Archive for the ‘Europe’ category

What Bobby Jindal Gets about Islam — and Most People Still Don’t

January 24, 2015

What Bobby Jindal Gets about Islam — and Most People Still Don’t, National Review on lineAndrew C. McCarthy, January 24, 2015

(This is the best post I have read thus far on “no go zones” and their significance to civilized societies. — DM)

With Western Europe still reeling from the jihadist mass-murders in Paris at Charlie Hebdo magazine and the Hyper Kacher Jewish market, Governor Jindal outlined a bold, Reaganesque vision of American foreign policy guided by three imperatives — freedom, security, and truth. It is on the last one, truth, that our capacity to ensure freedom and security hinges. “You cannot remedy a problem,” Jindal explained, “if you will not name it and define it.”

The world’s most influential Islamic supremacists have told us in no uncertain terms that they see Muslim immigration in the West as part of a conquest strategy.

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pic_giant_012415_SM_Muslims-France

Footballs are deflating, the president is detached from reality, the Saudi king is deceased, and the sharia state next door, Yemen, is descending into bloody chaos. With mere anarchy loosed upon the world, it would be easy to miss the fact that, in England this week, Bobby Jindal gave as important and compelling a speech as has been delivered in years about America — our leadership role on the world stage, our preservation as a beacon of liberty.

In the birthplace of the Magna Carta, it has nonetheless become legally risky to speak with candor (even when quoting Churchill). Yet Louisiana’s Republican governor became that rarest of modern Anglo or American statesmen. Bobby Jindal told the truth about Islam, specifically about its large radical subset that attacks the West by violent jihad from without and sharia-supremacist subversion from within.

With Western Europe still reeling from the jihadist mass-murders in Paris at Charlie Hebdo magazine and the Hyper Kacher Jewish market, Governor Jindal outlined a bold, Reaganesque vision of American foreign policy guided by three imperatives — freedom, security, and truth. It is on the last one, truth, that our capacity to ensure freedom and security hinges. “You cannot remedy a problem,” Jindal explained, “if you will not name it and define it.”

And so he did: Our immediate security problem today “is ISIS and all forms of radical Islam.” That is, the challenge is not limited to violent jihadists who commit barbaric atrocities. Jindal elaborated: “In the West, non-assimilationist Muslims establish enclaves and carry out as much of sharia law as they can without regard for the laws of the democratic countries which provided them a new home.”

The campaign to implement and spread sharia is antithetical to Western liberty. Freedom, Jindal said, means “the ability to conduct commerce both inside and outside your borders; it means the right to speak freely, to publish any cartoons you want. It means the right to worship freely. It means the right to self-determination.” By contrast, “radical Islamists do not believe in freedom or common decency, nor are they willing to accommodate them in any way and anywhere.” Moreover, the version of sharia law to which they adhere

is not just different than our law, it’s not just a cultural difference, it is oppression and it is wrong. It subjugates women and treats them as property, and it is antithetical to valuing all of human life equally. It is the very definition of oppression. We must stop pretending otherwise.

It cannot credibly be denied that this is so, as I have documented — using not only notorious examples of how sharia is applied in countries like Saudi Arabia (where it is the law of the land), but also Reliance of the Traveller, a classic sharia manual certified as accurate by prominent Islamic scholars, including at both al-AzharUniversity (the seat of Sunni jurisprudence since the tenth century) and at the International Institute of Islamic Thought (an influential Muslim Brotherhood think tank).

Still, Governor Jindal has been pilloried since his courageous speech by tendentious critics across the spectrum, from the usual Islamist grievance chorus to Fox News commentators and British prime minister David Cameron.

Why? Because he dared notice what ought to be an inarguable fact: The non-assimilationist Muslim campaign has resulted in the rise throughout Western Europe of what Jindal described as “unofficial” “so-called” “no-go zones.”

Jindal was clearly right about this. His timing, however, was wrong: He had the misfortune to dilate on “no-go zones” at the same time that Steven Emerson, the usually astute terrorism analyst, made a no-go gaffe. Steve erroneously claimed that the entire British city of Birmingham is “totally Muslim” and has become a “no-go zone” where “non-Muslims simply don’t go in.”

Emerson has since apologized profusely. The damage, however, was done. Fox News is evidently so embarrassed at having been the forum for his faux pas (and at having been threatened with legal action by the city of Paris, which was the main target of Steve’s commentary), that the network is over-correcting. This helps stoke the Islamist meme that no-go zones are a hysterical figment of the “Islamophobic” imagination.

That is absurd, but follows naturally from two things: a common misunderstanding about sharia, and a misrepresentation that describing the incontestable fact that sharia is being applied de facto in Europe is the same as falsely claiming that sharia is now the de jure writ of Europe.

Dreamy Islamophiles like Mr. Cameron and many of his like-minded progressives in bipartisan Beltway circles have a sputtering snit anytime a commentator associates Islam with anything other than “peace.” Consequently, the doctrine of Islam (which actually means submission) remains taboo and poorly understood in the West. One major misconception is that Islamists (i.e., Islamic supremacists or Muslims who want sharia implemented) demand that all non-Muslims convert to Islam. A no-go zone is thus incorrectly assumed by many to be a place that Muslims forbid non-Muslims to enter.

In reality, sharia explicitly invites the presence of non-Muslims provided that they submit to the authority of Islamic rule. Indeed historically, as I related in The Grand Jihad, my book about the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist ideology, because sharia calls on these submissive non-Muslims (dhimmis) to pay a poll tax (jizya), their continued presence was of economic importance in lands conquered by Islamic rulers.

