rojczyk had elected to go public with the case to attract attention to the judge's conduct. It seems to have worked. On Wednesday, after the Tuesday evening publication of the story on SPIEGEL ONLINE, the attorney received a fax from the Frankfurt court granting the conflict of interest claim and excusing the judge from the case.
Still, it is unlikely that the case will be heard again before the mandated year of separation expires in May. But the judge who heard the case may have to face further consequences for her decision. On Wednesday, numerous politicians in Berlin voiced their horror at the verdict -- and demanded disciplinary action against the judge.
Further investigation
"In my opinion, this is a case of extreme violation of the rule of law that can't be solved with a mere conflict of interest ruling," Social Democrat parliamentarian Dieter Wiefelspütz told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "There have to be further consequences. This is a case for judicial supervision -- this case needs to be further investigated."
The deputy floor leader for the Christian Democrats, Wolfgang Bosbach, agreed. "This is a sad example of how the conception of the law from another legal and cultural environment is taken as the basis for our own notion of law," he said on Wednesday.
This isn't the first time that German courts have used cultural background to inform their verdicts. Christa Stolle of the women's rights organization Terre des Femmes said that in cases of marital violence, there have been a number of cases where the perpetrator's culture of origin has been considered as a mitigating circumstance -- although such verdicts have become seldom in recent years.
But there remains quite a bit of work to do. "In my work educating sexist and short-sighted Muslim men," asked Michaela Sulaika Kaiser of the Network for Muslim Women, "do I now have to convince German courts that women are also people on the same level with men and that they, like any other human, have the right to be protected from physical and psychological violence?"
With reporting by Franziska Badenschier and Severin Weiland
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http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2007/03/16...hould_look_to_europe
America's eyes should look to Europe
By Diana West
Friday, March 16, 2007
Without attracting much attention, representatives of the Belgian political party Vlaams Belang recently visited Washington, D.C. Frank Vanhecke and Filip Dewinter hoped to meet members of Congress; but Congress was in recess. They hoped to engender some understanding of their program to reverse the Islamization of Belgium; but the media were strip-mining the tinsel life and tawdry times of Anna Nicole Smith.
Maybe they should have known that Tabloid America doesn't care about the likely transformation of Europe into an Islamic continent, let alone the fate of a French- and Dutch-speaking country of 10 million people. And while Literary America does write books about the transformation -- "While Europe Slept" by Bruce Bawer, "The War for the West" by Tony Blankley, and "America Alone" by Mark Steyn come to mind -- Political America has yet to acknowledge or even notice this colossal, epoch-defining shift now taking place.
Why don't our leaders face it? This may be one of those questions our children will ask some day. But if such natural curiosity isn't expressed until the next generation, the civilizational struggle for Europe will certainly have been lost. Better to question our politicians now. Better to examine the issue today.
Europe, as we may readily observe, is very far along in an accommodation with its still-increasing Muslim immigrant population that is resulting not in the Europeanizing of Islam, but rather the Islamizing of Europe. As Bernard Lewis declared in 2004, Europe will have an Islamic majority by the end of the 21st century at the latest. As Vlaams Belang's Dewinter recently put it, "We are becoming foreigners in our own land."
Such tragic pronouncements turn conversation with Vlaams Belang into a kind of political free verse -- sadly evocative but rooted in a desperate reality that should shake American complacency. That is, "foreigners in our land" is poetry; Mohammed as the most popular boy's name in Brussels for six years running is implacable fact. The idea that "We are living on a dying continent but we are not dead yet," as Dewinter has explained, is metaphorical. His citation from Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi that "Allah is mobilizing Muslim Turkey to add ... 50 million more Muslims" to the European Union augurs world-class revolution.
Is such a revolution desirable? After writing nearly incessantly about Islamization since Sept. 11, I won't surprise anyone by saying no -- not if freedom of conscience, religious equality or women's rights are your bag (not to mention the glorious representational artworks Europe's museums are stuffed with). Besides, the strategic implications for the United States are, in a word, bleak.
In multiculturally totalitarian Belgium, however, you make such judgments at your own risk. Vlaams Belang, a conservative, free-market party that stands for Flemish secession from the French-speaking part of Belgium and opposes continued immigration, now stands trial in a Belgian court for a comment -- a comment! -- Dewinter made in 2005 to a New York publication, The Jewish Week. When asked why Belgian Jews should vote for a party that espouses "xenophobia," Dewinter replied: "Xenophobia is not the word I would use. If (it) absolutely must be a 'phobia,' let it be 'Islamophobia.' Yes, we're afraid of Islam. The Islamization of Europe is a frightening thing."
If convicted of the "crime" of "Islamophobia" ("1984," anyone?), the party would lose its state funding. In a country that effectively prohibits private political fund-raising, Vlaams Belang -- the largest party in Belgium -- would ultimately cease to exist. And so, too, would free speech in the center of Europe.
Before I met Vlaams Belang's Frank Vanhecke and Filip Dewinter in Washington, I believed Europe's rush to Islamize itself was a stampede, its transformation all but inevitable. Now, I think these men have at least earned Europe the benefit of the doubt. Studying their various statements and interviews, I found no evidence to support the crude slanders to which they are continually subjected in the media for being a right-wing party opposed to the massive Islamic immigration now transforming traditional European culture. Indeed, their statements on Israel are more supportive than any European party I know of. As Vanhecke put it in a recent speech, "They call us 'intolerant' because we oppose intolerance. They call us 'fascists' because we oppose Islamo-fascism.
They call us 'the children of holocaust perpetrators,' because we oppose Islamists who are preparing a new holocaust against the Jews.' " America must start paying attention to Europe. And to Vlaams Belang.
Diana West is a contributing columnist for Townhall.com
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An ordinary American with some fitness centers in Europe responds to the Bernard Lewis piece:
Hey!
Good to hear from you. I work all over Europe, especially in Spain and Germany and I can tell you first hand that we don't want to do things the way they are over here.
The terrorists run the show and the people and governments are afraid of offending them.
You should see Belgium, for example. The Moors control many districts and make the people follow their laws, not those of the state of whom they are guests.
In France the Moors are constantly battling the police, burning cars and generally disrupting the society. Yesterday 200 Moors battled the police in the metro for 12 hours, before order was restored.
In England the Moors openly preach hate of their hosts and their ways, laws and existence and call for rebellion and a state within a state.
In Spain, the government collaborated with the terrorists to win the election in 2003, and today the government has politicized the judiciary branch so that no actions or convictions happen against the terrorists.
3 days ago, in a public protest, on live tv, a terrorist kicked one of the organizers of the opposition square in the b----, and his bodyguard caught the terrorist and as he was handing him over to the police, the cops let him go. They actually witnessed it all and they let the guy go.
It's amazing.
This is all true and I live it everyday. But don't be discouraged to visit. There is much to like.
It's amazing how people who live in the place where more wars have occured in the entire history of the world forget and refuse to learn from the past.
Go USA.
M.
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SPIEGEL ONLINE - March 29, 2007, 05:27 PM
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,474629,00.html
GERMAN JUSTICE FAILURES
Paving the Way for a Muslim Parallel Society
A recent ruling in Germany by a judge who cited the Koran underscores the dilemma the country faces in reconciling Western values with a growing immigrant population. A disturbing number of rulings are helping to create a parallel Muslim world in Germany that is welcoming to Islamic fundamentalists.
She didn't know it, nor did she even expect it. She had good intentions. Perhaps it was a mistake. In fact, it was most certainly a mistake. The best thing to do would be to wipe the slate clean.
Last week, in the middle of the storm, Christa Datz-Winter, a judge on Frankfurt's family court, was speechless. But Bernhard Olp, a spokesman for the city's municipal court, was quick to jump in. Olp reported that the judge had been under emotional stress stemming from a murder that had been committed in her office 10 years ago, and that she was now planning to take a break to recuperate. He also mentioned that she was "outraged" -- not about herself or her scandalous ruling, but over the reactions the case has triggered.
Photo Gallery: Does Germany already Have Sharia Law?
Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (8 Photos)
The reactions were so fierce that one could have been forgiven for mistakenly thinking that Germany's Muslims had won the headscarf dispute and the controversy over the Mohammed cartoons on a single day and, in one fell swoop, had taken a substantial bite out of the legal foundations of Western civilization.
The ensuing media furor came from both sides of the political spectrum. The left-leaning daily Die Tageszeitung ran a story on the case titled: "In the name of the people: beating allowed," while the right-wing tabloid Bild called it "An outrageous case!" The same unanimity across party lines prevailed in the political realm. "Unbearable," was conservative Bavarian Interior Minister Günther Beckstein's ruling, while Lale Akgün, a member of parliament of Turkish origin and the Social Democratic Party's representative on Islamic issues, commented that the Frankfurt judge's ruling was "worse than some backyard decision by an Islamist imam." Even the deputy head of the Green Party's parliamentary group, Hans-Christian Ströbele, noted that a German judge is obligated to uphold German law.
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The original purpose of the case was not to carry the clash of cultures into the courtroom. Instead, the case brought before Frankfurt's family court was that of a 26-year-old German woman of Moroccan origin who was terrified of her violent Moroccan husband, a man who had continued to threaten her despite having been ordered to stay away by the authorities. He had beaten her, and he had allegedly said that he would kill her if necessary.
But German law requires a one-year separation before a divorce can be completed -- and exceptions for an expedited process are only granted in extreme situations. When the woman's attorney, Barbara Becker-Rojczyk, filed a petition for an expedited divorce, Judge Christa Datz-Winter suddenly became inflexible. According to the judge, there was no evidence of "an unreasonable hardship" that would make it necessary to dissolve the marriage immediately. Instead, the judge argued, the woman should have "expected" that her husband, who had grown up in a country influenced by Islamic tradition, would exercise the "right to use corporal punishment" his religion grants him.
The judge even went so far as to quote the Koran in the grounds for her decision. In Sura 4, verse 34, she wrote, the Koran contains "both the husband's right to use corporal punishment against a disobedient wife and the establishment of the husband's superiority over the wife."
A disturbing pattern of rulings
Put plainly, the judge argued that a woman who marries a Muslim should know what she's getting herself into. In Germany, no less. Leading German feminist Alice Schwarzer argued that this was tantamount to a "softening of our legal system" that is "by no means a coincidence." Germany's only minister of integration at the state level, Armin Laschet, a member of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from the state of North Rhine Westphalia, sees the Frankfurt ruling as the "last link, for the time being, in a chain of horrific rulings handed down by German courts" -- rulings in which, for example, so-called honor killings have been treated as manslaughter and not murder.
This, says Berlin family attorney and prominent women's rights activist Seyran Ates, is part of the reason one should "be almost thankful that (judge Datz-Winter) made such a clear reference to the Koran. All she did was bring to the surface an undercurrent that already exists in our courts." Out of a sense of misguided tolerance, says Ates, judges treat the values of Muslim subcultures as a mitigating circumstance and, in doing so, are helping pave the way for a gradual encroachment of fundamentalist Islam in Germany's parallel Muslim world. It's an issue Ates often runs up against in her cases. "In Frankfurt," she says, "someone expressly openly for the first time what many are already thinking."
Ursula Spuler-Stegemann, an Islam expert from the central German university town of Marburg, has a similar take on the matter. "Do we already have Sharia here?" she asks, adding that the Frankfurt case shows that "things are getting out of hand here."
Does the unspeakable decision by a single Frankfurt family court judge truly mark a new stage in the German judiciary's unspoken policy of appeasement toward aggressive Muslims? Or is the collective outcry so loud and nonpartisan this time because the case is so clear? Is it because everyone believed that the debate, raging for years and still unresolved, over the issue of how much immigration the Germans should tolerate and how much assimilation they can expect was finally coming to an end? And because this particular case was about violence, the lowest common denominator on which everyone from left-leaning feminists to neoconservatives could agree?
And now that the danger has been recognized, is it being addressed quickly? Not exactly.
An abuse of the liberal state
Frankfurt family court judge Datz-Winter was removed from the case and the courts proved themselves capable of acting responsibly. In many other cases in Germany, however, the liberal nature of the constitutional state has been misused -- and a misguided approach to tolerance has been turned into self-sacrifice. But isn't it the court's job to protect the liberalism that has taken Germans so long and so much effort to achieve -- and with zero tolerance for intolerance, if need be?
The questions this raises in the context of social reality are agonizingly difficult, even insulting to many, and they lead us into a web of taboos that has developed over time. Those who move within this web often cannot help but rub someone the wrong way.
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The debate that Judge Christa Datz-Winter has now revived once again seems to afflict Germans like bouts of fever. It revolves around the question of how much assimilation the constitutional state can or must demand from immigrants. Will the Germans accept the sometimes outmoded customs of other cultural groups? In other words, will they permit groups to not only live in a society that parallels German society, but also to live their lives in an entirely different age and at a completely different pace? Is Germany not obligated to integrate those who are foreign to its society and bring them into the present?
Just as battles are often waged around flags, social conflicts tend to erupt around symbols -- the headscarves worn by female teachers, the minarets that are changing the appearance of some towns, the severed head of the Prophet Mohammed in the Berlin production of the opera "Idomeneo," and the harmless Danish cartoons depicting Mohammed, triggering an outcry that led to the torching of Western flags and embassies worldwide in 2005. But social conflicts also arise over seemingly minor issues. For example, if churches can ring their bells, why shouldn't the muezzin be allowed to call the Muslim faithful to prayer -- at 5:45 in the morning?
Because Germany became a country open to immigration some time ago, it now urgently needs guidelines on how rigidly it should enforce its standards and how it should treat its new arrivals -- as well as how the country expects them to behave.
As this debate becomes more and more urgent, Germans really ought to be thankful to the Frankfurt judge for naively stepping into the web of taboos. The problem Germany faces with its deeply religious Muslim immigrants is not unlike the challenge modern Israeli society faces in dealing with orthodox Jews. Fundamentalists -- including Muslims in Germany --- tend to produce large families, so that the men and women of the past could very well lay claim to a substantial share of the future. According to a study by the University of Tübingen, the number of fundamentalist Muslims in the country will have more than doubled by 2030.
For far too long, Germany's muslim immigrants were not asked to put much effort into integrating. For decades, German judges essentially paved the way for Islamic fundamentalists to form a parallel society. They raised little opposition to the strategy employed by Islamic groups to demand their supposed religious freedom in court until they got it. But the judges must have known, argues Johannes Kandel, that "giving preferential treatment to groups violates the principle of equal treatment in a secular legal system." Kandel heads the intercultural dialogue group at the political academy of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, which is closely alligned with the center-left Social Democrats.
Citing the freedom of religious expression guaranteed under the German constitution, judges in Germany permitted Muslims to withdraw their children from swimming lessons or to forbid them from taking part in school celebrations or school trips. This allowed outdated concepts of chastity from places like Turkey's highly traditional eastern Anatolia region to survive in an otherwise enlightened Europe. But religious freedom, says Udo Di Fabio, a judge on Germany's Federal Constitutional Court, the country's highest judicial institution, is no "basic right deluxe," but rather one of many constitutional rights -- and one that constantly has to be weighed against other rights.
"We were far too negligent for much too long," says Andreas Jacobs, the coordinator for Middle East policy and Islamic countries at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which is aligned with the conservative Christian Democrats. Wolfgang Bosbach, the deputy chairman of the CDU's parliamentary group says he sees the ruling as an indication "that we are gradually putting our own concepts of the law and values up for grabs." But Jacobs believes it is instead a kind of aftershock of the naïve multicultural illusions of recent decades.
A much-delayed wake-up call
"Finally the reactions to this nonsense are showing that sensitivity has become much greater than it was in the past," he says. The murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, he believes, served as a much-delayed wakeup call for most German judges and politicians.
In the autumn of 2004 Mohamed Bouyeri, the son of Moroccan immigrants who was born in Amsterdam and attended school there, slit van Gogh's throat as if he were slaughtering an animal on an Amsterdam street. He felt that van Gogh's film "Submission," about the oppression of women in Islam, was offensive to him and his religion. Van Gogh had shot the film together with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born Dutch who is one of the most prominent critics of Islam. The murder set the Netherlands into a deep state of shock. Suddenly the country was faced with the wreckage of its much-touted tolerance. Before long mosques and Koran schools were going up in flames, followed by retaliatory acts against churches.
Photo Gallery: Does Germany already Have Sharia Law?
Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (8 Photos)
The clash of cultures in the neighboring Netherlands also drew Germany's attention to conditions that many had preferred to play down as "cultural diversity." Suddenly Germans were waking up to the creeping Islamicization on the fringes of their society, and to the existence of parallel worlds in German cities. Ironically, until only a few years ago all of this was happening with the enthusiastic support of the constitutional state and its servants.
German judges were accommodating to Muslims in many minor rulings, and often with good reason. In 2002, the state labor court in the northern city of Hamm ruled that prayer breaks are permissible during working hours, but must be coordinated with the employer. The case had come to the fore after a company reprimanded a Muslim worker who wanted to pray several times a day. The worker demanded his rights, citing religious freedom.
In a number of cases dealing with halal butchering, German courts were forced to grant exceptions to Muslim butchers similar to those applied to butchers who adhere to Jewish kosher butchering rituals. In 2002, the Federal Constitutional Court issued a landmark decision allowing butchering according to Muslim ritual, after Rüstem Altinküpe, a butcher in the eastern city of Wetzlar, had filed a lawsuit.
Muslims can also often count on the support of German courts when it comes to building mosques. As far back as 1992, the Federal Administrative Court ruled that neighbors must "fundamentally accept" being woken before sunup.
The muezzin, who calls the faithful to prayer from the minaret in traditional mosques, can also usually look to German judges to support his cause. Attempts by cities to appeal decisions favoring mosques have rarely succeeded.
In Dillenburg, a town in the state of Hesse, a rural district office attempted to use the highway code to silence the local muezzin, arguing that his devout calls to prayer could irritate drivers. The Giessen Administration Court overturned the decision.
In theory, the Muslim call to prayer could be enforced in court in all German communities, the logic being that where Christians can sing their hymns the Muslims must be allowed to call the faithful to prayer.
As the courts saw it, the principle of equal treatment also applied to those with little interest in equality. But most mosques voluntarily waive this right to equal treatment.
Muslims can also often depend on courts that deal with the laws governing the press. The outcome of a legal dispute last May between the former imam of Berlin's Mevlana mosque, Yakub Tasci, and the ZDF public television network before the district court in Potsdam outside Berlin was especially absurd. Judge Klaus Feldmann barred the network from referring to the imam as a "hate preacher" on its Web site. And yet Tasci, according to an investigative piece in the magazine Frontal21, had characterized Germans during his sermons as the equivalent of stinking infidels. According to the court, Tasci had not been referring to Germans in particular but atheists in general, and had only preached about Germans' alleged lack of hygiene and apparent body odor outside of the mosque.
Issues of fundamental importance
While these cases may seem trivial, the matter becomes more sensitive when cases revolve around issues of fundamental importance. In some cases German courts choose to do little more than dabble, as in the headscarf dispute. In 2003, Fereshda Ludin, a teacher in the southern state of Baden-Württemberg, sued for the right to wear the headscarf in the classroom. Her case was referred to the Federal Constitutional Court, which ruled that schools are the business of the states. In other words, it would be up to the states to enact the appropriate legislation if they wanted to ban teachers from wearing the headscarf. This hasn't happened yet in many German states, and the debate continues.
In some cases German courts are even more accommodating to Muslims than those in secular Turkey. In 1984, the Wiesbaden Administrative Court upheld a Muslim woman's demand that she be allowed to wear her headscarf on photos for official identification documents. In the grounds for its decision, the court wrote: "The Islamic faith requires the plaintiff to cover her head in public." Even though the ruling is not legally binding, Muslims have used it to support their arguments.
Experts view a 1993 decision by the Federal Administrative Court as one of the most blatant mistakes on the road to establishing a legal framework to protect Islamic parallel words. The judges decided to allow a 13-year-old Turkish girl to be excused from physical education and swimming instruction if it could not be offered in a way that kept boys and girls strictly separated. The girl's family had argued that the headscarf could very well slip off during these activities.
The court was not even swayed by the school district's objection -- which now seems downright prophetic -- that granting special rights would make it increasingly difficult for schools to offer class trips, sex education classes and outings to the theater. The judges ruled that it was "unreasonable" to require pupils to take part in physical education classes. They decided in favor of the parents' religious freedom and against the development opportunities and rights of personal liberty of the child -- and of many other children.
In a similar case, a judge argued that whether the Koran does in fact require certain behaviors is immaterial, and that a perceived precept is already sufficient. In fact, the judge continued, it could not be argued that these religious rules "are, according to Western standards, one-sided and do not favor adolescent women."
This was an attitude that still prevailed in the minds of German judges one year after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.
At the time, the higher administrative court in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia ruled that a female Muslim student in the 10th grade should be permitted not to take part in a school trip. The family had argued that Islam prohibits allowing girls to go on such trips without being accompanied by a male family member. The family also insisted that the girl was constantly worried about losing her headscarf. The judges found that such fears were "comparable with the situation of a partially mentally impaired person who, because of her disability, can only travel with a companion." This assessment was devastating because it accepted the rules of a camel drivers' society in the modern age -- literally, because a few years earlier, an Islamic legal opinion dubbed the "camel fatwa" had been added to the professional literature.
Amir Zaidan, the then chairman of the Islamic Religious Community in the state of Hesse, wrote the opinion. He argued that a Muslim woman could travel no more than 81 kilometers (50 miles) from the home of her husband or parents without being accompanied by a male blood relative. The opinion came to be known as the "camel fatwa," because this was the distance a camel caravan could travel within 24 hours in the days of the Prophet Mohammed.
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Zaidan even defended this position at a 2001 conference of Germany's protestant churches in Frankfurt. His argument was that a woman who traveled farther would run the risk of being raped. Apparently one could spout such nonsense to the good church people who had gathered in Frankfurt without running the risk of being run off the premises for committing rape against religious freedom.
A bonus for polygamists
In another letter from Absurdistan, the Federal Ministry for Social Affairs issued the following announcement to German health insurance agencies in the summer of 2004: "Polygamous marriages must be recognized if they are legal under the laws of the native country of the individuals in question."
What the policy statement boiled down to was this: In certain cases Muslim men from countries where polygamy is legal -- like Morocco, Algeria and Saudi Arabia -- could add a second wife to their government health insurance policies without having to pay an additional premium.
Photo Gallery: Does Germany already Have Sharia Law?
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Such excesses are rare today. Judges are increasingly accepting the responsibility that legal expert and Islam scholar Mathias Rohe demands of them: to use the law "to signal to a society what is allowed and what is not."
For example, in 2005 a Düsseldorf judge ordered that a Muslim boy could be required to attend school swimming sessions together with girls. In his grounds, the judge argued that in Germany Muslims are "confronted with more liberal values, which they must be able to handle. The same applies to required swimming instruction."
But this change of heart within the judiciary has not brought about fundamental social change. On the contrary, the genie that the courts once let out of the bottle continues to shape social reality. "More and more girls are not taking part in swimming instruction or are not going on class trips," says Christa Stolle of Terre des Femmes, a women's rights group. "Or they are simply taken out of school." The wearing of headscarves has also increased tremendously, says Stolle, who is convinced that "it's getting more difficult for girls."
Experiences in urban German schools show just how much integration has suffered as a result of the decisions of timorous judges in past years. At the Carlo Mierendorff School in Preungesheim, a Frankfurt neighborhood, about one-third of students in the upper grades are permitted to not attend class trips for religious reasons, says Alexander Zabler, the school's principal. To prevent their daughters from traveling with schoolmates, many Muslim parents have either called the girls in sick or simply ordered them not to show up. Zabler tried many approaches, including talking to the parents, visiting them at home, offering special meals for Muslims during travel -- but all to no avail. Finally he turned to the government and asked the local school board for help -- also to no avail. He has since resigned.
Last month parents, teachers and students at the Carlo Mierendorff School decided to cancel future class trips altogether if more than 10 percent of students could not attend. "On this issue integration has failed here," complains Zabler.
That failure is at least partly attributable to the activities of people like Yavuz and Gürhan Özoguz, two brothers who offer sample letters for parents seeking to exempt their children from swimming instruction on their Web site, Muslim-Market.de. The parents then use the letters to demand special rights for their children from teachers and principals.
"Doing their best to survive"
If the parents' strict faith expresses itself as an extreme form of modesty in girls, then it often leads to rowdiness in Muslim boys. Paul Reiter, 47, an English and French teacher at a school in the western city of Bochum, constantly experiences the results of self-imposed, aggressive exclusion in the classroom. Reiter says he knows many "poor students with gold chains" who routinely use anti-American, anti-Semitic and sexist language, often addressing German women as "whores." Reiter says female teachers "are doing their best to survive" in some classes.
Marie-Luise Bock, the principal of Martin Luther Middle School in Herten, a city in the industrial Ruhr region, says her efforts to integrate Muslim girls are torpedoed from two sides: "arch-conservative" Muslim parents and "macho brothers." About one-third of female Muslim students wear headscarves, "and one in two are unhappy about it," says Bock, who has occasionally reserved spots in a women's shelter for some of her former female students. "It deeply upsets me that we can so little for these girls," she says.
Ursula Spuler-Stegemann, the Islam scholar, also has stories to tell about desperate teachers. "Many have no idea where they are allowed to draw the line when it comes to Muslims," she says. More dangerous, says Spuler-Stegemann, is a "dramatic development that is currently unfolding in the education sector, practically unnoticed by the general public: There are groups that truly want to establish a separate world."
She is referring to organizations like the Association of Islamic Cultural Centers, which operates a number of children's centers throughout Germany. Critics say the children, who often have no exposure to the outside world, are subjected to religious indoctrination -- an allegation the association's leadership denies. Milli Görüs and the Islamic Community of Germany -- two groups that are under observation by Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany's domestic intelligence agency -- are also heavily involved in working with youth. Muslim organizations in Germany, Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble warns, must behave in a way "that indicates partnership with us" -- at least if they hope to steer clear of investigators and the courts.
Muslim organizations are also beginning to establish their own schools, arguing that Christian nuns teach at some German schools. The Muslims tout their concepts as being integrative, and education officials believe them and approve the schools. But then, far from being integrated, the schools end up attracting only Muslims.
Domestic intelligence kept a close watch on the King Fahd Academy in Bonn for years. The mosque and associated school were criticized because some of the schoolbooks they used glorified jihad. But even the ordinary Koran schools, which exist at practically every German mosque, often forcefully draw their roughly 70,000 children and adolescents back into the world of their grandfathers.
Of course, in many families there is no escaping the closeness justified by Muslim traditions and rules. Women are brought up to serve and obey. Boys are alternately spoiled and beaten, as custom requires. According to a study conducted by the Lower Saxony Criminology Research Institute, physical abuse of boys is more than twice as common in Turkish families than German families. And "girls from conservative families say that their fathers and brothers have the right to hit them," reports Judith Gerling-Tamer, an educator at the Elisi Evi Support Center for women and girls in Berlin's heavily Muslim Kreuzberg district.
The authorities are generally aware of little of what happens in families. Nevertheless, laws and court decisions do send signals. If the wrong signals are sent, as was the case in many past court rulings, this also affects families. And lawmakers' failure to enact legislation that is urgently needed can also have devastating effects.
Young women routinely come to support centers after being married off against their will, but such arranged marriages are neither illegal nor regulated in Germany.
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According to a 2004 study commissioned by the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, 17 percent of Turkish women surveyed considered their marriage forced. The Turkish twins Ayse Auth and Hatice Nizam know what it's like to be forced into an arranged marriage in Germany. They were born in the state of Hesse into a large Turkish guest worker family. Both girls did well in school and trained to become hairdressers. But then, the twins say, their parents insisted that it was time for them to marry. Hatice was married at 18, Ayse at 19. The two sisters spent four years trying to separate themselves from their husbands they neither loved nor wanted. When they finally succeeded, the family treated them as outcasts.
Unlike many other girls with similar stories, the girls have now confidently made a life for themselves in Germany. They own two hairdressing salons and both live with their German partners. Arranged marriages, says Hatice Nizam, are "unfortunately still" part of everyday life for many women of Turkish origin in Germany, "and it's incredibly difficult to extract yourself from them."
Ayten Köse, 42, who manages a shelter in the Neukölln Rollberg district, tries to help. She doesn't resemble most of the Muslim women here. Instead of a headscarf, she wears her hair uncovered. Köse knows how difficult it is for Muslim women in Germany to be courageous and rebel. But she is constantly reminding women that the German state will not let them down. "But what should I tell them now, after this Frankfurt ruling?" Köse asks furiously. "That it can happen sometimes?" Trust in the constitution and the hope that it will be enforced, says Köse, is sometimes the only thing Muslim women can rely on for encouragement.
The problem for many women, says Köse, is that they are completely alone, alone against their own family or their husband's family. "And if they haven't attended school in Germany," Köse explains, "they usually don't even know about human rights."
A political system too paralyzed to act
Chances are slim that they can expect much help from the political end anytime soon. German lawmakers have repeatedly considered raising the age at which guest workers are allowed to come to Germany as a way of protecting young girls against forced marriages. Many immigrants are very young when they are forced into arranged marriages. A law outlawing forced marriages still doesn't exist today, although the German criminal code has been updated somewhat to deal with the problem. Even some of the measures other countries established are nonexistent in Germany. In Britain, for example, women who are worried that they could be forced into hastily arranged marriages while on vacation can leave information with the authorities before leaving the country. If they fail to report back by a prearranged date, officials, including those at the British Foreign Office, begin searching for them.
Germany is still a long way off from such well-meaning approaches and the symbolism they convey. In fact, some of the women who contact the women's rights group Terre des Femmes do so because they feel stabbed in the back by the constitutional state. If they are taken to their native countries against their will for forced marriages, the door often slams shut behind them -- permanently. If the brides are unable to extricate themselves and return to Germany within six months, their residency permits automatically expire in most cases.
Berlin attorney Seyran Ates says: "We are at a crossroads, everywhere in Europe. Do we allow structures that lead straight into a parallel society, or do we demand assimilation into the democratic constitutional state?"
The answer is clear, at least if one studies the literature of conservative Muslims. For example, in his book "Women in Islam," Imam Mohammed Kamal Mustafa of Spain recommends how women should be beaten. If you beat their hands and feet with "whips that are too thick," he warns, you risk leaving scars. Abdelkader Bouziane, an Algerian imam who calls two women his own, recommends handing out beatings in such a way that the consequences are not apparent to infidels.
Although Islamic groups do their best to condemn marital violence, there are clear indications of how ubiquitous beatings are in many Muslim marriages. Experts say that a disproportionately high percentage of women who flee to women's shelters are Muslim. This sort of domestic violence in the family has even ended in death for more than 45 people in Germany in the last decade. According to an analysis by the Federal Office of Criminal Investigation on the "phenomenon of honor killings" in Germany, woman are often slaughtered in the most gruesome of ways for violating archaic concepts of morality. In many cases an entire family council has ruled on the execution of a rebellious female family member.
In 2005, Hatun Sürücü, a young Berlin woman, was killed because she was "living like a German." In her family's opinion, this was a crime only her death could expiate. Her youngest brother executed her by shooting her several times, point blank, at a Berlin bus stop. But because prosecutors were unable to prove that the family council had planned the act, only the killer himself could be tried for murder and, because he was underage, he was given a reduced sentence. The rest of the family left the courtroom in high spirits, and the father rewarded the convicted boy with a watch.
It is by no means unusual for people put on trial for honor killings in Germany to be convicted on the lesser charge of manslaughter in the end. In 2003 the Frankfurt District Court handed down a mild sentence against a Turkish-born man who had stabbed his German-born wife to death. She had disobeyed him and was even insolent enough to demand a divorce.
Muslim moral precepts as mitigating factors
The court argued that one could not automatically assume that the man's motives were contemptible. He had, after all, acted "out of an excessive rage and sense of outrage against his wife" -- who he had regularly beaten in the past -- "based on his foreign socio-cultural moral concepts." According to the court's decision, the divorce would have violated "his family and male honor derived from his Anatolian moral concepts." The Federal Constitutional Court reversed the decision in 2004.
Even though higher courts usually reverse these sorts of rulings, judges are still handing down sentences based on the same logic. For example, the municipal court in the western city of Leverkusen sentenced a Lebanese man to probation in 2005 after he had severely beaten his daughter several times for resisting his efforts to force her into an arranged marriage. He hit her on the head with a stick. When it broke he choked her and threatened to stab her to death. The court argued that the fact that his actions were based on his Muslim moral concepts served as a mitigating factor.
The district court in Essen was equally lenient when, in 2002, it sentenced a Lebanese man who had applied for asylum -- and who routinely beat his children and wife with a belt and also raped his spouse -- to nothing more than probation. The judge cited the man's cultural background as a mitigating circumstance. In commenting on his crimes, the man said: "I am a Muslim, a normal person. I pray, fast and fulfill do my duties."
Both criminal courts and family courts have often gone soft on violent parents whose concepts of honor were more important to them than the well-being of their child. In 2000 the Cologne Higher Regional Court ruled that a couple from Kosovo who had planned to force their 17-year-old daughter into an arranged marriage at home should be denied custody of the girl. This was a reversal of a lower court's decision to send the girl, who had sought protection from the youth welfare office, back to her parents. It was only the higher court that clarified something that should have been obvious: that it is completely irrelevant as to whether "the parents, based on their origin, have different ideas about family obligation and the duty to obey." Family attorneys say that social workers have even been known to turn away girls who have turned to youth welfare officials for fear of being forced into a marriage. The social workers' response to the girls is that that sort of thing is, well, "normal with you people."
Jutta Wagner, a family attorney and president of the German Association of Female Lawyers, says that she is constantly hearing about "attorneys with a migration background" who have studied law in Germany but conclude marriage contracts "in which they attempt to adapt a sort of 'Sharia light.'" According to Wagner the purpose of the contracts, which are barely acceptable for German courts, is to make Islamic law acceptable in small steps.
Christa Datz-Winter, the Frankfurt family court judge, argued as if she had already accepted the basic tenets of Sharia law. In the Koran, she wrote, "the honor of the man, simply put, is tied to the chastity of the woman." Therefore, she continued, "for a man with an Islamic upbringing the fact that a woman is living according to Western cultural rules is already considered a violation of his honor."
Matthias Bartsch, Andrea Brandt, Simone Kaiser, Gunther Latsch, Cordula Meyer and Caroline Schmidt
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
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GM:
That was an interesting read.
From today's NY Slimes, here's this about France:
Marc
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By ELAINE SCIOLINO
Published: March 30, 2007
PARIS, March 29 — France’s presidential campaign has been seized by a subject long monopolized by the extreme right: how best to be French.
The conservative candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy, wants to create a ministry of “immigration and national identity” that would require newcomers to embrace the secular values of the republican state.
The Socialist candidate, Ségolène Royal, wants every French citizen to memorize “La Marseillaise” and keep a French flag in the cupboard for public display on Bastille Day.
The far-right candidate, Jean-Marie Le Pen, of the National Front party, chortles that his rivals have stolen — and therefore validated — his message of “France for the French.”
Some political commentators have accused Mr. Sarkozy of harking back to the darkest period in modern French history: the collaborationist Vichy government during the Nazi occupation. Ms. Royal, meanwhile, is being attacked by both her rivals and her own camp for manipulating symbols that historically have been the domain of the far right.
With the first round of the election 24 days away, the battle over French identity has overtaken discussion of more practical issues like reducing unemployment and making France more competitive.
On Tuesday, as if to underscore the tensions over identity, roving bands of young people threw objects at the police, smashed store windows and damaged property for several hours at the Gare du Nord, a major train station in Paris. The trouble started when an illegal immigrant from Congo jumped a turnstile in the subway and tried to punch a transit agent who asked to see his ticket.
The police shut down the subway and commuter train system, arrested 13 suspects and used tear gas before restoring order after midnight.
The shift to debating Frenchness is aimed in part at luring the right-wing vote away from Mr. Le Pen, who shocked France in 2002 when he finished the first round of voting in second place.
It is also an attempt to reassure jittery voters that France will remain an important power at a time when it is losing prominence in a larger European Union and a globalized world and struggling with a disaffected Muslim and ethnic Arab and African population at home.
“Resolving the identity crisis in France is a very serious problem, but both Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal have trivialized it in this election,” said Eric Dupin, a political scientist and an author. “Both of them are playing on the fears and the base emotions of the people.”
François Bayrou, the centrist candidate who leads the tiny Union for French Democracy party, denounced the “nationalistic obsession” that had infiltrated the campaign. “Every time in our past that we have wanted to go back to external signs, it has led to periods that are unhappy,” he said.
For the past few years, France has struggled with economic and cultural issues related to its immigrants. One is shared by much of the rest of Europe: how to stop the influx of illegal immigrants who drain a country’s economy and social services. A second is how to force French citizens of immigrant origin to obey laws, including those banning practices like polygamy and the wearing of head scarves by Muslim girls and women in schools and universities.
As interior minister before he stepped down Monday to focus on his campaign, Mr. Sarkozy tightened immigration laws and boasted that he had expelled tens of thousands of illegal immigrants and prevented others from entering. His pledge in 2005 to rid France’s ethnic Arab and Muslim suburbs of “scum” contributed to a three-week orgy of violence there.
Mr. Sarkozy, who has largely avoided the suburbs during his campaign, has criticized immigrants and their offspring who resist the French model of integration, saying it is unacceptable to want to live in France without respecting and loving the country or learning French.
He touched off the current debate in a television appearance on March 8 when he announced a plan to create a “ministry of immigration and national identity” if elected.
Ms. Royal called the plan “disgraceful,” adding, “Foreign workers have never threatened French identity.”
“Indecent,” was the reaction of Azouz Begag, the minister for equal opportunity. “I’m not stupid, and neither are the French,” he said. “It’s a hook to go and look for the lost sheep of the National Front.”
Simone Veil, a beloved former government minister and Holocaust survivor, found herself denouncing Mr. Sarkozy’s idea shortly after she endorsed him for president.
“I didn’t at all like this very ambiguous formula,” she told the magazine Marianne. She said a ministry for immigration and “integration” would be a better idea.
Mr. Sarkozy was unfazed. “I want the promotion of a common culture,” he said in reply to his critics.
Published: March 30, 2007
(Page 2 of 2)
Indeed, an OpinionWay Internet poll for the newspaper Le Figaro, splashed on the paper’s front page this month, indicated that 55 percent of French voters approved. Sixty-five percent agreed that the “immigrants who join us must sign up to the national identity.”
Although the poll was conducted using a representative sample via the Internet, not by using more reliable telephone surveys, it was widely cited as evidence that the French wanted a more restrictive immigration policy and that they wanted Muslims here conform to secular French customs.
But Mr. Sarkozy’s proposal has revived memories of the Vichy era. The idea of a national identity ministry has been compared to the General Commissariat of Jewish Affairs, which was created with ministerial rank under the Vichy administration. “Only Vichy developed administrative structures in their efficient way to defend a certain concept of ‘national identity,’ ” the columnist Philippe Bernard wrote in Le Monde last week. He said that the Commissariat, “even before being a tool in the service of the policy of extermination, responded to the objective of purification of the French nation.”
Some conservative Jewish voters, who were planning to vote for Mr. Sarkozy because of his staunch support of Israel, say they now are considering shifting to Mr. Bayrou.
Despite Ms. Royal’s criticism of Mr. Sarkozy, she followed his lead by wrapping herself tightly in her own mantle of nationalism. She started by encouraging her supporters to sing “La Marseillaise,” the national anthem and the rallying cry of the right, at the end of her rallies.
Last week in southern France, which historically votes for the right and extreme right, she called for a “reconquest of the symbols of the nation” from the right.
She said all French citizens should have the French flag at home, adding, “In other countries, they put the flag in the windows on their national holiday.” And she promised that if elected, she would “ensure that the French know ‘La Marseillaise.’ ”
In the end, both camps acknowledge that they are trying to appeal to voters on the right.
“Ségolène Royal is taking back the terrain too often abandoned by the left for ages to the right and the extreme right,” said a former defense and interior minister, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, who supports her.
Mr. Sarkozy was more explicit. “Since 1983, we have the strongest far right in Europe,” he said this month. “We must not proceed as if it does not exist. I want to talk to those who have moved toward the far right because they are suffering.”
During a campaign trip last week in the Caribbean, where some of the region’s residents can vote in French elections, Mr. Sarkozy boasted that after he proposed his immigration and national identity ministry, his standing in the polls jumped.
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Steyn will be seen as a prophet by future generations.
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"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.
"A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
"Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome."
Sir Winston Churchill (The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50, London: Longmans, Green Co., 1899).
And, Sir Winston, it appears as though oil revenues are buying technological parity.
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Quijote,
Muslims have been fighting over their theological divisions since the death of Muhammad. That doesn't mean they can't unite against the dhimmi and kufar under the banner of jihad. If I recall correctly Khomeni started out as a Sufi, which tends to be the hippy-dippy, new-agey version of islam. Having said that, there have been sufi jihads in history as well.
More to the point, Sunnis and Shiites HAVE been working together. Hezbollah practically invented Hamas. Hezbollah has been aiding al-Qaeda since the very beginning. Iran has been secretly supplying and pulling the strings for Sunni terrorist groups for nearly 3 decades.
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Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Governmentbacked study has revealed.
It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.
There is also resistance to tackling the 11th century Crusades - where Christians fought Muslim armies for control of Jerusalem - because lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques.
The findings have prompted claims that some schools are using history 'as a vehicle for promoting political correctness'.
The study, funded by the Department for Education and Skills, looked into 'emotive and controversial' history teaching in primary and secondary schools.
It found some teachers are dropping courses covering the Holocaust at the earliest opportunity over fears Muslim pupils might express anti-Semitic and anti-Israel reactions in class.
The researchers gave the example of a secondary school in an unnamed northern city, which dropped the Holocaust as a subject for GCSE coursework.
The report said teachers feared confronting 'anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils'.
It added: "In another department, the Holocaust was taught despite anti-Semitic sentiment among some pupils.
"But the same department deliberately avoided teaching the Crusades at Key Stage 3 (11- to 14-year-olds) because their balanced treatment of the topic would have challenged what was taught in some local mosques."
A third school found itself 'strongly challenged by some Christian parents for their treatment of the Arab-Israeli conflict-and the history of the state of Israel that did not accord with the teachings of their denomination'.
The report concluded: "In particular settings, teachers of history are unwilling to challenge highly contentious or charged versions of history in which pupils are steeped at home, in their community or in a place of worship."
But Chris McGovern, history education adviser to the former Tory government, said: "History is not a vehicle for promoting political correctness. Children must have access to knowledge of these controversial subjects, whether palatable or unpalatable."
The researchers also warned that a lack of subject knowledge among teachers - particularly at primary level - was leading to history being taught in a 'shallow way leading to routine and superficial learning'. Lessons in difficult topics were too often 'bland, simplistic and unproblematic' and bored pupils.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...n_page_id=1770
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It appears as though the single most effective weapon the Islamic world has to subjugate the Western World is immigration. First come small groups of Muslims, who due to Western Religious toleration, become large groups of Muslims. Then those Muslims start demanding Sharia. Once the populations reach 20%, they begin dictating terms to the secular governments. The progressives, fearing violence and the appearance of 'intolerance' cave to demand after demand. Is dhimmitude far behind?
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Quijote,
Muslims have been fighting over their theological divisions since the death of Muhammad. That doesn't mean they can't unite against the dhimmi and kufar under the banner of jihad. If I recall correctly Khomeni started out as a Sufi, which tends to be the hippy-dippy, new-agey version of islam. Having said that, there have been sufi jihads in history as well.
More to the point, Sunnis and Shiites HAVE been working together. Hezbollah practically invented Hamas. Hezbollah has been aiding al-Qaeda since the very beginning. Iran has been secretly supplying and pulling the strings for Sunni terrorist groups for nearly 3 decades.
True enough. I'm in a training class right now and this is one of the topics we've covered.
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http://www.spiegel.de/international/...476680,00.html
TERRORISM IN EUROPE
Bin Laden's Eurofighters
By Yassin Musharbash
242 jihadists, 31 attacks, 28 networks. After examining militant Islamism in Europe, researchers have found that self-recruitment is on the rise among terrorist leader Osama bin Laden's Eurofighters, and that there is no such thing as a standard terrorist.
Dutch researchers Edwin Bakker and Teije Hidde Donker had an ambitious goal in mind when they wrote: "We must find out who the jihadists are, where they come from and what they look like." Although they were not able to answer that question in its entirety, their study, "Jihadi Terrorists in Europe," does offer plenty of fascinating results.
They researched the stories of 242 people who, between 2001 and 2006, were organized in 28 networks, planned 31 attacks and, in some cases, executed or allegedly executed these attacks. (Some are still considered presumed terrorists because their cases are still pending.) The list includes little known plots, such as the attempt to attack the Spanish Supreme Court in 2004, as well as prominent terrorist attacks, including the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004 and the 2005 London bus and subway bombings.
Photo Gallery: Bin Laden's Eurofighters
Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (5 Photos)
One of the most important findings of the Dutch study is that there are no standard jihadists. According to the researchers, the 28 networks they identified differ considerably from one another. In some cases, authorities were dealing with individual attackers, whereas more than 30 people were involved in the 2004 bombings of trains in Madrid. The data also cover a wide range when it comes to the attackers' ages. The youngest was 16 and the oldest 59, which makes the average age of 27.3 years not especially meaningful.
Homogeneous cells
Internally, however, the cells are surprisingly homogeneous. Pakistanis generally get together with Pakistanis, Moroccans with Moroccans and -- as in the case of -- Lebanese with Lebanese. Most jihadists are men. Only five women appear in the study.
There are also few differences when it comes to goals and methods. Transportation systems were by far the most common targets, and in many cases explosives were the weapons of choice. The choice of specific targets was consistently perfidious: the plans were directed exclusively against civilian facilities or civilians themselves. Of the 242 jihadists, 11 were suicide bombers -- and they were the ones who committed the most devastating attacks.
Great Britain and the Netherlands have proven to be at the greatest risk during the period studied, with 12 of the networks operating in Great Britain, seven in the Netherlands, four in France and three each in Spain and Belgium.
Searching for a profile
By far the most interesting aspect of Bakker's and Hidde Donker's study is their analysis of the origins and radicalization of the attackers and presumed terrorists.
A total of 29 nationalities are represented, but there are clear clusters. The 55 Algerians in the study make up almost one-fourth of the entire sample. Together with other North Africans, they account for more than half of those studied. They were most likely to be active in those countries where many of their countrymen had settled: France, Spain and Belgium.
The second largest group consisted of 24 attackers of Pakistani ethnic origin whose attacks were planned primarily for Great Britain.
The Dutch data are even more meaningful when compared with a study by US researcher Marc Sagemann, who presented a similar analysis of international terrorists with ties to al-Qaida in 2004. The Dutch researchers also provided such a comparison, and it clearly points out that the European jihadists are already part of a different generation than those in Sagemann's sample.
His jihadists were mainly Arabs, especially Saudis and Egyptians, who went abroad. Seventy percent of them became radicalized outside the country in which they had previously lived. The situation is reversed among al-Qaida's Eurofighters: More than 80 percent of them found their way to armed jihad in the country in which they lived.
Radicalization with friends and family
These numbers indicate that the impact of Afghan training camps on radicalization has since been largely offset.
Bakker and Hidde Donker summarize the issue of radicalization as follows: Their group of jihadists differs "fundamentally from the global mujaheddin." This conclusion is also supported in other ways-- by the realization, for example, that the jihadists who became active in Europe "radicalized with little outside interference, ...often together with friends and family members."
What this boils down to is that these Euro-terrorists are recruiting themselves. The Internet plays an important role in this process. Many of the jihadists featured in the study obtained al-Qaida propaganda via the Internet, especially in the last few months leading up to their attacks.
This reinforces a fear security officials have long had: The radicalization phase is becoming shorter and shorter.
Another difference between the Dutch study and Sagemann's results is also disconcerting: 58 jihadists were noticed by the police before their planned attacks -- almost one-fourth of the sample and far more than in Sagemann's study. Small-time criminals are apparently finding their way into al-Qaida in Europe more often today than in the past.
A higher proportion of converts than in the Sagemann study (a total of 14, including 13 former Christians and one former Hindu) also confirms that there are more detours on the road to jihadism than there were in the past.
New generation of European jihadists is a fact
Despite all the interesting details, a profile cannot be derived from the data. The types of attackers are too diverse. Perhaps the most useful fact for the purpose of profiling is that so many terrorism suspects were minor criminals in the past.
The authors of the study believe that they have confirmed that "homegrown terrorism" is the new megatrend among Europe's jihadists. However, the debate among terrorism experts is currently moving away from this term again, now that investigations of the July 2005 London bombings revealed connections to Pakistan and possibly the central leadership of al-Qaida. These ties contradict the conclusion that the attackers acted entirely on their own.
But the real value of the study is likely to lie elsewhere: in the simple analysis of what has already happened. For example, the light the study sheds on the trends among active terrorists in selecting targets in Europe is helpful in prevention, as is the empirically backed conclusion that there is a correlation between propaganda on the Internet and rapid radicalization.
Most of all, what the study shows is that most attackers who commit acts of terror in Europe first developed into jihadists within European societies, and in most cases completely without any prior battlefield experience and without having attended terrorist training camps.
The "new generation" of jihadists in Europe is not the writing on the wall, but reality.
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WSJ
Hezbollah's German Helpers
By ALEXANDER RITZMANN and MARK DUBOWITZ
April 17, 2007
Hezbollah arrived in the European Union back in the 1980s, along with refugees from the civil war in Lebanon. Despite its deadly track record and a 2005 European Parliament resolution recommending the banning of the Iranian-funded group, it is still legal on the Continent. France, Spain, Belgium and Sweden prevent the EU from jointly designating Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.
Holding currently both the E.U. and G-8 presidencies, Berlin would be in a strong position to head the fight against an organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the replacement of Lebanon's fragile democracy with a Tehran-backed Islamic state. So far, however, Germany has squandered this unique opportunity to push for a Hezbollah ban. Berlin's passivity is consistent with its tolerant approach toward the "Party of God" over the past two decades.
While under the watchful eye of German law enforcement and intelligence, Hezbollah enjoys significant operational freedom. In the late 1990s, for example, it was able to recruit in Germany Steven Smyrek, a German convert to Islam, and train him in Lebanon as a suicide bomber. He was luckily arrested at Tel Aviv airport before he could blow up Israeli civilians.
German security services believe that about 900 Hezbollah core activists are in the country and regularly meet in 30 cultural community centers and mosques. These activists financially support Hezbollah in Lebanon through fund-raising organizations, such as the "Orphans Project Lebanon Association." This harmless-sounding charity belongs to the Lebanese "al-Shahid (the Martyr) Association," which is part of the Hezbollah network that supports the families of militia fighters and suicide bombers.
According to a German government report from February, the attitude of Hezbollah supporters in Germany "is characterized by a far-reaching, unlimited acceptance of the ideology and policy (of Hezbollah)." Berlin is also aware that representatives of Hezbollah's "foreign affairs office" in Lebanon regularly travel to Germany to give orders to their followers.
* * *
So why does the German government tolerate these activities?
First, the Hezbollah leadership in Beirut recognizes the value of a German safe haven. It demands that Hezbollah followers carefully obey German law, which Berlin claims they do "to a large extent." Experience from attacks in the U.S., Britain and elsewhere suggest, though, that terrorists follow the law up and until the point they decide to strike.
Second, too many Germany policymakers uncritically accept the idea that there is supposedly a political Hezbollah -- an Islamist but legitimate movement independent of those Hezbollah terrorists who have murdered hundreds of people around the world. To believe that fairy tale, they even ignore Hezbollah's own words. As Mohammed Fannish, member of the "political bureau" of Hezbollah and former Lebanese energy minister put it in 2002: "I can state that there is no separating between Hezbollah's military and political arms."
Hezbollah's leadership, the Shurah Council, controls the totality of its activities -- social, political and what it calls "military." Funding for Hezbollah is fungible: Money collected in Germany supposedly for social and political causes frees up funds for terrorist attacks.
In ignoring the threat from Hezbollah, the German government puts hope above experience. While it tries to spare German citizens from the wrath of Hezbollah, it plays down the danger of a group that seeks to destroy both Lebanese democracy and the Jewish state. In the end, this approach also compromises the safety of German citizens. On July 31, 2006, two Lebanese students, Yussuf Mohammed El Hajdib and Jihad Hamad, placed bombs hidden in suitcases on two regional trains in Germany, but they failed to go off. Germany's federal law enforcement agency concluded that a successful explosion would have resulted in a tragedy on par with the London subway attacks of July 2005. The two suspects said they wanted to take revenge for the Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed.
Just four month earlier, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah repeatedly urged Muslims on Hezbollah's TV-station al-Manar "to take a decisive stand" in the cartoon controversy. He said that he is certain that, "...not only millions, but hundreds of millions of Muslims are ready and willing to sacrifice their lives in order to defend the honor of their Prophet. And you are among them." The German federal prosecutor is still investigating the organizational affiliations of the two Lebanese terror suspects.
What is well established already is that al-Manar broadcasts into Germany (and the rest of Europe), the Middle East and North Africa. While eight out of 10 satellite providers (including four European) have dropped al-Manar, ARABSAT, majority-owned by the Saudi government, and Nilesat, owned by the Egyptian government, continue these broadcasts. Hezbollah TV's deadly mix of racial hatred, anti-Semitism, glorification of terrorism and incitement to violence are popular among Arabic-speaking youth in Europe. Young Muslims in Berlin recently asked in a German TV show to explain their hatred of the U.S. and Jews cited al-Manar as one of their primary sources of information.
In the past, the German government has shown strong resolve when it saw a threat to German security. It banned the Hamas "charity" al-Aqsa as well as the radical Sunni Islamist Hizb-ut Tahrir group. And it joined the EU in designating the PKK, the radical Kurdish group, as a terrorist organization.
Would branding the "Party of God" a terrorist group make any difference? Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah himself gave the answer in March 2005 when he told Arab media that European blacklisting would "destroy Hezbollah. The sources of our funding will dry up and the sources of moral, political and material support will be destroyed."
With so much power comes great responsibility to act.
Mr. Ritzmann, a former member of the Berlin State Parliament, is a senior fellow at the Brussels-based European Foundation for Democracy. Mr. Dubowitz is chief operating officer of the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies and director of its Coalition Against Terrorist Media project.
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Published on The Brussels Journal (http://www.brusselsjournal.com)
“All Women Should Wear A Veil”
By Filip van Laenen
Created 2007-04-15 16:36
According to Mostafa Chendid of the Danish Islamic Society (Islamisk Trossamfund), not only Muslim women but other women too should wear a veil. Why? Because five up to ten percent of all men cannot control themselves when they see a woman without a veil.
Mostafa Chendid is considered to be the successor of Ahmad Abu Laban, one of the imams who was involved in the affair around the notorious Danish cartoons. Ahmad Abu Laban was one of the leaders of the delegation that traveled around the Middle East and that had added three drawings to the original cartoons in its report to «give a clearer picture of the climate against Muslims in Denmark». Mostafa Chendid is doing well to become just as famous as his predecessor, and the interview that he recently gave to the Danish weekly newspaper Weekendavisen certainly isn't going to reduce the controversy around his person.
Earlier he had already succeeded to draw attention to himself by saying, on International Women's Day, to Jyllands-Posten (that's right: the newspaper with the cartoons) that not only Muslim women, but all other women too, should wear a veil. Of course, this resulted in a lot of reactions, and as a matter of fact his remarks in Jyllands-Posten were the direct reason for the interview with Weekendavisen, where he repeated them once more and commented on them. He said for example that wearing the veil is a woman's duty to God, because that is what the Koran says. However, that doesn't mean that he thinks that a woman with a veil is a better person than a woman without a veil.
According to him the veil also serves as a signal: women with a veil are «not for sale». Moreover, the veil protects against rapes, he says: in the US for example, every half minute a woman is raped, and according to him that is because women continuously tempt men by going onto the streets without a veil. Maybe not all men have a problem to control themselves when they see a woman without a veil, and perhaps there is only a problem with five to ten per cent of the men, but he says that is nevertheless enough for all women to wear the veil.
When asked whether men shouldn't cover themselves too, so they do not seduce women either, the imam basically evaded the question. Perhaps the journalist should have gone even further and asked if it wouldn't be much simpler if the men would stay inside and weren't allowed to go out unless accompanied by their wife or a female family member. After all, it's the men that are the problem, not the women. To me it seems rather bizarre that women should walk around with a veil because men can't control themselves. No doubt, it there wouldn't have been a prophet but a prophetess, Mostafa Chendid never would have set a step outside his door! Maybe it would have been better for Islam's image too if he wouldn't do that anyway.
Source URL:
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2053
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Given that the response is world-wide I suppose that this post could go in any of a number of threads, but I decided to put it here.
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WSJ
Sir Salman Rushdie
By SADANAND DHUME
June 23, 2007; Page A10
Another Friday in Peshawar, Quetta and Karachi -- and as if on cue, the hoarse, bearded and pyromaniacal pour out of the mosques into the streets armed with Union Jacks and effigies of Queen Elizabeth II, Tony Blair and the newly knighted Sir Salman Rushdie.
Having protested Danish cartoons and popish detours into Byzantine history to the point of exhaustion, the proverbial Muslim street is once again seething. Pakistan's minister of religious affairs said Mr. Rushdie's award justified suicide bombings, while a group of traders in Islamabad banded together to place a $140,000 bounty on his head. Fathi Sorour, the speaker of Egypt's parliament, declared that, "Honoring someone who has offended the Muslim religion is a bigger error than the publication of caricatures attacking Prophet Muhammad." Malaysian protesters besieged the British high commission (embassy) in Kuala Lumpur chanting, "Destroy Britain" and "Crush Salman Rushdie." With the irony perhaps lost in translation, Iran, whose president thinks nothing of threatening to wipe Israel off the map, condemned the award and called it a clear sign of (that mysterious new ailment) "Islamophobia."
For many of us, however, her majesty's conferral is a welcome example of something that has grown exceedingly rare: British backbone. After years of kowtowing to every fundamentalist demand imaginable -- from accommodating the burqa in schools and colleges to re-orienting prison toilets to face away from Mecca -- the British seem to be saying enough is enough. Nobody expects Mr. Rushdie to be awarded the Nishan-e-Pakistan, the Collar of the Nile or Iran's Islamic Republic Medal, but in Britain, as elsewhere in the civilized world, great novelists are honored for their work. A pinched view of the human condition or poorly imagined characters may harm your prospects. Blasphemy does not.
In the larger struggle against Islamism -- the ideology that demands that every aspect of human life be ordered by the seventh-century Arabian precepts enshrined in Shariah law -- the Rushdie affair carries totemic significance. In 1989 the late Ayatollah Khomeini declared a price on Mr. Rushdie's head for the crime of apostasy, after reading about his mockery of the prophet Mohammed in "The Satanic Verses." At the time, few could have predicted that this was merely the first act of a drama that's still unfolding.
Eighteen years after the ayatollah's fatwa, since lifted, but thanks to freelance fanaticism, never quite extinguished, the Bombay-born Mr. Rushdie has managed to lead a full life. He has turned out eight novels and essay collections, married twice (most recently the model and actress Padma Lakshmi), mentored a generation of young Indians writing in English, and spoken out against obscurantism and religious bigotry of every stripe. He has also witnessed -- mirrored in his own predicament -- the consequences of a Europe too paralyzed by deathwish multiculturalism and moral relativism to recognize the danger it faces. It has become a continent where an Islamist stabs a film director in broad daylight in Amsterdam, where bombs go off in Madrid commuter trains and London buses, where writers, directors and cartoonists suddenly find themselves bound by sensitivities imported not merely from alien lands but from another age altogether.
No Western country has done more to accommodate Islamists than Britain, and none better shows the folly of this course. Successive governments feted organizations such as the Muslim Council of Britain and the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, and welcomed as refugees a stable of jihadist clerics, including the Syrian-born Omar Bakri Muhammad and the hook-handed Abu Hamza al-Masri. Rather than moderate Muslim passions, this climate of permissiveness gave us Richard Reid the shoe bomber, Daniel Pearl's murderer, Omar Saeed Sheikh, the quartet behind the 2005 London bombings and the plotters who ensured that we must now worry about carrying moisturizing lotion and baby formula each time we board an airplane. A recent poll by Policy Exchange, a London think tank, shows that 28% of British Muslims would rather live under Shariah than under British law.
But at last it looks like the pendulum has begun to swing the other way. Mr. Rushdie's elevation signals an intention to draw a line between respecting Islam and allowing a small minority of Islamists to impose their hairtrigger hysteria on secular Muslims and non-Muslims. It highlights two of the core values of Western civilization conspicuously absent in most of the Muslim world: freedom of speech and freedom of inquiry. It squarely rejects the notion that the fossilized norms of Mecca and Mashhad hold sway over Manchester and Middlesex, and beyond them, over Malmo and Minneapolis. Above all, it honors a brave man who has come to symbolize our turbulent times. A little old-fashioned British spine has never been more welcome.
Mr. Dhume is a fellow at the Asia Society in Washington, D.C. "My Friend the Fanatic," his book about the rise of radical Islam in Indonesia, will be published next year.
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The forces of pre-emptive Dhimmitude on the march again:
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http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArti...71983050814540
Quote:
Backlash Overdue
Surrender: Scotland's National Health Services employees have been told
not to eat at their desks next month so they won't offend fasting Muslims. We regret to report this is not an isolated case of Euro cave-in.
In an e-mail "to all senior managers, giving guidance on religious
tolerance," the Scotsman said Monday, the NHS Equality and Diversity
Officer — a title that alone tells a story — has asked that staff members
refrain from eating at their desks, forgo working lunches and make sure
that food trolleys are not left in areas where Muslims work.
Why? It will soon be Ramadan, an Islamic observance beginning in
September during which Muslims fast for 30 days.
We have a hard time imagining the NHS or any other European government
agency carving out special dispensations for Christians who don't eat meat
on Fridays or fast during Lent.
What about prayer time for Christians in this nominal Christian nation?
Muslims, whose feelings are being protected as if they are an endangered
species, have been granted breaks to pray.
Despite appearances to the contrary, sensible people can still be found in
Europe.
"Frankly, this advice, well meaning as it may be, is total nonsense," Bill
Aitken, speaking for the Scottish Conservative Justice Party, told the
Scotsman. "This is the sort of thing that can stir up resentments rather
than result in good relations."
That is exactly what the forces of diversity, tolerance and political
correctness, so busy feeling morally superior, don't understand.
As we said, this is not an isolated case. While the Scottish NHS grovels
before Islam, across the North Sea in Belgium the mayor of Brussels is
refusing to let a group demonstrate on Sept. 11 — remember that date? —
against the introduction of Sharia laws in Europe.
This is not Nazis marching on Skokie, Ill., but Europeans from Great Britain,
Germany and Denmark who are alarmed by the Islamization of their
homelands. They want to take their protest through the streets of
Brussels to the European Parliament, where they will stop and honor the
9/11 victims with a moment of silence.
Clearly, they are being singled out.
The Brussels Journal, a blog of European journalists and writers, reports
that Brussels receives 500 and 600 protest applications a year and "with
very few exceptions permission is always granted. In the past five years
only six applications were turned down."
Mayor Freddy Thielemans, however, is saying no; he fears there will be
violence between marchers and local Muslims, which isn't exactly a
confirmation that Islam is the "religion of peace."
There might be more to the story, though. The Brussels Journal says
Thielemans "is an atheist who is fond of Muslims, not because he respects
religious people, but because he hates Christians."
He even publicly celebrated the news of Pope John Paul II's death, the
Journal reports.
But Brussels' socialist mayor doesn't have the last word. He can be
overruled by the Belgian Council of State. For the sake of free speech, the
right to assemble and Europe's future, we hope he is.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2007/08/18/video-islam-in-europe/
Brutally honest commentary on islam in europe.
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From the desk of Paul Belien on Thu, 2007-08-23 11:38
The Arab-European League (AEL), a pro-Hezbollah organization of Arab immigrants in Belgium and the Netherlands, is rallying its members to march in Brussels on 11 September “against Islamophobia and racism in Europe.” The AEL demonstration is a response to the request by the Danish-British-German organization Stop the Islamisation of Europe (SIOE) for permission to demonstrate on 9/11 in front of the European Union’s buildings in Brussels against the introduction of Sharia laws in Europe.
Two weeks ago the SIOE demonstration was banned by Freddy Thielemans, the mayor of Brussels. According to Mr Thielemans the SIOE demonstration is a criminal offence because it “incite to discrimination and hatred, which we usually call racism and xenophobia. [This] is forbidden by a considerable number of international treaties and is punished by our penal laws and by the European legislation.”
SIOE has initiated an appeal against the mayor’s ban before the Belgian Council of State. The CoS is expected to issue its verdict next week. Last week Mayor Thielemans gave permission for a demonstration in Brussels on 9 September by United for Truth (UfT), a group which claims that the terror attacks of 9/11/2001 on the WTC towers in NY and on the Pentagon were organized by the American government.
On its website UfT writes that the Brussels authorities, before giving permission for the UfT demonstration, checked that the demonstration would not address religious topics. “The biggest issue was if there was any possible conflict [of our demonstration] with religion. As we just base ourselves on facts and political issues, we have no intention to discriminate or promote any religion.”
Yesterday the Arab-European League issued a press release emphasizing that its own demonstration on 11 September, which so far has not received the mayor’s permission (Thielemans is waiting for the advice of the police), will not criticize any religion. “The AEL respects everyone’s religious convictions, culture and language […]. The demand for respect for every religious conviction is the central theme [of the demonstration].” The AEL says that freedom of expression is an absolute right, stressing that the organization did not ask for the SIOE demo to be forbidden. “However, the right to have one’s religious convictions, culture and language respected is an equally absolute right.”
The AEL was founded in Belgium in 2000. Its founder, Lebanese-born Hezbollah-member Dyab Abu Jahjah, has called the 9/11/2001 attacks “sweet revenge.” Following the Danish cartoon affair the AEL, advocating unrestricted freedom of speech, published anti-Semitic cartoons which deny the Holocaust. Though such denial is illegal in Belgium, the Belgian authorities failed to take any action. The AEL also demands that Arabic be recognized as an official language in Belgium.
The organization says it stands for three basic demands. “Bilingual education for Arab-speaking kids, hiring quotas that protect Muslims, and the right to keep our cultural customs.” According to Jahjah “Assimilation is cultural rape. It means renouncing your identity, becoming like the others.” In 2002 an AEL demonstration in Antwerp led to street riots and anti-Semitic violence. The AEL wants “the Jewish community in Antwerp to cease its support of, and distance itself
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2347
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ITALY: MUSLIM TRIES TO WALL UP STATUE OF THE MADONNA
(ANSAmed) - LECCO, AUGUST 21 - A Muslim immigrant triggered a northern villagés ire today by trying to wall up a local statue of the Madonna. The immigrant recently moved in to a new home in the village of Casatenovo near Lecco but was unhappy with the Madonna perched on an alcove outside his lodgings. Armed with a trowel and a bucket of cement, the immigrant moved in to action today, seeking to entomb the statue. The Madonna was rescued at the last minute by a group of angry villagers, who took her away saying they would find an alternative site. But local Mayor Antonio Colombo said the Madonna should be returned to her original resting place. He also threatened to take action against the immigrant, whose actions he described as "arbitrary and uncivilised". "Despicable and intolerant gestures of this sort must not be allowed to undermine our efforts to create a harmonious society based on mutual respect for different idea, traditions and religious convictions," Colombo said.
2007-08-21 18:04
http://www.ansamed.info/en/news/ME03.YAM18035.html
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Hardline takeover of British mosques From The TimesSeptember 7, 2007
Hardline takeover of British mosques
Andrew Norfolk
Almost half of Britain’s mosques are under the control of a hardline Islamic sect whose leading preacher loathes Western values and has called on Muslims to “shed blood” for Allah, an investigation by The Times has found.
Riyadh ul Haq, who supports armed jihad and preaches contempt for Jews, Christians and Hindus, is in line to become the spiritual leader of the Deobandi sect in Britain. The ultra-conservative movement, which gave birth to the Taleban in Afghanistan, now runs more than 600 of Britain’s 1,350 mosques, according to a police report seen by The Times.
The Times investigation casts serious doubts on government statements that foreign preachers are to blame for spreading the creed of radical Islam in Britain’s mosques and its policy of enouraging the recruitment of more “home-grown” preachers.
Mr ul Haq, 36, was educated and trained at an Islamic seminary in Britain and is part of a new generation of British imams who share a similar radical agenda. He heaps scorn on any Muslims who say they are “proud to be British” and argues that friendship with a Jew or a Christian makes “a mockery of Allah’s religion”.
Background
Speech: Infinite Justice
Riyadh ul Haq sermon on 'Jewish Fundamentalism' in full
Speech: The Globalised Suffering of the Muslims
Speech: On Our Responsibilities as Muslims
Speech: Imitating the Disbelievers
Related Links
Homegrown cleric who loathes the British
Movement fostered by fear of ‘imperial’ rule
Riyadh ul Haq sermon on 'Jewish Fundamentalism' in full
Seventeen of Britain’s 26 Islamic seminaries are run by Deobandis and they produce 80 per cent of home-trained Muslim clerics. Many had their studies funded by local education authority grants. The sect, which has significant representation on the Muslim Council of Britain, is at its strongest in the towns and cities of the Midlands and northern England.
Figures supplied to The Times by the Lancashire Council of Mosques reveal that 59 of the 75 mosques in five towns – Blackburn, Bolton, Preston, Oldham and Burnley – are Deobandi-run.
It is not suggested that all British Muslims who worship at Deobandi mosques subscribe to the isolationist message preached by Mr ul Haq, and he himself suggests Muslims should only “shed blood” overseas.
But while some Deobandi preachers have a more cohesive approach to interfaith relations, Islamic theologians say that such bridge-building efforts do not represent mainstream Deobandi thinking in Britain.
The Times has gained access to numerous talks and sermons delivered in recent years by Mr ul Haq and other graduates of Britain’s most influential Deobandi seminary near Bury, Greater Manchester.
Intended for a Muslim-only audience, they reveal a deep-rooted hatred of Western society, admiration for the Taleban and a passionate zeal for martyrdom “in the way of Allah”.
The seminary outlaws art, television, music and chess, demands “entire concealment” for women and views football as “a cancer that has infected our youth”.
Mahmood Chandia, a Bury graduate who is now a university lecturer, claims in one sermon that music is a way in which Jews spread “the Satanic web” to corrupt young Muslims.
“Nearly every university in England has a department which is called the music department, and in others, where the Satanic influence is more, they call it the Royal College of Music,” he says.
Another former Bury student, Bradford-based Sheikh Ahmed Ali, hails the 9/11 attacks on America because they acted as a wake-up call to young Muslims. This, he says, taught them that they will “never be accepted” in Britain and has led them to “return to Islam: sisters are wearing hijab . . . the lion is waking up”.
Mr ul Haq, the most high-profile of the new generation of Deobandis, runs an Islamic academy in Leicester and is the former imam at the Birmingham Central Mosque. Revered by many young Muslims, he draws on his extensive knowledge of the Koran and the life and sayings of the prophet Muhammed to justify his hostility to the kuffar, or non-Muslims.
One sermon warns believers to protect their faith by distancing themselves from the “evil influence” of their non-Muslim British neighbours.
“We are in a very dangerous position here. We live amongst the kuffar, we work with them, we associate with them, we mix with them and we begin to pick up their habits.”
In another talk, delivered a few weeks before 9/11, he praises Muslims who have gained martyrdom in battle and laments that today “no one dare utter the J word”. “The J word has become taboo . .. The J word is jihad in the way of Allah.”
The Times has made repeated attempts to get Mr ul Haq to comment on the content of his sermons. However, he declined to respond.
A commentator on religious radicalism in Pakistan, where Deobandis wield significant political influence, told The Times that “blind ignorance” on the part of the Government in Britain had allowed the Deobandis to become the dominant voice of Islam in Britain’s mosques.
Khaled Ahmed said: “The UK has been ruined by the puritanism of the Deobandis. You’ve allowed the takeover of the mosques. You can’t run multiculturalism like that, because that’s a way of destroying yourself. In Britain, the Deobandi message has become even more extreme than it is in Pakistan. It’s mind-boggling.”
In some mosques the sect has wrested control from followers of the more moderate majority, the Barelwi movement.
A spokesman for the Department for Communities said: “We have a detailed strategy to ensure imams properly represent and connect with mainstream moderate opinion and promote shared values like tolerance and respect for the rule of law. We have never said the challenge from extremism is simply restricted to those coming from overseas.”
Have your say
The writing has been on the wall for some time but the government are illiterate when it comes to Islam!
D Shaw, Derby, England
Bye bye, Britain - it's only what you deserve. Thank you for being an amazing parent to so much of the New World, for giving such a great example to the entire world, but your sleepiness at the wheel is disgraceful. I hope you win this one, god knows - but I worry anxiously that it's too late.
I'm a left-leaning voter, but the head-in-the-sand attitude of the left for so many years now is baffling to me.
Jason Bo Green, Toronto, Canada
So ul Haq's seminary outlaws art, television, music and chess and would do the same for football, evidently. Judging by the picture though, Allah permits car ownership and driving.
http://www.wnd.com/redir/r.asp?http...icle2402973.ece
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Switzerland: Europe's heart of darkness?
Switzerland is known as a haven of peace and neutrality. But today it is home to a new extremism that has alarmed the United Nations. Proposals for draconian new laws that target the country's immigrants have been condemned as unjust and racist. A poster campaign, the work of its leading political party, is decried as xenophobic. Has Switzerland become Europe's heart of darkness? By Paul Vallely
Published: 07 September 2007
At first sight, the poster looks like an innocent children's cartoon. Three white sheep stand beside a black sheep. The drawing makes it looks as though the animals are smiling. But then you notice that the three white beasts are standing on the Swiss flag. One of the white sheep is kicking the black one off the flag, with a crafty flick of its back legs.
The poster is, according to the United Nations, the sinister symbol of the rise of a new racism and xenophobia in the heart of one of the world's oldest independent democracies.
A worrying new extremism is on the rise. For the poster – which bears the slogan "For More Security" – is not the work of a fringe neo-Nazi group. It has been conceived – and plastered on to billboards, into newspapers and posted to every home in a direct mailshot – by the Swiss People's Party (the Schweizerische Volkspartei or SVP) which has the largest number of seats in the Swiss parliament and is a member of the country's coalition government.
With a general election due next month, it has launched a twofold campaign which has caused the UN's special rapporteur on racism to ask for an official explanation from the government. The party has launched a campaign to raise the 100,000 signatures necessary to force a referendum to reintroduce into the penal code a measure to allow judges to deport foreigners who commit serious crimes once they have served their jail sentence.
But far more dramatically, it has announced its intention to lay before parliament a law allowing the entire family of a criminal under the age of 18 to be deported as soon as sentence is passed.
It will be the first such law in Europe since the Nazi practice of Sippenhaft – kin liability – whereby relatives of criminals were held responsible for their crimes and punished equally.
The proposal will be a test case not just for Switzerland but for the whole of Europe, where a division between liberal multiculturalism and a conservative isolationism is opening up in political discourse in many countries, the UK included.
SWISS TRAINS being the acme of punctuality, the appointment was very precise. I was to meet Dr Ulrich Schlüer – one of the men behind the draconian proposal – in the restaurant at the main railway station in Zürich at 7.10pm. As I made my way through the concourse, I wondered what Dr Schlüer made of this station of hyper-efficiency and cleanliness that has a smiling Somali girl selling pickled herring sandwiches, a north African man sweeping the floor, and a black nanny speaking in broken English to her young Swiss charge. The Swiss People's Party's attitude to foreigners is, shall we say, ambivalent.
A quarter of Switzerland's workers – one in four, like the black sheep in the poster – are now foreign immigrants to this peaceful, prosperous and stable economy with low unemployment and a per capita GDP larger than that of other Western economies. Zürich has, for the past two years, been named as the city with the best quality of life in the world.
What did the nanny think of the sheep poster, I asked her. "I'm a guest in this country," she replied. "It's best I don't say."
Dr Schlüer is a small affable man. But if he speaks softly he wields a big stick. The statistics are clear, he said, foreigners are four times more likely to commit crimes than Swiss nationals. "In a suburb of Zürich, a group of youths between 14 and 18 recently raped a 13-year-old girl," he said. "It turned out that all of them were already under investigation for some previous offence. They were all foreigners from the Balkans or Turkey. Their parents said these boys are out of control. We say: 'That's not acceptable. It's your job to control them and if you can't do that you'll have to leave'. It's a punishment everyone understands."
It is far from the party's only controversial idea. Dr Schlüer has launched a campaign for a referendum to ban the building of Muslim minarets. In 2004, the party successfully campaigned for tighter immigration laws using the image of black hands reaching into a pot filled with Swiss passports. And its leading figure, the Justice Minister, Christoph Blocher, has said he wants to soften anti-racism laws because they prevent freedom of speech.
Political opponents say it is all posturing ahead of next month's general election. Though deportation has been dropped from the penal code, it is still in force in administrative law, says Daniel Jositsch, professor of penal law at Zurich University. "At the end of the day, nothing has changed, the criminal is still at the airport and on the plane."
With astute tactics, the SVP referendum restricts itself to symbolic restitution. Its plan to deport entire families has been put forward in parliament where it has little chance of being passed. Still the publicity dividend is the same. And it is all so worrying to human rights campaigners that the UN special rapporteur on racism, Doudou Diène, warned earlier this year that a "racist and xenophobic dynamic" which used to be the province of the far right is now becoming a regular part of the democratic system in Switzerland.
Dr Schlüer shrugged. "He's from Senegal where they have a lot of problems of their own which need to be solved. I don't know why he comes here instead of getting on with that."
Such remarks only confirm the opinions of his opponents. Mario Fehr is a Social Democrat MP for the Zürich area. He says: "Deporting people who have committed no crime is not just unjust and inhumane, it's stupid. Three quarters of the Swiss people think that foreigners who work here are helping the economy. We have a lot of qualified workers – IT specialists, doctors, dentists." To get rid of foreigners, which opponents suspect is the SVP's real agenda, "would be an economic disaster".
Dr Schlüer insists the SVP is not against all foreigners. "Until war broke out in the Balkans, we had some good workers who came from Yugoslavia. But after the fighting there was huge influx of people we had a lot of problems with. The abuse of social security is a key problem. It's estimated to cost £750m a year. More than 50 per cent of it is by foreigners."
There is no disguising his suspicion of Islam. He has alarmed many of Switzerland's Muslims (some 4.3 per cent of the 7.5 million population) with his campaign to ban the minaret. "We're not against mosques but the minaret is not mentioned in the Koran or other important Islamic texts. It just symbolises a place where Islamic law is established." And Islamic law, he says, is incompatible with Switzerland's legal system.
To date there are only two mosques in the country with minarets but planners are turning down applications for more, after opinion polls showed almost half the population favours a ban. What is at stake here in Switzerland is not merely a dislike of foreigners or a distrust of Islam but something far more fundamental. It is a clash that goes to the heart of an identity crisis which is there throughout Europe and the US. It is about how we live in a world that has changed radically since the end of the Cold War with the growth of a globalised economy, increased immigration flows, the rise of Islam as an international force and the terrorism of 9/11. Switzerland only illustrates it more graphically than elsewhere.
Switzerland is so stark an example because of the complex web of influences that find their expression in Ulrich Schlüer and his party colleagues.
He is fiercely proud of his nation's independence, which can be traced back to a defensive alliance of cantons in 1291. He is a staunch defender of its policy of armed neutrality, under which Switzerland has no standing army but all young men are trained and on standby; they call it the porcupine approach – with millions of individuals ready to stiffen like spines if the nation is threatened.
Linked to that is its system of direct democracy where many key decisions on tax, education, health and other key areas are taken at local level.
"How direct democracy functions is a very sensitive issue in Switzerland," he says, explaining why he has long opposed joining the EU. "To the average German, the transfer of power from Berlin to Brussels didn't really affect their daily lives. The transfer of power from the commune to Brussels would seriously change things for the ordinary Swiss citizen."
Switzerland has the toughest naturalisation rules in Europe. To apply, you must live in the country legally for at least 12 years, pay taxes, and have no criminal record. The application can still be turned down by your local commune which meets to ask "Can you speak German? Do you work? Are you integrated with Swiss people?"
It can also ask, as one commune did of 23-year-old Fatma Karademir – who was born in Switzerland but who under Swiss law is Turkish like her parents – if she knew the words of the Swiss national anthem, if she could imagine marrying a Swiss boy and who she would support if the Swiss football team played Turkey. "Those kinds of questions are outside the law," says Mario Fehr. "But in some more remote villages you have a problem if you're from ex-Yugoslavia."
The federal government in Berne wants to take the decision out of the hands of local communities, one of which only gave the vote to women as recently as 1990. But the government's proposals have twice been defeated in referendums.
The big unspoken fact here is how a citizen is to be defined. "When a Swiss woman who has emigrated to Canada has a baby, that child automatically gets citizenship," Dr Schlüer says. But in what sense is a boy born in Canada, who may be brought up with an entirely different world view and set of values, more Swiss than someone like Fatma Karademir who has never lived anywhere but Switzerland?
The truth is that at the heart of the Swiss People's Party's vision is a visceral notion of kinship, breeding and blood that liberals would like to think sits very much at odds with the received wisdom of most of the Western world. It is what lies behind the SVP's fear of even moderate Islam. It has warned that because of their higher birth rates Muslims would eventually become a majority in Switzerland if the citizenship rules were eased. It is what lies behind his fierce support for the militia system.
To those who say that Germany, France, Italy and Austria are nowadays unlikely to invade, he invokes again the shadow of militant Islam. "The character of war is changing. There could be riots or eruptions in a town anywhere in Switzerland. There could be terrorism in a financial centre."
The race issue goes wider than politics in a tiny nation. "I'm broadly optimistic that the tide is moving in our direction both here and in other countries across Europe, said Dr Schlüer. "I feel more supported than criticised from outside."
The drama which is being played out in such direct politically incorrect language in Switzerland is one which has repercussions all across Europe, and wider.
Neutrality and nationality
* Switzerland has four national languages – German, Italian, French and Romansh. Most Swiss residents speak German as their first language.
* Switzerland's population has grown from 1.7 million in 1815 to 7.5 million in 2006. The population has risen by 750,000 since 1990.
* Swiss nationality law demands that candidates for Swiss naturalisation spend a minimum of years of permanent, legal residence in Switzerland, and gain fluency in one of the national languages.
* More than 20 per cent of the Swiss population, and 25 per cent of its workforce, is non-naturalised.
* At the end of 2006, 5,888 people were interned in Swiss prisons. 31 per cent were Swiss citizens – 69 per cent were foreigners or asylum-seekers.
* The number of unauthorised migrant workers currently employed is estimated at 100,000.
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2938940.ece
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I saw the posters referenced in this article everywhere I went while in Switzerland last week.
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NY Times
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
Published: October 8, 2007
SCHWERZENBACH, Switzerland, Oct. 4 — The posters taped on the walls at a political rally here capture the rawness of Switzerland’s national electoral campaign: three white sheep stand on the Swiss flag as one of them kicks a single black sheep away.
A poster at a rally for the Swiss People’s Party showed a white sheep kicking out a black one.
“To Create Security,” the poster reads.
The poster is not the creation of a fringe movement, but of the most powerful party in Switzerland’s federal Parliament and a member of the coalition government, an extreme right-wing party called the Swiss People’s Party, or SVP. It has been distributed in a mass mailing to Swiss households, reproduced in newspapers and magazines and hung as huge billboards across the country.
As voters prepare to go to the polls in a general election on Oct. 21, the poster — and the party’s underlying message — have polarized a country that prides itself on peaceful consensus in politics, neutrality in foreign policy and tolerance in human relations.
Suddenly the campaign has turned into a nationwide debate over the place of immigrants in one of the world’s oldest democracies, and over what it means to be Swiss.
“The poster is disgusting, unacceptable,” Micheline Calmy-Rey, the current president of Switzerland under a one-year rotation system, said in an interview. “It stigmatizes others and plays on the fear factor, and in that sense it’s dangerous. The campaign does not correspond to Switzerland’s multicultural openness to the world. And I am asking all Swiss who do not agree with its message to have the courage to speak out.”
Interior Minister Pascal Couchepin, of the Liberal Democratic Party, has even suggested that the SVP’s worship of Christoph Blocher, the billionaire who is the party’s driving force and the current justice minister, is reminiscent of that of Italian fascists for Mussolini.
[On Saturday, a march of several thousand SVP supporters in Bern ended in clashes between hundreds of rock-throwing counterdemonstrators and riot police officers, who used tear gas to disperse them. The opponents of the rally, organized by a new group called the Black Sheep Committee, had tried to prevent the demonstrators from marching to Parliament.]
The message of the party resonates loudly among voters who have seen this country of 7.5 million become a haven for foreigners, including political refugees from places like Kosovo and Rwanda. Polls indicate that the right-wing party is poised to win more seats than any other party in Parliament in the election, as it did in national elections in 2003, when its populist language gave it nearly 27 percent of the vote.
“Our political enemies think the poster is racist, but it just gives a simple message,” Bruno Walliser, a local chimney sweep running for Parliament on the party ticket, said at the rally, held on a Schwerzenbach farm outside Zurich. “The black sheep is not any black sheep that doesn’t fit into the family. It’s the foreign criminal who doesn’t belong here, the one that doesn’t obey Swiss law. We don’t want him.”
More than 20 percent of Swiss inhabitants are foreign nationals, and the SVP argues that a disproportionate number are lawbreakers. Many drug dealers are foreign, and according to federal statistics, about 70 percent of the prison population is non-Swiss.
As part of its platform, the SVP party has begun a campaign seeking the 100,000 signatures necessary to force a referendum to let judges deport foreigners after they serve prison sentences for serious crimes. The measure also calls for the deportation of the entire family if the convicted criminal is a minor.
Human rights advocates warn that the initiative is reminiscent of the Nazi practice of Sippenhaft, or kin liability, under which relatives of criminals were held responsible and punished for their crimes.
The party’s political campaign has a much broader agenda than simply fighting crime. Its subliminal message is that the influx of foreigners has somehow polluted Swiss society, straining the social welfare system and threatening the very identity of the country.
Unlike the situation in France, where the far-right National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen campaigned for president in the spring alongside black and ethnic Arab supporters, the SVP has taken a much cruder us-against-them approach.
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In a short three-part campaign film, “Heaven or Hell,” the party’s message is clear. In the first segment, young men inject heroin, steal handbags from women, kick and beat up schoolboys, wield knives and carry off a young woman. The second segment shows Muslims living in Switzerland — women in head scarves; men sitting, not working. The third segment shows “heavenly” Switzerland: men in suits rushing to work, logos of Switzerland’s multinational corporations, harvesting on farms, experiments in laboratories, scenes of lakes, mountains, churches and goats. “The choice is clear: my home, our security,” the film states.
The film was withdrawn from the party’s Web site after the men who acted in it sued, arguing they were unaware of its purpose. But over beer and bratwurst at the Schwerzenbach political rally, Mr. Walliser screened it for the audience, saying, “I’m taking the liberty to show it anyway.”
For Nelly Schneider, a 49-year-old secretary, the party’s approach is “a little bit crass,” but appealing nevertheless. “These foreigners abuse the system,” she said after Mr. Walliser’s presentation. “They don’t speak any German. They go to prostitution and do drugs and drive fancy cars and work on the black market. They don’t want to work.”
As most of the rest of Europe has moved toward unity, Switzerland has fiercely guarded its independence, staying out of the 27-country European Union and maintaining its status as a tax haven for the wealthy. It has perhaps the longest and most arduous process to become a citizen in all of Europe: candidates typically must wait 12 years before being considered.
Three years ago the SVP blocked a move to liberalize the citizenship process, using the image of dark-skinned hands snatching at Swiss passports. And though the specter of terrorism has not been a driving issue, some posters in southern Switzerland at the time showed a mock Swiss passport held by Osama bin Laden.
Foreigners, who make up a quarter of the Swiss work force, complain that it is harder to get a job or rent an apartment without a Swiss passport and that they endure everyday harassment that Swiss citizens do not.
James Philippe, a 28-year-old Haitian who has lived in Switzerland for 14 years and works for Streetchurch, a Protestant storefront community organization, and as a hip-hop dance instructor, said he is regularly stopped by the police and required to show his papers and submit to body searches. He speaks German, French, Creole and English, but has yet to receive a Swiss passport.
“The police treat me like I’m somehow not human,” he said at the Streetchurch headquarters in a working-class neighborhood of Zurich. “Then I open my mouth and speak good Swiss German, and they’re always shocked.
“We come here. We want to learn. We clean their streets and do all the work they don’t want to do. If they kick us out, are they going to do all that work themselves? We need them, but they need us too.”
SVP officials insist that their campaign is not racist, just anticrime. “Every statistic shows that the participation of foreigners in crime is quite high,” said Ulrich Schlüer, an SVP Parliament deputy who has also led an initiative to ban minarets in Switzerland. “We cannot accept this. We are the only party that addresses this problem.”
But the SVP campaign has begun to have a ripple effect, shaking the image of Switzerland as a place of prosperity, tranquillity and stability — particularly for doing business. On Thursday, a coalition of business, union and church leaders in Basel criticized the SVP for what they called its extremism, saying, “Those who discriminate against foreigners hurt the economy and threaten jobs in Switzerland.”
“In the past,” said Daniele Jenni, a lawyer and the founder of the Black Sheep Committee who is running for Parliament, “people were reluctant to attack the party out of fear that it might only strengthen it. Now people are beginning to feel liberated. They no longer automatically accept the role of the rabbit doing nothing, just waiting for the snake to bite.”
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Europe’s no-go zones or SUAs (“sensitive urban areas”) are multiplying. These are areas where the police no longer dares to venture and where Islamists hold sway. Every night since the beginning of last week, immigrant youths have been torching cars and clashing with police in Amsterdam’s Slotervaart district. The incidents started on Oct. 14 when a policewoman shot dead Bilal Bajaka, a 22-year old ethnic Moroccan, whilst he was stabbing her and a colleague with a knife. The officers were stabbed in the breast, face, neck and back. Surgeons could only narrowly save their lives.
Since the incident, Slotervaart has seen rioting almost every night. The Amsterdam Moroccans are “shocked” because one of them has been killed by an infidel woman. According to his family, Bilal Bajaka was mentally deranged and had a suicide obsession. Ahmed Marcouch, the Moroccan-born Socialist mayor of Slotervaart, criticized the Dutch authorities for failing to provide adequate health care for Bajaka’s mental problems.
Bilal Bajaka was, however, a personal friend of Mohammed Bouyeri, the Jihadist who ritually slaughtered the Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh in 2004. Bilal’s attack on the two police officers came exactly two years after the arrest of his brother, Abdullah Bajaka, the leader of an alleged plot to blow up an El-Al Boeing at Amsterdam airport. Bilal’s family background is not at all deprived. One of his sisters is a medical doctor, another sister is a Dutch judge.
For ten days now, the situation in Amsterdam’s immigrant neighbourhoods has been tense. Senior police officers compare the current situation in Amsterdam to the 2005 Ramadan riots in Paris. Media outside the Netherlands, however, hardly mention the riots, which aim to drive the police from Slotervaart and turn the neighborhood into a new no-go area – yet another pocket of Eurabia on Europe’s soil.
Similar events are currently taking place in Brussels, the capital of neighbouring Belgium and of the EU. Last Sunday, demonstrating Turkish youths ransacked an Armenian restaurant in the Sint-Joost-ten-Node borough. According to the owner the police was present at the scene but did not interfere while his establishment was being demolished. The Armenian had to flee for his life.
Another man who had to run for his life was the Belgian journalist Mehmet Koksal, an ethnic Turk. He was attacked around 11 pm on Sunday evening by a group of some twenty Turkish youths in front of the American embassy in Brussels, a few yards from the Belgian parliament building. The Parliament and the US Embassy are less than one kilometer from Sint-Joost-ten-Node. Koksal fled to a nearby police car, but a female police officer refused to let him into the car, whereupon the youths savagely beat him up. Fearing that they were about to lynch him, the police officer changed her attitude and allowed the journalist to seek refuge in the police car.
Koksal told the press today that he is not going to press charges against the police for failing to help him. “The police woman was more afraid than I was and ultimately the police came to my rescue,” he said.
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2584
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Its the NYTimes, so the flavoring is to be expected, but a very interesting piece nonetheless. As the date of the piece indicates, I've been meaning to get around to posting this one for quite some time.
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NY Times
Where Every Generation Is First-Generation
By CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL
Published: May 27, 2007
Last June, Seyran Ates, a lawyer, was waiting for a U-Bahn train in Berlin's
Mockernbrucke subway station with a client for whom she had secured a
divorce when the client's husband stormed onto the platform. He began
beating up his ex-wife. Then he turned on Ates. Ates recalls seeing a number
of men standing around, watching it all happen, as she danced from side to
side with her attaché case, trying to fend off his heavy punches and kicks.
It was not the first time she had been attacked in the line of duty.
A Turk of partly Kurdish descent, Ates arrived with her parents in the West
Berlin neighborhood of Wedding in the late 1960s, when she was 6. Her
parents were loving, but it was a traditional kind of love that involved
much scolding, grounding and disciplinary slapping. School was Ates's only
escape from the house, and she excelled at it. She knew she wanted to be a
lawyer. Just before her 18th birthday, as her mother and aunt were beginning
to make plans to marry her off, she ran away. This flight was not a simple
abandonment of her family, to whom Ates remains close. Nor was it an
abandonment of her ancestral culture. True, Ates has built her career in law
around a German - and to many Turks, idiosyncratic and hostile - conception
of women's rights. Yet she speaks to her young daughter in Turkish because,
she says, "I want her to understand why I cry when I hear my favorite
Turkish songs."
Ates (pronounced AH-tesh) went to Kreuzberg, a run-down, part-Turkish,
part-hippie neighborhood backed up against the Berlin Wall. By the early
1980s she was working part time as a counselor in a women's center while she
finished her studies. In September 1984, a Turkish nationalist, his exact
motives unclear even today, burst in. Mumbling that "this won't take long,"
he pulled out a gun and fired a bullet into Ates's neck. He then shot the
client Ates was counseling, mortally wounding her. Ates's 2003
autobiography, "Journey Into the Fire," centered on that incident, on her
long, touch-and-go recovery from it and on the preoccupation to which she
has devoted her intellectual and professional energies ever since. Namely,
the inability of women of Turkish background to claim the rights to which
they are entitled as German residents and even as German citizens.
Ates's preoccupation is now Germany's. Since last fall, the Islamkonferenz,
a 30-member panel set up by Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, has
devoted much of its time and energy to the way ethnic minorities meet, mate
and marry - particularly the almost three million German residents of
Turkish descent, more than one-third of whom have German citizenship. The
panel, intended to create a "German Islam," differs from analogous
government bodies set up in France and Italy. In those countries, religious
hierarchs and political activists have dominated. Emerging government
structures have been staffed by people who view religion sympathetically.
The Islamkonferenz, by contrast, includes a wide variety of voices,
religious and not. There is the largely Arab and conservative Central Muslim
Council. There is the Turkish Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (known by
its Turkish acronym, Ditib), a 25-year-old body established in Germany by
the Turkish government to aid with mosque-building, burials and other
religious arrangements. But there are also 10 independent members appointed
without regard to their religious views or affiliations. That is how Ates
wound up pronouncing on some of the most stubborn problems that have arisen
from the mass immigration that began decades ago.
Marriage is not just an aspect of the immigration problem in Germany; to a
growing extent, it is the immigration problem. Starting in the 1960s,
millions of Turkish "guest workers" were imported to provide manpower for
the German economic boom. The guest-worker program was ended in 1973, the
year of the first oil crisis, but large-scale immigration from Turkey has
scarcely abated since. For years, political asylum was relatively easy for
Turks to obtain, owing to political assassinations, military coups and the
violent Kurdish nationalist movement in eastern Anatolia. But since the
Balkan wars of the 1990s, Germany, like most European countries, has
steadily tightened its criteria for political asylum.
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Page 2 of 7)
This leaves open only one avenue for non-European men and women who want to
enter Germany legally: marriage to someone with legal residency in the
country. Fortunately for would-be immigrants, young ethnic Turks in Germany
have a strong tendency to marry people from the home country. Exact
statistics are hard to come by, but it is possible that as many as 50
percent of Turks (a word that in common parlance often includes even those
with German citizenship) seek their spouses abroad, according to Schäuble,
the interior minister. For most of the past decade, according to the
ministry, between 21,000 and 27,000 people a year have successfully applied
at German consulates in Turkey to form families in Germany. (Just under
two-thirds of the newcomers are women.) That means roughly half a million
spouses since the mid-1980s, which in turn means hundreds of thousands of
new families in which the children's first language is as likely to be
Turkish as German.
Binational marriage alarms many Germans for two reasons. First, it allows
the Turkish community to grow fast at a time when support for immigration is
low. The Turkish population in Germany multiplies not once in a life cycle
but twice - at childbirth and at marriage. Second, such marriages retard
assimilation even for those Turks long established in Germany. You
frequently hear stories from schoolteachers about a child of guest workers
who was a star pupil three decades ago but whose own children, although born
in Germany, struggle to learn German in grade school. After half a century
of immigration, every new generation of Turks is still, to a large extent, a
first generation.
Turkish marriages are seldom Western-style love matches. They are often
arranged by parents. A 2003 study by the Federal Ministry of Family found
that a quarter of Turkish women in Germany hadn't even known their partners
before they married. The rural Anatolian practice of marrying relatives,
usually first cousins, is frequent. It accounts, according to the Center for
Turkey Studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen, for between a sixth and
a quarter of binational pairings. These marriages bring certain Anatolian
problems into the heart of Germany. Domestic violence is high. The causes of
wife-beating among families of immigrant background can be debated, but not
the numbers. Gulgun Teyhani, who works at a battered-women's shelter in
Duisburg, reckoned that of the 86 women her house took in last year, 60 had
a migrant background, and 51 of them spoke Turkish. Last year, the Federal
Criminal Investigation Agency found that in the preceding five years, 45
"honor killings" were carried out by Turkish or Kurdish families in Germany
against women deemed to have "strayed," generally by dating Europeans or
adopting Western fashions.
It probably doesn't take more than a few such incidents to intimidate young
Turkish women who watch the news or read the papers. Seyran Ates admits that
even divorce lawyers feel this way. "It is a dangerous line of work," she
says. "The men are often aggressive. Their idea is, I'm taking their women
away from them."
Watch Out!
The tragedy of imported brides, Necla Kelek writes, is that they "will live
in Germany but never arrive there." Like Ates, Kelek is a Turkish-German
woman with intense passions on either side of the hyphen. She is another
independent member of the Islamkonferenz. Kelek was born in Istanbul and
came to Germany as a young girl in the 1960s. She, too, climbed into the
middle of mainstream German society through the school system. She earned a
doctorate in sociology but has since turned to a more literary kind of
writing. Her best-selling book, "The Foreign Bride," is a memoir - although
it might be better described as a polemic - about Turkish women imported as
wives. It relies on Kelek's own family anecdotes, on dozens of interviews
conducted in mosques in Hamburg and Lower Saxony and on government studies.
It is in large part a result of her books that some Germans who once viewed
Turkish marriage practices as none of their business now see it as a
pressing crisis.
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3 of 7
The German reading public has a powerful appetite for what might be called
noble-savage memoirs - books that span the genres between ethnology, erotica
and bildungsroman. Corinne Hofmann's "White Masai" series, which describes
her romantic life with an East African tribesman, has sold millions of
copies. Even given such a standing fascination, there is something
extraordinary about the appeal, over the last half-decade, of
autobiographies by Muslim women who have either triumphed over or been
beaten down by traditionalist understandings of the family. Although Ates's
and Kelek's books stand out, there are literally dozens of other, lesser
books - with titles like "Choking on Your Lies," "No One Asked My
Permission" and so on - covering entire dinner-table-size displays in
bookstores.
Just why Germans are consuming these books in such numbers is unclear. This
has always been a culture with an insatiable interest in other cultures, as
the role of Germans in founding the modern social sciences and the thick
concentration of museums in the center of Berlin both attest. It may also be
that Germans have so deeply internalized the ethics of repentance for World
War II that they lack the confidence, or the inclination, to make sweeping
and critical value judgments about other cultures. They now require
non-Germans or semi-Germans or new Germans to say such things. "I have a
special role in this debate," Kelek says over dinner in the East Berlin
neighborhood where she lives. "It is to say, 'Watch out!' "
Few deny that Kelek has put her finger on a genuine problem. A 2002 Berlin
Senate report (cited in her book) documented hundreds of complaints of
forced marriage. But there is controversy over what "forced" means. In
Turkish culture, people tend to discuss liberty in terms of the family
rather than in terms of the individual. If you look at things this way, then
Turkish-style betrothals are just the kind of consultation you would expect
in a close family. After all, they don't involve matchmakers or
extrafamilial institutions. But if you consider individuals first, as
Germans tend to, the intense involvement of parents in the child's marriage
decision looks like a severe constraint on personal freedom - particularly
in a structure as patriarchal as the traditional Turkish family. Kelek
embraces this German way of looking at things. "For me there is no essential
difference between arranged marriage and forced marriage," she writes. "The
outcome is the same."
Many Turks call this a simplistic view. It blurs the distinction between
parental persuasion and heartless coercion, they say. Almost all Turks would
grant that, at some point, threats of ostracism or violence would constitute
unacceptable force. But Kelek, who is a staunch, and to some ears strident,
defender of European values, is impatient with what she sees as
multiculturalist cant. (She is given to tossing off remarks like "Europeans
built America, not Indians," as she did over dinner in Berlin last winter.)
Like Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the Netherlands, Kelek has been accused of
"Enlightenment fundamentalism," a tendency to defend secular values too
dogmatically. Last year, a group of 60 "migration researchers" wrote an open
letter to the weekly paper Die Zeit attacking Kelek's writing as
"unserious" - an odd criticism to level at a memoirist, even one trained in
sociology. Others say she has made Islam too central to her explanation of
violence against women.
Marriage among Turks has become a cause célèbre partly because of Turks'
resistance to German ways. But Turks' acceptance of German ways,
particularly by this first generation of Turkish-German feminist writers and
intellectuals, plays a role too. "I think a lot of Germans are positively
embarrassed by how patriotic these women are," writes Jorg Lau, an admirer
of both Kelek and Ates who often writes about Muslim issues for Die Zeit.
For the first time, negative verdicts on the Turkish model of relations
between the sexes are coming out of the Turkish community itself.
-
Parallel Societies
(Page 4 of 7)
The topic of marriage comes up often among Turks in places like Duisburg. It
is not a side issue. Of the roughly 25,000 foreigners who immigrate to
Germany every year to marry, about a thousand go to Duisburg, and the great
majority of those are Turks. The city's Marxloh neighborhood is the
Continental capital of Turkish wedding caterers and bridal shops.
Duisburg, where the Rhine and the Ruhr meet, and where mining and industry
link up to the biggest inland port in Europe, is a kind of European
Pittsburgh. In decades past, tens of thousands of Turks came to work in the
city's three big steel plants, which together employed 64,000 people in the
'70s, and in its archipelago of coal mines. But today there are only 20,000
industrial jobs left in the whole city. Duisburg's population, 608,000 in
the 1970s, has fallen to under half a million. The older German-born natives
(who had jobs) die, their children (who want jobs) move and the absolute
number of Turks living there continues to grow. According to the mayor's
office, there are 41,900 Turks in Duisburg, and another 24,000 of Turkish
background who have acquired German citizenship. Together they account for
more than half of Duisburg's minority population - and for much of the city's
dynamism as well. In Marxloh, where half of the 18,000 residents are
immigrants or children of immigrants, the largest mosque in Germany is
nearing completion. At the same time, the local Catholic bishop has
announced he must reduce the number of parishes in Duisburg from 32 to 4.
The Evangelical Church of Germany, a Protestant umbrella organization,
recently published a controversial document in which it laid out some ground
rules for turning Christian houses of worship into Muslim ones. Duisburg is
changing from a "typical" postwar German city into a heavily - and, in
parts, predominantly - Turkish one, through a kind of distillation.
In the neighborhood of Hochfeld, which has lost one-third of its population
in the past three decades, this distillation is at its extreme. Rauf Ceylan,
a sociologist whose parents settled as guest workers nearby in Wanheim, has
spent years studying the coffeehouses and mosques that are the central
community institutions for men. What Ceylan has found is a parallel society
growing increasingly elaborate and increasingly entrenched. He calls
Hochfeld an "ethnic colony," rather than just a "ghetto" or "community."
That is, Hochfeld is more than a place where a homesick Turk can find a
little corner of Turkey, the way a Japanese immigrant might gravitate to a
sushi restaurant in New Hampshire. It is turning into a fully articulated
Turkish society, where a Turk has the institutions to lead any kind of
Turkish life he chooses. And the life that most Hochfeld residents choose is
becoming steadily more traditional. The first generation of guest workers
were not particularly traditionalist, Ceylan says. They were mostly single
men, with the easy-come, easy-go lifestyle that being single implies. But
once they acquired wives from Turkey and formed families, their role changed
from hired worker to paterfamilias, and their priorities changed, too. They
built institutions that mimicked those of the villages they hailed from.
Many Germans held out hope that younger generations, those born here, would
have different priorities. Exposed to German society through television and
schools, they would lose interest in the ways of coffeehouse and mosque. The
old assumption that living in the middle of Western prosperity creates an
almost automatic loyalty has been shaken in recent years. German residents,
of course, played a leading role in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Said
Bahaji, a German citizen of Moroccan descent who served in the German Army,
provided important logistical support for the Hamburg-based cell led by the
Egyptian Mohamed Atta. The Lebanese-born 9/11 terrorist Ziad Jarrah did part
of the planning in Duisburg, and had a romantic involvement with a seemingly
well-assimilated Turkish-German woman who studied dentistry nearby in
Bochum.
The way immigrants marry is a key factor in the way they assimilate, or don't.
In 2000, the German Youth Institute reported that 53 percent of Turkish
women ages 16 to 29 would not consider marrying a German "under any
circumstances." Indeed, the big gap that separates young Turks from German
youth culture is an important theme of "Head-On," Fatih Akin's
Turkish-German film of 2005. Perhaps Turks' preference for Turkish mates
reflects, in some cases, the desire for a religious life. But a survey taken
in the late 1990s found similar discomfort on the part of Germans, for whom
religious considerations are presumably less of a factor. Fifteen percent of
western Germans and just 7 percent of eastern ones said it would be
"pleasant" (angenehm) to have a Turkish relative. Majorities in both places
agreed it would be "unpleasant."
===============
Page 5 of 7)
Where such attitudes prevail, self-segregation is inevitable, mystifying
those immigrants most inclined to assimilate. "There is a big change that
comes at puberty, a divergence of interests," says Osman Apaydin, who runs a
development program around the corner from the wedding shops in Marxloh.
Sitting in his office in February, he described how his grown daughter,
modern-minded, open to the world, much more comfortable speaking German than
Turkish, who went to majority-German schools, now finds herself unmarried,
with an increasingly Turkish circle of friends. To hear Apaydin describe it,
the difficulty of modern Turkish women in finding husbands resembles the
predicament of highly educated black women in the United States.
Where traditional young women start families and assimilated ones have
trouble finding their social footing, the next generation is brought up -
almost by definition - by those who are least assimilated themselves. You
can blame Turkish attitudes if you want, but they arise from a certain
objective truth: The closer one gets to German culture, the farther one gets
from family. There are a lot of ways to measure this. In North
Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populous state and the one where Duisburg
is located, 80 percent of Turks ages 25 to 34 are married; their average
marriage age is 21 for women and 24 for men. Among non-Turks, only 32
percent of 25- to 34-year-olds are married; the average marriage age is 29
for women and 32 for men. Germans have one of the lowest fertility rates in
the history of the world - 1.36 children per woman, according to 2004
figures. While it is hard to find precise figures for Turks in Germany, the
rate is widely agreed to be higher. The rate in Turkey itself is almost
twice as high, at 2.4 children per woman. If a good chance of childlessness
and middle-aged solitude is the price of assimilation, it is for many Turks
an exorbitant one. According to a study done by the Center for Turkey
Studies in Essen, young Turkish women and men brought up in Germany view
their fellow Turkish-Germans of the opposite sex as "distant from their own
culture, or 'degenerate.' "
You seldom meet young Turkish women of marriage age who describe themselves
as either unambiguously traditional or unambiguously modern. Take Yasemin
Yadigaroglu, for instance. A tight, traditional head scarf covers every last
strand of her hair. But there is something bold and dashing about her, as
well as conservative. At 26, she leads a campaign supported by the Duisburg
city government to dissuade Turks from marrying their cousins. A German
citizen born in Duisburg, she studied social science at the University of
Duisburg-Essen.
Unlike Kelek, Yadigaroglu is an observant Muslim. She says that cousin
marriage is "a misrepresentation of Islam." Yet despite her religious bent,
Yadigaroglu's preoccupations and even conclusions about the family overlap
with Kelek's. Yadigaroglu claims that marriage between cousins retards
assimilation, that it contributes to parallel societies like the ones Ceylan
describes in Hochfeld and that it is responsible for birth defects. In an
academic paper, she even hints at a feminist critique of the traditional
Turkish family. "Through marriage to a cousin," she writes, "a new role
orientation gets established within the family. The aunt and uncle become
in-laws. The new daughter-in-law sinks to the lowest level of the family
hierarchy, in marked contrast to her previous role as niece."
One Friday afternoon just before evening prayers, I traveled to
Wanheimerort, a dockside area just south of Hochfeld, to see four young
women between 17 and 20 who meet there every week. All were born in Turkey
but have spent much of their lives in Wanheimerort. At least two are German
citizens. Esra is studying mathematics at a university nearby, Fatma and
Meltem are on their way there and Guler studies dental hygiene. Esra, at
least, spoke terrific English but wouldn't use it, perhaps out of
consideration for the several non-English speakers in the room. The Ditib
mosque they attend is among the more liberal in the area, but all the girls
except Fatma were wearing head scarves. I thought of Yadigaroglu, with her
mix of tradition and eagerness to assimilate and decided to ask whether -
given their career tracks - any of them might consider themselves feminists,
if only in an unconventional way. Their answers were: Nein, nein, nein and
nein. "Women think this word makes them more and more free," one said
scornfully.
==============
Page 6 of 7)
Young men I met were often more sour and defensive in such discussions. It
was as if they wanted to be clear about just who was rejecting whom in this
battle between their egos and the wider society's values. In the Duisburg
neighborhood of Meiderich, I visited a German-literature class at the local
high school and asked a room full of 18-year-olds to talk about marriage.
Three-quarters had a Turkish background. One, Husayn, spoke of how he had
already been betrothed to a cousin at a family celebration in Bielefeld and
was looking forward to standing on his own two feet. Several said that
brothers and sisters had married cousins from Turkey, yet each one of them
presented that as a special case, an exception.
But one student, a sharp-tongued fellow named Yavuz, had noticed the erosion
of the Turkish family model in Germany. It struck him as a catastrophe.
"Father and son are no longer father and son," he complained. "They're
buddies to one another. Your father becomes someone to go out and have a
beer with." And Turks' tendency to marry their cousins did not look so bad,
Yavuz said, with the air of one repeating something heard over a dinner
table, when you consider that "one out of six Germans commits incest."
I had heard similar things elsewhere in Germany. In the Comenius Garden in
Neukolln, a particularly tough part of Berlin, Murat, Ali and Hakan, all in
their late teens, were passing a freezing cold afternoon chatting and making
up rap verses. Ali, whose family comes from the Black Sea port of Rize, is
the son of a local Neukölln imam. He is training to be a plumber but is not
employed yet. He is betrothed to a "friend" in Turkey. The person who
introduced me to Ali said Ali's other friends had spoken of the woman as his
cousin. So I started by asking him why he had looked for his wife in Turkey.
"German girls are Schlampen," he replied. They're sluts.
These may be dangerous attitudes. They may also be just the ordinary
sour-grapes insecurities that are the lot of immigrants' children at all
times and all places. Turks often complain that Germans see only the
repressive side to Turkish traditions and not the protective side.
Even Seyran Ates sometimes sounds uncertain that German ideals are
sufficient to protect women. At the end of last summer, two months after she
was attacked on the Mockernbrucke subway platform, she gave up her law
practice. She now says she would be willing to continue work in a law firm,
provided it was large enough to guarantee her security. People have
organized events for her and proclaimed their solidarity. Her alma mater,
the Free University of Berlin, awarded her a prize for defense of human
rights last March. "Socially, there has been a lot of support," she says.
But the way the incident itself occurred, particularly the way men looked on
while she and her client were assaulted - that clearly still upsets her.
"It brought me to despair," she said over tea. "It showed a lack of civic
courage."
But would it have been any different in Turkey if a man had begun to beat up
a woman like that on a subway platform?
"Oh, yes," she said calmly. "They'd have lynched him."
The Same Pillow
Wolfgang Schauble, Germany's interior minister, is in an awkward position. A
European interior minister is usually referred to as his country's "top
cop." That was the job description the last time Schauble held the post,
under Helmut Kohl, between 1989 and 1991. But since he returned to the
ministry in the autumn of 2005, as the highest-ranking Christian Democrat
(behind Chancellor Angela Merkel) in a new coalition government, Schauble
has devoted much of his effort to the Islamkonferenz. At times he seems less
a top cop than a top marriage counselor.
Seated near his desk at the top of an office tower north of Berlin's
Tiergarten in February, Schauble admitted that the tendency of Turks to
bring spouses from abroad is a "main reason why integration isn't improving
with the passing generations." He agrees with Kelek and Ates that what he
calls the "freedom-constraining effects of the family" can stand between a
woman from a non-German culture and the rights to which she is entitled as a
German resident. But as a churchgoing Protestant, he is disinclined to
fiddle with marriage itself. "You have to distinguish between arranged
marriages and forced marriages," he told me. "Forced marriages are illegal.
They're assaults on human rights. They don't meet the minimum demands of a
free society. But arranged marriage - that's a complicated area. There have
always been cases where people have chosen not to meet as just man and woman
but with the intercession of some kind of third party."
=================
Page 7 of 7)
So Schauble seems to be trying to influence behaviors that he says are
neither illegal nor, in most cases, even wrong. He has been pragmatic. When
he started the Islamkonferenz last September, he praised Islam for
reinforcing aspects of German tradition that Germans themselves had
neglected: "the importance of family, respect for elders, a consciousness
and pride in one's own history, culture, religion, tradition and the
day-to-day life of one's faith." Yet he has also spoken favorably about a
controversial video that the government of the Netherlands has been showing
to prospective immigrants. It is supposed to acclimate them to the relative
tolerance of Western societies. Images of women at a topless beach and of
two men kissing are meant to squelch any expectation that those who inhabit
traditionalist cultures can bring those cultures with them to Holland. But
isn't this inconsistent? Don't the social benefits that Schäuble praises
come from a traditional moralism - about, for instance, baring ones breasts
in public - that the video repudiates? "Breasts," Schauble replied, "are not
the main theme."
Certain countries in Europe have placed sharp restrictions on those who
marry foreigners. The Netherlands is one of them. In Denmark, citizens under
the age of 24 are not even allowed to reside in the country with their
non-E.U. spouses. Germany is unlikely to try anything so restrictive. But in
March, the German cabinet approved a reform of immigration laws that would
raise the minimum age of foreign-born spouses to 18. (Studies show that the
lower the age of marriage, the greater the tendency to have an arranged
marriage.)
Schauble also intends to require a minimum basic language proficiency for a
spouse before he or she comes to Germany. "Let's say a young woman, from
some remote part of Turkey, is brought together with her husband while he is
on summer vacation," Schauble suggested. "If she doesn't know a single word
of German when she comes - well, she has little chance to escape the total
control of his family. If she knows a little bit of German, her chances are
better." Long a pet enthusiasm of Schauble's, the idea was taken up by the
incoming French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, during the French campaign this
spring. Schäuble insists that when he says "a little bit" of the native
language, he means a bare minimum, the kind of German you can learn from a
few weeks of listening to audiotapes.
Nonetheless, this little bit means a big change. For perhaps the first time
since the war, German institutions and public opinion are taking a stand in
favor of German culture as they understand it, and implicitly against the
culture of a foreign minority. After a decade in which the Social Democratic
government of Gerhard Schroder focused on the qualifications for German
citizenship (since 1999, all children born in Germany, of whatever
parentage, are eligible for it), the Merkel coalition, following Schäuble,
is stressing the content of citizenship. Germany is beginning to insist on
citizens' responsibilities as well as citizens' rights.
"We are facing the same problems, whether we are practicing Muslims or not,"
Oguz Ucuncu told me one night in Cologne, over a Turkish barbecue in the
heavily immigrant neighborhood of Mulheim. Ucuncu, a quick-witted and
decidedly modern spokesman for the conservative Turkish Muslim group Milli
Gorus, serves on one of the committees of the Islamkonferenz. He pointed out
that Internet "flirt exchanges" and "singles exchanges" are increasingly
popular in Germany. What are those, he asked, if not high-tech means of
"arranging" marriages? (Not to mention considerably less binding romantic
encounters.) What of those native Germans who marry abroad, he asked,
especially the thousands who have married women from East Asia? Shouldn't
they, too, stand accused of wishing to "secede" from Western European
feminism, just as those Turks who marry in Turkey stand accused? "The first
point of any government program now," Ucuncu said, "should be to promote
solidity of family. The idea we should promote is: May you sleep on the same
pillow to the end of your life. This is a Muslim value we should not give
away."
-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UK: Children involved in terrorism
LONDON, England (CNN) -- The head of Britain's intelligence services has warned that children as young as 15 are becoming involved in terrorist-related activity.
Jonathan Evans, the chief of MI5, also said that at least 2,000 people are living in Britain who pose a threat to security because of the country's support for al Qaeda-inspired terrorism.
"As I speak, terrorists are methodically and intentionally targeting young people and children in this country. They are radicalising, indoctrinating and grooming young, vulnerable people to carry out acts of terrorism," he told a gathering of newspaper editors in Manchester.
Evans said the figure of 2,000 -- an increase of 400 since November 2006 -- only included those the intelligence services knew about and that the actual number could be double.
He said there had been 200 terrorist convictions in Britain since the September 11 attacks.
The MI5 head added that over recent years much of the command and inspiration for attack planning in the UK had come from al Qaeda's remaining core leadership in the tribal areas of Pakistan.
However, he said in the last 12 months terrorist plots on British soil were increasingly been inspired by al Qaeda cadres in other countries, including in Iraq and East Africa.
"There is no doubt now that al Qaeda in Iraq aspires to promote terrorist attacks outside Iraq. There is no doubt that there is training activity and terrorist planning in East Africa -- particularly in Somalia -- which is focused on the UK," he told the Society of Editors meeting.
According to Evans, there had been "no decrease" in the number of Russian covert intelligence officers operating in Britain since the end of the Cold War.
He said that resources that could be devoted to counter-terrorism were instead being used to protect Britain against spying by Russia, China and others.
"A number of countries continue to devote considerable time and energy trying to steal our sensitive technology on civilian and military projects, and trying to obtain political and economic intelligence at our expense," he said.
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Illegal immigrant demands to be flown home
Illegal immigrant demands to be flown home because Britons are 'rude and unfriendly'
Last updated at 11:13am on 16th November 2007
An illegal immigrant has demanded to be flown home after saying he was fed up with British people - because they are "rude and unfriendly".
Speaking today, Mokhtar Tabet, 30 - who has been given a home, food and free travel around London - claims his local council has breached his human rights by moving him to a place he does not like.
He was refused asylum in 2004 and is set to be deported.
He said: "The council evicted me from my home in September and moved me to Streatham, which I don't like.
"The new place is small, and the kitchen closes at 9pm, so I can't have anything to eat late at night. They have taken away my human rights."
Croydon Council says it has bent over backwards to help Tabet, who fled Algeria in 2002.
A spokesman said: "Mr Tabet was accommodated in Norbury Crescent, with Croydon Council paying his rent, council tax and utility bills.
"In July, his landlord gave him two months' notice to quit the premises, and the council offered him a flat in Anerley Road, which he refused citing its poor state of repair.
"The necessary repairs were carried out and he again refused it.
"He was told that refusal would amount to him making himself intentionally homeless and he would be placed in hostel-style accommodation. He agreed to this."
Mr Tabet is entitled to return to Algeria at his own expense and admits that he "does not like it here".
But he refuses to do so and says Britain will have to pay for his travel if it wants him to leave.
He moaned: "I miss Algeria. The English people are not helpful, they are so unfriendly and rude.
"I thought I had made friends in Croydon, but when I ask them for money they don't give me it, so I know they can't be my friends."
Mr Tabet fled Algeria in 2002 after being arrested for refusing to give up his home so the army could monitor terrorist activity in his town.
Released after 30 days' solitary confinement he fled to Britain, illegally entering the country on a flight from Tunisia, and sought asylum.
He now receives £32 a week in vouchers from Croydon Council to buy food with while he awaits deportation.
Unsatisfied at this, he griped: "Croydon Council only gives me food vouchers, they won't give me cash. I want the money.
"I have nothing to buy new clothes with, I have to go to a refugee centre. But if there's not anything nice there, you leave with nothing.
"I want the council to give me a bigger flat and money instead of vouchers."
Mr Tabet suffers from diabetes, a retina disease and kidney failure and believes he should be allowed to stay in the country so he can continue to get free NHS care.
He said: "The Home Office said I could afford the medicine back home, but I can't, I don't have a job."
The council insists he has no grounds for complaint. The spokesman explained: "He is supported by the council by way of vouchers, in accordance with the law."
Mr Tabet admits that since he was refused asylum he has "stayed and no one has said anything about it".
But a spokesman from the Border and Immigration Agency insisted he can expect to be deported. He said: "The period between an individual being refused asylum and their removal will vary from case to case depending on individual circumstances. He is being processed through our returning scheme.
"Individuals are free to apply for a new passport and return voluntarily at any time. It's a case of if he wants to return on his own dollar or ours."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...n_page_id=1770
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Imam's daughter in hiding after her conversion to Christianity sparked death threats
By LIZ HULL and DANIEL BATES
The daughter of a British imam is living under police protection after receiving death threats from her father for converting to Christianity.
The 31-year-old, whose father is the leader of a mosque in Lancashire, has moved house an astonishing 45 times after relatives pledged to hunt her down and kill her.
The British-born university graduate, who uses the pseudonym Hannah for her own safety, said she renounced the Muslim faith to escape being forced into an arranged marriage when she was 16.
She has been in hiding for more than a decade but called in police only a few months ago after receiving a text message from her brother.
In it, he said he would not be held responsible for his actions if she failed to return to Islam.
Officers have agreed to offer her protection in case of an attempt on her life.
Last night the woman said: "I'm determined to live my life the way I want to because I should have that freedom in this country.
"If you make the choice to come to this country, as my parents did from Pakistan, you have to abide by the laws of this country and that means respecting the freedoms of other people.
Scroll down for more... {R}
"I know the Koran says anyone who goes away from Islam should be killed as an apostate, so in some ways my family are following the Koran. They are following Islam to the word.
"But I do not think every Muslim would act on that.
"My situation is frightening, but I'm not going to let it frighten me to the extent I can't live my life.
"I pretty much feel like I've lost my family and that's very hard.
"Some days I feel very low and what my father might do preys on my mind. But I regularly change my phone number to avoid him catching up with me.'
Hannah was born in Lancashire to Pakistani parents who raised her and her siblings as strict Sunni Muslims.
She prayed and read the Koran, wore traditional Muslim clothes and was sent to a madrassa, a religious Muslim school.
She ran away from home at 16 after overhearing her father organising her arranged marriage.
Hannah was taken in by a religious education teacher and decided to convert to the Christian faith.
Although unhappy, her parents tolerated their daughter's dismissal-of Islam as a "teenage phase".
But when she opted to get baptised, while studying at Manchester University, her family were incensed and the death threats began.
Her father arrived at her home with 40 men and threatened to kill her for betraying Islam.
"I saw my uncle and around 40 men storming up the street clutching axes, hammers, knives and bits of wood," she said.
"My dad was shouting through the letter box, "I'm going to kill you", while the others smashed on the window and beat the door.
"They were shouting, 'We're going to kill you' and 'Traitor'.
"It was terrifying. I was convinced I was going to either die, but suddenly after about ten minutes the noise stopped and the men suddenly went away."
Since then Hannah, who gives talks to churches on Islam, has been on the run from her family, often being forced to flee her home with only a few minutes' notice.
After receiving the latest text threat from her brother, in June, she finally went to the police.
No one has been arrested or charged in connection with the death threats, but officers have put her on an "at risk" register and have given her a panic number to call if she fears for her own safety.
Yesterday Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, told delegates at the launch of a religious charity that Muslims in Britain who wished to change faiths were living in fear of their lives because of Islamic hostility to conversion.
A study this year found that 36 per cent of British Muslims between 16 and 24 believe those who convert to another religion should be punished by death.
In July an Iranian immigrant to Britain, who converted to Christianity, was saved from deportation after it emerged she would be stoned to death in her own country.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...n_page_id=1770
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http://www.goal.com/en/Articolo.aspx?ContenutoId=509968
Fenerbahce To Ask Uefa For Three Points From Inter Match
A Turkish lawyer has filed a complaint to Uefa after Inter wore a shirt with an offensive symbol, at least to Islamic culture, in their recent match against Fenerbahce.
A Turkish lawyer who's an expert on European law, Baris Kaska, is asking Uefa to cancel the three points Inter earned in their win against Fenerbahce in the recent Champions League match.
The Nerazzurri had beaten the Turkish champions 3-0 at home to qualify for the next round of the Champions League.
The reason for the appeal is unusual: the celebratory shirt for Inter's centenary worn by the team that night, and on several other occasions this season, offended many people in Turkey.
The shirt's scheme saw a big red cross on a white background, a symbol of the city of Milan, and reminded many of an emblem of the order of the Templars, which is considered offensive in Islamic culture.
Inter consciously did not wear their 'centenary shirt' in their first match against Fenerbahce in Istanbul, but at home, they did not think it was necessary to do the same.
However, the very sensitive Turkish media reacted bitterly and that led to the official appeal filed by Kaska, who announced this decision during an interview to Barcelona daily La Vanguardia.
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This could fit on any of a number of threads, but because the discs in question were being sold in the UK, I post it here:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=28314&only&rss
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http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,524739,00.html
Interior Ministry Warns of Radicalization of Muslims
A new study commissioned by Germany's Interior Ministry warns of a growing threat from the radicalization of Muslims in the country. Six percent of Muslims in Germany support violence in the name of Islam, the authors write.
AP
Muslims protest in Dusseldorf against the Danish Muhammad cartoons in this Feb. 2006 photo. The Interior Ministry has warned that exclusion of Muslims from mainstream German society is leading to radicalization.
A new study released by Germany's Interior Ministry has added new fuel to the debate about integration of Muslims in Germany, with the report warning about the danger of radicalization of Muslims.
According to the study, which was published Tuesday, around 40 percent of Muslims surveyed had a "fundamentalist orientation," which the authors defined as a strongly religious worldview and moral values.
However, the authors concluded that the vast majority of Muslims in Germany reject religiously motivated terrorism and violence: Some 92 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that terrorist acts in the name of Islam were a serious sin and an insult to Allah.
But the authors saw a potential threat in a small minority with Islamist leanings: Around 6 percent of those surveyed were classified as having "violent tendencies," while 14 percent of respondents had "anti-democratic" tendencies.
Around 12 percent of the Muslims in Germany identified with a religious-moral critique of the West and supported corporal punishment and the death penalty. The report also concluded that religious beliefs are becoming increasingly important for young people.
The study, which was carried out by Katrin Brettfeld and Peter Wetzels from the Institute for Criminology at the University of Hamburg, was commissioned by the Interior Ministry in an attempt to finding out the extent to which the Muslim community in Germany provides a breeding ground for extremist groups and potential terrorists. The authors interviewed 1,750 Muslims living in Germany for the study. Of that number, around 40 percent had German citizenship.
'Fundamental Religious Orientation'
In the introduction to the report, Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble writes that the study leads to the "worrying conclusion that a serious potential for Islamist radicalization has developed in Germany." According to Schäuble, the lack of integration of immigrants into German society is leading to a "fundamental religious orientation."
The survey found that more than half of the respondents felt themselves excluded from German society and felt they were treated as foreigners. Around 20 percent had experienced some form of racism within the last 12 months.
Reacting to the study, Christine Haderthauer, general secretary of the conservative Bavarian party the Christian Social Union, said that her party "has always warned against the dangers of parallel societies. Our fears have been confirmed in a shocking manner." She said that Germany needs "an offensive to promote religious tolerance among young Muslims."
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However social anthropologist Werner Schiffauer urged caution when interpreting the results. He told the daily newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau that "anti-democratic attitudes were equally common among Muslims and Germans (sic)," adding that it could not be concluded that Islam encourages anti-democratic tendencies. Leaders of groups representing the Turkish community and Muslims in Germany also urged caution in interpreting the results.
In concluding that 6 percent of Muslims in Germany have violent tendencies, the study appears to contradict to some extent the findings of Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which monitors Islamist activity in the country. According to its 2006 report, there are currently around 32,000 Islamists in Germany who pose a potential security threat. That figure represents slightly more than 1 percent of the around 3 million Muslims who live in the country.
The Interior Ministry under Schäuble has sparked a series of controversies in recent months. Schäuble was the subject of heated criticism in July of this year when he appeared to suggest in a SPIEGEL interview (more...) that the targeted killing of terrorists might have to be considered. Schäuble's opponents have condemned him for attempting to constantly stretch the limits of what is acceptable under Germany's constitution in the fight against terror.
Other controversial positions Schäuble has promoted recently include taking terrorists into preventive custody, deploying the German army in domestic operations and searching suspects' computers online without their knowledge.
dgs/ap/ddp/afp
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Iran: Europe will become a Muslim continent, says Khamenei's spokesman
Tehran, 21 Dec. (AKI) - Europe will eventually become a Muslim continent, according to a representative of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.
"In a dozen years, Europe will be an Islamic continent," said Rasul Jalilzadeh on Friday as he was speaking to the basiji, a voluntary organisation in the capital Tehran.
"The Islamisation of the European continent is imminent and this step favours the arrival of the Mahdi," he said, referring to the 12th imam of Shiite Islam.
Shiites believe that the Imam Mahdi, who disppeared as an adolescent, will return to bring an end to chaos and bring universal justice.
Rasul Jalilzadeh believes that "the Islamisation of Europe is one of the consequences of the Islamic revolution in Iran" in that "the messages and values that this revolution has transmitted to the Europeans, to convince them "to abandon their current faiths and convert to Shiite Islam."
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English...1.0.1696552901
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Bishop warns of no-go zones for non-Muslims
By Jonathan Wynne-Jones
Last Updated: 12:39am GMT 06/01/2008
Islamic extremists have created "no-go" areas across Britain where it is too dangerous for non-Muslims to enter, one of the Church of England's most senior bishops warns today.
The Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester and the Church's only Asian bishop, says that people of a different race or faith face physical attack if they live or work in communities dominated by a strict Muslim ideology.
Bishop Nazir-Ali warns that attempts are being made to give Britain an increasingly Islamic character
Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, he compares the threat to the use of intimidation by the far-Right, and says that it is becoming increasingly difficult for Christianity to be the nation's public religion in a multifaith, multicultural society.
His comments come as a poll of the General Synod - the Church's parliament - shows that its senior leaders, including bishops, also believe that Britain is being damaged by large-scale immigration.
Bishop Nazir-Ali, who was born in Pakistan, gives warning that attempts are being made to give Britain an increasingly Islamic character by introducing the call to prayer and wider use of sharia law, a legal system based on the Koran.
In an attack on the Government's response to immigration and the influx of "people of other faiths to these shores", he blames its "novel philosophy of multiculturalism" for allowing society to become deeply divided, and accuses ministers of lacking a "moral and spiritual vision".
Echoing Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Commission for Equalities and Human Rights, who has said that the country is "sleepwalking into segregation", the bishop argues that multiculturalism has led to deep divisions.
David Davis, the shadow home secretary, has accused Muslims of promoting a kind of "voluntary apartheid" by shutting themselves in closed societies and demanding immunity from criticism.
In the Synod survey, to be published this week, bishops, senior clergy and influential churchgoers said that an increasingly multi-faith society threatens the country's Christian heritage and blamed the divisions on the Government's failure to integrate immigrants into their communities.
It found that more than one in three believe that a mass influx of people of other faiths is diluting the Christian nature of Britain and only a quarter feel that they have been integrated into society.
The overwhelming majority - 80 per cent - said that the Government has not upheld the place of religion in public life and up to 63 per cent fear that the Church will be disestablished within a generation, breaking a bond that has existed between the Church and State since the Reformation.
Calls for disestablishment have grown following research showing that attendance at Mass has overtaken the number of worshippers at Church of England Sunday services.
Bishop Nazir-Ali, whose father converted from Islam to Catholicism, was criticised by Ibrahim Mogra, of the Muslim Council of Britain. He said: "It's irresponsible for a man of his position to make these comments.
"He should accept that Britain is a multicultural society in which we are free to follow our religion at the same time as being extremely proud to be British. We wouldn't allow 'no-go' areas to happen. I smell extreme intolerance when people criticise multiculturalism without proper evidence of what has gone wrong."
Religious membership in Britain:
click to enlarge
But the Bishop's concerns are shared by other members of the General Synod.
The Rt Rev Nicholas Reade, the Bishop of Blackburn, which has a large Muslim community, said that it was increasingly difficult for Christians to share their faith in areas where there was a high proportion of immigrants of other faiths.
He believes that increasing pressure will be put on the Government to begin the process of disestablishment and end the preferential status given to the Church of England. "The writing is on the wall," he said.
Gordon Brown relinquished Downing Street's involvement in appointing bishops in one of his first facts as Prime Minister - a move viewed by some as a significant step towards disestablishment.
Last night, Mr Davis said: "Bishop Nazir-Ali has drawn attention to a deeply serious problem. The Government's confused and counter-productive approach risks creating a number of closed societies instead of one open, cohesive one. It generates the risk of encouraging radicalisation and creating home-grown terrorism."
From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...-mostviewedbox
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Can anyone help explain the role of the Church of England and its connection with the British government?
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Head banker leaves job over Muslim gaffe
Ill-advised quip
By OUT-LAW.COM → More by this author
Published Tuesday 8th January 2008 10:22 GMT
Find out how your peers are dealing with Virtualization
A senior banking industry figure has left his job after making a joke about Muslims which reportedly stunned colleagues and was the subject of complaints. Marc Howells of Barclaycard Europe has left his post.
Howells was discussing quarterly figures with staff when he is reported as saying: "The results were like Muslims – some were good, some were Shi'ite".
The remark was reported to senior management and a complaint was made. It is understood that Howells has left in what has been called 'redundancy under compromise'. He was the head of Barclaycard in Europe.
Barclaycard will not comment directly on Howells and his leaving of the company, but company sources told the Daily Telegraph newspaper: "Once word got round and a complaint was made he was toast. Part of the deal was that the circumstances of his departure must never be disclosed. But there was no chance of that once his Shi'ite joke started doing the rounds."
"We have nothing to add on this particular case," said a Barclaycard statement. "Everybody who works here gets guidance of what is right and what is wrong. We have a robust approach to equality and diversity and do not tolerate discrimination."
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Bin Laden's son applies to move to U.K. with wife - Daily Mail RIA Novosti
Monday January 14, 2008
Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden's son has applied for a visa to the United Kingdom where he intends to live with his British wife, the Daily Mail reported.
Omar Bin Laden, 26, and his wife Jane Felix-Browne, 52, say they have been interviewed at the British Embassy in Cairo. The embassy has declined to comment on the issue.
The British woman, who changed her name to Zaina Al Sabah Bin Laden after her marriage to Omar, has been married six times and has three sons and five grandchildren, according to the tabloid.
If the couple's application is accepted, they will move to Jane's $1.1 million home in Cheshire, near Manchester.
The Daily mail quoted her as saying: "The embassy staff are all very friendly and they are doing all the checks. It could take a while for the visa to come through but there's no reason in law why Omar and I should not be able to live in the U.K. together."
The son of the world's most wanted terrorist has divorced his first wife, the mother of his two-year-old son, and is currently waiting for confirmation of the divorce to come through from Saudi Arabia, so that he can prove the British woman is his only spouse.
"We have been told there will not be a problem as long as we can provide the original documents from his divorce from his first wife. And that should be done in a week," Mrs Bin Laden said.
A British marriage visa would allow Omar to live in the country for two years, after which he would be able to apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain.
The couple say they are "peace activists", and are organizing a horse ride from Cairo to Morocco.
Omar Bin Laden told the Mail on Sunday: "Associates of my father forced the cancellation of the Dakar Rally [across north-west Africa], but they won't stop me from riding. We want people to join us on the trek - Jews, Arabs, Christians, Muslims, it doesn't matter where people are from."
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English mosques are so extremist they'd be closed down in Baghdad, says IRAQ'S deputy prime minister
Certain English mosques are more radical than those found in Iraq and would be "illegal" in the war-torn country according to the Iraqi deputy prime minister. The shocking remarks, made by Dr Barham Salih, related to mosques he visited in Blackburn and have angered Muslim leaders. Dr Salih visited the east Lancashire town in 2005 as a guest of Jack Straw and made his remarks at a dinner party in Baghdad in November.
Shadow culture minister Tobias Ellwood, who attended the dinner, claimed the Iraqi politician said: "I am not surprised that you British are facing so many problems with extremists after what I saw in those mosques in Blackburn. What I saw would not be allowed here in Iraq - it would be illegal."
The 41-year-old MP made the claims during a Westminster debate on terrorism.
He said: "I know Jack Straw well, but my eyebrows raise when you have a very senior Iraqi leader make comments like that. I do not believe these comments can be dismissed out of hand. I was absolutely shocked. He went inside the mosques, and said literature he saw would be illegal. He was quite clear. The comments are only directed at a very small proportion of mosques in the UK - the vast majority of Muslims wouldn't want to be labelled."
Salim Mulla, chairman of the Lancashire Council of Mosques, reacted furiously to the comments. He said Dr Salih spoke positively about what he had seen in the town when they spoke during his visit.
He said: "We are going out of our way to bring the community together. Nobody is working harder than us at breaking down barriers. For Dr Salih to make these sort of comments is not very helpful at all. I don't know where he's coming from. He was very co-operative when he visited, and took lots of photographs. How many incidents have we had in Blackburn? He is talking a load of rubbish."
Dr Salih, a Sunni Muslim, was elected in January 2005 to Iraq's first democratically held elections in 50 years. During his visit, in the run-up to the 2005 general election, he told voters to support Jack Straw, then Foreign Secretary, and not to turn against him because of the war in Iraq. Salim Mulla said he could not recall which mosques, Dr Salih visited.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...n_page_id=1770
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Porter sacked by hospital after he asks for 'multi-faith' prayer room crucifix be made visible
A hospital porter has been sacked after a row over a crucifix being covered up in a prayer room used by Muslims.
Joseph Protano, 54, was suspended four days after the incident last month at a children's hospital - and has since been dismissed.
The row centres on a prayer room available to staff and visitors of all faiths, which contains a statue of the Virgin Mary and a crucifix.
Mr Protano, a Roman Catholic who has worked two years at the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital, Pendlebury, entered the room when three Muslims were using it - two patients and a doctor.
An argument broke out after he asked them to remove a cloth covering the crucifix and statue and to turn a picture of the Virgin Mary face up.
He has now been dismissed for gross misconduct but he intends to appeal.
Police quizzed him for four hours last month, on suspicion of religiously aggravated assault, but he was released without charge.
He denies the allegations and must wait to see if police take any action.
He said he was unable to comment on his sacking as the police probe and his plans to appeal were ongoing.
But a friend said: "He was very shocked at the decision. He thinks he has been treated terribly.
"He loves his job and doesn't do it for the money - until recently, his employers were paying just £5.88 an hour.
"They are saying he should not have gone into the prayer room and it is alleged he used racist language, which he totally refutes.
"His pay has been stopped, even though he intends to appeal, and he has had to sign on for benefits."
The friend said Mr Protano went into the prayer room about six times a day to check that the statue and crucifix were not left covered because he felt could be upsetting for visiting Christian parents to find them covered up.
The case has angered many hospital staff, who think he has been treated unfairly.
Police said a file had been passed to the Crown Prosecution Service for a decision over any further action.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...n_page_id=1770
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**"America Alone" continues to be proven accurate. It's wonderful how well "multiculti" is working out. Keep in mind that under sharia law, no non-muslim is ever justified in self-defense and any muslim has the right to rob, rape, enslave and murder any non-muslim.**
SPIEGEL ONLINE - February 1, 2008, 10:32 AM
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,532423,00.html
'WE'RE SITTING ON A POWDER KEG'
Immigrants Protest Death of Moroccan Teenager in Cologne
By Barbara Schmid and Andreas Ulrich
Following the violent death of a Moroccan teenager in Cologne, hundreds of immigrants have taken to the streets in nightly demonstrations to protest what they see as evidence of their second-class status in Germany. Police warn the city could be ready to explode.
Ikhlas Abbis
Members of the immigrant community have been protesting the death of a teenager in Cologne.
The owner of an electronics shop on Cologne's Kalker Hauptstrasse had rolled down the shutters on the windows in case there was unrest. Now they have photos of a 17-year-old Moroccan boy taped to them. The teenager, whose name was Salih, was killed in front of the shop two weeks ago.
The sidewalk is a sea of candles as hundreds of people chant: "Salih! Salih! We want justice!" They feel that Salih was one of them -- a youth from an immigrant family.
For the police, the case is clear cut. According to their version of events, Salih allegedly wanted to mug a 20-year-old German man, who tried to defend himself. But he panicked and pulled out a pocketknife that he plunged into Salih's heart with an unlucky stab. Prosecutors said it was a clear case of self-defense, and there are witnesses. But none of that matters any longer.
Every night last week, up to 300 protestors gathered at the spot where Salih died to demand "justice" instead of letting his killer walk free. They are protesting against "racism in Germany" -- but since it appears clear that this case involves self-defense, it's obviously about more than just the unfortunate Salih. It's more about how immigrants and their children feel they are currently being treated in Germany.
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The incident has struck a chord with those who feel disenfranchised from German society -- those without a proper education or vocational training, those without a future. The frustration is palpable. "We're sitting on a powder keg," warns former police commissioner Winrich Granitzka, who is also head of the Christian Democratic group in Cologne's city council. "There's the danger we could see a situation like in the suburbs of Paris."
Cologne certainly isn't Paris and the district of Kalk can't be compared with the high-rise suburban ghettoes surrounding the French capital. But Kalk, which used to be home to a chemical plant, is certainly depressing. The only bright spot is the large and colorful new shopping center, which stands out from its gray surroundings.
Immigrants and people with at least one non-German parent make up 54.7 percent of Kalk's population. The amount of young people between 15 and 18 living there is above average; education levels, on the other hand, are below average. Some 90 percent of people without a job in the area count as long-term unemployed.
"It seems to me as if they only send losers here," says Kemal Düzardic, a 22-year-old friend of the dead teenager. He and the others gather near the photos and candles even in the cold and the rain. One question weighs heavily on their minds. What if a German had died and the killer had been one of them?
A mere eight hours after the incident happened, the police announced it had been a case of self-defense and no charges would be pressed. The statement was "somewhat unfortunately formulated," admits Cologne police officer Catherine Maus in hindsight.
The "unfortunate" wording came at a particularly unfortunate time. "We have too many criminal foreigners," Roland Koch, the conservative governor of the state of Hesse, said in late December. In his re-election campaign, which many observers considered xenophobic, Koch made clear he thought immigrants should assimilate and shouldn't expect Germans to accommodate their cultural practices.
Of course, many of the Kalk youths who were born and raised within sight of Cologne's towering cathedral and speak the local German dialect don't consider themselves "foreigners." But Koch's populist attacks still resonated throughout the immigrant community.
"Stop this Racist," was the headline in the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet, accompanied by a caricature of the Christian Democrat politician with an extra-long nose. The Social Democrats, the left-wing Left party, the Greens and even a few Christian Democrats distanced themselves from Koch. Only the mass circulation newspaper Bild took his side and delighted in featuring new stories about "foreign" repeat offenders with long criminal records on an almost daily basis.
But the people with immigrant backgrounds in Kalk read Bild too. "What's with this crap?" says one irritated young man. "We grew up here, we aren't criminals. So why are we treated differently than other Germans?"
'We Feel like Second-Class Citizens'
For more than 40 years, the German mainstream tried to assert that Germany wasn't a "country of immigration." That attitude has had repercussions. Around 72 percent of Germany's 1.7 million Turks -- the largest group of foreigners living in the country -- don't have proper vocational qualifications. Some 40 percent of young people from immigrant families neither study nor pursue a traineeship after they leave school. They do odd jobs or hang around -- and they make up a disproportionate amount of violent offenders.
"The city of Cologne does a lot for integration," says police director Michael Temme, who has been keeping a careful eye on how his officers have been policing the demonstrations. But he admits there are "hot spots" in the city, including in Kalk. And so every evening he finds himself wondering if this will be the night when a spark finally ignites the powder keg, if this will be the night when shop windows get shattered and cars go up in flames.
"We feel like second-class citizens," says a middle-aged Moroccan man. "It will never stop, maybe it will even get worse," adds a young man. A group of intimidating-looking youths chant: "Salih, Salih!" They want a different kind of justice. It sounds more like a call for revenge.
"Something needs to happen to shake up Germany," says Social Democratic parliamentarian Lale Akgün, quoting a phrase made famous by former President Roman Herzog. "We need, at long last, social policies that are based on acceptance, and we need a fundamental reform of both education and social policy," she says. Germans need foreigners and foreigners need Germans, she says.
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It's an opinion shared by demographers and labor market experts. If people aren't given the opportunity to get vocational skills and qualifications, there will be "mass unemployment with a simultaneous dearth of skilled labor," according to the Institute for Employment Research (IAB).
A study commissioned by the Bertelsmann Foundation has calculated that a lack of integration of immigrants in Germany has already cost the country €16 billion. Many immigrants are unemployed, earn less and pay smaller amounts of tax and social security contributions.
The protesters in Cologne's Kalk district know this and that's what makes the situation so explosive. There's a feeling of not getting a fair chance and of being disenfranchised.
Around a fifth of foreign children see themselves as being "strongly discriminated against" or "individually disadvantaged," according to a survey by the Germany Youth Institute (DJI) in Munich. More than half feel they are neither respected nor treated equally. "Those are strong opinions that they have formed based on their own experiences," says DJI researcher Jan Skrobanek.
"We're not welcome here," says 14-year-old Fatima from Kalk. She ostentatiously pulls down her headscarf to cover her face as she stands in front of Salih's photo. "After elementary school we all get shoved into the Hauptschule," she says, referring to the lowest level of Germany's three-tier high school system. "None of us go to Realschule (apprenticeship-track high school), only Germans go there," she says. Her three older siblings couldn't find a traineeship after finishing high school. Fatima doesn't believe her luck will be any better.
Experts agree that youth crime in Germany isn't an ethnic problem, but rather a social one. Immigrant children from middle-class families and those that do well in school generally aren't troublemakers. Those that manage to find an apprenticeship or a job have a "significantly smaller feeling of being disadvantaged," according to youth researcher Skrobanek.
"We have to do everything we can to lower the high proportion of 40 percent of young immigrants without vocational qualifications," Maria Böhmer, the German government's commissioner for integration affairs, announced recently.
The federal government wants to spend €350 million over the next three years to work toward that goal. An employer will receive a subsidy of at least €4,000 if they give an apprenticeship to an applicant that has already unsuccessfully applied for one. It's a beginning.
"But immigrants have to do their part as well," insists Social Democrat Lale Akgün. "They have to give up their attitude of rejection and join society."
In a survey carried out by the Center for Turkish Studies in Essen, one-third of immigrant parents admitted that they would have problems with a German son-in-law. Hence, not much can be expected from the older generation -- which makes the future prospects of the children that much worse.
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"Many children experience an inconsistency in the way that they are raised which they find very challenging," says Haci-Halil Uslucan from the University of Magdeburg. At home they might be raised in a patriarchal fashion that puts an emphasis on obedience, while at school they are taught self-responsibility, individual choice and equality. "This disconnect is extremely difficult to deal with," says Uslucan.
Anyone interested in establishing equal opportunities and preventing young immigrants from drifting into criminality has to start promoting language development and education as early as kindergarten, says economist and criminologist Horst Entorf.
Salih, the dead teen from Kalk, had never had any run-ins with the police. "He wanted to get his high school diploma," says his 23-year-old brother Abdallah, who is studying electronics. Abdallah was part of the street protests last week. But the more radical protesters made him uneasy.
A few days ago, the Moroccan consul general visited Abdallah and his parents. He explained to them that the police investigation had been carried out conscientiously. But Abdallah still wonders whether a foreigner would have been released so quickly.
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=511963&in_page_id=1770&in_page_id=1770&expand=true#StartComments
Asian PCs 'blocking crackdown on honour killings'
By MILES GOSLETT and DANIEL BOFFEY - More by this author »
Last updated at 13:56pm on 3rd February 2008
Comments (15)
Some Asians in the police and in Government jobs have been accused of blocking the crackdown against so-called honour killings.
It is alleged they are not only failing to help desperate women trying to flee abuse and arranged marriages but are actively encouraging punishment for those they believe are breaking traditional taboos.
Terrified victims who seek official help are even being tracked down by a network of Asian men working in Government departments and social services, according to a study written by the think-tank Social Cohesion.
One woman was found by her family after she signed on at a Jobcentre where a member of the Asian community was working.
Scroll down for more
The study follows the horrific case of 20-year-old Banaz Mahmod whose body was found in a suitcase after she was raped and strangled with a bootlace by hitmen hired by her family
The report also claims some Asian police officers actually return women to their abusive families or refuse to act against men enforcing 'traditional' roles.
Meanwhile, non-Asian officials and police officers are scared of acting against families who abuse their relatives for fear of being branded as racist, the report says.
The study follows the horrific case of 20-year-old Banaz Mahmod, from Mitcham, South London, whose body was found in a suitcase after she was raped and strangled with a bootlace by hitmen hired by her family.
She was killed for falling in love with a man the family disapproved of – despite unsuccessfully asking police for help five times.
In one plea she recorded a video message that helped convict her father and uncle of her murder.
Controversially, the report accuses one of the Government's closest advisers on Muslim matters, the Muslim Council of Britain, of hampering attempts to criminalise forced marriage.
It said: "The MCB has sought to block legislation aimed at ending honour-based violence. Almost all women's groups interviewed for this report say that the MCB has done little or nothing to end honour-based violence...
"In many northern towns...South Asian women are often afraid to seek help because they know that Asians working in local government believe that women who break traditional taboos deserve to be punished."
Report contributor Nazir Afzal, of the Crown Prosecution Service, added: "Domestic violence is not an issue the Muslim Council of Britain wants to know about."
David Davies, the Tory MP for Monmouth who is on the Home Affairs Select committee investigating forced marriages and domestic violence, said: "Thousands of girls are being taken to Pakistan every year for marriage, although it is best described as abduction and rape."
James Brandon, one of the report's authors, said: "It is estimated that ten women a year in Britain die through honour killings and honour violence. The Government must change the way it approaches this problem."
The MCB said: "Our position has always been clear: so-called honour killings are murder. They are severe criminal offences which we condemn."
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Does anyone have any other info on the subject of this piece? I'd like to have more than one source/one point of view on this:
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Can of Worms: Mufti Wants Moratorium on French Law Separating Church and State
From the desk of Tiberge on Fri, 2008-02-01 13:06
The mufti of the Paris mosque, Dalil Boubakeur, has dropped what amounts to a political and religious bomb. He proposes a moratorium on the French law of 1905 separating Church and State, because not enough mosques are being built in France.
Besides his position as mufti, he is the president of the CFCM (French Council of the Muslim Faith), an association officially established in 2003 thanks to the efforts of Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy.
Questioned by Le Monde, Mr. Boubakeur set forth the idea of a “moratorium of 10 to 20 years” on the 1905 law, which forbids all public funding of places of worship, so that Islam can “catch up” on its needs. “The associations that administer houses of worship need to be given air to breathe,” he says.
This has to be one of the most daring statements made yet by a Muslim leader in France. There are at least 1500 mosques and prayer rooms in France, 75 in Paris alone.
Dalil Boubakeur’s proposal to suspend the 1905 law has incensed France’s radical secularists, the advocates of “laïcité,” who see in his words a predictable maneuver, welcomed by the State and Churches alike, for the purpose of restoring the power of religion to all spheres of French life.
Militants of “laïcité” are convinced that Nicolas Sarkozy intends, through modifications to the existing law, to impose his view of the equality of all religions onto the French people, instead of maintaining the strict separation that has been enforced until recently when Islam came into the picture.
The blog Riposte Laïque writes:
Sarkozy, through his speeches in Rome and then in Ryadh rolled out the red carpet to the Churches, and someone had to go into the breach. This role fell to the freedom-destroying mufti of the Paris mosque, since Islam is the spear-head of this offensive.
Their fear, despite what they say about Islam, is of the return of Christianity, especially Catholicism, to the decision-making process of the government, as the following statements attest:
Furthermore, in Europe, 20 countries out of 25 are signatories of concordats with the Catholic Church. Now they want all of France to be aligned with those countries.
Riposte Laïque calls for a massive protest, first at the local level, then a march towards Paris. Among the organizations cited as participants in this protest are the Grand Orient of France (Freemasons) and the Ligue de l'Enseignement (League of Teachers).
Sarkozy has (knowingly?) opened a can of worms with his initiatives on religion. But the essential problem remains Islam. The advocates of “laïcité” seem to forget that there can be no separation of Church and State in Islam and that if Islam is going to be given privileges, it automatically means the end of the law of 1905. Sarkozy is banking on the fallacious notion of “equality” of religions and is throwing all religions together in the same arena to find a way of co-existing.
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2927
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Second post on this. The quality and accuracy of this source is unknown to me, but the subject matter seems important.
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http://galliawatch.blogspot.com/2008/01/great-fear.html
Dalil Boubakeur's proposal to suspend the 1905 law separating Church and State has incensed the advocates of "laïcité" who see in his words a predictable maneuver, welcomed by the State and Churches alike, for the purpose of restoring the power of religion to all spheres of French life.
The following excerpts are taken from a long text posted at Riposte Laïque, a website of militants of "laïcité". Essentially, a coalition of left-leaning groups and individuals, they have the virtue of wanting to preserve intact the 1905 law separating Church and State. It isn't clear if they understand the true nature of Islam and its refusal of such a separation. What is clear is their intense hostility towards religion, and their firm belief that Nicolas Sarkozy intends, through modifications to the existing law, to impose his view of the equality of all religions onto the French people, instead of maintaining the strict separation that has been enforced until recently when Islam came into the picture.
(...) Why should Boubakeur have any qualms (about suspending the law)? Sarkozy, through his speeches in Rome and then in Ryadh rolled out the red carpet to the Churches, and someone had to go into the breach. This role fell to the freedom-destroying mufti of the Paris mosque, since Islam is the spear-head of this offensive.
(...) The ministers visit him (Boubakeur) during Ramadan, an obscurantist practice if ever there was one, to break the fast. They invite him to the television studios where, all the while claiming to favor "laïcité", he whimpers about discrimination towards Muslims. Sarkozy takes him along in his baggage when he goes to Algiers. There, Boubakeur listens enthralled to the French president who, in an incredible speech, denounces Islamophobia and anti-Semitism in the same breath.
As thanks for these good and loyal favors, Boubakeur plays the game expected of him by the powers-that-be and the Churches: he demands the end of the law of 1905.
Note: They come close to saying that it is a conspiracy by the government and the religions - i.e. a pre-planned plot to pave the way for the abolition of the law.
Their fear, despite what they say about Islam, is of the return of Christianity, especially Catholicism, to the decision-making process of the government, as the following statements attest:
In Europe through Article 15-1 of the new Treaty of Lisbon, which replaces the former Article 1-52, they want to render unavoidable the consultation of the Catholic Church before any political policy is adopted.
Furthermore, in Europe, 20 countries out of 25 are signatories of concordats with the Catholic Church. Now they want all of France to be aligned with those countries.
Note: I cannot comment on the above. I have not read the Treaty, nor am I familiar with the concordats.
But Catholicism is not their only fear:
(...) The Turkish Islamists who still intend to enter Europe feel that the moment has come. They are trying to end the ban on the Islamic veil, instituted by Mustapha Kemal, at the University.
The Protestants, among whom the Evangelicals are today in the majority, are patiently waiting for the French State to "tinker" with the law of 1905 that forbids the construction of houses of worship, in order to benefit from these derogations.
Movements such as the Church of Scientology, Jehovah's Witnesses, Raelians, and others are eager for these revisions so that they may be recognized fully as religions, and take advantage of the subsidies, fiscal exemptions and other privileges which are today forbidden by Article 2 of this accursed law.
In short, the stage is set, the scenario is soon to be played out.
Note: I know nothing about Raelians. I doubt that they pose a threat comparable to Islam.
The article goes on to call for a massive protest, first at the local level, then a march towards Paris. Among the organizations cited as participants in this protest are the Grand Orient of France (Freemasons) and the Ligue de l'Enseignement (League of Teachers):
Today is not the time to be timorous with those who prepared the way for Sarkozy and the concept of "open laïcité." Nor must we be divided in our ranks, whatever divergences may exist,
(...) We are convinced that the potential for mobilization by the French people around the concept of "laïcité" is intact. The citizens of this country are much more attached to the separation of the religious from the political than the elite is willing to believe.
Note: Sarkozy has (knowingly?) opened a can of worms with his initiatives on religion. But the essential problem remains Islam. The advocates of "laïcité" seem to forget that there can be no separation of Church and State in Islam and that if Islam is going to be given privileges, it automatically means the end of the law of 1905. Sarkozy, the Great Egalitarian, is banking on the fallacious notion of "equality" of religions and is throwing all religions together in the same arena to find a way of co-existing. His specific plans to modify the 1905 law will be the topic of future posts.
The image is of Liberty Leading the People, a famous painting from 1830 by Eugène Delacroix.
Labels: Christianity, Dalil Boubakeur, Islam, Laïcité, Religion
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The Coming Dhimmitude:
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Sharia law in UK is 'unavoidable'
BBC ^
Posted on 02/07/2008 6:03:54 AM PST by Sub-Driver
Sharia law in UK is 'unavoidable' The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams says the adoption of Islamic Sharia law in the UK is "unavoidable".
Dr Williams told BBC Radio 4's World at One that the UK has to "face up to the fact" that some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system.
Dr Williams argues that adopting some aspects of Sharia law would help maintain social cohesion.
For example, Muslims could choose to have marital disputes or financial matters dealt with in a Sharia court.
He says Muslims should not have to choose between "the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty".
In an exclusive interview with BBC correspondent Christopher Landau, ahead of a lecture to lawyers in London later on Monday, Dr Williams argues this relies on Sharia law being better understood. At the moment, he says "sensational reporting of opinion polls" clouds the issue.
He stresses that "nobody in their right mind would want to see in this country the kind of inhumanity that's sometimes been associated with the practice of the law in some Islamic states; states; the extreme punishments, the attitudes to women as well".
But Dr Williams says the argument that "there's one law for everybody... I think that's a bit of a danger".
"There's a place for finding what would be a constructive accommodation with some aspects of Muslim law, as we already do with some other aspects of religious law." Dr Williams adds: "What we don't want either, is I think, a stand-off, where the law squares up to people's religious consciences."
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Last updated at 16:32pm on 8th February 2008 Comments (16)
Sharia law "courts" are already dealing with crime on the streets of London, it emerged today.
The revelation came after the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, called for an "accommodation" with parts of the Islamic legal code in a speech which attracted widespread condemnation.
The Archbishop said parts of civil law could be dealt with under the sharia system but already some communities have gone much further - and it was revealed today that a teenage stabbing case among the Somali community in Woolwich had been dealt with by a sharia "trial".
Youth worker Aydarus Yusuf, 29, who was involved in setting up the hearing, said a group of Somali youths were arrested by police on suspicion of stabbing another Somali teenager.
The victim's family told officers the matter would be settled out of court and the suspects were released on bail.
A hearing was convened and elders ordered the assailants to compensate the victim.
"All their uncles and their fathers were there," said Mr Yusuf. "So they all put something towards that and apologised for the wrongdoing."
An Islamic Council in Leyton also revealed that it had dealt with more than 7,000 divorces while sharia courts in the capital have settled hundreds of financial disputes.
Today's revelations came as controversy raged over Dr Williams's call for parts of sharia law to be adopted in Britain.
His comments were condemned by Downing Street, the Tories and the chairman of the Government's Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
They were described as a "recipe for chaos" by Culture Secretary Andy Burnham.
Along with the Islamic Council in Leyton, there are reports of at least two other sharia courts sitting in London.
There are also courts in a number of other areas of the country with high Muslim populations, including Dewsbury in West Yorkshire, Birmingham and Rotherham, South Yorkshire.
Most are understood to concentrate on divorce cases - although such judgments are not recognised in British law - as well as financial disputes. Suhaib Hasan, a spokesman for the Islamic Sharia Council in Leyton, which was set up in 1982, said that he and his colleagues dealt with more than 200 cases a year, ranging from inheritance to marriage and divorce.
"From the beginning, people have wanted our services. More and more come back to us. Each month we deal with 20 cases," he said.
On its website, the Islamic Sharia Council warns those who use its services that the divorces it grants cannot invalidate a union under British civil law and advises that a separate civil divorce should be obtained. As well as giving advice on legal matters, such as inheritance, the website also gives general guidance on Muslim practices including the need for beards and the need for women to cover themselves in public.
It also covers issues such as whether women should train as doctors. It supports this as a "lesser evil", but suggests that training should take place at an all-female college and that future treatment should be given to "women only".
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Sharia law row: Archbishop is in shock as he faces demands to quit
The Archbishop of Canterbury was facing demands to quit last night as the row over sharia law intensified. Leading bishops publicly contradicted Dr Rowan Williams's call for Islamic law to be brought into the British legal system. With the Church of England plunged into crisis, senior figures were said to be discussing the archbishop's future.
One member of the church's "Cabinet", the Archbishop's Council, was reported as saying: "There have been a lot of calls for him to resign. I don't suppose he will take any notice, but, yes, he should resign."
Officials at Lambeth Palace told the BBC Dr Williams was in a "state of shock" and "completely overwhelmed" by the scale of the row. It was said that he could not believe the fury of the reaction. The most damaging attack came from the Pakistan-born Bishop of Rochester, the Right Reverend Michael Nazir-Ali. He said it would be "simply impossible" to bring sharia law into British law "without fundamentally affecting its integrity". Sharia "would be in tension with the English legal tradition on questions like monogamy, provisions for divorce, the rights of women, custody of children, laws of inheritance and of evidence. This is not to mention the relation of freedom of belief and of expression to provisions for blasphemy and apostasy."
The church's second most senior leader, Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu, refused to discuss the matter. But he has said sharia law "would never happen" in Britain. Politicians joined the chorus of condemnation, with Downing Street saying British law should be based on British values. Tory and LibDem leaders also voiced strong criticism.
Even prominent Muslims were rounding on Dr Williams. Shahid Malik, Labour MP for Dewsbury, said: "I haven't experienced any clamour or fervent desire for sharia law in this country. "If there are people who prefer sharia law there are always countries where they could go and live." Khalid Mahmood, Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Bar, rejected the idea that British law forces Muslims to choose between their religion and their society. He said: "This will alienate people from other communities because they will think it is what Muslims want - and it is not."
The Muslim Council of Britain came to Dr Williams's aid, however, describing his comments in a lecture to lawyers and a BBC interview as "thoughtful".
But Oxford University Islamic scholar Professor Tariq Ramadan admitted: "These kinds of statements just feed the fears of fellow citizens. I really think we, as Muslims, need to come up with something that we abide by the common law and within these latitudes there are possibilities for us to be faithful to Islamic principles."
The archbishop is likely to come under heavy fire next week at a meeting of the Church's General Synod. Liberal and feminist critics have been appalled by the thought of sharia law while evangelical opponents believe Dr Williams has failed to defend Christianity.
The archbishop was already battling intractable difficulties within the church over gay rights, a row which began nearly five years ago and has brought him criticism from all sides. Later this year he has to face a conference of hundreds of bishops from around the world which threatens further bitter division. Dr Williams's opponents on the conservative evangelical wing - who resent his liberal beliefs on issues such as gay rights - were suggesting last night that the archbishop is finished.
The Reverend Paul Dawson of the Reform group of around 500 clergy said: "We are very sad that he does not seem to be able to articulate a clear Christian vision for Britain. It is true to say that there is a lot of dissatisfaction."
Dr Williams defended himself in a Lambeth Palace statement saying he had been trying to "tease out" the issue. The archbishop had said it could help build a better and more cohesive society if Muslims were able to choose to have marital disputes or financial matters, for example, dealt with in a sharia court. The adoption of some elements of sharia law "seems unavoidable".
But the statement insisted: "The archbishop made no proposals for sharia, and certainly did not call for its introduction as some kind of parallel jurisdiction to the civil law."
Even fellow bishops, however, think this is precisely what Dr Williams did say.
Bishop of Southwark Tom Butler, a liberal who would normally be expected to defend Dr Williams, said the archbishop had been entering a minefield and added: "It will take a great deal of thought and work before I think it is a good idea."
He was more blunt in a circular to clergy in his diocese, saying he had yet to be convinced of the feasibility of incorporating any non-Christian religious law into the English legal system.
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TURKEY: ASSIMILATION IS A CRIME, ERDOGAN TO GERMAN TURKS
(ANSAmed) - BERLIN, FEBRUARY 11 - Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan added yesterday fuel to the fire of the polemics recently sparked off in Germany on the integration of the Turkish immigrants in the country, warning the German Turkish community against an excessive adaptation to the national culture. "Assimilation is a crime against humanity", Erdogan said in Cologne, during his visit in Germany, in front of an audience of 16,000 people, the majority of whom Turkish immigrants. Erdogan's proposal to open schools of Turkish language in Germany also to favour the integration of the Turkish immigrants in the country was strongly criticised recently by the German political world. Leader of conservative party CSU, Erwin Huber, said that if the proposal were launched, it would be a poison for integration and would lead to the creation of ghettos, as well as to the establishment of a mini-Turkey in Germany. Yesterday Erdogan said that it is important to learn German, however he underlined that the Turkish language could not be neglected, in order to protect the Turkish students from the challenge to maintain their identity and their culture. (ANSAmed).
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'Osama bin London' groomed 21/7 bombers
By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent
Last Updated: 4:40pm GMT 26/02/2008
The missed opportunities in relation to the July 21 bombers can be disclosed today following the conviction of one of the most senior terrorist recruiters in Britain - a man who called himself "Osama bin London".
Street preacher Mohammed Hamid - who once told young Muslims the 52 deaths in the July 7 attacks on London were "not even breakfast to me" - groomed the would-be suicide bombers under the noses of watching police, security services and even the BBC.
Hamid, 50, who is believed to have met senior al-Qa'eda figures in Afghanistan, organised a series of training camps in the New Forest, the Lake District, and Scotland and paintballing sessions in Berkshire and Kent to train his followers.
He also held regular Friday prayer meetings at his home in Clapton, East London, where he would urge Muslims to attack non-believers.
All four of the failed suicide bombers of July 21 attended his meetings and Hamid ran an Islamic bookstall on Oxford Street with Muktar Ibrahim, the leader of the July 21 gang.
He was spoken to by police on three other occasions before July 2005 at his Oxford Street stall and on eight separate occasions afterwards - but was not arrested until September 2006, more than a year after the July attacks, after an undercover policeman infiltrated his group.
The 50-year-old was found guilty of organising terrorist training camps and encouraging Muslims to murder non-believers at the end of a four-month trial at Woolwich Crown Court.
Police first observed the July 21 bombers being put through their paces in the Lake District at one of Hamid's camps on May 2, 2004 - more than a year before they launched their failed attacks on London's transport system.
Following a tip off, a Cumbrian officer out fell running came across a group of 20 Asian men training in Great Langdale as Hamid barked orders.
Special Branch was called in to photograph the group and close-up surveillance pictures showed all four of the men who went on to attack London on July 21 the following year.
Hamid's home in Hackney, East London was subsequently put under surveillance and four weeks later, on May 29, he was seen collecting another group together to return to Great Langdale.
Once again the fell-running officer located them in the Lake District and this time the surveillance was left to Cumbrian police who saw the group "holding branches or sticks as though they were carrying rifles".
The case was handed over to MI5 but their agents brought the wrong camera equipment when they turned up in August 2004 because they were not expecting the group to be there again. They shot just 11 minutes of footage across three days, however the film once again included Muktar Ibrahim.
One former Royal Marine Commando watched the group as they performed press-ups, sit-ups, an anti-ambush drill and "leopard crawling," moving low and flat along the ground.
But the three-man surveillance team seemed to take a relaxed approach to the operation, at one point signing off on the camera: "And what a lovely view it is."
Also there were Hamid's co-accused Kibley da Costa, 24, Mohammed Al-Figari, 42, and Kader Ahmed, 20. They have been found guilty of attending terror camps in the New Forest and at a Berkshire paintballing centre.
Hamid was also joined in his teachings by Atilla Ahmet, 43, the self-styled emir of the gang, who admitted three charges of soliciting murder at the start of the trial.
Ahmet was Abu Hamza's right-hand man at Finsbury Park Mosque and took control of his notorious Supporters of Shariah group after his arrest in 2004.
During Hamid's trial, the court heard how he and Muktar Ibrahim set up a stall selling Islamic literature outside Debenhams department store in Oxford Street and how, in October 2004, both men were arrested following a disturbance at the stall.
Police called to reports of three men blocking the pavement with a trestle table stacked with religious books found they refused to move and started to abuse the black and Asian officers when they were threatened with arrest.
The officers had to call for assistance and as Hamid was handcuffed and dragged to the police van he told the officers: "I've got a bomb and I'm going to blow you all up."
At the police station Hamid gave his name as Osama bin London and was only identified after a fingerprint check which showed up his extensive criminal record for theft and burglary. Ibrahim ran from police and was only stopped when a member of the public tripped him up. However, he failed to turn up at Horseferry Road Magistrates Court because he had travelled to Pakistan where it is thought he learned how to make the bombs for July 21.
Perhaps the ultimate irony came courtesy of a BBC documentary called "Don't Panic I'm Islamic" broadcast in June 2005. Hamid was recruited from his stall on Oxford Street to represent the acceptable face of modern Islam.
He was filmed, along with co-accused Mohammed al-Figari and 14 other men at a paintball centre in Tonbridge, Kent where they were seen ducking behind oil barrels and shooting at cut out figures before lining up to pray at the end of the day.
The documentary was shot in February 2005 at the Delta Force centre because it was convenient for the TV crew but Hamid's group returned four days before the July 7 attacks, this time bringing with them Ramzi Mohammed and Hussain Osman, who went on to launch failed attacks on July 21.
The producer returned to talk to Hamid as the July 21 gang were on the run and said he admitted knowing them and was "agitated, concerned, and worried", but the producer claimed her bosses took the decision not to notify the police.
Hamid exchanged 155 calls and text messages with the four July 21 bombers, including one message sent to Hussain Osman on the evening of July 7, in which he used the alias Al-Quran and wrote: "Assalam bro, we fear no-one except ALLAH, we will not change our ways, we are proud to be a Muslim an we will not hide. 8pm Friday at my place, be there food and talk, AL-QURAN."
He also sent Mohammed and Osman a text on the night of July 21 and attempted to ring both of them the following day.
Co-accused Kader Ahmed and Kibley da Costa also made attempts to contact the men in the two days after the attacks.
Hamid, assisted by Ahmet, was said to be a "recruiter, groomer and corrupter of young Muslims."
Both men talked of shedding blood to implement sharia [Islamic law] and suggested Parliament as a target, with Ahmet saying: "The House of Parliament, the big people, the MPs, the police, the army, the city slickers are all halal [permitted]."
MI5 put a recording device in Hamid's home in September 2005 and in April 2006 an undercover officer managed to join the group after approaching Hamid at his stall in Oxford Street.
The officer, codenamed Dawood, joined Hamid at his home for his Friday meetings and went with the group on camping weekends in the New Forest and an Islamic school in Sussex.
At a meeting at his house on June 16 2006, he told his followers they were "Soldiers of Allah" who were "fighting for sharia".
"The whole aspect is for you to get shahada [martyred] for you to be shaheed [martyr]," he added.
Hamid and Kibley da Costa, 24, of West Norwood, south east London, were also found guilty of providing training for terrorism. Mohammed al-Figari, 42, of Tottenham, north London, and Kader Ahmed, 20, of Plaistow, east London, were found guilty of receiving terrorist training.
Two further members of the gang, Mohammed Kyriacou, 19, and Yassin Mutegombwa, 23, admitted attending terrorist training camps, it can be reported today after restrictions were lifted.
Property manager Mousa Brown, 41, was cleared of providing and receiving weapons training and has been freed from custody.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...526.xml&page=1
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http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23450679-details/MI5%20targets%20four%20Met%20police%20officers%20'working%20as%20Al%20Qaeda%20Spies'/article.do
MI5 TARGETS FOUR MET POLICE OFFICERS 'WORKING AS AL QAEDA SPIES'
Last updated at 22:37pm on 09.03.08
Add your view
Warning: Terror moles reportedly work in the Met
Four police officers in Britain's top force are reportedly under close secret service surveillance after being identified as Al Qaeda spies, it emerged today.
MI5 are said to have homed in on the the "sleeper" agents passing secrets from Scotland Yard to the terror group only in recent weeks.
The suspected spies are believed to have used methods similar to those employed by the IRA in the 1970s as they infiltrated the police and the Army in Northern Ireland.
Bombed: Police began searching for spies after July 7 attacks
All four are understood to be Asians living in London and are feared to have links both with Islamic extremists in Britain and worldwide terror groups - including al-Qaeda training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
MI5 chiefs reportedly believe the suspected moles have been planted as sleepers - agents under deep cover - to keep al-Qaeda informed of anti-terror raids planned by London's Metropolitan Police.
They are said to fear the four could have already accessed sensitive information about secret operations to root out terror cells planning further attacks in the UK.
Scotland Yard refused to discuss allegations that a sleeper cell of al Qaida spies is being kept under secret service surveillance after infiltrating the Metropolitan Police.
According to the News of the World, in the past few weeks MI5 agents have identified four officers suspected of passing secrets from the force.
All four are allegedly Asians living in London and are feared to have links with Islamic extremists in Britain and worldwide terrorist organisations.
MI5 bosses reportedly fear the moles may have been planted to keep al Qaida informed of anti-terror raids, and may have already accessed sensitive information about ongoing operations.
Secret service agents are said to be monitoring the suspects, who work at different London police stations. A Yard spokesman said: "All police officers and police staff, upon joining the Metropolitan Police Service and during their careers undergo a range of security checks.
"These are robust and vary accordingly to the type and sensitivity of the individual postings.
"We take matters of security very seriously and if any issues arise about individuals, they may be subject to further assessment.
"This could lead to restrictions being put in place relating to where an individual may work within the organisation or could lead to their dismissal."
"If there are people within the police force feeding information to terror groups this needs to be stopped.
"Since the names came to light there has been a non-stop effort to find out everything about their backgrounds."
The officers' names apparently emerged during a low-profile investigation into police force infiltration which has been going on since the July 2005 London bombings.
Last year MI5 believed there were up to eight police staff—uniform and civilians with links to extremist groups.
Now agents, helped by anti-terror police, are understood to be watching the four suspects - who work at different police stations around London - around the clock while searching for the vital evidence needed to make arrests.
The officers' every move at work is being monitored along with their phone calls, it was claimed.
Homeland security agents are reportedly sifting through their bank account transactions.
MI5 experts are also understood to be building a family tree for each one and trying to put together a picture of their links to their home countries.
Their names are being cross-referred with lists of men who have been to terror training camps in Pakistan or Afghanistan.
What is clear is that the infiltration methods used by the officers under suspicion bear hallmarks of the IRA in the past.
The police source said: "The IRA tried to infiltrate and they succeeded to a certain extent.
"By just slipping under the radar it takes suspicion away from you.
"If you are a young Pakistani of English origin and you feel you want to do something for the cause of Islam, what better way than to join the enemy and attack from within?"
MI5 believes other sleeper cells are trying to infiltrate public services across Britain in order to gain vital intelligence.
Even exiled cleric Omar Bakri has revealed how Islamic extremists were working at the heart of the NHS and other vital services.
Failed asylum seeker Omar Altimimi was jailed for nine years last July for keeping manuals on detonating car bombs.
Before his conviction he had applied to work as a cleaner for Greater Manchester police.
Numbers of officers from ethnic minorities have risen since the Met was accused of being institutionally racist in the Stephen Lawrence public inquiry report.
MP Patrick Mercer, Tory terrorism advisor, said: "This discovery by MI5 comes as no surprise to me.
"Recruiting ethnic people into key public sector organisations - in place to protect us - is a risk.
"Our vetting procedures have to be toughened before it's too late."
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Its the NY Times, so the tone of the piece is what you would expect. Still some worthy point to be gleaned.
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LLEIDA, Spain — As prayer time approached on a chilly Friday afternoon and men drifted toward the mosque on North Street, Hocine Kouitene hauled open its huge steel doors.
As places of worship go, the crudely converted garage leaves much to be desired, said Mr. Kouitene, vice president of the Islamic Association for Union and Cooperation in Lleida, a prosperous medieval town in northeastern Spain surrounded by fruit farms that are a magnet for immigrant workers. Freezing in winter and stifling in summer, the prayer hall is so cramped that the congregation, swollen to 1,000 from 50 over the past five years, sometimes spills onto the street.
“It’s just not the same to pray in a garage as it is to pray in a proper mosque,” said Mr. Kouitene, an imposing Algerian in a long, black coat and white head scarf. “We want a place where we can pray comfortably, without bothering anybody.”
Although Spain is peppered with the remnants of ancient mosques, most Muslims gather in dingy apartments, warehouses and garages like the one on North Street, pressed into service as prayer halls to accommodate a ballooning population.
The mosque shortage stems partly from the lack of resources common to any relatively poor, rapidly growing immigrant group. But in several places, Muslims trying to build mosques have also met resistance from communities wary of an alien culture or fearful they will foster violent radicals.
Distrust sharpened after a group of Islamists bombed commuter trains in Madrid in March 2004, killing 191 people, and in several cities, local governments, cowed by angry opposition from non-Muslims, have blocked Muslim groups from acquiring land for mosques.
The result, Muslim leaders say, is that some Muslims feel anchorless and marginalized.
“A proper mosque would act as a focus, a reference point for Islam here,” said Mohammed Halhoul, spokesman for the Catalan Islamic Council. A quarter of Spain’s Muslims live in Catalonia, the northeastern region that is home to Lleida, but the area has no real mosques.
“I feel like a Catalan,” Mr. Halhoul said, “except when it comes to the question of the mosque.”
Muslims ruled much of Spain for centuries, but after they were ultimately vanquished in the 1400s, their mosques were either left to ruin or converted into churches. Since then, fewer than a dozen new mosques have been built to serve Spain’s Muslim population, which has grown in the past 10 years to about one million from about 50,000 as immigrants have poured into the country.
That rise has coincided with a decline in church attendance in overwhelmingly Catholic Spain, giving new echo to an old rivalry between the two religions. It was the Catholic king and queen, Ferdinand and Isabella, who defeated the last Moorish ruler in Spain in 1492 and oversaw the expulsion of Jews and Muslims. Now, as churches struggle to draw a dwindling flock, Muslim prayer halls are overflowing.
