The daughter of Palestinian immigrants is to be the Berlin senate’s secretary of state for coordinating federal and state affairs, but attention has focused on her recent remarks in support of Sharia law.
Berlin state senate member, former deputy speaker for foreign affairs and Muslim rising star of German politics Sawsan Chebli is to get a new cabinet post. The appointment by the Red-Red-Green coalition government has caused concern after a recent interview in which she expressed her view that Sharia law was perfectly compatable with secular German society.
Speaking back in August alongside Berlin Social Democrat party Mayor Michael Muller, she not only defended Sharia law against suspicion by many Germans who she accused of not understanding what it meant, but she also went on the attack too. Criticising members of anti-mass migration party Alternative for German (AfD), she said their views towards foreigners made them fundementally un-German.
Speaking to the Franzfurter Allgeimeine Zeitung, she said: “My father is a pious Muslim, hardly speaks German, can neither read nor write, but he is more integrated than many functionaries of the AfD who question our constitution”.
Germany’s newspaper of record and the nation’s most widely-read broadsheet Welt reported Sunday that while the politician attempted to portray the image of the perfect “successful migrant” who despite being born to illiterate, stateless parents was able to succeed in education and enter politics, there are “cracks” displayed by her support of Sharia.
In August she complained that in political discourse, German national law and Sharia law are always presented as contradictory to each other, and said “Everyone talks about Shariah, but hardly anyone knows what Sharia means”. Remarking that Sharia exists “largely to govern the relationship between God and man”, Chebli said Sharia law was “absolutely compatible” with Germany.
In a letter to Mayor Muller seen by Welt, a senior member of Angela Merkel’s ruling Christian Democrat party moved to criticise the appointment of Chebli, remarking: “It is detrimental to the peaceful coexistence in our city, when a Sharia-trivialising minister such as Ms. Chebli exercises government responsibility”.
“There can be no evasion [around this matter]. I expect a clear distinction from a member of government [over Sharia law]”.
As reported by Breitbart London, Berlin’s SPD faction and Mayor Muller have proven extremely friendly towards migrants, with the city conspiring to prevent deportations of predominantly Muslim illegals ordered by the federal government. As Berlin’s new secretary of state for federal and state affairs, it will be up to Sharia-friendly Chebli to manage that relationship between central government and sanctuary-city Berlin.
The cynicism of this is breathtaking, but the easy marks among Jewish and Christian leaders are lining up to participate.
“It’s ironic that they would hold a rally against hate in one of the most hateful houses of worship in New England where imam after imam has been found to preach anti-Semitism, homophobia, and hate for the United States, its people and its government.”
Yes, but there is never any shortage of useful idiots among Jewish and Christian leaders. And this article goes easy: not only was the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center frequented by the Tsarnaev brothers, Siddiqui, and Mehanna, but also Ahmad Abousamra, the Islamic State’s “social media guru.” And Alamoudi wasn’t just “sentenced in 2004 to 23 years in prison for taking part in a plot to kill Saudi royal officials”; that operation was an al-Qaeda plot.
“Controversial Islamic center hosts interfaith call for peace, despite terror ties,” by Brooke Singman, Fox News, December 9, 2016:
A Boston Islamic center that has been linked to convicted terrorists is hosting an interfaith event on Sunday to promote peace, but some critics say such “hateful houses of worship” are a dubious venue for a message of solidarity and hope.
The event, at Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, is entitled “Out of Many, One,” and has Boston Mayor Marty Walsh and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., slated to speak. It is sponsored by the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, and aimed at bringing religious communities together under common beliefs.
This Cambridge mosque has been at the center of controversy for years.
“My hope is that we can provide a place for members of the community, who are so fearful and concerned about our values being challenged, to speak up,” Interfaith Organization Board Member Nahma Nadich told FoxNews.com. “We need to affirm our values and be in solidarity with each other to protect all members of our community against hateful, divisive rhetoric.”
But the location of the event has raised concerns, as the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center operates two mosques –one in Boston, where the event will be held, and one in Cambridge where several convicted terrorists reportedly worshipped. They include Boston Marathon bombers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev; Aafia Siddiqui, who plotted a chemical attack on New York City and Tarek Mehanna, who was sentenced in 2012 to 17 years in prison for conspiring to aid Al Qaeda.
In addition, a founder of ISBCC, Abduraham Alamoudi, was sentenced in 2004 to 23 years in prison for taking part in a plot to kill Saudi royal officials, has allegedly worshipped at the mosque.