It is therefore easy for Islamists and their apologists to knock down their strawman depiction of no-go zones as places where non-Muslims are not allowed. That is not what no-go zones are — neither as they exist in fact nor as they are contemplated by sharia. The point of imposing sharia — the reason it is the necessary precondition for building an Islamic society — is to make Islam the dominant social system, not the exclusive faith. The idea is that once sharia’s systematic discrimination against non-Muslims is in place, non-Muslims will see the good sense of becoming Muslims. Over time, every one will convert “without coercion.” The game is to set up an extortionate incentive for conversion while maintaining the smiley-face assurance that no one is being forced to convert at the point of a sword.

So radical Muslims will be welcoming to any ordinary non-Muslims who are willing to defer to their mores. What they are hostile to are officials of the host state: police, firefighters, building inspectors, emergency medical personnel, and anything associated with the armed forces. That is because the presence of those forces symbolizes the authority — the non-submission — of the state.

Notice, however, that no sensible person is saying that state authorities are prohibited from entering no-go zones as a matter of law. The point is that they are severely discouraged from entering as a matter of fact — and the degree of discouragement varies directly with the density of the Muslim population and its radical component. Ditto for non-Muslim lay people: It is not that they are not permitted to enter these enclaves; it is that they avoid entering because doing so is dangerous if they are flaunting Western modes of dress and conduct.

There is a reason that Governor Jindal qualified his invocation of the term no-go zones, modifying it with “so-called” and noting that the term is used “unofficially.” His speech was about reality, particularly where it stressed the need for truthfulness in forming policy. If our premise is reality, it is not no-go zones that are imaginary; it is the suggestion that no-go zones do not exist simply because non-Muslim entry is not literally prohibited by law. As the Gatestone Institute’s Soeren Kern painstakingly demonstrates, “Muslim no-go zones are a well-known fact of life in many parts of Europe.” It has been amply acknowledged not only in press reports and academic analyses but by governments that must deal with them.

Have a look, for example, at the French government’s official listing of 750 Zones Urbaines Sensibiles­ — “sensitive urban zones.” France’s “ZUS” designation is significant. As the estimable scholar Daniel Pipes recounted in a column at NRO this week, when he coined the term “no-go zone” in 2006 it was intended as “a non-euphemistic equivalent” of ZUS. If that is how the term “no-go zone” is understood — as an enclave deferential to Islamic sensibilities rather than exclusionary of non-Muslims — the contention that no-go zones do not exist is plainly frivolous. This is so even if, as Pipes maintains, the term “no-go zone” itself was an overstatement. The term “semi-autonomous sectors,” he says, would more accurately convey the historical anomaly the West has created: “a majority population [that] accepts the customs and even the criminality or a poorer and weaker community,” and in a manner that involves far more than control over physical territory.

Nevertheless, the problem with all this semantic nattering is its intimation that we can only infer the existence of no-go zones, and of the Islamist subversion they signal, by drawing inferences from what we see happening on the ground.

Nonsense. The world’s most influential Islamic supremacists have told us in no uncertain terms that they see Muslim immigration in the West as part of a conquest strategy.

As I recounted in The Grand Jihad, the strategy is often referred to as “voluntary apartheid.” One of its leading advocates is Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood icon who is probably the world’s most revered sharia jurist. SheikhQaradawi, who vows that Islam will conquer America and Europe, and who has been crystal clear on the incompatibility of sharia and Western democracy, elaborates:

Were we to convince Western leaders and decision-makers of our right to live according to our faith — ideologically, legislatively, and ethically — without imposing our views or inflicting harm upon them, we would have traversed an immense barrier in our quest for an Islamic state.

Translation: To establish Islamic domination in the West, we do not need to resort to terrorism or to force non-Muslims to convert; we need merely a recognized right to resist assimilation, to regard sharia as superseding Western law and custom when the two conflict, as they do in fundamental ways.

This is precisely why the Organization of Islamic Cooperation — the bloc of 56 Muslim countries (plus the Palestinian Authority) — warned in a 2010 report on “Islamophobia” that “Muslims should not be marginalized or attempted to be assimilated, but should be accommodated.” (Here, at p. 30.) It is why Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Islamist president of Turkey who has systematically dismantled that country’s secular, pro-Western system, pronounces that pressuring Muslims to assimilate “is a crime against humanity.”

At Oxford, Bobby Jindal bluntly asserted that the ideology of our enemy, radical Islam,

holds the view that it is wrong to expect assimilation, that assimilation is colonialist, assimilation is backward, and assimilation is in fact evidence of cultural bigotry and insensitivity. They think it is wrong to expect that people who chose to immigrate to your country should be expected to endorse and abide by your laws. They think it is unenlightened, discriminatory, and even racist to expect immigrants to endorse and assimilate into the culture in their new country. This is complete rubbish.

That is the truth. The United States will not get national-security policy right, nor reestablish our credentials as leader of the free world, until we accept that truth. Accept it and resolve, as Governor Jindal has resolved, to tell it boldly.

Op-Ed: Is the Middle East on the Verge of Exploding?

January 22, 2015

Op-Ed: Is the Middle East on the Verge of Exploding? Israel National News, Dr. Mordechai Kedar, January 21, 2015

The potential for destruction posed by all these disputes is enormous, and the explosion may shake Europe and even cross the Atlantic when Islamic extremists blow their minds at the deep crisis affecting the entire Middle East.

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Five separate sets of potential fireworks have been igniting simultaneously in the Middle East for the last few weeks, each of them adding fuel to the fires caused by the others. If and when these developments reach the kindling point, the entire region may go up in uncontrollable flames.