“The reality of this country has changed much faster than that of other countries,” Ángel Ros, Lleida’s mayor, said in an interview. “A process that took 30 years in Italy or France has taken 10 years in Spain.”
Lleida is a case in point: a city whose 13th-century cathedral looms from a fortified hilltop over plains that produce half of Spain’s pears and apples, it has drawn a flood of immigrants. They now make up nearly a fifth of the city’s 125,000 residents, compared with 4 percent in 2000. A quarter of them are from Muslim countries. Friday, the Muslim day of prayer, has replaced Saturday as a day off in addition to Sunday on many local farms.
The North Street prayer hall faced opposition from the outset. Marta Roigé, head of the local neighborhood association, said residents tried to block it five years ago by renting the garage themselves, but backed down after the landlord started a bidding war. They have since sued the local council to close it down on the basis that it is a health and safety hazard.
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“The tension has grown as the numbers have grown,” Ms. Roigé said. “They’ve set up shops, butchers, long-distance call centers and restaurants.” These businesses, catering to Muslim immigrants, line the surrounding streets.
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The New York Times
The immigrant population has soared recently in Lleida.
She added: “They are radicals, fundamentalists. They don’t want to integrate.”
Muslim leaders, however, say the lack of proper mosques is one barrier to integration. And Spanish authorities and Muslim leaders say the potential for extremism would be easier to monitor at fewer, larger mosques than at the 600 or so prayer halls scattered throughout the country.
Some Muslim leaders believe the tide is starting to turn in their bid to return minarets to Spanish skylines. Following a pact between the Islamic Association and Lleida’s town hall in December, the city may become the first in Catalonia to build a mosque.
The association secured a 50-year lease on a plot of government land on the edge of town, and Mr. Kouitene says the group hopes to break ground next year if it can raise the money.
Several other Muslim communities are on the verge of similar breakthroughs. In the southern city of Seville, Muslims are close to obtaining a plot of land for a mosque after years of bitter local resistance; in 2005 protesters dumped a pig’s head on a plot originally chosen.
Meanwhile, the ruling coalition in Catalonia submitted a bill in the regional parliament in December that would oblige local governments to set aside land for mosques and other places of worship. Representatives of Muslim organizations hope it will inspire a similar national law.
“People are realizing the world has changed and they can’t look the other way,” said Mohammed Chaib, a member of the Catalan parliament and the only Muslim lawmaker in Spain.
Some Catholic clerics see things differently. Cardinal Luis Martínez Sistach, archbishop of Barcelona, opposes the bill, which would entitle all religious groups to land on an equal basis. He argues that Catholicism requires different rules.
“A church, a synagogue or a mosque are not the same thing,” he said, according to the conservative Spanish newspaper ABC. The bill, he said, “impinges on our ability to exercise a fundamental right, that of religious liberty.”
While no law on religious land use exists, the wealthy Catholic Church faces no difficulty acquiring land, experts in law and religion say.
Álex Seglers, an expert on church-state relations, is skeptical that the bill will be effective. The bill is vague and gives local governments too much discretion over what land it provides to which group, he says.
For the worshipers at North Street, the next big hurdle is money. Spain’s secular state cannot finance religious buildings, though it has a special arrangement to subsidize the Catholic Church.
“We have a saying in our religion,” Mr. Kouitene said. “Anywhere there are even a few Muslims, you must build a mosque for joint prayer. Otherwise, the devil rules in that place.”
Mayor Ros, for one, welcomes the building.
“We used to have a dominant religion, and now we have many religions and we have to find a way of respecting that fact,” he said. “Churches were the great public works of the Middle Ages and of the Renaissance. Now I see a day when every large city in Spain will have a mosque.”
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March 16, 2008
Asian youths in 'faith hate' attack on priest
Kevin Dowling
An Anglican priest is in hospital after he was beaten up and insulted in what appears to be a “faith hate” assault by Asian youths.
Canon Michael Ainsworth, 57, was kicked and punched in the head and left with deep cuts, bruising and two black eyes in the grounds of his historic church in east London after he asked three Asian youths there to be quiet.
The attack at the 18th-century St George in the East Church in Stepney follows a number of apparently anti-Christian attacks in recent months in the same area.
Alan Green, area dean for Tower Hamlets, said: “It was a nasty cowardly attack. There were several groups in the churchyard and two from one group attacked him and the other group came and helped him back to the house.
“He was kicked and punched in the head as he lay on the ground, I believe that what was shouted was ‘you ********** priest’ before they attacked him.”
A Metropolitan police spokesman said: “The suspects are Asian . . . and the incident is being investigated as an alleged faith hate crime.”
The church had previously been targeted when a brick smashed a window during a service. Allan Ramanoop, a member of the parochial church council, said: “On one occasion, youths shouted: ‘This should not be a church, this should be a mosque, you should not be here’.
“The youths are anti-Christian. It’s terrible what they have done to Canon Ainsworth. We’ve never had violence like that before.”
A parishioner raised the alarm after the attack on March 5, but the youths had fled by the time police arrived.
The church was consecrated in 1729 and designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor, a pupil of Sir Christopher Wren. It was severely damaged during the blitz but rebuilt in the 1960s.
Ainsworth was discharged from hospital but has now gone back in. Yesterday, he was visited in St Bartholomew’s hospital by his wife Jan, who is also a priest as well as being the Church of England’s chief education officer.
She said her husband was concerned publicity about the attack could fuel inter-faith tensions. “He does not want the level of fuss and attention. I think he feels it’s quite difficult in the local area.”
The Met recorded an upsurge in attacks against Muslims after the July 2005 bombings in London. There are also numerous attacks against Jews but, according to police statistics, relatively few Christians are attacked because of their faith.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/com...cle3559768.ece
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When you read the Sun story below make sure you click on the link to view the pictures.
A MUSLIM bus driver told stunned passengers to get off so he could PRAY.
Published: 29 Mar 2008
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article976258.ece
Video: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article976258.ece
By ALEX PEAKE and ANDY CRICK
The white Islamic convert rolled out his prayer mat in the aisle and knelt on the floor facing Mecca. Passengers watched in amazement as he held out his palms towards the sky, bowed his head and began to chant.
One, who filmed the man on his mobile phone, said: “He was clearly praying and chanting in Arabic.
“We thought it was a wind-up at first, like Jeremy Beadle.”
The 21-year-old plumber added: “He looked English and had a London accent. He looked like a Muslim convert, with a big, bushy beard.
“Eventually everyone started complaining. One woman said, ‘What the hell are you doing? I’m going to be late for work’.”
After a few minutes the driver calmly got up, opened the doors and asked everyone back on board.
But they saw a rucksack lying on the floor of the red single-decker and feared he might be a fanatic. So they all refused.
The passenger added: “One chap said, ‘I’m not getting on there now’.
“An elderly couple also looked really confused and worried.
“After seeing that no-one wanted to get on he drove off and we all waited until the next bus came about 20 minutes later. I was left totally stunned. It made me not want to get on a bus again.”
The bizarre event unfolded on the number 81 in Langley, Berkshire, at around 1.30pm on Thursday.
The passenger said he rang the bus firm to complain but claimed it did not believe him.
He said: “They asked me, ‘Are you sure?’. Then they said they would get back to me, but they weren’t taking me seriously at all.”
Yesterday the driver, who said his name was Hrun, told The Sun: “I asked everyone to get off because I needed to pray. I was running late and had not had time.
“I pray five times a day as a Muslim — but I don’t normally ask people to get off the bus to do it.”
Muslims pray at pre-dawn, noon, afternoon, sunset and evening.
A spokesperson for bus company London United said: “We are aware of a reported incident involving our route 81.
“We are currently undertaking a full investigation into the matter.”
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The Heathrow Plot Trial: Retrospection and Implications
April 9, 2008
Graphic for Terrorism Intelligence Report
By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart
The trial of eight men accused of participating in a 2006 plot to bomb a series of airline flights began April 3 in London. The men are charged with conspiracy to commit murder and preparing acts of terrorism in connection with the plot, which allegedly called for using liquid explosives to bring down at least seven planes flying from London’s Heathrow Airport to cities in the United States and Canada.
The trial is expected to last several months, but several interesting facts already have emerged regarding the plot and the people accused of participating in it. Although a considerable amount of media attention has been focused on the revelation that two Air Canada flights (one to Montreal and one to Toronto) were among the first seven flights targeted — the others were United Airlines flights to Washington, Chicago and San Francisco, and American Airlines flights to Chicago and New York — perhaps the most interesting revelation has been the alleged role of Mohammed Gulzar.
Gulzar reportedly flew into the United Kingdom in July 2006 using a fraudulent identity. His means of travel and his role in the conspiracy suggest he was an operational commander who had been sent from abroad to assist the grassroots plotters with their attack plans. The involvement of an operational commander sent by the al Qaeda core leadership and charged with working with grassroots operatives to orchestrate an attack is what we consider the al Qaeda 1.0 operational model.
When combined with other indicators, Gulzar’s role and travel pattern seem to confirm the involvement of the al Qaeda core leadership in the plot. The participation of the core organization sheds new light on the behavior of the core al Qaeda leaders in 2006, and gives us some insight into plots they might still be planning.
Recurrent Themes
As we noted after the Heathrow plot came to light, the scheme shared several themes with other thwarted or successful al Qaeda plots, including the choice of aircraft as targets, the notion of multiple, simultaneous strikes and the use of modular improvised explosive devices, which would have been smuggled aboard the aircraft in carry-on luggage. Moreover, whoever was involved in planning the operation shared al Qaeda’s penchant for “thinking big.”
As originally conceived, al Qaeda’s 2001 “planes operation” was to involve the simultaneous hijackings of 10 aircraft departing from both the East and West Coasts of the United States. Nine of the aircraft were to be either blown up in-flight or slammed into targeted buildings. The 10th plane was to be landed at a U.S. airport and, after all the adult male passengers were killed, a speech was to be delivered outlining al Qaeda’s grievances with the United States. Al Qaeda’s apex leaders — Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Mohammed Atef — eventually agreed to a scaled-down version of the planes operation involving four aircraft, which was carried out Sept. 11, 2001.
The West Coast portion of the plan was spun off as a separate operation that was to have occurred in October 2001, but which reportedly was postponed several times for various reasons. This operation, also known as the Library Tower Plot, was compromised and disrupted in 2002.
These themes also were evidenced in the plot to bomb American Airlines Flight 63 in December 2001. In that plan, Richard Reid successfully smuggled his “shoe bomb” aboard the aircraft. The attempt failed only because Reid tried to light the bomb’s fuse in the passenger cabin (rather than a more secluded area, such as a restroom) and was stopped by a flight attendant and passengers.
The 2006 Heathrow plot, however, bears the strongest resemblance to Operation Bojinka, which Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, along with his nephew Abdel Basit, helped to plan and finance while living in Manila, the Philippines, in the mid-1990s. The tactical similarities include the targeting of multiple U.S.-flagged aircraft traveling to the United States, the use of modular explosive devices — which were to be assembled in-flight after operatives accessed their carry-on baggage — and the use of liquid explosives.
The scope of the Heathrow plot also highlights another theme common in al Qaeda plots: a tendency to think big. This theme, which was reflected in the original planes operation and in Bojinka, was also the undoing of al Qaeda attacks such as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the Millennium Bomb Plot and an attempted strike against the USS The Sullivans off the coast of Yemen in January 2000. Indeed, the scope of the Heathrow plot and the need to include many people in its execution is likely what opened the door for a British government informant to penetrate the group and learn of the plans.
Mohammed Gulzar
A close look at the details emerging from the trial of Gulzar and the seven other suspects also reveals other recurring themes, including the use of document fraud. Gulzar entered the United Kingdom on July 18, 2006, using a fraudulent South African passport in the name of Altaf Ravat. He reportedly was traveling with his new wife and, in order to secure a visa, alleged that he was on his honeymoon. The pair even spent a couple of days in Mauritius after leaving South Africa in order to make the honeymoon cover appear more convincing. As a British citizen, Gulzar had the right to a British passport and thus could have traveled to the United Kingdom using his own identity. The only reason to commit document fraud was to conceal his identity.
As seen in past cases involving operational commanders such as Basit and Ahmed Ressam, it is fairly common for operational commanders to commit passport fraud. In fact, recovered al Qaeda operation manuals encourage using fraudulent documents to hide one’s identity, enter a country illegally or continue to stay in a country after a legitimate visa has expired. Basit had more than a dozen aliases that we know of, including the well-known fraudulent Iraqi passport in the name of Ramzi Yousef — the name by which many people still mistakenly refer to him. Gulzar’s use of South Africa as a source of fraudulent documents and a transit point to Europe also exemplifies a trend we have been watching for some time now.
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When British police arrested Gulzar on Aug. 9, 2006, he told them his name was Altaf Ravat and produced his South African documents. It was only after running fingerprint checks that they determined — two days after his arrest — that he really was a British citizen named Mohammed Gulzar. When questioned by police, Gulzar admitted he was not on his honeymoon, though he then said he was a missionary with the Tablighi Jamaat and was in the United Kingdom on a proselytizing mission.
As seen in past attacks — the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the attack on the USS Cole, the East Africa embassy bombings and others that followed the al Qaeda 1.0 operational model — the operational planner does not intend to be killed or captured. He flees and lives to fight another day. In operations in which an operative plans to be killed, such as 9/11 and the July 7, 2005 London attacks, there is no need for him to hide his true identity. Gulzar’s use of a fraudulent identity suggests he intended to flee after the attack. This theory is supported by the fact that British authorities recovered a number of videotapes containing the wills and suicide declarations of various members of the alleged cell, but they did not recover such a video featuring Gulzar.
Fitting the Pieces Together
Hindsight is a wonderful thing and when we use it to plug the 2006 Heathrow plot into the big picture of al Qaeda behavior during that time, we can begin to make some assumptions as to the extent of the core leadership’s involvement.
According to court testimony, the British government began to monitor many of the men allegedly involved in the plot shortly after the July 7, 2005 London attacks. It also has been reported that, like Mohammed Siddique Khan, several of the men involved in the 2006 plot had traveled to Pakistan and received training at jihadist camps. It also appears that Gulzar was sent by the core al Qaeda leadership to London in July 2006 to supervise the execution of this plot. Judging from past cases, Gulzar’s preparation for the travel to London likely began several months prior to his actual arrival in the United Kingdom. Also judging from past cases, a plan of this magnitude, involving so many aircraft, almost certainly would have to have been approved by the al Qaeda apex leadership. The leadership probably also provided the funding for the operation, including the more than $271,000 in cash the group reportedly paid for the flat they purchased in London, where the improvised explosive mixtures were to be manufactured.
If those assumptions are indeed true, then this plot may very well be one of the operations Osama bin Laden was referencing in his Jan. 19, 2006, message when he said, “The delay in similar operations happening in America has not been because of failure to break through your security measures. The operations are under preparation and you will see them in your homes the minute they are through (with preparations), with God’s permission.”
The preparations for this attack also had picked up momentum by mid-2006 when the al Qaeda core leadership was undertaking what we referred to at the time as a media blitz. Indeed, just as the traffic from this blitz was beginning to slow down, As-Sahab released a video titled, “Will of the Knights of the London Raid (Part 2),” which contained the last will of London bomber Shehzad Tanweer. This video was released one day before the anniversary of the July 7 attacks and 12 days before Gulzar arrived in the United Kingdom.
Nine days after Gulzar’s arrival, and two weeks before the arrests were made, As-Sahab released a video featuring al-Zawahiri. The backdrop featured three large photographs: one of Mohammed Atef (al Qaeda’s senior military chief who was killed in Afghanistan in late 2001), one of 9/11 operational commander Mohammed Atta and one of the burning World Trade Center towers.
In the video, al-Zawahiri discussed a lecture Atef gave in 2000 to al Qaeda trainees about Palestine. According to his recounting, Atta — who was among the trainees — asked, “What is the way to defeat the attack on Palestine?” Al-Zawahiri supplied his own answer in the video, saying the nation that produced the 19 “who shook America” is “capable of producing double that number.”
It could be a coincidence that a large plot involving aircraft — nearly twice as many as were hijacked on 9/11 — was thwarted only two weeks after this video surfaced. But we are not big believers in coincidence — nor do we believe there are obvious (or even hidden) messages in every al Qaeda message. However, to our minds the July 27 tape was a clear message meant to be viewed in retrospect — that al Qaeda was behind the Heathrow airline plot.
The Continuing Fixation
More than anything, the current trial is a reminder of three things. First, had the first wave of attacks successfully taken down the planes, it would have been very difficult to determine how the explosive devices had been smuggled aboard the aircraft. This means it is entirely possible the same tactic would have been used in subsequent waves of attacks.
Second, for some reason in 2006 the al Qaeda leadership’s eagerness for a spectacular attack appears to have trumped their perceived need for moderation. It was the moderation of people like Mohammed Atef that reined in the enthusiasm of the group’s idealists (men such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) and caused them to scale down the 2001 planes operation to less than half its original size — a measure that improved operational security and assisted in the 9/11 plot’s eventual success.
Finally, al Qaeda remains fixated on aircraft as targets and, in spite of changes in security procedures since 9/11, aircraft remain vulnerable to attack.
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Second post of the day:
Children Told they are Dogs during Mosque Visit
THE HAGUE, 09/04/08 - A primary school in Amsterdam wished to provide its pupils with an understanding for other cultures. But during a visit to a mosque, the children were told they were dogs.
With a view to developing understanding and respect for other cultures among children, primary school De Horizon regularly organises outings to various religious organisations. The chairman of the El Mouchidine mosque told the children from group 7 (aged 10) and their chaperones however that non-Muslims are dogs.
In a letter to the children's parents, the school expresses its regret at the incident: "We are shocked that during the guided tour, the mosque's chairman told the children and chaperoning parents that non believers were dogs. We consider this statement as unacceptable since we allow our children to partake in this project to develop respect for freedom of religious choice".
In the meantime, the school's management has addressed the mosque on the undesirable behaviour of the chairman. Both parties will say nothing further on the matter. "We will resolve the matter amongst ourselves and I have no inclination whatsoever to discuss the matter with the media", as newspaper De Telegraaf quoted the school's spokesperson Mariet ten Berge. "We have been to the mosque before and it always went well".
Angry parents had sent the letter on to De Telegraaf but were reportedly rapped on the knuckles by the school's management. "The school wishes to play this down. That is precisely the problem", as one mother commented.
http://www.nisnews.nl/public/090408_2.htm
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http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/20...de-out-of.html
Quote:
In 2006 Church of England officials contemplated giving Saint George the boot from his perch as Patron Saint of England because he was too offensive for modern day Muslims.
Now, British officials have cancelled an annual St. George's Day Parade in Bradford in fear that Muslims will riot. Many of the youngsters had already made flags of St George to carry in the parade on April 23, which was designed to boost community cohesion.
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German Court Rules Muslim Girl Can't Skip Swimming Lessons
Thursday , May 08, 2008
A German court on Wednesday ruled that a Muslim student cannot skip co-ed swimming lessons because her religion prohibits form-fitting clothes that do not cover her body, The Local reported.
The 12-year-old girl’s parents sued a school in the northern city of Remscheid after it refused to let the girl skip the lessons. The court sided with the school, saying that the state’s responsibility to educate the girl outweighed an infringement on her religious freedom.
Last year the girl’s parents rejected an offer from the school saying she could swim in leggings and a T-shirt. They argued that her body still would be visible through wet clothes, The Local reported.
The court concluded that because the swim lessons take place in water, there would be very little time that her body would be seen.
The parents’ attorney said the family will appeal the decision.
Click here to read more on this story from The Local.
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German Court Rules Christian Girl Can't Skip Sharia Law Thursdays
Thursday , May 08, 2012
A German court on Wednesday ruled that a Christian student cannot skip Sharia Law Thursdays where all of the female students must dress in Burkas and pray towards Mecco 5 times a day in an effort to teach all non-muslim children religious diversity and tolerance, despite the fact her religion prohitbs worshipping false gods, The Local reported.
The 12-year-old girl’s parents sued a school in the northern city of Remscheid after it refused to let the girl skip the lessons. The court sided with the school, saying that the state’s responsibility to educate the girl outweighed an infringement on her religious freedom.
Muslim students, of course, still do not have to learn about Christianity or Judaism, because those religions are offensive to muslims, and they could burn in Allah's Fires if they should emulate Infidels.
(Requesting URL on this one)
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/06/01/british-cop-warns-christians-leafletting-in-muslim-areas-is-a-hate-crime/
British cop warns Christians: Leafletting in Muslim areas is a “hate crime”
POSTED AT 9:16 PM ON JUNE 1, 2008 BY ALLAHPUNDIT
Well, no. Not yet, anyway.
The preachers, both ministers in Birmingham, were handing out leaflets on Alum Rock Road in February when they started talking to four Asian youths.
A police community support officer (PCSO) interrupted the conversation and began questioning the ministers about their beliefs.
They said when the officer realised they were American, although both have lived in Britain for many years, he launched a tirade against President Bush and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan…
“He said we were in a Muslim area and were not allowed to spread our Christian message. He said we were committing a hate crime by telling the youths to leave Islam and said that he was going to take us to the police station.”…
West Midlands Police, who refused to apologise, said the incident had been “fully investigated” and the officer would be given training in understanding hate crime and communication.
Funny how British cops keep “misunderstanding” hate crimes laws. I have some legal training myself and after reading this story from April, I’d say the cop here has a pretty firm handle on where the law is headed. Spend some time with that last link and see how far down the road they already are. In America, as far as I know, hate crimes constitutionally can only be charged in connection with another criminal offense. You can’t be charged with hate; you can be charged with assault and have your sentence enhanced if they prove the assault was motivated by hate. Thoughtcrime + actual crime = hate crime, in other words. In the U.K., it sounds like they’re flirting with knocking out that pesky “actual crime” element and just going the whole nine Orwellian yards.
Exit quotation, per the cop: “You have been warned. If you come back here and get beaten up, well you have been warned.” They’re being silenced for their own safety, you see, and if that “logic” sounds distressingly familiar, well, it should. (Bonus nuance: As longtime HA readers know, the cop’s worries about this sort of thing being especially unwelcome in Birmingham are not necessarily unfounded.)
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Islamic extremists to get therapy not jail in Government's new 'anti-radicalisation' plan
By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
Last updated at 3:53 PM on 03rd June 2008
Islamic extremists could receive counselling instead of criminal charges under new Government plans to 'deradicalise' religious fanatics issued today.
The move is part of a £12.5m Home Office plan which give councils guidance about how to prevent extremism spreading.
People who fall under the influence of violent organisations will not automatically face prosecution under the new plan.
Instead it will concentrate on a national 'deradicalisation' programme that will try to persuade extremists to change their views through therapy and counselling from community groups.
The scheme will seek to reverse the process of indoctrination carried out by al Qaida-related extremists, using unnamed 'specialised techniques'.
Community groups and councils in England and Wales will get cash from a £12.5m fund to implement the new measures.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said: 'The national security challenges we face demand fresh approaches.
'A key element of our strategy aims to stop people getting involved in extremist violence.
'We are investing at local level to build resilient communities, which are equipped to confront violent extremism and support the most vulnerable individuals.'
However the plan came in for criticism for being pointless.
Shadow home secretary David Davis said of today's publication: 'This is pointless when the Government is fuelling the problem it is seeking to solve with its draconian approach to 42 days.'
Ms Smith is facing a battle with MPs to extend the time police can hold terror suspects without charge from 28 days to 42 days.
The 72-page plan also said councils should make sure they have systems to remove funding or other support from inappropriate groups.
Councils should ask police to vet anyone involved in projects that receive government anti-radicalisation funding, it urged.
However local groups that challenge the messages of violent extremists should be supported, it went on.
If a group is found to be promoting violent extremism, local agencies and the police should consider disrupting or removing funding, and deny access to public facilities, the document added.
The measures on 'de-radicalisation' are based on examples overseas and on a scheme in Leicester which 'aims to encourage young people to feel more valued and to eradicate myths and assumptions which lead to young people becoming alienated and disempowered'.
Communities Secretary Hazel Blears said: 'Preventing violent extremism is about supporting local people to build resilient communities where extremists and their messages of hate cannot take root.
'Nationally and locally there is a growing alliance against violent extremism. A majority of individuals and organisations are working together to prevent radicalisation and extremism in a small minority of communities.
'We are putting funding where it is needed and today's new guidance sets out our clear expectations around what local authorities and their partners should achieve.
'Local leadership is vital and it is those people that know their communities best - community leaders, local authorities, police and schools - who, with support from government, provide the key to tackling this issue.
'Whilst no-one pretends it is easy we are already seeing some fantastic work including projects working with some of the most vulnerable young people, work to strengthen governance in mosques and the capacity of imams and Muslim women beginning to take a stronger role.'
A Home Office spokesman said the maps referred to in today's strategy document were already being drawn up.
They would not focus only on Muslim extremism but 'anywhere prone to extremist talk and violent behaviour,' he said.
'This is not an anti-Muslim document,' he said. 'It will cover denominations of all faiths.'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...tion-plan.html
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Brit Secretary, says sidelining of Christianity is 'common sense'
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Hazel Blears, Communities Secretary, says sidelining of Christianity is 'common sense'
By George Pitcher and Jonathan Wynne-Jones
Last updated: 1:17 PM BST 09/06/2008
It is "common sense" for Christianity to be sidelined at the expense of Islam, a Government minister claimed on Sunday.
Hazel Blears, the Communities Secretary, defended Labour’s policy on religion after a report backed by the Church of England claimed that Muslims receive a disproportionate amount of attention.
She said it was right that more money and effort was spent on Islam than Christianity because of the threat from extremism and home-grown terrorism.
Ms Blears told BBC Radio 4’s Sunday programme: “That’s just common sense. If we’ve got an issue where we have to build resilience of young Muslim men and women to withstand an extremist message.”
She added: “We live in a secular democracy. That’s a precious thing. We don’t live in a theocracy, but we’ve always accepted that hundreds of thousands of people are motivated by faith. We live in a secular democracy but we want to recognise the role of faith.”
The Church of England bishop responsible for the report, the Rt Rev Stephen Lowe, Bishop for Urban Life and Faith, said afterwards: “She said we live in a secular democracy. That comes as news to me – we have an established Church, but the Government can’t deal with Christianity.”
As The Daily Telegraph reported on Saturday, the landmark report commissioned by the Church and written by academics at the Von Hugel Institute accuses ministers of paying only “lip service” to Christianity and marginalising the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches, while focusing “intently” on Islam.
However Malaysia’s Prime Minister warned yesterday that Muslim extremism in Britain will grow unless the Government and society learn to understand Islam.
Abdullah Badawi claimed that the legacy of Britain’s imperial past has hampered its ability to appreciate its Islamic population.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, the prime minister urged Gordon Brown to allow the country’s Muslims to live under Islamic law, but also said that they must prove their worth to society.
Mr Abdullah argues that the Government must do more to ensure Muslims do not feel discriminated against if it is to tackle the rise of radicalism.
“The failure to understand Muslims is driving a divide between the communities,” he said.
“Gordon Brown must encourage a better understanding because Britain must appreciate its Muslims.”
Mr Abdullah argued that Britain needs to come to terms with being home to immigrants from countries that it used to rule over.
“The British Empire expanded in Asia, everywhere, throughout the Muslim land, through the land of Hindus and the land of Buddhists.
“When they were ruling it was different because they wanted it to be peaceful and to keep it peaceful they had to use diplomacy.”
He said that Muslims in Britain were more likely to be radicalised because they feel ignored rather than due to religious reasons.
“Is it because of poverty, social unrest, deprivation, feeling discriminated against, thinking people don’t care much because of the colour of their skin?”
Mr Abdullah, who was talking on the eve of a landmark summit of world leaders, echoed the calls of the Archbishop of Canterbury earlier this year for Muslims to be able to live under sharia.
The Malaysian Prime Minister also acknowledged that Muslims must also play their part in proving their value as immigrants.
“If they want to be respected then they must do something for the community,” he said.
“They must not be a liability. They have to be an asset.”
Story from Telegraph News:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/news...-sense%27.html
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For Muslim women in Europe, a medical road back to virginity
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For Muslim women in Europe, a medical road back to virginity
By Elaine Sciolino and Souad Mekhennet Published: June 10, 2008
PARIS: The surgery in the private clinic off the Champs-Élysées involved one semicircular cut, 10 self-dissolving stitches and a discounted fee of $2,900.
But for the patient, a 23-year-old French student of Moroccan descent from Montpellier, the 30-minute procedure represented the key to a new life: the illusion of virginity.
Like an increasing number of other Muslim women in Europe, she had a "hymenoplasty," a restoration of her hymen, the thin vaginal membrane that normally breaks during the first act of intercourse.
"In my culture, not to be a virgin is to be dirt," said the student, perched on a hospital bed as she awaited surgery Thursday. "Right now, virginity is more important to me than life."
As Europe's Muslim population grows, many young Muslim women find themselves caught between the freedoms that European society affords and the deep-rooted traditions of their parents' and grandparents' generations.
Gynecologists report that in the past few years, more Muslim women are asking for certificates of virginity before marriage.
That trend in turn has created a demand among cosmetic surgeons for hymen replacements, which, if done properly, they say, will not be detected and will produce tell-tale vaginal bleeding on the wedding night. The service is widely advertised on the Internet; there are medical tourism packages to countries like Tunisia where the procedure is less expensive.
"If you're a Muslim woman growing up in more open societies in Europe, you can easily end up having sex before marriage," said Hicham Mouallem, a doctor in London who performs the surgery. "So if you're looking to marry a Muslim and don't want to have problems, you'll try to recapture your virginity."
There are no reliable statistics on how many women undergo the procedure because it is mostly done in private clinics and in most cases is not covered by tax-financed insurance plans.
But the subject of hymen repair is becoming so talked about that it has become the subject of a film comedy that opens in Italy this week. "Women's Hearts," as its title is translated in English, tells the story of a Moroccan-born woman living in Italy who takes a road trip to Casablanca for the operation.
"We realized that what we thought was a sporadic practice was actually pretty common," said Davide Sordella, the director. "These women can live in Italy, adopt our mentality and wear jeans. But in the moments that matter, they don't always have the strength to go against their culture."
The issue has been particularly charged in France, where there has been a renewed and fierce debate about a prejudice that was supposed to have been buried with the country's sexual revolution 40 years ago: the importance of a woman's virginity.
The furor followed the revelation two weeks ago that a court in the northern city of Lille had annulled the 2006 marriage of two French Muslims after the groom discovered his bride was not the virgin she had claimed to be.
The domestic saga has gripped the nation. The bridegroom, an unidentified engineer in his 30s, left the nuptial bed and announced to the still-partying wedding guests that his bride had lied about her past. She was delivered that night to her parents' doorstep.
The next day, he asked a lawyer to annul the marriage. The bride, then a nursing student in her 20s, confessed the truth to the court and agreed to an annulment.
In its ruling, there was no mention of religion. Rather, it cited breach of contract, concluding that he had married her after "she was presented to him as single and chaste."
In secular, republican France, the case touches on several sensitive subjects: the intrusion of religion into daily life, the grounds for dissolution of a marriage and the equality of the sexes.
There were calls in Parliament this week for the resignation of Rachida Dati, the minister of justice, after she upheld the ruling. Dati, who is a Muslim, backed down and ordered an appeal.
Some feminists, lawyers and doctors warned that the court's acceptance of the centrality of virginity in marriage would encourage more French women from Arab and African Muslim backgrounds to have their hymens rebuilt. But there is much debate over whether the procedure is an act of liberation or repression.
"The judgment was a betrayal of France's Muslim women," said Elizabeth Badinter, a feminist writer. "It sends these women a message of despair by saying that virginity is important in the eyes of the law. More women are going to say to themselves: 'My God, I'm not going to take that risk. I'll recreate my virginity."'
The plight of the rejected bride persuaded the Montpellier student to go ahead with the surgery.
She insisted that she had never had intercourse and said that she had discovered her hymen was torn only when she tried to obtain a certificate of virginity to present to her boyfriend and his family.
She said she had bled after an accident on a horse when she was 10.
The trauma of realizing that she could not prove her virginity was so intense, she said, that she quietly took out a loan to pay for the procedure.
"All of a sudden, virginity is important in France," she said. "I realized that I could be seen like that woman everyone is talking about on television."
Surgeons who perform the procedure said they were empowering their patients by giving them a viable future and preventing them from being abused - or even killed - by their fathers or brothers.
"Who am I to judge?" asked Marc Abecassis, the plastic surgeon who restored the Montpellier student's hymen. "I have colleagues in the United States whose patients do this as a Valentine's present to their husbands. What I do is different. This is not for amusement. My patients don't have a choice if they want to find serenity - and husbands."
A specialist in what he calls "intimate" surgery, including penile enhancement, Abecassis says he performs two to four hymen restorations a week.
The French College of Gynecologists and Obstetricians opposes the hymen procedure on moral, cultural and health grounds.
"We had a revolution in France to win equality; we had a sexual revolution in 1968 when women fought for contraception and abortion," said Jacques Lansac, the association's president. "Attaching so much importance to the hymen is regression, submission to the intolerance of the past."
But the stories of the women who have had the surgery capture the complexity and raw emotion behind their decision.
One 32-year-old Macedonian-born Muslim said that she had chosen the surgery to avoid being punished by her father after her relationship with her boyfriend of eight years ended.
"I was afraid that my father would take me to a doctor and see whether I was still a virgin," said the woman, who owns a small business and lives on her own in Frankfurt. "He told me, 'I will forgive everything, but not if you have thrown dirt on my honor.' I wasn't afraid he would kill me, but I was sure he would have beaten me."
In other cases, the woman and her partner together decide on the surgery. A 26-year-old French woman of Moroccan descent said she lost her virginity four years ago when she fell in love with the man she was now planning to marry. She and her fiancé decided to share the cost of her $3,400 hymen replacement surgery in Paris.
His extended family in Morocco is very conservative, she said, and required that a gynecologist - and family friend - in Morocco examine her for proof of virginity before their wedding.
"It doesn't matter for my fiancé that I am not a virgin, but it would pose a huge problem for his family," she said. "They know that you can pour blood on the sheets on the wedding night, so I have to have better proof."
Meanwhile, the lives of the young French couple whose marriage was annulled are on hold. The Justice Ministry has asked the Lille prosecutor for an appeal, arguing that the court decision "provoked a heated social debate" that "touched all citizens of our country and especially women." At the Islamic Center of Roubaix, the suburb of Lille where the marriage took place, there is sympathy for the woman.
"The man is the biggest of all the donkeys," said Abdelkibir Errami, the center's vice president. "Even if the woman was no longer a virgin, he had no right to expose her honor. This is not what Islam teaches. It teaches forgiveness."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/...ope/virgin.php
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At the Islamic Center of Roubaix, the suburb of Lille where the marriage took place, there is sympathy for the woman.
"The man is the biggest of all the donkeys," said Abdelkibir Errami, the center's vice president. "Even if the woman was no longer a virgin, he had no right to expose her honor. This is not what Islam teaches. It teaches forgiveness."
**This is why you see muslims oppose honor killings with such fervor around the world, right?**
/a cricket chirps in the distance/
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**Two questions: How do you say "right of return" en espanol? When do we stop posting this in "Islam in europe" and post articles like this in "Islam in Islamic countries"?**
- Pajamas Media - http://pajamasmedia.com -
Spain, the Once and Future Muslim Province
June 9, 2008 - by Aaron Hanscom
It’s a miracle Matthew Yglesias made it out of Spain alive in 2006. The young blogger described the dangers he confronted on his Spanish vacation in a [1] piece he wrote for the American Prospect shortly after his return to America:
The modern city [of Toledo] features a large traffic circle just outside the medieval town walls known as the glorieta de la reconquista in honor of this distinction. But today in a new ironic twist, it is from that very plaza where the Mullahs issue their fatwas that the craven Spanish government, having chosen the path of appeasement, invariably follows. Toledo’s women, who only in the recent past enjoyed basic legal equality with men albeit in the context of a culture that was highly traditionalistic by American standards, now fear to walk the streets unveiled. Spain’s historic wine industry groans under the crushing yoke of the Islamists’ informal power, the riojas of the past but a fading memory.
Yglesias was obviously writing with tongue firmly planted in cheek. The joke, of course, was on conservative pundits in America, who had predicted devastating consequences in the wake of the March 11 Madrid bombings and the subsequent electoral victory of Socialist José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. “Appeasement,” it turned out, hadn’t enabled Muslims to reconquer Granada and avenge the Moors’ loss of Al-Andalus in 1492 following more than 700 years of Islamic rule. Spain, Yglesias argued, had instead become a paragon of liberalism, with positions on gay marriage and women’s rights that America “should be so lucky as to have.” Two years after Zapatero fulfilled a campaign promise and pulled Spanish troops from Iraq, Spaniards were living in a socialist utopia — not under sharia law.
Although Muslim extremists surely appreciate some of Zapatero’s policies — he granted the largest [2] blanket amnesty in Spanish history to nearly one million undocumented immigrants and thought it wise to [3] negotiate with the Basque terrorist group ETA — their idea of paradise is quite different from those of Spain’s “[4] accidental prime minister.” Critics such as Matthew Yglesias seem unaware that jihadists will not rest until the caliphate is reestablished on the Iberian Peninsula because they feel compelled to reconquer any country or territory that has at one time been under the domain of Islam. Spain is the most important of these lands because it was the largest Christian territory conquered in Europe and it represented the summit of Islamic civilization. The loss of Al-Andalus was therefore the most important loss ever suffered by the Ummah (the community of Muslims). Thus, freeing Spain from an illegal and illegitimate occupation by infidels would prove that all other Islamist goals can be achieved.
Nostalgia for an idealized Al-Andalus is being passed on to the next generation. Gustavo de Aristegui, the foreign affairs spokesman for the conservative Popular Party, explains in his book [5] The Jihad in Spain: The obsession to reconquer Al-Ándalus that, in schools throughout the Muslim world, maps are used with Spain and Portugal colored green because they are still considered part of dar al-Islam, or the House of Islam. The HAMAS children’s magazine Al-Fateh published a [6] piece in 2006 from the point of view of Asbilia or — as the infidels call it — Seville: “I yearn that you, my beloved, will call me to return, together with the rest of the lost cities of the lost orchard [Andalus] to the hands of the Muslims so that joy and happiness will fill my land, and you will visit me because I am the bride of the country of Andalus.”
Unfortunately, it’s not only terrorists in the making who are being told to reclaim Spain. Osama bin Laden has made many references to “the tragedy of Al-Andalus,” and Ayman Al Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda’s number two man, never misses an opportunity to mention the “lost paradise.” He’s not pining for a Mediterranean vacation and the sandy beaches of Marbella, though. Last year he [7] exhorted Islamists in North Africa “to once again feel the soil of Al Ándalus beneath your feet.” In case that wasn’t clear enough, he later released a videotape in which he says that “the reconquest of Al-Andalus is a responsibility” of all Muslims.
Many are doing their best to live up to that responsibility. More than 300 Islamist suspects have been arrested in counterterrorism operations in Spain since the Madrid bombings. Most recently, twelve Pakistanis were [8] arrested in January for allegedly planning suicide bombings in Barcelona’s subways. Meanwhile, rhetoric about the reconquest of Ceuta and Melilla (Spanish enclaves on the North African coast) is common among jihadists. For example, Zawahiri responded to the arrests of 11 individuals for planning to stage terrorist attacks in Ceuta by referring to Ceuta and Melilla as “occupied cities.” No wonder former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer once warned that if by any chance Israel were to fall and be defeated, the next in line would definitely be Spain.
Some Spanish politicians often seem eager to move Spain up to the front of that line. Zapatero, who has [9] said that “sexual equality is a lot more effective against terrorism than military strength,” appointed a pregnant woman as defense minister in April. According to PJM’s [10] Jose Guardia, this move was meant to symbolize Spain’s new role as a soft power. At least the primer minister isn’t prepared to start giving away land. Representatives of the Cordoba and Seville City Councils signed a document in 2004 that states that Ceuta and Melilla are occupied territories that need to be returned to their legitimate owners. In 2007 the small left-wing party, Izquierda Unida, backed a call for [11] preferential citizenship for descendants of Spanish Muslims expelled from Spain in the seventeenth century. Such a policy would be less disturbing if there wasn’t already an active “foot in the threshold” strategy being employed by irredentist Muslims. Aristegui explains that the “purchase of land, houses and commercial properties in some of the most emblematic cities of the former Al-Andalus…[is]the first step towards dominating the city, the region and eventually, all Al-Andalus.”
It’s worth remembering that the terrorist cell responsible for the Madrid bombings called itself “[12] the brigade situated in Al-Andalus.” Since March 11, 2004, Spanish security forces have successfully broken up plots to blow up such locations as Real Madrid’s soccer stadium and Madrid’s Audiencia Nacional — the highest criminal court where Islamic cases are investigated. But, as former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar has [13] noted: “Islamic terror is not just a criminal activity. It’s something more. To win over terror we will need much more than just intelligence or police actions. We will need more than defensive measures.” Of course, Spaniards made clear that they prefer appeasement to this uncomfortable truth when they voted Aznar’s party out of power in 2004.
So could Spain could once again fall under Islamic rule? I asked this question to Aristegui in a 2006 [14] interview. “I don’t think so, but the fight will become more difficult and extensive because Spanish society today is not willing or ready to accept the threat we face,” he told me. In other words, Spain might not always remain an ideal vacation destination — even for Matthew Yglesias.
Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com
URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/spain-the-once-and-future-muslim-province/
URLs in this post:
[1] piece: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?articleId=11371
[2] blanket amnesty: http://spainreview.org/?p=146
[3] negotiate: http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_2_basque_terrorists.html
[4] accidental prime minister: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article691019.ece
[5] The Jihad in Spain: The obsession to reconquer Al-Ándalus: http://www.casadellibro.com/fichas/fichabiblio/0,1094,2900001086733,00.html?codigo=2900001086733
[6] piece: http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=BA2D868F-BDCB-429A-8432-E83343375FF9
[7] exhorted: http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=031907C
[8] arrested: http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL19433678
[9] said: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,901040927-699350,00.html
[10] Jose Guardia: http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/20/europe/madrid.php
[11] preferential citizenship: http://africa.reuters.com/wire/news/usnL21935313.html
[12] the brigade situated in Al-Andalus.: http://www.lawrencewright.com/art-madrid.html
[13] noted: http://www.jcpa.org/brief/brief005-23.htm
[14] interview: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=715C1193-821F-47F0-8332-1FA10C86CEB6
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Muslims outraged at police advert featuring cute puppy sitting in policeman's hat
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 12:15 PM on 01st July 2008
A postcard featuring a cute puppy sitting in a policeman's hat advertising a Scottish police force's new telephone number has sparked outrage from Muslims.
Tayside Police's new non-emergency phone number has prompted complaints from members of the Islamic community.
The choice of image on the Tayside Police cards - a black dog sitting in a police officer's hat - has now been raised with Chief Constable John Vine.
The advert has upset Muslims because dogs are considered ritually unclean and has sparked such anger that some shopkeepers in Dundee have refused to display the advert.
Dundee councillor Mohammed Asif said: 'My concern was that it's not welcomed by all communities, with the dog on the cards.
'It was probably a waste of resources going to these communities.
'They (the police) should have understood. Since then, the police have explained that it was an oversight on their part, and that if they'd seen it was going to cause upset they wouldn't have done it.'
Councillor Asif, who is a member of the Tayside Joint Police Board, said that the force had a diversity adviser and was generally very aware of such issues.
He raised the matter with Mr Vine at a meeting of the board.
The chief constable said he was unaware of the concerns and that the force had not sought to cause any upset but added he would look into the matter.
Councillor Asif said: 'People who have shops just won't put up the postcard. But the police have said to me that it was simply an oversight and they did not seek to offend or upset.'
Cards featuring police dog-in-training Rebel have been distributed to communities throughout the area to advertise the single number point of contact for non-emergency calls to the police.
Rebel has proved a popular recruit for Tayside Police after coming through the very first Lothian and Borders Police dog-breeding programme in February.
One of seven German Shepherd pups born in early December, he has now completed his course of inoculations, and is free to venture out onto the streets of Tayside.
A spokesman for Tayside Police said: 'Trainee police dog Rebel has proved extremely popular with children and adults since being introduced to the public, aged six weeks old, as Tayside Police's newest canine recruit.
'His incredible world-wide popularity - he has attracted record visitor numbers to our website - led us to believe Rebel could play a starring role in the promotion of our non-emergency number.
'We did not seek advice from the force's diversity adviser prior to publishing and distributing the postcards. That was an oversight and we apologise for any offence caused.'
Find this story at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...emans-hat.html
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The correct response was "If ye dinna like tha wee doggie, gah fock yuirself".
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Sharia law SHOULD be used in Britain, says UK's top judge
By Steve Doughty
Last updated at 8:07 PM on 03rd July 2008
The most senior judge in England tonight gave his blessing to the use of sharia law to resolve disputes among Muslims.
Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips said that Islamic legal principles could be employed to deal with family and marital arguments and to regulate finance.
He declared: 'It is possible in this country for those who are entering into a contractual agreement to agree that the agreement shall be governed by a law other than English law.'
In his speech in an East London mosque Lord Phillips signalled approval of sharia principles as a means of settling disputes so long as no punishments that conflict with the established law are involved, and as long as divorces are made to comply with the civil law.
But his remarks - which give the green light from the highest judicial office to the informal sharia courts already operated by numerous mosques - provoked a storm of criticism.
Lawyers warned that family and marital disputes settled by sharia could leave women or vulnerable people at a serious disadvantage.
Tories said that equality under the law must be respected and warned that outcomes incompatible with English law should never be enforceable.
Lord Phillips spoke five months after Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams surrounded himself in controversy with a lecture in which he suggested Islamic law could have official status and that it could govern marital law, financial transactions and arbitration in disputes.
The Lord Chief Justice said today of the Archbishop's views: 'It was not very radical to advocate embracing sharia law in the context of family disputes.'
He added that there was 'widespread misunderstanding as to the nature of sharia law'.
Lord Phillips said: 'Those who in this country are in dispute as to their respective rights are free to subject that dispute to the mediation of a chosen person, or to agree that the dispute shall be resolved by a chosen arbitrator.
'There is no reason why principles of sharia law or any other religious code should not be the basis for mediation or other forms of alternative dispute resolution.'
Lord Phillips said that any sanctions must be 'drawn from the laws of England and Wales'. Severe physical punishment - he mentioned stoning, flogging or the cutting off of hands - was 'out of the question' in Britain, he said.
'So far as aspects of matrimonial law are concerned, there is a limited precedent for English law to recognise aspects of religious laws, although when it comes to divorce this can only be effected in accordance with the civil law of this country,' he said
The signal of approval for voluntary sharia tribunals brought protests from lawyers who fear that in some Islamic communities women do not have a full and equal say and that they could be disadvantaged in supposedly voluntary sharia arrangements.
Barrister and human rights specialist John Cooper said: 'There should be one law by which everyone is held to account.
'I have considerable concerns that well-crafted and carefully designed laws in this country, drawn up to protect both parties including the weak and vulnerable party in matrimonial break-ups could be compromised.
'I have concerns over a system of law that may cause one party to be disadvantaged.'
Resolution, the organisation of family law solicitors, said people should govern their lives in accordance with religious principles 'provided that those beliefs and traditions do not contradict the fundamental principle of equality on which this country’s laws are based.'
Spokesman Teresa Richardson said religious law 'must be used to find solutions which are consistent with the basic principles of family law in this country and people must always have redress to the civil courts where they so choose.'
Robert Whelan of the Civitas think tank said: 'Everybody is governed by English law and it is not possible to sign away your legal rights.
That is why guarantees on consumer products always have to tell customers their statutory rights are not affected.
'There is not much doubt that in traditional Islamic communities women do not enjoy the freedoms that women in this country have had for 100 years or more.
'It is very easy to put pressure on young women in a male-dominated household.
'The English law stands to protect people from intimidation in such circumstances.'
Tories warned that principles of equality under the law must be respected.
Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: 'The Lord Chief Justice correctly points out that there is a tradition in this country of allowing mediation to take place subject to other legal principles as long as it is voluntary and not subject to coercion, and with outcomes which are not fundamentally incompatible with our own legal principles.
'Any that are incompatible cannot and should never be enforceable.
'One of the key aspects of our free society in Britain is equality under our own laws. It is important that this should be understood and respected by all in our country.'
A spokesman for Jack Straw's Ministry of Justice said: 'English law, which is based on our shared values of equality and a respect for the rule of law, takes precedence over any other legal system.
'The Government has no intention of changing this position. Alongside this it is possible for other dispute resolution systems on matters of civil law to be accommodated, so long as they are not in conflict with the laws of England and Wales and are abided by on a voluntary basis.'
BRIEFING: SHARIA LAW
* Sharia law is based on the Koran, on associated teaching about the life of the Prophet Mohammed, and on the judgements of Islamic clerics and lawyers down the centuries.
* It is in essence a set of religious principles by which Muslims are required to live. Sharia is interpreted and enforced differently in different countries across the Islamic world.
* Islamic law is often regarded as having four parts: how Muslims should worship; commerce; crime and punishment; and marriage and divorce.
* Sharia says forbidden behaviour, like drinking alcohol and taking drugs, or adultery, should be punished. Islamic scholars say the Koran sets down punishments such as lashes or stoning for adultery.
* Sharia law also permits behaviour not allowed by English law, for examply polygamy, which in some jurisdictions says men may have up to four wives.
* In Britain, sharia courts are often operated by mosques. Muslim families come to sharia courts for justice and agree to be bound by their rulings.
* They have no formal legal status.
* There are around 1.6 million British Muslims, most of whom are of Pakistani origin. The strongest Muslim communities are in London, especially in the East London borough of Tower Hamlets where Lord Phillips spoke yesterday, Birmingham, Yorkshire and Lancashire.
* Orthodox Jews operate Beth Din courts which are subordinate to the civil law and which decide issues among 180,000 people according to ancient Jewish law. They are regulated by the Chief Rabbi. A divorcing Jewish couple first divorce in the civil courts, then come to the Beth Din tribunals for religious judgement.
* The only religious courts in England with full and official legal status are the consistory courts and tribunals which decide disputes and disciplinary matters in the Church of England.
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Anyone still want to argue this is "nothing to worry about"?
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2nd Terror Suspect Released in Britain
NY" Times
By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: July 4, 2008
LONDON — A 45-year-old Algerian described by American prosecutors as the mastermind of an abortive plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport during millennium celebrations in 1999 has been released on tight bail conditions after seven years in British jails, court officials said Thursday.
The release of the unnamed Algerian is the second time in a little more than two weeks that a suspect named by prosecutors as having close ties to Osama bin Laden, but not charged, has been let out on bail in Britain pending a final court ruling on government deportation proceedings.
In June, a 47-year-old Palestinian with Jordanian citizenship, described as having had a major ideological influence within Al Qaeda’s European ranks, was released after seven years in jail. That suspect, known by the alias Abu Qatada, was placed under house arrest for 22 hours a day.
British officials said the bail conditions for the Algerian would be similar. In addition to being allowed to leave his home for only two hours a day, mainly for mosque visits, Abu Qatada is required to wear electronic monitoring devices, and barred from having guests, access to the Internet or a mobile phone. He is also forbidden to receive guests or to meet with people outside his home.
In some instances, terrorist suspects held in Britain without being charged have the right not to be named publicly. In the Algerian’s case, this has meant that he has been identified by court officials only by a code name, “U.”
But American prosecutors previously identified him in court papers by an alias, Abu Doha. British newspapers have said he was born in Algeria in 1963 and captured in 2001 at Heathrow Airport in London while trying to board a flight to Saudi Arabia with a false passport.
The release of the two men has highlighted the problems the British authorities face as they try to curb what they have acknowledged as a large and growing Islamist terrorist underground in Britain. Despite volumes of intelligence information implicating the Algerian and Abu Qatada amassed by British and American investigators, and by the authorities in their own countries, British officials say that attempts to build indictments against them have been frustrated by a lack of detailed evidence that would stand up in court.
The other option, seeking to deport the two men to their homelands, has been blocked by British judges on the grounds that the men may be subjected to torture at home, or to prosecution based on evidence obtained by torture, in violation of Europe’s human rights charter.
In both cases, appeal court judges also ruled that their rights were being violated by indefinite detention, and ordered their release.
In a ruling last year, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission in Britain described the Algerian suspect as having had “direct links” with Mr. bin Laden and of having held a “senior position” at a Qaeda camp for Islamic extremists in Afghanistan in the late 1990s. In their bid to deport the Algerian, the British authorities described him as the leader of an abortive plot to attack a Christmas market in the French city of Strasbourg in 2000, in addition to the role he is alleged to have played in the planned Los Angeles attack.
The protections afforded the Algerian and Abu Qatada, including the decision to release them while lawyers battle the government over their deportation, have caused growing dismay on both sides of the Atlantic. Bush administration officials have pressed Britain to adopt tighter antiterrorism laws that reduce the courts’ discretion in terrorism cases, and opinion polls have shown increasing concern among British voters about the scope of the terrorism threat.
The frustration was mirrored in a commentary published after Abu Qatada’s release in The Sun, the hell-raising tabloid that is Britain’s most widely sold newspaper.
“Poor old Osama bin Laden, scuttling around the war-torn Afghan mountains to avoid death or capture,” the newspaper said. “But hope is on the horizon for the world’s most wanted terrorist. There’s one place on Earth where he would be perfectly safe. Britain. Here, we throw nobody out. Bin Laden has every chance of ending his days among peace and plenty.”
British newspapers have chronicled the steep costs of years of court proceedings against those suspected of being terrorist leaders, and what British commentators have described as overly generous welfare payments to them and their families. After Abu Qatada was released, the newspapers said, he was granted a $300-a-week disability payment because a bad back made it impossible for him to work, even though the release order prevented him from seeking employment.
Officials have estimated the cost of maintaining surveillance on Abu Qatada in the four-bedroom Edwardian house in west London where he is confined with his wife and five children at $2 million a year. Welfare payments to his family amount to an additional $90,000 a year, according to news accounts. Similar figures have been calculated for the family of a man with the alias of Abu Hamza al-Masri, a 51-year-old Egyptian-born cleric with steel prosthetics for hands who once ran the main Qaeda Web site in Britain, now serving a seven-year prison term for incitement to murder.
The Hamza case is cited by British officials as one in which the legal system here has effectively stifled an Islamic extremist leader. The British government has agreed to his extradition to the United States, where he faces a possible life sentence on charges that involve being part of a global conspiracy to wage holy war against the United States, and trying to set up a Qaeda training camp in Oregon.
Last month, the Court of Appeal in London upheld the extradition order, and officials have said he could be flown to the United States within a month unless the country’s highest court, the Law Lords, agrees to review the appeal court ruling.
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Second post of the day:
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Schoolboys punished with detention for refusing to kneel in class and pray to Allah
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 11:30 AM on 04th July 2008
Two schoolboys were given detention after refusing to kneel down and 'pray to Allah' during a religious education lesson.
Parents were outraged that the two boys from year seven (11 to 12-year-olds) were punished for not wanting to take part in the practical demonstration of how Allah is worshipped. They said forcing their children to take part in the exercise at Alsager High School, near Stoke-on-Trent - which included wearing Muslim headgear - was a breach of their human rights.
One parent, Sharon Luinen, said: "This isn't right, it's taking things too far. I understand that they have to learn about other religions. I can live with that but it is taking it a step too far to be punished because they wouldn't join in Muslim prayer. Making them pray to Allah, who isn't who they worship, is wrong and what got me is that they were told they were being disrespectful. I don't want this to look as if I have a problem with the school because I am generally very happy with it."
Another parent Karen Williams said: "I am absolutely furious my daughter was made to take part in it and I don't find it acceptable. I haven't got a problem with them teaching my child other religions and a small amount of information doesn't do any harm. But not only did they have to pray, the teacher had gone into the class and made them watch a short film and then said 'we are now going out to pray to Allah'.
"Then two boys got detention and all the other children missed their refreshment break because of the teacher. Not only was it forced upon them, my daughter was told off for not doing it right. They'd never done it before and they were supposed to do it in another language."
"My child has been forced to pray to Allah in a school lesson." The grandfather of one of the pupils in the class said: "It's absolutely disgusting, there's no other way of putting it. My daughter and a lot of other mothers are furious about their children being made to kneel on the floor and pray to Islam. If they didn't do it they were given detention. I am not racist, I've been friendly with an Indian for 30 years. I've also been to a Muslim wedding where it was explained to me that alcohol would not be served and I respected that. But if Muslims were asked to go to church on Sunday and take Holy Communion there would be war."
Parents said that their children were made to bend down on their knees on prayer mats which the RE teacher had got out of her cupboard and they were also told to wear Islamic headgear during the lesson on Tuesday afternoon.
Deputy headmaster Keith Plant said: "It's difficult to know at the moment whether this was part of the curriculum or not. I am not an RE teacher, I am an English teacher. At the moment it is our enterprise week and many of our members of staff are away. The particular member of staff you need to speak to isn't around. I think that it is a shame that so many parents have got in touch with the Press before coming to me. I have spoken to the teacher and she has articulately given me her version of events, but that is all I can give you at the moment."
A statement from Cheshire County Council on behalf of the school read: "The headteacher David Black contacted this authority immediately complaints were received. Enquiries are being made into the circumstances as a matter of urgency and all parents will be informed accordingly. Educating children in the beliefs of different faith is part of the diversity curriculum on the basis that knowledge is essential to understanding. We accept that such teaching is to be conducted with some sense of sensitivity."
Find this story at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ray-Allah.html
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Young Brit Muslims to get citizenship lessons in bid to combat extremism
Lee Glendinning
guardian.co.uk, Friday July 18, 2008
Young Muslims will be given British citizenship lessons when they attend mosque schools, as part of a range of new measures outlined by the government to combat extremism.
The plans, contained in a report published today, Preventing Violent Extremism: Next Steps for Communities, were put together after discussions with representatives of Muslim communities in an attempt to prevent the marginalisation of young people.
A central focus will be to show that adhering to the Islamic faith can co-exist with being British.
Trials of the new citizenship lessons will begin in several cities at the start of the new term in September, where they will be taught alongside traditional lessons about the Qu'ran.
Cambridge University has been commissioned to create an independent board of about 20 academic and theological experts to examine issues relating to Islam in a modern context.
They will be expected to compile a report on Islamic beliefs in relation to life in modern Britain over the coming academic year.
The communities secretary, Hazel Blears, announced the plans as part of a new package to prevent radicalisation which includes a renewed focus on community leadership.
"We have made significant progress working with communities to build an alliance against violent extremists,'' she said.
"We have a responsibility to ensure our young people are equipped with the skills they need to stand up to violent extremists and help them understand how their faith is compatible with wider shared values,'' she said.
Officials said mosque teachers in London, Leicester, Birmingham, Oldham, Rochdale, and Bradford would be trained in using the new materials over the summer.
The secretary of state for children, schools and families, Ed Balls said: "Extremists of every persuasion tend to paint the world as black and white, accentuating division and difference, and exploiting fears based on ignorance or prejudice.
"Education can be a powerful tool in tackling this. Giving young people the opportunity to learn about different cultures and faiths, and - crucially - to gain an understanding of the values we share, will also help to build mutual respect and tolerance from an early age and create an environment where extremism cannot flourish."
Sheikh Ibrahim Mogra, an imam who is a member of the Muslim Council of Britain, said the creation of the group had been driven by Muslims rather than the government.
"We felt we needed something of this nature to help create a better structured approach to how we are educating our children,'' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We feel our children need to be taught that they can be proud Muslims and proud young British people.
"Anything that helps to make our communities stronger should be welcomed - provided that it's not used to isolate, control or change what a community is."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2...tion.terrorism
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Some folks in Denmark are getting upset
http://siad.wordpress.com/
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/2461830/Killing-for-religion-is-justified,-say-third-of-Muslim-students.html
Killing for religion is justified, say third of Muslim students
A third of Muslim students in Britain believe killing someone in the name of religion is justified, a new poll claims.
By Patrick Sawer
Last Updated: 1:00AM BST 27 Jul 2008
The survey found that extreme Islamist ideology has a profound influence on a significant minority of Muslims on campuses across the country.
The findings will concern police chiefs, the security services and ministers, who are struggling with radicalisation among Muslim communities.
The YouGov poll was conducted for the Right-wing think tank, the Centre for Social Cohesion, at 12 universities, including Imperial College and Kings College London. It also found:
40 per cent support the introduction of sharia into British law for Muslims
a third back the notion of a worldwide Islamic caliphate (state) based on sharia law
40 per feel it is unacceptable for Muslim men and women to mix freely
24 per cent do not think men and women are equal in the eyes of Allah
a quarter have little or no respect for homosexuals.
Although 53 per cent said that killing in the name of religion was never justified, compared with 94 per cent of non-Muslims, 32 per cent said that it was. Of these, 4 per cent said killing could be justified to "promote or preserve" religion, while 28 per cent said it was acceptable if that religion were under attack.
There was also sympathy for the view that Muslim soldiers in the Armed Forces should be allowed to opt out of operations in Muslim countries, with 57 per cent agreeing.
The report's authors found that Islamic societies on campus, operating under the umbrella of the Federation of Student Islamic Societies, exert a strong influence on many of Britain's 90,000 Muslim students. A quarter of them belong to Islamic societies and their views are often more extreme.
While three-fifths of society members said that killing in the name of religion was acceptable, an equal number of non-member Muslims said it was never justified. The security services have identified Islamist activism at universities acts as a possible "gateway" to violent extremism. Several terrorists and sympathisers began their extremist careers on campuses.
The authors of the report, "Islam on Campus", lay much of the blame for extremism among Muslim students on the group Hizb ut-Tahrir, which seeks to build a worldwide Islamic state.
YouGov polled 600 Muslim students and 800 non-Muslim students at universities with a high number of Muslims.
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Italy Declares State of Emergency over Illegal Immigration Invasion
We can all see that the Western world is being overrun by illegals from the 3rd world. But most of our countries leaders just do not have the guts to do anything about it. Except for one, our friends in Italy. Our countries are being financially drained by illegals, entire neighbourhoods being taken over and many of them are trying to impose an ideology on us that is completely opposite from life as we know it. Now the government of Italy which has bulldozed a Mosque site, closed a major Mosque, and deported dozens of Egyptians, has declared a state of emergency because of illegal immigration. Our countries are like a life raft to some coming from the 3rd world, but even life rafts sink if overcrowded.
Italy Declares State of Emergency over Illegal Immigration Invasion ⋅ July 26, 2008
Britain is not the only country which is being subjected to a Third World immigration invasion - almost every other Western European country is struggling under the same burden. Italy is however, unusual in one respect - it now actually has a government with enough guts to tackle the issue head-on.
Yesterday, the Italian government declared a “national state of emergency” over illegal immigration. A Cabinet statement said that the Government had to confront a “persistent and exceptional influx” of non-EU citizens and it had approved a proposal from Roberto Maroni, the Interior Minister, to declare a state of emergency “throughout the national territory”.
The state of emergency was earlier in effect only for the southern provinces of Sicily, Puglia and Calabria. Italy’s long shoreline and proximity to Africa make it a popular entry point into Europe for thousands of Africans who make hazardous journeys in flimsy boats each year.
Mario Morcone, a senior official at the Interior Ministry, said that the decision had been prompted by the continuing arrival of illegal immigrants in ramshackle boats run by people-smugglers at the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa, just off the North African coast. Many such boats capsize and their passengers drown.
Mr Morcone said that 9,342 immigrants had arrived between the start of the year and the end of June - double the figure for the previous year - and there were at present more than 1,000 at the overcrowded refugee camp in Lampedusa. Some are repatriated but many are sent to immigrant camps on the Italian mainland.
Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister, won final parliamentary approval this week for a security package under which illegal immigrants convicted of crimes will face jail sentences a third longer than those for Italians.
Italy has also started a controversial census of Roma which involved the fingerprinting and photographing of all adults and children over 14 years old. Roma - sometimes referred to as gypsies - are often blamed in Italy for the rising crime rate across the country.
Minister Maroni said that fingerprinting Roma gypsy children would ensure that those parents who sent their children out to beg instead of school could be traced and punished.
http://islaminaction08.blogspot.com/2008/07/italy-declares-state-of-emergency-over.html
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July 26, 2008
NORWAY - UP IN FLAMES AND MUSLIMS FIGHTING MUSLIMS
Here are two posts that aptly describe the "enhancement" to Western European countries, in particular Norway, and their indigenous populations that the so called "diversity", multiculturalism and rampant immigration has brought. Aided and abeted by moronic politicians and law enforcement who fear political correctness over actual violence. One has to wonder if the backlash has begun -- but interesting enough - the fighting that appears to have started is between immigrant groups - particularly muslims.
23 PEOPLE INJURED IN NORWAY REFUGEE CENTER ATTACK:
OSLO, July 25 (Reuters) - Twenty-three people were wounded when a gang of 40-50 men armed with steel bars and machetes attacked residents at a refugee centre in Norway late on Thursday, officials said on Friday.
No one was seriously wounded, but 10 were sent to hospital and 13 treated at a local clinic, hospital officials said.
An official at the centre in Oestfold south of Oslo said the attackers were Chechens and the victims Kurds. Police declined to confirm or deny that and said they had made no arrests so far.
"There was an attack from outside the asylum centre by people who don't live here, Chechens, 40 to 50 men armed with steel bars and other weapons," Ole Morten Lyng, an official at the centre, told NRK public radio news.
"There also seem to have been knives involved," Lyng said. "They went into the rooms and pulled out Kurds and beat them up."
A police officer said some of the attackers had machetes.
Lyng told Norwegian news agency NTB that the conflict stemmed from a minor dispute between Kurds and Chechens at the centre that got blown out of proportion. (Reporting by John Acher; editing by Elizabeth Piper)
Meanwhile, Norway is Sinking into a Sea of Flames
by Dymphna
Fjordman sends along some of the dystopian stories emanating from Northern Europe...
First, a link to Bruce Bawer’s site. He’s talking about Dagbladet’s report on the alarming number of tourist buses being set afire in Oslo (from July 18):
Dagbladet reports that in the last two weeks, eighteen tourist buses in Oslo have been set upon by thieves and vandals.
[…]
Official reactions to this latest development only serve to underscore where the roots of the problem lie. You can almost see the spokesman for the Agency for Road and Transport shrugging and yawning as he tells Dagbladet that, well, this sort of this happens every summer, and hey, don’t worry, there’s more and more tourist buses coming to Norway. And the cops? They say that they “can’t see any connection among the events of recent weeks.” A police spokesman told Dagbladet that they hadn’t put the case materials together yet - they’ll get around to that on, oh, Monday.
No, Oslo isn’t Rome or Paris. But not long ago, it was at least a safe, clean city. It’s now rapidly declining into a maelstrom of chaos, crime, and filth under politicians who’ve essentially handed it over to armies of Nigerian prostitutes, gypsy beggars, and Muslim gangsters; who ordered street work that should have been wrapped up months ago but that continues to keep much of the downtown area looking like Berlin in 1946; and who blithely hike subsidies to groups like the Islamic Council while letting the police and military go chronically underfunded.
Well, of course. Who wants to pay a decent wage to those nasty men who protect others when the Islamic Council, peace be unto them, needs funding so desperately?
And the cops? They simply suffer from the same virulent indifference as their superiors. It’s a top-down disease.
Mr. Bawer suggests that tourists re-route to Copenhagen instead.
Aftenposten has more details (in English) on this pastime of tourist bus burning. Here’s one Spanish tour driver’s experience:
“My company sends buses all over Europe, but we’ve never experienced anything like this,” bus driver Jorge Muniz Paredes to newspaper Aften. “If I talked about this on Spanish television, people would think I was in Africa.”
Paredes recently found his bus burning near the new Opera House on Oslo’s waterfront. The bus, used to carry Spanish tourists on sightseeing trips in Oslo, was in top condition, he said.
He’s convinced vandals are behind the fire on his bus. Two days earlier, the bus’ windshield had been smashed.
[…]
Three Spanish tour bus companies have filed a complaint with Norwegian tourism promoters in Madrid, who in turn have contacted both the Norwegian embassy in Spain and the Spanish embassy in Norway.
Some tour operators are considering dropping Oslo from their tour itineraries. “Oslo’s not a particularly pretty city, like Rome or Paris,” said Paredes. “The only reason we come is because it’s the capital of Norway. The vandalism makes the destination insecure and if this continues, we’ll stop coming.”
Oh, well. Plenty more tourists to take their place, right?
But here is the most interesting story from Fjordman’s selection. It lays bare the core of the problem. Olso burns while government strangles its citizens on procedural policies. The pervasive cynicism is heart-breaking.
- - - - - - - - -
Read carefully with attention to what the authorities themselves consider important:
An awkward power struggle has broken out among foreign and local beggars in Oslo, ironically over their street sales of a magazine whose very title calls for more equality in the capital.
Norwegian beggars are getting competition from foreign beggars, and conflicts are breaking out.
The conflict is over who should be allowed to peddle the magazine, which sells for NOK 50. Its sellers can keep half of the proceeds.
The magazine, called “=Oslo” (equal Oslo), was started up to help provide an income source to those who otherwise would beg for spare change on the streets of the capital. Many of its original sellers were Norwegian drug addicts.
Now, however, new groups of foreign beggars want to sell the magazine as well, reported newspaper Dagsavisen earlier this week. The magazine won’t let them, saying the sellers should be Norwegian and must be able to speak Norwegian.
That’s led to protests, and state authorities are investigating whether “=Oslo” is violating anti-discrimination laws. “If we find that ‘=Oslo’ has broken the law, they’ll have to find a new solution for the foreigners,” said Ingeborg Grimsmo, Norway’s acting discrimination ombud.
Why would a magazine originate with the intention of having “beggars” sell their product? It’s insane. Remember when Rudy Giuliani began cleaning up New York City by removing the beggars who were washing car windshields in city traffic?
The problem with “beggars” is that keeping civic order is an on-going problem. Mayor Giuliani solved it in his time, but the squeegee men are making a comeback in The Big Apple and their appearance scares people because of what it represents - erosion of public space. These depredations don’t stay “cured”; they demand vigilance and creative thinking. Neither is in great supply in Norway.
Here’s another problem where the authorities cynically leave in a bind those who would help the hungry:
Thorny issues also have broken out within an Oslo organization that serves the poor and offers them free food (Fattighuset). It has refused to give food to the foreign beggars, claiming that the foreigners try to sell the food on the street.
“We can’t have that,” said Johanna Engen, a board member at Fattighuset, arguing that it defies the purpose of the aid and can threaten donations.
The anti-discrimination authority is investigating whether Fattighuset can legally only give food to poor Norwegians and not poor foreigners. “There are important principles at stake,” Grimsmo said, arguing that the foreigners are becoming “more and more” stigmatized in Norway.
People get “stigmatized” when they consistently operate outside the mores of local culture. Perhaps these “foreigners” of unnamed ethnicity come from a place where ripping off charitable organizations is all in a day’s work.
Fattighuset is absolutely right: letting this go on would threaten donations. But the “anti-discrimination authority” is not concerned with outcomes; it lives for procedures. And by its lights, procedures take precedence over virtue.
When a government - be it local, state, or federal - has that much power over charitable endeavors and it uses that dominance with Kafkaesque indifference, then the government is acting with evil. Indifferent evil, but evil nonetheless.
Fjordman called it a maelstrom of chaos. His powers of perception are acute.
http://theopinionator.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/07/men-with-bars-b.html
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/2485750/British-Muslims-fighting-with-Taliban-in-Afghanistan.html
British Muslims 'fighting with Taliban in Afghanistan'
British Muslims are helping the Taliban in their war against UK soldiers in southern Afghanistan, according to the former commander of Britain's forces in Afghanistan.
By Con Coughlin, Duncan Gardham and Thomas Harding
Last Updated: 12:25PM BST 02 Aug 2008
Brig. Ed Butler: 'There are British passport holders who live in the U.K. who are being found in places like Kandahar' Photo: HEATHCLIFF O'MALLEY
Brig. Ed Butler, who spent six months commanding British forces in Afghanistan, also revealed fears that militant Islamic groups in south-east Asia are supporting terrorist plots in the UK.
The brigadier, a former head of the SAS, spoke exclusively to the Daily Telegraph in the week when the British death toll in Afghanistan reached 114, with 17 fatalities in the last two months.
UK forces have uncovered evidence that British Muslims are actively supporting the Taliban and al-Qa'eda in attacks on coalition forces in southern Afghanistan, Brig Butler said.
He said: "There are British passport holders who live in the U.K. who are being found in places like Kandahar."
Earlier this year, it was revealed that RAF Nimrod spyplanes monitoring Taliban radio signals in Afghanistan had heard militants speaking with Yorkshire and Midlands accents.
Privately, British officers in Afghanistan estimate that several thousand Taliban fighters have been killed since 2006, among them people from outside the country.
One officer said: "While my troops have not actually found British passports on enemy dead there has been a suspicion that with the high number of Taliban casualties they have needed to recruit a lot of foreign fighters and some of these are likely to be of British-Muslim descent."
Disturbingly, Brig Butler suggested the traffic between Britain and Afghanistan may flow in both directions, with some British Muslims returning from the region and posing a domestic security threat.
Brig Butler, 46, said he had seen evidence that terror groups based in southern Afghanistan were plotting with Muslim extremists in Britain to carry out terror attacks in the UK.
"There is a link between Kandahar and urban conurbations in the UK," said Brig. Butler. "This is something the military understands but the British public does not."
Western intelligence agencies are increasingly concerned that Afghanistan and its lawless border with Pakistan are now home to many training camps used by Jihadi groups to prepare radicals for attacks in the West.
A Whitehall source confirmed that the security services are aware of some radicalized British Muslims returning to the UK from Afghanstan.
The source said: "There are very small numbers of British citizens traveling out there, being trained up and then returning to the UK."
With al-Qaeda widely seen to be losing ground in Iraq, counter-terrorism officials say that Afghanistan is emerging as the focus for radicalised Western Muslims wanting to fight Western forces.
Earlier this year, Nigel Inkster, a former deputy head of MI6, warned that Taliban groups over the border in Pakistan have "dispatched terrorists to a number of locations including Spain and the United Kingdom."
Brig Butler, widely regarded as one of the best British officers of his generation, announced his decision to retire from the Army earlier this year.
He had been a candidate for the job of Director, Special Forces, overseeing the SAS, the SBS and the Special Reconnaissance Regiment.
Despite claims that his premature retirement was in protest at the government's underfunding of the Armed Forces, Brig Butler insisted his decision to step down had been prompted by the desire to spend more time with his family.
"I reached the conclusion that I did not want to leave my family any more for an extended period. Life is too short. There is no point having a family if you are not going to see them," he said.
Brig Butler commanded British forces when they began their current mission in southern Afghanistan two years ago and is credited with being the architect of the British Army's strategy for defeating the Taliban.
But he said that from the outset British commanders knew the Taliban "would be up for a fight, but we were surprised at how ferocious that fight turned out to be."
When British forces deployed to Helmand province in 2006, Brig Butler warned the government that there was a strong possibility that British soldiers would end up killing Muslims who held British passports and were fighting with the Taliban and al-Qa'eda.
He is currently Commander of Joint Force Operations based at Northwood, near London, and will formally leave the Army next year.
British commanders and diplomats have warned that the West faces a "long haul" in Afghanistan and may have to retain a military presence there for decades to come.
Brig Butler believes the continued presence of radical British Muslims in southern Afghanistan is one of the reasons British forces must remain in the region, despite the heavy number of battlefield fatalities.
"This is a highly significant mission," he said. "If we do not win against the protagonists of the September 11 attacks then those who are against us will take great succour from it."
It is vital for British forces to remain in Afghanistan "for as long as it takes" to prevent a repeat of the July 7 bombings in London in 2005, which killed 52 people, he said.
Several British Muslims were detained in Afghanistan during the 2001 U.S.-led military operation to overthrow the Taliban, and were held at Guantanamo Bay as enemy combatants.
All were later released and say they had no involvement in anti-coalition activity.
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Germany’s Intifada
By Stephen Brown
FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, August 01, 2008
First it was France, and now Germany.
German authorities are reporting that, within their cities, areas now exist where police fear to tread. In many German urban areas drug dealing, theft, brawls, and assaults on police officers are the order of the day. The problem is becoming so severe police scarcely dare enter some quarters except in strength, while in others they concentrate on their own safety first.
But this is old news to French law enforcement officials. The 2005 riots woke France up to the fact that an anti-civilization had arisen in the “banlieues” (housing projects), which surround major French cities. Populated mainly by immigrants from North and West Africa, many with a Muslim background, they are known as places of anger and aggression towards anyone who represents “official” France.
French police are sometimes attacked with Molotov cocktails when they enter such areas. Firemen and ambulance attendants are not treated much better. Police even had difficulty protecting a French president, Jacques Chirac, and his interior minister when they went campaigning in a banlieue. The two high-ranking politicians were also met with Molotovs and had to retreat.
In all, the French housing projects have the look of scarred battlefields with burnt out cars littering the landscape. The extent of France’s lawlessness problem manifested itself last month when 592 cars were torched in France in the two nights surrounding Bastille Day, July 14 and 15, 150 in the Paris region alone. To make matters worse, Islamic fundamentalists have attracted many of the banlieus’ unemployed, uneducated and frustrated young men to their cause. These fundamentalists, it is suspected, were the ones directing the 2005 disturbances and their recurrence in 2007.
In Germany, the problem neighbourhoods are often located within the city and not on the outskirts. Like in France, though, urban anti-societies have arisen, but in Germany they consist mainly of Turkish and Arab immigrants, many from Lebanon. In their districts, German laws and values now have little, if any, validity, while their culture of lawlessness does.
Police complain that when they conduct routine checks in these neighbourhoods, they are met with angry crowds and often risk assault. Even when a policeman is carrying out a simple duty, like inspecting someone’s identification, out of nowhere suddenly appear 20 to 30 men, yelling wildly, who push and shove him. They assemble quickly after having been contacted by cell phone.
While confrontations occur over nothing, violence can occur when the stakes are higher. When Berlin police arrested three drug-dealing Arabs in Kreuzberg, for example, a district where Turks and Arabs form the majority, they were immediately swarmed by two dozen men who tried to free the suspected criminals by force. Only the quick arrival of reinforcements saved the day. It is also in Kreuzberg that the first car burnings in Germany took place.
For the last ten years Berlin has been the leading German city for such “resistance-to-police” incidents. Overall, Germany’s police union records an average of 26,000 such occurrences a year, an increase of 60 per cent from the 1980s. Berlin accounts for about 3,000 of this total. In Germany’s capital, a union official said, there exists “an alarm level red” concerning violence against police.
“We have been registering for years a loss of police authority and a rapid sinking of a lack of restraint,” said Eberhard Schonberg, the police union’s head.
But what is even more disturbing to law enforcement officials is the increase in violent crime among minors, especially those with a foreign background. Germany was shocked this year when two youths, one Turkish and the other Greek, nearly beat a 76-year-old retired school principal to death in Munich last December. The pensioner had admonished them for smoking on a commuter train. The two criminals kicked and yelled “s**t German” at the man’s prostrate form after having knocked him down.
There is also an overrepresentation of immigrant youth in crime statistics. A survey of schools in western German cities showed that ten per cent of the Turkish students were repeat offenders, who had committed more than five violent offences. The same survey showed 8.3 per cent of students from the former Yugoslavia were in the same category along with 5.9 per cent from the former Soviet Union. Native-born Germans, who also included those from migrant backgrounds with German citizenship, made up only 2.9 per cent of such delinquents.
And while German teenagers are more often the victims of youth crime, immigrant youth brutality very often occurs between different ethnic groups. Violence between Turks and Arabs at one high school in Berlin, for example, became so bad the principal asked the city to close her school. This incident then led other principals across Germany to request the same for their schools.
But even immigrant children as young as eight are committing illegal acts. Police report of an Arab neighborhood in Duisburg, a city in the Rhineland, where such youthful miscreants “kick old ladies, demand sexual intercourse from women, throw water-filled balloons against business windows and deliberately cross streets at red lights to create traffic jams.” Their aim, police say, is to generate fear among outsiders.
The overall purpose of such disturbing behavior and anti-police incidents is to turn these immigrant neighbourhoods into lawless mini-states, where their tribal and religious customs and rules predominate, and criminals can act freely. In scuffles and confrontations German police are often told, in threat and obscenity-filled language, to go away and that these streets belong to the ethnic group that lives there.
As everyone knows, a competent and effective police force is necessary to protect the law-abiding citizen, guarantee his rights and carry out one of the main functions of the state: law and order. But increasingly in some European urban areas, a police uniform has come to mean nothing. And countries like Germany do not act now to reverse this, their cities will become as burnt out and eviscerated as the carcasses of cars France knows only too well.
Stephen Brown is a contributing editor at Frontpagemag.com. He has a graduate degree in Russian and Eastern European history. Email him at alsolzh@hotmail.com.
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Moved here from a post elsewhere by GM:
http://www.amazon.com/While-Europe-Slept-Radical-Destroying/dp/0767920058/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1217916421&sr=8-1
A must read! I'm sorry I put off reading it for so long.
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his religion prohibited him from rising for other people
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Amsterdam - All Dutch attorneys, including Muslims, should rise when a judge enters a court room, Dutch Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin told Dutch parliament on Tuesday. Hirsch Ballin said the Dutch Council for Jurisprudence felt that rising for a judge is "the common way to show respect for the court and legal authority."
The minister was responding to a question posed by legislator Henk Kamp (Liberals), who inquired about a news report which said a Rotterdam court had made an agreement with a Muslim attorney that he could remain seated when a judge enters the courtroom.
Mohammed Enait, who was sworn in as an attorney last month, said his religion prohibited him from rising for other people. Enait has remained seated as the judge entered.
Last week the Rotterdam court decided that although the : behavioral code requires attorneys to rise when a judge enters the court, exceptions could be made "in extraordinary situations" such as that of Enait.
Hirsch Ballin told parliament that the Dutch Council for Jurisprudence would inform all involved parties of its position that no exceptions could be made.
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/s...-minister.html
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle4749183.ece
ISLAMIC law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.
The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.
Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court.
Previously, the rulings of sharia courts in Britain could not be enforced, and depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims.
It has now emerged that sharia courts with these powers have been set up in London, Birmingham, Bradford and Manchester with the network’s headquarters in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. Two more courts are being planned for Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Sheikh Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siddiqi, whose Muslim Arbitration Tribunal runs the courts, said he had taken advantage of a clause in the Arbitration Act 1996.
Under the act, the sharia courts are classified as arbitration tribunals. The rulings of arbitration tribunals are binding in law, provided that both parties in the dispute agree to give it the power to rule on their case.
Siddiqi said: “We realised that under the Arbitration Act we can make rulings which can be enforced by county and high courts. The act allows disputes to be resolved using alternatives like tribunals. This method is called alternative dispute resolution, which for Muslims is what the sharia courts are.”
The disclosure that Muslim courts have legal powers in Britain comes seven months after Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was pilloried for suggesting that the establishment of sharia in the future “seems unavoidable” in Britain.
In July, the head of the judiciary, the lord chief justice, Lord Phillips, further stoked controversy when he said that sharia could be used to settle marital and financial disputes.
In fact, Muslim tribunal courts started passing sharia judgments in August 2007. They have dealt with more than 100 cases that range from Muslim divorce and inheritance to nuisance neighbours.
It has also emerged that tribunal courts have settled six cases of domestic violence between married couples, working in tandem with the police investigations.
Siddiqi said he expected the courts to handle a greater number of “smaller” criminal cases in coming years as more Muslim clients approach them. “All we are doing is regulating community affairs in these cases,” said Siddiqi, chairman of the governing council of the tribunal.
Jewish Beth Din courts operate under the same provision in the Arbitration Act and resolve civil cases, ranging from divorce to business disputes. They have existed in Britain for more than 100 years, and previously operated under a precursor to the act.
Politicians and church leaders expressed concerns that this could mark the beginnings of a “parallel legal system” based on sharia for some British Muslims.
Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, said: “If it is true that these tribunals are passing binding decisions in the areas of family and criminal law, I would like to know which courts are enforcing them because I would consider such action unlawful. British law is absolute and must remain so.”
Douglas Murray, the director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, said: “I think it’s appalling. I don’t think arbitration that is done by sharia should ever be endorsed or enforced by the British state.”
There are concerns that women who agree to go to tribunal courts are getting worse deals because Islamic law favours men.
Siddiqi said that in a recent inheritance dispute handled by the court in Nuneaton, the estate of a Midlands man was divided between three daughters and two sons.
The judges on the panel gave the sons twice as much as the daughters, in accordance with sharia. Had the family gone to a normal British court, the daughters would have got equal amounts.
In the six cases of domestic violence, Siddiqi said the judges ordered the husbands to take anger management classes and mentoring from community elders. There was no further punishment.
In each case, the women subsequently withdrew the complaints they had lodged with the police and the police stopped their investigations.
Siddiqi said that in the domestic violence cases, the advantage was that marriages were saved and couples given a second chance.
Inayat Bunglawala, assistant secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: “The MCB supports these tribunals. If the Jewish courts are allowed to flourish, so must the sharia ones.”
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What's all the fuss about?
I don't know about criminal matters, but what's wrong with divorce, inheritance and other civil matters being decided by binding arbitration if BOTH parties agree to arbitration? We have a similar system here in America; frankly the Courts here encourage binding arbitration.
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JDN,
It's just another step towards the death of europe.
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GM, I don't understand. As I mentioned, here in the U.S. many divorces, inheritances, and other civil matters are often resolved through binding arbitration. The parties are free to chose any particular arbitrator and there are benefits to both parties. And of course, BOTH parties must waive their right to trial and submit to to binding arbitration; it's actually very fair; faster and more efficient than going to court. The system overall works quite well and is supported and encouraged by the Court System here in America. It is my understanding that the same is being offered in England; why is this same and successful alternative to litigation "just another step towards the death of europe."?
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JDN,
It's another step closer to sharia law becoming the law in europe. That is the demand and the ultimate goal of the "stealth jihad" from so-called "moderates".
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Your conclusion seems rather pessimistic and baseless; going from alternative voluntary arbitration (one including myself would argue that voluntary alternative arbitration is a superb and efficient alternative accommodation beneficial to all parties) system to "becoming the law in Europe." Arbitration has existed for may years. And Arbitrators (here in the US as well) may be chosen for any reason, including on a religious basis as long as BOTH parties agree. It's a fair system for everyone and frees up the court.
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news
'Have more babies and Muslims can take over the UK' hate fanatic says, as warning comes that 'next 9/11 will be in UK'
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 6:55 PM on 13th September 2008
Muslim hate fanatics plan to take over Britain by having more babies and forcing a population explosion, it has been revealed.
The swollen Muslim population would be enough to conquer Britain from inside, they claim.
Fanatics told a meeting of young Muslims on the anniversary of the 9/11 atrocity, that it would then be easy to impose Sharia law on the population, the Sun newspaper reported.
Speaking at a meeting in London, Anjem Choudary, right-hand man of exiled preacher Omar Bakri Mohammed, said: "It may be by pure conversion that Britain will become an Islamic state. We may never need to conquer it from the outside."
Preachers: Ajum Choudhary (left) chairs the meeting with banned Muslim cleric Omar Backri's webcast on the wall behind
He added: "We do not integrate into Christianity. We will ensure that one day you will integrate into the Sharia Islamic law."
His comments were made as voice of hate Bakri warned that the next 9/11 would take place in the UK.
Speaking via video link the exiled cleric said Osama bin Laden had taught the Americans a ‘lesson’ seven years ago, but the ‘crusaders’ had not learned.
Anjem Choudary: Have more babies and conquer from the inside
Muslim cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed: The next 9/11 will be in the UK
He said the next ‘9/11 will take place in Britain, the next 7/7 [London bombings] could take place locally’.
Bakri told a 100-strong audience of supporters in Walthamstow, east London this week that he believed the British government was trying to assassinate him and claimed to have foiled a bomb plot.
Technical difficulties meant much of his speech was inaudible, but his appearance was greeted by cheers of ‘faith’ and ‘god is great’ at the community centre.
Bakri’s right-hand man, Anjem Choudary, led the proceedings in person, under the auspices of a group called Association for Islamic Research.
The most incendiary speech was delivered by Saiful Islam, who lauded Bin Laden and al Qaeda for their ‘courage’ in retaliating against the ‘dictatorship and oppression’ of the West.
Horror: Al Muhajiroun warned the UK would be next for a 9/11-magnitude attack
He said: ‘The blame of 9/11 belongs to no one but the American government. They are the terrorists.
'Sheikh Osama warned America numerous times, it was because of their own arrogance, because they thought they are a superpower and nobody could match them, that Sheikh Osama taught them a lesson - a lesson they still haven’t learned.’
Mr Islam, who is linked to an organisation called Salafi Youth for Islamic Propagation, warned that unless British and American troops were withdrawn from ‘Muslim lands’ they would be to blame for the consequences, saying the West would ‘never achieve security until our own [Muslim] lands achieve security’.
‘Wake up. Withdraw. Listen to the warnings. Muslims will stand side to side, not just al Qaeda. The actions of the British and Americans have given prominence to al Qaeda.
'All of us have a part to play in stopping the violence or the next 9/11 will take place in Britain, the next 7/7 could take place locally,’ he added.
Mr Choudary was the last speaker and was more guarded in his address to the young Muslim men that made up most of the audience.
'Lesson': The wreckage of a London bus after a bomb attack on July 7, 2005
But he criticised the Government for persecuting ‘innocent Muslims’, naming Bakri, Abu Hamza, Abu Qatada and Omar Brooks along with the defendants in the airliner bomb plot trial.
He said: ‘They [the Government] say they are civilised. But they don’t act very civilised. They jailed Sheikh Abu Qatada in Belmarsh prison. Is that the way you treat your guests?’
Mr Choudary then referred to Bakri’s notorious aim of flying the ‘flag of Sharia’ over Downing Street, claiming that this would happen by 2020 as 500 people a day were converting to Islam and laughing that Muslim families in places like Whitechapel and Bethnal Green in east London were having ‘10 or 12 children each’.
He ranted against mainstream bodies like the Muslim Council of Britain, who condemned 9/11 and 7/7, accusing them of ‘selling their souls to the devil’.
Find this story at www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1054909/Have-babies-Muslims-UK-hate-fanatic-says-warning-comes-9-11-UK.html
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Sharia law in UK is 'unavoidable'
Dr Williams says Muslims should have a choice in legal disputes
Dr Williams interview
The Archbishop of Canterbury says the adoption of certain aspects of Sharia law in the UK "seems unavoidable".
Dr Rowan Williams told Radio 4's World at One that the UK has to "face up to the fact" that some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system.
Dr Williams argues that adopting parts of Islamic Sharia law would help maintain social cohesion.
For example, Muslims could choose to have marital disputes or financial matters dealt with in a Sharia court.
He says Muslims should not have to choose between "the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty".
'Sensational reporting'
In an exclusive interview with BBC correspondent Christopher Landau, ahead of a lecture to lawyers in London on Monday, Dr Williams argues this relies on Sharia law being better understood.
At the moment, he says "sensational reporting of opinion polls" clouds the issue.
An approach to law which simply said - there's one law for everybody - I think that's a bit of a danger
Dr Rowan Williams
Archbishop of Canterbury
He stresses that "nobody in their right mind would want to see in this country the kind of inhumanity that's sometimes been associated with the practice of the law in some Islamic states; the extreme punishments, the attitudes to women as well".
But Dr Williams said an approach to law which simply said "there's one law for everybody and that's all there is to be said, and anything else that commands your loyalty or allegiance is completely irrelevant in the processes of the courts - I think that's a bit of a danger".
"There's a place for finding what would be a constructive accommodation with some aspects of Muslim law, as we already do with some other aspects of religious law."
'Other loyalties'
Dr Williams added: "What we don't want either, is I think, a stand-off, where the law squares up to people's religious consciences."
HAVE YOUR SAY There is, and should only be, one law which covers all people and to suggest it can be otherwise is to seriously damage our rights Patricia London, UK
"We don't either want a situation where, because there's no way of legally monitoring what communities do... people do what they like in private in such a way that that becomes another way of intensifying oppression inside a community."
The issue of whether Catholic adoption agencies would be forced to accept gay parents under equality laws showed the potential for legal confusion, he said.
"That principle that there is only one law for everybody is an important pillar of our social identity as a western democracy," he said.
"But I think it is a misunderstanding to suppose that means people don't have other affiliations, other loyalties which shape and dictate how they behave in society and that the law needs to take some account of that."
'Custom and community'
Dr Williams noted that Orthodox Jewish courts already operated, and that the law accommodated the anti-abortion views of some Christians.
"The whole idea that there are perfectly proper ways the law of the land pays respect to custom and community, that's already there," he said.
People may legally devise their own way to settle a dispute in front of an agreed third party as long as both sides agree to the process.
Muslim Sharia courts and the Jewish Beth Din which already exist in the UK come into this category.
The country's main Beth Din at Finchley in north London oversees a wide range of cases including divorce settlements, contractual rows between traders and tenancy disputes.
Dr Williams's comments are likely to fuel the debate over multiculturalism in the UK.
Last month, the Bishop of Rochester, the Right Reverend Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, said some places in the UK were no-go areas for non-Muslims.
Dr Williams said it was "not at all the case that we have absolute social exclusion".
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/7232661.stm
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1576066/%27We-want-to-offer-sharia-law-to-Britain%27.html
'We want to offer sharia law to Britain'
By Clare Dwyer Hogg and Jonathan Wynne-Jones
Last Updated: 10:25PM BST 18 Apr 2008
Dr Suhaib Hasan is pushing for personal sharia law to be integrated into the British legal system
Islamic courts meet every week in the UK to rule on divorces and financial disputes. Clare Dwyer Hogg and Jonathan Wynne-Jones report on demands by senior Muslims that sharia be given legal authority
Amnah is a modern British Muslim. She is dressed in a denim skirt and her head is covered in a hijab. Poised and self-assured, she has come to meet Dr Suhaib Hasan, a silver-bearded sheikh who sits behind his desk, surrounded by religious books.
The origins and obligations of sharia law
"But why would I have to observe the waiting period?" she asks him. "What are the reasons?" There is an urgency to her questions.
"These reasons don't apply to me, that's what I'm very confused about. If you could give me the reasons why I have to wait three months, then I'll understand."
Amnah is going through a divorce and is baffled at being told that she must wait for three months to remarry, considering that she hasn't seen her estranged husband for two years.
She twists her sock-clad toes into the carpet, grasping one hand with the other in her lap, and fixes Dr Hasan with an intense look. He meets this with a simple reply: "These rulings are all in the Koran. The rulings are made for all."
Amnah has little choice but to comply: Dr Hasan is a judge, and this is a sharia court - in east London. It sits, innocuously, at the end of a row of terrace houses in Leyton: a converted corner shop, with blinds on the windows, office- style partitions and a makeshift reception area.
It is one of dozens of sharia courts - also known as councils - that have been set up in mosques, Islamic centres and even schools across Britain. The number of British Muslims using the courts is increasing.
To many in the West, talk of sharia law conjures up images of the floggings, stonings, amputations and beheadings carried out in hardline Islamic states such as Saudi Arabia and Iran. However, the form practised in Britain is more mundane, focusing mainly on marriage, divorce and financial disputes.
The judgments of the courts have no basis in British law, and are therefore technically illegitimate - they are binding only in that those involved agree to comply. For British Muslims who are keen to follow Islam, this poses a dilemma. An Islamic marriage is not recognised by British law, and therefore many couples will have two ceremonies - civil for the state, and Islamic for their faith.
If they wish to divorce, they must then seek both a civil and an Islamic divorce.
Dr Hasan, who has been presiding over sharia courts in Britain for more than 25 years, argues that British law would benefit from integrating aspects of Islamic personal law into the civil system, so that divorces could be rubber-stamped in the same way, for example, that Jewish couples who go to the Beth Din court have their divorce recognised in secular courts.
He points out that the Islamic Sharia Council, of which he is the general secretary, is flooded with work. It hears about 50 divorce cases every month, and responds to as many as 10 requests every day by email and phone for a fatwa - a religious verdict on a religious matter.
Dr Hasan, who is also a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain on issues of sharia law, says there is great misunderstanding of the issue in the West.
"Whenever people associate the word 'sharia' with Muslims, they think it is flogging and stoning to death and cutting off the hand," he says with a smile.
He makes the distinction between the aspects of law that sharia covers: worship, penal law, and personal law. Muslim leaders in Britain are interested only in integrating personal law, he says.
"Penal law is the duty of the Muslim state - it is not in the hands of any public institution like us to handle it. Only a Muslim government that believes in Islam is going to implement it. So there is no question of asking for penal law to be introduced here in the UK - that is out of the question."
Despite this, Dr Hasan is open in supporting the severe punishments meted out in countries where sharia law governs the country.
"Even though cutting off the hands and feet, or flogging the drunkard and fornicator, seem to be very abhorrent, once they are implemented, they become a deterrent for the whole society.
"This is why in Saudi Arabia, for example, where these measures are implemented, the crime rate is very, very, low," he told The Sunday Telegraph.
In a documentary to be screened on Channel 4 next month, entitled Divorce: Sharia Style, Dr Hasan goes further, advocating a sharia system for Britain. "If sharia law is implemented, then you can turn this country into a haven of peace because once a thief's hand is cut off nobody is going to steal," he says.
"Once, just only once, if an adulterer is stoned nobody is going to commit this crime at all.
"We want to offer it to the British society. If they accept it, it is for their good and if they don't accept it they'll need more and more prisons."
These sentiments, and the vast cultural gulf they expose, alarm many in the West and go to the heart of the debate about the level of integration among Muslims living in Britain and their acceptance of British values.
Dr Hasan's cause is not helped by the fact that, last December, he was named by the Policy Exchange think tank as being linked to a mosque, the Al-Tawhid in Leyton, east London, which was accused of propagating extremist literature - although the evidence for this has since been challenged.
Many are uncomfortable with the idea of linking sharia to civil law in Britain. In The Sunday Telegraph earlier this month, Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, wrote: "Attempts have been made to impose an "Islamic" character on certain areas?… There is pressure already to relate aspects of the sharia to civil law in Britain. To some extent this is already true of arrangements for sharia-compliant banking but have the far-reaching implications of this been fully considered?"
There are also issues around the Islamic approach to equality and human rights that make integration with British law problematic and contentious.
Sharia judges in this country deal mainly with divorce - khula. In Islamic law, a husband can divorce his wife in the presence of two witnesses without having to go through an official system.
He can even merely utter the word "talaq" - meaning "to release" - to gain a divorce, whether or not the wife accepts it. She has no such right and must go through the processes of sharia, entreating judges to grant her divorce.
"The introduction of sharia law in Britain raises complex questions, as some of its basic tenets are incompatible with the fundamental principles of our liberal democracy and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," says Baroness Cox, a leading human rights campaigner.
"There is no equality before the law between men and women and between Muslims and non-Muslims; and there is no freedom to choose and change religion."
Ibrahim Mogra, chairman of the Muslim Council of Britain's inter-faith committee, admits that to non-Muslims some laws may seem harsh on women. Those who are married to a man with a number of wives can be treated badly, for instance. But he insists that sharia is an equitable system.
"It may mean that a woman married under Islamic law has no legal rights, but the husband is required to pay for everything in marriage and in the case of a divorce all the woman's belongings are hers to keep."
In fact, Sheikh Mogra argues that sharia in Britain would give rights to women. "A Muslim man can take a second wife under sharia law and treat her as he wants, knowing that she has no legal rights in Britain. It means that she is regarded as no more than a mistress and he can walk out on her when he wants."
Critics warn, however, that in giving even parts of sharia law official status, Britain would be associating itself with a system that in many ways was intolerable according to Western values.
Professor John Marks, author of The West, Islam and Islamism, points out that apostates from Islam can suffer severe punishment, even honour killings.
"There are more violent cases that are being related to people who choose to convert from Islam," he says.
A survey by Policy Exchange found that 36 per cent of young British Muslims believed that a Muslim who converted to another religion should be "punished by death".
"This clearly goes against the laws of our country. If they come to live in this country they should live by our laws," says Prof Marks.
Haras Rafiq, the executive director of the Sufi Muslim Council, points out that Muslims are anyway divided on the correct interpretation of sharia law. He is particularly critical of those who support the strict penal law.
"Things like stoning are being used as a deterrent, but this is reinterpreting the Koran in a rigid and extreme way that misses the spirit of what is being said."
Perhaps the strongest argument in favour of some form of recognition of sharia in Britain is that it would help to regulate a system that operates beyond the law.
The Government has expressed concern about imams who may be using the Koran to justify fatwas that clash with British law.
Leaders of four major British Muslim groups published a government-backed report in 2006 that accepted that many imams were not qualified to give guidance to alienated young people.
They agreed to set up a watchdog aimed at tackling extremism and monitoring mosques, but Yunes Teinaz, a former adviser to the London Central Mosque, warns that one of the greatest problems is the imams who arrive in Britain unable to speak English, and with no regard for British law.
"The absence of anyone regulating the mosques and sharia courts means that they can act as a law unto themselves, issuing fatwas that breach people's human rights because they have no knowledge of the law," he says. "They can take people's money despite having no proper qualifications, but worse they can harm the communities that they are in."
Zareen Roohi Ahmed, the chief executive of the British Muslim Forum - one of the four groups on the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Body - concedes that sharia courts in Britain are still poorly organised.
"They need development - the government should be supporting them to deliver their service more effectively," she says.
"If sharia courts can be supported to be more professionally run and to have female involvement as well on the decision-making panels, then I think they can work quite effectively and meet the needs of Muslims."
She suggests that existing systems need to be supported and a wider range of scholars and academics involved to put more thought into making the rules and regulations applicable to today's society.
Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, the secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, points out that during British rule in India, Muslim personal law was allowed to operate and sees no reason why it wouldn't work now.
"Sharia encompasses all aspects of Muslim life including personal law," he says. "In tolerant, inclusive societies all faith groups enjoy some acceptance of their religious rules in matters of their personal life.
"I am sure some day our society here will also be more at ease with its Muslim community and see the benefit of allowing such rights to those who prefer this."
Back in the court in Leyton, the plight of Amnah is typical of the challenges facing Muslim women in Britain who are seeking to abide by the traditional Islamic teaching, but find themselves victims of the system as a result.
The husband she seeks to divorce is untraceable, but she married him in a purely Islamic ceremony so now she must fight to gain her freedom.
She met him on an Islamic matrimonial website, then discovered that he wasn't everything he had claimed to be.
"I found out he was stealing money from me," she says, adding that her husband had lied about having a job and a visa for the UK.
"So how come you married such a person who is not of your standard?" Dr Hasan asks quietly, leafing through the notes of her case.
"I made a mistake," Amnah says, simply. "Basically this man lied to me from the beginning until the end. Not only did he fool me, he fooled my family."
Despite Amnah's protestations and questioning, Dr Hasan goes on to explain that the methods and rules set out in the Koran are for very practical reasons.
A recently divorced wife must wait three months to remarry to give enough time for her ex-husband to know that she is not carrying his child. "This is for all," he says.
"There is no exception to this rule, in the sharia there is no exception, you have to accept it."
He takes down a copy of the Koran from a shelf and points to the chapter and verse that spells out the lengths of iddat - the waiting period - in detailed terms.
There are different lengths for widows, for wives whose husbands have authorised the divorce and for wives whose husbands have not. There is even a rule for pre-pubescent girls.
For Amnah, it is clear that the answer has thrown up further problems for her. "Another quick question," she says. "Because I'm going through a divorce now, is it right for me to have found someone or should I have waited?"
The man may not, Dr Hasan replies, clearly state his wish to marry her - he may subtly make his intentions known, as in "once you are free from marriage, remember me", but no, not propose. That is not allowed in the Koran.
Amnah thanks him with deference, and leaves. Coming through this religious court is the only way she will be truly at liberty to remarry but, for now, she must wait.
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Dr. Williams as you quoted, "noted that orthodox Jewish Courts already operate." And, "people may legally devise their own way to settle a dispute in front of an agreed upon third party as long as both sides agree to the process."
And in the U.S. people as well may choose any agreed upon third party including religious as long as both sides agree to the process. Truly, the courts here support and actually insist upon mediation in most civil matters hoping that a voluntary agreement can be reached before the matter needs to go to trial. And many individuals, for various reasons, prefer binding arbitration.
And to clarify and confirm, in your most recent post Dr. Hasan states that, "Muslim leaders in Britain are interested only in integrating personal law (civil law); Penal Law (criminal law) is the duty of the State." Anotherwords, he is saying that criminal matters belong to the Court system, but Civil Matters, if both sides agree, belong to binding Arbitration.
It sounds like voluntary ("both sides agree to the process") (civil matters) arbitration to me. Nothing wrong with that. Good and fair for everyone. And if you don't like it, i.e. you don't agree to the process, hire a attorney and take it to court; it is your choice. And your legal bill. To oppose it seems like a racial reaction against Muslims to me; if not Muslims, we would all say to all that binding arbitration in civil matters is just common sense for everyone as long as all parties voluntarily agree to join in the system.
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To oppose it seems like a racial reaction against Muslims to me; if not Muslims, we would all say to all that binding arbitration in civil matters is just common sense for everyone as long as all parties voluntarily agree to join in the system.
Islam isn't a race, it's a religion. Although to be more accurate, it's a totalitarian and imperialist political movement fused with theology. You seem to want to ignore the first article I posted where the conquest of the UK is celebrated.
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I understand Islam isn't a race, it is a religion, but then again so is being a Jew, it's a religion not a race, or is it...? Sort of like the Palestinian issue; the term often seems interchangeable.
As far ignoring your first article, that wasn't the question on the table; my original response was directed at Crafty's article posted this morning regarding Islamic Law. It was a legal issue addressing the matter of voluntary yet binding arbitration (I am in favor) rather than a tirade on the evils of Muslim influence. Let's keep to the subject. That being said, I think you and perhaps many people seem to forget that many practicing Muslims are law abiding and peaceful; simply wishing to worship their God and live in harmony, make a few dollars for their family and be happy; yet follow their teachings. As do Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, and even American Indians as well as a multitude of other religions.
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A certain percentage directly engage in jihad, many others directly or indirectly support jihad against the unbelievers and under sharia law, submissive jews and christians are only allowed to live as second class citizens and those that convert from islam or are polytheists face death. Aside from the brutal oppression, it's wonderful.
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**What of the other 67%?**
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1124/p06s01-woeu.html
BRITISH MUSLIMS PUSH TO INTEGRATE
Members of Britain's growing Muslim population are working to repair an image tattered by homegrown radicals - and to find a place in mainstream society.
By John Thorne | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
LONDON –
Hunched in black robes over his microphone, Sheikh Omar Bakri suddenly heaves himself upright in rhetorical climax and pounds the table. "Embrace capitalism or Christianity, you go to hellfire!" he bellows. The crowd of men seated before him nod in agreement as Sheikh Bakri warns against misplaced sympathy for Western society.
"Don't think that because [the unbelievers] give us income support we should have less hate," he continues. "Because we hate not for our sakes, but for the sake of Allah."
03/31/04
With successful raids, British chip away at terror threat
His point made, Bakri sinks into his chair and indulges in a bit of Islamist bravado by cracking a dark joke about stabbing people in the guts. A low murmur of laughter passes through the men, while at the back of the room their wives, wrapped in chadors, remain still and silent as columns. A few children scamper in the aisles.
Hard-line Islamists like Bakri have become the bête noire for Britons who question whether the growing ranks of Muslims here want to integrate more fully into society. This anxiety, felt throughout Europe, has intensified after weeks of headlines played up the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh by an Islamic extremist.
It's an anxiety felt acutely by Britain's 1.8 million Muslims. They are one of the country's fastest-growing, poorest, and least educated minorities. But many are struggling to repair a reputation tattered by home-grown radicals like Bakri and find a place in mainstream society. And despite setbacks to their image, they are making progress.
• Muslim leaders supported a government initiative to filter out extremists by imposing an English test on foreign imams seeking work permits.
• Mosques are transforming themselves into community hubs in an attempt to dampen the mistrust and alienation that observers say can cause some young Muslims to turn to radicalism in the first place.
• Many mosques now host regular interfaith discussions, organize after-school youth groups, and have worked with local police to foster goodwill.
• Muslims voted in record numbers at this summer's European elections, defying both radical imams' and some non-Muslims' view that Islam and democracy don't mix.
"The Muslim community has to stand up and be counted as a British Muslim community," Khurshid Ahmed, spokesman for Muslim issues at the Commission for Racial Equality, told the BBC.
Many Muslims seem to agree. A recent poll commissioned by The Guardian newspaper showed that 33 percent of Muslims wanted more integration into mainstream British culture.
"The generation that's grown up here calls itself British and Muslim," says Imam Yunus Dudhwala, "and I don't think that's a contradiction."
But the same poll showed that 26 percent of British Muslims felt integration has gone too far.
"We have pockets who ... feel that even integration is a threat to their way of life," explains Ibrahim Mogra, head of the Muslim Council of Britain's Imams and Mosques Committee.
Indeed, Muslim parents often worry - with some justification - that their kids will pick up un-Islamic behavior from their English peers.
"Muslim girls aren't supposed to smoke and drink and hang about out on the street like boys," says Ima, a Muslim woman out shopping for a new sari in her Muslim neighborhood.
But when she slips into a side-street for a quick cigarette, she confirms fears that mainstream British culture will corrupt traditional Islamic values.
At the same time, moderate Muslims worry that the British media's focus on the few bad apples creates a false, sinister image of all Muslims.
"The reality [of extremism] is that there is almost nothing there," insists Inayat Bunglawala, spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, the country's foremost Muslim lobby group. "The rhetoric about the Great Satan and the Islamic superstate can seem daunting. But it's just rhetoric."
Yet a handful of British Muslims have turned such rhetoric into action.
• In 2001, Richard Reid, a British convert to Islam, boarded an American Airlines flight with shoes packed full of explosives. (Crew members restrained him before he could set them off.)
• In 2003, two British Muslims blew themselves up in a Tel Aviv bar, killing three and wounding 55.
• British-born mujahideen were found fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan.
• Last spring, British police foiled a massive bombing plot by Muslims targeted inside Britain.
• And three British Muslims are alleged to have joined the radical insurgency of Al Qaeda affiliate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq.
Although some blame the media, many Muslims - especially younger ones - complain that their community lacks unity and strong leadership.
"I don't think there are inspiring spokespeople for mainstream Islam, and that's a major problem," says Wasif, who runs a graphic design business.
Above all, moderates say, mainstream Muslims must confront the extremism that has taken root in Britain.
"Much of the Muslim leadership has not only denied the problem, it has maligned and ostracized those who have attempted to address it," stormed Fareena Alam, the managing editor of the Muslim magazine Q-News, in a column for The Observer newspaper last April.
Muslim leaders are beginning to respond. Mosques have adopted a policy of vetting would-be imams and blackballing radicals like Bakri, who are forced to preach in hired halls.
Affirming British identity is what mainstream Muslims claim they must do if they are to capture the limelight from the extremist minority and shake off the stigma of terrorism.
But for integration efforts to bear fruit, the British public will have to take notice. "Non-Muslims need to have an open mind," says Bilal, an Islamic studies student, "and we need to be better examples."
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I postd the article in question without comment of my own. JDN correctly summarizes the case for the sharia arbirtration panels/courts. The logic is impeccable. Unfortunately it is not clear that things are that simple and GM does a good job I think of fleshing out why.
We live in interesting times.
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http://www.publicservice.co.uk/news_story.asp?id=7068
Sharia law is now legally binding
Monday, September 15, 2008
It’s been described by one commentator as an example of Great Britain ‘surrendering’ itself and the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams was criticised for saying it will happen, but whatever the reaction, Islamic law now officially operates in the UK.
Whereas before rulings by sharia courts in Britain could only be enforced if all parties in a Muslim civil case agreed to abide by them, now what the courts say will be legally binding, backed by county courts or the High Court.
The five sharia courts are Birmingham, Bradford, London and Manchester with others planned for Glasgow and Edinburgh. They will be run by the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal whose Sheikh Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siddiqi said: "We realised that under the Arbitration Act [1996] we can make rulings which can be enforced by county and high courts. The act allows disputes to be resolved using alternatives like tribunals."
Muslim tribunal courts have been running since August 2007, hearing cases of divorce, domestic violence and much more. Jewish Beth Din courts have been in the UK for over 100 years.
However, Siddiqi admitted that the courts can favour men, with several cases of domestic violence ending with husbands receiving little punishment other than being made to take an anger management course. In every case, the women later withdrew their claims.
Tory shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve was amazed that sharia law had been made legally binding. "If it is true that these tribunals are passing binding decisions in the areas of family and criminal law, I would like to know which courts are enforcing them because I would consider such action unlawful. British law is absolute and must remain so."
And Douglas Murray, the director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, said: "I think it’s appalling. I don’t think arbitration that is done by sharia should ever be endorsed or enforced by the British state."
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Independent.co.uk
A question of honour: Police say 17,000 women are victims every year
Ministers are stepping up the fight against so-called 'honour' crime and forced marriages. Detectives say official statistics are 'merely the tip of the iceberg' of this phenomenon. Brian Brady investigates
Sunday, 10 February 2008
Up to 17,000 women in Britain are being subjected to "honour" related violence, including murder, every year, according to police chiefs.
And official figures on forced marriages are the tip of the iceberg, says the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO).
It warns that the number of girls falling victim to forced marriages, kidnappings, sexual assaults, beatings and even murder by relatives intent on upholding the "honour" of their family is up to 35 times higher than official figures suggest.
The crisis, with children as young as 11 having been sent abroad to be married, has prompted the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to call on British consular staff in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan to take more action to identify and help British citizens believed to be the victims of forced marriages in recent years.
The Home Office is drawing up an action plan to tackle honour-based violence which "aims to improve the response of police and other agencies" and "ensure that victims are encouraged to come forward with the knowledge that they will receive the help and support they need". And a Civil Protection Bill coming into effect later this year will give courts greater guidance on dealing with forced marriages.
Commander Steve Allen, head of ACPO's honour-based violence unit, says the true toll of people falling victim to brutal ancient customs is "massively unreported" and far worse than is traditionally accepted. "We work on a figure which suggests it is about 500 cases shared between us and the Forced Marriage Unit per year," he said: "If the generally accepted statistic is that a victim will suffer 35 experiences of domestic violence before they report, then I suspect if you multiplied our reporting by 35 times you may be somewhere near where people's experience is at." His disturbing assessment, made to a committee of MPs last week, comes amid a series of gruesome murders and attacks on British women at the hands of their relatives.
Marilyn Mornington, a district judge and chair of the Domestic Violence Working Group, warned that fears of retribution, and the authorities' failure to understand the problem completely, meant the vast majority of victims were still too scared to come forward for help. In evidence to the home affairs committee, which is investigating the problem, she said: "We need a national strategy to identify the large number of pupils, particularly girls, missing from school registers who have been taken off the register and are said to be home schooled, which leads to these issues. Airport staff and other staff need to be trained to recognise girls who are being taken out of the country.
"We are bringing three girls a week back from Islamabad as victims of forced marriage. We know that is the tip of the iceberg, but that is the failure end. It has to be part of education within the communities and the children themselves."
Women who have been taken overseas to be married against their will are now being rescued on an almost daily basis. The Government's Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) handled approximately 400 cases last year – 167 of them leading to young Britons being helped back to the UK to escape unwanted partners overseas. And it is not just women who are affected. Home Office figures show that 15 per cent of cases involve men and boys.
In an attempt to crack down on the crimes being committed in the name of honour, police are to introduce a new training package that will give all officers instructions on handling honour cases. In addition, detectives are believed to be conducting a "cold case" style review of previous suicides amid suspicions that cases of honour killings are more common than previously thought.
Almost all victims of the most extreme crimes are women, killed in half of cases by their own husbands. Sometimes murders are carried out by other male relatives, or even hired killers. The fear that many thousands are left to endure honour violence alone may be supported by the disturbing details of the incidence of suicide within the British Asian community. Women aged 16 to 24 from Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi backgrounds are three times more likely to kill themselves than the national average for women of their age.
A report published last week by the Centre for Social Cohesion found that many women felt unable to defy their families and therefore "suffer violence, abuse, depression, anxiety and other psychological problems that can lead to self-harm, schizophrenia and suicide". James Brandon, co-author of Crimes of the Community: Honour-based Violence in the UK, said: "The Government is still not taking honour crime seriously. Until this happens, the ideas of honour which perpetuate this violence will continue to be passed on through generations. Religious leaders, local authorities and central government must work together to end such abuses of human rights."
The human cost of honour crime was vividly captured in a haunting video message from murdered Banaz Mahmood, who revealed how her own father had tried to kill her after she abandoned her arranged marriage and fell in love with another man. In the grainy message she told how he plied her with brandy – the first time she had ever drunk alcohol – pulled the curtains and asked her to turn around.
The 19-year-old fled, but less than a month after making the grainy video on a mobile phone, Banaz was dead. Her naked body was found buried in a yard in Birmingham in 2006, more than 100 miles from her London home. She had been raped and tortured by men hired by her uncle to kill her. Mahmood's father, uncle and one of her killers were sentenced to a total of 60 years in jail for the murder.
And the fatal potential of honour disputes was laid bare last month when a coroner said he was convinced that a Muslim teenager who feared she was being forced into an arranged marriage by her parents had suffered a "vile murder." Ian Smith said the concept of an arranged marriage was "central" to the circumstances leading up to the death of 17-year-old Shafilea Ahmed, whose decomposed body was discovered on the banks of the River Kent at Sedgwick, Cumbria, four years ago. After running away from home in February 2003, Shafilea told housing officers: "My parents are going to send me to Pakistan and I'll be married to someone and left there." The tragic story of the bright teenager who wanted to go to university and study law is far from the only example of the anguish suffered by British teenagers in recent years.
Toafiq Wahab, British consul in Dhaka, Bangladesh, recalls a "rescue mission" to recover a 17-year-old who called his office from Sylhet. "We had to track her down and 36 hours from taking that call, we had turned up at her house with an armed police escort," he said. "The house was filled with over 20 of her relations, most of whom were from Britain and stunned to see me. They obviously did not want her to leave. We simply asked her if she wanted to leave and go back to the UK in the presence of all her family and she agreed. I then spoke to the family and explained what we were doing and tried to make them understand. In the end, we had to get the police to assist in helping us to leave."
Former Bradford policeman Philip Balmforth, who works with vulnerable Asian women, said he saw 395 cases of forced marriage in the city last year. "I had a case of a 14-year-old girl at school," he recalled. "The teacher tells me that the girl claims to have been married. So I went along to the school with a Muslim colleague. We saw the girl. We asked her a few questions and we were not sure. Then the girl said: 'If you don't believe me I have the video at home.'"
In Bradford alone, a total of 250 girls aged between 13 and 16 were taken off the school rolls last year because they failed to return from trips abroad. Campaigners suspect many were victims of forced marriages.
"If contacted by concerned young British men and women in the UK, the FMU provides free and confidential advice on the potential dangers of being forced into marriage overseas and precautions to take to help avoid this happening," said a Foreign Office spokesperson last night. "If we learn that a British national overseas is being forced into marriage, or has already been forced into marriage, we look at various means of consular assistance ranging from action through the courts to rescue missions."
"The FMU can also help to arrange accommodation for victims for when they return to the UK and can refer victims to counselling and supports groups, legal centres, and so on.
"When it is necessary, the FMU and our embassies and high commissions work closely with the police and judiciary overseas in order to organise emergency rescue and repatriation missions."
Britain's hidden scandal
The kidnap victim
In June 2000 Narina Anwar, 29, and her two sisters claim they were tricked by their parents into going on a family holiday to a remote village in Pakistan, where they were held captive for five months in an attempt to force them to marry three illiterate villagers. The sisters fled to Lahore and contacted the British High Commission, which persuaded their parents to hand over their children's passports so they could return home.
The 'slave'
Gina Singh, 28, sued her former mother-in-law for £35,000 in 2006 after she was forced to work 17 hours a day around the house. Ms Singh, from Nottingham, was forbidden to leave the house on her own after an arranged marriage in 2002.
The runaway wife
In 1983, Zana Muhsen and her sister Nadia, from Birmingham, were pushed by their father to visit Yemen and forced to marry. Zana, now 35, escaped eight years later. Her father had sold her for a few thousand dollars. The experience is recounted in her book, 'Sold'.
The murder victim
Surjit Athwal disappeared with Bachan Athwal, her mother-in-law, after a family wedding in India in 1998. Her body was never found. Bachan later boasted that she arranged for her son, Sukhdave, to murder Surjit after finding out that she was having an affair.
The attempted suicide
Shafilea Ahmed was the victim of a suspected honour killing. The 17-year-old's body was found months after she had returned from a trip to Pakistan in 2003. On the trip she drank bleach. The coroner said he saw it as a 'desperate measure' to avoid a forced marriage.
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http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Quran/003-wife-beating.htm
Domestic violence, now with the force of British law! Woo hoo!
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http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Quran/003-wife-beating.htm
Domestic violence, now with the force of British law! Woo hoo!
"Woo hoo!" maybe, but NO WHERE in you link or anywhere else for that matter does British Law condone or provide the "force of law"
allowing domestic violence. It's simply not true! It's a fabrication without basis for fact. Apparently you don't like Muslims, any Muslims,
but like Christians, Hindu's, Jews, et al there are good ones and bad ones. Did you ever notice there is a lot of domestic violence here
in America among so called, "Christians"?
-
004.034
YUSUFALI: Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because Allah has given the one more (strength) than the other, and because they support them from their means. Therefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient, and guard in (the husband's) absence what Allah would have them guard. As to those women on whose part ye fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish them (first), (Next), refuse to share their beds, (And last) beat them (lightly); but if they return to obedience, seek not against them Means (of annoyance): For Allah is Most High, great (above you all).
PICKTHAL: Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High, Exalted, Great.
SHAKIR: Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to excel others and because they spend out of their property; the good women are therefore obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded; and (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them; then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them; surely Allah is High, Great.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Book 004, Number 2127:
Muhammad b. Qais said (to the people): Should I not narrate to you (a hadith of the Holy Prophet) on my authority and on the authority of my mother? We thought that he meant the mother who had given him birth. He (Muhammad b. Qais) then reported that it was 'A'isha who had narrated this: Should I not narrate to you about myself and about the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him)? We said: Yes. She said: When it was my turn for Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) to spend the night with me, he turned his side, put on his mantle and took off his shoes and placed them near his feet, and spread the corner of his shawl on his bed and then lay down till he thought that I had gone to sleep. He took hold of his mantle slowly and put on the shoes slowly, and opened the door and went out and then closed it lightly. I covered my head, put on my veil and tightened my waist wrapper, and then went out following his steps till he reached Baqi'. He stood there and he stood for a long time. He then lifted his hands three times, and then returned and I also returned. He hastened his steps and I also hastened my steps. He ran and I too ran. He came (to the house) and I also came (to the house). I, however, preceded him and I entered (the house), and as I lay down in the bed, he (the Holy Prophet) entered the (house), and said: Why is it, O 'A'isha, that you are out of breath? I said: There is nothing. He said: Tell me or the Subtle and the Aware would inform me. I said: Messenger of Allah, may my father and mother be ransom for you, and then I told him (the whole story). He said: Was it the darkness (of your shadow) that I saw in front of me? I said: Yes. He struck me on the chest which caused me pain, and then said: Did you think that Allah and His Apostle would deal unjustly with you? She said: Whatsoever the people conceal, Allah will know it. He said: Gabriel came to me when you saw me. He called me and he concealed it from you. I responded to his call, but I too concealed it from you (for he did not come to you), as you were not fully dressed. I thought that you had gone to sleep, and I did not like to awaken you, fearing that you may be frightened. He (Gabriel) said: Your Lord has commanded you to go to the inhabitants of Baqi' (to those lying in the graves) and beg pardon for them. I said: Messenger of Allah, how should I pray for them (How should I beg forgiveness for them)? He said: Say, Peace be upon the inhabitants of this city (graveyard) from among the Believers and the Muslims, and may Allah have mercy on those who have gone ahead of us, and those who come later on, and we shall, God willing, join you.
-
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Quran/003-wife-beating.htm
Domestic violence, now with the force of British law! Woo hoo!
"Woo hoo!" maybe, but NO WHERE in you link or anywhere else for that matter does British Law condone or provide the "force of law"
allowing domestic violence. It's simply not true! It's a fabrication without basis for fact. Apparently you don't like Muslims, any Muslims,
**I don't like Islam's theology of violence.**
but like Christians, Hindu's, Jews, et al there are good ones and bad ones. Did you ever notice there is a lot of domestic violence here
in America among so called, "Christians"?
**If you'd bother to actually read up on islamic theology, you'd see that wife-beating is mandated by "allah".**
-
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Quran/003-wife-beating.htm
Domestic violence, now with the force of British law! Woo hoo!
"Woo hoo!" maybe, but NO WHERE in you link or anywhere else for that matter does British Law condone or provide the "force of law"
allowing domestic violence. It's simply not true! It's a fabrication without basis for fact. Apparently you don't like Muslims, any Muslims,
**I don't like Islam's theology of violence.**
but like Christians, Hindu's, Jews, et al there are good ones and bad ones. Did you ever notice there is a lot of domestic violence here
in America among so called, "Christians"?
**If you'd bother to actually read up on islamic theology, you'd see that wife-beating is mandated by "allah".**
Whether wife beating, murder, incest, or rape is "mandated by allah" or Christianity is irrelevant to my post. The SUBJECT on the table
is that you said, "domestic violence, now with the FORCE OF BRITISH LAW". And I said that is hogwash! it simply is not true. Now I can
talk about baseball games, my love for the Packers and USC and go on and on (all equally as relevant to English Law as your post),
but the SUBJECT of my post was objecting to your stating that British Law condones or approves domestic violence.
Please stick to the subject rather than ranting on irrelevant issues to this discussion.
My point is simply that you are wrong, British Law DOES NOT support or condone domestic violence in any way; period.
I am not addressing the issue of women's rights in Islamic theology or any other theology; it is irrelevant to this simple legal debate.
IF you have specific English Laws or rulings that truly and specifically condones and supports Islamic or any other domestic violence, please post it and I will
stand corrected. If not, you should stand corrected; it is very simple. But please, no more rants and tirades about the evils of Islam;
they are not relevant to this simple legal question nor does it answer, provide new legal information, or even address the question on the table.
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Sharia law condones domestic violence, given that it's the husband inflicting violence on the wife. Now that sharia law is creeping into the UK's legal system, you'll see the system empower abusers via the sharia courts, just as sharia courts do around the globe.
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Soooo bottom line, I am right; ABSOLUTELY NO British Law condones or allows domestic violence?
Soooo what you said is totally and absolutely wrong and in error.......
Good!!! Just wanted to clear that up......
As for "sharia law creeping into the UK's legal system", I thought it was already agreed;
it pertains to Civil Matters only, i.e. VOLUNTARY ARBITRATION. That's good! We do the SAME thing in America!
NOTHING pertains to criminal matters.
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http://memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD205008
Special Dispatch Series - No. 2050
September 12, 2008 No. 2050
Lebanese Islamist Sheikh Omar Bakri: Britain's Problem – 'Its Law Is Not the Law Sent Down by Allah'; Terrorism by Mujahideen is 'Blessed'; 'Within 20 Years, British Society Will Have A Muslim Majority'
Following are excerpts from an interview with Lebanese Islamist sheikh Omar Bakri, which aired on OTV on August 22, 2008.
To view this clip on MEMRI TV, visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1848.htm .
"The Problem With Britain Is that Its Law Is Not the Law Sent Down by Allah"
Sheikh Omar Bakri: "This is true Salafism: Pure and complete religious preaching, and we only brandish our weapons against those who fight us. If we are fought and prevented from calling people to join Islam, a right that everybody has... You call this 'freedom of expression,' but I call it a religious duty to preach for the sake of Allah. If I am prevented from performing this duty, I must either defend myself or emigrate. They prevented me from doing this in Britain, so I emigrated to Lebanon."
Interviewer: "What is your problem with the British? We all know that you left before they decided you would not be allowed to return, and revoked your British citizenship, even though your family still has citizenship."
Bakri: "The problem with Britain is that its law is not the law sent down by Allah. This country says that it implements democracy, freedom of expression, personal liberties, and the right to own property, but when I expressed my belief by preaching to Islam - there was an impressive response in the universities, and George and Michael became Omar and Abd Al-Rahman, and Jane became Hadija...
"Within 20 Years, British Society Will Have A Muslim Majority"
"When they saw that Islam was spreading in British universities at an unprecedented rate, and that the non-Muslims - the Hindus, the Christians and the Jews - were accepting Islam at an average rate of 21 people a day, it began to endanger their society. Within 20 years, British society will have a Muslim majority. Of course, this cannot be allowed by this secular regime, which wants to strip society of any religious values connected to Allah.
[...]
"In cases of self-defense, there are victims, who are not intentionally targeted. They are killed by mistake, as collateral damage, not intentionally... When America bombs Sudan, Somalia, and Iraq, and sows destruction, the Muslims have the right to retaliate, and then there might be victims.
[...]
"Why do people say that Islam is being distorted today, when these are jihad operations against an enemy occupying Muslim lands? What's the difference between America in Iraq and Israel in Palestine?"
Interviewer: "There is a difference between fighting an American or Israeli soldier, who is occupying my land..."
Bakri: "When the American soldier takes off his uniform and wears pajamas, it becomes forbidden to fight him?"
"There Are Two Types of Terrorism, Blessed and Deplorable - [The Mujahideen's] Terrorism is Blessed"
Interviewer: "Was there a military base in the Twin Towers, which were destroyed?"
Bakri: "It was not just the Twin Towers, but also the U.S. Department of Defense... The 9/11 operation is a matter subject to personal judgment. Some people were against, and others supported it…"
Interviewer: "When explosives are placed on trains and in coffee shops... If I am under occupation, and I carry out attacks against it, that's one thing..."
Bakri: "You can call such operations terrorist operations par excellence. But today, America represents the camp of Western terrorism, and there is another camp of terrorism within Islam. But there are two types of terrorism: Blessed and deplorable. The same is true with regard to violence. Violence can either take lives or save lives. In both cases, it is violence. America's violence is meant to take lives, and so its terrorism is deplorable, whereas the violence the mujahideen use for defense and retaliation is meant to protect lives and defend honor. Their terrorism is blessed. Not all terrorism is deplorable.
[...]
"The problem with Hizbullah is that it believes in resistance for the sake of the land. We believe that fighting for the sake of land..."
Interviewer: "... is forbidden, because fighting should be for the sake of Allah."
Bakri: "I was created from mud, I fight for the mud of Shaba', and I will be buried in mud - my entire history is muddy... I fight for the sake of God who lives and does not die. I fight to glorify the word of Allah. If in Lebanon, they would fight to glorify the word of Allah, I'd say: Fine, let them fight for Shaba', liberate it, and instate the law of Allah. But if all they want is to liberate the Shaba' Farms, and then instate what is known here as the 'Lebanese law' - I do not accept this."
Interviewer: "You are talking about Lebanon as if you do not belong here."
Though I Was Given British Citizenship, "I Refused to Swear That I Would Obey the Queen or the Laws - I Obey Only Allah and His Messenger"
Bakri: "I belong to Islam. I did not belong to Britain when I lived there. I was a Muslim living in Britain, now I am a Muslim living in Lebanon, and tomorrow I will be a Muslim living in Iraq. God only knows, I may be a Muslim in prison."
Interviewer: "So why did you take British citizenship?"
Bakri: "I didn't take it. They gave it to me."
Interviewer: "So why didn't you reject it?"
Bakri: "I did not carry their ID. I did not have a British passport. I used a Lebanese passport to get back here."
Male guest: "They took it away from him."
Interviewer: "Why didn't he reject it beforehand?"
Bakri: "They took away my right to become a citizen. They didn't give me a passport because I refused to pledge allegiance to the queen. My wife and children got passports because they were born there. I refused to swear that I would obey the queen or the laws. I obey only Allah and His Messenger."
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Omar Bakri can see it, why can't you? You should fly to Beirut so you can lecture him on his anti-islamic beliefs.
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GM:
JDN's linear logic seems correct to me and his point fairly made.
JDN:
Although it is sure to make many of us uncomfortable, GM's point about Islam seems reasonably made to me as well. Because Islam seeks theocracy, to treat it as simply another religion raises profound problems because as best as I can tell many of its tenets are inherently seditious to core Western political principles such as (to put it in American terms) pursuit of happiness, freedom of choice, freedom of speech, equality of the sexes in front of the law and separation of church and state. I can readily understand GM's concern at any expansion of Sharia. Is there anything in what he says that you can acknowledge?
Marc
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http://womenagainstshariah.blogspot.com/2008/07/uk-forced-marriage-victims-betrayed-by.html
WOMEN AGAINST SHARIAH
ABOUT US
The mission of Women Against Shariah is to prevent and outlaw the imposition of shariah law in the United States for both Muslim and American women as either a parallel legal system or a replacement for existing laws. Additionally, we hope to empower women worldwide to resist shariah.
It is our position that shariah law imposes second class status on women and is incompatible with the standards of liberal Western societies and the basic principles of human rights that include equality under the law and the protection of individual freedoms. The shariah code mandates the complete authority of men over women, including the control of their movement, education, marital options, clothing, bodies, place of residence and all other aspects of their existence. Further, it calls for the beating, punishment, and murder of women who don’t comply with shariah requirements.
In our efforts to stem the encroachment of shariah in the West, we are focusing on the following objectives:
Education of the American public about the inherent human rights violations and the attempt to undermine or replace U.S. law and American statutes with Islamic shariah
Publicizing of important issues related to sharia requirements such as honor killings, forced marriages, child marriage, polygamy, female genital mutilation, violence against women, etc.
Alerting policy makers and legislators to potential human rights and equal rights violations and working toward the development of possible remedies and legal actions
Building coalitions with like-minded organizations to develop policy initiatives and interventions for victims of shariah.
________________________________________________________________________________
FRIDAY, JULY 4, 2008
UK: Forced Marriage Victims Betrayed by Doctors
Doctors and Job Centre workers are breaching confidentiality rules and passing on vital information to families, allowing them to trace and punish Asian women who are attempting to escape coerced marriages and "honour"-based domestic violence.
Commander Steve Allen, who is the spokesman on forced marriages for Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), revealed that some doctors have informed girls' families that they have asked for the contraceptive pill, placing them at risk from fathers or brothers who believe this means the family's honour has been besmirched.
Cmdr Allen also told The Sunday Telegraph that Job Centre workers have accessed the National Insurance details of women who flee violent husbands, tracing where they collect benefits and passing the details on to their families so they can be found and forced back to their marital home.
In one case the family of an 18-year-old Pakistani woman attempted to kidnap her from a south London Job Centre after being tipped off by a member of staff. The plot was only foiled because her boyfriend intervened.
Cmdr Allen, of the Metropolitan Police, said: "GPs will tell fathers their daughter has seen them and is on the pill. That can get a girl killed. Public sector employees will pass on to a family member an individual's National Insurance number knowing it can be used to trace their new whereabouts around the country.
"There is collusion by certain public servants and people in a position of authority, such as doctors, which supports these offences. It means many victims don't have the faith or the trust to be able to report their situation."
Cmdr Allen revealed the problem is compounded by some police offices treating women fleeing a forced marriage as 'teenage runaways' and returning them to their families – unwittingly placing them in danger. This has led to a breakdown of trust in some areas, with young Asian girls scared to tell the police of their plight for fear their families will be told.
He also said that in some Asian communities women do not trust the police because they suspect local officers will inform their families if they attempt to flee a forced marriage. ACPO is now taking urgent steps to address the problem by increased training for officers in how to deal with cases.
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**"The water feels fine", said the frog.**
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hqiCwPO2NHjLstgMZcot-vSzFq0w
First sharia-compliant insurance firm launched
Jul 27, 2008
LONDON (AFP) — Britain's first sharia-compliant insurance company was launched Monday, offering motoring policies in line with the Islamic legal code.
Salaam Halal insurance uses Takaful principles, whereby the risk is spread between all policy holders. In contrast, conventional insurance policies shift the risk from the policy holder to the insurance firm.
People taking out a policy with Salaam Halal pay contributions into a pool, with that money then put into sharia-compliant investments -- avoiding companies that are involved in alcohol or pay interest.
The central pool of funds is used to pay any claims that arise, and at the end of the year, if the pool is over-funded, the excess will be distributed back to policyholders through a discount on their next premium.
The policies are aimed at Britain's 1.6 million Muslims, who constitute 2.7 percent of the total population, according to the 2001 census.
"The launch of Salaam insurance -- the first independent, fully sharia-compliant Takaful operator available in this country -- is a significant step for the growth of Islamic finance in the UK," said Abdulaziz Hamad Aljomaih, the chairman of Salaam insurance.
The group, authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority, an independent watchdog, hopes to launch home insurance policies later this year.
Their call centres in Britain can take calls in English, Arabic, Bengali, Gujarati or Urdu.
In 2004, Britain authorised a 100 percent Islamic bank, the Islamic Bank of Britain. And the traditional bank Lloyds TSB last year launched Islamic finance products targeted at businesses, and offered sharia-compliant bank accounts.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1578119/Sharia-law-already-enforced-in-10-courts.html
Sharia law already enforced in 10 courts
By Gordon Rayner and Duncan Gardham
Last Updated: 2:24AM GMT 09 Feb 2008
The extent to which sharia law already operates in Britain was the subject of concern yesterday after it emerged that at least 10 Islamic "courts" are sitting across the country.
The existence of the courts, in towns and cities including London and Birmingham, heightened anxiety following the Archbishop of Canterbury's remarks that the introduction of some elements of Islamic law was "unavoidable".
The majority of cases heard in the courts involve divorce or financial disputes, but one reported case involved a gang of Somali youths who were allowed to go free after paying compensation to a teenager they had stabbed.
Extremists were said to have used the spread of sharia courts to justify calls for Islamic law to be adopted "wholesale" for Muslims living in Britain.
Anjem Choudary, a solicitor and former senior figure in the banned organisation Al-Muhajiroun, said: "Some element of family law or social and economic law will not work. It has to be adopted wholesale. It will not happen tomorrow but it is inevitable because sharia is superior and better for mankind."
Despite grave warnings from lawyers about the dangers of a dual legal system, criminal cases are already being dealt with by some of the unofficial courts.
In 2006 an Islamic Council sitting in Woolwich, south-east London, heard the case of the Somali gang, who had been accused of stabbing another Somali teenager and were reportedly arrested by the police.
Aydarus Yusuf, a youth worker, told Radio 4's Law in Action programme that the suspects were released on bail after the victim's family said the matter would be dealt with by the Islamic community. "All their uncles and fathers were there," said Mr Yusuf.
"So they all put something towards that and apologised for the wrongdoing." The Metropolitan Police said it was unaware of the case, but admitted that officers sometimes did not proceed with assault cases if the victim decided not to press charges.
Mr Yusuf told the programme that he felt more bound by sharia law than by the laws of his adopted country.
"Us Somalis, wherever we are in the world, we have our own law,'' he said. "It's not sharia, it's not religious, it's just a cultural thing.''
He said sharia's great strength was that those who appeared before religious courts would avoid re-offending so as not to bring shame on their families. The first sharia court in the UK started in Birmingham in 1982, and others have followed in London, Rotherham and Dewsbury, West Yorks.
Although their rulings are not recognised by English law, participants often agree to abide by the court's decision in the same way that Jewish civil disputes are often settled in their own court, the Beth Din.
Divorces must still be ratified by civil law courts. **Not anymore.**
Omar Bakri Mohammed, the former leader of Al-Muhajiroun, who is banned from entering the UK, said: "If sharia law were introduced it would have all kinds of benefits. It would get rid of drinking, night clubs, casual sex, homosexuality, prostitution, gambling and usury."
David Pannick QC, a leading human rights barrister, said that if criminal law and marriages were dealt with by sharia courts
"it would lead to the breakdown of society, if some groups could just ignore laws that applied to others".
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GM:
JDN's linear logic seems correct to me and his point fairly made.
JDN:
Although it is sure to make many of us uncomfortable, GM's point about Islam seems reasonably made to me as well. Because Islam seeks theocracy, to treat it as simply another religion raises profound problems because as best as I can tell many of its tenets are inherently seditious to core Western political principles such as (to put it in American terms) pursuit of happiness, freedom of choice, freedom of speech, equality of the sexes in front of the law and separation of church and state. I can readily understand GM's concern at any expansion of Sharia. Is there anything in what he says that you can acknowledge?
Marc
Marc, i am not defending Islam's treatment of women; I unequivocally do not approve. But then I do not approve of truly terrible treatment of women in Africa, some places in Asia, and also,
I find appalling the amount of domestic violence in this country. No one is immune. For example, among those sworn to protect us, domestic violence among police officers is 2 to 4 times the national average and many incidents do not even get reported. I was raised that you simply do not/ever strike a woman; period.
However, as you indirectly pointed out, that is not the question/argument on the table. My point, my only point, my logic is that there is absolutely no English Law that promotes domestic violence. You agreed with my logic. GM said to the contrary and being unable to back it up; is wrong. All his discourses on the evils of Islam do not change English Law; while interesting, it is not germane to the discussion. I find it odd that after your post, GM again insisted upon posting additional tirades about the evils of Islam. We have already had this discussion; Civil Matters can be taken care of by voluntary arbitration utilizing sharia law, jewish law, or any other voluntarily agreed upon third party. But only British Law pertains to criminal matters. Yes, people can work out deals; as we do here. I hit you; you hit me. Our lawyers meet; we voluntarily mutually agree to resolve this matter; I say sorry, I pay you a few dollars and the "criminal" aspect is dropped. Probably better for everyone. And as GM's new post states, like in the US these ruling are not recognized by British Law but are largely ignored if the parties reach an agreement. My main point? This is becoming redundant, but no where in this post or any other post of his does GM point out any English Law that permit's or condones domestic violence. Better for him to admit a mistake and move on. His other points are interesting and deserve attention, but the subject on the table is English Law and domestic violence. It is all rather simple and straightforward I would say. NO BRITISH LAW CONDONES DOMESTIC VIOLENCE.
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Yet.
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http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,474629,00.html
03/29/2007
GERMAN JUSTICE FAILURES
Paving the Way for a Muslim Parallel Society
A recent ruling in Germany by a judge who cited the Koran underscores the dilemma the country faces in reconciling Western values with a growing immigrant population. A disturbing number of rulings are helping to create a parallel Muslim world in Germany that is welcoming to Islamic fundamentalists.
She didn't know it, nor did she even expect it. She had good intentions. Perhaps it was a mistake. In fact, it was most certainly a mistake. The best thing to do would be to wipe the slate clean.
Last week, in the middle of the storm, Christa Datz-Winter, a judge on Frankfurt's family court, was speechless. But Bernhard Olp, a spokesman for the city's municipal court, was quick to jump in. Olp reported that the judge had been under emotional stress stemming from a murder that had been committed in her office 10 years ago, and that she was now planning to take a break to recuperate. He also mentioned that she was "outraged" -- not about herself or her scandalous ruling, but over the reactions the case has triggered.
PHOTO GALLERY: DOES GERMANY ALREADY HAVE SHARIA LAW?
Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (8 Photos)
The reactions were so fierce that one could have been forgiven for mistakenly thinking that Germany's Muslims had won the headscarf dispute and the controversy over the Mohammed cartoons in a single day and, in one fell swoop, had taken a substantial bite out of the legal foundations of Western civilization.
The ensuing media furor came from both sides of the political spectrum. The left-leaning daily Die Tageszeitung ran a story on the case titled: "In the Name of the People: Beating Allowed," while the right-wing tabloid Bild called it "An Outrageous Case!" The same unanimity across party lines prevailed in the political realm. "Unbearable," was conservative Bavarian Interior Minister Günther Beckstein's ruling, while Lale Akgün, a member of parliament of Turkish origin and the Social Democratic Party's representative on Islamic issues, commented that the Frankfurt judge's ruling was "worse than some backyard decision by an Islamist imam." Even the deputy head of the Green Party's parliamentary group, Hans-Christian Ströbele, noted that a German judge is obligated to uphold German law.
The original purpose of the case was not to carry the clash of cultures into the courtroom. Instead, the case brought before Frankfurt's family court was that of a 26-year-old German woman of Moroccan origin who was terrified of her violent Moroccan husband, a man who had continued to threaten her despite having been ordered to stay away by the authorities. He had beaten his wife and he had allegedly threatened to kill her.
But German law requires a one-year separation before a divorce can be completed -- and exceptions for an expedited process are only granted in extreme situations. When the woman's attorney, Barbara Becker-Rojczyk, filed a petition for an expedited divorce, Judge Christa Datz-Winter suddenly became inflexible. According to the judge, there was no evidence of "an unreasonable hardship" that would make it necessary to dissolve the marriage immediately. Instead, the judge argued, the woman should have "expected" that her husband, who had grown up in a country influenced by Islamic tradition, would exercise the "right to use corporal punishment" his religion grants him.
The judge even went so far as to quote the Koran in the grounds for her decision. In Sura 4, verse 34, she wrote, the Koran contains "both the husband's right to use corporal punishment against a disobedient wife and the establishment of the husband's superiority over the wife."
A disturbing pattern of rulings
Put plainly, the judge argued that a woman who marries a Muslim should know what she's getting herself into. In Germany, no less. Leading German feminist Alice Schwarzer argued that this was tantamount to a "softening of our legal system" that is "by no means a coincidence." Germany's only minister of integration at the state level, Armin Laschet, a member of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from the state of North Rhine Westphalia, sees the Frankfurt ruling as the "last link, for the time being, in a chain of horrific rulings handed down by German courts" -- rulings in which, for example, so-called honor killings have been treated as manslaughter and not murder.
This, says Berlin family attorney and prominent women's rights activist Seyran Ates, is part of the reason one should "be almost thankful that (judge Datz-Winter) made such a clear reference to the Koran. All she did was bring to the surface an undercurrent that already exists in our courts." Out of a sense of misguided tolerance, says Ates, judges treat the values of Muslim subcultures as a mitigating circumstance and, in doing so, are helping pave the way for a gradual encroachment of fundamentalist Islam in Germany's parallel Muslim world. It's an issue Ates often runs up against in her cases. "In Frankfurt," she says, "someone expressly openly for the first time what many are already thinking."
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http://counterterrorismblog.org/2006/04/print/the_muslim_brotherhood_and_isl.php
Counterterrorism Blog
The Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic law in Europe
By Lorenzo Vidino
Over the last few days various contributors to the CT Blog have debated the real aims of the Muslim Brotherhood, especially in the West. Another indication of what the Ikhwan really want came just a few days ago from Sweden, where the country’s largest Muslim organization, the Brotherhood-linked Sveriges Muslimska Förbund (SMF), published a serious of demands addressed to all Swedish political parties (note the text-in Swedish only- “we demand,” not “we ask” or “we suggest”). Among its many demands, SMF stated Swedish Muslims should be given time off work for Friday prayers and Islamic holidays and that imams should approve all divorces between Muslim couples. Basically, SMF is asking for a partial introduction of sharia law in Sweden and the creation of a separate legal system for Swedish Muslim, something politicians from all sides of the Swedish political spectrum and moderate Muslim organizations have immediately condemned as completely unacceptable.
The Swedish case is hardly unique, but mirrors the demand of Brotherhood-linked organizations throughout Europe. For example, in Germany, the Islamische Gemeinschaft Deutschland (IGD), the country’s largest Muslim organization, has stated in its official publication Al Islam (here, page 48): “In the long run, Muslims cannot be satisfied with the acceptance of German family, estate, and trial law. … Muslims should aim at an agreement between the Muslims and the German state with the goal of a separate jurisdiction for Muslims.” In Great Britain, the UK Islamic Mission, has the stated goal of conducting a “continuous campaign for the establishment of Muslim family laws,” and to “establish Islamic social order in the United Kingdom in order to seek the pleasure of Allah.”
The Ikhwan organizations of Europe follow the teachings of Sheik Yusuf al Qaradawi, who outlined the methods that these organizations should follow in order to achieve their goal of establishing sharia in Europe in his book Priorities of the Islamic Movement in the Coming Phase. In spite of the European Brothers’ pro-integration public declarations, Qaradawi urges them: “Try to have your small society within the larger society…Try to have your own ‘Muslim ghetto.’” Qaradawi clearly sees the role that the Ikhwan organizations would play in creating these separated Muslim communities, running the mosques, schools, and civic organizations that will shape the daily life of the desired “Non-territorial Islamic States in Europe,” as Reuven Paz calls them. Qaradawi also suggests that sharia law should govern the relations among inhabitants of these Muslim islands, affirming that Muslim minorities “should also have amongst them their own ulema and men of religion to answer their questions when they ask them, guide them when they lose the way and reconcile them when they differ among themselves.”
Unlike the Salafis, the Brothers use a cunning double-talk when dealing with Western elites, advocating integration and dialogue. Yet the plans of the two movements, two different faces of the same coin, are eerily similar. Abu Qatada, al Qaeda’s “ambassador” to Europe was clear about the mujaheddins’ goal: “Muslims’ target is the West. We will split Rome open. The destruction must be carried out by sword. Those who will destroy Rome are already preparing the swords. Rome will not be conquered with the word but with the force of arms.” This is how Qaradawi sees the same issue: “Islam will return to Europe as a conqueror and victor, after being expelled from it twice…I maintain that the conquest this time will not be by the sword but by preaching and ideology.” Different methods, but same goal. Are we sure the U.S. government should use the Brothers as partners in the dialogue with the Muslim world?
By Lorenzo Vidino on April 30, 2006 10:25 PM
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Britain’s Sharia Courts
By Kathy Shaidle
FrontPageMagazine.com | Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Muslim Sharia courts have been operating throughout England for more than a year. This startling fact came as news to not a few UK residents when the Sunday Times broke the story last week. Officially called “arbitration tribunals,” these courts already have ruled on over 100 cases, including divorces, financial disputes and domestic violence cases – even though the latter is a criminal and not a civil matter. As such, they represent a worrying advance for Islamic law into the heart of Europe.
According to the Times, the rulings of these courts are now legally binding. Previously, their judgments could not be enforced unless all parties involved agreed to abide by them. As of August 2007, however, “[r]ulings issued by a network of five Sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court.” To match their growing authority, the courts themselves are proliferating: Two more Sharia courts are planned for Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Those who monitor the spread of radical Islam throughout the Western world were quick to take note. Robert Spencer warned, “Britain will come to regret this, but whether or not it will before it's too late is an open question.” Author Melanie Philips, while cautioning against undue alarmism, observed that, “Sharia law is not compatible with English law or the principles of equality and human rights that it embodies. The result – regardless of the fact that this is not, as the Sunday Times claimed, anything new – is that Britain is allowing the development of a de facto parallel legal system in Britain, thus destroying our society's cardinal principle of one law for all.”
How did it come to this? Sheikh Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siddiqi, whose Muslim Arbitration Tribunal runs these courts, told the Times that he and other Sharia supporters were simply exploiting a legal loophole: “We realized that under the Arbitration Act [1996] we can make rulings which can be enforced by county and high courts. The act allows disputes to be resolved using alternatives like tribunals.” Indeed, Jewish Beth Din courts have operated in UK for more than a century. “If the Jewish courts are allowed to flourish,” insisted Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain, “so must the Sharia ones.”
This plausible-sounding defense is in fact specious. As Robert Spencer points out, “Jewish courts do not rule on the basis of a law that Jews are laboring to impose upon the whole of British society. Sharia courts are.” Therein lies a crucial distinction, and one that Sharia advocates fail to mention.
Sheikh Siddiqi and Bunglawala may have been inspired on by the example of some Canadian Muslims. Back in 2004, Muslims in the province of Ontario also used the existence of long-standing provincial Catholic and Jewish arbitration tribunals to campaign for the establishment of Sharia courts. When some expressed concern, Sharia supporters accused their critics of “Islamophobia” and paranoia. Undaunted, one intrepid reporter took the time to visit the website of the pro-Sharia Canadian Society of Muslims. What he found there was chilling.
“As Canadian Muslims, you have a clear choice,” wrote the group’s president Syed Mumtaz Ali. “Do you want to govern yourself by the personal law of your own religion or do you prefer governance by secular Canadian family law? If you choose the latter, then you cannot claim that you believe in Islam as a religion and a complete code of life actualized by a prophet who you believe to be a mercy to all.” The punishment for apostasy under Sharia law is death.
Eventually, Ontario’s Liberal Premier Dalton McGinty responded to the controversy – which included anti-Sharia protests in London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dusseldorf, and local protests by Canadian Muslim feminists -- with a decidedly un-Solomonic gesture: he shut down all religious tribunals, even though Catholic and Jewish arbitration had operated without controversy for generations.
(Interestingly, two vocal Canadian Sharia law proponents, Syed Soharwardy and Mohammed Elmasry, went on to sue publisher Ezra Levant and author Mark Steyn, respectively, for “Islamophobia” using Canada’s Sharia-like Human Rights Tribunals. As well, Elmasry recently endorsed the socialist New Democratic Party (NDP) in the upcoming federal election. It was a former NDP attorney general who first proposed bringing Sharia to Ontario.)
The “Labor government has colluded with extremist Muslims” before, wrote A. Millar in the Brussels Journal, “Ken Livingstone, the former Left-wing Mayor of London, has openly embraced Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a man who believes that wives can be beaten into submission, that homosexuals should be executed, and pregnant Israeli women should be murdered.”
Earlier this year, Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams shrugged that the formal adoption of Sharia law “seemed unavoidable” given Britain’s ever-growing Muslim immigrant population. Shortly thereafter, Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips endorsed the use Islamic courts to deal with family, marital and financial disputes. Thus was the path for the mainstreaming of Sharia cleared by left-leaning members of Britain’s political and religious establishment.
Among the many troubling issues raised by this new parallel Muslim justice system is the fact that Sharia law doesn’t not recognize the equality of men and women. Sheik Siddiqi admitted as much to the Sunday Times when he conceded that “the courts can favor men.” The Times reported that already, “in the six cases of domestic violence, Siddiqi said the judges ordered the husbands to take anger management classes and mentoring from community elders. There was no further punishment.” Each woman subsequently withdrew the complaints they had lodged with the police, who then called off their criminal investigations. For his part, Siddiqi viewed these outcomes as a triumph because “marriages were saved and couples given a second chance.” Similarly, in a recent inheritance dispute heard before a UK Sharia court, a Muslim father’s estate was split unevenly, in compliance with Sharia law: each son received twice as much as each daughter.
Violent crimes, too, have fallen under the purview of Sharia courts. Last month, the Evening Standard revealed that “a teenage stabbing case among the Somali community in Woolwich had been dealt with by a Sharia ‘trial’” instead of by the secular justice system. Incredibly, after the victims told police that “the matter would be settled out of court,” officers released the suspects in the violent attack on bail.
Perhaps most disturbing of all is Patrick Sookhdeo’s assertion in his book, Faith, Power and Territory: A Handbook of British Islam, that the “Sharia Council of the Darul Uloom London even appears to assume the possibility of child marriages, as there are instructions on its website for how to deal with the divorce of a girl who has not yet reached puberty.”
Surveying these developments, it seems that Britain has failed to heed the warnings of a 2005 study on “Islam and World Domination” by the U.K.’s Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity, which monitors the advance of Sharia in England. Back then, said the ISIC, Sharia was “already practiced unofficially.” The institute warned that, “Muslims find it difficult to assume minority status in a majority non-Muslim society. More than other minority communities, they constantly, sometimes subconsciously, strive to redress the balance and assume an expanding and dominant position in their host countries.”
That conclusion may have been dismissed as unfounded speculation in 2005. But with Sharia courts growing in stature, the verdict is decidedly in.
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Yet.
Finally we agree. You were wrong. British Law does not condone domestic violence. And I hope it never does.
"Yet" it may change one day; bring the subject up again if you wish; however for the present, unless laws are legally changed in England such violence is not legally condoned. As a side note, all of your articles you continue to quote pertain to Civil Law; not Criminal. It is my understanding that you are in Law Enforcement so you clearly know the difference. Civil Law does allow voluntary binding arbitration; frankly it is encouraged. And, Civil Law permits a greater deal of latitude by the Judge. Even in America for example, Family Law is very subjective changing from Judge to Judge and from region, i.e. California to let's say down South. Good or bad, I don't know, but it seems to work just fine.
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According to the last article I posted above, the sharia courts have already addressed domestic violence cases. Just wait and see what happens.
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JDN:
Now that GM has acknowledged your point, is there anything in what he has posted that you wish to acknowledge?
"Marc, i am not defending Islam's treatment of women; I unequivocally do not approve. But then I do not approve of truly terrible treatment of women in Africa, some places in Asia, and also, I find appalling the amount of domestic violence in this country. No one is immune. For example, among those sworn to protect us, domestic violence among police officers is 2 to 4 times the national average and many incidents do not even get reported. I was raised that you simply do not/ever strike a woman; period."
Two points here:
1) In the comparisons you mention, violence against women is not specifically called for/permitted by God.
2) There is GM's larger point wherein these sharia courts are specifically part of a larger cause to establish Sharia and Islam for all.
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Reason had a piece about this yesterday. I've taken the liberty of bolding a germane point:
Sharia Invades Britain, Cultural Relativists Quietly Pack Their Bags
Mike Riggs | September 16, 2008, 3:19pm
First, the big news:
Islamic law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.
The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.
Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court....
Under the act, the sharia courts are classified as arbitration tribunals. The rulings of arbitration tribunals are binding in law, provided that both parties in the dispute agree to give it the power to rule on their case.
Next, some thoughtful analysis from the students at the GW Patriot blog:
[T]he act in question--sanctioning Muslim Sharia courts to serve as officially-recognized arbiters in British civil cases--shouldn't be so repugnant to thinking people. As liberals (and, in global terms, all of us here at the Patriot are liberal), we ought only to worry whether these courts are really as "voluntary" as they claim to be, which are similar to the Beth Din courts that decide civil cases between consenting Jews. We might find Sharia law itself repugnant, but the degree of cultural relativism inherent in liberal political institutions is there for a good reason. If we don't like it, we don't have to consent.
It's an open question just how voluntary these sorts of arrangements really can be. The possibility that participation in these courts could be coerced is there, which is worrisome enough to justify significant state oversight. That is not sufficient reason, though, to dismantle the courts entirely. We have to swallow our principles here and admit that--since we allow people to make self-harming decisions elsewhere all the time--it would make sense only to a xenophobe to stop at sanctioning a Sharia arbitration court.
Critics should examine not just the voluntary aspect of sharia, but also its fairness. How many Muslim women will be coerced by their fathers and husbands into submitting to sharia instead of taking their chances with the British court system? And how many of them, as a result of this cultural insulation, will end up being punished for—or as a result of—their gender? Anecdotal evidence suggests quite a few women will end up worse off under sharia:
There are concerns that women who agree to go to tribunal courts are getting worse deals because Islamic law favours men.
Siddiqi said that in a recent inheritance dispute handled by the court in Nuneaton, the estate of a Midlands man was divided between three daughters and two sons.
The judges on the panel gave the sons twice as much as the daughters, in accordance with sharia. Had the family gone to a normal British court, the daughters would have got equal amounts.
Almost as disturbing as the people who advocate for sharia on principle are the people who ask why the Jews get special treatment and the Muslims don't. Where are the advocates for dissolving both Beth Din and Sharia?
Bruce Bawer saw this coming, and said as much three years ago in reason.
Addendum: The astute Jesse Walker brought this H&R post to my attention, as well as this defense of alternative forms of arbitration. Despite his seductive intellectual prowess, I maintain my disdain for sharia.
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/128823.html
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GM: As established over and over ad nauseam, Sharia Courts are CIVIL COURTS; that is the basis and foundation for this whole discussion. Given that they are Civil Courts, yet not really even a "Court", but rather a VOLUNTARY (both parties must agree) binding place of arbitration, it has no basis or relevancy to the criminal system or English Criminal Law. In your example above "the women withdrew the complaints they had lodged with the Police, who then called off the criminal investigation." In similar matters, it's the SAME in America; no complaint, usually no investigation or charge. Yet IF the women had chosen to pursue CRIMINAL CHARGES, the Police would have finished their investigation and the Prosecutor, both here and in England, would bring CRIMINAL charges IF appropriate. Their decision to bring charges and the severity of the punishment thereafter, if appropriate, would have NOTHING to do with the decision of the Sharia Court or any other Voluntary Arbitration or Civil Proceeding.
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GM: As established over and over ad nauseam, Sharia Courts are CIVIL COURTS; that is the basis and foundation for this whole discussion. Given that they are Civil Courts, yet not really even a "Court", but rather a VOLUNTARY (both parties must agree) binding place of arbitration, it has no basis or relevancy to the criminal system or English Criminal Law. In your example above "the women withdrew the complaints they had lodged with the Police, who then called off the criminal investigation." In similar matters, it's the SAME in America; no complaint, usually no investigation or charge. Yet IF the women had chosen to pursue CRIMINAL CHARGES, the Police would have finished their investigation and the Prosecutor, both here and in England, would bring CRIMINAL charges IF appropriate. Their decision to bring charges and the severity of the punishment thereafter, if appropriate, would have NOTHING to do with the decision of the Sharia Court or any other Voluntary Arbitration or Civil Proceeding.
It varies from state to state, I can tell you that my state has very strict laws regarding domestic violence. The state, not the victim pursues charges related to domestic violence. My state statute requires that any time a peace officer finds there is probable cause to believe that dv has occurred, he/she SHALL make a custodial arrest. Failure to do so is official misconduct. If a peace officer in my state were convicted of official misconduct, kiss your career in law enforcement bye-bye.
So, what's the endgame? If it's just civil arbitration, why push sharia courts?
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Once again I acknowledge the logic of your point and once again I invite you to address the underlying question about sharia being the camel's nose inside the tent for something seditious.
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It's the slow motion, semi-peaceful conquest of europe. Already, there are places in western europe where jews must hide their jewishness and non-muslim women must wear the hijab just to walk through their neighborhoods in peace. Just wait to see what the future brings.
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Jewish Life in an Increasingly Muslim Europe
by Daniel Pipes
Sat, 31 Jan 2004
updated Sun, 27 Jul 2008
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2004/01/jewish-life-in-an-increasingly-muslim-europe.html
In a caustic piece last month titled "A French Lesson for Tom Harkin," I noted that due to the hostility coming from the Muslim population of France, nearly half of the country's sizeable Jewish population is considering emigration. In this space, I shall provide occasional updates, in reverse chronological order, on the reasons why Jews of Europe, having survived the Holocaust, again worry about their future.
__________
"The 19th arrondissement of Paris has become a war zone between Jews and North Africans": Tiberge writes in the Brussels Journal about the most recent flare-up of Parisian violence on June 21: "A 17-year old Jewish boy suffered several broken ribs and skull fractures during a violent assault by Mulsim youths. The boy was hospitalized in an unconscious state at Cochin Hospital where he is currently being kept in an artificial coma. The boy, who was wearing a kippa, was walking on Rue Petit, in the 19th, when he came upon a group of 30 young persons of African origin who insulted him before beating him. Five minors were arrested, said a police source, but they have not been identified by witnesses. According to the police, the assault must be put into the context of "brawls" between groups of young Jews and North Africans. One such brawl is said to have occurred just before the beating." (June 24, 2008)
"Jews fleeing Paris suburbs for ‘ghettos' where life is safer": Devorah Lauter writes for JTA that in a period of just three years, roughly half the Jewish families in Villepinte, working-class suburb north of Paris, 150 out of 300, have left due to anti-Semitism, fleeing to other suburbs, Paris neighborhoods considered safer for Jews, or out of France entirely. Symbolic of this flight, Villepinte's 40-year-old synagogue, already torched in 1991 and 2001, might close because it often lacks a minyan. "By the next generation there will be practically no more Jews in the northern Paris periphery," says Maurice Robert Fellous, the president of the Jewish community in Noisy-le-Sec, a northern Paris suburb. More broadly, more than 16,000 Jews, or roughly two-thirds of the mostly Sephardic Jews who once lived in the Seine-Saint-Denis region have left due to the surge of anti-Semitism in the period 2000-05.
As the Jews move tighter together, observes University of Paris sociologist Shmuel Trigano, a self-ghettoization is taking place. "It is a general shift, not a passing crisis. The Jewish community is becoming a ghetto. It is no longer a community of choice but a community of necessity. In a democracy that shouldn't happen."
Many Sephardic families compare this migration and their families' escape from North Africa in the 1960s. "They chased us from Algeria and they followed us here," Robert Sebbane, 81, of Creteil. In 2000, "we were shocked because we didn't think this would happen here." (March 12, 2008)
Dov Hikind, New York State Assemblyman.
American politician urges special refugee status to European Jews: Dov Hikind, a Democrat who represents Boro Park in the New York State Assembly, characterized anti-Semitic incidents in Europe as "staggering," said anti-Semitism has made life intolerable for Jews in England, France, Germany, and Belgium, and called on President George W. Bush to grant Western European Jews special refugee status. (Dec. 4, 2007)
French woman attacked for wearing Star of David: An unnamed French woman, 22, reported that two youths of Middle Eastern origin snatched her Star of David necklace at an underground train station in Marseille, lifted her shirt, drew a swastika on her stomach, and then fled. (Apr. 26, 2007)
Belgian Jewish group attacked by Turks: Sixty or so teenage Hasidic Jews from Antwerp, out on a trip, were attacked on Nov. 30 in the town of Beringen. The MSM ignored the incident for three days. The blog "Islam in Europe" has stitched together this account:
The incident started when a group of Orthodox Jewish kids ages 13-15 came with several adult escorts to the town in order to spend the weekend. The kids had spent the day having fun and had come to Beringen to sleep over at a youth hostel [in a largely Muslim neighborhood, adds the JTA]. Once the kids stepped out of the buses, they were immediately attacked by a group of Turks who threw stones at them and yelled anti-Semitic slurs. The Jewish kids took cover in an inner corridor of the youth hostel. The Turks threw stones and concrete blocks, breaking dozens of windows in various buildings. Glass and stone fragments littered the floor and beds.
The police showed up but the violence continued for about another hour. Even after police managed to get things under control, the Turkish youth kept hanging round the building. The police informed the organizers of the trip that they could not guarantee the safety of the children and at that the organizers decided to cut short the trip and the group returned to Antwerp [accompanied to the highway by a police escort, adds the JTA]. Ten people were arrested later on, among them six minors and four adults.
(Dec. 5, 2006)
Norwegian Jews warned to lie low: After a man wearing a yarmulke was assaulted on an Oslo street on July 22, the Jewish communal body in Norway, called the Mosaic Religious Community, issued an advisory urging Jews to be discreet. "We have encouraged our members to avoid speaking Hebrew loudly on the street," Anne Sender told the newspaper Vårt Land. To Norwegian Broadcasting she suggested that men reconsider wearing a yarmulke. Despire these warnings, Sender stressed that "the situation for Jews in Norway is better than it has been for a long time." (July 20, 2006)
Murder of a Parisian Jew: Ilam Halimi, 23, was a mobile-telephone store clerk who was lured by an Iranian woman, then abducted, tortured, and murdered by a Muslim gang over a 24-day period. (February 2006)
Denmark's "Jewish" cookies.
Denmark's offensive Jewish cookies: It's a small thing in the greater scheme of things, but indicative of three trends. First, Danish Muslims are refusing to buy or eat a cinnamon and hazelnut confection known as the "Jewish cookie" because they don't like the name, reports Yigal Romm in the European Jewish Press. Second, Ole Poulsen, the head of something called the "public food consumer department" noted that this boycott could effect sales, in which case, "we would be obliged to do something about it," i.e., change the product name. Third, noting that the "Jewish cookies" are popular in the pre-Christmas period and have nothing specifically Jewish about them, Denmark's chief rabbi, Bent Lexner, is easy with a change in name. "There is nothing Jewish in it and I wouldn't mind another name," though he does add that "it would be better to educate Muslims to respect the culture of the majority in Denmark, if they want the majority to respect their culture."
Comment: What Poulsen and Lexner both seem to miss here is the consequences of giving way to rank Muslim antisemitism. Winning this small cookie victory inevitably will lead to a push on larger issues. (Dec. 6, 2005)
Former chief rabbi: European Jewish history nearing its end. Israel's former chief rabbi, Meir Lau, yesterday predicted that European Jewish history is nearing its end for the slightly more than one million Jews now living in Europe. He warned that antisemitism is on the rise in nearly every European country and quoted survey data released in recent days indicating that 62 percent of Germans are tired of hearing about the Holocaust. "I see the end of the Diaspora of Jews in Europe. I call on the government to prepare for a new phase in the spiritual and physical absorption of European Jewry before they consider emigrating to the United States or Australia." (Dec. 3, 2004)
Denial of Antisemitism: It's horrible enough that Moshe Yitzchak Naeh, 26, a Hasidic Jew, synagogue sexton, and the father of four, was shot in the head and killed while walking down the street in Antwerp early in the morning on Nov. 18. The fact that Naeh was carrying a considerable sum of money (€1,400) which was not stolen, plus that he had no known criminal connections and was walking near a predominantly Muslim area all pointed to the crime being anti-Jewish in nature. That, however, is not what the Belgian authorities have concluded. "There are no signs that racism was involved," stated Dominique Reyniers, a spokeswoman for the Antwerp prosecutor's office. (Nov. 20, 2004)
French Government Re-authorizes a Terrorist Television Station: France's Higher Audiovisual Council (CSA) reached an agreement on Nov. 19 to permit Hizbollah's al-Manar TV to continue broadcasting throughout Europe using the French satellite operator Eutelsat. (The United States and Britain classify Hizbollah as a terrorist group.) This decision followed an attempt by the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France (CRIF) to have al-Manar's local operations shut down due to its drama "The Diaspora," depicting a Zionist plot to dominate the world. CSA called the "Diaspora" program "intolerable" but permitted al-Manar to go on operating if it agreed to a list of commitments to unbiased journalism. Al-Manar readily agreed to the list but also said it foresaw no changes following the agreement. CRIF president Roger Cuikerman responded to this agreement that "We French citizens are under attack as Jews by this television. The Republic should protect all its citizens and not give in to external pressures." (Nov. 20, 2004) Dec. 13, 2004 update: France's highest administrative court, the Council of State, today banned al-Manar from Eutelsat, a French satellite service, thereby becoming the first country partially to ban the station (it continues to be broadast on GlobeCast, another French satellite). Dec. 16, 2004 update: The New York Sun ascribes this decision to the efforts of Natan Sharansky.
Moving to Israel: The New York Times reports that "The Jewish Agency, the quasi-governmental body responsible for settling immigrants, reported a doubling in the number of French Jews who arrived last year and in 2002, to more than 2,000 each year, compared with about 1,000 a year in the previous three years. By contrast, worldwide immigration to Israel has sharply declined during the Arab-Israeli violence." (July 4, 2004)
Only Jewish student: Today's International Herald Tribune recounts how the only Jewish student in a French public school outside Paris with a large Muslim minority stopped eating and had nightmares due to the incessant insults and attacks against her, until she and her mother moved to the south of France, where the 13-year-old enrolled in a new school. (Feb. 10, 2004)
"Teacher told to drop Star of David": That's the headline in Norway's Aftenposten. Curiously, the teacher in question, Inge Telhaug is not a Jew but wears a 16-millimeter (0.6-inch) Magen David around his neck, usually under a T-shirt, as a religious symbol: "I see it as the oldest religious symbol we have in our culture, because without Judaism there would be no Christianity." But he was informed by Kjell Gislefoss, principal of the Kristiansand Adult Education Center, where he teaches immigrants about the Norwegian language and culture, that wearing the star could be deemed a provocation towards the many Muslim students at the school. "The Star of David would be a symbol for one side in what is perhaps the world's most inflamed conflict at the moment. Many [students] have a traumatic past that they have escaped and then we feel that if they are going to learn Norwegian then they can't sit and at the same time be reminded of the things they have traveled from." Telhaug refuses to acquiesce and has hired a lawyer. Heidi Hauge Uldal, head of the Education Association in Kristiansand, deemed the school's decision "unacceptable." (Feb. 5, 2004)
Death Chants: During a Belgium-Israel football game on January 28, 2004, reports Le Soir (Brussels), Muslim fans pulled out Hamas and Hezbollah flags, then cried out "Jews to the gas chamber!" "Death to Jews!" and "Strangle the Jews!" To make matters worse, a Belgian soccer player named Mustapha Toukouki, is said to have encouraged these chants. (Jan. 31, 2004)
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Sexual Amputation and Silence
By Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, December 02, 2004
The mutilation of Muslim girls’ genitals is on a steady rise throughout Europe.
Young girls born in Europe to immigrant Muslim families, mostly from Africa, are being assaulted with female genital mutilation (FGM).
No one, save a handful of courageous activists, is doing anything about it.
The Scotsman.com recently reported that Waris Dirie, the Somalia-born supermodel and best-selling author, who has campaigned to stop female genital mutilation (which disfigured her at age five in her homeland), has stated that approximately one out of every three African families in Europe is secretly perpetrating this crime against their daughters. Germany, the Netherlands and Austria are the main scenes of this barbarity -- where approximately 8,000 girls have been assaulted.
European authorities, with the exception of those in France, are benignly standing by, operating according to the progressive Party Line that disallows any criticism of Third World cultures in general -- and Islamic culture in particular. Police officers, social workers, teachers, doctors and nurses operate under the social obligation not to report this crime.
This sexual lobotomy of women is usually performed on girls at the age of seven or eight, right before their menstrual periods begin. The impulse behind this savagery is clear: the hatred of women and the terrifying fear of their sexuality. Demonizing female sexual desire and pleasure -- and annihilating it -- becomes the priority. To successfully achieve female genital mutilation, therefore, the mutilators have to legitimize and institutionalize it. As a result, they socially construct the pathological ideology that a girl’s genital area is “dirty” and, therefore, unacceptable. In Egypt, an uncircumcised girl is considered nigsa (unclean). The way she becomes non-nigsa is to have her clitoris sliced off. In Sudan, the term used for getting rid of the clitoris is tahur -- which means “cleansing” or “purification.”
Africa and Arabia are the regions where misogynists carry out the highest number of these “purifications.” Muslims serve as the principal religious group that bestows this cleansing gift unto women. In Egypt, 97 percent of girls are circumcised. Nawal el Saadawi, a leading Egyptian feminist and author, describes in her autobiography, The Hidden Face of Eve, how, at the age of six, this monstrosity was violently perpetrated against her -- while her mother stood by and smiled proudly.
While Egyptian girls’ clitorises are amputated (clitoridectomy), in countries like Sudan the purifiers are not so kind: all the women’s external genital organs are completely removed. In a crime against humanity called infibulation, the clitoris, the two major outer lips (labia majora) and the two minor inner lips (labia minora) are amputated.
Many of the “purified” victims lose their lives during this torture – which is often inflicted with broken glass. Most victims suffer from severe and chronic infections and pain for the rest of their lives. With serious and disabling lifelong consequences, the mutilation robs women of their equilibrium forever. It deprives them from enjoying the fullness of their sexuality and the completeness of their lives.
More than a hundred and thirty million women living today have been victimized by this horrifying crime, and more than two million girls are assaulted by it each year. In other words, we are talking about 6,000 girls every day -- 6,000 girls today.
In terms of sexual pleasure, we know that approximately 75 percent of women cannot achieve orgasm without clitoral stimulation. In other words, the possibility of orgasm has been obliterated for all of these millions of victims. And since the psychic, mental and physical health of women cannot be complete without sexual pleasure, it means that all of these millions of women as beings are mutilated.
Female genital mutilation is a holocaust.
But because most of the victims of this holocaust are women behind the Islamic Curtain, the world turns a blind eye. Since the Left moulds the West’s boundaries of permitted discourse, criticism of cultures -- and especially adversary cultures -- is taboo, unless, of course, it is criticism of American culture, then everything is fair game. Thus, harsh judgement of American culture is not only permissible but highly promoted, while the slightest criticism of Third World cultures represents a violation of the progressive Party Line.
To add to this tragedy: whenever the genital mutilation holocaust is raised, the first chorus that comes from the Muslim community is that this genocide is not rooted in Islam and predates Islam. Well then, why are Muslim girls this genocide's greatest victims? And why do so many Muslims spend more of their time and energy arguing that female genital mutilation is non-Islamic than campaigning to stop this “un-Islamic” barbaric practise from violating their women and defaming their religion?
The answer is simple: female genital mutilation produces the oxygen that Islamic fundamentalism needs to breathe. It helps militant Islam keep intact the foundation on which its life depends: the subjugation and enslavement of women under a rigid system of gender apartheid.
Thus, Islamic clerics and educators do everything in their power to keep this mutilation in place. No wonder the Eqyptian government’s efforts to protect little girls’ sacred body parts are crushed every time. Any hint of opposition to mutilation is consistently met with furious resistance from Islamic clerics, who fervently emphasize that female genital mutilation is Allah’s will and point to the Prophet’s sanctioning of female circumcision in the hadiths to prove it. Umdat al-Salik, e4.3, therefore, a manual of Shafi'i Islamic law, which is endorsed by Al-Azhar University of Cairo, Egypt (the oldest and most prestigious university in the Islamic world), states that circumcision is obligatory for both men and women.
The prominent Egyptian Sheikh Mustafa Al-Azhari is one of the heroes of the pro-mutilation movement. He has led the way by insisting, among other things, that the attempt to stop female genital mutilation is a Western conspiracy designed to spread promiscuity among Muslims. For him, the Egyptian media’s attempt to stop female circumcision is a “crime.” Surgical specialist at Al-Azhar University, Dr. Muhammad Rif'at Al-Bawwab, meanwhile, puts it more simply: the pleasure that women derive from the clitoris is simply just unnatural and abnormal -- and leads to moral degradation.
In terms of the free West, Muslim girls in Europe are not the only tortured victims of mutilation. The savage practise is also perpetrated right here on our continent. And what are North American Muslim leaders and clerics doing about it? What are we doing about it?
Many of our own political leaders and authorities are not doing anything about this silent holocaust because protecting Muslim girls from this sexual genocide would mean criticizing Islamic culture, which would mean the unimaginable: violating the liberal sacred cow of multiculturalism. The Left feels too good about itself and its tolerant ways to get off track by protecting innocent young girls’ genitals from mutilation.
Once again, therefore, the Left has succeeded in continuing its dark tradition of sacrificing human blood on the altar of utopian ideals. The 100 million human corpses socialism engendered in the 20th century were, apparently, not enough.
And so, one heart-wrenching and disquieting question remains: when the next Muslim girl, perhaps right next door to us, is forcibly held down and her genital area is attacked with a piece of broken glass, who will hear her cries?
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Once again I acknowledge the logic of your point and once again I invite you to address the underlying question about sharia being the camel's nose inside the tent for something seditious.
Sooo rather than "Crafty" am I to call you Solomon? :-D
GM: As established over and over ad nauseam, Sharia Courts are CIVIL COURTS; that is the basis and foundation for this whole discussion. Given that they are Civil Courts, yet not really even a "Court", but rather a VOLUNTARY (both parties must agree) binding place of arbitration, it has no basis or relevancy to the criminal system or English Criminal Law. In your example above "the women withdrew the complaints they had lodged with the Police, who then called off the criminal investigation." In similar matters, it's the SAME in America; no complaint, usually no investigation or charge. Yet IF the women had chosen to pursue CRIMINAL CHARGES, the Police would have finished their investigation and the Prosecutor, both here and in England, would bring CRIMINAL charges IF appropriate. Their decision to bring charges and the severity of the punishment thereafter, if appropriate, would have NOTHING to do with the decision of the Sharia Court or any other Voluntary Arbitration or Civil Proceeding.
It varies from state to state, I can tell you that my state has very strict laws regarding domestic violence. The state, not the victim pursues charges related to domestic violence. My state statute requires that any time a peace officer finds there is probable cause to believe that dv has occurred, he/she SHALL make a custodial arrest. Failure to do so is official misconduct. If a peace officer in my state were convicted of official misconduct, kiss your career in law enforcement bye-bye.