Neither the mosque nor top officials have been implicated in criminal activity. But critics say several speakers at the mosque have delivered fiery and hateful sermons, and that its connections to terror make it an unlikely host of an event calling for peace.
“It’s ironic that they would hold a rally against hate in one of the most hateful houses of worship in New England where imam after imam has been found to preach anti-Semitism, homophobia, and hate for the United States, its people and its government,” Director of Research at Americans for Peace and Tolerance Ilya Feoktistov told FoxNews.com.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts Carmen Ortiz has dismissed Americans for Peace and Tolerance’s claims as “incredibly racist and unfair.”
But Feoktistov referred to a 2010 video of Abdullah Faaruuq, a guest preacher, exhorting worshipers to “grab onto the rope, grab onto the typewriter, grab onto the shovel, grab onto the gun and the sword.” Faaruuq told FoxNews.com last year that ISIS was not created by Islamic teachings, but rather by America.
“It was created by the United States’ encouragement into other people’s countries seeking weapons of mass destruction that don’t exist,” Faaruuq said. “Destroying their societies and leaving the bitter taste in young people’s mouths.”
In August, ISBCC appointed an associate imam, Abdul-Malik Merchant, who, according to APT shared anti-Semitic posts on social media. Merchant issued an apology to the Jewish community.
Local Jewish leaders said neither the ISBCC nor the mosques it operates should be judged by the actions of a few….
Feoktistov said faith leaders and elected officials are turning a blind eye to what has taken place in the mosque.
“I think lawmakers discount the hatred for political reasons because the hatred is being spouted by what they consider to be a valuable minority,” Feoktistov told Fox News. “They are holding this event at an extremely hateful place, and that doesn’t bother them at all.”…
The “Interfaith call for Dignity & Diligence” event will take place at ISBCC in Roxbury, on Sunday, Dec. 11 at 6 p.m.
ISBCC Executive Director Yusuf Vali said in a statement that the work at the ISBCC embodies a community that “builds bridges” and “brings people together.”…
(But Obama says his Administration is the most transparent in history.
You can see right through him. — DM)
So, as chance would have it we are currently hosting a newly arrived visitor from Mars, who has been avidly following the headlines. Having studied our world for some time, he is intrigued by the news, as reported first by the Washington Post on Friday: “Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House.”
This is the story in which U.S. “officials” told the Post it is “now ‘quite clear’ that electing Trump was Russia’s goal.” Earlier in the week, according to White House spokesman Eric Schultz, President Obama “instructed the intelligence community to conduct a full review of the pattern of malicious cyber activity related to our presidential election cycle.” Obama wants this report completed and submitted to him before the end of his term, Jan. 20 — now less than six weeks ahead.
Since this story broke, we have been trying to field questions from our inquisitive Man from Mars, who seems oddly disinclined to take things at face value. (We think our visitor is a he, so I’ll proceed on that assumption, though we have not inquired about gender identification).
I’m sharing below some excerpts from our chat. For convenience, I’ve abbreviated “Man from Mars” as MFM. Our replies, I am attributing simply to “Us.”
MFM: This is shocking news about Russia, but surely meddling in America’s elections is not new. What were the findings of the deep-dive report produced at speed by the Obama administration, its concerns leaked in advance to the press, over the effects, starting early in his first term, of the IRS targeting conservative groups?
Us: There was no such report. There were congressional hearings in which a prominent witness from the IRS took the Fifth. There were tussles over destroyed hard drives, emails not turned over, or some turned over long after the deadlines, and this year brought news that the targeting may still be going on — see Kim Strassel’s May 19 column in the Wall Street Journal on the “The IRS’s Ugly Business as Usual.”
MFM: But wasn’t Obama deeply worried that this targeting might silence a lot of conservatives, skew public debate and warp America’s political process?
Us: Nah. In 2014, Obama in a TV interview dismissed it all as nothing worse than “bone-headed decisions,” saying there was “not even a smidgen of corruption.” So much for that.
MFM: OK. But what about the deep-dive report Obama demanded, urgently, prior to the 2012 presidential election, to shed light on his own administration’s lies about the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi. You remember, all that “messaging” about an ad hoc mob, and blaming the “video.” That sure looked like Obama was trying to mislead the American public in order to bolster his campaign line that “the tide of war is receding,” plus his administration’s claims that leading-from-behind in Libya was a success. I mean, there were four Americans murdered, including — as I discern from your Earth records — the first American ambassador killed on the job in 33 years. Obama, who had the authority to send help directly to Benghazi, never did. What does Obama’s urgently ordered, in-depth and surely impartial report tell you about what Obama himself was doing that night?