These are the sources of the fires:

a. the rivalry between Al Qaeda and ISIS

b. the intensifying struggle between the Sunni Jabhat al Nusra and the Shiite Hezbollah.

c. the successes of the Houthis in Yemen

d. Islamic fury at what is happening in Egypt

e. the struggle between Islamic extremists and European regimes

Here are the details::

a. In the militant Sunni arena there is a fierce struggle going on between organizations that identify with Al Qaeda’s ideology, headed by Jabhat al Nusra – and ISIS, which is in control over large swathes of Syria and Iraq and has established the most stringent form of Sharia law in those areas. The rivalry has caused Al Qaeda to increase its attacks on the Yemeni government, abort an American attempt to rescue two hostages from Yemen last December, accept responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris and announce that the brothers who perpetrate the murders received their training in an Al Qaeda camp in Yemen.

b. The war between the Shiite Assad regime and Hezbollah on the one hand and Sunni Jabhat al Nusra on the other is getting more fierce. Jabhat al Nusra managed to cause Hezbollah painful losses  recently, near the Hermon Mountain range and in a daring infiltration into the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, by way of the city of Arsal. Hezbollah is feeling pressured, leading the Iranian revolutionary guards to send some top officers to help the organization plan its next operation and improve its results.

c. In Yemen, the Shiite Houthi militias have succeeded in taking over the capital city of Sana’a and appear as the winning side in the long, drawn out war the Houthis have been waging against that nation. Iran is backing the Houthis, the US is helping the regime, both against al Qaeda and the Houthis. Without doubt, Yemen is a battlefield where Iran is forcing its enemies to follow its agenda, including nearby Saudi Arabia, which sees the Houthis as a direct threat to its security. Several years ago, the Saudis built a separation fence all along their border with Yemen, in an attempt to keep out Al Qaeda and Houthi militants.

d. There is a fierce struggle in Egypt between the Muslim Brotherhood – the mother of all Sunni Jihad organizations – and the regime of Al Sisi. As far as this struggle goes, Sisi is reinstating the government of Gamal abdel Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak, all of whom waged relentless and bloody war against the “Brothers”.  As of now, Sisi has succeeded in pushing the “Brothers” from positions of rule into jail cells and from the streets to the cemetery. His successes are infuriating his detractors.    The fight is to the finish, and it is also being waged in the Sinai Desert between the government and the militias of Anṣār Bayt al-Maqdis, who recently switched its loyalties from al Qaeda to ISIS.

Europe is a relatively new battleground, but the last few weeks showed mounting escalation, both in jihadist activities against governments (see France) and in governmental activity against jihad cells (Belgium, Germany). Jihad activities in Europe are encouraged by ISIS as well as Al Qaeda, both sides of the rivalry mentioned above. People who return from Jihad in Syria, Iraq and Libya – but not just they – are participating in the heated struggle for Europe’s image.

These struggles are synergetic, they influence one another because an Islamic militant sees what is happening in one area and decides to take revenge for Allah in another. This sinking into chaos can lead to large number of large scale conflicts, with many more participants and deaths, especially if these organizations succeed in drawing Israel and the US into the fray. We have already heard of ground troups from the West fighting ISIS.

Israel must understand the dangers now permeating the atmosphere of the MIddle East with oil vapors that any spark can set on fire and that no one will be able to put out before the entire region is ablaze. The potential for destruction posed by all these disputes is enormous, and the explosion may shake Europe and even cross the Atlantic when Islamic extremists blow their minds at the deep crisis affecting the entire Middle East.

The massive Islamic immigration to Europe turned that continent into a branch of the Middle East’s disputes, so that Europe will not be immune to the many deep seated and broad Middle Eastern problems. And America is on the same planet, so that the Middle East disasters will find their way to its shores as well.

 

“Unity”? About What Exactly?

January 22, 2015

Unity”? About What Exactly? The Gatestone Institute, Jeremy Havardi, January 22, 2015

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia tried to fool the world by joining France’s “Unity March” for free speech just two days after a young Saudi blogger, Raif Badawi, received the first installment of 50 lashes — out of the 1000 he is to get — “very severely,” the lashing order says. Badawi still has 950 lashes to complete.

Mahmoud Abbas, whose genocidal, jihadi partner, Hamas, was just declared not a terrorist group by the European Union, joined the forefront of the “Unity March” at the same time as a Palestinian human rights groups published a report accusing the Palestinian Authority of “waging war” against university students in the West Bank.

What “Islamophobia” motivated the killing of Jewish customers in a kosher supermarket? What had those victims done to deserve that?

We may like to imagine that this is not Islam, and that the faith promotes peace and nothing else. But the murderers say it is Islam, and they act accordingly.

Much of the media has offered up a context for these killings that is false.

The real story is that despite a few sporadic incidents, there has been no backlash against the Muslim community.

The recent rally for free speech and against the terrorism in Paris initially appeared to have generated a surge of defiance and resolve, not just in France but around the world. People were actually talking about a turning point in the battle against terrorism and radical Islam.

If only it were true.

The reality is that much of the political class and media remain in denial about the events in Paris.

Ban Ki Moon explained that the tragic events had nothing to do with religion. Signing a condolence book for the victims of the attacks, he said: “This is not a country, a war against religion or between religions… This is a purely unacceptable terrorist attack – criminality.”

France’s President François Hollande said that the Charlie Hebdo fanatics had “nothing to do with Islam,” and he was joined in this view by commentators on France24, as well as the German Interior Minister, Thomas de Maizière.

The Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland condemned the actions of a “handful of wicked fanatics against the rest of us.” The implication was that they merely acted in the name of Islam — purely coincidentally, as it were.

In the Daily Mail, Piers Morgan wrote that the perpetrators were “not ‘real’ Muslims” and that this was “not a religious war.” Why he thought he could act as the arbiter on that question is still unclear.

As for President Obama, he has effectively outlawed the term “Islamic terror.”

The United States, in what was widely seen as a snub, was only represented at the rally by the U.S. Ambassador to France, Jane Hartley. Since the President had declared in 2012 that “[t]he future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam” — the implication was that they were not acting purely coincidentally.

There is in those comments a mixture of political correctness, wishful thinking and staggering ignorance. It is understandable and commendable not to lump a majority of law-abiding, patriotic and peaceful Muslims together with their violent counterparts. But calling for “unity” in a march leaves one asking: Unity about what exactly?