So, what's the endgame? If it's just civil arbitration, why push sharia courts?
Yes, I understand that here in the US, many states, CA included, are prone to arrest someone (the male) in matters of domestic violence. I don't necessarily agree and unfairly (perhaps on another forum?) the man is usually arrested regardless of fault. Actually, statistics show that men and women are equally at fault and often, the woman starts the physical violence.
That being said, even though one is arrested, a complaint must still be filed by the aggrieved party otherwise there is no case and resulting in the matter being quickly dismissed; the DA rarely will press charges. It is the similar in English Law; no complaint; case usually dismissed.
As for the "endgame", well perhaps it is an endgame and in 10-20 years they may push for criminal matters too. However, I doubt if they will succeed. English Law has been around for a long time and while Voluntary Binding Arbitration seems new, arbitration in general has also been around for a long time. They can and do work together. However, while I vociferously argued against your "criminal" law point, one should not negate the influence of Civil Matters on society. Further, while the cornerstone of arbitration is "voluntary" participation, you could I think argue persuasively that women in Muslim society are often "coerced" in to agreeing to "voluntary" binding arbitration. An end game that truly does subvert the legal process.
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Unfortunately, that end game is facilitated by the integrity of your position. Big Bummer that! Any thoughts on this?
@GM:
The piece you post is powerful. Before spreading it around, I find myself wondering about these numbers:
"More than a hundred and thirty million women living today have been victimized by this horrifying crime, and more than two million girls are assaulted by it each year. In other words, we are talking about 6,000 girls every day -- 6,000 girls today."
Lets see. 1.3 billion Muslims= 675,000,000 women.
130/675= approximately 20%. If we screen out girls too young for the amputation, the percentage is even higher.
This number seems questionably high to me. My understanding is that the clitorectomies tend to take place in Ethiopia, Somalia, Egypt, Yemen-- not through out the Muslim world-- though the larger point of the neuroses about women remains.
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**Here is the WHO's numbers. I notice they don't want to use the "I" word in their fact sheet. I saw another stat that had 97% of all Egyptian women were mutilated.**
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs241/en/print.html
Female genital mutilation
key facts
Female genital mutilation (FGM) includes procedures that intentionally alter or injure female genital organs for non-medical reasons.
An estimated 100 to 140 million girls and women worldwide are currently living with the consequences of FGM.
In Africa, about three million girls are at risk for FGM annually.
The procedure has no health benefits for girls and women.
Procedures can cause severe bleeding and problems urinating, and later, potential childbirth complications and newborn deaths.
It is mostly carried out on young girls sometime between infancy and age 15 years.
FGM is internationally recognized as a violation of the human rights of girls and women.
Female genital mutilation (FGM) comprises all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.
The practice is mostly carried out by traditional circumcisers, who often play other central roles in communities, such as attending childbirths. Increasingly, however, FGM is being performed by medically trained personnel.
FGM is recognized internationally as a violation of the human rights of girls and women. It reflects deep-rooted inequality between the sexes, and constitutes an extreme form of discrimination against women. It is nearly always carried out on minors and is a violation of the rights of children. The practice also violates a person's rights to health, security and physical integrity, the right to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and the right to life when the procedure results in death.
Procedures
Female genital mutilation is classified into four major types:
Clitoridectomy: partial or total removal of the clitoris (a small, sensitive and erectile part of the female genitals) and, rarely, the prepuce (the fold of skin surrounding the clitoris) as well.
Excision: partial or total removal of the clitoris and the labia minora, with or without excision of the labia majora (the labia are "the lips" that surround the vagina).
Infibulation: narrowing of the vaginal opening through the creation of a covering seal. The seal is formed by cutting and repositioning the inner, and sometimes outer, labia, with or without removal of the clitoris.
Other: all other harmful procedures to the female genitalia for non-medical purposes, e.g. pricking, piercing, incising, scraping and cauterizing the genital area.
Read more about types of procedures [pdf 3.35Mb]
Health consequences
FGM has no health benefits, and it harms girls and women in many ways. It involves removing and damaging healthy and normal female genital tissue, and interferes with the natural functions of girls' and women's bodies.
Immediate complications can include severe pain, shock, haemorrhage (bleeding), tetanus or sepsis (bacterial infection), urine retention, open sores in the genital region and injury to nearby genital tissue.
Long-term consequences can include:
recurrent bladder and urinary tract infections;
cysts;
infertility;
the need for later surgeries. For example, the FGM procedure that seals or narrows a vaginal opening (type 3 above) is surgically changed to allow for sexual intercourse and childbirth, and sometimes stitched close again afterwards;
an increased risk of childbirth complications and newborn deaths.
Who is at risk?
Procedures are mostly carried out on young girls sometime between infancy and age 15, and occasionally on adult women. In Africa, about three million girls are at risk for FGM annually.
Between 100 to 140 million girls and women worldwide are living with the consequences of FGM. In Africa, about 92 million girls age 10 years and above are estimated to have undergone FGM.
The practice is most common in the western, eastern, and north-eastern regions of Africa, in some countries in Asia and the Middle East, and among certain immigrant communities in North America and Europe.
Causes
The causes of female genital mutilation include a mix of cultural, religious and social factors within families and communities.
Where FGM is a social convention, the social pressure to conform to what others do and have been doing is a strong motivation to perpetuate the practice.
FGM is often considered a necessary part of raising a girl properly, and a way to prepare her for adulthood and marriage.
FGM is often motivated by beliefs about what is considered proper sexual behaviour, linking procedures to premarital virginity and marital fidelity. FGM is believed by some to reduce a woman's libido and help her resist "illicit" sexual acts. When a vaginal opening is covered or narrowed (type 3 above), for example, a woman is physically hindered from premarital sex. Afterwards, a painful procedure is needed to reopen the closure to enable sexual intercourse.
FGM is associated with cultural ideals of femininity and modesty, which include the notion that girls are “clean” and "beautiful" after removal of body parts that are considered "male" or "unclean".
Though no religious scripts prescribe the practice, practitioners often believe the practice has religious support.
Religious leaders take varying positions with regard to FGM: some promote it, some consider it irrelevant to religion, and others contribute to its elimination.
Local structures of power and authority, such as community leaders, religious leaders, circumcisers, and even some medical personnel can contribute to upholding the practice.
In most societies, FGM is considered a cultural tradition, which is often used as an argument for its continuation.
In some societies, recent adoption of the practice is linked to copying the traditions of neighbouring groups. Sometimes it has started as part of a wider religious or traditional revival movement.
In some societies, FGM is being practised by new groups when they move into areas where the local population practice FGM.
International response
In 1997, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a joint statement with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) against the practice of FGM. A new statement, with wider United Nations support, was then issued in February 2008 to support increased advocacy for the abandonment of FGM.
The 2008 statement documents new evidence collected over the past decade about the practice. It highlights the increased recognition of the human rights and legal dimensions of the problem and provides current data on the frequency and scope of FGM. It also summarizes research about why FGM continues, how to stop it, and its damaging effects on the health of women, girls and newborn babies.
Since 1997, great efforts have been made to counteract FGM, through research, work within communities, and changes in public policy. Progress at both international and local levels includes:
wider international involvement to stop FGM;
the development of international monitoring bodies and resolutions that condemn the practice;
revised legal frameworks and growing political support to end FGM; and
in some countries, decreasing practice of FGM, and an increasing number of women and men in practising communities who declare their support to end it.
Research shows that, if practising communities themselves decide to abandon FGM, the practice can be eliminated very rapidly.
WHO response
WHO efforts to eliminate female genital mutilation focus on:
advocacy: developing publications and advocacy tools for international, regional and local efforts to end FGM within a generation;
research: generating knowledge about the causes and consequences of the practice, how to eliminate it, and how to care for those who have experienced FGM;
guidance for health systems: developing training materials and guidelines for health professionals to help them treat and counsel women who have undergone procedures.
WHO is particularly concerned about the increasing trend for medically trained personnel to perform FGM. WHO strongly urges health professionals not to perform such procedures.
For more information contact:
WHO Media centre
Telephone: +41 22 791 2222
Email: mediainquiries@who.int
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This doesn't quite belong belong her but it relates. Unfortunately some woman get a raw deal under Jewish law as well though nothing compared to Islam (no gender mutilation and honor killing :cry:)
A man must give his wife a get a writ of divorce and if he doesn't she can't remarry under Jewish Law. If she remarries under civil law without getting a Jewish divorce her children are considered illegitimate until the 10th generation and only allowed to marry others like them or converts. If a man remarries this is not true.
Men have been know to extort money and unfavorable custody rights. Also some Rabbis have sent women back to their husbands even in cases of domestic violence
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2001/aug/14/religion.world
I certainly would not want to be denied the right to marry and to G-d forbid divorce under Jewish Law but it is a difficult situation.
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Actually Rachel, I think it is quite relevant; in many societies "women get the raw deal" not just under Islam.
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[quote author=Crafty_Dog link=topic=977.msg21143#msg21143 date=1221687272
@GM:
The piece you post is powerful. Before spreading it around, I find myself wondering about these numbers:
"More than a hundred and thirty million women living today have been victimized by this horrifying crime, and more than two million girls are assaulted by it each year. In other words, we are talking about 6,000 girls every day -- 6,000 girls today."
Lets see. 1.3 billion Muslims= 675,000,000 women.
130/675= approximately 20%. If we screen out girls too young for the amputation, the percentage is even higher.
This number seems questionably high to me. My understanding is that the clitorectomies tend to take place in Ethiopia, Somalia, Egypt, Yemen-- not through out the Muslim world-- though the larger point of the neuroses about women remains.
[/quote]
Crafty, you are right to question these numbers. FMG is primarily an African problem; few examples exist anywhere else in the Middle East. And according to UNICEF it is not an Islamic problem, but one of poverty and ignorance. UNICEF found "no evidence of FMG in the middle east". While I always doubt absolute numbers, the tradition predates Islam and primarily is centered in Africa; I am not saying examples do not exist, but the problem is not prevalent (rarely exists?) in the US or Europe among Muslims or even in the Middle East. Yet FMG is a terrible problem. But ignorance and tradition is the problem. IF you have AIDS, but sleep with a virgin in Africa, you are cured??? hmmm No, you just simply spread the AIDS problem.... It's not Islam's fault, but simply ignorance. Sometimes I think on this forum we blame Islam for every little problem in society today; better to look around us or simply just look in the mirror.
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You had me, until this:
"Sometimes I think on this forum we blame Islam for every little problem in society today".
Examples please?
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http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP148307
Special Dispatch Series - No. 1483
March 1, 2007 No. 1483
Al-Azhar University Scholars Argue over the Legitimacy of Female Circumcision Practiced in Egypt on Al-Arabiya TV
The following are excerpts from a TV debate between Egyptian Al-Azhar University scholars Sheikh Muhammad Al-Mussayar [1] and Sheikh Mahmoud Ashur, who is a member of Al-Azhar's Islamic ResearchAcademy (or Islamic Research Council) on the issue of female circumcision. The debate aired on Al-Arabiya TV on February 12, 2007.
TO VIEW THIS CLIP: http://www.memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=1392
Mahmoud Ashur: "Female circumcision is a traditional custom, and not a religious act. All the hadiths dealing with female circumcision are unreliable. Moreover, the hadith cited by those who support circumcision calls to refrain from it more than it calls to perform it.
[...]
"Female circumcision is not part of Islam. Rather, it is a traditional custom. Under no circumstances should we follow this custom, because it leaves a deep wound in the souls of these girls, which has a psychological, emotional, and social impact on their lives. Female circumcision does a lot of damage. This damage is harmful, and it shatters the girl's soul. Therefore, it is absolutely forbidden to perform this custom. No person should do this, because it is harmful and causes damage.
[...]
"This is a despicable, ugly, and evil custom. It is performed by a woman who uses inappropriate and non-sterile instruments. She may be passing on to the girl a terrible disease, or causing her a wound that never heals, because the person who performs this custom lacks expertise and experience, and does not know how to sterilize the instruments, and therefore she inflicts terrible diseases upon the girls."
[...]
Muhammad Al-Mussayar: "All the jurisprudents, since the advent of Islam and for 14 centuries or more, are in consensus that female circumcision is permitted by Islam. But they were divided with regard to its status in shari'a. Some said that female circumcision is required by shari'a, just like male circumcision. Some said this is the mainstream practice, while others said it is a noble act. But throughout the history of Islam, nobody has ever said that performing female circumcision is a crime. There has been a religious ruling on this for 14 centuries."
[...]
Mahmoud Ashur: "In the days of Jahiliya [i.e. the pre-Islamic period] and in the early days of Islam, a man whose mother carried out this custom was scorned by people who called him 'you son of a clitoris cutter.' This proves that it was never part of the religion of Islam. As for male circumcision, it is the approved mainstream practice, as determined by Islam and as instructed by the Prophet Muhammad."
[...]
"There is no doubt that we must reach agreement on this issue. There must be a decisive view and a resolute decision on this custom especially, because it is evil. When people perform it, they do so out of extreme ignorance, and it has a severe impact on marital life."
[...]
Muhammad Al-Mussayar: "First of all, there are reliable hadiths in Al-Bukhari and Al-Muslim which support female circumcision. The Prophet Muhammad said: 'If a circumcised woman and man have intercourse, they must undergo ablution.' Unreliable hadiths do not cancel out the reliable ones. We have unreliable hadiths regarding prayer, fasting, charity, and pilgrimage. Should we abolish prayer and charity just because some hadiths are unreliable? According to some hadiths in Al-Bukhari and Al-Muslim, 'If a circumcised woman and man have intercourse, they must undergo ablution.' People would curse one another by saying: 'You son of a clit woman' - the son of a non-circumcised woman. The objections to circumcision are illogical and unnatural.
Interviewer: What is the justification for doing this?"
Muhammad Al-Mussayar: "First of all, allow me... Regarding the claim that the instruments are not sterile - this is the reality and is not part of religious law. If there are dentists who do not sterilize their instruments, should we abolish medical faculties and dental clinics, or should we demand that they rectify the situation? Flawed reality cannot serve as a religious argument. The claim that female circumcision leads to barrenness is not true. The Muslim woman bears more children than any other woman. It is the Western woman who is barren, even though she is not circumcised. Moreover, when talking about nervous breakdowns... This is considered a day of celebration for the family."
Interviewer: "A day of celebration for the family?! Let me begin with the psychological effects. According to some studies, when there is a celebration, and sweets are given to the girl, and then an act is performed in which the girl's flesh is cut off... this makes her lose trust in her family, first of all. This generates an inner problem. As for the medical, physical problem, there is a problem in childbirth. There are lacerations, microbes, deformities - this is what the doctors say."
Muhammad Al-Mussayar: "Sterilization is necessary in such cases. Cutting off a part of the human body does not mean a violation of its sanctity. How many human body parts are cut off in plastic surgery, and so on, yet we do not consider this offensive to the woman?"
Interviewer: "What is the reason for circumcising girls?"
Muhammad Al-Mussayar: "First of all, the claim that this is a Pharaonic or Jahili practice..."
Interviewer: "Let's assume that this is a religious requirement..."
Muhammad Al-Mussayar: "It isn't..."
Interviewer: "Nevertheless, hypothetically speaking, what is the main reason for this?"
Muhammad Al-Mussayar: "Some sources said: 'Reduce, but do not remove.' In other words, it is neither about removing the organ, nor about leaving it. It is a trustworthy Muslim doctor who makes the decision. She decides whether the girl needs it or not. We do not obligate every girl to undergo circumcision. We say it should be left up to the doctor, and she can evaluate the case and determine whether the girl needs circumcision or not."
Interviewer: "Why would she need it? Sheikh Mahmoud Ashur, would you like to comment? What are the reasons that one could say... Go ahead..."
Mahmoud Ashur: "If it is left up to the doctor, then it is a custom and not part of the religion."
[...]
Muhammad Al-Mussayar: "Female circumcision is no less valid just because it was practiced in Pharaonic times and in the Jahiliya. Islam accepted some customs, which were harmonious with human nature, and rejected others, which contradicted human nature."
[...]
Interviewer: "Some studies show that the upbringing at home is the main thing, and that 95% of all prostitutes [in Egypt] are circumcised."
Muhammad Al-Mussayar: "And 100% of the prostitutes in the West are not circumcised, so what is the problem?"
[1] For more on Muhammad Al-Mussayar, see MEMRI TV Clip No. 183, "Al-Azhar Sheikh Al-Mussayar: Instead of Merely Defending Islam, Muslims Must Confront Non-Muslims," July 12, 2004, http://www.memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=183 , and MEMRI TV Clip No. 102, "Al-Azhar Sheikh Muhammad Al-Mussayyer on Wife Beating in Islam," June 7, 2004, http://www.memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=102 .
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JDN,
When are you flying off to Al-Azhar university to lecture those islamic theologians on the un-islamic nature of female genital mutilation?
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JDN,
When are you flying off to Al-Azhar university to lecture those islamic theologians on the un-islamic nature of female genital mutilation?
Gosh, did I miss a day of geography class? To be fair, it's been a while. But, I mean, isn't Al=Azhar University still in Africa????? Or did it move and I missed it?
Wasn't I (I'm sorry I mean WHO and UNICEF) clear enough in my post above that this is an "African problem", a terrible problem, but it is not necessarily an Islamic problem and rarely does it appear
among practicing Muslims in the Middle East or Europe or the US? To answer your question, No, I don't plan on going to Al-Azhar in Africa, or Ethiopia, or Somalia, or Yemen,
or ...... or any other place in Africa and lecture on female genital mutilation.
-
Do you know the importance of the Al Bukhari and Sahih Muslim ahadith in sunni theology?
-
JDN,
When are you flying off to Al-Azhar university to lecture those islamic theologians on the un-islamic nature of female genital mutilation?
Gosh, did I miss a day of geography class? To be fair, it's been a while. But, I mean, isn't Al=Azhar University still in Africa????? Or did it move and I missed it?
Wasn't I (I'm sorry I mean WHO and UNICEF) clear enough in my post above that this is an "African problem", a terrible problem, but it is not necessarily an Islamic problem and rarely does it appear
among practicing Muslims in the Middle East or Europe or the US? To answer your question, No, I don't plan on going to Al-Azhar in Africa, or Ethiopia, or Somalia, or Yemen,
or ...... or any other place in Africa and lecture on female genital mutilation.
**A perfect example of your utter ignorance on this topic.**
http://www.sunnah.org/history/Scholars/mashaykh_azhar.htm
Al-Azhar is the world's oldest university, older than Cambridge or Oxford. Situated at the heart of Cairo, Egypt's capital, Al-Azhar has been the greatest learning centre for Muslims since it was first built by the Fatimid dynasty in the 10th century AD.
The Fatimids were of Shiah belief. They erected Al-Azhar as an institution to propagate the teachings of the Isma'iliya madhhab. When the Ayyubids took over Egypt, they turned Al-Azhar into a school that taught the Sunni understanding of Islam.
Rich in tradition and knowledge, Al-Azhar had produced brilliant ulama throughout history. Examples of Imam Suyuti, Imam Ibn Hajar 'Asqalani and Imam Ibn Hajar Al-Haitami bejeweled its glorious past. Contemporary ulama produced by this university include Shaykh Ghazali and Shaykh Sha`rawi. With thousands of others, these giants of Islamic knowledge became the symbol of Al-Azhar supreme position among Muslims, something unrivalled thus far.
Today, Al-Azhar is not just a university, but an institution that vanguard the teachings of Sunni Islam, and an umbrella body to which thousands of ulama affiliate themselves with. The Head of Al-Azhar, called the Grand Imam (Imamul Akbar Shaykhul Azhar), was previously appointed by a committee of Azharian top scholars (shuyukh). But now it is under the appointment from the Egyptian President from the advice of the committee. Recently however, the Egyptian government is getting inclined to leave the matter of appointment purely in the hands of the Azharian ulama.
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http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP127406
Special Dispatch Series - No. 1274
August 31, 2006 No. 1274
Saudi Historian: Muslim Student Organizations in U.K. are Rife With Extremism, Xenophobia, and Discrimination Against Women
On August 21, 2006, the online Saudi daily Al-Iqtisadiyya published an article by Saudi university lecturer Dr. Hatoon Ajwad Al-Fassi titled "The Extremism of the Muslims in the West and Our Responsibility." In it, she wondered how it could be that the Muslim students on U.K. university campuses conduct, along with the usual student activity, Islamic activity that is rife with racism, separatism, extremism, and discrimination against women.
The following are excerpts from the article: [1]
"Manchester... was Jam-Packed With Young British-Asian Muslims Who Realized That Education was the Way to Fight... Marginalization"
"... In my previous article, I wrote about the elements of the identity of the Muslim community [in the U.K.], that range from British racism and socio-politico-economic marginalization [of the Muslims], to the winds of [Muslim] extremism that have reached from the [Arab] deserts to the island [of Britain] and begun [to sweep over] the Muslim youth that is in constant search of its self.
"In the 1990s Manchester was - and still is - jam-packed with young British-Asian Muslims who realized that education was the way to fight this marginalization, and we began to see them in not insignificant numbers at Manchester's four universities. Furthermore, [the Muslims] maintained a strong presence [at these universities] by establishing Islamic associations under the [general] students' unions at each of the universities. This enabled them to hold many Islamic, humanitarian, and social activities, such as breaking the fast [i.e. banquets] for the fasting students, holiday celebrations, etc.
"[The participants in these activities included] many male and female students, who succeeded in attaining a high level of coordination among the Islamic associations at the universities... By means of democratic struggle, these associations managed to obtain a permanent place allocated to prayer at the university, which the male and female [Muslim] students took care to use constantly, not only for prayer but also for holding religious study groups and Koran study... Fridays presented a wonderful picture, as the Muslim students of this city answered the call [to prayer, and prayed] before they scattered to eat lunch at the kebab and shawarma restaurants in the area, or returned to the lecture halls and the library..."
"I Don't Remember a Single Week in Which I Didn't Sense Provocation Rising From the Friday Sermons"
"But perhaps here I need to fill in the picture with what was happening on the sidelines on Fridays, and especially in the sermons. I don't remember a single week in which I didn't sense provocation rising from the Friday sermons. There was usually a different preacher every week, in accordance with whoever was available.
"Rarely, one of the students would take it upon himself to deliver the sermon. But in most cases the person giving the sermon was someone considered to be capable and successful in public speaking. Because people like this are hard to find, we were witness to sermons that dripped with the smell of racism, separatism, extremism, and discrimination against women. Since most of the worshippers were young people with no religious experience, such as, for example, the [experience] provided by our [Saudi] environment, they accepted these statements submissively and thought that Islam advocates discrimination against women, against every Muslim who disagrees with us, or against 'the People of the Book' [i.e. Jews and Christians] among whom we live...
"Only rarely did the preacher address the women, whom he couldn't see during the worship; the sermon was meant only for the men. The situation reached the point where the preacher would [sometimes] deliver his sermon in Arabic, and say that every Muslim should know Arabic thoroughly, and if he did not, this would detract from his religion. This made the Western Muslims [feel] a permanent sense of inferiority to the Arabs, who present themselves as the only ones bearing [the message] of the true religion, while [in fact] they ignored the true call of Islam, to whom it was addressed [i.e. to all humanity], and who raised its banner. Many statements [in the sermons] were, in my opinion, loaded with racism and one-sidedness - and I try to clarify to women... that the preacher was expressing his personal opinion, and not the religion of Islam in all its wide scope."
Despite University Regulations Against Discrimination, "Women Heard [the Lectures] From Behind a Partition"
"Gradually, we found that the activity of the Islamic association was characterized by an extremist character, which is in fact contradictory to its status [as a student organization], as well as to the places where these activities were being held. For lectures to which speakers from outside Manchester were invited, two halls were allocated - one for women and one for men, such that the women heard [the lecture] from behind a partition, or through a microphone [i.e. speaker], because closed-circuit TV technology had not yet reached them. Or else you would find them allocating seats in the back for the women, as though we were worshipping at a mosque. Or, they were fearful of the presence of women, and didn't know what to do and how to act with the British women - who in no way accept the discriminatory positions against women that were taken at such events. And then, [because of our objections,] the event's organizers would retract their statements - thus entering into [a state of] internal contradiction.
"What was even stranger was that all these activities were carried out on the university campus, one of whose statutes forbids discrimination among students on the basis of gender, race, or religion, and where all these [male Muslim] students studied together with their Muslim sisters at lectures, morning and evening, as well as with the non-Muslim [female students]...
"On the sidelines of these meetings, one could find religious pamphlets with fatwas on issues of how to act towards a non-Muslim, towards a woman, and other matters of controversy in day-to-day life, translated into every language, and especially into English. These pamphlets bore the imprimatur of councils of the most prominent 'ulama in Islamic countries, which, as far as [these students] were concerned, constituted the source of authority on [proper] behavior and religious law."
Before These Youth Understood Islam’s Spirit, Morals, Tolerance, and Lofty Message… They Had Already [Absorbed] Hatred of Non-Muslims and... of Anything Coming From Western Civilization
"Before these young people have understood the morals of Islam, its tolerance, its spirit, and its lofty message that led people far and near to embrace it... they already diligently [absorbed] hatred of non-Muslims and hatred of anything coming from Western civilization - or even from [non-fundamentalist] Islamic civilization, and have already discussed controversial issues such as veils for women, music, and even photography, as part of the religious guidelines that they receive from the sheikhs who occasionally visit from [Saudi Arabia], Pakistan, and other countries, where they have this same dogmatic [system of] single-sex schools...
"I saw many young people, men and women, who are sick to death of the activities of their colleagues, which are contradictory to their European environment and even to their Pakistani or Indian environment. Some of them have begun to withdraw and to try to ignore anything having to do with Islam, while others find extremism to be [a tool] by means of which they can benefit from an authority that they do not have in their regular surroundings."
[1] http://www.aleqtisadiah.com/article.php?do=show&id=2979 , August 21, 2006.
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FIGHTING WORDS
The Caged Virgin
Holland's shameful treatment of Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, May 8, 2006, at 3:44 PM ET
Three years ago, at a conference in Sweden, I was introduced to a Dutch member of parliament named Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Originally born in Somalia, she had been a refugee in several African countries and eventually a refugee from her own family, which had decided to "give" her in marriage to a distant male relative she had never met. Thinking to escape from such confines by moving to the Netherlands, she was appalled to find that radical Islam had followed her there—or in fact preceded her there—and was proselytizing among Turkish and Moroccan and Indonesian immigrants. In ancient towns like Rotterdam and Amsterdam, where once the refugees from Catholic France and inquisitional Spain had sought refuge, and where Baruch Spinoza had been excommunicated and anathematized for his opposition to Jewish fundamentalism, there were districts where Muslim women were subjected to genital mutilation and where the Dutch police were afraid to set foot.
Entering politics to try to alert the European left to this danger, she was first elected as a deputy for the Labor Party, but after 9/11 she changed her allegiance to the Liberals. This, she explained, was because many Labor spokesmen preferred to think of immigrants as possessing "group rights." They had become so infatuated by their own "multi-culti" style that they had ignored the rights of individuals—especially women and girls—who were imprisoned within their own ghetto. (That, by the way, was precisely Spinoza's problem as well. The Dutch rabbis cursed him and condemned him in their own sectarian "court," of which the Christian authorities approved because it took care of dangerous secularism among Jews.)
At the Swedish event, Ayaan Hirsi Ali spoke calmly and rationally about the problem. I never know whether or not it's right to mention, with female public figures, the fact of arresting and hypnotizing beauty, but I notice that I seem to have done so. Shall I just say that she was a charismatic figure in Dutch politics, mainly because of the calm and reason to which I just alluded? She was the ideal choice of collaborator for the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh (a distant descendant of the anguished painter) on Submission, a film about the ignored problem of enslaved and oppressed women in Holland. Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote the screenplay and provided the movie's voice-over.
You probably remember what happened next: Van Gogh was bicycling to work one morning in 2004 in the capital city of one of Europe's most peaceful and civilized countries when he was shot down in the street and then mutilated in a ritual fashion by an Islamist fanatic. The murderer (who had expected to become a martyr but who was only wounded in the leg by the gentle Dutch cops) left a long "martyr's letter" pinned to van Gogh's corpse by an equally long knife. In it, he warned Ayaan Hirsi Ali that she was the next target, and he gave a long and detailed account of all the offenses that would condemn her to an eternity in hell. (I noticed, reading this appalling screed when it was first published, that he obsessively referred to her as "Mrs. Hirshi Ali," as if trying to make her sound like a Jew. Other references to Jews in the text were even less tasteful.)
She has had to live under police protection ever since, and when I saw her again last week in Washington, I had to notice that there were several lofty and burly Dutchmen acting in an unaffected but determined way somewhere off to the side. I would urge you all to go out and buy her new book, The Caged Virgin, which is subtitled An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam. The three themes of the story are: first, her own gradual emancipation from tribalism and superstition; second, her work as a parliamentarian to call attention to the crimes being committed every day by Islamist thugs in mainland Europe; and third, the dismal silence, or worse, from many feminists and multiculturalists about this state of affairs.
Before being elected to parliament, she worked as a translator and social worker among immigrant women who are treated as sexual chattel—or as the object of "honor killings"—by their menfolk, and she has case histories that will freeze your blood. These, however, are in some ways less depressing than the excuses made by qualified liberals for their continuation. At all costs, it seems, others must be allowed "their culture" and—what is more—must be allowed the freedom not to be offended by the smallest criticism of it. If they do feel offended, their very first resort is to violence and intimidation, sometimes with the support of the embassies of foreign states. (How interesting it is that the two European states most recently attacked in this way—Holland and Denmark—should be the ones that have made the greatest effort to be welcoming to immigrants.) Considering that this book is written by a woman who was circumcised against her will at a young age and then very nearly handed over as a bargain with a stranger, it is written with quite astonishing humor and restraint.
But here is the grave and sad news. After being forced into hiding by fascist killers, Ayaan Hirsi Ali found that the Dutch government and people were slightly embarrassed to have such a prominent "Third World" spokeswoman in their midst. She was first kept as a virtual prisoner, which made it almost impossible for her to do her job as an elected representative. When she complained in the press, she was eventually found an apartment in a protected building. Then the other residents of the block filed suit and complained that her presence exposed them to risk. In spite of testimony from the Dutch police, who assured the court that the building was now one of the safest in all Holland, a court has upheld the demand from her neighbors and fellow citizens that she be evicted from her home. In these circumstances, she is considering resigning from parliament and perhaps leaving her adopted country altogether. This is not the only example that I know of a supposedly liberal society collaborating in its own destruction, but I hope at least that it will shame us all into making The Caged Virgin a best seller.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2141276/
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Hirsi Ali: shut anti-woman, anti-gay Dutch mosque
22 April 2004
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=19&story_id=6851
AMSTERDAM — Somali-born MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali demanded on Thursday the closure of an Amsterdam mosque that sells books supporting female circumcision, beating wives and the murder of gay people.
The Dutch Parliament is to hold an emergency debate about the El Tawheed mosque next week. MPs want Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner and Immigration and Integration Minister Rita Verdonk to explain what they intend to do about the book "De weg van de moslim".
The publication — translated as The Way of the Muslim in English — is said to advocate violence against women and killing gay people
Gay people should be thrown head first off high buildings. If not killed on hitting the ground, they should then be stoned to death, the book allegedly suggests.
In her column in newspaper Algemeen Dagblad, Hirsi Ali — who was raised as a Muslim — went one step further and called on the government to close the mosque. The MP has been a strident opponent of Islamic teachings on women and gay people.
The Liberal VVD party MP said it was time for the Justice Ministry to indicate whether it intended to go to court to have the mosque banned.
Hirsi Ali said the latest revelations about the book advocating beating women and killing gay people was the last straw. Closure of the mosque was a question of "political will", she wrote.
"This mosque has been warned repeatedly by the authorities that intolerance against non-Muslims and undermining the law is unacceptable in the Netherlands," Hirsi Ali said.
"The Way of the Muslim" is one of the publications on sale at the El Tawheed mosque. Earlier this month the mosque was at the centre of a storm about another book available at its open day organised to help combat the mosque's negative public image.
That book "Fatwas of Muslim Women" says that women who lie deserve 100 blows and the husband's duty of care for his wife is negated if she refuses him sex or leaves the home without his permission. One of its most controversial aspects is the call for Muslim girls to be circumcised.
A fatwa is an official statement or order from an Islamic religious leader.
MPs in the Dutch Parliament have indicated they want the second book, "The Way of the Muslim", banned if it supports violence towards women and killing gay people.
VVD parliamentarian Geert Wilders has called for the emergency debate next week.
Another MP, Mirjam Sterk of the Christian Democrat CDA, said imams (Islamic religious leaders) must distance themselves from the book's content. If not, the imams must be prosecuted or deported.
An Islamic cleric was deported from France to his native Algeria on Wednesday after he caused uproar by his endorsement of wife-beating and polygamy.
Clerics at El Tawheed feel they have been unfairly singled out in the media as part of a wider campaign against Islamic institutions in Europe.
MPs and media commentators attacked the Amsterdam mosque previously when one of the imams referred to non-Muslims as "firewood for hell". He also forbade Islamic women from leaving the family home without the permission of their husbands.
RTL Television reported on Thursday a cameraman was assaulted when a news team attempted to buy "The Way of the Muslim" at the mosque.
Eventually RTL's female reporter managed to buy the book, albeit while accompanied by police protection.
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JDN,
When are you flying off to Al-Azhar university to lecture those islamic theologians on the un-islamic nature of female genital mutilation?
Gosh, did I miss a day of geography class? To be fair, it's been a while. But, I mean, isn't Al=Azhar University still in Africa????? Or did it move and I missed it?
Wasn't I (I'm sorry I mean WHO and UNICEF) clear enough in my post above that this is an "African problem", a terrible problem, but it is not necessarily an Islamic problem and rarely does it appear
among practicing Muslims in the Middle East or Europe or the US? To answer your question, No, I don't plan on going to Al-Azhar in Africa, or Ethiopia, or Somalia, or Yemen,
or ...... or any other place in Africa and lecture on female genital mutilation.
**A perfect example of your utter ignorance on this topic.**
http://www.sunnah.org/history/Scholars/mashaykh_azhar.htm
Al-Azhar is the world's oldest university, older than Cambridge or Oxford. Situated at the heart of Cairo, Egypt's capital, Al-Azhar has been the greatest learning centre for Muslims since it was first built by the Fatimid dynasty in the 10th century AD.
The Fatimids were of Shiah belief. They erected Al-Azhar as an institution to propagate the teachings of the Isma'iliya madhhab. When the Ayyubids took over Egypt, they turned Al-Azhar into a school that taught the Sunni understanding of Islam.
Rich in tradition and knowledge, Al-Azhar had produced brilliant ulama throughout history. Examples of Imam Suyuti, Imam Ibn Hajar 'Asqalani and Imam Ibn Hajar Al-Haitami bejeweled its glorious past. Contemporary ulama produced by this university include Shaykh Ghazali and Shaykh Sha`rawi. With thousands of others, these giants of Islamic knowledge became the symbol of Al-Azhar supreme position among Muslims, something unrivalled thus far.
Today, Al-Azhar is not just a university, but an institution that vanguard the teachings of Sunni Islam, and an umbrella body to which thousands of ulama affiliate themselves with. The Head of Al-Azhar, called the Grand Imam (Imamul Akbar Shaykhul Azhar), was previously appointed by a committee of Azharian top scholars (shuyukh). But now it is under the appointment from the Egyptian President from the advice of the committee. Recently however, the Egyptian government is getting inclined to leave the matter of appointment purely in the hands of the Azharian ulama.
Ahhhh GM I never said Al-Azhar university isn't a fine university or isn't "rich in tradition and knowledge"; I (a study by WHO and UNICEF - read unbiased source) simply stated that FMG is an AFRICAN PROBLEM ergo Al-Azhar being in Africa represents an African take on the problem. IF Al-Azhar was in in the Sudan or Ethiopia or Somolia it would be the same; they are all in Africa; got it? FMG according to unbiased references (often you seem to have a hard time finding these) is a result of poverty and ignorance; yes Islam in Africa supports FMG as does a dozen or more other religions in Africa. And elsewhere, people talk of it, a few people are proponents of it, but not a significant number and even then in nearly every case they are from Africa. That one or a very few Islamic individuals promote it does not make a majority of Muslims supporting it. Most Muslims abhor it and do not practice FMG. Again, my point, the vast majority of Muslims are good people as are most Buddhists, Christians and Jews, and most.... but all religions have extremists and they are dangerous. But to bash all Muslims seems wrong to me.
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JDN,
When are you flying off to Al-Azhar university to lecture those islamic theologians on the un-islamic nature of female genital mutilation?
Gosh, did I miss a day of geography class? To be fair, it's been a while. But, I mean, isn't Al=Azhar University still in Africa????? Or did it move and I missed it?
**I guess I need to help you out in reading the important parts of what I post.
"Today, Al-Azhar is not just a university, but an institution that vanguard the teachings of Sunni Islam, and an umbrella body to which thousands of ulama affiliate themselves with. "
Al Azhar is the most important theological institution in the world for sunnis. You not knowing this is like not knowing that Vatican City has a global impact on catholic theology and trying to assert that theology being formulated in the Vatican applies only to southern europe. There is no hierarchy in islam like the pope and college of cardinals, but you are very mistaken in trying to assert that what theologians in Al Azhar say doesn't sway sunnis around the planet. My state has a law specifically banning female genital mutilation. Can you guess why? Last time I checked my map I live a long distance from North Africa.**
Wasn't I (I'm sorry I mean WHO and UNICEF) clear enough in my post above that this is an "African problem", a terrible problem, but it is not necessarily an Islamic problem and rarely does it appear
among practicing Muslims in the Middle East or Europe or the US?
**The UN and it's WHO UNICEF are hardly fair and impartial. Would you like me to deconstruct this assertion? What is "rare" when it comes to female genital mutilation outside of africa?
"That book "Fatwas of Muslim Women" says that women who lie deserve 100 blows and the husband's duty of care for his wife is negated if she refuses him sex or leaves the home without his permission. One of its most controversial aspects is the call for Muslim girls to be circumcised."
Why would this book be sold by a mosque in the Netherlands if FGM is just "an african problem" and has nothing to do with islamic theology?**
To answer your question, No, I don't plan on going to Al-Azhar in Africa, or Ethiopia, or Somalia, or Yemen,
or ...... or any other place in Africa and lecture on female genital mutilation.
**A perfect example of your utter ignorance on this topic.**
http://www.sunnah.org/history/Scholars/mashaykh_azhar.htm
Al-Azhar is the world's oldest university, older than Cambridge or Oxford. Situated at the heart of Cairo, Egypt's capital, Al-Azhar has been the greatest learning centre for Muslims since it was first built by the Fatimid dynasty in the 10th century AD.
The Fatimids were of Shiah belief. They erected Al-Azhar as an institution to propagate the teachings of the Isma'iliya madhhab. When the Ayyubids took over Egypt, they turned Al-Azhar into a school that taught the Sunni understanding of Islam.
Rich in tradition and knowledge, Al-Azhar had produced brilliant ulama throughout history. Examples of Imam Suyuti, Imam Ibn Hajar 'Asqalani and Imam Ibn Hajar Al-Haitami bejeweled its glorious past. Contemporary ulama produced by this university include Shaykh Ghazali and Shaykh Sha`rawi. With thousands of others, these giants of Islamic knowledge became the symbol of Al-Azhar supreme position among Muslims, something unrivalled thus far.
Today, Al-Azhar is not just a university, but an institution that vanguard the teachings of Sunni Islam, and an umbrella body to which thousands of ulama affiliate themselves with. The Head of Al-Azhar, called the Grand Imam (Imamul Akbar Shaykhul Azhar), was previously appointed by a committee of Azharian top scholars (shuyukh). But now it is under the appointment from the Egyptian President from the advice of the committee. Recently however, the Egyptian government is getting inclined to leave the matter of appointment purely in the hands of the Azharian ulama.
Ahhhh GM I never said Al-Azhar university isn't a fine university or isn't "rich in tradition and knowledge"; I (a study by WHO and UNICEF - read unbiased source) simply stated that FMG is an AFRICAN PROBLEM ergo Al-Azhar being in Africa represents an African take on the problem. IF Al-Azhar was in in the Sudan or Ethiopia or Somolia it would be the same; they are all in Africa; got it? FMG according to unbiased references (often you seem to have a hard time finding these) is a result of poverty and ignorance; yes Islam in Africa supports FMG as does a dozen or more other religions in Africa. And elsewhere, people talk of it, a few people are proponents of it, but not a significant number and even then in nearly every case they are from Africa. That one or a very few Islamic individuals promote it does not make a majority of Muslims supporting it. Most Muslims abhor it and do not practice FMG. Again, my point, the vast majority of Muslims are good people as are most Buddhists, Christians and Jews, and most.... but all religions have extremists and they are dangerous. But to bash all Muslims seems wrong to me.
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http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2008/01/22/clarification-of-islamic-law-support-for-female-genital-mutilation-by-dr-mark-durie/
Clarification of Islamic Law Support for Female Genital Mutilation, by Dr. Mark Durie
January 22nd, 2008 by Andrew Bostom |
Indonesian toddler following her ritual FGM
Dr. Mark Durie is the author, most recently of Revelation? Do We Worship the Same God?—Jesus, Holy, Spirit, God in Christianity and Islam, 2006. His cogent analysis, “Isa, the Muslim Jesus,” is available online, here.
Dr. Durie has also studied the Acehnese (i.e., from Aceh, Indonesia), and published many articles, and books (here, here, and here, for example) on their language and culture.
Dr. Dure writes—
In Februrary 2007 Dr Muhammad al-Mussayar of Al-Azhar University, referring to reliable hadiths from Muslim and al-Bukhari, stated:
“All jurisprudents, since the advent of Islam and for 14 centuries or more, are in consensus that female circumcision is permitted in Islam. But they were divided as to its status in the sharia. Some said that female circumcision is required by the sharia, just like male circumcision. Some said this is a mainstream practice, while others said that it is a noble act.”
Of the four Sunni schools of sharia, it is the Shafi’is who have said that circumcision of girls is compulsory. The Reliance of the Traveller, a respected manual of Shafi’i jurisprudence, states “Circumcision is obligatory (for every male and female) by cutting off the piece of skin on the glans of the penis of the male, but circumcision of the female is by cutting out the clitoris” (section e4.3). [The English translation by Nuh Ha Mim Keller (certified by Al-Azhar University) disguises the true meaning of the Arabic text by offering the following bogus English ‘translation’: “For men it consists of removing the prepuce from the penis, and for women, removing the prepuce (Ar. Bazr) of the clitoris (n: not the clitoris itself, as some mistakenly assert).” ]
As Indonesia is a country in which Shafi’i Islam predominates, it is hardly surprising that female circumcision is commonly practiced among Indonesian Muslims, from Java to Aceh. There is a close correlation between Shafi’i Islam and the frequency of FGM. Regions where the Shafi’i school predominates are also the places where FGM is more frequent. These include Egypt, southern Arabia, Bahrain, Kurdistan, Somalia, Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia. The oft-recited claim that FGM is not a religious practice is proved false, not only because it is more frequently found in Shafi’i areas, but also because it was introduced, along with Shafi’i Islam, into Southeast Asia, a part of the world where it had previously been unknown.
It is only the teachings of the sharia which account for this practice being followed in Bandung Java today, and specifically the doctrinal formulations of the Shafi’i school of sharia. Imam Shafi’i may be long-dead, but he has a lot to answer for to the Muslim women of the world.
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A while ago I posted to the effect, "... Muslims getting blamed for everything." Perhaps it's not true, yet if I read this forum, especially GM's posts, it seems all the evils of the world are caused by and propagated by Muslims. Otherwise, America is perfect; Europe is perfect, Israel is innocent, etc. yet it is simply not true. There is plenty of blame to pass around if one just looks for it. And many of the problems are multidimensional; it is not black and white.
I worked out at my gym with my attorney friend yesterday (Cambridge - Law; not as old as Al-Azhar or equal to Columbia :-) but not shabby either). He is from England (Wales). His comment was that yes, the Muslims are a problem, not necessarily for religious reasons, but rather poverty and ignorance. He lived through the Irish times; they were much much worse he said, although not that much different. Today, Ireland is doing great. He went on further to say that the Muslims, "are really not a big deal", they "just get bad press". As for arbitration, he said that arbitration has existed for many years and often religious leaders from all denominations will intercede.
After we finished our beer, he left, but I had scotch :-) in the Library and picked up this month's Foreign Affairs Magazine (I should be grateful to this forum; a few months ago I might have picked up a wine or cigar magazine while I drank). :-D
Now as I read this forum, especially GM's posts, Muslims, the Palestinians, seem to always be the "bad guy"; I rarely if ever (did I miss a post?) see a positive article by GM on Muslims or Palestinians. Yet, as I read the article/review by Shlomo Ben Ami, the former Israel Foreign Minister I realized that two sides do exist. I love his line, "The ability to engage in a sober inquiry, into the past (or present) is an essential test of free democracies."
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080901fareviewessay87511/shlomo-ben-ami/a-war-to-start-all-wars.html
Now, I am sure he is a good Jew and that he truly loves Israel, but the article goes on to honestly talk of the atrocities committed by Israeli soldiers. And how "Zionists deliberately killed far more civilians and prisoners of war and committed more acts of rape" than the Palestinians ever did. In a similar manner, instances exist where America has done wrong, Europe, and other allies of ours have done wrong.
My point is that all sides often contribute bad and nearly all sides can and do contribute good. A balanced approach or at least one that is not so biased might be better? I think a "sober inquiry" means an open mind; one that is not blinded by racial or ethnic prejudices. Lately, this forum, led by GM seems to be a "dump on Muslim" forum. I think there are good Muslims, frankly I think most Muslims are good, just as I like to think most Christians, Jews, Buddhists are good. And, there are a few bad apples. I am not defending the "bad apples". Those of ANY religion that publicly promote FMG, violence, killing of gays, etc. should be stopped, arrested, incarcerated and frankly, if they don't stop I don't care what you do to them. But don't only blame the Muslims; there are many other participants and religions to share the blame.
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A while ago I posted to the effect, "... Muslims getting blamed for everything." Perhaps it's not true, yet if I read this forum, especially GM's posts, it seems all the evils of the world are caused by and propagated by Muslims. Otherwise, America is perfect; Europe is perfect, Israel is innocent, etc. yet it is simply not true.
**Lacking any valid point, all you can do is offer this pathetic straw man argument? Where have I ever said that all the world's evils are caused by muslims, or asserted that the US, Israel or europe is perfect? Answer: I haven't.**
There is plenty of blame to pass around if one just looks for it. And many of the problems are multidimensional; it is not black and white.
**This is why some people actually bother to read up on and study issues rather than endlessly parrot the same mindless talking points. Yes, not every muslim is a jihadist, but EVERY jihadist is a muslim, and is motivated by core elements of islamic theology. I actually read up on a topic before rendering an opinion, you might give it a try sometime. I've made an in depth study of islam and islamic theology a major aspect of my life since 9/11 and have spent endless hours reading about the theological roots of violent jihad. I don't love wading through fatwas and the writings of Ibn Taymiyya and Sayid Qutb, I do it to understand what we face today with a complex understanding of the multidimensional nature of this problem.**
I worked out at my gym with my attorney friend yesterday (Cambridge - Law; not as old as Al-Azhar or equal to Columbia :-) but not shabby either). He is from England (Wales). His comment was that yes, the Muslims are a problem, not necessarily for religious reasons, but rather poverty and ignorance. He lived through the Irish times; they were much much worse he said, although not that much different. Today, Ireland is doing great. He went on further to say that the Muslims, "are really not a big deal", they "just get bad press". As for arbitration, he said that arbitration has existed for many years and often religious leaders from all denominations will intercede.
After we finished our beer, he left, but I had scotch :-) in the Library and picked up this month's Foreign Affairs Magazine (I should be grateful to this forum; a few months ago I might have picked up a wine or cigar magazine while I drank). :-D
**I don't doubt that your are much more qualified to render an opinion on cigars or wine than I am. I'll defer to you on these topics.**
Now as I read this forum, especially GM's posts, Muslims, the Palestinians, seem to always be the "bad guy"; I rarely if ever (did I miss a post?) see a positive article by GM on Muslims or Palestinians.
**Ok, let's post in the Israel thread. I'll post all the scientific advances, books published, nobel prizes and contributions to medical science that have come from Israel. You can do the same for that "Palestinians". Want to wager as to who will have the longer list?**
Yet, as I read the article/review by Shlomo Ben Ami, the former Israel Foreign Minister I realized that two sides do exist. I love his line, "The ability to engage in a sober inquiry, into the past (or present) is an essential test of free democracies."
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080901fareviewessay87511/shlomo-ben-ami/a-war-to-start-all-wars.html
Now, I am sure he is a good Jew and that he truly loves Israel, but the article goes on to honestly talk of the atrocities committed by Israeli soldiers. And how "Zionists deliberately killed far more civilians and prisoners of war and committed more acts of rape" than the Palestinians ever did. In a similar manner, instances exist where America has done wrong, Europe, and other allies of ours have done wrong.
My point is that all sides often contribute bad and nearly all sides can and do contribute good. A balanced approach or at least one that is not so biased might be better? I think a "sober inquiry" means an open mind; one that is not blinded by racial or ethnic prejudices. Lately, this forum, led by GM seems to be a "dump on Muslim" forum.
**A rational examination of the global jihad and the theological roots behind it isn't just "dumping on muslims". Again, Islam isn't a race or ethnicity and more than Roman Catholics are a race or ethnicity. Just as there are blue eyed, blond catholics, there are blue eyed, blond muslims. The majority of the planet's muslims live in asia, not the middle east. There isn't a muslim "race" or ethnicity.**
I think there are good Muslims, frankly I think most Muslims are good, just as I like to think most Christians, Jews, Buddhists are good. And, there are a few bad apples. I am not defending the "bad apples". Those of ANY religion that publicly promote FMG, violence, killing of gays, etc. should be stopped, arrested, incarcerated and frankly, if they don't stop I don't care what you do to them. But don't only blame the Muslims; there are many other participants and religions to share the blame.
http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html
Christianity: 2.1 billion
Islam: 1.5 billion
According to the website below, the global jihad's deadly attacks since 9/11/2001 is 11490 as of 7/21/2008.
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/
Can you provide stats for attacks by "christianists" worldwide? So then the question would be, if islamic terrorism is from a "tiny minority of extremists" from out of the larger muslim population, and the number of christians is larger than the number of muslims, then why the "extremist gap"? Please explain.**
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**Ok, let's post in the Israel thread. I'll post all the scientific advances, books published, nobel prizes and contributions to medical science that have come from Israel. You can do the same for that "Palestinians". Want to wager as to who will have the longer list?**
Ahhh GM no doubt you will have the LONGER list; but long isn't everything... :-D
Maybe you should have a good glass of wine and a cigar; it might be good for you :evil:
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The last time I drank wine, it was red and came out of a box. I couldn't tell the difference between a cuban cigar and a Philly blunt without looking at the label. I'm a blue collar guy, what can I say?
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http://www.ajcongress.org/site/DocServer/congressmonthly_energy_new_.pdf?docID=1441
Q: When we reach our goal of independency from oil-soaked nations that use their oil for terror, then what do you see becoming of them if they no longer have wealth? Will they be forced to educate themselves and develop with the West? Will poverty force them, as in Afghanistan, to turn to drug trafficking? The populations are generally poor or nowhere near the level they should be with such oil wealth, except for the Emirates. Basically, what is their future?
A:They will have to get work. Twenty-one Arab nations, plus Iran, have about the same population as the United States and Canada. Other than fossil fuels—mainly oil, of course—they export to the world less than Finland, a country of only 5 million people. If the world moves away from oil, these countries will have to learn from countries like Finland that have no oil but that produce decent lives for their people by educating their women, teaching engineering, math, and science in their schools and colleges—not just the rote memorization of religious texts—and otherwise move out of the 7th century. Indeed there is a fine role model quite near them, a nation that operates in this fashion, practices freedom of speech, press, and religion, and has a GDP per capita of over $18,000 per year (as contrasted to Saudi Arabia's of some$13,000 per year). This country—Israel—has virtually no natural resources except for farmland it has reclaimed from the desert. Tours should perhaps be organized for those who want to learn how to start with little more than sand and resolve, and from those create a prosperous democracy in the Middle East.
R. JAMES WOOLSEY served as Director of Central Intelligence from 1993-95. During a long career in government service, he served both Republican and Democratic administrations.
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I totally agree with G M. These muslims want to have their cake and eat it to. When they go to another country they want special treatment, but have no tolerance for others outside islam. If I were to go to a muslim country I would be forced to live by their rules and laws. Look at our soldiers in Iraq, they have to abide by certain rules and regs so they won't unecessarily offend the locals and their muslim practices. On the other hand muslims come over here and they want foot baths in public restrooms special prayer rooms, they talk trash about our religions, but if anyone says anything bad about the Koran they get their panty's in a bunch and go for the first lawyer within earshot. Many western scholars have read and interpreted the Koran. The cats out of the bag. They can't sit there and tell us they want peace! We know what they want, so come and try to get it. Any Red Blooded American already knows what they need to do, and thats is to fight tooth and nail for our Great Country. The UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THE GREATEST COUNTRY ON THE PLANET!!!!!!!!
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Yes sir, we are just laymen, speaking in laymens terms!!!!!
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JDN: A while ago I posted to the effect, "... Muslims getting blamed for everything." Perhaps it's not true, yet if I read this forum, especially GM's posts, it seems all the evils of the world are caused by and propagated by Muslims. Otherwise, America is perfect; Europe is perfect, Israel is innocent, etc. yet it is simply not true.
GM: **, , ,Where have I ever said that all the world's evils are caused by muslims, or asserted that the US, Israel or europe is perfect? Answer: I haven't.**
Me: JDN, I think you may be confusing having a fundamental problem with certain aspects of the Muslim religion and blaming them for everything. Anyway, I agree with GM that he has not made the blanket assertions that you assert that he has. IMHO he may make his points with little concern for the ego of the other :lol: but I find that he HAS done quite a bit of reading and thinking on these subjects. I for one am impressed with his ability to come up with pertinent pieces that support his point on a tremendous variety of aspects of the larger question. What do you think? Agree with him or not, the invitation to you is to answer with similar specificity (or acknowledge when you can't) as well as broad statements.
Speaking for myself, I think in this moment we wrestle with the key difficulty for the west. Let the conversation continue!
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- Pajamas Media - http://pajamasmedia.com -
Who’s Sleeping More Deeply — Europe or America?
September 30, 2008 - by Bruce Bawer
In my 2006 book [1] While Europe Slept, I expressed concern about the will of Europeans to defend their freedoms in the face of the continent’s Islamization. I contrasted them in this regard with Americans, for whom, I argued, freedom is a living reality for which they are willing to fight and to sacrifice.
My book came out in the midst of the Danish cartoon crisis. And during that crisis I saw things in Europe that — quite frankly — surprised and impressed me. I saw the editors of a Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, stand up for freedom of expression in the face of worldwide rioting, vandalism, and murder by Muslims and contempt on the part of foolish Westerners. I saw a Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, in defiance of the UN, the EU, and most of the “international community,” stand by that newspaper and refuse to meet with Muslim ambassadors who were out to intimidate his country and to force Sharia-like restrictions on Western liberties. I saw the people of Denmark, in overwhelming numbers, stand behind their prime minister in his refusal to yield to jihad. And I saw major newspapers across Europe reprinting the Jyllands-Posten cartoons in acts of free-speech solidarity.
I don’t mean to paint too rosy a picture. The Danish response wasn’t perfect. Not a single newspaper in Britain reprinted the cartoons. And both the Swedish and Norwegian governments provided textbook cases of cowering dhimmitude. But none of that was really a surprise. What did surprise, and disappoint, me was the American political and media establishment. Both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush condemned the Jyllands-Posten cartoons out of hand. The State Department denounced them too, and only reversed itself after getting an earful from the Danish government, one of its few allies in Iraq. In the entire United States of America, exactly one major newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, reprinted the cartoons. And while the major broadcast networks, as well as CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC, reported extensively on the cartoon riots, none of them ever showed the cartoons at all.
A big part of the reason for this dismaying American response to the cartoon affair is, of course, that Islamization hasn’t progressed as far in America as in Europe, and there’s consequently an incredible level of ignorance in America both about what’s really going on in Europe and about the very nature of Islam. In the current presidential campaign, only a small portion of the electorate seems to think that the war with jihadist Islam is a major issue. The one candidate who understood best what we’re up against, and who took it most seriously, Rudy Giuliani, was ridiculed across the political spectrum for being obsessed with 9/11 — as if the events of that day had been some kind of fluke or accident that has virtually no meaning for us today.
In depressing numbers, in short, Americans seem not to grasp the lessons of 9/11 — which should hardly be a surprise, considering how many journalists and politicians keep repeating that the terrorists are betraying a great and peaceful religion, that jihad means doing good works, and so on. A while back, in response to rumors that Barack Obama is a closet Muslim, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof argued that it would be a matter of [2] utter indifference if the president of the United States were a Muslim. Of the hundreds of people who commented on this article on the Times website, the overwhelming majority applauded Kristof for his extraordinary courage in standing up to Islamophobia. Only a tiny handful of readers noted that there are, in fact, good reasons for free people to be concerned about the possibility of a U.S. president with a devout commitment to Islamic theology and law. The American media that do report honestly on the less attractive truths about Islam, moreover, tend to be media that people are encouraged to look down upon.
Make no mistake: if Europeans are, on average, more aware than Americans of the realities of Islam, it’s no thanks to their media but rather because they can see with their own eyes what’s going on around them. Yet many of them feel cowed — not only by Muslims but by politically correct politicians and media — into keeping their opinions to themselves, and feel powerless to prevent what now seems to many of them, in any event, inevitable. In other words, fatalism has taken hold.
In While Europe Slept I also contrasted European and American approaches to immigration. Ever since the Muslim influx began some decades ago, European countries have encouraged the newcomers to retain their cultural identity, to live apart from mainstream society, and to become clients of the welfare state. America, by contrast, has traditionally expected immigrants to learn English, to get a job, and to obey the law, and if they do so they’re every bit as American as anyone else. I didn’t argue in While Europe Slept that America was invulnerable to Islamization, but I did suggest that — thanks to this very dramatic difference both in the general public’s attitudes toward immigrants and in government immigration policy — America stood a far better chance than Europe did of seeing Muslim newcomers turn into loyal citizens rather than enemies within. I think I had a valid point there, though if I were writing the book today I’d probably be somewhat less sanguine about America’s ability to integrate absolutely everyone into its melting pot. I might also be less sanguine, I’m afraid, about the endurance of Americans’ love of freedom in an age of poisonous multicultural relativism.
I do feel, however, that there’s one very important difference between America and Europe when it comes to resisting cultural jihad, and that is this: that in America, a large proportion of the people who recognize the threat of Islam and who are determined to resist it are consciously fighting for freedom — for, that is, the principles articulated in the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights. In many parts of Western Europe, this kind of certainty and unanimity about freedom — simple freedom — as a first principle can be discouragingly hard to come by. The blogger Frank Martin has written about a teenage tour guide at a World War II battlefield in the Netherlands who told him that the Allied soldiers who fell there had been “fighting for bridges, how silly that they would all fight for something like that.” Somebody like that boy, who didn’t grasp that those soldiers had died for the very freedom that he had taken for granted his whole life, is incapable of standing up for freedom against Islamofascism. Yes, there are Europeans who realize that the opposite of Islam is indeed human freedom. But in Europe, with its checkered history of fascism and socialism, there are also all too many people on the right who are mounting the barricades in the name not of freedom but of ethnic identity, cultural tradition, or religion, and all too many on the left whose cri de coeur is not individual liberty but the welfare state.
Meanwhile Europe’s cultural elites are dominated by people who seem likely to continue to smile upon Islamization right up till the moment they’re stoned to death. At a recent Norwegian conference on integration, the Swedish government representative was asked: “Is Swedish culture worth preserving?” “Well,” she replied dismissively, “what is Swedish culture?” To people like that, European culture is a void waiting to be filled with something, and that something might as well be Islam. Granted, things aren’t quite that bad in the U.S. — not even at the New York Times. Yet to an extraordinary extent, the political and cultural elites on both sides of the Atlantic are in sync in their denial of the reality we’re up against.
This was driven home to me a few months ago when I took part in a day-long conference in Washington, D.C., about the America/Europe relationship. Nearly all the participants and audience members, I gathered, were Americans or Europeans who worked in the diplomatic corps. The day was crammed with panel discussions, and from early morning until late in the afternoon we talked about nothing but America and Europe. Yet aside from me, only one other person even mentioned Islam. And he did so in the most indirect way, as if he were bringing up something indelicate. Everybody present seemed to share an unspoken understanding that this subject was off limits. Indeed, pretty much everybody seemed to agree that Europe is doing great — that it’s moving from strength to strength — and that America should be more like it in every way.
How I even got invited to such a conference I have no idea. In any case, everything I said was dismissed out of hand. One genial fellow who seemed desperate to correct my folly and bring me into the tent came up to me after my talk and said, almost pleadingly, “But don’t you think that the real problem is not Islam but Islamophobia?” And on the panel that followed my talk, a retired diplomat with decades of experience (and a masterly command of the art of condescension) mentioned in a tone of both wonder and whimsy that I wasn’t alone in my peculiar affliction; even Walter Laqueur — the distinguished octogenarian historian of Europe whom the retired diplomat, as his tone made clear, had once, but no longer, held in high esteem — had written a book making the same bizarre arguments I was making! But neither this retired diplomat nor anyone else was willing to entertain the possibility that if both Laqueur and I, and many others, had made certain arguments, there might actually be something in them; no, it was as if, in their eyes, we had all simply been bitten by some exotic bug or contracted some mysterious new infection or had giant alien pods placed under our beds while we were sleeping.
Among those who are considered experts on Europe, or on transatlantic relations, that patrician diplomat’s attitude is ubiquitous. Tony Judt, in [3] Postwar, his acclaimed 2005 book on Europe since 1945, pronounced the continent in magnificent health and all but ignored Islam. Timothy Garton Ash, in his 2004 book [4] Free World, did the same, only pausing briefly on pages 197 and 198 to admit parenthetically that addressing Europe’s Islamization is “the single most urgent task of European domestic politics in the next decade” — after which he amazingly returned to pretending, as he had on the preceding 196 pages, that Europe’s most urgent tasks lie elsewhere. Meanwhile one book after another on the America-Europe relationship has contended that it’s America that’s the problem — that America is out of step with the world and needs to get back into line, pronto. In the title of Clyde Prestowitz’s 2005 book, America is a “[5] rogue nation” because it refuses to go along and get along with the rest of the planet under the wise auspices of the UN. I don’t know exactly how to characterize or understand this mass self-deception, this determination to cling to an illusion of the West in which the ongoing Islamization of Europe simply is not a factor; it would appear to be rooted partly in confusion, partly in cowardice, partly in careerism — and partly, I think, in a perhaps not entirely conscious conviction that some truths are just too sensational to speak without sounding hysterical, too repulsive to be honest about without sounding (to some ears) vulgar and bigoted, and too challenging to face without being utterly overwhelmed by the scale and the horror of it all.
What happens to the West will depend, in large part, on what happens to this pervasive self-denial and to those men and women of power and influence who cling to it as if to a life raft in a raging sea. Will Europeans who have faced the facts manage to gain power and turn things around before Europe passes the point of no return in its gradual surrender to Sharia? Will the European elites collaborate to realize Nicolas Sarkozy’s dark dream of a Mediterranean Union and develop it in the same ominous way in which the EU itself was developed, steadily compromising individual freedom and representative democracy — and leaving America increasingly out in the cold? Or will the next president of the U.S. be someone who is every bit as eager to appease Islam as the archbishop of Canterbury, resulting in a strong transatlantic alliance devoted not to the joint preservation of freedom but to the joint pursuit of dhimmitude? I’m sorry to say that a year or so ago, when it looked as if the major-party presidential candidates would be Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton — the former of whom obviously gets it, and the latter of whom, I suspect, does so as well — I was considerably more hopeful on this score than I am now.
Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com
URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/who%e2%80%99s-sleeping-more-deeply-%e2%80%94-europe-or-america/
URLs in this post:
[1] While Europe Slept: http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FWhile-Euro
pe-Slept-Radical-Destroying%2Fdp%2F0385514727&tag=pajamasmedia-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789
&creative=9325
[2] utter indifference: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/opinion/09kristof.html?ex=1362718800&en=90b821a5d81b7e98&e
i=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
[3] Postwar: http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FPostwar-Hi
story-Europe-Since-1945%2Fdp%2F1594200653&tag=pajamasmedia-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&
;creative=9325
[4] Free World: http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FFree-World
-America-Europe-Surprising%2Fdp%2F1400062195&tag=pajamasmedia-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&
amp;creative=9325
[5] rogue nation: http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FRogue-Nati
on-American-Unilateralism-Intentions%2Fdp%2F0465062792&tag=pajamasmedia-20&linkCode=ur2&
camp=1789&creative=9325
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JDN,
I strongly suggest you read Bruce Bawer's book.
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JDN,
I strongly suggest you read Bruce Bawer's book.
You mean his book "While Europe Slept" published in 2006? If yes, no need to respond, I will check it out. If no, please tell me which one. Also, odd, I tried to go to his
webpage and it seems down. Simple repairs, or?
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http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_2_cultural_jihadists.html
BRUCE BAWER
An Anatomy of Surrender
Motivated by fear and multiculturalism, too many Westerners are acquiescing to creeping sharia.
An example of Western self-censorship: Belgian officials prohibited Shark, by David Cerny, depicting Saddam Hussein as an aquatic predator.
Islam divides the world into two parts. The part governed by sharia, or Islamic law, is called the Dar al-Islam, or House of Submission. Everything else is the Dar al-Harb, or House of War, so called because it will take war—holy war, jihad—to bring it into the House of Submission. Over the centuries, this jihad has taken a variety of forms. Two centuries ago, for instance, Muslim pirates from North Africa captured ships and enslaved their crews, leading the U.S. to fight the Barbary Wars of 1801–05 and 1815. In recent decades, the jihadists’ weapon of choice has usually been the terrorist’s bomb; the use of planes as missiles on 9/11 was a variant of this method.
What has not been widely recognized is that the Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1989 fatwa against Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie introduced a new kind of jihad. Instead of assaulting Western ships or buildings, Kho meini took aim at a fundamental Western freedom: freedom of speech. In recent years, other Islamists have joined this crusade, seeking to undermine Western societies’ basic liberties and extend sharia within those societies.
The cultural jihadists have enjoyed disturbing success. Two events in particular—the 2004 assassination in Amsterdam of Theo van Gogh in retaliation for his film about Islam’s oppression of women, and the global wave of riots, murders, and vandalism that followed a Danish newspaper’s 2005 publication of cartoons satirizing Mohammed—have had a massive ripple effect throughout the West. Motivated variously, and doubtless sometimes simultaneously, by fear, misguided sympathy, and multicultural ideology—which teaches us to belittle our freedoms and to genuflect to non-Western cultures, however repressive—people at every level of Western society, but especially elites, have allowed concerns about what fundamentalist Muslims will feel, think, or do to influence their actions and expressions. These Westerners have begun, in other words, to internalize the strictures of sharia, and thus implicitly to accept the deferential status of dhimmis—infidels living in Muslim societies.
Call it a cultural surrender. The House of War is slowly—or not so slowly, in Europe’s case—being absorbed into the House of Submission.
The Western media are in the driver’s seat on this road to sharia. Often their approach is to argue that we’re the bad guys. After the late Dutch sociologist-turned-politician Pim Fortuyn sounded the alarm about the danger that Europe’s Islamization posed to democracy, elite journalists labeled him a threat. A New York Times headline described him as MARCHING THE DUTCH TO THE RIGHT. Dutch newspapers Het Parool and De Volkskrant compared him with Mussolini; Trouw likened him to Hitler. The man (a multiculturalist, not a Muslim) who murdered him in May 2002 seemed to echo such verdicts when explaining his motive: Fortuyn’s views on Islam, the killer insisted, were “dangerous.”
Perhaps no Western media outlet has exhibited this habit of moral inversion more regularly than the BBC. In 2006, to take a typical example, Manchester’s top imam told psychotherapist John Casson that he supported the death penalty for homosexuality. Casson expressed shock—and the BBC, in a dispatch headlined IMAM ACCUSED OF “GAY DEATH” SLUR, spun the controversy as an effort by Casson to discredit Islam. The BBC concluded its story with comments from an Islamic Human Rights Commission spokesman, who equated Muslim attitudes toward homosexuality with those of “other orthodox religions, such as Catholicism” and complained that focusing on the issue was “part of demonizing Muslims.”
In June 2005, the BBC aired the documentary Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic, which sought to portray concerns about Islamic radicalism as overblown. This “stunning whitewash of radical Islam,” as Little Green Footballs blogger Charles Johnson put it, “helped keep the British public fast asleep, a few weeks before the bombs went off in London subways and buses” in July 2005. In December 2007, it emerged that five of the documentary’s subjects, served up on the show as examples of innocuous Muslims-next-door, had been charged in those terrorist attacks—and that BBC producers, though aware of their involvement after the attacks took place, had not reported important information about them to the police.
Press acquiescence to Muslim demands and threats is endemic. When the Mohammed cartoons—published in September 2005 by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten to defy rising self-censorship after van Gogh’s murder—were answered by worldwide violence, only one major American newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, joined such European dailies as Die Welt and El País in reprinting them as a gesture of free-speech solidarity. Editors who refused to run the images claimed that their motive was multicultural respect for Islam. Critic Christopher Hitchens believed otherwise, writing that he “knew quite a number of the editors concerned and can say for a certainty that the chief motive for ‘restraint’ was simple fear.” Exemplifying the new dhimmitude, whatever its motivation, was Norway’s leading cartoonist, Finn Graff, who had often depicted Israelis as Nazis, but who now vowed not to draw anything that might provoke Muslim wrath. (On a positive note, this February, over a dozen Danish newspapers, joined by a number of other papers around the world, reprinted one of the original cartoons as a free-speech gesture after the arrest of three people accused of plotting to kill the artist.)
Last year brought another cartoon crisis—this time over Swedish artist Lars Vilks’s drawings of Mohammed as a dog, which ambassadors from Muslim countries used as an excuse to demand speech limits in Sweden. CNN reporter Paula Newton suggested that perhaps “Vilks should have known better” because of the Jyllands-Posten incident—as if people who make art should naturally take their marching orders from people who make death threats. Meanwhile, The Economist depicted Vilks as an eccentric who shouldn’t be taken “too seriously” and noted approvingly that Sweden’s prime minister, unlike Denmark’s, invited the ambassadors “in for a chat.”
The elite media regularly underreport fundamentalist Muslim misbehavior or obfuscate its true nature. After the knighting of Rushdie in 2007 unleashed yet another wave of international Islamist mayhem, Tim Rutten wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “If you’re wondering why you haven’t been able to follow all the columns and editorials in the American press denouncing all this homicidal nonsense, it’s because there haven’t been any.” Or consider the riots that gripped immigrant suburbs in France in the autumn of 2005. These uprisings were largely assertions of Muslim authority over Muslim neighborhoods, and thus clearly jihadist in character. Yet weeks passed before many American press outlets mentioned them—and when they did, they de-emphasized the rioters’ Muslim identity (few cited the cries of “Allahu akbar,” for instance). Instead, they described the violence as an outburst of frustration over economic injustice.
When polls and studies of Muslims appear, the media often spin the results absurdly or drop them down the memory hole after a single news cycle. Journalists celebrated the results of a 2007 Pew poll showing that 80 percent of American Muslims aged 18 to 29 said that they opposed suicide bombing—even though the flip side, and the real story, was that a double-digit percentage of young American Muslims admitted that they supported it. U.S. MUSLIMS ASSIMILATED, OPPOSED TO EXTREMISM, the Washington Post rejoiced, echoing USA Today’s AMERICAN MUSLIMS REJECT EXTREMES. A 2006 Daily Telegraph survey showed that 40 percent of British Muslims wanted sharia in Britain—yet British reporters often write as though only a minuscule minority embraced such views.
After each major terrorist act since 9/11, the press has dutifully published stories about Western Muslims fearing an “anti-Muslim backlash”—thus neatly shifting the focus from Islamists’ real acts of violence to non-Muslims’ imaginary ones. (These backlashes, of course, never materialize.) While books by Islam experts like Bat Ye’or and Robert Spencer, who tell difficult truths about jihad and sharia, go unreviewed in newspapers like the New York Times, the elite press legitimizes thinkers like Karen Armstrong and John Esposito, whose sugarcoated representations of Islam should have been discredited for all time by 9/11. The Times described Armstrong’s hagiography of Mohammed as “a good place to start” learning about Islam; in July 2007, the Washington Post headlined a piece by Esposito WANT TO UNDERSTAND ISLAM? START HERE.
Mainstream outlets have also served up anodyne portraits of fundamentalist Muslim life. Witness Andrea Elliott’s affectionate three-part profile of a Brooklyn imam, which appeared in the New York Times in March 2006. Elliott and the Times sought to portray Reda Shata as a heroic bridge builder between two cultures, leaving readers with the comforting belief that the growth of Islam in America was not only harmless but positive, even beautiful. Though it emerged in passing that Shata didn’t speak English, refused to shake women’s hands, wanted to forbid music, and supported Hamas and suicide bombing, Elliott did her best to downplay such unpleasant details; instead, she focused on sympathetic personal particulars. “Islam came to him softly, in the rhythms of his grandmother’s voice”; “Mr. Shata discovered love 15 years ago. . . . ‘She entered my heart,‘ said the imam.” Elliott’s saccharine piece won a Pulitzer Prize. When Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes pointed out that Shata was obviously an Islamist, a writer for the Columbia Journalism Review dismissed Pipes as “right-wing” and insisted that Shata was “very moderate.”
So it goes in this upside-down, not-so-brave new media world: those who, if given the power, would subjugate infidels, oppress women, and execute apostates and homosexuals are “moderate” (a moderate, these days, apparently being anybody who doesn’t have explosives strapped to his body), while those who dare to call a spade a spade are “Islamophobes.”
The entertainment industry has been nearly as appalling. During World War II, Hollywood churned out scores of films that served the war effort, but today’s movies and TV shows, with very few exceptions, either tiptoe around Islam or whitewash it. In the whitewash category were two sitcoms that debuted in 2007, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Little Mosque on the Prairie and CW’s Aliens in America. Both shows are about Muslims confronting anti-Muslim bigotry; both take it for granted that there’s no fundamentalist Islam problem in the West, but only an anti-Islam problem.
Muslim pressure groups have actively tried to keep movies and TV shows from portraying Islam as anything but a Religion of Peace. For example, the Council for American-Islamic Relations successfully lobbied Paramount Pictures to change the bad guys in The Sum of All Fears (2002) from Islamist terrorists to neo-Nazis, while Fox’s popular series 24, after Muslims complained about a story line depicting Islamic terrorists, ran cringe-worthy public-service announcements emphasizing how nonviolent Islam was. Earlier this year, Iranian-Danish actor Farshad Kholghi noted that, despite the cartoon controversy’s overwhelming impact on Denmark, “not a single movie has been made about the crisis, not a single play, not a single stand-up monologue.” Which, of course, is exactly what the cartoon jihadists wanted.
In April 2006, an episode of the animated series South Park admirably mocked the wave of self-censorship that followed the Jyllands-Posten crisis—but Comedy Central censored it, replacing an image of Mohammed with a black screen and an explanatory notice. According to series producer Anne Garefino, network executives frankly admitted that they were acting out of fear. “We were happy,” she told an interviewer, “that they didn’t try to claim that it was because of religious tolerance.”
Then there’s the art world. Postmodern artists who have always striven to shock and offend now maintain piously that Islam deserves “respect.” Museums and galleries have quietly taken down paintings that might upset Muslims and have put into storage manuscripts featuring images of Mohammed. London’s Whitechapel Art Gallery removed life-size nude dolls by surrealist artist Hans Bellmer from a 2006 exhibit just before its opening; the official excuse was “space constraints,” but the curator admitted that the real reason was fear that the nudity might offend the gallery’s Muslim neighbors. Last November, after the cancellation of a show in The Hague of artworks depicting gay men in Mohammed masks, the artist, Sooreh Hera, charged the museum with giving in to Muslim threats. Tim Marlow of London’s White Cube Gallery notes that such self-censorship by artists and museums is now common, though “very few people have explicitly admitted” it. British artist Grayson Perry, whose work has mercilessly mocked Christianity, is one who has—and his reluctance isn’t about multicultural sensitivity. “The reason I haven’t gone all out attacking Islamism in my art,” he told the Times of London, “is because I feel real fear that someone will slit my throat.”
Leading liberal intellectuals and academics have shown a striking willingness to betray liberal values when it comes to pacifying Muslims. Back in 2001, Unni Wikan, a distinguished Norwegian cultural anthropologist and Islam expert, responded to the high rate of Muslim-on-infidel rape in Oslo by exhorting women to “realize that we live in a multicultural society and adapt themselves to it.”
More recently, high-profile Europe experts Ian Buruma of Bard College and Timothy Garton Ash of Oxford, while furiously denying that they advocate cultural surrender, have embraced “accommodation,” which sounds like a distinction without a difference. In his book Murder in Amsterdam, Buruma approvingly quotes Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen’s call for “accommodation with the Muslims,” including those “who consciously discriminate against their women.” Sharia enshrines a Muslim man’s right to beat and rape his wife, to force marriages on his daughters, and to kill them if they resist. One wonders what female Muslims who immigrated to Europe to escape such barbarity think of this prescription.
Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury and one of Britain’s best-known public intellectuals, suggested in February the institution of a parallel system of sharia law in Britain. Since the Islamic Sharia Council already adjudicates Muslim marriages and divorces in the U.K., what Williams was proposing was, as he put it, “a much enhanced and quite sophisticated version of such a body, with increased resources.” Gratifyingly, his proposal, short on specifics and long on academic doublespeak (“I don’t think,” he told the BBC, “that we should instantly spring to the conclusion that the whole of that world of jurisprudence and practice is somehow monstrously incompatible with human rights, simply because it doesn’t immediately fit with how we understand it”) was greeted with public outrage.
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Another prominent accommodationist is humanities professor Mark Lilla of Columbia University, author of an August 2007 essay in the New York Times Magazine so long and languorous, and written with such perfect academic dispassion, that many readers may have finished it without realizing that it charted a path leading straight to sharia. Muslims’ “full reconciliation with modern liberal democracy cannot be expected,” Lilla wrote. For the West, “coping is the order of the day, not defending high principle.”
Revealing in this light is Buruma’s and Garton Ash’s treatment of author Ayaan Hirsi Ali—perhaps the greatest living champion of Western freedom in the face of creeping jihad—and of the Europe-based Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan. Because Hirsi Ali refuses to compromise on liberty, Garton Ash has called her a “simplistic . . . Enlightenment fundamentalist”—thus implicitly equating her with the Muslim fundamentalists who have threatened to kill her—while Buruma, in several New York Times pieces, has portrayed her as a petulant naif. (Both men have lately backed off somewhat.) On the other hand, the professors have rhapsodized over Ramadan’s supposed brilliance. They aren’t alone: though he’s clearly not the Westernized, urbane intellectual he seems to be—he refuses to condemn the stoning of adulteresses and clearly looks forward to a Europe under sharia—this grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna and protégé of Islamist scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi regularly wins praise in bien-pensant circles as representing the best hope for long-term concord between Western Muslims and non-Muslims.
This spring, Harvard law professor Noah Feldman, writing in the New York Times Magazine, actually gave two cheers for sharia. He contrasted it favorably with English common law, and described “the Islamists’ aspiration to renew old ideas of the rule of law” as “bold and noble.”
With the press, the entertainment industry, and prominent liberal thinkers all refusing to defend basic Western liberties, it’s not surprising that our political leaders have been pusillanimous, too. After a tiny Oslo newspaper, Magazinet, reprinted the Danish cartoons in early 2006, jihadists burned Norwegian flags and set fire to Norway’s embassy in Syria. Instead of standing up to the vandals, Norwegian leaders turned on Magazinet’s editor, Vebjørn Selbekk, partially blaming him for the embassy burning and pressing him to apologize. He finally gave way at a government-sponsored press conference, groveling before an assemblage of imams whose leader publicly forgave him and placed him under his protection. On that terrible day, Selbekk later acknowledged, “Norway went a long way toward allowing freedom of speech to become the Islamists’ hostage.” As if that capitulation weren’t disgrace enough, an official Norwegian delegation then traveled to Qatar and implored Qaradawi—a defender of suicide bombers and the murder of Jewish children—to accept Selbekk’s apology. “To meet Yusuf al-Qaradawi under the present circumstances,” Norwegian-Iraqi writer Walid al-Kubaisi protested, was “tantamount to granting extreme Islamists . . . a right of joint consultation regarding how Norway should be governed.”
The UN’s position on the question of speech versus “respect” for Islam was clear—and utterly at odds with its founding value of promoting human rights. “You don’t joke about other people’s religion,” Kofi Annan lectured soon after the Magazinet incident, echoing the sermons of innumerable imams, “and you must respect what is holy for other people.” In October 2006, at a UN panel discussion called “Cartooning for Peace,” Under Secretary General Shashi Tharoor proposed drawing “a very thin blue UN line . . . between freedom and responsibility.” (Americans might be forgiven for wondering whether that line would strike through the First Amendment.) And in 2007, the UN’s Human Rights Council passed a Pakistani motion prohibiting defamation of religion.
Other Western government leaders have promoted the expansion of the Dar al-Islam. In September 2006, when philosophy teacher Robert Redeker went into hiding after receiving death threats over a Le Figaro op-ed on Islam, France’s then–prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, commented that “everyone has the right to express their opinions freely—at the same time that they respect others, of course.” The lesson of the Redeker affair, he said, was “how vigilant we must be to ensure that people fully respect one another in our society.” Villepin got a run for his money last year from his Swedish counterpart, Fredrik Reinfeldt, who, after meeting with Muslim ambassadors to discuss the Vilks cartoons, won praise from one of them, Algeria’s Merzak Bedjaoui, for his “spirit of appeasement.”
When, years after September 11, President George W. Bush finally acknowledged publicly that the West was at war with Islamic fascism, Muslims’ and multiculturalists’ furious reaction made him retreat to the empty term “war on terror.” Britain’s Foreign Office has since deemed even that phrase offensive and banned its use by cabinet members (along with “Islamic extremism”). In January, the Home Office decided that Islamic terrorism would henceforth be described as “anti-Islamic activity.”
Western legislatures and courts have reinforced the “spirit of appeasement.” In 2005, Norway’s parliament, with virtually no public discussion or media coverage, criminalized religious insults (and placed the burden of proof on the defendant). Last year, that country’s most celebrated lawyer, Tor Erling Staff, argued that the punishment for honor killing should be less than for other murders, because it’s arrogant for us to expect Muslim men to conform to our society’s norms. Also in 2007, in one of several instances in which magistrates sworn to uphold German law have followed sharia instead, a Frankfurt judge rejected a Muslim woman’s request for a quick divorce from her brutally abusive husband; after all, under the Koran he had the right to beat her.
Those who dare to defy the West’s new sharia-based strictures and speak their minds now risk prosecution in some countries. In 2006, legendary author Oriana Fallaci, dying of cancer, went on trial in Italy for slurring Islam; three years earlier, she had defended herself in a French court against a similar charge. (Fallaci was ultimately found not guilty in both cases.) More recently, Canadian provinces ordered publisher Ezra Levant and journalist Mark Steyn to face human rights tribunals, the former for reprinting the Jyllands-Posten cartoons, the latter for writing critically about Islam in Maclean’s.
Even as Western authorities have hassled Islam’s critics, they’ve honored jihadists and their supporters. In 2005, Queen Elizabeth knighted Iqbal Sacranie of the Muslim Council of Britain, a man who had called for the death of Salman Rushdie. Also that year, London mayor Ken Livingstone ludicrously praised Qaradawi as “progressive”—and, in response to gay activists who pointed out that Qaradawi had defended the death penalty for homosexuals, issued a dissertation-length dossier whitewashing the Sunni scholar and trying to blacken the activists’ reputations. Of all the West’s leaders, however, few can hold a candle to Piet Hein Donner, who in 2006, as Dutch minister of justice, said that if voters wanted to bring sharia to the Netherlands—where Muslims will soon be a majority in major cities—“it would be a disgrace to say, ‘This is not permitted!’ ”
If you don’t find the dhimmification of politicians shocking, consider the degree to which law enforcement officers have yielded to Islamist pressure. Last year, when “Undercover Mosque,” an unusually frank exposé on Britain’s Channel 4, showed “moderate” Muslim preachers calling for the beating of wives and daughters and the murder of gays and apostates, police leaped into action—reporting the station to the government communications authority, Ofcom, for stirring up racial hatred. (Ofcom, to its credit, rejected the complaint.) The police reaction, as James Forsyth noted in the Spectator, “revealed a mindset that views the exposure of a problem as more of a problem than the problem itself.” Only days after the “Undercover Mosque” broadcast—in a colossal mark of indifference to the reality that it exposed—Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Ian Blair announced plans to share antiterrorist intelligence with Muslim community leaders. These plans, fortunately, were later shelved.
Canadian Muslim reformist Irshad Manji has noted that in 2006, when 17 terrorists were arrested in Toronto on the verge of giving Canada “its own 9/11,” “the police did not mention that it had anything to do with Islam or Muslims, not a word.” When, after van Gogh’s murder, a Rotterdam artist drew a street mural featuring an angel and the words THOU SHALT NOT KILL, police, fearing Muslim displeasure, destroyed the mural (and a videotape of its destruction). In July 2007, a planned TV appeal by British cops to help capture a Muslim rapist was canceled to avoid “racist backlash.” And in August, the Times of London reported that “Asian” men (British code for “Muslims”) in the U.K. were having sex with perhaps hundreds of “white girls as young as twelve”—but that authorities wouldn’t take action for fear of “upsetting race relations.” Typically, neither the Times nor government officials acknowledged that the “Asian” men’s contempt for the “white” girls was a matter not of race but of religion.
Even military leaders aren’t immune. In 2005, columnist Diana West noted that America’s Iraq commander, Lieutenant General John R. Vines, was educating his staff in Islam by giving them a reading list that “whitewashes jihad, dhimmitude and sharia law with the works of Karen Armstrong and John Esposito”; two years later, West noted the unwillingness of a counterinsurgency advisor, Lieutenant Colonel David Kilcullen, to mention jihad. In January 2008, the Pentagon fired Stephen Coughlin, its resident expert on sharia and jihad; reportedly, his acknowledgment that terrorism was motivated by jihad had antagonized an influential Muslim aide. “That Coughlin’s analyses would even be considered ‘controversial,’ ” wrote Andrew Bostom, editor of The Legacy of Jihad, “is pathognomonic of the intellectual and moral rot plaguing our efforts to combat global terrorism.” (Perhaps owing to public outcry, officials announced in February that Coughlin would not be dismissed after all, but instead moved to another Department of Defense position.)
Enough. We need to recognize that the cultural jihadists hate our freedoms because those freedoms defy sharia, which they’re determined to impose on us. So far, they have been far less successful at rolling back freedom of speech and other liberties in the U.S. than in Europe, thanks in no small part to the First Amendment. Yet America is proving increasingly susceptible to their pressures.
The key question for Westerners is: Do we love our freedoms as much as they hate them? Many free people, alas, have become so accustomed to freedom, and to the comfortable position of not having to stand up for it, that they’re incapable of defending it when it’s imperiled—or even, in many cases, of recognizing that it is imperiled. As for Muslims living in the West, surveys suggest that many of them, though not actively involved in jihad, are prepared to look on passively—and some, approvingly—while their coreligionists drag the Western world into the House of Submission.
But we certainly can’t expect them to take a stand for liberty if we don’t stand up for it ourselves.
Bruce Bawer is the author of While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within. He blogs at BruceBawer.com.
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The West’s Islamic legacy challenged
A French scholar has sparked a controversy by challenging the conventional wisdom that we emerged from the Dark Ages guided by Muslim teachers.
Sylvain Gouguenheim | Aristote au Mont saint-Michel – Les Racines grecques de l’Europe chrétienne | Seuil, Paris | 2008 | 280 pages
In France, historians writing about the cultural formation of Christian Europe throughout the Middle Ages do so at their own peril, as Sylvain Gouguenheim, professor of Medieval History at the École normale supérieure de Lyon (ENS-L), recently discovered. Because his latest book argues that the contribution of Islam to the cultural and intellectual development of Europe has been largely overemphasized, a petition was drawn up last spring by faculty colleagues lamenting its “ideological positions [inconsistent with] the pedagogical serenity and the scientific reputation of the ENS-L”.
The controversy quickly spilled into the French press with various specialists of the Middle Ages debating the book’s merits and demerits for weeks on end. Although Le Figaro (moderate right) and Le Monde (left) both published positive reviews, other publications such as Libération (far left) and Télérama (Catholic progressive) accused Gouguenheim of pursuing a “repugnant objective, that of annihilating the very notion of Arabian identity”. This led some world known authorities on the Middle-Ages, notably Rémi Brague and Jacques Le Goff, to take Gouguenheim’s defense. The book was also hotly debated on French television.
To understand why the controversy arose in the first place, one must bear in mind that there are currently three schools of thought about the relationship between Greece, the Islamic world and Medieval Europe.
The first school is premised on the notion of the “Dark Ages”, a period allegedly running from about 400 AD to 1200 AD (or earlier, depending on various historians) during which almost any form of learning would have ceased to exist except in monasteries. It holds: a) that the works of Greek philosophers, doctors and mathematicians would have first been discovered by the Arab-Muslim world beginning in the 9th century, thus giving rise to an “Islamic Enlightenment” fostered by the Abbasid Dynasty; b) that, thanks to the translation of these works from Arabic into Latin, Greek knowledge would have then penetrated into Christian Europe beginning in the 12th century; and c) that the West grew out of its “darkness” largely as a result of this “Islamic Enlightenment” and is therefore culturally indebted to the Islamic World. (1)
While this school held sway until the early 1950s, it was gradually overtaken in recent decades by a second school, one that might be termed the “self-development” view, which holds that Western civilization essentially grew out of a synthesis of Greek philosophy, Roman law and the Christian faith. Although it admits of some limited cultural influence exerted by the Islamic world on the West, it emphasizes the autonomy of Western cultural development based on a self-directed assimilation of our Greek heritage.
The third school argues that the notion of a vital continuity, whether directly from Greece to Europe, or indirectly from Greece to Arabia to Europe, is highly debatable and that, indeed, the very concept of “cultural roots” on which historians have traditionally relied should be called into question.(2)
Because the relatively new “self-development” view of the Middle Ages has been increasingly challenged in recent years by upholders of the first and third schools mentioned above, Gouguenheim has undertaken to buttress it and to respond to the arguments of its challengers. His book is essentially a synthesis of scholarly works published in the last 40 years (the bibliography includes more than 250 books and articles) by well-known French, British, Italian and American historians who contributed to the “self-development” interpretation of the Middle Ages.
So what does Gougenheim’s synthesis tell us? Four things.
First, Greek thought never really impregnated the Islamic world because the latter carefully subjected all “foreign” knowledge to an “Islamic filter” designed to determine its consistency with Muslim beliefs. Consequently, what Islamic scholars retained from Greece was limited “to that which did not contradict the teaching of the Koran”. This created major problems, notably with respect to Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics. More specifically, the Greek concept of causality was deemed incompatible with the Koranic understanding of God’s omnipotence, which it seemed to limit. And although some scholars like Al-Farabi, Al-Andalusi, Avicenna and Averroes were genuinely receptive to Greek influences, they were unable to reconcile Aristotelian metaphysical concepts with the content of Islamic revelation.
Moreover, Islamic works that did reflect Greek influence were usually not well received. Averroes’ books were burnt (only Latin translations of his commentaries on Aristotle have survived, all of his commentaries in Arabic having been lost or destroyed) and his disciples were found only among Jews and Christians. While the Koran may well offer its adherents a rational view of the world, Muslim rationalism has very little in common with Western rationalism. The notion of kalâm, sometimes translated as “Islamic philosophy”, was understood by the famous Muslim theologian Al-Ghazali as a means of “protecting the faith against the disruptions of innovators” and was, therefore, alien to the Greek concept of philosophy.
Finally, Muslim scholars were quick to realize that Aristotle’s political theories were inapplicable in a Muslim state, where politics, law and religion are closely intertwined. This explains why the Greco-Roman legal system was never envisaged, even by Averroes, as a source of juridical thinking in the Islamic world.
Second, Greek knowledge became accessible to the Islamic world thanks to the work of Eastern Christian scholars who translated Greek works into their own Syriac language, and then from Syriac into Arabic. More importantly, however, Islamic civilization is itself culturally indebted to early Christian scholars. For example, because the translation of Greek documents into Arabic raised major problems occasioned by the total absence of scientific terms in that language, it became incumbent on Christian Melkite translators to develop most of the Arabic scientific vocabulary. They were responsible in particular for translating into Arabic 139 medical books by Galen and Hippocratus and 43 books by Rufus of Ephesis. Also of interest is the fact, attested by several Muslim writers, that the Arabic “coufic” writing was developed by Christian missionaries in the 6th Century.
Third, Islam did not pass on its intellectual heritage to the West. The knowledge acquired by the West is the product of its own discoveries. The West benefited from the translations done at the request of abbots and bishops by clerics familiar with the Greek language, like Jacques de Venise who, after studying several years in Byzantium, spent the rest of his life translating Aristotle and other Greek philosophers at the monastery of Mont Saint-Michel, in Brittany. The West also benefited from a constant relationship with Byzantium, where Greek was the everyday language and Byzantine scholars were quite familiar with the Greek heritage. Thus, most of the knowledge discovered or transmitted throughout the period extending from the 8th to the 12th centuries resulted, not from Islam, but from the intellectual appetite of European Church elites. This explains the first Western Renaissance, known as the Carolingian Renaissance, which took place at the turn of the 9th Century.
Fourth, far from having been a “dark” or “barbarian” age, the period from the 8th to the 12th century, from Charlemagne to Peter Abelard, was characterized by the gradual assimilation of Greek philosophy and science and by an exceptional intellectual dynamism. It is throughout this period that Europe acquired the frame of mind of Greek and Roman antiquity and developed an understanding of the world and of science which became a specific character of Western civilization. The period set the stage for the 13th century, which witnessed a new intellectual “take-off” that manifested itself in the philosophical and theological works of Bonaventure, Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas, as well as in the scientific works of Roger Bacon, Campanus de Novare and Pierre de Marincourt.
Anyone interested in understanding the cultural roots of Western civilization will benefit greatly from reading Gouguenheim’s book. It provides overwhelming evidence in support of the notion that the Islamic world and the West reacted very differently to Greek knowledge, with the former remaining relatively impermeable to its influence and the latter making it very much its own. No one who reads Guggenheim can fail to realize how true remains the contention that Western civilization was built on the combined heritage of Athens, Rome and Jerusalem.
Finally, one is hard put to find any evidence in this book in support of the view that it is ideologically biased. The grievances against the author call to mind Matthew 7:3 – “Why do you see the speck in your brother’s eye but fail to notice the beam in your own eye?”
Richard Bastien is director of the Catholic Civil Rights League for the National Capital Area in Canada and a contributor to Égards, a French language journal of ideas.
Notes
(1) This is the view held by historians such as R.-R. Menocal (The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History: A Forgotten Heritage), A. de Libera (Penser au Moyen Âge), A. Miquel (L’Islam et sa civilisation) and R. Mantran (L’Expansion musulmane).
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The always suspect NY Times, on a subject wherein it is particulalry suspect:
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Britain Grapples With Role for Islamic Justice
by ELAINE SCIOLINO
Published: November 18, 2008
LONDON — The woman in black wanted an Islamic divorce. She told the religious judge that her husband hit her, cursed her and wanted her dead.
Suhaib Hasan spoke with a woman who was trying to divorce her husband in London. But her husband was opposed, and the Islamic scholar adjudicating the case seemed determined to keep the couple together. So, sensing defeat, she brought our her secret weapon: her father.
In walked a bearded man in long robes who described his son-in-law as a hot-tempered man who had duped his daughter, evaded the police and humiliated his family.
The judge promptly reversed himself and recommended divorce.
This is Islamic justice, British style. Despite a raucous national debate over the limits of religious tolerance and the pre-eminence of British law, the tenets of Shariah, or Islamic law, are increasingly being applied to everyday life in cities across the country.
The Church of England has its own ecclesiastical courts. British Jews have had their own “beth din” courts for more than a century.
But ever since the archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, called in February for aspects of Islamic Shariah to be embraced alongside the traditional legal system, the government has been grappling with a public furor over the issue, assuaging critics while trying to reassure a wary and at times disaffected Muslim population that its traditions have a place in British society.
Boxed between the two, the government has taken a stance both cautious and confusing, a sign of how volatile almost any discussion of the role of Britain’s nearly two million Muslims can become.
“There is nothing whatever in English law that prevents people abiding by Shariah principles if they wish to, provided they do not come into conflict with English law,” the justice minister, Jack Straw, said last month. But he added that British law would “always remain supreme,” and that “regardless of religious belief, we are all equal before the law.”
Conservatives and liberals alike — many of them unaware that the Islamic courts had been functioning at all, much less for years — have repeatedly denounced the courts as poor substitutes for British jurisprudence.
They argue that the Islamic tribunals’ proceedings are secretive, with no accountability and no standards for judges’ training or decisions.
Critics also point to cases of domestic violence in which Islamic scholars have tried to keep marriages together by ordering husbands to take classes in anger management, leaving the wives so intimidated that they have withdrawn their complaints from the police.
“They’re hostages to fortune,” said Parvin Ali, founding director of the Fatima Women’s Network, a women’s help group based in Leicester. Speaking of the courts, she said, “There is no outside monitoring, no protection, no records kept, no guarantee that justice will prevail.”
But as the uproar continues, the popularity of the courts among Muslims has blossomed.
Some of the informal councils, as the courts are known, have been giving advice and handing down judgments to Muslims for more than two decades.
Yet the councils have expanded significantly in number and prominence in recent years, with some Islamic scholars reporting a 50 percent increase in cases since 2005.
Almost all of the cases involve women asking for divorce, and through word of mouth and an ambitious use of the Internet, courts like the small, unadorned building in London where the father stepped in to plead his daughter’s case have become magnets for Muslim women seeking to escape loveless marriages — not only from Britain but sometimes also from Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands and Germany.
Other cases involve disputes over property, labor, inheritances and physical injury. The tribunals stay away from criminal cases that might call for the imposition of punishments like lashing or stoning.
Indeed, most of the courts’ judgments have no standing under British civil law. But for the parties who come before them, the courts offer something more important: the imprimatur of God.
“We do not want to give the impression that Muslims are an isolated community seeking a separate legal system in this country,” said Shahid Raza, who adjudicates disputes from an Islamic center in the West London suburb of Ealing.
“We are not asking for criminal Shariah law — chopping of hands or stoning to death,” he continued. “Ninety-nine percent of our cases are divorce cases in which women are seeking relief. We are helping women. We are doing a service.”
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Still, there is ample room for clashes with British custom. Three months ago, for example, a wealthy Bangladeshi family asked Dr. Raza’s council to resolve an inheritance dispute. It was resolved according to Shariah, he said. That meant the male heirs received twice as much as the female heirs.
Courts in the United States have endorsed Islamic and other religious tribunals, as in 2003, when a Texas appeals court referred a divorce case to a local council called the Texas Islamic Court.
But Shariah has been rejected in the West as well.
The Canadian province of Ontario had allowed rabbinical courts and Christian courts to resolve some civil and family disputes with binding rulings under a 1991 law. But when the Islamic Institute on Civil Justice there tried to create a Shariah court, it was attacked as a violation of the rights of Muslim women.
As a result, Ontario changed the entire system in 2006 to strip the rulings of any religious arbitration of legal validity or enforceability.
In Britain, beth din courts do not decide whether a Jewish couple’s marriage should end. They simply put their stamp of approval on the dissolution of the marriage when both parties agree to it. The beth din also adheres to the rules of Britain’s 1996 Arbitration Act and can function as an official court of arbitration in the consensual resolution of other civil disputes, like inheritance or business conflicts.
“People often come to us for reasons of speed, cost and secrecy,” said David Frei, registrar of the London Beth Din. “There’s nothing to prevent Muslims from doing the same thing.”
In Britain’s Islamic councils, however, if a wife wants a divorce and the husband does not, the Shariah court can grant her unilateral request to dissolve the marriage.
Most Shariah councils do not recognize the Arbitration Act, although Mr. Straw has been pushing them in recent months to do so. The main reason for their opposition is that they do not want the state involved in what they consider to be matters of religion.
The conflict over British Shariah courts comes at a time when Islamic principles are being extended to other areas of daily life in Britain.
There are now five wholly Islamic banks in the country and a score more that comply with Shariah.
An insurance company last summer began British advertising for “car insurance that’s right for your faith” because it does not violate certain Islamic prohibitions, like the one against gambling.
Britain’s first Shariah-compliant prepaid MasterCard was begun in August.
Here in London, Suhaib Hasan’s “courtroom” is a sparsely furnished office of the Islamic Shariah Council in Leyton, a working-class neighborhood in the eastern corner of the city. It has no lawyers or court stenographer, no recording device or computer, so Dr. Hasan takes partial notes in longhand.
“Please, will you give him another chance?” he asked the woman in black who was seeking divorce — that is, before she brought in the weighty voice of her father.
“No, no!” the woman, a 24-year-old employment consultant who had come seeking justice from 200 miles away, replied. “I gave him too many chances. He is an evil, evil man.”
“I’ll give you one month’s time to try to reconcile,” Dr. Hasan ruled.
Then her father tipped the scales.
“He was not a cucumber that we could cut open to know that he was rotten inside,” the father testified. “The only solution is divorce.”
Apparently convinced, Dr. Hasan said he would recommend divorce at the London Central Mosque, where he and several other religious scholars meet once a month to give final approval to cases like this.
Dr. Hasan, a silver-bearded, Saudi-educated scholar of Pakistani origin, handles the Pakistani community; an Egyptian ministers to the ethnic Arab community, while a Bangladeshi and a Somali work with their own communities.
The council in Leyton is one of the oldest and largest courts in the country. It has been quietly resolving disputes since 1982 and has dealt with more than 7,000 divorce cases.
Under some interpretations of Islamic law, a woman needs the blessing of a scholar of Islamic jurisprudence to be divorced, while a man can simply say three times that he is divorcing his wife.
Dr. Hasan counsels women that they must have their civil marriages dissolved in the British civil system.
“We always try to keep the marriages together, especially when there are children,” said Dr. Hasan’s wife, Shakila Qurashi, who works as an unofficial counselor for women.
If the husband beats her, she should go to the police and have a divorce, Ms. Qurashi said. “But if he’s slapped her only once or something like that,” she said, “and he admits he has made a mistake and promised not to do it again, then we say, ‘You have to forgive.’ ”
One recent afternoon, the waiting room was full of women and their family members.
A Pakistan-born 33-year-old mother of five explained that her husband would beat her and her children. “He threatens to kill us,” she said, as her daughter translated from Urdu. “He calls me a Jew and an infidel.” Dr. Hasan told her to immediately get police protection and request an Islamic divorce.
Another woman, 25, wanted out of a two-year-old arranged marriage with a man who refused to consummate the relationship. Dr. Hasan counseled dialogue.
“Until we see the husband,” he said, “we can’t be sure that what you’re saying is true.”
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Crafty; just a thought, this article is similar to ones that have been posted and debated in Sharia 101; you might consider moving it.
As discussed in the other forum, what's the problem? It's no different than voluntary arbitration, a common practice here in America.
Whether the mutually agreed upon arbitrator is a retired judge, a lawyer, a businessman, a layman, your priest or rabbi, it doesn't matter. The system
of voluntary arbitration has faults and issues, but also significant advantages. One being of course that it unclogs the legal system. And,
“People often come to us for reasons of speed, cost and secrecy,” said David Frei, registrar of the London Beth Din. “There’s nothing to prevent Muslims from doing the same thing.”
Most of the "objections" raised in this article could also be raised against other religious arbitration and non religious arbitration here in America.
"They argue that the Islamic tribunals’ proceedings are secretive, with no accountability and no standards for judges’ training or decisions."
Yet in American arbitration proceedings are often "secretive, with no accountability and no standards for judges' training or decisions."
And as Jack Straw says in you article,
“There is nothing whatever in English law that prevents people abiding by Shariah principles if they wish to, provided they do not come into conflict with English law,” the justice minister, Jack Straw, said last month. But he added that British law would “always remain supreme,” and that “regardless of religious belief, we are all equal before the law.”
Arbitration has existed in England and this country for many years; it works.
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**Sharia is to equal protection under the law, what islam is to free speech.**
LONDON — The woman in black wanted an Islamic divorce. She told the religious judge that her husband hit her, cursed her and wanted her dead.
Suhaib Hasan spoke with a woman who was trying to divorce her husband in London. But her husband was opposed, and the Islamic scholar adjudicating the case seemed determined to keep the couple together. So, sensing defeat, she brought our her secret weapon: her father.
In walked a bearded man in long robes who described his son-in-law as a hot-tempered man who had duped his daughter, evaded the police and humiliated his family.
The judge promptly reversed himself and recommended divorce.
**What if this woman had no male relative to offer witness on her behalf? Remember that under sharia, a muslim woman's testimony is only half that of a muslim male's.**
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http://www.islamic-sharia.org/general/on-the-testimony-of-women-2.html
On the testimony of women:
Asalaamu-Aleikum
I would like to know why two women are the equivalent on one man in an Islamic court. I thought we were different, but equal. Please reply with an in-depth explanation as to why this is.
Please bear in mind the following facts regarding this issue:
1. There are issues where only women's testimony is enough like those related to birth of a child, the period of suckling and weaning. In such cases, which are normally handled by the women, testimony of a single lady is accepted. For example, when a woman said, looking at a newly-wed couple: "I suckled you both", the Prophet (SAS) nullified their marriage and asked them to separate from each other.
2. Cases of serious nature, like that of fornication, adultery and rape attract a very hard punishment in Islam. Flogging a hundred times for unmarried couples and stoning to the married ones. To prove such an allegation, even two male witnesses are not enough, but four of them are required. Suppose those who witnessed were women alone. If the number of witnesses is doubled, less would be the chance for the implementation of this punishment. Many people do not object a lot to these ways of punishment but they do not realize how difficult it has been made in Islam, to prove such allegations.
3. The text (Surah Al-Baqara 2:282) which requires two female witnesses in place of one male witness, gives a clear reason for it i.e. "if one of them forgets, the other reminds her." Is this derogatory to the status of the women or is it a revealed secret about the nature of the women? Though much has been said about the difference between a man's brain and that of a women but I would rather like to quote the latest research made about this issue. According to a survey, as published in Los Angeles Times (U.S.A) , made involving fifty men and women for quite a considerable time, the out come was as follows:
Man's mind is uni-focal while the women's mind is multi-focal. In other words, a man would be fully occupied with the task he is involved with; he may not be distracted by anything else while being engaged in his activity. On the other hand, a woman may be busy in kitchen work and she will be easily alert to a phone buzzer or her infants cry from the cradle. In a way she is found to be more sensitive and active in her dealings. Thus she has got a very praise worthy character but that is not so good for a case of testimony which requires more attention and concentration. What is wrong then, if a second woman is needed, only to remind her is she fails to deliver her testimony completely. So it is a case of verification of the testimony, not that of degradation to the status of the women at all.
4. In many other matters, the nature of women are considered. For example, the right of divorce is vested in the hand of the man while she is allowed to ask for divorce either directly or through a Qadi (Judge). Why? Because the women are kind-hearted human beings who are governed by their emotions, a character strongly needed for bringing up the children. On the other hand, man is governed by his mind more than his emotions. He would think twice but more than that before uttering the word "Talaq" (divorce). Even if he misuses this word (as noticed again and again) a long procedure following a divorce i.e. the Iddat period of a woman, allows him to retract the step he has taken. He can revoke that Talaq within this cooling period of approximately three months time.
To deny the difference between the two genders is a denial of truth. Allah who created us, gave us rulings according to our nature. And all is well as long as we go by the nature.
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http://www.islamic-sharia.org/general/deeming-shariah-islamic-law-as-incompetent-2.html
Deeming Shariah (islamic law) as incompetent
Introduction:
As we know that He is our Creator and the reason behind our existence is submission to Him and to His Laws whether we understand the wisdom behind each and every single one of them or not. Our role is not to question Allah as He says in Quran;
"He can not be questioned as to what He does, but they will be questioned" [1]
Rather we say
"we hear and obey" [2]
We do not question the legitimacy of His Laws as they are built upon His vast Wisdom and our comprehension is limited to His Will as He says in Quran;
"And they will never compass anything of His Knowledge except that which He wills" [3]
Rather His Laws are perfect and are there for us as a test to see who will obey the message and who will turn back on their heels as Allah says in Quran;
"And we made the Qiblah which you used to face, only to test those who followed the Messenger from those who would turn on their heels" [4]
This is clearly illustrated in the story of satan and Adam. The reason why satan refused to prostate was because he used logic/analogy over submission. This is what has prevailed in this era. People have forgotten the submission and are heading towards logic and analogies as to claim that they know better than their Creator.
Those who deem Law of Allah as incompetent should read the conversation between Allah and His Angels when He disclosed to them the creation of Adam.
"And (remember) when your Lord said to the angels "Verily, I am going to place (mankind) generations after generations on earth". They said: "Will You place therein those who will make mischief therein and shed blood, - while we glorify You with praises and thanks and sanctify You."
Look at the questions raised by the most noblest of creations. Those who are pure by essence and never disobey His commands. Even they were not able to comprehend the Wisdom of Allah behind creating humans whom are bound to shed blood, cause corruption, while they are there already praising Allah, sanctifying Him, glorifying Him. How would we, those who are drench in sins, away from Islam and its teaching - how could we ever comprehend His Wisdom? But look at the response of Allah!
"He (Allah) said: "I know that which you do not know" [5]
Questions & Answers
Q1) what is the Islamic ruling on statements stating the shariah law as barbaric and what is the ruling on saying Hudood are incompatible wit contemporary life?
As a Muslim we should know that our religion is perfect without any imperfection as Allah says;
"this day, I have perfected your religion for you, and have chosen for you Islam as your religion" [6]
Therefore, belittling them or calling them as out-of-date constitutes disbelief as Allah says;
"Then do you believe in part of the scripture and reject the rest? Then what is the recompense of those who do so among you, except disgrace in the life of this world, and on the Day of Resurrection they shall be consigned to the most grievous torment. And Allah is not unaware of what you do."[7]
It is mentioned in the book by Al-Haafiz Abil Hassan Ali bin Al-Qittan Al-Faasi he says:
? ???? ??? ??????? ???? ? ????? ?? ?? ???? ? ??? ???? ?????? ????? ??????? ??? ?? ?????? ???? ????? ???? ??? ????? ?? ???? ??? ??? ??????
"and the people of Islam have agreed upon from the Jinn and humans in every time and in every place with sound confirmed agreement that the Quran which has been sent down by Allah upon His prophet is the truth and a necessity for every person to follow it"[8]
Leaving any part of Quran or changing it is going against the consensus of entire Muslim nation. The author mentions another consensus in his book;
? ?????? ?? ?? ??? ????? ????? ? ?????? ? ??? ?? ??? ?? ??? ??? ??? ??? ???? ? ?? ??? ?? ??????? ?? ?? ?????? ?? ?? ???? ?? ??? ??? ??? ?? ?? ?? ????? ??? ??? ?? ??? ??? ??? ??? ???? ??? ?? ??? ???? ??? ????? ?? ?? ?? ?? ??? ? ??? ??? ??? ???? ???? ???? ???? ?? ??? ???? ?????
"and they all have agreed (unanimously) that whosoever believes in Allah and His prophet and in all that which has been reported from him authentically and did not have doubt in Tawheed of Allah (Lordship, Worship & Names and Attributes) or in prophethood or in Muahmmed (himself) or in any single letter which he has come with or in the shariah which he has come with narrated from him authentically, so whosoever negates in any of the things which we have mentioned or have doubt in anything from them and he dies upon that state then he dies as a disbeliever mushrik, inhabitant of Hellfire forever" [9]
If you were to ask: "is every single shariah law unchangeable"? We say that shariah law is constituted in two segments:
1) Laws which are fixed for certain crimes such as adultery, murder, theft etc
2) Laws which are not fixed and are executed based up liaising between individual and society such as drinking wine etc. These laws or punishments are initiated by religious scholars or supreme leader who can choose to implement various methods for such actions such as either to lash them, or expel them from country or imprison them etc
Now the question is asked whether these laws are barbaric or not?
Barbaric is truly a conformist word where they emulate certain punishments of the old and replicate them in modern day society to symbolize how cruel they were for mankind. However, if one was to look at modern day warfare, it is evident in their usage of artillery being more barbaric and leaving no mercy at all for the enemy. Countries are accumulating atomic warheads, chemical arsenal etc for their so called "peace" missions whereas they are causing more havoc, destruction, and cruelty to people than others.
So who determines what is barbaric and what is not? Rather Allah says in Quran
"And there is (a saving of) life for you in Al-Qisas (the law of equality in punishment), O men of understanding that you may become the pious" [10]
So the underlining factor behind laws are to deter criminals from committing crimes and we know that not all will adhere to them so which system is applicable? Look at the current systems in placed and see their results and compare them to those countries using Islamic criminal law. The results are overwhelmingly supporting for the implementation of shariah law.
There are statements of companions and their students (Tabieen) collected regarding those who denied the law of stoning by ???? ??? ??? ???? ?? ?????? ??????:
???- ??????? ?? ????? ????? ?????? ?????? ??? ??? ??? ???????? ??????? ???
?? ??? ?? ??? ?? ???? ?? ????? ???: ????? ??? ???? ???????? ????: ??? ???? ??? ?? ?????? ???? ???????? ????: "???? ????? ??? ????? ?? ??? ????? ????? ?????? ?????? ? ?????? ??????? ? ?????? ?????? ? ?????? ???????? ? ?????? ??????? ????? ? ?????? ???? ?????? ?? ????? ????? ???????"
"Chapter: Warning from school of thoughts of those people who deny the shariah which is a compulsory upon Muslims to have certainty in:
Ali bin Zayd reported from yusuf bin mahraam who said; ibn Abbas gave us a sermon in Basra so he said, Omar bin Khattab the leader of Muslims stood within us so he said:
"O people! Verily there will be people from this nation who will deny Rajm (stoning) and deny Dajjal and deny the pond of prophet and will deny the intercession of prophet and will deny the punishment in the grave and will deny that some people will be taken out from the hellfire after they have been punished" [11]
In another place.........
?? ??? ?? ??? ?? ???? ?? ????? ?? ??? ???? ? ???: ??? ??? ?? ?????? :"??? ???? ???? ? ??? ??? ??? ? ???? ???' ? ???? ??? ?????? ?????? ? ?????? ??????? ? ?????? ?????? ? ?????? ???????? ? ?????? ??????? ????? ? ?????? ???? ?????? ?? ?????
"ali bin zayd narrated from yusuf bin mihraan who narrated from ibn Abbas who said that Omar bin Khattab said;
"O people! Indeed rajm (stoning) is truth, so do not deviate from it and the proof is that the prophet stoned and abu bakr stoned and I also stoned. Hence there will be people from this nation who will deny stoning, who will deny dajjal......"[12]
In another place he mentions
?? ??? ????? ??????? ???? ? ?? ??? ? ??? ??? ?????? ? ?? ??? ??? ? ?? ??? ??? ??? ???? ????? ? ???? ?? ??? ? ?? ??? ?????? ??? ?????? ? ????? ??? ????? ? ??? (( ?????? ????? ???? ?? ? ?? ? ?????? ???? ???? ????))
"verily the prophet stoned two Jews who fornicated and verily abu bakr stoned and omar bin khattab stoned and Ali bin abi taalib stoned a woman called Shuraaha who committed fornication while she was a divorcee/widow so he lashed her on Friday and stoned her on Saturday and said;
"I stoned her in accordance to the Book of Allah and upon the sunnah of prophet Muahmmad"[13]
Now by looking at all these statements of the companions, there remains no doubt that they never saw such laws as barbaric because they knew that it has come from the Most Wise the Most Merciful and He would never do injustice upon His slaves.
Q3) what is the ruling who denies the Sovereignty of Allah as lawgiver and ruling on the concept that Islamic state is alien to Islam?
Denying Allah the right of Lawgiver means he has taken someone else as partners besides Allah who has the right to determine how this individual should conduct his life. The one who does not recognises Allah as his Master to govern him then surely he has found another god to administrate him. He is a clear disbeliever outside the fold of Islam.
"the Hukm is for Allah alone. He declares the truth and He is the best of judges" [14]
"and whomsoever does not judges according to what Allah has revealed then surely they are the disbelievers" [15]
"say O people of the scripture,! You have nothing (as regards guidance) till you act accordance to the Torah, the Gospel and what has been sent down to you from your Lord (the Quran)". Verily that which has been sent down to you (Muhammed) from your Lord increases in most of them (their) obstinate rebellion and disbelief. So be not sorrowful over the people who disbelieve"[16]
"[say (O Muhammad):] "shall I seek a judge other than Allah while it is He Who has sent down unto you the Book (the Quran), explained in detail."[17]
As for the second question that is Islamic state alien to Islam? Lets look at scholars and see how they defined Islamic state
Imam abu yusuf said;
"a place is recognised as Islamic state by manifesting Islamic law, even if majority of the people are non-Muslims. Similarly a non Islamic state is in her manifestation of non Islamic law even if most of the people living there are Muslims. [18]
Another hanafi scholar called al-kisaani said;
"there is no disagreement between our companions (within their school of thought) that a dar ul kufr becomes dar ul islam with the manifestation of Islamic rules"[19]
So in the light of these two definitions given by the scholars and generally most of the scholars agree that Islamic state has to manifest Islamic shariah if not then it will not be considered as Islamic state. Hence, those who say that Islamic is alien to Islamic state need to be educated.
Q5) Ruling on those who search for rare opinions to provide modernist interpretation of Islam?
Sheikh ul islam ibn taymiyyah said;
??? ????? ??????? ?? ???? ???? ? ????? ???? ??????? ??? ??? ???? "????? ???? ?? ???????" ? ??? ????? "??? ?????? ???? ????? ??? ?? ???????" ? ?????? ?? ???? ???? ??? ?????? ????? ?????? ?? ?????? ? ?????? ? ??? ??? ??????? ? ??? ?? ?????? ???? ??? ????? ??? ???? ? ???? ?????? ?????? ????? ???? ??? ????? ???? ?? ????? ?????? ???? ???? ??? ????? ???? ?? ????? ?????? ???? ??? ???? ???? ??? ????? ?????? ??????? ? ??????? ? ????? ??????? ? ???????
"Ahlul sunnah strive hard in serving Allah and His prophet in accordance to their ability as Allah said
"Fear Allah as much as you can"[20]
And the prophet said,
"When I have commanded you with something then do that as much as you can"[21]
And they know that Allah has sent Muhammad with the welfare in people's livelihood and customs and that he ordered with conciliation and forbade us from corruption. So if there was an action containing welfare and corruption, we would give preference to the predominant. So if its welfare outweighs corruption, we would give it precedence. And if its corruption outweighs the welfare, then we would leave that action. For indeed Allah sent His prophet to acquire welfare and to shun corruption and make it lesser any way possible" [22]
This principal clearly outlines that any action agreed by majority will be for people's welfare and interest and any rare opinion will serve less interest for people and for their welfare. Thus, any opinion or interpretation which is rare can not be made as a mainstream view and compelled to be accepted. Example is one scholar going against the majority. If for instance the practice in a country is based upon majority opinion then suddenly to be changed for the rare opinion and made that as mainstream practice then it is incorrect. This illustrates that majority was in error and the rare view was rightly guided? This in itself by logic is absurd.
[1] Chapter 21 verse 23
[2] Chapter 2 verse 285
[3] Chapter 2 verse 255
[4] Chapter 2 verse 143
[5] chap 2 ver 29
[6] chap 5 ver 3
[7] Chap 2 ver 85
[8] ??????? ?? ????? ??????? volume 1 page 127
[9] ??????? ?? ????? ??????? volume 1 page 126
[10] Chapter 2 verse 179
[11] ???? ??????? volume 3 page 1192
[12] ???? ??????? volume 3 page 1195
[13] ???? ??????? volume 3 page 1197
[14] Chapter 6 verse 57
[15] Chapter 5 verse 44
[16] Chapter 5 verse 68
[17] Chapter 6 verse 114
[18] Almabsoot lil sarkhasee volume 10 page 144
[19] Bada'eul sanaai'e volume 7 page 130
[20] Chapter 63 verse 16
[21] Narrated by Abu Hurayrah. Reported by Bukhari & Muslim
[22] Minhaaj us sunnah volume 4 page 527
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Funny enough :? = Arabic script
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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/11/19/german-outreach-to-muslims-backfires/
German outreach to Muslims backfires
posted at 3:17 pm on November 19, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
An attempt by German Academia to provide outreach to moderate Muslims may have significantly backfired, with its leading light becoming an apostate. Muhammed Sven Kalish has written a paper asserting that the prophet Mohammed never existed at all, and that Islam started as a Christian heresy. Needless to say, the same people who threatened death on editorial cartoonists merely for depicting Mohammed are not pleased:
Muhammad Sven Kalisch, a Muslim convert and Germany’s first professor of Islamic theology, fasts during the Muslim holy month, doesn’t like to shake hands with Muslim women and has spent years studying Islamic scripture. Islam, he says, guides his life.
So it came as something of a surprise when Prof. Kalisch announced the fruit of his theological research. His conclusion: The Prophet Muhammad probably never existed.
Muslims, not surprisingly, are outraged. Even Danish cartoonists who triggered global protests a couple of years ago didn’t portray the Prophet as fictional. German police, worried about a violent backlash, told the professor to move his religious-studies center to more-secure premises.
“We had no idea he would have ideas like this,” says Thomas Bauer, a fellow academic at Münster University who sat on a committee that appointed Prof. Kalisch. “I’m a more orthodox Muslim than he is, and I’m not a Muslim.”
Of course, Christians and Jews have dealt with critical research for many years on the historical accuracy of their scriptures. Claims that Jesus, Moses, and David didn’t exist have been made, debunked, and made yet again so often that they no longer make news any more. Christians and Jews express annoyance at times with these claims, but they don’t react to them with violence and rage.
Neither should Muslims, Kalisch says, and the reluctance to even offer such a hypothetical amounts to bigotry:
Most Western scientists turn down such an hypotheses out of respect for Islam or because they are afraid of the reactions of their Muslim friends or because they think it is speculative nonsense.
The word “respect” sounds wonderful but it is completely inappropriate here because one really refers to the opposite. Whoever thinks that Muslims can’t deal with facts puts Muslims on the same level as small children who can’t think and decide for themselves and whose illusions of Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny one doesn’t want to destroy.
Whoever really bases his thoughts on the equality of all human beings must expect the same intellectual performance. Really treating Muslims with respect would imply that they are strong enough to deal with their religion on the basis of our modern level of knowledge. “Islamophobes” think we Muslims are barbarians, the “kind-hearted” take us for “noble savages”… The result is the same: Muslims are seen as different from the rest of the world — they either belong in a “petting zoo” or in cages for wild animals, but by all means they belong in a zoo.
I agree with Kalisch’s response, but I think he misplaces the blame. Western intellectuals have this reaction because of the massive rage that comes not just from a few nutcases but millions of Muslims when the Koran or the Hadiths receive any sort of critical scrutiny at all. The Prophet Cartoon outrage was particularly instructive, as the resultant demonstrations had millions of participants worldwide calling for death to the editorial cartoonists — and they just drew pictures of Mohammed. It’s that predictable rage that makes Western academics place Muslims in general in the category of ill-tempered children.
However, I’d take his hypothesis with a large, Lot’s wife-sized grain of salt. Modern academics show little respect to the value of oral traditions in these revisionist theories. It’s certainly possible that Mohammed never existed, but it strikes me as extremely unlikely. Just because his story didn’t get written in a traditional paper medium during his life doesn’t make him a fable. It could certainly impact the veracity of his quotes and the stories told in the Koran, but his existence? Especially given the disputes over his succession that broke out after his death — all of which have fairly clear records and resulted in the Sunni-Shi’ite split within a generation or two — I’d call Kalisch’s theory a long shot.
Nevertheless, it’s precisely this kind of critical thinking that Islam requires to bring it into modernity and toleration. Unfortunately, it’s also this kind of critical thinking that provokes the most reactionary behavior, which them shuts down critical thinking. This will be a long process indeed, one I’m certain Germany’s academics had no intention of starting with such a controversial launch.
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**Sharia is to equal protection under the law, what islam is to free speech.**
LONDON — The woman in black wanted an Islamic divorce. She told the religious judge that her husband hit her, cursed her and wanted her dead.
Suhaib Hasan spoke with a woman who was trying to divorce her husband in London. But her husband was opposed, and the Islamic scholar adjudicating the case seemed determined to keep the couple together. So, sensing defeat, she brought our her secret weapon: her father.
In walked a bearded man in long robes who described his son-in-law as a hot-tempered man who had duped his daughter, evaded the police and humiliated his family.
The judge promptly reversed himself and recommended divorce.
**What if this woman had no male relative to offer witness on her behalf? Remember that under sharia, a muslim woman's testimony is only half that of a muslim male's.**
We have had this discussion before. I am not questioning or discussing the merits or unfairness of "islamic law"; only the law in England.
This post was in "Islam in Europe".
Before the Courts of England a Muslim, Christian, or Jew are equal.
“There is nothing whatever in English law that prevents people abiding by Shariah principles if they wish to, provided they do not come into conflict with English law,” the justice minister, Jack Straw, said last month. But he added that British law would “always remain supreme,” and that “regardless of religious belief, we are all equal before the law.”
However, IF BOTH parties agree to arbitration and IF BOTH agree to be heard in an Islamic Court, my point was/is "what's the problem"? And my answer is there is no problem. It is fair. People choose
voluntary arbitration for many practical and different reasons, but the key word is "voluntary". If you don't like it, don't do arbitration and you will then not be subject to Islamic Law; only English Law. But if you voluntarily agree to arbitration, and there truly are benefits, and then don't like the decision, why am I to feel sorry for you? I don't - you knew the possible risk and benefits of arbitration before you agreed. The same is true of arbitration here in America.
Voluntary arbitration has existed for a long time in England and does here as well. And it may well be religious based. As Crafty's NY Times article pointed out, the Church of England as does the Jewish faith offer arbitration. “People often come to us for reasons of speed, cost and secrecy,” said David Frei, registrar of the London Beth Din. “There’s nothing to prevent Muslims from doing the same thing.”
In your example, the woman sandbagged her husband. She, as does everyone who participates, voluntarily agreed to Islamic Arbitration. Her husband thought he had the upper hand, and then walked in her father. Great strategic courtroom tactics; she won a quick and decisive victory for herself; clever girl. And if she did not have a male relative, well then she should pass on arbitration and take her chances in English court. It's all strategy, but fair for everyone. Don't blame Islamic Law; they are only offering a voluntary service for members of their faith.
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1) For the record "In Britain, beth din courts do not decide whether a Jewish couple’s marriage should end. They simply put their stamp of approval on the dissolution of the marriage when both parties agree to it." This is different than determining whether the divorce should take place.
2) GM: JDN's point seems fairly reasoned. What say you?
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**Sharia is to equal protection under the law, what islam is to free speech.**
LONDON — The woman in black wanted an Islamic divorce. She told the religious judge that her husband hit her, cursed her and wanted her dead.
Suhaib Hasan spoke with a woman who was trying to divorce her husband in London. But her husband was opposed, and the Islamic scholar adjudicating the case seemed determined to keep the couple together. So, sensing defeat, she brought our her secret weapon: her father.
In walked a bearded man in long robes who described his son-in-law as a hot-tempered man who had duped his daughter, evaded the police and humiliated his family.
The judge promptly reversed himself and recommended divorce.
**What if this woman had no male relative to offer witness on her behalf? Remember that under sharia, a muslim woman's testimony is only half that of a muslim male's.**
We have had this discussion before. I am not questioning or discussing the merits or unfairness of "islamic law"; only the law in England.
This post was in "Islam in Europe".
Before the Courts of England a Muslim, Christian, or Jew are equal.
**Not in sharia court. And yet, in the UK's attempts to appease by giving the pre-existing sharia courts legal standing, they feed the destructive force they wish to restrain. Has "seperate, but equal" ever been anything but a mask for oppression? Do the neo-nazis get their own civil courts as well? If not, why not?**
“There is nothing whatever in English law that prevents people abiding by Shariah principles if they wish to, provided they do not come into conflict with English law,” the justice minister, Jack Straw, said last month. But he added that British law would “always remain supreme,” and that “regardless of religious belief, we are all equal before the law.”
However, IF BOTH parties agree to arbitration and IF BOTH agree to be heard in an Islamic Court, my point was/is "what's the problem"? And my answer is there is no problem. It is fair. People choose
voluntary arbitration for many practical and different reasons, but the key word is "voluntary".
**What mechanism is there to ensure that muslim women, in the growing islamic enclaves in europe, would be protected if they chose not to go to "voluntary" sharia court. You ignore the religious, cultural and potentially physical coersion that they face.**
If you don't like it, don't do arbitration and you will then not be subject to Islamic Law; only English Law. But if you voluntarily agree to arbitration, and there truly are benefits, and then don't like the decision, why am I to feel sorry for you? I don't - you knew the possible risk and benefits of arbitration before you agreed. The same is true of arbitration here in America.
Voluntary arbitration has existed for a long time in England and does here as well. And it may well be religious based. As Crafty's NY Times article pointed out, the Church of England as does the Jewish faith offer arbitration. “People often come to us for reasons of speed, cost and secrecy,” said David Frei, registrar of the London Beth Din. “There’s nothing to prevent Muslims from doing the same thing.”
In your example, the woman sandbagged her husband. She, as does everyone who participates, voluntarily agreed to Islamic Arbitration. Her husband thought he had the upper hand, and then walked in her father. Great strategic courtroom tactics; she won a quick and decisive victory for herself; clever girl. And if she did not have a male relative, well then she should pass on arbitration and take her chances in English court. It's all strategy, but fair for everyone. Don't blame Islamic Law; they are only offering a voluntary service for members of their faith.
**Islam, from the time of it's invention has never been about free choice, only forcing submission. Many, if not all of these women are being forced to submit to sharia. This step toward imposing sharia is but the first step in the "stealth jihad". Those that support it have the same goals as al qaeda, the difference is they way they work towards those goals.**
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Pulling up the chair and the popcorn , , ,
Over to you JDN :-D
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Pulling up the chair and the popcorn , , ,
Over to you JDN :-D
More likely you are paraphrasing Caesar before the battle!
And like good centurions, are we to say, "we who are about to die salute you!" :-D
I repeat myself, before the Courts of England a Muslim, a Christian and a Jew are equal. Again, I quote, Jack Straw, "regardless of religious belief we are all equal before the law.".
Sharia "court" is only a VOLUNTARY court of arbitration. For example in America, many matters are settled through arbitration and/or outside the US Court system. It's voluntary; both parties
approve of the arbitrator. And both parties are or should be aware of any biases of the arbitrator. Sharia court is separate but equal just like the Church of England and other arbitrator's are separate
but equal. In all instances, English Law and in American Law participation in arbitration is VOLUNTARY on the part of the participants. Benefits exist; i.e. speed, cost, and time among them. Nearly anyone can be the arbitrator. However, both parties must mutually choose the arbitrator; if you don't like sharia arbitration court, or any other arbitration court, don't participate; it's very simple.
As for "protection of muslim women if they chose not to go to voluntary shiria court" they have the same protection that you and I have if we are threatened. Again, as justice minister Straw said, "we are all equal before the law.". If someone threatens me, I call the police. If someone harasses me, I call the police. etc. Muslim women have no more, but no less protection than any other citizen of England. They are equal.
Islam may or may not be about "forcing submission"; I don't know. But I do know that if a women was physically "forced to submit to sharia" in England the perpetrator upon the victim filing charges would probably be arrested; at minimum I presume a restraining order could be obtained. That is the same protection any other woman has in England; again, no more no less.
As for "stealth jihad" that sounds like the ninja animation movie I watched last time I was in Japan. Flying in the air, doing triple flips and killing 100 to one; he too looked pretty ominous, but after I finished my popcorn, we all got up and left for the bar to have a few beers and a few laughs. It was good good story.
So Crafty, do you have any popcorn left, or hopefully do you suggest we move on? :-)
I mean you have have already watched this same movie in Sharia 101 if I recollect. Reruns are usually pretty boring. :-D
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Pulling up the chair and the popcorn , , ,
Over to you JDN :-D
More likely you are paraphrasing Caesar before the battle!
And like good centurions, are we to say, "we who are about to die salute you!" :-D
I repeat myself, before the Courts of England a Muslim, a Christian and a Jew are equal. Again, I quote, Jack Straw, "regardless of religious belief we are all equal before the law.".
Sharia "court" is only a VOLUNTARY court of arbitration. For example in America, many matters are settled through arbitration and/or outside the US Court system. It's voluntary; both parties
approve of the arbitrator. And both parties are or should be aware of any biases of the arbitrator. Sharia court is separate but equal just like the Church of England and other arbitrator's are separate
but equal. In all instances, English Law and in American Law participation in arbitration is VOLUNTARY on the part of the participants. Benefits exist; i.e. speed, cost, and time among them. Nearly anyone can be the arbitrator. However, both parties must mutually choose the arbitrator; if you don't like sharia arbitration court, or any other arbitration court, don't participate; it's very simple.
**It might be simple for you or me, not so much for non-english speaking women imported from other islamic garden spots, who are kept locked away and abused, as allah intended.**
As for "protection of muslim women if they chose not to go to voluntary shiria court" they have the same protection that you and I have if we are threatened. Again, as justice minister Straw said, "we are all equal before the law.".
**Ah yes, "seperate but equal" again. Nothing uncomfortable about that concept for you?**
If someone threatens me, I call the police. If someone harasses me, I call the police. etc. Muslim women have no more, but no less protection than any other citizen of England. They are equal.
Islam may or may not be about "forcing submission"; I don't know.
**Islam most closely translates to submission, as in "submission to the will of allah". Submission and slavery are some of the most common themes in islamic theology.**
But I do know that if a women was physically "forced to submit to sharia" in England the perpetrator upon the victim filing charges would probably be arrested; at minimum I presume a restraining order could be obtained. That is the same protection any other woman has in England; again, no more no less.
As for "stealth jihad" that sounds like the ninja animation movie I watched last time I was in Japan. Flying in the air, doing triple flips and killing 100 to one; he too looked pretty ominous, but after I finished my popcorn, we all got up and left for the bar to have a few beers and a few laughs. It was good good story.
**Did you see the movie where 19 jihadis killed about 3000 people in about two hours? There has actually been several movies made about that one. Did you have beers and laughs after watching one of those?**
So Crafty, do you have any popcorn left, or hopefully do you suggest we move on? :-)
I mean you have have already watched this same movie in Sharia 101 if I recollect. Reruns are usually pretty boring. :-D
**You are so quick to accuse someone of being a racist without evidence, and yet you are such a fan of policies that result in the oppression, suffering and deaths of the minorities that you allegedly are so concerned about. Who is the racist?**
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I dunno, as someone who has seen a lot of Muslim women show up to school in burqas, change over to jeans and a blouse before class, and then change back before they are picked up at the end of the day--women aren't 'sposed to drive, don'tcha know--I have a hard time wrapping my head around the concept of "voluntary paternalism." When we see women in many Muslim societies making "choices" women in less restrictive ones go a long way to avoid, are we not adopting dissimilitude should we label those choices "voluntary?"
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**Celebrate diversity!**
'Family turned a blind eye' as teenage bride was beaten to death by arranged husband
by CHRIS BROOKE
Last updated at 13:06 08 January 2008
A teenage bride was beaten to death by her husband while her in-laws who shared the same house ignored her sickening ordeal, a court heard yesterday.
Sabia Rani, 19, was repeatedly attacked over a three-week period, suffering bruising over 90% of her body and 'catastrophic' injuries usually only seen in car crash victims.
The 'vulnerable' teenager, who had arrived five months earlier from Pakistan for the arranged marriage, required emergency treatment in a hospital intensive care unit, the jury at Leeds Crown Court heard.
Beaten to death: Sabia Rani was repeatedly attacked over a three-week period by Shazad Khan (right)
But not only did four members of her husband's family do nothing to help her, they turned a blind eye as he continued the beatings and ultimately murdered the helpless young woman at the house they all shared, it was alleged.
The victim's mother-in-law and a sister-in-law blamed her horrfic injuries, which included at least 15 fractures on 10 fractured ribs, on 'evil spirits, curses and black magic.' While two of the family allegedly lied under oath while giving evidence in husband Shazad Khan's murder trial in a deliberate attempt to help him cheat justice, the court heard.
Khan, 25, of Oakwood Grange, Leeds, was convicted of murdering his wife at Leeds Crown Court last January. After the trial police launched an investigation into the role of other family members sharing the house.
Detectives arrested and charged the victim's mother-in-law Phullan Bibi, 52, sisters-in-law Nazia Naureen, 28, sister-in-law Uzma Khan, 23, and her husband Majid Hussain, 28. All four denied a charge of allowing the death of a vulnerable adult. Khan and Hussain also denied a charge of perjury.
Summarising the prosecution case Simon Myerson, QC, said of the defendants: 'They did nothing. She was in severe pain, but not one of them did anything about it.'
Sabia grew up in the Pakistani region of Kashmir and arrived in the UK in December 2005 to marry her cousin Shazad Khan and live with his family in Leeds. Although they 'signed a marriage certificate' in Pakistan three years earlier, they were not formally married until a ceremony on 15 January 2006.
The teenage bride didn't speak English, knew no one else apart from her husband's family and never went out alone, the court heard.
Paramedics were called to the family home at 11.28 am on Sunday 21 May 2006 to find Sabia's fully-clothed and dead body in an upstairs bathroom. They claimed Sabia had been found dead in the bath, but the court heard she was 'probably killed in the garage' and her body taken upstairs.
Mr Myerson said Khan had inflicted a number of brutal attacks during the last three weeks of Sabia's life. The final attack which killed her was 'prolonged and vicious,' the court heard. Her agonising rib fractures were caused by 'kicks, stamps or very hard punches.'
The court heard Sabia would have been in terrible pain and her injuries 'couldn't have been hidden by simple stoicism.' She was given paracetemol, but needed powerful medication and hospital care.
However, the defendants claimed they saw no injuries on her body and didn't realise she was in pain.
Mr Myerson said this explanation was a lie and because they shared the same home and regularly spent time with Sabia they must have realised the ordeal she was enduring alone.
He said: 'There must have come a time when each defendant knew Sabia Rani was ill and in pain. They must have known or suspected Shazad Khan was the cause of her illness and pain and must have known it was unlawful.'
He added:'This family disliked Shabia from almost the beginning. That dislkike grew until it turned into violence by Shazad Khan.'
Bibi, the mother-in-law, was said to shout at Sabia continously over 'petty things' and the teenager would 'tip toe around the house trying not to upset her.'
The court heard Khan said she was told by a 'holy man' who examined an item of the victim's clothing that she had been 'possessed by evil spirits.' But Mr Myerson said:'This is not a question of faith, this is a question of evidence.'
He said there have been no scientifically verified cases in which 'evil spirits have beaten a girl to death.' 'The evil spirit who beat Sabia Rani was Shazad Khan and Uzma Khan knew that perfectly well.'
The case continues.
Find this story at www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-506686/Family-turned-blind-eye-teenage-bride-beaten-death-arranged-husband.html
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JDN:
I get your point about the legal theory of it all, and I suspect that GM does too, but is that really responsive to his point about the real world of it all? His post about the poor Sabia Rani seems to support his case rather vividly , , ,
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**Note that the Guardian is very left in it's orientation.**
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2008/nov/19/religion-islam
Dangerous liaisons
Is there really any place for polygamy in English law, as a leading Muslim figure recently argued?
Rosa Freedman
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday November 19 2008 14.30 GMT
The bodies of the Knights Templar were surely spinning under their effigies last night, as someone they would have regarded as an infidel delivered a lecture within the walls of Temple Church entitled "Family Law, Minorities and legal Pluralism: Should English Law give more Recognition to Islamic Law?".
The lecture focused on Islamic marriages and divorces in this country, with Sheikh Faiz ul-Aqtab Siddiqi (of the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal) speaking candidly on many areas. One such topic was that of polygamy, and the refusal of English law to recognise such relationships. Siddiqi boldly stated:
In a jurisdiction where rights are afforded to a mistress, or many mistresses, and where there are same-sex marriages … polygamous marriages should not be such an alien concept.
Siddiqi is a practising barrister, and has been involved with the process of reforming English law to accommodate Muslim cultural practices, especially within the area of family law. As a religious leader, he is at the conservative end of the spectrum. However, he is a well-respected member of a number of unifying Muslim organisations and is at the forefront of attempts to find common ground between sharia law and English law.
Later, after a question from the floor, he clarified his position as being one of confusion as to why relationships such as extra-marital affairs should be recognised under English law, and furthermore how men could be permitted to marry other men, and women other women. He argued that if such relationships were not considered abhorrent, then current attitudes towards polygamy could not, and should not, be justified.
The main problem with using this argument in favour of recognition of polygamous marriages both inside and outside this country is that of proof as to whether these marriages have been entered into willingly and freely by the women involved. No one forces a person to have an extra-marital affair, or to enter into a civil partnership, but there is widespread evidence of the forcing of women into polygamous relationships in many religions and in many parts of the world. To compare consensual relationships with forced ones, whether physical or emotional coercion is used, is completely misguided.
Siddiqi said that polygamous marriages derived from the need to protect women from destitution, or from being "business for ... pimps". He alleged that prior to polygamous marriages female children were buried alive because they were seen as a burden to their parents. He spoke of the widows and divorcees left to starve; impoverished and abandoned. The Prophet Mohammad was said to have allowed polygamous marriages in order to give kind and benevolent men the opportunity to save these poor wretches.
He expressed the view that women are no longer in such a position today, glossing over – or, perhaps, forgetting – about women in places like the Indian subcontinent who are still viewed as being inferior to their male counterparts, with some female children still suffering terrible fates. He spoke of the opportunities and choices that women now have, which is true in the western world, but less so in predominantly Muslim countries where some women are denied education and other basic rights.
The crux of this argument was that polygamous marriages should be permitted in a country where sensitivity is professed for people's rights to individual and cultural needs. He asserted that these marriages would be relatively few in number, due to the advances made by women in society negating the need to "save" them from destitution, and that any entered into would be through the free choice of the woman. This line of reasoning contradicted his earlier remarks about the subjugation of women through their lack of knowledge of their legal rights in England, and the dire consequences for such women upon divorce. Similarly, warning bells rang when he spoke of the need to deal with domestic violence through arbitration tribunals due to women's fear of approaching the police as it would lead to marital breakdown. The idea of encouraging a woman to remain in a violent relationship, and for an arbitration tribunal to "deal" with the situation through encouraging the man to change his behaviour, suggests that we can't be confident polygamous marriages would be freely entered into by Muslim women.
The final position Siddiqi put forward by the for the acceptance of polygamous marriages under English law was that of the time-honoured herd mentality. He pointed to the 1.5billion Muslims living across the world, and asked the audience whether so many people could be deemed "stupid" or "wrong" for believing that polygamy is acceptable. The ability of leaders to influence large numbers of people's thoughts and actions does not necessarily mean that the underlying principles are correct. Far be it for me to equate religion with brainwashing, but we all know the answer when such logic is applied to groups such as the Unification Church, or to people living under regimes such as Stalin's Russia.
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**Just footnoting islam=submission**
http://www.ummah.net/what-is-islam/_other/main.htm
ISLAM means submission, that is, submission to the will of God, the characteristic attitude of members of our faith. MUSLIM (also spelled Moslem) is based on the same Arabic root as Islam (s-l-m) and means one who submits to God, that is, a believer in Islam.
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/ayaan-hirsi-ali-my-life-under-a-fatwa-760666.html
Ayaan Hirsi Ali: My life under a fatwa
Born and raised by fundamentalist Muslims, Ayaan Hirsi Ali fled her native Somalia for a new life in the Netherlands. Her talents bought fame as a feminist, writer and MP; her criticisms of Islam made her a target for violent extremists. Johann Hari meets a woman who dared to stand up for her beliefs – and paid the price
Tuesday, 27 November 2007
Ayaan Hirsi Ali was stabbed into the world's consciousness three years ago. One wet afternoon in November 2004, her friend Theo van Gogh – a film-maker, and descendant of Vincent – left his house and was about to cycle off through Amsterdam. But a young Dutch-born Muslim called Mohammed Bouyeri was waiting for him – with a handgun and two sharpened butcher's knives.
Wordlessly, he shot Van Gogh twice in the chest. Van Gogh howled: "Can't we talk about this?" Bouyeri ignored his pleas and fired four more times. Then he pulled out a knife and slit Van Gogh's throat with such strength that his head was almost severed from his body. He used the other knife to stab a five-page letter on to Van Gogh's haemorrhaging corpse.
Ayaan explains: "The letter was addressed to me." It said that Van Gogh had been "executed" for making a film with her that exposed the widespread abuse of Muslim women. Now, she would be "executed" too – for being an apostate.
She says that, even now, "every time I close my eyes, I see the murder, and I hear Theo pleading for his life. 'Can't we talk about this?' he asked his killer. It was so Dutch, so sweet and innocent." At the trial, Bouyeri spat at Van Gogh's mother: "I don't feel your pain. I don't have any sympathy for you. I can't feel for you because I think you're a non-believer."
This is the story of how a 25-year-old bogus asylum-seeker from Africa came to Europe in search of freedom – only to be nearly murdered here by a Dutchman, on the streets of Amsterdam, for speaking out against religion. The story opens in the blood-strewn streets of Somalia, and it closes amid the shiny white marble of Washington, DC – yet it also ends where it began: with Ayaan's life in danger. This is the story of the refugee who rocked Islam.
****
Her light, slight figure walks into the room so quietly that I would not have noticed her. But then the bodyguards follow: big, with their eyes darting into every corner in search of the long-awaited assassin, and you realise – yes, she is here. The internet is littered with pledges to torture and slay Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Yet, just a few weeks before we meet in London, the Dutch government has stripped away her security detail. She is paying for her own bodyguards now – and she could soon run out of cash.
So how did this soft-voiced woman come to be so hated – and to be abandoned by the country that gave her sanctuary?
The life of her mother hangs over Ayaan as a morality tale, a warning of what she might have been. "I was determined to never let what happened to my mother happen to me," she says, looking away. "I think that has made me the way I am."
By the time her mother gave birth to Ayaan in a hospital on the outskirts of Mogadishu in 1967, she was a broken woman. Like all Somalian women, she had been pressured all her life to suppress her personality, to sublimate everything to men and to God – to become what Ayaan calls "a devoted, well-trained work-animal".
In her youth, her mother had moments when she fought back, briefly and bravely. She insisted on leaving her family. They were desert nomads, in effect living in the Iron Age, with no writing, few metal objects, and a belief that Allah's angels and demons were constantly tinkering with reality. At 15, she walked out of their desert to the city of Aden.
But when her father called her back to be married to a man she had never met, she submitted. There was another flickering moment of freedom: exceptionally for that time and place, she later insisted on a divorce, and got one.
But this was all gone when Ayaan was born. The woman striving for independence had soon remarried, and crashed into the sheer weight of cultural expectation. She had been persuaded that "God is just and all-knowing and will reward you in the hereafter for being subservient". Her personality became deformed by it.
"She remained completely dependent," Ayaan says. "She nursed grievances; she was resentful; she was often violent, and she was always depressed." She would take it out on Ayaan, tying her arms behind her back and lashing her with wire for the slightest misdemeanour.
When Ayaan first menstruated, her mother screamed at her: "Filthy prostitute! May you be barren! May you get cancer!" Ayaan tried to commit suicide not long after. But now she says she knows that "all the abuse wasn't really directed at me, but at the world, which had taken her rightful life away."
When her second husband left her, Ayaan's mother was too infantilised to react. "It never occurred to her to go out and create a new life for herself, even though she can't have been older than 35 or 40 when my father left," Ayaan has written.
She remembers waking up every night as a small girl to hear her mother wailing. Once, she went into her mother's bedroom and placed a hand on her cheek; her mother screamed and beat her. After that, Ayaan would simply crouch at the door, listening to the wails, wishing she knew what to do.
Somali culture began to demand that Ayaan too become a submissive woman who scrubbed away her own personality and sexuality. When she was five years old, she was made "pure" by having her genitals hacked out with a knife. It was a simple process; her grandmother and two of her friends pinned her down, pulled her legs apart, and knifed away her clitoris and labia. She remembers the sound even now – "like a butcher, snipping the fat off a piece of meat". The bleeding wound was sewn up, leaving a thick tissue of scars to form as her fleshy chastity belt. She could not walk for two weeks.
Ayaan soon realised that, in a culture so patriarchal that it could not tolerate the existence of an unmaimed vagina, "I could never become an adult. I would always be a minor, my decisions made for me. But I wanted to become an individual, with a life of my own."
By reading novels, she heard whispers of a world where this was possible. For her, even poring over Enid Blyton and Barbara Cartland seemed transgressive, because they depicted a world where boys and girls played together on the basis of equality, and where women chose their husbands rather than having them forced on them by their fathers. Imagine a world so patriarchal that Barbara Cartland seems like a gender revolutionary.
Yet, on the road to this self-determining life, Ayaan turned first to its polar opposite: the very Islamic fundamentalism that now wants to kill her. Ayaan was taught from infancy to revere the Prophet Mohamed and the Koran, and she believed it all. She desperately wanted to please Mohamed, and his path seemed to her the only one.
So, once her family had moved to Kenya, a country where few people wore the headscarf, she chose to don one. She has written: "It had a thrill to it, a sensuous feeling. It made me feel powerful: underneath this screen lay a previously unsuspected, but potentially lethal, femininity. It sent out a message of superiority: I was the one true Muslim."
She began to go to a prayer group where the texts of Sayyid Qutb and Hassan al-Banna – the intellectual inspirations for al-Qa'ida – were pored over. When the Ayatollah Khomeini declared that Salman Rushdie should be murdered for what a maniac says in one of his novels, Ayaan wanted him dead. "I supported it," she says now, "and the logic of my position is that I would have become a martyr myself, or supported the people [who did become martyrs]."
What would that girl, who took to the streets to call for Rushdie's death, say if she could see you now? Would she think you should be killed too? For the first time in our interview, Ayaan pauses. A long pause. "What would that girl of 1989 think of this girl?" she repeats. "I think... well... people change." Another pause. "She would at least approve of it. That's why I try to explain – there is a reason why so many Muslims are silent when, in the name of Islam, violence is committed. It's because we believe that jihad is the sixth obligation. Those, then, who are brave enough to commit acts of jihad must deserve our commendation."
Then, one day, as she slid into jihadism, her absent father reappeared and announced that he had found her a good husband. Ayaan thought the potential life-partner stupid and ugly – but she had no choice. He was from the right clan, he had the right fundamentalist beliefs, and he wanted her. She knew what was expected: "A Muslim girl does not make her own decisions or seek control."
****
But she could not – would not – do it. She ran. She ran all the way to the Netherlands, on a plane, to claim asylum. She was terrified when she landed in the heartland of The Infidel. She expected to find depravity on every corner. But she was amazed. Here was a peaceful land that seemed like Paradise.
"In the Netherlands, I saw people we called infidels living an amazing life – men and women mixing, gay people being free, you could say whatever you wanted," she says. "Then I went back to the asylum-seekers' centre and almost everyone was from a Muslim country begging for the charity of these infidels. And I thought, 'If we're so superior, why are we begging from them?'"
She experimented in stepping out on to the streets without her hijab, expecting she would be harassed and raped by the sex-crazed infidel. Nobody looked twice. She began to test other democratic freedoms. She drank alcohol, she found a boyfriend – and she headed for the library to discover the principles that had created this place. She began to pore over the works of Enlightenment philosophy.
"Sometimes, it seemed as if every page I read challenged me as a Muslim. Drinking wine and wearing trousers was nothing compared to reading the history of ideas," she says. "The Enlightenment cut European culture from its roots in old fixed ideas of magic, kingship, social hierarchy and the domination of priests, and regrafted it on to a great strong trunk that supported the equality of each individual and his right to free opinions and self-rule." She found that all this was a profound challenge to the severe Islam she had been pickled in since childhood.
She began to study for a political science degree and was slowly rethinking her faith when, one bright morning in September 2001, the island of Manhattan became swathed in smoke. The chief hijacker, Mohammed Atta, was exactly the same age as Ayaan. She feels like she knows him, and that if her life had taken a different turn – if she had stayed in Kenya, with the jihadis – "perhaps I could have done it." And she says something very revealing: "I realised I could either go mad, join the Bin Ladenists, or step out of the religion."
This fanatical form of Islam was, she realised, around her in the Netherlands. On the night of September 11, a small group of Muslim men took to the streets to celebrate the massacre. The country's domestic violence shelters were disproportionately crammed with Muslim women fleeing male terror. Forced marriages and "honour killings" continued at a startling rate in Dutch cities. But she found that many otherwise good people were reluctant to speak out against this abuse of women and gay people within immigrant communities.
The Netherlands had a policy called "emancipation within your own circle", and Ayaan saw this as a betrayal. Multiculturalism, she believed, was "elevating cultures full of bigotry and hatred towards women to the stature of respectable alternative ways of life. I wanted Muslim women to be aware of just how bad, and unacceptable, their suffering was. I wanted to help them develop the vocabulary of resistance."
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She took the great English feminist Mary Wollstonecraft as her lodestar, and began to campaign for the state to log the rate of "honour" killings, because nobody was even bothering to count. This led to the centre-right Liberal Party asking her to run to be a member of parliament.[/b]
She accepted, and got one of the highest personal votes in the country. This in turn led her into the path of Theo van Gogh – and to his slaughter. After that, Ayaan was placed under full-time surveillance by security guards and was barely permitted to leave her house.
****
At this point, two Ayaans were born, with clashing and contradictory views on Islam. Sitting here now, I can feel their presence; I can hear them alternate in her mind. I call the first "revolutionary Ayaan", and this Ayaan says about September 11: "This was not just Islam, this was the core of Islam. Mohammed Atta believed he was giving his life for Allah. This is beyond Osama bin Laden, it is based in the basic roots of Islam."
Without pausing, she continues: "You have to ask – is it a fact that the Prophet Mohamed conquered lands using the sword? Is it a fact that Muslims are commanded to commit jihad? Yes it is."
She has no time for what she sees as the ignorant, woolly Islam-is-peace message of Western liberals, insisting: "I see no difference between Islam and Islamism. Islam is defined as submission to the will of Allah, as it is described in the Koran. Islamism is just Islam in its most pure form. Sayyid Qutb didn't invent anything, he just quoted the sayings of Mohamed."
Revolutionary Ayaan believes that the religion cannot be reformed or changed, only defeated. The millions upon millions of Muslims who are not violent – "the wonderful, decent, law-abiding people" – simply do not really follow Islam. They ignore it, or they live uncomfortably with the explosive "cognitive dissonance" of simultaneously supporting human decency and the demands of Islam.
She lists the awkward truths about the Prophet Mohamed. "All Muslims believe in following his example, but many of the things he did are crimes. When he was in his fifties, he had sex with a nine-year-old girl. By our standards, he was a pervert. He ordered the killing of Jews and homosexuals and apostates, and the beating of women." That is why she concludes that "the war on terror is a war on Islam", and "Islam is the new fascism".
But then there is "reformist Ayaan". This Ayaan says the opposite: that internal reform within Islam is both possible and necessary. She insists: "It's wrong to treat Muslims as if they will never find their John Stuart Mill. Christianity and Judaism show that people can be very dogmatic and then open up. There is a minority [within Islam] like [the reformists] Irshad Manji and Tawfiq Hamid who want to remain in the faith and reform it.
"Can you be a Muslim and respect the separation of church and state? I hope a large enough number of Muslims will agree you can, and they will find a way to keep the spiritual elements that comfort them and live in a secular society."
Ayaan's life story is strewn with Muslims who rejected Bin Ladenist fanaticism. Her father, for example, was revolted by the Wahabbism he witnessed in Saudi Arabia, and told her: "This is not Islam – this is Saudis perverting Islam." She hesitates when I ask her about this fracture line in her thinking; I can almost touch the cognitive dissonance.
Then "reformist Ayaan" says: "Well, my father was trying to combine the commandments in the Koran with his conscience. He has reached a level of civilisation because he's living in the 21st century, but he was also trying to follow a religion founded in the seventh century. So on the one hand he thinks you should accept that the content of the Koran is the true word of God, and on the other hand he is a decent person. He tried to move on by saying that we should only convert non-Muslims by example, not by violence, and [by saying] that only the Prophet Mohamed can call for a jihad." But then "revolutionary Ayaan" adds: "That's not what the Koran says. It says you can never change the faith."
Is there is a danger that the language of "revolutionary Ayaan" is undercutting the very people "reformist Ayaan" wants to encourage? Does she worry that by calling all Islam "fascism" she might encourage the hard right, who want to deny women like her the chance even to come to Europe as refugees?
"I do," she says. "But the group of Europeans, white Europeans, who want to stop immigration altogether, and who reject Muslims, today in 2007, is not that large. But they could become larger if European governments continue the policy of accommodating and appeasing fascist demands made by radical Muslims. They need to oppose fascist demands by Muslims, and the fascist demands by far-right white groups. I think that if there is equal treatment on both sides, the traditional populations of Europe will say that it's fair play."
As we discuss this, I realise there is something odd about this conversation. It is all so disconcertingly normal. Ayaan is speaking in a level voice, at a level volume. If you didn't speak English and you saw us talking, you could assume that we were discussing bus timetables, or the weather. It's not that she seems passionless – not at all – but that her personality seems to be coiled up within her, and I am only seeing the carefully considered tip of it. When she describes the people who want to hack her body to pieces, it is in paragraphs that feel prepacked. Perhaps it is all she can bear to show.
And so we continue. She looks at me politely and says that Europe needs to be more confident about standing up to Islamic fundamentalism. "When we come here as immigrants, we know it will be different to where we come from. It's a choice to come, and we can always choose to leave. If we do not want to adopt European values, we should expect to be criticised."
For example, she says, the veil she used to wear is "a political statement, it's not just a religious statement. It says: I'm different from you and I reject what you stand for." She stresses that she doesn't want to ban it, just to see it challenged. "I'm opposed to banning of political expression, but I'm very much a proponent of competing political expression.
"The message of liberals is so much better, so much stronger, that you don't have to resort to banning. You can wear whatever it is that you want, you can give out whatever message that you want to give out – but you have to understand that if that message is rejected, then you can't call people Islamophobic and expect to be taken seriously. If you choose to wear a veil, people might ridicule and oppose you. That's their right, too."
****
She speaks with such eloquent intensity because she is arguing against another, younger version of herself. The Ayaan of 2007 is attacking the Ayaan of 1987 – who is damning her right back. If there is a clash of civilisations, it is happening within her. It's hard to remember, as we sit here, that there are tens of thousands of people who want to prematurely bring this fizzing debate inside Ayaan's head to an end – with a bullet.
She fell in love with Holland because of its tradition of unabashed free speech, but it seems the country's politicians have judged that she took free speech too far for them. Last year, the Dutch government began to reinvestigate the lies in her original asylum claim. Ever since she entered public life she had been totally candid about this: she exaggerated the degree of state persecution she faced because being abused by your family isn't enough to be granted refugee status. Now the government was twitchy about the rows she was stirring up – so they suddenly decided to strip her of her seat in parliament. Amid efforts to revoke her Dutch citizenship as well, she fled to Washington and a job with a conservative think-tank.
Her alignment with the American right doesn't seem like an easy fit. She is a militant defender of atheism, feminism and gay rights – all forces they have demonised for decades. She is an illegal immigrant, their ultimate hate figure. But, as our interview goes on, I realise she has depressingly begun to adopt some of their ideas. She wants to abolish the minimum wage. She no longer calls for the closing of all faith schools, but simply Muslim ones, because "they are the only ones that do not respect the division between secular and divine law".
She has even begun to touch on the American hard right's preposterous predictions that Muslims are "outbreeding" the continent's traditional populations and will impose sharia law "within decades". When I challenge her on this, she says that "experts" say it is true.
Then, this month, the Dutch government went further and stripped away her security protection, saying she should pay for it herself. The US government will not pick up the tab – the only mechanism they have for protecting private citizens full-time is the Witness Protection Program, which isn't appropriate.
"Only 11 members out of the 150 MPs voted to keep my security detail," she says. "So it's an overwhelming decision, and when I saw that I did feel betrayed. It's not only a betrayal of me, it's a betrayal of the idea of free expression.
"I think they believe that supposedly provoking Muslims will only make them more angry and hostile. The four large cities in Holland have now got very large Muslim populations, and that number is increasing – the estimate is that they're about 40 per cent. With that kind of electoral power [they think] it's best not to provoke them." Even if that means sacrificing basic Dutch values? "Yes."
She is revolted by the people who claim that it is she, Ayaan, who has "sold out" Muslims. "Tell me, is freedom only for white people?" she has written. "Is it self-love to adhere to my ancestors' traditions and mutilate my daughters? To agree to be humiliated and powerless? When I came to a new culture, where I saw for the first time that human relations could be different, would it have been self-love to see that as a foreign cult, which Muslims are forbidden to practise?"
So here she is, with the last sliver of protection she can afford standing between her and the people determined to murder her, still speaking, still fighting. Her family have said that they will never speak to her again. She knows she can never return to the country where she was born. Is she frightened? She answers quickly, as if reciting a reassuring script. "I know that is what these terrorists want me to be," she says. "So I try not to be scared." Then she pauses, and looks down. "But sometimes. Yes."
She looks up again. "But I am lucky. There are so many crossroads where my life could have become so much worse. If I had stayed in Kenya with the [jihadist] prayer group, if I had entered into the marriage my father wanted... I could have lived like my mother." She nods with confidence. "How many girls born in Digfeer Hospital in Mogadishu in November 1969 are even alive today? And how many have a real voice?"
Ayaan Hirsi Ali was in London to address the Centre for Social Cohesion
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JDN:
I get your point about the legal theory of it all, and I suspect that GM does too, but is that really responsive to his point about the real world of it all? His post about the poor Sabia Rani seems to support his case rather vividly , , ,
I am not sure GM really does get my legal point, i.e. Sharia court is voluntary; don't participate if you don't want to. Instead, he seems to ignore the law and talk about extraneous matters. Please remember, one is always welcome to use the English legal system, however arbitration is often faster and cheaper. The debate was not about Islam per se, but rather VOLUNTARY arbitration in England. Voluntary arbitration is fair and just for all by definition since you choose to participate.; if you don't like it, don't participate in it. It is really a very simple clear legal point.
As for poor Sabia Rani it is tragic. But domestic violence is real; it happens in America among all religions and ethnic groups. Also, it is very hard to prevent. And in the Rani case like any other case in the real world the police investigated the matter and if I read the article correctly, the perpetrators are being tried for murder. It's tragic, but at least the law is equal and fair for all. If a Christian beats his wife (it happens too often) or a Muslim beats his, both are wrong and both should be severely punished according to the law. That is the law in England and America. One law for all; isn't that fair?
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"The debate was not about Islam per se, but rather VOLUNTARY arbitration in England."
No, the debate is about WHETHER the REALITY of it is voluntary.
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Actually, my original post was in response to yours; the issue/point I made is that Sharia court aka voluntary arbitration is just that; VOLUNTARY
therefore it is fair for everyone. It was a legal point - I did not nor did your article if I recollect discuss the issue or "reality" of it's being voluntary.
That being said, domestic violence (gender thread?) is a real problem. It never ceases to amaze me that often even after severe domestic violence happens,
the aggrieved party often returns to the relationship. How do you stop domestic violence? I don't know, but perhaps through education, quick police work..... it is not easy.
Nonetheless, the aggrieved party does have the choice to leave. If they are "forbidden" or stopped by their spouse or family, at least in England and in America, the police and the courts
will quickly intercede granting a restraining order if necessary. If not obeyed, the offending party can and will be arrested. I grant that culture, tradition, etc.
are important, but since the aggrieved party (domestic violence is not gender based) does have recourse and can voluntarily refuse arbitration or request police/court assistance if necessary.
And if the offending party continues their illegal action an arrest will quickly be made. My point is that the aggrieved party has "free" choice; it is up to them to exercise it. By so doing,
they may alienate their friends and family, but still they have voluntary choice. It is up to them to choose whether to exercise their rights or not. And the law will protect their choice.
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FWIW IMHO your logic is as correct as it is naive.
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http://www.centerforinquiry.net/isis/islamic_viewpoints/girls_nightmare_in_muslim_families_forced_marriages_in_europe/
Girls’ Nightmare in Muslim Families: Forced Marriages in Europe
By Azam Kamguian
Every year, many thousands of young girls, living in Muslim inhabited communities in European countries face forced marriages. In Muslim immigrant families, often from the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey, teenage girls are struggling against the pressure of tribal culture and Islamic customs imposed on them by their parents; and forced marriage is often their fate.
A women group against sexual mutilation of women, formed in 1980s in France, estimates that more than 30,000 young girls have been involved in forced marriage since 1990. In Britain, south Asian women groups have records of numerous cases of young girls who have been forced to marry by their parents.
This nightmare started in 1990s, when young girls from Muslim immigrant families in Europe reached their early teenage years and were considered mature and marriageable by their parents. Teenage girls from Turkish immigrant families are especially under intense pressure. According to statistics provided by women groups in France and Britain, in 1990s, 43% of girls from Turkish families, and 36% of girls from South Asian families in Britain, have been involved in forced marriages.
Forced marriage is a taboo, untouchable, and is performed secretly. The secret is revealed when the girl suddenly behaves strangely, gets isolated and is not doing well at school. She often breaks the silence and talks about her painful ordeal with a friend or some teacher at school. In this way, she unveils the bitter reality that is awaiting her. Once the forced marriage becomes known outside the family, the real fight starts. Zahia Hasan, chair of a women association; "Women's Voice" in France, and a victim of forced marriages says: " it is a painful experience, it was a nightmare for me for many years. I was deeply ashamed, I lied about my life and hid my misery"
Girls, who reveal the terrible secret outside family, often clash with their parents and leave home. They even feel ashamed and guilty of revealing the secret and having betrayed their families and relatives. Many young girls under a heavy family and community pressure undergo forced marriage because they don't want to lose their families and relatives. Forced marriage is their inevitable fate, because there is no government or social support network to protect their rights. Forced marriages are practiced in France, Britain, Scandinavian countries and among Turkish community in Germany.
Early marriage is another aspect of forced marriages. Girls, 15 or younger, undergo forced marriages, are considered as part - times wives, continue to live with their parents and go to school, living with their dark and heavy secret.
In most cases, these marriages end to divorce; according to statistics; two out of three. Rape, teenage pregnancy, disrupted education; nervous breakdown, neurological disorders and suicide are all fruits of forced marriages for young girls. But, their families insist that their act is decent and good for the girls. They defend it by referring to Islam and Islamic Law; according to which, a girl cannot marry without the consent of her father, and in the absence of her father, that of her paternal grandfather. These families, not only haven't been affected by advanced and modern culture in Europe, but also are out of tune with the current situation in their countries of origin, where social and cultural norms and values have moved forward. By marrying their young girls in this way, Muslim parents try to block the integration of their daughters into a modern and European life style. As a result, parents deprive their own children of enjoying the civil rights and individual freedom entitled to them. They harm their children physically, emotionally and psychologically.
Under French law, a forced marriage can be annulled if there has been lack of consent. But if the marriage ceremony is a customary one, the French courts cannot act. However, magistrates can intervene before a marriage takes place if an underage girl, who has broken with her family, is in physical danger.
Under the guise of respecting 'others' traditions and Islamic values, the legal system and authorities tend to overlook forced marriages. They say: "there are customs and religion, which are different from those, practiced here. It is not for us to judge these traditions and religion, unless the young girls are in physical danger and there should be proof for that."
Consider a young girl under legal age, undergoing the ordeal of a forced marriage, clashing with her family, without a legal help or a supporting social network, who must provide proof against her own parents in the court, in order to get rid of this nightmare. Isn't it inhumane and shameful? What is respectable in this misery imposed on these innocent young girls? What is respectable in destroying and wasting lives, hopes and dreams of these girls? And of course, both 'Western' and Eastern 'intellectuals', shamelessly, tell us that "to talk of forced marriages is an Euro - centric way of looking at things."
Young girls in Muslim inhabited communities in Europe are victims of tribal and Islamic values and traditions, as well as a racist treatment by government authorities, intellectuals and mainstream media. These girls are born and have grown up in European countries, and should be entitled to all rights and freedom like other European citizens. Forced marriages must be prohibited by law as rape; and mental and emotional damages to teenage girls.
Girls from Muslim families are not the belongings of their families; they should be treated as equal citizens. The governments and the legal system must protect them from the harm caused by their parents. Society is duty bound to help the victims of forced marriages to recover from the emotional, mental and physical damages they suffer.
azam_kamguian@yahoo.com
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FWIW IMHO your logic is as correct as it is naive.
It nice to know that you concede that my logic is correct; :-) albeit in you opinion naive. :?
Still, it's better than being wrong and acting like Don Quixote, running off and discussing numerous but irrelevant evils of Islam.
This topic is about voluntary arbitration or as you said and seem to prefer "whether the reality of it (arbitration) is voluntary."
But naive?
I presume you are inferring that some Muslim women are "forced" to participate in "voluntary" arbitration
leaving them at a disadvantage and therefore although you concede my logic is impeccable, reality is different?
OK, what do you suggest? We, England and America are bound by our legal system. Frankly, overall I
think it is pretty good. What should we do? I mean in a Civil matter (divorce for example) if both parties (on the surface) agree to voluntary arbitration, what can the police do?
Or what can the courts do? One person needs to file a complaint and if after the fact, there must be proof of coercion. Otherwise the answer is the court
can will and will do nothing. Nor frankly should it. Or everyone would complain after an adverse arbitration ruling.
I further contend that if a woman/man is strong enough to file a complaint for coercion (a criminal matter) than surely they are mentally
strong enough to simply state that they prefer English Law versus voluntary arbitration under Sharia Law. And then they will have the full protection
of that country's law, i.e. restraining orders if coerced or threatened and the fair distribution of property.
And if any illegal action is taken against them, or if the law is not followed, the perpetrator will be arrested. That is fair.
But if both parties voluntarily choose voluntary arbitration; the court is tied. A crime (i.e. coercion) must be committed before the state can intercede.
So back to my question, given that arbitration is a legal part of the court system, and given that both parties together are allowed to choose the arbitrator, how do
you solve the problem of the arbitrator being biassed or the process being unfair? Remember, in many matters, the arbitrator is going to being biased. You
cannot simply do away with arbitration or prohibit one group from being the arbitrator just because they are biased. The Church of England is biased on many matters as
are many other arbitrators biased for their own reasons.
Frankly, while I am sympathetic, Muslim women in divorce, inheritance or other civil matters have a much better deal in England and the US than women in many other countries.
They have a choice; Sharia Court (voluntary arbitration); fast and efficient or they can choose the State's Legal System which is usually gender fair, albeit slow and expensive.
Many "advanced" Asian countries for example including Japan's legal system in divorce matters do not usually give anywhere close to 50% of the assets to the woman.
I think that this is one of the reasons divorce is so low in Japan - who can afford to leave? Nor, as it regards other issues are women equal to men in many Asian countries.
Latin America is another example; women and men are not equal.
Easy for me to say they are wrong, but then they too will say we are often wrong. I guess each has their own problems and good points.
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Just in from a weekend of camping with my son and now I am quickly catching up around here. Bypassing for now the substantive points raised, for the moment I ask for examples supporting this assertion:
"Latin America is another example; women and men are not equal."
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Hope you enjoyed the weekend.
I will withdraw my comment about Latin America; I was making a broad generality and am not as knowledgeable about Mexico or further south as I am about Asia.
That being said, I sincerely like Mexico and the people. I have been to various parts of Mexico maybe ten times, however in my personal experience, I do find it to be a male dominated society
in business, banking, law, government, religion and the home. Perhaps I am wrong and women and men are equal in ALL aspects of Mexican society?
I will stand corrected if I am.
However, in my post Latin America (Mexico) was only a minor example, clearly not my main point or as you noted not even an issue of substance.
Rather, I look forward to your thoughts on a solution for a "fair" voluntary arbitration system within the confines of the law.
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I am under the impression that the question presented concerns the legal system, not whether Latin society thinks men and women are different.
Will try to get to the big questions tomorrow, but no promises.
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Yes, my primary question concerned the legal system; and how to prevent discrimination and subrogation of women.
My point indirectly is that even in countries (Japan for example) where the law does not specifically discriminate, in fact it does favor the man
and/or not protect the women in regards to many financial issues,, job promotion, and opportunities. It is not a "fair" system like we have
here and in England. Women suffer subrogation in many countries.
As a side note, I happened to be reading a biography of Edward Weston (photographer) last night. I coincidentally came across his quote,
"God help me to some day return to a man's land, ---- Mexico or Japan or Somewhere...."
No demand for you "answer to the big questions" today or tomorrow; it's Thanksgiving Week a holiday and we need to remember we
all have a lot to be grateful for.
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That right wing bastion, the BBC, weighs in on the application of Sharia law.
Some Imams 'biased against women'
By Sanjiv Buttoo
BBC Asian Network
A Muslim think tank has found some UK Imams discriminate against women when enforcing Islamic Sharia law.
Scholars at the Centre for Islamic Pluralism (CIP) interviewed 90 Muslims in London, the West Midlands, Lancashire and West Yorkshire.
They found some women did not get fair hearings in forced marriage, arranged marriage and domestic violence matters.
It comes after an NHS doctor was freed in Bangladesh following claims she was being held there for a forced marriage.
Sharia law governs every aspect of a Muslim's life, and Imams or scholars give out rulings on how to live by God's wishes. Some mosques hold Sharia courts.
The CIP's international director and its report's author Dr Irfan Al-Alawi said women seeking help in situations like forced marriages often turned to Imams for a ruling on what to do.
"Our research shows that domestic violence and forced marriages seem to be the dominant problems that women are facing and seeking Sharia rulings on.
"In every case it is a male who is the defendant coming from India, Pakistan or Bangladesh.
"Some ladies have approached the Imams and the Imams... have encouraged the ladies to stay with their husband or with their in-laws, whereby they have a duty bound under the Sharia."
He said he knew of a 15-year-old girl in Pakistan who was tricked into marriage over the telephone with a 40-year-old man from Sheffield, who had the mental age of a four-year-old child.
"The Home Office refused to recognise the validity of the marriage but the Islamic Sharia Council in Britain accepted it," said Dr Al-Alawi.
He said Imams should be working at the heart of their communities showing leadership, but some were failing to do so.
He accused some Imams of "cashing in" on the Sharia system.
On average it may cost someone £250 to go and get an Islamic divorce, he said.
"There are Pirs [Muslim holy men] and Imams who come here from south Asia and charge people for charms, holy water... how is this helping anyone?" he asked.
"They should be putting back something useful into society."
The spotlight has been on forced marriages in recent weeks, with the introduction of new laws designed to help victims, and a high-profile case in Bangladesh.
Lawyers for trainee NHS GP Humayra Abedin, 33, from east London, said her family planned to force her into marriage after she travelled to Dhaka.
She had travelled there as she thought her mother was ill, and then was held against her will for months, they said.
Ms Abedin is due to arrive back in the UK later, after London's High Court ordered her return under the new Forced Marriage Act and the High Court in Dhaka also ruled she must be freed.
Thirty-year-old Sophiya (not her real name) from West Yorkshire, was 13 when her father arranged her marriage to a distant cousin in Pakistan.
She said that after much resistance she was forced to marry a man she did not want to, but decided to go through with it so she could get back to the UK and put her case to a local Imam.
"I saw three Imams but they all ruled that I was legally married according to the Sharia. I told them I had been forced but they said that did not change anything."
Sophiya decided to try and please her parents and her new husband and carry on, but three years later she sought an Islamic divorce.
"I met some more Imams and said that we had been separated now for nearly two years but instead of giving me guidance with my divorce, they suggested I had to go for counselling or therapy.
"I told them I had been forced and this was not Islamic, but they disagreed."
A few months later Sophyia's husband wrote and gave her the Islamic divorce she longed for.
"I went through the proper Islamic way and these men told me to go away."
Sophiya said she wants the government to send Imams back to their countries of origin if they cannot uphold the true values of the Sharia.
'Grey area'
Ishtiaq Ahmed, is a spokesperson the Council for Mosques, a Bradford-based group which represents over 90 mosques and religious schools.
"We have in Britain... Muslims from all over the world, people are practising their own cultural, their social, kind of way of life.
"We have looked into this issue on many occasions and have found that for some Imams a grey area can form where the rulings of the Sharia finish and long-held cultural practices start.
"Imams do need more training and help; we also need lots more female scholars, ulemas, to work with our communities and try and help women."
"I feel Imams are not trying to deliberately discriminate against anyone we just have to be more open in how we pass judgements so everyone is happy and understands the process."
The report is due to be published next month and will be sent to the government and agencies.
It will recommend that Imams coming to the UK from south Asia and Africa need to be vetted to ensure they have a broad knowledge of Islam and a good command of English, so they can carry out their duties in a professional and competent way.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/7783627.stm
Published: 2008/12/15 13:09:38 GMT
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Comment JDN?
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w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m
Last update - 14:34 07/01/2009
Report: Islamist site compiling list of U.K. Jews to target over Gaza op
By Haaretz Service
An Islamic extremist Web site is believed to be drawing up a list of prominent British Jews to target over Israel's offensive against Hamas in Gaza, The Sun reported on Wednesday.
According to the British newspaper, Amy Winehouse record producer Mark Ronson and Foreign Secretary David Miliband were among names discussed on the online forum Ummah.
The report came as a British Jewish watchdog group, the Community Security Trust, said there has been a rise in anti-Semitic incidents in Britain since the upsurge of hostilities in Gaza.
The British daily quoted the Ummah site as saying, "Saladin1970" asks for help compiling "a list of those who support Israel."
"Abuislam" asks: "Have we got a list of top Jews we can target? Can someone post names and addresses?"
Tony Blair's Middle East envoy and tennis partner Lord Levy, TV's The Apprentice boss Sir Alan Sugar and Princess Diana's divorce lawyer Anthony Julius were also reportedly among those mentioned on the site.
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It is heartening to see some outrage at this shameful and cowardly act of dhimmitude.
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http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,601122,00.html
OUTRAGE OVER DEMONSTRATION IN GERMANY
Police Remove Israeli Flag during Islamist Protest March
By Yassin Musharbash
Police in the western German city of Duisburg have admitted they removed flags a student had hung in his apartment in support of Israel during a pro-Palestinian protest march in the city. Officers broke down his door and removed the flags. The city's police chief has issued an apology, but outrage is spreading.
It's certainly not a new phenomenon in Germany for feathers to be ruffled every time bombs fall or rockets fly in the Middle East. It is unusual, though, for German police officials to use force to enter into an apartment and remove an Israeli flag from a bedroom because people protesting the Gaza Strip invasion on the street below are bothered by it.