Us: Get real. Obama was hardly likely to order an all-out urgent investigation of himself and his team, especially during the final weeks of his reelection campaign. He was already booked to go to Vegas, he needed his sleep. Anyway, by the morning after the Benghazi attack, the damage was already done. So — as somebody-or-other told Congress — “What difference, at this point, does it make?”
MFM: Right-o. I can see that a president needs his sleep. But I’m still puzzled over these latest news stories that imply President Obama thinks Russia is an enemy trying to subvert the United States. Yes, but…wasn’t Obama a buddy of Vladimir Putin?
Us: Well, yes. But only for the first six or seven of Obama’s eight years in office. There was Obama’s chummy 2009 “Reset” with Russia — you remember that mislabeled red button Hillary Clinton presented to Russia’s foreign minister. Obama threw in, as a bit more swag for Putin, the gift of shelving missile defense plans for Eastern Europe. And when NATO missile-defense plans became a sore point with the Kremlin during Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, there was that open-microphone moment in which Obama was caught promising Putin’s sidekick, Dmitry Medvedev, “After my election I will have more flexibility.” To which Medvedev replied, companionably, “I will transmit this information to Vladimir, and I stand with you.” Pretty friendly, actually. But, hey, dude, that was like four years ago.
MFM: Fair enough. But wasn’t there a bit more to it?
Us: OK, yeah, but let’s not get too bogged down in the past. There was Obama’s 2013 red line in Syria over chemical weapons, which he erased by way of basically turning over the Middle East to Putin — and, of course, to Iran. And of course there was the case that same year of Edward Snowden, the guy who fled the U.S. with a trove of National Security Agency secrets. After a quick sojourn in Hong Kong, Snowden washed up as Putin’s guest in Russia, where Putin has not gotten around to sending him back. Obama apparently didn’t like that, but he didn’t let a transient thing like wholesale plundering of the NSA, or Moscow’s asylum for the plunderer, interfere with buddying up to Moscow to clinch the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.
MFM: Well, at least when Putin snatched Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, Obama made him give it back.
Us: Umm, actually, no, he didn’t. Russia now owns Crimea, has roughed up more of Ukraine and seems to be eyeing the Baltics. Though Obama did impose sanctions on Russia, which Putin didn’t like.
MFM: And those sanctions, of course, stopped Russian aggression and put Putin back in his box?
Us: Would you like more coffee?
MFM: Thanks. You Earth people have such nice customs.
Us: Coffee’s even better with sugar, not salt. Try it.
MFM: Wow. Who knew? Which brings me to just a few more questions. In the stories this week about the urgent report Obama has ordered — following up on conclusions reached secretly with “high confidence” by U.S. “intelligence agencies” that Russia acted covertly to promote Donald Trump over Hillary — why are all the official sources anonymous? I see a couple of officials quoted by name, commenting on the need for such a report, including Obama’s counterterrorism and homeland security adviser, Lisa Monaco, who had breakfast recently with some reporters. But the whole thing seems based on specifics which the press has attributed only to anonymous “officials briefed on the matter,” or officials “who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.”
Us: Look, this is delicate stuff. The intel guys have to worry about exposing sources, and there are clearly big secrets involved. Check out the cloak-and-dagger stuff in the penultimate paragraph of the Washington Post story, telling how administration officials briefed select members of Congress, in ” a secure room in the Capitol used for briefings involving classified information.” That ought to tell you just how extremely secret and classified this stuff is.
MFM: Call me an idiot, but how secret is an assessment that has details of its contents leaked to one of America’s major newspapers, including the sweeping conclusion that, as one nameless “senior U.S. official” told the Post, “Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected.” Isn’t Obama, with his concerns for the integrity of state secrets, trying frantically to stop these anonymous officials from leaking these secrets to the press? Haven’t people lower down the food chain gone to prison for leaking classified information?
Us: Yes, but as you say, those jailbirds were lower down the food chain. Maybe Obama doesn’t know who exactly is leaking this information to the press. As you say, they’re anonymous.
MFM: Give me a break. If these anonymous officials have it right about Russia’s cyber abilities, I’d bet the Russians already know who these same anonymous officials really are. Surely Obama could find out. If he can’t find out direct, maybe he could order U.S. intelligence to steal the information from the Russians? Can’t he order up another urgent report, to get to the bottom of who’s leaking some of the state secrets that inspired him to order up the original urgent report?