To pretend that there is a complete disconnect between Islam and terror is to ignore reality. Jihadis are gaining ideological succour from the tenets of their faith, drawing upon teachings promulgated by imams, including the late Anwar al Awlaki. We may like to imagine that this is not Islam, and that the faith promotes peace and nothing else. But the murderers say it is Islam, and they act accordingly.

To confront this problem properly, the ideological underpinnings of jihad need to be tackled comprehensively at source.

It is not enough to unite against terrorism, as every community must. We need to know what we are uniting for — free speech. And we need to know what we are uniting against — namely the militant war of extremist Islamism.

It is equally inaccurate to describe these jihadis as “lone wolves.” They will have spent time gaining combat experience abroad, perhaps in Yemen, Syria or Iraq, and will have received ideological indoctrination and funding from a network of other jihadis. They are recruits in a theocratic, totalitarian death-cult spread across the planet. It comes in different forms: Boko Haram, which slaughtered 2,000 people in Nigeria the weekend before last; the Taliban, which murdered schoolchildren in Pakistan; Hamas with its genocidal doctrine and many years of bombings, and the Islamic State, which seems busy ethnically cleansing nearly everyone in Syria and Iraq.

The murders in Paris, therefore, were merely the latest salvo in a global confrontation between jihadist Islam and its declared enemies, this time in the West.

Much of the media has offered up a context for these killings that is false. Within hours of the massacre at Charlie Hebdo, the Telegraph led with a feature on the growing problem of “Islamophobia” in France. The Guardian, too, weighed in; one story headlined: “Muslims fear backlash after Charlie Hebdo deaths as Islamic sites attacked”. The Spectator spoke of the killings as an “attack on Islam;” and Robert Fisk in the UK Independent referred to the legacy of the Algerian war as a motive for the attackers. Other news outlets voiced fears of a “backlash” against Muslims in France and elsewhere.

But the real story is that while there have been some sporadic incidents against mosques and Muslim owned businesses in France following the Charlie Hebdo attacks, there has been no backlash against the Muslim community. Muslims across France even joined in the unity rally, an act that would have been impossible were there a climate of widespread public hostility.

The majority of hate crimes in France, as in a number of other countries, affects the Jewish community. It was a Jewish supermarket that was attacked. This does not mean that there will not be attacks — all of them naturally deplorable — against Muslim innocents, only that fears of a major widespread assault seem highly exaggerated. The same fears of widespread attacks against the Muslim community also proved unfounded after the 7/7 London bomb attacks.

Lumping terrorism and “Islamophobia” together ignores the real motivation of the latest killers in France. One of them, Amedy Coulibaly, pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in a video address prior to the supermarket attack. This hardly suggests a rant against perceived intolerance or racism. Invoking racism here also suggests, in a shifting of blame, that we in the West are somehow at fault for the violent behaviour of these Islamist terrorists. What “Islamophobia” motivated the killing of Jewish customers in a kosher supermarket? What had those victims done to deserve that?

Another reason this is no turning point is that the press continues to engage in self-righteous self-censorship. Not one broadcaster — including the BBC, Fox, NBC and CNN — showed any of the Charlie Hebdo images that had been deemed provocative. Those outlets were joined by the Associated Press, which deliberately cropped a photograph of the magazine’s now-dead editor to avoid showing an image of the Prophet Muhammad. In a cringe replicated across almost all of Europe, not one major British newspaper published any of Charlie Hebdo’s satirical images of Islam, and only The Guardian showed the full front cover of the edition that the survivors published after the attack.

Big mistake. These newspapers and broadcasters are denying the public a dispassionate view of what the killers themselves say is causing them to kill. Worse again, by drawing a line against possibly offending Muslims — many of whom seem to have no problem offending Jews and Christians, among others, if not killing them — the media have acted as if there is already in place an unofficial blasphemy law: the terrorists’ key demand.

A violent mob, disastrously undermining Western values, is effectively dictating the boundaries of free speech.

It is all very well to praise Charlie Hebdo as an icon of free speech, but after the riots that followed the publishing of Muhammad cartoons in Denmark’s Jyllands Posten in 2006, Charlie Hebdo was virtually alone in reprinting them, and it was condemned widely for doing so.[1]

Time magazine, in 2011, likened Charlie Hebdo’s reprinting the cartoons as “the right to scream ‘fire’ in an increasingly over-heated theater.” In other words, the “Islamophobic” cartoonists were to blame for their own misfortune. There is a notion permeating Europe, that if you speak out, not only can you can be put on trial — as is the Dutch MP, Geert Wilders[2] — but that it will also, in an Orwellian twist, be your own fault; if you had just kept quiet, nothing unpleasant would be happening to you. Try telling that to the four Jews lying murdered on the floor of the French supermarket. What did they ever say?

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia tried to fool the world by joining France’s “Unity March” for free speech just two days after a young Saudi blogger, Raif Badawi, received the first installment of 50 lashes — out of the 1000 he is to get — “very severely,” the lashing order says. He was taken after Friday prayers to a public square outside a mosque in Jeddah. His declared “crime” is “insulting Islam,” for writing thoughts such as, “My commitment is to reject any repression in the name of religion… a goal we will reach in a peaceful and law-abiding way.” Badawi still has 950 lashes to complete. If he lives. There is no medical help.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas — whose genocidal, jihadi partner, Hamas, was, in a burst of surrealism, declared not a terrorist group by the European Union — joined the forefront of the Unity March in Paris at the same time as a report was published by a Palestinian human rights group, accusing the Palestinian Authority of “waging war” against university students in the West Bank.

883World leaders link arms at the Paris anti-terror rally on January 11, 2014. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas stands at the far right of the front row. (Image source: RT video screenshot)

Turkey, “named the world’s biggest jailor of journalists in 2012 and 2013” according to theWashington Post, was also there. Turkey “ended 2014 by detaining a number of journalists … including Ekrem Dumanli, editor in chief of Zaman, a leading newspaper” with links to an opposition movement.