But that's what happened this weekend in Duisburg in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Around 10,000 people had gathered on Saturday morning at the central station in the city, located in the Ruhr region, to protest against Israel's course of action in the Gaza Strip. The protest, organized by the Islamist group Milli Görüs, which, although legal, has been monitored for years by German domestic intelligence agencies in charge of observing potentially radical or fundamentalist groups.
After a short time, the protest passed along one of the city's main thoroughfares. At a house on the corner, protesters spotted two Israeli flags -- one hanging from a balcony and the second from the window of a bedroom inside the apartment. Twenty-five-year-old student Peter P.* and his 26-year-old girlfriend had mounted them there.
'Suddenly I Saw a Police Officer in my Bedroom'
It wasn't the first time, either. At the beginning of the year, P. flew the Israeli flag on the day commemorating the Holocaust. And in May, he flew the flag for several weeks because the state of Israel was celebrating its 60th birthday. For years, Hamas fired rockets at Israel, and few people took notice, P. told SPIEGEL ONLINE, explaining his reasons for flying the flag. This time around, he said, he did it to express "solidarity with the sole democracy in the region."
P. also knew that on that day people participating in the protest march against the Israeli offensive would go past his house. But he said he was also concerned about what he saw as the "greatest onslaught of anti-Semitism in Europe since 1945," namely marches against Israel's actions that included anti-Semitic hate campaigns that he claims are being tolerated in cities like Paris and London.
REPRINTS
Find out how you can reprint this SPIEGEL ONLINE article in your publication. As the first protesters recognized the flag, P. and his girlfriend were standing on the street nearby. He said he followed the march because he wanted to document any incidents of anti-Semitism or hate campaigns. He described the sentiment that developed within the crowd as it viewed the Israeli flag as tantamount to that of a "lynch mob." "Death to Israel," some of the protestors shouted. He said the police appeared to be overburdened.
"Suddenly," the student explained, "I saw a police officer on the balcony on the second floor" in the apartment located directly beneath his. The officer ripped down the Israeli flag that had been affixed to P.'s balcony. A short time later he witnessed an officer inside his own apartment taking down the flag that had been hung in the bedroom.
A Hail of Icicles, Nail Clippers and a Pocket Knife
The police's moves caused loud cheering amongst the protesters -- a fact not only reported by the student, but also confirmed in videos of the event that have been widely circulated on YouTube. The incident first came to the attention of the media after journalists at the local blog "Die Ruhrbarone" reported on it. The objects reportedly thrown at the apartment included what appeared to be small chunks of ice, a folded up pocket knife, nail clippers and also what looked like a stone.
P. said he was "shocked" by the incident. Afraid to return to his apartment, he first went to a friend's place nearby. Around two hours later he returned with his girlfriend and an acquaintance -- but he claims youths were still throwing things at the house.
He said he didn't return to the apartment until they had left. A police car passed by and P. asked the officers to come to his apartment. The officers warned that P. and his girlfriend should stay away from the window and that police would watch the house for a few hours.
"I was beside myself," P. said, "I was afraid." Two hours passed without any incident. Then P.'s acquaintance, also in the apartment, went out to the balcony for a smoke and claims he was immediately cursed as a "shit jew".
Two minutes later, the police returned to P.'s door -- and for the second time they did something unexpected. They ordered the acquaintance to leave the apartment.
A Police Apology
The actions of Duisburg officials have since caused outrage -- sparking criticism from the Central Council of Jews in Germany. Rainer Wendt, the head of the German Police Union for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, said: "It is intolerable that German Islamists be able to determine police actions." At the same time, he expressed understanding for what he described as a "difficult deployment situation" police officials in Duisburg had run up against. He said it appeared too few officers had been dispatched to the protest. Frank Richter of the Union of Police, another organization representing officers in the state, said the police mission should be explored and clarity brought to the incident.
Initially, Duisburg police defended their actions. In its Monday issue, the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper quoted a police spokesperson stating that the flags had been removed in order to de-escalate a potentially dangerous situation. German news agency DDP quoted the spokesperson on Tuesday saying "the right thing had been done here."
But by Tuesday afternoon, the city's chief of police, Rolf Cebin, expressed his apologies for the incident. "I deeply regret the fact that, especially, the feelings of Jewish people were hurt. From the standpoint of the present, it was the wrong decision."
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Despite the apology, the row may not be over yet. The state chapter of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) wants a discussion about the police actions to take place in the state parliament in Düsseldorf. "We are going to raise the issue during a meeting of the state domestic affairs committee on Thursday," the party's deputy parliamentary chief, Ralf Jäger, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "The central question is this: Why was the potential for danger during the protest so underestimated that police were forced into a situation in which they had to concede to the demands of violent (protesters) rather than (protect) the right to the freedom of speech of others?"
The politician claims that Duisburg police believed 1,000 people would attend the rally, far fewer than the 10,000 who eventually turned up. He claims they should have better predicted the situation and the fact that they didn't raises the question of whether the state's Office of Criminal Investigation had done enough "preparation."
As of Tuesday, Milli Görüs has not yet provided any statement about the incident. The acting spokesperson for the organization's secretary general could not be reached for comment, and the group's office said its chairman was currently outside the country.
On Tuesday, Peter P. said he had obtained the services of a lawyer. He still hasn't been told who will be held responsible for paying for the door broken down by police.
* The name of the main source of this story has been changed at his request by the editorial staff.
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1120831/Muslim-civil-servant-suspended-killing-British-troops-justified-blog.html#
Muslim civil servant suspended over 'killing British troops is justified' blog
By Simon Walters and Jason Lewis
Last updated at 1:27 AM on 18th January 2009
Hardline: Azad Ali attacked Britain's call for a ceasefire in Gaza
A senior Muslim civil servant has launched an astonishing verbal onslaught against the Government over its response to Israel’s military strikes in Gaza – and has suggested that killing British troops in Iraq is justified.
Treasury official Azad Ali, president of the Civil Service Islamic Society, now faces the sack over the remarks.
Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell – who is the patron of the society – acted immediately after being alerted to the comments by The Mail on Sunday.
Shortly after this newspaper contacted the Cabinet Office, a senior official disclosed that Mr Ali had been suspended for the remarks made on his personal internet blog.
In it he:
Quotes an Islamic extremist who says it is his ‘obligation’ to kill British and American soldiers in Iraq;
Accuses the Government of failing to condemn the ‘Zionist terrorist state of Israel’; and
Attacks moderate British Muslims as ‘self-serving vultures, feeding on the dead flesh of the Palestinians’.
The Treasury lists Mr Ali’s title as ‘Business Partner’. He is understood to work as an IT administrator.
On the Civil Service Islamic Society’s official website, Mr Ali declares that it is bound by strict rules that say Whitehall special-interest groups must be ‘non-partisan and non-political’ and act with ‘honesty, impartiality and integrity’.
But there is no such restraint on his personal blog, which highlights his civil service role and provides a link to its Whitehall website.
Azad Ali's blog suggests that the killing of British troops is justified (file picture)
He takes a far more hardline approach, using the most provocative language, and appears to challenge the Whitehall code of practice that restricts mandarins’ political activities.
In one posting, ‘Defeating extremism by promoting balance’, he appears to condone the killing of British and US troops in Iraq.
He said there was ‘much truth’ in an interview with an Islamic militant who said: ‘If I saw an American or British man wearing a soldier’s uniform inside Iraq I would kill him because that is my obligation.
‘If I found the same soldier over the border in Jordan I wouldn’t touch him. In Iraq he is a fighter and an occupier, here he is not. This is my religion and I respect this as the main instruction in my religion for jihad.’
Last week Mr Ali wrote on the ‘Between the Lines’ site: ‘We are the Resistance. The Zionist terrorist state of Israel had only one aim, to destroy all semblance of resistance. We have yet to hear any condemnation from our government.’
He pours scorn on the British Government’s call for a ceasefire and mocks official representatives of moderate British ‘Muslims’ (his quotation marks) who support them.
He observes witheringly that he ‘can see the £ signs in their eyes!’ – an apparent suggestion that they believe their groups may get more public money as a result.
He lambasts Foreign Secretary David Miliband for condemning Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar for saying Jewish children are ‘legitimate targets’.
‘Blaming Hamas does not wash any more... you can stop peddling the Zionist lie about Mahmoud Zahar!’ Mr Ali writes.
Azad Ali is considered a high profile 'moderate' Muslim who is trustee of the East London Mosque & London Muslim Centre, among many posts
And he derides Mr Miliband’s refusal in the Commons to disown Israel for ‘terrorist’ actions. ‘You’re going to love his response, “As I said in my statement, I do not think it is right to compare a democratic state with a terrorist organisation.” What!’
He added: ‘The [British] government is engaging with individuals who have no credibility in the community...a motley crew who are nothing but self-serving vultures, feeding on the dead flesh of the Palestinians.’
Mr Ali said people who blame the Palestinians or Hamas for the Gaza attacks ‘are like sick men or women who blame the woman who has been raped, saying she brought it upon herself’.
Tory MP Patrick Mercer, an adviser to Gordon Brown’s Security Minister Lord West, questioned how Mr Ali could continue as a civil servant.
‘I can’t see how this man can ever be viewed as objective again,’ said Mr Mercer. ‘It is extraordinary to me that a civil servant who is meant to be politically neutral should be making these sorts of comments about the Government.
‘It would seem that Mr Ali is not trying to conceal the fact that he is a civil servant, nor suggesting these statements are purely made in a personal capacity. I believe he has compromised himself seriously with these comments.’
The civil service code restricts political activities ‘which impinge wholly or mainly on party politics’ including ‘speaking in public on matters of national political controversy; expressing views on such matters in letters to the Press, or in books, articles or leaflets’.
Officials who want to engage in this kind of activity need permission from their Whitehall bosses.
Until his internet outburst, Mr Ali was regarded as a moderate Muslim who could help tackle Islamic fanaticism in Britain.
As a former chairman of the influential Muslim Safety Forum and the current head of its counter-terrorism work-team, he works with the Home Office, senior police officers and the Security Services trying to combat extremism.
Last night the Treasury said: ‘HM Treasury takes allegations of this nature extremely seriously and will investigate them thoroughly.’
Mr Ali, who is married with three children and lives in East London, declined to comment.
The proceeds of a recent Civil Service Islamic Society annual dinner were passed to Interpal, a Palestinian charity that is banned by the US government – although not in the United Kingdom – due to allegations of links to terrorism.
The dinner was attended by Labour MP Sadiq Khan and Peter Lewis, head of the Crown Prosecution Service.
As well as being a career civil servant, Mr Ali has been a community activist for more than 20 years.
He is also on the board of London CrimeStoppers and sits on the Metropolitan Police’s Strategic Stop & Search Committee and Police Use of Firearms Group.
Mr Ali is a member of the Independent Police Complaints Commission’s Community Advisory Group and the Home Office’s Trust and Confidence Community Panel.
There are few people with a higher profile within the ‘moderate’ Muslim community. He is a trustee of the East London Mosque & London Muslim Centre. He chairs the Muslim Council of Britain’s membership committee and is a member of its central working committee.
He is also the vice-chairman of Canon Barnet School board of governors and chairman of the Saturday Islamic School board of governors.
He has a wide network of friends, making him an influential figure as the Government tries to ‘engage’ with radical Islamic groups to prevent them turning to terrorism.
Mr Ali’s friends on the Facebook website include former Guantanamo Bay inmate Moazzam Begg, Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain, and journalist and Muslim convert Yvonne Ridley.
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Bomb found at Florence Chabad House
Jan. 18, 2009
jta , THE JERUSALEM POST
A rudimentary explosive device was found at the entrance of the Chabad House in Florence.
The device, described as being constructed from a small camping gas canister, was reportedly discovered during the day Saturday but not reported to police until Saturday night after Shabbat.
The Chabad House is located half a block from the city's main synagogue.
Media reports said a paper fuse apparently had been lit, but had burned out, and no damage occurred.
Florence Chief Rabbi Joseph Levy said the episode was "a very serious gesture that shows how one can pass from irresponsible words to actions such as this."
Tensions are high in Italy over Israel's operation in Gaza. Last week, red paint was thrown at the façade of the synagogue in Pisa. On Saturday, thousands of people, many of them Muslim, staged a pro-Palestinian march in Rome. Some of the placards showed swastikas superimposed on the Star of David.
About 300 people staged a counterdemonstration in Rome's historic Jewish ghetto neighborhood.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1232292896268&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull
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http://www.metimes.com/International/2009/01/19/the_middle_east_war_comes_to_europe/7128/
The Middle East War Comes to Europe
OLIVIER GUITTA
Published: January 19, 2009
EUROPEAN-WIDE DEMOS -- People demonstrating here in Paris on Jan. 18, and in cities across Europe, against Israel's military campaign in Gaza, which ended Sunday. Since Israel unleashed Operation Cast Lead on Dec. 27, at least 1,199 Palestinians, including 410 children, have been killed in the Gaza Strip and 5,300 wounded. (Sipa Photo via Newscom)
After three weeks of war in Gaza, Israel has implemented a unilateral cease-fire. The coverage of this war has been overwhelming. From Washington to Amman to Paris and London, the images, reports and articles on this conflict have been hyper-present.
While it is true that the Israeli-Arab war has been a very passionate issue, the so-called peaceful demonstrations in Europe have unfortunately turned more than often into pure Jew-bashing. And like in 2003-2004, Europe is importing the Middle East war once again.
In fact, the intent of demonstrating for peace - real peace - is quite laudable. But when it comes to calling for the destruction of a democratic state acting in self-defense against a group classified as a terrorist organization by among others the United States and the European Union, then the peaceful aspect seems totally gone.
Lots of demonstrations in Europe have turned quite violent physically and verbally. While it is totally acceptable to criticize Israel and deplore the Palestinian civilian victims, cries of "Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas" that erupted during demonstrations throughout Europe are unacceptable and show the extent of the problem Europe is once again facing.
Also most of the demonstrators consider Hamas, a legitimate resistance movement that they compare to the French resistance during WWII. That disturbing comparison totally whitewashes a movement that is viewed by the large majority of European countries as terrorist. Interestingly the WWII comparisons do not stop at Hamas, but are mostly targeted at Israel, described as the "new Nazi state" committing a "holocaust."
Unsurprisingly this rhetoric has pushed in some cases to calls of boycott not against Israel but against all its alleged supporters. So in one instance, Giancarlo Desiderati, the head of a small Italian union called Flaica-Uniti-Cub, called for the boycott of all Jewish-run businesses. In another case, a famous Jewish French stand-up comedian had to cancel his one-man show on Friday because dozens of pro-Hamas angry demonstrators prevented the spectators from going into the venue.
In one troubling example, authorities have even played into the hands of the Islamists that were behind some of the demonstrations. For example, in the German city of Duisburg, during a pro-Palestinian protest organized by the Turkish Islamist group Milli Gorus, demonstrators demanded that the police removed an Israeli flag that was hanging out of a window. And the police complied: they broke down the door of the apartment in question and removed the flag, to the demonstrators' great satisfaction.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg: in fact violence against European Jews has resurfaced. In France alone, 67 anti-Semitic acts have been perpetrated since Dec. 27. These crimes include violent aggression of Jews, burning of synagogues.
The situation has been so bad that some Danish schools in largely Muslim neighborhoods are going to refuse Jewish students because they cannot guarantee their security.
Some Islamist groups are also playing the terrorism card to scare off authorities and advance their agenda. For instance, anonymous posters calling for "Jihad in Palestine" have been found on walls of some London streets.
It is not surprising that Europe is importing the Middle East war: indeed Hamas is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. And since the Muslim Brotherhood is very active and present among European Muslim communities through local organizations with lots of clout, such as the Union Des Organisations Islamiques de France, it is their duty to support their Palestinian peers. Even when it means to burn down synagogues.
And that is exactly where the problem lies. Europe is facing an acute challenge at the moment because some in the various Muslim communities are seeing this Gaza war not as an Arab-Israeli war but rather a Muslim-Jewish war. And the most striking example of this dangerous slide is France, which hosts both the largest Muslim (about 6 million) community and the largest Jewish community (about 600,000) in Europe.
That is why the Nicolas Sarkozy government is taking this threat quite seriously and monitoring some suburbs that could erupt in violence. But the French authorities, who want to avoid this tension between religious communities, have called the respective religions for help. So in a way they are reinforcing the view that the war is more of a religious war than anything else.
The current escalation in France is reminiscent of what occurred in 2004 when a staggering 970 anti-Semitic incidents were registered in the country.
A few years ago, Frederic Encel, a geopolitical expert not known for crying wolf, stated that France was turning into a new Lebanon. He was just observing that communities were rapidly growing apart and that tensions were increasing at a rapid pace. Today what is going on in Europe as a result of the Gaza war is a stark reminder of the challenge Europe faces.
--
Olivier Guitta is an Adjunct Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a foreign affairs and counterterrorism consultant. You can read his latest work at www.thecroissant.com/about.html
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http://www.worldpress.org/europe/0402faz.htm
Germany Grapples with Integration
Uncertain Expectations
Georg Paul Hefty, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (conservative), Frankfurt, Germany, Jan. 22, 2002
"Nobody is Illegal" Police in riot gear stand guard during a protest in support of asylum seekers at a Frankfurt pre-deportation detention center (Photo: AFP).
No politician ever speaks about immigration without using the word “integration,” but no one will say what integration really is. In the famous outline document, which Otto Schily created in order to establish himself as a thorough minister of the interior, the problem of integration—including both laws and explanations—accounts for just five of the 252 pages.
And this section is highly bureaucratic: Which courses will be offered, who must attend them, and what will happen to those who refuse the offer? What about people who merely sit there during the German lessons? And will the “knowledge” provided about the German legal system lead immigrants to accept, exploit, or reject the German way of life?
These questions do not interest Schily—those who complete the course are, ipso facto, “integrated” and can count on the right to remain here and, eventually, to gain citizenship.
To the extent that government officials at the state and federal level have argued about integration, the disputes have been about who will pay for the courses, meaning paying for the German teachers, the foreign interpreters, the classrooms—and not about the meaning of integration. Even the prime minister of Bavaria [and candidate for chancellor in Germany’s general elections to be held this fall—WPR], Edmund Stoiber, admitted in the Bundesrat a month ago, “We have, if we are honest about it, no rigorous conception of it so far.”
Two developments occurred between Schily’s outline and Stoiber’s confession: the formulation, on May 10, 2001, of the Christian Socialist Union’s (CSU) position paper on immigration, and then Sept. 11. The [conservative] Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the [conservative] CSU, did not merely sketch out the supply side of integration; they also summarized what should be demanded: “Integration means more than being able to speak German and recognize our legal system. It also includes...acceptance of the norms and customs that the native population feels obliged to obey. This means accepting the system of values of our Western, Christian culture, which has been influenced by Christianity, ancient philosophy, humanism, Roman law, and the Enlightenment.”
Sept. 11 made it clear that these demands are not enough. German authorities must recognize that foreigners will pretend to be “integrated” while fighting with all their strength, if necessary even sacrificing their lives, to harm the society absorbing them. The phenomenon of “sleepers” is small, but it eliminates any certainty in assessing whole strata of immigrants.
No laws and no government agencies can prevent, in advance and over the long run, crimes and criminals of the Al-Qaeda variety unless the potential perpetrators themselves refrain from acting. Nor can integration policies have, for example, the goal of absolutely eliminating conflicts among foreigners themselves, or between foreigners and Germans. What the policies must seek is to see that such conflicts are settled according to the rules accepted in Central European civilization and that they do not result in bloodshed any more often than is typical for conflicts among Germans. Nor is it principally an act of integration that German government agencies and private groups are demanding to increase the esteem in which girls and women of families of Muslim or other cultures (such as Asian or African) are held.
Humanitarian organizations and the government pursue this goal, together with respect for the rights of women—not just for immigrants but in their homelands, too.
When Manfred Stolpe, the prime minister of Brandenburg, presented his wish list of changes to Schily’s document, under pressure from his coalition partner, Interior Minister [of Brandenburg] Jörg Schönbohm (CDU), there was no mention of integration. For him, as well as Schönbohm, what is important are legal prescriptions, not their effects.
The Bavarian Greens demanded that the German people work for integration, including official and labor-law recognition of Islamic holidays, the creation of quotas for people of various “immigrant backgrounds” in civil service jobs, regular broadcasts by Radio Bavaria in Arabic, and interreligious education in schools that would present all religions on an equal basis.
Now the CSU faction in the state legislature has weighed in with a paper titled “Dialogue with Islam,” attempting to stake out part of the territory on integration policies. This document affirms the necessity of a “constructive dialogue with our Muslim fellow citizens.” But it stresses, “Our leading culture [is] the only basis on which a dialogue on cultural and social-policy issues with our Muslim fellow citizens may be conducted.”
The West may not have any right to assume that the standards of its civilization are accepted in other cultural circles; “however, we must expect that members of other cultural traditions living in Germany will respect the laws and values in effect here.” The paper brings up the issue of the fundamental compatibility of the Quran with the German constitution.
Spokesmen for the Caliphate [an Islamist organization suspected of ties with Osama bin Laden], which was declared illegal in Cologne a few months ago, rejected such compatibility. Now the CSU faction in the legislature brings up the same issue: “The equality of men and women and priority of our laws over the provisions of Sharia are absolute.” What such a declaration could mean in everyday life—given the Supreme Court’s [Jan. 16, 2002] decision on ritual slaughter—does not take much imagination to see. [The court’s decision permits ritual slaughter of animals according to Muslim law, i.e., without anesthetics. The same provision had already been in effect for years for Jewish ritual slaughter. Ritual slaughter had come under fire in Germany because it was seen as cruelty toward animals.—WPR]
Germany’s legal system provides many avenues for going to court to get laws redefined. The CSU seeks to head that off. “Any divided loyalties, which would put ethnic or religious ties above loyalty to the constitution, are unacceptable to us.”
Obviously, the chairman of Bavaria’s CSU, Alois Glück, and his team had only a part of the foreign population in mind in this statement on integration policy: They were considering only the Islamic aspects. It is true, of course, that the 3.2 million Muslims represent the largest formally identified segment of the 7.3 million foreigners in Germany.
But the question of how the foreigners now living here, and those who will arrive in the future, ought to be integrated must be answered, as well as what being integrated actually means. Both questions must be answered for all those people who, unlike the 1.9 million citizens of the European Union living in Germany, do not enjoy complete freedom of movement.
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Foster parent who has looked after 80 children struck off...because a Muslim girl in her care became a Christian
By Jonathan Petre
Last updated at 10:11 PM on 07th February 2009
A foster mother has been struck off by a council after a teenage Muslim girl in her care became a Christian.
The carer, who has ten years’ experience and has looked after more than 80 children, said she was ‘devastated’ by the decision.
‘This is my life,’ she revealed. ‘It is not just a job for me. It is a vocation. I love what I do. It is also my entire income. I am a single carer, so that is all I have to live on.’
The foster mother said she had recently bought a larger car and had been renting a farmhouse, with a pony in a field, so that she could provide more disadvantaged children with a new life.
‘That was always my dream and then suddenly, bang, it was gone. I am now in a one-bedroom flat,’ she added.
The girl is understood to be back with members of her family, who have not been told of her conversion. A second girl the woman was fostering has been moved to another carer.
The woman insisted that, although she was a Christian, she had put no pressure on the Muslim girl, who was 16 at the time, to be baptised.
But council officials allegedly accused her of failing to ‘respect and preserve’ the child’s faith and tried to persuade the girl to reconsider her decision.
The carer, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is now preparing to take legal action against the council with the support of the girl, now 17, who also cannot be named.
Her case follows the controversy over Caroline Petrie, 45, the Christian nurse in Somerset suspended without pay in December for offering to pray for an elderly woman patient. She was reinstated this week.
Yesterday, Christians expressed outrage over the foster carer’s treatment, saying that it was a basic right for people to be able to change their religion and the woman should be praised, not punished.
Mike Judge, a spokesman for the Christian Institute, a pressure group which is funding her case, said: ‘I cannot imagine that an atheist foster carer would be struck off if a Christian child in her care stopped believing in God.
‘This is the sort of double standard which Christians are facing in modern Britain. In recent months, we have seen grandparents, a nurse, adoption agencies, firemen, registrars, elderly care homes and now a foster carer being punished because of the Christian beliefs they hold. It has got to stop.’
The carer, a mother-of-two in her 50s, has worked with young children for much of her life and became a foster parent for the local authority in the North of England in 1999.
In 2007, she was asked to look after the girl, who had been assaulted by a family member.
She told council officials that she was very happy to support the girl in her religion and culture.
‘We had a multicultural household and I had no problems helping the young person maintain her faith of birth,’ she said. ‘I have always prided myself in being very professional in what I do. If something works for a young person, whether I agree with it or not, I am happy to support them in that.’
But the girl, whom the foster mother describes as caring and intelligent, defied expectations by choosing not to wear overtly Muslim clothes or to eat Halal food.
The girl, whose interest in Christianity had begun at school some time before her foster placement, also made it clear that she wanted to go to church.
The carer, an Anglican who attends a local evangelical church, said: ‘I did initially try to discourage her.
‘I offered her alternatives. I offered to find places for her to practise her own religion. I offered to take her to friends or family. But she said to me from the word go, “I am interested and I want to come.” She sort of burst in.’
The carer said that the girl’s social workers were fully aware that she was going to church and had not raised any objections.
The girl had told her auxiliary social worker of her plans to convert before she was baptised in January last year, and the social worker had appeared to give her consent.
‘At that point the brakes were off,’ the carer said. ‘I couldn’t have stopped her if I had wanted to. She saw the baptism as a washing away of the horrible things she had been through and a symbol of a new start.’
Three months later, however, senior officials complained that they had not been fully informed of the girl’s intentions to become a Christian.
They said that she should have undergone counselling to ensure that she understood the implications, especially as such conversions are dealt with harshly in some Muslim countries.
The foster carer said, however, that the girl had thought about her decision very carefully and was aware that members of her family might react strongly, so she was adamant that they should not be told.
The carer said that as the auxiliary social worker knew about the baptism, she had not thought it necessary to tell the fostering team as well.
But she received a phone call from the fostering manager who was ‘incandescent with rage’ that the baptism had gone ahead.
The carer said: ‘Up to that point, we had had a good relationship, so I was quite taken aback. I was very shocked.’
In April, council officials told the girl that she should not attend any church activity for six months, so that she could reconsider the wisdom of becoming a Christian.
The carer was also instructed to discourage the girl from participating in any Christian activities, even social events. The council then told the carer there had been a breakdown of trust and in November removed her from the register.
‘It never occurred to me that they would go that far,’ she said. ‘I was concerned that the council seemed to view Christianity in such a negative light. I wonder whether if it had gone the other way – if one of my Christian young people had decided to embrace another faith – there would have been this level of fuss.’
She added that the girl has been devastated by the experience.
The carer’s solicitor Nigel Priestley said: ‘There is no doubt that the event that provoked the council was the decision by the girl to be baptised. This girl was 16 and has the right to make this choice, so for the council to react in this way is totally disproportionate. Even at this late hour, we hope that the council will resolve the issue.’
A council spokes-man said: ‘From the details provided, we believe that this information relates to a child who is the subject of a final care order in favour of the council. In those circumstances, we are unable to pass any comment.
‘We would never be able to comment on sensitive issues surrounding a child in care.
‘To do so would be irresponsible and in this particular case may put the child at risk of harm.’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1138701/Foster-parent-looked-80-children-struck--Muslim-girl-care-Christian.html#
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Second Post.
Panned over pork takeaway
By ANDREW PARKER
Published: Today
TAKEAWAY giant Domino's has pizza-ed off customers by taking pork off the menu and serving only HALAL meat.
The group have opened the first halal-only pizza store in the country, catering to the needs of Muslim customers in the mixed race area of Hall Green, Birmingham.
The controversial menu change means Brummie pizza lovers hoping to tuck into classic pizzas like a Hawaiian with ham and pineapple will be disappointed.
Instead, they will have to travel over two miles to the next closest Domino's branch, something which has angered some non-Muslim customers who say they are being discriminated against.
Angry
One disgruntled punter Chris Yates, 29, a hospital worker living in Moseley said he was told he couldn't have a "Meteor" pizza, topped with pepperoni, sausage, meatballs, ground beef and smoky bacon, when he called up at the weekend.
"It's a disgrace, I can appreciate them having it as an option but to have it completely halal is just not on."
Halal items on the menu include halal spicy beef sausage, roast and tandoori chicken, halal pepperoni and halal cured turkey – all produced and stored within the Halal Food Authorities guidelines.
A spokesman for Domino's, who recently announced profits were up 33 per cent, said: "In that particular area of Birmingham there are a large number of Muslims so there is naturally more of a demand for halal based products.
"We appreciate we cannot please everybody but there are alternatives, such as turkey ham, and we have thought long and hard about this decision and we are sure it is the right one."
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2226711.ece
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I had the opportunity to see a Davis Cup semifinal years ago featuring USA v. Sweden in Minneapolis. There were no riots in the streets or car burnings. This story in Malmo is amazing, they are host to Israel v. Sweden and the show just won't go on. I would be very interested in hearing from people who have witnessed the unrest in places like France and Sweden.
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Anyone for tennis in Malmo?
February 24, 2009 Powerlineblog.com
The AP reports that spectators will be barred from the Sweden-Israel Davis Cup match next month in Malmo. There appears to be a vague concern about controlling Swedish youth in Malmo:
The Davis Cup matches between Sweden and Israel will be played without spectators in Malmo next month. Attempts to move the venue to Stockholm fell through.
Officials have cited security concerns for the World Group series, which will be played March 6-8. Several anti-Israeli demonstrations have been planned in Malmo.
Stockholm had offered to host the matches, saying it was better prepared to guarantee security arrangements. But that possibility ended when Stockholm officials said they couldn't get organized in time for Sunday's arrival of the Israeli team.
What's the problem in Malmo? Interested readers are left to fill in the blanks for themselves.
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Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Steyn on Britain and Europe - THE NEXT STAGE
from National Review
The other day I found myself wondering when the conversion rate would become an avalanche. To Islam, I mean. If you’ve been following recent developments in the Netherlands, you’ll know that Geert Wilders, a Dutch Member of Parliament, is to be put on trial for offending Muslims. “Look at what you’re doing,” the sardonic Brit Pat Condell pointed out. “You’re prosecuting a man who is under 24-hour protection from attack by violent Muslims. Yet he’s the criminal for expressing an opinion.”
Quite. But, while Europe has a high degree of tolerance for intolerant imams, it won’t tolerate anyone pointing out that intolerance. It is not necessary for Minheer Wilders to be either jailed or forced into exile to conclude that the Netherlands, like many of its neighbors, has already conceded the key point - that Muslims now have the exclusive right to set the parameters of public debate on Islam. And, given that they don’t regard it as debatable at all, that means that the remorseless Islamization of Europe will continue and accelerate while the deWildered political establishment stands mute.
When I talk like that, I’m assumed to be nuts – or, to use the preferred term, “alarmist” (The Economist et al). Brian Barrington, a Dublin blogger, recently concluded a review of my book by asking:
Is Mark Steyn a scaremongering fool indulging in Islamophobic fantasies..?
Answer: yes he is.
Here’s a 2008 headline from Le Figaro re demographic trends in Brussels:
La capitale européenne sera musulmane dans vingt ans.
For those who haven’t taken up President Obama’s urgings to learn another language, that’s French for “Nothing to see here, folks.”
Now here’s a 2009 headline from The Times :of London
Muslim Population ‘Rising 10 Times Faster Than Rest Of Society’.
A little bit harder for that one to get lost in translation. According to the United Kingdom’s Office of National Statistics, the greatest number of “Christians” (whatever that means in a contemporary Anglican context) is to be found among the over-70s, and the largest number of Muslims is in the cohort aged four and under. Which is Britain’s past and which Britain’s future? No need to ask a “scaremongering fool”. In a land where the head of state is also Supreme Governor of the established church, a quarter of all public elementary schools in England are what are known as “Church of England schools”. In practice, they cannot teach Christianity because many of them, especially in the inner cities, are now overwhelmingly Muslim. In the Blackburn and Dewsbury C-of-E schools, every single pupil is Muslim. At others, the retreating Christian community can still muster up to one per cent of the enrolment. In Bradford, the Church is building a new school for what will be an entirely Muslim student body. “Demographics change,” says the Venerable Peter Ballard, Archdeacon of Lancaster. “There was certainly a Christian population there at one time and, who knows, 20 years from now the Christians might be back.”
Not in 20 years. According to official statistics, of “white British Christian” households 16 per cent have two or more dependent children; among the UK’s “Pakistani Muslim” households, the figure is 50 per cent; “Bangladeshi Muslims”, 58 per cent. The British Government “sustainable development chair” (whatever that is) Sir Jonathon Porritt has just announced that he thinks parents are being “environmentally irresponsible” if they have more than two children.
That 16 per cent will listen to the sustainable baronet. The 58 per cent will fill the void.
So Britain and Europe are becoming more Muslim. The only question is how much more, how fast. And in that respect I think the only thing I got wrong in America Alone is that I was insufficiently “alarmist”. I’ll bet that “la capitale européenne sera musulmane” a lot sooner than 20 years.
Islam is not a race: As The Times reported, “Experts said that the increase was attributable to immigration, a higher birthrate and conversions to Islam.” That last category is the next stage. Like many readers, I’ve been enjoying Robert Ferrigno’s Prayers For The Assassin trilogy, set in an Islamic Republic of America a decade or three hence, while being just a wee bit skeptical about the premise – that a nuclear catastrophe would prompt millions of Americans to convert to Islam. But in Europe? There’s no need for nukes, just the quiet, remorseless daily reality.
In the next few years, Brussels, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Rotterdam will become majority Muslim. Let’s say you work in an office in those cities: One day they install a Muslim prayer room, and a few folks head off at the designated time, while the rest of you get on with what passes for work in the EU. A couple of years go by, and it’s now a few more folks scooting off to the prayer room. Then it’s a majority. And the ones who don’t are beginning to feel a bit awkward about being left behind.
What do you do? The future showed up a lot sooner than you thought. If you were a fundamentalist Christian like those wackjob Yanks, signing on to Islam might (pace Mr Ferrigno) cause you some discomfort. But, if you’re the average post-Christian Eurosecularist, what’s the big deal? Who wants to be the last guy sitting in the office sharpening his pencil during morning prayers?
Funny how quickly it all happened. There was the woman on reception, but she retired. And the guy in personnel who used to say, sotto voce, that Geert Wilders had a point. But he emigrated the year after Wilders did.
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Jihad Chic Comes to London
In the city's Muslim neighborhoods, an Afghan reporter finds a few too many uncomfortable reminders of home.
Sami Yousafzai
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Mar 23, 2009
I still don't know who wanted me dead. I was sitting in my car one day last november, not far from my house in the northwest Pakistani city of Peshawar, when a group of strangers walked up. One of them pointed a pistol through my window. I remember he wore a turban and shalwar kameez—the tunic and baggy pants common in the area—and he had a long beard, dyed red with henna. He shot me in the chest, hand and arm, and then fled with his friends. Miraculously, none of the bullets hit any arteries or vital organs, and as soon as a doctor patched me up and I was strong enough to travel, I booked a flight to London. I planned to lie low for a while, to rest and seek further medical help for a bullet that was lodged in my arm. But more than that, I just wanted to be somewhere calm and safe, far from AK-toting gunmen, suicide bombers and the daily, random violence of Pakistan's borderlands.
London was a revelation—cold, clean and orderly—but my sense of relief didn't last long. In one of the city's many South Asian neighborhoods, I saw a tall young Afghan who reminded me of my would-be assassin, striding down the street like a bad dream. He too wore a shalwar kameez, and a big turban of white silk was wrapped loosely around his head. His beard was long, and his hair was shoulder length. Anyone dressed like that in Islamabad would be immediately picked up for questioning by the police. I had flown halfway across the world to get away from killers who resembled this young Londoner. I stared after him until he was gone from view.
But as days passed I spotted him again and again. He stood out even in a neighborhood full of Asians dressed in traditional garb—shalwar kameez, saris, abayas. Locals had a nickname for him: Talib Jan. It's a friendly Afghan slang term for a Taliban member, something like GI Joe for Americans. The area's crowded, rundown row houses had become home to hundreds of Afghans who first arrived in England as fugitives from the Taliban's intolerance and brutality. Nevertheless, most of Jan's neighbors spoke of him tolerantly or even approvingly.
In fact, during my three-month stay in England I met a surprising number of Muslims who shared Jan's fascination with the Taliban. The older generation, urbane and relatively well educated, had little love for the extremists. But among some younger men, frustrated and marginalized in British society, I discovered a fury that was depressingly familiar. I met many immigrants who were blatant, vocal and unquestioning in their support for what they imagined to be "jihad." Few seemed troubled by the brutality that characterized Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar's reign, or by his banning of music or girls' education. Indeed, many looked back on Omar's rule as a kind of Islamic utopia, and they eagerly snapped up the Islamist leaflets handed out after Friday prayers at various mosques around town.
I first introduced myself to Jan at one of those mosques. I complimented his taste in clothes: that's how people dress back home in Afghanistan, I said. (I was born in northern Afghanistan; my family fled to Pakistan in 1979 to escape the Soviet invasion.) His fierce appearance to the contrary, Jan turned out to be friendly and outgoing. He listened with interest to my story, but mostly he talked about himself, his Islamist views, his fierce support for the Taliban and his contempt for the Brits and Americans fighting them.
His vehemence surprised me. Twenty-three years old, Jan had been born in eastern Afghanistan and attended a madrassa in Pakistan. The Taliban still ruled Afghanistan when his parents paid a people smuggler to sneak Jan to England at 14. There he applied for and was granted political asylum, claiming that the Taliban had persecuted him and his family. Now he's a legal resident, yet openly cheers for his supposed oppressors to defeat troops from his adopted homeland in Afghanistan. The irony seems lost on him.
Jan is a terror to his neighbors. He prowls the streets as a one-man, self-appointed morality patrol. He castigates young Muslim couples he sees holding hands in public, and he badgers acquaintances for shaping their beards into what he disapprovingly calls a "French cut" that frames the mouth. His diatribes can be frightening. Several young men told me they were afraid Jan had friends who could create problems for them or their relatives in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Some feared they might be disowned if Jan got word to their families about their "immoral" living in London.
At a neighborhood restaurant one day I noticed that my waiter looked miserable. Khalil is a clean-shaven, broad-shouldered young Afghan who wears a gold ring in one earlobe. I asked why he was so unhappy, and he told me his story as he cleaned the table and took my order. He said he had been dumped a few days earlier by his girlfriend, a beautiful young Englishwoman. They were out walking when Talib Jan marched up and began denouncing Khalil, threatening to let his family back in Afghanistan know that their son was having a forbidden affair. The girl was frightened by Jan, but more than that, she was furious at Khalil for lying to her: he had told her he was Turkish. She told him they were through.
Now Khalil worries that same routine will be repeated with every girl he meets in London. He's convinced that Jan knows how to find his family in Afghanistan and can make big trouble for him there. "I wanted to marry that girl, but now I have no hope," he told me. "My family lives in the insecure countryside. If I go back and the Taliban know I have an English girlfriend, they will behead me." I asked if he thought Jan was an actual Taliban member. "No," Khalil answered. "He is not with the militias, but he is a big headache for every Afghan who knows him."
As far as I could tell, Jan is an armchair jihadist. I saw no sign that he had direct ties to the Taliban, or that anyone was paying him to proselytize. On the contrary, he works hard to support himself with business deals like buying and selling used cars. I often found him in a little store that sells mobile phones and watches at a London shopping plaza. A crowd of young, bearded men hangs out there: more armchair jihadists. The shop's 35-year-old owner, a Pakistani from Peshawar, loves to show them the latest Taliban videos on his mobile phone, featuring beheadings of alleged anti-Taliban "spies" and ambushes of U.S. forces. When asked if he worried that British authorities might discover his collection of videos, he told me: "If our Taliban brothers can stand up to B-52 bombing and modern U.S. war technology, it would be cowardly of me to be afraid to watch and share their heroic actions."
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Brave words, I thought, but still the shopkeeper disturbed me. He was relatively well educated and a former banker, but made no secret of his Islamist leanings. Giving change, he avoids touching a woman's hand. He also tells a chilling tale—maybe true, maybe not—of his days as a radical religious student in Peshawar in the mid-1990s. He claims that he and a group of friends murdered several prostitutes there in what he called a "moral cleansing drive." He warned me against speaking against the Taliban even in London: people's loved ones at home could get hurt, he said darkly.
Jan, too, is always glad to pull out his Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone and share streaming videos of Taliban training camps and Coalition convoys hitting IEDs. He even has Taliban ring tones—fire-and-brimstone sermons and Qur'anic recitals from jihadist mullahs. If you want copies, he'll transfer them to your phone or point you to the right Web site. "I'm winning converts to a holy cause every day," he says. As for the cops, Jan says he's careful to break no laws and claims he's never had problems with the police. They seem to regard him as a deeply religious man, he says, or at least as a harmless eccentric.
In fact, Jan embodies a powerful need among many young Muslims in Britain to preserve a sense of identity in a strange land. One 50-year-old engineer told me he worries constantly about his four children, especially his two sons, ages 19 and 20. He says they seem addicted to Internet porn, but what scares him even more is the amount of time they spend on jihadist Web sites. He worries as well about extremist operatives who hang out at local mosques trying to recruit young people to the Taliban cause.
Extremism's appeal is especially strong for immigrants fed up with hard times and bigotry. In economically depressed Birmingham I met an unemployed man from Kandahar. He said he had just lost his job and feared he wouldn't be able to feed his family. "If I get hit by a car or bus one day crossing the street, who will look after my family?" he asked. "It would be better for me to go and fight and die with the Taliban. Then at least I could see paradise." One 35-year-old British Muslim told me he's infuriated by widespread discrimination. An office worker, he says he hasn't had a promotion in 10 years. The reason, he believes, is that he's an ardent Muslim who wears a long beard and never joins his coworkers at the local pub. "This kind of behavior is what makes Muslims extremist," he said. Jan himself says most Britons look on him with "love and kindness," but others occasionally stare at him with "hate" and won't sit next to him on the train. Their hearts, he says, "are black and full of enmity toward Muslims."
Most of these young men, even Jan, would probably never give up their lives in Britain to join the jihad in Afghanistan. But something of that far-off fight, some tinge of blood and chaos and hatred, has certainly seeped into London's streets. Alokozai, 27, arrived in London a year ago after an arduous trip via the Afghans' underground railway. He used to be an interpreter/fixer for British troops in Kandahar. The pay was excellent by Afghan standards—some $1,600 a month—but then the death threats began. His family's life would be worthless unless he left his job, the anonymous letters warned. He quit as he was told; in Britain he applied for political asylum, thinking he had finally escaped the Taliban's wrath.
Then the phone woke him one night at 3 a.m. "Death angels will soon clutch at your throat," an Afghan voice warned. "Remember, we have Islamic brothers in the U.K. Your family should not rest easy in Kandahar either." He says he could only listen to the voice, too scared to say anything.
Alokozai worries all the time now. Too many Afghans in London sympathize with the Taliban, he says. He thinks many recent asylum seekers, especially from southern Afghanistan, have ties to the Taliban and remain under the sway of extremist ideas. "They will create trouble for Britain in the near future," he predicts. But equally disturbing to him are the thoroughly assimilated Muslims who also treat him like a traitor to his religion. When they find out he worked for British forces in Afghanistan, they ask him, "How many houses did you bomb?" and "How many innocents did you kill?" "These people are as narrow-minded and have as much hate in their eyes as the Taliban do in Afghanistan," he says. "I cannot understand how these Afghans and Pakistanis can wear Western clothes, dance and drink, and then condemn me and see the Taliban as their heroes."
Neither can I. As I was riding the train one day, Owais, a 27-year-old Pakistani from Kashmir, began praising the Taliban and talking seriously of going to live in Afghanistan after Mullah Omar returned to power. "My fervent wish is that next winter we may be able to breathe freely in the restored Islamic state of Afghanistan," he declared in Urdu. Here you can breathe freely too, I told him. "No, only in a true Islamic state can we be free," replied his friend Ishaq. A 25-year-old Afghan immigrant, Ishaq wore a long, white tunic over his blue jeans. "The West is destroying the spirit, soul and values of Islam. Muslims should avoid contact with and coming to the West." As I go home to my family, I too wonder and worry about such men. There is too much of Peshawar in them, and in London.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/189241
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Headmistress accused of 'Islamophobia' wins £400,000
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Head accused of 'Islamophobia' wins £400,000 after being forced out by Muslim governors
By Andy Dolan, Matt Sandy and Nick Mcdermott
Last updated at 11:20 PM on 19th March 2009
A headmistress who was hounded out of her job after being falsely accused of racism was yesterday awarded more than £400,000 in compensation.
Erica Connor had run a 'happy and successful' primary school but was driven to a breakdown by the allegations.
The Daily Mail can reveal the school's troubles started when a local mosque decided to pack the governing body with Muslims.
Paul Martin - a Muslim convert - and Mumtaz Saleem began monopolising meetings with the aim of turning New Monument in Woking into an Islamic faith school.
The Surrey town is home to the first purpose-built mosque in the country - the Shah Jahan Mosque - which dates from 1889.
Mr Martin, a businessman, yesterday confirmed there had been a 'conscious effort' to increase the number of Muslims on the board.
But when Mrs Connor resisted the new governors' plans - such as the introduction of Islamic worship into the school - she became the target of a smear campaign.
An anonymous petition was circulated among parents, stating that those signing 'no longer have confidence in Erica Connor to educate our children in a way that respects and values our faith, culture and heritage'.
An accompanying document accused the headmistress of 'racism and Islamophobia'.
The accusations drove her to suffer from depression.
She eventually retired from the 300-pupil school because of illhealth in December 2006.
She is unlikely ever to return to teaching and now does voluntary work for a cancer charity.
A judge at the Royal Courts of Justice in London yesterday ordered Surrey County Council to pay Mrs Connor £407,781 in compensation.
He ruled that the local education authority had failed to support her properly against the unfounded accusations.
Deputy Judge John Leighton Williams said the council disregarded the 'health and welfare' of Mrs Connor because it was more concerned about being reported to the Commission for Racial Equality.
Erica Connor was headteacher of New Monument School in Woking (pictured) where 80 per cent of pupils are Muslim. She claimed she was forced to retire through ill health after a campaign of harrassment
After the case, Mrs Connor said the allegations 'attacked the core of my being and my values'. She accused the council of cownorardice for failing to stand by her while the non-demoninational primary school - where around 80 per cent of the pupils are Muslim - was torn apart by the split in the governing body.
She had told the court earlier: 'I felt the LEA, because of the political sensitivity of the issue, were not addressing it.
'I felt - I will be honest - that this was racism towards me, because I felt that, had I been a Muslim head, things would have been conducted in a different way. I felt that they didn't have the courage to stand by me in this.'
The divorced mother of one was made headmistress in 1998 after joining the school four years earlier as the deputy head. In 2001 she was invited to a Downing Street reception after the school was named the second most improved in the country for SATs results. Her problems started in 2003 when four Muslim governors, including Mr Martin, joined the board. He was appointed as a parent-governor, despite having no children at the school.
'It was tense': Paul Martin at home in Woking, Surrey
Shortly afterwards, Mr Saleem joined as one of two LEA-appointed Muslim governors. Mr Martin also nominated another Muslim as parent-governor - Sofia Syed, who also had no prior connection to the school. Over the next two years Mrs Connor believed the governing body became 'dysfunctional' because of the conduct of Mr Martin and Mr Saleem, the court heard. In her witness statement, Mrs Connor said they 'effectively railroaded' meetings, repeatedly raising issues of religious education, content of assemblies and religious worship. They wanted more formal Islamic worship in the school and closer links with the local mosque.
From late 2003, Mr Martin, now 58, repeatedly complained about the school's policies and its stance towards Islam, as well as its links with the Muslim community and Mrs Connor's management.
His complaints resulted in an investigation. Its report acquitted the school of racism, Islamophobia and religious bias. Mr Martin was finally voted off the governing body in June 2005. He complained that he had been 'removed for blowing the whistle on institutional racism'.
The council wrote to parents saying it had no evidence that the allegations were true and reiterated the results of the investigation.
But at the start of the following school term in September, a second investigation - this time at the instigation of the council - concluded the school 'had not been responsive to the needs of the faith community'.
Mrs Connor went on sick leave suffering from stress and depression soon afterwards.
By then, the entire governing body had been disbanded. The following year the school was put in special measures by Ofsted.
Mrs Connor did not sue Mr Martin or Mr Saleem, but claimed that Mr Saleem had harassed her. Judge Williams cleared him of harassment, but ruled that he had been guilty of 'offensive verbal attacks' towards Mrs Connor.
The judge said of the two governors: 'I am satisfied that they sought to monopolise governing body meetings with a view to imposing their own agenda, and were prepared to do so regardless of the interests of the school and anyone who resisted that agenda. What was that agenda? It was at the very least to introduce an increasing role for the Muslim religion in New Monument School.'
The judge added that it was also 'not unreasonable' for Mrs Connor and the school's staff 'to consider that there was an agenda to convert New Monument to an Islamic faith school'.
The judge said the council's 'excessive tolerance' of the Muslim governors' behaviour, its 'misplaced sympathy' for Mr Martin - and its failure to provide Mrs Connor with proper support were the reasons for her depression. Last night, Mr Martin said that he and other governors had simply lobbied for an increase in the number of Islamic assemblies.
He said: 'There were many Muslims in the school and they should be properly represented. It is only fair and democratic.'
Mr Martin, who converted to Islam 28 years ago and was treasurer of the mosque, said he thought Mrs Connor 'became very defensive and it got very tense'.
Mrs Connor, who is believed to live with her partner Neil in Skenfrith, near Abergavenny in South Wales, said after the ruling she was 'thrilled that justice has prevailed'.
She added: 'I finally feel vindicated. I was subjected to dreadful pressures from a small group of individuals, unrepresentative of the local community, without the support I would have expected from Surrey County Council.'
Her damages claim covered sums for her pain and suffering and loss of income and pension.
A Surrey County Council spokesman said the authority was 'disappointed' with the decision
The council was refused permission to appeal, but could take the case to the Court of Appeal.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...governors.html
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Politicians Fret as Muslim Population Swells in Europe
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Politicians Fret as Muslim Population Swells in Europe Amid Little Integration
Tuesday , March 24, 2009
By Greg Burke
BRUSSELS, Belgium —
A clash of civilizations may be taking place on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, but it's also happening a lot more quietly in European cities. Old Europe's population is dwindling even as immigration and high birth rates among Muslim groups are swelling in cities all over the continent. And in Belgium, it is no different.
Filip Dewinter, a leader of the far-right separatist party Vlaams Belang, predicts there will eventually be a kind of civil war when the longtime residents of Brussels — the nation's capital and administrative seat of the European Union — realize their city is about to be taken over by Muslim immigrants.
• Click here for video.
Although there are no official statistics on how many Muslims live in Brussels, it is believed they make up about 25 percent of the city’s 1 million urban residents. Dewinter, who opposes immigration and has called Islamophobia a "duty," claims three of the 19 sections of Brussels, each with its own mayor, now have Muslim majorities.
"In those neighborhoods it's not our government that's in power," he said, "but the Muslim authorities — the mosques, the imams — who are in charge."
FOX News visited one of those neighborhoods, called Molenbeek, which looks more like North Africa than the heart of Europe.
For some Belgians, that's not a problem. The mayor of Molenbeek, Socialist Philippe Moureaux, has worked hard to help Muslims try to integrate over the past decade and a half. Moureaux believes multiculturalism is a good thing. He says even those who disagree with him should get used to life as it is in Brussels today: "Be realistic. They're here. They're relatively numerous and they're growing."
Many Moroccans have been in Belgium for decades and are now citizens, as are their children. The imam of one of the main mosques, which thousands of young Moroccans attend each Friday, stressed that Muslim immigrants have starting blending in around Brussels.
During FOX News' brief visit, there were no fiery demonstrations of the kind that have wracked the Netherlands, though the municipality is sometimes considered dangerous to traverse at night.
Yet Molenbeek remains disconcerting. Belgian police assigned three plainclothes officers to watch over a FOX News team shooting street scenes one morning in Molenbeek. When FOX News returned in the afternoon as more people were out and about, the police said it would be safer not to get out of the car. It wasn't even dark yet.
Part of that fear stems from particularly nasty street crime, something that can happen in bad neighborhoods in any big European — or American — city. But part of it is due to strong anti-Western sentiment among Belgium's Muslims, which suggests that true integration is still a long way off.
Mayor Moureaux blames the problems on a tiny number of very violent youths who are condemned by everyone, including the Muslim community.
But for Dewinter, integration simply isn't working. He claims the great majority of the Muslims don't want it to work. So instead of being a melting pot, Brussels has become a city that does everything possible to appease Islam, he claims.
"Halal food is served in the schools, not only for Muslim children, but for all the children," said Dewinter, adding that municipal pools in Brussels now have separate hours for men and women to swim.
The anti-immigrant Vlaams Belang, once considered a pariah party, now controls about 24 percent of the Belgian vote, a trend matched in other European countries with burgeoning Muslim populations.
Though the immigration debate has not yet reached the fever pitch it has in the U.S., a real test will come when a major European city has a Muslim majority. The first could be Marseilles, in France, or Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. But don't count out Brussels, the heart and capital of Europe.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,510364,00.html
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‘100 dangerous Islamists in Germany’
AFP/Berlin
Germany is home to several hundred “potentially dangerous Islamists” including a hard core of around 100 people classed as dangerous, a senior interior ministry official said yesterday. Between 60 and 80 “Jihadists” have returned to Germany out of some 140 who have undergone training in camps in the tribal areas of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area, state secretary August Hanning said.
“The danger should not be underestimated. The 60 to 80 who have returned make up the overwhelming majority of up to around 100 people whom we class as dangerous,” Hanning told the Tagesspiegel daily’s Saturday edition. “On top of that there are about another 300 potentially dangerous Islamists. All in all we are talking about a circle of around 1,000 people,” said Hanning, who used to head Germany foreign intelligence agency, the BND.
He added that he is worried about the possibility of attacks in the run up to this September’s general election.
“We remember that the attacks in Madrid in 2004 were carried out a few days before elections in Spain,” he said, referring to the train bombings that left 191 people dead in Europe’s worst terror attack. “That really did affect the outcome of the elections ... Al Qaeda sees this as a model for success.”
A number of videos - sometimes in German or with German subtitles - have emerged in recent months warning of future attacks on German soil because of the presence of 3,500 of the country’s troops in Afghanistan.
The closest Germany came to an attack was in July 2006 when suitcases containing homemade bombs were placed on two regional trains passing through Cologne’s busy main train station. They failed to detonate.
http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topic...9&parent_id=21
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From powerline: A video of Israel haters scouring a French supermarket to remove Israeli products from the shelf. There isn't a manager in sight. All the shoppers go about their business like it is 1942 Vichy France. The video was apparently shot in the northeastern suburbs of Paris that gained attention as the scene of the mysterious French "youth" riots of 2005.
This video is even more grotesque than you think. It was shot in a suburb of Paris called Aulnay-sous-Bois. The next-door town to Aulnay is called Drancy, about one mile away. Drancy was used by the Nazis between 1942-1944 as a deportation holding camp for the Jews of Paris prior to the deportation to the extermination camps in eastern Europe. Sixty-five thoursand Jews passed through Drancy, of whom 63,000 were killed. In other words, the Israeli boycotters have chosen, of all the supermarkets in France, the one closest to France's most important Holocaust memorial site. Look on Google Maps to see how close they are.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfK7Yal64S0[/youtube]
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I differentiate between a "Boycott Israel" i.e. people who oppose Israel's politics (valid or invalid depending upon your viewpoint)
versus a "Boycott Jews" which I would find repugnant.
Here in America, I have heard/seen boycott this, that, and everything else it seems under the sun. In and of itself, why can't a person/group
oppose another group's/country's products or politics? Free speech?
And I am a little unclear as to the video (I don't speak French) but it seems that the group simply bought up all Israel products on the shelf.
Heck, if I was manager, I would be grateful, not apologetic.
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I have sent the video to my mom, who speaks French very well, to ask what it says. Somehow, I doubt they are paying for these products-- it seems rather contrary to the notion of a boycott :lol:
I respect the point you make about boycotts, but I note the front of the shirts says what I think means "Long Live Palestine". Somehow I doubt they are working for a two state solution , , ,
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I too am curious as to the translation, but I assume it consists of various people vilifying Israel for "oppressing"
Palestinians. Whether it is be a two state solution, or...... however in this instance, the French views do not seem
religiously oriented, rather it's all politics. Agree with Israel's "solution" to the Palestinians or not is the question.
It is a "fair" question.
As for the economics of boycotts, I understand your point, but perhaps they merely sought publicity? Because,
speaking of economics, I cannot imagine a Supermarket here or in France allowing "customers" to walk
off with significant merchandise regardless of where is was manufactured without calling the police or
at minimum, putting up struggle; everyone seemed too relaxed. I would venture to guess the merchandise was either
paid for or never physically taken from the store. Yet the protestors still garnered attention. Everyone
"accomplished" their goal.
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Just another version of jihad.
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Just another version of jihad.
:?
Actually there is a wave of "Boycott Israel" across Europe; people from all walks of life
are protesting the abdominal treatment of Palestinians. Agree or disagree with Israel's
treatment of Palestinians, I believe there are two valid sides to the discussion.
The tape was simply misleading and the conclusions drawn absolutely incorrect. The right to protest
and boycott is deeply seated in American culture as well. And this boycott seemed rather peaceful,
albeit some may object to the vilification of Israel by the participants yet that is their right.
Frankly, store management didn't care since the protestors were doing nothing wrong.
Free speech is the bedrock of a democracy.
And no where did I see "Boycott Jews" etc. Palestine and the treatment of the
Palestinians seems to be the issue sweeping Europe. I think it is wrong to assume that if
one opposes a particular policy of Israel, they are against all Jews.
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"Frankly, store management didn't care since the protestors were doing nothing wrong."
How many stores you know freely allow that sort of actiivty? We are still waiting to here from someone who can say whether they were paying for the food they were taking. What meaning do you put to their shirts' fronts "Long live Palestine"? I think they are calling for the destruction of Israel.
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Jeepers, maybe we should wait for the next Kristallnacht before we grow concerned over signs of European anti-semitism.
As for those poor Palestinians, and as has been discussed at length here before, perhaps if they abided by the terms of Camp David et al, quit embracing the indiscriminate killing of civilians as a military tactic, fired all their kleptocratic and bloodthirsty leaders, abandoned the racist and sexist rhetoric they force feed their children in the hope of continuing to breed cannon fodder, and so on, they'd find their lives improving a bit more than any boycott would bring. Just a wild guess, one that will continue to be speculation so long as those on the left continue to reward the current counter-productive Palestinian behavior.
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Perhaps I am wrong, but it seems to me that if they were stealing all the food from the store, management would
have called the police and at minimum, objected. And no where could I find testament that they stole anything.
As for "Long live Palestine" it can mean many things; not just the destruction of Israel. I for example believe
Palestine has a right to exist and deplore their treatment and Israel's expansion; however I strongly support Israel's right to exist
and frankly support and respect Israel on many other issues.
But for arguments sake, let's say the T-Shirt said, "Eliminate Israel, let Palestine rule". As absurd (for many reasons)
as this statement is, isn't this the right of a protestor to express their opinion about a political issue? For example
my South Korean friends might approve of a T-Shirt that said, "Eliminate North Korea, let Seoul rule".
Probably, many on this forum would also support such a T-Shirt.
But one should not pick and choose when it comes to free speech or one day we may not have it.
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"Perhaps I am wrong, but it seems to me that if they were stealing all the food from the store, management would
have called the police and at minimum, objected. And no where could I find testament that they stole anything."
Do you speak French so as to be able to find that testament?
Why would boycotters BUY the food?
"As for "Long live Palestine" it can mean many things; not just the destruction of Israel."
In this context, I think it is pretty clear that it means precisely the destruction of Israel. For example PLO school books, despite having signed to the contrary in Oslo, still show Palestine as being from "river to sea".
"But for arguments sake, let's say the T-Shirt said, "Eliminate Israel, let Palestine rule". As absurd (for many reasons)
as this statement is, isn't this the right of a protestor to express their opinion about a political issue?"
Sure, but that's not the point here.
"For example my South Korean friends might approve of a T-Shirt that said, "Eliminate North Korea, let Seoul rule".
Probably, many on this forum would also support such a T-Shirt."
Actually I would suport the people of NK truly deciding.
"But one should not pick and choose when it comes to free speech or one day we may not have it."
Again, read again and see that no one here has called for anything against free speech. Not sure where you are getting this :?
Subject to confirmation by a competent French speaker, what we are noting here is the apparent intimidation of the store by an organized group going in and taking its products off the shelf-- I'm guessing without payment.
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Ah yes, as usual a liberal bends over backwards to defend evil.
Peaceful protest is different that disrupting a store's business and intimidating people. Gee, the French cowered and didn't fight back? SHOCKING! :-o
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Crafty and GM covered most of what my reaction to it is. We don't need a translation to know that this group is not buying up all the products from Israel. JDN, I hope you were pulling our chain or just enjoying an adult beverage as you wrote.
"And this boycott seemed rather peaceful"
Did you miss the intro that explained that this is the area with the car fire riots?
Again, with or without a translation there is a level of intimidation present IMO that you and I can hardly imagine.
There is a difference between a free speech boycott and physically removing items from shelves that a private store keeper obviously paid people to put on the shelves. This is a serious violation of the storekeepers private property rights, with or without knowing the laws of France.
At least an implied threat of violence exists to the patrons and the establishment, based on the numbers and the known past of the movement, with or without a visual sign of weaponry.
The distinction between hating Jewish people and hating all people of Israel is lost on me. I am neither and I fear these people greatly. To most Americans, protecting Israel is part of protecting America and for Europe, turning their back on Israel and coddling Israel's enemies has not been helpful to security at home.
Not mentioned was that this is actually a promo video for the group ransacking the store, posted to the internet, obviously encouraging others/all to copy and join them.
An example of a free speech boycott IMO would be to put a sign on YOUR lawn or YOUR website and encourage people not to buy certain products from certain origins.
How about if 500 straight people walked into a shop of gay orientation all wearing colored shirts boldly marked 'straight power' and removed all items from the store that are gay oriented? Still just an expression of free speech, not tromping on the civil rights of others? I don't think so.
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I posted and removed a video ('wrong thread') from Sweden in March that showed unrest (a peaceful boycott?) against Israel. The victims were the tennis fans of Sweden because a major event, the Swedish hosted Davis Cup match, had to be played in an empty stadium BECAUSE OF FEAR OF VIOLENCE if they did not succumb to the wishes of the protesters. Another version or the video is posted below. My point then was that there is cross-link between the social behavior of these do-nothings and the social programs that pay people who contribute nothing. Unemployment in the immigrant-ghetto neighborhoods is as high as 40%. They do not come to the greatest social welfare states in the world for the job opportunities, or to Sweden for the climate or to France out of French pride. Whether you call it hate-politics, intimidation or jihad, it is an invasion exploiting the generosity (and weakness) of the developed nations, not a friendly merger.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxX27Pe-AH0[/youtube]
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Doug, I do enjoy adult beverages from time to time, but in this instance only coffee so far this morning :-)
As for the peacefulness and "intimidation" I merely observed the video. The protestors are intermixed with other shoppers
who obviously don't seem to mind and are simply going about their own shopping. And as the protestors are exiting,
everyone seemed to be smiling and having a good time. Hardly a violent or "intimidating" protest...
And while I don't speak French; I do understand economics (why boycott and buy the product) however as the protestors are peacefully
leaving the store there is no indication of any resistance by management and therefore I think it is reasonable to conclude that merchandise is not being stolen.
To assume otherwise without evidence is wrong. (If they stole, they should be arrested, regardless of what their T-Shirt says). And doing
a search I did not find one credible site saying that these items were stolen.
And I do believe that there is a distinction between hating Jewish people and hating Israel. I don't hate either, but I think a reasonable person
can disagree, even strongly, with some of the policies of Israel, yet have no religious biasses against Jewish people.
And I am not sure if your gay analogy is valid. The store in question was a Supermarket, not a Jewish delicatessen. And the boycott was
centered on Israel and it's foreign policy, not some protected group based on race, religion or one's sexual persuasion.
As for immigration, I don't pretend to understand the reasons why, but surely there were good reasons why such mass immigration is/was allowed.
And I think Europe's welfare state exasperates the problem. Now these policies are coming back to haunt individual countries. Also,
I think recent dire current economic times contributes and enlarges the problem; throughout history in difficult times it was often the most recent immigrant
or foreigner who was blamed yet in good times they were encouraged and badly needed.
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"Hey, nice little store you got here. Shame if all these Israeli products made it catch on fire."
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Mayhem in the Marais
Nidra Poller from Paris
May 2009
Firefighters tackle a blazing car during anti-Jewish violence in January
Saturday night in spring 2009, in a quiet corner of the Marais. Sounds of tumult and smashing. A pause. An ominous silence. Then, the first explosion. Gunshots? Gas? It's on the rue des Arquebusiers. A fire engine pulls up, the firefighters jump out, ready for action. They're stymied. They run in circles, shouting to each other like helpless civilians. Cars are burning in the narrow side street and they can't get near the roaring inferno. Seven cars in a row, popping like huge champagne corks. It takes an eternity before a bigger engine arrives. It has a huge hose but it's hours before the last flames are extinguished.
Torched cars are a familiar sight on the French landscape. Tens of thousands are burnt out every year. But this isn't video footage on the evening news. It's not the banlieue in 2005. It's very close and extremely scary.
By Sunday noon, municipal workers had towed away the ghostly skeletons and swept up the debris, baring deep scars in the asphalt. Three weeks later, the scene is a black gaping wound. The stone kerb is cracked and chipped, as if it were made of clay. Metal awnings are buckled and blistered, the wooden façades are burnt away, revealing melted wires and pipes. A period street lamp is gutted. A thick coat of black soot reaches up to the wrought-iron balconies.
Apart from one laconic article in the daily le Parisien, the incident was not considered newsworthy in France. The international readership of the atlasshrugs.com newsblog knew more from my on-the-spot coverage than people living nearby. I was tipped off about another big fire at the Résidence Madeleine Béjart, a city-owned retirement home on rue de la Perle, five minutes' walk from Arquebusiers. That fire started in a decorative alcove on the façade and charred the ceiling of the wide portico. In some places, it's completely burned away.
Who would be torching the Marais? Punk jihadis? Anarchists? Stupid kids? Is this a fluke or the beginning of a new phase? No one in the vicinity seems to care. They dismiss it with a Gallic shrug. "The insurance will pay for the damages." Torching cars could become as commonplace as the graffiti that disfigures beautiful 18th-century mansions. The Marais is Paris's old Jewish quarter, with emphasis on the old. Orthodox families go to synagogue. There's a Jewish day school, some remnants of the declining garment business and the rue des Rosiers with its mix of kosher delicatessens, Judaica shops and encroaching upscale boutiques. But there are more Jews and more anti-Jewish violence in the 19th arrondissement, where Rudy Haddad was beaten into a coma last summer. I'm told the investigation is stalled because they are still trying to prove it was inter-communitarian strife-Jewish gangs fighting Arabs/Muslims/Blacks-instead of gratuitous, violent anti-Semitism.
On the other hand, we can't be sure the Marais fire was aimed at Jews. I start my inquiry with the chief of the third arrondissement police station, who tells me to phone the press attaché at the Préfecture (police headquarters), who refers me to the Cabinet du Parquet (public prosecutor's office), where I speak to a gracious but bemused spokeswoman. "Burned cars?" she asks. "There are so many..." The investigation is under way but if it turns out to be arson, she admits, it is unlikely the police will find the culprits. And the case will be closed. She is surprised that I think the two fires in the Marais might be related.
I had a scoop on the Marais fires, but didn't even know about the "supermarket intifada", in which French supermarkets, such as Carrefour, have been invaded and any produce suspected of originating from Israel is destroyed, until I was told about it by my friend and colleague, Tom Gross (www.tomgrossmedia.com). Except for a brief mention on the France 2 TV channel, the media have ignored that story.
Boycott Israel is a longstanding passion of Olivia Zemmour, a Tunisian Jew whose venomous hatred of Israel knows no bounds. Goons from her organisation, CAPJPO, now united with an outfit called EuroPalestine, beat up Jewish boys from the left-wing Zionist Hashomer Hazaïr youth movement during a 2003 "peace march".
Look at the EuroPalestine website (www.europalestine.com) and you don't need to understand French to get the flavour of their unabashed anti-Zionist operations. Islamists face the camera and spew out hate-filled talking points: Israel=Occupation, Genocide, Apartheid. A "commando" with a trademark beard and North African accent holds up an Israeli product, declaring: "We won't allow this stuff chez nous. This is our country." Then he sweeps up bottles of shampoo and threatens: "This is what will happen to anyone who supports Israel."
If it were only a few thousand wackos here, a handful of delinquents there, a few pinpricks in a healthy society, but this is not the case. It is an onslaught and it's moving fast. France-Info radio just reported a little sugar-coated item on the joyous Muslim converts attending the annual UOIF (French branch of the Muslim Brotherhood) convention at Le Bourget.
Islamist movements are emboldened because the authorities, the media and secular society have failed to react properly to their show of force in January. Using the Israeli operation in Gaza as a pretext, the French-Arab street swung into action with a vengeance. I watched angry Muslims pouring from all directions into Place de la République on 3 January, hastily donning their keffiehs, marching as to war. While the
media (with the notable exception of an unsigned article in Le Figaro) painted this explosion of organised rage in the soft colours of anti-war protest, Islamist websites proudly displayed their true face: blood-curdling shouts of "Death to Israel, Death to the Jews"; Hamas and Hizbollah flags, slogans; violent attacks on the police; and the destruction of public and private property. Those were not demonstrations, they were acts of conquest by jihad foot soldiers claiming our streets, in our society, for the free expression of hate speech, death threats and genocidal promises.
As anti-Jewish attacks reached a new high, President Nicolas Sarkozy promised to punish anti-Semitism and Islamophobia with equal severity, reinforcing the myth of reciprocal inter-communitarian violence. When two naïve, Jewish 15-year-olds handing out pro-Israel leaflets in front of Lycée Jeansson-Sailly, in the affluent 16th arrondissement, got into a fight with some Muslim kids and won, Le Monde turned the Jewish kids into extremists from the Jewish Defence League. They were detained by the police and the incident was repeatedly cited to balance out real attacks against Jews.
Michaël Benamou, 29, was attacked by three Arab-looking men on the busy platform of the Auber suburban railway station. He told YNet, an Israeli news website: "They called me a ‘f***ing Jew' and said they would kill me. They broke my nose and beat me all over." He has decided to emigrate to Israel. Désiré Amsellem, a 70-year-old Jewish family doctor devoted to his patients of all faiths and origins, was shot in the back as he left his office in Valenton, 10 miles south-east of Paris. Investigators have no clue as to the motive or identity of the killer. On 15 January, after a pro-Hamas demonstration in Strasbourg, 50 men travelled to Metz with the intention of breaking into a synagogue during a service. They were held off by the police. On 24 January, the 1,500 square-metre warehouse of a major distributor of kosher foods burned down in Montreuil, a rough eastern Paris suburb. Obviously arson but, with no graffiti, authorities hesitate to classify it as anti-Semitic.
The attack on 24-year-old Jonathan Guez began as an ordinary carjacking in Fontenay-sous-Bois, a Paris banlieue. "I came out with my car keys in my hand. A masked man stepped up and asked me to hand over the keys. A second man grabbed me from behind. The first man saw the Hebrew letters on my pendant. He asked me if it was Hebrew, and I said, ‘Yes.' He asked, ‘Are you Jewish?' I looked him in the eyes and said, ‘Yes.' He pulled out a butcher's knife, said Israel was drinking the blood of Palestinians. They spoke to each other in Arabic, they insulted me in Arabic and in French. The one with the knife said, ‘I am going to cut you until you bleed.' He slashed once. He said: ‘I am going to cut you until you die,' and drew the knife across my skin a second time, a third time. I fell to my hands and knees. The fourth time, the blood started to flow. Then he kicked me in the head with all his might.
"This shouldn't happen in France. I am French and Jewish and for that I was almost killed. The doctor said the last slash was two millimetres from the carotid."
He is physically and psychologically devastated. His ordeal is among the more than 350 anti-Semitic incidents, from insults to savage beatings, reported for the month of January alone as compared to 460 for the whole of 2008. This has been going on, with ups and downs, since the outbreak of the "al-Aqsa intifada" in September 2000. It has reached proportions that should be unacceptable to any self-respecting person, Jewish or not. We should be aware of the growing danger, not only for Jews but for everyone.
I am American, but I have lived in Paris for more than 35 years. Thousands of Jews have left France, many thousands think that they will have to leave, but hope they won't. Sephardi Jews who fled North Africa in the 1950s and '60s are now hounded and harassed by Muslim immigrants. The energy expended by the Jewish community since 2000 to defend itself and its honour has been weakened by endless insults,
repeated setbacks and the feeling that there is no collective heart in this society that can be truly reached. An "enough is enough" ad published by Jews in Le Figaro in April is more despondent than determined.
And yet, life can be so sweet on a balmy springtime evening in the Marais. How can such grace and charm be sacrificed to hostile forces whose strength is drawn from our weakness? Two years ago this month, Nicolas Sarkozy was triumphantly elected by citizens determined to stem the tide of reckless violence and reassert secular values. What went wrong? Could it be that the surrender to obsessive anti-Zionism is
disabling French society, turning it away from its true purpose, delivering it into the hands of its enemies?
Copyright © Social Affairs Unit Magazines Limited 2008
Source URL: http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/mayhem-in-the-marais-may-09-dispatches-paris-anti-semitism-violence
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We received two types of responses from the 'BOYCOTT' video, one a literalist who saw nothing other than peaceful, free expression, and all others who connected this intimidation with car fires and property crime at the least, the implied threat of burning the store and ‘I am going to cut you until you die' at the worst.
I wanted to ask the one who saw nothing wrong in the France 'boycott' what he thought of the brick throwing rioters attacking 'Polis' cars in Sweden, but anticipating the answer that there was no connection, I refrained, but there is a connection.
I went to 'boycotters' website europalestine.com (google will translate websites but not videos) and found that they hate more than Jews and they support and applaud more that non-violence. They attack Obama's war in Afghanistan and they link and post nice comments about the Swedish riot protesters. Reading the website in its entirety it is pretty easy to ascertain that the expression "boycott" is meant in jest, allowing them more freedom to operate in France but that their view is that this is a war, they are participants, and you very likely are the enemy.
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://www.europalestine.com/&ei=MmMISobbNYyjtgew97z5Bg&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3Deuropalestine%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG
Computer translations are not so perfect, here is 'europalestine' on Obama:
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Obama stronger than Bush to Massacre the Population of Afghanistan
Published on 8-05-2009 (Europalestine.com)
The aviation of NATO has achieved a new record this week, killing more than 140 Afghan villagers, mostly women and children, in the western province of Farah. This is the balance the bloodiest in a single strike, attributed to U.S. troops and their subsidiary, since the launch of the war seven years ago.
The horror, that the U.S. authorities have sought to silence for 48 hours under a stream of lies, has finally been declared Wednesday afternoon, while Barack Obama received exactly the White House its Afghan puppet Hamid Karzai.
The U.S. administration has made a few crocodile tears over the bodies of Afghan villagers, but it has no intention of slowing its destructive madness, quite the contrary.
Obama has just to ask for a special supplementary budget of more than 60 billion dollars only for military operations in Afghanistan during the next fiscal year (October 2009 - September 2010) to finance the dispatch of tens of thousands (including 21,000 in the next quarter) troops as reinforcements.
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BOYCOTT BOYCOTT [Code word for destroy, destroy. Please read. - Doug]
No spectators, but many police officers for the Davis Cup in Sweden
Publié le 8-03-2009 Published on 8-03-2009
C'est dans un stade vide de 4000 places, protégé par un millier de policiers, que s'est déroulé le match de la Coupe Davis de Tennis, qui opposait un joueur Suédois à un tennisman israélien, hier à Mälmö. In a stadium of empty seats in 4000, protected by a thousand police, that held the match of the Davis Cup Tennis, a player who opposition to a Swedish tennis player Israel yesterday in Malmo.
La Fédération Internationale de Tennis, a eu beau faire les gros yeux, la Suède a maintenu sa décision de faire jouer cette coupe à huis clos, samedi. The International Tennis Federation, took to the big beautiful eyes, Sweden has maintained its decision to cut the play closed on Saturday.
Plus de 7000 manifestants s'étaient déplacés pour manifester contre les massacres israéliens à cette occasion, et le stade a dû être protégé par un millier de policiers, rapporte Al Jazeera. More than 7000 protesters had come to demonstrate against the Israeli massacres at this time, and the stage had to be protected by a thousand police, reports Al Jazeera.
Pas tout a fait une première en Suède, où la même chose s'était produite en 1975, lorsque la Suède avait accepté de recevoir un joueur d'une équipe chilienne de tennis, alors que le dictateur Augusto Pinochet faisait régner la terreur dans son pays. Not quite a first in Sweden, where the same thing occurred in 1975, when Sweden had agreed to receive a player from a team of Chilean tennis, while the dictator Augusto Pinochet was a reign of terror in his country .
Israël est désormais paria, de la même façon. Israel is now a pariah in the same way.
Et dans tous les cas de figure, c'est sous haute protection policière que ses représentants sportifs, culturels, artistiques, scientifiques, devront désormais se produire, dans le monde entier. And in any case, it is under police protection high that its sports, cultural, artistic, scientific, will now occur throughout the world.
Car aucun de ses sportifs, artistes, intellectuels... Because none of its athletes, artists, intellectuals ... ne conteste la colonisation israélienne et son escorte de crimes. does the Israeli settlement and its escort of crimes. Bon nombre d'entre eux font même partie de l'armée israélienne, et acceptent sans broncher —entre deux matches, deux concerts, ou deux dédicaces de livres— de participer à l'occupation des territoires palestiniens et la répression qu'ils subissent depuis plus de 60 ans. Many of them are also part of the Israeli army, and accept without flinching-two matches, concerts or two book-signings to participate in the occupation of Palestinian territories and the repression they suffered from more than 60 years. Et quand il n'y vont plus eux-mêmes, il y envoient leurs enfants, jouer le rôle de bourreaux. Car on sait le peu de valeur qu'ils accordent à la vie et à la moralité de leurs enfants. And when there are more themselves, send their children, act as executioners. Because we know how little value they attach to life and morals of their children.
BOYCOTT ! So to those who ask in the heart the mouth that "we do not mix politics and sport" or "politics and culture," we answer: BOYCOTT!
(http://www.europalestine.com/IMG/jpg/Suede_match_policiers.jpg)
The words say "BOYCOTT!" The photo immediately below the word "BOYCOTT" shows masked protesters trying to break windows on Swedish police vehicles by throwing large bricks. You do the math.
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We received two types of responses from the 'BOYCOTT' video, one a literalist who saw nothing other than peaceful, free expression, and all others who connected this intimidation with car fires and property crime at the least, the implied threat of burning the store and ‘I am going to cut you until you die' at the worst.
Hmmmm - could that one person be me? :?
Literalist; Fidelity to observable fact (Webster).
Yep, that's me. :-D
And no, there is no direct literal connection between the "Boycott" video in France, and the rioters in Sweden. The "boycott" in France was peaceful
and uneventful. An example of free speech which we all value highly. And I am only addressing the issue of the boycott in France.
To answer your question, "what do I think about the brick throwing rioters .... in Sweden" I say arrest them all. They are committing a crime.
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JDN, I was wrong and I apologize. You are only selectively literal since you remain confused over whether or not the boycott people (boycott means DON'T BUY) were kind enough to pay for the items they ransacked off the stores shelves. The placement of the items on the shelf is part of the investment of the proprietor and part of the product the store offers its customers. The placement of the products was taken by the protesters WITHOUT COMPENSATION and they also should all be hauled off to jail for theft and destruction as much as the 'Swedish' rioters who were unable to break a window.
Your tolerance is not reciprocated. They hate you the exact same amount that they hate GM or myself.
I'm guessing you don't own a store and never had a gang come in and 'peacefully' strip your shelves.
Arrest and prosecution did not not happen because of car fires, arson and intimidation. Even though you don't see that, God Bless your right to hold and express a view.
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JDN,
You might want to read up on how protection rackets work. Islam, from it's origin has been a form of organized crime. It's "boycott" is nothing more than a version of the protection game.
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"Even though you don't see that, God Bless your right to hold and express a view."
Thank you; different views makes the discussion much more interesting. And I am always grateful I
live in America where we all can express our different views.
It is true, I am a literalist, but I try to be a consistent one. :-)
IF (no proof that I am aware) the product was taken (stolen) without compensation, these protestors in France also should
be hauled off to jail for theft and be prosecuted accordingly.
But on what fact do you base your statement that these products were taken (stolen)? And yes, I understand the "logic"
of a boycott, buying the product accomplishes the opposite, but this is not proof the products were stolen. And in contrast
to Sweden, the French boycott seemed almost relaxed and casual.
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"I am always grateful I live in America where we all can express our different views."
- Same goes for freedom in France. This group however openly favors the Taliban over the elected government of Afghanistan for example, which means to forcibly remove rights from others that they currently enjoy.
"IF (no proof that I am aware) the product was taken (stolen)..."
- I will try a third time. The product was taken from shelves. If it was left in baskets instead of destroyed or stolen to avoid arrest for theft, they have still taken and stolen from the shopkeeper. A store is not just a pile of products randomly strewn. Part of the 'product' IS the placement and design. The right to have oranges neatly arranged and stacked in the produce section and shampoos of the vendor's choice in the shampoo section. If one customer takes one item from the shelf, changes his mind and leaves it by the checkout, that may be a nuisance less than a crime. I have left a loaded cart in a store when I discovered that I had no chance of a checkout in a reasonable amount of time. But I did not take their products from their shelves WITHOUT the intention of buying them as is the case here, on a massive and systematic scale.
The "product" in "GDP" includes goods and services. The product of a supermarket is again not a pile of random goods, it is a arrangement, a presentation, an offering to the customer that they will be able to find and purchase that which they expect to be able to find and purchase and we know the shopkeeper wanted THOSE GOODS on THOSE SHELVES until someone takes the quantity they desire for purposes of BUYING them, which is where he can finally recover his sunken from buying the goods and PAYING THE LABOR cost and electric lighting cost and property tax, insurance etc to try to eek out a profit. The store owner paid to have them put there and pays everyday to have them always look full and neatly arranged! That is where he wanted them, until sold. A mob even with a smile that undoes that has STOLEN something from him. On the third try, do you really still not see that??
"An example of free speech which we all value highly."
- Please do not include me in your "WE ALL VALUE...". I certainly don't value any type of "free speech" that tromps all over other peoples rights and freedoms such as the right to conduct business in a legal manner of their choosing, to buy and sell products from the sources of THEY choose and for the shopkeeper's right to design his own displays and have product stay in those arrangements until a customer comes and takes them with the intent of buying. What you say 'seemed peaceful' I witnessed as LITERALLY trespassing and vandalism, even more evident and 'proven' than a brick thrown at a window that did not break glass.
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Back to my being a Literalist.
And while I understand your point about labor, lighting costs, property taxes, etc.
that has what to do with criminal theft in this instance??? Zero... I mean, as you pointed out, any customer can
take merchandise off the shelf, decide not to buy it, and leave it in the store. Criminal theft :?
For what? The DA would have a good laugh :-D
Further, it was peaceful; this supposed "mob" as you call them were laughing and smiling as were the other customers in the store.
All shopping and going about their business I might point out.
I suppose you can read into and interpret as you desire, and disagree with their reasons for demanding a boycott, but...
So just a summary, i.e. the literal FACTS.
No one was hurt.
The protestors expressed a legal free speech opinion (boycott) supported by many, i.e. Israel is acting in the wrong regarding Palestine.
Nothing was stolen.
Nothing was vandalized (The intentional and malicious destruction of or damage to the property of another.)
Nobody trespassed (entering onto land without consent of the landowner.)
No one seemed to complain; neither management nor other customers.
Everyone seemed to be having a good time.
Business went on as normal...
Only you complain??? And post. And imply violence, theft, vandalism, trespass, etc. when none are true?
And maybe you are right; I should not say "WE", I will say "I" value free speech.
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If you disrupt a business, you are depriving a business of money, which is a form of theft. If you are doing it to force it to submit to you, this is racketeering/extortion.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1581141/Mafia-free-supermarket-defies-mob-extortion.html
Mafia-free supermarket defies mob extortion
By Nick Pisa in Rome
Last Updated: 9:42PM GMT 08 Mar 2008
Fabio Messina (left) in his mob-free shop in Palermo
Shoppers in Sicily have the chance to take on the Mafia after the first racket-free supermarket opened yesterday on the island long dominated by the mob.
Its owner, Fabio Messina, is taking a brave stand against the organisation by stacking his shelves with products only from firms which - like his own - have refused to pay pizzo, the local term for protection money.
"For too long ordinary citizens of Palermo and business people have been held to ransom, and now we are fighting back," said Pasquale Masucci, a computer technician who was one of the store's first customers.
The supermarket, located in the heart of Palermo, is the latest initiative from campaign group Addiopizzo (Goodbye Pizzo) that has been fighting racketeering since 2004.
Its campaign was launched by pasting up posters around the city overnight, bearing the slogan: "A society that pays pizzo is a society without dignity.''
Investigators estimate that the Mafia extorts more than £130 million a year from shops and businesses in the Palermo region, with the island as a whole handing over 10 times that figure. The more money a business makes, the more money the Godfathers expect - and those who don't pay up are quickly paid a visit.
It starts with a friendly chat to explain the rules, followed by a nudge such as a brick through the window. If that fails to make the point, a home, business or car might be firebombed.
Small shops are expected to hand over around £100 a month: for supermarkets and jewellers, the going rate is nearer £1,000.
But shoppers and businesses are rebelling, with those refusing to pay adding their names online at the Addiopizzo website. As of yesterday, 241 firms and individuals were listed.
Now Mr Messina, 29, has decided to bring them together by stocking their items in Supermercato Punto Antipizzo - literally, anti-pizzo point supermarket.
He said: "I felt the time had come to give those businesses that had refused to pay the pizzo an extra economic opportunity.
"All the products in the store are supplied by firms who have refused to pay pizzo — we are talking about products from fruit and vegetables to wine, olive oil, pasta and bread. The sort of items you find in any normal supermarket."
Gerlando Mazone, an optician who is among the anti-Mafia traders, has refused to back down despite suffering several break-ins.
Mr Mazone said: "I refused to pay the pizzo and the windows were smashed and I lost £230,000 worth of stock.
"I then also noticed my customers were falling away and it broke my heart. I am not ashamed to say I cried every night. But with the help of Addiopizzo I am starting to get back on my feet.
"Of course I could have gone to the local boss, paid the money and got my stock back - but I don't see why I should share my profits with anyone other than my staff.''
Centre left senator Francesco Ferrante, who has campaigned against Mafia racketeering, said: "With the opening of this supermarket a new symbol of rebellion and pride has been born from a category that has too often been crushed by Cosa Nostra.
"They have decided to declare war on the racketeers by giving honest citizens the opportunity to fight back against the godfathers with a simple gesture - such as buying from a pizzo free supermarket.''
Shoppers in Palermo hope this stand will prove successful. "If everybody does just one thing like this then we are all making a stand against the Mafia," said Mr Masucci's wife Tiziana, a teacher. "I am not afraid to come shopping here and I have told all my friends about it. I wish the owner all the success in the world."
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If you disrupt a business, you are depriving a business of money, which is a form of theft. If you are doing it to force it to submit to you, this is racketeering/extortion.
:?
It is my understanding GM that you are connected with Law Enforcement. How many times in all your years of service have you heard about arresting someone because they took a few items
off a retail supermarket shelf, decided they didn't want to buy these items, and then simply left them in another part of the store. NEVER?
Of course the answer is never! It is not a crime.
Your example in Palermo is like comparing apples and oranges. "windows are smashed, firebombing and stock destroyed".
In the French example, it was a peaceful boycott; period. Nothing illegal done, nothing broken or destroyed.
And your point is?
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Did you miss this article posted above?
I had a scoop on the Marais fires, but didn't even know about the "supermarket intifada", in which French supermarkets, such as Carrefour, have been invaded and any produce suspected of originating from Israel is destroyed, until I was told about it by my friend and colleague, Tom Gross (www.tomgrossmedia.com). Except for a brief mention on the France 2 TV channel, the media have ignored that story.
Boycott Israel is a longstanding passion of Olivia Zemmour, a Tunisian Jew whose venomous hatred of Israel knows no bounds. Goons from her organisation, CAPJPO, now united with an outfit called EuroPalestine, beat up Jewish boys from the left-wing Zionist Hashomer Hazaïr youth movement during a 2003 "peace march".
Look at the EuroPalestine website (www.europalestine.com) and you don't need to understand French to get the flavour of their unabashed anti-Zionist operations. Islamists face the camera and spew out hate-filled talking points: Israel=Occupation, Genocide, Apartheid. A "commando" with a trademark beard and North African accent holds up an Israeli product, declaring: "We won't allow this stuff chez nous. This is our country." Then he sweeps up bottles of shampoo and threatens: "This is what will happen to anyone who supports Israel."
If it were only a few thousand wackos here, a handful of delinquents there, a few pinpricks in a healthy society, but this is not the case. It is an onslaught and it's moving fast. France-Info radio just reported a little sugar-coated item on the joyous Muslim converts attending the annual UOIF (French branch of the Muslim Brotherhood) convention at Le Bourget.
Islamist movements are emboldened because the authorities, the media and secular society have failed to react properly to their show of force in January. Using the Israeli operation in Gaza as a pretext, the French-Arab street swung into action with a vengeance. I watched angry Muslims pouring from all directions into Place de la République on 3 January, hastily donning their keffiehs, marching as to war. While the
media (with the notable exception of an unsigned article in Le Figaro) painted this explosion of organised rage in the soft colours of anti-war protest, Islamist websites proudly displayed their true face: blood-curdling shouts of "Death to Israel, Death to the Jews"; Hamas and Hizbollah flags, slogans; violent attacks on the police; and the destruction of public and private property. Those were not demonstrations, they were acts of conquest by jihad foot soldiers claiming our streets, in our society, for the free expression of hate speech, death threats and genocidal promises.
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No I read it and I deplore such violence.
But the issue in question is the French Boycott tape. Doug posted it;
I said, "What's the problem" and baseless accusations were thrown about that the protestors
were stealing merchandise, destroying property, trespassing, vandalizing, etc. yet in this instance NONE
of these accusations were true. It was was it looked like; a simple peaceful protest against
Israel's involvement in Palestine. Agree or disagree, they are entitled to peaceably protest.
And frankly, I think many people in Europe all across religious faiths agree that Israel is in the wrong. They are entitled
to their opinion, aren't they? And suggesting a boycott is a valid and legal method of protest, isn't it?
If at other locations, i.e. Palermo or Marais or South Los Angeles there is violence, well, arrest the perpetrators
but that has nothing directly to do with the peaceful protest at the French Supermarket in question.
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"suggesting a boycott is a valid and legal method of protest, isn't it?" - No. They were not "suggesting a boycott", they were physically removing items from the shelves. You can't walk into a department store and take down their display. You can't walk onto a roofing project, object to their shingles and move the shingles, after they are carried and stacked near the roof, to another location on the property, unstacked. Not in a civilized country. But these people would love to turn France, Sweden or the US into a third world country, parts of each are already.
"Baseless accusations"?
"Trespassing" - Yes. They are entering the store, private property, with no intention of buying, applying for a job or anything to do with why the doors are open to them.
"Vandalism" - Yes. Disrupting the flow of business and taking down displays of value to the store.
"Stealing merchandise" - No. Why lie? I didn't write that. I said stealing the investment they had in the labor etc. invested to place the items in the locations where they wanted them. I have explained that 4 times now.
"took a few items off a retail supermarket shelf, decided they didn't want to buy these items, and then simply left them in another part of the store" - No. Who are you fooling? Anyone reading this can see the video and that isn't what was happening.
This is what I take away from this exchange: You and I don't have shared values enough to have any kind of back and forth exchange and the time I spent trying to explain myself to you, only to have it twisted back, is part of my life I will never get back.
I will try not to comment on your posts in the future and ask the same in return.
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Doug, I think sometimes emotion gets in the way of logic.
If you research criminal Trespassing, Vandalism, and Theft (you and others earlier implied earlier that they might have
stolen the merchandise) and/or upsetting the "placement of the merchandise" you will find that none of these are
criminally prosecutable in this case. Even GM, while given that he is in law enforcement, and given that he strongly
supports your position, didn't imply that he would or could arrest these people for any of the above actions.
And if I walk into a department store, gather up suits, shirts, sox, and shoes, removing them from the shelves, but
do not buy and leave the product on the premises, it may be rude and disrespectful, but it is not a crime. And that
is what happened, regardless of motive, therefore no crime was committed. It's really quite simple.
I think we overall do share the same values. GM has offered other examples; I agreed, IF violence or destruction of
property took place, the perpetrators should be arrested. But in this case, and I am only addressing this case, that is
not the situation. Merely rearranging the merchandise does not make one a criminal.
Simply because one does not agree with their cause does not deny them the right to protest Otherwise next time
the shoe will be on the other foot. I think this particular issue draws emotional responses. But there are two sides.
I posted today without comment in the section "Anti-semitism & Jews" an excellent editorial written by a Jewish man
who explains my opinion much more eloquently.
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So if this conduct is legal, could anti-abortion activists go into a Planned Parenthood and hold such a protest?
Could you go into your local supermarket and hold a similar protest? I suggest you walk your talk and see how it turns out.
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http://media.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDBmMGRiN2Q1MzcwYTQwOWU4NGJjOTY1NWQxOTc0YWI=
Sunday, April 12, 2009
French Supermarket Intifada [Tom Gross]
A taste of things to come... appearing soon at a supermarket near you?
Recently several French supermarkets have been invaded and any produce suspected of originating from Israel has been destroyed.
Here is one example at French supermarket chain Carrefour:
Where are the police?
A journalist friend of mine in Paris tells me that the organization of boycotts is illegal in France, and that the destruction of Israeli products deprived some Orthodox Jews of the opportunity to buy kosher products and they subsequently went hungry (almost all processed kosher foods sold in France come from Israel).
Now, the London Jewish Chronicle reports that the British supermarket giant Tesco has set up a customer helpline for those considering boycotting Israeli goods.
Callers selecting the general information option on its customer helpline hear the recorded message: “If you are ringing regarding Israeli goods, please press one.” They are then connected to specially-trained call center staff.
No other country is targeted this way – just Israel, the Middle East’s only true democracy. Tesco is now a public company (and by some estimates is the world's fourth largest retailer) but the chain’s founder in 1919, Jewish immigrant Jack Cohen, must be turning in his grave.
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Trust GM to find a source. You can find plenty more of the same genre by searching "Israel Boycott" on YouTube. Here's the YouTube video from GM's piece:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfK7Yal64S0&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia%2Enationalreview%2Ecom%2Fpost%2F%3Fq%3DNDBmMGRiN2Q1MzcwYTQwOWU4NGJjOTY1NWQxOTc0YWI%3D&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
You know, JDN, I try to sit them out every now and then, but that inanity hammer always appears. Last scene in the You Tube movie at GM's link show all the Green Shirts parading with their carts up an escalator that is clearly outside of the store and within some sort of mall. So are you of the opinion these folks "boycotted" a product by loading up carts, paying for the contents, and then parading around the mall with them? An aberration, no doubt. All those other boycotters aren't also interested in doing Israel economic harm, right?
Further, you don't strike me as someone who has stocked a lot of shelves in your life. In view of your likely ignorance on the subject you sure are free with other people's labor when it comes time to restock, assuming of course there is something to restock with, which I doubt as I think all the "boycotted" items walk out of the store.
But lets assume all those items are indeed restocked. What kind of shape do you think a clementine orange that's been sitting in a stacked full shopping cart will be in? Seeing how the item was handled by someone who likely has a venomous hatred for Israel, would you feed that orange to a child you cared for? Think those flowers that got plunked in the cart are going to be in shape to give to your sweetie once the are restocked? And how do you think the costs of restocking removed items, and replacing damaged, tainted, or stolen items get passed on? Think the store eats the cost, or perhaps everyone who shops there gets it tacked on to their bill? Where are your relentlessly egalitarian sensibilities when vandals get the costs of their actions underwritten by others?
I could go on, but what's the point? Think you like sucking people into pointless, circular discussions from which little value can be derived. And it pisses me off that Doug, who invariably posts stuff that I do derive value from gets driven from conversations due to your smug foolishness.
Doug, don't let these patrician circumlocutions drive you from the debate. I seek out your posts and frequently find that they lead me interesting directions. Please ignore the sand that gets tossed in the air and keep doing what you do so well.
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GM; I think we need to move on.
AGAIN, as to the French Supermarket in question, nothing was destroyed. No crime committed.
NO criminal theft, no trespassing, no vandalism. But as a law enforcement officer, you know that.
As for the Police, the protest/incident was so minor (check out the other happy customers milling
about the store) management didn't care. No complaint, therefore no police; but again, you know that.
Probably these same "protestors" will be customers tomorrow.
And while I agree, Israel is the Middle East's only true democracy, some think their treatment and
policy towards the Palestinians is outrageous.. And therefore they protest and boycott. That is their right.
Boycott's are a part of American tradition too, nothing wrong or illegal.
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You know, JDN, I try to sit them out every now and then, but that inanity hammer always appears. Last scene in the You Tube movie at GM's link show all the Green Shirts parading with their carts up an escalator that is clearly outside of the store and within some sort of mall. So are you of the opinion these folks "boycotted" a product by loading up carts, paying for the contents, and then parading around the mall with them? An aberration, no doubt. All those other boycotters aren't also interested in doing Israel economic harm, right?
Actually, I think Doug even acknowledged that no product was stolen from the store; it was all left behind. But I too noticed the carts. I guess the protesters after they finished protesting
did their own shopping for dinner, clothes, etc. (I presume non Israeli goods). No wonder the store management was happy to see them. :-D
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GM; I think we need to move on.
**Yes. Once you are trapped by facts you should feel that need.**
AGAIN, as to the French Supermarket in question, nothing was destroyed.
**Just because something wasn't destroyed, doesn't mean it's value wasn't damaged, as BBG pointed out the cost of restocking and diminished value translate to dollars (or euros) lost.**
No crime committed.
**Wrong. I can't comment as to the Napoleonic code, but in the US what was seen in the youtube clip would be chargable under several statutes. In my state, if you knowingly deprive the lawful owner of an item, that is a form of theft. Disorderly conduct and criminal tampering are a few other charges that spring to mind.**
NO criminal theft, no trespassing, no vandalism. But as a law enforcement officer, you know that.
As for the Police, the protest/incident was so minor (check out the other happy customers milling
about the store) management didn't care.
**Did they? I hate to point out French culture and history, but cowering and submission to thugs isn't exactly unheard of.**
No complaint, therefore no police; but again, you know that.
Probably these same "protestors" will be customers tomorrow.
**Maybe, and as extortion often works, the extorted businesses might just decide it's easier to pay the jizya rather than have the store burned down.**
And while I agree, Israel is the Middle East's only true democracy, some think their treatment and
policy towards the Palestinians is outrageous.. And therefore they protest and boycott. That is their right.
Boycott's are a part of American tradition too, nothing wrong or illegal.
Boycotts are legal. I'm boycotting Pepsico myself. Let's look at the definition.
boycott
The refusal to purchase the products of an individual, corporation, or nation as a way to bring social and political pressure for change.
The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Now, I'm not buying anything from Pepsico. This is legal. If I went to my local grocery store and started sweeping Pepsico products from the shelves, that would be illegal, as mentioned before. Comprende?
Now if you still want to insist that the conduct seen in the video was legal, go down to your local Ralph's, Lucky's or in your case, Whole Foods and see how that works out for you. Be sure to let us know.
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JDN:
I salute your determination to stay in good spirits here, but , , , dude!!! On the logic front my vote is that you are getting your butt kicked! :lol:
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Marc, I'm a glutton for punishment :-D
**Just because something wasn't destroyed, doesn't mean it's value wasn't damaged, as BBG pointed out the cost of restocking and diminished value translate to dollars (or euros) lost.**
Since there was no complaint from management; what is the crime? Restocking is a cost of doing business. And if you look at the other shoppers, from their actions, as far as they were concerned, there was no crime. As for the taking of something off a shelf and leaving it somewhere else in the store, that is not a criminal act. I was going to buy some wine, later I decided I didn't want it, I left it elsewhere in the store. Is that a crime??? Should I be arrested? That's silly. Yet that is technically what these protestors did. And I am willing to guess most of the products were in packages and not soft perishable goods. Like my bottle of wine. Note, no one has stated that they destroyed or damaged any product. Because the employee had to restock the my bottle of wine, I "stole" the employee's time??? That's criminal :? You would arrest me? With no complaint from the owner :? You're kidding right?
**Wrong. I can't comment as to the Napoleonic code, but in the US what was seen in the youtube clip would be chargable under several statutes. In my state, if you knowingly deprive the lawful owner of an item, that is a form of theft. Disorderly conduct and criminal tampering are a few other charges that spring to mind.**
What item was the owner deprived of; NOTHING was taken. And please forget that silly fallacious argument about the employee's time. Further the owner (private property) never filed a complaint (other customers didn't seem to mind, so why should they) so I think disorderly conduct is irrelevant. Tampering? Again, no complaint was filed, no evidence of tampering presented. You have got to have a reason to arrest.
**Did they? I hate to point out French culture and history, but cowering and submission to thugs isn't exactly unheard of.**
I like French culture and history, but since Napoleon, I must agree submission in general seems to the way in France. No argument.
**Maybe, and as extortion often works, the extorted businesses might just decide it's easier to pay the jizya rather than have the store burned down.**
Pure speculation with no basis of fact in this instance; rather as I pointed out the other customers didn't seem to mind, (in contrast, if the police arrived it would bring negative publicity to the store) and as
someone else pointed out, the protestors had full carts. I guess they went shopping and bought merchandise after they finished protesting? Hardly what anyone would call a riot committed by thugs.
boycott
The protestors were not boycotting, they were drawing attention to the boycott. For example you don't like Pepsi and are boycotting it. Since I have never heard
of this boycott, obviously I am not going to join. But if you held a protest, it made national news, even the Dogbrothers forum, I would look into
the reasons for the boycott and if agreeable, perhaps join. But the publicity is needed and obviously this group accomplished that.
As for me, I'm not big on boycotting. If Ralph's is having a sale on Pepsi, I might just buy the Pepsi. But persuade me why Pepsi is bad.
And speaking of Ralph's I worked almost full time for them for two years while I was in school; I understand a little about retail and shelf space and re stocking.
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Let's see, there are these folks who think that launching missiles from hospitals and schools into random population centers, blowing themselves up on busses and elsewhere, and firing indiscriminately into Israeli crowds who have these supporters. These supporters, who relentlessly excuse and justify the behavior described above, go into a store and collect all the Israeli items off of the shelves. They call this action a "boycott," a noble mantle that harkens back to the civil rights struggle, but in fact this effort more closely resembles union goon efforts to run non-union vendors out of town. Be that as it may, these supporters are purported to hold some sort of seance around these carts full of merchandise and then depart, leaving nothing but restocking fees in their wake. Yes, and maybe the tooth fairy helps puts the stuff back on the shelves.
Perhaps you haven't heard, but all around Paris cars get torched on a regular basis. No arrests are made in these arsons, so by "logic" you've employed in this thread, no crime occurred. And throughout Paris there are these ghetto districts that have been built to house immigrant populations, districts so violent that the police rarely patrol them. Clearly, though, little crime occurs in them as so few arrests are made. Indeed, your perspective throughout this thread inspires me to rewrite a philosophical question: if a Palestinian missile falls on an Israeli playground do the death rattles of the dying children make a sound if there is no one there to hear them? In view of the rank foolishness you've embraced throughout the thread, the answer has to be no.
So let's recap, you've again damaged your credibility by embracing an absurd position, driven an intelligent voice from the debate, and forced others to waste time refuting your ludicrous claims. I'm curious if you measure this as a success. If so, what does that say about your character? If not, what does that say about the utility of the techniques you employ?
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BBG, Thanks for kind words, the appreciation is mutual. Problem here is that this isn't supposed to be a debate IMO, just each person who wants to make their own observations about a situation. I am here to look for a wider and deeper understanding, not here to dish out punishment.
I made the mistake of repeating points already made as if saying again would help. It didn't.
My interest was not to narrow the focus to the contents of a promo film for a hate group, but to widen the focus and learn more about the context, who these people really are, what else do they do, how do they decide which cars to torch, who are they linked with and what will they do next.
I came across the video originally on powerline, a rare conservative voice out of MN. I posted it mostly because of the interest here in the subject of Islam in Europe.'The most telling part was to translate their website and read their hate views on Obama and their adoration of the mob violence in Malmo, Sweden. They literally put their "boycott" label right over their posting of the thugs throwing bricks at the authorities. So I know that "Boycott Israel", to them means 'Destroy Israel' and it means 'Destroy the U.S.' too as time permits and their reach widens.
The violence in Sweden preventing spectators at the Davis Cup is a tragedy. Assuming tennis is one of the top two sports in Sweden, keeping fans out is an act of war in my book, but a fact of life in Malmo and a feather in their cap to these thugs.
So Islam or middle easterners in Europe are tied to these business disruptions and car fires, riots and events canceled in Sweden, the cartoon violence in Denmark, the Theo van Gogh murder in the Netherlands, the threats to Salmon Rushdie, the bombings in London and Madrid and one other important one: these thugs attacked me on my last trip to Europe..
Forget my brush with Islam, or the murders, the car fires, the riots and the bombings... it is offensive and intimidating beyond words for these groups or any protesters, smiling or masked, to enter a private store and stage their event. I share no values that I know of with anyone who thinks that is 'free speech we all value' and that no harm was done to the store when they are tromping all over the rights and freedoms of others.
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"Problem here is that this isn't supposed to be a debate IMO, just each person who wants to make their own observations about a situation. I am here to look for a wider and deeper understanding, not here to dish out punishment."
Well said!
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A controversial Muslim programme-maker has been appointed as the BBC's new head of religious broadcasting.
By Jonathan Wynne-Jones, Religious Affairs Correspondent
Last Updated: 10:26PM BST 11 May 2009
Aaqil Ahmed will move to the corporation from Channel Four, where he upset Roman Catholic priests by commissioning documentaries that appeared to contain a pro-Islam bias.
His appointment will also raise fears at the top levels of the Church of England, which has expressed its concerns over the BBC's treatment of religion and warned that it must not ignore its Christian audience.
Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has met with Mark Thompson, the BBC's director-general in March to challenge him over the corporation's religious broadcasting.
Senior bishops have also written to Mr Thompson to question its commitment to Britain's Christian audience.
Leading church figures suspect that the BBC is giving preferential treatment to minority faiths, with a Muslim now in charge of its programming on television and a Sikh producing Songs of Praise, its flagship Christian show.
Christina Rees, a member of the Archbishops' Council, has warned: " The vast majority of the population identifies itself as Christian and as the established Church in England we would be negligent not to take an active concern in the changes happening with the BBC's religion and ethics department."
Rt Rev Nigel Mcculloch, Bishop of Manchester, said yesterday that Mr Ahmed's appointment came "at a time when the BBC's coverage of religion has caused some disquiet".
He said: "The Church of England will be watching how the future of religion and ethics develops. We wish him well in this very important post."
Mr Ahmed is understood to have impressed BBC executives by commissioning a series on Christianity that featured high-profile names, including Cherie Blair and Michael Portillo.
However, the series, Christianity, A History, was criticised by Church figures for trivialising the religion.
Furthermore, Channel 4 was accused of being biased towards Islam and failing to show enough respect to Christianity under Mr Ahmed, who was head of religious broadcasting.
Last summer, the channel screened a week of special programmes on Islam including a feature-length documentary on the Qu'ran, and a series of interviews with Muslims around the world talking about their beliefs.
Yet the main Christian documentary broadcast for Easter that year, called The Secrets of the 12 Disciples, cast doubt on the validity of the Pope.
It argued that St Peter died in Palestine, not in Rome, as the Church has always taught and as he was not the first Pope those elected following him would not have been true successors.
Mr Ahmed's appointment follows claims by Mr Thompson that Islam should be treated more sensitively by the media than Christianity.
"There's no reason why any religion should be immune from discussion, but I don't want to say that all religions are the same," he said.
"To be a minority I think puts a slightly different outlook on it."
Mr Ahmed will split the role of overseeing religious broadcasting with, Christine Morgan, who has been promoted to head of Religion Radio.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/5309777/Controversial-Muslim-programme-maker-to-be-head-of-BBC-religion.html
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I think different people can reasonably look at a particular incident from a different perspective. It is one's opinion, different,
but not meant to individually criticize another's opinion.
I was only attempting to argue the right, in this instance, of the group to "peacefully" protest. And perhaps to criticize the biases of Powerline in this
particular instance. I am not defending car bombing, launching missiles from hospitals and schools at random populations, or firing indiscriminately into
Israeli crowds.
By coincidence, last night I was having drinks with a friend of mine (partner major law firm in LA) downtown at my Club and a friend (acquaintance of mine)
of his showed up. Brilliant older man, eloquent, he is retired from serving on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. So I decided to raise the issue and ask their opinion.
Both individuals, but particularly the judge found the actions of the group appalling. And both were aware and deplored the ongoing Islamic violent actions
and intimidation throughout Europe. It was an interesting conversation as to what could be legally done. But both agreed in this particular instance,
while acknowledging that the group's motive was possibly anti-semitic and definitely anti-zionist, that they had the right to protest and committed no crime.
Trespass; none. Theft of employees time to replace the items; that got a good chuckle. Disorderly conduct; perhaps, but the owner never filed a complaint.
In summary, no crime. And the judge vehemently went on defending the right of this group in this instance to peacefully protest in contrast with
the violent actions in other cities. The judge further went on to discuss that a particular action should be looked at on it's own merit and not be tainted
by the group's action in other cities. And, then the judge talked about and emphasized the importance of free speech.
We also all agreed that the situation in Europe's immigrant ghettos is deplorable. And the answers elusive. And then we gave up and went on to discussing the Dodgers.
And Manny. And have another drink.
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We also all agreed that the situation in Europe's immigrant ghettos is deplorable. And the answers elusive. And then we gave up and went on to discussing the
the answer is mass deportations and immigration reform. A country accepting immigrants should look at applicants the same way a business interviews potential employees. Will they assimilate and fit into the culture? Do they speak the language? do they offer a skill set that is in demand? Will the country be a better place for having them?
If the answer is not yes to all of those questions they should be barred from entering.
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Doug, I understand the points you made above and know that there's no need to jump in on your behalf. I've dealt with the sorts of tactics on display in the videos, managed to surmount them successfully, albeit at a cost, and so have a strong visceral reaction when that sort of goon squad thuggery is defended despite having its true nature explained in several different ways by several different people. Add to that the fact that obstinate, smarmy cognitive dissonance embraced long after it's clear the argument's lost sets me off. What can I say, I'm hardwired in a manner that doesn't let me sit idly by while rank foolishness is spouted or petty thuggery is given a respectable veneer, and have walked away from few fights where that sort of stuff is involved.
Be that as it may, I decided to do something of a reality check by enlisting an expert of my own. Bought a bottle of Ripple and sat down on the curb with the squeegee guy who hangs out by the East Falls Church Metro in Virginia. Asked him if he had ever been involved in an incident where merchandise was damaged in a retail setting.
"Sure thing," he replied. "I was hittin' some lady up for change at that vegetable stand over in Ballston. She wouldn't cough up nothin' and got pissy about it so I lost it a little and flung some rutabagas to the ground. Got busted for destruction of property."
"Uh huh," I replied, passing him the bottle of Ripple, "and do you have any experience where shoplifting is concerned?"
"Oh hell yeah," the squeegee guy said. "It's a win/win for guys like me. Get away with it and and you got yourself something good, get busted an' yer in for a meal and out on yer own 'recognisance' or somethin' in time to get yer evening buzz on. I tell ya, thank goodness for the liberal nutjobs in Arlington county."
I then got out my laptop and showed the squeegee guy the various videos of the "boycotts" in France, noting that some people I had spoken to thought that no crime had occurred.
"You gotta be effin' kidding me," my drinking buddy said. "The guys behind the camera's are clearly on the side of them green shirted bastards. Though them Palestinians do alot of stupid crap, even they aren't dumb enough to film themselves breaking the law. And how can you think they aren't messin' the stuff up and stealin' it? I mean these guy blow up people all the time, but someone thinks they ain't serious enough to 'lift all that stuff too? Sheeeeit."
I explained a judge and a couple other men who considered themselves quite learned had come to the opposite conclusion while discussing the matter at their club.
"Hah!," said the squeegee guy, "I hope I get that judge someday 'cause he'll probably let me go on my 'recognisance' again. Man, I can just see those guys, sitting in their leather wingback chairs, sipping their single malts and VSOPs, and solving all the problems of the world just like fat cats have forever, and look where it's got us, huh? You ever drank that VSOP? Tastes like cat piss. Hand me the Ripple or are you gonna bogart it all night?"
I packed up my laptop, handed off the bottle, and bid the squeegee guy good day. As I left he called after me, "If any of them fat cats need to get straightened out on somethin' else, send 'em my way an' tell 'em to bring a bottle wif 'em. Anything but VSOP."
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"You gotta be effin' kidding me," my drinking buddy said. "The guys behind the camera's are clearly on the side of them green shirted bastards. Though them Palestinians do alot of stupid crap, even they aren't dumb enough to film themselves breaking the law. And how can you think they aren't messin' the stuff up and stealin' it? I mean these guy blow up people all the time, but someone thinks they ain't serious enough to 'lift all that stuff too? Sheeeeit."
Looks like we have a consensus! "even they are not dumb enough to film themselves breaking the law". So even the Ripple drinking Squeegee man agrees the film didn't show anyone breaking any law :wink:
No crime... But Squeegee man is full of ideas and willing to give his opinion as to what might, could, etc. Now there's grounds for an arrest and prosecution. :?
PS Don't like VSOP much myself, but I do like the the single malt :-)
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Agreement is something we most certainly don't have. Anyone with sense enough to shake a scorpion out of his shoe knows a series of crimes were committed, and a scant amount of research confirms that categorically. The fact that you cling so obstinately to so inane a position does nothing but demonstrate how futile it is to participate in any sort of exchange where you're involved.
Crafty, other lists I participate in have an "ignore" option. Would it be too much to ask to get something similar here?
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BBG, Squeegee man looks more even-handed to me than the 9th circus. What's illegal in their venue is not in yours or mine. How 'bout that for equal protection. We are into about the 6th round of pretending the issue is "criminality". Before the digression it was "free speech we all value", with values being the process of trying to make distinctions between right and wrong. But that failed so we went for the straw man.
For now, the ignore button rests somewhere between the urge and the click finger and I failed the test miserably.
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Can't you guys just skim past posts by posters you don't like?
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Can't you guys just skim past posts by posters you don't like?
hahahahaha, this thread is turning into a train wreck that you know you should pass over but just cant look away.
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http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/israel-today--the-west-tomorrow-15134
Israel Today, the West Tomorrow
MARK STEYN
May 2009
On Holocaust Memorial Day 2008, a group of just under 100 people—Londoners and a few visitors —took a guided tour of the old Jewish East End. They visited, among other sites of interest, the birthplace of my old chum Lionel Bart, the author of Oliver! Three generations of schoolchildren have grown up singing Bart’s lyric:
Consider yourself
At ’ome!
Consider yourself
One of the family!
Those few dozen London Jews considered themselves at ’ome. But they weren’t. Not any more. The tour was abruptly terminated when the group was pelted with stones, thrown by “youths”—or to be slightly less evasive, in the current euphemism of Fleet Street, “Asian” youths. “If you go any further, you’ll die,” they shouted, in between the flying rubble.
A New Yorker who had just moved to Britain to start a job at the Metropolitan University had her head cut open and had to be taken to the Royal London Hospital at Whitechapel, causing her to miss the Holocaust Day “interfaith memorial service” at the East London Central Synagogue. Her friend, Eric Litwack from Canada, was also struck but did not require stitches. But if you hadn’t recently landed at Heathrow, it wasn’t that big a deal, not these days: Nobody was killed or permanently disfigured. And given the number of Jewish community events that now require security, perhaps Her Majesty’s Constabulary was right and these Londoners walking the streets of their own city would have been better advised to do so behind a police escort.
_____________
A European Holocaust Memorial Day on which Jews are stoned sounds like a parody of the old joke that the Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz. According to a 2005 poll by the University of Bielefeld, 62 percent of Germans “are sick of all the harping on about German crimes against the Jews”—which is a cheerfully straightforward way of putting it. Nevertheless, when it comes to “harping on,” these days it’s the Jews who are mostly on the receiving end. While we’re reprising old gags, here’s one a reader reminded me of a couple of years ago, during Israel’s famously “disproportionate” incursion into Lebanon: One day the U.N. Secretary General proposes that, in the interest of global peace and harmony, the world’s soccer players should come together and form one United Nations global soccer team.
“Great idea,” says his deputy. “Er, but who would we play?”
“Israel, of course.”
Ha-ha. It always had a grain of truth, now it’s the whole loaf.
“Israel is unfashionable,” a Continental foreign minister said to me a decade back. “But maybe Israel will change, and then fashions will change.” Fashions do change. But however Israel changes, this fashion won’t. The shift of most (non-American) Western opinion against the Jewish state that began in the 1970s was, as my Continental politician had it, simply a reflection of casting: Israel was no longer the underdog but the overdog, and why would that appeal to a post-war polytechnic Euro Left unburdened by Holocaust guilt?
Fair enough. Fashions change. But the new Judenhass is not a fashion, simply a stark reality that will metastasize in the years ahead and leave Israel isolated in the international “community” in ways that will make the first decade of this century seem like the good old days.
A few months after the curtailed Holocaust Day tour, I found myself in that particular corner of Tower Hamlets for the first time in years. Specifically, on Cable Street—the scene of a famous battle in 1936, when Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, in a crude exercise of political muscle, determined to march through the heart of Jewish East London. They were turned back by a mob of local Jews, Irish Catholic dockers, and Communist agitators, all standing under the Spanish Civil War slogan: “No Pasaran.” They shall not pass.
From “No Pasaran” to “If you go any further, you’ll die” is a story not primarily of anti-Semitism but of unprecedented demographic transformation. Beyond the fashionable “anti-Zionism” of the Euro Left is a starker reality: The demographic energy not just in Lionel Bart’s East End but in almost every Western European country is “Asian.” Which is to say, Muslim. A recent government statistical survey reported that the United Kingdom’s Muslim population is increasing ten times faster than the general population. Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp, and many other Continental cities from Scandinavia to the Côte d’Azur will reach majority Muslim status in the next few years.
Brussels has a Socialist mayor, which isn’t that surprising, but he presides over a caucus a majority of whose members are Muslim, which might yet surprise those who think we’re dealing with some slow, gradual, way-off-in-the-future process here. But so goes Christendom at the dawn of the third millennium: the ruling party of the capital city of the European Union is mostly Muslim.
There are generally two responses to this trend: The first is that it’s like a cast change in Cats or, perhaps more precisely, David Merrick’s all-black production of Hello, Dolly! Carol Channing and her pasty prancing waiters are replaced by Pearl Bailey and her ebony chorus, but otherwise the show is unchanged. Same set, same words, same arrangements: France will still be France, Germany Germany, Belgium Belgium.
The second response is that the Islamicization of Europe entails certain consequences, and it might be worth exploring what these might be. There are already many points of cultural friction—from British banks’ abolition of children’s “piggy banks” to the enjoining of public doughnut consumption by Brussels police during Ramadan. And yet on one issue there is remarkable comity between the aging ethnic Europeans and their young surging Muslim populations: A famous poll a couple of years back found that 59 percent of Europeans regard Israel as the greatest threat to world peace.
Fifty-nine percent? What the hell’s wrong with the rest of you? Hey, relax: In Germany, it was 65 percent; Austria, 69 percent; the Netherlands, 74 percent. For purposes of comparison, in a recent poll of Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—i.e., the “moderate” Arab world—79 percent of respondents regard Israel as the greatest threat to world peace. As far as I know, in the last year or two, they haven’t re-tested that question in Europe, possibly in case Israel now scores as a higher threat level in the Netherlands than in Yemen.
To be sure, there are occasional arcane points of dispute: one recalls, in the wake of the July 7 bombings, the then London Mayor Ken Livingstone’s somewhat tortured attempts to explain why blowing up buses in Tel Aviv is entirely legitimate whereas blowing up buses in Bloomsbury is not. Yet these are minimal bumps on a smooth glide path: The more Europe’s Muslim population grows, the more restive and disassimilated it becomes, the more enthusiastically the establishment embraces “anti-Zionism,” as if the sinister Jewess is the last virgin left to toss in the volcano—which, given the 13-year old “chavs” and “slappers” face down in pools of their own vomit in most British shopping centers of a Friday afternoon, may indeed be the case. For today’s Jews, unlike on Cable Street in 1936, there are no Catholic dockworkers or Communist agitators to stand shoulder to shoulder. In post-Christian Europe, there aren’t a lot of the former (practicing Catholics or practicing dockers), and as for the intellectual Left, it’s more enthusiastic in its support of Hamas than many Gazans.
To which there are many Israelis who would brusquely reply: So what? Pity the poor Jew who has ever relied on European “friends.” Yet there is a difference of scale between the well-established faculty-lounge disdain for “Israeli apartheid” and a mass psychosis so universal it’s part of the air you breathe. For a glimpse of the future, consider the (for the moment) bizarre circumstances of the recent Davis Cup First Round matches in Sweden. They had been scheduled long ago to be played in the Baltiska Hallen stadium in Malmo. Who knew which team the Swedes would draw? Could have been Chile, could have been Serbia. Alas, it was Israel.
Malmo is Sweden’s most Muslim city, and citing security concerns, the local council ordered the three days of tennis to be played behind closed doors. Imagine being Amir Hadad and Andy Ram, the Israeli doubles players, or Simon Aspelin and Robert Lindstedt, the Swedes. This was supposed to be their big day. But the vast stadium is empty, except for a few sports reporters and team officials. And just outside the perimeter up to 10,000 demonstrators are chanting, “Stop the match!” and maybe, a little deeper into the throng, they’re shouting, “We want to kill all Jews worldwide” (as demonstrators in Copenhagen, just across the water, declared just a few weeks earlier). Did Aspelin and Lindstedt wonder why they couldn’t have drawn some less controversial team, like Zimbabwe or Sudan? By all accounts, it was a fine match, thrilling and graceful, with good sportsmanship on both sides. Surely, such splendid tennis could have won over the mob, and newspapers would have reported that by the end of the match the Israeli players had the crowd with them all the way. But they shook ’em off at Helsingborg.
Do you remember the “road map” summit held in Jordan just after the U.S. invasion of Iraq? It seemed a big deal at the time: The leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the U.S. president, all the A-list dictators of the Arab League. Inside the swank resort, it was all very collegial, smiles and handshakes. Outside, flags fluttered—Jordan’s, America’s, Saudi Arabia’s, Egypt’s, Palestine’s. But not Israel’s. King Abdullah of Jordan had concluded it would be too provocative to advertise the Zionist Entity’s presence on Jordanian soil even at a summit supposedly boasting they were all on the same page. Malmo’s tennis match observed the same conventions: I’m sure the Swedish tennis wallahs were very gracious hosts behind the walls of the stockade, and the unmarked car to the airport was top of the line. How smoothly the furtive maneuvers of the Middle East transfer to the wider world.
_____________
When Western governments are as reluctant as King Abdullah to fly the Star of David, those among the citizenry who choose to do so have a hard time. In Britain in January, while “pro-Palestinian” demonstrators were permitted to dress up as hook-nosed Jews drinking the blood of Arab babies, the police ordered counter-protesters to put away their Israeli flags. In Alberta, in the heart of Calgary’s Jewish neighborhood, the flag of Hizballah (supposedly a proscribed terrorist organization) was proudly waved by demonstrators, but one solitary Israeli flag was deemed a threat to the Queen’s peace and officers told the brave fellow holding it to put it away or be arrested for “inciting public disorder.” In Germany, a student in Duisburg put the Star of David in the window of an upstairs apartment on the day of a march by the Islamist group Milli Görüs, only to have the cops smash his door down and remove the flag. He’s now trying to get the police to pay for a new door. Ah, those Jews. It’s always about money, isn’t it?
Peter, the student in Duisberg, says he likes to display the Israeli flag because anti-Semitism in Europe is worse than at any other time since the Second World War. Which is true. But, if you look at it from the authorities’ point of view, it’s not about Jew-hatred; it’s a simple numbers game. If a statistically insignificant Jewish population gets upset, big deal. If the far larger Muslim population—and, in some French cities, the youth population (i.e., the demographic that riots) is already pushing 50 percent—you have a serious public-order threat on your hands. We’re beyond the anti-Semitic and into the ad hoc utilitarian: The King Abdullah approach will seem like the sensible way to avoid trouble. To modify the UN joke: Whom won’t we play? Israel, of course. Not in public.
One Saturday afternoon a few weeks ago, a group wearing “BOYCOTT ISRAEL” T-shirts entered a French branch of Carrefour, the world’s largest supermarket chain, and announced themselves. They then systematically advanced down every aisle examining every product, seizing all the items made in Israel and piling them into carts to take away and destroy. Judging from the video they made, the protesters were mostly Muslim immigrants and a few French leftists. But more relevant was the passivity of everyone else in the store, both staff and shoppers, all of whom stood idly by as private property was ransacked and smashed, and many of whom when invited to comment expressed support for the destruction. “South Africa started to shake once all countries started to boycott their products,” one elderly lady customer said. “So what you’re doing, I find it good.”
Others may find Germany in the ‘30s the more instructive comparison. “It isn’t silent majorities that drive things, but vocal minorities,” the Canadian public intellectual George Jonas recently wrote. “Don’t count heads; count decibels. All entities—the United States, the Western world, the Arab street—have prevailing moods, and it’s prevailing moods that define aggregates at any given time.” Last December, in a well-planned attack on iconic Bombay landmarks symbolizing power and wealth, Pakistani terrorists nevertheless found time to divert one-fifth of their manpower to torturing and killing a handful of obscure Jews helping the city’s poor in a nondescript building. If this was a territorial dispute over Kashmir, why kill the only rabbi in Bombay? Because Pakistani Islam has been in effect Arabized. Demographically, in Europe and elsewhere, Islam has the numbers. But ideologically, radical Islam has the decibels—in Turkey, in the Balkans, in Western Europe.
And the prevailing mood in much of the world makes Israel an easy sacrifice. Long before Muslims are a statistical majority, there will be three permanent members of the Security Council—Britain, France, Russia—for whom the accommodation of Islam is a domestic political imperative.
_____________
On the heels of his call for the incorporation of Sharia within British law, the Archbishop of Canterbury gave an interview to the Muslim News praising Islam for making “a very significant contribution to getting a debate about religion into public life.” Well, that’s one way of putting it. The urge to look on the bright side of its own remorseless cultural retreat will intensify: Once Europeans have accepted a not entirely voluntary biculturalism, they will see no reason why Israel should not do the same, and they will embrace a one-state, one-man, one-vote solution for the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.
The Muslim world has spent decades peddling the notion that the reason a vast oil-rich region stretching thousands of miles is politically deformed and mired in grim psychoses is all because of a tiny strip of turf barely wider than my New Hampshire township. It will make an ever more convenient scapegoat for the problems of a far vaster territory from the mountains of Morne to the Urals. There was a fair bit of this in the days after 9/11. As Richard Ingrams wrote on the following weekend in the London Observer: “Who will dare to damn Israel?”
Well, take a number and get in line. The dust had barely settled on the London Tube bombings before a reader named Derrick Green sent me a congratulatory e-mail: “I bet you Jewish supremacists think it is Christmas come early, don’t you? Incredibly, you are now going to get your own way even more than you did before, and the British people are going to be dragged into more wars for Israel.”
So it will go. British, European, and even American troops will withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, and a bomb will go off in Madrid or Hamburg or Manchester, and there will be nothing left to blame except Israeli “disproportion.” For the remnants of European Jewry, the already discernible migration of French Jews to Quebec, Florida, and elsewhere will accelerate. There are about 150,000 Jews in London today—it’s the thirteenth biggest Jewish city in the world. But there are approximately one million Muslims. The highest number of Jews is found in the 50-54 age group; the highest number of Muslims are found in the four-years-and-under category. By 2025, there will be Jews in Israel, and Jews in America, but not in many other places. Even as the legitimacy of a Jewish state is rejected, the Jewish diaspora—the Jewish presence in the wider world—will shrivel.
And then, to modify Richard Ingrams, who will dare not to damn Israel? There’ll still be a Holocaust Memorial Day, mainly for the pleasures it affords to chastise the new Nazis. As Anthony Lipmann, the Anglican son of an Auschwitz survivor, wrote in 2005: “When on 27 January I take my mother’s arm—tattoo number A-25466—I will think not just of the crematoria and the cattle trucks but of Darfur, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Jenin, Fallujah.” Jenin?
You can see why they’ll keep Holocaust Day on the calendar: In an age when politicians are indifferent or downright hostile to Israel’s “right to exist,” it’s useful to be able to say, “But some of my best photo-ops are Jewish.”
The joke about Mandatory Palestine was that it was the twice-promised land. But isn’t that Europe, too? And perhaps Russia and maybe Canada, a little ways down the line? Two cultures jostling within the same piece of real estate. Not long ago, I found myself watching the video of another “pro-Palestinian” protest in central London with the Metropolitan Police retreating up St. James’s Street to Piccadilly in the face of a mob hurling traffic cones and jeering, “Run, run, you cowards!” and “Allahu akbar!” You would think the deluded multi-culti progressives would understand: In the end, this isn’t about Gaza, this isn’t about the Middle East; it’s about them. It may be some consolation to an ever-lonelier Israel that, in one of history’s bleaker jests, in the coming Europe the Europeans will be the new Jews.
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Sarkozy says burqas are 'not welcome' in France
1 hr 25 mins ago
PARIS – President Nicolas Sarkozy said the Muslim burqa would not be welcome in France, calling the full-body religious gown a sign of the "debasement" of women.
In the first presidential address to parliament in 136 years, Sarkozy faced critics who fear the burqa issue could stigmatize France's Muslims and said he supported banning the garment from being worn in public.
"In our country, we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity," Sarkozy said to extended applause at the Chateau of Versailles, southwest of Paris.
"The burqa is not a religious sign, it's a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement — I want to say it solemnly," he said. "It will not be welcome on the territory of the French Republic."
Dozens of legislators have called for creating a commission to study a possible ban in France, where there is a small but growing trend of wearing the full-body garment despite a 2004 law forbidding it from being worn in public schools. France has Western Europe's largest Muslim population, an estimated 5 million people, and the 2004 law sparked fierce debate both at home and abroad. Even the French government has been divided over the issue, with Immigration Minister Eric Besson saying a full ban would only "create tensions," while junior minister for human rights Rama Yade said she was open to a ban if it was aimed at protecting women forced to wear the burqa.
The terms "burqa" and "niqab" often are used interchangeably in France. The former refers to a full-body covering worn largely in Afghanistan with only a mesh screen over the eyes, whereas the latter is a full-body veil, often in black, with slits for the eyes.
A leading French Muslim group, the French Council for the Muslim Religion, has warned against studying the burqa, saying it would "stigmatize" Muslims.
Sarkozy was due to host a state dinner Monday with Sheik Hamad Bin Jassem Al Thani of Qatar, where women wear Islamic head coverings in public — whether while shopping or driving cars.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090622/...arkozy_burqa_3
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Britain has 85 sharia courts: The astonishing spread of the Islamic justice behind closed doors
By Steve Doughty
Last updated at 1:57 AM on 29th June 2009
At least 85 Islamic sharia courts are operating in Britain, a study claimed yesterday.
The astonishing figure is 17 times higher than previously accepted.
The tribunals, working mainly from mosques, settle financial and family disputes according to religious principles. They lay down judgments which can be given full legal status if approved in national law courts.
Disputes: Islamic leaders rule on disagreements
However, they operate behind doors that are closed to independent observers and their decisions are likely to be unfair to women and backed by intimidation, a report by independent think-tank Civitas said.
Commentators on the influence of sharia law often count only the five courts in London, Manchester, Bradford, Birmingham and Nuneaton that are run by the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal, a body whose rulings are enforced through the state courts under the 1996 Arbitration Act.
But the study by academic and Islamic specialist Denis MacEoin estimates there are at least 85 working tribunals.
The spread of sharia law has become increasingly controversial since its role was backed last year by Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams and Lord Phillips, the Lord Chief Justice who stepped down last October.
Dr Williams said a recognised role for sharia law seemed 'unavoidable' and Lord Phillips said there was no reason why decisions made on sharia principles should not be recognised by the national courts.
But the Civitas report said the principles on which sharia courts work are indicated by the fatwas - religious decrees - set out on websites run by British mosques.
Controversial comments: Dr Rowan Williams said a recognised role for sharia law seemed 'unavoidable'
Mr MacEoin said: 'Among the rulings we find some that advise illegal actions and others that transgress human rights standards as applied by British courts.'
Examples set out in his study include a ruling that no Muslim woman may marry a non-Muslim man unless he converts to Islam and that any children of a woman who does should be taken from her until she marries a Muslim.
Further rulings, according to the report, approve polygamous marriage and enforce a woman's duty to have sex with her husband on his demand.
The report added: 'The fact that so many sharia rulings in Britain relate to cases concerning divorce and custody of children is of particular concern, as women are not equal in sharia law, and sharia contains no specific commitment to the best interests of the child that is fundamental to family law in the UK.
'Under sharia, a male child belongs to the father after the age of seven, regardless of circumstances.'
It said: 'Sharia courts operating in Britain may be handing down rulings that are inappropriate to this country because they are linked to elements in Islamic law that are seriously out of step with trends in Western legislation.'
The study pointed out that the House of Lords ruled in a child custody case last year that the sharia rules on the matter were 'arbitrary and discriminatory'.
And a 2003 judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg said it was 'difficult to declare one's respect for democracy and human rights while at the same time supporting a regime based on sharia, which clearly diverges from Convention values.'
However last year Justice Minister Bridget Prentice told MPs that 'if, in a family dispute ...the parties to a judgment in a sharia council wish to have this recognised by English authorities, they are at liberty to draft a consent order embodying the terms of the agreement and submit it to an English court.
'This allows judges to scrutinise it to ensure it complies with English legal tenets.'
Decisions from sharia tribunals can be presented to a family court judge for approval with no more detail than is necessary to complete a two page
form. The sharia courts in the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal are recognised as courts under the Arbitration Act. This law, which covers Jewish Beth Din courts, gives legal powers to a tribunal if all parties involved accept its authority.
The Civitas study said the Islamic courts should no longer be recognised under British law.
Its director Dr David Green said: 'The reality is that for many Muslims, sharia courts are in practice part of an institutionalised atmosphere of intimidation, backed by the ultimate sanction of a death threat.'
The Muslim Council in Britain condemned the study for ' stirring up hatred'.
A spokesman said: 'Sharia councils are perfectly legitimate. There is no evidence they are intimidating or discriminatory against women. The system is purely voluntary so if people don't like it they can go elsewhere.'
Patrick Mercer, Tory MP for Newark and chairman of the Commons counter-terrorism sub committee, said: 'We have an established law of the land and a judiciary. Anything that operates otside that system must be viewed with great caution.
'If crimes are going unreported to police, this will erode the authority of those who have to enforce our law. In a sovereign state there must be one law, and one law only.'
Philip Davies, Tory MP for Shipley, said: 'Everyone should be deeply concerned about the extent of these courts.
'They do entrench division in society, and do nothing to entrench integration or community cohesion. It leads to a segregated society.
'There should be one law, and that should be British law. We can't have a situation where people can choose which system of law they follow and which they do not.
'We can't have a situation where people choose the system of law which they feel gives them the best outcome. Everyone should equal under one law.'
Veteran Tory Lord Tebbit provoked anger among Muslims earlier this month by comparing Islamic sharia courts to gangsters.
He likened the tribunals to the 'system of arbitration of disputes that was run by the Kray brothers'.
Lord Tebbit told the Lords: 'Are you not aware that there is extreme pressure put upon vulnerable women to go through a form of arbitration that results in them being virtually precluded from access to British law?'
Warning that women could be shut out from the protection of the law, he asked Justice Minister Lord Bach: 'That is a difficult matter, I know, but how do you think we can help those who are put in that position?'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196165/Britain-85-sharia-courts-The-astonishing-spread-Islamic-justice-closed-doors.html#
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Al Qaeda vows revenge over France's plan to ban the burqa
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Al Qaeda vows 'dreadful revenge' on France over plans to ban the burqa
By Ian Sparks
Last updated at 11:02 PM on 01st July 2009
Al Qaeda terrorists have vowed to 'wreak dreadful revenge' on France over its plans to ban the burkha.
The chilling warning comes after President Nicolas Sarkozy said the Islamic garment which covers the head and body 'debases women' and is not welcome in his country.
French MPs have set up a commission to decide if it should be made illegal for women to hide their faces in public.
Now leaders of Al Qaeda's North African network have called on French Muslims to react 'with the utmost hostility'.
One Islamic extremist website carried the message: 'We will seek dreadful revenge on France by all means at our disposal, for the honour of our daughters and sisters.
'Our Mujahadin followers must not remain silent in the face of such provocation and such injustice.'
The call for an inquiry into burkhas was made two weeks ago by Left-wing deputy Andre Gerin, who described them as 'mobile prisons'.
He said: 'We find it intolerable to see images of these imprisoned women when they come from Iran, Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia.
'Today in many cities, we see several Muslim women wearing the burkha, which covers and fully envelops the body and the head, or the niqab which allows only the eyes to be shown. They are totally unacceptable on the territory of the French republic.'
President Sarkozy supported a ban, saying: 'These head and body covers make women prisoners and deprive them of their identity.
'The burkha is not a religious sign, it's a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement.
'I say solemnly that it will not be welcome on the territory of the French Republic.'
Paris Mosque leader Dalil Boubakeur supported the proposal for a commission, adding: 'There is a growing number of women wearing the burkha in France, which could be taken as a sign that some fundamentalist trends are gaining ground.
'But any official debate on this issue should be on the condition that they listen to what the experts on Islam have to say on the issue.'
In 2004, France - which is home to Europe's largest Muslim population of five million - banned school pupils from wearing veils and other religious symbols as part of the government's drive to defend secularism.
Last year, the country's highest court refused to grant French citizenship to a Moroccan woman who wears a burkha on the grounds that her Muslim practices were incompatible with French gender equality and secularism laws.
Reacting to the Al Qaeda terror threat, a French government spokesman said: 'Our security services will remain on their continuously high level of vigilance against any threat to security in France.'
The commission of 58 MPs is expected to announce its decision later this year on whether a law should be passed to ban the burkha.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worl...an-burqa.html#
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/6034706/Swimmers-are-told-to-wear-burkinis.html
Swimmers are told to wear burkinis
British swimming pools are imposing Muslim dress codes in a move described as divisive by Labour MPs.
By Patrick Sawer
Published: 9:00PM BST 15 Aug 2009
UK councils running restricted swimming session for Muslims
Under the rules, swimmers – including non-Muslims – are barred from entering the pool in normal swimming attire.
Instead they are told that they must comply with the "modest" code of dress required by Islamic custom, with women covered from the neck to the ankles and men, who swim separately, covered from the navel to the knees.
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The phenomenon runs counter to developments in France, where last week a woman was evicted from a public pool for wearing a burkini – the headscarf, tunic and trouser outfit which allows Muslim women to preserve their modesty in the water.
The 35-year-old, named only as Carole, is threatening legal action after she was told by pool officials in Emerainville, east of Paris, that she could not wear the outfit on hygiene grounds.
But across the UK municipal pools are holding swimming sessions specifically aimed at Muslims, in some case imposing strict dress codes.
Croydon council in south London runs separate one-and-a half-hour swimming sessions for Muslim men and women every Saturday and Sunday at Thornton Heath Leisure Centre.
Swimmers were told last week on the centre's website that "during special Muslim sessions male costumes must cover the body from the navel to the knee and females must be covered from the neck to the ankles and wrists".
There are similar rules at Scunthorpe Leisure Centre, in North Lincolnshire, where "users must follow the required dress code for this session (T-shirts and shorts/leggings that cover below the knee)".
In Glasgow, a men-only swimming session is organised by a local mosque group at North Woodside Leisure Centre, at which swimmers must be covered from navel to knee.
At a women-only class organised by a Muslim teacher at Blackbird Leys Swimming Pool, Oxford, to encourage Muslim women to learn to swim, most participants wear "modest" outfits although normal costumes are permitted.
The dress codes have provoked an angry reaction among critics who say they encourage division and resentment between Muslims and non-Muslims, putting strain on social cohesion.
Ian Cawsey, the Labour MP for the North Lincolnshire constituency of Brigg and Goole, said: "Of course swimming pools have basic codes of dress but it should not go beyond that.
"I don't think that in a local authority pool I should have to wear a particular type of clothes for the benefit of someone else. That's not integration or cohesion."
Labour MP Anne Cryer, whose Keighley, West Yorkshire constituency has a large number of Muslims, said: "Unfortunately this kind of thing has a negative impact on community relations.
"It's seen as yet another demand for special treatment. I can't see why special clothing is needed for what is a single-sex session."
Muslim swimming sessions are also held at a number of state schools around the country. At Loxford School in Ilford, east London, a local Muslim group organises weekly sessions for Muslim men, with the warning that "it is compulsory for the body to be covered between the navel and the knees.
"Anyone not adhering to the dress code or rules within the pool will not be allowed to swim".
The practice of holding special Muslim swimming sessions has led to non-Muslims being turned away.
David Toube, 39 and his five year old son Harry were last year refused entry to Clissold Leisure Centre, in Hackney, east London, after being told the Sunday morning swimming session was for Muslim men only.
Council officials later said staff had made a mistake and both Mr Toube, a corporate lawyer, and his son should have been admitted.
After discovering the rules at Thornton Heath one Croydon resident, 34-year-old Alex Craig, said: "I think it is preposterous that a council should be encouraging this type of segregation over municipal facilities.
"Surely if Muslims want to swim then they should just turn up with their modest swimwear at the same time as everyone else."
Douglas Murray, director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, last night condemned the practice. He said: "This kind of thing is extremely divisive.
"Non-Muslims see these extremist demands as an example of Muslims wanting things to fit into their lifestyle, when there aren't similar things organised for Hindus, Buddhists or Jews.
"It also puts moderate Muslims in an awkward position as it suggests, wrongly, that they are not devout enough, simply because they choose not to cover themselves in a shroud in a pool."
A press officer at Croydon council, which introduced Muslim-only swimming in 2006, claimed that the wording on the website was a mistake and the dress code should be regarded as a suggestion rather than a requirement.
The website was late changed to remove the reference to the dress code.
However, an official at the leisure centre said the dress code remained compulsory.
Earlier, defending the segregation policy, a Croydon council spokesman said: "We appreciate that certain religious groups, such as Muslims, have strict rules on segregation for activities including sports, so in response to requests from the local community, we have been running these sessions at Thornton Heath Leisure Centre."
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Pravda on the Hudson
September 6, 2009
British Police Arrest 90 After Birmingham Clashes
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:18 a.m. ET
LONDON (AP) -- Authorities arrested 90 people after racially charged violence erupted between a group protesting Islamic extremism and counter-demonstrators in the central English city of Birmingham, police said Sunday.
The clashes erupted Saturday when a rally by the English Defense League ran into counter-demonstrators including anti-fascists and youths of South Asian descent, West Midlands Police said.
About 200 people were involved in the clashes in downtown Birmingham, police said.
Television footage showed masked or hooded youths throwing projectiles and running from riot police through the diverse city's downtown area.
Police said the 90 people detained -- all males aged 16 to 39 -- were arrested on suspicion of criminal damage and violent disorder.
It was not immediately clear how many were protesters and how many were counter-demonstrators.
Clashes also erupted last month at a similar demonstration in Birmingham, a diverse city of about 1 million where nearly a third of the population is nonwhite.
The English Defense League blames counter-demonstrators for inciting violence at its rallies. It has planned protest marches in other cities, including one next month in Manchester.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009...ef=global-home
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A 28 year old Somali. (Elsewhere today Somali pirates take another vessel.) Danish Police didn't read him his rights. They came in and shot him. Like it or not, Mr. President, we are at war.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8437433.stm
Danish police have shot and wounded a man at the home of Kurt Westergaard, whose cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad sparked an international row.
Mr Westergaard was at home in Aarhus when a man broke in and threatened him. He pressed a panic button and police entered the house and shot the man.
Danish officials said the intruder was a 28-year-old Somali linked to the radical Islamist al-Shabab militia.
The cartoon, printed in 2005, prompted violent protests the following year.
ANALYSIS
Malcolm Brabant
By Malcolm Brabant, BBC News
This attack will force the Danish secret service Pet to review whether their protection is adequate.
Mr Westergaard's house was supposed to have been turned into a fortress. The windows were supposed to be blast proof, and yet a determined individual came within a whisker of killing a man regarded by Islam as a pariah, but by his supporters, as one of the bravest defenders of free expression.
One of 12 cartoons published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten, it depicted the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban.
In 2006 the paper apologised for the cartoons, but other European media reprinted them.
Danish embassies were then attacked by Muslims around the world and dozens killed in riots.
Mr Westergaard went into hiding amid threats to his life, but emerged last year saying he wanted to live as normal a life as possible.
His house has been heavily fortified and is under close police protection.
'Shocked'
Police said the man had entered Mr Westergaard's house armed with a knife and had shouted in broken English that he wanted to kill him.
Anti-Danish protest in Pakistan 2006
The cartoons prompted anti-Danish outrage across the Muslim world
He said he had grabbed his five-year-old granddaughter and run to a specially designed panic room where he raised the alarm.
Mr Westergaard told Jyllands Posten he was shocked that his granddaughter had witnessed the attack.
He has now been taken to a safe location, but said defiantly that he would be back, the newspaper reported.
Jakob Scharf, who heads the Danish intelligence service Pet, said the attack was "terror related" and that the suspected assailant has close contacts to Somalia's al-Shabab group.
He had been under surveillance for activities unrelated to Mr Westergaard, Mr Scharf said.
Police said he was shot in the knee and the shoulder after threatening officers who tried to arrest him. Preben Nielsen of Aarhus police, said the man was seriously hurt but his life was not in danger.
The BBC's Malcolm Brabant, who interviewed Mr Westergaard when he emerged from hiding, says the incident will raise questions about security measures put in place by the Danish secret service to protect the artist.
Islamic militants have placed a $1m price on Mr Westergaard's head.
Although he is one of 12 cartoonists whose drawings of the Prophet were published in Jyllands-Posten, he has the highest profile, our correspondent says.
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PARIS (Reuters) - Youths burned 1,137 cars across France overnight as New Year's Eve celebrations once again turned violent, the French Interior Ministry said on Friday.
World
Car burnings are regular occurrences in poor suburbs that ring France's big cities, but the arson is especially prevalent during New Year's Eve revelry.
The number of vehicles torched was only 10 short of the record 1,147 burned this time last year, even though the Interior Ministry mobilized 45,000 police during the night -- 10,000 more than 12 months ago.
It said police detained 549 people overnight, compared with 288 in 2009 New Year celebrations.
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The jihadists tend to see charity as "jizya".
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Al-Qaeda target British soldiers returning from Afghanistan
British-based Islamist radicals are targeting Army soldiers - especially snipers - returning from fighting in southern Afghanistan, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.
By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent
Published: 9:30AM GMT 03 Jan 2010
Soldiers from 12 Regiment Royal Artillery mark their return from operations in Iraq and Afghanistan as they process through the streets of Blackpool.
In one case, a police armed response unit was called to the home of a sniper last September amid fears he was about to be murdered or abducted by al-Qaeda terrorists.
The Corporal, serving with a Scottish Regiment, was one of a two-man sniping team which shot dead 32 Taliban fighters during a six-month tour of Afghanistan.
The soldier – whom this newspaper has agreed not to name – was temporarily forced to leave home his wife and family after details of his service in Afghanistan were made public.
It can also be disclosed that a second sniper who recently returned home to the Glasgow area received death threats from suspected British-based al-Qaeda sympathisers after his personal details became known.
The threats were deemed so serious that an armed response unit was sent to his home in case terrorists tried to kidnap or kill him or members of his family.
Defence chiefs now see the situation as so serious that they have asked newspapers and broadcasters not to publicise the names or personal details of snipers serving in Helmand or of those who have recently returned.
It is understood that senior commanders believe Army snipers are being specifically targeted because they are often used to seek out and kill Taliban commanders.
In November, The Sunday Telegraph interviewed two snipers, who were not named for security reasons, serving in the reconnaissance platoon of the 1st battalion Grenadier Guards
Both soldiers had taken part in an ambush of a Taliban force as the insurgents prepared to attack a British patrol base.
The two snipers were used to initiate the ambush by shooting dead a Taliban commander who was positioning his troops prior to a planned dawn attack in the Nad-e'Ali area of central Helmand.
After more than 12 hours of fighting both soldiers said that believed that they had killed at least two insurgents each. One of the snipers also admitted that he had lost count of the number of insurgents he had killed since arriving in Helmand two months earlier but believed the number was "well into double figures".
But senior commanders requested that the two snipers not be identified in reports of the battle amid fears that the troops or their families might be attacked when they returned to Britain.
In January 2007, a plot by a Birmingham-based al-Qaeda cell to kidnap a British soldier and behead him was discovered.
The six-man cell was led by Paviz Khan, a 37-year-old father of three, who planned to kidnap a Muslim soldier and post a film of him being beheaded on the internet in a bid to deter other members of the faith from joining the British Army.
The plan was thwarted by a year-long surveillance operation by MI5 and members of the West Midlands counter-terrorist unit. Khan was later jailed for life.
A senior defence source said snipers were being targeted because theirs sole role in Afghanistan was to kill.
He added: "Sniping is a cold and calculating art. You have to be prepared to kill someone at a long range who may not be posing any direct threat to you. Every sniper who deploys to Helmand will return with several kills, many will be into double figures and this is something which is not lost on al-Qaeda or their sympathisers. Islamists would see targeting snipers as something is "acceptable" because they are killing a soldier who has killed one of their brothers."
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Al-Qaeda threat: Britain worst in western world
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Al-Qaeda threat: Britain worst in western world
Al-Qaeda has successfully restructured its global network and now has the capability to carry out a wide range of terror attacks against Western targets, according to a detailed U.S. intelligence assessment that has been conducted in the wake of the failed Christmas Day Detroit bomb plot.
By Con Coughlin
Published: 9:00AM GMT 15 Jan 2010
And the growing strength of al-Qaeda’s support in Britain has emerged as a major concern for U.S. intelligence agencies as they attempt to prevent further attacks after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian student who studied at London’s University College, nearly succeeded in detonating an explosive device that he had concealed in his underpants as Northwest airlines flight 253 made its final approach to Detroit airport.
American intelligence officials are still investigating claims that Abdulmutallab was radicalised while he was a student between 2005 and 2008, although British security officials insist that he was radicalised in Yemen after he left London.
But the failure of British security officials to alert their American counterparts to Abdulmuttalab’s radical activities while president of UCL’s Islamic Society has led to increased tensions between Washington and London.
Earlier this week Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, confirmed that the UK had not passed any information to the U.S. prior to the attempted December 25 bombing that would have led American officials to believe that Abdulmutallab was a potential terrorist.
But while in London Abdulmutallab regularly presided over debates that denounced Britain’s involvement in the war on terror and America’s Guantanamo detention facility.
American officials now believe Britain poses a major threat to Western security because of the large number of al-Qaeda supporters that are active in the country. Two years ago Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, estimated that there were 2,000 al-Qaeda sympathisers based in Britain – the largest concentration of al-Qaeda activists in any Western country. But American officials, who regularly refer to “Londonistan” because of the high concentration of Islamic radicals in the capital, believe the figure is growing all the time. They point out that recent al-Qaeda terror attacks planned in Britain have been the work of British-based Muslims, many of whom have been trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
With al-Qaeda’s leadership under intense pressure from Nato and Pakistani security forces, there are reports that scores of British activists are now travelling to Yemen and Somalia to attend al-Qaeda training camps and receive instructions for carrying out terror attacks against Western targets.
“The level of al-Qaeda activity in Britain is becoming a major source of concern,” said a senior State Department official. “The organisation’s ability to use Britain as a base to plot terror attacks constitutes a serious threat to the security of Britain and other Western countries.”
American officials have been shocked by the resurgence of al-Qaeda’s terrorist operations in recent weeks which have seen it mount a series of attacks on U.S. targets. Last November a U.S. Army major with links to al-Qaeda in Yemen killed thirteen soldiers and injured another thirty at the Fort Hood military base in Texas. And a week after Abdulmutallab’s failed bomb attack in Detroit an al-Qaeda double agent managed to kill seven CIA officials in a suicide bomb attack at their headquarters in Afghanistan. The recent surge in al-Qaeda terror attacks has led U.S. officials to conclude that al-Qaeda is planning a series of new attacks later in the year, some of them in Britain. Abdulmutallab is reported to have told his American interrogators that there were another 25 fully-trained al-Qaeda terrorists ready to carry out similar terror attacks against Western targets.
The ease with which al-Qaeda has managed to launch attacks against American targets has taken many U.S. intelligence officials by surprise. Only two years ago Michael Hayden, the CIA director under former American President George W. Bush, boasted that the U.S. had al-Qaeda on the run. Its terrorist infrastructure in Iraq and Saudi Arabia had been destroyed, and its organisational network in other parts of the world was under intense pressure, especially in its presumed haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. “On balance we are doing pretty well,” said Mr Hayden at the time. There had been “significant setbacks for al-Qaeda globally.”
Since then al-Qaeda’s leadership, the majority of whom are still based in the lawless tribal regions along Pakistan’s North-West frontier, have worked to rebuild their global terror network. Recent analysis by the world’s leading intelligence agencies shows that al-Qaeda can call on operatives all over the world, although the various terror cells have different capabilities. For example, while terror cells in countries like Uraguay and Paraguay have what intelligence experts call a “watching brief”, others in Indonesia and the Philippines play a more active role in the planning and execution of terror plots.
“The threat from al-Qaeda and its affiliates remains high, though not on the scale of bringing off another 9/11 attack,” said Peter Bergen, the last Western journalist to interview al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden before the September 11 attacks, and a leading expert on al-Qaeda. “But al-Qaeda militants can still pull off attacks on commercial aircraft and other key elements of the global economy.”
While intelligence officials say it is impossible to estimate the total number of al-Qaeda activists worldwide, the emergence of Yemen as a major terrorist training and recruitment centre for al-Qaeda is now a major concern for American intelligence officials.
They have also been shocked to discover that many of those responsible for strengthening the terror capabilities of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula are former inmates of the U.S. Guantanamo Detention Facility in Cuba.
Pentagon officials estimate that one in five released Guantanamo detainees have rejoined al-Qaeda terror cells after their release. But a recent study by BBC journalist Peter Taylor of a 15-strong batch of Guantanamo detainees who were returned to Saudi Arabia under President Bush in 2007 showed that six of them had rejoined al-Qaeda in Yemen, suggesting that the percentage of former Guantanamo inmates returning to terrorism is far higher than estimated by the Pentagon.
“Whichever way you look at it Yemen has now emerged as one of al-Qaeda’s top training grounds for its global terrorist network,” said a senior U.S. intelligence official. “And what really concerns us now is the number of British-based Muslims who are traveling there to take part in the training. This represents a serious escalation in the terror threat the West faces from Islamic militants.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...ern-world.html
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Summary
French proposals for a burqa ban have been echoed in the Netherlands, Germany and Italy. The proposed bans, which come at a time of economic uncertainty, are popular across the European political spectrum. While such a ban would affect a very small minority of Muslims in continental Europe, it could spark Muslim ire in Europe and abroad.
Analysis
German politicians from across the political spectrum called Jan. 28 for a French-styled ban on the Muslim face veil known as the niqab. The calls come just days after a Jan. 26 French parliamentary commission ruling in favor of a ban on the burqa, a garment that covers the entire body; the French ban also forbids wearing the niqab in public institutions. Voices in the governments of Italy and Denmark are joining calls for a similar ban, with Italian Minister for Equal Opportunity Mara Carfagna saying Jan. 27 that she was in absolute agreement with the French initiative, which she said will encourage other European countries to legislate on the issue.
A small minority of Muslim women in Europe wear the niqab, and even smaller minority wears the burqa. Even so, the ban is becoming a symbol of the opposition to what is seen as excessive Muslim immigration to Europe.
Calls for a “burqa ban” are not new in France. French President Nicolas Sarkozy asked parliament to form a commission to consider the issue in June 2009, and the topic has been debated for years. With the negative consequences of the economic crisis in full swing across Europe and with regional elections scheduled for March in France, the burqa ban has returned to the forefront.
Calls for such a ban represent an easy way to score political points during a time when Europeans are worried about job and economic security, which explains why the debate in France has so quickly traveled to other European states. They follow the recent ban in Switzerland on the building of minarets, which was also picked up across Europe by various right-wing politicians as a useful way to score political points.
Burqa bans also appeal to the left, however. The left often sees the burqa and the niqab as an affront to women’s rights and personal dignity. In Germany, for example, the liberal Free Democratic Party, part of the current ruling coalition, favors some sort of a ban.
More broadly, widespread calls for policies like the burqa ban underlie growing native European resentment against Muslim immigrants. These resentments historically have become more intense and more accepted during times of economic crises — like the one under way in Europe.
How Muslims inside and outside Europe react to the growing resentment of Muslims within Europe remains an open question. The 2005 Danish cartoon controversy taught that such sensitive matters can whip up antagonism throughout the Muslim world. So far, the burqa ban debate has not had such an effect on Europe’s Muslim population, but a widespread European campaign to ban the niqab — which is more common than the burqa — could be interpreted as widespread anti-Muslim discrimination and invite a violent reaction in Europe and abroad. A possible mitigating factor is that while there was little argument among Muslims regarding the offensiveness of the cartoons caricaturing the prophet, many in the Muslim community — especially the European Muslim community — do oppose the niqab and burqa.
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Giant mosque's towers 'will loom over Sandhurst' Royal (UK) Military Academy.
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Giant mosque's towers 'will loom over Sandhurst'
By Dan Newling
Last updated at 12:13 AM on 22nd February 2010
Generals are trying to block plans to build a mosque with two 100ft minarets next to Sandhurst.
The £3million building would have a clear view over the military academy and is just 400 yards from its parade ground.
Senior officers oppose the project saying it could pose a security threat to cadets.
Enlarge
Objection: The MoD, backed by a petition signed by 7,000 local residents, is fighting plans to build a giant mosque overlooking Sandhurst
Yesterday an Army source said: 'This has gone right to the top of the chain of command.
'There is very real concern that if this thing gets built then soldiers could be put at risk.
'It is outrageous to even think that the officers of the future would have to watch their backs while they are still in training.'
Hundreds of newly-commissioned Army officers take to the parade ground each year for the academy's passing out ceremony.
The event attracts senior members of the Royal Family, including the Queen when her grandson Prince Harry was commissioned in 2006.
Security threat: The Queen and other senior members of the royal family are regular visitors to Sandhurst
The gigantic mosque is the idea of the Bengali Welfare Association, which worships at the al-Kharafi Islamic Centre in Camberley, Surrey.
The group wants to demolish a listed Victorian school building in use as a mosque at the centre and replace it with a sprawling Saudi Arabian-style building.
Planning papers reveal that the massive structure would tower over local buildings.
As well as the two minarets, it would feature a large central dome, five smaller outlying domes, a morgue, a library and a separate worship area for women.
The first attempt at securing planning approval led to objections from 1,000 locals. Planning officers were also opposed but Conservative-dominated Surrey Heath gave the mosque the go-ahead last month.
However, a procedural error means the application now needs to go to a full council meeting for approval.
Plan: The new mosque will be built on the site of a Victorian former school, which has been used as an Islamic centre for the last 14 years
And the Ministry of Defence - which initially had no objections - has its mind to insist that the minarets are not built.
Local MEP Nigel Farage of UKIP, who is battling the plans, said: 'I am appalled that a local council can totally ignore the wishes of the overwhelming majority of the electorate of Camberley and overturn the recommendations of planning officers.
'This building is quite simply inappropriate and gives rise to genuine security concerns.
'I know that senior military officers are extremely concerned about this. It simply cannot be allowed to go ahead.'
Alan Kirkland, a local campaigner, said: 'Local people are simply flabbergasted that 100ft high minarets can be built right next to the Royal Military Academy.
'There is obviously a security risk and there is no way that it should be built.'
A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: 'Defence Estates has objected to the plans as such a tall building would give oversight into Defence property which could prove a security risk.'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...andhurst.html#
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Jews leave Swedish city after sharp rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes
Sweden's reputation as a tolerant, liberal nation is being threatened by a steep rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes in the city of Malmo.
By Nick Meo in Malmo, Sweden
Published: 7:30AM GMT 21 Feb 2010
When she first arrived in Sweden after her rescue from a Nazi concentration camp, Judith Popinski was treated with great kindness.
She raised a family in the city of Malmo, and for the next six decades lived happily in her adopted homeland - until last year.
In 2009, a chapel serving the city's 700-strong Jewish community was set ablaze. Jewish cemeteries were repeatedly desecrated, worshippers were abused on their way home from prayer, and "Hitler" was mockingly chanted in the streets by masked men.
"I never thought I would see this hatred again in my lifetime, not in Sweden anyway," Mrs Popinski told The Sunday Telegraph.
"This new hatred comes from Muslim immigrants. The Jewish people are afraid now."
Malmo's Jews, however, do not just point the finger at bigoted Muslims and their fellow racists in the country's Neo-Nazi fringe. They also accuse Ilmar Reepalu, the Left-wing mayor who has been in power for 15 years, of failing to protect them.
Mr Reepalu, who is blamed for lax policing, is at the centre of a growing controversy for saying that what the Jews perceive as naked anti-Semitism is in fact just a sad, but understandable consequence of Israeli policy in the Middle East.
While his views are far from unusual on the European liberal-left, which is often accused of a pro-Palestinian bias, his Jewish critics say they encourage young Muslim hotheads to abuse and harass them.
The future looks so bleak that by one estimate, around 30 Jewish families have already left for Stockholm, England or Israel, and more are preparing to go.
With its young people planning new lives elsewhere, the remaining Jewish households, many of whom are made up of Holocaust survivors and their descendants, fear they will soon be gone altogether. Mrs Popinski, an 86-year-old widow, said she has even encountered hostility when invited to talk about the Holocaust in schools.
"Muslim schoolchildren often ignore me now when I talk about my experiences in the camps," she said. "It is because of what their parents tell them about Jews. The hatreds of the Middle East have come to Malmo. Schools in Muslim areas of the city simply won't invite Holocaust survivors to speak any more."
Hate crimes, mainly directed against Jews, doubled last year with Malmo's police recording 79 incidents and admitting that far more probably went unreported. As of yet, no direct attacks on people have been recorded but many Jews believe it is only a matter of time in the current climate.
The city's synagogue has guards and rocket-proof glass in the windows, while the Jewish kindergarten can only be reached through thick steel security doors.
It is a far cry from the city Mrs Popinski arrived in 65 years ago, half-dead from starvation and typhus.
At Auschwitz she had been separated from her Polish family, all of whom were murdered. She escaped the gas chambers after being sent as a slave labourer. Then she was moved to a womens' concentration camp, Ravensbrück, from where she was then evacuated in a release deal negotiated between the Swedish Red Cross and senior Nazis, who were by then trying to save their own lives.
After the war, just as liberal Sweden took in Jews who survived the Holocaust as a humanitarian act, it also took in new waves of refugees from tyranny and conflicts in the Middle East. Muslims are now estimated to make up about a fifth of Malmo's population of nearly 300,000.
"This new hatred from a group 40,000-strong is focused on a small group of Jews," Mrs Popinski said, speaking in a sitting room filled with paintings and Persian carpets.
"Some Swedish politicians are letting them do it, including the mayor. Of course the Muslims have more votes than the Jews."
The worst incident was last year during Israel's brief war in Gaza, when a small demonstration in favour of Israel was attacked by a screaming mob of Arabs and Swedish leftists, who threw bottles and firecrackers as the police looked on.
"I haven't seen hatred like that for decades," Mrs Popinski said. "It reminded me of what I saw in my youth. Jews feel vulnerable here now."
The problem is becoming an embarrassment for the Social Democrats, the mayor's party.
Their national leader Mona Sahlin - the woman who is likely to become the next prime minister after an election later this year - last week travelled to Malmo to meet Jewish leaders, which they took to be a sign that at last politicians are waking to their plight. After the meeting, the mayor, Mr Reepalu, also promised to meet them.
A former architect, he has been credited with revitalising Malmo from a half-derelict shipbuilding centre into a vibrant, prosperous city with successful IT and biotech sectors.
His city was - until recently at least - a shining multicultural success story, and has taken in proportionally more refugees than anywhere else in Sweden, a record of which it is proud.
Sweden has had a long record of offering a safe haven to Jews, the first of whom arrived from the east in the mid-nineteenth century. Today the Jewish population is about 18,000 nationally, with around 3000 in southern Sweden.
The mayor insisted to The Sunday Telegraph that he was opposed to anti-Semitism, but added: "I believe these are anti-Israel attacks, connected to the war in Gaza.
"We want Malmo to be cosmopolitan and safe for everybody and we have taken action. I have started a dialogue forum. There haven't been any attacks on Jewish people, and if Jews from the city want to move to Israel that is not a matter for Malmo."
Sweden has had a long record of offering a safe haven to Jews, the first of whom arrived from the east in the mid-nineteenth century. Today the Jewish population is about 18,000 nationally, with around 3000 in southern Sweden.
“Jews came to Sweden to get away from persecution, and now they find it is no longer a safe haven,” said Rabbi Shneur Kesselman, 31. “That is a horrible feeling.”
One who has had enough is Marcus Eilenberg, a 32-year-old Malmo-born lawyer, who is moving to Israel in April with his young family.
"Malmo has really changed in the past year," he said. "I am optimistic by nature, but I have no faith in a future here for my children. There is definitely a threat.
"It started during the Gaza war when Jewish demonstrators were attacked. It was a horrible feeling, being attacked in your own city. Just as bad was the realisation that we were not being protected by our own leaders."
Mr Eilenberg said he and his wife considered moving to Stockholm where Jews feel safer than in Malmo. "But we decided not to because in five years time I think it will be just as bad there," he said.
"This is happening all over Europe. I have cousins who are leaving their homes in Amsterdam and France for the same reason as me."
Malmo's Jews are not the only ones to suffer hate crimes.
At the city's Islamic Centre, the director Bejzat Becirov pointed out a bullet hole in the window behind the main reception desk.
Mr Becirov, who arrived in 1962 from the former Yugoslavia, said that windows were regularly smashed, pig's heads had been left outside the mosque, and outbuildings burnt down - probably the acts of Neo-Nazis who have also baited Jews in the past.
He said that the harassment of Jews by some young Muslims was "embarrassing" to his community. Many of them are unemployed and confined to life on bleak estates where the Scandinavian dream of prosperity and equality seemed far away.
For many of Malmo's white Swedish population, meanwhile, the racial problems are bewildering after years of liberal immigration policies.
"I first encountered race hatred when I was an au pair in England and I was shocked," said Mrs Popinski's friend Ulla-Lena Cavling, 72, a retired teacher.
"I thought 'this couldn't happen in Sweden'. Now I know otherwise."
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http://www.shropshirestar.com/2010/04/02/blog-sharia-councils-undermine-social-cohesion/
Blog: Sharia Councils ‘undermine social cohesion’Friday 2nd April 2010, 7:31AM BST
Blog: By Mark Pritchard, Conservative MP for The Wrekin since 2005 and a member of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission.
Since the 1996 Arbitration Act, Government ministers have allowed Islamic tribunals around Britain to rule on a range of financial disputes, provided both parties agree to accept the court’s decision. But in recent years, these tribunals have developed into fully fledged Sharia Councils – allowed to settle new disputes, such as divorce, family law, and faith issues. These powers go well beyond the letter and spirit of the original legislation and whilst they provide new ways of dispensing cheap justice they do not always dispense fair justice.
By expanding the powers of Sharia Councils, ministers have set the scene for a breaking narrative which is fractious, discriminates against women, and, incrementally, is establishing a parallel legal system.
As Sharia Councils expand their powers and reach, ministers have unwittingly rolled the dice over a type of cultural snakes and ladders, all in the hope that such initiatives will increase inclusiveness and marginalise Islamic radicals. But all the evidence contradicts ministers’ stated aims. Sharia rulings are more likely to create legal ghettos – undermining rather than improving social cohesion. And in so doing, ministers are found guilty of piecemeal legal vandalism and managing the gradual decline of English jurisprudence.
The replacement of legal precedence and common law with Islamic codification is also a gift to some extremist parties who have seized on the increasing numbers of Sharia Councils as more evidence of the demotion of hard fought for British cultural freedoms and laws. And despite the protestations of senior government ministers over recent BNP advances, ministerial alarm calls will ring deep and hollow as long the same ministers continue to advocate two Britains.
The views of the BNP are repugnant, but it should not take BNP electoral gains for ministers to wake up to the fact that social cohesion cannot be predicated on the reality, or the perception, of one rule for one community and a different set of rules for everyone else. Allowing different groups to apply different standards at variants with existing common and statute law is a recipe for resentment and suspicion. This legal dualism also strikes at the very heart the great British virtue of fair play – and all British subjects being united – under one nation.
And as ministers sleepwalk into further fragmenting communities, they still decline to answer the fundamental question: do Muslim women enjoy the same rights under Sharia jurisprudence as under English law? Ministers should not be allowed to obviate when challenged about Islamic teaching on the role, rights, and responsibilities, of women in society. Ministers may choose to evade this issue, but Sharia principles and practices are unlikely to progress the much needed emancipation of Britain’s Muslim women.
Sharia Councils shine an embarrassing light on how ministers have increasingly relegated and downgraded thousands of Muslim women to de facto second class British citizens, perversely, in the name of tolerance and understanding.
The response of Government proponents of Sharia Councils say those who choose to come before councils do so on a voluntarily basis and that, according to the 1996 Act, parties are free to agree upon how their disputes are resolved. In reality, some Muslim women feel pressured into accepting the rulings of male-dominated Sharia Councils – mostly through fear of retribution and being ostracised – sometimes by their own families.
Women are also losing out in rulings over child custody disputes, which more often rule in favour of men. It is not unimaginable that, in the near future, people from other faiths – and no faith at all – will nominally or genuinely convert to Islam in the hope of begetting a sympathetic custody hearing and paternal settlement compared to the maternal bias of some English family courts.
Speaking at a justice conference last October, Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, commented: “There is nothing whatever in English law that prevents people abiding by Sharia principles if they wish to, provided they do not come into conflict with English law”.
Such conflicts occur throughout Britain every week, and with it, the shunning of basic rights for thousands of British Muslim women.
With Britain’s growing Muslim population, the sphere of Sharia Councils is likely to increase still further. This is something that must be resisted by those who believe in tolerance and mutual respect, and by those, including progressives in the Muslim community, who seek to champion the rights of all – including the equal rights of Britain’s female Muslims.
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As Some Young Muslims Turn to Radicalism, Concern Grows
By SOUAD MEKHENNET
Published: July 30, 2010
FRANKFURT — Before Abi left her parents’ house in northern Germany last year, she asked her father, “Daddy, what can I bring you from my journey?” He looked up from his book and answered, “Some perfumed oil.” “Will do,” she said, hugging him goodbye.
Enlarge This Image: A video still from a media affiliate of the Islamic Jihad Union and German Taliban Mujahedeen, is said to show a jihadist practicing his shooting skills.
He is still waiting, more than a year later, for her to return.
Abi, now 23, and her husband never made the trip they said they had planned to Saudi Arabia to visit Mecca and Medina. Instead they became part of a growing number of young Muslims from Germany and other European countries who travel to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region, eventually ending up in the camps of groups affiliated with Al Qaeda or the Taliban.
One German man, Eric Breininger, was later reported killed in a battle with Pakistani troops.
A Turkish-language Web site announced that in recent days nine foreign fighters were killed as they traveled to carry out operations with the Taliban. Two of them were identified as Germans, from Bonn and Berlin. Others have been arrested on a variety of charges. In one case, several people were convicted of planning attacks against American military facilities in Germany.
Intelligence officials are concerned that the young people, most in their 20s, will be used by the militants for propaganda purposes or trained to take up arms. They also worry that some will slip back into Germany to recruit others or to join sleeper cells and ultimately commit acts of terrorism.
“This is a very dangerous situation and German security services are very nervous about it,” said Guido Steinberg, terrorism expert of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin. “Al Qaeda and other organizations have put Germany on their target priority list as one of the top places.”
Security officials believe that the number of young Germans who make the trip is relatively small, perhaps fewer than 200 since the early 1990s. But they also believe the number is growing, inspired in part by German-language videos on the Internet, including some made by a group called German Taliban Mujahedeen, which promise a happy life with others committed to Shariah law.
It is difficult to pin down an exact figure because most of those headed for the border regions first leave Germany by car, to elude airport security checks; many go to Turkey and then illegally into Iran, where they meet smugglers who take them to their destination.
Security officials are also troubled because it appears that whole families are now making the move, after selling all their possessions and taking their savings from the bank.
A man who helps smuggle foreigners into the region offered an explanation for the need for cash. In the past, said the man, Abu Yahia, who is from Waziristan, the militant groups once had enough money to support those who joined them. Now, he said, with all the fighting going on, the newcomers are asked to “bring enough money so they can support the groups and themselves.”
The parents of Abi — her mother is German and her father is from a West African country — are appalled by their daughter’s transformation from a Westernized dental student to a radicalized Muslim. (Fearing harassment, the parents consented to be interviewed only if their names were not disclosed. Abi is a shortened form of their daughter’s real name.)
The changes came slowly, they say, after Abi fell in love with a young Iranian man, who grew up in Germany. After marrying in a mosque in 2008 — a shock to her father, though he is Muslim — the young couple changed their behavior and their dress. He converted from Shiism, started to follow a radical Sunni form of Islam and grew his beard; she started wearing head scarves and cut off contact with friends. “My husband told her that this was not what Islam was teaching, to stop friendships, but she would not listen,” Abi’s mother said.
At the beginning of March last year, Abi, her husband and three others left their homes in Germany and ultimately made their way to the Pakistani border region of Waziristan. At the beginning Abi told her parents through e-mail that she and her husband wanted to live in an Islamic society, though her husband later sent signals to his parents that he wanted to return to Germany. But then he appeared in a propaganda video with a gun in his hand. “I knew then, that it would be very tough for them to return,” Abi’s mother said.
Security officials, as well as the parents of Abi, her husband and other parents of young people who have gone to the Pakistani border region, hope to learn more about their situation from Rami Makanesi, a 25-year-old German national of Syrian descent, who was recently arrested by Pakistani officials while in the tribal district of North Waziristan.
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Since his arrest Mr. Makanesi has been in the custody of Pakistan’s main spy service, the ISI. According to a senior ISI official, Mr. Makanesi told Pakistani investigators that he was a member of Al Qaeda and had trained suicide bombers for them in Waziristan. “He did not leave the impression that he was someone who had no idea what he was doing there,” said the ISI official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to speak publicly about the case.
Mr. Makanesi also spoke about dozens of Qaeda-recruited Europeans fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan. “He spoke about six other German men who had been in the same region with him,” the official said.
“There are connections between the circles from Hamburg to circles in Berlin, Bonn and Frankfurt,” said a senior German intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the case. “It is very possible that Mr. Makanesi has met some people from Germany who traveled from other cities as well.”
One of the families desperate for some information is that of Thomas, a 24-year-old convert to Islam who has grown more observant over the past two years. The family grew alarmed when Thomas, now using the name Haroun, and his wife began talking about moving to a place where they could practice their faith more completely.
“We went to the police and intelligence service and asked for help, because we noticed how they had changed,” his mother said. “We’ve cried for help.” But the authorities had no legal basis to intervene.
Last September, he and his wife told his parents that they were leaving Berlin for a trip to celebrate their first wedding anniversary. Instead, they made their way to Waziristan.
At the beginning, Thomas sent e-mails to his parents, telling them the living conditions were tough. Last December, he wrote that he didn’t know if he would see the next summer.
“Since then no message, no idea if he is still alive or dead, no certainty, which is making it very complicated,” his mother said.
German security officials say that they believe Thomas went through military training in Waziristan. “We have indications that he has appeared in one propaganda video, but with his face covered,” one official said.
The parents of Abi and Thomas still hope that their children will return to Germany. But security officials say that in nearly all cases those who return continue to associate with more militant Muslims.
Abi’s mother says the signals that she is getting from her daughter about a return are not very hopeful.
Abi has told her mother that Muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan are oppressed and need help. That reaction is typical for her daughter, who always wanted to help people, Abi’s mother said, adding, “I was always proud of her for this.”
Then tears filled her eyes, as she said: “My husband and I became very weak because of what she has done, and I would like to ask her, ‘Doesn’t the Koran say you should never lie to your parents and have to honor them?’ ”
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http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2010/August/Islamization-of-Paris-a-Warning-to-the-West/
PARIS - Friday in Paris. A hidden camera shows streets blocked by huge crowds of Muslim worshippers and enforced by a private security force.
This is all illegal in France: the public worship, the blocked streets, and the private security. But the police have been ordered not to intervene.
It shows that even though some in the French government want to get tough with Muslims and ban the burqa, other parts of the French government continue to give Islam a privileged status.
An ordinary French citizen who has been watching the Islamization of Paris decided that the world needed to see what was happening to his city. He used a hidden camera to start posting videos on YouTube. His life has been threatened and so he uses the alias of "Maxime Lepante. "
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/the-pope/8008981/Pope-visit-Five-suspected-Islamist-terrorists-arrested-over-assassination-plot.html
More people who must not understand islam is a religion of peace.... :roll:
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If only there weren't opposition to the Ground Zero Mosque then all would be well.
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Radical Islam on rise in Balkans, raising fears of security threat to Europe
Published September 18, 2010
| Associated Press
SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) — An online music video praising Osama bin Laden has driven home a troubling new reality: A radical brand of Islam embraced by al-Qaida and the Taliban is gaining a foothold in the Balkans.
"Oh Osama, annihilate the American army. Oh Osama, raise the Muslims' honor," a group of Macedonian men sing in Albanian, in video posted on YouTube last year and picked up by Macedonian media this August. "In September 2001 you conquered a power. We all pray for you."
Although most of Macedonia's ethnic Albanian minority are Muslims, they have generally been secular. But experts are now seeing an increasing radicalization in pockets of the country's Islamic community, particularly after armed groups from the ethnic Albanian minority, which forms a quarter of the population of 2.1 million, fought a brief war against Macedonian government forces in 2001.
It's a trend seen across the Balkans and has raised concerns that the region, which includes new European Union member Bulgaria, could become a breeding ground for terrorists with easy access to Western Europe. Many fear that radicalized European Muslims with EU passports could slip across borders and blend into society.
At the center of the issue is the Wahhabi sect, an austere brand of Islam most prevalent in Saudi Arabia and practiced by bin Laden and the Taliban.
"Wahhabism in Macedonia, the Balkans and in Europe has become more aggressive in the last 10 years," said Jakub Selimovski, head of religious education in Macedonia's Islamic community. He said Wahhabis were establishing a permanent presence in Macedonia where none existed before, and that "they are in Bosnia, here, Kosovo, Serbia, Croatia and lately they have appeared in Bulgaria."