Us: Enough already. You may know plenty about Mars, but you’ve got a lot to learn about White House politics under Obama.
MFM: Speaking of Mars, we Martians love conspiracy theories. There’s lots here that we don’t know, but all this leaking seems tilted toward delegitimizing the victory of Donald Trump, even before he takes office. I mean, how does someone defend himself, when accusations are all over the headlines, conveyed by anonymous officials, while the actual basis for these stories is officially secret? Is that what Obama meant when he promised to run the most “transparent” administration ever?
Us: Give it a rest. U.S. elections are sacred to our democracy, and if anyone — and we mean anyone — tries to fiddle them, we have to get to the bottom of it.
MFM: Calm down. I’m just curious. If the Russians did try to intervene, by hacking and flooding the public with emails humiliating to Hillary and the Democrats, but not to Trump, then did Trump have any control over this? Wasn’t it the responsibility of Obama to protect the country, and the election, from any such intrusions?
Us: You’ve been reading too much fake news. Obama’s a busy guy. He’s been trying for years to control the level of the oceans. He can’t cover everything.
MFM: And if the Russians, emboldened by Obama’s reset and flexibility and vanished red lines, did actually try to tip the 2016 American election, did they succeed? Did it make a difference?
Us: Look, please stop with the questions. We’re just the little guys here. Normal Americans. We don’t have time to read reams of emails dumped out by anybody. We come home tired from our day jobs. Or we’ve been reading about the wealth and fashions of the liberal elite, and the fat pensions of the federal bureaucracy, while we work the part-time night shifts, and look for any extra income we can scrounge up.
I’ll tell you what we read during the recent presidential campaign. We read the letter that arrived a week before the election, from our health insurance company, informing us of the double-digit rate hike slated for our premiums, yet again. We read about the terrorist attacks — in Paris, Nice, San Bernardino, Orlando — inspired or linked to ISIS, the “JV team” that was expanding its murderous reach while Obama was still boasting about killing Osama bin Laden. We listened to Obama exhorting people to vote for Hillary, in order to cement and extend his legacy. We listened to Hillary denouncing tens of millions of Americans as “deplorables.” Did Russia make her do that?
MFM: Don’t ask me. I’m from Mars.
Us: We get it. But watch out. If you keep asking questions like these, someone’s going to report you as part of a Russian plot. Speaking of… enough with the coffee. It’s gonna take more than caffeine to get through these next six weeks. Ever tried vodka?
DEBKAfile Special Report December 11, 2016, 7:00 PM (IDT)
Judging from the rash of reports claiming US-Iraqi military progress in the Mosul offensive against ISIS and the extra American special operations forces personnel posted to Syria for an impending US-Kurdish operation to capture the ISIS Syrian stronghold of Raqqa, the Islamic State ought to be cowering under siege, finally defeated – or at least on the run.
But the facts tell another story. ISIS is on the offensive – so far in the Middle East. Over the weekend, Islamist terrorists accounted for dozens of deaths and injured hundreds more.
Sunday, Dec. 11, at least 25 people worshipping at the Coptic St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s church adjacent to St, Mark’s cathedral in Cairo were killed and scores injured. The Coptic pope often leads the prayers there. debkafile’s counterterrorism sources reveal that the attack was carried out by Islamist terrorists from Raqqa who bided their time until they struck in the Egyptian capital. Saturday, six Egyptian troops were killed by another Islamist bomb near the Giza pyramids.
On the same day, ISIS fighters pushed back into the ancient Syrian town of Palmyra, nine months after their expulsion.
The Raqqa terrorist stronghold is clearly alive and kicking on more than one front. A number of contributing factors enable the Islamic State to unleash a fresh spate of terror.
1. The US-Iraqi-Kurdish drive has stalled without driving ISIS out of Mosul or choking off the terrorist fighters’ freedom to move between Mosul and Raqqa, their Syrian bastion.
US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, who arrived in Baghdad Sunday, Dec. 11, was assigned by the Obama administration to make a last effort to reactivate the Mosul campaign. His chances of success are slim. The military coalition which launched the campaign two months ago has lost a vital component, the Kurdish Peshmerga, which backed out three weeks ago. The Iraqi military units which captured some of the city’s outskirts stopped short when they reached the strongest defense lines set up by the Islamic State and have been unable to break through, even with US air support.