Meanwhile, between January 8 and January 14, as over three million copies of Charlie Hebdowere selling out and four million more being printed, there was already talk in France of hardening its laws against free speech. So this may not be a turning point either for free speech or against radical Islam. So it may be a while before we can truly say, “Nous sommes Charlie.”

Jeremy Havardi is a historian and journalist based in London. His books include The Greatest Briton, analytical essays on Churchill.


[1] Ezra Levant, who reprinted the cartoons in Canada, was then compelled to appear before the Alberta Human Rights Commission to defend their publication, because of a complaint lodged by Syed Soharwardy of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada and the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities.

[2] As also was Lars Hedegaard (for speaking in his own drawing room), Suzanne Winters, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, or at the very east need round-the-clock-bodyguards, such asFrench journalist Eric Zemmour, for saying that France might be facing a virtual civil war.

Op-Ed: The West Cannot Win this War

January 19, 2015

Op-Ed: The West Cannot Win this War, Israel National News, Giulio Meotti, January 19, 2015

(Can’t win, or refuses to win? — DM)

Take another look at the video filmed under the Charlie Hebdo’s building, the black car of the terrorists who had no fear of death and are advancing by shooting, while the white car of the policemen is forced to retreat.

We are capitulating.

The West cannot win this war. Take the last French mass rally with dozens of heads of states from around the world: it was a silent march, a mute show where nobody took the podium. As if these people didn’t know what to say. As if these Western leaders didn’t really believe in what they were doing in Paris.

A few days ago, Martin Wolf in the British daily Financial Times gave voice to the deep estrangement of Europe’s élite. He suggested using massive doses of multicultural recognition of equality between different cultures in order to combat Islamism. Mr. Wolf is implicitly saying that we must surrender, that we cannot win, that we have to contain terror and finally find a way to coexist with it.

The French horror doesn’t lie in the killings per se. A few hours later, in Nigeria, Boko Haram destroyed many villages and burned hundreds of people to death. Europe’s horror lies in the fact that the terrorists came from the heart of the continent. The Chouaci’s brothers, the British bombers and Theo Van Gogh’s killer didn’t came from Raqqa, in Syria, or Al Qaeda in Yemen. No, they were born and raised in European democracies.

Europe gave everything to these terrorists: schools, education, entartainment, sexual pleasures, salaries and freedom. The French terrorists rejected the French values of liberté, egalité and fraternité; the British suicide bombers rejected British multiculturalism, while Dutch terrorist Mohammed Bouyeri, who slaughtered the film maker in Amsterdam, rejected the Dutch mute values of moral indifference.

A few days ago, I was talking with Flemming Rose, the Danish journalist who first published the cartoons in 2006 and now lives protected by the police. He told me the shocking truth nobody wants to hear:

“I am pretty pessimistic about the future of free speech, though I am delighted that so many people came out to support Charlie Hebdo”, Rose told me. “I knew several of the cartoonists who were killed, and I was a witness in a criminal case against CH in 2007. My fear is that this support will not translate into real decisions and changed behavior when we get back to our day-to-day life. We have seen that before. Madrid 2004, Theo van Gogh 2004, London 2005, Kurt Westergaard 2008 and 2010 (one planned attack and another real attack in which he was nearly killed). Every time lots of support and solidarity with the victims, but very little has changed in reality, quite to the contrary, apart from CH no European newspapers have dared to publish Mohammed cartoons since 2008”.

Charlie Hebdo’s journalists were brave people, defiant, but if they are the Western heroes, we have already lost. “Charb” and the other cartoonists didn’t believe in anything.

A few years ago, at my newspaper in Italy. I suggested we publish a letter that Mohammed Bouyeri released from his Dutch prison. Bouyeri says he does not feel remorse for what he did. The tone of the letter is marked by a kind of puerile candor. Bouyeri never mentions Van Gogh, but he makes it clear that he has fulfilled a religious duty by killing him.

The West cannot win this war. The price it would have to pay is the loss of European values: reducing the civil rights of many people, deporting them, declaring a war of values, sending boots on the ground in the Middle East, imposing Western civilization on them. Europe will never do that. Europe itself doesn’t believe in these values anymore. This is also one of the reason why Europe hates Israeli Jews who daily confront evil and fight it, so deeply.

The terrorists of Charlie Hebdo talk a religious language and use terms like honor, faith, prophet and loyalty, while the West replies to them with words such as freedom, democracy, rights, respect and tolerance. They speak theology, we reply with logic. They use bullets, we march in the streets.

It is a sad joke. The truth is that people in the West are relieved that they don’t have to fight, that we are surrendering, that life goes on as usual. Hurray, we are capitulating!

Iranian Exports to Europe Jump by 63% in November

January 18, 2015

Iranian Exports to Europe Jump by 63% in November, Tasnim News Agency [Iranian], January 18, 2015

Ship

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The value of Iran’s exports to the 28 members of the European Union (EU) in November 2014 has witnessed a 63 percent increase, compared to the same month in 2013, data released by the Eurostat showed.

The EU imports from the Islamic Republic in November 2014 reached 134 million euros, showing a 63 percent rise, compared to the same period last year, in which the figure stood at €82 million, according to the Eurostat.

Meanwhile, trade turnover between Iran and the EU member states during November 2014 also jumped by 18 percent hitting €693 million.

The figure in November 2013 had amounted to €585 million, the data indicated.

According to the report, the total value of EU exports to Iran in November 2014 amounted to €559 million, indicating an 11 percent increase compared with November 2013, in which the figure stood at €503 million.

Following the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s “constructive interaction” policy with the world since August 2013, a whole host of Western companies have been vying for Iran’s market, particularly after an interim nuclear deal between Tehran and six major world powers.