It is the first time a high-ranking official in the former Yugoslav republic's Islamic community has agreed to speak openly about the presence and threat of radical Islam.
In Bulgaria, nearly one-sixth of the population of 7.6 million are Muslims who adhere to conventional Sunni beliefs. Ethnic peace has been maintained in the last 20 years. As elsewhere in the Balkans, however, Wahhabi incursions have led to a struggle for control of religion and Islamic community-owned property.
Large amounts of money, allegedly from Muslim organizations abroad, have been spent in Bulgaria since the mid-1990s for more than 150 new mosques and so called "teaching centers" to spread Wahhabism.
According to Bulgaria's former chief mufti, Nedim Gendzhev, some Muslim organizations were aiming to create a "fundamentalist triangle" formed by Bosnia, Macedonia and Bulgaria's Western Rhodope mountains. Local newspaper reports say radical Islam is being preached in different cities and villages in southern and northeastern Bulgaria.
In 2003, Bulgarian authorities shut down a number of Islamic centers on the grounds they allegedly belonged to Islamic groups financed mainly by Saudi Arabians that possibly also had links to "radical organizations" such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Official statements said that the centers were shut down "to prevent terrorists getting a foothold in Bulgaria."
However, centers where radical brands of Islam are preached continue to to crop up in the country, said political analyst Dimitar Avramov.
"Along with the three official Muslim schools, there are at least seven other which are not registered and not controlled by the state," he said, adding that in the last 20 years some 3,000 young Muslims have graduated from these schools.
In neighboring Serbia last year, 12 Muslims — allegedly Wahhabis — from the tense southern Sandzak region were sentenced to up to 13 years in prison for planning terrorist attacks, including on the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade. The presence of radical Muslims in Sandzak, the poorest region of Serbia, is linked to the advent of mujahedeen foreign fighters who joined Bosnian Muslims in their battle against the Serbs in Bosnia's 1992-95 independence war.
In Bosnia, the issue of Wahhabi influence is one of the most politically charged debates, with Bosnian Serbs maintaining there is a huge presence of Wahhabis in the country and Muslim Bosniaks downplaying the issue and at times claiming it does not exist.
Juan Carlos Antunez, a Spanish military specialist in religious extremism with years of experience in Bosnia, estimates there are about 3,000 people in Bosnia who have embraced this interpretation of Islam and only a small fraction of them are a potential security threat.
In a study prepared for the Sarajevo-based Center for Advanced Studies in May, Antunez argued that Bosnia's official Islamic Community has been successful in curbing Wahhabi influence. Although it did not aggressively ostracize the Wahhabis, it strictly controls the appointments of imams in mosques and lecturers in Islamic educational institutions in the country.
Ahmet Alibasic, a lecturer at the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Sarajevo, said most Wahhabis in Bosnia refrain from criticizing the Islamic Community and were even calling for unity among Muslims.
"Their influence reached its peak in 2000, but it has since started falling and it continues to fall," Alibasic said, adding that measures taken by Bosnian authorities after 9/11 had a significant effect as the movement began to lose power after the closure and banning of several Islamic, mostly Saudi-backed, charities which funded the movement.
In Albania, the issue is also charged. Ilir Kulla, former head of the government's department on religious issues, insisted the Wahhabis had not caused any problems in Albania.
Kulla said hundreds of young Albanian men had been educated in universities in the Middle East, including in Saudi Arabia, and were now mosque leaders, but that there had been no attempt by Wahhabis to challenge the leadership of the country's Muslim Community, which he insisted was still moderate.
But in Macedonia, the increasing clout of radical Islam is causing a rift in the country's Muslim community, with a power struggle developing within the country's official Islamic Religious Community between the moderate mainstream and the emerging Wahhabi wing.
"A destructive, radical and extremist current has appeared with an intention of taking over the lead of the Islamic religious community," Selimovski said.
Authorities in Macedonia are reluctant to confirm any threat of radical Islam in the country. But a government official, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic, did acknowledge that "radical groups and their followers are being closely observed."
Last year, three ethnic Albanian brothers originally from Macedonia were implicated — along with a Jordanian, a Turk and a Kosovo Albanian living in the U.S. — in an alleged plot to attack the U.S. Army's Fort Dix military base in New Jersey. No attack was ever staged on the base, which is used largely to train U.S. reservists bound for Iraq.
"Macedonia is part of the international coalition in the fight against terrorism and it cannot be excluded from the responsibility to observe and respond to any possible activity or emerging of terrorists," Interior Ministry spokesman Ivo Kotevski told the AP.
Moderate Muslims say the Wahhabi sect now controls five mosques in Skopje even though the Islamic Religious Community has suspended the man they claim is the sect's leader, Ramadan Ramadani, as imam of the Isa Beg mosque in Skopje, and prohibited him from organizing prayers.
But Ramadani, who has launched a petition seeking supporters to overturn the current Community leadership, rejects any accusation of radicalism, saying his opponents are scaremongering.
"They need my name to have somebody to frighten people," Ramadani said. "I do not know any individuals or structures here that could be defined as Wahhabi. It is the attempt of political labeling and stigmatizing people who want reforms."
Ramadani insisted that Macedonia's Islamic community had nothing to do with the online song supporting bin Laden, and denied Macedonian media reports that it had been played in mosques there.
"Bin Laden is nothing for the Muslims in Macedonia," Ramadani said. "He is not our hero."
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This is about free speech in Europe on trial; the underlying issue is about Islam in Europe and a tolerance that has been abused by the welcomed immigrants. As one who was mugged and knifed in Amsterdam by 'immigrants', it seems to me that it should be legal to voice dissent to all the openness and tolerance that has been spit upon (worse) by certain new residents in a free society.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/10/201010454645572293.html
Dutch MP on trial for 'hate speech'
He risks up to a year in jail or a 7,600-euro ($10,471) fine for his comments if convicted.
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Here is one of the more offensive quotes on trial, and it is no doubt offensive:
"I've had enough of Islam in the Netherlands; let not one more Muslim immigrate," he wrote in the paper. "I've had enough of the Quran in the Netherlands: Forbid that fascist book."
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From personal experience, I would say it is the behavior of certain people from among the new immigrants who incited the hatred, not the free speech of those who point it out.
If you are allowed to speak in favor of something, calling Islam a religion of peace for example when we know plenty of examples of people reading and acting on those passages do not come in peace, then why should people not be be allowed to speak out against that same thing, even if what is said is offensive?
If Wilders had called for violence against the Muslims, and he didn't, that would be very different than calling for an end to additional immigration.
I wonder what Theo van Gogh thinks about the issue.
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"As one who was mugged and knifed in Amsterdam by 'immigrants'"
What happened?
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"What happened?"
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CCP, Here is the story of my brush with 'Islam in Europe' and my only experience with nationalized healthcare. On the latter, I was treated very nicely and stitched up for free. When they listed my address as just 'Amerika' I realized I wasn't going to see a bill in the mail.
Dec. 1991, I was in charge of exports for a US telecom manufacturer with the Europe 92 initiative (European Union) coming, which for us would open the telecom networks of Europe to US products for the first time ever. I had appointments in 5 capitols in 5 days, spent every evening on a plane and traveled in and out of Europe through Amsterdam. At the end of the week returning to my original hotel in Amsterdam I was tired of dinner on a plane and no exercise the whole trip, so I got off the train from the airport, skipped the taxis and walked to my hotel with early December darkness setting in.
Amsterdam is designed in a horseshoe shape. I picked a route to cut over to a different major street and picked the wrong one. After a half block down this street in prime evening time I realized I was alone, no one in sight on the street or sidewalk either side, no car, no pedestrian, no one visible in windows of the residential buildings lining the street. Then footsteps came up pretty fast from behind me which seemed odd. I shifted over thinking how could I possibly be in their way on an empty street, like can't they see me. When they shifted over too, I knew. I turned to face them. The first guy froze but the other guy was already taking a swing at me. I ducked down and away and he still got me on the back of the head. He fell and I didn't. I dropped my bags, stepped back a few steps and screamed for help. No one heard me but I got it out pretty loud. They hesitated, looked around, then left in the direction I had been headed, so I grabbed my stuff and headed back where I came from and briskly cut through on a better street to my hotel.
The guy who hit me seemed to have something hard like an oval shaped rock cupped in his hand but from the bleeding it must have had a sharp blade in it. I felt okay the rest of the walk, got to the hotel and sheepishly started to explain my situation to the desk clerk who remembered me from the previous weekend. She figured out what I was trying to say when she saw the blood on my hand from holding my head and got me a ride to the ER. I sat down and then lost all my strength.
I described the attackers to the hotel manager driving me to the hospital. He said they are Moroccans. I don't like to call them that because a favorite in-law of mine is from Morocco. I never told him of this experience. Now I call them al Qaida for a better story. One strange part, it never occurred to me I was attacked for money since they never took anything. It just felt like a hate crime or something territorial.
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From Wikipedia: "Netherlands hosts an estimated 850,000 Muslims, including approximately 320,000 Turks and 280,000 Moroccans.[1] Most of them live in the major cities, concentrated in low-income neighborhoods with poor housing quality, chronic unemployment, and high levels of crime."
I did not know that.
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Note the dates in question
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfmEpKsUS5k
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/5408470.stm
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Doug,
It sounds like you responded in a way that scared them off. It seems weird they would attack you like that if it roberry wasn't the motive but who knows.
Could you imagine if they attacked Crafty. They would have been in the hospital.
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by Audrey Kauffmann Audrey Kauffmann – Sun Oct 17, 11:50 am ET
BERLIN (AFP) – Germany's attempt to create a multi-cultural society has failed completely, Chancellor Angela Merkel said at the weekend, calling on the country's immigrants to learn German and adopt Christian values.
Merkel weighed in for the first time in a blistering debate sparked by a central bank board member saying the country was being made "more stupid" by poorly educated and unproductive Muslim migrants.
"Multikulti", the concept that "we are now living side by side and are happy about it," does not work, Merkel told a meeting of younger members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party at Potsdam near Berlin.
"This approach has failed, totally," she said, adding that immigrants should integrate and adopt Germany's culture and values.
"We feel tied to Christian values. Those who don't accept them don't have a place here," said the chancellor.
"Subsidising immigrants" isn't sufficient, Germany has the right to "make demands" on them, she added, such as mastering the language of Goethe and abandoning practices such as forced marriages.
Merkel spoke a week after talks with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in which they pledged to do more to improve the often poor integration record of Germany's 2.5-million-strong Turkish community.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul, in a weekend interview, also urged the Turkish community living in Germany to master the language of their adopted country.
"When one doesn't speak the language of the country in which one lives that doesn't serve anyone, neither the person concerned, the country, nor the society," the Turkish president told the Suedeutsche Zeitung.
"That is why I tell them at every opportunity that they should learn German, and speak it fluently and without an accent. That should start at nurseries."
German President Christian Wulff was due for a five-day visit to Turkey and talks with the country's leaders on Monday.
The immigration debate has at times threatened to split Merkel's conservative party, and she made noises to both wings of the debate.
While saying that the government needed to encourage the training of Muslim clerics in Germany, Merkel said "Islam is part of Germany", echoeing the recent comments of Wulff, a liberal voice in the party.
Horst Seehofer, the leader of the CDU's Bavarian sister party, CSU, who represents the right-wing, recently said Germany did not "need more immigrants from different cultures like the Turks and Arabs" who are "more difficult" to integrate.
While warning against "immigration that weighs down on our social system", Merkel said Germany needed specialists from overseas to keep the pace of its economic development.
According to the head of the German chamber of commerce and industry, Hans Heinrich Driftmann, Germany is in urgent need of about 400,000 engineers and qualified workers, whose lack is knocking about one percent off the country's growth rate.
The integration of Muslims has been a hot button issue since August when a member of Germany's central bank sparked outrage by saying the country was being made "more stupid" by poorly educated and unproductive Muslim migrants with headscarves.
The banker, Thilo Sarrazin, has since resigned but his book on the subject -- "Germany Does Itself In" -- has flown off the shelves, and polls showed considerable sympathy for some of his views.
A recent study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation think tank showed around one-third of Germans feel the country is being "over-run by foreigners" and the same percentage feel foreigners should be sent home when jobs are scarce.
Nearly 60 percent of the 2,411 people polled thought the around four million Muslims in Germany should have their religious practices "significantly curbed."
Far-right attitudes are found not only at the extremes of German society, but "to a worrying degree at the centre of society," the think tank said in its report.
"Hardly eight weeks have passed since publication of Sarrazin's theory of decline, and the longer the debate continues to a lower level it falls," the weekly Der Spiegel commented Sunday.
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London, England (CNN) --
Hit the road, Jack.
Last year's most popular name for baby boys in England has been knocked off -- by Mohammed.
That's not immediately obvious from data put out this week by the Office of National Statistics, which declared Wednesday that Oliver was the single most popular name for boys born in 2009.
But a CNN analysis of the top 4,500 boys names shows that, when different spellings of the name are lumped together, Mohammed is No. 1.
Oliver and variations come second, followed by Jack, Thomas, Charles, Harry, William and Daniel.
The United Kingdom is about 4.6 percent Muslim, with just under 2.9 million Muslims according to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
And Muslims have a strong tendency to name their sons Mohammed.
"The first reason why people keep the children's name Mohammed is because of their love of the prophet Mohammed, because they want to emulate him," said Imam Abdullah al-Hasan of the East
London Mosque.
"They want to copy him not just through his behavior and conduct, but also his name," said the imam, who is thinking about naming his own newborn son after the founder of Islam.
The Muslim population has risen rapidly in Western Europe in the past 20 years, according to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
From under 10 million in 1990, it's gone up to about 17 million today, the think tank said in a report last month.
That has be accompanied by tensions ranging from racial violence in parts of England to legal restrictions like banning the burqa in France and banning minarets in Switzerland.
But al-Hasan says Britain has nothing to fear.
"One message I would give to them is that you shouldn't be surprised. You shouldn't be scared. You shouldn't be frightened or anything like that," he said.
"It shows that Islam is here to stay in Britain. Islam is here to stay in Europe," he said. "It's not alien from the Western society. It's not alien to the British context."
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--CNN's Brittany Harris, Erin McLaughlin and Atika Shubert contributed to this report.
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FWIW IMHO your logic is as correct as it is naive.
It nice to know that you concede that my logic is correct; :-) albeit in you opinion naive. :?
Still, it's better than being wrong and acting like Don Quixote, running off and discussing numerous but irrelevant evils of Islam.
This topic is about voluntary arbitration or as you said and seem to prefer "whether the reality of it (arbitration) is voluntary."
But naive?
I presume you are inferring that some Muslim women are "forced" to participate in "voluntary" arbitration
leaving them at a disadvantage and therefore although you concede my logic is impeccable, reality is different?
OK, what do you suggest? We, England and America are bound by our legal system. Frankly, overall I
think it is pretty good. What should we do? I mean in a Civil matter (divorce for example) if both parties (on the surface) agree to voluntary arbitration, what can the police do?
Or what can the courts do? One person needs to file a complaint and if after the fact, there must be proof of coercion. Otherwise the answer is the court
can will and will do nothing. Nor frankly should it. Or everyone would complain after an adverse arbitration ruling.
I further contend that if a woman/man is strong enough to file a complaint for coercion (a criminal matter) than surely they are mentally
strong enough to simply state that they prefer English Law versus voluntary arbitration under Sharia Law. And then they will have the full protection
of that country's law, i.e. restraining orders if coerced or threatened and the fair distribution of property.
And if any illegal action is taken against them, or if the law is not followed, the perpetrator will be arrested. That is fair.
But if both parties voluntarily choose voluntary arbitration; the court is tied. A crime (i.e. coercion) must be committed before the state can intercede.
So back to my question, given that arbitration is a legal part of the court system, and given that both parties together are allowed to choose the arbitrator, how do
you solve the problem of the arbitrator being biassed or the process being unfair? Remember, in many matters, the arbitrator is going to being biased. You
cannot simply do away with arbitration or prohibit one group from being the arbitrator just because they are biased. The Church of England is biased on many matters as
are many other arbitrators biased for their own reasons.
Frankly, while I am sympathetic, Muslim women in divorce, inheritance or other civil matters have a much better deal in England and the US than women in many other countries.
They have a choice; Sharia Court (voluntary arbitration); fast and efficient or they can choose the State's Legal System which is usually gender fair, albeit slow and expensive.
http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/006.sbt.html#001.006.301
Volume 1, Book 6, Number 301:
Narrated Abu Said Al-Khudri:
Once Allah's Apostle went out to the Musalla (to offer the prayer) o 'Id-al-Adha or Al-Fitr prayer. Then he passed by the women and said, "O women! Give alms, as I have seen that the majority of the dwellers of Hell-fire were you (women)." They asked, "Why is it so, O Allah's Apostle ?" He replied, "You curse frequently and are ungrateful to your husbands. I have not seen anyone more deficient in intelligence and religion than you. A cautious sensible man could be led astray by some of you." The women asked, "O Allah's Apostle! What is deficient in our intelligence and religion?" He said, "Is not the evidence of two women equal to the witness of one man?" They replied in the affirmative. He said, "This is the deficiency in her intelligence. Isn't it true that a woman can neither pray nor fast during her menses?" The women replied in the affirmative. He said, "This is the deficiency in her religion."
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2010/jul/05/sharia-law-religious-courts
What isn't wrong with Sharia law?
To safeguard our rights there must be one law for all and no religious courts
* Maryam Namazie
*
o Maryam Namazie
o guardian.co.uk, Monday 5 July 2010 14.18 BST
o Article history
Gita Sahgal Gita Sahgal says there is active support for sharia laws because it is limited to denying women rights in the family. Photograph: Richard Saker
The recent global day against the imminent stoning of Sakine Mohammadi-Ashtiani in Iran for adultery is an example of the outrage sparked by the brutality associated with sharia law's penal code.
What of its civil code though – which the Muslim Council of Britain's Shaykh Ibrahim Mogra describes as "small aspects" that concern "marriage, divorce, inheritance, custody of children"? According to human rights campaigner Gita Sahgal, "there is active support for sharia laws precisely because it is limited to denying women rights in the family. No hands are being cut off, so there can't be a problem …"
Now a report, Sharia Law in Britain: A Threat to One Law for All and Equal Rights, reveals the adverse effect of sharia courts on family law. Under sharia's civil code, a woman's testimony is worth half of a man's. A man can divorce his wife by repudiation, whereas a woman must give justifications, some of which are difficult to prove. Child custody reverts to the father at a preset age; women who remarry lose custody of their children even before then; and sons inherit twice the share of daughters.
There has been much controversy about Muslim arbitration tribunals, which have attracted attention because they operate as tribunals under the Arbitration Act, making their rulings binding in UK law.
But sharia councils, which are charities, are equally harmful since their mediation differs little from arbitration. Sharia councils will frequently ask people to sign an agreement to abide by their decisions. Councils call themselves courts and the presiding imams are judges. There is neither control over the appointment of these judges nor an independent monitoring mechanism. People often do not have access to legal advice and representation. Proceedings are not recorded, nor are there any searchable legal judgements. Nor is there any real right to appeal.
There is also danger to those at risk of domestic violence. In one study, four out of 10 women attending sharia courts were party to civil injunctions against their husbands.
"In this way, these privatised legal processes were ignoring not only state law intervention and due process but providing little protection and safety for the women. Furthermore … husbands used this opportunity to negotiate reconciliation, financial settlements for divorce, and access to children. Settlements which in effect were being discussed under the shadow of law."
An example of the kind of decision that is contrary to UK law and public policy is the custody of children. Under British law, the child's best interest is the court's paramount consideration. In a sharia court the custody of children reverts to the father at a preset age regardless of the circumstances. In divorce proceedings, too, civil law takes into account the merits of the case and divides assets based on the needs and intentions of both parties. Under sharia law, only men have the right to unilateral divorce. If a woman manages to obtain a divorce without her husband's consent, she will lose the sum of money (or dowry) that was agreed to at the time of marriage.
There is an assumption that those who attend sharia courts do so voluntarily and that unfair decisions can be challenged. Since much of sharia law is contrary to British law and public policy, in theory they would be unlikely to be upheld in a British court. In reality, women are often pressured by their families into going to these courts and adhering to unfair decisions and may lack knowledge of their rights under British law. Moreover, refusal to settle a dispute in a sharia court could lead to to threats, intimidation or isolation.
With the rise in the sharia courts' acceptability, discrimination is further institutionalised with some law firms offering clients "conventional" representation alongside sharia law advice.
As long as sharia courts are allowed to make rulings on family law, women will be pressured into accepting decisions which are prejudicial.
The report recommends abolishing the courts by initiating a human rights challenge and amending the Arbitration Act as Canada's Arbitration Act was amended in 2005 to exclude religious arbitration.
The demand for the abolition of sharia courts in Britain, as elsewhere, is not an attack on people's right to religion; it is a defence of human rights, especially since the imposition of sharia courts is a demand of Islamism to restrict citizens' rights.
Rights, justice, inclusion, equality and respect are for people, not for beliefs and parallel legal systems. To safeguard the rights and freedoms of all those living in Britain, there must be one secular law for all and no religious courts.
Maryam Namazie is a rights activist, commentator and broadcaster and spokesperson of Iran Solidarity and One Law for All
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Why is this post in the "Islam in Europe" thread instead of the Sharia thread?
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The original quotes were in this thread.
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http://islamineurope.blogspot.com/20...stockholm.html
Quote:
A man blew himself up in a suicide attack in central Stockholm this evening surrounded by Christmas shoppers. A car exploded just minutes earlier on a nearby street, injuring two people.
The man carried six pipe-bombs, but only one exploded. In addition he had a backpack filled with nails, and a possible additional bomb.
According to witnesses, the man shouted something in Arabic before he detonated the bombs.
The bomber was the only one killed in the attack. Several people nearby went into shock and suffered hearing loss.
The bombs detonated at Bryggargatan street. According to one source, if he would have blown up on the nearby Drottninggatan street, it would have been a massacre.
Approximately ten minutes before the explosions occurred, Swedish news agency TT received an email, also addressed to Säpo, in which a reached out to “Sweden and the Swedish people”.
He cites Sweden’s silence surrounding the cartoons by Swedish Lars Vilks which portray the prophet Mohammed as a dog, the Swedish troops in Afghanistan, saying in audio files attached to the email that “now your children, daughters and sisters die like our brothers’ and sisters’ children die”.
“Our actions will speak for themselves. As long as you don’t stop your ward against Islam and degrading the prophet and your stupid support of that pig Vilks,” the man said.
The man also urges all Muslims in Sweden to “stop sucking up to and degrading”. He concludes the message with yet another call to “all the mujahedeen in Europe and Sweden”.
“Now it’s time to act, don’t wait any longer. Fear no one, don’t fear prison, don’t fear death.”
The message contained audio files in both Swedish and Arabic. The audio files do not link the man to any organization. The man also says that he's been to the Middle East and asks his family to forgive him for lying to them. "I never went to the Middle East to work or earn money. I went there for Jihad."
The email was also sent to Säpo, the Swedish Security service. They did not see the mail before the explosion.
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**They must be christians, because the bible is more violent than the koran, or so i've been told. Oh, and jihad means "warm woolen mittens and whiskers on kittens", or something to that effect....
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/terror-plot-foiled-britain-12438300
Terror Plot Foiled in Britain
12 men suspected of planning to set off a number of bombs are under arrest.
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/harry-potter-actress-beaten-called-a-prostitute-by-family-for-seeing-non-muslim/
Harry Potter Actress Beaten, Called a Prostitute by Family for Seeing Non-Muslim
* Posted on December 20, 2010 at 6:53pm by Meredith Jessup Meredith Jessup
Afshan Azad, the 22-year-old British actress who portrayed Padma Patil, a classmate of Harry Potter in the blockbuster Hollywood films, was reportedly beaten, called a ‘whore’ and threatened with death by members of her own family after dating a young, non-Muslim man.
According to the UK’s Daily Mail, the young actress was assaulted and called a ‘prostitute’ after she met with a young Hindu man — a potential relationship that apparently angered her father and brother. After her family members threatened to kill her, Azad reportedly fled the family’s home through her bedroom window. The movie star is apparently so frightened of her brother and father, she has refused to confront them in court.
Both men were charged with making threats to kill her and her brother was also charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm on his sister.
Instead of both going on trial today, the prosecution decided to accept a guilty plea of assault by her brother, and both men were formally found not guilty of making threats to kill. …
Richard Vardon QC, prosecuting, told the court: ‘The incident took place on Saturday 21 of May at the home address of the family in Longsight, Manchester.
‘The prosecution allegation in essence is she was the victim of a wholly unnecessary and unpleasant assault by her brother.
‘The reason for the assault, apparently her association with a Hindu young man, that apparently being disapproved of by her family who are Muslim.
‘Specifically she spoke not only of assault but also threats to kill, made jointly by her father and brother.’
According to the prosecutor, the father was awoken by his son when he shouted, “Sort out your daughter! She’s a slag (slang for ‘whore’)!”
‘[The brother] continued to further assault her, in disputed Bengali, shouting, “Just kill her!”
‘The assault continued. There was a discussion where she was being called a prostitute.’
The threats to kill her apparently continued, the witness told police in a statement.
Reading from the victim’s statement, Mr Vardon added: ‘My father began saying he would do it, a reference to kill her, as he did not want his sons to have her blood on their hands and he would do time for it.
‘Then she began to feel very scared.
‘Having gone to the police in respect of these matters she made a statement to the police on 22nd of May.
‘Part of her version of events was that he was going to force the complainant into a forced marriage of some sort.’
But, according to the prosecutor’s report, the young actress was too afraid of her own family members to press formal assault charges:
After going to police she ‘made it plain’ to officers and lawyers that she did not want any action taken against her family, or the arrest of her father or brother otherwise it would put her in ‘genuine danger’.
‘She came to police for help and support, and the arrest of her family members would not be of assistance,’ Mr Vardon added.
The prosecutor said she later made ‘retraction statements’ to police and reiterated her lack of willingness to support any prosecution.
She also ‘put a gloss’ on her father’s words by saying she found it hard to understand his heavy Bengali accent so could not be sure what he had said.
Both men were found not guilty on death threats and the son pleaded guilty to one count of assault, but was bailed out and awaits formal sentencing in January and has been instructed not to contact his sister. Both men have been ordered to “keep the peace” on parole.
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I love plays. This story reminds me of West Side Story and Romeo and Juliet.
Tragic.... This story is too.... Interesting reading...
Oh yeah, this is real life, but not much different. Except they're Islamic. Is that why it was posted?
Or are you a fan of Afshan Azad?
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Just showing how their time in the UK obviously made them moderate muslims, they didn't just kill her outright.
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1340599/WikiLeaks-1-3-British-Muslim-students-killing-Islam-40-want-Sharia-law.html#ixzz18nRU3RD7
The latest WikiLeaks revelation: 1 in 3 British Muslim students back killing for Islam and 40% want Sharia law
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 3:24 PM on 22nd December 2010
* Reaching out to UK Muslim community was 'top priority' for U.S.
Around a third of young British Muslims favour killing in the name of Islam, according to a survey revealed by the WikiLeaks' publication of U.S. diplomatic cables.
A survey of 600 Muslim students at 30 universities throughout Britain found that 32 per cent of Muslim respondents believed killing in the name of religion is justified.
A U.S. diplomatic cable from January 2009 quoted a poll by the Centre for Social Cohesion as saying 54 per cent wanted a Muslim party to represent their world view in Parliament and 40 per cent want Muslims in the UK to be under Sharia law.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRmgI_WXff0&feature=player_embedded
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Glad to see some old time Germanic spunk..... Is it to late though?
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No, it's not too late. Still, the sooner the problem is addressed, the better.
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Demographics present a real problem here. The German birth rate is far below replacement levels (anyone have the exact number handy? Perhaps it can be found in the "Demographics" thread?) and the Turkish and Arab rate is well above it IIRC.
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As has been pointed out, the islamification of europe is the result of europe's post-modern, post-religious, socialist path. It's a symptom, not the cause of europe's decline.
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Dutch offer Bosnians monthly repatriation benefits
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Bosnia: Dutch offer Bosnians monthly repatriation benefits
ultimo aggiornamento: 05 gennaio, ore 17:46
The Netherlands has offered life benefits to Bosnians who settled in the country in the wake of the 1992-1995 war, if they decide to return home, Bosnian Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees said on Wednesday.
Sarajevo 5 Jan. (AKI) - The Netherlands has offered life benefits to Bosnians who settled in the country in the wake of the 1992-1995 war, if they decide to return home, Bosnian Ministry for Human Rghts and Refugees said on Wednesday.
The ministry said it was informed by Netherlands authorities that the Dutch government would pay travelling expenses to returnees of up to 1,500 euros and life benefits to persons over 45 years of age.
The monthly benefits for individuals would be 470 euros, or 670 euros per married couple, the ministry said.
It is estimated that some 30,000 Bosnians settled in the Netherlands after the war and many have failed to integrate into Dutch society.
The Dutch government said it was a “quality solution for all foreigners who have failed to integrate into Dutch society”.
The participants in the repatriation program would be allowed a one year trial period, after which they would have the right to return to the Netherlands. After that period, they would have to renounce Dutch citizenship and lose residential rights, the government said.
In view of Bosnia’s crippled economy, huge unemployment and average monthly wage below 300 euros, it is generally expected that the repatriation program would yield good results.
http://www.adnkronos.com/IGN/Aki/English/Security/Bosnia-Dutch-offer-Bosnians-monthly-repatriation-benefits_311499932413.html
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Very rarely it seems that a leader tells the truth, straight on. I did not want to let the U.K Prime Minister's speech of last week go by without mention: http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/speeches-and-transcripts/2011/02/pms-speech-at-munich-security-conference-60293
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100074881/david-cameron-versus-the-islamists-the-prime-minister-throws-down-the-gauntlet-to-a-deadly-enemy/
We will not defeat terrorism simply by the action we take outside our borders. Europe needs to wake up to what is happening in our own countries… We have got to get to the root of the problem, and we need to be absolutely clear on where the origins of where these terrorist attacks lie. That is the existence of an ideology, Islamist extremism.
… And if we are to defeat this threat, I believe it is time to turn the page on the failed policies of the past. So first, instead of ignoring this extremist ideology, we – as governments and as societies – have got to confront it, in all its forms. And second, instead of encouraging people to live apart, we need a clear sense of shared national identity that is open to everyone.
...
Governments must also be shrewder in dealing with those that, while not violent, are in some cases part of the problem. We need to think much harder about who it’s in the public interest to work with. Some organisations that seek to present themselves as a gateway to the Muslim community are showered with public money despite doing little to combat extremism. As others have observed, this is like turning to a right-wing fascist party to fight a violent white supremacist movement.
So we should properly judge these organisations: do they believe in universal human rights – including for women and people of other faiths? Do they believe in equality of all before the law? Do they believe in democracy and the right of people to elect their own government? Do they encourage integration or separation? These are the sorts of questions we need to ask. Fail these tests and the presumption should be not to engage with organisations – so, no public money, no sharing of platforms with ministers at home.
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Date unknown: French police avoid near lynching by muslim youth, flee"muslim"zone. DRM Irelandhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2TArjNeqzw
O'Reilly bit (date unknown) on communist-Islamo fascist alliance of convenience
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3il1TnYxSyE&NR=1
For the record, I don't have a terribly high opinion of O'Reilly
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Imam who believes in evolution retracts statements
Many British Muslims do not believe in Darwin's theory of evolution
An imam has retracted statements about evolution and the right of Muslim women not to cover their hair after death threats were made against him.
Dr Usama Hasan, a science lecturer, has voluntarily suspended his role in taking Friday prayers at Leyton Mosque in east London.
He said he went too far in the way he defended the theory of evolution.
He acknowledged many British Muslims believe in creationism, adding that he intended only to begin a debate.
Dr Hasan - a senior lecturer at Middlesex University - used an opinion piece on the Guardian newspaper's website in 2008 to suggest Darwin's theory of evolution was not incompatible with the teaching of Islam.
He wrote that there were many Muslim biologists who had no doubt about the essential correctness of evolutionary theory and he added: "Many believers in God have no problem with an obvious solution: that God created man via evolution."
'Obscuring clear scientific thinking'
Dr Hasan wrote: "Snazzy websites, videos and books produced by fundamentalist Muslim 'creationists' such as those at www.harunyahya.com, are obscuring clear scientific thinking."
He also wrote: "One problem is that many Muslims retain the simple picture that God created Adam from clay, much as a potter makes a statue, and then breathed into the lifeless statue and lo! it became a living human.
"This is a children's madrasa-level understanding and Muslims really have to move on as adults and intellectuals."
In a separate article he claimed the requirement for women to cover their hair in public was cultural in origin, and that British Muslims should have the choice.
The BBC's Religious Affairs Correspondent Robert Pigott said his remarks three years ago have led to fatwas denouncing him from Muslim scholars in several countries.
More recently, it was reported that he was subjected to death threats when he delivered a lecture in January and that a leaflet campaign had been mounted against him.
Dr Hasan, who is vice chairman of Leyton Mosque - which houses one of the country's largest sharia courts - has agreed he went too far in suggesting that the Adam of the creation story would have had human parents.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12661477
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The "vast majority of peaceful muslims" should be arriving any second to offer their support and protection to the imam.
Yup, any time now.....
Where is Andrew to again assert his claim about the scientific superiority of islamic though?
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'Wear a headscarf or we will kill you': How the 'London Taliban' is targeting women and gays in bid to impose sharia law
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 11:03 PM on 17th April 2011
Women who do not wear headscarves are being threatened with violence and even death by Islamic extremists intent on imposing sharia law on parts of Britain, it was claimed today.
Other targets of the 'Talibanesque thugs', being investigated by police in the Tower Hamlets area of London, include homosexuals.
Stickers have been plastered on public walls stating: 'Gay free zone. Verily Allah is severe in punishment'.
Troubled: Whitechapel in east London is at the centre of the hate campaign by the 'London Taliban' (file picture)
Posters for H&M which feature women in bikinis and a racy poster for a Bollywood film have been defaced.
More...Persecuted for his cross: Electrician told he faces the sack for Christian symbol on his van dashboard
It is believed Muslim extremists are behind a spate of attacks being investigated by police, according to the Sunday Times.
How they want to see women: 'Talibanesque thugs' have been threatening women including non-Muslims with violence for not wearing a headscarf
An Asian woman who works in a pharmacy in east London was told to dress more modestly and wear a veil or the shop would be boycotted.
When she went to the media to talk about the abuse she suffered, a man later entered the pharmacy and told her: 'If you keep doing these things, we are going to kill you'.
The 31-year-old, who is not a practising Muslim, said she has since been told to take holiday by the pharmacy owners and now fears she may lose her job.
She said: 'Why should I wear a hijab (headscarf) or burqa? I haven't done anything wrong.'
Other incidents reported include the placing of stickers across the white-minority borough which state it is a 'gay-free zone' and the daubing of paint on posters for clothing shop H&M featuring women in bikinis.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1377780/London-Taliban-targeting-women-gays-bid-impose-sharia-law.html
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8570506/Police-covered-up-violent-campaign-to-turn-London-area-Islamic.html
Police 'covered up' violent campaign to turn London area 'Islamic'
Police have been accused of “covering up” a campaign of abuse, threats and violence aimed at “Islamicising” an area of London.
By Andrew Gilligan
8:10AM BST 12 Jun 2011
Victims say that officers in the borough of Tower Hamlets have ignored or downplayed outbreaks of hate crime, and suppressed evidence implicating Muslims in them, because they fear being accused of racism.
The claims come as four Tower Hamlets Muslims were jailed for at least 19 years for attacking a local white teacher who gave religious studies lessons to Muslim girls.
The Sunday Telegraph has uncovered more than a dozen other cases in Tower Hamlets where both Muslims and non-Muslims have been threatened or beaten for behaviour deemed to breach fundamentalist “Islamic norms.”
One victim, Mohammed Monzur Rahman, said he was left partially blind and with a dislocated shoulder after being attacked by a mob in Cannon Street Road, Shadwell, for smoking during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan last year.
“Two guys stopped me in the street and asked me why I was smoking,” he said. “I just carried on, and before I knew another dozen guys came and jumped me. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in hospital.”
“He reported it to the police and they just said they couldn’t track anyone down and there were no witnesses,” said Ansar Ahmed Ullah, a local anti-extremism campaigner who has advised Mr Rahman. “But there is CCTV in that street and it is lined with shops and people.”
Teachers in several local schools have told The Sunday Telegraph that they feel “under pressure” from local Muslim extremists, who have mounted campaigns through both parents and pupils – and, in one case, through another teacher - to enforce the compulsory wearing of the veil for Muslim girls. “It was totally orchestrated,” said one teacher. “The atmosphere became extremely unpleasant for a while, with constant verbal aggression from both the children and some parents against the head over this issue.”
One teacher at the Bigland Green primary school, Nicholas Kafouris, last year took the council to an employment tribunal, saying he was forced out of his job for complaining that Muslim pupils were engaging in racist and anti-Semitic bullying and saying they supported terrorism. Mr Kafouris lost his case, though the school did admit that insufficient action had been taken against the behaviour of some pupils. The number of assaults on teachers in Tower Hamlets resulting in exclusions has more than doubled from 190 in 2007/8 to 383 in 2008/9, the latest available year, though not all are necessarily race-related.
Tower Hamlets’ gay community has become a particular target of extremists. Homophobic crimes in the borough have risen by 80 per cent since 2007/8, and by 21 per cent over the last year, a period when there was a slight drop in London as a whole.
Last year, a mob of 30 young Muslims stormed a local gay pub, the George and Dragon, beating and abusing patrons. Many customers of the pub told The Sunday Telegraph that they have been attacked and harassed by local Muslim youths. In 2008 a 20-year-old student, Oli Hemsley, was left permanently paralysed after an attack by a group of young Muslims outside the pub. Only one of his assailants has been caught and jailed.
Even during meetings of the local council, prominent supporters of Tower Hamlets’ controversial directly-elected mayor, Lutfur Rahman – dropped by the Labour Party for his links to Islamic fundamentalism - have persistently targeted gay councillors with homophobic abuse and intimidation from the public gallery.
The Labour leader, Josh Peck, was attacked with animal noises and cries of “Unnatural acts! Unnatural acts!” when he rose to speak. The Conservative leader, Peter Golds, was repeatedly heckled as “Mrs Golds” and a “poofter”.
Mr Golds said: “If that happened in a football stadium, arrests would have taken place. I have complained, twice, to the police, and have heard nothing. A Labour colleague waited three hours at the police station before being told that nothing would be done. The police are afraid of being accused of Islamophobia. Another Labour councillor said that the Met is now the reverse of what it must have been like in the 1970s, with a complete lack of interest when white people make complaints of harassment and hatred.”
In February this year, dozens of stickers appeared across Tower Hamlets quoting the Koran, declaring the borough a “gay-free zone” and stating that “verily Allah is severe in punishment.”
The Sunday Telegraph has learned that during a routine stop-and-search at the time police found a young Muslim man with a number of the stickers in his possession. He was released without charge on the advice of the Crown Prosecution Service. Police also had CCTV images of a second unidentified Muslim youth posting the stickers at a local railway station, but refused to release the pictures for several weeks.
Peter Tatchell, the gay human rights campaigner, said: “The police said no-one was allowed to talk publicly about this because they didn’t want to upset the Muslim community. We’ve made very clear the difference between the Muslim community as a whole and these particular fundamentalists, and the fact that the police wouldn’t publicly say what they knew was an absolute disgrace.”
When the CCTV footage was finally released, in early April, the culprit was quickly identified as 18-year-old Mohammed Hasnath, who last week pleaded guilty to a public order offence and was fined £100. Jack Gilbert, of the Rainbow Hamlets gay group, said a more serious charge should have been brought. “The vast majority of the community saw the material as threatening, but the police were not willing to accept it as threatening,” he said.
Hasnath’s “interests” on his Facebook page include Khalid Yasin, a hate preacher who describes Jews as “filth” and teaches that homosexuals must be killed. Yasin has spoken at least four times since 2007 at the East London Mosque, Tower Hamlets’ most prominent Muslim institution. Although the mosque claims to be against extremism, discrimination, and violence, it has hosted dozens of hate, extremist or terrorist preachers and also hosted a “Spot The Fag” contest.
In the same week that it issued a press release condemning the anti-gay stickers, the mosque was also due to host a “gala dinner” with Uthman Lateef, a homophobic hate preacher.
The mosque is controlled by a fundamentalist group, the Islamic Forum of Europe, which says that it is dedicated to changing the “very infrastructure of society, its institutions, its culture, its political order and its creed ... from ignorance to Islam.”
The IFE’s community affairs co-ordinator, Azad Ali, is chairman of the Muslim Safety Forum, an organisation officially recognised by the Met as its “principal [liaison] body in relation to Muslim community safety.” Mr Golds said: “This relationship may explain the police’s feebleness.” The IFE also has close links to the Tower Hamlets mayor, Mr Rahman.
There is no suggestion that any mosque official has been personally involved in any act of violence or intimidation. However, in an email obtained by The Sunday Telegraph, one IFE activist, Abu Talha, used the name of the group to threaten a local Muslim woman who ran a dating agency.
“I am asking you kindly to stop these activities as it goes against the teachings of Islam,” he wrote. “Let me remind you that I have a huge network of brothers and sisters who would be willing to help me take this further…If by tomorrow you haven’t changed your mind … then the campaign will begin.” The dating agency has now closed and the woman has left the area.
Mr Ahmed Ullah said: “There has been a gradual increase in these kinds of attacks, that’s for sure.” A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: “When any allegation of crime is made to us, we investigate appropriately. We will always take action against hate crime in accordance with, and within the confines of, the law.”
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Dewsbury, Bradford and Tower Hamlets ... where Islamic extremists want to establish independent states with sharia law
Medieval 'emirates' would operate outside British rule
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 11:45 AM on 6th July 2011
Islamic extremists have called on British Muslims to establish three independent states within the UK.
The notorious Muslims Against the Crusades (MAC) group have named Yorkshire towns Bradford and Dewsbury and Tower Hamlets in East London as testbeds for blanket sharia rule.
The medieval 'emirates' would operate entirely outside British law, according to a document on the MAC website.
Veiled women in the London borough of Tower Hamlets which has seen a rise in extremism. The Muslims Against the Crusades group says the medieval 'emirates' would function as autonomous territories and operate entirely outside British law, according to a document published on their website
Where the group envisages the autonomous areas being set up
The MAC group, led by Abu Assadullah, was set up last year and has become notorious because of its violent protests, most provocatively burning poppies during the Remembrance Day silence.
Under the heading 'Muslims should set up Islamic emirates in the UK', MAC says: 'We suggest it is time that areas with large Muslim populations declare an emirate delineating that Muslims trying to live within this area are trying to live by the sharia as much as possible with their own courts and community watch and schools and even self sufficient trade.
More...Snatched and shot in the head: Horrific fate of British soldier executed by the Taliban
Cameron calls for Taliban to enter talks as he says Northern Ireland shows even 'those who maim and bomb can join the peace process'
'Likely areas for these projects might be Dewsbury or Bradford or Tower Hamlets to begin with.
'In time we can envisage that the whole of the sharia might one day be implemented starting with these enclaves.'
The call is likely to cause anger among moderate Muslims and community leaders in the areas concerned.
Ian Greenwood, leader of Bradford Council, said people would 'not allow extremists to provoke them into violence'.
A general view of Bradford in Yorkshire which Muslims Against the Crusades (MAC) group have named as one of three testbeds for blanket sharia rule
London 7/7 bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan lived in Dewsbury, which has battled to diffuse extremism in recent years. In 2007, it was alleged that a number of Muslims in Dewsbury were running an illegal Islamic court from a school and similar claims have been made in Tower Hamlets and Bradford.
Tower Hamlets council was last year accused of falling under the control of extremist groups following a documentary by the Daily Telegraph journalist Andrew Gilligan.
The plan is part of the MAC's response to the government's revised Prevent strategy to combat Islamic extremism.
In its document, called Islamic Prevent, the fanatics also call for an end to CCTV cameras in and around mosques.
It says: 'Muslims must get rid of all CCTV cameras from Muslim institutions. Sadly many mosques have today adopted CCTV cameras to spy on Muslims on behalf of the police and local authorities.'
Other inflammatory instructions include demanding the release of all Muslim prisoners, a ban on Muslims joining the police or armed forces and a rejection of British democracy.
The document ends: 'We can conclude that measures by the UK government are nothing more than an attempt by them to strip the Muslim community of their Islamic identity and to integrate them into the non-Islamic way of life.'
The revised Prevent programme, announced last month, is aimed at tackling home-grown terrorism and radicalisation of students.
It demands stricter controls on extremist literature and a more proactive approach by universities to prevent extremism.
Councillor Greenwood added: 'Extremism is less likely to emerge when people get the opportunity to come together.
'Local voluntary, community and faith groups, the council, and other public and private sector partners, all work together in Bradford to strengthen community relations and encourage better understanding and respect between all our communities.
'We believe that this is one of the best ways to build a tolerant society in which extremism plays no part.'
Tower Hamlets and Kirklees Council, the local authority for Dewsbury, refused to comment.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2011433/Islamic-extremists-set-independent-states-UK-fall-Shariah-law.html
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There will be an "independent states with sharia law" in East London, England and "would operate outside British rule". :?
Shocked, I read further. According to the official government announcement, I noticed this transition is scheduled to happen at exactly the same time Pigs are scheduled to be flying over Parliament.
"Who could have seen this coming?"
:-D
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Yes JDN, the jihadists need useful idiots like you to live in denial until it's too late.
On Geert Wilders's Acquittal
by Bat Ye'or
July 5, 2011 at 5:00 am
http://www.hudson-ny.org/2239/on-geert-wilders-acquittal
The acquittal of Geert Wilders has deeper meanings for Europe's future than it appears at first glance. As Geert Wilders said: it is a victory for truth. But what does truth mean in international policy? Do we not see that in Eurabia the words 'justice and peace' are travesties for submission to injustice and terrorism? Here one needs to know the extensive system of lies spread at every political and cultural level in Eurabia, to understand the Copernican revolution achieved by Geert Wilders. A victory performed by a single unarmed man, constantly threatened by death and whose only defence was his courageous and unbending commitment to say the truth. A truth buried by the whole Eurabian transnational and international system created since the 1970s.
Imposed on Europeans by controlling networks such a system emanates from the European Commission whose masters are no other than the political leaders of the European governments. The EU, a mastodon Kafkaesque structure, consuming astronomical sums, often enables European leaders to implement an authoritarian policy escaping people's awareness. Rivalries for power, ambitions, ideology, oppose Eurocrats to those they disdainfully call "racist, populist, xenophobic" opponents to their globalist Islamophile ideology. Yet there is more than usual policy into these clashes. There is what Wilders calls: the truth, a human moral element.
To understand the tremendous revolution achieved by Geert Wilders, one has to realise that the foundational stone of the Eurabian mind consists of two principles stated in article 22 of the 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam:
a. Everyone shall have the right to express his opinion freely in such manner as would not be contrary to the principles of the Shari'a.
b. Everyone shall have the right to advocate what is right, and propagate what is good, and warn against what is wrong and evil according to the norms of Islamic Shari'a.
Europe, while claiming to defend human rights has, in effect, adopted these principles and obeys a fundamental law of dhimmitude: dhimmis are forbidden on pain of death to propagate ideas considered hostile to Islam. Qadi 'Iyad (d. 1149), the famous Andalusian Imam, prolific author and scholar, described explicitly blasphemy. It consists in cursing Muhammad, blaming him or attributing imperfection to him, to his religion, whether in the form of a curse, contempt or belittling him or maligning him. He stated that any Jew or Christian who reviled the Prophet should be beheaded or burned, unless he converts. Under the pressure of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, Eurabia has adopted these Islamic blasphemy rules.
The dhimmi attitude that has developed among European intellectuals, politicians, and the clergy requires the Western public to conform to one of the basic rules of dhimmitude: the express prohibition on Christians and Jews to criticize Islamic history and doctrine. This means that shari'a law has been imposed on Europeans by their own dhimmi leaders in their outreach to Islam. No wonder that since the 1970s Eurocrats censor any criticism of jihad and incriminate Israel's right to exist as an aggression, triggering wars and terrorism. The denial of the jihadist current trend by Europe, its compliance to shari'a laws by prosecuting and punishing its own citizens for criticizing them, constitute the basic issues of Wilders trial. By exposing them, he has overturned EU's policy.
In this tremendous fight for truth, Wilders is not alone. Many sacrificed their position and reputation, many despaired such as the sociologist Jacques Ellul (d. 1994) who saw the return of Nazism in a machinery disguising its Fascist authoritarianism and antisemitism with the words 'peace, justice, love, human rights'.
Can Wilders and his courageous supporters – each fighting in his own country against their dhimmi leaders – succeed in bringing some morality into a sordid policy of lies, corruption, hate and cowardice? Or could this success for truth be just a moment of light and hope before being crushed? Will Muslims themselves take this opportunity offered by the sacrifices of Wilders and the young anti-racist militants for freedom of speech, to ponder upon their own history of a long genocidal jihad over four continents with its trail of enslavement and dispossession of people? We are waiting to hear them acknowledging that jihadist ideology is criminal and that dhimmitude is a dehumanising oppression.
Now, the world sees the fanatical and revolting persecution of Copts and other Christians in Islamic countries, and the jihadist genocidal hatred against Israel. And Now, Jews, Christians, Hindus and others victims of Islamic wars, who suffered dispossession, apartheid, deportations, humiliations, child abductions – crimes perpetrated altogether within the context of dhimmitude – are hoping for a reconciliation that can only come with Muslim acknowledgement of a criminal supremacist ideology and its rejection.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8570506/Police-covered-up-violent-campaign-to-turn-London-area-Islamic.html
Police 'covered up' violent campaign to turn London area 'Islamic'
Police have been accused of “covering up” a campaign of abuse, threats and violence aimed at “Islamicising” an area of London.
By Andrew Gilligan
8:10AM BST 12 Jun 2011
Victims say that officers in the borough of Tower Hamlets have ignored or downplayed outbreaks of hate crime, and suppressed evidence implicating Muslims in them, because they fear being accused of racism.
The claims come as four Tower Hamlets Muslims were jailed for at least 19 years for attacking a local white teacher who gave religious studies lessons to Muslim girls.
The Sunday Telegraph has uncovered more than a dozen other cases in Tower Hamlets where both Muslims and non-Muslims have been threatened or beaten for behaviour deemed to breach fundamentalist “Islamic norms.”
One victim, Mohammed Monzur Rahman, said he was left partially blind and with a dislocated shoulder after being attacked by a mob in Cannon Street Road, Shadwell, for smoking during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan last year.
“Two guys stopped me in the street and asked me why I was smoking,” he said. “I just carried on, and before I knew another dozen guys came and jumped me. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in hospital.”
“He reported it to the police and they just said they couldn’t track anyone down and there were no witnesses,” said Ansar Ahmed Ullah, a local anti-extremism campaigner who has advised Mr Rahman. “But there is CCTV in that street and it is lined with shops and people.”
Teachers in several local schools have told The Sunday Telegraph that they feel “under pressure” from local Muslim extremists, who have mounted campaigns through both parents and pupils – and, in one case, through another teacher - to enforce the compulsory wearing of the veil for Muslim girls. “It was totally orchestrated,” said one teacher. “The atmosphere became extremely unpleasant for a while, with constant verbal aggression from both the children and some parents against the head over this issue.”
One teacher at the Bigland Green primary school, Nicholas Kafouris, last year took the council to an employment tribunal, saying he was forced out of his job for complaining that Muslim pupils were engaging in racist and anti-Semitic bullying and saying they supported terrorism. Mr Kafouris lost his case, though the school did admit that insufficient action had been taken against the behaviour of some pupils. The number of assaults on teachers in Tower Hamlets resulting in exclusions has more than doubled from 190 in 2007/8 to 383 in 2008/9, the latest available year, though not all are necessarily race-related.
Tower Hamlets’ gay community has become a particular target of extremists. Homophobic crimes in the borough have risen by 80 per cent since 2007/8, and by 21 per cent over the last year, a period when there was a slight drop in London as a whole.
Last year, a mob of 30 young Muslims stormed a local gay pub, the George and Dragon, beating and abusing patrons. Many customers of the pub told The Sunday Telegraph that they have been attacked and harassed by local Muslim youths. In 2008 a 20-year-old student, Oli Hemsley, was left permanently paralysed after an attack by a group of young Muslims outside the pub. Only one of his assailants has been caught and jailed.
Even during meetings of the local council, prominent supporters of Tower Hamlets’ controversial directly-elected mayor, Lutfur Rahman – dropped by the Labour Party for his links to Islamic fundamentalism - have persistently targeted gay councillors with homophobic abuse and intimidation from the public gallery.
The Labour leader, Josh Peck, was attacked with animal noises and cries of “Unnatural acts! Unnatural acts!” when he rose to speak. The Conservative leader, Peter Golds, was repeatedly heckled as “Mrs Golds” and a “poofter”.
Mr Golds said: “If that happened in a football stadium, arrests would have taken place. I have complained, twice, to the police, and have heard nothing. A Labour colleague waited three hours at the police station before being told that nothing would be done. The police are afraid of being accused of Islamophobia. Another Labour councillor said that the Met is now the reverse of what it must have been like in the 1970s, with a complete lack of interest when white people make complaints of harassment and hatred.”
In February this year, dozens of stickers appeared across Tower Hamlets quoting the Koran, declaring the borough a “gay-free zone” and stating that “verily Allah is severe in punishment.”
The Sunday Telegraph has learned that during a routine stop-and-search at the time police found a young Muslim man with a number of the stickers in his possession. He was released without charge on the advice of the Crown Prosecution Service. Police also had CCTV images of a second unidentified Muslim youth posting the stickers at a local railway station, but refused to release the pictures for several weeks.
Peter Tatchell, the gay human rights campaigner, said: “The police said no-one was allowed to talk publicly about this because they didn’t want to upset the Muslim community. We’ve made very clear the difference between the Muslim community as a whole and these particular fundamentalists, and the fact that the police wouldn’t publicly say what they knew was an absolute disgrace.”
When the CCTV footage was finally released, in early April, the culprit was quickly identified as 18-year-old Mohammed Hasnath, who last week pleaded guilty to a public order offence and was fined £100. Jack Gilbert, of the Rainbow Hamlets gay group, said a more serious charge should have been brought. “The vast majority of the community saw the material as threatening, but the police were not willing to accept it as threatening,” he said.
Hasnath’s “interests” on his Facebook page include Khalid Yasin, a hate preacher who describes Jews as “filth” and teaches that homosexuals must be killed. Yasin has spoken at least four times since 2007 at the East London Mosque, Tower Hamlets’ most prominent Muslim institution. Although the mosque claims to be against extremism, discrimination, and violence, it has hosted dozens of hate, extremist or terrorist preachers and also hosted a “Spot The Fag” contest.
In the same week that it issued a press release condemning the anti-gay stickers, the mosque was also due to host a “gala dinner” with Uthman Lateef, a homophobic hate preacher.
The mosque is controlled by a fundamentalist group, the Islamic Forum of Europe, which says that it is dedicated to changing the “very infrastructure of society, its institutions, its culture, its political order and its creed ... from ignorance to Islam.”
The IFE’s community affairs co-ordinator, Azad Ali, is chairman of the Muslim Safety Forum, an organisation officially recognised by the Met as its “principal [liaison] body in relation to Muslim community safety.” Mr Golds said: “This relationship may explain the police’s feebleness.” The IFE also has close links to the Tower Hamlets mayor, Mr Rahman.
There is no suggestion that any mosque official has been personally involved in any act of violence or intimidation. However, in an email obtained by The Sunday Telegraph, one IFE activist, Abu Talha, used the name of the group to threaten a local Muslim woman who ran a dating agency.
“I am asking you kindly to stop these activities as it goes against the teachings of Islam,” he wrote. “Let me remind you that I have a huge network of brothers and sisters who would be willing to help me take this further…If by tomorrow you haven’t changed your mind … then the campaign will begin.” The dating agency has now closed and the woman has left the area.
Mr Ahmed Ullah said: “There has been a gradual increase in these kinds of attacks, that’s for sure.” A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: “When any allegation of crime is made to us, we investigate appropriately. We will always take action against hate crime in accordance with, and within the confines of, the law.”
Pigs flying yet?
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"Europe, while claiming to defend human rights has, in effect, adopted these principles and obeys a fundamental law of dhimmitude: dhimmis are forbidden on pain of death to propagate ideas considered hostile to Islam."
Poppycock. What a bunch of rubbish.
GM - I think you see a Jihadist behind every tree and bush.
Maybe the police don't arrest every crime, they don't in LA either, but as your article pointed out, the police try to do their best.
"four Tower Hamlets Muslims were jailed for at least 19 years for attacking a local white teacher who gave religious studies lessons to Muslim girls.
And in contrast to your absurd post about "independent states with sharia law" in East London, England that "would operate outside British rule" that is the silliest thing I've read in a long time. It belongs in the humor section. NOT a forum seeking the truth.
Why not publish "the world is ending" story; it has more credibility than "independent states with Sharia law" in East London operating "outside British rule."
http://www.december212012.com/articles/news/French_cult_predicts_end_of_the_world_December_21_2012.htm
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/andrew-gilligan/7908273/Police-Muslim-forum-headed-by-Islamic-extremist.html
Andrew Gilligan
Police Muslim forum headed by Islamic extremist
An Islamic extremist who has described al-Qaeda as a "myth" and justified the killing of British troops in Iraq has been chosen as the main link between the Metropolitan Police and the Muslim community.
New Scotland Yard Photo: AP
By Andrew Gilligan
9:00PM BST 24 Jul 2010
Scotland Yard will now face pressure to renounce Azad Ali, the new chair of the Muslim Safety Forum, which is recognised by the Met under a formal written agreement as "the principal body in relation to Muslim community safety and security".
The deal says that the Met will "use the MSF as a consultation body to help formulate policy or practice". Mr Ali was the founding chair of the MSF in 2006, but left that job in 2008 and resigned entirely from the group last year after publicity over his extremist comments. Last week, he was quietly reappointed as its chairman.
Mr Ali is a senior official of the fundamentalist Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE), which works, in its own words, to create an Islamic state under sharia law in Europe. The IFE and the MSF share the same offices.
He has previously praised a key mentor of Osama bin Laden. Earlier this year, he was filmed by an undercover reporter from Channel 4's Dispatches stating: "Democracy, if it means not implementing the sharia, of course nobody agrees with that."
When the documentary was aired, Mr Ali attacked the reporter on the IFE's official radio station, saying: "We've got a picture of you and a lot more than you thought we had. We've tracked you down to different places. And if people are gonna turn what I've just said into a threat, that's their fault, innit?"
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Mr Ali's comments about terrorism were made on his official blog on the IFE website. Earlier this year, he lost a libel action against a newspaper which reported them. The judge, Mr Justice Eady, said that Mr Ali "was indeed taking the position that the killing of American and British troops in Iraq would be justified", describing his claim as "bound to fail" and having an "absence of reality".
Patrick Mercer, a Conservative MP and counterterrorism expert, said: "It beats me why the police should want to take the advice of this man. They should have nothing to do with him. I know for a fact that there are just as knowledgeable members of the Muslim community who do not share his subversive views."
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"Europe, while claiming to defend human rights has, in effect, adopted these principles and obeys a fundamental law of dhimmitude: dhimmis are forbidden on pain of death to propagate ideas considered hostile to Islam."
Poppycock. What a bunch of rubbish.
**Then why was Geert Wilders prosecuted?
GM - I think you see a Jihadist behind every tree and bush.
**No, I see what's happening. I see what your mindset has done to the once great state of California and is doing to this country.
Maybe the police don't arrest every crime, they don't in LA either, but as your article pointed out, the police try to do their best.
**Uh, no. The articles point out how political correctness handcuffs the police, allowing the lawless to rule the streets.
"four Tower Hamlets Muslims were jailed for at least 19 years for attacking a local white teacher who gave religious studies lessons to Muslim girls.
And in contrast to your absurd post about "independent states with sharia law" in East London, England that "would operate outside British rule" that is the silliest thing I've read in a long time. It belongs in the humor section. NOT a forum seeking the truth.
Why not publish "the world is ending" story; it has more credibility than "independent states with Sharia law" in East London operating "outside British rule."
http://www.december212012.com/articles/news/French_cult_predicts_end_of_the_world_December_21_2012.htm
**Yes, it's as silly as to suggest that the US DOJ under Obama would ship guns to drug cartels in Mexico to create a push for disarming Americans, right?
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/23/world/europe/23oslo.html?_r=2&hp
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/23/world/europe/23oslo.html?_r=2&hp
Wait, are we sure this wasn't the Tea Party or people upset about Obamacare?
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/23/world/europe/23oslo.html?_r=2&hp
Wait, are we sure this wasn't the Tea Party or people upset about Obamacare?
You were right, GM. It seems that the early reports of an aQ connected group claiming responsibility were wrong.
"A 32-year-old Norwegian was arrested and charged with terrorism, but police have not officially released his name. Local media has identified the man as Anders Behring Breivik, who has been described as a right-wing Christian fundamentalist."
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It is strange the only explanation that could make sense to us is an Islamic extreme religious motive, ... of course it's a perversion of any former sense of our logic that that would make any sense either.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/23/world/europe/23oslo.html?_r=2&hp
Wait, are we sure this wasn't the Tea Party or people upset about Obamacare?
You were right, GM. It seems that the early reports of an aQ connected group claiming responsibility were wrong.
"A 32-year-old Norwegian was arrested and charged with terrorism, but police have not officially released his name. Local media has identified the man as Anders Behring Breivik, who has been described as a right-wing Christian fundamentalist."
Well, I was going for a snarky shot at Mayor Bloomberg, expecting this to be another act by the religion of peace. However, I'll point out that until the investigation is completed, we really don't know all the aspects of the case.
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I have seen the "right-wiong fundamentalist" label as seemingly persuasively attacked as a smear by the Pravdas and that his true motive was pro-nationalist anti multi-culti.
In the context of Scandinavian politics, I understand multi-culti to assert a geographic concept of nationality as vs. a cultural one. In that all cultures are equal :roll: then it does not matter if Muslim values completely inimical to Scandinavian culture use its tolerance to take over the geography-- or something like that.
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Apparently the killer wrote of hostility to Muslim immigration and the treason of those that enabled it; the latter being his motive for this vile rampage.
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Apparently the killer wrote of hostility to Muslim immigration and the treason of those that enabled it; the latter being his motive for this vile rampage.
Which doesn't compute. Meaning people willing to use terrorist violence tend to use it against what they perceive to be their enemy, not what they are wanting to protect.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stJg1p7qJYA&feature=related
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http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/150378#.TtyHqUqhd7x
Muslim 'Rape Wave' Reported in Oslo, Ministers Blame Israel
Report: 45 of 48 rapes in Norway's capital recently were by Muslims, but Norwegian ministers think this is just pro-Israel propaganda..
By Gil Ronen
First Publish: 12/4/2011, 6:58 PM
Norway is suffering from an unprecedented wave of rapes that are largely being perpetrated by Muslim immigrants against local women, according to Yehuda Bello, an acclaimed Israeli blogger whose special interests include Norway.
Bello reports that from January to late October, 48 rapes were confirmed to have been carried out in Oslo alone, 45 of them by Muslims. In the first six months of 2011, 208 Norwegian women complained of rape and attempted rape in Oslo alone. In all of Norway, 929 rapes and attempted aggravated rapes were reported since the beginning of the year, he adds.
Bello notes that Norway is "the most advanced country in the world in granting rights to women." However, he adds, the "politically correct rot" prevents the rape wave by Muslims from being reported. "They are called 'non-western,' 'dark skinned,' 'Middle Eastern' et cetera."
After a police report in Oslo said that Muslims were raping Norwegian women out of a religious conviction that this was the proper thing to do, a stormy public debate erupted, reports Bello, and "the government ministers, most of them avowed anti-Semites, claimed that the report and its publication serve Israel and its policy of occupation."
Bello says women do not dare venture out of their homes after dark in many parts of Oslo and that many have even dyed their hair black, out of the conviction that blond hair is more alluring to the rapists. Some carry tear gas, although this is against the law.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2011/jun/08/sharia-bill-lords-muslim-women
Bill limiting sharia law is motivated by 'concern for Muslim women'
Lady Cox, the proposer, says aim is to prevent discrimination against Muslim women and 'jurisdiction creep' in Islamic tribunals
Karen McVeigh and Amelia Hill
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 8 June 2011 16.06 EDT
Whitechapel High Street in east London. The area is predominantly Muslim; just over half the population is of Bangladeshi descent. Photograph: Mike Kemp/Corbis
Islamic courts would be forced to acknowledge the primacy of English law under a bill being introduced in the House of Lords.
The bill, proposed by Lady Cox and backed by women's rights groups and the National Secular Society, was drawn up because of "deep concerns" that Muslim women are suffering discrimination within closed sharia law councils.
The Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill will introduce an offence carrying a five-year jail sentence for anyone falsely claiming or implying that sharia courts or councils have legal jurisdiction over family or criminal law. The bill, which will apply to all arbitration tribunals if passed, aims to tackle discrimination, which its supporters say is inherent in the courts, by banning the sharia practice of giving woman's testimony only half the weight of men's.
Cox said: "Equality under the law is a core value of British justice. My bill seeks to preserve that standard"
In a similar way to Jewish Beth Din courts, sharia tribunals can make verdicts in cases involving financial and property issues which, under the 1996 Arbitration Act, are enforceable by county courts or the high court.
The tribunals should only be deciding civil disputes but two years ago the think-tank Civitas claimed sharia courts, some 85 of which operate in Birmingham, London, Bradford and Manchester, had crossed the proper limits of their jurisdiction and were regularly giving illegal advice on marriage and divorce.
Cox said they are increasingly ruling on family and criminal cases, including child custody and domestic violence. Jurisdiction "creep" had caused considerable suffering among women compelled to return to abusive husbands, or to give up children and property.
Diana Nammi, of the Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organisation, said: "Women and children are very vulnerable members of the community and under sharia law they become invisible. Women and children are the most vulnerable in minority communities where religion tradition and culture has become the identity taking precedence over the human rights and women's rights that are protected under civil, UK law."
The bill requires public bodies to inform women they have fewer legal rights if their marriage is unrecognised in English law. Cox said she had found "considerable evidence" of women, some of whom are brought to Britain speaking little English and kept ignorant of their legal rights, suffering domestic violence or unequal access to divorce, due to discriminatory decisions made. "We cannot continue to condone this situation. Many women say: 'We came to this country to escape these practices only to find the situation is worse here.' "
Cox said she would be asking the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, who caused a row last year when he said a recognised role for sharia law seemed unavoidable, to back her bill. She said: "By appearing to condone this inherent discrimination system which is causing real suffering to women, he has failed to recognise that suffering. He is appearing to forward the acceptability and validity of Sharia law in this country."
Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society, said: "Laws should not impinge on religious freedoms, nor should courts judge on theological matters. By the same token, democratically determined and human rights compliant law must take precedence over the law of any religion."
Aina Khan, a solicitor who advises on sharia law, said: "It is good in parts. I would like to see best practice in sharia councils, like in the Beth Din model and I would like some legislation. I don't want somebody opening up a sharia board in their front room. Of course sex discrimination laws must apply. But there are some alarmist tones in the bill. Where she goes wrong is assuming that some sort of misogyny and discrimination goes on. Eighty per cent of its users are women."
Khurshid Drabu, adviser on constitutional affairs to the Muslim Council of Britain, said: "Bills of this kind don't help anybody. They don't appear to understand that we live in a free country where people can make free choices. Yet again, it appears to be a total misunderstanding of the concept that underpins these arbitration councils. Sharia councils operate under consent. If there is a woman who suffers as a result of a decision by one of these councils a woman is free to go to the British courts."
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**Imagine the carnage if islam was violent, or something.....
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2069459/Alarming-rise-Muslim-honour-killings-thousands-cases-reported-police-year.html
Alarming rise of Muslim 'honour attacks' in the UK as police reveal thousands were carried out last year
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 1:15 PM on 3rd December 2011
London sees the highest number of honour crimes, with West Midlands second
Call for more support for victims as cases rise by more than 300 per cent in some areas
Culprits hailed 'heroes' in the community for carrying out the attacks
Victim: Banaz Mahmod left her violent husband to be with her boyfriend, but was killed by relatives in 2006
Nearly 3,000 so-called honour attacks were recorded by police in Britain last year, new research has revealed.
According to figures obtained by the Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organisation (Ikwro), at least 2,823 incidents of 'honour-based' violence took place, with the highest number recorded in London.
The charity said the statistics fail to provide the full picture of the levels of 'honour' violence in the UK , but are the best national estimate so far.
The data, taken from from 39 out of 52 UK forces, was released following a freedom of information request by Ikwro.
In total, eight police forces recorded more than 100 so called honour-related attacks in 2010.
The Metropolitan Police saw 495 incidents, with 378 reported in the West Midlands, 350 in West Yorkshire, 227 in Lancashire and 189 in Greater Manchester.
Cleveland recorded 153, while Suffolk and Bedfordshire saw 118 and 117 respectively, according to the figures.
Between the 12 forces able to provide figures from 2009, there was an overall 47 per cent rise in honour attack incidents.
More...Groomed for sex at 12, stabbed to death at 17: Shocking life of white teenage mother murdered after Asian lover rejected her child
Police in Northumbria saw a 305 per cent increase from 17 incidents in 2009 to 69 in 2010, while Cambridgeshire saw a 154 per cent jump from 11 to 28.
A quarter of police forces in the UK were unable or unwilling to provide data, Ikwro said.
The report stated: 'This is the first time that a national estimate has been provided in relation to reporting of honour-based violence.
'The number of incidents is significant, particularly when we consider the high levels of abuse that victims suffer before they seek help.'
Honour attacks are punishments usually carried out against Muslim women who have been accused of bringing shame on their family (file picture)
'Honour' attacks are punishments usually carried out against Muslim women who have been accused of bringing shame on their family and in the past have included abductions, mutilations, beatings and murder.
Ikwro director Diana Nammi told the BBC that families often deny the existence of the attacks.
She said: 'The perpetrators will be even considered as a hero within the community because he is the one defending the family and community's honour and reputation.'
Calling for more support for victims, she added: 'For some cases, police and some organisations just help them up to a length of time, then they will stop. With honour-based violence, the threat may be a lifetime threat for them.
The Metropolitan Police saw 495 incidents, with 378 reported in the West Midlands, 350 in West Yorkshire, 227 in Lancashire and 189 in Greater Manchester
'The problem is that there is no systematic training for police and other government forces in the UK, such as social services, teachers and midwives.'
She said that honour-based violence is an 'organised or collective crime or incident' which is orchestrated by a family or within a community.
Honour crimes mostly happen in South Asian, Eastern European and Middle Eastern communities, she added.
Ms Nammi added that 'lots of things' are considered to be dishonourable including; having a boyfriend, being a victim of rape, refusing an arranged marriage, being gay or lesbian and in some cases wearing make-up or inappropriate dress.
The association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) said they were working hard to offer support to victims, and front-line staff had been specially trained to deal with complaints.
Commander Mak Chishty, lead for honour based violence, said: 'In 2008 Acpo published a strategy which recommended consistent reporting across England and Wales. We are satisfied that this is being done.
'We're now in consultation on a new strategy. All frontline staff have received awareness training and every force has a champion on honour-based abuse.
'Acpo is confident that any victim who comes to us will receive the help they need.'
A Home Office spokesman said: 'We are determined to end honour violence and recognise the need for greater consistency on the ground to stop this indefensible practice.
'Our action plan to end violence against women and girls sets out our approach to raise awareness, enhance training for police and prosecutors and better support victims.'
A Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) spokesman said: 'Honour-based violence cuts across all cultures, nationalities and faith groups - it is a worldwide problem.
'Our fundamental aims are always: to preserve life, protect those at risk, and seek to bring perpetrators to justice.
'The MPS has been on a significant journey regarding how we police honour-based violence over the past decade, and has played an instrumental part in developing work in this field.
'We have used our organisational learning over the years to inform our current policies, staff training and operating procedures.
'We know that like other hate crimes, honour-based violence is under-reported however, and remain very concerned about this. We continue to work with victims' groups, non-governmental organisations and statutory agencies to ensure that we are providing the best assistance possible to victims - they are at the heart of all we do.
The spokesman added there were specially-trained officers who carry out daily reviews of reported incidents in London.
He said: 'The MPS has incorporated honour-based violence and forced marriage into its mandatory domestic violence training for all constables, sergeants and inspectors; there has also been specific training for PCSOs and senior officers, and regular training sessions for other specialist officers such as schools officers and Safer Neighbourhoods' Teams.'
In 2006, Banaz Mahmod, from Mitcham, south London, was strangled on the orders of her father and uncle because they thought her boyfriend was unsuitable.
Cousins Mohammed Saleh Ali and Omar hussain, both 28, were jailed last year for a minimum of 22 and 21 years respectively for the honour killing of the 20-year-old Iraqi Kurd.
The victim's father Mahmod Mahmod and uncle Ari Mahmod were jailed for life at the Old Bailey in 2007.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2069459/Alarming-rise-Muslim-honour-killings-thousands-cases-reported-police-year.html
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http://pjmedia.com/blog/sharia-law-already-devouring-uk/?singlepage=true
Sharia Law Already Devouring UK
Examples on the ground from a premier religious freedom attorney.
by
Paul Diamond
December 12, 2011 - 12:09 am
In 2008, while arguing for the need to formally introduce Sharia law into the law of the United Kingdom, the Archbishop of Canterbury claimed Sharia law was “inevitable” in the UK . He denied it was an “alien” system and called for “constructive accommodation” of Muslim law. He did this in a calculated and provocative manner, while denying a place for its more “extreme punishments.”
It is unlikely that many members of the Muslim community would be satisfied with an Anglican primate determining the limitations of the Quran and Sharia law.
This argument was rapidly followed by the Lord Chief Justice: Lord Phillips helpfully said there was a place for Sharia law, particularly in mediation. He lamented the “widespread misunderstanding” of Sharia law. The newly established Muslim Arbitration Tribunals immediately put a picture of the Lord Chief Justice on their website in appreciation of his endorsement.
In the United Kingdom, the many thousands of Sharia courts can quietly go about their business of implementing “justice” in a form totally “alien” to the Judeo-Christian tradition, denying human rights to many of our citizens — particularly women.
The “constructive accommodation” of Muslim law reached a logical conclusion with the declaration this year of Sharia law controlled zones in a number of areas geographically spread over the country, where the Islamist militants enforce their will. Their posters declare: “No music or concerts, no porn or prostitution, no drugs or smoking, no gambling, no alcohol.” A reign of terror has begun, with threats of implicit violence against anyone who “insults” Islam, changes religion, or fails to dress appropriately. I have already been contacted about assisting two individuals subject to Islamist threats.
The police stand passively by, adhering to their diversity training.
If the Labour Party had won the last general election in 2010, I believe they would have introduced Sharia law into the United Kingdom. Things have changed for the better since David Cameron became prime minister — he has criticized “state multiculturalism” as causative of terrorism and radicalism. An inquiry of the Ministry of Justice into the operation of Sharia courts had to be stopped as Muslim leaders refused to cooperate with the government; they wanted to continue to execute Sharia law in secrecy. However, this has only heightened concerns. A Conservative peer has sought to introduce legislation delimiting the operation of Sharia courts as discriminatory against women. The home secretary has at last refused entry visas to “hate preachers” like Zakir Naik. (The last Labour government welcomed Hezbollah terrorists to lecture the police on “political Islam.”)
When I was a boy growing up in London, as Roger Kimball has written, terms like “Sharia” and “jihad” were anthropological phrases analogous to witch burning, using leeches to draw blood, and cannibalism. It would have been beyond my comprehension that our political elite would seek to introduce this medieval system into one of the most advanced societies in the world.
Sharia law is the antithesis of law as representative of rational human endeavor to alleviate the human condition.
In this short piece, it is not possible to fully illuminate the “establishment” of Islam in the United Kingdom (as described by the First Amendment). I can only give examples.
An interesting case of mine involved a church in a part of the country declared a “Sharia law controlled zone.” The church had existed for about 150 years, but it was served with a noise pollution notice for the singing of hymns on a Sunday morning at 10:30 a.m. As the notice was served, the council officer said: “This is a Muslim area.” (Naturally, this statement was denied in court.)
However, it was the court experience which was most disturbing; the local court was in an area with a high Muslim population, and the majority of the judges hearing the case were Muslim. The court closed the church. I thought the only image missing from the scene was about 200 mullahs demonstrating outside the court for the death of the infidels.
The case was appealed, and moved to a district that was predominantly English (where the appeal court was situated). The court opened the church.
This case was similar to a case where Muslim police officers prevented two street preachers, Arthur Cunningham and Joseph Abraham, from evangelizing in Birmingham. The Muslim police office called it a “hate crime” to seek to convert Muslim youths. A Muslim police office failed to uphold British values: social cohesion requires that the appointment of Muslim judges and police officers is in accordance with British standards and values.
In 2005, the BBC broadcast Jerry Springer — The Opera. It conformed to the usual high standards of the BBC: Jesus in a nappy; Jesus a “little bit gay”; the fondling of Jesus’s genitals. Fifty-five thousand complaints were received, and ignored — the BBC governors declared the program “artistically exceptional.” There was legal action against the BBC, but they bravely defended themselves — using taxpayers’ money — by asserting their willingness to challenge sensitivities. No apology was given.
How brave. Yet their courage seems to fail with Islam, and there has yet to be such an “artistically exceptional” program on Mohammed (nor will there ever be).
This must be juxtaposed with a BBC program titled Question Time, a flagship political discussion program in which free speech is vital to open debate. Mr. Charles Moore, a former editor of the Sunday Telegraph and the Spectator magazine, openly criticized the Muslim Council of Britain for not condemning the killing and kidnapping of British troops overseas and suggested they thought it was a “good thing.” The BBC offered a £30,000 payment from taxpayers’ money, along with an apology. No attempt was made to defend free speech.
If this decision by the BBC had been challenged as inconsistent with their position to the Christian community, it would have been dismissed by the court (with costs to pay).
In 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (the underwear bomber) appeared on the world scene. He is the fourth British Muslim student leader in three years to be implicated in terrorist activity. He was a devout Nigerian student, clearly radicalized during his time at London University — many of our universities have become hotbeds of Islamic radicalism, where Jewish students keep a low profile. Of course, London University commissioned a report and denied that Umar was radicalized while in their educational care, and they defended the right of free speech. Undaunted, Islamic hate preachers continue to appear regularly at London University.
U.S. readers can rest assured that the university authorities and student unions are taking decisive measures against dangerous and radical religious groups. I was recently contacted by the Exeter University Christian Union after they were expelled from the student union for having a discriminatory membership policy. The policy? Requiring members to be … Christians! I ought to say that at the time, my U.S. colleagues assured me that no Christian society at any U.S. university would ever suffer such a “silly” fate because of the First Amendment.
Poor Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang entered a religious discussion with a Muslim guest at their bed and breakfast hotel in Liverpool. Foolishly in a private conversation, they described Mohammed as a “warlord.” They were prosecuted by the police.
The evidence was so bad that the judge effectively threw the case out (and it is instructive to note that a Muslim guest gave evidence on behalf of the couple), but this was not before a year of awaiting trial and the devastation of their business. Their bed and breakfast had been used by the local hospital, which now refused to use such an Islamophobic hostel. The state used its economic powers to ensure that British citizens’ private religious views conform to state policy.
Simultaneously, the British police act in the vanguard of the Islamification of Britain by selectively terrorizing the British population to use only the “free speech rights” of which they approve. In 2007, Channel 4 produced a documentary titled Undercover Mosque which showed video of imams saying things like: “You have to bomb the Indian businesses and, as for the Jews, you kill them physically,” among a whole range of other religious speech advocating violent jihad. A clear case of a “hate crime,” no?
The Crown Prosecution Service said no charges should be brought, and the police announced they would consider prosecuting Channel 4 for showing the documentary.
You can imagine what the average British citizen thinks. The Islamists can say what they want; anyone who criticizes this or shows it will be prosecuted by the police. Of course, Channel 4 is big enough and wealthy enough to defend itself — they sued the police for libel. The police capitulated and paid £100,000 to Channel 4, and accepted “without reservation” that the documentary was accurate and dealt with the subject matter responsibly.
The question remains: why have the imams not been arrested? And why have the police officers themselves not been arrested for interfering with the administration of justice?
Many British employers permit the hijab, but not a cross, and so on and so forth. I could continue, but I am sure you get the picture. Islam is becoming the established religion. However, while the Islamists welcome it, the causative reason is a liberal elite who are “fellow travelers” with a primitive juristic system. The Labour Party and Democratic Party are sympathetic to religious practice that discriminates against women, homosexuals, and Jews — everything they purport to be against.
This could be coming to a state near you sooner than you think.
Paul Diamond is the leading religious rights barrister in the United Kingdom.
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'I've got a surprise for you': Husband blindfolds his wife.... and then chops off her fingers to stop her studying for a degreeBy Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 2:33 PM on 17th December 2011
A jealous husband is facing life in prison after chopping off his wife's fingers because she began studying for a degree without his permission.
Rafiqul Islam, 30, blindfolded his wife Hawa Akhter, 21, and taped her mouth, telling her he was going to give her a surprise present.
Instead he made her hold out her hand and cut off all five fingers. One of his relatives then threw Ms Akhter's fingers in the dustbin to ensure doctors could not reattach them.
(http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/12/17/article-2075435-0F334F4B00000578-426_634x419.jpg)
Hawa Akhter has said she will continue her studies, despite the horrific attack
Mr Islam, who is a migrant worker in the United Arab Emirates, had warned his wife there would 'severe consequences' if she did not give up her studies.
'After he came back to Bangladesh, he wanted to have a discussion with me,' Ms Akhter told The Times.
'Suddenly, he blindfolded me and tied my hand. He also taped my mouth saying that he would give me some surprise gifts. But, instead he cut off my fingers.'
More...Ticket inspector stabbed on train after challenging teenagers over fare
Jail for football fan who stole ambulance: Police discovered it parked outside drunkard’s house
Mohammed Saluddin, the Bangladesh police chief said that Mr Islam had confessed after he was arrested in the capital, Dhaka, and will face charges of permanent disfiguration.
Human rights groups are demanding life imprisonment.
'He was enraged. He was jealous because while he only had a grade eight standard education, she was off to college to pursue higher studies,' said Mr Saluddin.
Ms Akhter says she is learning to write with her left hand and is determined to resume her studies. She is now back at her parent's house.
The attack is the latest in a series of acts targeting educated women in the Muslim-majority company.
In June, an unemployed man gouged out the eyes of his wife, an assistant professor at Dhaka University, apparently because he could not stand her pursuing higher studies at a Canadian University.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2075435/Husband-chops-wifes-fingers-stop-studying-degree.html
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AP Exclusive: Al-Qaida trains Norwegian to attack
Monday - 6/25/2012, 3:49pm ET
By KARL RITTER
Associated Press
STOCKHOLM (AP) - A Norwegian man has received terrorist training from al-Qaida's offshoot in Yemen and is awaiting orders to carry out an attack on the West, officials from three European security agencies told The Associated Press on Monday.
Western intelligence officials have long feared such a scenario _ a convert to Islam who is trained in terrorist methods and can blend in easily in Europe and the United States, traveling without visa restrictions.
Officials from three European security agencies confirmed Monday the man is "operational," meaning he has completed his training and is about to receive a target. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case publicly. They declined to name the man, who has not been accused of a crime.
"We believe he is operational and he is probably about to get his target," one security official said. "And that target is probably in the West."
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http://www.radicalislam.org/videos/uk-mom-may-lose-baby-due-anti-islamist-views
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http://www.radicalislam.org/analysis/then-they-took-meter-maids/#fm
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After looking at the meter maid's picture in the story, I hope they apply for a transfer to LA! The parking tickets I have gotten in LA have been from meter maids weighing a LOT more than I do. Maybe we should offer an exchange program. It's hard to tell if the local LA ones are male or female. Maybe the Muslims won't care either. :-)
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/al-qaeda/9585098/Al-Qaeda-blamed-for-Europe-wide-forest-fires.html
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Has Geller left any pertinent facts out of this?
========================================
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/10/darkness_descending_in_england.html
October 26, 2012
Darkness Descending in England
By Pamela Geller
The arrest of over 53 people in the United Kingdom is the beginning of the end for once-great Britain. The leaders of the English Defence League (EDL), Tommy Robinson and Kevin Carroll, were among those arrested, as well as Paul Weston of the British Freedom Party (BFP). I spoke with Kevin Carroll about his recent arrest and that of Robinson and Weston, and he told me the appalling details.
Carroll told me that British authorities tried everything in the book to stop him from running for police and crime commissioner (PCC) for the Bedfordshire Police Authority. Nonetheless, he officially won the right to run for PCC last Friday. But then, the very next day, British authorities carried out these mass arrests of EDL and BFP members, stripping them and forcing them to wear white paper overalls like those given to incarcerated terrorists. They were allowed no phone calls.
Meanwhile, British police raided the homes of Carroll, Robinson, and three others who had been arrested. "They absolutely ransacked mine," Carroll told me. "They smashed the door off and wrecked my home. They took my only vehicle, with all the tools of my trade inside, and impounded it, as well as Tommy's car." The police, the bomb squad, forensics teams, and sniffer dogs spent seven and a half hours stripping Carroll's van to the bone. "When they finished," he said, "they found nothing! They loaded it up with bugs and GPS monitors and threw everything in the back; it looks like it's been in a blender."
After smashing the door to Carroll's home off its hinges, police officials repaired it, got a locksmith to put on a new lock, and left with the new keys, leaving Carroll locked out of his own home. When Carroll was released, still wearing his white paper prison suit, it was dark and raining; true to form, police officials offered him no transportation, even though it was late at night on a Sunday.
Robinson is being held in Wandsworth prison, an old and antiquated structure with a large population of Muslim prisoners. Weston was arrested and later released without charge for refusing to leave a reception area without information about Robinson. And it is clear why officials would not want that information to get out: not only has Robinson been placed with the general prison population instead of segregated for his own protection, but prison officials have even put him in a cell with hostile Muslims. He was allowed to call his wife Jenna, and he told her that he knew it was going to be "lively" in the cell. That was an understatement: prison officials have deliberately put Robinson in physical danger and even imperiled his life. Carroll contacted a high-ranking police official to request that Robinson be segregated, and she received a promise that he would be, but it hasn't happened yet -- and Robinson has even been denied bail.
"They are really coming at us with everything," Carroll told me. "I'm even on police bail at the moment for 'conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.'" This is a politically motivated and trumped up charge, but in Britain it can carry a life sentence.
According to Carroll, Robinson was incarcerated for leaving the United Kingdom and entering the United States fraudulently for our September 11, 2012 Stop Islamization of Nations free speech conference in New York City. Robinson could get twelve to eighteen months in prison just for that. "They are really turning up the heat here, Pamela," said Carroll. "They are going after all of us, especially Tommy and me." The EDL said in a statement: "Tommy has been dragged from one court to another -- almost always without any serious chance of conviction -- simply in order to help disrupt our activities and to prevent us from voicing our legitimate concerns about the spread of Islamic extremism."
Carroll's bail hearing is set for November 30, which gives him just two weeks after the November 15 elections to prepare his defense. Anyone who can vote for Bedfordshire police authority commissioner and who loves freedom should vote for Kevin Carroll; it could be your last hope to preserve the freedom of speech and the principle of the equality of rights for all people in Britain.
Clearly the establishment elites in Britain are extremely worried that Carroll might win and upset the entrenched culture of accommodation to Islam and sharia; in fact, one of the briefs in Carroll's case actually stated that this was why he was arrested -- because he is running for PCC. The dhimmi elites understand that this could be the beginning of their end. "The police," said Carroll, "are out to finish us on behalf of the establishment."
This is a defining moment in British history, as significant as any major turning point. It is in many respects like the Night of the Long Knives, which marked the point of no return from Nazism for Germany. With these outrageous and politically motivated arrests, Britain has entered a dark and dangerous new era. Said Weston: "The full power of the State appears to be concentrating on shutting down any political dissent. This does not really feel like a democratic country anymore."
Carroll is organizing a demonstration outside Wandsworth prison this coming Saturday morning. All free citizens in Britain should be there. And is there no one is the political establishment in the U.K. who has any decency, integrity, or spine? No one who will stand up against these outrages?
Pamela Geller is the publisher of AtlasShrugs.com and the author of the WND Books title Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance.
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Guest Column: What's in a name?
by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
November 9, 2012
http://www.investigativeproject.org/3800/guest-column-what-in-a-name
In some cases, it's an entire history of social change -- and a sign of things to come.
That fact became clear last week, when the newly-created "Islam Party" won seats in
the local governments of two towns just outside of Brussels.
Redouane Ahrouch, the founder of the Islam Party, and Lhoucine Ait Jeddig took seats
in the City Councils of Andelicht and Molenbeek-St. Jan, respectively, earning their
places thanks to votes from those towns' significant Muslim populations.
These gains in local elections by these two Islamists are troubling, demonstrating
an evolution of Islamist political savvy. The Islam Party holds many of the same
ideals as earlier Muslim political groups in the Lowlands, but while building on the
successes of those groups, they've repackaged their message while benefitting from
concentrated voting blocs in those towns.
Tiny Belgium (population 11,008,000) has a big history of Muslim radicals in
politics, most notably in the person of Dyab Abou Jahjah, a Lebanese-born
naturalized Belgian who, in 2000, founded and then led the Arab European League
(AEL), a political group that eventually gained a chapter in the Netherlands. A
member of Hizballah and the author of an autobiography in which he describes his
jubilation on hearing of the attacks of 9/11, Jahjah walked a tight and careful
line, preaching democracy on the one hand and Islamic supremacy on the other,
skillfully couching his extremist viewpoints in conciliatory speeches and
deftly-written publications.
The AEL eventually fizzled out, but the men and women who supported it remain and it
is likely they -- over 5,000 of them in the towns of Molenbeek, Andelicht, and
Brussels Ville -- who turned out to vote for the List Islam. (The party, with 4.1
percent of the vote in Molenbeek and Andelicht, did not obtain enough votes to earn
a government seat in Brussels Ville.)
And why not? By and large, there is little difference between the AEL and the Islam
Party -- except the name. And that distinction is notable, reflecting changes in
European culture as Muslims with an Islamic political agenda enter into the
mainstream. Ten years ago, the term "Arab-European" offered a soft link between
Islam and Europe, a tiptoeing, as it were, from one to the other. Even the words
"Muslim" and "Islam" were omitted: merely "Arab," (even though, at least in the
Netherlands, many of the AEL's most active members weren't Arab at all, but
Turkish). One could not, at that point, have gotten away with a name like "Islam
Party."
Then came Holland's Muslim Party, which, according to its Web site, was created to
suit "those who hope to develop or design society according to a schema that differs
from that of the majority." Its purpose, according to the site, is first and
foremost to support the right of free speech -- but to outlaw speech that "is
hurtful to others." In other words, they don't really support free speech at all.
Additionally, the party specifically renounces extremism "of any kind," but further
defines its goals as:
"Minimizing the social cleft between Muslims and non-Muslims in the Netherlands;
improving the image of Islam; strengthening the social position of the Islamic
community and its people in the Netherlands; [and] supporting positive relations
with others on the basis of mutual respect."
In effect, the Muslim Party, too, is virtually identical to the AEL (which did not
offer candidates for political office). But the creation of a "Muslim Party" in the
neighboring Netherlands -- versus an "Arab-European League" -- also opened the door
for the formation of a pure "Islam Party" in Belgium with all the differences in
nuances between them: one party may be made up of Muslims, but the other explicitly
seeks to define an Islamic agenda.
And that is exactly what its leaders proclaim.
Sure, like Jahjah, they mask their aims in colorful costumes and masquerades of
democracy aimed at soothing the fears of non-Muslims in the community: Ahrouch has,
for instance, denounced the radical Shariah4Belgium group as "far left" (though that
was as damning as he got). Yet, also like Jahjah, prior to the election he observed
that, according to the principles of democracy, "if a majority wishes to live by
Shariah, then Shariah should become law."
But things changed after the elections. In a recent press conference, Ahrouch
admitted that he, too, supports Shariah for Belgium, though "not just yet." First,
he says, Belgians must become accustomed to the idea, led gently to the end goal. It
"will take time -- decades, a century," he says. "But the movement has now certainly
begun."
That's a pretty scary statement from someone who just took the majority vote in his
district. But it was apparently his purpose all along: not as some may have hoped,
to encourage Muslims in the West to adopt Westernized philosophies, values, and
legal systems; but rather, to encourage Europeans adopt the principles and values of
Shariah. (Then again, that's hardly a surprise from a man who, while claiming to
place "ethics" and "family" at the center of his policy design, was convicted in
2003 for domestic assault and battery and sentenced to six months in prison.)
But what else could anyone really have expected? A political party that bases its
policies on the Koran does not truly represent democratic, Western goals -- however
well it plays the democratic game. If nothing else, the very notion of a separation
between church and state is negated outright by the central foundation of their
existence.
Ten years ago, Ahrouch was among the founders of Belgium's Noor party (now
essentially swallowed up by List Islam). It advocated, among other things,
abolishing taxes, encouraging teen marriage, banning abortion, eradicating interest
on bank loans, and "revisiting" the practice of mixed-gender classrooms. "We know
that religion provides the solution for the problems we are facing," states Noor's
home page, which even at its founding identified itself as "the Islamic party."
"Judeo-Christian values no longer provide foundations for the political orientations
that, for centuries, have defined our common history." (See
http://www.noor.ovh.org/Nederlands/Nederlands.html. NOTE: the English-language
translation on the Noor site alters the original text somewhat.)
Despite all this, the real threat, the real danger, is not the Islam Party or its
members. It is their supporters, numerous enough to have elected them to power.
Belgium's Muslim population is now around 6 percent; a recent Pew study suggests
that it will rise to above 10 percent by 2030. In Europe, only France has a higher
percentage of Muslim residents.
And already some studies show that Muslims account for 25 percent of the population
of Brussels, Europe's capital -- and that includes the regions of Molenbeek and
Andelicht. (According to Gatestone, "since 2008, the most popular name in Brussels
for baby boys has been Mohammed. It is also the most popular name for baby boys in
Belgium's second-largest city, Antwerp, where an estimated 40% of elementary school
children are Muslim.")
Many of the more radical of those Muslims, as it happens, live in Andelicht and
Molenbeek, or frequently attend rallies and demonstrations there. A Shiite mosque
was torched in Anderlicht last March by a Salafist who threw a Molotov cocktail into
the building even as congregants were praying. The imam died in the fire. And in
June, a French Muslim, who had come to Molenbeek to take part in a pro-Islamist
rally, stabbed two local police agents with a kitchen knife. The reason: an earlier
arrest of 24-year-old Stephanie Djato for refusing to remove her nikab despite
recent laws banning the full veil for women.
This makes it somewhat unsurprising that Ahrouch received so much support. But it is
also why the current local petition calling him a traitor and demanding a ban on the
List Islam is not only useless (you cannot rightly recall a democratically elected
official unless he can be charged with outright wrongdoing); it is entirely beside
the point. Because while many insist that radical Islam in the West is a fringe
movement with no substantial capacity to effect change in the way the West is run,
the very real success of Belgium's List Islam makes frighteningly clear just how
powerful -- and how insidious -- the radical Muslims among us really are.
Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning
Over Democracy in the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New York
and the Netherlands.
Related Topics: Abigail R. Esman
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http://www.radicalislam.org/analysis/zealous-prosecution-religious-hatred-act-borders-insane/#fm
Zealous Prosecution of Religious Hatred Law Borders on Irrational
Wed, December 5, 2012
by:
Soeren Kern
While the Dutch parliament has approved a motion to revoke a law that makes it a crime to insult God, most European countries still have blasphemy laws intact and have even added the new crime of intentionally stirring up religious hatred against people on religious grounds.
In 2006, the British government enacted the Racial and Religious Hatred Act which has led to zealousness bordering on the irrational. (England and Whales abolished the common law offenses of blasphemy and blasphemous libel in 2008.)
In Nottingham, for example, the Greenwood Primary School cancelled a Christmas nativity play because it interfered with the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha. In Scarborough, the Yorkshire Coast College removed the words Christmas and Easter from their calendar not to offend Muslims.
Card from the Tayside Police Dept.'s campaignIn Scotland, the Tayside Police Department apologized for featuring a puppy as part of a campaign to publicize its new non-emergency telephone number. As Islamic legal tradition holds that dogs are impure, the postcards used in the campaign were potentially offensive to the city's 3,000-strong Muslim community.
In Glasgow, a Christian radio talk show host was fired after a debate between a Muslim and a Christian on whether Jesus is "the way, the truth and the life." In Birmingham, two Christians were told by police "you cannot preach here, this is a Muslim area." In Cheshire, two students at the Alsager High School were punished by their teacher for refusing to pray to Allah as part of their religious education class. Also in Cheshire, a 14-year-old Roman Catholic girl who attends Ellesmere Port Catholic High School was branded a truant by teachers for refusing to dress like a Muslim and visit a mosque.
In Liverpool, a Christian couple was forced to sell their hotel after a female Muslim guest accused the pair of insulting her during a debate about Islam. In London, Rory Bremner, a political comedian, said that every time he writes a sketch about Islam, he fears that he is signing his own death warrant. At the same time, Scotland Yard says that Muslims who launch a shoe at another person are not committing a crime because the practice is Islamic symbolism.
In recent months, however, Muslims have been lobbying to reinstate blasphemy laws in Britain. A petition reportedly sent to British Prime Minister David Cameron reads: "It is axiomatic that Great Britain is a key player in global harmony. British parliamentarians have made outstanding progress in eradicating racism, anti-Semitism, discrimination, inequalities and other factors causing hurt to all citizens. The trust and hope of millions of British Muslims is placed in yourselves as representatives and Members of Parliament to call for changes in the law to protect the honor of Faith Symbols of Islam and other faiths."
In February 2012, it emerged that a Muslim activist group with links to the Muslim Brotherhood had asked the British government to restrict the way the British media reports about Muslims and Islam.
More recently, a Muslim lobbying group called ENGAGE launched an exhibition and a month-long campaign "Islamophobia Awareness Month," highlighting the spread of "Islamophobia" in Britain. The exhibition was held in the British Parliament and ENGAGE activists pressed Members of Parliament to strengthen the existing religious hatred law to provide more protections for Muslims.
In Ireland, a new blasphemy law went into effect in January 2010. The Irish Defamation Act, which created the crime of blasphemous libel, makes "publication or utterance of blasphemous matter" punishable by a fine of up to €25,000 ($32,500).
According to the Irish Times, Ireland's blasphemy law is being cited by Islamic states "as justification" for persecuting religious dissidents. Pakistan, for example, has cited the Irish statute at the United Nations to support its own blasphemy laws.
In Denmark, blasphemy is outlawed by Paragraph 140 of the penal code, which states: "Anyone who publicly mocks or insults the tenets of faith or worship of any religious community existing in this country legally will be punished by fine or imprisonment for up to four months." The law has not been used since 1938. Measures were proposed in 2004 to abolish the blasphemy article, but the proposals were not adopted and the law remains on the books.
The rules against hate speech and racism are set down in the infamous Paragraph 266b of the Danish penal code, which states: "Whoever publicly, or with intention to disseminating in a larger circle makes statements or other pronouncements, by which a group of persons is threatened, derided or degraded because of their race, color of skin, national or ethnic background, faith or sexual orientation, will be punished by fine or imprisonment for up to two years."
Free speech advocate Lars Hedegaard was prosecuted under this statute for remarks made to a blogger in December 2009 criticizing Islam. He was finally acquitted by the Danish Supreme Court in April 2012, which ruled that it could not be proven that he intended the statements to be published.
Also in Denmark, Jesper Langballe, a Danish politician and Member of Parliament, was found guilty of hate speech in December 2010 for saying that honor killings and sexual abuse take place in Muslim families.
Langballe was denied the opportunity to prove his assertions: Under Danish law, it is immaterial whether a statement is true or false. All that is needed for a conviction is for someone to feel offended. Langballe was summarily sentenced to pay a fine of 5,000 Danish Kroner ($850) or spend ten days in jail.
In Finland, blasphemy is covered by Section 10 of Chapter 17 of the Criminal Code. In March 2009, Jussi Kristian Halla-aho, a politician and well-known political commentator, was taken to court on charges of "incitement against an ethnic group" and "breach of the sanctity of religion" for saying that Islam is a religion of pedophilia.
A Helsinki court later dropped the charges of blasphemy but ordered Halla-aho to pay a fine of €330 ($450) for disturbing religious worship. The Finnish public prosecutor, incensed at the court's dismissal of the blasphemy charges, appealed the case to the Finnish Supreme Court. In June 2012 the Supreme Court found Halla-aho guilty of both disturbing religious worship and ethnic agitation.
In Germany, blasphemy is covered by Chapter 11, Article 166 of the German Criminal Code (Strafgesetzbuch), which states: "Whoever publicly or by dissemination of writings defames, in a manner suitable to disturb the public peace, the substance of the religious or world view conviction of others, shall be fined or imprisoned for up to three years."
In February 2006, a German political activist named Manfred van H. received a one year suspended jail sentence and 300 hours of community service for breaching Article 166. He had had rolls of toilet paper with the words "Koran, the Holy Koran" printed on them and distributed to mosques and media outlets. This followed the London bombings in July 2005 and Manfred claimed his motives were "to find out who is on whose side in today's Germany."
In Austria, the government of Saudi Arabia has officially opened the King Abdullah International Center for Inter-Religious and Inter-Cultural Dialogue (KAICIID) to "foster dialogue" between the world's major religions in order to "prevent conflict." Critics say that KAICIID's work will parallel long-standing efforts by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), a bloc of 57 Muslim countries, to pressure Western countries into making it an international crime to criticize Islam or Mohammed -- all in the name of "religious tolerance."
This was effectively confirmed by the Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, who spoke at the inauguration ceremony of KAICIID in downtown Vienna on November 26. Ihsanoglu declared: "Islamophobia leads to hate crimes and as such, it generates fear, feelings of stigmatization, marginalization, alienation and rejection. The West must define hate crimes broadly and address the information deficit as well as enact adequate legislation and implement this legislation effectively. In conjunction with national legislation, they should also implement international commitments and agreed norms."
Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.
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http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/exclusive-young-woman-scarred-for-life-and-almost-blinded-in-random-acid-attack-on-london-street-8476680.html
EXCLUSIVE: Young woman scarred for life and almost blinded in random acid attack on London street
- Shop assistant Naomi Oni, 20 was on phone to boyfriend when she was covered in chemical
- She faces skin grafts and permanent scarring after late-night attack as she finished work
- Naomi left with partial vision in one eye after random attack
(http://www.standard.co.uk/incoming/article8476470.ece/ALTERNATES/w620/Naomi+Oni)
Scarring: an unknown attacker left Naomi scarred and almost blinded
Rashid Razaq
01 February 2013
A young woman was facially disfigured and almost lost her eyesight in a horrific unprovoked acid attack on the streets of London.
Naomi Oni, 20, was on her way home from work when an unknown attacker dressed in a niqab threw a chemical substance at her leaving the retail assistant with severe burns on her head, neck, arms, legs and body.
These shocking images have now been released by Ms Oni in an appeal for help to catch the attacker whose identity was concealed behind the Muslim women’s dress which completely covers the face apart from the eyes.
Ms Oni, who is employed by Victoria’s Secret at the Westfield Stratford shopping centre, was five minutes from home in Dagenham, east London when she was attacked on December 30.
The 20-year-old was only released from Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford last weekend after spending almost a month receiving skin grafts and specialist treatment in the hospital’s burns unit.
Doctors initially warned Ms Oni that she may not be able to see again and although she can now see out of her left eye she still only has partial vision in her right eye.
Ms Oni, who is sole carer for her disabled mother Marian Yalekhue, 52, has decided to speak out after police failed to establish any motive behind the attack or identify a suspect.
She told the Standard the attack had “destroyed” her life and left her too afraid to venture out or even show her face in public.
“I look in the mirror and it just isn’t me. I’ll never look the same again. I’ve always been outgoing and confident in my job and in my personal life, used to getting attention for the way I dress or my hair, but now I don’t want anyone looking at me.
“I don’t want people to see me in public. I don’t want to get the Tube or the bus. If I have to go to the hospital I take a taxi. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to go back to my job. I was planning to go to college in September to study media and fashion, but I don’t even know if I’ll be able to do that,” said Ms Oni.
The store assistant had just got off the bus and was talking to her boyfriend Ato Owede, 23, on her phone when she felt someone walking behind her in Lodge Avenue in Dagenham at around 12.40am.
She said:“I’d been working a late shift and was talking to my boyfriend about what we were going to do for New Year when I saw this Muslim woman wearing a niqab covering her face. I thought it was a bit strange at that time of night, but she didn’t say anything and I kept on walking.
“Then I felt a splash on my face. It burned and I screamed out. I started running and screaming, holding my face, all the way home. I didn’t look back.
“I got home and I was screaming and banging on the door. I was hysterical. Luckily my godmother, who is a pharmacist, was at home with my mum and she helped me and kept dipping my face in water and trying to calm me down until the police and ambulance got there. I was in shock. Saying: ‘Who would do that? Who would do that?’ How could anyone do this?”
Ms Oni has been told she faces months if not years of skin grafts and further plastic surgery and even then is likely to be left with severe facial scarring.
The retail assistant and her mother say they are too afraid to go back to their council flat in Dagenham. They are currently sleeping on a friend’s sofa-bed after turning down the offer to be rehoused in Tottenham on safety grounds.
Ms Oni said she had been inspired by the story of Katie Piper, the model who launched a charity and spoke out publicly after falling victim to an acid attack orchestrated by her boyfriend, but that she would never feel safe with her attacker still at large.
“Even with the support of my family and friends and boyfriend I feel very alone. Nothing is going to be same anymore,” said Ms Oni.
A Scotland Yard spokesman said acid attacks were “extremely rare” and that detectives were keeping an “open mind as to the motive.”
Officers from Barking and Dagenham are investigating. No arrests have been made and inquiries are ongoing.
Anyone with information should contact police on 0203 276 1058 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
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Europeans are going to wish they'd kept their guns about the time their Islamist populations reach about 30%........multi-culturalism is a great idea, until you get a significant minority population that doesn't share your view of a multi-cultural world, and finally gains the numbers to flex their muscle. Then it becomes cold hard reality that, perhaps, a little xenophobia might be healthy thing......Kind of like a cultural immune system.
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http://www.radicalislam.org/analysis/europe-rolls-over-hezbollah-blackmail/#fm
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May 24, 2013 6:00 PM
To the Slaughter
British lions come up lambs in Woolwich.
By Mark Steyn
Michael Adebolajo speaks to horrified onlookers after the attack.
On Wednesday, Drummer Lee Rigby of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, a man who had served Queen and country honorably in the hell of Helmand Province in Afghanistan, emerged from his barracks on Wellington Street, named after the Duke thereof, in southeast London. Minutes later, he was hacked to death in broad daylight and in full view of onlookers by two men with machetes who crowed “Allahu akbar!” as they dumped his carcass in the middle of the street like so much road kill.
As grotesque as this act of savagery was, the aftermath was even more unsettling. The perpetrators did not, as the Tsarnaev brothers did in Boston, attempt to escape. Instead, they held court in the street gloating over their trophy, and flagged down a London bus to demand the passengers record their triumph on film. As the crowd of bystanders swelled, the remarkably urbane savages posed for photographs with the remains of their victim while discoursing on the iniquities of Britain toward the Muslim world. Having killed Drummer Rigby, they were killing time: It took 20 minutes for the somnolent British constabulary to show up. And so television viewers were treated to the spectacle of a young man, speaking in the vowels of south London, chatting calmly with his “fellow Britons” about his geopolitical grievances and apologizing to the ladies present for any discomfort his beheading of Drummer Rigby might have caused them, all while drenched in blood and still wielding his cleaver.
If you’re thinking of getting steamed over all that, don’t. Simon Jenkins, the former editor of the Times of London, cautioned against “mass hysteria” over “mundane acts of violence.”
That’s easy for him to say. Woolwich is an unfashionable part of town, and Sir Simon is unlikely to find himself there of an afternoon stroll. Drummer Rigby had less choice in the matter. Being jumped by barbarians with machetes is certainly “mundane” in Somalia and Sudan, but it’s the sort of thing that would once have been considered somewhat unusual on a sunny afternoon in south London — at least as unusual as, say, blowing up eight-year-old boys at the Boston Marathon. It was “mundane” only in the sense that, as at weddings and kindergarten concerts, the reflexive reaction of everybody present was to get out their cell phones and start filming.
Once, long ago, I was in an altercation where someone pulled a switchblade, and ever since have been mindful of Jimmy Hoffa’s observation that he’d rather jump a gun than a knife. Nevertheless, there is a disturbing passivity to this scene: a street full of able-bodied citizens being lectured to by blood-soaked murderers who have no fear that anyone will be minded to interrupt their diatribes. In fairness to the people of Boston, they were ordered to “shelter in place” by the governor of Massachusetts. In Woolwich, a large crowd of Londoners apparently volunteered to “shelter in place,” instinctively. Consider how that will play when these guys’ jihadist snuff video is being hawked around the bazaars of the Muslim world. Behold the infidels, content to be bystanders in their own fate.
This passivity set the tone for what followed. In London as in Boston, the politico-media class immediately lapsed into the pneumatic multiculti Tourette’s that seems to be a chronic side effect of excess diversity-celebrating: No Islam to see here, nothing to do with Islam, all these body parts in the street are a deplorable misinterpretation of Islam. The BBC’s Nick Robinson accidentally described the men as being “of Muslim appearance,” but quickly walked it back lest impressionable types get the idea that there’s anything “of Muslim appearance” about a guy waving a machete and saying “Allahu akbar.” A man is on TV dripping blood in front of a dead British soldier and swearing “by Almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you,” yet it’s the BBC reporter who’s apologizing for “causing offence.” To David Cameron, Drummer Rigby’s horrific end was “not just an attack on Britain and on the British way of life, it was also a betrayal of Islam. . . . There is nothing in Islam that justifies this truly dreadful act.”
How does he know? He doesn’t seem the most likely Koranic scholar. Appearing on David Letterman’s show a while back, Cameron was unable to translate into English the words “Magna Carta,” which has quite a bit to do with that “British way of life” he’s so keen on. But apparently it’s because he’s been up to his neck in suras and hadiths every night sweating for Sharia 101. So has Scotland Yard’s deputy assistant commissioner, Brian Paddick, who reassured us after the London Tube bombings that “Islam and terrorism don’t go together,” and the mayor of Toronto, David Miller, telling NPR listeners after 19 Muslims were arrested for plotting to behead the Canadian prime minister: “You know, in Islam, if you kill one person you kill everybody,” he said in a somewhat loose paraphrase of Koran 5:32 that manages to leave out some important loopholes. “It’s a very peaceful religion.”
That’s why it fits so harmoniously into famously peaceful societies like, say, Sweden. For the last week Stockholm has been ablaze every night with hundreds of burning cars set alight by “youths.” Any particular kind of “youth”? The Swedish prime minister declined to identify them any more precisely than as “hooligans.” But don’t worry: The “hooligans” and “youths” and men of no Muslim appearance whatsoever can never win because, as David Cameron ringingly declared, “they can never beat the values we hold dear, the belief in freedom, in democracy, in free speech, in our British values, Western values.” Actually, they’ve already gone quite a way toward eroding free speech, as both prime ministers demonstrate. The short version of what happened in Woolwich is that two Muslims butchered a British soldier in the name of Islam and helpfully explained, “The only reason we have done this is because Muslims are dying every day.” But what do they know? They’re only Muslims, not Diversity Outreach Coordinators. So the BBC, in its so-called “Key Points,” declined to mention the “Allahu akbar” bit or the “I”-word at all: Allah who?
Not a lot of Muslims want to go to the trouble of chopping your head off, but when so many Western leaders have so little rattling around up there, they don’t have to. And, as we know from the sob-sister Tsarnaev profiles, most of these excitable lads are perfectly affable, or at least no more than mildly alienated, until the day they set a hundred cars alight, or blow up a school boy, or decapitate some guy. And, if you’re lucky, it’s not you they behead, or your kid they kill, or even your Honda Civic they light up. And so life goes on, and it’s all so “mundane,” in Simon Jenkins’s word, that you barely notice when the Jewish school shuts up, and the gay bar, and the uncovered women no longer take a stroll too late in the day, and the publishing house that gets sent the manuscript for the next Satanic Verses decides it’s not worth the trouble. . . . But don’t worry, they’ll never defeat our “free speech” and our “way of life.”
One in ten Britons under 25 is now Muslim. That number will increase, through immigration, disparate birth rates, and conversions like those of the Woolwich killers, British-born and -bred. Metternich liked to say the Balkans began in the Landstrasse, in southeast Vienna. Today, the Dar al-Islam begins in Wellington Street, in southeast London. That’s a “betrayal” all right, but not of Islam.
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http://libertygb.org.uk/v1/index.php/news-libertygb/4103-david-cameron-declares-war-on-the-edl
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reliability of this site is unknown:
http://www.siotw.org/modules/news_english/item.php?itemid=1150#.Ub-6dZ9FEDB.facebook
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http://www.clarionproject.org/news/swedish-court-hands-out-light-sentence-muslim-teen-rapists/#fm
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Guest Column: Dutch Islamic School's Lies and Threats Offer Broader Lessons
by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
July 19, 2013
http://www.investigativeproject.org/4092/guest-column-dutch-islamic-school-lies
Students threatening teachers. Teachers threatening students. Corruption in the classrooms, the hallways, and, eventually, becoming a national scandal – all part of daily life at an Islamic high school in Rotterdam. There, according to a recent article in Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad, non-Muslim teachers are pressured to pass failing Muslim students, while Muslim teachers hold secretive classes instructing their pupils on the evils of European culture.
And that's only part of the story.
The Ibn Ghaldoun school has a long history of controversy, but returned recently to the spotlight after it was discovered that a group of its students had stolen copies of the national final exam, administered to all Dutch students, and were selling it over the Internet. Dozens were found to have cheated, including at least one young woman who, having researched the answers, spoke them into her smartphone and played the recording during test-taking, hiding the headphones under her hijab. The result: the tests had to be repeated, even by those who had not seen them in advance – and so students around the country whose families had planned to take their summer holidays were, in many cases, forced to forfeit flights and other travel arrangements (often at substantial cost).
Investigations into the theft have revealed deep-rooted corruption and revisited previous dirty dealings at the Islamic school, the only Islamic secondary school in the country. In 2007, for instance, Ibn Ghaldoun's directors were found to have used over €200,000 in government subsidies earmarked for books and local educational school outings to take 200 students and their families not, say, to the Rijksmuseum or Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, but to Mecca. To make matters worse, school administrators then created false receipts and invoices to cover up the misallocation of funds.
Other money also appears to have been paid that same year to local imams not officially affiliated with the school, including the radical Khalil El Moumni, known, among other things, for regularly characterizing homosexuals as being "worse than pigs."
In this latest scandal, the school has come under its most intense scrutiny yet. And the findings suggest that problems with Holland's Muslim population are far more complex – and potentially serious – than has been recognized to date.
It isn't only that several hundred of Rotterdam's Muslim youth attend a school where lying and stealing is evidently the norm for the administration, creating an environment in which the basic values and principles of Western law and social values are dismissed and disregarded; and it isn't only that the role model this establishes for these children is one that not only ignores Dutch law, but defies it. What is worse is that such lessons, according to the NRC Handelsblad, are actually taught directly: in a discussion with seven non-Muslim teachers from the school (all of whom claim to have taken jobs there in the hope of improving chances for underprivileged Muslim youth), reporter Andreas Kouwenhoven discovered that after-school "study groups" prove not to be study groups at all. Rather, one Ibn Ghaldoun teacher told him, "they were classes aimed at indoctrinating the children. The lessons were directed against Dutch culture: Girls should never marry a Dutch boy or a non-believer [non-Muslim]."
Others told the NRC that parents frequently participated in the culture of lies prevalent at the school, regularly pressuring them to raise a child's grade or even to pass a failing student. Equally distressing, however, is the fact that some teachers actually capitulated. Some cited threats (one claimed his car was vandalized when he refused to raise one student's grade). Others who admitted inflating grades and secretly giving pupils second- and third chances felt that Dutch-Muslim children experience particular difficulty navigating Dutch society and so, deserve some latitude – this even when many Ibn Ghaldoun's students were born and raised in the Netherlands. Not only have students who should have failed been allowed to pass, but even those who rightfully should have flunked out completely have received diplomas. (Ibn Ghaldoum's director, Ayhan Tonca, did not respond to requests for comment for this column.)
The consequences of all this are significant. The unemployment rate among the Dutch Muslim population, particularly among Moroccans, is 15 percent, versus 8 percent of non-Muslims. Far more live in poverty. These facts are frequently cited as reasons for the high rate of criminality in the Muslim (and especially Moroccan) community, and as proof that Muslims are discriminated against by non-Muslim employers. But the situation at the school suggests that the problems lie deeper, in a systemic, cultural approach to maneuvering through life and handling an adverse situation: the lying, the cheating, the threats.
(As for allegations of discrimination in the job market, one can't help but wonder: the fact that two kids graduate with a certain grade point average may make them appear equal as job candidates; but if one of them received that diploma despite the fact that he cannot write a coherent job solicitation letter, then there's likely more than just ethnicity involved.)
What's more, failure to assimilate appears to come, then, not from discrimination or difficulties in adapting per se, but as a deliberate strategy promoted not just be radical imams in the mosques, but by the schools.
Granted, Ibn Ghaldoun is but one of many Islamic schools in the country (though it is, significantly, the only Islamic high school). But it is by far not the only one that expressly teaches students to oppose Dutch norms or resist Westernization; in fact, a 2008 report showed that a full 86 percent had defrauded the government of a total of over €2 million, while more recent government reports have shown that 30 percent of Islamic schools in the Netherlands have ties to Hamas and/or the Muslim Brotherhood.
That may explain the rise in extremism in the country in recent years, and the growing flow of Dutch Muslims to join the jihad in Syria – trends that have caused Dutch officials to raise the terror alert to its next-to-highest level.
This is not to argue against the existence of Muslim schools in principle, any more than against the presence of, say, Yeshivas. But if this is the kind of Islam Ibn Ghaldoun and similar such schools are teaching, then not only Holland, but all of Europe – and the West would be far better off without them. The time, in any case, has come to stop mollycoddling these children, and to stop making excuses for their behavior. The West must at last demand that its Muslim children be part of our cultural and moral fabric – starting in the classroom.
Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New York and the Netherlands.
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http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/secret-minutes-chancellor-kohl-wanted-half-of-turks-out-of-germany-a-914376.html#ref=nl-international
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http://www.thelocal.se/50030/20130903/
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http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2013/09/open-wide-.html
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Kuwait Funding Muslim Brotherhood Growth in Western Mosques
by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
September 13, 2013
http://www.investigativeproject.org/4160/kuwait-funding-muslim-brotherhood-growth-in
The completion of a new mosque in Amsterdam is doing more than opening the doors of worship to Dutch Muslims; it is opening new windows into unexpected avenues of terrorist financing and funding for the growth of radical Islam in the West.
For years, Western counterterrorism officials and pundits have expressed concern about the sponsorship of European and American mosques, Islamic schools, and other Muslim organizations by the Saudi government in efforts to its own extremist version of Islam, Wahhabism. Wahhabis adhere to strict, literal interpretations of the Quran and defend the use of violence against those who do not – Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
Now, however, it seems we've been so focused on the Saudis, we may have missed a potentially even greater source of radicalization, and certainly a fast-growing one: the Muslim Brotherhood. And the government of Kuwait, with ties to al-Qaida groups and Hamas, appears to be among the largest financiers of Brotherhood infiltration into Europe.
This is where the Amsterdam mosque comes in. Located in the largely Muslim neighborhood of Sloterdijk, the Blue Mosque has been the subject of controversy in the Dutch press since its conception. A report that the government of Kuwait was paying salaries to its imam and other officers recently propelled the mosque – and its organization – into the headlines. Those reports have since been challenged, but the gist of them remains true: through a pan-European organization called the Europe Trust, Kuwait is tying Dutch and other European Muslims directly into the Muslim Brotherhood via complex financial, non-profit and religious networks that stretch from Spain to Ireland – and across the Atlantic to New York.
Based in the UK, the Europe Trust is funded largely by Kuwait (with help from the UAE-based Makhtoum Foundation, about which, more later), and, according to the Middle East Quarterly, "channels money from the Persian Gulf to groups sympathetic to the Brotherhood in Europe, primarily to build mosques." Indeed, the Blue Mosque was funded entirely by Kuwait, working through the offices of the Europe Trust Nederland (ETN). Others have tied the Europe Trust to the Brotherhood as well; but particularly notable is the fact that the Trust is led by Ahmed Al-Rawi, a UK-based Muslim Brotherhood leader, and Nooh al Kaddo, a Dublin-based Iraqi who runs the Islamic Cultural Center of Ireland (ICCI), well known as a Brotherhood institution. The ICCI also houses the European Council of Fatwa and Research, whose director, the Egyptian cleric Yusuf al Qaradawi, has reportedly "defended suicide bombing and advocated the death sentence for homosexuals, according to the Irish Independent. (Kaddo, for his part, defends Qaradawi, describing his views in the Independent as "representative of Islamic teachings and not assumed to be a violation of same.")
But here's what else: al-Kaddo, who serves as a trustee of the Hamas-linked charity, Human Appeal International, also directs the largest mosque in Western Europe: the Al Salam mosque in Rotterdam, a controversial monument whose 50-meter high minarets form the highest point in the city. And like the ICCI, Al Salam (also known as Essalam) was financed entirely by Hamdan ben Rashid Al-Makhtoum, deputy ruler of Dubai and (conveniently) UAE Minister of Finance. Makhtoum, as it happens, also is a generous donor to Hamas-linked CAIR in the U.S. (The Sheik has also provided funds for other European mosques.)
Thirty-five miles away, Amsterdam's Blue Mosque also has al-Kaddo to thank for his efforts to secure the money that built it – an achievement made possible in part through his affiliation with Yahia Bouyafa, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Netherlands and director (among other things) of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in the Netherlands (FION). FION, in turn, is a member of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (FIOE) – which the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report identifies as a Brotherhood umbrella group that also embraces al-Kaddo's Europe Trust – and thus the Al Salam mosque in Rotterdam.
All in the same web. But there's more.
According to a fact sheet published by the Blue Mosque itself, a partnership developed early in the planning stages placed the ETN and FION – or al-Kaddo and Bouyafa – in charge of raising funds for the building. Bouyafa approached Kuwait's Ministry of Religious Affairs. But when his proposal was rejected, another local imam, Yassin Elforkani – suspected of ties to the Brotherhood – was called in to take over. With a few clever alterations to the construction and financing plan, Elforkani convinced Kuwait to provide the needed €2 million.
But with Kuwait now owning the building, sponsoring the ETN, and with extensive ties to Kaddo and Bouyafa (who has regularly exchanged places with Elforkani as director of FION and of the mosque board), the next step was inevitable: the appointment of Kuwaiti Minister for Religious Affairs (Awaqf) Mutlaq al-Qarawi, as chairman of the European Trust Nederland.
This means that one of the most active Muslim organizations in the Netherlands is now led not by a Dutch citizen, not even by a Dutch-speaking foreign imam, but by the government of Kuwait. More specifically, the Trust now sits in the hands of the Kuwaiti Ministry of Religious Affairs, which takes as its mandate spread of Islam to nonbelievers (dawah).
The Europe Trust has also not limited itself to Northern Europe: the NEFA Foundation has tied the group to properties in France, Greece, Romania, and Germany, where, NEFA notes, "funds for real estate purchased […] on behalf of a German Islamic association also came from the Makhtoum Foundation as well as the Awaqf Ministry [Ministry of Religious Affairs] in Kuwait and the Bayt al-Zakat in Dubai."
If all this sounds remote for Americans, too far across the oceans to matter very much, think again. According to a 2003 statement from former National Security and Counter-terrorism Coordinator Richard Clarke before the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, "several Al Qida operatives have allegedly been associated with the Kuwaiti Muslim Brotherhood," including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramsi Yousef, a key figure in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
What's more, Clarke testified, "The Kuwaiti government allegedly provides substantial funding to charities controlled by the Kuwait Muslim Brotherhood, such as Lajnat al-Dawa. The U.S. Department of Treasury and the United Nations Security Council designated Lajnat al-Dawa on January 9, 2003 as a supporter of Al Qida. Lajnat al-Dawa and its affiliates had offices in the U.S. in Michigan, Colorado, and Northern Virginia."
If that's not enough, cables published by Wikileaks regarding the problems of policing money flowing to terrorist groups are even more damning. The New York Times summed up a series of these cables, which described Kuwait, the only Gulf country where terrorist funding has not been criminalized, as "a key transit point."
Other ties have been suggested between U.S. mosques and the Brotherhood, most notably the renowned Islamic Cultural Center in New York, founded by Egyptian-born
Muhammad Abdul Rauf – father of former Ground Zero Mosque/Park51 imam Faisal Rauf – and funded in large measure by the Kuwaiti government.
Meanwhile, al-Kaddo, with continuing support from the Muslim Brotherhood in Kuwait, is gathering funds for even more mosques throughout Europe. While the ETN, he insists, does not define the positions of those mosques, it does use its power to hire, appoint, and fire each mosque's officers and imams – all carefully selected from an inside Brotherhood group – and many of whom have ties to Hamas or al-Qaida.
With Europe now becoming one of the richest resources for Islamic jihad, and with the free ability of its citizens to travel visa-free to the United States, the threat a growing, radicalized European Brotherhood network poses is a lot closer than it seems.
Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New York and the Netherlands.
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I posted a few years back how Sweden's third largest city is Malmö with the highest percentage of Muslims in Scandinavia was unable to allow any spectators in to see Sweden host Israel in a Davis Cup (tennis) match because of the violence. Here is a riot video Malmo 'welcoming' their international guests from Israel. This is a must-see if your view of Scandinavia or western Europe is outdated.
Violent Riots at Davis Cup in Malmö Sweden 20090307
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zb1q7KzJBbE
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Yesterday a local Swedish newspaper published a story about a journalist donning a kippah for a day in Malmo:
A day as a Jew in Malmö
http://www.thelocal.se/50790/20131014/
...In 2010 the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which represents Jewish interests abroad, issued a travel warning for Malmö urging “extreme caution.” A year later a Hollywood film company scrapped plans to shoot a Jewish themed movie in the city because of concerns about anti-Semitism there. Last year the Wiesenthal Centre said “they see no reason to relax or revoke” their travel warning to Jews considering a visit to southern Sweden. A few months afterwards the Jewish community centre was attacked in a bomb blast.
...the sole Jewish kindergarten is protected with bullet-proof doors after the bomb attack last year.
...The idea was to go about my normal day and also visit places which a potential tourist may go to, albeit with one major difference - the kippah clipped to the back of my head. My intention was not to take the biggest risk possible by venturing into a suburb like Kroksbäck where a Gambian national was recently assaulted along with his young son and nearly thrown off a bridge in a racially motivated crime. Besides, Kroksbäck along with say Rosengård are not exactly tourist hotspots. ...
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Story at the link. Editor's Note: Some names have been changed in order to protect identities.
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Trail of Kenyan mall attack leads investigators to Norway
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Security-Watch/terrorism-security/2013/1018/Trail-of-Kenyan-mall-attack-leads-investigators-to-Norway
Norwegian police have been questioning friends and family of a Somalia-born Norwegian citizen who they suspect may be one of the gunmen behind last month's terrorist attack in Nairobi.
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Where did we read recently about militant Islam in Scandinavia? (See previous post in thread.)
The trail also leads to the Scandinavian strongholds of the USA, Somalis living in Minneapolis: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2430324/Kenya-mall-attack-Up-3-American-teens-Minnesota-involved-Nairobi-massacre.html
Open borders with trust and tolerance of people committed to destroy you is a recipe for disaster.
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Guest Column: UK Child Brides Victims of "Cultural Sensitivity"
by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
November 21, 2013
http://www.investigativeproject.org/4223/guest-column-uk-child-brides-victims-of-cultural
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The original tale may be apocryphal, but the story of the silver spoon has saved the lives of hundreds of British Muslim girls being forced into marriage by their parents. "Put a spoon in your knickers," a counselor at the British organization Karma Nirvana told a young girl being sent abroad to wed against her will. Karma Nirvana attends to the needs of girls being threatened with forced marriage, many of whom are under the age of 17.
The idea behind the plot was simple, but ingenious: the spoon would set off alarms at airport security, whereupon the unwilling bride-to-be could explain her situation to a law enforcement officer who could then intervene to protect her.
The ploy evidently worked, and has been adopted since by other young women in the UK, most of them British-born, who are sent to their parents' original homes and villages in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and elsewhere to marry first cousins they have never met, conscribed to a life of servitude and worse.
It's a trick more and more girls seem to need. According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Britain's Forced Marriage Unit took in 1,485 such cases in 2012. And that's just a drop in the proverbial bucket: Britain's Chief Prosecutor Nazir Afzal told the ABC, "There are probably between 8,000 to 10,000 forced marriages or threats of forced marriage in the UK every year." Even more shocking, according to the FMU, of those, nearly 1,500, or "thirteen percent involved victims below 15 years [and] 22 percent involved victims aged 16-17." One victim was merely two years old; another, at the other end of the spectrum, was 71.
Almost half of these cases involve Pakistani families, many of whom reportedly take advantage of dual nationality rights so that British officials cannot intervene once the girl is on Pakistani soil, the BBC reported. Getting her there, however, is often the problem – one which generally involves either violence (a girl is beaten and locked into her room until she agrees to marry) or deceit (frequently, a girl will be told she will be attending a wedding in Pakistan during her summer holiday; only when she arrives does she learn that the wedding is her own). Because parents so often will use the summer school holidays to spirit their daughters away, officials have begun sending out alerts for airline officials to be on the lookout for young girls traveling to Southern Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. Teachers are also being asked to watch for girls who do not return to school in the fall.
Other measures are also beginning to be put in place in the UK, including a law to criminalize forced marriages. And as Phyllis Chesler, an American scholar who writes frequently on the subject, told me, "The Special Prosecutor of honor-based crimes now has the power to return such girls if they can be found and say they are willing to be re-patriated."
But for now, the issue remains, and women and girls continue to be married off against their will to men they've never met, who usually do not share their values, mores, or world view.
Forced marriage, it should be noted, is not the same as an arranged marriage, in which bride and groom are both willing participants in a union organized by their parents. In forced marriages, one or both are unwilling; and girls particularly who refuse are often subjected to unspeakable violence, which at times has been known to end in an honor killing.
When they do submit, their "marriages" more often than not involve abusive husbands, in-laws who expect them to act as servants, and rape. Many become pregnant before they even turn 15, as was the case with one British-Pakistani girl, whose marriage a British judge recently refused to dissolve, citing legal restrictions.
Yet while many argue that these arrangements, like arranged marriages, occur in many cultures and across religions, statistics show another story, particularly in the West, where the vast majority of forced marriages occur in Muslim families. Almost all the UK victims, for instance, are Muslim along with some Sikhs, coming not just from Pakistan, but also from Bangladesh, India, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and Somalia.
For years, such marriages were organized in large part to bring the grooms and their families to the West, says Sameem Ali, author of Belonging, a memoir of her own forced marriage. And according to ABC, "Sometimes girls do not return to Britain until they are pregnant, the theory being that this may assist the process by which the husband seeks residency in the United Kingdom."
But as the immigrant population grows, more and more forced marriages are even taking place in British mosques – despite British laws prohibiting marriage below the age of 16. Soeren Kern, an analyst with the Gatestone Institute, recently described a situation in which one Muslim cleric, officiating at the forced marriage of a 14-year-old, declared, "She's 14. By Sharia, grace of God, she's legal to get married. Obviously Islam has made it easy for us. There is nothing against that. We're doing it because it's okay through Islam."
But if the problem lies within the immigrant community, Ali also blames the British, and specifically, the multiculturalists who, she says, are "afraid to tread on the toes" of the Muslim community. "I keep seeing professionals who say 'it's a cultural issue, why are we imposing our cultural values on this community?'" she tells me. "But that young girl is being forced into marriage, and that young girl needs help." Rather than focus on the religious or cultural aspect of these marriages, says Ali, "they should be attacking it for what it is: a child abuse issue."
But isn't it also a cultural or religious one?
Sameem Ali
Ali is adamant that this should not matter to the authorities. "It's for me, for those in the community, to worry about the culture," she says. "Everyone keeps using that as an excuse, that they don't want to be seen as treading on the toes of the Muslims. But why not? If the community didn't want to pick up Western values, then why have they moved to a Western country? The people of this country need to start asking that question."
That they don't, she believes, explains why both forced marriages and honor killings, also rampant in the British Muslim community, continue almost 30 years after her own grim experience. "If people had asked the right questions then, we wouldn't have the term 'honor killing' on everyone's lips now. We wouldn't have gotten to the point where everyone knows what that is," she says. "Too many Muslims use Islam as a way of putting people back into the Stone Age. It doesn't help when Western people use my religion to do the same."
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This is exactly the distinction I have been making here for several years now!
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http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/uk-moves-to-criminalize-islamism/
It’s easy to slam all the nonsense about Islamic extremism as willful denial and the notion that Islamism is something separate from Islam, rather than the political implementation of Islam through Islamization, as delusional.
But this is potentially a quite important step. For the first time, a major Western country is moving to criminalize a variant of Islam. And that’s an interesting precedent.
The UK is separating a part of Islam (based on specific characteristics, e.g. a worldwide Islamic state, approval of violence) that the religion shares as a whole. And it’s doing this by classifying it as a political ideology… rather than a religion.
That’s a good thing. Yes, this isn’t an actual ban. But it is a declaration that it is unwelcome and is to be treated the way that “right-wing extremists” like the EDL are. That is going to have plenty of invisible consequences especially on the policing level. Assuming that it’s truly implemented.
The UK isn’t going to suddenly go full Angola. Even Angola isn’t going full Angola. But these represent three important steps
1. Classifying a form of Islam as an ideology rather than a religion
2. Taking legal steps to move it out of the public square
3. Making that classification based on characteristics that Islam overall shares
That’s a base for something much bigger.
It would be premature to make too much of this right now. Cameron is worried about his political prospects and European leaders have a tendency to talk big going into elections before scampering away… but this does look like it was workshopped through the bureaucracy. That means it may actually turn into policy.
The British government said Wednesday it needs new powers to help combat the spread of violent extremist Islam, including administrative authority to ban groups and restrict the movement and behavior of alleged recruiters.
A special task force of senior ministers set up by Prime Minister David Cameron reported Wednesday, recommending new quasi-judicial authorities and defining Islamic extremism as “a distinct ideology that should not be confused with traditional [Muslim] religious practice,” according to a statement from Mr. Cameron’s office.
The report also recommends the government work with Internet providers in Britain to get them to block access to sites based abroad that carry material “illegal under U.K. law.”
The new powers recommended for use against extremist recruiters would be similar to the controversial “anti-social behavior orders” introduced in 1998. Such orders are imposed by local magistrates on hooligans and other reckless youths — banning them from being in places like malls or parks, associating with certain people and exhibiting behaviors like swearing or playing loud music.
Anti-social behavior orders can be imposed “on the balance of the evidence.” By contrast, criminal sanctions can be imposed only after conviction “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
That last part is rather important. It makes it possible for the authorities to begin harassing people because everyone knows what they’re up to.
The move is part of a sweeping package of measures drawn up by an anti-extremism task force set up by David Cameron after the death of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich.
In its initial report to be detailed to Parliament today, the task force will also propose new internet filters to block extremist websites and extended powers for watchdogs to shut down charities suspected of being fronts for extremist groups.
‘I want to see an end to hate preaching in Britain,’ the Prime Minister said.
As well as new civil orders against extremists – dubbed ‘Tebos’, or terror and extremism behaviour orders – the Government is to consider the case for another new type of order to ban groups which ‘seek to undermine democracy or use hate speech, when necessary to protect the public or prevent crime and disorder’.
Both types of order are to be based on a new definition of extremism which specifically includes a ‘distorted interpretation of Islam’.
It identifies Islamist extremism as a distinct ideology which should not be confused with traditional religious practice. This ‘distorted’ view argues for a global Islamic state and against ‘liberal values such as democracy, the rule of law and equality’, and tells people they cannot be both Muslim and British.
This “distorted view” just happens to be Islam. And if the UK government just blindly classified Islam as a political ideology to be repressed… that puts him on the same line as Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Cameron made the announcement in China, which like Russia, has government clergy and clergy not sanctioned by the government who are subject to all sorts of government sanctions. Europe is slowly drifting toward that solution. It’s not a real solution since it does not address the demographic issues, something China can afford to ignore, but it’s a potentially important step.
The task force includes Home Secretary Theresa May, Deputy Premier Nick Clegg, Minister for Faith Baroness Warsi, and has taken advice from police and intelligence chiefs.
Clegg is well on the left and Warsi is a Muslim and has some suspicious ties. So I would like to see how this is actually implemented, but there is potential here.
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http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/majority-europes-muslims-favor-sharia-over-democracy#
http://www.clarionproject.org/news/islamist-protesters-london-warn-shops-against-alcohol-sales
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http://www.cbn.com/tv/1509282970001
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The French Jihadist Killings in Belgium: This is Just the Beginning
by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
June 2, 2014
http://www.investigativeproject.org/4410/the-french-jihadist-killings-in-belgium-this-is
Security camera screenshot showing gunman firing at victims.
At around 3:50 pm on Saturday, May 24, a man dressed in a blue sweater and baseball cap walked casually into the Jewish Museum in Brussels, Belgium. Pulling a Kalashnikov rifle from a black bag, he shot and killed four people– an Israeli couple, a French national waiting to enter the museum and a Belgian museum volunteer. He then nonchalantly walked away.
By the following Saturday, French authorities in Marseille had arrested 29-year-old Mehdi Nemmouche while performing a routine customs check at the local bus station. Nemmouche, who boarded the bus in Amsterdam, had recently returned to his native France from Syria, where he is believed to have fought alongside the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.
The killings bear strong resemblance to a string of murders carried out by French-Algerian Mohammed Merah in Toulouse just two years ago. Nemmouche's calm demeanor after the shooting closely parallels that of Mohammed Bouyeri, the Dutch-Moroccan Muslim who stabbed and shot filmmaker Theo van Gogh on an Amsterdam street in 2004. And most notably, Nemmouche allegedly used a Kalashnikov, the weapon of choice among Western Muslims who join Syrian rebel forces. A Kalashnikov, along with another gun, and a video claiming credit for the murders, were found in Nemmouche's luggage at the time of his arrest.
The May 24 murders have brought long-overdue focus to the situation in Belgium, where radical Islam has long been spilling poison on its soil.
And the problem is not just about the strength of Sharia4Belgium, one of the strongest Sharia4 organizations seeking to install Sharia law in European countries; nor is it about the estimated 3000 European Muslims who have joined the Syrian rebels.
The problems began much earlier and have been growing more incendiary by the year. On the afternoon of 9/11/2001, for instance, controversial activist Dyab Abou Jahjah, a Lebanese-born Belgian with alleged ties to Hezbollah, celebrated the attacks on New York's World Trade Center with friends. Jahjah, who also founded the now nascent Arab-European League ("AEL"), a political group that sought to combine democracy with Sharia in Europe, described the day in his autobiography, writing: "We sat as if hypnotized by the radio, and heard that another plane was missing, maybe two. And that the Pentagon had been hit. We couldn't hold our joy, and laughed together."
Jahjah was arrested for inciting riots in 2002; in 2009, AEL protests in Antwerp's Jewish quarter left many Jews afraid to leave their homes. Soon after, he returned to his native Lebanon. This past January Jahjah made his way back to Belgium where he has been actively contributing to the political dialogue, engaging in debates and speeches and penning a column for De Standaard. At the same time, he continues to post veiled anti-Semitic remarks on his Twitter feed (@aboujahjah) and elsewhere.
Yet little of this situation has been noted in the international press, even in discussing the attacks of May 24. No one seems to have noticed, say, the migration of Jews from Brussels' center as Muslim immigrants move in, or – more significantly – the increasing number of Jews who have emigrated to Israel, citing anti-Semitism at home. In fact, this development is true elsewhere in Europe as well, where, as the Deutsche Wirtschaft observed in 2011, "Particularly when Jews are recognizable, such as by wearing a yarmulke, they cannot show themselves in certain neighborhoods."
Little attention has been paid, either, to a 2013 European report in which Belgium scored the second highest percentage of anti-Semitic attacks, the majority, though not all, of which were at the hands of Muslims, and in which 88 percent of Belgian Jews said that anti-Semitism had increased greatly in the previous five years.
This could explain why even top Belgian officials were woefully unprepared for what took place last Saturday at the museum; as former Brussels Police Commissioner Raphael Vandenbergh wrote me in an e-mail, "we never thought such a terrorist attack would be possible in Belgium."
That the accused is in fact French suggests, too, that the terror threat is in no way limited to Belgian borders – as the 2011 massacre of children in Toulouse already showed. Indeed, the French have had their share of threats, ranging from the fire-bombing of the offices of Charlie Hebdo in response to a published satirical cartoon, to the bombing of a kosher grocery just outside Paris. A year ago, members of a suspected Chechnyan terror cell were also arrested in various locations surrounding the French capital.
In fact, Nemmouche himself was on the French officials' radar, having been previously arrested for armed robbery, and because he was known to have fought alongside jihadist groups in Syria.
And yet, he still managed to enter Belgium, walk into a Jewish museum with guns, and use them.
There is an even more tragic irony to this story: just two days after the Belgian attacks – and a day after a similar attack in a town outside of Paris -- Dutch officials publicized a new report on local and European intelligence, showing that America's controversial PRISM eavesdropping program abroad – the one that has since been suspended after being leaked by former NSA employee Edward Snowden -- helped foil 26 terrorist attacks across Europe. Very possibly, that same program, were it not for Mr. Snowden, might have prevented the Brussels attack of May 24th. And the next one. And the next one, and the next - whoever may commit them. Wherever they may be.
Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New York and the Netherlands.
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How come I can only find this story in Jewish press, picked up in the US on conservative sites? I have posted other anti-Israel violence in Sweden third largest city.
http://www.israeltoday.co.il/NewsItem/tabid/178/nid/24733/Default.aspx
A Kurdish man living in Malmö, Sweden was beaten and seriously injured this week by a gang of local Muslims who took offense at the Israeli flag displayed in his apartment window. ... Babak said that twice rocks were thrown through his windows. When he went down to the street after the last incident, he was confronted by at least 10 youths, most wielding iron rods and glass bottles. After demanding to know why he placed an Israeli flag in his window, the youths severely beat Babak.
http://www.jns.org/news-briefs/2014/7/7/man-assaulted-in-sweden-for-flying-israeli-flag
http://forward.com/articles/201529/sweden-man-beaten-for-hanging-israel-flag/
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/swedish-jew-hospitalized-after-flying-israeli-flag/2014/07/08/
http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/14903/sweden_man_severly_beaten_for_hanging_israel_flag_in_his_window
http://www.jta.org/2014/07/07/news-opinion/world/man-beaten-in-malmo-for-hanging-israeli-flag
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41 percent of Malmös population consists of first or second generation immigrants.
The dismal experience of Malmö undermines the theory that immigration has benefited the Swedish economy.
http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2013/05/malmo-case-study-in-multiculturalism.html
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http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/07/13/violent-anti-jewish-riots-rock-paris-activist-says-french-jews-are-in-serious-danger-video/
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http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/07/13/violent-anti-jewish-riots-rock-paris-activist-says-french-jews-are-in-serious-danger-video/
Anyone shocked to read this?
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What would these Muslims do if they don't have Jews to kick around anymore? Answer:
Christians and Hindus.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/tens-of-thousands-rally-in-london-against-israels-gaza-op/
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http://ace.mu.nu/archives/350663.php
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o443KJiBTU
IIRC "Mohammed" is the second most common name of new borns in Rotterdam.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o443KJiBTU
IIRC "Mohammed" is the second most common name of new borns in Rotterdam.
Number one according to this:
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/56791
Muslim demographic bomb
Muslims are Not a Minority
By Daniel Greenfield July 25, 2013
...Muslims are not a minority. There are 1.5 billion Sunni Muslims worldwide, outweighing Catholics as the next largest religious faction at 1.1 billion and Hindus at 1 billion. They are still a minority of the overall population in Western countries, but a demographically trending majority.
In the UK more people attend mosques than the Church of England, that makes Muslims the largest functioning religious group there. Mohammed was the most popular baby name last year, ahead of Jack and Harry. In France, in this generation, more mosques have been built than Catholic churches and in southern France there are already more mosques than churches. Mohammed-Amine is the most popular double name, ahead of Jean-Baptiste, Pierre-Louis, Leo-Paul and Mohammed-Ali.
In Belgium, 50 percent of newborns are Muslim and empty Belgian churches are being turned into mosques. The most popular baby name is Mohammed and of the top 7 baby names, 6 were Muslim. A quarter of Amsterdam, Marseilles and Rotterdam and a fifth of Stockholm is already Muslim. The most popular baby name in Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam and The Hague is… Mohammed.
Europe’s Muslim population doubled in the last generation, and is set to double again. By 2025, (a decade and a half away), a third of all births in the EU will be Muslim
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:-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o
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I'm sure it'll turn out fine. I've been told Islam is a religion of peace.
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This thread hit 100,000 reads today gentlemen. 8-)
Well done!
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Europe's Jihadist Girls: Teen Rebellion That Kills
by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
August 14, 2014
http://www.investigativeproject.org/4514/europe-jihadist-girls-teen-rebellion-that-kills
Like many girls her age, 15-year-old Moezdalifa El Adoui left her family's home on a summer afternoon without stopping to say goodbye. But unlike other teens, she wasn't going shopping or meeting friends downtown. The Dutch-Moroccan girl with the sweet warm smile was running away for Syria, to join in the jihad.
The moment they noticed she was gone, her parents phoned the police and her brother spread the word on Facebook. The next day, June 22, Moezdalifa was stopped at the airport in Dusseldorf, from where she planned to fly to Turkey and – like thousands of other European Muslims before her – to cross the border into Syria.
It is hard to imagine a 15-year-old girl, raised in the luxury and opportunity of Europe, running away to join an insurgency abroad, choosing to exchange friends and family for a life on the battlefield of a violent civil war. But over the past year, more and more underage European girls have headed off to Syria to take part in the Islamist uprising. Some go with boyfriends; others, like Moezdalifa, are lured by promises of a better life and lifelong romance once they arrive.
Indeed, according to Janny Groen, a reporter for Holland's Volkskrant, Moezdalifa was one of a group of several girls from the Netherlands all planning to make the trip.
They were by no means the only ones: around the same time, for instance, 16-year-old twins Salma and Zahra Hulani slipped out of their parents' Manchester, England home in the middle of the night, also for Syria. And in April, Samra Kesinovic, 16, left home in Vienna with her friend Sabine Selimovic, aged 15. Austrian officials, reports the UK's Mail Online, now "believe that the pair are in a training camp and are not only already married, but also already living in the homes of their new husbands." Both girls, daughters of (Muslim) Bosnian refugees, were born and raised in Vienna.
All of these seem to be part of a new campaign by ISIS to recruit Western Muslims. "The self-proclaimed Islamic State, formerly known by the acronym ISIS, is actively recruiting Western women and girls," according to the Daily Beast. "And in the process this 'caliphate' that now occupies large swathes of Syria and Iraq is showing, once again, that it's almost as shrewd with social media as it is ruthless on the battlefield."
It is perhaps tempting to wave off such disappearances with a "you know how kids are," or observe that other kids in the 1960s, say, also ran off to join a "revolution" – usually to London or to Berkeley, Calif. But those girls were running away from a culture of war; these are running to its front lines. The first wanted peace, equality, universal love. These girls seek conquest. The children of the '60s imagined "no religion." The children of the jihad imagine only one.
Even so, much of what motivated '60s teens to join the hippie movement is still part of what stirs even underage Muslims in the West to join the extremists in Aleppo. Dutch adolescent psychiatrist Carla Rus, who specializes in treating Muslim girls, notes that their age makes them especially vulnerable to manipulation by recruiters. "They are already turning, because of puberty, against their parents and their society," she observed in a recent e-mail. "Some of them may also be smitten with a jihadist boy, and easily sucked in by his ideology and ideas. Or they may have problems at home, where they get little attention."
Problems at home can be a particularly influential factor for Muslim girls, who are frequently overlooked by their parents in homes where sons are king and where they are often repressed by parents and by brothers. The girls' urge to break free from their families, coupled with a defiant attitude ("I'll show them") and a wish to prove themselves as worthy also make them easy prey for recruiters – many of whom they encounter in local mosques (as the Austrian girls did) or online.
In Moezdalifa's case, one of her friends told Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad, the contact came through Facebook, where two Muslim women from Belgium assured her that, "In Syria she could have a perfect life and get married." Others are specifically targeted by young men around their own age, like 18-year-old Dutch-Moroccan Oussama C, alias Abou Yazeed, who was arrested in June in The Hague just days before Mouzdalifa disappeared.
And ISIS jihadists reportedly have recently released English-language videos aimed at encouraging Westerners to join them. "All my brothers, come to jihad," says one, according to an NBC News report. "Feel the honor we are feeling, feel the happiness that we are feeling." A similar video, created in Dutch, received 57,000 hits in its first day.
Tragically, Muslim parents in the West have been sounding the alarm for well over a year now, warning of recruiters targeting underage youth. In the Netherlands, at least one father filed suit against the Dutch intelligence agency for failing to address the problem.
Now, with a reported 3,000 Europeans having joined Syrian jihadist groups, officials are cracking down. Dual Dutch citizens can lose their Dutch passports, for instance; and in early July, EU leaders announced a "confidential action plan" to address the problem, with measures that include passport confiscation and international arrest warrants.
But for girls like the Halane sisters, you have to ask yourself if this is really the right answer. What happens when reality reaches these girls, when the thrill and the romance are over, and they find themselves trapped in a marriage to a Muslim extremist, living in a foreign land, subjected to the violent oppression of Sharia law?
Arguably, as dual citizens, such girls still have someplace to go, but most carry passports for Turkey or Morocco, where conditions are deteriorating – especially for women. And how do you tell a child of 15 that she can never come back home, just because she believed in something that turned out to be a lie? Do we refuse these young girls – and their future daughters –because they may pose a danger to the West, or provide the safe haven they (inevitably) will need?
(Marc: Life is tough. It is tougher when you are stupid.)
These are questions we have never had to face with any other war, but as the Syrian battles keep raging, and as Western girls continue to join Syria's Islamic jihad, they are questions to which we will soon, urgently, need to find the answers.
Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New York and the Netherlands.
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http://www.newsweek.com/twice-many-british-muslims-fighting-isis-armed-forces-265865
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http://www.newsweek.com/twice-many-british-muslims-fighting-isis-armed-forces-265865
Strange, I'm sure lots of credentialed experts have told me many times that Islam is a religion of peace.
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/aug/29/italy-ramps-security-over-islamic-state-threats-po/
By Cheryl K. Chumley - The Washington Times - Friday, August 29, 2014
Italy has ramped up its security in the wake of some Rome media reports that Islamic State terrorists have set their sights on Pope Francis and threatened to do him harm because of his rally call for the world to subdue the group.
Il Tempo published a report that said the pope is “in the crosshairs” of the Islamic State for “bearing false witness” against Islam — a charge that carries severe punishment and even death.
The newspaper cited anonymous sources among Italy’s intelligence agencies and reported the nation has gone on heightened alert.
The paper also reported that the Islamic State apparently has plans to raise “the level of confrontation” with Europe, Italy and the pope, called the “greatest exponent of the Christian religions,” the Daily Beast reported.
The Vatican, meanwhile, is playing down that report.
“There is nothing serious to this,” Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardo told Catholic News Agency. “There is no particular concern in the Vatican.”
Yet Italy’s Deputy Interior Minister Filippo Bubbico said both the nation and the Vatican face equal risk, and government officials have issued a terrorism alert, the Daily Beast reported.
The alert warns that the Islamic State is looking to attack “sensitive targets” both in and out of Rome, including embassies, Catholic churches, bus and train stations, airports and the like. And officials have put in place flight restrictions over Vatican City and over Italy’s foreign ministry, the Daily Beast reported.
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/aug/29/italy-ramps-security-over-islamic-state-threats-po/#ixzz3BpdDqvYu
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/09/07/guess-which-country-found-shariah-police-patrolling-outside-nightclubs/
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http://pamelageller.com/2014/10/dutch-police-forbid-construction-of-a-sukkah-for-fear-of-vandalism-in-muslim-neighborhood.html/
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http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/10/23/regretful_jihadists_islamic_state_foreign_fighters_return_home?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=*Editors%20Picks&utm_campaign=2014_EditorsPicks23%2F10Rs
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The Swedish police has released a map of 55 areas where they publicly admit to having surrendered control to the criminal gangs. The report describes outright attacks on police officers trying to enter the areas, which is a step up from the previous problem with attacks on mailmen, fire trucks, ambulances and similar services; it used to be that fire trucks and ambulances had to wait for police escort to enter the areas, but now the police themselves need protection.
The no-go areas heavily coincides with the map of the 186 “exclusion areas” aka. crowded, predominantly muslim immigrant ghettos, where education is low, employment is lower, and the only local business thriving is that of the drug dealing (which takes place openly and continues to do brisk business.)
http://swedenreport.org/2014/10/29/swedish-police-55-official-no-go-zones/
http://polisen.se/Global/www%20och%20Intrapolis/Rapporter-utredningar/01%20Polisen%20nationellt/Ovriga%20rapporter-utredningar/Kriminella%20natverk%20med%20stor%20paverkan%20i%20lokalsamhallet%20Sekretesspr%2014.pdf
http://www.svd.se/opinion/ledarsidan/55-no-go-zoner-i-sverige-minner-om-parallellsamhallen_4051399.svd
55 ”no go”-zoner i Sverige
(I used "Google Translate" to get the following roughly to English.)
55 "no go" zones in Sweden
October 28, 2014 at 16:49, Updated: October 29, 2014 at 21:37
The number of residential areas in Sweden where the police can not maintain law and order now totals 55. National Criminal Intelligence Section has identified the geographic areas where local criminal networks is considered to have a major negative impact on the environment. There are areas where bargains among criminals can result in gunfire on the streets, where residents do not dare to testify and where the police are not welcome.
The report "A national survey of criminal networks with major impact in the local community" was published last week. It describes areas where "unattended police cars are attacked," where police officers will be "attacked" and where it is "common for police officers exposed to violence and threats." Traders suffer from vandalism, burglary, robbery and extortion. Drug Sales are open, and although not the gangs control the territory "occurs checks on vehicles" in the battle over the drug market.
The police do not want to talk about parallel societies, but in some areas experiencing residents to "ordinary justice system to some extent eliminated", while police notes that "a wider clientele turn to the criminal justice environment." The residents believe "that it is the criminals who control the areas."
It is about famous places Rinkeby / Tensta and Alby / Fittja in Stockholm, Bergsjön and the Bishop's Palace in Gothenburg and manor / Rosengård in Malmö, but also about Copper farm in Landskrona, Araby in Växjö and brown in Gavle, to name just a few. On these 55 locations, the police have little power to curb crime. Police Call-out services are greeted by stone-throwing and investigations is difficult because people do not want to testify, for now even the crimes reported.
The police do not use the term "no go" zones. It is originally military slang for rebel-controlled areas. But the question is whether there is a clearer description of the places where "the public in several cases, understands that it is the criminals that control in the areas" and where "the police are not able to fulfill its task."
Police are talking about older gangs and younger, with the former work more professional and structured, while the latter as soon as is loosely connected networks, '' mayflies' that comes and goes in different configurations "where the common denominator is the social context and the geographical area .
They established gangs - which are held together by "ethnicity, kinship or friendship" - can probably be countered with targeted efforts against organized crime, while the younger ones can hardly be achieved without broad approaches in the local community. Police are now investigating whether overlap with those the government deemed as "exclusion areas", to possibly identify socioeconomic and other factors behind the development.
And, of course, plays the role of exclusion. But it may be worth recalling that many so-called exclusion areas do not seem to have lapsed into lawlessness, and that the vast majority of people in isolation rather victims than perpetrators. The 55 identified areas need first and foremost safety and security. Only then can the fields evolve in a positive direction. We need a permanent police presence - well staffed police stations - to remove criminals from the streets and to regain control of the areas.
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http://pamelageller.com/2014/11/caliphate-in-europe-sweden-cedes-control-of-muslim-areas.html/
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http://pamelageller.com/2014/11/caliphate-in-europe-sweden-cedes-control-of-muslim-areas.html/
Good thing Islam is a religion of peace!
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnqvCUGBVUk
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https://libcom.org/files/IslamisationMyth.pdf
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http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/germany-thousands-join-anti-islam-protest-against-european-spread-isis-al-qaeda-1478724
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http://pamelageller.com/2014/12/queens-guards-in-retreat-the-islamic-state-isis-plans-attack-on-queens-guards-beheading-plot-fears.html/
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http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/welcome_back_killers/#
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:-o :-o :-o :cry: :cry: :cry: :x :x :x
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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30694406?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=*Morning%20Brief&utm_campaign=2014_MorningBrief%2001%2006%2014%20B
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12 dead, Paris France, satirical news paper office. 4 terrorists still on the loose. 2 police officers among the dead.
P.C.
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Apparently the publication in question was part of the Mohammed cartoon brouhaha in 2006 and until a few days ago had 24/7 protection. The hit took place at the time of a meeting when pretty much everyone would be there.
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Apparently the publication in question was part of the Mohammed cartoon brouhaha in 2006 and until a few days ago had 24/7 protection. The hit took place at the time of a meeting when pretty much everyone would be there.
Looks like well trained,well planned attack.
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Apparently the publication in question was part of the Mohammed cartoon brouhaha in 2006 and until a few days ago had 24/7 protection. The hit took place at the time of a meeting when pretty much everyone would be there.
Looks like well trained,well planned attack.
Hope everyone in the US and Europe stays safe.
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Apparently the publication in question was part of the Mohammed cartoon brouhaha in 2006 and until a few days ago had 24/7 protection. The hit took place at the time of a meeting when pretty much everyone would be there.
Looks like well trained,well planned attack.
Hope everyone in the US and Europe stays safe.
Hard to when there is a global war on and most people in the west want to pretend it isn't happening.
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Tactics Suggest Overseas Jihadi Training in Paris Newspaper Shooting
Analysis
January 7, 2015 | 14:06 GMT Print Text Size
French soldiers patrol in front of the Eiffel Tower on Jan. 7, 2015 in Paris. (JOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images)
Analysis
Three gunmen killed 12 people and critically wounded five in an attack this morning at the headquarters of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Among the dead were two French police officers assigned to protect the office. The magazine is widely known for lampooning Islam and the Prophet Mohammed, and it has paid a high price for it. The magazine's Paris office was completely destroyed by a Molotov cocktail attack in November 2011 in response to a previous edition that contained caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed. The magazine's editors refused to tone down their content despite repeated threats, the past attack and requests by the French government not to publish provocative images.
This attitude meant that they continued to be in the crosshairs of jihadists in recent years. For example, the 10th edition of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's Inspire magazine contained a hit list of people who had insulted the Prophet Mohammed. That list included Stephane Charbonnier, the editor of Charlie Hebdo, whom, according to early reports of today's attack, is among the dead. One of the attackers was alleged to have shouted out, "You tell the media it was al Qaeda in Yemen" during the assault, Britain's Channel 4 News reported.
That such an attack occurred in Paris is not surprising. Indeed, the jihadist threat in France and other parts of Europe has been acute for some time. From photos and videos of the attack it appears that the gunmen were trained, from the way they handled their weapons, moved and shot. This raises the possibility that they had received training in using light arms (perhaps at a jihadist camp overseas) or had fought with jihadists overseas.
The method used in the attacks is also not surprising. Jihadists returning from overseas rarely receive training in advanced terrorist tradecraft, but almost all of them receive training in small arms and small unit tactics. These attackers conducted a successful attack using what they knew instead of attempting to conduct an attack beyond their capability and failing as a result.
That the attack involved a group instead of a lone gunman is also unsurprising. The nature of the jihadist threat is slightly different in Europe than it is in the United States because of differences in the Muslim communities. In the United States, where the Muslim community is more integrated and less likely to be isolated in their own districts, plotters tend to be more self-radicalized and aspirational. Once they become radicalized — frequently via the Internet — it is quite common for them to be arrested as they seek assistance with their plots from individuals who are FBI agents or police informants working on sting operations.
Because of Europe's concentrated and disenfranchised Muslim population, it is not difficult for radicalized European Muslims to find confederates who are not police informants. Even more aspirational and inept groups — such as the four men who were arrested in April 2012, in Luton, United Kingdom, and who pled guilty to plotting to attack a British army base on March 1, 2013 — can be part of a larger radicalized community and have friends and relatives who have been involved in prior plots or who have traveled overseas to fight jihad. This was true for Toulouse shooter Mohammed Merah. Although he conducted his shooting attacks alone, Merah had long been part of a larger militant community and had traveled to places like Pakistan and Afghanistan to train and fight.
The gunmen, who are still at large, can be expected to continue to attack until they are killed or captured. They may or may not have been acting under direct orders from a jihadist group but were in all likelihood working in solidarity with either al Qaeda or the Islamic State. There will probably be some sort of claim of responsibility, in which their ideological affiliation will be made clear, beyond shouted statements reported from the scene.
The attacks happened at a time when the role of Muslim minorities in France is the subject of a heated debate, especially after the publication of a novel that depicts a Muslim president governing France. It also happens at a time when the anti-immigration National Front is seeing record levels of popular support and will probably be a serious contender for the presidential elections of 2017. The situation of Muslim minorities is also controversial in Germany, where anti-Islam protests have taken place in recent months, and in the Netherlands, where the far-right Party of Freedom proposes tighter immigration laws.
Such attacks will continue in the West as long as jihadism survives as an ideology. They will be limited in scope but intended to cause terrorist theater that spills well beyond the limits of the attack to create vicarious victims. Because of this continuing threat, citizens should practice appropriate situational awareness and be prepared to properly respond to danger.
Read more: Tactics Suggest Overseas Jihadi Training in Paris Newspaper Shooting | Stratfor
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The Charlie Hebdo Jihad Massacre: Time to Stand for Free Speech
Posted By Robert Spencer On January 8, 2015
Islamic jihad gunmen have murdered twelve people in the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. One of the jihad murderers in Paris shouted, “We have avenged the prophet Muhammad,” making it abundantly clear that this was a jihad attack and a response to Charlie Hebdo’s daring to mock Muhammad.
It is virtually certain that the mainstream media response to this heinous mass murder will be calls for the West to restrict its freedom of expression, and not publish material that offends Muslims. If you think that is unlikely, remember that it has happened before. When the Obama Administration blamed the Benghazi jihad attack on a video about Muhammad, there were calls in the mainstream media for restrictions on the freedom of speech. Eric Posner in Slate derided the First Amendment’s “sacred status” and declared that “Americans need to learn that the rest of the world—and not just Muslims—see no sense in the First Amendment. Even other Western nations take a more circumspect position on freedom of expression than we do, realizing that often free speech must yield to other values and the need for order.”
In the Los Angeles Times, Sarah Chayes noted that “the current standard for restricting speech — or punishing it after it has in fact caused violence — was laid out in the 1969 case Brandenburg vs. Ohio. Under the narrower guidelines, only speech that has the intent and the likelihood of inciting imminent violence or lawbreaking can be limited.” She then argued at length that the Muhammad video did indeed have the likelihood of inciting imminent violence, and should thus be banned. Her article was a sleazy and dishonest sleight of hand, as the law is that speech that calls for violence can be banned, whereas she was arguing that speech that doesn’t call for violence, but that might make people who oppose it behave violently, should be banned. That would be to enshrine the heckler’s veto into law and to enable Islamic jihadis to silence anyone they disliked simply by killing someone.
And in the Washington Post, the gutter thug Nathan Lean (who has repeatedly published on Twitter what he thinks is my home address and places I frequent, in a transparent attempt to endanger me and those around me, and/or to frighten me into silence) declared: “The voices of hate that hope to fracture our society along religious lines should have no place in our public discourse.” Who would decide which are the “voices of hate” that should be silenced? People like Nathan Lean, of course – that is, purveyors of the “Islamophobia” myth who are determined to silence anyone and everyone who dares raise the slightest objection to the advancing jihad.
Now, as twelve people have been gunned down by Islamic jihadists in Paris, we will hear more such calls for restrictions on the freedom of speech. The likes of Posner, Chayes, and Lean will blame Charlie Hebdo and call on Western media to adopt Sharia blasphemy laws, and refrain from saying or doing anything that Muslims would find offensive — including, of course, honest discussion about how Islamic jihadists use Islamic texts and teachings to justify things like the Charlie Hebdo massacre.
This is the time to say, “Enough.” This is the time to say, We are going to stand for the freedom of speech. No more people are going to die for saying things that offend Muslims. The capacity to be offended and not respond with violence is essential to a pluralistic society, and the freedom of speech itself is our foremost protection against tyranny that would do whatever it willed and crush all dissent.
It is time to stand, or free speech will be lost, and when it is lost, all will be lost.
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http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/10/europe/charlie-hebdo-paris-shooting/index.html
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See video of discussion below:
www.jihadwatch.org/2015/01/video-robert-spencer-on-hannity-on-sharia-no-go-zones-in-france-and-the-charlie-hebdo-jihadists
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Reliability of source unknown, but footage seems legit
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=697860583692539
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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/12/world/europe/paris-attacks-charlie-hebdo.html Western news media down playing anti-terror protest in Paris today, expecting 1 million protesters.
P.C.
Amid Heavy Security, Huge Crowds Gather for Unity March in Paris
By DAN BILEFSKY and MAÏA de la BAUMEJAN. 11, 2015
After Terrorist Attacks, Many French Muslims Wonder: What Now?JAN. 10, 2015
Jihadists and Supporters Take to Social Media to Praise Attack on Charlie Hebdo JAN. 10, 2015
Open Source: Muslim Employee of Kosher Market in Paris Praised for Hiding Customers From GunmanJAN. 10, 2015
Hayat Boumeddiene
French Premier Declares ‘War’ on Radical Islam as Paris Girds for RallyJAN. 10, 2015
PARIS — Hundreds of thousands of people poured into the streets of Paris to join top French officials and world leaders for a rally and march under extraordinary security in a government-sponsored show of unity and defiance after a series of terrorist attacks.
The French government said it would mobilize 500 additional troops and hundreds more police officers to provide security at the rally, intended to galvanize the shaken country. In the area around Place de la République, where the march was starting, snipers could be seen on rooftops, and security officers were seen checking sewers for explosives. The police swarmed the area, and several subway stops and streets were blocked off.
Officials said that public transport in Paris would be free all day Sunday to encourage participation in the march.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls declared on Saturday that France was at “war” with radical Islam after harrowing attacks that claimed the lives of 17 victims. Three gunmen who said they were acting on behalf of Al Qaeda and other radical Islamist groups were killed by the police on Friday in two separate raids. One gunman had taken hostages at a Jewish supermarket in Paris, and the two others had holed themselves up in a print shop in Dammartin-en-Goële, northeast of the French capital.
Mr. Valls called on the French to take to the streets to show solidarity with the victims and to stand behind the idea that republican values of free speech and freedom of expression are the most potent bulwark against terrorists.
“Indignation. Resistance. Solidarity. I am Charlie” read an invitation to the event that was circulating on social media. The organizers said the rally was to show support for freedom of the press and freedom of speech, and to reinforce the message that France and the French would not be cowed by terrorists.
Officials from across Europe and elsewhere, including Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey, have said they planned to attend the rally.
The president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel also said they would be present.
Security officials in France and across Europe remained on high alert for copycat attacks, even as a French prosecutor said that five people detained in the wake of the terrorist attacks had been released.
Early on Sunday, a German newspaper that had reprinted cartoons from the French weekly Charlie Hebdo lampooning the Prophet Muhammad was the target of an apparent arson attack, the newspaper reported on its website. It said there were no injuries.
The daily, the Hamburger Morgenpost, had published three cartoons that had been previously published by Charlie Hebdo, whose offices were attacked Wednesday in Paris. “This much freedom must be possible!” the headline read.
The Associated Press, citing police sources, said that the police in Germany had detained two men in connection with the Hamburger Morgenpost attack.
Several other national and local German newspapers published the cartoons and were placed under police protection, the news agency reported.
On Sunday morning, the French Interior Ministry held what it described as a security summit meeting, bringing together top intelligence and law enforcement officials from across Europe and North America to discuss ways to combat and contain terrorism. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. was among those attending.
Following the meeting, Bernard Cazeneuve, the French interior minister, said that the current European legislation aimed at fighting against terrorism “wasn’t enough” and called for a better European system for tracking potential jihadists and terrorists.
He also said the European ministers had agreed on a need for better cooperation with Internet companies to monitor, detect and remove any “illicit” material that could encourage terrorism.
Mr. Holder announced that the White House would convene an international forum on Feb. 18 to discuss new means of countering terrorism. The White House, in a statement, said the meeting would address domestic and international measures “to prevent violent extremists and their supporters from radicalizing, recruiting, or inspiring individuals or groups in the United States and abroad to commit acts of violence.”
The challenges raised by the attacks — including the threats of foreign fighters and the challenges of violent extremism — figured prominently at the meeting. On Saturday, French cabinet ministers held an emergency meeting in Paris to discuss measures to prevent other attacks.
The mass rally has created a major security headache for the French authorities, two days after security forces killed Amedy Coulibaly, a heavily armed gunman who is suspected of shooting and killing four hostages at a kosher supermarket near Porte de Vincennes in eastern Paris, and two brothers, Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, who are suspected of killing 12 people on Wednesday at the offices of Charlie Hebdo.
On Sunday, counterterrorist officials in France said they were continuing to investigate links between Mr. Coulibaly and the Kouachi brothers, the source of their funding and weapons, and whether the suspects were part of a dormant sleeper cell that had been activated.
The investigation is a challenge for French law enforcement officials, who are already grappling with the more than 1,000 French citizens who last year went or planned to join jihadists in Syria and Iraq. The events of the past week appear to confirm fears that some could return to wage attacks on French soil.
The attacks fanned anxieties across France and Europe and raised questions about why the authorities had failed to thwart an attack by suspects who were known to the French security services.
While the rally on Sunday was intended to help unite the country, it has fanned some divisions. Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Front, who was not invited, urged her followers to stay away, saying that the demonstration had been usurped for political ends “by parties which represent what the French hate: partisan spirit, electioneering and indecent polemic.”
On Saturday, hundreds of thousands of people marched in Paris, Toulouse, Nice and other cities in a show of solidarity, and rallies were held in places as far away as Athens, Madrid, Madagascar, Tel Aviv and Bangui, Central African Republic.
The French authorities on Saturday intensified the hunt for the companion of one of the killers, only to learn that she appeared to have fled to Turkey and probably went to Syria days before the first assault in Paris on Wednesday. The police had suspected that the woman — Hayat Boumeddiene, 26, the girlfriend of Mr. Coulibaly — might have played a role in one or more of the attacks.
In Germany on Saturday, an estimated 35,000 people demonstrated in Dresden in support of tolerance and an open society, nearly double the number that attended the protests of a local group, Pegida, against what it called the “Islamization” of German society. Demonstrators on Saturday held a moment of silence for the victims of last week’s attacks in Paris, and many carried signs in support of the slain satirists from Charlie Hebdo.
In her weekly podcast, Ms. Merkel called for renewed efforts at unity among the European Union’s 28 members. “We are only strong and convincing when we stand together,” she said. Leaders of Germany’s Jewish and Muslim communities, backed by leading political parties, have called for Germans to attend rallies in support of tolerance on Monday in more than 20 cities across the country.
The rally in Paris on Sunday, which was to begin at 3 p.m. local time at the Place de la République, will be led by relatives of the victims of last week’s attacks.
The attacks have spread alarm among the Jewish community in France, which was already reeling from a spate of anti-Semitic attacks in the country, including on synagogues and Jewish shops last year, at the time of an Israeli incursion in Gaza. On Sunday, President François Hollande, who has labeled the attack at the kosher supermarket a horrific act of anti-Semitism.
In a meeting on Sunday with Roger Cukierman, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France, Mr. Hollande said that the government would protect Jewish schools and synagogues with army troops if necessary, and that it was committed to the security of France’s 500,000 Jews.
Mr. Hollande was expected to go to the Great Synagogue of Paris, also known as the Synagogue de la Victoire, after the unity march to convey his support for the Jewish community.
Thousands of Jews left France last year for Israel amid concerns about security, and in recent days Israeli officials have said that the recent attacks could prompt a new wave of French Jews arriving in the country. On Saturday, Mr. Netanyahu said that Israel was the home of French Jews, and on Sunday morning, as he was leaving Israel for the march in Paris, he repeated his invitation to French Jews to move to Israel.
“I am going to Paris in order to participate in the rally, along with world leaders, for a renewed struggle against the Islamic terrorism that is threatening all of humanity, which I have been calling for years,” the Israeli leader said.
Mr. Netanyahu said that he would attend a second rally, of Paris’s Jewish community, in the evening.
“I will say there that any Jew who wants to immigrate to Israel will be received here with open arms,” he said.
The French National Assembly is to hold a debate and vote on Tuesday on whether France should continue participating in American-led airstrikes in Iraq against the Islamic State.
France joined the campaign in September, and Islamic State militants have asked their supporters to attack Europeans in retaliation for the strikes. In September, a group aligned with the Islamic State beheaded Hervé Gourdel, a 55-year-old mountaineering guide from the French city of Nice, who had been kidnapped by fighters in Algeria.
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http://www.parismatch.com/Actu/Societe/Lassana-le-heros-de-Vincennes-686818
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This is quite a good interview with a journalist who was a witness on the scene in Paris.http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/01/the-power-line-show-episode-7-claire-berlinski-reporting-from-paris.php
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http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/15/world/belgium-anti-terror-operation/index.html
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Immigration and Islam: Europe’s Crisis of Faith
France and the rest of Western Europe have never honestly confronted the issues raised by Muslim immigration
Two women talk as police officers stand in front of the courthouse in Meaux, near Paris, on Sept. 22, 2011. The court convicted two other women for publicly wearing Islamic veils; France banned face coverings earlier that year. ENLARGE
By Christopher Caldwell
Jan. 16, 2015 6:14 p.m. ET
476 COMMENTS
The terrorist assault on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Jan. 7 may have been organized by al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen. But the attack, along with another at a Paris kosher market days later, was carried out by French Muslims descended from recent waves of North African and West African immigration. Well before the attacks, which left 17 dead, the French were discussing the possibility that tensions with the country’s own Muslim community were leading France toward some kind of armed confrontation.
Consider Éric Zemmour, a slashing television debater and a gifted polemicist. His history of the collapse of France’s postwar political order, “Le suicide français,” was No. 1 on the best-seller lists for several weeks this fall. “Today, our elites think it’s France that needs to change to suit Islam, and not the other way around,” Mr. Zemmour said on a late-night talk show in October, “and I think that with this system, we’re headed toward civil war.”
More recently, Michel Houellebecq published “Submission,” a novel set in the near future. In it, the re-election of France’s current president, François Hollande, has drawn recruits to a shadowy group proclaiming its European identity. “Sooner or later, civil war between Muslims and the rest of the population is inevitable,” a sympathizer explains. “They draw the conclusion that the sooner this war begins, the better chance they’ll have of winning it.” Published, as it happened, on the morning of the attacks, Mr. Houellebecq’s novel replaced Mr. Zemmour’s at the top of the best-seller list, where it remains.
Two days after the Charlie Hebdo killings, there was a disturbing indication on Le Monde’s website of how French people were thinking. One item about the killing vastly outpaced all others in popularity. The reactions of Europe’s leaders was shared about 5,000 times, tales of Muslim schoolchildren with mixed feelings about 6,000, a detailed account of the Charlie Hebdo editorial meeting ended by the attack, 9,000. Topping them all, shared 28,000 times, was a story about reprisals: “Mosques become targets, French Muslims uneasy.” Those clicks are the sound of French fear that something larger may be under way.
Marine Le Pen of France’s Front National acknowledges supporters on Nov. 30. Populist parties are rising across Europe as voters feel abandoned by the mainstream political class. ENLARGE
Marine Le Pen of France’s Front National acknowledges supporters on Nov. 30. Populist parties are rising across Europe as voters feel abandoned by the mainstream political class. Getty Images
France’s problem has elements of a military threat, a religious conflict and a violent civil-rights movement. It is not unique. Every country of Western Europe has a version. For a half-century, millions of immigrants from North and sub-Saharan Africa have arrived, lured by work, welfare, marriage and a refuge from war. There are about 20 million Muslims in Europe, with some 5 million of them in France, according to the demographer Michèle Tribalat. That amounts to roughly 8% of the population of France, compared with about 5% of both the U.K. and Germany.
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Such a migration is not something that Europeans would have countenanced at any other moment in their generally xenophobic history, and the politicians who permitted it to happen were not lucky. The movement coincided with a collapse in European birthrates, which lent the immigration an unstoppable momentum, and with the rise of modern political Islam, which gave the diaspora a radical edge.
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Just why Europe has had such trouble can be partially understood by contrasting it with the U.S. Europe’s welfare states are more developed and, until recently, more open to noncitizens, so illegal or “underground” immigration has been low. But employment rates have been low, too. If Americans have traditionally considered immigrants the hardest-working segment of their population, Europeans have had the opposite stereotype. In the early 1970s, 2 million of the 3 million foreigners in Germany were in the labor force; by the turn of this century, 2 million of 7.5 million were.
Europe was not just disoriented by the trauma of World War II. It was also demoralized and paralyzed by the memory of Nazism and the continuing dismantling of colonialism. Leaders felt that they lacked the moral standing to address problems that were as plain as the noses on their faces—just as U.S. leaders ducked certain racial issues in the wake of desegregation.
Europeans drew the wrong lessons from the American civil-rights movement. In the U.S., there was race and there was immigration. They were separate matters that could (at least until recently) be disentangled by people of good faith. In Europe, the two problems have long been inseparable. Voters who worried about immigration were widely accused of racism, or later of “Islamophobia.”
In France, antiracism set itself squarely against freedom of speech. The passage of the 1990 Gayssot Law, which punished denial of the Holocaust, was a watershed. Activist lobbies sought to expand such protections by limiting discussion of a variety of historical events—the slave trade, colonialism, foreign genocides. This was backed up by institutional muscle. In the 1980s, President François Mitterrand’s Socialist party created a nongovernmental organization called SOS Racisme to rally minority voters and to hound those who worked against their interests.
Older bodies such as the communist-inspired Movement against Racism and for Friendship Among the Peoples made a specialty of threatening (and sometimes carrying out) lawsuits against European intellectuals for the slightest trespasses against political correctness: the late Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci for her post-9/11 lament “The Rage and the Pride,” the philosopher Alain Finkielkraut for doubting that the 2005 riots in France’s suburban ghettos were due to unemployment, the Russia scholar Hélène Carrère d’Encausse for speculating about the role of polygamy in the problems of West African immigrants.
Speech codes have done little to facilitate entry into the workforce for immigrants and their children or to reduce crime. But they have intimidated European voting publics, insulated politicians from criticism and turned certain crucial matters into taboos. Immigrant and ethnic issues have become tightly bound to the issue of building the multinational European Union, which has removed vast areas of policy from voter accountability. “Anti-European” sentiments continue to rise.