The pro-Iranian Iraqi Shiite front which undertook to seize Tal Afar in order to sever the ISIS connecting link between Iraq and Syria are parked outside, having been warned by Turkey not to set foot in the town.
Added to these setbacks, the US CENTCOM which is running the aerial war in Iraq is at loggerheads with the Iraqi Air Force command and has practically grounded all Iraqi warplanes.
Even if Carter can wave a magic wand and resolve all these issues, the momentum and high hopes that actuated the Mosul campaign when it started have been lost and can hardly be recovered before Barack Obama leaves the White House.
At least two of the incoming president Donald Trump’s designated security advisers – Defense Secretary Gen, James Mattis and National security Adviser Gen. Michael Flynn – have criticized the operation in is current form.
2. What is happening in Raqqa doesn’t fit the designation of an offensive. At most, small Kurdish and Syrian rebel groups are mounting sporadic raids against ISIS fighters on the town’s outskirts, with the support of the Obama administration. Our military experts say that Raqqa can’t be captured from the Islamist terrorists by conventional means – mainly because it is spread over a large area of mostly empty desert. ISIS has taken advantage of this terrain to distribute knots of defenders across a vast area ranging hundreds of kilometers from northern to eastern Syria up to the winding, heavily overgrown banks of the Euphrates River.
So when Ash Carter announced Saturday that he would be sending another 200 Special Operations Forces into Syria to join the battle for Raqqa, he had no idea that he, the Russians and the Syrians were about to be caught off guard by a fresh ISIS initiative to reoccupy Palmyra, the ancient Syrian two from which they are thrown out in March.
This was a poke in the eye for Russian President Vladimir Putin who proclaimed Palmyra’s capture from ISIS as a signal coup for the Russian army in its war on Islamist terror.
3. He might well commiserate with Egyptian President Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi. For two years, the Egyptian armed forces have been fighting an uphill battle to crush the ISIS groups infesting the Sinai Peninsula. The jihadists constantly elude punishment with the help of supportive Bedouin tribes.
Every few months, they pose a real threat to the stability of the El-Sisi regime by striking inside Cairo, the capital, with some terrorist atrocity, for which they are aided by the Muslim Brotherhood underground and Palestinian Hamas extremists in the Gaza Strip.
The bombing of the Coptic church Saturday was unusually the work of jihadists deployed from Raqqa, Syria. Egypt has reacted by placing extra guards at Christian sites and declaring three days of national morning for the disastrous bombing attack on Egypt’s largest minority.
The new Islamist drive is looking ominously like the onset of the Christmas-New Year holiday terror onslaught the Islamic State has threatened to unleash in the Middle East and beyond. US and European security services have been placed on high alert in the belief that returning jihadis are programmed to strike at home.
The problem is that there is no plan on how to deal with these children whose indoctrination began at birth with inculcation of Islamic doctrine and memorization of passages from the Koran. They are seen as purer than adult fighters because they have never been exposed to secular values and therefore have a superior understanding of Islam.
*********************
The projected defeat of Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) in Syria may prove to be a Pyrrhic victory for Europe given that it will result in the return of combatants trained to carry out attacks on the home front.
An ancillary issue is the repatriation of children who either travelled to Syria alone or with their parents, or who were born there. They are a key component in Islamic State’s strategy to develop the next generation of jihadists.
In May 2016, Patrick Calvar, head of French national security, revealed that around 400 French minors were present in the combat zone. Two-thirds of these had travelled there with their parents and one-third were born there and are now under the age of four. One five-year-old girl was abandoned in Syria following the death of her father, Eddy Leroux, who had left France with his wife and four children in August 2014 to wage jihad in Syria.
He was killed a year later and his wife returned to France with three of their children, leaving the youngest in the hands of Islamic State. The mother was jailed in France for abandoning and endangering the child.
Islamic State propaganda videos show these children wearing balaclavas engaged in military training: hand-to-hand combat, body-building, shooting with assault weapons, hostage-taking and suicide bombing. They are slapped and beaten with sticks by adults to desensitize them to violence. In some cases they carry out executions of prisoners by shooting, beheading and detonation of explosives.
For the children who return to France, reintegration will not be easy. What should be done with a child who has carried out an execution?
Calvar says these offspring of jihad have been raised to hate Western values and are potential time-bombs. “They have been trained and instrumentalized by Islamic State.“
The problem is that there is no plan on how to deal with these children whose indoctrination began at birth with inculcation of Islamic doctrine and memorization of passages from the Koran. They are seen as purer than adult fighters because they have never been exposed to secular values and therefore have a superior understanding of Islam.