 

Don’t ignore the writing on the wall

January 16, 2015

Don’t ignore the writing on the wall, Israel Hayom, Yoram Ettinger, January 16, 2015

(It’s much easier and much less stressful to look forward to hope and change. Briefly. –DM)

Since the 1993 Oslo Accord, Western democracies have refrained from reading the writing on the Palestinian (Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas) wall: hate education in grades K-12; unprecedented terrorism; systematic noncompliance with agreements; naming squares, streets and tournaments after terrorists; monthly allowances for families of terrorists; responding to Israeli withdrawals with intensified terror.

Hitler’s master plan was outlined in 1925-26 in the two volumes of the supremacist, anti-Jewish “Mein Kampf” (“My Struggle”), which is currently a best-seller in the Muslim world, particularly in Iran and the Palestinian Authority.

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In 539 B.C.E., Babylonian King Belshazzar ignored the writing on the wall — as interpreted by the Prophet Daniel — and was, therefore, annihilated by the Persians (Daniel 5).

In 2015, Western civilizations must read the writing on the wall, desist from ambiguity, denial and political correctness and embrace clarity, realism and political incorrectness, in order to survive and overcome the clear and present lethal threat of Islamic takeover, which is gathering momentum via demographic, political and terroristic means.

History proves that Western ambiguity and the refusal to identify enemies — due to ignorance, gullibility, oversimplification, appeasement, delusion and wishful thinking — have taken root, yielding major strategic setbacks and painful economic and human losses. When it comes to reading the writing on the wall, Western eyesight has been far from 20:20, dominated by modern day Belshazzars, ignoring modern day Daniels.

For example, during the 1930s, the writing was on the wall in glaring letters: Germany abrogated the Treaty of Versailles, which called for German disarmament, reparations and territorial concessions; German military spending skyrocketed, military conscription was reintroduced and the Rhineland was remilitarized; Germany withdrew from the League of Nations and annexed Austria. Still, on September 30, 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich Pact, declaring “peace for our time.” He refused to recognize Hitler’s strategic, global, supremacist goal, assuming that Hitler’s appetite could be satisfied with a tactical, limited gain in Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland, signing a “peace accord” that triggered the “war of all wars.”

Hitler’s master plan was outlined in 1925-26 in the two volumes of the supremacist, anti-Jewish “Mein Kampf” (“My Struggle”), which is currently a best-seller in the Muslim world, particularly in Iran and the Palestinian Authority.

During 1977-79, U.S. President Jimmy Carter did not read the writing on the wall, supporting the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s battle against the Shah of Iran, who was, in fact, the U.S.’s policeman in the Persian Gulf. Overwhelmed by denial and wishful thinking, and heavily influenced by the U.S. foreign policy establishment, Carter ignored the litany of sermons delivered by Khomeini, which exposed the Iranian cleric as an enemy of Western civilization and civil liberties. He despised the U.S. and aligned himself with the enemies of the U.S., while protected by a Palestinian PLO praetorian guard. Thus, the U.S. betrayal of the Shah eliminated a most effective and loyal strategic partner of the U.S., gave rise to the most lethal, conventional and nonconventional threat to vital U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf, the Middle East and beyond and generated a robust tailwind to Islamic terrorism.

In 1990, on the eve of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, the U.S. stated that an Iraq-Kuwait military clash would be an intra-Arab, rather than a U.S., concern. The Bush/Baker administration assumed that “the enemy of my enemy [Iran] is my friend [Iraq],” supplying Saddam with dual-use sensitive systems, providing him with $5 billion loan guarantees and concluding a U.S.-Iraq intelligence sharing agreement. The 1990 policy of denial triggered a conventional conflict, a $1.25 trillion cost to the U.S. taxpayer, 4,500 U.S. military fatalities, a surge of anti-U.S. Islamic terrorism and a dramatic destabilization of the Persian Gulf.

Since the 1993 Oslo Accord, Western democracies have refrained from reading the writing on the Palestinian (Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas) wall: hate education in grades K-12; unprecedented terrorism; systematic noncompliance with agreements; naming squares, streets and tournaments after terrorists; monthly allowances for families of terrorists; responding to Israeli withdrawals with intensified terror.

In 2011, Western democracies denied the eruption of an Arab tsunami, welcoming the violence on the Arab Street as an Arab Spring that would transition the Arabs toward democracy. The Obama administration embraced the Muslim Brotherhood (while giving a cold shoulder to Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi), refusing to recognize its well-documented intra-Arab terrorism, the offshoot of its motto: “Allah is our objective; the Quran is the constitution; the prophet is our leader; jihad is our way; death for the sake of Allah is our wish.”

The 2015 failure to carefully read the Iranian writing on the wall could produce a nuclear conflict that would cost the U.S. taxpayer trillions of dollars, incur an unprecedented level of fatalities, spark a tidal wave of Islamic terrorism throughout the globe, including in the U.S., decimate the pro-U.S. Arab regimes in the Persian Gulf and Jordan, create an unprecedented disruption of the supply of Persian Gulf oil, further radicalization of the anti-U.S. regime in Venezuela with ripple effects in Latin America, including Mexico, and additional tectonic eruptions of insanity throughout the globe.

At stake is not only freedom of expression and the safety of European Jewry, but the survival of Western democracies.

Solidarity demonstrations and eloquent speeches will not spare Western democracies the wrath of Islamic terrorism and domination, unless accompanied by clarity, realism and the willingness to take military, legislative and political action to thwart the writing on the walls of the mosques: submission of humanity to the Prophet Muhammad; submission of the Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh and Jewish kuffar (“infidel”) to Muslims and to Shariah laws; jihad — holy war on behalf of Islam — is the duty of Muslims; waqf — Muslim land — is ordained by Allah; Dar al-Islam (the residence of Islam) must take over Dar al-Harb (the residence of war); and Islam-sanctioned taqiyya (dissimulation, deception and concealment of inconvenient data) aimed at shielding Islam and “believers” from “disbelievers.”

Isolated incidents or global war?

