WarSclerotic

Berlin Christmas Attack – Part of a Larger Plan, Clarion Project, Meira Svirsky, December 20, 2016

The aftermath of the attack on a Christmas market in Berlin (Photo: © TOBIAS SCHWARZ/AFP/Getty Images)

The attack in Berlin last night, in which a Pakistani immigrant truck driver plowed into a crowded Christmas market killing 12 and injuring at least 48, was a point in a trajectory of incitement by Islamist extremists against anything and anyone not Muslim.

Consider the following recent incidents across the world of late:

In Indonesia, considered to be a “moderate” Islamic country, a fatwawas just issued by the Indonesian Ulema Council prohibiting Muslims from wearing or using Christmas-themed clothing or decorations, saying, “Religious images and accessories are used intentionally to show the identity of a certain religion, and represent its tradition and rituals…[it is] a foreign culture with which we must not mingle.”

News reports explained the fatwa was primarily directed toward employees in shopping malls who often wear Santa hats, appealing to the nine percent of Indonesia’s population (21.2 million people) who are Christian.

Since the fatwa was issued, members of the extremist Islam Defenders Front escorted by police raided malls in East Java to check whether employees were abiding by the decree.

The fatwa prompted a warning by International Christian Concern, a human rights group, that the ruling could give license to extremists to attack non-Muslims and foster an “increasingly emboldened radical Islamic sub-group that is applying public pressure to adhere to conservative Islamic law.”

That not only has already happened, it is sanctioned and supported by the country’s police.

The raids follow protests last month in which more than one hundred thousand Muslims marched in the capital calling for the death penalty of the capital’s governor, a Christian accused of blasphemy.

In Greece, a Christian church in Crete was set on fire, before which the perpetrators wrote on the building’s wall “Allah is great.” The church is a major pilgrimage site for the region and attracts many to its annual feast. The burning came on the heels of a vote by the Greek parliament to build the first state-funded mosque in Athens since the country gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1832. The vote passed by a wide margin and it was agreed to speed up construction of the $1 million project stymied since 2006.

In Egypt, just one week before the bombing of St. Peter’s Cathedral which killed 25 Christian worshippers, a meeting – sponsored by the top Sunni authority in the world, Al Azhar — was held in the village of Naghameesh, where an Islamist mob attacked property owned by Coptic Christians after rumors that a church was being opened spread through the area.

The community used their community center, which houses a pre-school and a home for the elderly, for prayer services.

After the niceties of acknowledging the “brotherhood of all Egyptians” were dispensed with, Muslim authorities present refused to allow the Christians to continue to use the building which they ruled must remain shut.

Just last August, the Egyptian legislature passed a new law codifying the rights of Christians to build and renovate churches. Yet, even though all the necessary paperwork was submitted according to a local member of the Christian community, a permit has not been received by the community to build a church.

“We don’t understand what is so dangerous about the Copts praying and exercising their legal rights in this matter,” the Christian said.

These incidents highlight the supremacist ideology of Islamism – the end point of which is the total genocide of non-Muslim communities as reflected in territory held by Islamic State.

The attack in Berlin is part of the trajectory of extremist ideology that begins with intolerance of anything non-Muslim (as witnessed in Indonesia) to the destruction of churches to, finally, attacks on the life of non-Muslims themselves – both as a way to cow them into submission and to assert the supremacy of sharia law.

The Western world needs to awaken from its politically-induced slumber and stand up for the rights of all peoples.