Intelligence and psychology experts reckon that it will take a generation to bring them back to normality.
The deal between OPEC members and oil exporting countries from outside the group could bring more stability to the oil market for the common benefit, Saudi energy minister, Khalid Al-Falih, told RT, praising the role of Russia in the agreement.
The Saturday meeting of the members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) with 12 oil exporting countries outside the group “is significant because [it] has brought so many countries together for the first time,” Al-Falih said.
Al-Falih stressed that the total volume of oil produced by the countries that attended the meeting is close to 53 million barrels per day out of a total of roughly 90, so their share in the world’s oil production approaches 60 percent. He went on to say that the share of the countries that took part in the negotiations in Vienna on Saturday is even greater in the total volume of oil that is traded because “oil produced by the countries that were not represented at today’s meeting is mostly consumed within the countries that produce it.”
The minister welcomed the agreement on the oil production reduction and hailed Russia’s commitment to the deal.
“This meeting gave us understanding that we are all in the same boat, we all benefit [from being] together while [our attempts] to take advantage of each other” eventually hurt the market, he said, adding that this agreement showed that the OPEC and non-OPEC countries “were able to build trust.”
He then stressed that the parties to the agreement have to reinforce this mutual trust by ensuring the maximum compliance with the agreement and expressed his hope that Russia will take one of the leading roles in this process.
Al-Falih particularly said that he trusts the word of the Russian Economy Minister Aleksandr Novak and expressed confidence that Russia will comply with the terms of the deal.
“If Russia and Saudi Arabia lead, the rest will follow,” he stressed.
He then said that he “does not expect the US government to react to this in any way” to the Saturday deal as it has “not reacted in the past and let the market respond.”
At the same time, Al-Falih expects oil producers in the US to “respond to the higher prices and more stability” which will result in “healthy” development. Saudi Arabia welcomes the development of the oil industry in the US, as it “has been a center of innovation” and provided “new cost-efficient technologies”, so the Saudis want it to be “competitive and healthy.”
On Saturday, twelve non-OPEC countries, including Azerbaijan, Oman, Mexico, Sudan, South Sudan, Bahrain, Malaysia, Equatorial Guinea, Bolivia, Kazakhstan and Russia, agreed to cut oil production by 558,000 barrels per day (b/d) under the deal with the OPEC members.
OPEC members also confirmed their commitment to the plan to reduce the oil supply by 1.2 million b/d. This, together with the commitments made by non-OPEC states, would lead to the total reduction of oil production by about 1.7-1.8 million b/d, Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak said at the press conference.
The commitments taken by both OPEC and non-OPEC countries put an end to the ’pump-at-will’ policy the group has conducted since 2014, which sent oil prices down from $100 to less than $50 a barrel. Now, both OPEC and non-OPEC oil exporters are trying to push prices up.
St Mark’s Cathedral is the “seat of Egypt’s Orthodox Christian church and home to the office of its spiritual leader, Pope Tawadros II.”
Muslim Brotherhood operatives have long hated Pope Tawadros and the Coptic Christians, blaming them for the toppling of the Muslim Brotherhood regime in 2013, and considering them kuffar harbi, infidels at war with Islam whose lives can, because of that war, be lawfully taken.
“The blast took place as a Sunday mass being held in the chapel was about to end and coincided with a national holiday in Egypt marking the birth of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.”
The bomb seems to have been timed to maximize the carnage.
“St. Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Cairo bombed, killing dozens,” Associated Press, December 11, 2016:
CAIRO – A bombing at Egypt’s main Coptic Christian cathedral killed 25 people and wounded another 35 on Sunday, in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory.
The attack came two days after a bomb elsewhere in Cairo killed six policemen, an assault claimed by a shadowy group that authorities say is linked to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. Islamic militants have targeted Christians in the past, including a New Year’s Day bombing at a church in Alexandria in 2011 that killed at least 21 people.
Egypt’s official MENA news agency said an assailant lobbed a bomb into a chapel close to the outer wall of St Mark’s Cathedral, seat of Egypt’s Orthodox Christian church and home to the office of its spiritual leader, Pope Tawadros II. Egyptian state TV gave the casualty toll.
Witnesses said the explosion may have been caused by an explosive device planted inside the chapel. Conflicting accounts are common in the immediate aftermath of attacks.