A woman holds up a sign that says, ‘I am Charlie, I am Jewish, I am a Muslim, I am French’ during a rally in Paris on Jan. 11. ENLARGE
A woman holds up a sign that says, ‘I am Charlie, I am Jewish, I am a Muslim, I am French’ during a rally in Paris on Jan. 11. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
So impressed were the Europeans with their own generosity that they failed to notice that the population of second- and third-generation immigrants was growing bigger, stronger, more unified and less inclined to take moral instruction. This is partly a demographic problem. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, Western Europe has had some of the lowest birthrates of any civilization on record. Without immigration, Europe’s population would fall by a hundred million by midcentury, according to U.N. estimates.
When mass immigration began, Europeans did not give much thought to the influence of Islam. In the 1960s, there might have been worries that a North African was, say, a Nasserite Arab nationalist, but not that he was a would-be jihadist. Too many Europeans forgot that people carry a long past within them—and that, even when they do not, they sometimes wish to. Materialistic, acquisitive, averse to God and family, Europe’s culture appeared cold, dead and unsatisfying to many Muslims. It failed to satisfy a lot of non-Muslims too, but until they ran out of borrowed money with the 2008 crash, they could avoid facing it squarely.
Europeans didn’t know enough about the cultural background of Muslims to browbeat them the same way they did the native-born. Muslims felt none of the historic guilt over fascism and colonialism that so affected non-Muslim Europeans. They had a freedom of political action that Europeans lacked.
As European politics grew duller and the stakes lower, many political romantics looked enviously at the aspirations of the Muslim poor, particularly regarding Palestine. You could see a hint of this last weekend in the BBC journalist who interrupted a mourning Frenchwoman, distraught about the targeting of Jews for murder at a kosher supermarket, to say that “the Palestinians suffer hugely at Jewish hands.”
In a world that prized “identity,” Muslim immigrants were aristocrats. Those who became radicalized developed the most monstrous kind of self-regard. A chilling moment in the most recent terrorist drama came when the TV network RTL phoned the kosher supermarket where the Malian-French hostage-taker, Amedy Coulibaly, was holding his victims at gunpoint. He refused to talk but hung up the phone carelessly. The newspaper Le Monde was able to publish a transcript of the strutting stupidity to which he then gave expression:
“They’re always trying to make you believe that Muslims are terrorists. Me, I’m born in France. If they hadn’t been attacked elsewhere, I wouldn’t be here…Think of the people who had Bashar al-Assad in Syria. They were torturing people…We didn’t intervene for years…Then bombers, coalition of 50,000 countries, all that…Why did they do that?”
The Muslim community is not to be confused with the terrorists it produces. But left to its own, it probably lacks the means, the inclination and the courage to stand up to the faction, however small, that supports terrorism. In 1995, there were riots among French Muslims after the arrest of Khalid Kelkal of Lyon, who had planted several bombs—in a train station, near a Jewish school, on a high-speed rail track. In 2012, when Mohamed Merah of Toulouse was killed by police after having gunned down soldiers, a rabbi and three Jewish elementary-school children, his brother professed himself “proud,” and his father threatened to file a wrongful-death suit against the government.
Populist parties like the U.K. Independence Party wind up, by voter demand, placing immigration and multiculturalism at the center of their concerns. ENLARGE
Populist parties like the U.K. Independence Party wind up, by voter demand, placing immigration and multiculturalism at the center of their concerns. PA Wire/Zuma Press
And when Charlie Hebdo printed a memorial cover this week that had a picture of its controversial cartoon character “Muhammad” on it, it was as if the attacks had never happened: Muslim community spokesmen, even moderate ones, issued dire warnings about the insult to them and their coreligionists. To many Muslims in France and the rest of Europe, the new drawings were evidence not that the terrorists had failed to kill a magazine but that the French had failed to heed a warning. Impressive though the post-attack memorial marches were, “the working classes and the North African and West African immigrant kids weren’t there,” as the president of France’s Young Socialists told the newspaper Le Temps.
It may seem harsh to criticize the French in their time of grief, but they are responding today with tools that have failed them in previous crises. They reflexively look at their own supposed bigotry as always, somehow, the ultimate cause of Islamist terrorism, and they limit their efforts to making minority communities feel more at home.
The mysterious riots of 2005 in France—which lasted for almost three weeks, during which the rioters made no claims and put forward no leaders—were chalked up to deprivation. The French media responded with an effort to hire more nonwhite news anchors and reporters, and the government promised to spend more in the suburbs. Now, after the murders in Paris, the contradictions continue to accumulate:
• On religion: Mr. Hollande has insisted that the attacks have “nothing to do with Islam.” At the same time, Prime Minister Manuel Valls speaks of “moderate Islam” and rails against “conservatism and obscurantism”—as if the violence had everything to do with Islam, and even with religious devotion in general.
• On spying: Some in the French government blame intelligence failures, since the secret services tracked the Charlie Hebdo killers Said and Chérif Kouachi until last summer. But government officials boast of about their principled unwillingness to legislate a “Patriot Act a la française”—even as they draw daily on intelligence gathered by the U.S.
• On religious hatred: Justice Minister Christiane Taubira has announced an all-out assault on “racism and anti-Semitism,” promising that those who attack others because of their religion will be fought “with rigor and resolve.” In theory, this sounds like a promise to protect Jewish shoppers from getting killed at their neighborhood grocery stores. In practice, it will mean placing limits on any inquiry into the inner dynamics of Muslim communities and may wind up increasing the terrorist threat rather than diminishing it.
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What continues is the deafness of France’s government and mainstream parties to public opinion (and popular suffrage) on the issues of immigration and a multiethnic society. Mr. Hollande’s approval ratings have risen since the attacks, but they are still below 30%. In January 2013, according to the newsweekly L’Express, 74% of the French said that Islam “is not compatible with French society.” Though that number fell last year, it is almost certain to be higher now.
Voters all across Europe feel abandoned by the mainstream political class, which is why populist parties are everywhere on the rise. Whatever the biggest initial grievance of these parties—opposition to the European Union for the U.K. Independence Party, opposition to the euro for Alternative für Deutschland, corruption for Italy’s 5 Star Movement—all wind up, by voter demand, placing immigration and multiculturalism at the center of their concerns.
In France, it is the Front National, a party with antecedents on the far right, that has been the big beneficiary. In the last national election, for seats in the European Parliament, the FN, led by Marine Le Pen (daughter of the party’s founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen), topped the polls. But the ruling Socialists froze the Front National out of the recent national ceremonies of mourning, limiting participation in the Paris rally to those parties it deemed “republican.” This risks damaging the cause of republicanism more than the cause of Le Pen and her followers.
Acts of terrorism can occur without shaking a country to its core. These latest attacks, awful as they were, could be taken in stride if the majority in France felt itself secure. But it does not. Thanks to wars in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, thousands of young people who share the indignation of the Kouachis and Coulibaly are now battle-hardened and heavily armed.
France, like Europe more broadly, has been careless for decades. It has not recognized that free countries are for peoples strong enough to defend them. A willingness to join hands and to march in solidarity is a good first response to the awful events of early January. It will not be enough.
Mr. Caldwell is a senior editor at the Weekly Standard and the author of “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West.”
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Bobby Jindal's allegation of "No Go" zones in Europe set off a firestorm last week here on the left, and in parts of Europe.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/19/bobby-jindal-muslims_n_6503998.html
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/01/21/bobby-jindal-defends-no-go-zones-myth-foxs-john/202225
"Muslim immigrants have created "no-go zones" in Europe where non-Muslims are not welcome."
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/01/15/jindal-no-go-zones-muslim-europe/21825173/
Others have said entire cities such as Birmingham are such, and have had to back down from erroneous statements. The mayor of Paris is suing Fox News. http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/01/city-of-paris-to-sue-fox-news-201302.html (I assume these Paris "suburbs" are not in Paris.)
Here on the forum, we have documented the looting of Jewish grocery stores in France, the car fires of Clichy-sous-Bois, Villiers-le-Bel, the inability of Sweden to host a Davis Cup tennis match versus Israel, and massive riots that broke out over that.
http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=977.msg26295#msg26295
http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=977.msg28181#msg28181
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfK7Yal64S0&x-yt-ts=1421914688&x-yt-cl=84503534
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxX27Pe-AH0&x-yt-ts=1421914688&x-yt-cl=84503534
I don't know about no-go zones in the UK, but bring forward this post documenting 55 police no go zones in Sweden:
http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=977.msg84433#msg84433
A place formerly known as Sweden now has 55 Police No Go Zones
« Reply #435 on: October 30, 2014»
The Swedish police has released a map of 55 areas where they publicly admit to having surrendered control to the criminal gangs. The report describes outright attacks on police officers trying to enter the areas, which is a step up from the previous problem with attacks on mailmen, fire trucks, ambulances and similar services; it used to be that fire trucks and ambulances had to wait for police escort to enter the areas, but now the police themselves need protection.
The no-go areas heavily coincides with the map of the 186 “exclusion areas” aka. crowded, predominantly muslim immigrant ghettos, where education is low, employment is lower, and the only local business thriving is that of the drug dealing (which takes place openly and continues to do brisk business.)
http://swedenreport.org/2014/10/29/swedish-police-55-official-no-go-zones/
http://polisen.se/Global/www%20och%20Intrapolis/Rapporter-utredningar/01%20Polisen%20nationellt/Ovriga%20rapporter-utredningar/Kriminella%20natverk%20med%20stor%20paverkan%20i%20lokalsamhallet%20Sekretesspr%2014.pdf
http://www.svd.se/opinion/ledarsidan/55-no-go-zoner-i-sverige-minner-om-parallellsamhallen_4051399.svd
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On a related matter, I see that Powerline yesterday picked up on my 2013 post of "A Jew in Malmo, Sweden":
http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=977.msg76275#msg76275
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/01/jewish-like-me-in-malmo.php
Maybe not really a Jew in Malmo, but a Scandinavian wore a kippah to see the reaction.
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My thought on this controversy is that it is good to force people like the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the Mayor of Paris to make sure and make pubic that this is NOT happening! That is Jindal's point, no-go zones within western allies must not stand. Religious intolerance in places like Tehran and Hebron is enough.
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As stated elsewhere by ccp, this isn't about militant Islamists attacking Jews. It is about militant Islamists attacking Jews first. Their war is against all others.
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The leftists in europe attack fox news because fox won't machine gun them in their homes and offices.
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Excellent contribution Doug.
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To GM's point - the majority of the world's news media - with few exceptions - has been self-censoring itself, essentially surrendering to the terrorists. This is NOT a good sign.
As I've commented before - it's looking more and more like 1938 in Europe these days - and not just in Europe. The level of denial in the U.S. is staggering as well.
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The authorities in the various countries don't admit the "no-go" terminology. But read the Swedish Police report in Swedish (with the help of Google translate) and see if these same things are not happening at times in similar areas within these other countries, UK, France, Germany, etc. The borders within Europe are open.
...loosely connected networks, broad-based youth environment.
...criminal settlements which manifest itself in serious violence in public places, various forms of extortion
and unlawful influence.
...Witnesses don't come forward. Difficulty to get people to testify. Police vehicles attacked.
...establishes an informal power structure ultimately benefits the criminal actors.
...the public's fear of reprisal led to the ordinary justice system to some extent being sidelined
55 specific areas in 22 cities with these characteristics are identified on detailed maps.
No mention of a religion in the demographics, or of "no-go zones". It is only on the opinion pages that observers call these areas no-go zones for police or non-Muslims. The official police report refers to the situation as "serious" and "worrisome".
https://polisen.se/Global/www%20och%20Intrapolis/Rapporter-utredningar/01%20Polisen%20nationellt/Ovriga%20rapporter-utredningar/Kriminella%20natverk%20med%20stor%20paverkan%20i%20lokalsamhallet%20Sekretesspr%2014.pdf
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PARIS — The typical trajectory of most French Islamist terrorists follows four steps: alienation from the dominant culture, thanks partly to joblessness and discrimination in blighted neighborhoods; a turn to petty crime, which leads to prison, and then more crime and more prison; religious awakening and radicalization; and an initiatory journey to a Muslim country like Syria, Afghanistan or Yemen to train for jihad.
Stints in prison were seminal for Chérif Kouachi, Amedy Coulibaly and other major figures of French jihadism in recent years — Mohammed Merah, Mehdi Nemmouche, Khaled Kelkal — as both a rite of passage and a gateway to radicalism.
Muslims account for about 7-10 percent of France’s total population but around half of its prison population of 68,000. Muslims are even more numerous in facilities near large cities, particularly in maisons d’arrêt, which hold prisoners serving shorter sentences.
Precise figures are unavailable because laïcité, France’s strict form of secularism, prohibits officially asking and collecting data about people’s religious preferences. These estimates are based on research I conducted in French prisons in 2000-3 and again in 2011-3, when I interviewed some 160 inmates and many guards, doctors and social workers in four major facilities, some among the largest in Europe. Fifteen of those inmates had been sentenced for terrorist acts.
Many Muslims feel marginalized when they get to prison, due to exclusion and bigotry from the white majority in mainstream society, and their own counterracism. Although in urban prisons they are a majority, they continue to feel victimized and trapped. Very few guards are Muslim, and prison officials, who tend to be hypersecular, have little understanding of Islam, for example confusing fundamentalism with extremism.
“Look at how a Catholic or a Jew is treated, and look at how we are treated,” Abdelkarim, a Frenchman of Italian origin in his late 20s who was serving a five-year sentence for armed robbery, told me in 2012. “They have their weekly prayers; in this prison we don’t have Friday prayers. Their rabbi can go to all the cells; our Muslim minister cannot. There’s kosher food, but no halal meat. They despise us, and they call that laïcité.”
In fact, Muslim ministers can visit Muslim inmates in their cells but usually don’t do it for lack of time, and halal meat is increasingly available. But such misperceptions are common, and they only reinforce the appeal of Islam as the religion of choice for the stigmatized and the oppressed. Unlike Christianity, it has an anti-Western and anti-imperialist bend.
One young French inmate of Algerian origin told me in 2013, “If you are a Muslim and ask to participate in the Friday prayers, they take your name down and hand it over to the Renseignements Généraux.” (The Renseignements Généraux is the French equivalent of the FBI.) He added: “If I try to take my prayer carpet to the courtyard, they prohibit it. If I grow a beard, the guards call me Bin Laden, smiling and mocking me. They hate Islam. But Islam can take revenge!”
Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story
Adherence to radical Islam is largely the transfer into the spiritual realm of that particular combination of indignation, rancor and wholesale rejection encompassed by the expression, widespread among prisoners, “avoir la haine” (to have hate). For some inmates, especially those who were only nominally Muslim and nonpracticing, violent aspirations emerge first, with religiosity — and often a very approximate understanding of Islam — grafting itself onto to them later.
Abdelkarim, who converted to Islam (and adopted an Arabic name) about a decade before I met him, acted as an informal Salafist chaplain; his prison counted about 1,000 Muslim inmates and just one Muslim minister, an older gentleman from North Africa out of touch with the young prisoners’ concerns. Each time Abdelkarim sang the call to prayer at dawn he would be sent to solitary confinement for a few days; eventually he was transferred to another jail. Nationwide, there is only about one Muslim minister for every 190 inmates, leaving self-proclaimed ulama to proffer their own religious guidance.
Radical preaching catches on because it offers young Muslim prisoners a way to escape their predicament and develop a fantasy of omnipotence by declaring death onto their oppressors. During my research in 2000-3, the prisoners idolized Khaled Kelkal, whose network killed eight people in a Paris subway station in 1995 to punish the French government for backing a military coup against an Islamist party in Algeria. A decade later their new icon was Mohammed Merah, who in 2012 shot down seven people, including soldiers and Jewish children, in the name of radical Islam; some inmates even impersonated him. Now the new celebrities will be the Kouachi brothers and Coulibaly.
About three months ago, the authorities at Fresnes, a very large prison known for its strict discipline, started experimenting with separating suspected Muslim radicals from the general population, grouping them in special cells. Although it is too early to assess the measure’s effectiveness, the provisional results are mixed.
The prisoners’ segregation at Fresnes is incomplete, owing to the shape of the 19th-century building. With rows of cell blocks branching out perpendicularly from a central corridor, the inmates can communicate with each other simply by shouting. The radicalized prisoners now have less influence on other inmates, especially ones who are impressionable or have mental disorders. But they are in closer contact with one another, allowing them to organize and make plans.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls announced recently that the quarantine program would be expanded in several prisons around Paris. The proposal needs to be refined. Seasoned jihadists must be separated from untested radicals and the returnees from, say, Syria and Iraq, who may have been traumatized or disappointed by their experience of jihad and still stand a chance of being reintegrated into mainstream society.
More must also be done to address the legitimate claims of Muslim inmates. Collective Friday prayers should be allowed in all French prisons, for example. The government announced last week that 60 Muslim ministers would be trained to supplement the 182 or so currently in service. This is a welcome proposal. But at least three times as many ministers are needed, and they must be more uniformly distributed throughout the prisons. Above all, they will need to be coached to better understand and address the concerns of disaffected young Muslim prisoners.
Indeed, reform must begin with respect. For if French prisons have become a breeding ground for radicalism, it is partly because they mistreat the Islamic faith itself.
Farhad Khosrokhavar is a sociologist at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and the author, most recently, of “Radicalisation.”
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http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9420662/how-marine-le-pen-is-winning-frances-gay-vote/
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Fascinating article, Crafty. Maybe French gays are starting to finally wake up and "smell the coffee." One can only hope it happens here in the US as well, but I think until we start getting such murders here on a regular basis, sadly - things won't change.
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Back in the 60s, there was this saying "A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged."
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Yes - also William F. Buckley stated that (paraphrasing) Conservatism is an inherently intellectual exercise. It requires discernment. Liberalism is the default position - the most gutless choice one can make - because it's easy to profess to have compassion without regard to actual results.
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http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/01/30/mark-steyn-on-europes-no-go-zones/
The left loves to deny real problems while creating imaginary ones.
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http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/01/30/mark-steyn-on-europes-no-go-zones/
The left loves to deny real problems while creating imaginary ones.
Thank you GM and Mark Steyn (famous people caught reading the forum):
But we’re supposed to believe they’re not real, because they don’t have big “KEEP OUT OR DIE, INFIDEL!” billboards denoting their perimeter, and they’re not labeled “Muslim No-Go Zone #23″ on the official maps of major European cities...
Yet. They don't mark the perimeter because they are actively expanding it.
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http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/02/french-artists-calls-for-peace-end-in-brutal-beating-by-local-muslims/
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The Sound of Silence
by Mark Steyn
February 9, 2015
Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University is nobody's idea of a right-winger. He voted for Obama, and supports almost all of his policy goals (if not his extra-constitutional methods). But, unlike most of the left, he's still prepared to defend free speech against what he calls Charlie's False Friends:
For civil libertarians, it is clear that when leaders insist that they "Stand with Charlie" it does not mean actually standing with free speech. To the contrary, the greatest threat facing free speech today is found in Western governments, which have increasingly criminalized and prosecuted speech, particularly anti-religious speech. Once the defining right of Western Civilization, free speech is dying in the West and few world leaders truly mourn its passing.
Around the world, speech is under attack under an array of hate speech and anti-discrimination laws... The result is a growing, if not insatiable, appetite for speech regulation that only increases after violent responses to controversial publications.
The most recent tragedy in France follows an all too familiar pattern from publication to prosecution. Consider what happened in 2005 with the publication of the Danish cartoons and the global riots leading to the murder of non-Muslims and burning of churches and homes. The West rallied around the right of free speech, but then quietly ramped up prosecutions of speech. It happened again in 2012 when a low-budget trailer of a low-grade movie was put on YouTube. The "Innocence of Muslims" trailer was deemed insulting to Mohammad and Islam and led to another global spasm of murder and arson by irate Muslims. Again, Western leaders professed support for free speech while cracking down further on anti-religious speech. Even in the United States, President Obama insisted that the filmmaker Nakoula Basseley Nakoula had every right to make the film. However, the next image that the world saw after that speech was filmmaker being thrown into a police car in handcuffs for technical violations of a probation on unrelated charges...
Professor Turley then lists a round-up of state assaults on freedom of expression from around the so-called free world, including my own difficulties in Canada. I doubt Turley agrees with a single one of these hatespeechers (including me) on the merits, but he recognizes that the point of free speech is for the speech you hate. If you don't believe in free speech for those you hate, you don't believe in free speech at all. And then he adds:
These cases represent more than a lack of support for free speech. They represent a comprehensive assault on free speech. Indeed, one of the world leaders proudly proclaiming support for free speech in Paris has banned the publication of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons. Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan called the use of the prophet's image on the magazine an act of "sedition and provocation."
Well, Turkey is hardly anyone's idea of a crucible of liberty. But what are we to make of England, mother of the free? The other day Wiltshire Police went to a local newsagent and demanded that, in the interests of "community cohesion", he hand over the names of every customer who bought a copy of Charlie Hebdo:
Mrs Keat, a self-confessed news junkie, ordered the magazine from a local newsagent in Corsham, Wiltshire, a week after the 7 January attacks in Paris. Two days after she bought her magazine, she learned that an officer had been back to ask for the names of the buyers.
The names and addresses of the buyers were added to an intelligence note and fed into a police crime and intelligence system, police confirmed. The force deleted the note after details of the visit came to light in a letter that Mrs Keat wrote to The Guardian and warned of the potential ramifications after seeing an advert for Je Suis Charlie badges...
What really is the difference between Charlie Hebdo's killers and Wiltshire Police? The anti-Charlie crowd made it clear years ago that they knew where the offending cartoonists were and one day they would get them. The Wiltshire Police are not so subtly telling Charlie's English readers that they know where you are - just in case one day they need to get you:
"Wiltshire Police would like to apologise to the members of public who may be affected by this. Information relating to this specific incident has been permanently and securely disposed of," it said... "Wiltshire Police are confident that the police officer's intention was purely around enhancing public safety and ensuring that the newsagent was advised appropriately."
You can get away with anything when you smother it in blather about "enhancing" public safety and "advising appropriately". But the fact remains that, a few days after the hideous opportunist Cameron was marching under the #JeSuisCharlie banner in Paris, his coppers were ordering newsagents to cough up the names of anyone who bought the magazine. This is Mother England in 2015: You can still read samizdat literature, but your name will be entered in a state database.
Equally disturbing was a recent English court judgment re the Home Office ban denying Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller entry into the United Kingdom. Their Lordships' appalling decision essentially extends the heckler's veto to Her Britannic Majesty's immigration policy:
A British Court of Appeal handed down its judgment dismissing our appeal challenging our ban from entering the United Kingdom. The key element of its decision is its emphasis on the fact that "this was a public order case where the police had advised that significant public disorder and serious violence might ensue from the proposed visit." In writing that judgment, Lord Justice Tomlinson (with whom Lord Justice Patten and Lord Justice Floyd agree) has only made it clear that the British government has decided to set aside established law and the freedom of speech in order to appease violent Muslims.
No serious person thinks Spencer and Geller are any threat to "public order". They speak without incident all over not only the United States but also the Dominion of Canada, and without unduly stressing the Queen's Peace. So, if they can't speak without incident in the United Kingdom, that is a reflection not on them but on Britain. What Lord Justice Tomlinson means by the prospect of "serious violence" is that, if you're booked to give a speech in Oxford and some Islamic grievance-mongers threaten to go bananas over it, your speech has to be forbidden in deference to the crazies. The decision thus incentivizes those who threaten violence. As Laura Rosen Cohen likes to say, "security concerns" are the new "shut up".
And, if you think David Cameron's ministry has grown far too comfortable with using state power to restrain the opinions of a free party, wait till the other fellows take over:
The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, will on Monday unveil a strategy to tackle the UK's soaring rise in antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia and abuse of people with disabilities. The package includes making homophobic and disability hate crimes an aggravated criminal offence, ensuring that police treat such offences in the same way as racist hate crimes.
Cooper will outline changes to the criminal records framework whereby such offences will be clearly marked on the criminal records of perpetrators. Currently, records checks do not highlight homophobia, disability or transgender identity as a motivating factor in a conviction, and do not automatically appear in police data used for vetting applicants in sensitive vocations, such as those working with vulnerable people, including the disabled.
Labour's move comes as a new breakdown of police figures reveals an escalation in hate crimes since 2012, with a steep rise in abuse reported by the transgender community alongside the well-documented rises in antisemitism and Islamophobia.
As that grab-bag suggests, right now the leftie sexual identity groups are happy to make common cause with the Islamocrazies because they're both about shutting people up. For example, the feminist comedienne Kate Smurthwaite is already in Britain so, unlike Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, she can't be turned back at Heathrow. But she apparently holds insufficiently "respectful" attitudes to "sex workers", so she had her speech at Goldsmiths College canceled because of - what else? - "security concerns". The topic of her talk was, of course, free speech.
Professor Jonathan Turley says:
Western leaders have increasingly spoken out against the dangers of free speech. For politicians, free speech is an abstraction, the consequences of free speech tend to be more tangible in the form of riots and murders.
You don't have to be a politician to think "free speech is an abstraction". Robert Spencer might want to give speeches about Islam, and Mrs Keat might want to read Charlie Hebdo, but most people don't want to give any speeches at all and are content to read Hello! or People or whatever's filling the rack where Charlie Hebdo used to be. In some ways, it's the easiest right to surrender, particularly to regimes that smother the expansion of state regulatory power in soothing twaddle about "enhancing public safety" to protect "vulnerable people".
Speaking of "vulnerable people", how about this headline from The Daily Mirror?
Child sex abuse gangs could have assaulted ONE MILLION youngsters in the UK
That's according to Rotherham Labour MP Sarah Champion. Who knows if it's true? On the one hand, Britain is so alert to "paedos" that, if some cheesy old Radio One disc-jockey is alleged to have grabbed the passing breast of a 15-year-old teenybopper on "Top Of The Pops" in 1973, he'll be dragged through the courts and publicly ruined. But vast, systemic, industrial-scale 21st-century paedophilia by Muslim grooming gangs aided and abetted by law enforcement and local government will be ignored and hushed up - essentially in the interests of (what was that expression again?) "community cohesion". It turns out free speech isn't that "abstract". When you so hedge in free expression with political correctness, you make it impossible even to raise certain subjects, and thereby facilitate real, non-abstract evil. The loss of free speech brings other losses, too.
Yet, looking at the ease with which governments of some of the oldest, freest societies on earth are shackling and restraining the right to speak, to read, to think, the obvious question to ask is what rights will they go after next? After all, if 300 years of free speech can be rolled back in the interest of "enhancing public safety", why not property rights, due process, freedom of association, freedom of religion or even (gasp!) sexual liberty? Why think that statist restraints on core liberties will confine themselves to just one right?
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https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=722669444544986
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There Is No Modern Islam
Posted By Daniel Greenfield On February 18, 2015 @ frontpagemag.com
Like math and the Midwest, ISIS confuses progressives. It’s not hard to confuse a group of people who never figured out that if you borrow 18 trillion dollars, you’re going to have to pay it back. But ISIS is especially confusing to a demographic whose entire ideology is being on the right side of history.
Raised to believe that history inevitably trended toward diversity in catalog models, fusion restaurants and gay marriage, the Arab Spring led them on by promising that the Middle East would be just like Europe and then ISIS tore up their Lonely Planet guidebook to Syria and chopped off their heads.
But ISIS also believes that it’s on the right side of history. Its history is the Koran. The right side of its history is what Iraq and Syria look like today. It’s also how parts of Europe are starting to look.
Progressive politicians and pundits trying to cope with ISIS lapse into a shrill incoherence that has nothing to do with their outrage at its atrocities and a lot to do with their sheer incomprehension. Terms like “apocalyptic nihilism” get thrown around as if heavy metal were beginning to make a comeback.
Those few analysts who admit that the Islamic State might be a just a little Islamic emphasize that it’s a medieval throwback, as if there were some modern version of Islam to compare it to.
Journalists trying to make sense of ISIS demanding Jizya payments and taking slaves ought to remember that these aren’t medieval behaviors in the Middle East. Not unless medieval means the 19th century. And that’s spotting them a whole century. Saudi Arabia only abolished slavery in 1962 under pressure from the United States. Its labor market and that of fellow Petrojihadi kingdoms like Kuwait and Qatar are based on arrangements that look a lot like temporary slavery… for those foreigners who survive.
Non-Muslims paid Jizya to Muslim rulers until very recently. Here is what it looked like in nineteenth century Morocco from the account of James Riley, an American shipwrecked sea captain.
“The Mohammedan scrivener appointed to receive it took it from them, hitting each one a smart blow with his fist on his bare forehead, by way of receipt for his money, at which the Jews said, ‘Thank you, my lord.’”
Those Jews who could not pay were flogged and imprisoned until they converted to Islam. An account from 1894 is similar, except that the blows were delivered to the back of the neck. Only French colonialism finally put a stop to this practice as well as many other brutal Islamic Supremacist laws.
Morocco was one of the Arab countries where Jews were treated reasonably well by the standards of the Muslim world. It’s one of the few Arab countries to still retain a Jewish population. When ISIS demands Jizya from non-Muslims, it’s not reviving some controversial medieval behavior. It’s doing what even “moderate” Muslim countries were doing until European guns and warships made them stop.
If the French hadn’t intervened, the same ugly scene would have gone on playing out in Morocco. If the United States hadn’t intervened, the Saudis would still openly keep slaves.
Islam never became enlightened. It never stopped being ‘medieval’. Whatever enlightenment it received was imposed on it by European colonialism. It’s a second-hand enlightenment that never went under the skin.
ISIS isn’t just seventh century Islam. It’s also much more recent than that. It’s Islam before the French and the English came. It’s what the Muslim world was like before it was forced to have presidents and constitutions, before it was forced to at least pay lip service to the alien notion of equal rights for all.
The media reported the burning of the Jordanian pilot as if it were some horrifying and unprecedented aberration. But Muslim heretics, as well as Jews and Christians accused of blasphemy, were burned alive for their crimes against Islam. Numerous accounts of this remain, not from the seventh century, but from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Those who weren’t burned, might be beheaded.
These were not the practices of some apocalyptic death cult. They were the Islamic law in the “cosmopolitan” parts of North Africa. The only reason they aren’t the law now is that the French left behind some of their own laws.
Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia that were never truly colonized still behead men and women for “witchcraft and sorcery.” Not in the seventh century or even in the nineteenth century. Last year.
The problem isn’t that ISIS is ‘medieval’. The problem is that Islam is.
What progressives mistake for modern Islam, whether while touring Algeria or on the campus of their university, is really an Islam whose practice has been repressed by the West while its ideology remains untouched. Modern Islam is in a state of contradiction. It’s a schizophrenic religion whose doctrine calls for supremacism but whose capabilities prevent it from exercising the full measure of its doctrines.
Islam is the 90 lb. weakling that wants to be the school bully. It can’t punch you in the face, so it stabs you in the back and then blames someone else. When you punch it back, it plays the victim.
This split between ideas and power forced Islamists to resort to sneakier tactics, from terrorism to mass migration, to fulfill the spirit of their religion. The underlying imperative is to restore a conquering Islam capable of humiliating non-Muslims in Muslim lands and expanding into non-Muslim countries. That is why Saddam and Iran pursued weapons of mass destruction. Why Muslim armies tested themselves against Israel. Why Al Qaeda built a decentralized terrorist network with cells around the world.
Together with the practical agendas of wealth and power was a deeper spiritual significance. Islam required that its leaders wage a war against the infidels. And they had to do so on terms that would allow them to win. Or at least to survive the attempt.
ISIS cuts through the split by advocating an uncompromising supremacism. Its theater of brutality is meant to convince Muslim audiences that they have the ability to directly confront the West. They no longer need to navigate a course between their capabilities and their religion. Under a Caliph, they can build the capabilities to restore the full practice of Islam as it was before the Europeans put a stop to it.
In the bigger picture, ISIS would like to turn the clock back to the seventh century. That’s a vision it shares with any number of Islamist groups and governments. But its most objectionable behavior, such as beheading and burning non-Muslims, taking slaves and demanding Jizya from non-Muslims, only requires turning back the clock to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
To truly understand ISIS, we don’t need to go back to the seventh century. The eighteenth century would be just as good. And once we understand that, we understand all the rest of it too.
Progressives see ISIS as a historical aberration. ISIS sees them the same way. It’s all a question of whose history book we’re using and which side is willing to do anything to win. Islam is a religion of war. Its right side of history is not a matter of faith. The right side of history is the side that wins.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/20/world/europe/after-attacks-denmark-hesitates-to-blame-islam.html?emc=edit_th_20150220&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193
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http://pamelageller.com/2015/02/over-500-muslims-attend-islamic-burial-for-danish-cafesynagogue-murderer.html/
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Not 100% confident of the reporting by The Blaze here, but interesting nonetheless:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/02/23/was-the-muslim-ring-of-peace-around-the-norway-synagogue-really-an-msm-hoax/
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A Mom’s Choice: Jihad or Jail
U.K. woman who told police her son joined a militant group in Syria now regrets her decision
By Alexis Flynn and Jenny Gross
Updated Feb. 27, 2015 6:02 p.m. ET
WSJ
BIRMINGHAM, England—Majida Sarwar searched the bedroom of her 21-year-old son five days after he left on what he had said was a university-sponsored trip. Mrs. Sarwar found a frightening six-page letter, addressed, “DEAR MUM PLEASE READ,” that sent her to police.
“As you know, I have gone for a holiday, but the real purpose is to do Jihad for Allah,” the May 2013 letter began. It ended saying he was headed to Syria, where, citing religion, “I will help the oppressed and fight Allah’s enemies.”
Mrs. Sarwar and her husband worked with U.K. authorities to help retrieve their son and his boyhood friend from an al Qaeda-linked rebel group fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Months later, the young men, apparently disillusioned with the war, agreed to return home. They were arrested on arrival at London’s Heathrow Airport and sentenced in December to more than 12 years in prison, the longest penalty imposed in the U.K. so far for traveling to fight in Syria. Mrs. Sarwar, angry over the sentence, says she regrets turning in her son.
As Western countries try to figure out how to keep young people from the lure of Islamic Stateand other terror groups, the U.K. has turned to Muslim women in a program launched last year to help spot radicalism sprouting in their families. The idea is to intercept family members before they leave. Other intervention programs have been started in Denmark, France and Australia.
But the experience of the Sarwar family illustrates the difficulties, and it may give pause to parents who face the choice for their sons and daughters of a militant’s death abroad or a lengthy prison term at home.
“The feeling in the Muslim community was, ‘Are you kidding me?’ ” said Farooq Siddique, a former adviser to the British government’s anti-extremism campaign. “You are effectively asking parents to spy on their children.”
Authorities in the U.K. and throughout Europe are focused on keeping citizens from the conflict zones in Syria and Iraq, seeking to counter homegrown extremism that this year has yielded deadly shooting sprees in Paris and Copenhagen. But despite tightened borders and tougher laws, the numbers are rising.
This week, the British government has come under fire for failing to prevent three Muslim girls from flying to Turkey, despite knowing their links with a British woman suspected of joining Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Authorities say the school friends, ages 15 and 16, are now believed to be in Syria.
U.S. authorities arrested three men this week from Brooklyn, N.Y., suspected of planning to travel to Syria to join the militant group. A lawyer for one of the men, Akhror Saidakhmetov, said his client planned to plead not guilty. Lawyers for the other two men declined to comment.
Europol, Europe’s police coordinating agency, said as many as 6,000 Europeans have gone to Syria and Iraq. The U.K. counts about 600 of its citizens who have traveled there, mostly to fight; the U.S. about 100.
The head of the U.K.’s domestic intelligence agency known as MI5 said in January that authorities had detected more than 20 terror plots by militants in Syria, including ones directed at Canada, Australia, Belgium and France.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said this week the fact that young British girls can be persuaded by reading the Internet in their rooms to join extremist groups “demonstrates the scale of the problem.” Beyond police and border agents, Mr. Cameron said, “Everyone has a role to play in preventing our young people being radicalized—whether schools, colleges and universities or families, religious leaders and local communities.”
In addition to the campaign aimed mostly at Muslim mothers, U.K. authorities are seeking passage of a law this year that would require schools, colleges and other public institutions to take action against radicals.
But imposing a statutory duty would create “a climate of fear, where people don’t feel comfortable having a frank conversation,” said Talha Ahmad, of the Muslim Council of Britain, an umbrella group for Muslim organizations. He said the government should be focusing on building ties with local Muslims rather than increased scrutiny, which can fuel mistrust.
Others say the approach places an unfair burden on Muslim families to turn in their own children or siblings, citing the case of Mrs. Sarwar and her son.
Studying computers
Yusuf Sarwar grew up in Handsworth, an ethnically mixed working-class neighborhood in Birmingham. He attended classes at Birmingham City University, studying computer science and working part time guarding cars at a soccer club. He met Mohammed Nahin Ahmed, a postal worker, in junior high.
They took religious inspiration reading online material from Osama bin Laden ’s mentor, Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, as well as from online chats with extremists abroad, according to U.K. prosecutors.
Mr. Ahmed, age 22, asked in one exchange with a Danish Islamist in March 2012: “would the brothers in yemen accept me?” The Dane said he could “be a mujahid wherever in the world you are. Look at 7/7 from your country,” referring to the 2005 attack on London’s transport system that killed 56 people, including the four attackers.
By December 2012, Mr. Sarwar and Mr. Ahmed had begun plans to join the fight in Syria, according to court filings. Mr. Sarwar bought supplies on Amazon, including balaclavas, combat gloves and a walkie-talkie, which prosecutors said were intended for battle. He also bought gym equipment, including a punching bag, prosecutors said.
Two months later, in February 2013, Mr. Sarwar told his mother he was going on a two-week university trip to Turkey. He forged a flier about the outing and included an email contact, which carried a pseudonym for a Hot Mail account he created, according to court documents.
In May 2013, the two men flew to Istanbul on one-way tickets, authorities said, and then made their way to Syria.
During a neighborhood visit a few days later, Mr. Ahmed’s father asked Mrs. Sarwar about the trip their two boys had taken together, according to prosecutors. That was news to Mrs. Sarwar. Her son had said he was traveling alone. That sent her searching his room, where she found the letter explaining his deception and asking forgiveness, prosecutors said.
Mr. Sarwar’s letter also included instructions for settling his affairs, including how to cancel a mobile phone contract and pay any outstanding debts. He told his mother where she could find a check equal to $7,466, his savings, to underwrite a pilgrimage to Mecca for her.
When Mrs. Sarwar handed over the letter to police, she told them she had no inkling of his radical views.
Police assigned an officer to Mrs. Sarwar and her husband as a liaison with detectives. Authorities searched the homes of the Sarwars and the Ahmeds, who lived nearby.
In Syria, Messrs. Sarwar and Ahmed received training from Jabhat al Nusra, an affiliate of al Qaeda, according to prosecutors, and were sent near Aleppo, a scene of fierce battle.
Police and prosecutors pieced together the men’s movements by reading their conversations over the WhatsApp mobile messaging service. Mr. Ahmed exchanged lighthearted and sometimes flirtatious chats with a British woman, who authorities said was a sympathizer. Mr. Ahmed sent her a picture of himself surrounded by automatic rifles.
Mrs. Sarwar tried to stay in touch with her son by phone, according to Ayaz Iqbal, a lawyer for the family. Her eldest son also tried to talk his brother into coming home, Mr. Iqbal said.
Yusuf Sarwar wasn’t persuaded. But after months in Syria, he and Mr. Ahmed had a change of heart. When they decided to return, Mrs. Sarwar gave police the flight details.
Armed police provided an airport homecoming. Forensic experts swabbed the men’s belongings and found traces of military-grade explosives.
Mr. Ahmed and Mr. Sarwar each pleaded guilty at the start of their criminal trial to a single count of engaging in conduct in preparation of terrorist acts. The material provided in their defense was intended to mitigate the penalty.
Attorneys for Mr. Ahmed and Mr. Sarwar argued that the men—acting on their conscience—had been helping to overthrow the Assad regime, a stated British policy in 2013. The men claim not to have fought but instead worked as guards and grave diggers.
Prosecutors acknowledged they couldn’t prove the men had fought on behalf of a terror group but presented as evidence the traces of explosives found when they arrived. Defense lawyers said the material likely came from administering first-aid to civilian bomb victims.
The men offered statements in court down-playing their commitment to radical Islam. Each said they had never intended to attack fellow citizens or commit terrorism in the U.K.
“The defendant is British and he is proud to be British,” said Michael Ivers, Mr. Sarwar’s lawyer. “He is not somebody who is alienated. He enjoys the tolerant society he lives in.”
During the December sentencing hearing, Mr. Ivers urged the judge to take into account Mrs. Sarwar’s cooperation with authorities and said a stiff sentence could deter other families.
Mr. Sarwar and Mr. Ahmed showed little emotion when the judge gave their sentence. “It’s with no enthusiasm the court sentences young men to significant terms of imprisonment,” but they had enthusiastically and determinedly embarked on a path intending to commit terrorist acts, the judge said.
Police in several U.K. cities, including London, have been meeting for months with small groups of Muslim women to warn of seemingly innocuous online forums, including gaming zones. They urge mothers to ask their children about their Internet use. The women also are coached to take notice if family members turn more outwardly religious or are increasingly angry about Syria’s civil war.
Authorities say the program works. Dozens of families contacted police in the first six months of “Prevent Tragedies,” London’s Metropolitan Police said. That helped lead to an increase across the U.K. in terror-related arrests to 327 in 2014 from fewer than 250 the previous year. Of last year’s arrests, 165 were Syria-related, nearly seven times the number in 2013.
The U.K. isn’t alone in such grass-roots efforts. Denmark, which has large numbers of foreign fighters relative to its population, has a program offering help for returning foreign fighters to find a job and a place to live. The program also offers counseling to steer people from extremist ideology.
In France, the government has set up a hotline for tips from friends and family of the more than 1,000 people that authorities say are either planning to travel to fight abroad or have already gone.
Australia, which had a deadly standoff in a Sydney cafe in December, created a $10.5 million program that includes grants to ethnic communities, mainly in the suburbs of Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, to help counter extremism.
Detective Chief Superintendent Sue Southern, head of the West Midlands police counterterror unit that handled the Sarwar case, acknowledged the fragility of community trust. She said she was sympathetic to Mrs. Sarwar’s feelings but there was little police could do. By the time the family alerted police, she said, Yusuf Sarwar had already committed a crime.
“When a mother contacts us to say, ‘My son’s missing, I think he’s in Syria, can you get him back,’ it’s too late,” she said.
Mrs. Sarwar worked with authorities, in part, because she believed her son would receive more lenient treatment in return, according to a lawyer who represented the family.
One of Mr. Ahmed’s brothers said the stiff sentence was “going to backfire” by alienating Muslim families and discouraging them from coming forward. The brother said Mr. Ahmed recognized his mistakes, and it would have been better for authorities to work to integrate him back into society.
Mr. Sarwar and Mr. Ahmed had grown disillusioned during their months in Syria, according to their accounts in court. They became disturbed by the rise of Islamic State, particularly the militant group’s pursuit of sectarian killing. And they found Syria’s revolution had turned into a deadly rivalry pitting one rebel group against another.
The Sarwars and Ahmeds have also split. Mr. Ahmed’s brother said his family regrets that Mrs. Sarwar called police, and the families no longer speak.
Write to Alexis Flynn at alexis.flynn@wsj.com and Jenny Gross at jenny.gross@wsj.com
Popular on WSJ
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I'm confused. I have been told jihad doesn't mean violence. :-o
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http://www.barenakedislam.com/2015/03/01/norway-mullah-tells-tv-interviewer-we-have-the-right-to-kill-anyone-who-does-not-respect-muslims/
http://toprightnews.com/?p=8509
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http://speisa.com/modules/articles/index.php/item.397/this-country-will-be-the-first-islamic-nation-in-europe-muslims-claim.html
Daily headlines prove that Europe is bursting at the seams with Islamists attempting to establish Sharia law and homegrown terror plots. France is ablaze with radicals, ISIS threatens they will send Spain back to the times of the Ottoman Empire, and Britain is much too concerned with appeasing Muslims that they are doing away with their own citizens’ free speech.
The world is idly watching to see which European country will fall to Islamic rule, creating the first Muslim nation.
According to TMI, Muslims have already established which country will be the first to cave to Sharia:
A website claiming to be the Danish Muslim Party (DAMP) published a “press release” in English and Danish, saying that Denmark will be the first Muslim nation in Europe.
The website also stated as follows:
“[W]e can assure you that everything will be better in Muslim Denmark: No drugs, no crime, peace, and humanity – instead of drug culture, immorality, possibly human rights crimes and violence which we have now.”
“Every immigrant or Muslim in Danish jails should be released from prisons, because it is possible that there has been plotting or framing or provocation towards them – and all cases should be investigated again carefully.”
“Muslim party will be biggest party of Denmark – and it may be soon. First day after Turkey becomes EU member country – about one million 20-50 year old Muslims [may] move to Denmark, and after that Denmark [may] be a Muslim country. Be ready!”
“Danish Muslim party’s only agenda is to get Muslims into Danish politics and into the parliament, no matter what our ideas and religious or political beliefs are.”
Mathaba News Network cites that 700,000 Muslims live in Denmark, and about one-third of the Danish parliament is Muslim. With this large of a percentage of Islamists in government, Muslims are seeing their religious views established in legislature under the guise of anti-discrimination.
According to the website, riots and violence from the Muslim community is a direct response to the mistreatment of Muslims, and can be solved by integrating them into politics.
So, to keep Islamists from killing and rioting, we must put them in positions of power, and if we don’t, they will resort to destruction and violence. Does this sound like the kind of people who you would trust to lead a nation?
Denmark had better wake up to the religious revolution before their rights are stripped away from them in favor of an Islamic State.
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http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman/real_life/6554233/Ex-paid-thugs-to-throw-acid-at-me.html
Islamaphobia.
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/08/09/islamic-state-planned-to-assassinate-queen-elizabeth-in-massive-bomb-attack-on-ceremony-next-weekend-report/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Firewire&utm_campaign=Firewire%20-%20HORIZON%208-9-15%20FINAL
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https://www.facebook.com/strawb31/videos/1011087625590347/
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This is not a refugee crisis - it is a hijrah - and Muslims don't want that known by non-Muslims:
THE HIJRAH INTO EUROPE
“Refugees” colonize a continent.
September 4, 2015 Robert Spencer
Approximately 104,460 asylum seekers arrived in Germany during the month of August, setting a new record. That makes 413,535 registered refugees and migrants coming to Germany in 2015 so far. The country expects a total of around 800,000 people to seek asylum in Germany this year. And that’s just Germany. The entire continent of Europe is being inundated with refugees at a rate unprecedented in world history. This is no longer just a “refugee crisis.” This is a hijrah.
Hijrah, or jihad by emigration, is, according to Islamic tradition, the migration or journey of Muhammad and his followers from Mecca to Yathrib, later renamed by him to Medina, in the year 622 CE. It was after the hijrah that Muhammad for the first time became not just a preacher of religious ideas, but a political and military leader. That was what occasioned his new “revelations” exhorting his followers to commit violence against unbelievers. Significantly, the Islamic calendar counts the hijrah, not Muhammad’s birth or the occasion of his first “revelation,” as the beginning of Islam, implying that Islam is not fully itself without a political and military component.
To emigrate in the cause of Allah – that is, to move to a new land in order to bring Islam there, is considered in Islam to be a highly meritorious act. “And whoever emigrates for the cause of Allah will find on the earth many locations and abundance,” says the Qur’an. “And whoever leaves his home as an emigrant to Allah and His Messenger and then death overtakes him, his reward has already become incumbent upon Allah. And Allah is ever Forgiving and Merciful.” (4:100) The exalted status of such emigrants led a British jihad group that won notoriety (and a shutdown by the government) a few years ago for celebrating 9/11 to call itself Al-Muhajiroun: The Emigrants.
And now a hijrah of a much greater magnitude is upon us. Evidence that this is a hijrah, not simply a humanitarian crisis, came last February, but was little noted at the time and almost immediately forgotten. The Islamic State published a document entitled, “Libya: The Strategic Gateway for the Islamic State.” Gateway into Europe, that is: the document exhorted Muslims to go to Libya and cross from there as refugees into Europe. This document tells would-be jihadis that weapons from Gaddafi’s arsenal are plentiful and easy to obtain in Libya – and that the country “has a long coast and looks upon the southern Crusader states, which can be reached with ease by even a rudimentary boat.”
The Islamic State did not have in mind just a few jihadis crossing from Libya: it also emerged last February that the jihadis planned to flood Europe with as many as 500,000 refugees. Now the number is shooting well beyond that in Germany alone. Of course, not all of these refugees are Islamic jihadis. Not all are even Muslims, although most are. However, no effort whatsoever is being made to determine the refugees’ adherence to Sharia and desire to bring it to their new land. Any such effort would be “Islamophobic.” Yet there are already hints that the Islamic State is putting its plan into effect: jihadis have already been found among the refugees trying to enter Europe. There will be many more such discoveries.
Eight hundred thousand Muslim refugees in one year alone. This will transform Germany, and Europe, forever, overtaxing the welfare economies of its wealthiest nations and altering the cultural landscape beyond recognition. Yet the serious public discussion that needs to be had about this crisis is shouted down by the usual nonsense: the Washington Post Wednesday published an inflammatory and irresponsible piece likening those concerned about this massive Muslim influx into Europe to 1930s Nazis ready to incinerate Jews by the millions. Hollywood star Emma Thompson accused British authorities of racism for not taking in more refugees – as if British authorities haven’t already done enough to destroy their nation.
And so it goes. If you don’t accept the brave new world that is sure to bring more jihad and more Sharia to Europe, you’re a Nazi and a racist. Meanwhile, no one is bothering even to ask, much less answer, one central question: why is it incumbent upon Europe have to absorb all these refugees? Why not Saudi Arabia or the other Muslim countries that are oil-rich and have plenty of space? The answer is unspoken because non-Muslim authorities refuse to believe it and Muslims don’t want it stated or known: these refugees have to go to Europe because this is a hijrah.
This is also Europe’s death knell.
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http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/09/16/palestinian-boy-wants-engineer-can-blow-jews/
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http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/605974/Berlin-knife-attack-German-police-shoot-dead-terrorist-officer-stabbed
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Why Western Nations Should Only Accept Christian Refugees
Raymond Ibrahim - 09-18-2015
RaymondIbrahim.com
As refugees from the Middle East flood the West, a number of countries—including Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Cyprus, and Australia—are defying political correctness by wanting to accept Christian refugees only.
While more “progressive” voices cry “racism,” the fact remains: there are several objective reasons why the West should give priority, if not exclusivity, to Christian refugees—and some of these are actually to the benefit of European host nations.
Consider:
Christians are true victims of persecution. From a humanitarian point of view—and humanitarianism is the chief reason being cited in accepting refugees—Christians should receive top priority simply because they are the most persecuted group in the Middle East—well before the Islamic State phenomenon came into being. As Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop put it, “I think that Christian minorities are being persecuted in Syria and even if the conflict were over they would still be persecuted.”
Indeed. While they are especially targeted by the Islamic State, before the new “caliphate” was established, Christians were and continue to be targeted by Muslims—Muslim mobs, Muslim individuals, Muslim regimes, and Muslim terrorists, from Muslim countries of all races (Arab, African, Asian, etc.)—and for the same reason: Christians are infidel number one. See Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians for hundreds of anecdotes before the rise of ISIS as well as the Muslim doctrines that create such hate and contempt for Christians.
Conversely, Muslim refugees—as opposed to the many ISIS and other jihadi infiltrators posing as “refugees”—are not fleeing direct persecution, but chaos created by the violent and supremacist teachings of their own religion, Islam. It’s not for nothing that Samuel Huntington famously pointed out that “Islam’s borders are bloody, and so are its innards.” This means that when Muslims enter Western nations, chaos, persecution, and mayhem follow. Take a look at those West European cities—for example, Londonistan—that already have a large Muslim population for an idea.
Muslim persecution of Christians has been further enabled by Western policies, especially those of the Obama administration. In other words, Western nations should accept Christian refugees on the basis that Western meddling in the Middle East is directly responsible for exacerbating the plight of Christian minorities. After all, Christians did not flee from Bashar Assad’s Syria, or Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, or Muamar Gaddafi’s Libya. Their systematic persecution began in earnest after the U.S. and others interfered in those nations in the name of “democracy.” All they did is unleash the jihadi forces that the dictators had long kept suppressed. Now the Islamic State is deeply embedded in all three nations, enslaving, raping, and slaughtering countless Christian “infidels” and other minorities.
Vladimir Putin’s thoughts on the refugee crisis are plainly true:
This is a crisis which was absolutely expected…. We in Russia and your humble servant said several years ago that there would be massive problems if our so-called western partners conduct what I have always called the “wrong” foreign policy, especially in regions of the Muslim World, the Middle East and north Africa, which they continue practically to this day.
The Russian leader correctly adds that “people are running away not from the regime of Bashar Assad, but from Islamic State, which seized large areas in Syria and Iraq, and are committing atrocities there. That is what they are escaping from.”
Thus if the West is responsible for unleashing the full-blown jihad on Christians, surely it is the latter that the West should prioritize, from a humanitarian point of view.
Unlike Muslims, or even Yazidis, Christians are easily assimilated in Western countries, due to the shared Christian heritage. As Slovakia, which prefers Christian refugees, correctly points out, Muslims would not fit in, including because there are no mosques in the Slavic nation. Conversely, “Slovakia as a Christian country can really help Christians from Syria to find a new home in Slovakia,” said an interior minister.
This too is common sense. The same Christian teachings that molded Europe over the centuries are the same ones that mold Middle Eastern Christians—whether Orthodox, Catholic, or Protestant. As San Diego’s Father Noel said in the context of the Iraqi Christian refugees who managed to flee ISIS but are now rotting in a U.S. detention center, Mideast Christians “who come here [America] ‘want to be good citizens’ and many who came here a decade ago are now lawyers, teachers, or other productive members of society.”
Meanwhile, Muslims follow a completely different blueprint, the Koran—which condemns Christians by name, calls for constant war (jihad) against all non-Muslims, and advocates any number of distinctly anti-Western practices. Hence it is no surprise that many Muslim asylum seekers are anti-Western at heart, if not members of jihadi organizations.
Mideast Christians bring trustworthy language and cultural skills that are beneficial to the West. They understand the Middle Eastern—including Islamic—mindset and can help the West understand it. Moreover, unlike Muslims, Christians have no “conflicting loyalty” issues: Islamic law forbids Muslims from aiding “infidels” against fellow Muslims (click here to see some of the treachery this leads to in the U.S. and here to see the treachery Christians have suffered from their longtime Muslim neighbors and “friends”). Indeed, an entire book about how “double agent” Muslims have infiltrated every corner of the U.S. government exists. No such threat exists among Mideast Christians. They too render unto God what is God’s and unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.
Finally, it goes without saying that Mideast Christians have no sympathy for the very people and ideology that made their lives a living hell—the very people and ideology that are also hostile to everything in the West. Thus a win-win: the West and Mideast Christians complement each other, if only in that they share the same foe.
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All the above reasons—from those that offer humanitarian relief to the true victims of persecution, to those that offer benefits to the West—are unassailable in their logic and wisdom. Yet, because Western progressives prioritize politically correct ideals and fantasies over stark reality, there is little chance that they will be considered.
Quite the reverse: in America and Britain persecuted Christians are “at the bottom of the heap” of refugees to be granted asylum. Muslims receive top priority. Since January 2015, the U.S. has granted asylum to approximately six Muslims for every Christian it takes in.
The reason for this is simple: for the progressive mindset—which dominates Western governments, media, and academia—taking in refugees has little to do with altruism and everything to do egoism: It matters little who is really being persecuted—as seen, the West is directly responsible for greatly exacerbating the sufferings of Christians.
No, what’s important is that we “feel good” about ourselves. By taking in “foreign” Muslims, as opposed to “siding” with “familiar” Christians, progressives get to feel “enlightened,” “open-minded,” “tolerant,” and “multicultural”—and that’s all that matters here.
Meanwhile, reality quietly marches on: The same Islamic mentality that slaughters “infidel” Christians in the Middle East is now welcomed into the West with open arms.
The reproduction of any material or information originating on this website
must include either a link to this website or cite the name of this website
(RaymondIbrahim.com) as the source of the material or information reproduced.
Violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
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https://www.facebook.com/cbnnews/videos/10156087723405393/
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https://www.facebook.com/OfficialBritainFirst/videos/851393248339271/
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https://www.facebook.com/OfficialBritainFirst/videos/851393248339271/
Europe better decide soon if they wish to live under sharia.
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http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/09/muslims-in-germany-demand-end-to-un-islamic-oktoberfest/
http://pamelageller.com/2015/09/eiffel-tower-closed-after-three-terror-suspects-spotted-with-large-backpacks.html/
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http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/09/28/germany-segregating-christians-as-migrant-violence-escalates/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social
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http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/09/28/germany-segregating-christians-as-migrant-violence-escalates/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social
Wait. I was told Islam is a religion of Peace. Muslims attacking non_muslims? Has this happened before?
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"In Iran, the Revolutionary Guards have arrested my brother in a house church. I fled the Iranian intelligence, because I thought in Germany I can finally live freely according to my religion,” says Said, a Christian who fled persecution in his native country.
“But I can not openly admit that I am a Christian in my home for asylum seekers. I will be threatened,” he told Germany language paper Die Welt.
This year Germany prepares to absorb a million people in just twelve months – one per cent of its entire population – from numerous, diverse and alien cultures.
“We must rid ourselves of the illusion that all those who arrive here are human rights activists,” says Max Klingberg of the International Society for Human Rights (ISHR), who has worked with refugees for 15 years. “Among the new arrivals is not a small amount of religious intensity, it is at least at the level of the Muslim Brotherhood,” he said.
Said is living in an asylum centre in southern Brandenburg, near the border with Saxony. “They wake me before dawn during Ramadan and say I should eat before the sun comes up. If I refuse, they say I’m a kuffar, an unbeliever. They spit at me… They treat me like an animal. And threaten to kill me.”
“… They are also all Muslims,” he adds.
Gottfried Martens, a pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church Trinity in Berlin-Steglitz, has around 600 Afghanis and Iranians in his church, most of whom he baptised himself. “Almost all have big problems in their homes,” says Martens. “Devout Muslims teach their view, that here [in Germany] there is the Sharia, and then there is our law.”
He told Die Welt that the Christian refugees are often stopped from using kitchens to prepare food in asylum centres, and are constantly bullied for not praying five times a day to Mecca. Martens continues:
“And [the Christians] ask the question: What happens when the devout Muslim refugees leave the refugee center, must we continue hiding ourselves as Christians in the future in this country?”
Said’s fear is not unfounded. On the 14th of September German police in the town of Hemer revealed in a statement that an Eritrean Christian and his wife – who was eight months pregnant – had been hospitalised after being brutally attacked with a glass bottle by Algerian Muslims. The man had been wearing a wooden crucifix, which had “insulted” the Algerians.
Read more in link:
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Third post
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U36fCE_vCE
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ct. 2, 2015 4:46 p.m. ET
0 COMMENTS
BERLIN—Four weeks after Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the doors to refugees and Germans welcomed them with applause and food, worries are mounting that the country has been overwhelmed.
Ms. Merkel’s long-lofty approval ratings are falling back to earth. Senior officials are voicing fears of terrorists among the migrants as towns and cities run out of shelter space. And in a country that prizes order, polls show that Germans are losing faith that their government is up to the task of managing the influx as the news media show chaotic scenes of migrants sleeping outside and police responding to fights at shelters.
“It is simply too much,” said Karin Pahlitzsch, a 57-year-old teacher in the eastern German city of Dresden, referring to the number of people coming to Germany. “But the worst thing is how poorly organized everything is.”
ENLARGE
Unlike past European crises such as Ukraine and the early-summer debt showdown with Greece, the migration crisis directly affects Germans’ daily lives. Auditoriums, gyms, and trade-show halls are being converted to emergency shelters. Government officials are starting to openly voice frustration that migrants are misbehaving, stoking fears that the influx could lead to a rise in crime.
“Until summer, the refugees were thankful to be here with us,” Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière said on ZDF public television Thursday night. Now, he said, some “go on strike because they don’t like their shelter, they make trouble because they don’t like the food, they fight in the asylum-seeker facilities.”
Germany-based Islamists have been approaching migrants, particularly minors traveling alone, Mr. de Maizière said Friday after meeting with security officials. And intelligence agencies have warned that Islamic State jihadists could try to sneak into Germany with the migrants, he said.
‘We in Germany are rapidly approaching the limits of what we can do.’
—
Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, head of the SPD
In early September, many Germans flocked to train stations to welcome arriving migrants, and commentators described the outpouring of generosity as a “summer fairy tale” in a country whose Nazi history still complicates feelings of national pride. Polls showed that most Germans stood behind Ms. Merkel after she declared “We can do it!” in response to questions over whether Germany could handle the flow of people.
But a poll released late Thursday showed Ms. Merkel’s approval rating fell in recent weeks to 54% after some three years around 70%. The poll, conducted by research firm Infratest Dimap earlier this week, also found that 51% of Germans feared that too many refugees were arriving in their country—up from 38% a month ago.
In a speech in eastern Germany Thursday ahead of Saturday’s 25th anniversary of the country’s reunification, Ms. Merkel attempted to rally German spirits. She described accommodating migration as a “herculean task that now deeply moves us and demands from us a national effort.” Germany, working with the European Union and Turkey to try to channel the tide of migrants, will be able to overcome the crisis, she said.
The chancellor, who has led Europe’s largest economy for a decade, has long garnered high marks from Germans for calm and pragmatism under pressure. She faced other major crises such as the Greek debt showdown and the Ukraine conflict without losing significant support at home.
But this time, Germans appear to be more skeptical of her response. An Emnid poll for television broadcaster N24 published Thursday found 59% of respondents disagreed with her “We can do it” promise in the refugee crisis.
Amid the nation’s unease, leaders of other political parties in Ms. Merkel’s governing coalition are increasingly sowing doubts about her crisis management. Horst Seehofer, governor of the state of Bavaria and head of Ms. Merkel’s sister conservative party there, has repeatedly criticized the chancellor’s generosity toward migrants. His approval rating shot up 11 points, to 39%, in the monthly Infratest Dimap poll released on Thursday.
“We in Germany are rapidly approaching the limits of what we can do,” Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, head of the left-of-center Social Democrats, told news website Spiegel Online on Friday. “Many places in Germany are already overwhelmed.” Mr. Gabriel is widely expected to challenge the conservative Ms. Merkel in the 2017 election.
The sense of a crisis slipping out of the government’s control is being fed by images of chaos at shelters and registration points.
The port city of Hamburg, which is sheltering about 30,000 migrants and has received some 500 a day for the past month, was under particular strain this week. Tuesday night, 500 migrants slept in the open near the city’s main registration point because all shelters were full.
On Wednesday, desperate city officials sought to put up the migrants in a vacant tennis hall but couldn’t contact the owner to let them in. They sent firefighters to break open the door. Later in the day, the city found two schools with enough space to house newly arrived migrants and didn’t need to use the tennis hall, city official Björn Domroese said.
But the additional space didn’t head off violence in two other Hamburg asylum shelters Wednesday night. At one, in a vacant hardware store, two groups of people got into a fight, some of them armed with pieces of furniture, the police said.
In Berlin close to Ms. Merkel’s chancellery, scores of newcomers sleep on the street every night outside the main asylum office in the hopes of getting a spot in line for registration—a prerequisite for access to shelters.
Once registered, they have to wait for their number to be posted on a screen to proceed to the next step in the asylum-seeking process. On Thursday, people interviewed in the courtyard said they had been coming there every day for more than 20 days. Some still expressed gratitude that, at least, they were safe.
Raed Almarey, a 32-year-old from Damascus, was waiting with his wife and a brother on flattened cardboard boxes spread out on the lawn. He said the family had fled after two of his brothers were arrested by government forces.
“Waiting here for a year is better than being arrested for an hour [in Syria],” he said.
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The europeans should enjoy the opportunity to complain, they won't be able to soon.
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http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/10/05/worlds-first-lesbian-bishop-calls-church-remove-crosses-install-muslim-prayer-space/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social
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https://www.facebook.com/OfficialBritainFirst/videos/865110476967548/
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If Sudanese are Muslim, then this is the correct thread:
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/10/06/no-borders-activist-gang-raped-migrants-pressured-silence-not-damage-cause/
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MUSLIM MURDERS POLICE OFFICIAL, AUTHORITIES RUSH TO DEFEND…ISLAM
Just another day in the suicidal West.
October 6, 2015 Robert Spencer
Last week a fifteen-year-old Muslim, Farhad Jabar Khalil Mohammad, went to a police station in New South Wales and shot dead a civilian police employee, Curtis Cheng. After the murder, the young murderer was, according to an eyewitness, “dancing joyously.” Outside the station, he waved his gun at police and screamed “Allahu akbar” at them before he was killed in the ensuing gunfight.
In the wake of this jihad murder, Australian officials have behaved in an utterly predictable manner – one that we have seen many, many times before in Western countries, and that we will doubtless see many more times as well: they rushed to profess ignorance of the killer’s motives and above all, to defend Islam.
None of these officials are Muslims. They have all just been thoroughly indoctrinated with the idea that to look too closely at the motivating ideology behind murders like that of Curtis Cheng would be “hateful” and “bigoted.”
And so Pat Gooley from the New South Wales Police Association said: “We are used to being under threat. What’s really concerning police is there’s no rhyme or reason to these current terror threats.”
No rhyme or reason? Have you ever heard of jihad, Mr. Gooley? Evidently not.
Other police officials, meanwhile, made themselves busy ensuring that Farhad Jabar Khalil Mohammad’s jihad murder doesn’t lead anyone to think there is anything amiss with the Muslim community. The murder “was doubly shocking because it was perpetrated by a 15-year-old boy and it underlines the importance of families, communities, leaders being very aware of whether young people are becoming radicalised,” said Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, complacently assuming that Muslim “families, communities, leaders” in Australia are against this “radicalization” — but where is the evidence of that?
Turnbull also said: “We must not vilify or blame the entire Muslim community with the actions of what is, in truth, a very, very small percentage of violent extremist individuals. The Muslim community are our absolutely necessary partners in combating this type of violent extremism.”
When has the Muslim community in Australia or elsewhere in the West genuinely acted like partners in combating this type of violent extremism? And we must indeed not vilify or blame the entire Muslim community, but can we not call upon them to institute honest, transparent and inspectable programs in mosques and Islamic schools that teach against this understanding of Islam that they ostensibly reject and oppose?
Meanwhile, opposition leader Bill Shorten said: “Our thoughts are also with the family of the alleged young perpetrator. Like all Australians, they will be struggling to comprehend how someone so young could be part of such a terrible crime.” How does he know his family wasn’t involved? Has he carried out an investigation? He assumes that the family taught young Farhad Jabar Khalil Mohammad the true, peaceful Islam, but that he was then “radicalized on the Internet” — but why was his family’s true, peaceful Islam not able to withstand the challenge from the twisted, hijacked Internet Islam?
New South Wales Premier Mike Baird said that he and others were trying to understand “how someone so young could commit such a hideous crime.” He might wish to look into Islam’s teachings about jihad, but he won’t. He also said: “We cannot let actions such as this divide us. We cannot let hate overtake us. We have to come together and I’m sure that’s what we’ll see from this city and state.”
Indeed, we must not let hate overtake us, as it overtook Curtis Cheng. But can we do that by refusing to examine the ideology that led to his murder? By “hate,” Baird means “honest investigation into the texts and teachings of Islam that incite attacks such as this one, and the prevalence of such teachings in the Muslim community.”
And that’s the problem: every time there is another jihad attack or foiled jihad plot in the free world, our leaders just circle the wagons, trot out their Religion-of-Peace cliches again, warn us against “Islamophobia,” and refuse to look into the genuine root causes of the problem.
It’s a sure-fire path to societal suicide.
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http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/10/07/integration-failed-danes-changing-laws-exclude-foreigners-citizenship/
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http://www.religiousfreedomcoalition.org/2015/10/08/syrian-gang-rape-victim-is-ordered-killed-by-parents/
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http://www.religiousfreedomcoalition.org/2015/10/08/syrian-gang-rape-victim-is-ordered-killed-by-parents/
Embrace the beautiful Islamic culture !
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Sweden; Eurabia not working as promised
« Reply #90 on: October 17, 2015, 12:09:48 PM »
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http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6607/sweden-migrants-fear
Embrace Survive diversity!
« Last Edit: October 20, 2015, 02:39:59 PM by Crafty_Dog » Report to moderator 97.122.184.70 (?)
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It's now "Eurapia"
« Reply #91 on: Today at 11:07:52 AM »
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http://www.meforum.org/5569/migrants-rape
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The Refugee Crisis: What Europe Can Learn From the Past
Analysis
October 5, 2015 | 09:30 GMT Print
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Portuguese workmen set off to France from London to look for employment in June 1917. (TOPICAL PRESS AGENCY/Getty Images)
Forecast
In Europe, the process of integrating foreigners will remain problematic, especially because migrant workers tend to have fewer job opportunities than their native peers.
Right-wing parties and groups will continue to resist arriving foreigners, attack migrant shelters and protest immigration policies.
Although immigration can somewhat mitigate the effects of a shrinking and aging population, it cannot reverse it, nor will all EU members attract foreigners to join their workforces.
Analysis
In recent weeks, the massive arrival of asylum seekers opened a debate about the economic and political repercussions of immigration in Europe. The discussion is not entirely new. Traditionally, migrations in and out of Europe have shaped the Continent. Merchants, artists and intellectuals moved between European countries to practice their trade. British, Dutch, Germans and Swedes also immigrated to the United States, while Spaniards and Italians sought South America. Europe has had its fair share of population displacements as well: Russians moved to Western Europe after the Bolshevik revolution, and Greece and Turkey exchanged parts of their populations after World War I.
Many displaced peoples were forced to resettle in the decades following World War II, creating even more intra-European migrations. Many ethnic Germans living in Central and Eastern Europe were expelled from their homes in retaliation for the war. While reliable numbers are hard to find, by the early 1950s almost 8 million ethnic Germans had moved into Western Germany, while some 3.5 million had moved into Eastern Germany. Also after the war, hundreds of thousands of southern Europeans emigrated to Northern Europe and the Americas to escape poverty and unemployment.
By the 1950s and 1960s, decolonization had resulted in people from Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia moving to their former colonial powers, creating demographic change in Europe. In many cases, European countries actually encouraged this movement, because immigrants were needed to bolster the workforce of a rapidly growing European economy.
But this golden era of the "guest workers" programs had one underlying issue: The policies were based on the assumption that the migrants would eventually return home. Most of these programs subsequently ended with the economic downturn that followed the oil crises of the early 1970s. However, migrants still continued to flow into Europe thanks to family reunification policies, Turkish families moving to Germany probably being the most distinct example.
The early 1990s were again a time of European migration, with Germany once more at the center of the process. The fall of the Berlin Wall enabled ethnic Germans living in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union to move to the reunified Germany, and people from the former East Germany move to the more developed West Germany. The 1990s were later marked by the collapse of Yugoslavia and the ethnic conflicts that followed, which forced even more people to seek Western Europe.
And in the 2000s, two events shaped migration to Europe. The first was the European Union's enlargement to the east, which allowed citizens from countries in the former Communist bloc to legally work in Western Europe. The second was the financial crisis, which encouraged hundreds of thousands of Portuguese, Spanish, Irish and Greeks to immigrate to Germany, the United Kingdom and other wealthy economies in the north.
Signs From the Past
The current migration flow into Europe is somewhat different from those of the past. Unlike the litany of previous population movements, this one involves a combination of asylum seekers from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan and economic migrants from sub-Saharan Africa and the Balkans, most of whom arrive in Europe by land or sea. Many of these migrants endure long and dangerous trips from their countries of origin.
To an extent, it resembles the displacement of ethnic Germans and people from the former Yugoslavia because many of the migrants are fleeing war and ethnic persecution. It also partially resembles the decolonization process because it mostly involves non-Europeans. But the current migration flow differs from the others in the sense that it is chaotic and massive, and it affects multiple countries in different ways. Whether Europe should have been prepared for this migration influx is irrelevant at this point. Simply put, the European Union has been overwhelmed by the events.
The predicament has laid bare the shortcomings of EU migration policies because countries in the bloc's external borders had to deal with an influx of people they were not prepared to handle. It has also threatened the principle of free movement of people in the bloc; several countries reintroduced border controls to disrupt the migration routes. Finally, it deepened the Continent's already serious political divisions. The debate over measures to address the crisis revealed different approaches among member states, and a plan to relocate asylum seekers across the Continent was approved only after Berlin and Brussels threatened to introduce punitive measures on countries deciding not to participate.
Still, while this refugee crisis is unique in many aspects, previous migration experiences offer some indications of how it could affect Europe. First, the process of integrating foreigners remains problematic for European nations. In most Western European countries, migrant workers tend to be disproportionally represented in the bottom segments of the national earnings distribution. Eurostat data also shows that in most EU countries, unemployment rates are higher among migrants. Both disadvantages are particularly pronounced among non-European immigrants — a key aspect to keep in mind considering the backgrounds of the men and women currently arriving in Europe.
For example, a recent report by Germany's Interior Ministry shows that the unemployment rate among workers with an immigrant background is almost twice as high as that among the non-immigrant population. The same report says young foreigners are less successful in school than their German peers, which makes finding jobs more difficult. This suggests that in many cases there is a perpetuation of the disadvantage between foreigners and locals; the children of immigrant families encounter problems similar to those of their parents in trying to enter the workforce.
Second, migration flows generally produce political and social reactions in the receiving countries. In the United Kingdom, for example, the arrival of Central and Eastern European workers (mostly Polish) in the mid-2000s contributed to the electoral rise of the anti-immigration UKIP party. Though the British electoral system prevented UKIP from winning a significant representation in the British Parliament, the party's popularity influenced the behavior of the Conservative Party government, which introduced reforms to make it harder for foreigners to access welfare benefits. This is also one of London's priorities for EU reform.
France is another clear example of a country where the constant influx of non-European immigrants combined with the failure to integrate them completely leads to discontent among both immigrants and the receiving population. The French riots of 2005 and 2009 and the electoral rise of the right-wing National Front are symptomatic of the social tensions created by decades of migration from former French colonies.
Even Sweden, a country famous for its tolerance for immigrants, experienced disturbances when violence broke out in a Stockholm suburb where a relatively large group of immigrant residents lived in 2013. The Swedish justice minister was blunt in her explanation of the causes of the riots; she said that "social segregation" was to blame. Thus local populations are just as likely to react to rising immigration. Norway's intelligence service even went so far as to say the biggest risk posed by the influx of migrants was a violent reaction from far-right groups rather than Islamists infiltrating the country.
The Demographic Impact
Third, previous migrations show that the movement of people affects demographics. As life expectancy improves and fertility rates drop, most populations in European countries are aging and shrinking, which will reduce the size of their workforces in the coming decades. These changes will in turn create fiscal challenges for these countries as they are forced to spend more in pensions and health care.
On the surface, immigration looks like a good way of mitigating the process of demographic change. If a country cannot produce enough workers domestically, it may as well import them. There is some truth to this. However, France and the United Kingdom, which have some of the highest fertility rates in Europe and populations that will continue to grow during this century while the overall EU population is expected to begin to decline by the 2050s, are still two of Europe's main destinations for immigrants. This partially explains why Germany, the country with the lowest fertility rate in the European Union, was so enthusiastic to receive immigrants during the early stages of the refugee crisis, while the United Kingdom refused to participate in the EU plan to accept more migrants.
But immigration is not an antidote to demographic change. First, fertility rates are dropping across the board, even among immigrant families. Second, decisions that may make sense economically are often not viable politically. Countries in Central and Eastern Europe, which in the coming decades will face serious problems because of low fertility rates and high levels of emigration, were critical of the EU plan to relocate migrants. These are relatively homogeneous societies where many locals feel that a spike in immigration would threaten their national identity.
Few Options for Europe
Finally, migrants tend to go where jobs are available and migration policies are friendly. This fact will undermine any EU efforts to introduce one-size-fits-all policies such as the automatic relocation of migrants. If a migrant wants to go to Austria, there is little the European Union can do to keep him or her in Romania. If Germany allows refugees to work three months after they arrive in the country while France makes them wait for a year, it is only natural that migrants will continue to choose Germany over France. And as long as Sweden offers friendlier asylum legislation than Denmark, the former will be a destination country where the latter will be a transit country for asylum seekers.
Over the past few weeks, the European Union has changed its approach to the migration crisis. The bloc's immediate reaction focused on how to host an increasing number of foreigners, but its attention rapidly changed to how to prevent them from entering the Continent. EU leaders recently announced more financial aid for countries in the Middle East and Africa, and the bloc's naval operation in the Mediterranean will soon start boarding and seizing vessels in international waters. These are only palliative measures that will have a limited effect.
Since the beginning of the crisis, many European politicians have suggested that the European Union should emulate Australia, which intercepts migrants arriving by boat and sends them to detention centers on island nations in the Pacific Ocean. But Australia is both an island continent and a nation-state, and Europe is neither of those things. Europe is geographically and historically linked to the Middle East and North Africa, and the movement of people between the two will not stop any time soon. The European Union is also a club of nation-states where global solutions are elusive and often counterproductive.
In the months ahead, the European Union is likely to harden its resolve to stem immigration, taking steps to consolidate the so-called Fortress Europe. But this position will have little meaning without additional measures to integrate those who have already arrived and those who will undoubtedly arrive in the future.
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http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/10/caught-on-video-german-muslim-islam-is-coming-and-your-daughters-will-wear-the-hijab/
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This will continue until people are honest about the fact that not everyone wants to be friends.
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And more precisely - Islam's stated goal is world domination and conquest. Unbelievers are to be converted, enslaved, or executed. There are no other options.
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Report: Muslim Intimidation Pervasive in British Prisons
by Johanna Markind
The American Thinker
November 3, 2015
http://www.meforum.org/5615/islam-british-prisons
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Originally published under the title "Islam in British Prisons."
British Muslims are three times more likely than the population at large to be in prison, though many have converted to Islam behind bars.
Muslim Abuse of Non-Muslim Prisoners
Recent media reports of government investigations indicate that throughout the United Kingdom's category A prisons – those holding the most serious offenders – of Belmarsh, Long Lartin, Woodhill and Whitemoor, gangs of Islamist extremists intimidate non-Muslim prisoners. Muslim inmates pressure non-Muslims to convert and extort money from prisoners who do not. It is unclear how long the problem has been going on. Media previously reported about pressure to convert three and a half years ago.
According to the UK's Independent Monitoring Board, Muslims are overrepresented in Whitemoor prison, a maximum security facility holding about 450 inmates. Muslims make up about half of the total population of that facility. The board also noted, Muslim gangs make up the "biggest power bloc," and "some prisoners and staff found the Muslim presence overwhelming."
Demographics
As of December 2014, 12,225 of the UK's 84,691 prisoners were Muslim. That is to say, Muslims made up 14.4% of the UK's prison population.
According to the UK's most recent census – in 2011 – roughly 2,706,066 or 4.8% out of a population of 56,075,912 identified as Muslim (although, given that the UK's total population is elsewhere identified as 63.2 million, the actual Muslim percentage may be closer to 4.28%).
Based on the 4.8% figure, Muslims appear to be overrepresented in the British prison population by 3.01 times their percentage of the population.
According to the UK's Independent Monitoring Board, Muslim gangs make up the "biggest power bloc" at Whitemoor prison and "some prisoners and staff found the Muslim presence overwhelming."
Back in 2002, 5,502 of the UK's 70,778 prisoners, or 7.8%, were Muslim. According to the 2001 census, Muslims constituted 3.0% of the total UK population. In other words, Muslims were overrepresented in the UK prison population by 2.59 times their percentage of the population. So the current numbers may represent an increase in degree of overrepresentation (only "may," because population data for 2014 is unavailable, given that the last census was three years earlier), but not a huge one.
More noteworthy is the fact that, compared to Muslim incarceration rates in France and the United States, the UK rate is actually low. Muslims are overrepresented in the French prison population by 7.5 times their percentage of the population; they make up 60% of the French prison population but only 8% of the general population. In the United States, although their overall percentage is smaller, Muslims are overrepresented in the prison population by 11.25 times their percentage of the population; they make up 9% of the US prison population but only .8% of the general population).
Questions Remaining
Will the UK government act to protect non-Muslim prisoners from intimidation by Muslim prisoners? Will it sanction the Muslim gangs and their accomplices? Or will it simply accept second-class status for non-Muslims, as the UK's justice system seems in danger of doing?
Will the UK government act to protect non-Muslim prisoners from Muslim intimidation?
Will it explore the factors leading to overrepresentation of Muslims in the prison population? One must wonder whether the overrepresentation is at least partly the result of intimidation against other prisoners to convert.
Given that Muslims are able to exert so much pressure in prisons for serious offenders, and make up about half of the prison population at one of them (Whitemoor), are Muslims particularly overrepresented in more serious offenses? If so, why?
Finally, given these reports, and the even greater overrepresentation of Muslims in French and US prisons, will authorities in France and the US investigate whether Islamist extremists in their prisons are likewise pressuring and or extorting non-Muslim prisoners, and whether Muslims are especially overrepresented among more serious criminals?
Johanna Markind is associate counselor at the Middle East Forum
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https://specialoperationsspeaks.com/current-news/sweden-facing-collapse-because-of-refugees-foreign-minister-says
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http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/11/09/al-qaeda-terror-boss-discovered-on-migrant-boat-authorities-tried-to-hide-news/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social
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Not knowing where to put this but:
The UC Merced knife stabber (Had he read Ben Carson's book? :evil:) was a follower of Islam. He was also apparently on the Terror Watch List, and the college and local PD briefed about him. Notice that the media is not covering this story, even here in the Bay Area where Merced is just a couple of hours away.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2015/11/report-uc-merced-stabber-was-on-terror-watch-list-had-islamic-state-flag (http://www.jihadwatch.org/2015/11/report-uc-merced-stabber-was-on-terror-watch-list-had-islamic-state-flag)
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I don't know if this video has been "sensationalized", but the scenes it shows on the Islamic migration to Europe is in one word...frightening. This is the future of the US without control of our borders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44vzMNG2fZc&feature=youtu.be&t=1019 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44vzMNG2fZc&feature=youtu.be&t=1019)
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Two notable developments occurred Nov. 11 related to Europe's migrant crisis, notable not so much for what they directly achieved but for their potential effects. Both events concerned the migration route that passes across the eastern Mediterranean and up through the Balkans, which has been largely responsible for the massive uptick in immigrant numbers in 2015. The first was a statement from the Czech Republic's deputy prime minister, Andrej Babis, who said that since Greece has not been adequately controlling its borders it should be ejected from the Schengen zone, which allows free movement of people in Europe. The second was the news that Slovenia has begun to erect a fence on its border with Croatia.
Babis' comments are important: Greece's exclusion from the Schengen area would deal a blow both to the European Union itself and to Greece's place within it. The links among its members have already been strained by the immigrant crisis, with some countries claiming emergency conditions and erecting fences with their non-Schengen neighbors, while others have suspended border crossings within the borderless zone, temporarily nullifying its effects. If a country were to be booted out of the borderless area, it would be a further blow to the structural integrity of the entire initiative. For Greece, meanwhile, whose continued existence in the European Union has been in doubt for much of the year primarily for financial reasons, would see another rope that ties it to the union severed, creating even more distance between Greeks and their European counterparts and thus facilitating an eventual Grexit.
What is a Geopolitical Diary?
Potentially consequential though Babis' statements may be, Greece is probably not leaving the Schengen area any time soon. Europe's leaders will be well aware of the risks its departure creates, and kicking Greece out would not actually help the situation that much. This is because Schengen is a system designed to make it easy to cross the borders that exist between Schengen members, removing the need for papers to be checked. Greece's Schengen membership is not a factor in the current crisis because Greece does not have any Schengen neighbors, so any migrants traveling by land are entering the Schengen area when they enter Greece, but they then leave it again to continue up through the Balkans before entering it once more in countries such as Hungary or Slovenia. If migrants were entering Greece and at that stage booking flights or ferries to other Schengen territories, it might be an issue. But at this stage they are not (at least not in significant numbers).
It is the second development that actually has the potential to change the situation on the ground more dramatically. Slovenia has said it is building a fence to control the flow of migrants — not to cut off that flow — but once the building has begun it is not hard to imagine it continuing to its natural conclusion. This would close off the narrow passage through which the migrants currently pass. Throughout the year, migrants have taken small boats from Turkey to Greek islands, ridden to the mainland by ferry, and made their way up through Macedonia and Serbia to Europe. Hungary's erection of fences on its border first with Serbia and then with Croatia has steadily driven the flow westward, until the majority of the migrants have been passing through the bottleneck of the Croatia-Slovenia border. This has created so many problems in Slovenia that they have decided to erect a fence to inhibit migrants. If the fence did end up passing all the way from the Hungarian border to the Adriatic Sea, it would finally plug the migrants' route, since there would be no way to continue going west — at least not by land.
Under such circumstances, the migrants, whose flow to Europe has thus far not abated in November, would be facing some hard choices. If they decided to take their chances on an eastern land route up through Romania, there would be a high likelihood that Hungary would soon erect a fence on that border as well, just as it did on its border with Serbia and Croatia earlier in the year. At that stage, the migrants might continue northward, assuming they could overcome the barrier of the Carpathian Mountains, and into Ukraine, which is not currently the most hospitable of states, and on to Slovakia and Poland, which are themselves two of the more anti-migrant countries.
Alternatively, migrants might start to seek different routes to Europe, routes that would probably require another sea crossing into Italy, most easily at the top of the peninsula between Croatia and Trieste. If that were inhibited by Croatian and Italian authorities, migrants would have to attempt a longer crossing farther down the Adriatic Sea. This would be similar (though in most cases longer) to the crossing they would have made from Turkey to Greece, though it is unlikely that they would be able to find transport so easily. After a year of building migrant flows there is now a small cottage industry operating off the Turkish coast that provides inflatable boats for the quantities of people making the crossing every day, but even this very mobile and opportunistic industry would take a while to get going on the Dalmatian coast. The high numbers of migrants butting up against the new Slovenian fence would be unlikely to be able to find an accommodating group of black market traffickers able to provide vessels for so many customers at such short notice.
Thus, faced with these two unattractive options, there is a high possibility that many of these migrants would find themselves stuck on the wrong side of the European fences for an extended period. This would have the potential to be very destructive. The Balkan states, which would then have to cope with large numbers of people not just passing through but actually remaining, have already exchanged angry words this year. For a multitude of ethnic and historical reasons the region has a reputation for being a powder keg, and throwing in the spark of having to support large numbers of migrants who cannot go forward and cannot go back could have serious consequences. Added to the regional tensions there is also the possibility of a humanitarian crisis as winter draws in, and these countries are some of the least prepared in Europe to be able to provide extensive facilities for these people. Slovenia, then, constitutes an ever-narrowing bottleneck through which the flow of migrants is still being allowed to pass. The consequences of shutting this bottleneck, if it were to happen, could be disastrous for the region and for Europe as a whole.
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http://www.clarionproject.org/news/cultural-exclusion-reigned-over-uk-trojan-horse-school#
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11995227/Paris-shooting-Many-feared-dead-live.html (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11995227/Paris-shooting-Many-feared-dead-live.html)
4th Paris attack just occurred. But don't worry, Islam is the religion of peace.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11995227/Paris-shooting-Many-feared-dead-live.html (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11995227/Paris-shooting-Many-feared-dead-live.html)
4th Paris attack just occurred. But don't worry, Islam is the religion of peace.
Obviously France needs more gun control, and grenade control.
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It is now up to 6 different locations and the stadium where a suicide bombing took place.
Welcome to open immigration.
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http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/11/14/clemons-french-officials-criticizing-absence-of-us-leadership-against-terror/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social
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http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/11/14/clemons-french-officials-criticizing-absence-of-us-leadership-against-terror/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jessica-roy/france-celebrates-obamas_b_141383.html
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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/14/opinion/swedens-self-inflicted-nightmare.html
Sweden's Self-Inflicted Nightmare
By BENJAMIN R. TEITELBAUMNOV. 13, 2015
Sweden’s message to migrants in Europe is clear: Don’t come here. “Even we have our limits, and now they have been reached,” a defeated-sounding migration minister, Morgan Johansson, explained during a press conference on Nov. 5. “Those who come to our borders may be told that we cannot guarantee them housing.”
That message, nailed down this week when the government announced that Sweden was reintroducing border controls, was a sudden shift from an administration that had claimed there were “no limits” to the number of refugees it could accept. The reversal testifies not only to intensifying challenges Sweden faces abroad, but also to the dysfunctional nature of its immigration debate at home.
Sweden’s backtracking is part of a larger trend as Europe struggles to deal with the hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern and African asylum seekers. States that together with Sweden had been advocating generosity and openness — like Austria and Germany — now too are tightening their policies and calling for Europe to reinforce its external borders. Their efforts have turned to repatriating those without legitimate claims to asylum as well as relocating part of their migrant populations to other, less inundated E.U. states like Poland, France or Denmark.
Making progress on either front promises to be a challenge. Indeed, responding to the Swedish government’s cries for neighboring states to take some of their refugees, the Danish migration minister, Inger Stojberg, said her country would not be coming to the rescue, and added: “Sweden has had an irresponsible refugee policy for years. They have put themselves in this situation.”
Sweden, a country of 9.6 million, lately has been absorbing 10,000 asylum seekers per week, and expects the total number coming into the country this year alone to reach 190,000 — a population greater than that of its fourth largest city. Since the intensification of the immigration crisis in September, municipalities have complained that they lack housing, teachers and classroom space, and doctors for the newcomers. The police have acknowledged that they’ve lost the ability to monitor the whereabouts of foreign nationals within the country. Migration agencies have signaled that they can no longer ensure that unaccompanied minors passing through their offices will be transferred into acceptable living conditions. And leaked emails have shown that government officials are panicking over how they will pay for associated costs.
Sweden, like Germany and Austria, overestimated its capacity. Casualties of this miscalculation will not only include its domestic welfare institutions, but also — tragically — its global humanitarianism. In an effort to pay for increased immigration, the government is now dipping into its foreign aid budget. Sweden consistently ranks as one of the most generous providers of foreign aid worldwide, supporting efforts to expand educational opportunities, provide access to water, and promote political and economic development in regions producing the bulk of asylum seekers in Europe. But 20 percent of this year’s foreign aid budget has been redirected to domestic migration agencies, and officials have suggested they will take even more out of next year’s budget. Reducing foreign aid in such substantial amounts promises to fuel the same instability and desperation that is causing the migrant crisis. Worse yet, by refocusing its humanitarian effort on individuals healthy enough and wealthy enough to take themselves to its shores, Sweden is shunning those abroad in greatest need.
The government’s slow response to all of this seems baffling. But the seeds of the current debacle were sown earlier, when immigration became an untouchable centerpiece of Sweden’s politics. For the past five years, the nationalist Sweden Democrats party has been the only force opposing the country’s refugee policies. Born in the late 1980s through the fusion of an anti-tax populist party and a neo-Nazi activist group, the Sweden Democrats have grown exponentially since entering Parliament in 2010. Their rise has nonetheless been condemned and hotly contested by a mainstream weary of seeing the country’s reputation for tolerance tarnished. Far from introducing new restrictions to immigration, the Sweden Democrats have caused the political establishment to entrench itself: Any move to restrict immigration is now seen as a concession to paranoid nativism.
Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has called the Sweden Democrats “neo-fascists,” and like all other mainstream party leaders — on the left as well as the right — he has refused to communicate with them. But on the heels of his administration’s about-face on its own immigration policy, his past attacks on the party seem awkward. When members of the Sweden Democrats began criticizing his policy months ago for its blindness to logistical and economic pitfalls, he dismissed them. The party also argued early on that money for humanitarian purposes would be more efficiently and equitably spent through foreign aid than immigration, and he disregarded their argument as a convenient excuse for a xenophobic agenda. He may have been right, but so were they.
And therein lies the problem. The real nightmare for Swedish politics is not that it now includes the kind of continental-style far-right party it once thought itself immune to. It is rather that mainstream forces have surrendered all critical perspectives on immigration to a party with which they can neither collaborate nor bear to see affirmed. Had a transparent and dynamic public discussion been taking place in Sweden during the past months — a discussion that acknowledged both the need for human solidarity and the limitations of the country’s infrastructure — a more sustainable immigration policy might have emerged. Instead, it seems ill-fated policies will not be altered until the country brings itself to the brink of collapse.
Benjamin R. Teitelbaum, who teaches Nordic Studies and International Affairs at the University of Colorado, Boulder, is the author of the forthcoming book “Lions of the North: Sounds of the New Nordic Radical Nationalism.”
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(http://a.disquscdn.com/uploads/mediaembed/images/2801/3593/original.jpg)
http://a.disquscdn.com/uploads/mediaembed/images/2801/3593/original.jpg
Oh, and COEXIST bumperstickers!
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Raymond Ibrahim: The Grand Lesson of the Paris Jihad
NOVEMBER 15, 2015 1:08 AM BY RAYMOND IBRAHIM
What is the grand, take away lesson from yesterday’s jihadi/terrorist attack in Paris, that left 129 dead and hundreds injured?
Is it a result of the mass influx of Muslim migrants into Europe—including Islamic State operatives?
Is it yet another reflection of Islam’s unwavering Rule of Numbers, which holds that, wherever and whenever Muslims grow in numbers—and they make for a large minority in France—the same acts of “anti-infidel” violence that are endemic to the Islamic world grow with them?
For all who are uninformed, the above are certainly lessons associated with the Paris attack. But they are not the grand lesson.
The grand lesson is that such attacks must and will continue to multiply in severity. Why? Because Western nations, their leaders and media talking heads continue to be shocked and dismayed. As Judith Berman writes for the Gatestone Institute today:
One of the most surprising aspects of the terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday night is how “deeply shocked” members of the European political establishment appeared to be.
Angela Merkel, David Cameron and the Pope all expressed their condolences — and “deep shock” — at the well-coordinated, citywide terror attacks in six different places across Paris…
Even “NBA players express shock, sympathy over Paris terrorist tragedy.”
What is truly shocking is that so many are still shocked. When someone is shocked, they are essentially saying they have no idea how a specific event, in this case yesterday’s Paris attack, came to pass.
In turn, this means that all the factors that led up to such terrorist attacks—from an already large Muslim presence further engorged with more Muslim migraters, to an inability to speak honestly about Islam’s supremacist and violent teachings—will continue unabated.
And that means many more such attacks and worse will continue. Count on it.
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It turns out they were evangelical Christians that sneaked in from America's deep south. Just kidding.
What haven't we learned yet? We already had the London bombings of 7/7/2005, Madrid train bombings 2004. Charlie Hebdo a few blocks from this one in Paris, not to mention Bali 2002 and 2005, 9/11/2001, and the previous attack on the World Trade Center, the embassies of Kenya and Tanzania 1998, Tunisia June 2015 (did you know that one?), Beslan 2002, Mumbai 2008, Kunming 2014, Pashewar 2014, and the beheading of Daniel Pearl . Is this really still rocket science?
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3318379/Hunt-Isis-killers-Syrian-passport-body-suicide-bomber-Stade-France.html
Face of a Paris suicide bomber: First picture of ISIS killer as it's revealed two of the Jihadis sneaked into Europe via Greece by posing as refugees and being rescued from a sinking migrant boat - and survivors say one of the attackers was a WOMAN
Ahmed Almuhamed, 25, believed have been in terror squad at the Bataclan concert hall before blowing himself up
French police revealed his Syrian passport was found on a bomber's body who registered as a refugee in Greece
Ferry tickets from October 3 reveal he travelled to Europe with a Mohammed Almuhamed, who may be a relation
Authorities believe at least two of the terror cell traveled from Syria, through Turkey and into Greece since summer
A second passport, from Egypt, was found on the body of another bomber who took part in the Paris terror attack
Homegrown terrorist Omar Ismaël Mostefai , 29, identified as a gig bomber by fingerprint from severed digit
Seven terrorists killed themselves using suicide belts while another was shot dead by police at the Bataclan gig
Paris attacks have left 129 dead and 352 injured - 99 of which are in a critical condition. 30 of dead not yet identified
See more of the latest news and updates on the ISIS attacks on Paris
By IAN GALLAGHER and MARTIN BECKFORD FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY and MARTIN ROBINSON FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 07:14 EST, 14 November 2015 | UPDATED: 13:02 EST, 15 November 2015
This is the face of one of the Paris killers who allegedly sneaked into France by posing as a refugee after being rescued from a sinking migrant boat as it emerged a woman and three brothers may have been part of the eight-strong ISIS kamikaze terror squad.
Serbian media claims Ahmed Almuhamed, 25, whose Syrian passport was found on the body of a suicide bomber, allegedly blew himself up at the Bataclan concert hall, where at least 89 people were slaughtered on Friday.
The newspaper, Blic, claims Almuhamed arrived with another of the bombers in Europe on the Greek island of Leros on October 3 on his way to Paris. Greek website Protothema have published ferry tickets showing the name of a second man, Mohammed Almuhamed, who could be a relation.
French police are hunting 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, from Brussels, who is accused of renting a Volkswagen Polo used by the suicide bombers who killed 89 people at the Bataclan music venue on Friday.
His brother Ibrahim is believed to have blown himself up during the Paris siege and a third unnamed sibling has been arrested in the Belgian capital.
An official told the Washington Post another of the shooters was Bilal Hadfi, who was from Belgium and had spent time fighting with ISIS in Syria, who also died after detonating his suicide vest during a murderous rampage.
One of the attackers has been named locally as homegrown terrorist Omar Ismaël Mostefai , 29, from Courcouronnes, Paris. The petty criminal was known to police as a radical and identified by the fingerprint on a severed digit found after he detonated his suicide belt.
(http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/11/15/16/2E794AB000000578-3318379-image-a-3_1447605337024.jpg)
Investigators are now investigating claims that he went to Syria last year, and may have spent time training with ISIS terrorists.
Survivors have claimed that a woman was among the group shooting randomly into the crowd at the Eagles of Death Metal gig before three blew themselves up and a fourth person was shot dead by police before they could detonate their bomb.
At least 129 people died and another 99 were injured in Paris on Friday night after eight terrorists, including one as young as 15, attacked the Stade de France, restaurants and the packed Bataclan concert hall armed with AK-47s, grenades and wearing suicide vests.
More than 350 were injured - 99 of which are in a critical condition - and 30 of the dead have not yet been identified.
It is believed two of the bombers were carrying Syrian passports. At least two others are believed to be French while several could also be Belgian.
Prosecutors in Brussels have said two attackers killed in Paris were Frenchmen who lived in the Belgian capital and that two vehicles used in the terror attack were rented in Belgium.
The disclosure that some may have entered Europe as migrants, which came amid claims of French intelligence failures, inevitably raises new security concerns about the safety of Europe's borders.
Meanwhile the black Seat Leon used by the terrorists who murdered diners outside the Casa Nostra pizza restaurant and the La Belle Équipe cafe has been found abandoned 20 minutes away in Montreuil with three AK-47s with five full magazines and 11 empty ones.
Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said on Saturday that gunmen armed with automatic weapons pulled up in that model of car before opening fire, killing 15 people and injuring 10.
On the second day after the worst terror attack in French history it has emerged:
French police are hunting for two gunmen on the run after Friday's attacks and an ISIS bombmaker likely to have made the suicide vests
One is known to be 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, from Brussels, who is accused of renting a Volkswagen Polo used by the suicide bombers who killed 89 people at the Bataclan music venue
A Seat car used in drive-by shootings at two restaurants was found abandoned containing three AK-47s with five full magazines and 11 empty ones
One of Bataclan suspects was found carrying a Syrian passport under the name Ahmed Almuhamed who travelled to France as a migrant through Greece. Ferry tickets reveal he travelled with another man named as Mohammed Almuhamed.
Frenchman Omar Ismaël Mostefai, 29, also named as a Bataclan suicide bomber who was identified by his severed finger. Mostefai's father, a brother and other family members have been held and are being questioned.
Mostefai said to have been radicalised by a Belgian hate preacher of Moroccan descent said to have regularly preached at his mosque
Bataclan survivors claim that one of the four shooters was a woman
Seven people were detained in Belgium linked to the atrocities - five in Brussels district known as a 'den of terrorists'
Ahmed Almuhamed is believed to have taken around a month to travel to France posing as a migrant. He had entered Serbia at Miratovce, having crossed the frontier from Macedonia. The newspaper reported that Almuhamed, applied for asylum in Serbia in Presevo before crossing into Croatia and Austria.
Paris prosecutors confirmed that the suspects, all wearing explosive vests, roamed across the French capital in three teams, perpetrating the 'worst acts of violence' in the country since the Second World War. Fingerprint records show that two of the terrorists had arrived in the EU as refugees through Greece.
A Syrian passport found near the body of one of the gunmen had passed through the Greek island of Leros on October 3.
On October 5 they used their Syrian passports to travel to the port of Piraeus on Mainland Greece before arriving in Serbia on October 7.
The Syrian passport was registered in October in Serbia and Croatia, two of the countries on the corridor crossing the Balkans. The owner was allowed to proceed because he passed what is essentially the only test in place - he had no international arrest warrant against him.
It is still not yet clear if the Syrian passport is fake or real, or if it belonged to the dead bomber. European officials say there is a brisk trade in fake Syrian passports to help people get refugee status in the EU.
Greece's deputy minister in charge of police, Nikos Toscas, said he was 'identified [as a refugee] according to EU rules' as he passed through the country, but did not know if it was checked elsewhere en route to Paris. In all, 129 people were killed in a series of co-ordinated bomb and gun attacks on Friday night. With 99 of the 352 wounded critically ill, the death toll is expected to rise.
Six of the terrorists, believed to be from Islamic State who appear to have formed their own international terror cell, took their own lives, while one was shot dead by police.
The first Jihadi suicide bomber named in connection with the Paris terrorist attacks that left at least 129 people dead was Is Omar Ismail Mostefai, who was identified by his finger.
The digit was found among the carnage of the Bataclan concert hall, where the 29-year-old was one of three men who blew himself up killing 89 men, women and children.
Born on 21 November 1985, in the Paris suburb of Courcouronnes, Mostefai's criminal record shows eight convictions for petty crimes between 2004 and 2010.
He had never been jailed but Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said Mostefai had been picked out as a high-priority target for radicalisation in 2010 He added that Mostefai had 'never been implicated in an investigation or a terrorist association'.
Police have also detained members of his family for questioning. Mostefai's father, a brother and other family members have been held and are being questioned.
(http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/11/14/23/2E72EAAD00000578-3318379-image-a-23_1447544896811.jpg)
At least two of the terrorists is believed to have left Syria, travelled through Turkey and registered as a refugee on the Greek island of Leros on October 3 before continuing his journey northwards eventually arriving in Paris.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/16/world/europe/france-islamic-state-syria.html
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The majoriy of people in the world don't have the stomach to do what needs to be done, and since people are busy being politcally correct and behind the curve.... we'll suffer more of this, until they get with the program.
I'm cool with it. People get the world they deserve.
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The majoriy of people in the world don't have the stomach to do what needs to be done, and since people are busy being politcally correct and behind the curve.... we'll suffer more of this, until they get with the program.
I'm cool with it. People get the world they deserve.
Obama gave a speech in Cairo and bowed to every world leader he could find. I was promised a new era of peace and prosperity!
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The majoriy of people in the world don't have the stomach to do what needs to be done, and since people are busy being politcally correct and behind the curve.... we'll suffer more of this, until they get with the program.
I'm cool with it. People get the world they deserve.
Obama gave a speech in Cairo and bowed to every world leader he could find. I was promised a new era of peace and prosperity!
Obama should have been run off in chains years ago. Unfortunately, his security detail and the stupidity of half the American population are both world leaders in their given arenas.
I think this will all end the way the Bible says it does.
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LA Times: Muslims in France fear reprisals after Paris jihad massacre
NOVEMBER 15, 2015 10:27 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER
This is always the mainstream media preoccupation after a jihad attack: portraying Muslims as victims of a generally nonexistent “backlash.” There is always a steady stream of articles like this one after every fresh jihad murder, and never, ever any articles about Muslim communities redoubling their efforts to show themselves to be loyal citizens and rooting out the jihadis.
“French Muslims fear reprisals in wake of Paris terrorist attacks,” by Christina Boyle, Los Angeles Times, November 15, 2015 (thanks to Darcy):
In this heavily Muslim suburb of Paris, there was a nagging fear in the back of many minds on Sunday: Would the latest spasm of violence in the name of Islam bring retaliation against their community?
“Of course we are scared,” said one worshiper at the Evry-Courcouronnes mosque, an ethnically diverse community full of low-rise public housing about 20 miles south of the center of Paris.
“We didn’t choose for this to happen. The people who carried out the murders were not Muslim, they were not fanatics, they were assassins. But not everyone sees that.”
Maybe that’s because it’s so hard to see when the assassins explain themselves in terms that are so very Muslim.
In the wake of Friday’s terrorism strikes in Paris, some residents of this suburb – built in the 1970s to offer a cheaper, more spacious alternative to city living, but now mostly home to poorer immigrants – faced the possibility that some might view them as the enemy.
Already, French officials have warned of the possibility of cracking down on mosques deemed as harboring Muslim radicals.
The French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said Sunday that the state of emergency declared Friday gives the government the means to act more quickly against those “who preach hatred in France,” including through expulsions and the “dissolution” of radical mosques.
“I didn’t wait for the state of emergency to track down radical imams who preach hatred and to address places of worship where they preach that hatred,” Cazeneuve said in an interview with France 2 TV. He said the expansion of government powers will allow the authorities to be “much quicker in the expression of the republic’s resolve … in the face of terrorism.”
No public mention has been made of targeting mosques in Courcouronnes, but that hasn’t stopped residents here from worrying about the general atmosphere across Europe.
It didn’t help that far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen quickly called on fellow citizens to “annihilate Islamist fundamentalism” and to “take back control” of their borders….
Muslims in France are upset about this? Yet we’re constantly told that the Muslims in the West are moderates who abhor “Islamist fundamentalism.” So why would they not want it annihilated?
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LA Times= POTB= Pravda On The Beach
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Unconfirmed
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=994562597275608&set=p.994562597275608&type=3&theater
Edited to add:
Assuming the name to be Muslim, it appears the meme above is confirmed:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/attacker-tried-to-enter-paris-stadium-but-was-turned-away-1447520571?alg=y
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Unconfirmed
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=994562597275608&set=p.994562597275608&type=3&theater
Edited to add:
Assuming the name to be Muslim, it appears the meme above is confirmed:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/attacker-tried-to-enter-paris-stadium-but-was-turned-away-1447520571?alg=y
Funny how he doesn't want to give out his name. I wonder why...
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http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tom-blumer/2015/11/15/two-paris-terrorists-lived-supposedly-mythical-belgian-no-go-zone
http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/01/30/mark-steyn-on-europes-no-go-zones/
The left loves to deny real problems while creating imaginary ones.
Thank you GM and Mark Steyn (famous people caught reading the forum):
But we’re supposed to believe they’re not real, because they don’t have big “KEEP OUT OR DIE, INFIDEL!” billboards denoting their perimeter, and they’re not labeled “Muslim No-Go Zone #23″ on the official maps of major European cities...
Yet. They don't mark the perimeter because they are actively expanding it.
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y Marcus Walker and
Noemie Bisserbe
Updated Nov. 16, 2015 2:07 p.m. ET
3 COMMENTS
ATHENS—Mystery deepened over a Paris attacker who traveled to Europe via Greece and the Balkans, after French officials said Monday that the Syrian passport he had used was indeed a fake.
Authorities in France and Greece have said that fingerprints taken from the remains of a suicide bomber outside France’s national sports stadium, the Stade de France, match the prints of a man who entered Europe via the Aegean island of Leros on Oct. 3.
Police on Leros registered the man under the identity in the passport he showed them: Ahmad AlMohammad, 25, from Syria. The same passport was found near the man’s body outside the stadium on Friday night.
Whoever the man was, he posed as one of the many refugees fleeing Syria’s war—including the violence of Islamic State—to enter Europe through its lightly controlled frontier in the Aegean Sea.
Greek authorities on islands such as Leros, Lesbos and Chios have confronted thousands of arrivals every day in recent months as refugees and other migrants make the short sea crossing from Turkey in inflatable boats. Short of staff and equipment, Greek police carry out only a simple procedure that involves taking people’s data and fingerprints, and sometimes asking them a few questions, before giving them permission to travel onward, deeper into Europe.
Upon his arrival in Leros, the Paris assailant was checked against police databases under his Syrian identity, Greek officials say. Nothing was found. Police on Leros didn’t spot that the passport was fake. A black market in Syrian passports has sprung up in Turkey as migrants try to gain the easiest possible entry into Europe, which has treated Syrian war refugees as more deserving of shelter in European Union countries than many other nationalities.
Greek authorities say the man using the name Ahmad AlMohammad took a ferry to the port of Piraeus, arriving on Oct. 8, before traveling north through the Balkans. Greece’s migration ministry said on Sunday that the man later reached Croatia. But after that, the trail appears to go cold. Officials in Austria, Germany, Italy and Hungary say they have no information about any man using that name entering their territory.
Adding further confusion, Serbia’s government has said a man by the same name entered its territory at the Presevo border crossing with Macedonia on Oct. 7—a date when Greek authorities say he was on a ferry.
Neither country’s authorities could explain the inconsistency. But Serbian media reported that another man carrying a passport with the same name and other details was arrested in the country on Saturday. Serbian authorities haven’t confirmed or denied those reports, which raised the possibility that multiple forged Syrian passports using the same name have been circulating.
All that is clear is that the man who landed in Greece got as far as Paris.
—Valentina Pop and Inti Landauro contributed to this article.
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http://www.fivefeetoffury.com/2015/11/15/why-paris-is-doomed-in-one-image/
Let it burn.
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Fox News' "Special Report with Bret Baier" actually featured this obscenity as its final clip of the show. As if this were some great display of courage and compassion.
Lennon's song has always sickened me - paean to communism that it is. Infantile and pretentious at the same time. The French should have run this guy out of there with pitchforks.
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I caught that too , , , :-P
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https://www.facebook.com/inthenowrt/videos/545378905612483/
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https://www.facebook.com/inthenowrt/videos/545378905612483/
I captured a rattlesnake once.... named it "Bubba." Kept it as a pet. Almost killed me three times. It didn't end well.
Don't keep rattlesnakes in your house.
The video is emotional porn. Nice music though.
Bonus thought...he could be lying to enable more Jihad... they do that. It is expressly permitted.
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https://www.facebook.com/inthenowrt/videos/545378905612483/
Awwww
Should have choked him the fcuk out and shipped him back to dar al islam
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https://www.facebook.com/inthenowrt/videos/545378905612483/
Awwww
Should have choked him the fcuk out and shipped him back to dar al islam
Great way to start the day (reading that)...
Side note.... GM, myself and others are not alone in that sentiment....why on earth would members of Islam want to live amongst people like us, knwoing that we feel the way we do....if it were not for the reason to overcome that same society, because it's pretty clear (speaking for myself), I have ZERO wish to live amongst them....zero. If they come.... it is not to assimilate.
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Islam in Europe, Middle East War and US Immigration Issues are now all one and the same.
One point of not taking people who will not assimilate into our society is that we end up with no-go zones, for police and for others, and these zones become safe haven for people like the planners of the Paris attacks.
In the last year or so there was denial of such a thing as no-go zones in Europe. Denial didn't make them go away and wasn't persuasive to me since I walked into one by accident, met the enforcers, and got my head stitched up in a Dutch hospital. I've posted since 2009 about Malmo, Sweden:
http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=58.msg26601#msg26601
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zb1q7KzJBbE
In 2006, WSJ wrote about the "commune of Molenbeek" within Brussels:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB115620653882441697?cb=logged0.9548784010112286
Politico: http://www.politico.eu/article/attack-on-paris-molenbeek-dirty-dozen/
The current mayor of Molenbeek hasn’t been able to turn the district around in her three years in office, acknowledging this week that it is “a breeding ground for violence,” ... [admits] that 30 young residents have left the area to train as jihadis in Syria, and that others continue to take refuge in Molenbeek.
9 years later, no-go zones are back in the news. We should have learned and stopped much of this then.
Paris attacks: Is Molenbeek a haven for Belgian jihadis?
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34839403
http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/2015/11/17/97001-20151117FILWWW00360-aubervilliers-une-mosquee-perquisitionnee.php
The police finally had to go in.
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http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/11/16/paris-and-fall-rome/ErlRjkQMGXhvDarTIxXpdK/story.html
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http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/11/16/paris-and-fall-rome/ErlRjkQMGXhvDarTIxXpdK/story.html
Yup. Let it burn. Enjoy Andrez, this is what you wanted.
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As I suspected all along - now we get the real story regarding Crafty's earlier posts about this Muslim security guard. But hey! Why should the establishment media correct their story? It's useful to advance their narrative - even if it is a lie. Correcting it will only invite "backlash against Muslims.":
The Muslim Security Guard Who Saved Paris and Other Progressive Myths
by JAMES DELINGPOLE18 Nov 2015 for Breitbart News.
Did you hear about the Muslim security guard called Zouheir at the Stade de France in Paris who, like, singlehandedly foiled what would have been the worst terrorist incident of Friday night?
Of course you did!
Perhaps you even felt as strongly as the Tweeter below did that it was so important the story deserved to go viral. As indeed it duly did. Among those who eagerly repeated it was that much-loved disseminator of truth, Piers Morgan, in a Mail on Sunday piece which since mysteriously appears to have been taken down.
Why did it go viral? Because, as we know, quite the most important thing after any new terrorist atrocity committed by the Religion of Peace is for all right thinking people — renowned anti-gun campaigner and human rights crusader Piers Morgan, for example — to demonstrate how totally and utterly “nothing to do with Islam” they know the incident to have been.
Hence, for example, the #illridewithyou hashtag which emerged in 2014 when a deranged Islamist murdered two hostages in a Sydney cafe. Never mind the dead (cafe manager Tori Johnson and barrister and mother of three Katrina Dawson): the real victims of the incident, as all sensitive people understood, were all those Muslims in Australia who might now feel they were being given funny looks and somehow held responsible for this inexplicable act by one of their co-religionists which, of course, had “nothing to do with Islam”™.
So an enterprising girl called Tessa Kum hit on the bright idea of turning it into a heartwarming internet meme about how someone had spotted a girl in a hijab looking uncomfortable and got-at on a train and had cheerfully volunteered, “I’ll ride with you.”
Everyone loved this story — especially the Guardian, obviously — because it showed a) how totally delightful, shy but quietly appreciative, and totally unthreatening most Muslims are and b) how incredibly sensitive, non-judgemental, caring, tolerant, non-racist, enlightened and un-Islamophobic all the people who retweeted the hashtag were. (Plus, you never know, if there were any Islamists going through people’s Twitter feeds and deciding who to kill next, then maybe this hashtag might act as a kind of defence against the dark arts spell. Not that they were thinking about that when they did it. Well, only a bit…)
The only problem with this too-good-to-be-true story is that it wasn’t actually true. Not only was the inspiring incident either exaggerated or made up, but worse, the woman who made it go viral — that’s Tessa Kum — turned out to be the author of several mildly unhinged, anti-white, racist blog posts.
Still, it didn’t diminish the public’s appetite for delightful stories about white people interacting with Muslims on public transport. Here’s another one which was on Buzzfeed just last month. This time the hero was a man called Dante who spotted a woman wearing a niqab on a train. He sat next to her. So pleased was he with his own reckless decency and courage that he then posted a story about his magnificence on his Facebook page, urging people not to be “judgemental.” They weren’t. They loved it so much that this story too went viral.
It makes you wonder, given the massive appetite for this sort of thing, whether Buzzfeed oughtn’t to open a new vertical consisting entirely of stories like this. Perhaps it called be called “Religion of Peace, Fun and Friendship.” Possibly, it could be run by the Telegraph’s Radhika Sanghani.
But enough great new vertical ideas, already. We must return to that heartwarming tale of the Muslim security guard who allegedly foiled the plot to blow up the Stade de Paris. This, it turns out, wasn’t true either…
…as the French newspaper Liberation was the first to reveal in this investigative piece.
“Every tragedy needs its heroes…” it begins. Then it goes on to explain how the story appears to have begun with a perfectly accurate story in the Wall Street Journal, which quoted a guy called Zouheir describing how another security guard had foiled the plot of a terrorist to blow himself up on the terraces in front of the France/Germany match. This then mutated into a series of stories and tweets about how it was Zouheir himself who had saved the day. Which he didn’t. (And which, even if he had, he’d probably wish to keep very quiet right now, what with the need to avoid possible retribution from fellow adherents to his peace loving religion).
“Every tragedy needs its heroes…” Yeah, sure, but do you realise how tough it is on these occasions to find ones that fit the right religious profile?
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So what did happen with the Zouheir story-- from this piece it is not clear to me.
And does it not remain that a Muslim heroically helped the jews at the deli in the Charlie Hebdo attack and another one was pivotal in shooting some of the attackers (or something like that)?
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I warned about demise of Europe 6 years ago
Posted By Pamela Geller On 11/22/2015
The mainstream media and Barack Obama may be surprised by what happened in Paris on Nov. 13. I was not. I have seen this coming, and warned about it, for years now.
On Dec. 31, 2009, I wrote an article for the Washington Times, “Europe’s looming demise,” on the disastrous Euro-Med agreement. In it, I predicted that the freedom of movement between European Union nations and their Muslim Mediterranean partners would be disastrous: Open borders would unleash a hijrah, a mass migration of Muslims into Europe, resulting in jihad violence and, ultimately, the end of Europe as a home of free societies.
The pioneering historian Bat Ye’or warned of all this in her groundbreaking book, “Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis.” She exposed the initial Euro-Med plan, showing conclusively that what is happening now is not by accident or chance. This was a deliberate scheme to outmaneuver America and make Europe into a rival superpower – a scheme that started with de Gaulle. Instead, the Europeans outmaneuvered themselves.
Breaking the story of the unthinkable immigration policies of the Euro-Med partnership which would lead to the demise of Europe, in that 2009 article I quoted the human rights group, Stop Islamization of Europe, part of our umbrella organization, Stop Islamization of Nations, explaining that in the Euro-Med plan, “Europe is to be Islamized. Democracy, Christianity, European culture and Europeans are to be driven out of Europe. Fifty million North Africans from Muslim countries are to be imported into the EU.”
In another article in Newsmax in January 2010, I wrote: “Because of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership between the European Union and Islamic states in the Middle East, by the year 2050 the Islamic population of Europe will be 25 percent to 30 percent of the total population. There will be perhaps over 100 million Muslims in Europe. The effects on European civilization, and on Europe’s relationship with the United States, are all too easy to imagine.”
In that piece, I asked: “Why would Europe get involved again with such evil, and simultaneously take in such a diabolical and disastrous immigration bomb? And that’s what this is.” Around the same time, I titled another Newsmax article, “Euro-Mediterranean Plan Will Make Jihad Attacks Easier.”
Now it is all taking place just as I had warned. My predictions became reality on Nov. 13, 2015. The jihadists identified as perpetrating the Islamic slaughter of 132 people (most under the age of 30) in Paris were from an astonishing number of European and Middle Eastern countries.
The ease of movement across Europe without papers, etc., has made the tracking of jihadists across the continent almost impossible. Currently, E.U. passport holders only undergo a cursory visual passport inspection, to respect their “freedom of movement.”
At this point, emergency measures are mere Band-Aids that won’t fix years of infiltration.
Breitbart reported, “Europe’s home and interior ministers are expected to agree tightened security measures at the external borders of the Schengen zone, at a summit in Brussels today. Emergency plans have been drawn up to ensure that everyone travelling into the Schengen Zone will have their details checked against the Schengen System Watchlist, a database used to flag criminals.” Too little, too late.
Security officials in Europe have admitted that borders in Europe are “like a sieve.” The French didn’t even know that Paris jihad murderer Abdelhamid Abbaoud was in the country until after the mass slaughter. Abbaoud was able to move between the Middle East and Europe with relative ease.
And now it has been established that some of the Paris jihad attackers came into Europe as part of the migrant influx. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has said that Europe’s passport-free Schengen zone may be ended if Europe is unable to “take responsibility” over its borders.
When I wrote these articles, I was widely ridiculed and derided, even by some who were concerned about the Muslim influx into Europe. But had my warnings been heeded, Paris and the world might not be embroiled in this crisis now.
I wrote in that 2009 Washington Times article: “Been to Europe lately? Thought it was bad? You ain’t seen nothing yet. The passage of the Lisbon Treaty, hailed by Barack Obama, nailed the coffin shut on national sovereignty in Europe.” Then I concluded the article with this: “This internationalism is already destroying what has made Europe free and great. And now Mr. Obama seems to want to do the same to America.”
It’s happening now. It’s happening now with a swiftness and decisiveness that makes it clear that European and American elites saw all this coming as well as I did, and actively worked to bring it all about, rather than to prevent it. “The people of Europe,” I wrote back in 2009, “fought it, but were overwhelmed by their political elites and the lack of American leadership in this age of our Marxist, collectivist U.S. president.”
Will Americans allow the same thing to happen here, or will we fight to protect and defend our nation before it is too late?
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Belgian Breeding Ground Fuels New Terror Wave
by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
November 23, 2015
http://www.investigativeproject.org/5046/belgian-breeding-ground-fuels-new-terror-wave
Time was, thoughts of Belgium led to thoughts of rich, dark chocolate, of Old Master painters and delicate, handmade lace.
Now it brings a different image: of Islamic jihad and men armed with Kalashnikovs, and of secret meetings of Muslim youth plotting a new attack against the West. The country is in lockdown today, facing what authorities believe is an "imminent attack." On Sunday, police raided 19 homes in and around Brussels, and made 16 arrests. Brussels continues to be the focus of their action.
There is good reason for this. The Nov. 13 massacres in Paris, we've since learned, were planned in the Brussels district of Molenbeek, sometimes called "little Morocco" for its large Moroccan immigrant population. The attack on Charlie Hebdo also was planned there, along with the foiled attack on a Thalys high-speed train between Brussels and Amsterdam. Mehdi Nemmouche, who killed four people at the Brussels Jewish Museum in May 2014, spent time there.
But it isn't only Molenbeek, and it isn't only recently. Belgium has been a hotbed of radical Islam for more than a decade, breeding organizations like Sharia4Belgium – one of the most influential "Sharia4" groups globally – and the now-defunct Arab European League (AEL). The goal of the AEL, founded by the Lebanese-Belgian Dyab Abou Jahjah in 2001, was to form a "sharocracy" in which sharia and democracy ruled together across the West. The organization was based in Antwerp, where Jahjah and his friends also celebrated the attacks of 9/11 with laughter. "We couldn't hold our joy," he recalled later in his autobiography.
Other signs of radicalism, also connected to Jahjah, soon followed; in 2002, Jahjah helped orchestrate riots in Borgenhout, outside of Antwerp. And in 2004, after establishing a Dutch arm of the AEL, he declared, "I consider every death of an American, British, and Dutch soldier a victory."
Jahjah was hardly alone. By 2006, Belgian journalist Hind Fraihi, herself a Muslim, discovered that books teaching Muslims to fight infidels were being freely distributed by radical imams who preached jihad in local mosques. Other books she found in Belgium included Guide For Muslims, a Dutch publication that encourages Muslims to throw homosexuals from tall buildings and to beat their wives. A Washington Post profile of Fraihi cited other books she found, including some that "advised readers to learn to communicate in symbols and secret code, and offered tips on how to do that."
But the largest influence on Belgian Muslims, and the source of much of their extremism, was the creation of Sharia4Belgium in 2010. Thanks to that group, Belgium boasts the largest number of Muslims per capita who have joined the Islamic State and its jihad. According to the Wall Street Journal and others, "dozens" of Sharia4Belgium members have made the pilgrimage to Syria, and dozens more have been detained before they could make the trip. Three of them, all women, were arrested in May 2014, around the time of the Jewish Museum shooting. They were part of a larger group of 40 Belgians planning to join the jihad, and most of them had Sharia4Belgium ties.
This should not have been surprising. By 2012, Belgium's security service director Alain Winants determined that "radical Islam forms the greatest threat" to the country. Salafism, he told Belgian daily de Morgen, is gaining followers who have built up a parallel community with its own values, its own banks, justice system, and educational program.
Sharia4Belgium's founder, Fouad Belkacem, was tried and convicted in September 2014 for supporting terrorism, along with dozens of other Sharia4Belgium members, some of whom are still on the Syrian battlefields. But by then it was too late. The group, with its active Dutch- and French-speaking recruiters in Belgium, France, the Netherlands and – most of all – the Internet, had already infiltrated the minds of untold numbers of other Belgian youth.
And still, no one seems to be watching.
This is due in part to limits of Belgium's intelligence facilities. While German intelligence, for instance, is currently stretched to its limits trying to track potential terrorists, Der Spiegel reports that Belgium's threat has long since exceeded the its own intelligence capabilities.
Indeed, according to Dutch NOS TV, "the central counterterrorism unit of the [Belgian] police department has only one employee tracking radical [Islamic] activity on the Internet. And she only works part time." The result, notes Der Spiegel, is that "many Muslims who have become radicalized or received military training and may even have been traumatized are returning home from Syria without anyone checking on them whatsoever."
Moreover, Belgium's disorganized police system – with six authorities for 19 districts in Brussels alone – coupled with a chaotic government and the European capital's convenient location at the midway point between Amsterdam and Paris –combine to help French and Dutch Islamists take refuge there. Two of the Paris attackers, the French-born Bilal Hafdi and Brahim Abdelslam, were among them.
As recently as last month, an exploratory committee determined that Belgian police had failed to notice, let alone monitor, a "jihad camp" set up by Kurdish PKK members and Sharia4Belgium in the Ardennes.
But the truth is, the country's "capabilities" are only part of the problem: political timidity and correctness carry a good share of the blame. Suspicious behaviors are too often overlooked for fear of being called "racist," Alain Winants told de Morgen in 2012. That viewpoint has since been echoed in Belgian editorials since the Paris attacks, with journalist Luckas Vander Taelen noting that Molenbeek's mayor had once called a journalist "Islamophobic" for reporting on the radical Islamic books being distributed there. "There are no problems here," the mayor insisted at the time.
Since the Nov. 13 attacks, however, Belgium has rounded up dozens of jihadists, with nine raids leading to nine arrests on Thursday preceding Sunday's additional raids. The speed with which these terrorists were located suggests that authorities were aware of them prior to the events in Paris. So why weren't they captured earlier? Was it a matter of incompetence? Or a kind of narcissistic concern over image, a fear, as Winants suggests, of being seen as "racist?"
Hopefully, Belgium has now learned its lesson. The fight against terrorism is not a popularity contest. It's a contest we fight for our lives.
Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New York and the Netherlands.
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Many of my Euro friends regard the source of this video, the English Defense League, as a nasty and racist organization, but this looks to me like a fairly presented clip.
https://www.facebook.com/238696516197018/videos/1016671881732807/
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http://gatesofvienna.net/2015/11/tet-take-two-islams-2016-european-offensive/
Plan accordingly.
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:-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o
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:-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o
Note that the author of the above piece is a former Seal, with boots on the ground experience in the middle east.
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I am interested in the Seals point about Cronkite being a card carrying member of the World Federalist Association. So I tried to look it up. I am fully aware of bias in Wikipedia pieces but here it is anyway. Two of the founders were "feminists/pacifists". One a Hungarian Jew who predates the Jewish and America backstabbing profiteering Soros wound up being branded a socialist and "without" a nationality. She won a slander suit but ironically isn't being without "country" essentially what she wished for? Be careful what you wish for you elitist pricks.......
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Federalist_Movement
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Analysis
By Mark Fleming-Williams
On the evening of Friday, Nov. 13, eight people armed with assault rifles and suicide vests attacked several targets in Paris, killing 129 civilians. At least five of the attackers were French nationals and two were Belgians; all eight appear to have been radical Islamists, and the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attacks. French President Francois Hollande declared the killings to be an act of war and immediately scaled up France's military operations, primarily by increasing its airstrikes in Islamic State territory. Taking advantage of a temporary state of emergency, French police have conducted more than 100 raids each night since the attack as they track down suspects.
While the attacks are obviously shocking, they probably will not have the same transformative effect as other major incidents such as 9/11 or the Madrid bombings, which led the states that were targeted to change their strategies. (9/11 prompted the United States to invade Afghanistan and ultimately Iraq, while the Madrid bombings persuaded Spain to withdraw its troops from Iraq.) By comparison, the French attacks, which are more akin to the July 2005 bombings in the United Kingdom, will likely accelerate the strategies France already had for achieving its domestic and foreign interests.
Domestic Concerns
From France's perspective, the most immediate concern the Paris attacks raise is that French citizens were killed. Any government that fails to protect its citizenry risks being replaced, meaning that officials must work quickly to neutralize the attackers before doing the same for any accomplices who were directly involved. Then the government must try to prevent similar attacks from taking place in the future. The first two of these actions are already well underway, and progress toward the third is evident. Hollande has asked to extend emergency powers for three months, to deploy an extra 5,000 police officers over the course of two years, and to amend the constitution to broaden surveillance powers. By all appearances, France seems to be on the verge of becoming a closely watched state in the coming years — much like the United Kingdom, which has one surveillance camera in place for every 11 Britons.
The Nov. 13 attacks also play into domestic politics, and the government will want to be seen avenging its citizens and punishing the offending party for its actions. This appears to be a large part of the motivation behind Paris' increased bombings of Islamic State targets overseas. Hollande is the leader of the center-left Socialist Party, which traditionally takes a softer line on social, security and privacy issues and is therefore vulnerable to recriminations from the public that it has not done enough to protect French citizens. Adding to this problem, France has experienced other terrorist attacks this year, most notably in January when gunmen attacked the offices of the Charlie Hebdo newspaper, and people expected the government to have learned from these experiences in addressing security threats.
Regional elections in December will give voters across the country a chance to show their displeasure with the government's response, making the situation even more urgent for Hollande. The anti-immigration National Front has enjoyed a surge in support in recent years, with party leader Marine Le Pen polling strongly ahead of the 2017 presidential election. For the more moderate voter, there is also the center-right Republicans party headed by former President Nicolas Sarkozy. The former president has long divided public opinion with his tough stance on immigrants and security, which dates back at least to his time as France's interior minister in the early to mid-2000s.
Implications for France's European Ties
The Paris attacks have also exacerbated problems that have been brewing in France's relationship with the rest of Europe. A passport found at the scene of the crime appears to be linked to an immigrant who passed through Greece and up through the Balkans to get to France within the past two months. Doubts have since been raised about the authenticity of the passport, but the damage has been done, and many in France are linking the attacks to immigrant flows. As a result, the Schengen Agreement, which allows free travel across borders within member states, is under serious threat. The immigrant link may or may not prove valid, but an even more damning piece of evidence has arisen against Schengen: the Belgian connection. Belgium has emerged as a key staging point of the attacks, and the perpetrators seem to have done a great deal of their planning in Brussels. Belgium's connectivity, small size and membership in the Schengen area mean that it is extremely easy to enter several countries from Belgium within a short time. Consequently, many see the Schengen Agreement as a facilitator in the attacks.
The events of Nov. 13 have also altered France's budgetary situation. In November 2014, France fell afoul of the European Commission for its fiscal laxity, and its 2015 budget wasn't approved until several months into the year. This time around, the commission has been considerably less strict with its charges for the most part, mainly because of improvements in the overall economic climate, but it is still tasked with maintaining the union's economic guidelines. Hollande's Nov. 16 announcement that security concerns trump austerity, and that budgetary requirements will take a back seat since France is at war, cannot have been received well in Brussels, whether true or not.
Aside from the immediate considerations of the commission's mood, France may still be able to borrow at extremely cheap rates largely because of the European Central Bank's quantitative easing program, but this will not help its fiscal position. Borrowing to finance France's heightened spending will layer onto the country's already high debt levels. As a result, France will become even more firmly enmeshed in the Mediterranean group of eurozone countries with heavy debt burdens, relying on the European Central Bank and the prevailing economic climate to keep interest repayments low. At best, this will increase the chances of friction with Germany, and at worst, it will precipitate a debt crisis.
Older Problems
But France's biggest concerns in the wake of the Paris attacks speak to some of the country's much more deeply-rooted issues. Half of the attackers were Frenchmen. French law prohibits the inclusion of religious affiliation on national censuses, but estimates suggest that around 7.5 percent of France's population is Muslim, with a great portion of that group of North African extraction. Most of the recent terrorist incidents in France have stemmed from this part of the population, which tends to be poorer and more isolated than other groups.
Image
France, Africa: Paris Struggles to Retain Colonial Ties
Click to enlarge
Former French Colonies in Africa
The roots of this reality trace back to France's experiences in colonizing Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and then to the messy independence processes these colonies underwent, particularly Algeria's War of Independence from 1954 to 1962. Bombings, killings and police brutality on both sides of the Mediterranean created enmity between the two populations, which only continued as growing numbers of Algerians emigrated to France. After World War II, France experienced a significant growth spurt in its "Trente Glorieuses" ("Thirty Glorious Years") and it needed cheap labor — a need North African emigres helped fill.
The newcomers made homes for themselves around France's industrial centers, including Paris, Lyon and Marseilles, but their high numbers and low wealth, combined with existing antipathies, inhibited their ability to integrate. The country became dotted with pockets of poor, disaffected and mainly Muslim communities that struggled to find gainful employment and break the cycle of poverty in which they found themselves. It is from these communities that the Islamic State appears to have had some success in recruiting, and it is their problems that France must solve if it hopes to prevent the homegrown threats the Paris attacks brought to light.
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BTW, a "seal" is the ocean swimming mammal, and "SEAL" is the acronym that is a homonym for "seal".
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second post
Muslim "No-go Zones" in Europe?
by Daniel Pipes
The Daily Caller
December 2, 2015
http://www.meforum.org/5670/no-go-zones
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A typical housing block for immigrants in Marseille, France.
The existence of "no-go zones" in predominantly Muslim areas in Europe has been a major topic of conversation since the latest Paris massacre on November 13, primarily due to the assailants' many connections to Molenbeek, a heavily Muslim district of Brussels. This discussion brings to mind my visit to a drug- and crime-infested slum of 7,000 inhabitants in Marseilles, France, on Jan. 29, to see the situation for myself.
I entered the housing complex in an unmarked but recognizable city-owned car driven by a city employee who had been tasked with showing me around. Unfortunately, being mostly a paper-pusher and not experienced in the field, he got spooked and abruptly turned around to leave, raising suspicions among the drug dealers around us, who proceeded to set off the alarm.
A motorcyclist and a truck then zipped ahead of us and boxed us in on a nearby highway. Sitting in the car's front passenger seat, I was accosted and threatened by four young thugs. The city rep pleaded with them, telling them I was a visiting sociologist. They responded first with threatening comments and then by throwing a piece of concrete the size of a football through the back window. Luckily no on was injured, and they let us leave after the intimidating incident had concluded. I provided the mayor's office with audio, video, and still photographs of the thugs and their license plates.
I have kept quiet about this incident for ten months in the hopes that the French judicial system would function. As of today, however no one has been apprehended, no charges have been filed, and to my knowledge, no real investigation ever took place.
A street scene in one of the heavily Muslim areas of Brussels, taken as I walked solo through the neighborhood.
This incident was the great exception to my 28 other visits to predominantly Muslim areas in Australia, North America, and Western Europe. In all of these places – call them ZUS (French: Zones Urbaines Sensibles, or Sensitive Urban Zones): I "went" without problems, traveling sometimes alone, sometimes not, in an anonymous rental car during daylight hours wearing normal Western casual male clothing – not in a police uniform, a priest's habit, skimpy clothing, or with a kippa.
In many ZUS, I got out and walked around; nearly everywhere I took pictures. In some, I stopped and made purchases, had a meal, or visited a mosque. I did nothing provocative like evangelize, march in a gay pride parade, recruit for the army, or take pictures of drug dealers. I was not a threat. I then "left," none the worse for the experience. My forays into the ZUS suggest that they are in fact go-zones for innocous civilians. Even in Marseilles, had I shown up in a rental car, the thugs would likely have welcomed me as a potential drug customer.
In contrast, Brice De Ruyver, the former security adviser to a Belgian prime minister, has stated that "We don't officially have no-go zones in Brussels, but in reality, there are, and they are [found] in Molenbeek." Yet, I drove and walked about Molenbeek, also in January, freely taking pictures of people on the street, stores, and whatever caught my fancy, and no one paid me attention. I felt completely safe.
Likewise, I earlier strolled through Rinkeby, a notorious district of Stockholm, on a November 2014 afternoon without encountering so much as a hostile stare; yet a local policeman has testified in reference to Rinkeby that, "If we're in pursuit of a vehicle, it can evade us by driving to certain neighborhoods where a lone patrol car simply cannot follow because we'll get pelted by rocks and even face riots. These are no-go zones. We simply can't go there."
Firefighters, ambulance workers, and social workers routinely meet hostility in majority-Muslim areas.
How to reconcile these experiences? My visits establish that non-Muslim civilians can usually enter majority-Muslim areas without fear. But things look very different from the governmental point of view. On a routine basis, firefighters, ambulance workers, and even social workers meet with hostility and violence. For example, days after I visited the Marseille slum, its residents shot at police preparing for a visit by the prime minister of France. Thus does it and its ilk represent a no-go zone for police, a place that government representatives enter only when heavily armed, in convoys, temporarily, and with a specific mission.
The term no-go zone is informal (apparently deriving from American military argot); dictionaries ascribe it two meanings in line with my conclusions: either (1) ordinary people staying away from an area out of fear or (2) the representatives of the state entering only under exceptional circumstances. ZUS do not fit the first description but do fit the second.
Whether or not Molenbeek, Rinkeby, and the Marseilles slum are no-go zones, then, depends on what aspect one choses to emphasize – their accessibility to ordinary visitors at ordinary times or their inaccessibility to government officials in times of tension. There are also no-go gradations, some places where attacks are more frequent and violent, others less so. However one sums up this complex situation – maybe partial-no-go zones? – they represent a great danger.
Daniel Pipes (DanielPipes.org, @DanielPipes) is president of the Middle East Forum.
________________________________________
Dec. 2, 2015 addenda: (1) This is my third and – I hope – final assessment of the no-go zone issue. The first was in 2006, when I translated the official French designation of Zones Urbaines Sensibles (ZUS) as no-go zones. The second was in January 2015, when I revoked this term on the basis of personal experience. Now, here, I find it partially applicable and partially not, where they are no-go zones primarily for representatives of the state, regardless of religion.
(2) The 28 largely heavily Muslim areas in Western countries that I have visited:
• 6 areas outside Europe: Dearborn and Hamtramck, Michigan; Lodi, California; Queens, New York; Mississauga, Canada; and Lakemba, Australia.
• 7 in Europe outside France: Antwerp, Athens, Berlin, Brussels, Copenhagen, Malmö, and Stockholm.
• 7 in France outside Paris: the ZUS in Beziers, Lunel, Marseilles, Montpellier, Nice, Perpignan, and Toulon.
• 8 in the Paris region: Barbès–Rochechouart, Belleville, Clichy-sous-Bois, Clignancourt, Gennevilliers, Sarcelles, Seine-Saint-Denis, and Val d'Oise.
(3) Some dictionary definitions of the informal terms no-go zone and no-go area:
• American Heritage: "an area into which entry is forbidden, restricted, or reputed to be dangerous."
• Cambridge: "an area, especially in a town, where it is very dangerous to go, usually because a group of people who have weapons prevent the police, army, and other people from entering."
• Collins: "a district in a town that is barricaded off, usually by a paramilitary organization, within which the police, army, etc., can only enter by force."
• Macmillan's: "an area in a town that is not considered to be safe because there are high levels of crime and violence there."
• Merriam-Webster: "an area into which entry is forbidden or dangerous."
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Yes, the no-go zones within western countries are informal and unmarked. The author walked in and took pictures unharmed. I walked in, and walked out just fine - to the nearest Dutch hospital to have my head stitched up. The no-go designation is a warning based on collective experience, not a mathematical proof.
Other observations here:
http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=977.msg91612#msg91612
I don't want to say rabid dog, but your experience with pythons, lions or pyranhas might depend on the time of day and how hungry they are when they encounter you..
You can't mark the boundary accurately when the no-go zone is continually expanding.
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https://www.facebook.com/Muslims-Against-ISIS-1444672609121662/?fref=nf
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https://www.facebook.com/Muslims-Against-ISIS-1444672609121662/?fref=nf
Are they against sharia? The death penalty for apostates? Other core elements of islamic theology?
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That would be a reasonable inference, but please note the subject line of my post.
When we say "Muslims need to stand up against this excrement" we should note when they do-- yes?
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[quote a :-(uthor=Crafty_Dog link=topic=977.msg92286#msg92286 date=1449763544]
That would be a reasonable inference, but please note the subject line of my post.
When we say "Muslims need to stand up against this excrement" we should note when they do-- yes?
[/quote]
.
Yes, when they legitimately do so, and it includes a rejection of sharia and jihad. Not the standard CAIR bs.
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/12/10/muslim-behind-viral-trust-hug-sign-finds-himself-in-serious-trouble/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Firewire%20-%20HORIZON%2012-10-15%20FINAL&utm_term=Firewire
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"There are Muslim areas of Preston that, if we wish to patrol, we have to contact local Muslim community leaders to get their permission”.
Another officer from Yorkshire in the North of England, wrote on an online Police web forum: “I’m not allowed to travel in half blues [uniform] to work anymore IN MY OWN CAR as we’re “All at risk of attack” – yet as soon as someone points out the obvious it’s ‘divisive.'”
He added: “In this instance he [Trump] isn’t wrong. Our political leaders are best either ill-informed or simply being disingenuous.
“He’s pointed out something that is plainly obvious, something which I think we aren’t as a nation willing to own up to – do you think a US Police Department would ban officers from wearing their uniforms under jackets etc due to FEAR of their cops being killed by extremists?
“We implement half measures such as “No-one is allowed to come into work half blues, even in your own cars because if you get beheaded it’ll be your own fault.
“It would be seen as un-American, un-democratic, not the done thing… In the UK though we accept it’.
A female officer added: “Even if one of us did get killed or dragged off in a van. It would just be reported as a ‘one-off incident’ and no reason to change the ‘British style of policing’.”
Another Met officer who resigned this year wrote: “I was a PC in the Met for 11 years – I resigned as I couldn’t handle it anymore
“Whilst provocative Trump’s comments does carry some weight. PCs are not permitted to even come to work in “half Blues” (just wearing trousers and shirt) for fear of attack whilst going to work. That is a directive from Scotland Yard.
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http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=cfb_1449062774#UM2Hd36P654ak4u0.99
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http://www.allenbwest.com/2015/12/very-bad-look-where-isis-death-squad-terrorists-just-showed-up/
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http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7045/sweden-asylum-shambles
In Sweden, only the people who say they are not applying for asylum are checked.
To avoid having to show any papers, a terrorist going to Sweden to commit acts of terror only has to tell the border police that he is seeking asylum. He will immediately be driven to the closest Immigration Service facility. And while the Immigration Service tries to figure out who he is, he can plan his attacks in the peace and quiet of the Swedish countryside.
"The truth is that persons with evil intent know exactly what to do when they come here. That information spreads like wildfire. These new border controls are there for the sole purpose of reassuring the public. They have absolutely no effect on the influx of migrants." — Border policeman at the Öresund Bridge (between Denmark and Sweden).
Despite many Swedes drawing a sigh of relief when the government announced that immigration was to be limited, the new policy does not really entail any difference at all.
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http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/12/14/interview-hospitalised-christian-convert-tells-breitbart-london-muslims-said-theyd-chop-off-head/
Religion of peace.
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The English speaking part begins around 00:15
https://www.facebook.com/achille.doyen1/videos/10203877845146596/
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The Danger of Partial No-go Zones to Europe
by Daniel Pipes
The Washington Times
December 29, 2015
http://www.meforum.org/5742/danger-of-partial-no-go-zones
Partial no-go zones are spread throughout much of Europe.
Partial no-go zones in majority-Muslim areas are a part of the urban landscape from the Mediterranean to the Baltic, with the French government alone counting 751 of them. This shirking of responsibility foreshadows catastrophe and calls for immediate reversal.
I call the bad parts of Europe's cities partial no-go zones because ordinary people in ordinary clothing at ordinary times can enter and leave them without trouble. But they are no-go zones in the sense that representatives of the state – police especially but also firefighters, meter-readers, ambulance attendants, and social workers – can only enter with massed power for temporary periods of time. If they disobey this basic rule (as I learned first-hand in Marseille), they are likely to be swarmed, insulted, threatened, and even attacked.
This situation needs not exist. Host societies can say no to the poor, crime-ridden, violent, and rebellious areas emerging in their midst. But, if governments need not abdicate control, why do they do so? Because of a fervent, slightly desperate hope to avoid confrontation. Multicultural policies offer the illusion of sidestepping anything that might be construed as "racist" or "Islamophobic."
If host governments need not abdicate control, why do they do so?
This abandonment is no minor aberration but a decision with grave consequences – consequences far deeper than, say, not controlling a crime-ridden American city like East St. Louis. That's because Muslim quasi-no-go zones fit into a far larger political context, with dual Western and Islamic dimensions.
Western: Avoiding confrontation reflects a deep-seated ambivalence about the value of one's own civilization and even self-hatred of the white race. The French intellectual Pascal Bruckner noted in his 2006 book La tyrannie de la pénitence (English: The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism) that leftist thinking "can be reduced to mechanical denunciations of the West, emphasizing the latter's hypocrisy, violence, and abomination." Europeans preen as "the sick man of the planet" whose greed and false notions of superiority causes every problem in the non-Western world: "The white man has sown grief and ruin wherever he has gone."
If the deadly triad of imperialism, fascism, and racism represent all that the West has to offer, no wonder immigrants to Europe, including Islamists, are treated as superior beings due supine deference. They exploit this by acting badly – drug dealers ruling the roost, a gang raping 1,400 children over a period of 16 years, and promoting violent ideologies – with near-impunity because, after all, the Europeans have only themselves to blame.
A sign prohibiting non-Muslims from entering Mecca.
Muslim: Partial no-go zones also result from an Islamic drive for exclusion and domination. Mecca and Medina constitute the official, sovereign, and eternal Muslim-only zones. For nearly fourteen centuries, these two Arabian cities have been formally off-limits to kafirs, who trespass at their peril; a lively literature of non-Muslims who penetrated their holy precincts and lived to tell the tale goes back centuries and continues still today.
Other Islamic no-go zones also exist. Before losing power in 1887, the Muslim rulers of Harar, Somalia, for centuries insisted (in the words of a British officer) on the "the exclusion of all travellers not of the Moslem faith." In like spirit, women in hijabs scream at non-Muslim visitors to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem to make them feel unwelcome and so stay away. In the West, lawful Muslim-only enclaves represent one drive for Muslim autonomy and sovereignty; the Muslims of America organization, with its 15 or so no-go compounds bristling with arms and hostility on private property dotted around the United States, represents another.
The job of dismantling all partial no-go zones must be started soon and executed with swift determination.
Unlike places like East St. Louis, Muslim-majority partial no-go zones have a deeply political and highly ambitious quality to them. Indeed, it is not far-fetched to foresee them turning into Muslim autonomous zones applying Islamic law and challenging the authorities. The mix of feeble European governments and a strong Islamic drive for power points to future unrest, crises, breakdown, and even civil war.
Some believe it is already too late to avoid this fate. I disagree, but if catastrophe is to be avoided, the job to dismantle all partial no-go zones must be started soon and executed with a swift determination based on a renewed sense of self-worth. Two universal principles should guide European governments: attaining a monopoly of force and applying the same code of law to all citizens.
Domestic peace in Europe and perhaps other regions, including Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States, demands nothing less.
Daniel Pipes (DanielPipes.org, @DanielPipes) is president of the Middle East Forum.
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After taking in more asylum seekers per capita than any other nation in Europe, Sweden’s welcome mat now lies in tatters. Overwhelmed by the human tide of 2015, the center-left government is deploying extraordinary new border controls and slashing benefits in an unmistakable signal to refugees contemplating the long trek to Sweden in the new year: Stay out.
...
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is under pressure from critics within her own center-right coalition to do the same after the country welcomed a record 1 million asylum seekers this year.
...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/even-sweden-is-turning-its-back-on-refugees/2015/12/30/6d7e8454-a405-11e5-8318-bd8caed8c588_story.html
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https://www.facebook.com/stoptherefugees/videos/861133357335069/
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https://www.facebook.com/stoptherefugees/videos/861133357335069/
That language is like nails on a chalkboard, no matter what is said.
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http://bearingarms.com/swiss-general-europe-verge-civil-war-citizens-must-arm/
Swiss General: Europe ”On The Verge Of Civil War,” Citizens Must Arm Themselves
Posted by Bob Owens on January 2, 2016 at 2:57 pm
Lieutenant-General André Blattmann
The flood of Middle Eastern “refugees” into Europe is pushing the continent into civil war, according to the head of Switzerland’s military, Lieutenant-General André Blattmann.
Society in western Europe is on the verge of breaking down amid chaotic violence caused by economic dislocation, mass immigration and terrorism. This is not the view of some ‘crazy survivalist’ but of the head of the Swiss Armed Forces.
Lieutenant-General André Blattmann has issued a warning to the Swiss people that society is dangerously close to collapse and advised those not already armed as part of the Swiss Army reserve to take steps to arm themselves. Blattmann has been head of the Armed Forces since, 1 March 2009 and his words carry very significant weight in a country in which several Citizens’ Initiative referenda against burqas and mosques have proven enormously popular as concerns grow about immigration and Islamisation.
In the last two World Wars, the Swiss combination of mountains and armed citizenry preserved the country’s peace and neutrality, but in the coming conflict, Switzerland already has its own massive fifth column.
It’s rather basic and sadly predictable, unfortunately.
You cannot import a large, relatively uneducated and typically violent culture that does not want to assimilate without bad things happening, a fact shown throughout human history. Eventually, there will be a fight.
Sadly, Europeans have long history of having to learn the same bloody lesson again and again of disarming the citizenry, going through wars, requiring desperate measures to thwart genocides, and then repeating the cycle.
European citizens are now arming themselves against the hordes through measures both legal and illegal. Blattman’s fellow Swiss are more fortunate in their ability to legally acquire quality firearms for self-defense. Other Europeans are not that fortunate, as they have allowed their natural right to bear arms to be stripped from them.
Hopefully there will be a political solution to this mess and the Muslim refugees can be peacefully repatriated, but I don’t their going to give up the generous social welfare provided by their hosts without a fight.
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3390042/The-fightback-begins-German-vigilante-group-vows-protect-women-migrant-attackers-three-Syrians-arrested-gang-raping-two-teenage-girls.html?ito=social-twitter_mailonline
Isn't multiculturalism grand?
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In a similar vein:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_qJae_4qAg
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3390042/The-fightback-begins-German-vigilante-group-vows-protect-women-migrant-attackers-three-Syrians-arrested-gang-raping-two-teenage-girls.html?ito=social-twitter_mailonline
Isn't multiculturalism grand?
Just orphans and widows, nothing to fear...
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The Rape Epidemic by ‘Refugees’ in Finland Has Reached the Point Where Fins have Given Up…
http://conservativepost.com/the-rape-epidemic-by-refugees-in-finland-has-reached-the-point-where-fins-have-given-up/
(http://conservativepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/rape_finland.jpg)
Finland, now, has become “one of the least safe countries in Europe for women,” according to Finland’s leading newspaper, “all because of the Muslim influx.”
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Pepper Spray: “We are completely sold out. We sold our last pepper spray on Wednesday. We order new supplies every day, but we always exceed the supply… mostly it is women demanding the products. They buy them for themselves, or for their daughters or girlfriends.”
http://www.express.de/koeln/enorme-nachfrage-pfeffersprays-sind-in-koeln-ausverkauft-23403854
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http://www.nationalreview.com/article/429493/cologne-rape-jihad-muslim-migrants-europe-fantasy-islam
Where is Andrez to explain how wonderful it all is?
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https://www.facebook.com/rondwyersettingtherecordstraight/videos/853468934781122/
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http://www.thelocal.dk/20160114/danish-muslim-convert-15-arrested-with-explosives
Unexpectedly!
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http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7223/europe-self-destruction
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second post
http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/196628/jewish-community-leader-in-marseille-believes-citys-jews-should-stop-wearing-yarmulkes-until-better-days
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http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7223/europe-self-destruction
Let it burn. They asked for what they are getting.
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http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/196628/jewish-community-leader-in-marseille-believes-citys-jews-should-stop-wearing-yarmulkes-until-better-days
Those better days aren't coming for generations, if ever again in Europe.
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https://www.facebook.com/971933286184233/videos/1095046170539610/
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https://www.facebook.com/971933286184233/videos/1095046170539610/
Funny how the feminists always looking for a "rape culture" can't find this one. Although increasingly, it will find them.
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(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CY96SZJWMAAOsrY.jpg)
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Are you fg kidding me?!?
http://pamelageller.com/2016/01/sweden-state-funded-muslim-sniper-training.html/
:cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:
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Are you fg kidding me?!?
http://pamelageller.com/2016/01/sweden-state-funded-muslim-sniper-training.html/
:cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:
Planting seeds that will bear bitter fruit.
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https://www.facebook.com/Channel4News/videos/10153464748691939/?pnref=story
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https://www.facebook.com/nevereveragainever/videos/556334491199416/
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http://www.timesofisrael.com/romes-nude-statues-covered-up-ahead-of-rouhani-visit/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
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http://www.timesofisrael.com/romes-nude-statues-covered-up-ahead-of-rouhani-visit/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
Why not just tear them down at this point?
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https://www.facebook.com/varneyco/videos/1110873758946057/
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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/28/sweden-to-expel-up-to-80000-rejected-asylum-seekers
Sweden sends sharp signal with plan to expel up to 80,000 asylum seekers
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We need a humanitarian territory set up in Syria. Maybe Trump can get Mexico to pay for it.
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http://nypost.com/2016/01/28/man-arrested-with-handgun-koran-at-disneyland-paris/
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3419814/Lunch-French-Iranians-CANCELLED-President-Hollande-refused-wine-menu-meeting-Muslim-counterpart-Rouhani.html?ito=social-twitter_mailonline
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3419814/Lunch-French-Iranians-CANCELLED-President-Hollande-refused-wine-menu-meeting-Muslim-counterpart-Rouhani.html?ito=social-twitter_mailonline
Nice to see even the smallest bits of resistance.
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https://www.facebook.com/jeanbaptiste.kim.3/videos/164761200549366/
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http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/01/26/swedens-army-chief-warns-the-country-will-be-at-war/
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http://pamelageller.com/2016/02/video-muslims-in-italy-explain-how-women-must-dress.html/
http://pamelageller.com/2016/02/muslim-migrants-will-cost-sweden-14-times-national-defense-budget.html/
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No idea as to the reliability of this site:
http://www.newsfoxes.com/2016/02/soldier-of-allah-plan-to-confront-badass-soldiers-of-odin-across-norway/
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http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/02/26/german-government-admits-they-have-lost-one-in-ten-migrants/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social
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Attacks in the airport and metro in Brussels: what we know from Belgium
Twenty people were killed and 106 were injured in the subway attack alone, and 14 were killed and 92 injured at the airport.
http://www.vox.com/2016/3/22/11282730/belgium-attacks-airport-metro-maelbeek
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We care about Europe for its own sake but we also follow this because what is happening there is coming to a theater near you!
My daughter just stood through a TSA line at MSP for 45 minutes at 5:00am on a Saturday morning. While we are 'securing' the flights, we are leaving thousands of people packed together in cattle gates, exposed to attacks from unscreened terrorists. We fight the terrorists by looking in the rear view mirror at their strategies from 15 years ago while they adapt, adjust ad move on. I commented on this to a friend just before terrorists attacked the Brussels airport. It didn't take rocket science to recognize that risk. What kind of security do we have by making people stand closely together as sitting-ducks in a known, unsecured area? It's just like mass shootings happening in gun free zones, and then surprise, no one can shoot back.
It sucks being more stupid than our enemy.
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Good thing islam is.a.religion of peace. Imagine the bloodshed if it were not.
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https://www.facebook.com/FoxBusiness/videos/10154021429970238/?pnref=story.unseen-section
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https://www.facebook.com/FoxBusiness/videos/10154021429970238/?pnref=story.unseen-section
More on this:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/brussels-attacks-how-extremism-flourished-amid-lack-of-integration-in-molenbeek-a6948896.html
Brussels attacks: How extremism flourished amid lack of integration in Molenbeek
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https://www.facebook.com/ILuvFreedom/videos/1636283903289338/
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/26/world/europe/belgium-fears-nuclear-plants-are-vulnerable.html?emc=edit_th_20160326&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193&_r=0
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15 minutes long:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSbgxChQAhQ
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second post
http://pamelageller.com/2016/03/belgian-police-pleaded-for-help-from-muslims-to-find-jihadis-were-ignored.html/
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jD6CN6uGZs
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http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/262303/belgian-soldiers-deployed-fight-terrorists-had-no-daniel-greenfield
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Second post
Terror Network’s Web Sprawls Beyond Brussels and Paris
Multiple recent arrests suggest a wider Islamic State presence in Europe than previously thought
Police stand guard during a raid last week in the Brussels neighborhood of Schaerbeek, home to two safe houses allegedly used by the network behind the attacks in Brussels and Paris. ENLARGE
Police stand guard during a raid last week in the Brussels neighborhood of Schaerbeek, home to two safe houses allegedly used by the network behind the attacks in Brussels and Paris. Photo: Alastair Grant/Associated Press
By David Gauthier-Villars and
Valentina Pop in Brussels and
Giovanni Legorano in Milan
March 27, 2016 8:14 p.m. ET
227 COMMENTS
A pan-European effort to crack the Islamic State network behind the Paris and Brussels attacks is yielding an unsettling discovery—a web of interlocking terror cells whose dimensions authorities say they are still trying to grasp.
European authorities said they suspect that several men detained in a number of countries over the Easter weekend all had connections to perpetrators of the deadly attacks. This has prompted French and Belgian prosecutors to seek closer U.S. assistance, according to Western officials, as they try to map the extent of the network responsible for killing 130 people in Paris in November and at least 31 in Brussels on Tuesday.
The immediate effort is centering on Fayçal Cheffou, a Brussels resident of Moroccan origin who was detained in front of the office of Belgium’s federal prosecutor Thursday as police were trailing him by car. Belgian authorities say they suspect Mr. Cheffou, who has been charged and is in custody, is the man seen pushing a cart on security footage captured at Brussels Airport minutes before two suicide bombers detonated their explosives.
Recent police raids have turned up more men allegedly linked to the Paris and Brussels attackers, which in turn have led authorities to other suspects. One man apprehended in Italy on Sunday is suspected of having supplied several suspected attackers with fake documents. Three other men detained last week, one near Paris and two in Brussels, also had links to the attackers, and were allegedly plotting a terror act in France.
That led Sunday to the detention of a 32-year-old Frenchman in Rotterdam, who also is suspected of being involved in the foiled French plot, according to French and Dutch officials.
Related Video
Najim Laachraoui—who French investigators believe built the explosive vests used last year in Paris — has been identified by Belgian investigators as one of the suicide bombers who attacked the Brussels airport on Tuesday. What else do authorities know about him? WSJ’s Jason Bellini reports.
The string of arrests, which come on top of multiple other detentions in recent months, suggests the terror networks being pursued by European authorities spread beyond Paris and Brussels.
“We know there are other networks,” France’s President François Hollande said last week. “Even if the network which conducted attacks in Paris and Brussels is about to be neutralized, there is always a threat hanging.”
Failure to dismantle the Islamic State network before it could strike in Paris and Brussels has been particularly vexing for Belgian authorities, who identified one of the group’s senior operatives—the suspected ringleader of November’s Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud—long before either incident. In January 2015, they killed two of his alleged associates in a police raid, while Mr. Abaaoud is believed to have escaped to Syria before slipping back into Europe sometime before the November attack in Paris. He was killed in a French raid a few days after the Paris attacks.
“They regathered, reorganized,” said Eric Van Der Sypt, spokesman for Belgium’s federal prosecutor. “Did Paris; Did Brussels.”
On Sunday, Mr. Van Der Sypt said Belgian prosecutors had charged 38-year-old Abderamane Ameroud with participation in a terrorist group in relation to a foiled terrorist plot in France.
Mr. Ameroud was convicted in 2005 by a French court and served prison time after being sentenced to seven years for having plotted, as part of an al Qaeda operation, the assassination of Afghan commander Ahmad Shah Massoud. Mr. Massoud, a renowned rebel leader in the fight against the Taliban, was killed on Sept. 9, 2001, by two Belgian jihadists posing as journalists. During his trial, Mr. Ameroud denied any involvement with the killing of Mr. Massoud, according to Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, his lawyer at the time.
Mr. Ameroud was arrested again on Friday in a police raid in the neighborhood of Schaerbeek, home to two safe houses allegedly used by the network that orchestrated the attacks in both Brussels and Paris.
As police sought to apprehend him on the platform of a tram station on Friday, he held on to his daughter, who according to witnesses and video footage appeared to be preschool-age, and defied police orders to hand over his backpack and lie down, according to authorities. Police shot him in the leg and deployed a bomb-disposal robot to neutralize his backpack. Officials said the daughter was unharmed and safely evacuated.
The Belgian prosecutor’s spokesman said Mr. Ameroud’s house was raided and no weapons or explosives were found.
Mr. Ameroud and another charged suspect, identified by prosecutors as Rabah N., are suspected of having helped a 34-year-old Frenchman named Reda Kriket, who was arrested in France on Thursday and who officials said had been “in an advanced stage” of planning an attack. Authorities said they had found explosives and weapons in his suburban Paris apartment during the raid.
Belgian and French officials said they were jointly tracking associates of Mr. Kriket, who was convicted of terrorism in absentia in Belgium last year.
The man arrested in Italy is a 40-year-old Algerian named Djamal Eddine Ouali, who was wanted in connection with a fake-documents factory discovered in Brussels a month before the Paris attacks.
Belgian authorities had issued a European arrest warrant for Mr. Ouali in January. Italian police say evidence of Mr. Ouali’s connection with the terrorist network emerged as Belgian authorities searched an apartment in the Brussels district of Saint-Gilles last October. There, police found roughly 1,000 digital photos and scores of false documents with fake names, including aliases used by three accused terrorists.
These included Soufiane Kayal, the false name used by Najim Laachraoui, one of the suspected suicide bombers in the Brussels airport, and Samir Bouzid, the alias used by Mohamed Belkaid, who was shot dead on March 15 while firing a Kalashnikov at police during a raid in Brussels.
They also found photos and documents with the name of Yassine Baghli, an alias that had been used by Salah Abdeslam, the suspected Paris attacker who was captured in Brussels a little over a week ago after four months at large.
Mr. Ouali was arrested late Saturday in the southern Italian town of Bellizzi, after he had applied for a residency permit at the local immigration office a week earlier. Police checks determined he was wanted by Belgian authorities in relation to both the attacks in Brussels and Paris.
A senior U.S. official said the array of arrests over the weekend showed that the terror network had become “very sophisticated.” Other officials said the arrests also have revealed its sheer scale. “There is a large number [of members], all across Europe,” the official said.
Mr. Cheffou, the suspected Brussels airport attacker, was charged with terrorist murder on Saturday. Belgian authorities were still in the process of establishing with the help of DNA and fingerprints whether he was, indeed, one of the attackers, the prosecutor’s spokesman said.
People who know Mr. Cheffou, a 31-year old social activist who dabbled in journalism, said they were stunned to hear of his alleged role in the attacks.
“He’s a bit wacky, but he was never part of the radical circles, not as far as I know,” says Ahmed El Khannouss, a district councilor in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek, a heavily Muslim district where several suspects linked to the Paris and Brussels attacks grew up.
Mr. Cheffou came from a broken family, the district councilor said, and his older brother, a fugitive after several armed robberies, was killed by police in 2002 in a shootout.
A year later, in 2003, Mr. Cheffou was investigated by police after one of his friends played with a gun he found in Mr. Cheffou’s apartment and killed another friend by accident.
—Julian E. Barnes and Matthew Dalton contributed to this article.
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third post
This is ten days old.
Violence Breaks Out in Molenbeek After Paris Suspect's Arrest
by Abigail R. Esman • Mar 18, 2016 at 6:04 pm
http://www.investigativeproject.org/5219/violence-breaks-out-in-molenbeek-after-paris
The most wanted terrorist in Europe, considered the mastermind in November's multi-targeted attack in Paris that left 130 people dead, was arrested Friday by Belgian authorities.
But residents in the Molenbeek district of Brussels, where Saleh Abdeslam was captured, didn't breathe a sigh of relief. Within hours, the district, which has a majority Muslim population, erupted into riots. Dozens of Abdeslam's fans attacked police with bottles, stones, and other objects, local press reported, angered by the arrest of their "hero."
The situation is developing.
Worse yet, Belgian newspaper De Morgen reported (subscription only) that "the whole neighborhood" knew where Abdeslam was ever since the Paris attacks. Nobody tipped off authorities.
The violence and code of silence over Abeslam's hideout is not as surprising as it might seem. As we've noted previously, the Paris attacks were hatched in Molenbeek, in addition to the 2015 attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo's offices.
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As a general rule, whatever Europe is now doing, we should do the opposite
- Victor Davis Hanson
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/433364/europe-edge-abyss
Without a Second Amendment or much of a defense budget, Europeans not only divert capital to enervating social programs, but also have sacrificed any confidence in muscular self-protection, individual or collective.
Even postmodern nations remain collections of individuals. A state that will not or cannot protect its own interests is simply a reflection of millions of dead souls that do not believe in risking anything to ensure that they are safe — including their own persons and those of their family. Finally, Europe is Petronius’s Croton. It does not believe in any transcendence as reified by children or religion. If there is nothing but the here and now, then why invest one’s energy in children who live on after one dies? Like atheism, childlessness reflects the assumption that ego-driven rationalism and satisfaction of the appetites are all there is and all that there ever will be.
Europe’s perfect storm is upon us. A shrinking, statist, and agnostic society that does not believe in transcendence, either familial or religious, is now in a war with near neighbors of a very different sort. In the Middle East, the fundamentalists are growing in numbers, and they most certainly do believe that their own lives are nothing in comparison to the Phoenix-like resurrection of their Caliphate and the sensual pleasures in the hereafter that will reward their martial sacrifices in the here and now. Of all the many reasons why immigrants to Europe so often dislike their generous hosts, the simplest may be because they so easily can.
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http://www.nationalreview.com/article/433364/europe-edge-abyss
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/german-train-operator-introduces-women-7640234
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http://pamelageller.com/2016/03/isis-airport-workers.html/
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https://www.facebook.com/1655553208052876/videos/1677976065810590/
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/02/air-france-stewardesses-mutiny-over-order-to-wear-headscarves/
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https://www.facebook.com/ILuvFreedom/videos/1676144609303267/
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https://www.facebook.com/Eyes.on.Sweden/videos/1706895512901879/
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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36055488
Grovel dhimmis.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0Hsqe6g_4U
A French police friend says about this footage:
"It is about fights enter various migrants in the center of bets for a not very clear motive. A lot of destruction of furniture with a very passive government."
"From where are they?" I asked.
"Syria libia an from magrheb"
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Report: German Refugee Program Money Given to Hizballah Operatives
by IPT News • Apr 20, 2016 at 1:07 pm
http://www.investigativeproject.org/5313/report-german-refugee-program-given-to-hizballah
Hizballah activists continue to operate freely in Germany and serve as senior employees of a German government-funded theater project intended to aid refugees in the country, according to the Berliner Zeitung daily and reported by the Jerusalem Post.
Two directors of the Refugee Club Impulse (RCI), sisters Nadia and Maryam Grassman, were central organizers of the annual pro-Iran/pro-Hizballah al-Quds Day rally in 2015 featuring "anti-Semitic slogans" and calls for "the abolition of Israel."
Video and photographic evidence showed Nadia chanting on a loudspeaker while Maryam disseminated fliers and posters and collected donations during the anti-Semitic rally. It is uncertain whether the donations were intended to fund Hizballah's terrorist operations in Syria and against Israel.
The RCI is expected to receive €100,000 ($113,260 USD) from the German government for the refugee project. Public taxpayer money has been transferred to the organization for several years.
There are roughly 250 active Hizballah operatives in Berlin and a total of 950 Hizballah members throughout Germany, according to a 2014 Berlin intelligence report summarized by the Jerusalem Post. Though the number of Hizballah supporters is believed to be far higher in Germany than listed in the report.
Radical Islamists are "the greatest danger to Germany...Germany is on the spectrum of goals for Islamic terrorists," said Hans-Georg Maassen, president of Germany's domestic intelligence agency – the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV).
In 2014, Germany closed down the Lebanon Orphan Children Project for providing money to the al-Shahid ("The Martyr") Association in Lebanon. Al-Shahid was "disguised as a humanitarian organization" and "promotes violence and terrorism in the Middle East using donations collected in Germany and elsewhere," German security expert Alexander Ritzmann said in a 2009 European Foundation for Democracy report.
While the European Union, including Germany, designated Hizballah's military wing as a terrorist entity, Germany allows Hizballah's political wing to operate freely in the country. The U.S., Canada, and the Netherlands designate Hizballah as a terrorist organization entirely. Even senior Hizballah officials have noted the futility in distinguishing between its political and military wings, acknowledging that Hizballah is a hierarchical and bureaucratic organization with a clear chain of command. Therefore the organization's terrorist and military wings answer to its senior leadership and political echelons, including its main benefactor – Iran.
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So shocked to learn of this.
:roll:
Report: German Refugee Program Money Given to Hizballah Operatives
by IPT News • Apr 20, 2016 at 1:07 pm
http://www.investigativeproject.org/5313/report-german-refugee-program-given-to-hizballah
Hizballah activists continue to operate freely in Germany and serve as senior employees of a German government-funded theater project intended to aid refugees in the country, according to the Berliner Zeitung daily and reported by the Jerusalem Post.
Two directors of the Refugee Club Impulse (RCI), sisters Nadia and Maryam Grassman, were central organizers of the annual pro-Iran/pro-Hizballah al-Quds Day rally in 2015 featuring "anti-Semitic slogans" and calls for "the abolition of Israel."
Video and photographic evidence showed Nadia chanting on a loudspeaker while Maryam disseminated fliers and posters and collected donations during the anti-Semitic rally. It is uncertain whether the donations were intended to fund Hizballah's terrorist operations in Syria and against Israel.
The RCI is expected to receive €100,000 ($113,260 USD) from the German government for the refugee project. Public taxpayer money has been transferred to the organization for several years.
There are roughly 250 active Hizballah operatives in Berlin and a total of 950 Hizballah members throughout Germany, according to a 2014 Berlin intelligence report summarized by the Jerusalem Post. Though the number of Hizballah supporters is believed to be far higher in Germany than listed in the report.
Radical Islamists are "the greatest danger to Germany...Germany is on the spectrum of goals for Islamic terrorists," said Hans-Georg Maassen, president of Germany's domestic intelligence agency – the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV).
In 2014, Germany closed down the Lebanon Orphan Children Project for providing money to the al-Shahid ("The Martyr") Association in Lebanon. Al-Shahid was "disguised as a humanitarian organization" and "promotes violence and terrorism in the Middle East using donations collected in Germany and elsewhere," German security expert Alexander Ritzmann said in a 2009 European Foundation for Democracy report.
While the European Union, including Germany, designated Hizballah's military wing as a terrorist entity, Germany allows Hizballah's political wing to operate freely in the country. The U.S., Canada, and the Netherlands designate Hizballah as a terrorist organization entirely. Even senior Hizballah officials have noted the futility in distinguishing between its political and military wings, acknowledging that Hizballah is a hierarchical and bureaucratic organization with a clear chain of command. Therefore the organization's terrorist and military wings answer to its senior leadership and political echelons, including its main benefactor – Iran.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isRnEx4HIzQ
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Rather timidly expressed, but the essence is there
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfAzBMwVSek
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http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/10/the-death-of-the-most-generous-nation-on-earth-sweden-syria-refugee-europe/
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Only the headline here for background context
http://www.israelvideonetwork.com/pro-palestinian-muslims-attack-people-for-drinking-beer-at-local-pub-in-britain/?omhide=true&utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Pro-Palestinian+Muslims+attack+people+for+drinking+beer+at+local+pub+in+Britain&utm_campaign=20160511_m131430538_5%2F11+Breaking+Israel+Video%3A+Pro-Palestinian+Muslims+attack+people+for+drinking+beer+at+local+pub+in+Britain&utm_term=Watch+this
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Apparently with substantial anglo support too so it will be interesting to see where it goes from here.
For the record, here are some concerns:
London Elects a Muslim Mayor Who Defended 9/11 Terrorists
by Raheem Kassam
Breitbart
May 5, 2016
http://www.meforum.org/5994/london-mayor-election
Slightly edited version of an article originally published under the title "London Is About to Elect a Muslim Mayor Who Has Defended Islamists, 9/11 Terrorists, and Who Is Endorsed by Anti-Semites."
Sadiq Khan narrowly won London's mayoral election on Thursday.
Londoners went to the polls on Thursday to choose a replacement for the outgoing mayor, Boris Johnson MP. Despite the fact the Labour Party is currently mired in an anti-Semitism scandal, the victory of its candidate, Sadiq Khan MP, was confirmed on Friday.
Mr. Khan, 45, has had a successful career in the Labour Party, being elected to parliament in 2005 and becoming a minister of state in 2008, with a promotion in 2009. He was a shadow secretary of state for justice from 2010-15 and has been running for London Mayor since then.
...
A Muslim Mayor?
Polling suggests some people are nervous about having someone like Mr. Khan near an office that wields so much power, responsibility, and cash.
The crimes of former Tower Hamlets Mayor Lutfur Rahman and others have left many voters distrustful of Muslim politicians.
Private conversations with Westminster insiders often see Lutfur Rahman – the former mayor of Tower Hamlets – raised as another example of a prominent Muslim mayor. Mr. Rahman was removed from office amid accusations of playing sectarian politics with the area's Muslim population, backing Islamists, and distributing tax payer cash to his favoured Muslim groups to secure their support.
Mr. Rahman was found guilty of "corrupt and illegal practices" – and has perhaps set back the plight of the few integrated British Muslims in elected life. He – alongside politicians like Humza Yousaf, Sayeeda Warsi, Rushanara Ali, Shabana Mahmood, Yasmin Qureshi, Amjad Bashir, Naz Shah, and Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh – have created a deep distrust between British voters and Muslim politicians.
In fact, one third of Londoners remain suspicious of having a Muslim mayor, and the likes of Sajid Javid or Syed Kamall suffer because of their coreligionists' insistence on fellow-travelling with extremists, if not holding extremist views themselves.
Extremism
And Mr. Khan can hardly claim a clean record. Mr. Goldsmith's attacks are not without basis, though they have been shrugged off as "racism" or "Islamophobia" with the assistance of the left's useful idiots, like Owen Jones.
Mr. Khan is now one of the most powerful Muslims in the Western world.
Apart from his somewhat threatening statements about not voting for him while claiming that "he is the West," Mr. Khan's own track record is perhaps one of the most sour of all Muslim politicians in the Western world.
In 2001 he was the lawyer for the Nation of Islam in its successful High Court bid to overturn the 15-year-ban on its leader, Louis Farrakhan.
Babar Ahmad
In 2005 and 2006 he visited terror-charged Babar Ahmad in Woodhill Prison. Mr. Ahmed was extradited to the U.S. in 2012, serving time in prison before being returned to the UK in 2015. Mr. Ahmed pleaded guilty to the terrorist offences of conspiracy and providing material support to the Taliban.
And Mr. Khan also campaigned for the release and repatriation of Shaker Aamer, Britain's last Guantanamo detainee, who was returned to the UK in November.
Both Messrs Aamer and Ahmed provided Mr. Khan with links to the advocacy group CAGE, which described the Islamic State executioner Mohammed Emwazi as a "beautiful young man" and which has campaigned on behalf of both men. Mr. Khan is reported to have shared a stage with five Islamic extremists, including at sex-segregated events. Even so, his poll numbers remained firm until election day.
The ConservativeHome website lists even more concerns, including:
• A letter to the Guardian in the wake of the 7/7 terrorist bombings on London, blaming terrorism on British government policy;
• His legal defence of Zacarias Moussaoui, a 9/11 terrorist who confessed to being a member of Al Qaeda;
• His chapter in a book, entitled "Actions Against the Police," which advises on how to bring charges against the police for "racism." This is the same police force that Mr. Khan as London mayor would exercise authority over;
• His defence of Islamist extremist Azzam Tamimi. When Dr. Tamimi told a crowd that the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed would "cause the world to tremble" and predicted "Fire... throughout the world if they don't stop," Mr. Khan, who shared a platform with him, dismissed the threats as "flowery language."
• His platform-sharing with Suliman Gani, a south London imam who has urged female subservience to men and called for the founding of an Islamic state.
Londoners got news on Friday that their mayor for the next four years is a man with the judgement, priorities, and fellow travellers as laid out above. This, combined with an annual £16bn budget and an army of police, bureaucrats, and officials, would make Mr. Khan one of the most powerful Muslims in the Western world.
Raheem Kassam is a Shillman-Ginsburg fellow at the Middle East Forum and editor-in-chief of Breitbart London.
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Aside from the current pResident of the White House.
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https://www.facebook.com/libtardmedia/videos/1687227271494623/
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3586942/Bar-owners-ordered-pay-protection-money-Sharia-patrols.html
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3586942/Bar-owners-ordered-pay-protection-money-Sharia-patrols.html
I hope Europe like the hole it has dug for it's self.
Crafty, what did you see and hear on your last trip to Deutchastan?
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(http://gatesofvienna.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/bracken-dhimmi.jpg)
http://gatesofvienna.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/bracken-dhimmi.jpg
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/world/europe/how-the-saudis-turned-kosovo-into-fertile-ground-for-isis.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/world/europe/migrant-crimes-add-volatile-element-to-austrias-election.html?emc=edit_th_20160522&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/world/europe/migrant-crimes-add-volatile-element-to-austrias-election.html?emc=edit_th_20160522&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193
Good.
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IIRC there is a goodly dose of antisemitism thrown in too.
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IIRC there is a goodly dose of antisemitism thrown in too.
When the mainstream politicos ignore the people, then the fringe gains power. As far as antisemitism, it's always lurking in Europe anyway, nothing new.
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I'm well aware of that.
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(http://ace.mu.nu/archives/Gsys-and-Muslims-copy.jpg)
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/Gsys-and-Muslims-copy.jpg
Stupid can be fatal.
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https://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/band-whose-concert-was-attacked-isis-has-gigs-canned#
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https://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/band-whose-concert-was-attacked-isis-has-gigs-canned#
PC trumps everything, especially survival.
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http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-36353650
Shocking.
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http://pamelageller.com/2016/05/muslim-stabs-women.html/
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http://pamelageller.com/2016/05/muslim-stabs-women.html/
Diversity is strength!
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http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/Postcard-from-Mallorca/Welcome-to-Swedenistanand-have-a-lousy-day-455464
Welcome to Swedenistan…and have a lousy day
MY new neighbor, Dan, is a semi-retired orthodontist, working two days a week in a private clinic. His wife, Karla, was his nurse until her career was cut short by rheumatoid arthritis.
Though still Swedish passport-holders both describe themselves curiously as ‘former Swedes’ and their dearest wish is for their 30-year-old school-teacher daughter to leave Stockholm and join their doctor son in Canada.
And, if not the Maple Leaf nation, then Israel, the USA, Britain or Australia.
Now in their 60s, Dan and Karla – not their real names – came to Mallorca, partly to eke out their silver years in the balmy climes of a laid-back Club Med state, but, effectively, as they say, ‘asylum-seekers.’