January 16, 2015

Isolated incidents or global war? Israel Hayom, Dore Gold, January 16, 2015

[V]irtually all these radical Islamic leaders see themselves as in no less than a civilizational battle with the West. There have been those who do not want to depict this struggle in this way, including those in the West who, out of political correctness, refuse to discuss the threat of radical Islam.

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In response to the first attack in Paris on the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, a member of a jihadi forum, affiliated with ISIS, wrote a very striking explanation as to why France in particular was targeted. As is usual in the jihadi world, which seeks to return to the early days of Islam centuries ago, history played an important role in his thinking: “France was one part of the Islamic land and it will be Islamic again.

What was he talking about? For years, global jihadi organizations have issued calls to retake al-Andalus, the Arabic name for Spain and those parts of the Iberian peninsula when they were held by the Muslims from 711 until 1492. This last summer ISIS members produced a video calling for the liberation of al-Andalus. But, it is often forgotten that shortly after the conquest of Spain, an Arab army crossed the Pyrenees and occupied territories that today are part of France. Having captured Bordeaux, it was met and defeated in 732 by a Frankish army led by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours — some 200 miles from Paris. Even after this historical battle, Arab armies did not halt their efforts to seize French territory. They in fact reached Lyons and threatened to occupy all of Provence. In fact, parts of France remained under Islamic rule until 759, when Narbonne, the main base of the invading Arab armies, fell.

Whether or not the attack in France was motivated by such historical memories, the passion to recover lost territories that were once under Islamic rule is a theme running through most of the organizations associated with the global jihadist network. It was no less than Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, who first articulated this theme: “Andalusia, Sicily, the Balkans, South Italy and Roman Sea Islands were all Islamic lands that had to be restored to the homeland of Islam; the Mediterranean and Red Sea should equally be part of the Islamic Empire as they were before.” Al-Banna’s writings, which are to this day still revered by most of the radical Islamic movements, are available on the internet today in Arabic and even in English.

In recent times, this ideological orientation of the Muslim Brotherhood has been best represented by Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, who is based in Qatar. Regarded by many as the highest spiritual authority in the Muslim Brotherhood, Qaradawi appeared on Qatari television in 2007 and declared: “I expect that Islam will conquer Europe without resorting to the sword or fighting. It will do so by means of da’wa (proselytizing) and ideology.” The only geographic points he mentioned in relationship to this expansion of the Islamic realm were as follows: “The conquest of Rome — the conquest of Italy, and Europe — means that Islam will return to Europe once again.”

Qaradawi, who appeared weekly on Al Jazeera, gave his patronage to a Muslim Brotherhood facility in a French chateau where Islamists used to train European Imams. Thousand of young Muslims were bussed into this retreat center. In short, Qaradawi’s ideas had multiple platforms through which they could spread.

There were other organizations that took Qardawi’s declarations a step further. Hamas, which is after all the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, has also made similar statements. Sheikh Younus al-Astal, who has had a leading role within the supreme religious body of Hamas (the Association of the Religious Scholars of Palestine) gave the following sermon in 2008 that was broadcast on Hamas television: “Very soon, Allah willing, Rome will be conquered, just like Constantinople was, as was prophesied by our Prophet Muhammad.” He then spoke about how the “Islamic conquests … will spread through Europe in its entirety” and beyond.

Dabiq, a journal published by ISIS, also deals with the conquest of Rome. The journal recently put on its cover a picture of Saint Peter’s Square in Rome; the editors manipulated the photograph and put the flag of ISIS on the obelisk in the center. The journal also quotes the founder of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as saying: “We fight here while our goal is Rome.” Before he led the insurgency in Iraq against the U.S. and its allies, Zarqawi actually set up a terrorist network for operations on European soil.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, under the ruling AKP Party, has also taken up the cause of recovering lost Islamic lands. In 2004, a U.S. State Department official sent a cable to Washington warning that at an event held at the AKP’s main think tank, he heard the idea voiced that Turkey’s role is to spread Islam in Europe, and “avenge the defeat at the siege of Vienna in 1683.” The cable linked a high level Turkish official with this view. It was made public by WikiLeaks.

What all these statements teach us is that virtually all these radical Islamic leaders see themselves as in no less than a civilizational battle with the West. There have been those who do not want to depict this struggle in this way, including those in the West who, out of political correctness, refuse to discuss the threat of radical Islam. They also cling to the mistaken idea that the Muslim Brotherhood can become an ally against al-Qaida and its affiliates.

Last week, on January 9, the American journal National Review published emails, leaked from an Al Jazeera producer, about the attacks in France. He sought to play down the significance of the terror in Paris, rejecting the notion that this was a “civilizational attack on European values.” He insisted that no one knows the motivation behind the attacks, suggesting perhaps that it was a reaction to France’s military actions against ISIS, or its operations in Libya and Mali.

In other words, the Al Jazeera producer did not want his network to admit that the attack in Paris was motivated by an aggressive Islamist ideology, but rather preferred to blame Western policies, which if it became widely accepted would cripple its leaders and deny them the self-confidence to take any effective action. That is what has largely happened until now. It is no wonder that Al Jazeera, whose headquarters is located in Qatar, has been correctly described as the satellite channel of the Muslim Brotherhood.

In contrast, Ghassan Charbel, the editor-in-chief of Al Hayat, the leading newspaper in the Arab world, on Monday refused to play down the Paris attacks as a unique, one-time event: “No one can disregard the scale of the problem and the extent of the threat any more.” Defying the political correctness of many of the world’s capitals, he bravely told the truth about what was happening: “What is clear is that the Paris attack is just the opening shot of a global war that the Islamist extremists will be waging in the West and the rest of the world.” He had no qualms about saying that the problem was the threat of radical Islam. Until the West internalizes his warning of what it is facing, unfortunately a new wave of attacks in the West will only be a matter of time.