The blast took place as a Sunday mass being held in the chapel was about to end and coincided with a national holiday in Egypt marking the birth of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad. Most of the victims are thought to be women and children.
An Associated Press reporter who arrived at the scene shortly after the blast saw blood-stained pews and shards of glass scattered across the chapel’s floor. Men and women wailed and cried outside….
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Sunday’s attack.
Egypt has seen a wave of attacks by Islamic militants since the military overthrew President Mohammed Morsi, a freely elected leader who hailed from the Brotherhood, in 2013. Many of Morsi’s supporters blamed Christians for supporting the overthrow, and scores of churches and other Christian-owned properties in southern Egypt were ransacked that year….
“It would have been better if the Dutch state had sent a clear signal [to terrorists] via a Dutch court that we foster a broad notion of the freedom of expression in the Netherlands.” — Paul Cliteur, Professor of Jurisprudence, Leiden University.
The historic dimension of Wilders’s conviction is related not only to the terrible injustice done to this MP, but that it was the Netherlands that, for the first time in Europe, criminalized dissenting opinions about Islam.
“I will never be silent. You will not be able to stop me… And that is what we stand for. For freedom and for our beautiful Netherlands.” — Geert Wilders, Dutch MP and leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV).
“We have a lot of guests who are trying to take over the house.” — Pym Fortuyn, later shot to death to “defend Dutch Muslims from persecution.”
Before being slaughtered, clinging to a basket, Theo van Gogh begged his assassin: “Can we talk about this?” But can we talk?
A country whose most outspoken filmmaker was slaughtered by an Islamist; whose bravest refugee, hunted by a fatwa, fled to the U.S.; whose cartoonists must live under protection, had better should think twice before condemning a Member of Parliament, whose comments about Islam have forced him to live under 24-hour protection for more than a decade, for “hate speech.” Poor Erasmus! The Netherlands is no longer a safe haven for free thinkers. It is the Nightmare for Free Speech.
The most prominent politician in the Netherlands, MP Geert Wilders, has just been convicted of “hate speech,” for asking at a really if there should be fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands. Many newly-arrived Moroccans in the Netherlands seem to have been responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime there.
Paul Cliteur, Professor of Jurisprudence at Leiden University, who was called as an expert witness, summed up the message coming from the court: “It would have been better if the Dutch state had sent a clear signal [to terrorists] via a Dutch court that we foster a broad notion of the freedom of expression in the Netherlands.”
Here are just a few details to help understand what Wilders experiences every day because of his ideas: No visitors are allowed into his office except after a long wait to be checked. The Dutch airline KLM refused to board him on a flight to Moscow for reasons of “security.” His entourage is largely anonymous. When a warning level rises, he does not know where he will spend the night. For months, he was able to see his wife only twice a week, in a secure apartment, and then only when the police allowed it. The Parliament had to place him in the less visible part of the building, in order better to protect him. He often wears a bulletproof vest to speak in public. When he goes to a restaurant, his security detail must first check the place out.
Wilders’s life is a nightmare. “I am in jail,” he has said; “they are walking around free.”
The historic dimension of Wilders’s conviction is related not only to the terrible injustice done to this MP, but that it was the Netherlands that, for the first time in Europe, criminalized dissenting opinions about Islam.
The Netherlands is a very small country; whatever happens to this enclave is seen in the rest of Europe. The Netherlands refused to surrender to the Spanish invasion. It was from Rotterdam, the second-largest Dutch city, that the Founding Fathers left to create the United States of America. It was to the Netherlands that some of the most brave, original European philosophers and writers — Descartes, Rousseau, Locke, Sade, Molière, Hugo, Swift and Spinoza — had to flee to publish their books. It is also the only corner of Europe where there were no pogroms against Jews, and where Rembrandt painted Jesus with the physical traits of Jews.
Take Leiden: “Praesidium Libertatis” (“Bastion of Freedom”) is the motto of the Netherlands’ most ancient university. Leiden was the university of Johan Huizinga, the great historian who opposed the Nazis and died in a concentration camp. Leiden was also the university of Anton Pannekoek, the mentor of Martinus Van der Lubbe, the Dutch hero who torched the Nazi Parliament in 1933.