‘All my life I’d been grateful to be part of a civilized society,’ explains Dan, whose parents were among almost the entire population of 8,000 Danish Jews, who were secretly ferried from Nazi-occupied Denmark in 1943 to sanctuary in neutral Sweden.
‘And, until about 2005, I felt blessed to live in a true social democracy, where people willingly paid high taxes for a fine welfare system and liberal values.’
So what prompted – or rather drove – the amiable Dan and his gentle wife, creator of the world’s most lip-smacking gravidlax, to sell their Malmö shoreline home, rip up their roots and migrate to Spain?
‘Sure, the sunshine and lifestyle played some part in our decision,’ he explains. ‘But the real reason was Sweden’s changing demographics and politics. The radical, Left-wing establishment became totally obsessed with multiculturalism and political correctness, which we didn’t need reminding had been part of Swedish ethos for centuries.
‘But this was different. It was verging on authoritarian diktat and the open-door immigration policy was threatening the nation’s cohesion. Only a fool couldn’t see this, but there was a conspiracy of silence, or rather a policy to whitewash the adverse effects of accepting half-a-million immigrants from the Middle East, who plainly weren’t interesting in adopting Sweden’s values and Swedish culture.
‘The politicians, the media, the intellectuals…they all played their parts in pandering to this dangerous ideology and, sadly, it’s changing the fabric of Swedish society irreversibly.’
Karla, who’d sat passively, occasionally nodding in agreement at Dan’s analysis, then interrupted, saying, ‘If you disagree with the establishment, you’re immediately called a racist or fascist, which we’re definitely not. At times I felt that this was what it must have been like to live in the old Soviet Union.’
Many Swedes wholeheartedly concur with the sentiment that Sweden’s long, noble record of liberalism has become perverted and are appalled at their extreme-socialist government’s incompetent, doe-eyed handling of the immigration issue.
‘It’s like a laboratory experiment gone horribly wrong,’ one told me. ‘But the scientists won’t admit they’ve made a monstrous mistake. So Sweden isn’t Sweden as we knew it – it’s become Swedenistan.’
For any in doubt, former Swedish Prime Minister, Frederik Reinfeldt, infamously stated in 2014 that Sweden now belongs to immigrants, not to the Swedes who have lived there for generations.
And the evidence stacking up in favor of kowtowing to incomers – a ‘lemming complex’, as Dan termed it – is growing increasingly stark and eccentric.
Displaying symbols, like the national flag, are frowned upon; Haribo, the candy-maker, was accused of ‘racism’, because its Skipper Mix included African masks; and children’s author, Jan Lööf, was pressured to self-censor his best-seller, Grandpa Is A Pirate, which featured characters like the wicked buccaneer, Omar, and street peddler, Abdullah.
All this coincided with the nation that gave the world flat-pack furniture and smorgasbord welcoming 500,000 incomers, mainly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, the overwhelming majority Muslim, though the government releases no official figures about migrants’ religious affiliations.
In this land of mystical forests and tranquil islands, whose population of around nine million remained relatively unchanged until contemporary times, such an influx was bound to have consequences, especially given where the huge wave of immigrants originated.
So, the impact on Sweden’s Jewry has been predictably disturbing.
Malmö, Dan and Karla’s former home and Sweden’s third largest city, has seen a dramatic surge in anti-Semitic violence over the last decade, in tandem with the exponential rise of its Islamic community, now numbering at about 75,000.
In 2009, its Jewish center was set ablaze and, since then, Jewish cemeteries have been repeatedly desecrated, worshippers abused on their way home from prayer, and Jews in the streets targeted with anti-Semitic insults by men of ‘dark and foreign’ appearance.
The case for historic toleration wasn’t helped by the city’s then mayor, far-Leftist, pro-Palestinian Ilmar Reepalu, who was accused by Malmö’s Jewish leadership of deliberately stoking animosity by claiming what Jews perceived as naked anti-Semitism was ‘just a sad, but understandable consequence of Israeli policy.’
(But – naturally – Reepalu is quick to add, ‘Of course, I’m not an anti-Semite.’)
Then, earlier this year, Sweden’s foreign minister, Margot Wällstrom, caused a diplomatic storm by alleging Israeli forces carried out extrajudicial killings of Palestinians.
Unsurprisingly, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Tzipi Hotovely, slapped her down, calling Wallström’s comments ‘a mix of blindness and political stupidity.’
Meanwhile, as the pattern of unrest is being replicated throughout Europe, the ancient prejudices of the Middle East have spread their tentacles further and deeper into Sweden, where the dwindling, 20,000-strong Jewish community has been strongly advised against wearing any outward signs of their faith in public.
Like Dan and Karla did, many Swedish Jews are now contemplating futures away from a country that long boasted toleration as its totem. But no longer.
As Dr. Richard Prasquier, former president of France's national Jewish association, noted, ‘Jews are a litmus test of what’s going on in a country. It’s not only Jews who will leave. And it’s not only the country which will go down the drain; it’s not only Europe, it’s the entire Western world.’
For Sweden, then, the sands of time are running down.
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This article was sent to me by a German friend-- can we get a translation?
http://www.epochtimes.de/politik/deutschland/nrw-waffenlager-mit-schweren-kriegswaffen-nahe-moschee-ausgehoben-a1337983.html
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This article was sent to me by a German friend-- can we get a translation?
http://www.epochtimes.de/politik/deutschland/nrw-waffenlager-mit-schweren-kriegswaffen-nahe-moschee-ausgehoben-a1337983.html
Google translation
NRW: arsenal with "heavy weapons of war" near mosque excavated
Epoch Times, Sunday, June 19, 2016 20:27
An arsenal of radical Islamists was dug in NRW. The "top-secret mission" had taken place about a week ago and promoted heavy military weapons to days. This was reported by the Hessian MPs Ismail Tipi (CDU).
According to information of the Hesse CDU deputies Ismail Tipi there has been a "top secret use" of seks in England about a week ago. In the refrigerator of a greengrocer near a mosque it said to have been found and seized weapons. "According to my information, a weapons cache was excavated with heavy military weapons in this operation. The danger of arming the fundamentalist violent Salafists in Germany is very large. That makes this secret use more than clear, "said Tipi on Friday in a press release .
The extremism -expert suspected that secret arsenals were also built in other German cities. So the Hamburg domestic intelligence speak for example, of an increase of supporters of armed jihad.
Meanwhile these are in Hamburg more than 300 identified supporters. "The information here on multiply. The fear is great that Salafist sleeper, jihadists and IS-terrorists found in Germany support from foreign intelligence services, which are not minded us amicably. By arsenals the sleepers and militant jihadists can be equipped on the way to their possible attack with weapons. Just something I always feared, "the Turkish origin MPs.
"Politicians must speak plainly"
Tipi admonishes: "If substantiate the fears, we can assume that the secret arsenals for a major terrorist attack not only in Germany but in the whole of Europe are used. It would be grossly negligent if we do not recognize this danger and not uncover these arsenals. "One problem is that many battle-hardened young Salafists have returned from combat zones to Germany and the migration stream many endangerers were introduced, the press release continues.
"We have to see this threat and act as quickly as possible. Here our security authorities have been invited should take a close look to determine precisely and to report any indications of all security-related enforcement and intelligence agencies, "said Tipi.
He asks: "Politicians need to talk, to highlight the potential dangers and threats, to educate the population and to encourage you that you can be awake and must report any kind of police observation plaintext. The problem of Salafism and IS-terror is increasing, if we do not all react. Here is every single demand. "
Tipis political commitment against radical Salafists already led to death threats against his person.
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:-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o
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http://www.jewsnews.co.il/2016/02/15/game-over-finland-follows-swedens-lead-and-gives-muslims-the-boot-back-to-where-they-came-from/
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Large arsenal of heavy military weapons found near mosque in Hamburg Germany.
..."suspected that secret arsenals were also built in other German cities."
:-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o
Just a little over-used, but what could possibly go wrong? And who knew? [gallows humor is all I have fleft]
The connection between Hamburg and terror goes back at least to the 911 planning. Now the Islamist terrorists in Germany have a million new recruiting prospects to work with. Maybe they will find a "lone wolf" to train and arm...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_of_the_September_11_attacks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburg_cell
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/6267615/Terrorist-cell-found-in-Hamburg-where-911-attacks-conceived.html
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http://pamelageller.com/2016/06/afdi-muhammad-ads-roll-out-on-london-streets-tomorrow.html/
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http://www.breitbart.com/milo/2016/06/26/milo-to-lead-gay-pride-march-through-muslim-ghetto-sweden/
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http://www.breitbart.com/milo/2016/06/26/milo-to-lead-gay-pride-march-through-muslim-ghetto-sweden/
Brave. I hope he has an armed protection detail.
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http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0ZR1AH
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Theresa May forced to defend views on Sharia Law as she prepares to enter No 10
By Pamela Geller on July 12, 2016
I am glad that the UK Prime Minister-to-be Theresa May is being called out on her craven cowardice in the face of sharia demands in her country (as described here: Sharia Enforcer Theresa May to be New UK Prime Minister). Not only did she ban me from entering the UK, but she sanctions the brutal sharia courts notoriously punishing towards women. Nightmare.
A number of news outlets went undercover at these sharia courts. A BBC Panorama Documentary went undercover in one of the 85 sharia courts operating as a parallel legal system in the UK, uncovering the extensive abuse of women, refusal to grant divorces, charging of the woman but not the man for divorce proceedings, and even the taking away of the woman’s children, and rulings contrary to British law. In 2007, Channel 4 documentary did a series called called Divorce Sharia Style, in which Muslims appeared to express a desire to impose Sharia law on the UK.
When women described being beaten and abused, court officials laughed. Evil.
And while Theresa May is “reviewing” these sharia courts, this is being branded a “whitewash.” This from the Independent, July 9, 2016:
Theresa May’s review of sharia courts has been branded a “whitewash” before it has even begun, with more than 200 individuals and human rights groups signing an open letter urging her to dismantle the panel chosen to oversee the inquiry.
They claim that by appointing an Islamic scholar as chair and placing two imams in advisory roles, the panel’s ability to make an impartial assessment of how religious arbitration is used to the detriment of women’s rights will be seriously compromised.
What are the credentials of the “experts”?
“Theresa May forced to defend views on Sharia Law as she prepares to enter No 10,” By Zole O’Brien, The Express, July 12, 2016:
INCOMING Prime Minister Theresa May has defended her position on Sharia Law on the eve of taking over as the leader of the Conservative party.
May sparked controversy when she spoke out in support of the Islamic courts operating in the country, telling the nation they could “benefit a great deal” from Sharia teachings.
The future Tory leader made the comments as she ordered a review into the system which are accused of ordering women to stay with abusive partners.Mrs May, said she is worried the courts are “misused” and “exploited” to discriminate against Muslim women, but defended their place in society.
Sharia is Islam’s legal system derived from both the Koran, Islam’s central text, and fatwas – the rulings of Islamic scholars.
There are thought to be around 100 Sharia Law courts operating throughout the UK, dispensing Islamic justice outside the remit of our own legal system.
Judgements handed down by the informal courts have no legal basis, but there are fears their presence means many Muslim women are not getting access to the justice they deserve.
Now, before she takes over Number 10, May has been forced to restate her position on Sharia Law.
- See more at: http://pamelageller.com/2016/07/theresa-may-forced-to-defend-views-on-sharia-law-as-she-prepares-to-enter-no-10.html/#sthash.2pXpuufC.dpuf
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Robert Spencer in Epic Times: Theresa May Prime Minister: A Disaster for Britain
July 12, 2016 By Robert Spencer
Over at Epic Times, I discuss the worst Prime Minister Great Britain could possibly have: its next one.
OPINION – The worst outcome of Britain’s unexpected vote to leave the European Union was the resignation of David Cameron as Prime Minister – not because he was a great leader (he wasn’t), but because his successor is Theresa May, who promises to surpass even her feckless predecessor and become the weakest, most appeasement-minded Prime Minister since Neville Chamberlain.
As I was banned by Theresa May from entering Britain for the crime of correctly noting that Islam has doctrines involving violence against unbelievers, I know firsthand her anxiousness to please forces that do not regard free speech and open debate as positives for society. But there is more. As head of the UK Home Office, May announced a review of Britain’s Sharia courts – then appointed Muslims to oversee it, drawing protests from human rights activists concerned that her review board would be too biased to note the courts’ violations of women’s rights.
Theresa May Has A History Of Oppression
May also disregarded warnings about security risks and scrapped an aerial surveillance program that had been designed to stop migrants from sneaking into Britain. With May heading the Home Office, the British government helped illegal immigrants quash convictions for fraud and other crimes, so that they could stay in the country.
May has claimed counterfactually that the Islamic State’s “actions have absolutely no basis in anything written in the Quran.” She asserted, in the teeth of abundant evidence (including a statement from ISIS saying that jihad attacks would continue in France “as long as they boast about their war against Islam”), that the November 2015 jihad massacre in Paris had “nothing to do with Islam.” This willful ignorance hamstrings intelligence and law enforcement officials’ ability to fight the jihadis: one cannot defeat an enemy while refusing to name or understand it.
But May is on the case. With the jihad threat higher than ever, May vowed to fight all forms of extremism, from “Islamist” to “neo-Nazi.” Does Britain have a big neo-Nazi problem? Did neo-Nazis set off bombs on a London bus and behead a British soldier in the street? Are goosesteppers strutting around in Trafalgar Square? No. By “neo-Nazis,” May means those people who dare to speak out against the immigration and national security policies she has pursued that have brought Britain to the brink of catastrophe.
As Prime Minister, she may get the chance to push Britain off the edge.
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Posted on social warriors thread too. Somehow I don't believe this is everything. If it was why are ties to feminism and gay issues on their website there?
BLM manifesto:
http://politicsbreaking.com/black-lives-matter-just-delivered-10-point-manifesto-want/
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http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/07/13/leaflets-calling-islamic-ban-dogs-distributed-manchester/
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZkdRJqEVyg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6cJR9copFw
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http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/07/15/saudi-funded-mosque-opened-nice-two-weeks-attack/
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZkdRJqEVyg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6cJR9copFw
(https://westernrifleshooters.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/cnzhk3mxgaa9zyp.jpg)
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France ‘SUPPRESSED NEWS OF GRUESOME TORTURE’ at Bataclan JIHAD Massacre: gouged out eyes, castrated victims, shoved testicles in their mouths, some disemboweled, Women stabbed in genitals
ByPAMELA GELLER on July 15, 2016
Police witnesses in Parliament said they vomited when they saw the disfigured bodies.
Again we ask, why are Western elites protecting the savage barbarians who are committing unspeakable acts of violence and torture in the cause of Allah?
Why scrub the evil from the evildoers? When is it going to stop? When are rational, civilized, freedom-loving peoples going to break the chains of the leftist/Islamic axis of evil?
People are woefully disarmed in the information battle-space, thanks to the left’s choke hold on media, academia, and culture. When Jesse Hughes, leader of the band Eagles of Death Metal, who was playing at the Bataclan the night of the monstrous jihad attack in Paris, spoke out about what he saw, he was demonized, marginalized and had gigs canceled. That is the world of those of us who speak up against jihad terror and sharia.
“EXCLUSIVE: France ‘Suppressed News of Gruesome Torture’ at Bataclan Massacre,” By Louise Mensch | Heatstreet, 10:50 am, July 15, 2016
HEAT STREET EXCLUSIVE – A French government committee has heard testimony, suppressed by the French government at the time and not released to the media, that the killers in the Bataclan tortured their victims on the second floor of the club.
Police witnesses in Parliament said they vomited when they saw the disfigured bodies.
Wahhabist killers apparently gouged out eyes, castrated victims, and shoved their testicles in their mouths. They may also have disemboweled some poor souls. Women were stabbed in the genitals – and all the torture was, victims told police, filmed for Daesh or Islamic State propaganda. For that reason, medics did not release the bodies of torture victims to the families, investigators said.
But prosecutors claimed these reports of torture were “a rumor” on the grounds that sharp knives were not found at the scene. They also claimed that maybe shrapnel had caused the injuries.
Q. For the information of the Commission of Inquiry….can you tell us how you learned that there had been acts of barbarism within the Bataclan: beheadings, evisceration, eyes gouged out …?
Investigator: After the assault, we were with colleagues at the passage Saint-Pierre Amelot when I saw weeping from one of our colleagues who came outside to vomit. He told us what he had seen.
Q. Acts of torture happened on the second floor?
Further on the investigator described how this was kept from relatives:
A. Bodies have not been presented to families because there were beheaded people there, the murdered people, people who have been disembowelled . There are women who had their genitals stabbed.
Q. All this would have been videotaped for Daesh !
A. I believe so. Survivors have said so.
Elsewhere the investigator says women were sexually tortured, stabbed in the genitals, and their eyes were plucked out. People were decapitated.
The committee chief pressed the investigator on whether victims were decapitated or mutilated. He stated that the authorities had given out conflicting information that said victims were merely shot or blown up. The President of the Committee replied with this damning statement about one victim’s father discovering the gruesome truth in the morgue:
Mr. President Georges Fenech Indeed, the Committee is troubled by this information which has appeared nowhere [in the media]. Thus, the father of one of the victims sent me a copy of a letter he sent to the investigating judge, which I quote in summary: “On the causes of the death of my son A., at the forensic institute in Paris, I was told, and what a shock it was for me at that moment, they had cut off his testicles, had put them in his mouth, and he was disemboweled. When I saw him behind glass, lying on a table, a white shroud covering it up to the neck, a psychologist was with me. He said: This is “the only presentable part, your son’s left profile.” I found that he had no right eye. I made the remark; I was informed that they had punctured his eye and sliced down the right side of his face, where there was a very large hematoma that we could all see. ”
This particular witness could corroborate the statements that we heard from one of the BAC officials, that one of his investigators vomited immediately on leaving the Bataclan after finding a decapitation and evisceration. Are you aware of such facts?
The prosecutor replied lamely that no sharp knife had been found at the scene that could have been used for torture. Perhaps shrapnel had caused the mutilation, he said. The head of the committee asked if an explosion would have placed testicles in a victim’s mouth:
Prosecutor: I specify, for the sake of clarity: some of the bodies found at the Bataclan were extremely mutilated by the explosions and weapons, to the point that it was sometimes difficult to reconstruct the dismembered bodies. In other words, injuries described this father may also have been caused by automatic weapons, by explosions or projections of nails and bolts that have resulted.
Q. Would those have put a man’s balls in in his own mouth?
Prosecutor: I do not have that information.
The news follows reports that German police sat on the huge number of sexual assaults committed by Islamist migrants in Cologne, which a secret report estimated at thousands, not hundreds. Heat Street will continue to report.
- See more at: http://pamelageller.com/2016/07/bataclan-torture-gruesome.html/#sthash.bb7Bo9nM.dpuf
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Colonization by Immigration
“Sheer Horror” in Paris
The Orwell of his generation visits the Banlieues, finding out the truth of "no go" zones in the heart of France.
BY CounterJihad · @CounterjihadUS | July 11, 2016
Ben Judah is a journalist who comes especially well-recommended. His two books, one about Russia and the other about London, have been hailed for their shockingly honest accounts of unpleasant truths. Of his work on London, the New Statesman reviewer wrote: “Every MP should be given a copy immediately. On every page lies an uncomfortable truth, in every paragraph sheer horror.”
Now he has turned to the rapid shift towards Islam in France. Brought on by mass immigration and hardline Islamic preachers, Judah finds a neighborhood in the shadow of the tombs of French kings that is no longer French.
“The French are too scared to come and shop in Saint-Denis since the attacks. There’s fear. There’s less order — less police, more druggies, more dealers and more thieves. It’s getting worse. I tell you — ten years ago it was not this bad.”
How does the French state explain all this? I take the butcher’s accusation to the prefect. Grey-haired Philippe Galli is Saint-Denis’s most powerful official and the president’s envoy to the department of Seine-Saint-Denis. His throaty, gravelly voice is accustomed to power.
“Those same people who say there is a lack of authority,” snaps the 60-year-old prefect, “are the same ones who refuse the police access when they try and enter. Those from the Maghreb, by origin, permit themselves to behave in ways that would be unthinkable where they came from.”
He tells me that the secret services are currently monitoring 700 people at risk of radicalisation in Saint-Denis, and the police are too frightened to enter alone most areas under his control.
The whole of his piece should be read.
The French government has been drawing up counter-insurgency plans against those al Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS) have been recruiting. Last year’s multiple major terror strikes in Paris not only led to the deaths of hundreds, but also highlighted the failure of European police authorities to handle the problem of rising Islamic radicalism.
Meanwhile, with French native birthrates continuing to be below replacement level, mass immigration has continued apace. A quarter of teenagers in France are now Muslims, implying a future in which any radicalized Islam poses only a greater threat to the stability of the Republic. Second generation immigrants, according to several major inquiries, seem to be the ones most inclined to radicalization. The problems of France today may well pale in comparison to the problems of a generation from now.
When can you kill civilians with suicide bombers? Also, what does it take to qualify as a "civilian" who might enjoy any level of protection from suicide bombs?
BY Immanuel Al-Manteeqi
Already Judah’s article identifies a rising Antisemitism that is driving French Jews from their homes. But it is also driving non-Jewish French from their homes, and making those who continue to live in the changing neighborhoods feel besieged.
The response by the French has been a rising nationalism. Even al Qaeda’s top figure in charge of recruting from France has endorsed the National Front. “If the French don’t want war, they should vote Marine Le Pen,” he said. “OK, she’s a woman, and one can call her a racist. But at least she defends the true values of France.”
Does she? Judah cites a gay leftist who has come to feel inclined towards a more nationalist politics. “I realised… my error of interpretation on immigration and Islamisation, which is a danger to liberty…. [A]ll around us this rise of halal, this halalisation of France through its dishes, it’s a conquest of France through its dishes, if you look closely.”
That has parallels in Germany, where nationalism is also rising as a response. These stories may not be pleasant to read, but every wise person should consider them, and ponder what is to be done.
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http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/07/19/this-is-europes-last-chance-to-fix-its-refugee-policy-george-soros/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20Campaign&utm_term=*Editors%20Picks
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3703705/Major-police-investigation-way-shots-fired-shopping-centre-Munich.html
Or maybe it means "This has nothing to do with Islam"?
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3703705/Major-police-investigation-way-shots-fired-shopping-centre-Munich.html
Or maybe it means "This has nothing to do with Islam"?
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/its-not-only-germany-that-covers-up-mass-sex-attacks-by-migrant-men-swedens-record-is-shameful/
Women sacrificed on the altar of PC.
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That's right, They holler Allah Akbar and we don't know the motive?! Muslim Brotherhood is secular? Islamic State is not Islamic? [An economy stuck in place is in recovery? Affordable housing and healthcare are the kinds you can't afford, requiring subsidy? Tax cuts are racist? Exhaling is pollution? Marriage is not when a woman become husband and wife?] We live in George Orwell's 1984. They took over thoughts by taking over language. It could backfire. A man who owns 11 trillion and lives in a palace can represent the common man. Europe has their own Trumps to oppose the Islamic invasion and the denial of it.
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Mainstream media covers up Munich killer’s ‘Allahu Akbar’ jihad, tries to link him to mass shooters like Breivik
By PAMELA GELLER on July 23, 2016
The heinous attack by the Munich jihadi who specifically targeted children is being scrubbed and whitewashed by the enemedia. Ali Sonboly was an Iranian German who took direction from al Qaeda and ISIS manuals to target and slaughter children for maximum effect. It is reported that Ali was “obsessed with mass shootings.” Sonboly was studying mass shootings in order to achieve a maximum kill rate. One of the mass shootings Ali reviewed was Breivik. Hellzapoppin in news rooms everywhere.
The enemedia is hang on to the very thinnest reed or no reed at all to avoid the motive behind this worldwide war – Islam.
Because of this tangential and minor point, the media has jumped all over the Breivik aspect. How corrupt and absurd. There is nothing that points to Ali being “inspired.” His inspiration is Islam. His method of jihad was mass shooting, so of course he would review past shootings. From this the enemedia announces, “Munich shooting: Teenage killer Ali Sonboly ‘inspired by far-right terrorist Anders Breivik.'”
And who can believe the German police? They scrubbed the thousands of sexual attacks on New Year’s Eve in order to protect Islam. They even deleted the CCTV tapes. Merkel’s sharia is strictly enforced.
In the hundreds of jihad attacks, the devout Muslim murderers cite Quran chapter and verse and scream Allahu Akbar while they behead, gouge out eyes, sexually mutilate, etc. But the media will never make the connection to Islam. Close to 30,000 jihad attacks since 9/11, and not once did the media connect it to jihad and Islam. But because Ali Sonboly had some of Breivik’s writings in his extensive collection of mass shootings among his possessions, the media has found its target — Breivik. Breivik quoted Obama and JFK, will the media blame them too?
The enemedia is at war with us. They are vile deceivers. The BBC doesn’t see fit to inform its readers about how Sonboly screamed “Allahu akbar.” Beware — they stand with jihad.
Mainstream media covers up Munich killer’s jihad, tries to link him to Breivik
July 23, 2016, By Robert Spencer:
This is what we know: this is a time of sorting. The political and media elites are threatened to a degree they have not been in decades or longer. Brexit and the success of Donald Trump have challenged their hegemony and threatened to end it altogether. It would be naive in the extreme to assume that they won’t strike back, and try to protect that hegemony by any and every possible means. That means, if Hillary Clinton is elected, the likely end of the First Amendment and the enactment of laws criminalizing “hate speech,” by which will be meant opposition to jihad terror.
And in the meantime, we should not be surprised to see desperate rear-guard attempts, however ludicrous, to fool people and divert them from the obvious, particularly in regard to jihad terror attacks. The elites, besotted with the multiculturalist idea, enthralled with internationalism, and intent on socialist leveling, are importing Muslims into Western countries in staggering numbers. Yet every jihad massacre awakens more non-Muslims in the West to the suicidal folly of this program. And so the public must be fooled into thinking that none of the jihad attacks are actually jihad attacks. The Orlando jihadi, you see, he was gay and exacting revenge for a bad relationship, or for getting AIDS. The Nice jihadi, you see, he was a bad driver. This one had psychological problems. That one was bullied by his non-Muslim coworkers. That one over there, he got kicked out of a study group. And on and on. Every jihad attack was not jihad, if you believe the mainstream media: yes, it just happened to involve a Muslim screaming “Allahu akbar” as he opened fire, but you see, the reality is that he had a troubled childhood, doncha know?
Oh, and the Munich jihadi did indeed scream “Allahu akbar”:
“Munich shooting: 9 victims, gunman dead, police say,” by Catherine E. Shoichet, Ralph Ellis and Jason Hanna, CNN, July 23, 2016:
Lauretta said she heard the gunman say, “Allahu Akbar,” or “God is great” in Arabic.
“I know this because I’m Muslim. I hear this and I only cry,” she said.
“Did Munich killer Ali Sonboly lure children to their deaths on Facebook? Police probe fake ad for free food at massacre McDonald’s where Iranian, 18, killed first of his nine victims before turning gun on himself,” by Anthony Joseph, Patrick Lion and Alan Hall, Mailonline, July 23, 2016:
But just a week after another teenager attacker launched an ISIS-inspired axe attack on a German train, witnesses in McDonald’s described hearing yesterday’s attacker shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’, or ‘God is Great’, a cry used by Islamist terrorists during previous attacks. And ISIS supporters took to social media in the hours after yesterday’s atrocity to celebrate the killings.
“What we know about Ali David Sonboly after he was named as Munich shopping centre massacre gunman,” by Sam Adams, Mirror, July 23, 2016:
In footage he was seen bursting from a McDonald’s restaurant toilet before opening fire on children. He reportedly screamed ‘Allahu Akbar’ before shooting them at close range.
Not long before he hijacked a jetliner and flew it into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, Mohamed Atta wrote this to himself: “When the confrontation begins, strike like champions who do not want to go back to this world. Shout, ‘Allahu Akbar,’ because this strikes fear in the hearts of the non-believers.”
So in the face of this, the mainstream media narrative is that Munich jihad murderer Ali Sonboly was inspired not by Islam and jihad, but by…Anders Breivik:
Look at the Telegraph’s headline: “Live: Munich shooting: Teenage killer Ali Sonboly ‘inspired by far-right terrorist Anders Breivik’ and ‘used Facebook offer of free McDonald’s food to lure victims,’” by Harriet Alexander, Barney Henderson, Chiara Palazzo, Luke Heighton, James Rothwell, Zia Weise, Camilla Turner, and Justin Huggler, Telegraph, July 23, 2016.
Now, with that headline in mind, read the salient portion of the Telegraph’s story:
Dr Peter Langman, the author of Why Kids Kill, the book which was found among Ali Sonboly’s possessions told The Telegraph he was “distressed” at the thought the book was being used in the wrong way.
He said: “It’s disturbing, I don’t know why he had the book. It could be he was better trying to understand himself because he needed mental health treatment and he was trying to get help. Or it could be he was looking for a role model. A lot of young shooters look for an Anders Breivik, or someone similar, as a role model. And since the attack was on the anniversary of the Norway attack, it suggests he was imitating Breivik….
According to German newspaper Bild.de, classmates said he had even used an image of Breivik as his profile picture on the social media network WhatsApp.
Does any of that establish what the Telegraph headline announces, that Sonboly was inspired by Breivik? No. In fact, it was Langman, not Sonboly, who linked Sonboly to Breivik. Authorities found the book Why Kids Kill among Sonboly’s possessions. It could have been there for any number of reasons, but in any case Langman uses it to link Sonboly to Breivik. Authorities did not find any “right-wing” or “anti-immigrant” literature among Sonboly’s possessions, or you can be sure they would have said so. The Telegraph also tells us that his classmates said that Sonboly had a picture of Breivik on his WhatsApp page, but provides no screenshot or anything else that would make this claim anything more than hearsay.
And even if Sonboly had admired Breivik, that in itself doesn’t establish that Sonboly was the “right-wing extremist terrorist” for which the mainstream media has been pining for so long. He may have admired his technique, not his ideology. We should remember in this connection that Sonboly’s parents were immigrants from Iran. Is it really likely that he harbored nativist “anti-immigrant” sentiment?
Needless to say, the Telegraph doesn’t bother to inform its readers that Sonboly screamed “Allahu akbar” as he opened fire. And the BBC is even worse:
“Munich gunman ‘obsessed with mass shootings,’” BBC, July 23, 2016:
The 18-year-old gunman who killed nine people in Munich was obsessed with mass shootings but had no known links to the Islamic State group, German police say.
Written material on such attacks was found in his room. Munich’s police chief spoke of links to the massacre by Norway’s Anders Behring Breivik.
Note the artfully deceptive writing. If anything actually linking Sonboly to Breivik had been found in Sonboly’s room, the BBC and other media sources would have said so plainly. The juxtaposition of these two sentences gives the impression that something linking him to Breivik was found in Sonboly’s room, but in fact all we have there is an assertion by Munich’s police chief that the shooting was linked to Breivik. Given the failure to produce any evidence to support this, and German authorities’ record of covering up crimes by Muslims, this link is extremely questionable.
The gunman, who had dual German-Iranian nationality, later killed himself.
His name has not been officially released but he is being named locally as David Sonboly….
The BBC doesn’t think it is important to tell you that the killer’s name was actually Ali David Sonboly. Why did they drop the “Ali”? Maybe so as not to give aid to those dreaded “right-wing extremists” by giving people the impression that there might be something to be concerned about in Islamic jihad?
The BBC added:
Munich police chief Hubertus Andrae said there was an “obvious” link between the new attack and Friday’s fifth anniversary of Breivik’s attacks in Norway, when he murdered 77 people….
But here again, Andrae doesn’t explain why Sonboly’s link to Breivik is “obvious.” He simply asserts it, with all the weight of his office, and that’s that.
Also needless to say, the BBC doesn’t see fit to inform its readers about how Sonboly screamed “Allahu akbar.” You don’t need to know that. It doesn’t fit what the political and media elites want you to believe; therefore it didn’t happen. Go back to sleep. When the knife slices through your throat, your death will be quick and almost painless, I promise.
- See more at: http://pamelageller.com/2016/07/mainstream-media-covers-up-munich-killers-allahu-akbar-jihad-tries-to-link-him-to-mass-shooters-like-breivik.html/#sthash.2WlSVh6i.dpuf
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3705823/Machete-wielding-attacker-kills-woman-injures-two-new-German-outrage.html
It's like there has been some sort of change in Germany's population. I wonder what happened.
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http://lasvegassun.com/news/2016/jul/24/police-man-likely-attacker-dies-in-explosion-in-ge/
Mysteries!
(https://westernrifleshooters.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/0-days-since-last-muslim-terrorist-attack-congrats-european-union-meme-clapping-bravo.jpg?w=750&h=1002)
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A German friend says this report calls pants on fire about the assertion of a major weapons cache.
http://sek-einsatz.de/nachrichten-sek-einsaetze/nordrheinwestfalen/bei-sek-einsatz-waffenlager-mit-schweren-kriegswaffen-ausgehoben/16489
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http://louderwithcrowder.com/french-police-enter-muslim-no-go-zone-get-viciously-attacked/#.V5aQW3rcD2C
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3708394/Two-men-armed-knives-people-hostage-French-church.html
:? :?
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https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CoTD3bHWYAA-gTt?format=jpg&name=large
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http://10news.dk/?p=760
Just noticed, this is from from last year , , ,
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The number of Muslims in Europe goes up and thus anti semitism goes up.
http://www.breitbart.com/jerusalem/2016/07/29/europes-anti-semitism-just-getting-uglier/
Happening here too with the boycott Israel movements that include the college campuses that have muslim students. I am certain at least some BLM kids feel the same way.
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http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/muslim-community-refuses-bury-jihadist-who-murdered-french-catholic-priest-jacques-hamel-1573372?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=rss&utm_content=/rss/yahoous/news&yptr=yahoo
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It is important that we report this sort of story too. We seek Truth.
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http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/muslim-community-refuses-bury-jihadist-who-murdered-french-catholic-priest-jacques-hamel-1573372?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=rss&utm_content=/rss/yahoous/news&yptr=yahoo
Of course, was it heartfelt, or a deliberate move to appease the kafir? I know what I would put my money on.
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http://shoebat.com/2016/07/23/the-munich-massacre-is-a-complete-coverup-the-munich-shooters-facebook-including-his-family-background-shows-he-is-not-iranian-but-a-syrian-islamist-pro-turkey/
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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36936658?SThisFB%3FSThisFB
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http://shoebat.com/2016/07/23/the-munich-massacre-is-a-complete-coverup-the-munich-shooters-facebook-including-his-family-background-shows-he-is-not-iranian-but-a-syrian-islamist-pro-turkey/
Sounds credible to me，
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(https://westernrifleshooters.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/screen-shot-2016-07-31-at-10-56-11-pm.png)
How much longer?
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http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/france-declares-barghouti-honorary-citizen-48-hours-after-catholic-priest-sacrificed-by-isis/2016/07/29/
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http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/07/31/pictures-huge-pro-erdogan-islamist-rally-germany/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social
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A nice place to meet new people:
European Prisons Fueling Spread of Islamic Radicalism WSJ
Convicted terrorists sit atop the social pecking order in many facilities, using jail time to plot new attacks or groom petty criminals for jihad
Fleury-Mérogis Prison, Europe’s largest, has become a hotbed of Islamist radicalism.
By NOEMIE BISSERBE
July 31, 2016
PARIS—After his capture in Belgium, the Paris terror suspect Salah Abdeslam was transferred to a prison cell in France where the paint on the walls was still fresh.
Prison staff had spent three weeks renovating the space, bolting down furniture and installing video cameras to make sure the 26-year-old’s solitary confinement went smoothly, said Marcel Duredon, a guard at Fleury-Mérogis, the high-security facility on the outskirts of Paris.
Still, the measures did little to calm the ruckus that erupted in the cell blocks as dusk fell and word spread about the prison’s newest inmate, the last surviving suspect in the Nov. 13 attacks.
“Some welcomed him as the messiah,” Mr. Duredon said.
The rise of Islamic State has caught Europe’s prison systems flat-footed. Convicted terrorists, some of whom serve prison terms as brief as two years, sit atop the social pecking order in facilities like Fleury-Mérogis.
Many use jail time to forge ties with petty criminals from the predominantly Muslim suburbs that ring European cities, authorities say, grooming them for jihad missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria—or attacks at home.
Now the return over the past year of an unprecedented number of jihadists from Islamic State territory is placing European prisons in an even bigger bind. To keep militants off the streets, authorities are throwing many of them in jail, but that is injecting battle-hardened radicals into overcrowded prisons. Researchers estimate that 50% to 60% of the roughly 67,000 inmates in the French prison system are Muslims, who represent just 7.5% of the general population.
Prison officials are also faced with a difficult choice between absorbing hardened militants into the general prison population, where they might radicalize others, or to concentrate them in special wards where they may be better able to hatch plots.
“We’re sitting on a time bomb,” says Adeline Hazan, who heads a state agency tasked with auditing French prisons.
Last week, a French teenager who had recently been released from Fleury-Mérogis stormed a church in the north of France with an accomplice and killed a Roman Catholic priest celebrating Mass. Adel Kermiche, 19, wrote that he met his “spiritual guide” in the prison, where he was being detained for twice trying to travel to Syria, according to police, who reviewed messages he posted on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app. The “sheik,” as Kermiche referred to him, “gave him ideas,” he wrote.
Eighty-two French nationals have been convicted of terrorism since the summer of 2012 and 154 alleged terrorists are in jail awaiting trial, according to the Paris prosecutor’s office. In addition, more than 1,000 inmates are under surveillance by intelligence services as suspected Islamist radicals, according to French officials.
The influx, authorities warn, is transforming facilities designed for punishment into incubators for future terror attacks. The moment Mehdi Nemmouche completed a prison term for armed robbery in 2012, prison administrators flagged him to intelligence as a radical Islamist who was a threat to national security, according to a Paris prosecutor. He later traveled to Syria and then resurfaced in May 2014 at the Jewish Museum in Brussels, where he allegedly shot four people dead—an allegation he denies.
Mohamed Merah—who killed three paratroopers, a Jewish schoolteacher, and three children in 2012 before being shot dead by police—was also radicalized in a French prison, authorities say. When he entered prison, for snatching a woman’s handbag, Mr. Merah was “just a kid banging on his cell’s door shouting for his PlayStation,” says Philippe Campagne, a prison guard who knew him.
Mr. Abdeslam himself was once a petty criminal who in 2010 served time in a Belgian prison for attempted car robbery. His partner in that crime, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was sentenced to the same prison. Months later, both men were released. Mr. Abaaoud eventually traveled to Syria, tapping Mr. Abdeslam to shepherd suicide bombers across Europe, where they mounted attacks that killed 130 people in Paris, according to police.
Now re-incarcerated, Mr. Abdeslam has joined an informal class system that a 2015 audit of French prisons conducted by a state agency described as “astonishing.”
Within that system, Islamist radicals act as an “aristocracy,” the audit said, dictating prison etiquette to other inmates by forbidding them to take showers naked or listen to music. Televised matches of women’s tennis are also banned by inmates in some cells, the audit said.
A 52-year-old inmate who has been in and out of prison for a decade said radicals who once kept to themselves have begun reaching out to thieves and drug dealers to expand their following.
“They’re now willing to promote their cause by whatever means possible,” he said.
The audit found that radicals have little trouble communicating beyond prison walls. French intelligence recovered contraband mobile phones from one jail showing that many inmates had contacted people in Syria and Yemen. A popular wallpaper for such phones, the audit noted, was the Islamic State’s flag.
Terror attacks come from many sources—Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, the truck attacker who mowed down 84 people in Nice on July 14, wasn’t known to have any connection to terrorist groups, prosecutors say. Officials though are most concerned about the conversions taking place in prisons.
Mohamadou Sy, 24, who served part of a three-year sentence for drug dealing in Fleury-Mérogis, recalls how a retinue of “soft-spoken and well-educated” men regularly made the rounds in the prison yard. They bonded with other inmates, he said, by teaching hand-to-hand combat, a useful skill in prison.
“If you’re weak, you’re done,” said Mr. Sy, who was transferred to another prison from Fleury-Mérogis five months ago.
In an attempt to disrupt the aura around radical inmates, governments across the continent have begun to experiment with special measures, such as segregating radicals from other prisoners by housing them on special floors or wards.
Implementation has been piecemeal and sluggish. Only a fraction of the terrorists in French and Belgian jails have been transferred to these new units so far and legal challenges could constrain authorities from holding radicals in solitary confinement for long stretches of time. Assigning radicals to live together in a special ward, meanwhile, also risks being challenged in court as an extrajudicial form of punishment, officials say.
In Belgium, the West’s biggest supplier of Islamic State fighters on a per capita basis, two prisons have been retrofitted with special wards to house radicals. Opened in April, each of the new wards has room for only 20 prisoners.
The Belgian government wants to keep radicals among the general prison population as long as possible and transfer them to the new wards only once they are caught recruiting other prisoners, according to Sieghild Lacoere, spokeswoman for the Belgian Justice Ministry.
“We don’t want to create a Guantanamo,” she said.
That softer approach hinges on the prisons’ experimental use of “de-radicalization” therapy, which aims to reintegrate radicals into European society. Doctors, social workers and state-approved imams are brought into prisons to meet with radicals and attempt to rehabilitate them before their release. Critics of this approach, who point to at least one high-profile failure in Germany, say it is ineffective and distracts from the primary goal of securing public safety.
In France, which has spawned more Islamic State fighters in absolute numbers than any other Western country, authorities have begun grouping radicals together in special units. But the arrangement has failed to fully isolate them from other inmates. The units are often located in cell blocks that house other prisoners and where messages can be passed between cells using bedsheets or word-of-mouth.
The initiative has stirred an internal debate among top officials in President François Hollande’s Socialist government. While some ministers publicly praise the measures as a long-overdue reform, other officials are seething in private, according to people familiar with the matter.
Former Justice Minister Christiane Taubira, who resigned in January to protest the government’s plans to strip terrorists of their French citizenship, expressed “grave reservations” over the idea of grouping radicals together.
“This is madness,” said a former counterterrorism official. “We are putting together terrorists who didn’t know each other and belonged to different groups, and helping them create tight, impenetrable networks,” the official said.
Fleury-Mérogis, located on the outskirts of Paris, is Europe’s largest prison, with 4,200 inmates spread across 445 acres. A netting of metal wires stretches over its rooftops to prevent inmates from escaping aboard helicopters.
In 2004, the prison received a new inmate: 23-year-old Amedy Coulibaly. Convicted of armed robbery, Mr. Coulibaly spent 22 hours a day locked up in his cell.
“Prison changed me,” Coulibaly would later tell French journalist Warda Mohamed after his release in 2008. Ms. Mohamed, a French journalist who interviewed Coulibaly as part of a documentary on prison life, said she didn’t publish the comments at the time.
“I learnt about Islam in prison. Before that I wasn’t interested, now I pray,” Coulibaly told Ms. Mohamed, she said. “Just for that, I’m glad I went to prison.”
Prosecutors say Djamel Beghal cultivated a circle of followers around him in prison and radicalized one of the Charlie Hebdo gunmen.
Prosecutors say Djamel Beghal cultivated a circle of followers around him in prison and radicalized one of the Charlie Hebdo gunmen. PHOTO: STAVEL CHRISTIAN/MAXPPP/ZUMA PRESS
His mentor, according to court documents, was 39-year-old Djamel Beghal, an al Qaeda recruiter who was serving a 10-year prison sentence in a cell near Coulibaly’s for his involvement in a 2001 plot to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Paris.
Mr. Beghal managed to cultivate a circle of followers around him because he was a “man of science and religion,” Coulibaly would tell police in 2010, according to a transcript of the interrogation. Coulibaly was being questioned on suspicion he had joined Mr. Beghal in a plot to break a terrorist out of prison. Both men were tried and convicted of taking part in the plot.
By the time Coulibaly was released in March 2014, the officials who run France’s prison system realized they had a big problem. In May, Paris’ top prison administrators wrote a letter to the government raising the alarm about the growing influence of radicals inside their walls, according to the 2015 audit.
The letter, the audit said, described the prisons as being “on the verge of a breakdown.”
In one facility, the audit said, a dozen prisoners jailed on suspicion of terrorism had managed to attract a following of 20 other inmates with no history of radicalization. During a cell search, authorities found an Islamic State headband along with a map of the Paris region railways network, according to the audit.
Some women visiting the prison, the audit said, were under pressure to change out of their jeans and T-shirts into hijabs—a scarf that covers the head and torso—before meeting inmates. Women who refused were insulted by prisoners and ordered to cover up.
In the fall of 2014, the warden of Fresnes, one of France’s oldest prisons, decided to shake things up. Stéphane Scotto rounded up 22 radical inmates and transferred them to a single floor.
The group was singled out, he said, because they had begun “dictating their own rules inside the prison, forbidding inmates from talking to women, taking showers naked or listening to music.” One inmate had posters and photos in his cell torn down by the group, Mr. Scotto recalled, adding: “I could no longer allow that,” he said.
The push for a revamp was too late to prevent the next attack.
In January 2015, Coulibaly gunned down a police officer in the street and four shoppers in a kosher grocery before being killed in a police raid.
Across Paris, televisions inside Fresnes prison broadcast news of Coulibaly’s attacks to the inmates. At the time, Mr. Sy was inside Fresnes, awaiting trial for drug dealing. His prison cell, he recalled, was right above the unit Mr. Scotto had created for radicals. The group was ecstatic about Mr. Coulibaly’s bloody exploit.
“They all shouted Allahu akbar,” Mr. Sy recalled. “I could hear them preaching to other inmates through the window.”
In a video filmed before his death, Coulibaly pledged allegiance to Islamic State and calmly explained that he had coordinated attacks with Chérif Kouachi, whom he had also met inside Fleury-Mérogis prison. Days earlier Kouachi and his brother Said had killed a dozen people during an attack on the newsroom of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo.
The bloodshed persuaded the government the prison system was in need of retooling. It launched a pilot project designed to create criteria for identifying radical inmates and finding a way to rehabilitate them.
The two-month program worked with inmates who volunteered to meet with social workers, sociologists, former inmates and terrorism victims.
“The idea was to create a dialogue,” says Ouisa Kies, a Paris-based sociologist who ran the program.
While Ms. Kies was conducting her research, Salah Abdeslam was allegedly at work shepherding radicals across Europe to stage a terrorist attack that would rank as the bloodiest in French history.
When the group struck—killing 130 people at the Bataclan concert hall and in restaurants and bars across Paris’ nightlife district—Mr. Abdeslam slipped away, allegedly ditching his explosive suicide vest.
The government accelerated its plans to overhaul the prison system, announcing plans to set up anti-radicalization units in four prisons, including Fleury-Mérogis and Fresnes. Prison staff was tasked with identifying inmates for the unit.
As of May, about 10 inmates had been transferred to a floor in Fleury-Mérogis dedicated to holding 40 radicals.
The new units are expected to hold a wide spectrum of radicals, ranging from Islamic State recruiters to the hundreds of French nationals jailed after returning home from Syria to people imprisoned for simply speaking out in support of terrorists.
“We are creating the best conditions for the worst to happen,” said the former antiterror official who is critical of the program.
One inmate slated for the radicals unit at Fleury-Mérogis is Karim Mohamed Aggad, the older brother of a suicide bomber who attacked the Bataclan.
Mr. Mohamed Aggad has denied playing any role in the November attacks.
“I’ll go to the unit. Like a laboratory rat,” Mr. Mohamed Aggad told a court in June. He was sentenced to nine years in jail on July 6 on terrorist association charges for traveling to Syria in December 2013 with his younger brother and joining Islamic State. His lawyer Francoise Cotta said her client didn’t get a fair trial and that judges were “guided by fear” rather than reason in their ruling. She plans to appeal the ruling.
Under questioning from police, Mr. Mohamed Aggad recounted how he and his brother filled out an Islamic State form shortly after their arrival in Syria, specifying whether they planned to fight in the Syrian civil war or become a suicide bomber, according to court documents.
“We chose to fight,” Mr. Mohamed Aggad told police.
Mr. Mohamed Aggad told police he became disillusioned with the war and returned to France in April 2014, leaving his brother behind.
After his arrest, he was sent to Fleury-Mérogis, where he received a visit from his mother.
“What are they going to do?” Mr. Mohamed Aggad asked her, according to court documents. “Open my skull and take the radical part out of my brain?”
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Must read. Chiling.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/04/world/middleeast/isis-german-recruit-interview.html?_r=0
New York Times
How a Secretive Branch of ISIS
Built a Global Network of Killers
A jailhouse interview with a German man who joined
the Islamic State reveals the workings of a unit whose
lieutenants are empowered to plan attacks around the world.
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHIAUG. 3, 2016
BREMEN, Germany — Believing he was answering a holy call, Harry Sarfo left his home in the working-class city of Bremen last year and drove for four straight days to reach the territory controlled by the Islamic State in Syria.
He barely had time to settle in before members of the Islamic State’s secret service, wearing masks over their faces, came to inform him and his German friend that they no longer wanted Europeans to come to Syria. Where they were really needed was back home, to help carry out the group’s plan of waging terrorism across the globe.
“He was speaking openly about the situation, saying that they have loads of people living in European countries and waiting for commands to attack the European people,” Mr. Sarfo recounted on Monday, in an interview with The New York Times conducted in English inside the maximum-security prison near Bremen. “And that was before the Brussels attacks, before the Paris attacks.”
The masked man explained that, although the group was well set up in some European countries, it needed more attackers in Germany and Britain, in particular. “They said, ‘Would you mind to go back to Germany, because that’s what we need at the moment,’” Mr. Sarfo recalled. “And they always said they wanted to have something that is occurring in the same time: They want to have loads of attacks at the same time in England and Germany and France.”
THE ISIS CONFLICT By ANDREW GLAZER, RUKMINI CALLIMACHI and BEN LAFFIN
In this rare jailhouse interview, a former ISIS member from Germany tells his story and provides new insight into the militant group’s plot to attack Western countries.
Publish Date August 3, 2016.
The operatives belonged to an intelligence unit of the Islamic State known in Arabic as the Emni, which has become a combination of an internal police force and an external operations branch, dedicated to exporting terror abroad, according to thousands of pages of French, Belgian, German and Austrian intelligence and interrogation documents obtained by The Times.
The Islamic State’s attacks in Paris on Nov. 13 brought global attention to the group’s external terrorism network, which began sending fighters abroad two years ago. Now, Mr. Sarfo’s account, along with those of other captured recruits, has further pulled back the curtain on the group’s machinery for projecting violence beyond its borders.
What they describe is a multilevel secret service under the overall command of the Islamic State’s most senior Syrian operative, spokesman and propaganda chief, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani. Below him is a tier of lieutenants empowered to plan attacks in different regions of the world, including a “secret service for European affairs,” a “secret service for Asian affairs” and a “secret service for Arab affairs,” according to Mr. Sarfo.
Reinforcing the idea that the Emni is a core part of the Islamic State’s operations, the interviews and documents indicate that the unit has carte blanche to recruit and reroute operatives from all parts of the organization — from new arrivals to seasoned battlefield fighters, and from the group’s special forces and its elite commando units. Taken together, the interrogation records show that operatives are selected by nationality and grouped by language into small, discrete units whose members sometimes only meet one another on the eve of their departure abroad.
And through the coordinating role played by Mr. Adnani, terror planning has gone hand-in-hand with the group’s extensive propaganda operations — including, Mr. Sarfo claimed, monthly meetings in which Mr. Adnani chose which grisly videos to promote based on battlefield events.
Based on the accounts of operatives arrested so far, the Emni has become the crucial cog in the group’s terrorism machinery, and its trainees led the Paris attacks and built the suitcase bombs used in a Brussels airport terminal and subway station. Investigation records show that its foot soldiers have also been sent to Austria, Germany, Spain, Lebanon, Tunisia, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia.
With European officials stretched by a string of assaults by seemingly unconnected attackers who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, Mr. Sarfo suggested that there may be more of a link than the authorities yet know. He said he was told that undercover operatives in Europe used new converts as go-betweens, or “clean men,” who help link up people interested in carrying out attacks with operatives who can pass on instructions on everything from how to make a suicide vest to how to credit their violence to the Islamic State.
The group has sent “hundreds of operatives” back to the European Union, with “hundreds more in Turkey alone,” according to a senior United States intelligence official and a senior American defense official, both of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence.
Mr. Sarfo, who was recently moved out of solitary confinement at his German prison because he is no longer considered violent, agrees with that assessment. “Many of them have returned,” he said. “Hundreds, definitely.”
The first port of call for new arrivals to the Islamic State is a network of dormitories in Syria, just across the border from Turkey. There, recruits are interviewed and inventoried.
Mr. Sarfo was fingerprinted, and a doctor came to draw a blood sample and perform a physical examination. A man with a laptop conducted an intake interview. “He was asking normal questions like: ‘What’s your name? What’s your second name? Who’s your mom? Where’s your mom originally from? What did you study? What degree do you have? What’s your ambition? What do you want to become?’” Mr. Sarfo said.
His background was also of interest. He was a regular at a radical mosque in Bremen that had already sent about 20 members to Syria, at least four of whom were killed in battle, according to Daniel Heinke, the German Interior Ministry’s counterterrorism coordinator for the area. And he had served a one-year prison sentence for breaking into a supermarket safe and stealing 23,000 euros. Even though the punishment for theft in areas under Islamic State control is amputation, a criminal past can be a valued asset, Mr. Sarfo said, “especially if they know you have ties to organized crime and they know you can get fake IDs, or they know you have contact men in Europe who can smuggle you into the European Union.”
The bureaucratic nature of the intake procedure was recently confirmed by American officials after USB drives were recovered in the recently liberated Syrian city of Manbij, one of the hubs for processing foreign fighters.
Mr. Sarfo checked all the necessary boxes, and on the third day after his arrival, the members of the Emni came to ask for him. He wanted to fight in Syria and Iraq, but the masked operatives explained that they had a vexing problem.
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“They told me that there aren’t many people in Germany who are willing to do the job,” Mr. Sarfo said soon after his arrest last year, according to the transcript of his interrogation by German officials, which runs more than 500 pages. “They said they had some in the beginning. But one after another, you could say, they chickened out, because they got scared — cold feet. Same in England.”
By contrast, the group had more than enough volunteers for France. “My friend asked them about France,” Mr. Sarfo said. “And they started laughing. But really serious laughing, with tears in their eyes. They said, ‘Don’t worry about France.’ ‘Mafi mushkilah’ — in Arabic, it means ‘no problem.’” That conversation took place in April 2015, seven months before the coordinated killings in Paris in November, the worst terrorist attack in Europe in over a decade.
While some details of Mr. Sarfo’s account cannot be verified, his statements track with what other recruits related in their interrogations. And both prison officials and the German intelligence agents who debriefed Mr. Sarfo after his arrest said they found him credible.
Since the rise of the Islamic State over two years ago, intelligence agencies have been collecting nuggets on the Emni. Originally, the unit was tasked with policing the Islamic State’s members, including conducting interrogations and ferreting out spies, according to interrogation records and analysts. But French members arrested in 2014 and 2015 explained that the Emni had taken on a new portfolio: projecting terror abroad.
“It’s the Emni that ensures the internal security inside Dawla” — the Arabic word for state — “and oversees external security by sending abroad people they recruited, or else sending individuals to carry out violent acts, like what happened in Tunisia inside the museum in Tunis, or else the aborted plot in Belgium,” said Nicolas Moreau, 32, a French citizen who was arrested last year after leaving the Islamic State in Syria, according to his statement to France’s domestic intelligence agency.
Mr. Moreau explained that he had run a restaurant in Raqqa, Syria, the de facto capital of the group’s territory, where he had served meals to key members of the Emni — including Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the on-the-ground commander of the Paris attacks, who was killed in a standoff with the police days later.
Other interrogations, as well as Mr. Sarfo’s account, have led investigators to conclude that the Emni also trained and dispatched the gunman who opened fire on a beach in Sousse, Tunisia, in June, and the man who prepared the Brussels airport bombs.
Records from French, Austrian and Belgian intelligence agencies show that at least 28 operatives recruited by the Emni succeeded in deploying to countries outside of the Islamic State’s core territory, mounting both successful attacks and plots that were foiled. Officials say that dozens of other operatives have slipped through and formed sleeper cells.
In his own interactions with the Emni, Mr. Sarfo realized that they were preparing a global portfolio of terrorists and looking to fill holes in their international network, he said.
He described what he had been told about the group’s work to build an infrastructure in Bangladesh. There, a siege by a team of Islamic State gunmen left at least 20 hostages dead at a cafe last month, almost all of them foreigners.
Mr. Sarfo said that for Asian recruits, the group was looking specifically for militants who had emerged from Al Qaeda’s network in the region. “People especially from Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia — they have people who used to work for Al Qaeda, and once they joined the Islamic State, they are asking them questions about their experiences and if they have contacts,” he said.
In his briefings with the German authorities, and again in the interview this week, Mr. Sarfo raised the possibility that some of the recent attackers in Europe who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State’s leader during their assaults might have a more direct link to the group than officials believe.
Mr. Sarfo explained that the Emni keeps many of its operatives underground in Europe. They act as nodes that can remotely activate potential suicide attackers who have been drawn in by propaganda. Linking them are what Mr. Sarfo called “clean men,” new converts to Islam with no established ties to radical groups.
“These people are not in direct contact with these guys who are doing the attacks, because they know if these people start talking, they will get caught,” he said of the underground operatives.
“They mostly use people who are new Muslims, who are converts,” he said. Those “clean” converts “get in contact with the people, and they give them the message.” And in the case of some videotaped pledges of allegiance, the go-between can then send the video on to the handler in Europe, who uploads it for use by the Islamic State’s propaganda channels.
The intelligence documents and Mr. Sarfo agree that the Islamic State has made the most of its recruits’ nationalities by sending them back to plot attacks at home. Yet one important region where the Emni is not thought to have succeeded in sending trained attackers is North America, Mr. Sarfo said, recalling what the members of the branch told him.
Though dozens of Americans have become members of the Islamic State, and some have been recruited into the external operations wing, “they know it’s hard for them to get Americans into America” once they have traveled to Syria, he said.
“For America and Canada, it’s much easier for them to get them over the social network, because they say the Americans are dumb — they have open gun policies,” he said. “They say we can radicalize them easily, and if they have no prior record, they can buy guns, so we don’t need to have no contact man who has to provide guns for them.”
Tanks captured by Kurdish militias in Syria last year. The Arabic writing identifies them as belonging to Jaysh al-Khalifa, or the Army of the Caliphate, an elite Islamic State unit. Credit Mauricio Lima for The New York Times
Training Days
Since late 2014, the Islamic State has instructed foreigners joining the group to make their trip look like a holiday in southern Turkey, including booking a return flight and paying for an all-inclusive vacation at a beach resort, from which smugglers arrange their transport into Syria, according to intelligence documents and Mr. Sarfo’s account.
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That cover story creates pressure to keep things moving quickly during the recruits’ training in Syria, and most get a bare minimum — just a few days of basic weapons practice, in some instances.
“When they go back to France or in Germany, they can say, ‘I was only on holidays in Turkey,’” Mr. Sarfo said. “The longer they stay in the Islamic State, the more suspicious the secret service in the West gets, and that’s why they try to do the training as quickly as possible.”
Mr. Sarfo’s facility in both German and English — he studied construction at Newham College in East London — made him attractive as a potential attacker. Though the Emni approached him several times to ask him to return to Germany, he demurred, he said.
Eventually, Mr. Sarfo, perhaps because of his burly build — 6-foot-1 and around 286 pounds when he arrived in Syria, though he has lost weight since then — was drafted into the Islamic State’s quwat khas, Arabic for special forces.
The unit only admitted single men who agreed not to marry during the duration of their training. In addition to providing the offensive force to infiltrate cities during battles, it was one of several elite units that became recruiting pools for the external operations branch, Mr. Sarfo said.
Along with his German friend, he was driven to the desert outside Raqqa.
“They dropped us off in the middle of nowhere and told us, ‘We are here,’” he said, according to the transcript of one of his interrogation sessions. “So we’re standing in the desert and thought to ourselves, ‘What’s going on?’” When the two Germans looked more closely, they realized there were cavelike dwellings around them. Everything above ground was painted with mud so as to be invisible to drones.
“Showering was prohibited. Eating was prohibited, too, unless they gave it to you,” Mr. Sarfo said, adding that he had shared a cave with five or six others. Even drinking water was harshly rationed. “Each dwelling received two cups of water a day, put on the doorstep,” he said. “And the purpose of this was to test us, see who really wants it, who’s firm.”
The grueling training began: hours of running, jumping, push-ups, parallel bars, crawling. The recruits began fainting.
By the second week, they were each given a Kalashnikov assault rifle and told to sleep with it between their legs until it became “like a third arm,” he said, according to his interrogation transcript.
The punishment for failing to keep up was harsh. “There was one boy who refused to get up, because he was just too exhausted,” Mr. Sarfo told the authorities. “So they tied him to a pole with his legs and his arms and left him there.”
He learned that the special forces program involved 10 levels of training. After he graduated to Level 2, he was moved to an island on a river in Tabqa, Syria. The recruits’ sleeping spots now consisted of holes in the ground, covered by sticks and twigs. They practiced swimming, scuba diving and navigating by the stars.
Throughout his training, Mr. Sarfo rubbed shoulders with an international cadre of recruits. When he first arrived at the desert campus, he ran laps alongside Moroccans, Egyptians, at least one Indonesian, a Canadian and a Belgian. And out on the island, he learned of similar special units, including one called Jaysh al-Khalifa, or the Army of the Caliphate.
A 12-page criminal complaint indicates that the Islamic State tried to recruit at least one American into that unit, but he declined to enroll.
The man, Mohamad Jamal Khweis, a 26-year-old from Alexandria, Va., traveled to Syria in December, only to be captured by Kurdish troops in Iraq in March. In his debriefing with the F.B.I., he explained that early on, he was approached by members of the unit. “During his stay at this safe house, representatives from Jaysh Khalifa, a group described by the defendant as an ‘offensive group,’ visited the new ISIL recruits,” the complaint says. “The representatives explained that their group was responsible for accepting volunteers from foreign countries who would be trained and sent back to their countries to conduct operations and execute attacks on behalf of ISIL. The group’s requirements, among other things, were that recruits had to be single, would train in remote locations, must be free of any injuries and had to stay reclusive when returning to their home countries.”
Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the Islamic State’s spokesman, also commands a unit called the Emni, which has become both an internal policing force and an external operations branch.
The Big Man
As he progressed through the special forces training, Mr. Sarfo became closer with the emir of the camp, a Moroccan, who began to divulge details about how the Islamic State’s external operations effort was structured, he said. Mr. Sarfo learned that there was one outsize figure behind the group’s strategies and ambitions. “The big man behind everything is Abu Muhammad al-Adnani,” he said.
“He is the head of the Emni, and he is the head of the special forces as well,” Mr. Sarfo added. “Everything goes back to him.”
Born in the town of Binnish in northern Syria, Mr. Adnani is said to be 39, and is the subject of a $5 million bounty from the State Department’s Rewards for Justice program. But details about his life remain a mystery. There are very few available photos of him, and the one used on the State Department’s website is years old.
Mr. Sarfo explained that when recruits to the special forces finished all 10 levels of training, they were blindfolded and driven to meet Mr. Adnani, where they pledged allegiance to him directly. Mr. Sarfo was told that the blindfolds stayed on the whole time, so that even Mr. Adnani’s best-trained fighters never know what he looks like.
To the world, Mr. Adnani is better known as the official spokesman of the Islamic State, and the man who put out a global call this year for Muslims to attack unbelievers wherever they were, however they could.
“Adnani is much more than just the mouthpiece of this group,” said Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington who tracks the group’s leadership. “He is heavily involved in external operations. He is sort of the administrative ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ at the top of the pyramid,” who signs off on attack plans, the details of which are handled by his subordinates.
During his time in Syria, Mr. Sarfo was contacted by other German fighters who wanted him to be an actor in a propaganda film aimed at German speakers. They drove to Palmyra, and Mr. Sarfo was told to hold the group’s black flag and to walk again and again in front of the camera as they filmed repeated takes. Syrian captives were forced to kneel, and the other German fighters shot them, showing an interest only in the cinematic effect.
One turned to Mr. Sarfo immediately after killing a victim and asked: “How did I look like? Did I look good, the way I executed?”
Mr. Sarfo said he had learned that videos like the one he acted in were vetted by Mr. Adnani himself in a monthly meeting of senior operatives.
“There’s a vetting procedure,” he said. “Once a month they have a shura — which is a sitting, a meeting — where all the videos and everything that is important, they start speaking about it. And Abu Muhammad al-Adnani is the head of the shura.”
Mr. Sarfo said he had started doubting his allegiance to ISIS during his training, after seeing how cruelly they treated those who could not keep up. Making the propaganda video provided his final disillusionment when he saw how many times they recorded each scene in the five-minute film. Back in Germany, when he had been inspired by similar videos, he had always assumed they were real, not staged.
He began plotting his escape, which took weeks and involved sprinting and crawling in a field of mud before crossing into Turkey. He was arrested at Bremen Airport, where he landed on July 20, 2015, and he voluntarily confessed. He is now serving a three-year term on terrorism charges.
Among the Islamic State’s innovations is the role of foreigners, especially Europeans, in the planning of attacks.
Mr. Sarfo’s account agrees with investigation documents and the assessments of terrorism experts, who say that French and Belgian citizens like Mr. Abaaoud are more than just operatives and have been given managing roles.
“It’s a creative and interesting operational road map, to be able to lean on someone like Abaaoud, who has his own network abroad,” said Jean-Charles Brisard, chairman of the Center for the Analysis of Terrorism in Paris. “They gave him the autonomy regarding tactics and strategy, even if the operation as a whole still needs a green light from the Islamic State’s leadership.”
Looking at the current leaders of the Emni, investigators have homed in on two in particular. They go by the aliases Abu Souleymane, a French citizen, and Abu Ahmad, described as Syrian. Both are considered top lieutenants of Mr. Adnani, according to the senior American defense official and senior intelligence official.
The two men play a direct role in identifying fighters to be sent overseas, in choosing targets and in organizing logistics for operatives, including paying for smugglers to get them to Europe and, in at least one case, sending Western Union transfers, according to European intelligence documents.
A glimpse into the possible role of Abu Souleymane came from one of the hostages held by suicide bombers inside the Bataclan concert hall in Paris in November.
After gunning down dozens of concertgoers, two of the suicide bombers retreated into a hallway with a group of hostages, forcing them to sit against the windows as human shields, said the hostage, David Fritz-Goeppinger, 24. In the two-and-a-half-hour standoff that ensued, Mr. Fritz heard one of the bombers ask the other, “Should we call Souleymane?”
The second operative appeared annoyed that the first had asked the question in French, and ordered him to switch to Arabic.
“I immediately understood that, yes, this was the individual, maybe not the individual who had organized the attack, but who held a place in the hierarchy above them,” Mr. Fritz said in a telephone interview. His testimony is also included in a detailed, 51-page report by France’s antiterrorism police. “They were absolutely, like soldiers,” awaiting orders, he said.
Souleymane, whose full nom de guerre is Abu Souleymane al-Faransi, or Abu Souleymane the Frenchman, is believed to be a French national in his 30s who is of either Moroccan or Tunisian ancestry, according to Ludovico Carlino, a senior analyst with IHS Conflict Monitor in London. Mr. Carlino says he believes that Souleymane was promoted to be the top terrorism planner for Europe after Mr. Abaaoud’s death.
A snapshot of the other senior leader, Abu Ahmad, appears in the account of a man who investigators have concluded was supposed to be part of the team of Paris attackers: an Algerian named Adel Haddadi. Mr. Haddadi said he and another member of the team, a former Lashkar-e-Taiba member from Pakistan named Muhammad Usman, were separated from two other attackers after they reached Greece by boat.
Mr. Haddadi, 28, and Mr. Usman, 22, were eventually arrested in a migrant camp in Salzburg, Austria. The two men sent alongside them became the first suicide bombers to detonate their vests outside the Stade de France during the November attacks.
After arriving in Syria and being routed to the international dormitory there in February 2015, Mr. Haddadi worked as a cook in Raqqa for months before a member of the Emni came to see him, according to French and Austrian investigation documents.
“One day, a Syrian came into the kitchen to see me and said that someone called Abu Ahmad wanted to see me,” Mr. Haddadi was quoted as saying in the Austrian record of his interrogation. He was driven to a five-story building, where another Syrian holding a walkie talkie radioed Abu Ahmad. They waited for hours before the Syrian got orders to drive the recruit to the next location. In the street, a Saudi man wearing all white was waiting, and asked Mr. Haddadi to go on a walk.
After 300 yards, they reached an empty apartment building and sat down. “I was scared, I wanted to leave, but he talked the whole time,” Mr. Haddadi told the authorities.
“He said only positive things about me, that Daesh trusted me and that I now needed to prove myself worthy of that trust. He said that Daesh was going to send me to France,” Mr. Haddadi added, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State. “The details, he said, I would get them once I arrived in France.”
Sometime after that, Abu Ahmad arrived. Mr. Haddadi described him as a Syrian man between 38 and 42 years old, slim with a long, black beard, and dressed all in black. He was, Mr. Haddadi said, “the giver of orders.”
Abu Ahmad brought Mr. Haddadi together with three other potential attackers, with the last man, Mr. Usman, being introduced just a day before they all set out for Europe. Mr. Haddadi and two of the other men were native Arabic speakers, and Mr. Usman spoke enough Arabic to communicate with them, the interrogation documents said.
The day of their departure, Abu Ahmad came and gave them his Turkish cellphone number, instructing them to store it in their phone as “FF,” to avoid registering a name. He gave Mr. Haddadi $2,000 in $100 bills, and they were driven to the Turkish border. A man met them in Turkey to take their photographs, and returned with Syrian passports. Another smuggler arranged their Oct. 3 boat trip to Leros, Greece.
All of these logistical steps, as well as Western Union money transfers, were organized by Abu Ahmad, one of the senior lieutenants running the Islamic State’s efforts to export terror. Until his arrest in December, Mr. Haddadi remained in touch with Abu Ahmad through messages on Telegram and via text messages to his Turkish number, according to the investigation record.
Abu Ahmad’s Turkish number was found somewhere else, too: written on a slip of paper in the pants pocket of the severed leg of one of the suicide bombers at the Stade de France.
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Such nice, law abiding people too.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8619/sweden-asylum-seekers-violence
30,000 people whose asylum application had been rejected and were scheduled for deportation, had gone missing. The police say they lack the resources to track down these illegals. Three Somali men in their 20s, who took turns raping a 14-year-old girl, received very lenient sentences -- and all three avoided deportation. On June 7, it was reported that British citizen Grace "Khadija" Dare had brought her 4-year-old son, Isa Dare, to live in Sweden, in order to benefit from free health care. ** In February, the boy was featured in an ISIS video, blowing up four prisoners in a car. The boy's father, a jihadist with Swedish citizenship, was killed fighting for ISIS.
** I recall that our moderator/host some years ago didn't understand why I posted a video of a violent Muslim riot in Malmo Sweden in the healthcare thread. I feel vindicated. If you're going to join a global revolution to invade sovereign countries and destroy them, might as well go to where they have the most generous benefits, Sweden, Minnesota, etc. They aren't coming for the weather...
June 1: The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brå), released a report which showed that 11,007 people have been sentenced to deportation after being convicted of crimes. There is no record that any were deported.
MUCH more at the link.
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Point scored :-)
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http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/belgium-police-stabbing-female-officer-8574786
"Allah akbar!" Which of course means "Nothing to do with islam".
Nothing to see here, move along.
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Know that RT is a Russian source.
http://pamelageller.com/2016/08/isis-cells-germany-migrants.html/
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http://www.thelocal.se/20160816/cars-burn-across-sweden-as-arsonists-roam-free
I wonder who it could be?
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http://www.patdollard.com/muslim-london-mayor-sets-up-task-force-to-jail-those-who-annoy-muslims-online/
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German news agency dpa quotes Merkel as saying that "Islamist terrorism by IS isn't a phenomenon that came to us with the refugees, it's one that we had before too."
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/08/18/world/europe/ap-eu-germany-merkel.html?_r=0
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/08/chancellor_merkel_no_link_between_terrorism_and_refugees.html#ixzz4Hn50t6Ni
Right, but Ms. Merkel, you made it worse, you made it worse by a million ('finding a needle in a stack of needles'), and you made it unsolvable, irreversible.
Might as well deny it...
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Lung cancer existed before I smoked two packs a day...
German news agency dpa quotes Merkel as saying that "Islamist terrorism by IS isn't a phenomenon that came to us with the refugees, it's one that we had before too."
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/08/18/world/europe/ap-eu-germany-merkel.html?_r=0
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/08/chancellor_merkel_no_link_between_terrorism_and_refugees.html#ixzz4Hn50t6Ni
Right, but Ms. Merkel, you made it worse, you made it worse by a million ('finding a needle in a stack of needles'), and you made it unsolvable, irreversible.
Might as well deny it...
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I think Merkel , the Clintons, the Obamas, some of the socialists from Europe and throw in a couple of illegals from Europe, Asia, Africa, South and Central America, and why not from Australia and Antarctica all in one giant home together against there will on an island in the middle of the Pacific. Any one for Pitcairn island?
Ah what a beautiful loving family they would all make . It takes a village. Heavy on the sarcasm. :wink:
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http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/541889/cop-stab-street-Toulouse-France-isis
Amazing how common violent mental illness is in Europe now.
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With The Terror Threat Growing, Europe Changes Course
by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
August 31, 2016
http://www.investigativeproject.org/5617/with-the-terror-threat-growing-europe-changes
Sixteen years ago, when Dutch commentator Paul Scheffer published his "Multicultural Drama" declaring that multiculturalism in the Netherlands had failed, the response was swift and angry. Critics across Europe called him racist, bigoted, nationalistic. Others dismissed his views as mere rants and ramblings of a Leftist in search of a cause.
Not anymore.
With over 275 people killed in 10 Islamic terrorist attacks since January 2015, Europeans harbor no more illusions about the multiculturalist vision: where immigrants from Muslim countries are concerned, that idealist vision has more than just failed. It has produced a culture of hatred, fear, and unrelenting danger. Now, with European Muslim youth radicalizing at an unprecedented rate and the threat of new terrorist attacks, Europe is reassessing its handling of Muslim communities and its counterterrorism strategies and laws.
Among the changes being considered are a reversal of laws that allow radical Muslims to receive handouts from the very governments they seek to destroy; restricting foreign funding of mosques; and stronger surveillance on private citizens.
Chief among the new counterterrorism approaches is a program to coordinate intelligence data among European Union countries – a tactic that has not been pursued with any regularity or such depth before now. But following the November attacks in Paris, the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD initiated weekly meetings among intel agencies from all EU countries, Switzerland, and Norway, with the objective of sharing information, exchanging new clues, insights, and suspect alerts, and discussing improvements to a Europe-wide system of counterterrorism and intelligence.
Through these meetings and the improved shared database, it is now possible for each country to contextualize its intelligence and understand links between individuals and various groups from one city to another – and so, between radicals and radical groups as they pass through a borderless EU.
Concurrently, EU members are now beginning to share information about web sites and even details about private citizens where needed. Most countries had been reluctant to make such exchanges, citing both privacy concerns and the need to protect their sources. Other cooperative efforts include an EU initiative begun in February 2015 to counteract Islamic extremist propaganda. The project received a major €400 million boost in June, indicating the high priority Europe now places on fighting recruitment.
Earlier this month, Europol began a new effort to screen refugees still awaiting placement in Greek asylum centers. According to a report from Europa Nu, an initiative between the European parliament and the University of Leiden, Europol agents "specifically trained to unmask and dismantle terrorists and terror networks" will be dispatched to the camps to try to prevent terrorists from infiltrating the flood of refugees to Europe.
Some EU measures, however, have been based more in politics than counterterrorism, including efforts to crack down on the ability of radical Muslims to benefit from welfare programs. British citizens, for instance, reacted with outrage when it was discovered that the family of "Jihadi John" had received over £400,000 in taxpayer support over the course of 20 years. In Belgium, Salah Abdeslam, the terrorist accused of participating in the Nov. 13 Paris attacks, pulled in nearly €19,000 in welfare benefits from January 2014 and October 2015, according to Elsevier. And Gatestone reports that more than 30 Danish jihadists received a total of €51,000 in unemployment benefits all while battling alongside the Islamic State in Syria.
Such concerns have also spread to the United States. Earlier this year, U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin, R-Maine, introduced the "No Welfare For Terrorists Act."
"Terrorist victims and their families should never be forced to fund those who harmed them," he said in a statement. "This bill guarantees this will never happen."
But not all of Europe's new approaches to the terror threat are being coordinated out of Brussels. Many more, in fact, are country-specific, such as England's decision to follow an example set earlier by the Netherlands and Spain, separating jailed terrorists and terror suspects from other prisoners. The measures follow others the country adopted after the July 7, 2005 bombings of a London underground and buses, to criminalize "those who glorify terrorism, those involved in acts preparatory to terrorism, and those who advocate it without being directly involved," the New York Times reported.
In fact, prisons worldwide, including in the U.S., have long been viewed as warm breeding grounds for radicals and potential terrorists. Ahmed Coulibaly, the gunman at the Porte de Vincennes siege in January 2015, was serving time for a bank robbery, for instance, when he met Cherif Koauachi, one of the Charlie Hebdo attackers. Both converted to Islam there. It was in that same prison that the two encountered Djamel Beghal, an al-Qaida operative who attempted to blow up the American Embassy in Paris in 2001.
Hence many experts now argue in favor of isolating those held on terrorism-related charges as a way to stop them from radicalizing their fellow inmates.
Yet British officials have until now resisted creating separate wings for terror suspects, arguing that doing so gives them "credibility" and makes it harder to rehabilitate them. But a recent government report on Islamist extremism in British prisons forced a change in thinking, in part by noting that "other prisoners – both Muslim and non-Muslim – serving sentences for crimes unrelated to terrorism are nonetheless vulnerable to radicalization by Islamist Extremists [sic]."
Similarly, France, the site of the worst attacks of the past two years, also balked at first at the idea of separating terrorists from other prisoners, arguing that doing so "forms a terrorist cell within a prison." But the Charlie Hebdo attacks of January 2015 changed all that. Now, officials are even going further, looking at other potential sources of radicalization: the mosques.
Shortly after the Bastille Day attack in Nice, Prime Minister Manuel Valls announced plans to ban foreign financing for French mosques as part of an effort to establish a "French Islam," led by imams trained only in France. France hosts dozens of foreign-financed mosques – many sponsored by Saudi Arabia and Morocco – which preach Salafism, an extreme version of Islam practiced in the Saudi Kingdom and the root of much radical Islamist ideology. And according to a new report on counter-radicalization, about 300 imams come from outside France.
That same report also calls for "regular surveys" of France's 4-5 million Muslims, according to France 24, in order "to acquire a better understanding of this population in a country where statistics based on religious, ethnic, or racial criteria are banned."
Both proposed measures have been met with resistance. The "surveys," as even the report itself notes, are a means of circumventing laws against gathering information on the basis of religious criteria – and so, go against democratic principles. And many French officials also oppose the ban on foreign funding for mosques, arguing that French government intervention in places of worship contradicts separation between church and state. Besides, they claim, radicalization doesn't take place there anyway.
But Dutch authorities and counter-extremism experts are not so sure. The announcement earlier this month that Qatar would finance an Islamic center in Rotterdam, for instance, set off alarms even among Muslim moderates, including Rotterdam's Moroccan-born mayor Ahmed Marcouch. There are good reasons for this. The Salafist Eid Charity, which sponsors the project, has been on Israel's terror list since 2008, according to Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad. Moreover, in 2013 the U.S. Treasury Department accused the charity's founder, Abd al-Rahman al-Nu'aymi, of providing funding for al-Qaida and its affiliates, and named him a "specially designated global terrorist."
Plans for the center sound much like those of the now-abandoned plans for New York's "Ground Zero mosque," with sports facilities, prayer space, tutoring for students, Islamic child care, and, reports Dutch newspaper Volkskrant, imam training.
Yet the center's prospective director, Arnoud van Doorn, a convert to Islam and former member of the far-right, anti-Islam political party PVV, insists that any fears about the project are unfounded. "Our organization has nothing to do with extremism," he told the NRC. "We want only to provide a positive contribution to Dutch society."
Notably, though, France's proposal to ban foreign mosque funding and the Qatari backing of the Rotterdam center point to some of the deepest roots of Europe's radical Islam problem, and, despite all the new initiatives now underway, the greatest challenges to ending it. When Muslim immigrants came to Europe in the 1970s, they carved prayer spaces wherever they could: the backs of community grocery stores, in restaurants and tea rooms. But these soon became too small to handle the growing Muslim population. Mosques – real mosques – would have to be built.
But by whom? The Muslim communities themselves were too poor. Western governments, wedded to the separation of church and state, could not subsidize them with taxpayer funds. And so the door was opened to foreign – mostly Saudi – investment, and the placement of Saudi-trained and Saudi-backed imams in European mosques. Europe had, in essence, rolled out the welcome mat for Salafism.
Now they want to roll it in again. But is it too late? Even as Western intelligence is now uniting to fight radical Islam, Islamic countries are pooling together in Europe to expand it. The result, as Manuel Valls told French daily Le Monde, is that, "What's at stake is the republic. And our shield is democracy."
Hence as the number attacks against Western targets increase, many Europeans are coming to understand that preserving the core of that democracy may mean disrupting some of the tenets on which it's built, like certain elements of privacy, for instance, and religious principles that violate the freedom that we stand for . It is, as it were, a matter of destroying even healthy trees to save the forest. But in this tug-of-war between the Islamic world's efforts to shape the West, and Western efforts to save itself, only our commitment to the very heart of our ideals will define who wins this fight.
Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New York and the Netherlands.
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File this under "too little, too late".
With The Terror Threat Growing, Europe Changes Course
by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
August 31, 2016
http://www.investigativeproject.org/5617/with-the-terror-threat-growing-europe-changes
Sixteen years ago, when Dutch commentator Paul Scheffer published his "Multicultural Drama" declaring that multiculturalism in the Netherlands had failed, the response was swift and angry. Critics across Europe called him racist, bigoted, nationalistic. Others dismissed his views as mere rants and ramblings of a Leftist in search of a cause.
Not anymore.
With over 275 people killed in 10 Islamic terrorist attacks since January 2015, Europeans harbor no more illusions about the multiculturalist vision: where immigrants from Muslim countries are concerned, that idealist vision has more than just failed. It has produced a culture of hatred, fear, and unrelenting danger. Now, with European Muslim youth radicalizing at an unprecedented rate and the threat of new terrorist attacks, Europe is reassessing its handling of Muslim communities and its counterterrorism strategies and laws.
Among the changes being considered are a reversal of laws that allow radical Muslims to receive handouts from the very governments they seek to destroy; restricting foreign funding of mosques; and stronger surveillance on private citizens.
Chief among the new counterterrorism approaches is a program to coordinate intelligence data among European Union countries – a tactic that has not been pursued with any regularity or such depth before now. But following the November attacks in Paris, the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD initiated weekly meetings among intel agencies from all EU countries, Switzerland, and Norway, with the objective of sharing information, exchanging new clues, insights, and suspect alerts, and discussing improvements to a Europe-wide system of counterterrorism and intelligence.
Through these meetings and the improved shared database, it is now possible for each country to contextualize its intelligence and understand links between individuals and various groups from one city to another – and so, between radicals and radical groups as they pass through a borderless EU.
Concurrently, EU members are now beginning to share information about web sites and even details about private citizens where needed. Most countries had been reluctant to make such exchanges, citing both privacy concerns and the need to protect their sources. Other cooperative efforts include an EU initiative begun in February 2015 to counteract Islamic extremist propaganda. The project received a major €400 million boost in June, indicating the high priority Europe now places on fighting recruitment.
Earlier this month, Europol began a new effort to screen refugees still awaiting placement in Greek asylum centers. According to a report from Europa Nu, an initiative between the European parliament and the University of Leiden, Europol agents "specifically trained to unmask and dismantle terrorists and terror networks" will be dispatched to the camps to try to prevent terrorists from infiltrating the flood of refugees to Europe.
Some EU measures, however, have been based more in politics than counterterrorism, including efforts to crack down on the ability of radical Muslims to benefit from welfare programs. British citizens, for instance, reacted with outrage when it was discovered that the family of "Jihadi John" had received over £400,000 in taxpayer support over the course of 20 years. In Belgium, Salah Abdeslam, the terrorist accused of participating in the Nov. 13 Paris attacks, pulled in nearly €19,000 in welfare benefits from January 2014 and October 2015, according to Elsevier. And Gatestone reports that more than 30 Danish jihadists received a total of €51,000 in unemployment benefits all while battling alongside the Islamic State in Syria.
Such concerns have also spread to the United States. Earlier this year, U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin, R-Maine, introduced the "No Welfare For Terrorists Act."
"Terrorist victims and their families should never be forced to fund those who harmed them," he said in a statement. "This bill guarantees this will never happen."
But not all of Europe's new approaches to the terror threat are being coordinated out of Brussels. Many more, in fact, are country-specific, such as England's decision to follow an example set earlier by the Netherlands and Spain, separating jailed terrorists and terror suspects from other prisoners. The measures follow others the country adopted after the July 7, 2005 bombings of a London underground and buses, to criminalize "those who glorify terrorism, those involved in acts preparatory to terrorism, and those who advocate it without being directly involved," the New York Times reported.
In fact, prisons worldwide, including in the U.S., have long been viewed as warm breeding grounds for radicals and potential terrorists. Ahmed Coulibaly, the gunman at the Porte de Vincennes siege in January 2015, was serving time for a bank robbery, for instance, when he met Cherif Koauachi, one of the Charlie Hebdo attackers. Both converted to Islam there. It was in that same prison that the two encountered Djamel Beghal, an al-Qaida operative who attempted to blow up the American Embassy in Paris in 2001.
Hence many experts now argue in favor of isolating those held on terrorism-related charges as a way to stop them from radicalizing their fellow inmates.
Yet British officials have until now resisted creating separate wings for terror suspects, arguing that doing so gives them "credibility" and makes it harder to rehabilitate them. But a recent government report on Islamist extremism in British prisons forced a change in thinking, in part by noting that "other prisoners – both Muslim and non-Muslim – serving sentences for crimes unrelated to terrorism are nonetheless vulnerable to radicalization by Islamist Extremists [sic]."
Similarly, France, the site of the worst attacks of the past two years, also balked at first at the idea of separating terrorists from other prisoners, arguing that doing so "forms a terrorist cell within a prison." But the Charlie Hebdo attacks of January 2015 changed all that. Now, officials are even going further, looking at other potential sources of radicalization: the mosques.
Shortly after the Bastille Day attack in Nice, Prime Minister Manuel Valls announced plans to ban foreign financing for French mosques as part of an effort to establish a "French Islam," led by imams trained only in France. France hosts dozens of foreign-financed mosques – many sponsored by Saudi Arabia and Morocco – which preach Salafism, an extreme version of Islam practiced in the Saudi Kingdom and the root of much radical Islamist ideology. And according to a new report on counter-radicalization, about 300 imams come from outside France.
That same report also calls for "regular surveys" of France's 4-5 million Muslims, according to France 24, in order "to acquire a better understanding of this population in a country where statistics based on religious, ethnic, or racial criteria are banned."
Both proposed measures have been met with resistance. The "surveys," as even the report itself notes, are a means of circumventing laws against gathering information on the basis of religious criteria – and so, go against democratic principles. And many French officials also oppose the ban on foreign funding for mosques, arguing that French government intervention in places of worship contradicts separation between church and state. Besides, they claim, radicalization doesn't take place there anyway.
But Dutch authorities and counter-extremism experts are not so sure. The announcement earlier this month that Qatar would finance an Islamic center in Rotterdam, for instance, set off alarms even among Muslim moderates, including Rotterdam's Moroccan-born mayor Ahmed Marcouch. There are good reasons for this. The Salafist Eid Charity, which sponsors the project, has been on Israel's terror list since 2008, according to Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad. Moreover, in 2013 the U.S. Treasury Department accused the charity's founder, Abd al-Rahman al-Nu'aymi, of providing funding for al-Qaida and its affiliates, and named him a "specially designated global terrorist."
Plans for the center sound much like those of the now-abandoned plans for New York's "Ground Zero mosque," with sports facilities, prayer space, tutoring for students, Islamic child care, and, reports Dutch newspaper Volkskrant, imam training.
Yet the center's prospective director, Arnoud van Doorn, a convert to Islam and former member of the far-right, anti-Islam political party PVV, insists that any fears about the project are unfounded. "Our organization has nothing to do with extremism," he told the NRC. "We want only to provide a positive contribution to Dutch society."
Notably, though, France's proposal to ban foreign mosque funding and the Qatari backing of the Rotterdam center point to some of the deepest roots of Europe's radical Islam problem, and, despite all the new initiatives now underway, the greatest challenges to ending it. When Muslim immigrants came to Europe in the 1970s, they carved prayer spaces wherever they could: the backs of community grocery stores, in restaurants and tea rooms. But these soon became too small to handle the growing Muslim population. Mosques – real mosques – would have to be built.
But by whom? The Muslim communities themselves were too poor. Western governments, wedded to the separation of church and state, could not subsidize them with taxpayer funds. And so the door was opened to foreign – mostly Saudi – investment, and the placement of Saudi-trained and Saudi-backed imams in European mosques. Europe had, in essence, rolled out the welcome mat for Salafism.
Now they want to roll it in again. But is it too late? Even as Western intelligence is now uniting to fight radical Islam, Islamic countries are pooling together in Europe to expand it. The result, as Manuel Valls told French daily Le Monde, is that, "What's at stake is the republic. And our shield is democracy."
Hence as the number attacks against Western targets increase, many Europeans are coming to understand that preserving the core of that democracy may mean disrupting some of the tenets on which it's built, like certain elements of privacy, for instance, and religious principles that violate the freedom that we stand for . It is, as it were, a matter of destroying even healthy trees to save the forest. But in this tug-of-war between the Islamic world's efforts to shape the West, and Western efforts to save itself, only our commitment to the very heart of our ideals will define who wins this fight.
Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New York and the Netherlands.
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http://dailycaller.com/2016/08/30/angela-merkel-on-refugee-crisis-germany-screwed-up-big-time/
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/03/world/europe/burkini-ban-muslim-women.html?emc=edit_th_20160904&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/03/world/europe/burkini-ban-muslim-women.html?emc=edit_th_20160904&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193
Perhaps they would be happier in a sharia compliant country. Plenty of those on the planet.
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https://www.jihadwatch.org/2016/09/hugh-fitzgerald-never-mind-about-50-million-frenchman-can-13000-chinese-be-wrong
Hugh Fitzgerald: Never Mind About 50 Million Frenchman – Can 13,000 Chinese Be Wrong?
September 5, 2016 10:54 am By Hugh Fitzgerald 91 Comments
Given the big demonstration in Paris on September 4, I’d like to come back to the same subject I posted about two weeks ago.
Chinese rally
“Thousands rally in Paris to protest crime targeting Chinese,” Reuters, September 4, 2016:
At least 13,000 people [the latest figures range from 15,000 to 50,000] attended a rally in Paris on Sunday to protest against what they say is a crime wave targeting the Chinese community in France, police said, after a Chinese textile designer died after being mugged last month.
Demonstrators waving French flags and sporting T-shirts printed with the slogans “Stop violence, muggings, insecurity” or “Equality for all, security for all” marched from the Place de Republique square to the Bastille in eastern Paris, asking for more police protection.
Chaoling Zhang, a 49-year-old textile designer, died last month after five days in a coma after being attacked in the northern Paris suburb of Aubervilliers by three men who stole his bag.
Members of Aubervilliers’ large Chinese community, home to many Chinese immigrants, said that the death of Chaolin Zhang was the latest in a string of targeted assaults.
At first it was just stealing bags, then it was stealing bags with violence, and now it’s stealing bags and killing. It could happen to anyone,” 31-year-old Wang Yunzhou told Reuters TV.
The people here are angry. We can’t feel relaxed in the street, and if we don’t even get a basic welcome in the police station people start to wonder,” he said, adding that he moved to France from Wenzhou in south east China twenty years ago.
Aubervilliers, which has a population of 77,500, is home to a large Chinese community connected to the garment trade. Some 600,000 ethnic Chinese people live in the country overall, including French citizens.
Last month, 27 Chinese tourists were robbed and their driver sprayed with tear gas as they boarded a bus that was to take them to Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport. The incident raised fears that Chinese tourists, important luxury spenders, would stop coming to Paris.
Tourist traffic in Paris has dropped significantly since attacks by Islamist militants last November, leading to sharp declines in sales for luxury goods makers but also for the capital’s retailers, hotels and restaurants.
Attacks on Chinese, Korean and Japanese tourists are also frequent in the French capital as robbers believe they carry large sums in cash and their suitcases are stuffed with luxury goods purchased in Paris, according to police.
In May, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo traveled to Beijing to reassure Chinese authorities that Paris – the most visited city in the world – had taken measures to beef up its security.
Now what is striking about this Reuters article is that it nowhere identifies those who are attacking the Chinese. Nor are they identified in this story from Channel News Asia, nor in this one from RFI, nor in this from Le Figaro, nor in any of the half-dozen other versions of the story I’ve checked. Not one of them, that is, dares to make mention of “Islam” or “Muslims,” even though in Paris and in Aubervilliers, the Chinese are protesting the violence visited upon them from Muslims, calling it “anti-Asian racism.”
When I posted my piece on the attacks that the Chinese immigrants in Aubervilliers, a heavily Muslim suburb on the outskirts of Paris, endure from their Muslim neighbors, I noted that Muslims have been robbing, extorting money from businesses, physically attacking, and even killing Chinese immigrants who have the misfortune to live and work near them. I should also have noted that robberies of the Chinese in Aubervilliers have tripled in just one year. Some explain this by suggesting the Muslims feel humiliated because the Chinese clothing and textile warehouses, and import-export shopping malls, are so successful, standing in silent economic reproach of the Muslims, who tend to live off welfare benefits for as long as they can (some are very good at turning it into a lifetime benefit), and have failed to demonstrate any entrepreneurial flair, unlike the Chinese migrants. But that’s nonsense. The Muslims in France aren’t ashamed of living off welfare; they’re proud they can manipulate the system, and claim their informal Jizyah from French taxpayers. The main reason that the Chinese are attacked in Aubervilliers is the same reason that the French are attacked – they are Infidels, and thus a legitimate target for Muslims. Chinese property is as much a form of Jizyah as are the welfare benefits offered by the French state.
This harassment of the Chinese near Paris has been going on for a long time. It got so bad that at one point the Chinese ambassador to France was forced to pay a visit to Aubervilliers to try to calm his countrymen down. And in 2013, the Socialist mayor of Aubervilliers, Jacques Salvator, suggested that the violence against them could be halted if Chinese companies would agree to hire more Arabs and Africans. The Chinese were not assuaged, countering that “Muslims do not work as hard as the Chinese, that they are more demanding, and that they complain too much.”Anyone familiar with Muslim work habits would need no convincing.
Since that demonstration in Aubervilliers two weeks ago, apparently little has been done to placate the Chinese. They described to reporters covering their demonstration in Paris their feeling of frustration at not being listened to by the French authorities who, they said, fail to realize what kind of daily terror they endure. And in addition to the attacks on Chinese who live in the suburbs, there has been a steady increase in the number of attacks targeting Chinese (and Korean, and Japanese) tourists in central Paris. These Asian tourists are known both to buy luxury goods to take home with them, and to carry lots of cash. Just the other day, a gang of six (unidentified men) jumped onto a bus just about to leave a hotel for the airport, and made off with luxury-filled luggage belonging to the 27 Chinese tourists on board. The attackers in Aubervilliers have been identified as Muslims, but in the stories about attacks on Chinese tourists the criminals are not identified. But reading between the lines suggests that those attacking the tourists, like those known to be attacking the Chinese in Aubervilliers, are Muslims, and for a simple reason: had any of these criminals been French, the press, which tends to protect Muslims, would certainly have been eager to describe them as such. A refusal to identify them, in the current climate, almost certainly means they were Muslims.
So on September 4, in Paris, according to the police, at least 15,000 Chinese showed up to demand “security for all.” Chinese sources claim that as many as 50,000 people may have turned out to show support. It’s a fantastic showing, in any case, and what’s more, no one can dismiss it as a “right-wing” or “racist” rally because it’s not white Frenchmen, but Chinese who are protesting against the “anti-Asian racism” by their attackers. Since some white Europeans may still be reluctant to stand up for themselves against Muslims, then perhaps they will find it easier to stand up for the Chinese in France as, in the U.K., it may be easier for the British to stand up for Hindus and Sikhs, and then Europeans will begin to realize – as I wrote two weeks ago and will repeat verbatim here – that wherever you look, it’s not a case of Islam against the West, but of Islam against All the Rest.
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London Mayor Sadiq Khan to U.S. Immigrants: Don't Assimilate
by Raheem Kassam • Sep 16, 2016
Cross-posted from Breitbart
http://www.meforum.org/blog/2016/09/sadiq-khan-immigrants-shouldnt-assimilate
Originally published under the title "London's Islamist-Linked Mayor Tells U.S. Audience: 'Immigrants Shouldn't Assimilate'."
Sadiq Khan narrowly won London's mayoral election in May.
London's Muslim mayor Sadiq Khan has continued his pro-Hillary Clinton tour of the United States by declaring that immigrants into the West should not be forced to assimilate. His comments come hot on the heels of the Chicago press exposing his connections to radical Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
Mr. Khan, who was elected to be London's mayor in May 2016, has also used his trip to claim that Republican candidate Donald Trump is "playing into the hands" of the Islamic State.
His trip runs contrary to the U.S. visit from former UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, who presented an upbeat message of defeating the political establishment on stage with Donald Trump.
Instead, Mr. Khan insisted: "One of the lessons from around the world is that a laissez-faire or hands-off approach to social integration doesn't work. We need rules, institutions, and support to enable people to integrate into cohesive communities and for the avoidance of doubt, I don't mean assimilation, I mean integration, and there's a difference."
He added: "People shouldn't have to drop their cultures and traditions when they arrive in our cities and countries."
The United Kingdom, and especially areas of East London which overwhelmingly voted for Mr. Khan, is currently suffering from Muslim ghettoisation, horrific employment rates for Muslim women, an internal debate surrounding the banning of the burka, and ongoing issues such as female genital mutilation, anti-Semitism, and homophobia within Muslim communities.
Under Mr. Khan's plans, none of these "cultures and traditions" would need to be dropped for Muslim migrants to Western countries.
According to VOA News, Mr. Khan called himself a "big fan" of Hillary Clinton, adding: "We play straight into the hands of those who seek to divide us, of extremists and terrorists around the world, when we imply that it's not possible to hold Western values dear and to be a Muslim."
Mr. Khan has been repeatedly criticised for connections with former Guantanamo Bay detainees, as well as known Muslim extremists in the United Kingdom.
His appearances have been widely covered by Britain's media, but are routinely ignored by the political establishment. He has also pledged to ban images of women not covered up from advertisements on the London Underground (Tube). Recently, Breitbart London revealed that Mr. Khan appointed an extremism-linked advisor to his City Hall team.
Raheem Kassam is a Shillman-Ginsburg fellow at the Middle East Forum and editor-in-chief of Breitbart London.
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If we accept that most mosques are funded by groups hostile to the West and that mosques are the place to disseminate and instill doctrine, then we know that in the US and Europe perhaps 80% of mosques are Wahhabist. In the UK half of the mosques are Deobandi (Taliban) and Wahhabi (Saudi) adherents.
Integration is prohibited by the Quran, as indicated by these verses.
Yusuf Ali version, 3:28
Let not the believers take for friends or helpers Unbelievers rather than Believers: if any do that, in nothing will there be help from Allah: except by way of precaution, that ye may Guard yourselves from them. But Allah cautions you (To remember) Himself; for the final goal is to Allah.
Pickthall version 48:29
Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. And those with him are hard against the disbelievers and merciful among themselves.
Yusuf Ali version, 6:106
Follow what thou art taught by inspiration from thy Lord: there is no god but He: and turn aside from those who join gods with Allah.
Yusuf Ali 8:55
For the worst of beasts in the sight of Allah are those who reject Him: They will not believe.
Yusuf Ali 9:28
O ye who believe! Truly the Pagans are unclean;
Yusuf Ali 9:29
Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.
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http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/714291/Malmo-gun-attack-shooting-Sweden-several-injured
Probably some extremist Lutherans....
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http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/714291/Malmo-gun-attack-shooting-Sweden-several-injured
Probably some extremist Lutherans....
We get accustomed to GM's wit but this a profound point. If these attacks are happening around the world in random places, why wouldn't the Swedish attacker be Lutheran? But Malmo Sweden is a de facto Muslim country. The flags they fly are 'Palestine' and ISIS. These aren't random acts in random places; they are acts of war in places where the enemy was invited in to destroy us.
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http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/714291/Malmo-gun-attack-shooting-Sweden-several-injured
Probably some extremist Lutherans....
We get accustomed to GM's wit but this a profound point. If these attacks are happening around the world in random places, why wouldn't the Swedish attacker be Lutheran? But Malmo Sweden is a de facto Muslim country. The flags they fly are 'Palestine' and ISIS. These aren't random acts in random places; they are acts of war in places where the enemy was invited in to destroy us.
Agreed. I would enter what I truly think of multiculturalism from a historical perspective, but don't want to give the Left any fuel.
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They're following the 7 point plan Al-Qaeda laid out (9/11 being the opening salvo), converging with the 5 point plan of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Both discuss escalating and ultimately open confrontation. While the attacks look 'random' and 'small minority' they have social cover - but once the iron fist shows itself, which eventually it must, they lose the protected status they presently have. They (as collective social enablers and the active militant group) will then be exposed. The plan rides on the mass following along in defense of Islam.
I expect that sadly it will get to this stage, and while it may not be pleasant and there will be casualties, it is where the tide is likely to turn. The enemy will no longer be amorphous, but clearly identified.
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They're following the 7 point plan Al-Qaeda laid out (9/11 being the opening salvo), converging with thethe 5 point plan of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Both discuss escalating and ultimately open confrontation. While the attacks look 'random' and 'small minority' they have social cover - but once the iron fist shows itself, which eventually it must, they lose the protected status they presently have. They (as collective social enablers and the active militant group) will then be exposed. The plan rides on the mass following along in defense of Islam.
I expect that sadly it will get to this stage, and while it may not be pleasant and there will be casualties, it is where the tide is likely to turn. The enemy will no longer be amorphous, but clearly identified.
Exactly so. The same is true of the Left (or any group that has a minority following, but that is prone to violence - as any group that wishes to govern must be), that while they suffer a numerical minority, they will wage war indirectly, often with words, but capable of escaping overt violence levied against them. In the end, historically, differing cultures have never existed together, long term, peacefully. The stronger group will always do one of the three following; submit the smaller group into assimilation on one form or another, kill the smaller group off, or drive them from the land they inhabit. The only exception to this, is the smaller group fighting a prolonged war, often guerrilla in nature, and winning. There is nothing else. If I'm mistaken (and I don't believe I am), I honestly welcome someone else to point it out.
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The enemies of the West have had centuries of practice, however they are also using persuasion, infiltration, confidence games and the principles of 4th Gen Warfare expertly. They have studied us, we haven't kept pace with them.
They've taken Boyd's concepts of warfare to their logical conclusion, and at present running rings around us.
A major stumbling block is the loss of cultural confidence brought on by excessive liberalism.
What concerns me from reading the documents, is the level of preparation they may have made. How many of their loyal people are in critical positions in the police, military, medical services, utilities? They are waiting for what they call 'Zero Hour'.
The longer we leave the push back, the more bloody it will be to regain control. To push back now would be wiser, but things will have to come to a head for the truth to be revealed.
All the same, I am confident.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/02/world/europe/womens-emergence-as-terrorists-in-france-points-to-shift-in-isis-gender-roles.html?emc=edit_th_20161002&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193&_r=0
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https://www.jihadwatch.org/2016/10/uk-government-puts-up-15-foot-screens-so-arriving-muslim-migrant-children-cant-be-seen
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3851012/I-don-t-feel-safe-refugees-Inside-stunning-German-ski-resort-hit-major-migrant-crime-wave-women-frightened-carry-pepper-spray.html
"The unease felt by many in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, pictured, is mirrored across Germany where Chancellor Merkel decision to open Germany's border to almost a million migrants has led to political and social unrest."
No word in the story about religion of the "migrants" and "asylum seekers", just a "clash of cultures". I will move this to the Violent Lutherans in Europe thread if that turns out to be the case.
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I say to prospective tenants, I'm not looking for perfect people to rent to but if I catch you lying to me, you're out.
http://www.thelocal.dk/20161207/600-underage-asylum-seekers-in-denmark-are-adults-repor
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The Geert Wilders story and conviction brings back an unpleasant personal memory for me. On this day (or last week) 25 years ago I had my head sliced while walking down a street in Amsterdam, 5pm on a weekday. The two perps were (allegedly) Moroccan Muslims. The one who hit me with the sharp instrument fell to the ground; I didn't, and they didn't get my wallet or anything else. It seemed far more like a hate crime than hearing a Dutch politician give a speech calling for “fewer Moroccans” in their country:
http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21711635-it-may-only-boost-muslim-bashers-popularity-netherlands-has-found-geert-wilders-guilty
A truth worth going to jail for, IMHO.
To pull from a previous speech of Wilders: "Very many Dutch citizens experience the presence of Islam around them. And I can report that they have had enough of... the enormous overrepresentation of Muslims in the area of crime, including Moroccan street terrorists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geert_Wilders
https://web.archive.org/web/20080614074737/http://www.groepwilders.com/website/details.aspx?ID=44
If t's true it ought to be legal to say, and to propose what to do about it.
I thought they were keeping the problem secret to avoid hurting reputation and tourism. I didn't know it was illegal to describe or criticize street terrorists, even if all locals are already aware. No one there I told my story to was surprised, they knew well of the problem.
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4049442/Terror-attack-fears-lorry-ploughs-Christmas-market-Berlin-leaving-two-people-dead.html
Christmas market carnage: 'Afghan refugee' drove stolen lorry that ploughed into Berlin shoppers at 40mph killing 12 and injuring 48
(http://www.barenakedislam.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/refugees-welcome.jpg)
http://www.barenakedislam.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/refugees-welcome.jpg
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/berlin-attack-germany-police-tunisian-man-hunt-id-truck-driver-seat-christmas-market-a7488151.html
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/berlin-attack-germany-police-tunisian-man-hunt-id-truck-driver-seat-christmas-market-a7488151.html
Luckily, the muslims Obama is bringing here would never do this!
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NRO:
Heck of a Job, Germany.
Just what does a guy have to do to get deported by Germany?
The prime suspect sought in the deadly attack on a Berlin Christmas market — a 24-year-old Tunisian migrant — was the subject of a terrorism probe in Germany earlier this year and was not deported even though his asylum bid was rejected, a senior German official said Wednesday.
The suspect — who went by numerous aliases but was identified by German authorities as Anis Amri — became the subject of a national manhunt after investigators discovered a wallet with his identity documents in the truck used in Monday’s attack that left 12 dead, two law enforcement officials told The Washington Post.
Meanwhile, a clearer portrait took shape of the suspect, including accusations that he had contact with a prominent Islamic State recruiter in Germany.
The Daily Mail reports, “He was put on a danger list shortly after arriving in Germany in June last year, which meant authorities considered him prone to extreme violence. Yet just how much surveillance he was under remains unclear.” Wait, somebody can be on a “danger list, prone to extreme violence” and not under surveillance?
The Wall Street Journal paints a thoroughly unnerving and depressing portrait of Germany internal counter-terrorism operations:
Successive mishaps in a separate case suggest the flaws in Germany’s antiterror effort run through the entire length of its security apparatus, from its long underfunded domestic intelligence to its police work and prison system.
In October, a police SWAT team stormed a flat in the eastern German city of Chemnitz in search of Jaber Albakr, a man suspected of planning a suicide bomb attack on a Berlin airport. He managed to flee on foot, partly because the officers’ tactical equipment was too heavy for them to catch up, security officials said at the time. Inside the flat, officers discovered large quantities of homemade TATP explosive.
Mr. Albakr was later caught in Leipzig—not by police but by Syrian refugees who restrained him and handed him over. Once he was detained, the Leipzig prison staff couldn’t immediately locate an interpreter to question him. When the prison’s psychologist finally interviewed him, she decided Mr. Albakr wasn’t a suicide risk. Two days after he was detained, Mr. Albakr’s lifeless body was found hanged in his cell.
Compared with France and the U.S., Germany is newer to facing the terror threat, a U.S. official said, adding more needs to be done in the country to overcome privacy concerns and allow deeper coordination among authorities on cases of interest.
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Just reporting what I heard, "Germany's second worst leader ever."
Oddly, she was elected as a conservative and turned into a reckless, open borders liberal.
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Daughter of an East German Lutheran minister who took seriously the Christian ethos of taking care of the stranger.
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Daughter of an East German Lutheran minister who took seriously the Christian ethos of taking care of the stranger.
Bringing in strangers to rape and murder those who you are charged with leading and protecting isn't anything related to Christianity that I am aware of.
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Well duh!
Just forwarding what a German friend told me by way of explanation as to what SHE thought she was doing.
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4073408/ISIS-general-blew-hostage-rocket-decapitated-prisoner-Europe-400-trusted-soldiers-fleeing-Syria.html
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Well duh!
Just forwarding what a German friend told me by way of explanation as to what SHE thought she was doing.
What's the motivation of all the other leaders inflicting this upon the countries they are supposed to care for?
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/02/almost-1000-cars-torched-around-france-new-years-eve-government/
Almost 1,000 cars torched around France on New Year's Eve but government insists it 'went particularly well'
A car on fire in Paris
A car on fire in Paris Credit: Getty images
Henry Samuel, Paris
2 January 2017 • 6:36pm
Vandals in France torched 945 parked cars over New Year's Eve in an arson rampage that has become a sinister annual "tradition" and amid a row over whether the government had sought to play down the figures.
According to the French interior ministry, the total of 945, which included cars that were either "totally destroyed" or "more lightly affected", amounted to a 17 per cent rise compared to last year.
Despite this, New Year's Eve "went off without any major incident", the interior ministry insisted in a statement, adding that there were only "a few troubles with public order",
In fact, police arrested 454 people over the night, 301 of whom were taken into custody.
On Sunday, the ministry had chosen to release a much lower figure of 650 cars torched, as this only indicated the number of vehicles "set on fire" and not those engulfed in the ensuing flames.
The lower figure enabled it to claim: "Once again this year, the overall number of vehicles burned demonstrates that, however intolerable, the phenomenon is contained". By this calculation, the rise, it said, was only 48 cars.
But the the lower figure prompted the far-Right Front National to denounce what it called the government's "extremely hazy security record".
"The new interior minister Bruno Le Roux…(initially) didn't communicate the number of vehicles burned and considers that the number of cars directly set on fire to be 'contained' while even this constitutes a signifiant rise of 8 per cent," the FN said in a statement.
Le Monde, the national daily newspaper, also accused the ministry of muddying the waters.
The government responded that the figures released were the "most pertinent and the most coherent".
"There is absolutely no attempt at hiding anything," said Pierre Henry Brandet, an interior ministry spokesman.
"You have to look at the trend over several years, and what is significant is that there has been a significant drop over five years,"he said.
Mr Brandet conceded, however, that the figure was still too high, adding: "These incidents are not tolerable and the perpetrators must be found and answer for their acts before justice."
Over New Year, a fire fighter in the eastern department of Ain was hurt while trying to extinguish one car.
In Nice, where security has been extremely tight since the deadly Bastille Day truck attack of last year, two police officers were hurt when revellers threw "projectiles" at them.
Bruno le Roux, the interior minister, said that no attack on security would not be tolerated.
"I regret that once again there were too many instances of security forces being hit with objects, or faced with attacks or insults," he said.
But he thanked the tens of thousands of police and firefighters, adding that they "allowed December 31st to go off particularly well".
With France under a state of emergency since a spate of terror attacks, some 90,000 security forces were out in its streets on New Year's Eve to police mass gatherings such on Paris' famed Champs-Elysées, where half a million revellers convened.
French domestic intelligence agents also reportedly swooped on a string of individuals ahead of festivities who they suspected might have been tempted to wreak violence.
The custom of setting vehicles alight on New Year’s Eve is said to have kicked off around Strasbourg, eastern France in the 1990s, in the the city’s deprived, high-immigrant districts.
It quickly caught on among disaffected youths in cities across the country, and is seen by some as a litmus test of general social unrest.
The most notorious spate of car burnings in recent years was seen in the 2005 riots when hundreds of vehicles were torched.
Former French president Nicholas Sarkozy briefly abandoned issuing a breakdown of New Year's Eve car burnings in 2010-11 amid fears this was sparking copycat actions, but it has since been re-instated.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/01/06/czech-government-tells-its-citizens-how-to-fight-terrorists-shoot-them-yourselves/?utm_term=.08d6b210798e
http://www.ammoland.com/2017/01/european-commission-update-citizens-wake-up/?utm_source=Ammoland+Subscribers&utm_campaign=8c7e0aa8e9-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6f6fac3eaa-8c7e0aa8e9-7181749#axzz4UwCbtDFx
http://www.ammoland.com/2017/01/national-interests-collide-globalist-controls-czechs-resist-eu-gun-ban/?utm_source=Ammoland+Subscribers&utm_campaign=8c7e0aa8e9-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6f6fac3eaa-8c7e0aa8e9-7181749#axzz4UwCbtDFx
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Of course this could have nothing to do with Islam in Europe. No mention of who is assaulting, maybe Swedish men have gone wild and the new immigrants are well behaved.
http://www.bra.se/bra/publikationer/arkiv/publikationer/2017-01-10-nationella-trygghetsundersokningen-2016.html
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/01/11/official-data-sexual-assault-70-per-cent-sweden/
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A Leftist would reply:
https://www.rainn.org/statistics/campus-sexual-violence
:roll:
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A Leftist would reply:
https://www.rainn.org/statistics/campus-sexual-violence
:roll:
You and I would question the accuracy of that and how it is defined and measured. The point in Sweden is the alarming increase more than the level.
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I am only trying to point out some of the absurd arguments of the Left.
Such as *hiding* or ignoring the fact that the increase in sexual assault is surely tied to Muslim immigrants.
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This is a very long, amazing article with great investigation and writing except for a few moments where the author inserts his own opinion.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/10/the-death-of-the-most-generous-nation-on-earth-sweden-syria-refugee-europe/
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http://dailycaller.com/2016/06/01/sweden-took-162k-refugees-last-year-494-got-jobs/#ixzz4XHu8ANAI
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http://dailycaller.com/2016/06/01/sweden-took-162k-refugees-last-year-494-got-jobs/#ixzz4XHu8ANAI
A greater success than I imagined!
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http://dailycaller.com/2016/06/01/sweden-took-162k-refugees-last-year-494-got-jobs/#ixzz4XHu8ANAI
A greater success than I imagined!
I wonder if the Swedes consider "rapist" an occupation, because if they do, the employment number might be even better!
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http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/224027/frauke-petry-tablet-interview?utm_source=tabletmagazinelist&utm_campaign=4922778f6d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_02_08&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c308bf8edb-4922778f6d-207194629
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eABehuOGaks
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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-election-lepen-idUSKBN1600R6
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second post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/02/21/riots-erupt-in-swedens-capital-just-days-after-trump-comments/?utm_term=.1f9a0913b1bd&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1
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http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/02/22/british-ex-guantanamo-islamic-state-suicide-bomber-paid-1-million-compensation/
:roll:
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Even POTH now has to admit there is something going on:
=========================================
Sweden, Nation of Open Arms, Debates Implications of Immigration
By MARTIN SELSOE SORENSENFEB. 24, 2017
Photo
The Rosengard district of Malmo, which has a large number of people with foreign backgrounds. Credit Gordon Welters for The New York Times
MALMO, Sweden — It has been only three years since she came to Sweden from Syria, but Hiba Abou Alhassane already says “we” when speaking about her new home country.
“Did we, I mean did Sweden, take too many refugees? Should we close the border?” she pondered this week after President Trump’s remarks that Sweden’s immigration policies had failed. “It already happened. People aren’t coming anymore.”
In many ways, Ms. Alhassane is a perfect example of Sweden’s long-held belief in the rightness of sheltering and helping to support migrants and refugees. She has worked hard to integrate. Already nearly fluent in Swedish, she teaches at two local primary schools.
But recently Swedes also find themselves questioning the wisdom of their generosity to outsiders in need, and its potential limits, leading to the country’s harshest debate ever over immigration.
Some residents see the clash as a refreshing chance to voice long-held concerns over immigration and its effects. Others see it as both racist and redundant, since Sweden is already changing its immigration policies.
Swedes are not rushing to a hard-line Trump-like approach to immigration, nor are they ready to throw out their country’s humanitarian values when it comes to sheltering refugees, values that remain firmly rooted in the national psyche.
Until a year and a half ago, Sweden offered lifetime protection, along with family reunification, to people deemed legitimate refugees. In 2015, about 163,000 people came and sought that protection, and the sheer numbers led this country of roughly 10 million to tighten the rules. Protection is now subject to review after one or three years and family reunification is more difficult, making Sweden less accessible and less attractive to immigrants.
“Sweden has been a top recipient of asylum seekers per capita in Europe, priding itself on a humanitarian approach to immigration,” said Daniel Schatz, a visiting scholar at Columbia University’s European Institute. “During the Iraq war, Sodertalje, a small Swedish municipality, took more Iraqi refugees than the U.S. and U.K. combined.”
“Sweden is experiencing a clash of ideals,” he added. “While the country seeks to maintain a humanitarian ideal, public concerns around immigration have begun to shift the politics of traditionally liberal Sweden to tighter immigration controls and more restrictive policies. The debate on migration is thus a very personal one for many Swedes.”
Mr. Trump is not the only person pointing to what he considers to be the troubling consequences of immigration to Sweden. This month, a seasoned investigator with the police department in Orebro, Peter Springare, caused a stir with a Facebook posting in which he discussed the case files on his desk.
“What I’ve been handling Monday-Friday this week: Rape, rape, serious rape, assault rape, black mail, black mail, assault in court, threats, attack against police, threats against police, drugs, serious drugs, attempted murder, rape again, black mail again and abuse,” Mr. Springare said. He went on to list the first names of the people he said were suspects, all but one of which were traditionally Middle Eastern.
The post, which was shared 20,500 times, led to an outpouring of support. People sent hundreds of flowers to Mr. Springare’s police station, and more than 170,000 people joined a Facebook group supporting him.
But both his superiors and the police in other departments said that they did not recognize his description, and that national levels did not resemble his claims.
Manne Gerell, a lecturer in criminology with Malmo University, said more immigrants than Swedes commit crimes, but the exact numbers are hard to determine. And on the national level, he said, the imbalance is not nearly as great as Mr. Springare suggested.
Still, it seems as if frustrations over the issue are spreading.
In 2014, the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats gained 12.9 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections to become the country’s third-largest party, up from only 2.9 percent eight years earlier.
“Shunned by mainstream parties, their stance is increasingly resonating with some voters,” Mr. Schatz said.
Some of the party’s progress has to do with residents’ perceptions of crime, a significant issue here in Malmo, Sweden’s third-largest city with about 350,000 people, which is often called the “Chicago of the Nordic region.” The reference is not to its icy, windswept shores. The murder rate in Malmo is the highest among Scandinavian countries: 3.4 annually per 100,000 citizens, compared with 1.3 in Stockholm, the capital.
That has earned Malmo an unsavory reputation well beyond Sweden’s borders, but the assessment lacks context: Chicago’s homicide rate was 28 per 100,000 citizens last year, and Saint Louis’s was 59, according to one analysis. A murder in Malmo remains so rare that it still generates headlines nationwide.
More than 40 percent of the city’s residents or their parents are foreign-born, a fact that is often linked to Malmo’s crime rates, but Mr. Gerell, the criminologist, said a correlation was not clear, and even if there was one, immigration was not the only contributing factor.
“Immigration has most likely played a part in the crime rates,” he said. “But we have many, many poor people living in poor areas so it’s not only about immigration. That said, poverty doesn’t necessarily cause crime, but when there are lots of social problems there will be more of other problems.”
Even some longtime immigrants concede that integration has not always gone smoothly, and that Sweden needs a more robust debate about what has gone wrong and what could be done better.
Maher Dabour, who came to Sweden from Lebanon in the 1980s, said the main problem lay in how migrants are schooled in societal differences.
“They didn’t manage to explain to us how to be citizens,” he said. “In legal terms it’s not difficult, and they’ve been more than generous, but it’s not enough to give money.”
Thirty years after leaving Lebanon, Mr. Dabour drives a Volvo and instinctively buckles his seatbelt like a Swede, but he breaks with tradition and chain smokes. He said that Swedes had built a society based on the individual’s respect for the state, discipline and rules, but that many newly arrived people come with no respect for, or trust in, government authorities, but great regard for family and elders.
“The authorities say everything is O.K. and in order, but it’s not true,” Mr. Dabour said. “We need to have an open and honest discussion about the problems,” he added, referring to crime among immigrants.
In Malmo, the Rosengard district has for years been named by the national police as having a high crime rate, although that has improved recently. It is home to 25,000 people, 86 percent of them with foreign backgrounds. Low-rent housing is clustered around a shopping center, where shops bear names like Noor, Najib and Orient Musik.
“We try to not focus on the problems,” said Maria Roijer, the chief librarian at the public library. She tries to act as a bridge between the many nationalities of Rosengard and Swedish society.
Ms. Roijer said many people of foreign origin come to the library and join the language cafe to practice their Swedish, to borrow books and use the computers.
“They need them to be able to communicate with authorities,” she said.
For decades area residents have felt they got more negative attention from the media than positive responses from municipal officials.
“They built a nice waterfront and created 10,000 jobs in the western part of town, but all we got was two mosques,” said Mira Dekanic, a retiree and nearby resident.
But change is coming. Recently three new real estate companies bought apartment blocks here and one also acquired the shopping center. The companies say that while they must make a profit for their shareholders, they are also committed to the area’s social development so people who live in Rosengard will have jobs, better houses and more places to meet and things to do in their free time.
“We’re aiming for the long term,” said Birgitta Bengtson, a representative of Trianon, one of the developers.
If all goes well, more native Swedes and Swedish retailers may move to Rosengard. “H&M and Espresso House is a dream,” she said.
In a Turkish restaurant, a Syrian refugee, Mohammed Hoppe, was clearing tables and washing dishes. He said he had been too busy to keep up with Mr. Trump’s remarks about Sweden, but after three and a half years in the country, he hadn’t seen anything bad happen.
And for her part, Ms. Alhassane, was not interested in the comments, either.
“Honestly, everything coming from the U.S. these days is a kind of joke,” she said. “I wasn’t even curious to find out if what he said was true. I didn’t need to.”
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For some reason the search command "Sweden" is not pulling up any posts, so just to make sure I post/repost? this:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-is-right-swedens-embrace-of-refugees-isnt-working-1487807010
y Jimmie Åkesson and
Mattias Karlsson
Feb. 22, 2017 6:43 p.m. ET
1125 COMMENTS
When President Trump last week raised Sweden’s problematic experience with open-door immigration, skeptics were quick to dismiss his claims. Two days later an immigrant suburb of Stockholm was racked by another riot. No one was seriously injured, though the crowd burned cars and hurled stones at police officers.
Mr. Trump did not exaggerate Sweden’s current problems. If anything, he understated them. Sweden took in about 275,000 asylum-seekers from 2014-16—more per capita than any other European country. Eighty percent of those who came in 2015 lacked passports and identification, but a majority come from Muslim nations. Islam has become Sweden’s second-largest religion. In Malmö, our third-largest city, Mohamed is the most common name for baby boys.
The effects are palpable, starting with national security. An estimated 300 Swedish citizens with immigrant backgrounds have traveled to the Middle East to fight for Islamic State. Many are now returning to Sweden and are being welcomed back with open arms by our socialist government. In December 2010 we had our first suicide attack on Swedish soil, when an Islamic terrorist tried to blow up hundreds of civilians in central Stockholm while they were shopping for Christmas presents. Thankfully the bomber killed only himself.
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Riots and social unrest have become a part of everyday life. Police officers, firefighters and ambulance personnel are regularly attacked. Serious riots in 2013, involving many suburbs with large immigrant populations, lasted for almost a week. Gang violence is booming. Despite very strict firearm laws, gun violence is five times as common in Sweden, in total, as in the capital cities of our three Nordic neighbors combined.
Anti-Semitism has risen. Jews in Malmö are threatened, harassed and assaulted in the streets. Many have left the city, becoming internal refugees in their country of birth.
The number of sex crimes nearly doubled from 2014-15, according to surveys by the Swedish government body for crime statistics. One-third of Swedish women report that they no longer feel secure in their own neighborhoods, and 12% say they don’t feel safe going out alone after dark. A 1996 report from the same government body found that immigrant men were far likelier to commit rape than Swedish men. Last year our party asked the minister of justice to conduct a new report on crime and immigration, and he replied: “In light of previous studies, I do not see that a further report on recorded crime and individuals’ origins would add knowledge with the potential to improve the Swedish society.”
Our nation’s culture hasn’t been spared either. Artists accused of insulting Islam live under death threats. Dance performances and art exhibitions have been called off for fear of angering Islamists. Schools have prohibited the singing of traditional Christian hymns because they don’t want to “insult” non-Christian immigrants. Yet reports made with hidden cameras by journalists from Swedish public media show mosques teaching fundamentalist interpretations of Islam.
Sweden’s government now spends an incredible amount of money caring for newly arrived immigrants each year. The unemployment rate among immigrants is five times as high as that of native Swedes. Among some groups, such as Somalis, in places like Malmö unemployment reaches 80%.
Our party, the Sweden Democrats, wants to put the security and welfare of Swedish citizens first. We are surging in the opinion polls and seem to have a good chance of becoming the country’s largest party during the elections next year. We will not rest until we have made Sweden safe again.
For the sake of the American people, with whom we share so many strong historical and cultural ties, we can only hope that the leaders in Washington won’t make the same mistakes that our socialist and liberal politicians did.
Mr. Åkesson is party chairman of the Sweden Democrats. Mr. Karlsson is the party’s group leader in Parliament.
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Second post
How to fight academic bigotry
For decades, the American Studies Association labored in well-deserved obscurity. No longer. It has now made a name for itself by voting to boycott Israeli universities, accusing them of denying academic and human rights to Palestinians.
, , ,
Five years ago in Sweden, Israel’s Davis Cup team had to play its matches in an empty tennis stadium because the authorities could not guarantee the Israelis’ safety from the mob. The most brazen display of rising anti-Semitism today is the spread of the “quenelle,” a reverse Nazi salute, popularized by the openly anti-Semitic French entertainer, Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4248492/Family-Iraqi-asylum-seekers-gang-raped-drunk-woman.html#article-4248492
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Five years ago in Sweden, Israel’s Davis Cup team had to play its matches in an empty tennis stadium because the authorities could not guarantee the Israelis’ safety from the mob. The most brazen display of rising anti-Semitism today is the spread of the “quenelle,” a reverse Nazi salute, popularized by the openly anti-Semitic French entertainer, Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala
Documented on these pages:
http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=977.msg26295#msg26295
DougMacG
Re: Islam in Europe - Davis Cup without Spectators
« Reply #268 on: February 24, 2009, 02:45:06 PM »
I had the opportunity to see a Davis Cup semifinal years ago featuring USA v. Sweden in Minneapolis. There were no riots in the streets or car burnings. This story in Malmo is amazing, they are host to Israel v. Sweden and the show just won't go on. I would be very interested in hearing from people who have witnessed the unrest in places like France and Sweden.
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Anyone for tennis in Malmo?
February 24, 2009 Powerlineblog.com
The AP reports that spectators will be barred from the Sweden-Israel Davis Cup match next month in Malmo. There appears to be a vague concern about controlling Swedish youth in Malmo:
The Davis Cup matches between Sweden and Israel will be played without spectators in Malmo next month. Attempts to move the venue to Stockholm fell through.
Officials have cited security concerns for the World Group series, which will be played March 6-8. Several anti-Israeli demonstrations have been planned in Malmo.
Stockholm had offered to host the matches, saying it was better prepared to guarantee security arrangements. But that possibility ended when Stockholm officials said they couldn't get organized in time for Sunday's arrival of the Israeli team.
What's the problem in Malmo? Interested readers are left to fill in the blanks for themselves. (It's a Muslim immigrant controlled city.)
http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=977.msg28248#msg28248
The video I posted of the riots in Malmo on March 8, 2009 is now blocked. Eurasia vs. oceania?
Try these:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWol4qA3Yjw
What immigrant crime wave in Sweden?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zb1q7KzJBbE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zo90U3uqKBo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppbK8fExvo8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pM8Ed9gIi_0
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Outstanding work Doug. Thank you!
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Outstanding work Doug. Thank you!
Funny, I was told this was a myth from right wing h8ors!!!!!!111!!!!!!!
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/le-pen-set-lose-eu-parliament-immunity-over-184550632.html
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Thanks for the nice words.
"Funny, I was told this (Sweden dangerous) was a myth from right wing h8ors!!!!!!"
Now this, probably just internet hoax:
https://heatst.com/world/german-government-issues-travel-warning-for-sweden/
German Government Issues Travel Warning for Sweden Because of Terrorism Risk
By Joe Simonson | 2:16 pm, March 1, 2017
It looks like Germany doesn’t believe refugee violence is merely a right-wing talking point: That government on Wednesday released a statement warning its citizens about travel to Sweden due to the “increased threat levels of terrorism.”
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More links, more stories, more riots. Nothing to see, really.
(http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2017/02/19/20170220_rinkeby4_0.jpg)
http://www.expressen.se/nyheter/polis-skot-varningsskott-mot-stenkastare/
via translate.google.com
Police in Rinkeby shot to hit
published February 20, 2017 at 21:50
During the night's violent riots in Rinkeby threw several masked stones at police.
The police felt then so constricted that they fired shots that were not intended to warn.
- You fired a shot that is designated as for effect, said police spokesperson Lars Bystrom.
A photographer at the Daily News was in connection with the riots beaten and had to spend the night at the hospital, he says to DN.
Now increase police staffing in Rinkeby.
The alarm came to the police at 20:18 on Monday evening. A police patrol should then have been in the area for disposing of a wanted person.
In connection with this began several people at the subway throwing stones at police.
Police patrol on the site must have felt so constricted that they were forced to fire shots before being pulled back from the site of the wanted person.
Initially it was said that it was warning shots, but in the morning, police announced that they fired for effect.
Unlike the warning shot for effect means that the police service weapon fires to hit the target.
- Our staff was attacked by a number of people, some of them were masked and threw stones. It felt so constricted that it fired a shot that is designated as for effect, said police spokesperson Lars Bystrom.
During the night, the police had a large number of patrols in place in Rinkeby, something they will continue on Tuesday.
- We are increasing our staffing and will remain as long as necessary to provide security and order, says Ulf Johansson, regional police chief on the police website.
A witness at the site reports that the police retreated to a gas station in connection with the stone-throwing began. Up to 30 young people have participated, and according to the witness, they have blocked the road to the fire department would not be able to get through.
Classified as rioting
Several police officers had stones thrown at them. A police got a stone on his arm, but it is unclear how seriously injured he was.
Police headlining the event as assaulting a police officer and rioting. No person should even have been arrested in connection with the stoning.
- A person who was in the square were beaten, and one person who was on his way home was beaten and robbed, says Sylvia Oldin.
One of those assaulted was a photographer on the DN.
- I've met a lot of punches and kicks on both the body and the head. I have spent the night in the hospital, he told the newspaper.
A witness at the site reports that the police retreated to a gas station in connection with the stone-throwing began. Up to 30 young people have participated, and according to the witness, they have blocked the road to the fire department would not be able to get through.
SL, following a decision by the police shortly before 22 o'clock, set the bus services in the area. Among other stops bus 179 and bus 514 is not at five stops, including Rinkeby center.
In the morning, the police announced that it is about a dozen cars have been burned.
A second attack
Photos of the site, one can see how many cars are on fire, and emergency services are on site to extinguish them.
- Seven or eight cars burned in the area. We move back and forth, it never stands still at such incidents but we have good resources in place, says Lars Bystrom.
Now increases police bemanninge in Rinkeby. Photo: FREDRIK SANDBERG / TT / TT NEWS AGENCY
In the morning, the police announced that it is about a dozen cars have been burned. Vandalism is otherwise at a couple of storefronts in Rinkeby center that has been crushed.
According to information are about the emergency services have requested reinforcements from Sollentuna and Brännkyrka.
At 22:20 the police attacked a second time by the youth gang. It was about a planned, concerted attack where the young people rushed towards the police and threw stones.
Police tackled to the ground during emergency
"Have helmets and protective equipment"
Expressen's reporter on the scene, Kim Malmgren says Monday evening that the atmosphere in the city center, where a hundred people are located, has been quite calm and not particularly excited.
- There is still burning in two cars. The rescue has gone into the center to start putting out the fires. Even the police are there with helmets and protective gear. Altogether, I have seen 4-5 police buses in the area, he says.
At 23:30 o'clock they had positioned themselves at the underground station in Rinkeby. According to Lars Bystrom have gone in with more resources in the area.
Burnt out cars in Rinkeby. Photo: FREDRIK SANDBERG / TT / TT NEWS AGENCY
- We go in for it to be peace and quiet in there. Unfortunately, we have received reports that several stores have been looted in the area. Once in place, we will certainly control the people and in the best case we can resort to anyone concerned.
"Very serious"
- Of course it is very serious that the police officers are attacked when it does its job. What we see may be a result of our increased pressure on criminals in the area. But I can assure that we are resilient and will not leave, rather intensify our work, says Ulf Johansson, the regional police chief on the police website.
A large number of reports have been prepared including: Three violent rioting, assaulting a police officer, two cases of assault, criminal damage and aggravated thefts.
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http://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/opptoyer-i-stockholm-politiet-skjot-for-a-treffe--nbspdet-ser-ut-som-en-krigssone-her/67274529
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http://www.dn.se/sthlm/nya-upplopp-i-rinkeby/
For the second night in a row Rinkeby shaken by violent riots. 50s youths threw stones at police and attacked the fire department. At least eleven fires started, most serious of which led to Rinkeby Academy burned.
Already on Tuesday evening, police had indications that something was going on in Rinkeby in western Stockholm. Young people had broken up paving stones laid in heaps. It all looked to be a repeat of the riots last night.
- They did everything to get our attention, says the county officer in charge of police officer Mats Brännlund in Stockholm.
- I would be able to understand the violence against the police, but why do they threaten and attack the emergency services I do not understand at all.
Despite the police escort could not rescue work close enough to extinguish the large fire in Rinkeby School annex, where Rinkeby Academy is housed. The group of young people gathered was deemed too threatening and police officers were met by stone-throwing.
A witness who wishes to remain anonymous tells the newspaper Metro that the area resembled a war zone.
- It rained down stones.
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http://www.nordstjernan.com/news/sweden/1897/
Swedes answer call for Somali jihad.
An al-Qaida-linked group is busy recruiting anti-government fighters among Somali youths living in the Stockholm suburb Rinkeby, according to a recent AP report.
The problems Sweden faces integrating large numbers of Muslim immigrants is a subject on which Nordstjernan columnist Ulf Nilson has written many times. His warnings of increasing radicalization among Sweden’s Muslims – warnings he started to broadcast a decade ago – now seem eerily prophetic in light of an Associated Press investigation that found Stockholm to be a breeding ground for jihadists among Swedish Somalis.
According to the AP report, which first ran Jan. 24, an al-Qaida-linked group is busy recruiting anti-government fighters among Somali youths living in Rinkeby. A suburb of Stockholm, Rinkeby has earned the nickname of “Little Mogadishu” because of the number of Somalis living there. Rinkeby is also the center of the recruiting efforts of al-Shabab, a group with ties to al-Qaida.
The most disquieting aspect of this effort is who al-Shabab is targeting – second-generation Somali immigrants. According to AP, about 20 Rinkeby residents have joined a bloody insurgency against Somalia's government. According to SÄPO, the Swedish state security police, five of them have been killed and 10 are still at large in Somalia.
The issue has gained notice at a time of worsening fears of Islamic radicalism in the Scandinavian countries, home to more than 40,000 Somalis who have fled their war-ravaged homeland. These fears sharpened with the Jan. 1 attack by a Somali immigrant in Denmark on a cartoonist who caricatured the Prophet Muhammad.
----------------------------
http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/21/europe/sweden-stockholm-riots/
Sweden: Riots erupt in Stockholm neighborhood
Lauren Said-Moorhouse
By Ivan Watson and Lauren Said-Moorhouse, CNN
Updated 10:59 AM ET, Wed February 22, 2017
sweden stockholm riots immigration watson pkg_00014506
Riots spark immigration debate in Sweden 03:26
Trouble flared in Stockholm's Rinkeby neighborhood as police arrested a suspect
Calm was restored to the area by midnight, Swedish authorities say
US President Donald Trump earlier suggested immigrants in Sweden were to blame for an increase in crime
Stockholm, Sweden (CNN)Riots broke out in a predominantly immigrant neighborhood of Stockholm Monday night, as residents clashed with police officers and set vehicles on fire, Swedish police say.
Officers were forced to call in reinforcements when a crowd began to gather in the suburb of Rinkeby during the arrest of a suspect, according to a statement from Stockholm police.
Stockholm regional police chief Ulf Johansson said the clashes may have been a result of their "increased pressure on criminals in the area."
http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/24/world/europe/sweden-riots-fifth-night/index.html
Swedish capital hit by fifth night of riots
By Per Nyberg and Bryony Jones, CNN
Updated 12:29 PM ET, Fri May 24, 2013
Police in the Swedish capital, Stockholm, have called in reinforcements after the city's suburbs were hit by a fifth night of riots.
Gangs set fire to two schools and a police station in the city on Thursday, police spokesman Kjell Lindgren told CNN.
About 30 cars were also torched, with the blaze from one vehicle spreading to a nearby shop.
"Police and firemen were also attacked again with rocks overnight, but no one was severely hurt," Lindgren said. "The level of violence has decreased," he added, "but the problem remains."
Extra police have been called in to help officers deal with the riots and a number of other events, including football matches, planned to take place in the city over the weekend.
Third night of riots hits Sweden
Third night of riots hits Sweden 01:31
Read more: Swedish suburbs shaken by violence
"Our resources are very stretched, so we need additional officers to make sure we cope with all the events and this violence," Lindgren said.
The riots broke out after days of rising tensions following the death of a 69-year-old man who was shot by police earlier this month while wielding a machete in the Stockholm suburb of Husby.
However, police say they are not sure what sparked the outbreak of violence.
The area is blighted by high unemployment and crime levels.
A total of 29 people have so far been arrested in connection with the riots, Stockholm Police said in a statement on their website.
The city's police chief pledged that more culprits would likely be arrested in the coming days.
"Initially we encountered a lot of violence, so our priority was to ensure the safety of the firemen," Mats Lofving said in a statement. "Now we are gearing up our ambition to start arresting more people.
"We have a lot of filmed material that we will be studying closely. We hope to arrest more of those who may think that they have gotten away with it because the worst is over."
Earlier this week, Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt vowed to take a stand against the rioters.
"We have to show that we won't allow a group of young men who believe in the use of violence to run society," Reinfeldt said.
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http://www.dn.se/sthlm/ungdomsgang-angrep-banklokal-i-rinkeby-1.1118091
Rinkeby, June 2010
The police told DN.se [Sweden’s largest daily newspaper] that hundreds of youths caused problems and vandalism throughout Monday night.
“As soon as the police showed themselves, stones were thrown at them,” said Thomas Persson, spokesman of the Stockholm police, to DN.se.
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http://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/opptoyer-i-stockholm-politiet-skjot-for-a-treffe--nbspdet-ser-ut-som-en-krigssone-her/67274529
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http://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/masked-men-attack-60-minutes-crew-in-sweden/news-story/cbeea138a8c48bd81280d9d659474eda
Masked men attack 60 Minutes crew in Sweden
MARCH 1, 2016 6:46PM
60 Minutes reporter Liz Hayes and her film crew were attacked by a group of masked men in Sweden.
ANNETTE SHARP
News Corp Australia Network
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on Google+Share on RedditEmail a friend
TWO 60 Minutes production crew were assaulted in Stockholm, Sweden, this week reporting on the refugee crisis effecting Europe.
Veteran reporter Liz Hayes and a small Australian crew were travelling through the Rinkeby district of Västerort, Stockholm, one of the poorer neighbourhoods in which 89.1 per cent are first or second generation migrants, when a group of unnamed assailants turned on the television crew.
Channel Nine last night confirmed early reports out of Stockholm that the group was confronted by a group of locals, some reportedly masked, who had objections to 60 Minutes filming in the region.
“Liz Hayes and a 60 Minutes crew are currently on assignment in Europe where they are reporting a story about the migrant crisis,” a Nine spokesman said.
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Strange, the countries where muslims come from are such nice places, I wonder what happens to them in europe.
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Strange, the countries where muslims come from are such nice places, I wonder what happens to them in europe.
We call them 'Muslims', but Swedish media calls them "immigrants and recent immigrants".
Funny that that trained professionals need more words to be less precise in their description.
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Failure to assimilate.
"Sweden has accepted more refugees per capita in recent years than any other country in Europe."
"Crime in these areas is not just new in scope, but also in kind."
A ticking time bomb - in addition to the explosion of hand grenades.
Most of these facts cited are contained in a previous post.
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The Truth About Sweden
MAR 13, 2017 | By PAULINA NEUDING
"I often use Sweden as a deterring example.”
The words are not those of Donald Trump, but Anders Fogh Rasmussen. In an interview with Swedish public television in January, the former NATO secretary general and Danish prime minister described Sweden's immigration policy as a failure and a warning to other countries. But it was President Trump's unclear and slightly confused reference to Sweden during his February 18 rally in Florida that has turned attention to the Scandinavian country of 10 million and the details of its migrant experience. Sweden has accepted more refugees per capita in recent years than any other country in Europe. "Sweden, who would believe this? Sweden. They took in large numbers. They're having problems like they never thought possible," Trump said. Since then, Swedes have seen facts about their country, and many exaggerations and misconceptions, used as arguments in an American domestic debate.
But there are, in fact, good reasons for Americans to care about Sweden's problems. First, because Sweden's failure to integrate its immigrants, in line with Rasmussen's observation, carries lessons for other countries; second, because Swedish news reporting and public discourse on immigration and integration are restricted by taboos. Swedish journalists and public figures who have been outspoken about the problems—and transgressed what the Swedes call the "opinion corridor"—have risked being labeled xenophobes or racists.
This peculiarity of Swedish public discourse has often allowed politicians and public authorities to deny the problems caused by the country's migration and integration policies, without being seriously challenged. The Swedish foreign ministry, for instance, launched a PR campaign in response to the debate following Donald Trump's remarks about the country. It tweeted last week, as part of the campaign:
"Does Sweden actually have 'No-Go Zones'? No, we don't.
You think that Swedish police have lost control? The 'no-go zones' are in fact 'go-go zones'. #FactCheck"
But no-go zones cannot simply be dismissed as a myth. Gordon Grattidge, chairman of a Swedish ambulance trade union, explained to me that no-go zones are a reality for paramedics in Sweden. There are areas where first responders can't enter without police escort. Grattidge's assessment is that ambulances are forced to retreat from such areas on a weekly basis.
Yet the government's use of taxpayer money to deny the existence of no-go zones has not been met with protests from Swedish journalists.
How, then, should we understand the connection between crime and immigration in Sweden? Former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt had the facts right when he tweeted in response to Trump: "Last year there were app 50% more murders only in Orlando/Orange in Florida, where Trump spoke the other day, than in all of Sweden. Bad." That comparison, while correct, misses the point. Of course Sweden has not turned into Orlando or, for that matter, Chicago. But in a short time—maybe as short as two decades—Sweden has gone from a nation rightly considered a model of social cohesion, equality, low crime, and political stability to a society with growing enclaves of social unrest.
In 1990, Sweden had three so-called "areas of social exclusion," characterized by socioeconomic problems—and high numbers of immigrants. According to Swedish economist Tino Sanandaji, the number of such areas had risen to 186 by 2012. Swedish police authorities have identified 53 with persistently high crime rates. Here, police officers risk assaults, while ambulance drivers and firefighters often have to wait for police escort before answering calls from people in distress. It's no surprise they're often described as no-go zones.
Crime in these areas is not just new in scope, but also in kind. Systematic attacks on paramedics and firefighters were an unknown phenomenon in Sweden only a generation ago. The same goes for extensive use of guns and hand grenades in a country where most homicides historically followed from stabbings, blunt force trauma, and unarmed violence. Today, Sweden is extreme with respect to violence from guns and explosives, compared with the country's Scandinavian neighbors: In Stockholm, the capital, 189 victims suffered gunshot injuries during the period 2010-2015. During the same period in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, only 30 people fell victim to such crimes.
Most hand grenades in Sweden come from the former Yugoslavia, where one can buy them for one or two euros or get them free when buying other weapons. They're easy to smuggle, since they're small and difficult to detect. In Sweden, they're plentiful and cheap—available for less than $150 in Malmö, according to the newspaper Sydsvenska Dagbladet. In the first six months of 2015 alone, 30 explosions took place in Malmö, Sweden's third-largest city. More bombings and explosions have been reported in the city than in any other in Scandinavia. Malmö links Sweden to the rest of Europe: It lies in southern Sweden, a short train or car ride across the bridge to Copenhagen. It has a high proportion of immigrants—in 2015, 43 percent of Malmö's population consisted of first- or second-generation immigrants, compared with 22 percent in Sweden overall.
An additional change in the Swedish crime landscape is the fact that gang shootings and explosions increasingly take place during the daylight, in public, as well as in residential areas. Here is a recent example: On February 27, a Malmö resident suffered injuries in the leg after a hand grenade detonated outside a house in a residential area. Earlier on the same day, a sharp hand grenade was found outside a police station in the Stockholm suburb Kista. Police investigated a connection between the grenade and the riots in neighboring Rinkeby the week before. Violence was sparked there when police arrested a 17-year-old criminal on the run from a juvenile home. Police were eventually forced to shoot and spent three hours retreating from the area after losing control over the situation. Rioters looted, torched cars, and threw rocks; a newspaper photographer was beaten by at least 15 men.
In a report to the government last week, the Swedish Police Authority stated that the use of hand grenades in Sweden is without parallel in the world among countries not at war. In 2015, the police handled 45 cases involving hand grenades. In 2016, the number grew to 52. Hand grenades, according to the report, are used in attacks against business facilities and homes "without regard for whether there are people there or not."
On several occasions, foreign journalists reporting from Swedish areas of social exclusion have been driven out by violent youths. When the Norwegian public TV network NRK tried to report from a housing project area in Stockholm, its team was forced to leave the neighborhood under duress. Australian 60 Minutes visited Rinkeby in March this year, only to have its camera crew attacked by rock throwers. "We've all been assaulted and insulted," the reporter declared on air.
Journalists have also documented how religious minorities are being persecuted in immigrant neighborhoods. When Swedish public television accompanied a Somali woman who has converted to Christianity to Rinkeby—the scene of last month's riots—she was immediately threatened because of her conversion and forced to run. A similar case occurred in Malmö, when a TV reporter entered the area of Rosengård wearing a yarmulke. Text messages circulated among residents that a Jew had entered the neighborhood, and he was forced out of Rosengård in a collective effort. Residents threw eggs at him from windows.
Social unrest has brought threats and violence close to previously peaceful public community institutions such as libraries and swim centers. A survey I conducted myself revealed that several public libraries in Sweden have had to close down temporarily, change their opening hours, engage security guards, or equip their staff with personal assault alarms, as a consequence of harassment by groups of youths.
In December, I visited two libraries in the town of Västerås. Both had been forced to change their opening hours. One librarian told me that gangs of young criminals had taken over her library, and that she was always tense and often frightened at work. The staff were equipped with assault alarms.
Many hospitals and emergency rooms have new security routines: At Sahlgrenska hospital in Gothenburg, security was tightened after gunshots were fired close to the emergency room entrance in 2012. In an interview with a manager at Sahlgrenska in 2015, I was told: "Security has been increased, both because of threats and violence against the staff, and because of the increasing amount of shootings in recent years."
Similarly, a spokesperson for the ER in Malmö explained: "Since 2013, it's mandatory for all staff at the ER to carry personal assault alarms. That year there was unrest here in town with shootings, and we had problems with large groups of relatives who caused unrest at the ER." At one time a mob of some hundred people tried to break into the ER following a shooting—a dramatically new phenomenon in Sweden.
As far as sex crime, it is obviously preposterous to call Sweden a "rape capital." Yet evidence suggests that immigration has had an impact on sexual violence in Sweden.
The latest report on crime among immigrants from the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (BRÅ) was published in 2005. The report, which covers the years 1997-2001, shows that immigrants from the Middle East and Africa were heavily overrepresented among suspects of violent crime, particularly for sexual offenses. Another study of gang rapes in Sweden in the 1990s indicated that a majority of group rapes in Sweden were committed by first- and second-generation immigrants.
There are, unfortunately, no more recent studies. Data are still being collected but are not compiled and made publicly available. The Swedish justice minister, Morgan Johansson, explained in an interview recently that there is no need to publish any new reports, because the facts are well-known from earlier studies.
But if the overrepresentation has not changed since the 2005 survey, the influx of the overrepresented demographic could offer an explanation for the recent rise in the proportion of women who report that they have been victims of sex crimes: Between 2012 and 2015, self-reported sex crimes doubled from 1.4 to 3 percent of the female population—an "alarming" increase, according to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention. Whether this is caused by increased immigration from the Middle East and Africa we don't know, since the government refuses to release the data.
At the same time, Sweden has experienced a new phenomenon with group abuse of women and children in public swimming pools and at music festivals. Police noted in a report last spring:
The suspects of crimes carried out by a large group of offenders, in public, were mostly people with foreign citizenship. Regarding crimes reported in public swimming pools, the alleged perpetrators were mainly asylum seeking boys. . . . In 80 percent of the complaints from swimming pools alleged perpetrators were of claimed or established foreign origin. Most of them did not have a Swedish social security number, and reports indicated that they belonged to groups of asylum seeking boys.
Finally, another radically new phenomenon in modern Swedish history is oppression of women in the general public sphere with reference to religion or "honor." As far back as 2010, a local newspaper reported that women were not visible on the main square in Rinkeby. Authorities tried to solve the problem by placing three pink benches on the square, designated for women. The benches were eventually removed, since they, too, were taken over by men. Female writers for the local newspaper tried to sit down and have coffee at a Rinkeby coffeehouse, but were verbally abused by male patrons.
The situation has not improved since then. Nalin Pekgul, a Social Democratic Swedish-Kurdish former MP and well-known feminist, explained in an interview February 27: "Everyone must understand that it is not acceptable that men and women do not sit together in cafés in 2017." She went on: "For women in Sweden to win their freedom it is crucial what politicians say and do, and what journalists cast light on. The debate must continue."
She is right. It is also the reason why international media should continue to report—and uncover the facts—from Sweden.
Paulina Neuding is a columnist with the Swedish center-right daily Svenska Dagbladet.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/the-truth-about-sweden/article/2007071
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"immigrants are flowing to Sweden, in part, because the government benefits they receive there are all-encompassing — including housing, food, and education. In interviews, the immigrants say that in large part because of these benefits “life is good” for them in Sweden."
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/443073/rape-violence-sweden-immigration-refugees-ami-horowitz-video
"Sweden doesn’t allow refugees to seek work until they know the language"
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/swedens-rape-crisis-isnt-what-it-seems/article30019623/
Questions have arisen about why officials had not made those documents public, and police officials in Germany and elsewhere in Europe have been accused of trying to cover up crimes committed by refugees (authorities have denied the allegations). Criticism has also targeted media outlets, which are not allowed to specify the nationalities of criminals under Germany's press regulations.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/08/16/trump-says-german-crime-levels-have-risen-and-refugees-are-to-blame-not-exactly/?utm_term=.fd4ee4764252
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Love the Swiss!
http://conservativefans.com/2017/02/03/switzerlands-not-playing-games-muslim-immigrants-are-told-if-you-reject-our-western-culture-we-will-reject-your-application-for-citizenship/
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http://pamelageller.com/2017/03/second-machete-attack-dusseldorf-hours-muslim-axe-rampage-city-station.html/
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http://pamelageller.com/2017/03/second-machete-attack-dusseldorf-hours-muslim-axe-rampage-city-station.html/
Islamophobia!
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2907941/Moroccan-born-mayor-Rotterdam-tells-fellow-Muslims-not-appreciate-freedoms-living-West-pack-bags-f-live-TV.html
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http://pamelageller.com/2017/03/sweden-cant-find-contractor-willing-build-police-station-muslim-migrant-suburb-dangerous.html/
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http://www.dailywire.com/news/14503/islamist-turkish-minister-holy-wars-will-soon-michael-qazvini
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http://spinzon.com/muslim-immigration-has-transformed-their-countr/
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http://pamelageller.com/2017/03/you-are-the-future-of-europe.html/
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London terrorist identified. His name is Lars and he is believed to be a Lutheran extremist.
Correction, his name is Khalid and he is believed to be an Islamic extremist.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/live/2017/mar/23/westminster-attack-parliament-resumes-tributes-keith-palmer-live
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London terrorist identified. His name is Lars and he believed to be a Lutheran extremist.
Correction, his name is Khalid and he is believed to be an Islamic extremist.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/live/2017/mar/23/westminster-attack-parliament-resumes-tributes-keith-palmer-live
Wait, I have been told Islam is a religion of peace, are you sure there is no Lutheran connection?
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http://metro.co.uk/2017/03/26/women-gather-on-westminster-bridge-to-condemn-abhorrent-attack-6535415/
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http://metro.co.uk/2017/03/26/women-gather-on-westminster-bridge-to-condemn-abhorrent-attack-6535415/
Have they planned out the next vigil for the next jihadist attack?
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Is that fair GM? Are they not doing what we here have asked of them?
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Is that fair GM? Are they not doing what we here have asked of them?
Did we ask them to do some PR damage control for the religion of peace? I don't recall asking for that.
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https://clarionproject.org/uk-muslim-man-im-afraid-to-speak-out-against-islamists/
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(https://westernrifleshooters.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/58e0f679e391f.png)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4375518/Explosion-metro-St-Petersburg.html
Diversity is our strength!
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http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/terror-stockholm-truck-rams-crowd-10178926
Let's not indulge in truck-a-phobia. The vast majority of trucks are peace loving and only celebrate this in private.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/07/truck-crashes-crowd-people-stockholm/
A suspected terrorist targeted young children as he drove a hijacked lorry into a crowded shopping street in Stockholm, witnesses claimed last night.
Infants’ buggies were sent “flying through the air”, one Swedish broadcaster reported, as the vehicle zigzagged along the pedestrianised Queen Street shopping district and embedded itself in the window of a department store.
“It swerved from side to side. It didn’t look out of control, it was trying to hit people,” a second witness, Glen Foran, an Australian tourist, told Reuters. “It hit people, it was terrible. It hit a pram with a kid in it, demolished it.”
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/07/truck-crashes-crowd-people-stockholm/
A suspected terrorist targeted young children as he drove a hijacked lorry into a crowded shopping street in Stockholm, witnesses claimed last night.
Infants’ buggies were sent “flying through the air”, one Swedish broadcaster reported, as the vehicle zigzagged along the pedestrianised Queen Street shopping district and embedded itself in the window of a department store.
“It swerved from side to side. It didn’t look out of control, it was trying to hit people,” a second witness, Glen Foran, an Australian tourist, told Reuters. “It hit people, it was terrible. It hit a pram with a kid in it, demolished it.”
Any chance the latest UK or Sweden attack was committed by a Lutheran extremist named Lars?
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/07/truck-crashes-crowd-people-stockholm/
A suspected terrorist targeted young children as he drove a hijacked lorry into a crowded shopping street in Stockholm, witnesses claimed last night.
Infants’ buggies were sent “flying through the air”, one Swedish broadcaster reported, as the vehicle zigzagged along the pedestrianised Queen Street shopping district and embedded itself in the window of a department store.
“It swerved from side to side. It didn’t look out of control, it was trying to hit people,” a second witness, Glen Foran, an Australian tourist, told Reuters. “It hit people, it was terrible. It hit a pram with a kid in it, demolished it.”
Any chance the latest UK or Sweden attack was committed by a Lutheran extremist named Lars?
No profiling! It might have been Sven, or Thor or Fritjof just as easily!
(http://gatesofvienna.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/swedencrime.gif)
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https://www.svd.se/arets-som-undersokning-presenteras-pa-tisdagen/om/sverige
Report: More Swedes want to receive fewer refugees
(translation)
The more negative attitude towards refugees is one of the major changes in the survey, made during the past autumn and winter. 52 percent supported the proposal to accept fewer refugees, while 24 percent were opposed. When questioned in 2015 "won" refugee opponents barely 40-37.
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4452774/Austrian-president-women-wear-headscarves.html
Austrian president says that all women will one day have to wear headscarves to fight 'rampant Islamophobia'
Alexander Van Der Bellen suggested all women must one day wear headscarves
Comments come after Austria government banned full-face veil in January
By Thomas Burrows for MailOnline
PUBLISHED: 13:06 EDT, 27 April 2017 | UPDATED: 13:34 EDT, 27 April 2017
'Besides that, not only Muslim women. Every woman can wear a headscarf. And if it goes on - and I am already on the next question - with actual rampant Islamophobia, the day will come that we must ask all women to wear a headscarf.
'All out of solidarity with those who have to on religious grounds.'
Mr Van der Bellen suggested all women should wear a headscarf in solidarity with Muslims +1
Mr Van der Bellen suggested all women should wear a headscarf in solidarity with Muslims
Austria banned the burqa, niqab and other face-covering veils earlier this year.
The measure was introduced by the ruling Social Democratic party (SPÖ) and the centre-right Austrian People’s party (ÖVP) to prevent the collapse of their coalition government.
By doing so, they followed in the footsteps of France, which became the first European country to ban the full-face veil officially in 2010.
Bans are also in place in Belgium and some parts of Switzerland.
Mr Van der Bellen had outlined a vision markedly different from that offered during campaigning by his right-wing rival Mr Hofer, who he defeated in December.
Hofer had campaigned on a law-and-order platform in line with his Freedom Party's opposition to Muslim immigration, its focus on Austrians first and its depiction of the European Union as an out-of-touch institutio.
In contrast, the left-leaning Van der Bellen rejected nationalism in favour of a 'common Europe as a project of peace.'
He urged equal treatment for all Austrians, whether 'their families live here for generations or not...whether they love men or women, and whether they are men or women.'
The presidency is a largely symbolic post.
But Van der Bellen's victory was welcomed by established European political parties fearful of another populist victory after Donald Trump's shock presidential win in the US.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4452774/Austrian-president-women-wear-headscarves.html
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www.jihadwatch.org/2017/05/medical-report-published-confirms-that-robert-spencer-was-poisoned-in-iceland
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http://www.bbc.com/news/live/uk-england-manchester-40007967
Quaker extremist? Uppity Lutherans?
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(https://cdn.meme.am/cache/instances/folder231/400x/65533231.jpg)
The bomber has been identified as Salman Ramadan Abedi.
Authorities unsure if his motivations for the attack will ever be known.
So, what is the official "I have the sads for the latest terror attack" meme for social media today?
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GM,
Even if they can never prove it, you and I know who was really behind the Manchester bomb attack.
Even if we can never find the link it is clear the Russians were colluding with the suicide bomber(s).
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GM,
Even if they can never prove it, you and I know who was really behind the Manchester bomb attack.
Even if we can never find the link it is clear the Russians were colluding with the suicide bomber(s).
The Russians and Fox News!!!!!!!11!!!!!!!!
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The beautiful people are always safe:
http://www.showbiz411.com/2017/05/23/cannes-fest-on-high-alert-cancels-fireworks-has-3-minutes-of-silence-for-manchester-and-70th-anniversary-all-star-photocall
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The beautiful people are always safe:
http://www.showbiz411.com/2017/05/23/cannes-fest-on-high-alert-cancels-fireworks-has-3-minutes-of-silence-for-manchester-and-70th-anniversary-all-star-photocall
Always happy to see gun control advocates being protected by men with guns.
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Religion of peace. It never turns out to be the Lutheran extremists anymore, does it?
"Known" wolf, as opposed to lone wolf. Bad analogy. Wolves don't do this.
A tweet about the first identified victim:
"There was not one bad bone in her body she was a true ray of sunshine and loved everyone for who they were.”
I've never heard of the singer, took a look at a couple of her videos. One has a billion views on YouTube. There is a young, cute, sexiness to the music. Young male Muslims want young virgins and rape young women, but can't handle young cute sexiness.
When do we start calling islamist extremism a dangerous mental disorder instead of a religion.
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Religion of peace. It never turns out to be the Lutheran extremists anymore, does it?
"Known" wolf, as opposed to lone wolf. Bad analogy. Wolves don't do this.
A tweet about the first identified victim:
"There was not one bad bone in her body she was a true ray of sunshine and loved everyone for who they were.”
I've never heard of the singer, took a look at a couple of her videos. One has a billion views on YouTube. There is a young, cute, sexiness to the music. Young male Muslims want young virgins and rape young women, but can't handle young cute sexiness.
When do we start calling islamist extremism a dangerous mental disorder instead of a religion.
If we started facing the hard truth rather than the usual teddy bears and flowers and sad faces on social media, we might have to do something about it. Can't have that.
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https://www.city-journal.org/html/enabling-murder-15209.html
Enabling Murder
Western politicians worry more about being called “Islamophobic” than they do about stopping jihadist slaughter.
Bruce Bawer
May 23, 2017 Public safetyPolitics and law
Damn these jihadist murderers of children. And damn the politicians who have, in many cases, helped make these murders possible but who are quick, this time and every time, to serve up empty declarations of “solidarity”even as the bodies of innocents are still being counted.
London mayor Sadiq Khan (who recently dismissed terrorist attacks as “part and parcel of living in a big city”): “London stands with Manchester.” Orlando mayor Buddy Dyer (who, in the wake of the Pulse nightclub massacre, proclaimed a CAIR-backed “Muslim Women’s Day”—you know, the kind of event that proclaims hijabs “empowering”): Orlando “stands in solidarity with the people of the UK.” L.A. mayor Eric Garcetti (who went berserk when Trump tried to impose that temporary travel ban from a half-dozen Muslim countries): “Los Angeles stands with the people of Manchester.”
Meaningless words, all of them. But Angela Merkel takes the cake: “People in the UK can rest assured that Germany stands shoulder to shoulder with them.” Well, isn’t that . . . reassuring. In what way do such words help anybody to “rest assured” of anything? In any case, how dare she? This, after all, is the woman who opened the floodgates—the woman who, out of some twisted sense of German historical guilt, put European children in danger by inviting into the continent masses of unvetted people from the very part of the world where this monstrous evil has its roots.
Then there was this from European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker: “Once again, terrorism has sought to instill fear where there should be joy, to sow division where young people and families should be coming together in celebration.” Beneath the innocuous-seeming surface of this statement is a slick rhetorical ruse: Juncker to the contrary, these savages aren’t out to “sow division”—they’re out to kill infidels. By introducing the concept of “division,” Juncker, like so many others, is implying that the important message here is: Hey, whatever you do, don’t let this little episode put any bad thoughts about Islam into your head!
Manchester City Council leader Sir Richard Leese also spoke of “fear” and “division”: “Manchester is a proud, strong city and we will not allow terrorists who seek to sow fear and division to achieve their aims.” Guess what, pal? They did achieve their aims: they killed 22 people, including children, and injured several dozen. Dead infidels: that’s their objective, period. (Or, as you would say, full stop.)
Naturally, Manchester’s mayor, Andy Burnham, put out a statement. Burnham, as it happens, is a radical socialist who has wrung his hands for years about Islamophobia and has fought tooth and nail against a nationwide “anti-extremism” program called Prevent on the grounds that it “singles out one community for different treatment.” After yesterday’s atrocity, Burnham said: “We are grieving today, but we are strong.”
Strong? No, Mr. Burnham, you are anything but strong. You are cowards, all of you. You are more scared of being called bigots than of the prospect of children under your official protection being slaughtered by jihadists.
Three-quarters of a century ago, Britain stood shoulder to shoulder in true solidarity while under violent assault by the diabolical ideology of Nazism. Today, its leaders speak of the same kind of solidarity—but it’s nothing but talk. In Rotherham, gangs of Muslim men sexually abused 1,400 girls—and police and other officials who knew about it did nothing for years lest they be accused of racism or Islamophobia. Almost certainly, similar mass-scale rapes are still occurring right now in other British cities, with similar silence and inaction on the part of pusillanimous authorities. Today, British leaders refuse to deport imams who preach murder but ban from their shores respected writers and knowledgeable critics of Islam who dare to take on those imams and their theology.
Strength? Don’t you dare speak of strength. You have the blood of innocent children on your hands.
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(http://thedeclination.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/emergency-plan-in-case-of-terrorist-attack-in-major-european-city-tearful-cartoons-facebook-flag-crying-on-tv-light-up-building-wait-repeat.jpg)
http://thedeclination.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/emergency-plan-in-case-of-terrorist-attack-in-major-european-city-tearful-cartoons-facebook-flag-crying-on-tv-light-up-building-wait-repeat.jpg
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Drive them out.
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Drive them out.
What? And miss out on the vibrant multicultural society europe has crafted?
(https://westernrifleshooters.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/1491802500435.jpg)
You are going to suffer losses, like the 11 year old girl above, but Diversity!
Besides, I have been told islam is a religion of peace. By people with Credentials. Who are we to question that?
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Posting this for the opening segment. Simple. Direct. Powerful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaUPJcpbfuI
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http://gatesofvienna.net/2017/05/geert-wilders-islam-is-to-blame-for-manchester/#more-42998
Posted on May 24, 2017 by Baron Bodissey
Geert Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, sends the following essay on Monday night’s jihad terror attack in Manchester.
Aftermath of Manchester bombing -- Salman Ramadan Abedi
Islam Is To Blame for Manchester
by Geert Wilders
I am writing this article today just after we, members of the Dutch Parliament, in the presence of the British Ambassador, commemorated the Manchester victims with a short speech by our Prime Minister and one minute of silence.
Two months ago, we did the same for the victims in Stockholm. Last December, for those in Berlin. And, earlier, for those in Nice, Brussels, Paris, Copenhagen… The list becomes endless, while the number of Western ambassadors, who have not visited our Parliament for one of these sad occasions, becomes ever smaller.
And, every time, we hear the same hollow words of shock and grief and how incomprehensible it all is. But we never hear our Prime Minister, nor the leaders of other Western countries, tell us the truth: The cause of all this bloodshed, all this misery, all this pain and sorrow, is Islam.
Instead of the truth, we get crocodile tears. We have to listen to platitudes, we have politically correct hot air blown at us, again and again. But the truth remains that no bad tree bears good fruit.
Mujahid with a Koran and an RPGWhat we are witnessing is pure Islamic practice. It is the Koran with its admonishment to “cast terror in the heart of the non-Muslims” (Surah 8:12). It is the so-called prophet Muhammad, who boasted to his followers: “I have been made victorious through terror” (Bukhari, 4.52.220).
Islam is not a peace-loving religion, but an evil totalitarian ideology. It wants all non-Muslims to submit. It is totally incompatible with freedom and human decency. It preaches hatred, propagates violence and is barbaric and violent by nature.
And it also abuses our own freedoms and democratic liberties to subvert our democracy and rob us of these freedoms. It builds mosques and Islamic schools, often with Saudi money, where hatred against the West is preached. It abuses our legal system to harass its critics. It behaves like a fifth column in our midst. It is not global warming that is threatening the world; it is global Islam.
Attack after attack, innocent people are being killed. Everyone is a target. It is absolutely unacceptable that there are still political leaders and media ignoring the problem. They want the citizens to believe that Islam is a peace-loving religion and that there are only a few Islamic extremists who are ruining everything for everyone. But do not let yourselves be fooled.
Opinion polls show that no less than two-thirds of Muslims in the Netherlands find Islamic rules more important than our secular democratic laws. Research from the University of Amsterdam shows that as many as 11 percent of Dutch Muslims find it acceptable to use violence in the name of Islam. That is more than 100,000 Muslims in the Netherlands. Twice the number of soldiers in our Dutch army.
It is impossible for the ideology of Islam to assimilate in a free society. People can assimilate; an ideology cannot. We should not import it any longer to our society. Not because we hate the people, but because we have a problem with an ideology that is totally incompatible with freedom. Those who sow Islam must realize that they will harvest nothing but terrorism and the barbarism of Sharia law, with its oppression of women, Christians, Jews, apostates and Islam critics.
Last month, the Pew Forum revealed something truly shocking. The world is becoming ever more Islamic. Between today and 2060, the number of Muslims will grow by 70 percent. That is more than twice as fast as Christians, thrice as rapid as Hindus, and almost five times faster than Jews. By 2060, Islam will have almost as many adherents as Christianity. And soon after, it is bound to become the largest belief system on earth.
In many Western European countries, populations are growing only because of immigrants. And many of these are Islamic. Muhammad is already the most popular name among newborn boys in major cities in Britain, France, The Netherlands, Belgium and elsewhere. Islam uses all the tools it can lay its hands on. Guns and bombs, knives and cars and planes. But also demography and immigration.
Lampedusa: boatload of refugees #2
Last year, over 180,000 people crossed in shabby boats from Libya to Europe. And this is just the beginning. The United Nations expect the population of Africa to quadruple by the end of the century. From 1 billion today to 4 billion. One third of the Africans want to leave their own countries. Many of them are Islamic. And many want to move north. If Western Europe continues with its present open-door policies, the population of the European continent is in danger of being replaced and its nations colonized and Islamized. No longer European, but a province of Africa.
In order to save ourselves from atrocities such as the one just committed in Manchester, and to stop the process of population replacement in Europe, these are the three most important things we should do:
1. Realize that Islam is the problem and start to de-Islamize our societies. No Islamic schools anymore, no hate preaching. We are facing an existential threat and should treat it as such.
2. End all immigration from Islamic countries. Enough is enough! Those immigrants who are already in our nations are welcome to stay, but only if they fully adhere to our values, our constitution, our laws. If they commit crimes or start acting according to Sharia law, we should expel them at once. If necessary, radical Muslims must also be administratively detained.
3. Get rid of political correctness. We should not let Islam abuse our freedoms and our constitutional rights just to abolish them. It is naïve and dangerous to grant rights to a totalitarian ideology which, if it gets its way, wants to rob us of our rights. We should realize that Islam has declared war on us, but that we will never allow it to win!
Islam hates and kills us. And nobody protects us. Our leaders betray us.
Let us start acting bravely, do our duty and de-Islamize our nations in order to protect us and remain a free people.
Geert Wilders MP is a member of the Dutch Parliament and the leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV) in The Netherlands
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(https://westernrifleshooters.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/18739621_1532948156724619_6854780391922047370_n.jpg)
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(http://i0.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2017/05/Emergency-Plan.jpeg)
Action!
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It is Breitbart so caveat lector:
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/05/27/police-helicopter-dispatched-garden-party-song-making-fun-bin-laden-offended-officer/
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It is Breitbart so caveat lector:
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/05/27/police-helicopter-dispatched-garden-party-song-making-fun-bin-laden-offended-officer/
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambridge-news/bin-laden-song-police-party-13097525
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Thank you for that-- Breitbart is such a dubious source.
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http://pamelageller.com/2017/05/23000-jihadis-in-uk.html/
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http://pamelageller.com/2017/05/23000-jihadis-in-uk.html/
GOVERNMENT SOURCES HAVE CONFESSED THAT THERE ARE AT LEAST 23,000 JIHADISTS IN BRITAIN – MORE THAN SEVEN TIMES HIGHER THAN PREVIOUSLY REVEALED.
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Seven fold also being the factor that anthropogenic global warming is overstated, must the global, liberal, tolerance level for margin of error to make a false point without facing humiliation when exposed.
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http://mediestudier.se/publikationer/misstron-mot-medier/
[Translation Google]
Fifty-four per cent of respondents agreed with the statement: “The Swedish media doesn’t tell the truth about social problems associated with immigration,” whilst only 27 per cent said they disagreed.
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http://disobedientmedia.com/2017/02/ngo-fleet-bussing-migrants-into-the-eu-has-ties-to-george-soros-hillary-clinton-donors/
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https://www.facebook.com/Channel4News/videos/10154883179186939/?hc_ref=NEWSFEED
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https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/06/cnn-on-london-jihad-attacks-we-dont-know-their-motives
People might want to try a news source that does.
3 more attacks overnight in London. Knives and truck. More deaths, more injuries.
Our guess that it might be Lutheran extremists is not real funny anymore.
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Doug,
"we don't know their motives"
CNN is a darn outrage.
"False news" description absolutely does fit their biased channel.
Everyone they have on who is politically right should be calling them on it every chance they get. Like Sununu did as noted in a CD post recently.
Throw their deceptions right back in their outrage arrogant faces in from to they're viewers.
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https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/06/cnn-on-london-jihad-attacks-we-dont-know-their-motives
People might want to try a news source that does.
3 more attacks overnight in London. Knives and truck. More deaths, more injuries.
Our guess that it might be Lutheran extremists is not real funny anymore.
How were the trucks radicalized? The U.K. Obviously needs to do more outreach to vehicles and reduce the overwhelming vehicle-phobia.
Who knew Trump's withdrawal from the Paris accords would have such immediate negative effects, well aside from killing all of humanity!!!!!
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/saudi-arabia-gulf-states-fund-islamic-extremism-germany-salafism-wahhabism-qatar-kuwait-islamists-a7473551.html
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https://www.theburningplatform.com/2017/06/04/barren-cat-lady/
Barren Cat Lady
Guest Post by The Zman
The above is the speech from British Prime Minister Barren Cat Lady after the latest attack by Muslims in Britain. Like all modern political speeches, hers was vapid and stupid in ways that suggest the people who wrote it, and the Prime Minister herself, are suffering from brain damage. The best part of the speech was the airy and frivolous platitudes about the true nature of Islam. Funny how our pols are now all experts on Islam.
It is only five minutes long, but it is tough to take so I’ll cover the key points for you. Barren Cat Lady wants everyone to know that the people responsible for importing millions of hyper-violent savages into Britain are on top of things. That’s something you never hear addressed in public by the pols of any party or the so-called news reporters allegedly charged with grilling them. No one ever asks, “why did you import these strangers into our lands?” It’s treated as if it just magically happened like a freak storm or earth quake.
Of course, someone could start asking these questions, so the Barren Cat Lady promised to ramp up policing of the Internet. No kidding. That was her first big proposal. She wants the British government to further stamp out speech on-line and she wants other countries to stamp out free expression in their countries as well. When your first response to an attack by foreign invaders is to crack down on your own citizens, it is not unreasonable to wonder who Barren Cat Lady is blaming for these attacks.
After she promise to crack down on the Internet, as if it is a thing with agency of its own, she makes noises about properly worshiping the gods of the new religion. She provides an example by informing us that the Muslims doing this are not practicing real Islam. That despite what all the Imams say and their holy books instruct, the real Islam is this wonderful thing that is going to be great for Britain. Even though the corpses are piling up, what’s important is that you don’t notice that all the perpetrators are Muslims.
Humorously, she then declares this mysterious, perverted version of Islam, that looks like all the other versions of Islam, is the great challenge of our time. She then goes on to say that “British values” of pluralistic tolerance are superior to anything offered by the preachers of hate. Well, we will find out soon enough. So far, the British people have not been able to rouse themselves from their drunken degeneracy to do anything about this challenge. The scoreboard says the Muslims are winning in a blowout, pun intended.
Probably the most laugh out loud line in the sermon, and yes, this was a sermon, was when Barren Cat Lady said that “we have to be less tolerant of extremism. And yes, that could mean some embarrassing and difficult conversations.” Embarrassing for whom is never mentioned, but we know. The reason we know is after the last Muslim attack, the one last week, the Brits went around arresting white people for saying mean things about Muslims on Faceberg. Being arrested is embarrassing, even when you’re innocent.
What was revealed by this speech is that outside of the public eye, the people in charge of Britain have no emotional or moral attachment to the British people. As far as they are concerned, the people are just a burden, whether it is the hyper-violent oogily-boogily people that arrive over the channel or the native Brits. Barren Cat Lady sees no difference between a Muslim from Pakistan and an Episcopalian for York. She just sees grasping hands demanding her time when she would much rather be elsewhere.
Prior to watching this speech, I figured that this event would get the sane Brits out to vote next week for the Tories. Labour is led by a deranged lunatic who should probably be locked away in an institution. No matter how bad the Tories have been, incompetent is better than radically deranged. Watching Barren Cat Lady, I think I’d be switching my vote and going with the black pill candidate, Burn it down. The only hope is to wipe out the people who put Barren Cat Lady in charge and then have the final battle with the crazies.
This is the same problem we face in the US. Instead of Barren Cat Lady, we have faggots like Caitlyn Graham and Paul Ryan supposedly leading the charge against the nihilistic death cult called the American Left. Trump is the black pill, which is why so many of us voted for him, despite what it most likely meant. The only way the West has any chance of defeating the demographic and ideological challenges facing it is to first hang all of the people currently in charge. Then new leaders can emerge to lead the fight.
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/home-office-terrorist-funding-report-saudia-arabia-focus-not-publish-conservatives-government-a7766381.html
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http://ace.mu.nu/archives/370048.php
Is Britain Doomed?
ostriches.jpg
I picked up the following "Tweetstorm" on Sunday in the wake of the multiple terrorist attacks in England. As is my custom, I will embed the first tweet in the series, and then lift out only the text in the others to save space and page loading time.
Context: Thomas Wictor, the author of the tweets, is responding to some progressive who is complaining about Breitbart writers.
So here we go:
23h
Brian Klaas ✔ @brianklaas
The ignorance of these Breitbart writers is astonishing. Worse, the guy who used to run Breitbart (Steve Bannon) is still in the White House pic.twitter.com/WC1Mhi8JDp
Follow
Thomas Wictor @ThomasWictor
@brianklaas (1) Last night, I saw something that I would've never thought possible.
It made me realize that the UK is likely doomed. pic.twitter.com/Q3tESI7U7i
12:44 PM - 4 Jun 2017
View image on Twitter
998 998 Retweets 1,345 1,345 likes
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(2) Breitbart writers don't matter. They have no authority. Their opinions are just blather. HERE'S what matters:
metro police warning.jpg
(3) A British man took video as unarmed, helpless police came into a bar and told everyone to lie down on the floor.
(4) In the middle of a mass-casualty terrorist attack, one customer shouted "F*cking Muslim c*nts!" He thought he was about to die.
(5) The man filming--in the MIDDLE OF THE ATTACK--began lecturing the other about how he shouldn't say such things.
(6) The comments on this man's Twitter feed showed that MANY Brits think it's rational to criticize victims of terrorism for their language.
(7) Keep in mind that the terrorist attack WAS IN PROGRESS, the victims were cowering on the floor, yet offensive language was the issue.
(8) An Israeli told me a joke once: Two Jewish men are being led to the wall to be executed by firing squad.
(9) One man says, "To hell with it. I'm going to demand a last cigarette." "Be quiet!" say the other. "You'll get us in trouble!"
(10) The joke is funny because it's based in reality, BUT IT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN FOR REAL.
(11) Last night, that joke happened FOR REAL in the UK.
(12) As two men waited to be killed by terrorists, one criticized the other for offensive language against Muslims.
(13) The fact that so many Brits APPLAUDED this insanity shows that Britain is likely doomed.