In Leiden today, you meet brave intellectuals such as Afshin Ellian, an Iranian jurist who fled Khomeini’s Revolution in Iran and who also now lives under police protection for his observations on Islam. Ellian’s office is close to the former office of Rudolph Cleveringa. When the Nazis invaded the Netherlands and called on Dutch public officials to fill out a form in which they had to declare whether they were “Aryans” or “Jews”, everyone but Cleveringa capitulated. He understood the consequences of such commands.
Twelve years ago, the Netherlands was again plunged into fear for the first time since World War II. In Linnaeusstraat, a district of Amsterdam, Mohammed Bouyeri, a Muslim extremist, ambushed the filmmaker Theo van Gogh and slaughtered him, then pinned on his chest a letter threatening the lives of Geert Wilders and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Before that murder, Pim Fortuyn, a professor who had formed his own party to save the country from Islamization, was shot to death to “defend Dutch Muslims from persecution.”
Twelve years ago, Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh (left) was assassinated by an Islamist who pinned on van Gogh’s chest a letter threatening the life of Geert Wilders (right). Today Wilders, the most prominent politician in the Netherlands, lives in hiding under round-the-clock protection.
Fortuyn had said, “We have a lot of guests who are trying to take over the house.”
Since then, many Dutch artists have capitulated to fear.
Sooreh Hera, from Iran, submitted her photos to the Gemeentemuseum Museum in The Hague. One of these works depicted Mohammed and Ali. After many threats, the museum proposed that it would acquire the photos without publishing them and that one day, perhaps, when the situation was calmer, they might show them then. Hera refused: it would have been self-censorship, a sad day for the West. Rants Tjan, director of Museum Gouda, bravely offered to exhibit her censored images, but that event was later cancelled, too. Hera was forced to go into hiding.
Paul Cliteur, a critic of multiculturalism, announced that he would no longer write for Dutch newspapers about Islam, for fear of reprisals: “With the murder of van Gogh, everyone who writes takes a certain risk. That is a scary development. What I am doing do is self-censorship, absolutely….”
Then a columnist, Hasna el Maroudi, from the newspaper NRC Handelsblad, stopped writing, after receiving threats.
The Dutch artist Rachid Ben Ali, irreverent about Islam, no longer satirizes Muslims.
Amsterdam, a city famous for its exuberant cultural life, had already lived through threats to artists: the occupation by the Nazis during World War II.
Several artists still refuse to mention Theo Van Gogh, so as not to “contribute to… divisions”, according to the New York Times. Translation: They are afraid. Who would not be?
In the Oosterpark, a steel sculpture by the artist Jeroen Henneman, dedicated to Van Gogh, is entitled “De Schreeuw” (“The Scream”). But it is a scream you hardly hear in the Dutch society.
What you do hear is the defiant protest after the conviction of a brave MP, Geert Wilders: “I will never be silent. You will not be able to stop me… And that is what we stand for. For freedom and for our beautiful Netherlands.”
Before being slaughtered, clinging to a basket, Theo van Gogh begged his assassin: “Can we talk about this?”
But can we talk?
Ask Geert Wilders, just the latest brave victim of Europe’s Bolshevik thought police.
The Christmas tree is one of the symbols of the Christian festival and celebration; this is why it is named for Christmas. It is said that it was first officially used as a symbol in this manner in the sixteenth century in Germany, in the Cathedral of Strasbourg in 1539 CE.
It is not permissible to imitate the kuffaar in any of their acts of worship, rituals or symbols, because the Prophet (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) said: “Whoever imitates a people is one of them.” Narrated by Abu Dawood, 4031; classed as saheeh by al-Albaani in Irwa’ al-Ghaleel, 5/109
So it is not permissible to put up this tree in a Muslim house even if you do not celebrate Christmas, because putting up this tree comes under the heading of imitating others that is haraam, or venerating and showing respect to a religious symbol of the kuffaar….
“Zayn Malik’s family receive ‘disgusting’ death threats – over a CHRISTMAS TREE,” by Jerry Lawton, Daily Star, December 10, 2016:
THE family of Zayn Malik got death threats from Muslim fanatics after his teen sister tweeted a photo of a Christmas tree.
The extremists accused the family of “insulting Islam” and warned of “retribution”.
Former One Direction singer Zayn celebrates Christmas as well as Muslim festivals such as Eid because he hails from a dual-faith family.
While dad Yaser follows Islam, mum Trisha was born a Christian.
But after sister Safaa posted a snap of the tree at their home in Bradford, West Yorks, she was blitzed with vile comments.
They branded the family’s celebration of Christmas “an insult to Islam” and said they were “a disgrace to the faith”.
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