So, to recap: Britain is doomed because most of her citizenry have their heads firmly lodged in the sand.
And then, as if on cue, here comes a British guy with his head firmly lodged in the sand:
stilltherealgraemek @GKenna49
Replying to @ThomasWictor
That guy can go home knowing he was tested to the extreme & came out if it an instinctively decent human being which terrorists never are
And that is why they will never win. Even when there's a possibility of death he retained British decency & principles.
I don't know if it's infuriating or gratifying to have the very point you were attempting to explain demonstrated perfectly, and in such an obvious manner. It's probably what Larry Correa felt when he started Sad Puppies to prove that the Hugo awards had been commandeered by an inbred clique of intolerant SJW goons, and they responded by publicly vilifying him as an evil right winger and declaring him persona non grata in an attempt to reduce his book sales. All the while insisting that they weren't intolerant SJW goons.
Or like claiming that Islam breeds violence and then getting death threats from Muslims. "Behead those who say Islam is violent." Yeah, that makes sense.
(h/t to Mark Huffman for the metro police warning pic)
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http://redstatewatcher.com/article.asp?id=81619
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http://redstatewatcher.com/article.asp?id=81619
Sadly, that's about 12 blokes.
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Funny nonetheless.
This however is not:
http://occupydeplorables.com/germany-will-become-an-islamic-state-says-merkel-theyll-have-to-come-to-terms-with-it/#.WTVnavlhq8g.facebook
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Funny nonetheless.
This however is not:
http://occupydeplorables.com/germany-will-become-an-islamic-state-says-merkel-theyll-have-to-come-to-terms-with-it/#.WTVnavlhq8g.facebook
How many of the European people thought they were voting for this?
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Accept Islamic Terror as the New Normal?
by Nonie Darwish
June 4, 2017 at 5:00 am
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10474/islamic-terror-new-normal
"The use of terror under this doctrine [Targhib wal tarhib, "luring and terrorizing"] is a legitimate sharia obligation." — Salman Al Awda, mainstream Muslim sheikh, on the Al Jazeera television show "Sharia and Life".
Part of the tarhib or "terrorizing" side of this doctrine is to make a cruel example of those who do not comply with the requirements of Islam. That is the reason Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, and entities such as ISIS, intentionally hold ceremonial public beheadings, floggings, and amputation of limbs.
Islamic jihad has always counted on people in conquered lands eventually to yield, give up and accept terrorism as part of life, similar to natural disasters, earthquakes and floods.
After terror attacks, we often hear from Western media and politicians that we must accept terrorist attacks as the "new normal."
For Western citizens, this phrase is dangerous.
Islam's doctrine of jihad, expansion and dawah (Islamic outreach, proselytizing) rely heavily on the use of both terror and luring. Targhib wal tarhib is an Islamic doctrine that means "seducing (luring) and terrorizing" as a tool for dawah, to conquer nations and force citizens to submit to Islamic law, sharia. It amounts to manipulating the instinctive parts of the human brain with extreme opposing pressures of pleasure and pain -- rewarding, then severely punishing -- to brainwash people into complying with Islam.
Most ordinary Muslims are not even aware of this doctrine, but Islamic books have been written about it. Mainstream Muslim sheikhs such as Salman Al Awda have discussed it on Al Jazeera TV. On a show called "Sharia and Life," Al Awda recommended using extremes "to exaggerate... reward and punishment, morally and materially... in both directions". "The use of terror under this doctrine,"' he said, "is a legitimate sharia obligation."
People in the West think of terror as something that Islamic jihadists inflict on non-Muslims, and it is. But terror is also the mechanism for ensuring compliance within Islam. Under Islamic law, jihadists who evade performing jihad are to be killed. Terror is thus the threat that keeps jihadists on their missions, and that make ordinary Muslims obey sharia.
An online course for recruiting jihadists contains this description:
"Individual Dawa depends on eliciting emotional responses from recruits (and building a personal relationship). Abu 'Amr's approach illustrates a recruitment concept called al-targhib wa'l-tarhib, which is a carrot-and-stick technique of extolling the benefits of action while explaining the frightening costs of inaction. The concept was introduced in the Qur'an and is discussed by many Islamic thinkers exploring the best way to call people to Islam (several scholars, for example, have written books titled al-targhib wa'l-tarhib). According to Abu 'Amr, recruiters should apply the concept throughout the recruitment process, but emphasize the benefits of action early in the process and the costs of inaction later."
In other words, recruiters of jihadists should start by emphasizing the "good stuff" first, the "lure" -- the future glory, supremacy and fulfillment of every lustful wish, such as virgins in heaven. Later, they should threaten the recruits with "terror" and shame -- the consequence if they fail to participate in jihad.
Part of the tarhib or "terrorizing" side of this doctrine is to make a cruel example of those who do not comply with the requirements of Islam. That is the reason Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, and entities such as ISIS, intentionally hold ceremonial public beheadings, floggings, and amputation of limbs. Countries such as Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey are more discrete, but they tolerate and support honor killings; killing apostates; beating women and children, and torture and murder in their jails. The doctrine of targhib and tarhib is alive and well, not just in Islamic theocracies but also in the so-called "moderate" Muslim countries.
Islam has been using these "pleasure and pain" brainwashing techniques, and cruel and unusual punishment, from its inception and until today. While the Bible -- the Western Judeo-Christian tradition -- is in harmony with, and nurtures, kindness in human nature, Islam does the opposite: it uses the human instincts for self-preservation and survival to break the people's will and brainwash them into slavish obedience.
Like the majority of Muslims, I never heard of this foundational Islamic doctrine when I was growing up in Egypt, but have felt the impact of this doctrine on my life -- in every aspect of Islamic culture; in Islamic preaching, in my Islamic family relations; in how Islamic governments operate and how people of authority, in general, treat the people under them.
The Islamic doctrine of "lure and terror" has produced a culture of toxic extremes: distrust and fear, pride and shame, permission to lie ("taqiyya"), and rejecting taking responsibility for one's actions.
Having lived most of my life under Islam, I am sad to say that people the West calls "moderate Muslims" are frequently, in fact, citizens who have learned to live with and accept terror as normal. For centuries, many have made excuses for terror, condemned victims of terror, remained silent or equivocal, and have even compromised with the terrorists to survive. The Islamic culture in which I lived looked the other way when women were beaten. When girls were honor-murdered, the question was "what did she do?" instead of "how could that be?" When Christians were killed and persecuted, many blamed the Christians for their own persecution at the hands of Muslims. The normal Islamic response to terror became: "None of my business."
And now the Islamic doctrine of Targhib wal Tarhib, has moved to the West and aims at changing Western humanistic culture. It would replace respect for human rights, caring for one's neighbor and the values of freedom and peace, with the values of bondage, terror, tyranny and fear.
Islamic jihad has always counted on people in conquered lands eventually to yield, give up and accept terrorism as part of life, similar to natural disasters, earthquakes and floods.
It did not take long for the Islamic doctrine of Targhib wal Tarhib to work on the psyche of Western leaders and media, who are now telling us to live with it as the "new normal." Islam counts on turning everyone into "moderate" Muslims who will eventually look the other way when terror happens to the person next to you.
The new normal? Police help survivors of the terrorist attack on London Bridge, June 4, 2017. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)
Nonie Darwish, born and raised in Egypt, is the author of "Wholly Different; Why I chose Biblical Values Over Islamic Values."
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The Identity Crisis Fueling European Muslim Radicalization
by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
June 7, 2017
https://www.investigativeproject.org/6235/the-identity-crisis-fueling-european-muslim
[IMG]When tanks entered the streets of Istanbul and Ankara last summer in an attempt to overthrow the Turkish government, people swarmed the streets to fight them off. At the urging of their president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, they pushed back against the coup, some waving Turkish flags, others waving guns. "What else would you do?" A friend in Istanbul asked me some months later. "When your government and your country are attacked, you fight back. It's to be expected."
Less expected, however, were the crowds of Turkish-Europeans who also took to the streets in cities like Rotterdam, where dozens demonstrated on the city's Erasmus Bridge, waving Turkish flags and, in some cases, crying out "Allahu Akbar." For many non-Turkish Europeans, the action felt almost threatening: Were these people Turkish or European? Could they reasonably be both? Or did they represent a fifth column, aiming to overtake Europe from within?
In Holland, members of Leefbaar Rotterdam (Livable Rotterdam), the populist political party founded by the late Pim Fortuyn, determined to address the issue head-on. They held a public panel discussion last week to debate the question of who these demonstrators were: traitors? Dual citizens with torn allegiances? Could they be true to both their Turkish heritage and to the Dutch culture in which they were born and raised?
Left unspoken were the more pressing questions, the ones the non-Turks really meant: do Dutch Turks identify more with the Islamist policies and values of Erdogan and his regime, or with the secular Enlightenment, the democratic culture of the West? What, after all, to think of the fact that the vast majority of European Turks voted for Erdogan in the November 2015 elections, and again voted against democracy in Turkey's April 16 referendum, which gave him virtually limitless powers until 2029?
While this particular debate took place in Rotterdam, once the home of the Renaissance humanist Erasmus, these questions have hovered over all of Europe since the 2004 terrorist attacks in Madrid and, even more, the 2005 attacks in London – and not only about the Turks, but about Muslim immigrants in general.
With Europe facing a near-continual onslaught of Islamist terrorist attacks often perpetrated by homegrown extremists, those questions feel more urgent than ever.
But both the issue and its urgency are far more complex than a matter of allegiance. For many second- and third-generation immigrant youth, especially those from Turkey and Morocco, it is also a matter of identity. As dark-skinned immigrants with names like Fatima and Mohammed, they are often discriminated against in their home countries. The values of their families and their religious leaders do not always mesh with the values of their communities and governments. But when they visit their cousins and grandparents in Anatolia and rural Morocco, they find they don't fit in there, either.
Many counterterrorism experts maintain that this situation makes Muslim European youth especially vulnerable to radicalization and recruitment by terror groups. As Belgian-Palestinian jihad expert Montasser AIDe'emeh has noted of Belgian Moroccan extremists such as the Paris and Brussels attackers, "The Islamic State is giving them what the Belgian government can't give them – identity, structure. They don't feel Moroccan or Belgian. They don't feel part of either society." And speaking to PBS's Judy Woodruff, Peter Neumann, director of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization, observed that "the cause [of radicalization] is ultimately a conflict of identity. It is about second- or third-generation descendants of Muslim immigrants no longer feeling at home in their parents' or grandparents' culture, at the same time not being accepted into European societies."
If this is true, then what to make of the Turkish-European dual citizens choosing, as most have, to support Erdogan's Islamist policies while living in the liberal West? Are they integrated, assimilated, into the cultures in which they live, as most insisted during the Rotterdam debate? Or are they rather true to the norms of a Turkey that is becoming increasingly religious, turning increasingly eastward, and to a president who is gradually unraveling the secular Western vision of the republic's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk?
At the same time, does waving the Turkish flag when the country is attacked mean they are not actually Dutch? Should Dutch Jews not fly the flag of Israel, or Dutch-Americans have left their stars and stripes at home after 9/11?
"It's more than just flags," Ebru Umar, a Dutch-Turkish journalist who moderated last week's event, explained in an e-mail. "The flags symbolize who they are.... They claim to be soldiers of Erdogan." Hence, she said, "the people [demonstrating] on the [Erasmus] bridge were and are seen as not integrated. Ask them and they'll answer they are integrated. And [yet] they tell you of course they adore Erdogan." Indeed, she noted, they even stated it at the debate: "'You can't ask a child whom they love more: mum or dad.'"
It is a false equivalency, however. This is not about loving one parent more than another, but about accepting one of two opposing sets of values: those of secular democracies, or those of Islamist theocracies. There is no combining the two. There is no compromise.
Which is what makes these questions so very critical right now – not just for the Dutch, but for all Europeans, as they confront a complex, existential dilemma. Should they continue to alienate the growing population of young Muslims, and should those same young Muslims continue to resist assimilation, they will together be laying out the welcome mat for recruiters for jihad. But should Europe instead accept the Islamist leanings of those same Muslim youth, it will soon discover there was a fifth column after all – a movement to Islamize the West. And it will have succeeded.
Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New York and the Netherlands. Follow her at @radicalstates.
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It comes down to either being a muslim or living in the west. If they wish to be muslim, they should be compelled to do it elsewhere. Islam does not allow for divided loyalties, neither should we.
Of course, this won't be recognized by western europe and as a result they are doomed.
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"He expedited the release and return of Gitmo detainees to the UK as well when he was a lawyer. Check out his bio on Wikipedia and Google search his name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadiq_Khan Note they leave out his cases as a human rights attorney, you have to dig deeper to find the Gitmo connections."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4578668/Sadiq-Khan-s-conference-London-Bridge-killer-s-friend.html
" Oh, not to mention although he was not part of the defense team for 9/11 suspect Zacarias Moussaoui he did speak publicly in his defense. So don't be thrown off by Snopes saying the claim is false. :D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZM6ujJ983c "
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"He expedited the release and return of Gitmo detainees to the UK as well when he was a lawyer. Check out his bio on Wikipedia and Google search his name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadiq_Khan Note they leave out his cases as a human rights attorney, you have to dig deeper to find the Gitmo connections."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4578668/Sadiq-Khan-s-conference-London-Bridge-killer-s-friend.html
" Oh, not to mention although he was not part of the defense team for 9/11 suspect Zacarias Moussaoui he did speak publicly in his defense. So don't be thrown off by Snopes saying the claim is false. :D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZM6ujJ983c "
Snopes has no credibility.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/06/flashback-sadiq-khan-refers-moderate-muslims-uncle-toms-video/
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https://twitter.com/AlfredAlbion/status/872223368812122116
Any "islamophobic" speech will be punished.
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https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/2017/06/12/theres-a-huge-catch-in-the-imams-refuse-funeral-prayers-for-london-jihadis-story/
There's a Huge Catch in the 'Imams Refuse Funeral Prayers for London Jihadis' Story
BY ROBERT SPENCER JUNE 12, 2017 CHAT 70 COMMENTS
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson speaks about Qatar at the State Department in Washington, Friday June 9, 2017. Tillerson is calling on Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to immediately ease their blockade on Qatar. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) gained worldwide headlines -- and praise -- for its announcement last week that 130 imams in the United Kingdom were refusing to perform funeral prayers for the London jihad mass murderers.
But as is so often the case, there was less to this much-heralded display of Islamic moderation than met the eye.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the following last Monday in New Zealand:
I was actually encouraged when I heard on the news this morning that a number of imams in London have condemned these attackers and said they will not perform prayer services over their funerals, which means they’re condemning their souls. And that is what has to be done, and only the Muslim faith can handle this.
Moderate Muslims stood up at last, right? It certainly seemed so. From the MCB statement:
Imams and religious leaders from across the country and a range of schools of thought have come together to issue a public statement condemning the recent terror attack in London and conveying their pain at the suffering of the victims and their families.
In an unprecedented move, they have not only refused to perform the traditional Islamic prayer for the terrorist -- a ritual that is normally performed for every Muslim regardless of their actions -- but also have called on others to do the same. They said:
“Consequently, and in light of other such ethical principles which are quintessential to Islam, we will not perform the traditional Islamic funeral prayer over the perpetrators and we also urge fellow imams and religious authorities to withdraw such a privilege. This is because such indefensible actions are completely at odds with the lofty teachings of Islam.”
This all sounds great, but there’s just one catch.
Muhammad himself is depicted in hadiths as forbidding funeral prayers for martyrs.
Islamic law forbids such prayers as well.
To be clear:
Withholding funeral prayers is an HONOR reserved for those who die while committing jihad.
In one hadith -- hadith are reports about Muhammad’s words and deeds that, when deemed authentic, are normative for Islamic law -- the prophet of Islam ordered:
[Two martyrs to] be buried with their blood (on their bodies). Neither was the funeral prayer offered for them, nor were they washed.
One of the martyrs’ sons recalled:
When my father was martyred, I started weeping and uncovering his face. The companions of the Prophet stopped me from doing so but the Prophet did not stop me. Then the Prophet said, "(O Jabir), don’t weep over him, for the angels kept on covering him with their wings till his body was carried away (for burial)" (Bukhari 5.59.406).
Muhammad told Jabir not to weep because his father was not dead, but alive:
But do not think of those that have been slain in Allah’s cause are dead. Nay, they are alive! With their Sustainer have they their sustenance (Qur’an 3:169).
Based on the hadith in which Muhammad orders the bodies of the martyrs not to be washed and funeral prayers not to be said over them, as well as others like it, Islamic law states:
[It is] unlawful to wash the body of a martyr … or perform the funeral prayer over him.
…
[A] martyr (shahid) means someone who died in battle with non-Muslims” (Reliance of the Traveller, g4.20).
What Rex Tillerson -- and much of the Western world, and certainly much of Western media -- took as a great show of Muslim rejection of terrorism was actually a display of Muslim adherence to Islamic law, Muslim acceptance of terrorist deaths as Islamic martyrdom, and application of Muhammad’s dictum “war is deceit” (Bukhari 4.52.268).
War is deceit, indeed. The Qur’an warns believers not to take unbelievers as “friends or helpers” (َأَوْلِيَا -- a word that means more than casual friendship, but something more like an alliance), “except when taking precaution against them in prudence” (3:28). This is a foundation of the Islamic idea that believers may legitimately deceive unbelievers when under pressure. The word used for “guard” in Arabic is tuqātan, from taqiyyatan -- hence the now familiar term taqiyya.
The renowned Qur’an commentator Ibn Kathir says that the phrase “except when taking precaution against them in prudence” means:
… believers who in some areas or times fear for their safety from the disbelievers … [may] show friendship to the disbelievers outwardly, but never inwardly. For instance, Al-Bukhari recorded that Abu Ad-Darda’ said, " We smile in the face of some people although our hearts curse them." Al-Bukhari said that Al-Hasan said, "The Tuqyah [ taqiyya] is allowed until the Day of Resurrection."
The MCB made sophisticated use of this weapon last week, fooling the international media and even the secretary of State into thinking that a demonstration of what they would call “extremism” was actually “moderation.”
It was an object lesson in the dangers of trying to formulate counter-terror policy without understanding the motivating ideology of the terrorists themselves.
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There's a Huge Catch in the 'Imams Refuse Funeral Prayers for London Jihadis' Story
[IMG]
BY ROBERT SPENCER JUNE 12, 2017
CHAT68 COMMENTS
[IMG]
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson speaks about Qatar at the State Department in Washington, Friday June 9, 2017. Tillerson is calling on Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to immediately ease their blockade on Qatar. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) gained worldwide headlines -- and praise -- for its announcement last week that 130 imams in the United Kingdom were refusing to perform funeral prayers for the London jihad mass murderers.
But as is so often the case, there was less to this much-heralded display of Islamic moderation than met the eye.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the following last Monday in New Zealand:
I was actually encouraged when I heard on the news this morning that a number of imams in London have condemned these attackers and said they will not perform prayer services over their funerals, which means they’re condemning their souls. And that is what has to be done, and only the Muslim faith can handle this.
Moderate Muslims stood up at last, right? It certainly seemed so. From the MCB statement:
Imams and religious leaders from across the country and a range of schools of thought have come together to issue a public statement condemning the recent terror attack in London and conveying their pain at the suffering of the victims and their families.
In an unprecedented move, they have not only refused to perform the traditional Islamic prayer for the terrorist -- a ritual that is normally performed for every Muslim regardless of their actions -- but also have called on others to do the same. They said:
“Consequently, and in light of other such ethical principles which are quintessential to Islam, we will not perform the traditional Islamic funeral prayer over the perpetrators and we also urge fellow imams and religious authorities to withdraw such a privilege. This is because such indefensible actions are completely at odds with the lofty teachings of Islam. This all sounds great, but there’s just one catch.
Muhammad himself is depicted in hadiths as forbidding funeral prayers formartyrs.
Islamic law forbids such prayers as well.
To be clear:
Withholding funeral prayers is an HONOR reserved for those who die while committing jihad.
In one hadith -- hadith are reports about Muhammad’s words and deeds that, when deemed authentic, are normative for Islamic law -- the prophet of Islam ordered:
[Two martyrs to] be buried with their blood (on their bodies). Neither was the funeral prayer offered for them, nor were they washed.
One of the martyrs’ sons recalled:
When my father was martyred, I started weeping and uncovering his face. The companions of the Prophet stopped me from doing so but the Prophet did not stop me. Then the Prophet said, "(O Jabir), don’t weep over him, for the angels kept on covering him with their wings till his body was carried away (for burial)" (Bukhari 5.59.406).
Muhammad told Jabir not to weep because his father was not dead, but alive:
But do not think of those that have been slain in Allah’s cause are dead. Nay, they are alive! With their Sustainer have they their sustenance (Qur’an 3:169).
Based on the hadith in which Muhammad orders the bodies of the martyrs not to be washed and funeral prayers not to be said over them, as well as others like it, Islamic law states:
[It is] unlawful to wash the body of a martyr … or perform the funeral prayer over him.
…
[A] martyr (shahid) means someone who died in battle with non-Muslims” (Reliance of the Traveller, g4.20).
What Rex Tillerson -- and much of the Western world, and certainly much of Western media -- took as a great show of Muslim rejection of terrorism was actually a display of Muslim adherence to Islamic law, Muslim acceptance of terrorist deaths as Islamic martyrdom, and application of Muhammad’s dictum “war is deceit” (Bukhari 4.52.268).
War is deceit, indeed. The Qur’an warns believers not to take unbelievers as “friends or helpers” (َأَوْلِيَا -- a word that means more than casual friendship, but something more like an alliance), “except when taking precaution against them in prudence” (3:28). This is a foundation of the Islamic idea that believers may legitimately deceive unbelievers when under pressure. The word used for “guard” in Arabic is tuqātan, from taqiyyatan -- hence the now familiar term taqiyya.
The renowned Qur’an commentator Ibn Kathir says that the phrase “except when taking precaution against them in prudence” means:
… believers who in some areas or times fear for their safety from the disbelievers … [may] show friendship to the disbelievers outwardly, but never inwardly. For instance, Al-Bukhari recorded that Abu Ad-Darda’ said, "We smile in the face of some people although our hearts curse them." Al-Bukhari said that Al-Hasan said, "The Tuqyah [taqiyya] is allowed until the Day of Resurrection."
The MCB made sophisticated use of this weapon last week, fooling the international media and even the secretary of State into thinking that a demonstration of what they would call “extremism” was actually “moderation.”
It was an object lesson in the dangers of trying to formulate counter-terror policy without understanding the motivating ideology of the terrorists themselves.
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I'm sure the media in the US and Europe will be sure to inform the people about this.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2017/06/13/spiked-documentary-anti-semitism-europe-leaked-germanys-largest-newspaper/
Europe dies in darkness.
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It is Breitbart so read with care:
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/06/14/poland-czech-republic-slam-eu-forced-migrant-relocation-plan-fight-sanctions/
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Up from an estimate of 200 in 2010, growing 10-fold in 7 years according to security agency SAPO. What could possibly go wrong.
http://www.friatider.se/s-po-det-finns-flera-tusen-v-ldsbejakande-islamister-i-sverige
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Up from an estimate of 200 in 2010, growing 10-fold in 7 years according to security agency SAPO. What could possibly go wrong.
http://www.friatider.se/s-po-det-finns-flera-tusen-v-ldsbejakande-islamister-i-sverige
Go long on florists and teddy bear companies.
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https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/06/londons-muslim-mayor-refuses-to-cancel-pro-jihad-terror-anti-israel-demonstration
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Hidden at least as well as Obama's academic records. The press covered the dead, but the survivors, many of whom may be missing body parts and had their lives forever altered have been awful camera shy.
Can't have mutilated teens and tweens disrupting the "islam is awesome" official narrative.
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The apparent logic of the van driving into Muslims coming out of their mosque in London last night is what it is.
Apart from the deep moral failings of this tactic, my guess is that it will be used in furtherance of a moral parity paradigm and as such a failure as defined by its goals.
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Caveat lector-- its Breitbart
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/06/16/asylum-seekers-going-back-native-countries-holidays/
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The apparent logic of the van driving into Muslims coming out of their mosque in London last night is what it is.
Apart from the deep moral failings of this tactic, my guess is that it will be used in furtherance of a moral parity paradigm and as such a failure as defined by its goals.
What is the moral response? As using social media to express anything "islamophobic" can result in a criminal charge in the U.K. Double down on the stuffed animals and floral arraignments?
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http://uk.mobile.reuters.com/article/UKNews1/idUKKBN19D1SI
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SycoZmlWo9k
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SycoZmlWo9k
The Sikhs have a long history of fighting the global jihad. I like the fact they are a warrior culture with a religious symbol made up of four weapons. Allies that should be cultivated.
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http://gatesofvienna.net/2017/07/matt-bracken-the-deep-pockets-behind-the-migrant-rescue-industry/
Matt Bracken: The Deep Pockets Behind the Migrant “Rescue” Industry
Posted on July 10, 2017 by Baron Bodissey
Matt Bracken has made a meme using a still taken from the video below. His topic is the carefully planned and executed “rescue” of migrants who cross the Mediterranean — usually just a few miles of it — in flimsy boats. He says:
This is a massive effort by Soros and others like him. There was no market for these boats prior to the planned hijra invasion of Europe. They have no sporting or military use and were not built anywhere in the world prior to the migrant invasion.
Boat plus engine cost at least $10,000, and probably double or triple that, delivered to Libya. They are suitable only for short-range one-time use by migrants who have the expectation of being picked up by NGO “rescue ships” that will ferry the migrants to Italian ports.
These massive and overloaded rubber boats are death traps if the weather turns bad or they are not “rescued” almost immediately, and within sight of Libya, by waiting NGO ships.
This invasion of Europe under the guise of an ongoing “rescue operation” is as carefully planned as D-day in 1944. There are deep pockets behind it, and Quisling traitor politicians in Italy and Europe who are being bribed to continue the charade. Concerning the likes of Reinier Boere, the SeaWatch mission director seen in the video, words fail me.
(http://gatesofvienna.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/bracken-migrantboats.jpg)
http://gatesofvienna.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/bracken-migrantboats.jpg
Matt Bracken: Those throwaway migrant boats
Leftist quislings on full display and proud to be destroying Europe:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW4qXfGCGb0 [/youtube]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW4qXfGCGb0
3:13 in: “Make no mistake: as well as a rescue mission, this is a political act, and the organization and the crew by and large have a left-leaning open-borders world view which some will find unpalatable. For example, what’s happening in the stern as we speak, the political equivalent to nailing your colors to the mast.” (Shows white Europeans around a flag that says “Build bridges, not walls.”)
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http://nationalinterest.org/feature/ive-worked-refugees-decades-europes-afghan-crime-wave-mind-21506?page=show
Refugees welcome!
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http://www.israelvideonetwork.com/graphic-vicious-muslim-mob-attack-on-female-tourist-filmed-in-paris-suburb/?omhide=true
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https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/2017/07/29/germanys-refugee-driven-terror-problem-out-of-control-after-a-dozen-incidents-since-jan-2016/
But diversity!
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https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/2017/08/01/report-gives-new-details-on-173-man-islamic-state-terror-team-headed-towards-europe
(https://shariaunveiled.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/rapefugees-rapists-welcome-1-resized.png?w=627&h=476)
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Source unknown:
http://www.projectrepublictoday.com/2017/08/02/coming-will-take-country-muslim-biker-gangs-boxing-clubs-training-take-germany/
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http://pamelageller.com/2017/08/rocketlauncher-quran-school.html/
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http://www.jpost.com/printarticle.aspx?id=503133
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https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DIRfvY1XoAA7946.jpg
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DIRfvY1XoAA7946.jpg)
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I'm not sure what all the questions are here. Is being a radical Islamic murdering terrorist grounds for an insanity plea in France? Is torturing, murdering a Jewish woman and throwing her off a third story balcony a prosecutable crime [or just a cultural difference?], is it okay to not report what everyone in the neighborhood knows happened in the mainstream media if you all all afraid it might affect the result a contentious election?
http://www.meforum.org/6888/france-turned-blind-eye-to-murder-of-sarah-halimi
Why France Turned a Blind Eye to the Murder of Sarah Halimi
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https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/09/13/rewarding-terrorists-baltic-countries/
Rewarding Terrorists in the Nordic Countries
The closest Larsson came to offering a justification for the policy was to say this: “No human being is born as an extremist.” There it is again: the nobody's-really-guilty Nordic mentality that will spell the death of Sweden.
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https://pamelageller.com/2017/09/czech-refugees-trojan.html/
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/sep/26/muslim-majority-in-france-projected-in-40-years/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTTJSbFptSmxPRFE0WW1JMCIsInQiOiJSNHV1VWtVY3U2V1E0UlNcL1lLUU5hV01QR3VocVlcLzFSa3ZHR05cL1ZLNmJaSVI1eWRqcmI4ckxkVzh1Z2d1R2d2am80cDFaM0tGYzdZTk9FSFJWVGluaFhtU3lFY25hTTBlY3FCMXc3NE1XY3NJaE5hc0M2RTl2TkpMZlBYd0g4MSJ9
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/sep/26/muslim-majority-in-france-projected-in-40-years/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTTJSbFptSmxPRFE0WW1JMCIsInQiOiJSNHV1VWtVY3U2V1E0UlNcL1lLUU5hV01QR3VocVlcLzFSa3ZHR05cL1ZLNmJaSVI1eWRqcmI4ckxkVzh1Z2d1R2d2am80cDFaM0tGYzdZTk9FSFJWVGluaFhtU3lFY25hTTBlY3FCMXc3NE1XY3NJaE5hc0M2RTl2TkpMZlBYd0g4MSJ9
Ah, I'm sure it will be fine.
(https://westernrifleshooters.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/dkrrhbdvoaamkyz.jpg)
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"Ah, I'm sure it will be fine."
Reminds me of a discussion we had about a video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfK7Yal64S0
http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=977.msg28181#msg28181
Yeah, vacation in France. Hope nothing happens to you or your stuff...
I don't need to travel to visit a third world country; they're building one here.
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" Reminds me of a discussion we had about a video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfK7Yal64S0
http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=977.msg28181#msg28181 "
right, lets let Palestinians take over Israel and make it a *desert wasteland* again like it was when they nomaded there way into it while many Jews left in the Middle Ages.
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https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5022333,00.html
Norwegian minister: 'We now get what Israel goes through'
Speaking in an exclusive interview with Ynet in Oslo, Immigration Minister Sylvi Listhaug says Europeans 'are experiencing now the fear that you have experienced for decades'; supporting Israel's right to defend itself, Listhaug adds 'you live in a region that has a lot of problems.'
Yaron Druckman, Oslo|Published: 28.09.17 , 13:20
OSLO - Norway’s minister of immigration drew comparisons Wednesday between the plight of Europeans suffering from increasingly common terror attacks with the experiences endured by Israel for decades.
“We are experiencing now the fear that you have experienced for decades,” said Sylvi Listhaug in an exclusive interview with Ynet in Oslo. “Many people now understand the situation you live in. We see what is happening in Sweden, in Britain and in France.”
Interview with Sylvi Listhaug
European nations, she added, “and their citizens need to understand the situation in Israel better because of the terror attacks in Israel.”
Since taking office, Listhaug has cracked down on illegal immigration into the Scandinavian country by adopting stringent policies that have resulted in just 1,000 illegal migrants entering the country in 2017 from 30,000 in 2015.
According to Listhaug, her Progress Party, which governs in a coalition with the Conservative Party, is a staunch supporter of Israel.
“The Progress Party has always been a supporter of Israel’s need to protect themselves (sic) in a region where you are the only democracy,” she claimed.
Sylvi Listhaug (Photo: Ze'ev Yanai)
Sylvi Listhaug (Photo: Ze'ev Yanai)
“That does not mean that we support everything you do but you have a right to defend your people and your borders because you live in a region that has a lot of problems,” she acknowledged.
The interview took place a day after Denmark’s Immigration Minister Inger Stojberg posted a screenshot of her iPad showing a drawing of the Prophet Mohammad on Facebook, one of the satirical cartoons that caused outrage among Muslims around the world more than a decade ago.
While saying that she did not necessarily agree with the caricature, Listhaug insisted her Danish counterpart had every right to publish it in the interest of free speech.
Satirical cartoon of Mohammas
Satirical cartoon of Mohammas
“People have been murdered because they have expressed their opinion like (what happened with) Charlie Hebdo,” she highlighted in reference to the French satirical magazine that was firebombed in 2011 for publishing a cartoon of Mohammad and was then the target of an brutal attack by two radical Muslim brothers in 2015 in which 12 people were massacred.
“It’s the new norm,” Listhaug concluded, “for Europeans to impose limits on freedom of speech in order to avoid offending minorities.”
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Is Austria's Burqa Ban an Example for America?
by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
October 10, 2017
https://www.investigativeproject.org/6781/is-austria-burqa-ban-an-example-for-america
With the number of jihadist terrorists in Europe rising, and a concurrent increase in the number of women involved in Islamist terrorism and recruiting, Austria's centrist government passed a bill in May to prohibit all face coverings in the public sphere. The measure, which carries a fine of €150, includes a ban on clown makeup, ski masks, and even hospital masks worn on city streets; but it is clearly the face-covering garments of Muslim women – the niqab and burqa – that are the law's real targets. The so-called "burqa ban," which went into effect Oct. 1, makes Austria the fifth European country to outlaw the wearing of face-coverings in public, and the fifth to do so on the basis of national security concerns related to Islamic dress. France, Belgium, Latvia, and Bulgaria already have such laws in place, and partial bans are in effect in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy and Spain.
Now other countries are starting to consider instituting comparable laws, despite ongoing protests from Muslim and many rights groups. Even Morocco, which is 99 percent Muslim, recently banned the sale and manufacture of burqas, citing safety concerns even though a small minority of Moroccan women wear face coverings. Reasons for such bans internationally range from similar security concerns to uneasiness about the oppression of Muslim women and their safety navigating in garments that restrict their movement and their vision.
Crimes have also been committed by women and even men disguised by burqas and niqabs: in 2009, a robber dressed in a burqa ran off with £150,000 worth of Rolex and Cartier watches from a jewelry shop Oxfordshire, England; a year later, two men, also in burqas, raided a French bank and escaped with €4,500; and when a non-Muslim Melbourne couple staged a robbery in August, the woman wore a burqa to conceal her identity.
Similar events have also taken place in the United States, most notably a rash of crimes in Philadelphia 2007 to 2013, including a number of bank robberies and the kidnapping and rape of a 5-year-old girl.
Yet a 2016 poll indicates that fewer Americans than Europeans support prohibiting the burqa and similar coverings. As in Austria and elsewhere in Europe, Americans' arguments against the bans tend largely to rely on the notion that they impinge on women's freedom to wear what they like. But this position ignores other public safety laws affecting dress – including complete undress – such as requirements to tie one's hair back while handling food, or to wear safety helmets on motorcycles and at construction sites.
Others insist such prohibitions violate laws protecting religious freedom, a position many Muslim feminists view as misguided, at best. Indeed, according to a Spectator editorial by Muslim activist and physician Qanta Ahmed, the idea of the full-face covering for Muslim women is a "recent invention," a concept "derived not from the Quran or early Islamic tradition, but from a misogyny which claims a false basis in the divine."
In this regard, Austria's approach is unique, as it actively seeks to address such misogyny in ways that distinguish it from other European bans. Following the earlier example set by the Dutch government in 2006, Austria, home to an estimated 700,000 Muslims – about 8 percent of the population – also now requires refugees and other immigrants to take German language courses and civics lessons that teach the moral codes and values of Austrian culture, including ideals of equality between men and women and acceptance of homosexuality.
Hence, while Muslim groups such as the Austrian Islamic Religious Authority describe the burqa ban as "Islamophobic" and discriminatory, proponents believe the opposite is true: by requiring Muslim women to live and dress as others in their society, they are breaking down the walls between them, encouraging equality, unity, and cohesion. Acceptance and respect of Austrian values are basic conditions for successful cohabitation between the majority Austrian population and people from third countries living in Austria," Chancellor Christian Kern said in a statement.
And nothing, said Pakistani-American counterterrorism expert and author Farhana Qazi, could be more Islamic. "Muslims living in a non Muslim country must respect the law," she said in an e-mail. "It is stated clearly in the Quran. God mentions the contract between the rulers and the ruled or citizens / residents. Muslims by Islamic law have to respect secular law or move to another country. It's that simple. And what I am saying is not my opinion but Islamic jurisprudence. Many Muslims don't know their own religion or law."
But this is not the only reason Qazi, like Ahmed, supports such laws in Europe and would like to see them enacted in America as well. "To be honest," said the former U.S. government counterterrorism analyst and military instructor, "the burqa ban is a response to a security concern that is valid. I respect women in hijab, but the burqa is a cultural cloth to me. This is not Islam."
Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New York and the Netherlands. Follow her at @radicalstates.
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German Towns Filled With Refugees Ask, ‘Who Is Integrating Whom?’
Earlier influx of foreigners feeds concerns about budget, safety, jobs and the quality of education
Nadine Langer with her daughters at their home in Lebenstedt, Germany.
Nadine Langer with her daughters at their home in Lebenstedt, Germany. Photo: LENA MUCHA FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
By Andrea Thomas
Updated Oct. 15, 2017 2:11 p.m. ET
398 COMMENTS
SALZGITTER, Germany—Late this summer, Nadine Langer took her six-year old to her first day at school. The girl was one of two German children in her class, she said, amid 20, mostly Syrian, refugees.
“I am not against foreigners,” said Ms. Langer, 41. “But there is a point where we have to wonder who is integrating whom.”
Germany’s 2015 refugee crisis has largely disappeared from the headlines. But in this and other midsize towns, it is continuing to unfold, putting communities under stress, pressuring local coffers and feeding concerns about safety, jobs and the quality of education.
Some 140,000 asylum seekers have entered Germany so far this year—a sharp drop from the 1.2 million who arrived in the past two years. But in places such as Salzgitter there is a sense that the government, having housed and fed the newcomers, is failing in the longer-term effort to integrate them in German society.
This unease, pollsters say, boosted the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany at last month’s election, making it the first far-right party to enter parliament in half a century. This shock means immigration will loom large when Chancellor Angela Merkel kicks off negotiations on Wednesday to form a three-party ruling coalition.
Related
Conservatives’ Loss in German State Election Is Blow to Merkel
Immigration has also returned to regional politics. In Lower Saxony, where Salzgitter is located and which elected its parliament on Sunday, integration and schools have been central in the campaign. Conservatives for years have said that refugees, a majority of whom settle permanently in the country, must learn German values, a concept known as Leitkultur.
Many here say they are proud of their town’s tradition as a refugee haven. But as their numbers rose sharply last year Salzgitter took the unusual step of requesting a moratorium on new arrivals.
“The established parties lived in a bubble. They said everything was fine, closed their eyes to reality and didn’t see people’s concern,” said Salzgitter’s mayor Frank Klingebiel.
Mr. Klingebiel hails from the conservative Christian Democratic Union. But his concerns transcend political lines. It was Stephan Weil, the left-leaning state premier who sought re-election on Sunday, who greenlighted the ban on further refugees moving to Salzgitter, which took effect this past week.
With about 5,700 mainly Syrian refugees for 106,000 residents, the highest proportion in the country, Salzgitter is an outlier. But several other communities, from Wilhelmshaven in the north to Hof in the south are also struggling.
Photos: German Towns Struggle to Integrate Refugees
Across the country, communities are under stress as they deal with increased demand for education, jobs and resources
Photos: German Towns Struggle to Integrate Refugees
Photos: German Towns Struggle to Integrate Refugees
Photos: German Towns Struggle to Integrate Refugees
Photos: German Towns Struggle to Integrate Refugees
Photos: German Towns Struggle to Integrate Refugees
Photos: German Towns Struggle to Integrate Refugees
Photos: German Towns Struggle to Integrate Refugees
Photos: German Towns Struggle to Integrate Refugees
Photos: German Towns Struggle to Integrate Refugees
Photos: German Towns Struggle to Integrate Refugees
People shop in Fredenberg, one of the districts with the highest numbers of refugees in Salzgitter.
LENA MUCHA FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
1 of 10
•••••
In Salzgitter, a pre-existing Syrian community and a glut of affordable housing drew over 2,000 refugees last year and nearly 1,000 this year, leaving a clear imprint on the town’s district of Lebenstedt.
Nour Alwadi, a 25-year-old from Damascus, arrived last year with his brother and his wife Asma. They now have a nine-month-old baby. His parents joined him in Salzgitter five months ago.
“We moved to Salzgitter because there are already many Arab and Turkish migrants here, we have friends here,” said Mr. Alwadi. “The people here are nice. We can attend mosques here.”
Many of those born or growing up in Salzgitter say they want to help refugees but that the influx has become too big to handle. Concerns range from the impact on schools to rising welfare costs, crime, and a diffuse sense that the local culture is becoming diluted, defeating the purpose of integration.
“There are permanently fights and the police have to come,” said Gülcan Dia, a 46-year-old German of Turkish heritage who works for a charity helping refugees.
Wherever refugees outnumber German children in schools, critics like Ms. Dia say, they find it harder to learn German. Local pupils, too, are falling behind on the curriculum.
A national school report released Friday showed a correlation between rising numbers of migrant schoolchildren and a deterioration in academic performance. In 2016, the share of foreign fourth-graders rose by one third to 34% from 2011, according to the education ministry, while the number of children who passed standard writing requirements dropped to 55% against 65% five years earlier.
Salzgitter Mayor Klingebiel said the town was struggling to find teachers for schools, kindergarten and adult language classes.
The AWO Familienkita kindergarten in Lebenstedt looks after 50 children, 18 of them Syrians. More than two thirds of the 160 children on the waiting list are Syrian.
“It’s good that we got this (moratorium), we simply couldn’t handle the situation anymore,” said manager Andrea Bernhof. This “gives the kids a chance to settle in and get proper education.”
Entering the labor market has proven equally difficult. Nationally, only 15.3% of adult nationals from the refugees’ main countries of origin had a regular job in July, two years after the refugee crisis peaked, according to the German labor agency. In Salzgitter, 91% of asylum seekers and refugees live on benefits.
Nicola Pöckler, who works for a charity that helps refugees find jobs, said many of the newcomers are only qualified for the simplest of occupations. “We don’t have the jobs that these people could take.”
In Lower Saxony, the anti-immigration AfD, seeking to tap into the growing discomfort, won its first parliamentary seats in the state. But its support there was just 5.8%, far below its 12.6% score at the September national election.
Michael Gröger, the party’s candidate for Salzgitter, said even the notion of integration should be reconsidered. “This asylum madness has to stop. An asylum seeker is a temporary guest, no immigrant. An asylum seeker doesn’t have to be integrated.”
Write to Andrea Thomas at andrea.thomas@wsj.com
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“But there is a point where we have to wonder who is integrating whom.”
Really? Do you really not know?
German Towns Filled With Refugees Ask, ‘Who Is Integrating Whom?’
Earlier influx of foreigners feeds concerns about budget, safety, jobs and the quality of education
Nadine Langer with her daughters at their home in Lebenstedt, Germany.
Nadine Langer with her daughters at their home in Lebenstedt, Germany. Photo: LENA MUCHA FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
By Andrea Thomas
Updated Oct. 15, 2017 2:11 p.m. ET
398 COMMENTS
SALZGITTER, Germany—Late this summer, Nadine Langer took her six-year old to her first day at school. The girl was one of two German children in her class, she said, amid 20, mostly Syrian, refugees.
“I am not against foreigners,” said Ms. Langer, 41. “But there is a point where we have to wonder who is integrating whom.”
Germany’s 2015 refugee crisis has largely disappeared from the headlines. But in this and other midsize towns, it is continuing to unfold, putting communities under stress, pressuring local coffers and feeding concerns about safety, jobs and the quality of education.
Some 140,000 asylum seekers have entered Germany so far this year—a sharp drop from the 1.2 million who arrived in the past two years. But in places such as Salzgitter there is a sense that the government, having housed and fed the newcomers, is failing in the longer-term effort to integrate them in German society.
This unease, pollsters say, boosted the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany at last month’s election, making it the first far-right party to enter parliament in half a century. This shock means immigration will loom large when Chancellor Angela Merkel kicks off negotiations on Wednesday to form a three-party ruling coalition.
Related
Conservatives’ Loss in German State Election Is Blow to Merkel
Immigration has also returned to regional politics. In Lower Saxony, where Salzgitter is located and which elected its parliament on Sunday, integration and schools have been central in the campaign. Conservatives for years have said that refugees, a majority of whom settle permanently in the country, must learn German values, a concept known as Leitkultur.
Many here say they are proud of their town’s tradition as a refugee haven. But as their numbers rose sharply last year Salzgitter took the unusual step of requesting a moratorium on new arrivals.
“The established parties lived in a bubble. They said everything was fine, closed their eyes to reality and didn’t see people’s concern,” said Salzgitter’s mayor Frank Klingebiel.
Mr. Klingebiel hails from the conservative Christian Democratic Union. But his concerns transcend political lines. It was Stephan Weil, the left-leaning state premier who sought re-election on Sunday, who greenlighted the ban on further refugees moving to Salzgitter, which took effect this past week.
With about 5,700 mainly Syrian refugees for 106,000 residents, the highest proportion in the country, Salzgitter is an outlier. But several other communities, from Wilhelmshaven in the north to Hof in the south are also struggling.
Photos: German Towns Struggle to Integrate Refugees
Across the country, communities are under stress as they deal with increased demand for education, jobs and resources
Photos: German Towns Struggle to Integrate Refugees
Photos: German Towns Struggle to Integrate Refugees
Photos: German Towns Struggle to Integrate Refugees
Photos: German Towns Struggle to Integrate Refugees
Photos: German Towns Struggle to Integrate Refugees
Photos: German Towns Struggle to Integrate Refugees
Photos: German Towns Struggle to Integrate Refugees
Photos: German Towns Struggle to Integrate Refugees
Photos: German Towns Struggle to Integrate Refugees
Photos: German Towns Struggle to Integrate Refugees
People shop in Fredenberg, one of the districts with the highest numbers of refugees in Salzgitter.
LENA MUCHA FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
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In Salzgitter, a pre-existing Syrian community and a glut of affordable housing drew over 2,000 refugees last year and nearly 1,000 this year, leaving a clear imprint on the town’s district of Lebenstedt.
Nour Alwadi, a 25-year-old from Damascus, arrived last year with his brother and his wife Asma. They now have a nine-month-old baby. His parents joined him in Salzgitter five months ago.
“We moved to Salzgitter because there are already many Arab and Turkish migrants here, we have friends here,” said Mr. Alwadi. “The people here are nice. We can attend mosques here.”
Many of those born or growing up in Salzgitter say they want to help refugees but that the influx has become too big to handle. Concerns range from the impact on schools to rising welfare costs, crime, and a diffuse sense that the local culture is becoming diluted, defeating the purpose of integration.
“There are permanently fights and the police have to come,” said Gülcan Dia, a 46-year-old German of Turkish heritage who works for a charity helping refugees.
Wherever refugees outnumber German children in schools, critics like Ms. Dia say, they find it harder to learn German. Local pupils, too, are falling behind on the curriculum.
A national school report released Friday showed a correlation between rising numbers of migrant schoolchildren and a deterioration in academic performance. In 2016, the share of foreign fourth-graders rose by one third to 34% from 2011, according to the education ministry, while the number of children who passed standard writing requirements dropped to 55% against 65% five years earlier.
Salzgitter Mayor Klingebiel said the town was struggling to find teachers for schools, kindergarten and adult language classes.
The AWO Familienkita kindergarten in Lebenstedt looks after 50 children, 18 of them Syrians. More than two thirds of the 160 children on the waiting list are Syrian.
“It’s good that we got this (moratorium), we simply couldn’t handle the situation anymore,” said manager Andrea Bernhof. This “gives the kids a chance to settle in and get proper education.”
Entering the labor market has proven equally difficult. Nationally, only 15.3% of adult nationals from the refugees’ main countries of origin had a regular job in July, two years after the refugee crisis peaked, according to the German labor agency. In Salzgitter, 91% of asylum seekers and refugees live on benefits.
Nicola Pöckler, who works for a charity that helps refugees find jobs, said many of the newcomers are only qualified for the simplest of occupations. “We don’t have the jobs that these people could take.”
In Lower Saxony, the anti-immigration AfD, seeking to tap into the growing discomfort, won its first parliamentary seats in the state. But its support there was just 5.8%, far below its 12.6% score at the September national election.
Michael Gröger, the party’s candidate for Salzgitter, said even the notion of integration should be reconsidered. “This asylum madness has to stop. An asylum seeker is a temporary guest, no immigrant. An asylum seeker doesn’t have to be integrated.”
Write to Andrea Thomas at andrea.thomas@wsj.com
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Just come home and we will forgive and forget and get you a job:
https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/insanity-official-says-uk-will-not-prosecute-returning-isis-terrorists-syria-iraq/
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Just come home and we will forgive and forget and get you a job:
https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/insanity-official-says-uk-will-not-prosecute-returning-isis-terrorists-syria-iraq/
https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/24/11297128/matthew-doyle-arrest-muslim-tweet-brussels
UK man arrested for posting anti-Muslim tweets after Brussels attacks
PR exec Matthew Doyle said he asked a Muslim woman to 'explain Brussels' following terror attacks
by Amar Toor@amartoo Mar 24, 2016, 7:31am EDT
A man in the UK has been arrested on charges of inciting racial hatred on social media, after he tweeted about asking a Muslim woman to "explain" the terror attacks in Brussels. As The Guardian reports, London's Metropolitan Police on Wednesday arrested a 46-year-old man believed to be Matthew Doyle, a partner at a London PR agency.
Earlier Wednesday, Doyle tweeted: "I confronted a Muslim women [sic] yesterday in Croydon. I asked her to explain Brussels. She said "Nothing to do with me" a mealy mouthed reply." His comment was posted after bombings at the Brussels airport and at a metro station killed at least 31 people and wounded 300 others. ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attacks.
"THANKS ALL YOU TWEETERS FOR PROVING I CAN STILL DO PR."
The tweet was later deleted, though not before it went viral, sparking a backlash that was covered by some news outlets. Doyle also appears to have embraced the controversy, posting links to coverage of his tweets and retweeting users who criticized him. Doyle later defended his tweet, using a racial epithet to describe Muslims, and thanked his followers "for proving I can still do PR." (That tweet included the same epithet.)
The UK has strict laws on inciting racial hatred online, and some arrests have led to convictions. Critics have in the past accused authorities of being overzealous in their policing of online speech, including one case in which a man was arrested over an online threat that was clearly a joke. (The conviction was overturned.) Twitter, Facebook, and Google have also sought to crack down on hate speech in Europe, where the refugee crisis has inflamed xenophobia and racial tensions online.
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https://vimeo.com/ondemand/killingeurope/238970726
Already in production.
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https://www.amazon.com/Submission-Novel-Michel-Houellebecq/dp/1250097347/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1510841274&sr=8-1&keywords=submission
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https://www.enemiesforeignanddomestic.com/excerpts/rc-chapter9.html
We know this is coming.
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In the Pam Geller, No go zones video, the unemployment rate was 10 times higher for refugees than "Swedish-born" residents.
In this article, 4% of refugees in this German town are employed:
https://www.mz-web.de/salzlandkreis/fluechtlinge-knapp-vier-prozent--nur-56-von-1-530-haben-einen-job-28969012
Google translate:
Refugees Nearly four percent: Only 56 out of 1,530 have a job
Aschersleben -
The job search for refugees continues to be difficult. Of the currently more than 1,530 refugees registered with the responsible job center, only 56 (equivalent to 3.66 percent) have taken up a job subject to social security contributions in the current year.
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In the Pam Geller, No go zones video, the unemployment rate was 10 times higher for refugees than "Swedish-born" residents.
In this article, 4% of refugees in this German town are employed:
https://www.mz-web.de/salzlandkreis/fluechtlinge-knapp-vier-prozent--nur-56-von-1-530-haben-einen-job-28969012
Google translate:
Refugees Nearly four percent: Only 56 out of 1,530 have a job
Aschersleben -
The job search for refugees continues to be difficult. Of the currently more than 1,530 refugees registered with the responsible job center, only 56 (equivalent to 3.66 percent) have taken up a job subject to social security contributions in the current year.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/01/germany-initiates-poster-campaign-to-fight-groping-rape-and-public-pooping/
Need to be told not to sh*t in the showers, but otherwise totally ready to join the German workforce!
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That particular behavior (sh*tting in the showers) does not constitute assimilating into civilized society?
When the Republican convention goes into a Democratic city, when a college team goes into a rival college's facility, don't they tell you that bad behavior of one or a few will reflect badly on all of us?
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That particular behavior (sh*tting in the showers) does not constitute assimilating into civilized society?
When the Republican convention goes into a Democratic city, when a college team goes into a rival college's facility, don't they tell you that bad behavior of one or a few will reflect badly on all of us?
It's the majority of muslims that ruin it for all the rest.
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https://pamelageller.com/2017/03/muslims-gang-rape-teen.html/
Sweden: Muslim classmates gang rape 14-year-old girl in school, remain enrolled because “rapists are victims too,” says principal
By Pamela Geller - on March 7, 2017
Any civilization that sacrifices its young girls to an invading army has no future at all.
Sweden is a stunning indictment of liberal polices of multiculturalism, political correctness and “tolerance” (of evil) in action. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
“All three youths involved were our students here and all three are, in a way, victims in this case.“
Sweden is done, finished. Cooked, like the Ramadan goat.
SWEDEN: CLASSMATES GANG RAPE 14Y/O GIRL IN SCHOOL, REMAIN ENROLLED BECAUSE “RAPISTS ARE VICTIMS TOO,” SAYS PRINCIPAL
Searchlight Germany, March 7, 2017:
A 14-year-old Swedish girl who was sexually abused in her school by two boys is now receiving her education at another school, while the attackers remain enrolled at their current school. One of them, a 16-year-old carrying the Arab name Ajuub, suffers from an “impaired ability to understand what is right and wrong,” the verdict stated. He was therefore punished mildly. Other school kids’ parents, as well as the principal, are now unhappy with the situation.
The gang rape was committed on the 30th of May last year at the restrooms of a school in Skane, in the south of Sweden. Both boys, Ajuub plus an unnamed 15-year-old, raped the victim vaginally as well as orally. They were sentenced in December, Sydsvenskan reports. Ajuub was convicted to 100 hours of youth service plus 24 meetings with a social worker “in order to learn to make better decisions,” while the 15-year-old is considered by Swedish law to be too young to be held criminally responsible and has thus been set free.
The first few days following the sex assault, the girl, called Tindra, was too afraid to tell her mother about the ordeal, not daring to go back to school again. Apparently, the youngest assailant had spread rumours about the victim for several months, calling her “a whore that sells sex for money.” He also threatened the girl with violence.
‘RAPIST IS A VICTIM TOO’
The school principal, who wishes to remain anonymous, says he “struggles” with the case and thinks about it “every day and every hour.” He’d furthermore like a “dialogue with the government” on the issue.
When addressing parents’ concerns, the principal says he didn’t feel the need to officially notify them since:
“there is no obligation for a school to go out and announce that there’s a student who has been convicted of rape.”
He then suddenly starts talking about “taking the whole picture into account,” and the interview takes an even odder twist:
“All three youths involved were our students here and all three are, in a way, victims in this case. The boy who was convicted has gotten a pretty harsh punishment, which turns him into a victim as well.”
‘Feminist moral superpower’ fails miserably
Ann Heberlein, a woman whose friend has a daughter in the school, recently wrote about the case, demanding much harsher punishment for the perpetrators of sexual violence. “Who cares about Tindra,” she wonders.
“Swedish schools that have gender and equality enshrined in their value system, which emphasizes gender perspective in their curricula, that invites feminists to teach girls self-defense, and that provide lessons in sex education to girls in order to strengthen them into not doing stuff that they do not want, and admonishing the boys to obtain the girls’ consent if they want to have sex with them, have completely lost it. How can a country that aspires to be a ‘moral superpower’ and a government that prides itself on being ‘feminist’ fail so miserably in living up to its own ambitions?”
“School should be a safe place. The fact that our children won’t have to be in the same classroom as a convicted criminal, should go without saying – and that a girl who has been raped will not have to face their rapists on her way to school or when she is out walking her dog, should be the minimum requirement that can be asked from our rule of law.”
Another school rape
Besides the scandal mentioned above, Swedish media yesterday reported on another school rape, this time in Kalmar, also in the south of Sweden.
In this case, both the victim and the assailant are under 15 years of age, SVT reports, so the attacker will go free. Even though the school board was obliged to immediately notify the social services on the sex crime, it waited for several days.
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5197675/Hundreds-protest-Sweden-series-gang-rapes.html
‘stay inside or walk in pairs’ advice retracted by police chief
No mention of religion or ethnicity in this report.
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https://clarionproject.org/german-fbi-fears-rising-influence-of-muslim-brotherhood/
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What changed in Sweden?
For the first time since World War II, Sweden is preparing to distribute a civil defense brochure to some 4.7 million households, warning them about the onset of war.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sweden-violence/swedish-pm-does-not-rule-out-use-of-army-to-end-gang-violence-idUSKBN1F629L
Swedish PM does not rule out use of army to end gang violence
... linking public concern about the rising crime rate to a large increase in the numbers of immigrants...
criminals who throw hand grenades "as if it were war".
"I am prepared to do whatever is necessary to make sure that serious, organized crime is stamped out."
"This is not a script for a dystopian crime story. This is Sweden in 2018, Kristersson said.
https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/lofven-utesluter-inte-att-satta-in-militar
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What changed in Sweden?
For the first time since World War II, Sweden is preparing to distribute a civil defense brochure to some 4.7 million households, warning them about the onset of war.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sweden-violence/swedish-pm-does-not-rule-out-use-of-army-to-end-gang-violence-idUSKBN1F629L
Swedish PM does not rule out use of army to end gang violence
... linking public concern about the rising crime rate to a large increase in the numbers of immigrants...
criminals who throw hand grenades "as if it were war".
"I am prepared to do whatever is necessary to make sure that serious, organized crime is stamped out."
"This is not a script for a dystopian crime story. This is Sweden in 2018, Kristersson said.
https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/lofven-utesluter-inte-att-satta-in-militar
I am so old, I can remember when Muslim no go zones in Europe were a right wing myth.
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http://www.breitbart.com/london/2018/01/18/swedish-no-go-zone-police-station-bombed/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=daily&utm_content=links&utm_campaign=20180118
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/20/german-city-bans-new-refugees-anti-migrant-mood-increases/
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https://www.thelocal.se/20180122/sweden-increases-deportation-rate-to-morocco
Many of the young Moroccans who come to Sweden lack sufficient cause for asylum, according to Sveriges Radio, and some have ended up on the street involved in crime and drug abuse.
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put url into google translate: https://translate.google.com/
https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article172879883/Islamistischer-Terror-Bundesanwaltschaft-nimmt-Dschihadistinnen-ins-Visier.html?wtrid=socialmedia.socialflow....socialflow_twitter
Federal Prosecutor's Office targets jihadists
... 970 Islamists from Germany have traveled to Syria or Iraq in recent years. ...
In Germany, security authorities observe several so-called women's networks in the Islamist scene. The extremists, including women returning from Syria or Iraq, network via online platforms and chat groups, some of whom also meet in person. The North Rhine-Westphalian constitutional protection recently warned that such networks would carry the radical Islamic ideology, recruit young women and specifically indoctrinate children.
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https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/753169/Sweden-sexual-assault-claims-70-per-cent-rise-survey-women
What changed?
From the article:
The data was revealed in an annual survey of around 12,000 people by he Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brå), an agency working under the Ministry of Justice. ...
Speaking to Aftonbladet, she said: “I’m not saying it’s the refugees' fault but we are are facing a crisis in migration issues.
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https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/753169/Sweden-sexual-assault-claims-70-per-cent-rise-survey-women
What changed?
From the article:
The data was revealed in an annual survey of around 12,000 people by he Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brå), an agency working under the Ministry of Justice. ...
Speaking to Aftonbladet, she said: “I’m not saying it’s the refugees' fault but we are are facing a crisis in migration issues.
It's perfectly legal conduct under sharia law.
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https://www.israelvideonetwork.com/why-is-britain-so-tolerant-of-muslim-terrorists-parading-in-their-streets/?omhide=true
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http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/256059/israeli-reporter-among-europes-muslim-immigrants
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https://gellerreport.com/2018/03/marine-le-pen-indicted-sharing-isis-pictures-twitter.html/
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https://gellerreport.com/2018/03/uk-muslim-radio-fined-airing-hate-speech-non-muslims.html/
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/in-sweden-christian-fleeing-persecution-face-violence-all-over-again/
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second post
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/01/03/refugee-influx-into-germany-fueled-violent-crime-surge-report-finds.html
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Third post
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/03/01/angela-merkel-admits-that-no-go-zones-exist-in-germany.html
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Third post
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/03/01/angela-merkel-admits-that-no-go-zones-exist-in-germany.html
e
I'm so old, I can remember when that was a right wing myth.
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Demographic Jihad: Islamists Celebrate Rising Muslim Populations in Europe
by Raymond Ibrahim
Frontpage Magazine
February 20, 2018
http://www.meforum.org/7236/demographic-jihad-islamists-celebrate-rising
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https://gellerreport.com/2018/03/migrant-austria-mass-stabbing.html/
https://gellerreport.com/2018/03/austria-knife-att.html/
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second post
https://gellerreport.com/2018/03/sweden-sharia-wife.html/
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This is from the not infrequently scurrilous "infowars" so do take with care:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=33&v=h45n1CSetiM
For example, the point about the PM accepting Saudi head of state is utter bullshit. The man is a radical reformer of Islam who has responded with gusto to President Trump's call to "cast them out."
===================================
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=390&v=9Kzkgd-GLrk
=============
More at https://israelunwired.com/the-truth-about-a-british-government-that-has-completely-lost-its-mind/
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Radicalization in The Classroom: A Continuing Problem in Europe's Schools
by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
March 20, 2018
https://www.investigativeproject.org/7378/radicalization-in-the-classroom-a-continuing
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http://gatesofvienna.net/2018/03/the-crushing-of-irish-culture-it-has-been-decided/#more-45347
What percentage of the Irish population wants this?
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/migrants-europe-30-minute-jet-ski-ride-4-101123134.html
MADRID (AP) — Spanish authorities say they have broken up a Moroccan gang that used powerful jet skis to smuggle migrants across the Strait of Gibraltar in trips that took half an hour and cost 4,000 euros ($4,870).
Police say each jet ski carried between one and three migrants and a skipper over the less than 15 kilometers (almost 10 miles) from Morocco to Spain.
Officials said the trafficked migrants either stayed in Spain or moved on to France or Italy.
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Reliability of source unknown
http://www.speroforum.com/a/SGCSYEYMBU59/83407-Katie-Hopkins-says-fellow-activist-could-be-killed-while-serving-sentence-is-she-right?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=FLNLZENFQQ22&utm_content=SGCSYEYMBU59&utm_source=news&utm_term=Katie+Hopkins+says+fellow+activist+could+be+killed+while+serving+sentence+is+she+right#.Wwj0D3rcCmA
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Reliability of source unknown
http://www.speroforum.com/a/SGCSYEYMBU59/83407-Katie-Hopkins-says-fellow-activist-could-be-killed-while-serving-sentence-is-she-right?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=FLNLZENFQQ22&utm_content=SGCSYEYMBU59&utm_source=news&utm_term=Katie+Hopkins+says+fellow+activist+could+be+killed+while+serving+sentence+is+she+right#.Wwj0D3rcCmA
I tend to think he is in serious danger. As I understand, the UK's prisons are dominated by jihadists.
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I've seen some deeply concerning reports about this matter. This clip was posted by a Brit who seems fair in these things:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8CPF1mK9Fo
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https://www.dailywire.com/news/31243/suicide-europe-ben-shapiro?utm_source=shapironewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=053118-news&utm_campaign=position1
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https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/islamic-school-head-forced-out-after-weapons-and-400000-cash-found-at-flat-in-grounds-a3869781.html
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MEF Organizes 25,000 Strong Protest in Support of Tommy Robinson; Plans Additional Rallies
https://www.meforum.org/Articles/2018/MEF-Organizes-Protest-in-Support-of-TR
PHILADELPHIA – July 8, 2018 – Tommy Robinson, the imprisoned English counter-Islamist activist, journalist, and book author, justifiably titled his autobiography Enemy of the State, for he has long been a target of the U.K. authorities impatient with his criticism of Islamism.
The Middle East Forum (MEF) is helping Robinson in his moment of danger. It does so in the context of its Legal Project which since 2007 has defended activists, journalists, politicians, et al. who face harassment, fines, or imprisonment because of their views concerning Islamism and related topics.
MEF is sponsoring and organizing the second “Free Tommy Robinson” gathering in London on July 14. MEF previously provided all the funding and helped organized the first “Free Tommy Robinson” event held June 9 in London.
MEF, along with a coalition of UK advocacy groups and international figures will assemble to advocate for Mr. Robinson’s release and demand greater protections for freedom of speech and freedom of the press in the United Kingdom. MEF is arranging for U.S. Congressman Paul Gosar (Republican of Arizona) to travel to London to speak alongside the Dutch political leader Geert Wilders, and others.
The latest incident began on May 25 with Mr. Robinson reporting on a rape-grooming trial involving Muslim defendants in Leeds, England, for which he was arrested, tried, convicted, sentenced to 13 months prison, and jailed – all in the course of a few hours. To make matters worse, he was tricked out of the right to confer with counsel. Now, he has been moved to historically violent Olney prison, where he is a potential target of Islamist gangs.
“The police allow rape gangs to operate for decades but swoop down within minutes on Tommy Robinson for a peccadillo,” notes Forum president Daniel Pipes. “We worry that his life is now in immediate peril.”
Forum director Gregg Roman adds: “Western democracy requires a robust public discussion of Islam – including terrorism, terrorist funding, Islamism, immigration and related matters – not its suppression. No matter one’s views of Mr. Robinson, all decent people must support his right to discuss controversial matters without fear of arrest, secret trial, and imprisonment.”
The Middle East Forum is aiding Mr. Robinson’s defense in three main ways:
• Legally – By using Legal Project monies to fund his legal defense.
• Diplomatically – By bringing foreign pressure on the UK government to ensure Mr. Robinson’s safety and eventual release.
• Politically – By organizing and funding the 25,000-person “Free Tommy” London rally on June 9 and now the July 14 protest, also taking place in London.
_ _ _ _ _
The Middle East Forum promotes American interests in the Middle East and protects Western civilization from Middle East threats.
For immediate release
For more information, contact:
Gregg Roman, Director
Roman@MEForum.org
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I'm so old, I can remember when the idea of sharia law in the UK was a right wing fantasy.
MEF Organizes 25,000 Strong Protest in Support of Tommy Robinson; Plans Additional Rallies
https://www.meforum.org/Articles/2018/MEF-Organizes-Protest-in-Support-of-TR
PHILADELPHIA – July 8, 2018 – Tommy Robinson, the imprisoned English counter-Islamist activist, journalist, and book author, justifiably titled his autobiography Enemy of the State, for he has long been a target of the U.K. authorities impatient with his criticism of Islamism.
The Middle East Forum (MEF) is helping Robinson in his moment of danger. It does so in the context of its Legal Project which since 2007 has defended activists, journalists, politicians, et al. who face harassment, fines, or imprisonment because of their views concerning Islamism and related topics.
MEF is sponsoring and organizing the second “Free Tommy Robinson” gathering in London on July 14. MEF previously provided all the funding and helped organized the first “Free Tommy Robinson” event held June 9 in London.
MEF, along with a coalition of UK advocacy groups and international figures will assemble to advocate for Mr. Robinson’s release and demand greater protections for freedom of speech and freedom of the press in the United Kingdom. MEF is arranging for U.S. Congressman Paul Gosar (Republican of Arizona) to travel to London to speak alongside the Dutch political leader Geert Wilders, and others.
The latest incident began on May 25 with Mr. Robinson reporting on a rape-grooming trial involving Muslim defendants in Leeds, England, for which he was arrested, tried, convicted, sentenced to 13 months prison, and jailed – all in the course of a few hours. To make matters worse, he was tricked out of the right to confer with counsel. Now, he has been moved to historically violent Olney prison, where he is a potential target of Islamist gangs.
“The police allow rape gangs to operate for decades but swoop down within minutes on Tommy Robinson for a peccadillo,” notes Forum president Daniel Pipes. “We worry that his life is now in immediate peril.”
Forum director Gregg Roman adds: “Western democracy requires a robust public discussion of Islam – including terrorism, terrorist funding, Islamism, immigration and related matters – not its suppression. No matter one’s views of Mr. Robinson, all decent people must support his right to discuss controversial matters without fear of arrest, secret trial, and imprisonment.”
The Middle East Forum is aiding Mr. Robinson’s defense in three main ways:
• Legally – By using Legal Project monies to fund his legal defense.
• Diplomatically – By bringing foreign pressure on the UK government to ensure Mr. Robinson’s safety and eventual release.
• Politically – By organizing and funding the 25,000-person “Free Tommy” London rally on June 9 and now the July 14 protest, also taking place in London.
_ _ _ _ _
The Middle East Forum promotes American interests in the Middle East and protects Western civilization from Middle East threats.
For immediate release
For more information, contact:
Gregg Roman, Director
Roman@MEForum.org
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https://voiceofeurope.com/2018/07/greece-muslim-mob-brutally-attacks-christians-in-refugee-camp-even-children-were-threatened/#.W0E6npHhiI0.twitter
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https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/07/01/world/europe/denmark-immigrant-ghettos.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=220&v=SLT9JOE64WQ
Take a half hour and watch this.
Oh yeah, "I'm so old, I remember when sharia law in the UK was some paranoid right wing fantasy".
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manchester-arena-bomber-was-rescued-from-libya-by-royal-navy
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https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/39410f46-976d-11e8-821b-8d0d10bd0d40
Sharia
monday august 6 2018
TIMES INVESTIGATION
Forced marriage: Police ‘turn a blind eye’ to child brides
Paul Morgan-Bentley, Head of Investigations
August 4 2018, 12:01am, The Times
Only three cases of forced marriage have resulted in a conviction since it became illegal four years ago
Police forces have been accused of failing thousands of victims of forced marriages by charging a suspect in only one in 38 cases.
Officials at the Home Office received more than 3,800 reports of forced marriages or victims being at risk of forced marriage in the past three years. Hundreds of the victims are children, with the youngest only four years old.
However, The Times surveyed police forces and found that fewer than 80 suspects had been charged in this time. It became illegal to force someone to marry in 2014 but only three cases have resulted in convictions.
Yesterday the police watchdog said that it would act to ensure that forces improved their performance and that victims were adequately protected.
Campaigners accused officers of turning a blind eye to victims’ complaints.
The findings come as Sajid Javid, the home secretary, instigated an investigation and conceded that more needed to be done by his department to protect victims.
Officials at the government’s forced marriage unit (FMU) received 1,196 reports last year, 1,428 in 2016 and 1,220 in 2015, a total of 3,844 in three years. About 30 per cent of victims last year were younger than 18 and half of those were 15 or under. The vast majority of victims were female.
The survey of police forces by The Times found that 77 suspects had been charged in this time. The charges included forcing someone to marry and assault in cases linked to a forced marriage. One in four police forces did not respond, suggesting that the true figure would be about 100 in three years, a charge rate of less than 3 per cent.
The rate for sexual offences, which is notoriously low, was 6.5 per cent to the year ending June 2017. For weapons offences in the same period it was 44 per cent.
In Lancashire there have been 259 police investigations linked to forced marriages over the past three years but no charges. More than 50 of the victims were under 16.
The Metropolitan Police have recorded 260 offences over three years and 26 charges. The majority related to assault and none was for the specific offence of forcing someone to marry. Two victims were under ten years old.
Jasvinder Sanghera, the founder of Karma Nirvana, which supports victims of forced marriage, said: “We’ve got a number of professionals who are turning a blind eye. They don’t want to rock the multicultural boat.”
Usha Sood, a barrister and expert on forced marriage, said: “The distinction between an arranged and forced marriage seems to fox the authorities but there should be no dilemma about it. It’s about pulling the veil away from the idea that this is arranged and saying no, this is forced.”
Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, the police watchdog, reviewed forces’ responses to forced marriage cases in 2015. A spokesman told The Times: “We concluded that the police service had some way to go before the public could be confident that potential and actual victims were adequately and effectively protected. We are considering the scope of follow-up activity.”
Forces deny having turned a blind eye to concerns and say that investigations are particularly complex because victims fear making statements that can be seen by their families. The same issue is at the heart of problems with victims blocking visas for their spouses, as they have to object publicly to be sure that they will be denied entry to Britain.
Commander Ivan Balhatchet, of the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), said: “Police are committed to protecting victims and pursuing offenders through the criminal justice system. The isolation, threats and violence that victims of forced marriage experience means that this is not something that can be tackled by police alone and requires close partnership with public and third-sector organisations.”
Detective Chief Inspector Joanne McHugh, of Lancashire police, said: “Many of the reports recorded as forced marriage incident are found not to be of that nature, albeit the person reporting had genuine concern. Potential victims are often unwilling to support a prosecution against a family member.”
The Metropolitan Police said that victims wanted the abuse to stop but did not necessarily want a family member to be prosecuted. A spokesman added: “Our fundamental aims are always to preserve life, protect those at risk and seek to bring perpetrators to justice.”
The Crown Prosecution Service said it produced an “action plan” with the police in 2016 to try to improve the number of prosecutions, adding: “It is often very difficult for victims to come forward, as it is for them to support a prosecution.”
The Home Office said that reports to the FMU were referred to a number of services, including the police, social services and UK Visas and Immigration. A spokesman added: “The FMU is working with the NPCC to improve the resources and training available to police. Almost 1,600 forced marriage protection orders have been made to prevent people being forced into a marriage.”
paul.morgan-bentley@the-times.co.uk
Sajid Javid said his department would do more to combat forced marriage and support victims
TIMES INVESTIGATION
Javid acts after Times investigation into abuse
Paul Morgan‑Bentley, Head of Investigations | Sam Coates, Deputy Political Editor
Sajid Javid has begun an investigation into his department’s handling of forced marriages after The Times revealed that abusers are being handed...
August 4 2018
Pupils such as Summaiya Uddin could use a metal spoon to alert airport staff to forced marriage
TIMES INVESTIGATION
Stirring solution to help save girls
Gabriella Swerling, Northern Correspondent
August 4 2018
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Times investigation into forced marriages
Mike Sigman 8 hours ago
Goodbye, Britain ... you brought it on yourself. When other peoples' tradition and culture become more important than your own, you just gave away your culture.
FlagRecommendReply
Derek Emery 11 hours ago
I'm not convinced the public will accept double standards. even if councils and the police do.
FlagRecommendReply
Dr Susanna J Dodgson 1 day ago
The age of consent needs to be raised to 18.
Flag2RecommendReply
Rosa T 1 day ago
Don't blame the police. It could be that the reluctance on their part to pursue this type of crime is driven by the fact that we have an evidence-based justice system.Evidence of this type of crime is hard to establish and readily contested. Witnesses are intimidated by their families. The CPS will not proceed with a prosecution if there is perceived to be insufficient evidence and a low chance of conviction.
Flag1RecommendReply
Alan Hawkes 1 day ago
This is almost the reverse of the allegation of institutional racism levelled against the police after Steven Lawrence’s murder. To borrow a phrase, from Clive James, this is a “cultural cringe” by the authorities when investigating crimes linked to some Islamic traditions.
Flag1RecommendReply
Bill Badger 1 day ago
You have to ask do the Police notice anything at all aside of drivers driving their own cars...... a level of attention they do not by the way extend to drivers driving someone else's car which they have stolen.
Flag2RecommendReply
Cassandra 1 day ago
These are current day crimes. Why have significant police resources been deployed to investigate allegations many years old, sometimes against dead people?
Flag3RecommendReply
David Craig 1 day ago
I thought that the police turned a blind eye to pretty much all crime nowadays except supposed "hate crimes" by white indigenous Brits against multi-cultural enrichers
Flag15RecommendReply
Markets Work 1 day ago
There is a lot that can be done with simple analytics, if the police were able to capture some basic data across the board when they are contacted or when any complaints are made.
Genereally there needs to be big shift away from the criminals "rights" to everying under the sun to respecting the rights of the victims.
Flag2RecommendReply
Harvestmoon 1 day ago
The young Sunderland footballer who had his name dragged through the gutter , lost his career , his home, and everything for a short "fling" with a very willing 15 years and 11 month year old girl has every right to feel aggrieved if he is reading this.
Flag14RecommendReply
Harvestmoon 1 day ago
They will have HUNDREDS of cops in the Met working full time on people writing hurty words online. Yet they are allowing this. An absolute scandal. This is the United Kingdom. Live by our laws.
Flag16RecommendReply
AOT Le Snarque 1 day ago
The police force are grossly overworked as it is. FFS hire more cops, Mr Javid!
Flag4RecommendReply
FruiTbun 1 day ago
One or two below conflating race and religion, somewhat alarmingly in an adult.
Flag1RecommendReply
Maddie Murray 2 days ago
This multicultural excuse is pathetic. The law is the law and it should be enforced regardless of colour or creed.
Flag35RecommendReply
Kalwant Ajimal 1 day ago
@Maddie Murray
Correct in theory. Suicide in terms of political practice and motivation.
Flag7RecommendReply
Richard B 2 days ago
And the Police wonder why they are losing respect but presumably they are not backed up by Politicians or the Law.
Flag12RecommendReply
FruiTbun 2 days ago
The age of consent is 14 in Germany, Italy and Portugal. Uncivilised and repellent.
Flag1RecommendReply
peter openshaw 2 days ago
It is hardly news, or surprising, that the police will soft peddle where the return on resources invested is poor. I am sure that they deploy their resources with this in mind, so what are their priorities? It is not burglary (the Met has given up and advertised the fact), nor drug abuse. Maybe terrorism, knife crime? I don't know.
Should it be true that they don't have the resources to exercise thir basic function we should be told.
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David Needham 2 days ago
Remember those voices in the wilderness 50 to 60 years ago who warned of this type of behavior and cultural differences . They made these warning based on their experiences in the Indian and Pakistan . They were called racist, fear mongers and shouted down by left wing activist and politicians
They went unheeded and ignored except when it made for a juicy front page headline that further ostracized them . Well now you have the end result coming home to roost
No need to apologies . A simple , You were right will suffice
My and others outrage against this practice is not racist . It is based on a moral code , that used to be the norm within the UK
I would be equally outraged if any group in society condoned such barbaric behavior
Flag8RecommendReply
D P 1 day ago
Why involve India in this discussion. Indians were not involved in on street grooming of 1000's of children in the UK, Indians are not involved in forced marriages (if there are some they are a much smaller % of the overall population), Indians are not producing terrorists who bomb people in the UK or go out to fight in the middle East. Just cos they are brown does not mean Indians are involved in what is predominantly a Muslim ideology which is practiced in the 2 breakaway states (Pakistan and bangladesh) where Muslims migrated 2 after the British split up India after 300 years of rule.
Get your facts right before you tar 1. 2bn people (less the Muslims) with the same brush. The other 900m people do not practice these kinds of things.
Indians were ruled by the British for 300 years. Indians have only been in this country for 60 years and they just work hard and mind their own business
Flag3RecommendReply
Richard Pursehouse 2 days ago
I cannot believe the Home Office is in total denial about its incompetence on this..... no wait, did your article say Home Office. Ah, that explains it. Time for heads to roll, all the way up to whoever is 'in charge' this week at the department....
Flag6RecommendReply
ArtemisiaFranklin 2 days ago
We have rightly heard a lot in the last few days about the failings of government and the police to protect girls and women from forced marriages.
But what about the greatest culprits - the parents? They are the largest elephant in the room. Why are we hearing nothing about challenging their medieval views that are so antithetical to British values, and preventing them from forcing a marriage on their daughters? We need an in depth and courageous look at this dark area. The assumptions about control of women and honour need to be openly challenged, the sooner the better.
Flag12RecommendReply
Chris Todhunter 18 hours ago
@ArtemisiaFranklin A club to which I belong had a fascinating talk a few months ago by an ex-US citizen who told us of her journey to UK citizenship. She read out to us the test she and others of a variety of cultures and nationalities had to pass. They had to know whether an EU regulation or an EU directive is directly applicable in EU member states, but not (for example) how many years you go to prison for for inflicting (eg) FGM or forced marriage on your daughter.
To teach them that kind of thing would, presumably, be 'invasive', or against human rights, or 'culturally insensitive' or something equally stupid.
Incidentally, we natural-born Brits (mostly farmers, teachers, etc) all failed the citizenship test.
Flag1RecommendReply
ArtemisiaFranklin 12 hours ago
@Chris Todhunter @ArtemisiaFranklin
I would have failed the EU directive questions too and have long thought how useless and irrelevant this is. All that should be needed for new migrants to this country in future is to impress upon them our values of equality and freedom, which others have fought and died for, and that these will be upheld in this country. Perhaps some sort of undertaking on their part to uphold them too.
If only this had been done a few decades ago, we might not have the wilful ignoring of our basic values that we see now from some 'communities'.
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falanf 2 days ago
Once more political correctness and ethnic and religious “sensitivity” are used as an excuse to allow people to flout the law of our land. So Rotherhams, forced marriage and knife crime cannot be tackled effectively. Well done chaps.
Flag22RecommendReply
Ella Guru 2 days ago
As a retired Police Officer with 34+ years service... I despair at what the Police Service has come to...
Common sense?
There is none...
Flag18RecommendReply
C J Delmege 2 days ago
This puts the ongoing fuss over Labour anti semitism in perspective.
Flag3RecommendReply
MargaretL 1 day ago
@C J Delmege No it doesn't. The Left defer to Islam and some of its unpleasant cultural practices, such as election fraud in Tower Hamlets. It was mostly Labour councils who turned a blind eye to the grooming gangs for years.
This issue is very much related to the anti-semitism scandal in the Labour Party.
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Ros from Wareham 1 day ago
@C J Delmege I used to be stalwart Labour but don't like what the Labour Party has become. Not only the anti-semitism but the pandering to misogynistic Muslims and the seeking to make political capital out of the Grenfell Tragedy ( but extremely silent about the Gosport deaths many of which occurred on its watch)
Labour were in power for 13 years but appear to have done precisely nothing during that time to address the forced marriage issue
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Foreversideways 2 days ago
More evidence of the uselessness of our police forces.
Flag6RecommendReply
Kalwant Ajimal 1 day ago
@Foreversideways
Nothing to do with the Police. Talk to their political masters.
Flag11RecommendReply
Thomas McDonald 2 days ago
So various ethnic groups are allowed get get away will appalling crimes but if a decent honest English chap goes a few mph over the speed limit on his way to work plod comes down like a tonne of bricks... Priorities all wrong due to lefty stance of police.
Flag21RecommendReply
Kalwant Ajimal 1 day ago
@Thomas McDonald
Please see my reply to @ Foreversidesways.
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AOT Le Snarque 1 day ago
Decent English chaps don't marry child brides or force their offspring into child marriages, and that goes for the ones of Muslim origin, too.
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Richard James 2 days ago
British society, our culture, our security, our way of life. All being ignored in the name of political correctness and multi-culturism. Time to hit the reset button. And get a new political leader, not far right, but will respect our traditional values and represent the largely silent majority. That's while we still have one.
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Maddie Murray 1 day ago
@Richard James Its happening all over Europe and is the reason why right wing parties and support for them is rising. There is no dialogue, no conversation, all conversation is immediately shut down by branding the person wishing to discuss it as racist
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D Holley 2 days ago
I was told by a police officer that they spend most of their time prosecuting white crime because the process is understood by both sides and there is only the legal matter to be dealt with.
They fear to pursue ethnic crime with the same vigour as the alleged racial discrimination aspect is too much of a deterent.
Flag29RecommendReply
The Woodster 2 days ago
@D Holley
Take it from me, that's nonsense or an excuse used by a lazy and incompetent officer. When I was a homicide detective, I pursued black gang members for murder as vigorously as any other ethnic group and charges and convictions were at the same level (very high - 90%) as any other racial group encountered. Instead of talking about resolving gang murder, my colleagues and I actually went out and did something about it.
Flag1RecommendReply
Kalwant Ajimal 1 day ago
@D Holley
Someone has lost the plot. The LAW is the law.
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Thomas 2 days ago
Anyone who has been burgled, or knows someone who has, knows the police are bone idle. But given the vehemence with which they go after alleged paedophiles, on the flimsiest false evidence, this report of their failure to protect child brides is particularly damning.
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Gerry 2 days ago
Political correctness and cultural diversity trumps child abuse. Is this going to change now?
Flag28RecommendReply
Bryn Lewis 2 days ago
They found enough resource to investigate dead celebrities and politicians.... simple matter of priorities.
Flag26RecommendReply
J McGill 2 days ago
In case anyone thinks Brexit will change any of this totally illegal madness; it won’t.
Even better, when we get our fantastic trade deal with India they will demand unlimited visa access.
That’s just inflammatory, you’re thinking.
Well, go check out what Modi told Dr. Fox.
Flag8RecommendReply
C J Delmege 2 days ago
@J McGill Spectacularly irrelevant. Forced marriage is a crime, Brexit or no.
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Richard Pursehouse 2 days ago
@J McGill Who ever said Brexit would do that? And if India does demand what you claim it will, the answer will be "No"
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D P 2 days ago
@J McGill Have you read where most forced married take place? Mostly bangladesh and Pakistan. So what has the trade deal with India got to do with it. Just cos everyone looks Brown does not mean they are same. Indian ( non Muslims) don't marry their own cousins either.
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George Aimer 1 day ago
Well said D P.
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William Isaac 1 day ago
@J McGill We can always say no.
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Trader Vic 2 days ago
Police cannot do the impossible . When they present a case to the cps it has to have witnesses prepared to speak up . If no witnesses will
Complain in court what should they do ?
We are all to blame. We have allowed a society where - notably the left- are selectively racist . Action against an ethnic minority criminal is racist . Action against an Anglo Saxon isn’t .
Do we hear the Labour Party railing against child brides ? The Labour Party councils in Rochdale and Rotherham knew what was happening but did nothing- or worse condoned it . Would you act as a policeman if you knew your career would be at risk from those political people ?
Flag90RecommendReply
MaryR 2 days ago
Yes the rot lies in the politics.
Flag7RecommendReply
Old Boot. 2 days ago
@MaryR As bad as Russia.
Flag2RecommendReply
jet199 2 days ago
If no witnesses speak you look for other evidence. Bruises on the victim, email and text messages, previous statements, things said to friends and teachers. In cases of domestic abuse police are now happy to go ahead without the victim giving evidence, this is very often also the case in other types of child abuse so there is a reason they are not using those tactics in these cases.
Flag4RecommendReply
Ros from Wareham 1 day ago
@jet199 All very well but if they prosecute and can't get a conviction because the victim (for whatever reason) won't cooperate they face allegation of racism and worse. Why would they put their career on the line?
FlagRecommendReply
Andrew Cole 2 days ago
@Trader Vic Remember that creep Denis MacShane, former Labour MP, Government Minister of State for Europe and more recently convicted criminal: MP for Rotherham from 1994 to his resignation in 2012 managed to see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil during his eighteen year career in Parliament.
FlagRecommendReply
JCW 2 days ago
At Trader Vic
Spot on ,
But don’t expect the people who have hijacked the Labour Party to change
They are people who are the guilty ones but they are to bigoted to see it.
FlagRecommendReply
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Migration to Europe Becomes a Crisis
by Daniel Pipes
MEF Wire
July 31, 2018
https://www.meforum.org/articles/2018/migration-to-europe-becomes-a-crisis
Daniel Pipes taught Middle Eastern and world history at Harvard University and the University of Chicago, served on the Policy Planning Council under President Reagan, founded the Middle East Forum, and oversaw $28 million in grants to allies. He has written sixteen books. He briefed the Middle East Forum in a conference call on July 31, 2018.
LISTEN HERE
The mass Muslim migration to Europe has galvanized civilizationist forces of populism and nationalism across the continent. This happens in three different ways, as shown by recent elections:
* In Hungary, the civilizationist part on its own forms the government.
* In Austria, the conservative party joined in a coalition with the civilizationist party.
* In Italy the anarchist-left Five Star Movement formed a coalition with the civilizationist party.
Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Switzerland, and Norway have likewise shifted towards a civilizationist stance. Even Germany, which opened the migratory floodgate in 2015, is in the throes of a backlash as Islamism is turning a substantial number of its five million Muslim Turks against their host society and culture. A recent study has found that 60% of German Turks align themselves with Turkey’s Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has funded and built hundreds of mosques throughout Germany led by imams who receive their instructions from Ankara.
In Holland and Bulgaria, the creation of Turkish-Islamic political parties has created tensions between the two governments and Ankara, while Denmark is experimenting with the assimilation of migrants through imposed regulations aimed at countering feelings of alienation and marginalization. In Eastern Europe, by contrast, the conversation is mainly about the incompatibility of Christian and Muslim cultures.
Spain, Italy, and Greece have been the entry points for illegal immigration into the continent, which can be stopped should Europe display the necessary resolve. Expelling criminal migrants is possible, though it is difficult to find countries that will accept them. A far greater challenge is expelling non-criminal illegals, which Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Salvini has pledged to do at the rate of 100,000 migrants per year over the next five years.
For now, proposed solutions to relieve the migration crisis plaguing Europe are at an embryonic phase. The extent of their success, however, is not only important for the vast and prosperous continent but will likely influence future developments in the United States.
Summary account by Marilyn Stern, Communications Coordinator for the Middle East Forum.
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"like a military action."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45181321
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http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/08/18/isis-sex-slave-survivor-says-met-her-captor-in-germany.html
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Investigation Finds Dutch Program Aided Terror-Tied Groups
by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
September 17, 2018
https://www.investigativeproject.org/7623/investigation-finds-dutch-program-aided-terror
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Euro pean Muslims: A Demographic Opportunity
Sep 20, 2018
By Jacob L. Shapiro
Summary
The Muslim population in Europe has been growing since World War II, topped off by the migration crisis in 2015. Today, about 33 million Muslims live in Europe, equal to 6 percent of the population. Not since the Ottomans laid siege to Vienna in 1683 has Islam played such a prominent role in European affairs.
Yet the numbers are slightly deceiving. Islam has become such a serious political issue in Europe not because of the growth in Muslims itself but because the Muslim population is younger and growing faster than other demographic groups. This is in part because of the migration wave and in part because European fertility rates have fallen below replacement level. The trend sows fear among the native population that its influence and way of life is ending, and it is compounded by the desire of the immigrants to retain at least elements of their previous national, ethnic and religious identities. These demographic shifts have led to internal disagreements that threaten to tear the European Union apart. They also profoundly shape internal political dynamics in many of Europe’s most powerful countries. Forty-five percent of Europe’s Muslims live in one of three countries: France (5.7 million), Germany (5 million) or the United Kingdom (4.1 million).
The future of the EU, and of countries like France and Germany, will be shaped by whether these countries can assimilate Muslims. Since France, Germany and the U.K. have the largest Muslim populations, this Deep Dive will focus mainly on the challenges that each faces. We’ll attempt to estimate the scale of the challenge of integration, but we’ll also cover its benefits for the host countries, where immigration will help solve labor shortages to come. We then draw on the history of European Jewry in the 18th century for insights into how European Muslim integration might proceed. We conclude that the significant minority of European Muslims who thus far have refused to assimilate will continue to pose a problem for their host countries, and the prospects for the majority to eventually “belong” in their new homes are mixed.
The Nature of the Problem
First, a caveat: Demographic data on European Muslim populations are difficult to parse and fraught with inconsistencies. France, for instance, does not account for religion in its national statistics, as doing so would violate its strict adherence to “laicite,” a distinctly French approach to secularism to which we will return. Whereas Pew estimates that Muslims make up 9 percent of France’s population, a French think tank called the Institut Montaigne puts the figure at closer to 6 percent. German data on religious affiliation depends on public affiliation with a public law religious society – in Germany’s last census in 2011, 33 percent of Germans did not identify with any religious society. Furthermore, there is no specific category for “Muslims” in the German census – they are instead subsumed by a general category of “others.” The data that follows thus constitute a useful but imprecise snapshot of the issue.
(click to enlarge)
(click to enlarge)
(click to enlarge)
Europe’s Muslim population first began to increase during the dramatic period of economic growth and reconstruction after World War II. There was a critical need for low-skilled labor throughout Western Europe, and though the bulk of that need was satisfied by internal European migration from east to west, substantial numbers of Muslim migrants also came to Europe for work. In 1936, there just 70,000 Muslims living in France, or 0.17 percent of France’s population. By 1960, there were 1 million, or 2 percent of the population. From 1960 to 1970, the Muslim population of the United Kingdom increased from 105,000 to 668,000. The German figures are perhaps the most staggering, growing from 20,000 Muslims in 1951 to 1.2 million in 1971.
(click to enlarge)
The ethnicities and nationalities of the immigrants depended somewhat on their destination. Many of the Muslim migrants to France came from Algeria, which France ruled as a colony from 1830 to 1962. Today, 38 percent of French Muslims are of Algerian descent. Muslim migration to the U.K. came predominantly from Britain’s former colonies in South Asia: More than 50 percent of British Muslims today are of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin. Germany had fewer former colonial holdings from which it could import foreign labor, which is a major reason Germany has had a tougher time integrating its Muslim population than the U.K. and France. Germany instead recruited cheap labor from its former World War I ally: Turkey. More than half of all Muslims in Germany in 1973 were Turkish, and the German Federal Office of Statistics estimates that the current population of Turkish descent in Germany is roughly 3 million – a number that is widely considered conservative.
The demographic makeup of Muslim migration to Europe in this period was equally important. Many Muslims who came to Europe in the 1960s and 1970s were young, single men. They were taking advantage of labor shortages in European countries, and the jobs that they got were often menial. This was not a problem at first. In fact, Muslim migration was one of a number of migrations that helped supercharge the Western European economies after the war. But by the end of the 1970s, the period of economic growth had run its course. The first workers to get laid off were the foreign workers and migrants who had left their families and homes behind in search of higher wages and better opportunities. In West Germany, the government did not even count Turkish workers in its official unemployment statistics; instead, it encouraged Turks to return home. But many Muslim migrants throughout Europe decided to stay – and used the money they had earned to bring their families to join them in Europe too.
The result was a self-perpetuating disconnection between Muslim migrants and the countries they now called home. Even though European countries had encouraged Muslim migration to fill low-skill jobs, the concern was never to integrate them into German or French or British society but to profit from their labor. The social mobility that a citizen of these countries enjoyed was not enjoyed equally by Muslim migrants. Furthermore, the migrants were far from home, living in a political culture and a religious environment radically different from the ones in which they had grown up. Sour prospects and the innate human desire for familiarity led to a de facto segregation that was as much by choice as it was by imposition. Muslim migrants felt unwelcome, so they created their own, often separate communities, which only raised suspicion and hostility among the natives toward Muslims, for whom there were fewer jobs and prospects.
This dynamic has only worsened over time as more Muslims have migrated to Europe, not in response to labor shortages but to escape violence or poverty. A 2016 U.K. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government report identified 42 wards where a minority faith or ethnic group was a local majority. Nine of the top 10 were Pakistani Muslim wards. The same report also found that almost 16 percent of all British Muslims speak little or no English – double the next highest group (Hindus at 8 percent). In France, the Institut Montaigne estimates that the unemployment rate for those of North African descent is roughly 30 percent, whereas countrywide unemployment is 9.1 percent as of July 2018. Similar conditions are present among Turkish workers in Germany. They face an unemployment rate of roughly 16 percent, more than three times the national average of 5.2 percent in August.
The issue has been aggravated by high fertility rates among European Muslims relative to other religious and ethnic groups. In France and the U.K., for example, Pew projected the average total fertility rate for Muslims would be around 2.9 children per woman – compared to 1.9 and 1.8 children per woman for non-Muslims, respectively. In Germany, the total fertility rate of 1.9 for Muslims is actually below replacement rate, but that is still significantly higher than the non-Muslim rate of 1.4. The average European total fertility rate for non-Muslims is around 1.6, compared to 2.6 for Muslims. Combine this with continued migration to European countries from the Muslim world – Germany alone received almost 1 million Muslim migrants from mid-2010 to mid-2016, before Chancellor Angela Merkel came under intense political pressure to stop migration – and it is not hard to imagine the more aggressive projections on Muslim population growth in Europe coming to fruition.
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These statistics led one well-known French financial analyst, Charles Gave, to estimate in 2017 that within 40 years, Muslims would become a majority of the French population. That seems far-fetched, and Gave wouldn’t be the first to be guilty of overestimation. After all, in 2003, Pew estimated that Muslims would make up 10 percent of Europe’s population by 2020 – well over the actual rate, according to Pew in 2018, of 6 percent – and worried that it was projecting too low a figure. Even so, the broader issue remains: Muslims have more babies and are younger and poorer than non-Muslims. In the U.K., the median age for Muslims is 25; the national median age is 39. In France, the average age of Muslims is 35.8 years, compared to 53 for Christians. That Europe will become more Muslim in the coming years is a given – what’s unclear is how much more.
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The Challenge of Integration
The deeper and often unasked question is why the growth of Europe’s Muslim population is so controversial. Muslims are not the only minority group in Europe. Both the U.K. and France, for instance, have significant black minorities (at roughly 3 percent and 1.5 percent of the total population, respectively). The U.K., France and Germany have all seen significant migration from India, Vietnam, China and other Asian countries in recent years as well – to say nothing of intra-European migration, including the high number of Poles who have migrated west in search of better jobs. The number of Muslims in these countries is also still quite low. Pew estimates that if European countries get tough on migration, by 2050 the Muslim population in most European countries won’t exceed 10 percent, with France being an exception at 12.7 percent. Western European countries are not as monochromatic as Eastern European countries, but compared to a country like the United States, where a recent U.S. census report projected that whites will be a majority-minority by 2045, they aren’t especially diverse.
The primary reason the Muslim population is problematic for European governments is because of its reluctance to assimilate into European society. “Islam,” after all, does not denote where one is from; it denotes adherence to a faith, one that informs how a believer should think about politics, cultural norms and justice. Non-Muslim migrants, or Muslim migrants who are not particularly religious, have typical immigrant struggles – overcoming language barriers or nostalgia for their home or their family or a particular kind of food. But these obstacles do not lead groups to want to be treated differently from British, French or German citizens. If anything, it leads to a greater desire to “belong.” There are, however, groups of religious Muslims in Europe who have no desire to belong at all. They want to practice their religion free of government influence and are even confused as to why this is problematic – from their perspective, European states are supposed to be “freer” than the states they came from. They also view European society as potentially corrupting – and try to isolate themselves from those influences as much as possible.
To be clear, these Muslim communities are a minority of the Muslims in European countries, and a fairly small minority at that. In the U.K., for instance, almost half of all Muslims were U.K.-born. Even more striking, a recent U.K. government report found that 86 percent of British Muslims feel a “strong sense of belonging to Britain” – higher even than the national average of 83 percent. Seventy-eight percent answered in the affirmative in a follow-up question about whether they desire full integration into British life. This is an overwhelming majority – but it’s the other roughly 20 percent who are the problem for London. The same U.K. study showed that 23 percent of British Muslims supported the introduction of sharia (Islamic law) in parts of Great Britain. Thirty-one percent said polygamy should be legal (compared to 9 percent for the national average), and 32 percent would not condemn violence against someone for mocking the Prophet Muhammad. Four percent even said they sympathized with terrorists and suicide bombers.
In other words, in the U.K., there are some 800,000 Muslims who do not value some of those basic fundamentals of British political life like the rule of law and freedom of speech. That 4 percent of British Muslims sympathize with Islamist terrorists may seem like a small figure, but it adds up to more than 150,000 people. The national average for Britain was 1 percent, so this is not a strictly Muslim issue – if no one except these Muslims supported terrorism, they would make up 0.3 percent of the total British population. The larger issue is that although all societies have radical fringes, the fringe of European Muslims is a relatively larger part of the whole and is resistant to assimilation or change. This, in effect, poisons the well. Even though the vast majority of British Muslims identify with their country and want to integrate, their reputation in Britain is damaged by those who resist assimilation. And the fear and suspicion that these Muslims create only reinforces prejudices and discrimination, which in turn further radicalizes British Muslims who feel isolated from British life.
A similar picture can be seen in both France and Germany. Institut Montaigne found that while 71 percent of French Muslims generally supported the French secular state, 29 percent “consider religious laws to be more important than the laws of the French state.” The study also pointed out that the vast majority of people with these views are young, low-skilled laborers living in segregated communities inside France. As in the U.K., a significant minority of French Muslims reject some basic tenets of French political life and French culture. Even more distressing in France is that those with more radical views are also the youngest – 50 percent of young people held these views as opposed to 20 percent of the French Muslim population over 40. Whether growing old will moderate the views of these young French Muslims is an open question – that 20 percent is still a distressingly large figure is not.
For Germany, the picture is less clear, partly because Germany experienced such a massive influx of Syrian refugees in the past three years. These migrants have had as little time to assimilate into German society as German sources have had to collect data on how well they are assimilating. Yet in a 2015 study, before the influx of Muslim refugees to Germany had really begun, independent German think tank Bertelsmann Stiftung noted that almost a quarter of the 4.7 million Muslims in Germany at the time had arrived since 2011. That Germany opened its doors to Muslim migrants has historical precedence: Germany recruited Turkish laborers to come to Germany in the 1960s to help cope with labor shortages. But Germany, more so than France and the U.K., never expected or wanted Muslims to integrate. Muslims and other migrants were not considered part of German society, and Germany only began trying to integrate Muslims (and migrants in general) in the 1990s.
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Indeed, until legal reforms were instituted in 2000, it was hard for Muslim migrants and their families, the majority of whom were Turkish, to become German citizens. (German nationality laws were based on a Wilhelmian law from 1913 that stressed German descent over all else.) But though the German government has sought to make Germany more welcoming to immigrants and has instituted policies specifically to better integrate them into society in recent years, their success so far has been mixed. The Bertelsmann Stiftung study found that 96 percent of German Muslims feel “connected with Germany,” though it also noted that almost one quarter of Muslims born in Germany did not learn German as a first language. A U.S.-based think tank, the Migration Policy Institute, pointed to high membership among Muslims in German associations (50 percent) and high numbers receiving school qualifications (85 percent) as signs that integration is succeeding.
What is most striking about this evidence is how similar the situation is in the U.K., France and Germany, despite radically different politically structures, ethnic makeups of the Muslim populations and approaches toward integration into society. In all three countries, a large majority of Muslims assimilate into society and become as British, French or German as any citizen, despite discrimination and in general poorer economic prospects compared to the national average. And yet in all three, a significant minority of the population not only resists assimilation but hives itself off from the rest of the country’s citizenry, espousing different views on everything from who should possess legitimate authority to what women should be allowed to wear in public. All three countries have also in recent years experienced Islamist terrorist attacks, which have reinforced mistrust of Muslims, which creates a vicious cycle that gives way to the very isolation that breeds radicalization among Muslim youths.
A Historical Comparison
The only real historical basis for comparison to the challenges European Muslims currently face is the fate of European Jews in the 20th century. Like European Muslims, European Jews were spread throughout the Continent, and at times, Jews would migrate to new countries to escape persecution or violence. This is not to say it’s a perfect comparison. The Jews living in Europe had been there for centuries, and especially in Western European countries, they were often well-off. And unlike European Muslims, the majority of European Jews lived in Eastern Europe (in 1933, in Poland, they made up 9 percent of the population, as compared to just under 1 percent of Germany’s population). Despite the differences, the experience of European Jews – a religious minority in Europe – informs thinking about Islam’s future in Europe.
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European Jews lived through one of the most transformative periods in European history – the slow, centuries-long transformation of Europe from a patchwork of multiethnic monarchies into individual nation-states. The European Jewish experience varied greatly depending on the given state. In Great Britain, membership in a religious community was not mandated by law. As a result, British Jews felt less dissonance between their religious lives and their national lives. British Jewish institutions even mimicked the Anglican Church in their development, so strongly did Jews want to integrate into British society.
The situation was much different in France. After the French Revolution, the National Assembly debated granting citizenship to French Jews and concluded famously that “the Jews should be denied everything as a nation but granted everything as individuals.” To become French, Jews had to check their religion at the door. In that sense, not much has changed in the intervening centuries.
Germany was a more complicated case. Before 1871, there was no Germany to speak of, and local Jewish communities interacted with the various Germanic states in a variety of ways. In Prussia, Jews were offered equal rights – but only if they recognized the absolute authority of the Prussian government and did not hold views antithetical to those of Prussian society. That “but” helped create a de facto Jewish reformation. For a long time, European countries were often made of different confessional groups, with authority delegated to the spiritual leaders of those groups. But the advent of the nation-state and the attempted integration of Jews into the new national European societies created crises in various religious communities, and Judaism was no exception. The very concept of today’s three main Jewish denominations came from this tumultuous time and from internal arguments about how much tradition to conserve versus how many reforms should be undertaken so that Jews could live prosperously in the new Europe.
Germany became the center of gravity for Jewish religious reform, but in truth, throughout Europe, Jews reconceptualized their relationship between organized religion and the state. (Eastern Europe, which we won’t address at any length here, became the epicenter of Jewish nationalism, one strain of which became Zionism.) Many Jews assimilated seamlessly into European society. Others held on to tradition with fundamentalist zeal, closing themselves off from what they saw as the corrosive influence of European modernity. In the end, it didn’t much matter. European Jews was never truly integrated into European society. The word “anti-Semitism” was coined by a German association in 1879 – eight years after a recently unified Germany had granted Jews full equal rights. Jews eventually became an easy scapegoat for Hitler during his rise to power, and European Jews, as well as gypsies and political dissidents, were marked for slaughter as a result. (Anti-Semitism also was not a strictly German phenomenon – Germany had only some 600,000 Jews. With the notable exception of Denmark, no European nation-state conquered by the Nazis defended Jewish citizens as if Jews were national brethren.)
European Muslims come from countries that, like 18th-century Europe’s multiethnic empires, are not organized on the basis of liberalism or nationalism. One of the reasons some Muslim migrants have such difficulty integrating into European societies is that in Islam, there is little distinction between governance and piety, and in most Muslim states, there has been no social or political revolution that necessitated the reinterpretation of Islam to allow for a separation of mosque and state. A religious Muslim’s primary identity is wrapped up in the “ummah” – the greater Islamic community – not his or her state of residence. Tribes, families and sects – not nations with constitutions and individual rights – are the political environments from which most of these Muslim migrants come. As with European Jews in the 18th century, this clash between Islam and Western political values may well lead to institutional religious reform to attempt to integrate.
This is not a process that will happen overnight, nor will it be seamless. But it is already possible to see the different ways in which European Muslims are struggling to maintain their religious beliefs while integrating into their new national communities. For example, in a recent 134-page report published by the Muslim Council of Britain, a Muslim sheikh made a religious case that Islam actually requires Muslims integrate into the societies in which they live. Quoting heavily from the Quran, the sheikh concludes that “Islam places a lot more emphasis on integration and human relationships than the worship of God itself.” The problem, for both European Muslims and for the nation-states where they live, is that while compromises and reforms may help integrate Muslims into European society better, no country or group has yet found a successful way of bringing the fringe elements in from the cold. And for as long as a fifth of European Muslims resist assimilation, domestic hostility toward Muslims will continue, as will Islamists attacks.
A Silver Lining?
There is one silver lining to this story. The rise of anti-Semitism in Europe and the horrors wrought by World War II were in part a result of economic crisis. The dismembering of Germany after World War I, followed by the Great Depression, essentially catapulted the world into a temporary Dark Age. Discrimination is often a byproduct of economic duress, and Jews in Europe were an obvious target for the masses: a religious minority that had always seemed to be a nation living within nations, with whom Christendom had a violent past, and which had in general profited seemingly at the expense of ordinary people, or so the line of thinking went. It is easy to dismiss it now, but it is impossible to dismiss how attractive such ideas were in the decade leading up to World War II.
European Muslims are by and large not wealthy. They are also generally younger than their neighbors. And that may make all the difference. Muslim migration first came to Europe when European countries were experiencing shortages of labor due to economic growth. Now, European countries are getting older and their populations are shrinking, a situation that is in turn creating new demand for labor. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has suffered grievous political harm because of her open migration policies, but the flipside is that migrants in Germany have essentially functioned as an economic stimulus. Oxford Economics recently published a report suggesting that the influx of Muslim migrants into Germany would raise gross domestic product by almost 1 percent by 2020, and that the influx of people might also curb inflationary pressures. The deeper problem for Germany is that it is simply an aging population: Next year, there will be fewer Germans under 30 years old than Germans over 60. Making its Muslim migrants truly German would go a long way toward combating Germany’s aging process.
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The U.K. and France, while also aging, do not face as stark a challenge as Germany does in this regard, but neither are they immune from demographic factors. France is in the least danger, though its non-Muslim total fertility rate has dropped for three consecutive years, falling to 1.9 children in 2017. Indeed, both the U.K. and France have total fertility rates that exceed the European average. The rub, however, is that Muslims in the U.K. and France are having babies at a significantly higher rate than non-Muslims. And though it is impossible to know whether the Muslims who are reproducing at these higher rates belong to the portion of the Muslim populations that have not assimilated into European societies, it is a good bet that they do, as a combination of traditional values, marriage at an early age and lack of access to education all lead to higher birth rates – and are all ways one could describe those Muslim communities that don’t integrate into British and French society.
The aging of Europe provides an opportunity. Nothing is better for integration than the prospect of economic opportunity and social mobility. And there will be plenty of jobs for young people in Europe in the coming decades, so much so that Poland is literally paying women to have babies, and Germany was willing to break taboos on immigration just to attract younger people to a country that has historically been hostile to immigration. The existence of opportunity is hardly a guarantee of Muslim assimilation, but it also means that Muslims will not be seen as stealing jobs from qualified German, French or British citizens. For the first time since the 1970s, European societies are actively encouraging migration and attempting to integrate Muslims into European societies, which may help balance against the hostility toward Muslims in these countries. At the very least, economic issues will not exacerbate the problem of integration that is already there.
The situation can be summed easily, even if it defies an easy solution. The size of the European Muslim population is increasing. While many European Muslims have assimilated into European society, a substantial minority, perhaps as many as one-fifth of all European Muslims, have not only failed to assimilate but reject the basic political and cultural tenets of the countries in which they live. These pockets of resistance to assimilation, often egged on by lack of economic prospects and discrimination, lead to hostility and suspicion on the part of the domestic population, while only exacerbates the problem of integration. The countries with the three biggest Muslim populations in Europe – France, Germany and the U.K. – have struggled to integrate Muslims into their societies, and despite the various differences in their approaches, all have failed to prevent the emergence of a strain of Islamic identity that the nation-state has yet to metabolize successfully. Europe is aging, and the economic opportunity that this will offer to young and relatively less wealthy European Muslims may help lead to assimilation. Even so, Europe’s historical approach to religious minorities leaves much to be desired and suggests integration will never truly be successful.
The post European Muslims: A Demographic Opportunity appeared first on Geopolitical Futures.
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Euro pean Muslims: A Demographic Opportunity form of suicide
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Austria May Ban Four-Fingered MB Salute
by John Rossomando • Oct 3, 2018 at 6:06 pm
https://www.investigativeproject.org/7644/austria-may-ban-four-fingered-mb-salute
The Austrian government is considering outlawing a four-fingered salute representing support for the Muslim Brotherhood. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan popularized it and began using it after Egypt's military toppled the Brotherhood in 2013.
Muslim Brotherhood members and sympathizers around the world use the image on websites, posters and literature. If the ban is approved, anyone in Austria who flashes the salute could be fined $4,600.
It also has been used by Muslim Brotherhood supporters in the United States, including members of Egyptian Americans for Freedom and Justice (EAFJ) and former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official Mohamed Elibiary.
Erdogan's role in popularizing the gesture seems to be driving the Austrian ban. It also would outlaw a wolf-head like salute used by the pro-Erdogan Turkish fascist group the Grey Wolves. Its most infamous member, Mehmet Ali Agca, tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981. The Wolves have become some of Erdogan's greatest non-Islamist supporters and aim to unify all Turkic peoples in Turkey across and throughout Central Asia into a single nation.
It was the only group besides Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) that backed constitutional changes allowing him to consolidate power.
So far Turkey hasn't responded.
Relations between Austria and Turkey have become tense due to reports that Erdogan's intelligence agency, the MIT, spied on Erdogan's enemies in Austria. In February 2017, a member of Austria's Green Party alleged that an umbrella organization headed by the Turkish embassy's religious attaché had carried out spy operations in Austrian mosques.
Turkey was inserting "unacceptable Turkish government politics in Austria," said Green Party member Peter Pilz.
Austria closed seven Turkish-linked mosques in June due to concerns over political Islam. Chancellor Sebastian Kurz complained about "parallel societies, political Islam and radicalisation." The Turks responded by accusing the Austrians of racism. The imams were paid by Turkey's Directorate of Religious Affairs, also called the Diyanet. It has a close relationship with Turkey's MIT intelligence agency.
Related Topics: John Rossomando, Austria, Muslim Brotherhood, hand gestures, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Egyptian Americans for Freedom and Justice, Grey Wolves, AKP, Mehmet Ali Agca, Peter Pilz, Sebastian Kurz, Diyanet
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https://gellerreport.com/2018/10/london-423-new-mosques-100-shariah-courts-more-than-in-many-muslim-countries.html/
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https://israelunwired.com/france-closes-muslim-zahra-france-center-after-massive-police-raid/
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/free-speech-sharia-european-court-of-human-rights-ruling/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Saturday%202018-10-27&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/free-speech-sharia-european-court-of-human-rights-ruling/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Saturday%202018-10-27&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives
I wonder how many Europeans are still in denial about what's happening.
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13362/netherlands-problem
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While France Burns, Macron Fiddles away 16 Million Euros to Terrorists
By JNS News Service,
The government of France recently donated 8 million euros to the Palestinian government’s 2018 general budget. [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 13, 2018]. This brings France’s direct support to the PA’s general budget to 16 million euros in 2018 (67,869,600 shekels).
The PA’s “general budget” is used by the PA to finance what has been termed its “Pay for Slay” program under which the PA pays salaries to terrorist prisoners, released terrorist prisoners and allowances to the families of dead terrorist “Martyrs”.
Despite the severe criticism of the PA practice by the international community and the PA’s constant complaints regarding its financial woes and the need for continued international monetary support, in 2018 the PA allocated 1.237 billion shekels – or over 7% of the entire PA budget – to fund its terror rewarding practice.
This approach was clarified by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, who, in response to US and Israeli legislation designed to combat the PA policy, declared: “The salaries of our Martyrs, prisoners, and wounded are a red line. From 1965 until now, this matter is sacred to us. The Martyrs and their families are sacred, [and so are] the wounded and the prisoners. We must pay all of them. If one penny remains in our hands it is for them and not for the living.” [Official PA TV, Oct. 28, 2018]
This unequivocal statement, which Abbas has repeated several times, makes the PA’s priorities crystal clear: To promote, incentivize, and reward terrorism before feeding, educating, or catering to the other needs of the PA’s non-terrorist population.
“It must be clear to the French government, that any donation it makes to the PA’s general budget, according to the PA itself, will be used first and foremost to give financial rewards to terrorists,“ explains PMW’s founder and director, Itamar Marcus.
“While French officials may claim that their specific euros do not fund the PA’s ”Pay for Slay” program, the French government must recognize that the 293 million euros the PA paid to terrorists and their families in 2018 is drawn from the same general budget enriched with 16 million French euros.
Moreover, it is important to note that any foreign donation to the PA – general budget or otherwise – which fails to condition the receipt of the funding on the PA ceasing to reward terror, legitimizes the PA’s terror payments. We call on the French government to immediately suspend its support of the PA general budget and to consider adopting legislation – as other donor countries have done – that would condition all of France’s aid to the PA on the latter abolishing this practice which squanders more than 7% of its entire budget on rewarding terror. “
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https://www.dw.com/en/germany-mulls-introducing-mosque-tax-for-muslims/a-46866041
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13711/germany-immigrants-prisons
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MONSTERS: British Government Rules Christianity Is Not a Religion of Peace, Refuses Convert Asylum
gellerreport.com/2019/03/uk-christianity-not-religion-of-peace.html/
By Pamela Geller - on March 23, 2019 March 23, 2019
The UK government “has claimed Christianity is not a religion of peace “after refusing a Christian convert’s bid for asylum in an ‘unbelievably offensive’” letter quoting passages from the Bible. While stepping and fetching for the most brutal and extreme ideology on the face of the earth, banning those of us who stand against jihad terror and sharia oppression, abandoning a million non-Muslim British tweens to Muslim child sex trafficking gangs — now this. They have turned a corner and gone over to the dark side.
Where is the Queen, defender of the faith? Surely they are sending this brave soul to his death. Imagine, the UK government cited the Bible in a breathtaking denial of reality. Have they ever approached the horror and hate speech in the Quran? No one is killing in the name of Jesus Christ, but millions are being slaughtered in the name of Allah. Especially apostates.
British Government Rules Christianity Is Not a Religion of Peace, Rejects Convert
By Jack Montgomery, Breitbart News, March 23, 2019:
The Home Office has rejected the asylum application of a Christian convert from Iran who said they had been drawn to the faith by its peaceful nature, due to a Government official ruling that Christianity is not peaceful.
The applicant indicated that they had converted to Christianity from Islam because of its peaceful nature, stating that “In Islam there is violence, rage and revenge. In Christianity in the contrary it is talking about peace, forgiveness and kindness.”
This earned the ire of the Home Office bureaucrat or bureaucrats charged with assessing the application, the Times reports.
The official cobbled together six passages from the King James Version and New International Version of the Old and New Testaments — such as Matthew 10:34, in which Christ proclaims he “came not to send peace, but a sword” — in an effort to prove that the applicant’s view of Christianity was wrong, and that Christian scripture is in fact “filled with imagery of revenge, destruction, death and violence”.
“These examples are inconsistent with your claim that you converted to Christianity after discovering it is a ‘peaceful’ religion, as opposed to Islam which contains violence, rage and revenge,” the rejection letter to the applicant admonishes passive-aggressively; an implicit ruling that Christianity is not peaceful — certainly not relative to Islam — and indeed is so clearly not peaceful that the Home Office does not consider perceived peacefulness a credible reason for conversion.
“I am extremely concerned that a Government department could determine the future of another human being based on such a profound misunderstanding of the texts and practices of faith communities,” commented Paul Butler, Bishop of Durham for the Church of England.
“To use extracts from the Book of Revelation to argue that Christianity is a violent religion is like arguing that a Government report on the impact of Climate Change is advocating drought and flooding,” he added.
The United Kingdom is, at least nominally, a Christian country, with the Queen also serving as the Supreme Governor of the established Church of England, and charged with defending the Protestant faith by her Coronation Oath.
Meanwhile the Islamic Republic of Iran is, as the name would suggest, officially Islamic, with a religious cleric acting as Supreme Leader. Conversion from the state religion of Islam to Christianity in Iran is officially deemed as “apostasy” — a criminal offence which is punishable by death.
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Robert Spencer: Freedom of Speech Dead in UK as London’s Muslim Mayor Defends Arrest of Christian Preacher
gellerreport.com/2019/03/spencer-speech-london.html/
By Robert Spencer - on March 23, 2019 March 23, 2019
How much has Britain deteriorated as a free society? This much: a Christian preacher from Nigeria, Oluwole Ilesanmi, recently discovered that preaching Christianity in public is illegal in London, because it offends Muslims. And London’s Muslim mayor has defended the arrest of Ilesanmi, saying that “there are limitations” on the freedom of speech.
Ilesanmi was arrested on February 23 while he was preaching, after a Muslim complained to police. A London activist, Ambrosine Shitrit, filmed the arrest. She explained what happened in an interview with CBN News: “A man with a hoodie was trying to humiliate, to be aggressive towards this Christian street preacher. I could see that he was a Muslim man because he was talking about, ‘No. Allah is the right way.’”
The Muslim who was harassing Ilesanmi was not arrested. Ilesanmi was. A police officer asked him, “What are you doing here?”
“I am preaching,” Ilesanmi answered.
The police officer responded: “You’re preaching. I am going to require you to go away.” To that, Ilesanmi said: “You can never.”
“Okay,” said the police officer, “then I will arrest you for breach of peace.” When Ilesanmi asked him how he was breaching the peace, the officer replied: “What you’re doing. You’re causing problems, you’re disturbing people’s day and you’re breaching their peace.”
Ambrosine Shitrit explains: “Nobody was offended by the preaching, nobody. Nobody was offended and nobody came to see what was happening.”
Andrea Williams of the Christian Legal Centre, which is working with Ilesanmi on his case, explained: “This was completely an overreach of their authority. There was no basis upon which to arrest the pastor - they did know clearly what happened because it’s caught on the camera. There was no proper investigation. They arrested him for Islamophobia which isn’t an offense and certainly there was no evidence that he was Islamophobic or racist.”
London’s Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, thought this arrest was just fine. According to Christian Today, Khan was asked about the arrest of Ilesanmi during Mayor’s Question Time at the London Assembly on March 21. Instead of saying that he thought the arrest was appalling and gratuitous, and defending the freedom of speech in general and Ilesanmi’s right to preach Christianity in particular, Khan said with studied blandness: “I expect the police to take this matter seriously.” He added: “It’s always been clear that freedom of speech is critical and must be protected but also the police must be able to investigate when allegations are made of a criminal offence.”
The possible “criminal offense” in Ilesanmi’s case is “Islamophobia” or offending a Muslim, which are criminal offenses according to Sharia, but not illegal in Britain – at least not officially.
This is in a London that has become so unsafe that Somali Muslim migrants are actually sending their children back to war-torn Mogadishu in order to keep them out of harm’s way. Crime rates are skyrocketing in Khan’s London, and Khan’s police are devoting time and attention not to stopping knife crime and making the city safe again, but making sure that Muslims don’t have to suffer hearing the sound of Christian preaching.
And when Khan was asked whether Christians could preach in London without risking arrest, he answered: “There’s not an unlimited right to freedom of expression or free speech. There are limitations and there’s a balance that needs to be done. But I’m quite clear in my own views – we should go as far as we can to uphold that really important principle [of free speech] and that includes discourse about religion.”
If there are any limits to the freedom of speech other than prohibitions on open calls for violence and criminal activity, then there is no freedom of speech at all. And if there is no freedom of speech, there is no longer a free society. Muslims complained about Oluwole Ilesanmi’s preaching, and now it is official: Muslims in Britain are a protected class whose wishes must be catered to in all circumstances.
As long as that principle goes unchallenged, Britain will continue to race toward its own ruin.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His new book is The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS herehere.
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https://gellerreport.com/2019/03/hungary-refugee-isis.html/
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A high level Paris LEO friend tells me the Notre Dame fire was truly a terrible accident.
OTOH, it is not like suspicions were implausible-- this from 2+ years ago:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/09/cell-of-french-women-radicalised-by-isis-behind-failed-notre-dame-attack?fbclid=IwAR3YxIYM9jrH6sVGipAnB5z_9EwJFHQaYXRLOvSiiAQaXQDCZqfjmcrIZ9Q
More recently:
https://www.breitbart.com/faith/2019/03/20/twelve-french-churches-attacked-vandalized-in-one-week/?fbclid=IwAR3JS8hSbbmelQiAHhGP_jctbDtZ0fCu08Ft78zeVDAMfptyjpPRIDOmTg4
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The unfortunate truth is that the ruling class and its pravdas, in the name of preventing Islamophobia, are perfectly willing to squash the search for Truth. Just as unfortunately, this can lead to conspiracy theories.
Which is, unfortunately, where we find ourselves with regard to the Notre Dame fire:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-24/burning-notre-dame-and-destruction-christian-europe?fbclid=IwAR08f7CJAwX57UGrf-ZA60rNBQlCvXwgVsdwgOA_RF7uxGR0iXnb3IZ84kw
https://www.sott.net/article/411378-Chief-architect-of-Notre-Dame-We-installed-new-detection-system-in-2010-and-completely-rewired-the-cathedral-so-the-fire-wasnt-caused-by-electrical-short-circuit?fbclid=IwAR1R2I8dkAMa9p7qg61eVOod0Xaw4mbkcSKpF2sTFDC23wBu0g_Lgo8ctk8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRoilgJ4qI8&fbclid=IwAR3Kr-brUDrZacCdCf5G6IdLXGLFdPitsf_LhFDlb7fjEYfOJanwPcYI36U
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You do of course realize that "conspiracy theory" is a construct used to attack anyone who questions the official narrative. Funny how the French govt. knew it was an accidental fire before even the most basic investigation could be conducted.
The unfortunate truth is that the ruling class and its pravdas, in the name of preventing Islamophobia, are perfectly willing to squash the search for Truth. Just as unfortunately, this can lead to conspiracy theories.
Which is, unfortunately, where we find ourselves with regard to the Notre Dame fire:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-24/burning-notre-dame-and-destruction-christian-europe?fbclid=IwAR08f7CJAwX57UGrf-ZA60rNBQlCvXwgVsdwgOA_RF7uxGR0iXnb3IZ84kw
https://www.sott.net/article/411378-Chief-architect-of-Notre-Dame-We-installed-new-detection-system-in-2010-and-completely-rewired-the-cathedral-so-the-fire-wasnt-caused-by-electrical-short-circuit?fbclid=IwAR1R2I8dkAMa9p7qg61eVOod0Xaw4mbkcSKpF2sTFDC23wBu0g_Lgo8ctk8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRoilgJ4qI8&fbclid=IwAR3Kr-brUDrZacCdCf5G6IdLXGLFdPitsf_LhFDlb7fjEYfOJanwPcYI36U
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"According to the data gathered, which was reported on by left-leaning French newspaper Le Figaro, 753 people were killed in terror attacks across Europe from 2000 to 2018.
"The figures also include a further 1115 European victims who were killed abroad by jihadists.
"91 per cent of these victims were killed by Muslim extremists, with just 14 victims being killed by right-wing extremists and 13 by left-wing extremists, as well as one killed by an animal rights extremist."
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https://gellerreport.com/2019/05/doctor-who-faces-inquiry-for-treating-a-muslim-child-says-he-will-quit-after-23-years-as-a-gp-due-to-the-major-injustice-of-the-investigation.html/
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7077943/Bodybuilding-steroids-did-not-make-London-Bridge-attackers-aggressive-inquest-hears.html#comments
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https://www.algemeiner.com/2017/07/07/muslim-extremists-are-main-perpetrators-of-antisemitic-violence-in-europe-major-norwegian-academic-study-concludes/?fbclid=IwAR1-SXzwvS36DMcOJ--FrdhkDSHJROYeWZS5FdimsC5psdFRbXnPM7jc4TE
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https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Antisemitism/Merkel-refuses-to-outlaw-Hezbollah-snubbing-German-Jews-after-kippah-row-591169?fbclid=IwAR2xSzJaDD-62Bn4MeOB2Uq1GnqEYAJEa6mH81U7xk1Y4pZRmg_7QdxqL_M
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https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/11/11/as-bombings-spread-denmark-closes-border-with-sweden/
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) – Denmark will temporarily reinstate border controls with Sweden and step up police work along the border after a series of violent crimes and explosions around Copenhagen that Danish authorities say were carried out by perpetrators from Sweden.
The checks, which start Tuesday for six months, will take place at the Oresund Bridge between Copenhagen and the Swedish city of Malmo and also at ferry ports.
Lene Frank of Denmark’s National Police said there will be both random and periodic checks of people crossing the border and officers will focus “particularly on cross-border crime involving explosives, weapons and drugs.”
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"Swedish city of Malmo" is a majority "immigrant" city.
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https://israelunwired.com/muslims-chant-death-threats-to-jews-at-rally-in-sweden/
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50339977?
Unexpectedly!
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50339977?
Unexpectedly!
Same story, more coverage of it. Let me know if the "criminal gang" problems in Malmo Sweden fall under anything other than our discussion of 'Islam in Europe'. Swedish police and media don't like to tie ethnicity or religion to "crime" which is really terror.
https://quillette.com/2019/11/15/abandoning-malmo-to-its-criminals/
https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-muslim-migration-made-malmo-sweden-crime-michael-qazvini
Bernie says, make the US more like Sweden and Denmark while Sweden is becoming more like Syria and Denmark is building a wall. Vote Bernie and his ideas down and add Sweden to the 'travel ban' list.
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Oh, I'm sure it's just Sven and Olaf that have suddenly taken to bomb building and gun crime. Magic soil in europe and the US ensures that all immigrants (legal and otherwise) leave all their 3rd world pathologies behind!
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50339977?
Unexpectedly!
Same story, more coverage of it. Let me know if the "criminal gang" problems in Malmo Sweden fall under anything other than our discussion of 'Islam in Europe'. Swedish police and media don't like to tie ethnicity or religion to "crime" which is really terror.
https://quillette.com/2019/11/15/abandoning-malmo-to-its-criminals/
https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-muslim-migration-made-malmo-sweden-crime-michael-qazvini
Bernie says, make the US more like Sweden and Denmark while Sweden is becoming more like Syria and Denmark is building a wall. Vote Bernie and his ideas down and add Sweden to the 'travel ban' list.
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15159/islamophobia-political-weapon
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https://gatesofvienna.net/2019/11/dont-hurt-me-im-dutch/
C'mon magic soil! Make everyone nice!
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15198/norway-pakistan
Fourteen Years after Cartoon Crisis, Norway again Knuckles Under to Islam
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15248/sweden-confronting-reality
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https://summit.news/2019/12/19/muslim-police-officer-hired-to-promote-diversity-ends-up-being-part-of-grooming-gang/
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https://www.newsweek.com/migrants-europe-violence-crime-germany-study-770105
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15366/europe-anti-christian-attacks
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15448/france-jews-murder
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15414/sweden-welfare-crisis
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15414/sweden-welfare-crisis
I remember being (properly) questioned for putting a Swedish immigration story in our healthcare thread. Open borders? Generous welfare state? Choose one, or neither, never both.
Question for the Left, Sander et al: Is Sweden better off without the (unassimilated) immigrants, better off without the welfare state, or better off bankrupt? [And why do you want that here?]
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15414/sweden-welfare-crisis
I remember being (properly) questioned for putting a Swedish immigration story in our healthcare thread. Open borders? Generous welfare state? Choose one, or neither, never both.
Question for the Left, Sander et al: Is Sweden better off without the (unassimilated) immigrants, better off without the welfare state, or better off bankrupt? [And why do you want that here?]
Think of all the jobs created for Bomb Techs and Forensic Nursing Sexual Assault Examiners!
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Dutch Museum Debates Censoring Degas Work to Avoid Muslim Offense
by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
February 18, 2020
https://www.investigativeproject.org/8308/dutch-museum-debates-censoring-degas-work-to
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Findings on ISIS Refugees Further Complicate Europe's Dilemma
by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
March 11, 2020
https://www.investigativeproject.org/8337/findings-on-isis-refugees-further-complicate
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15719/eu-closing-borders
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15977/france-no-go-zones-riots
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https://www.meforum.org/61410/in-europe-migrant-terrorist-strikes-continue
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https://www.israelunwired.com/the-story-of-how-sweden-is-falling-apart-due-to-muslim-immigration/
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Macron outlines new law to prevent Islamic ‘separatism’ in France
French President Emmanuel Macron has said he wants to promote integration and prevent radicalization.
Oct. 2, 2020 at 1:36 p.m. CDT
PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron took aim at "Islamist separatism" on Friday, unveiling the substance of a long-awaited law designed to regulate the practice of Islam in France.
The law, to be formally presented in December, will primarily crack down on the foreign influences in French Muslim communities, Macron said. It will allow the state to monitor the funding that French mosques receive from abroad, create a certificate program for French imams and ban home schooling for young children to prevent the creation of Islamic schools.
“What we need to fight is Islamist separatism,” Macron said, in a speech delivered in the northwestern Paris suburb of Les Mureaux. “It’s a conscious, theorized, politico-religious project that materializes through repeated deviations from the values of the republic and which often result in the creation of a counter-society.”
Motivated in part by a string of deadly terrorism attacks — some perpetrated by French Muslims against fellow citizens — Macron has talked for several years about his desire to encourage the integration and prevent the radicalization of those who practice Islam in France.
Struggling to prevent terrorist attacks, France wants to ‘reform’ Islam
But his Friday speech went further than previous statements in its critique of France’s largest minority community. Under fire by the political right for being soft on crime, he called Islam “a religion that is in crisis all over the world” whose problems stemmed from a “very strong hardening” of positions among Muslims.
His tone perplexed even the Muslim leaders who are largely sympathetic to the call for greater integration.
“I would like to point out, with all due respect, to those circles that seek to establish a parallel between Islam and Islamism, to those who suggest that Islam is Islamism, and vice versa, that there is indeed a distinction to be made between the Muslim religion and the Islamist ideology.”
“You recognize that ‘radical Islam’ (still not defined) is taking root because the Republic has deserted the social question,” wrote the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF), a prominent Muslim advocacy group, in a statement addressed to Macron. “Instead of developing the social, you propose to impose repressive devices.”
Macron did place some of the blame for “Islamist separatism” on France itself, particularly in its unwillingness to address the bloody Algerian war and the colonial past still imprinted in what he called “our collective psyche.”
“And so we see children of the Republic, sometimes from elsewhere, children or grandchildren of citizens from immigrant backgrounds and from the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa revisiting their identity through a post-colonial discourse.”
But this, he said, was “a form of self-hatred.”
The question of what to do about Islam has been a regular topic discussion in the French press and on talk shows. But calls to “reform” an entire religion have repeatedly elicited accusations of xenophobia and Islamophobia. And related policy proposals have eluded, and even embarrassed, virtually every president who has tried. Even an attempt by a left-wing president, Socialist François Hollande, to strip convicted terrorists of their French nationality failed in the French parliament.
Macron, a nominal centrist who became president in 2017, has acknowledged that legacy, including on Friday. Nonetheless, he said he was committed to a project that “consists in finally building an Islam in France that can be an Islam of the Enlightenment.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/macron-islam-france/2020/10/02/ba8a1dcc-04bc-11eb-b92e-029676f9ebec_story.html
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16550/france-terrorism-silence
France: More Terrorism, More Silence
by Giulio Meotti
September 27, 2020 at 5:00 am
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This brand of extremism has also managed to transform many European citizens into prisoners, people hiding in their own countries, sentenced to death and forced to live in houses unknown even to their friends and families. And we got used to it!
"[T]his lack of courage to follow in Charlie's footsteps comes at a price, we are losing freedom of speech and an insidious form of self-censorship is gaining ground." — Flemming Rose, Le Point, September 2, 2020.
"To put it simply, freedom of speech is in bad shape around the world. Including in Denmark, France and throughout the West. These are troubled times; people prefer order and security to freedom." — Flemming Rose, Le Point, August 15, 2020.
On September 25, in Paris, two people were stabbed and seriously wounded outside the former offices of Charlie Hebdo, where 12 of the satirical magazine's editors and cartoonists were murdered in 2015. Pictured: Firefighters and paramedics evacuate a wounded victim from the site of the attack. (Photo by Alain Jocard/AFP via Getty Images)
On September 25, in Paris, two people were stabbed and seriously wounded outside the former offices of Charlie Hebdo, where 12 of the satirical magazine's editors and cartoonists were murdered by extremist Muslims in 2015. The suspect, in police custody, is being investigated for terrorism.
The accused murderers in the 2015 attacks are currently on trial in Paris.
Shortly before the knifing attack, on September 22, Charlie Hebdo's director of human resources, Marika Bret, did not come home. In fact, she no longer has a home. She was evicted after serious and concrete death threats from extremist Muslims. She decided to make her "exfiltration" public for French intelligence to alert the public to the threat of extremism in France.
"I have lived under police protection for almost five years", she told the weekly Le Point.
"My security agents received specific and detailed threats. I had ten minutes to pack and leave the house. Ten minutes to give up a part of one's life is a bit short and it was very violent. I will not go home. I am losing my home to outbursts of hatred, the hatred that always begins with the threat of instilling fear. We know how it can end".
Bret also claimed that the French Left abandoned the "battle for secularism".
From the start of the trial of the men accused of committing the murders at Charlie Hebdo in 2015 -- and especially since the renewed publication of Mohammed cartoons -- Charlie Hebdo has received threats of all kinds -- including from al Qaeda. Security today at the satirical magazine is massive. "The address of our headquarters is secret, there are security gates everywhere, armored doors and windows, armed security agents, we can hardly get anyone in", Bret said.
Today, there are 85 policemen protecting Charlie's journalists.
Bret has become another example of the clandestine nature of freedom of expression in France, the country of Voltaire. The first was Robert Redeker, a professor of philosophy. On September 17, 2006, he arose early to write an article for Le Figaro on Europe's grappling with Islam. Three days later, he was in a safe house and on the run.
Last January, Mila O., a 16-year-old French girl, made insulting comments about Islam during a livestream on Instagram.
"During her livestream, a Muslim boy asked her out in the comments, but she turned him down because she is gay. He responded by accusing her of racism and calling her a 'dirty lesbian'. In an angry follow-up video, streamed immediately after she was insulted, Mila responded by saying that she 'hates religion'".
Mila continued, saying among other things:
"Are you familiar with freedom of expression? I didn't hesitate to say what I thought. I hate religion. The Koran is a religion of hatred; there is only hatred in it. That's what I think. I say what I think... Islam is sh*t... I'm not a racist at all. One cannot simply be racist against a religion... I say what I want, I say what I think. Your religion is sh*t. I'd stick a finger up your god's a**h*le..."
After her school's address was posted on social media, she was forced to leave and transfer to a different school, this time kept secret.
The journalist Éric Zemmour was attacked several times outside his house; the French-Moroccan journalist Zineb el Rhazoui also found the address of her home published on social media.
Meanwhile, to his credit, French President Emmanuel Macron has been defending Charlie Hebdo's right to freedom of expression. Blasphemy, he said, "is no crime."
"The law is clear: we have the right to blaspheme, to criticize, to caricature religions. The republican order is not a moral order... what is outlawed is to incite hatred and attack dignity."
A 2007 legal case ruled that "In France it is possible to insult a religion, its figures and its symbols ... however, insulting those who follow a religion is outlawed."
The courageous words of the French authorities, however, seem harmless, pale and dull, compared to the strength of extremist violence and intimidation.
Islamic fundamentalism has already managed to displace not only thousands of persecuted Christians -- such as Asia Bibi, forced to flee for her life from Pakistan to Canada after she was acquitted of committing blasphemy. This brand of extremism has also managed to transform many European citizens into prisoners, people hiding in their own countries, sentenced to death and forced to live in houses unknown even to their friends and families. And we got used to it!
On the day of Iran's death sentence against Salman Rushdie for his novel, The Satanic Verses, he and his wife, Marianne Wiggins, were taken from their home in North London by the British secret service, to the first of more than fifty "safe houses" in which the writer lived for the next ten years.
The Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders -- whose name, as the next to be murdered, was found on a sheet of paper knifed into the murdered filmmaker, Theo van Gogh -- has been living in safe houses since 2004. "I am in jail," he says, "and they are walking around free."
Ten years ago, a Seattle Weekly reporter, Molly Norris, in solidarity with the endangered makers of the television cartoon "South Park," also drew a caricature of Mohammed. The last newspaper article that talked about her stated:
"You may have noticed that the Molly Norris strip is not included in this week's issue. That's because there is no more Molly... on the advice of FBI security specialists, she will be moving and changing her name..."
The Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten, which first printed cartoons of Mohammed in 2005, gave up. The paper declined to republish the caricatures of the Prophet of Islam when Charlie Hebdo printed them again on its front page. The editor who published the cartoons at Jyllands Posten, Flemming Rose, is still escorted by bodyguards. "I really admire Charlie's courage," he said.
"Heroes who have not succumbed to threats or violence. Unfortunately, they received limited support. No publication in France or Europe behaves like Charlie. That is why I believe that in Europe there is an unwritten law against blasphemy. I am not criticizing the journalists and editors who make this choice. We cannot blame people who, unlike Charlie, do not put their lives in danger. But let us not be fooled: this lack of courage to follow in Charlie's footsteps comes at a price, we are losing freedom of speech and an insidious form of self-censorship is gaining ground".
In recent days, the new editor of Jyllands Posten, Jacob Nybroe, repeated:
"We will not publish them anymore. I confirmed this editorial line when I arrived and received a lot of applause. I may look like a coward, but we cannot do it".
The names of Danish cartoonists appeared on the same "hit list" that Al Qaeda published with the name of Charlie Hebdo's editor-in chief, Stéphane Charbonnier, murdered in the 2015 massacre. The Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard is alive only because during a terror assault on his home, he hid.
Today Jyllands Posten's headquarters has bulletproof windows, metal bars and slabs, barbed wire and video cameras. It sits opposite the port of Aarhus, the second largest city in Denmark, and is under surveillance day and night. Each automatic door, each elevator, requires a badge and a code. You enter it as if it were a bank vault. One door opens and after it closes, the next door opens. The journalists who work there enter one at a time. "To put it simply, freedom of speech is in bad shape around the world. Including in Denmark, France and throughout the West," Rose said, "These are troubled times; people prefer order and security to freedom."
If all of us do not defend our freedoms, soon we will not have them anymore.
Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16613/italy-immigration-borders
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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/oct/16/french-teacher-beheaded-outside-paris-cops-shoot-k/
French teacher beheaded outside Paris; cops shoot, kill suspect who screamed 'Allahu Akbar'
“He was waving a gun by this time and further threatened officers,” the newspaper’s source added. “This is when he was shot dead by police."
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I guess they can't say he was unarmed and start a protest on his behalf. Or will his name end up on the back of French football jerseys, the teacher allegedly showed the class what shall not be shown, cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8848509/Gunman-shouting-Allahu-Akbar-BEHEADS-man-northern-Paris-shot-police.html
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I wonder if beheading is illegal in all of France or if some areas are now under Sharia Law.
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Police are still trying to determine a motive, but say the incident was not related to terrorism.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/oct/16/french-teacher-beheaded-outside-paris-cops-shoot-k/
French teacher beheaded outside Paris; cops shoot, kill suspect who screamed 'Allahu Akbar'
“He was waving a gun by this time and further threatened officers,” the newspaper’s source added. “This is when he was shot dead by police."
----------------
I guess they can't say he was unarmed and start a protest on his behalf. Or will his name end up on the back of French football jerseys, the teacher allegedly showed the class what shall not be shown, cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
----------------
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8848509/Gunman-shouting-Allahu-Akbar-BEHEADS-man-northern-Paris-shot-police.html
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I wonder if beheading is illegal in all of France or if some areas are now under Sharia Law.
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https://m.dw.com/en/124-high-risk-islamists-at-large-in-germany-report/a-55684053
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16818/france-under-attack
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https://www.investigativeproject.org/8658/europe-hunts-erdogan-gray-wolves
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UK Finally Acknowledges the Obvious
by Patrick Dunleavy
IPT News
December 21, 2020
https://www.investigativeproject.org/8678/uk-finally-acknowledges-the-obvious
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https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/02/04/french-homicides-increased-91-per-cent-2000-2020/
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17167/denmark-mosques-foreign-funds
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https://gatesofvienna.net/2021/03/vignettes-from-the-euro-caliphate/#more-51731
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17197/denmark-parallel-societies
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https://www.westernjournal.com/french-generals-top-officers-warn-political-elites-military-intervention-divisive-critical-race-theory-breaks-society/
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Brief: Former French Generals Sign Threatening Letter
The defense minister condemned the politicization of the armed forces.
By: Geopolitical Futures
Background: France in recent years has experienced intense bouts of social unrest as well as attacks by Islamist extremists. On April 21, 20 former generals and more than 1,500 members of the military, police and gendarmerie signed an open letter calling on France’s leaders to “eradicate” threats and “safeguard the nation.” Failure risks a military uprising and civil war, the letter warned.
What Happened: On Sunday, the government of President Emmanuel Macron responded. Defense Minister Florence Parly called the letter irresponsible and condemned politicization of the armed forces. She was especially critical of far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s attempts to recruit the letter’s signatories to her party.
Bottom Line: That so many current members of the defense and security establishment were willing to sign the letter suggests they do not fear punishment. This is especially notable in a country like France, with a history of the military getting involved in domestic politics. This could be a warning to Macron.
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17404/germany-political-islamism
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17411/goran-adamson
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Hizballah's German Presence Grows Despite Terrorist Designation
IPT News
June 7, 2021
https://www.investigativeproject.org/8889/hizballah-german-presence-grows-despite-terrorist
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17450/denmark-mass-migration
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17468/germany-failed-hezbollah-ban
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17486/germany-extremists-grey-wolves
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https://gatesofvienna.net/2021/10/taharrush-in-tarragona/
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http://ace.mu.nu/archives/396007.php
How do you say “The motive may never be known” in Danish?
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http://ace.mu.nu/archives/396007.php
How do you say “The motive may never be known” in Danish?
White Supremacist Islamist. Who knew?
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https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/1179440/report-islam-convert-kills-5-in-norway-using-arrows
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https://summit.news/2021/10/18/denmark-reveals-cost-of-non-western-immigration-5-billion-per-year/
Good thing that can't happen here!
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17968/eric-zemmour-antisemitism
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Bataclan Trial Highlights France's Ongoing Security Challenges
by Hany Ghoraba
IPT News
December 16, 2021
https://www.investigativeproject.org/9095/bataclan-trial-highlights-france-ongoing-security
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https://summit.news/2022/01/14/afghan-migrant-who-raped-and-strangled-13-year-old-was-given-asylum-in-uk-after-arriving-on-a-boat/
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18163/eric-zemmour-france
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18421/europe-energy-cost
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18421/europe-energy-cost
More dangerous than Putin.
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https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2022/04/24/over-a-hundred-police-officers-injured-during-swedish-quran-riots/
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https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2022/04/24/over-a-hundred-police-officers-injured-during-swedish-quran-riots/
They can’t riot in your country if you don’t let them into your country.
At some point, people might figure that out.
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As we have warned here for years , , , and what awaits us here in America?
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/swedish-prime-minister-says-integration-has-failed-after-migrant-riots?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=646
https://summit.news/2021/05/26/sweden-goes-from-being-one-of-the-safest-countries-in-europe-to-the-second-most-dangerous/
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As we have warned here for years , , , and what awaits us here in America?
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/swedish-prime-minister-says-integration-has-failed-after-migrant-riots?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=646
https://summit.news/2021/05/26/sweden-goes-from-being-one-of-the-safest-countries-in-europe-to-the-second-most-dangerous/
Much worse.
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"Sweden Goes From Being One of the Safest Countries in Europe to the Second Most Dangerous"
----------------
Mugged by reality, it would seem that Swedes have gone from being the most liberal in Europe to the most conservative.
-
Import the 3rd world, become the 3rd world.
"Sweden Goes From Being One of the Safest Countries in Europe to the Second Most Dangerous"
----------------
Mugged by reality, it would seem that Swedes have gone from being the most liberal in Europe to the most conservative.
-
Reminiscing the changes in Sweden, the tennis match (Sweden v. Israel) riot where I found out Malmo Sweden was a Middle East country. 2009.
https://youtu.be/Zb1q7KzJBbE
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Replicated in Snowmalia, MN.
Reminiscing the changes in Sweden, the tennis match (Sweden v. Israel) riot where I found out Malmo Sweden was a Middle East country. 2009.
https://youtu.be/Zb1q7KzJBbE
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UK Theater Chain Pulls Movie After Muslims Protest
by Potkin Azarmehr
IPT News
June 8, 2022
https://www.investigativeproject.org/9179/uk-theater-chain-pulls-movie-after-muslims-protest
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UK Theater Chain Pulls Movie After Muslims Protest
by Potkin Azarmehr
IPT News
June 8, 2022
https://www.investigativeproject.org/9179/uk-theater-chain-pulls-movie-after-muslims-protest
Lesson: Violence works.
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Islamist Terrorism Resurfaces in Scandinavia
by Ioannis E. Kotoulas
Special to IPT News
July 5, 2022
https://www.investigativeproject.org/9213/islamist-terrorism-resurfaces-in-scandinavia
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Islamist Terrorism Resurfaces in Scandinavia
by Ioannis E. Kotoulas
Special to IPT News
July 5, 2022
https://www.investigativeproject.org/9213/islamist-terrorism-resurfaces-in-scandinavia
They obviously need common sense gun laws like they have in europe!
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In Molenbeek: Jihadists, Guns and (Drug) Money
by Abigail R. Esman
IPT News
July 6, 2022
https://www.investigativeproject.org/9214/in-molenbeek-jihadists-guns-and-drug-money
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18826/sweden-violent-crime
-
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18826/sweden-violent-crime
Good thing that can't happen here!
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRunUkdkK8s&ab_channel=Netflix
Good thing this won't happen in France this winter!
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https://gatesofvienna.net/2022/09/michael-sturzenberger-sentenced-to-six-months-in-prison/
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https://nationalfile.com/england-descends-into-chaos-as-roving-gangs-of-muslims-dominate-the-streets-hunt-down-hindus/
Local crime story.
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https://www.commonsense.news/p/two-bombings-in-one-night-thats-normal
Diversity!
-
Sometimes Tucker has on this super hot Swedish blond who is a PhD or something. She's bright and articulate , , , and damn fine.
Anyway, she said the recent election victory by the Right was due more to the Muslims no longer supporting the left but instead forming their own party and by so doing diminishing the vote for the Left.
-
Sometimes Tucker has on this super hot Swedish blond who is a PhD or something. She's bright and articulate , , , and damn fine.
Anyway, she said the recent election victory by the Right was due more to the Muslims no longer supporting the left but instead forming their own party and by so doing diminishing the vote for the Left.
Imagine how wonderful Sweden will be when the muslim party comes to power!
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https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/migrants-housed-dutch-luxury-5-star-cruise-ship-celebrate-viral-tiktok-videos
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watched video in GMs post
do they have banquets parties
and screw around ?
while on a luxurious ship
do they get shore leave to hang in Amsterdam?
this whole situation the "elites" keep shoving down our throats has got to be the most insane in my 65 yrs of breathing .
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19178/belgium-world-cup-riots
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19262/uk-different
Is the UK Turning into Something Extremely Different?
by Mohshin Habib
January 1, 2023 at 5:00 am
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Print
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In 2013, British journalist Vincent Cooper wrote: "By the year 2050, in a mere 37 years, Britain will be a majority Muslim nation."
Religion seems a far more important part of life for Muslims than for other Britons: it appears central to their sense of identity. According to a report from 2006: "Thirty percent of British Muslims would prefer to live under Sharia (Islamic religious) law than under British law.... Twenty-eight percent hope for the U.K. one day to become a fundamentalist Islamic state."
The question is: What teachings are the Muslims across the world, including in the UK, receiving from studying the Quran?
(Image source: iStock)
On December 1, 2022, Britain's Office for National Statistics released the latest 10-yearly census, carried out in 2021, showing that the fastest-growing population in England and Wales is Muslims. According to the census:
"For the first time in a census of England and Wales, less than half of the population (46.2%, 27.5 million people) described themselves as 'Christian'..."
"It's not a great surprise that the Census shows fewer people in this country identifying as Christian than in the past," the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, said in response to the findings, "but it still throws down a challenge to us not only to trust that God will build his kingdom on Earth but also to play our part in making Christ known."
The Muslim community in Britain reacted otherwise. Zara Mohammed, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said:
"Whilst the Census does look at religion, the lack of wider religion-specific monitoring prevents us from fully understanding how acute the issue of under-representation of Muslims is in British society.
"These initial figures give us an opportunity to now make meaningful change and create a better Britain for all."
In 2013, British journalist Vincent Cooper wrote: "By the year 2050, in a mere 37 years, Britain will be a majority Muslim nation."
The census taken 2021 has revealed that while fewer than half of people (27.5 million) in England and Wales now describe themselves as Christian, those claiming "No religion" rose by 12 points to 37.2% (22.2 million). Those identifying as Muslim rose from 4.9% in 2011 to 6.5% (3.9 million) in 2021. The next most common responses were Hindu (1.0 million) and Sikh (524,000), while Buddhists overtook Jews (273,000 to 271,000).
Religion seems a far more important part of life for Muslims than for other Britons: it appears central to their sense of identity. According to a report from 2006:
"Thirty percent of British Muslims would prefer to live under Sharia (Islamic religious) law than under British law.... Twenty-eight percent hope for the U.K. one day to become a fundamentalist Islamic state."
An article by Abdul Azim Ahmed, published by the Religion Media Centre in September 2021, admitted that within Britain all the divergent schools of Islam are present — although Salafism has grown in recent years, particularly among younger Muslims.
Trevor Phillips, former head of Britain's Commission for Racial Equality and Equality and Human Rights Commission, found that the followers of Islam hold very different values from the rest of the society; many apparently want to lead separate lives. "Muslims are creating nations within nations," he said.
Professor Linda Woodhead, a leading academic, said of second-generation Muslim immigrants:
"Now British Muslims were finding their voice with Muslim MPs and confident young people entering higher education, mixing with the many different ethnic Muslim communities and creating a new cultural kind of British Islam with food, clothing, music, and creative places."
Muslims in the UK appear more religious than most other religious groups. While fewer Christians are becoming church members and appear to be losing their faith, describing themselves atheist and non-religious, most Muslims in Britain strictly follow their religion. London shows the lowest share of non-religious residents, likely due to it having the highest percentage of followers of non-Christian faiths, including Muslims, who make up 13% of the area's respondents.
A 2015 report cites a survey by NatCen's British Social Attitude Survey:
"NatCen says the Church of England has been in decline for over 30 years and that decline appears to have accelerated over the last decade.
"In 2012, Muhammad had emerged as the commonest first name given by baby boys born in London. The name was also second commonest among new born mail babies across the UK and Wales the same year."
The Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats stated:
"Muslims have in some respects been more successful than others in the UK at passing on their religious beliefs and practices from one generation to the next. Higher rates of intergenerational transmission have been found among Muslims than among Christians, those of other religions, and non-religious people.
"Most Muslim children in the UK learn to read the Qur'an in Arabic, whether they do this at a daily mosque school, at the home of an independent teacher, in their own homes or even on Skype. In addition to the Qur'an and Arabic, many Muslim supplementary schools offer other aspects of Islamic Studies, as well as formal instruction in an ethnic language and culture."
The question is: What teachings are the Muslims across the world, including in the UK, receiving from studying the Quran? The Quran does not tolerate any polytheist, pagan, idolater or atheist -- the latter a group now increasing in Britain, according to the census. The quandary was envisaged by Prime Minister Winston Churchill:
"Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world."
Mohshin Habib, a Bangladeshi author, columnist and journalist, is Executive Editor of The Daily Asian Age.
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https://rmx.news/germany/watch-migrant-fueled-new-year-mayhem-turns-berlin-into-warzone-police-firefighters-and-even-ambulance-workers-targeted-in-brazen-attacks/
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intifada
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https://media.gab.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1050,quality=100,fit=scale-down/system/media_attachments/files/133/047/685/original/f18b908f52ead8ad.png
(https://media.gab.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1050,quality=100,fit=scale-down/system/media_attachments/files/133/047/685/original/f18b908f52ead8ad.png)
Good thing it's not us!
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What is that?
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What is that?
https://www.londonremembers.com/memorials/nelson-s-column
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https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/03/sweden-court-seals-photos-of-muslim-migrant-rapists-so-they-wont-be-exposed-to-the-disrespect-of-others
Vibrant and diverse!
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19730/france-islamism-submission
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19756/hamas-in-sweden
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19756/hamas-in-sweden
The magic soil still isn’t working?
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An uncontested point you have made many, many times.
I'm thinking it is rather understood that is precisely why I made the post , , ,
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An uncontested point you have made many, many times.
I'm thinking it is rather understood that is precisely why I made the post , , ,
It’s a point lost on many, including the PTB pushing open borders (although those at the top know exactly what they are doing).
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"It’s a point lost on many,"
Around here, not so much :-D
Sometimes it feels like you are hectoring us here , , ,
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https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/france-mobilizes-40000-police-after-all-hell-breaks-out
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the officers not in danger?
I dunno
the officers leaning right into the driver side window and the kid accelerates away
what do you call that?
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the officers not in danger?
I dunno
the officers leaning right into the driver side window and the kid accelerates away
what do you call that?
An aspiring rapper who was just turning his life around? I'm not sure of what the French version is.
All I know is that we must spend trillions more to protect them from PUTIN!
-
What the Foiled Vienna Pride Parade Plot Suggests About the Islamist Threat to the West
undefined and Director of Analysis at RANE
Sam Lichtenstein
Director of Analysis at RANE, Stratfor
9 MIN READJun 29, 2023 | 16:31 GMT
The director of Austria's intelligence agency (left) and the president of Vienna's state police hold a press conference on a foiled Vienna pride parade attack on June 18, 2023.
The director of Austria's intelligence agency (left) and the president of Vienna's state police discuss a foiled plot to attack a Vienna pride parade during a press conference on June 18, 2023.
(TOBIAS STEINMAURER/APA/AFP via Getty Images)
Depending on your perspective, the recently disrupted plot against Vienna's Pride Parade on June 17 – in which local Islamic State sympathizers planned to attack the LGBTQ+ celebration – is either a good example of security services doing their job well or a concerning reminder of the persistence of the Islamist terrorist threat to the West. As is often the case, there is truth in both perspectives and the incident thus provides an opportunity to reflect on the current and future state of the jihadist threat to the West. Despite major counterterrorism successes, ongoing technological developments, changing security priorities and rising threats from other extremists threaten to undo hard-won gains.
Handling Business
In many respects, the Islamist threat to the West has significantly diminished over the past few years. At home, strengthened intelligence sharing among security services and improved physical defenses in many cities, combined with better law enforcement detection and disruption of potential threats, have paid large dividends. Abroad, the collapse of Islamic State's claimed caliphate, ongoing kinetic operations against terrorist leaders and internal fractures have eroded groups' capabilities, if not their aspirations, to conduct large-scale attacks in the West. Consider the difference between the mid-2010s and today. Less than ten years ago, the Islamic State was able to direct operatives in Western cities to conduct complex, coordinated attacks in places like Paris and Brussels, as well as inspire (often through direct communications) a seemingly never-ending stream of local sympathizers to mount attacks against a range of countries, from the United States to Australia. Today, the external operations capabilities of the Islamic State (and al Qaeda) are shadows of their former selves, and plots like that in Vienna are more notable for their comparative rarity than anything else. To be sure, Islamist militants remain a threat, but they are a far cry from the Islamic State being a supposed ''existential threat'' to the West that some once considered it to be.
With this framing, Austrian authorities' disruption of the Pride Parade plot seems to show the wheels of Western counterterrorism strategies in motion. According to official statements and subsequent media reports, the three plotters (aged 14, 17 and 20 — the latter two being brothers) had been under surveillance for some time after being identified for consuming Islamic State propaganda online and participating in an extremist chat group on the Telegram encrypted messaging app. The 14-year-old and 17-year-old reportedly told members of the chat group that they wanted to attack the parade and traveled to the Czech Republic to try to acquire a firearm, but returned to Austria empty-handed. The 14-year-old had also promised a member of the chat group that he would travel to Islamic State territory to fight and had downloaded instructions for building a bomb onto his smartphone. Crucially, this information came from a ''reliable non-European partner service'' (almost certainly a reference to the United States) that had been monitoring the chat group and passed Austrian authorities the phone number of the 14-year-old, who officials were then able to identify. With this information, Austrian security services closely monitored the plotters for a number of weeks and arrested them the day of the parade, finding an ax, a saber, airguns, knives and throwing stars in the suspects' homes.
In many ways, therefore, the disrupted plot both showcases the improved state of Western counterterrorism efforts and the limited means of the plotters themselves. Foreign intelligence partnerships worked as they should and Austrian authorities successfully monitored the trio and took them into custody without incident. By contrast, the plotters were unable to acquire or build more threatening weapons and, in what they thought were supposedly covert communications, appear to have given away their plans to a spy in their chat group. Moreover, despite apparent aspirations to travel to Islamic State territory to join the group, there is no indication this was a serious possibility and no evidence that the plotters were actually in contact with any Islamic State members abroad, just fellow sympathizers. Finally, as an added counterterrorism bonus, officials in Belgium were able to identify and arrest another member of the chat group, illustrating how Western authorities are able to leverage one intelligence lead to multiple ends.
A More Concerning Picture
Nonetheless, multiple elements of the disrupted plot also show cause for concern. First and foremost, the threat from online propaganda clearly persists. In announcing the arrests, Austrian officials underscored that the plotters consumed a significant amount of pro-Islamic State digital content, specifically calling out TikTok as being responsible for hosting it. This is certainly not a new concern, as researchers have been warning about the presence of Islamist extremist content on the short-form video app since at least 2019. But despite repeated pledges to crack down on banned content, TikTok has struggled to do so. In fact, a recently released report from the U.K.-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) highlighted the ease with which its researchers found a network of 20 pro-Islamic State accounts with more than a million collective views spreading propaganda and inciting calls for violence.
To be sure, this is not a problem unique to TikTok. All social media platforms have struggled with eradicating extremist (and other harmful) content from their sites. But whereas platforms like Facebook and Twitter have made vast improvements in screening out Islamist extremist written and photo content, the rise of video-based platforms like TikTok presents greater challenges. While they will no doubt make improvements over time, broadly speaking algorithms trained to flag banned content have a harder time filtering through videos than text or photos, especially because it is much easier for video creators to use coded language and other means to circumvent content moderation filters. ISD's study, for instance, highlighted how the audio that accompanies a TikTok video (known as a ''sound'') often stays on the platform even if the video itself is removed, making it easy for Islamic State sympathizers to continue to circulate audio propaganda like exhortations to conduct attacks from some of the group's deceased but lionized founders. Advances in generative AI that enable novices to create realistic-looking but fake videos, photos, audio and other content will presumably only worsen this challenge.
Second, the use of encrypted chat apps like Telegram remains a problem. Fortunately, in this case, there appears to have been a spy in the chat group — a tactic Western intelligence services have used to great effect. But for every chat where authorities may have visibility, there are presumably countless others where sympathizers converse in secret — not only on apps like Telegram, but a wide variety of decentralized platforms that can be used for discreet and in some cases fully anonymous communications, such as gaming sites and niche online forums. This trend seems likely to only grow as concerns rise in many Western countries over digital privacy (therefore likely resulting in more restrictions on security services) and as encrypted and/or decentralized technologies further mature and proliferate. Even the United States, the Western country that has given the most powers to its intelligence services, appears likely to curtail some agencies' powers to snoop, as both many Democrats and Republicans (albeit for different reasons) believe the Intelligence Community has abused its powers.
Third, hiding in local Austrian media reports after the arrest was a concerning tidbit: the plotters were reportedly not simply Islamic State sympathizers, but specifically supportive of the group's Khorasan Province (ISKP), based in Afghanistan. Western officials have long been concerned about ISKP's external attack ambitions and recent U.S. intelligence leaks revealed assessments that the group has been planning attacks in Europe and Asia, and conducting ''aspirational plotting'' against the United States. Pressure from the Taliban, who see rival ISKP militants as their greatest internal security threat, appears to be curbing the group's ability to conduct attacks outside of Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan. But ISKP no doubt hopes to take its operations global — an assessment backed up by multiple public disclosures by U.S. officials. Thus, the fact that there are Western sympathizers specifically inspired by ISKP is a concerning reality that points to future threats.
Keeping Up the Pressure
As is often the case, counterterrorism pressure is effective to the degree it is sustainable. While there is no doubt that Western security services are able to simultaneously handle multiple threats, all agencies face resource constraints. Moreover, today's increasingly complex world is requiring ever more from intelligence and law enforcement personnel — from being asked to focus more on ''health security'' in the wake of the pandemic, to ''environmental security'' fast rising up the list of priorities amid climate change. And as a result, counterterrorism is receiving comparatively less attention, which in turn will impact resourcing. To use an admittedly imprecise but instructive metric, the placement of terrorism in the U.S. Intelligence Community's unclassified Annual Threat Assessment has steadily dropped from near the top to near the bottom of the list of transnational threats.
Two particular concerns stand out. First, the West had already been pivoting to focus more on preparing for potential conventional conflict with nation-state adversaries (namely, China) — a process that Russia's invasion of Ukraine has only turbocharged. While the United States can certainly devote resources to both nation-state competition and counterterrorism, even it faces tradeoffs. After all, for every satellite monitoring Russian troops in Ukraine, for every case officer focusing on recruiting Chinese assets, and for every dollar spent on new fighter jets and battle tanks, there are corresponding losses for counterterrorism priorities. Compared with the United States, these tradeoffs are also much starker for European countries that have vastly smaller budgets and, in some respects face, greater terrorist threats due to their closer geographic proximity to militant hot spots in Africa and the Middle East.
Second, even if counterterrorism remains a priority, it is no longer just Islamist threats that keep Western officials up at night. Indeed, both left- and especially right-wing extremist threats are growing, with security services across the West warning that these are increasingly just as worrying as Islamist threats and taking up ever more of their attention. As a result, even those resources dedicated to counterterrorism are under strain from competing threats.
The upshot is that, while the Islamist threat to the West has certainly declined (both on its own and relative to other threats), there is no guarantee that it will stay that way. The fundamental grievances that inspire Islamist violence most definitely have not gone away and, in free and open societies, defenders will always be playing catchup to attackers. The latest disruption in Vienna shows that Western counterterrorism personnel remain vigilant, but a loss of focus over time will lead to gaps that terrorists may exploit in the future.
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8580315/Outrage-Germany-Afghan-migrant-rapes-two-girls.html
Muslims can't rape your children, burn your cities or attack parades IF THEY AREN'T IN YOUR COUNTRY!
But diversity...
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdN8BCRVMjk
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdN8BCRVMjk
France can fix the problem:
https://gatesofvienna.net/2016/12/bastille-day-in-the-caliphate/
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8580315/Outrage-Germany-Afghan-migrant-rapes-two-girls.html
Muslims can't rape your children, burn your cities or attack parades IF THEY AREN'T IN YOUR COUNTRY!
But diversity...
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/france-has-fallen-dramatic-footage-shows-social-unrest-spreading-third-night
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A post I made today on the DBMA Assn forum after posting GM's post there:
==========================================================================
France is France and America is America, but ask yourself how close are we to similar breakdown in social order?
This is "Cranky crowds of scurrilous scum" and "Packs of Jackals". Would you be glad to have Chupacabra skills?
The guys you see firing off auto fire may be Algerian or Morrocan descent, and in America they might be Cartels/Gangbangers/ghetto thugs. The underlying reality is the same.
How ready are you to protect our land, women, and children?
We saw the many months of Antifa-BLM riots in 2020. Might the same dynamic happen again as we approach 2024 with one party trying to put the likely opposing candidate in jail for life? Due to tectonic plate shifts in the geopolitical order might there be disruption to food supply? to electricity? to internet? to your bank account?
How ready are you? What are you doing to up your game? How would you do if you and your family were caught in the sort of disorder we see above?
DBMA is about "Walking as Warriors for All Our Days".
We are here for you.
PG Crafty
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https://greyenigma.wordpress.com/your-on-your-own/when-the-music-stops/
A post I made today on the DBMA Assn forum after posting GM's post there:
==========================================================================
France is France and America is America, but ask yourself how close are we to similar breakdown in social order?
This is "Cranky crowds of scurrilous scum" and "Packs of Jackals". Would you be glad to have Chupacabra skills?
The guys you see firing off auto fire may be Algerian or Morrocan descent, and in America they might be Cartels/Gangbangers/ghetto thugs. The underlying reality is the same.
How ready are you to protect our land, women, and children?
We saw the many months of Antifa-BLM riots in 2020. Might the same dynamic happen again as we approach 2024 with one party trying to put the likely opposing candidate in jail for life? Due to tectonic plate shifts in the geopolitical order might there be disruption to food supply? to electricity? to internet? to your bank account?
How ready are you? What are you doing to up your game? How would you do if you and your family were caught in the sort of disorder we see above?
DBMA is about "Walking as Warriors for All Our Days".
We are here for you.
PG Crafty
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https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/french-police-say-were-war-vermin-nationwide-riots-spread-cancer
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funny Fetterman dresses just like them
hoody heaven :roll:
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https://media.gab.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=852,quality=100,fit=scale-down/system/media_attachments/files/141/828/153/original/15b1ab9c30bb6d9d.jpeg
(https://media.gab.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=852,quality=100,fit=scale-down/system/media_attachments/files/141/828/153/original/15b1ab9c30bb6d9d.jpeg)
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https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/french-police-say-were-war-vermin-nationwide-riots-spread-cancer?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1619
Assembly of prior footage. Link is unlisted for now. Please do not forward yet:
https://rumble.com/v2xgd18-french-test.html
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https://media.gab.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=852,quality=100,fit=scale-down/system/media_attachments/files/141/816/458/original/07ec0e57daf4ebc9.png
(https://media.gab.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=852,quality=100,fit=scale-down/system/media_attachments/files/141/816/458/original/07ec0e57daf4ebc9.png)
It's part of the template.
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rioters in Europe should be playing this BeeGees song:
[Just substitute France for "disco"]
"In up above my head, I hear music in the air
That makes me know there's a party somewhere
Burn, baby, burn
Burn, baby, burn
To my surprise, one hundred storeys high
People getting loose, y'all, they're getting down on the roof
Folks are screaming out of control, it was so entertaining
When that boogie-woogie started to explode
I heard somebody say
Disco Inferno, burn that mother down
(Burn, baby, burn)
Disco Inferno, burn that mother down
Satisfaction came in a chain reaction
I couldn't get enough, so I had to self-destruct
The heat was on and it was rising to the top
Everybody's going strong that is when my spark got hot
I heard somebody say
Disco Inferno, burn that mother down
(Burn, baby, burn)
Disco Inferno, burn that mother down
Burn it on down
Satisfaction came in a chain reaction
I couldn't get enough, so I had to self-destruct
The heat was on, it was rising to the top
Everybody's going strong, that is when my spark got hot
I heard somebody say
Disco Inferno, burn that mother down
(Burn, baby, burn)
Disco Inferno, burn that mother down
Burn it on down
Burn, baby, baby, won't you burn, burn
Burn, burn
(Incomprehensible)
(Incomprehensible)
And burn, baby let the good times roll with me
On a cold and gray Chicago morn
A poor little baby child is born in the ghetto
And if there's one thing that you don't need
It's another hungry mouth to feed in the ghetto
People, don't you understand
That the child don't need a helping hand in the ghetto
And a hungry little boy with a runny nose
Plays in the street as the cold wind blows in the ghetto
So he starts to roam the streets at night
And he learns how to steal and he learns how to fight in the ghetto
And then he buys a gun and he steals a car
And he drives away but he don't get far in the ghetto
As a crowd gathers 'round an angry young man
Face down on the street with a gun in his hand in the ghetto
And his momma cries
Oh, baby, baby, burn that disco down
You're gonna burn, you're gonna burn
You're gonna burn, burn, burn burn
Burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn
Disco Inferno, burn that mother down
(Burn, baby, burn)
Disco Inferno, burn that mother down
Disco Inferno, burn that mother down
(Burn baby burn)
Disco Inferno, burn that mother down
Burn it down
Let the good times roll
Get us loose as a goose
Up above my head, I hear music in the air"
https://www.google.com/search?q=disco+inferno+beegees&rlz=1C5GCEM_enUS1001US1001&ei=J7-hZOSTDpmuiLMP9IqLqAk&ved=0ahUKEwikw5H40PD_AhUZF2IAHXTFApUQ4dUDCBA&uact=5&oq=disco+inferno+beegees&gs_lcp=Cgxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAQAzIHCC4QDRCABDIGCAAQHhANMggIABCKBRCGAzIVCC4QDRCABBCXBRDcBBDeBBDgBBgBOgoIIRCgARAKEIsDOggIIRCgARCLAzoLCCEQFhAeEB0QiwM6CAghEKsCEIsDOggIIRAWEB4QHToFCAAQgAQ6BggAEBYQHjoICAAQgAQQsQM6CAgAEIoFEJECOgsIABCKBRCxAxCRAjoICC4QgAQQ5QQ6BQguEIAEOggILhCxAxCABDoICC4QigUQkQI6CwguEIAEELEDEIMBOg4ILhCKBRCxAxCDARCRAjoTCC4QgAQQlwUQ3AQQ3gQQ4AQYAToICAAQFhAeEApKBAhBGAFQ2ghY7jZg0jhoAnAAeACAAWaIAfILkgEEMjEuMZgBAKABAbgBAsABAdoBBggBEAEYFA&sclient=gws-wiz-serp#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:414b9152,vid:cWqcgPmCbDQ
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and I should add
just substitute "Paris" for Chicago.
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and I should add
just substitute "Paris" for Chicago.
https://gatesofvienna.net/2023/07/kill-the-kuffar/
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https://media.gab.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=852,quality=100,fit=scale-down/system/media_attachments/files/141/828/153/original/15b1ab9c30bb6d9d.jpeg
(https://media.gab.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=852,quality=100,fit=scale-down/system/media_attachments/files/141/828/153/original/15b1ab9c30bb6d9d.jpeg)
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/france-crisis-fifth-night-violence-spreads-neighboring-countries
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https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/why-are-sweden-denmark-having-crisis-over-koran-2023-08-03/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_campaign=Weekend-Briefing&utm_term=080523
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https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/declaration-war-europe-salvini-says-6000-migrants-landing-1-day-threatens-collapse
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https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2023/09/29/sweden-calls-up-the-army-to-help-deal-with-gang-violence-n581313
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https://gatesofvienna.net/2023/09/open-warfare-at-the-hungarian-border/
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/too-little-too-late-europe-finally-realizes-mass-immigration-destroying-them?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1864
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https://www.friatider.se/14-arig-flicka-hangde-sin-valdtaktsman-i-skogen
A 26-year-old taxi driver from the Middle East was reported for raping a 14-year-old girl - then he was found hanged in a nature reserve.
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12583725/Terrorist-like-gangland-violence-gripping-Sweden.html
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/10/why-sweden-is-turning-to-the-military-to-fight-crime/
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https://www.steynonline.com/13920/the-future-shows-up
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20171/jihad-on-churches-france
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https://www.steynonline.com/13949/diversity-rape-of-the-day
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https://www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2023/12/F_vPFAYbcAAihbn.jpg
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/14/four-arrested-in-europe-over-alleged-cross-border-hamas-terrorism-plot
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https://pjmedia.com/raymond-ibrahim/2024/01/25/europeans-will-succumb-to-islam-says-former-intelligence-chief-n4925852
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https://pjmedia.com/raymond-ibrahim/2024/01/25/europeans-will-succumb-to-islam-says-former-intelligence-chief-n4925852
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what you don't like my title ?
:-D :-o
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:oops: :oops: :oops:
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TAP FOR SOUND
Wonder Land: If you were an adversary looking at a U.S. uncertainty about its global leadership, what would you do? Answer: Up the ante—which is exactly what Iran, Russia and others are doing. Images: AP/AFP/Getty Images/Zuma Press Composite: Mark Kelly
London
Britain’s appeasement of Islamism, and a Conservative government’s unwillingness to enforce the law, has caused a crisis of democracy. For months, the government failed to counter the carnival of hatred that is London’s weekly anti-Israel marches. On Feb. 21, the tide of antidemocratic incitement reached the gates of Westminster, and the mother of parliaments surrendered to the mob.
The Scottish National Party had proposed a motion calling for a cease-fire in Gaza, scheduled to be debated that day. The intention was to pull Labour, the leading opposition party, off the fence on which its leader, Keir Starmer, has so carefully balanced it. Normally, a motion like this goes directly to a vote. This time the speaker of the Commons, Lindsay Hoyle, broke with precedent, surrendering to Labour’s pressure and proposing an amendment that its members could support.
Mr. Hoyle said he interfered with the legislative process because he didn’t want “another attack on this House,” a reference to the 2017 terrorist attack that killed five in and around Parliament. He feared that if he forced Labour moderates to vote against the original motion, he would be endangering their lives.
Mr. Hoyle is fighting for his job, but we can see why he thought discretion was the better part of valor. A mob of Palestinian Solidarity Campaign supporters had besieged Parliament and projected the genocidal slogan “From the river to the sea” onto the Elizabeth Tower, better known as Big Ben. The group’s leader, Ben Jamal, had exhorted his followers to “ramp up pressure” and force the police to “lock the doors of Parliament itself.”
Two members of Parliament have been assassinated since 2016. That year Labour’s Jo Cox was on her way to a surgery when a neo-Nazi shot and stabbed her to death in the street. In 2021 the Conservatives’ David Amess was fatally stabbed by an Islamic State follower at a surgery held in a church. In 2010, Labour’s Stephen Timms was seriously wounded in a knife attack by an al Qaeda sympathizer for, she said, his support of the Iraq war. The sharp rise in threats and harassment since Oct. 7 has forced members to rely in part on private security.
In early February, Mike Freer, a government minister, announced he won’t run for re-election. Mr. Freer, who represents a heavily Jewish constituency of North London, isn’t Jewish but supports Israel and campaigns against antisemitism. He’s endured death threats, homophobic insults, fake bombs left on his doorstep, and an arson attack on his office. He had already been wearing a stab vest to public events on police advice and considers himself “lucky to be alive.”
Labour members get more threats. The party’s “red-green” electoral strategy depends on the Muslim-rich urban vote. While Mr. Starmer talks moderation in Westminster, Labour moderates are menaced by their own voters for insufficient anti-Zionist zeal. Sometimes the fulminators are from the hard left, but they’re usually Muslim. Churchill defined an appeaser as someone who “feeds a crocodile hoping it will eat him last.” When Labour’s appeasers proffered the Jews and the party’s principles as appetizers, they made themselves the main course.
Last month Rachel Reeves, who will be the next chancellor of the exchequer if the Conservatives continue to self-destruct, was chased in the street by anti-Israel activists. Then, in a Feb. 29 by-election, Labour lost its previously safe seat in the heavily Muslim northern city of Rochdale. The party dropped its candidate, Azhar Ali, after it emerged that he suggested Israel allowed the Oct. 7 attacks as a pretext to invade Gaza. This allowed the extremist George Galloway, who was expelled from Labour in 2003, to win by attacking the party as weak on Gaza.
While diversity remains our strength, at least officially, Britain’s political class fortifies the Westminster “bubble.” The media hector the public about its “far right” objections to immigration. The police appeal limply to “community relations” as if naming the community that needs relationship counseling is above its pay grade. The BBC described the surge in reported antisemitic incidents in October—up 1,350% from a year earlier—as if it were inclement weather, not a victimless crime but one without perpetrators.
Mayor Sadiq Khan denounces “Islamophobia” with the ardor of an identity politician running for re-election. Politicians and columnists sing choruses against the “scourge of antisemitism” but can’t say who’s scourging whom. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says that “from the river to the sea” is racist and that incitement against Jews is “un-British” but he too can’t say who is attacking British democracy. Naming the problem admits its existence, and its scale.
Maria Lovegrove, head of the government’s antiradicalization program, Prevent, says the organization is racing to “flatten the curve, before it becomes a generational radicalizing moment.” That moment passed in the previous generation. A 2018 U.K. government report found that more than 900 British Muslims “of national security concern,” including women, had traveled to “engage with the conflict in Syria”: more than the number then serving in Britain’s armed forces, and more than the Irish Republican Army’s estimated number of active fighters at the time of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
British democracy and society are at a crunch point. Multiculturalism, political correctness and a deliberate failure to enforce immigration law have fostered a domestic-terrorist problem of unprecedented scale and complexity. The vast majority of the British people are repelled by extremism, appalled at the demolition of their values, and outraged by the cowardice of their rulers. Last month the red-green alliance crossed the Rubicon and bullied Parliament into submission. This is how a democracy dies.
Mr. Green is a Journal contributor and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
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This is how:
https://spectator.org/britain-again-has-a-choice-civilization-or-savagery/