Allies Know They Haven’t “Got a Friend” in Obama’s America

January 16, 2015

Allies Know They Haven’t “Got a Friend” in Obama’s America, Commentary Magazine, January 16, 2015

[T]he French and the rest of Europe know very well that the last thing they can count on in a crisis is the willingness of the Obama administration to “be there” for their oldest ally or anyone else for that matter.

In a week when French officials were rightly calling on the world to join them in the fight against Islamist terror, Washington was dithering and couldn’t even force itself to say the word “Islamist.”

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One of the basic rules of satire is that it is virtually impossible to satirize something that is already inherently ridiculous. That axiom is brought to mind as America belatedly sought to reaffirm its friendship with France in the wake of the administration’s decision to snub the Paris unity rally that commemorated the terror attack on the Charlie Hebdo office and a kosher market. Neither the president nor the vice president or even Secretary of State John Kerry bothered to come to a gathering attended by over 40 world leaders. But to make up for this, Kerry brought folk rock singer James Taylor to Paris to serenade French officials with a version of Carol King’s classic ballad, “You’ve Got a Friend.” This is something so absurd that it isn’t clear even the cleverest minds at Saturday Night Live or even Charlie Hebdo could adequately convey the sophomoric nature of a lame attempt to make up for a gaffe. While the real problem is the administration’s lack of comfort in standing up for the rights of cartoonists to offend Islamists as evidenced by the decision to stay away from the rally, it also tells us something significant about the inadequate man who is serving as the nation’s chief diplomat.

That Kerry would think schlepping an aging rock icon from his youth to Paris to tell the French that “all you’ve got to do is just ca-aall” if they need us is the sort of thing that makes one longs for the diplomacy of an earlier era when envoys wore uniforms, swords, and feathered hats and stuck to rigid formality.

That’s not just because such a gesture is jejune as well as puerile, though it is both of those things as well as a clear reflection of Kerry’s lack of seriousness as a public official. It’s that the French and the rest of Europe know very well that the last thing they can count on in a crisis is the willingness of the Obama administration to “be there” for their oldest ally or anyone else for that matter.

This is an administration that has spent six years offending and snubbing allies all the while seeking in vain to appease old foes and rivals such as Russia and Iran. Though U.S. and French policies often intersect, Paris and the rest of Europe have come to understand that Obama is as uninterested in their point of view or their needs as he is of those of congressional Republicans. In a week when French officials were rightly calling on the world to join them in the fight against Islamist terror, Washington was dithering and couldn’t even force itself to say the word “Islamist.”

As is well known, French opinion about the United States is decidedly mixed with resentment of American wealth and culture often overwhelming the basic commonality of interests shared by two great democracies. A James Taylor concert won’t make things much worse but neither will it improve the situation. What it will do is to remind Europe and those enemies once again that this is an administration that neither understands symbolism or how to reaffirm an alliance.

It is no small irony that an administration that came into office determined to work with the international community, and our allies rather than to be Bush-like unilateral cowboys, is now reduced to this sort of nonsense. What the French or any ally wants is not a touchy-feely Oldies song but a sense that the U.S. believes it is still part of the war against international terror. To the contrary, Obama’s instincts are such that allies have come to expect his contempt or disinterest in their problems.

Kerry’s cringe-inducing turn hosting his friend Taylor isn’t the dumbest thing he has done at the State Department by a long shot. Having faith in Mahmoud Abbas as a champion of peace and signing a weak nuclear deal with Iran are hard to top. But is an iconic moment that will symbolize Obama and Kerry’s ham-handed approach to allies. A song, even a folk rock classic that allows Kerry to reminisce about his youth spent falsely testifying against his fellow Vietnam vets, can’t substitute for a strong stand against Islamists or even the ability to say the word. Prior to this, it was possible to argue that U.S. foreign policy had become a joke. But after Taylor had finished warbling, even the president and his inner White House circle must be wondering what sort of a fool they’ve unleashed on the world.

The Free World Under Siege

January 16, 2015

The Free World Under Siege, Front Page Magazine, Robert Spencer, January 16, 2015

(As “radical” Islam becomes stronger and more assertive, the collective we become weaker and more compliant. — DM)

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The free world is under siege. And its appointed guardians are swinging wide the gates.

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Twelve cartoonists are dead in Paris for violating Islam’s blasphemy law. Four Jews are dead for being among the people that the Qur’an claims are “the most intense of the people in animosity toward the believers” (5:82). Muslims have recently attacked and killed police officers in New York City, Canada, and France. And Thursday, Muslims fired on police who were raiding their terror operations, and two of the jihadis were killed. Europe is under siege. As is the free world.

Murderous jihad attacks are coming more frequently than ever, and there is no reason to think they’re going to slow down. In a new Islamic State video, a jihadi declares: “I say to all French people who think that the Islamic State won’t arrive in Europe, with God’s help, we will arrive in Europe. We will expand across all of Europe, to France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and also the USA. I say to all my brothers that cannot immigrate and join the Islamic caliphate, try to resist with all means, kill them, slaughter them, burn their cars and homes. I say to my brothers, if you see a police officer—kill him. Kill them all. Kill all infidels that you see in the streets.”

Regarding Belgium in particular, “three Islamic State militants threatened attacks on Belgium in a video broadcast on Wednesday, the Belga news agency reported.” And the next day jihadis carried through on their threats. “I heard a sort of explosion, followed by several gunshots,” said a witness. Another added that “machine guns were firing for about 10 minutes.” A third said he saw two North African men “dressed all in black carrying a bag of the same color.” Still another said: “I heard two explosions. I left, then I saw two young people run — Arab types between 25 and 30 — who hurtled down in the dark with woolly hats on their heads.”

Said Thierry Werts of the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office: “This operational cell of about ten people, some of whom had returned from Syria, was on the point of launching significant terrorist attacks in Belgium. During the search, certain suspects immediately opened fire at special forces of the police with automatic weapons. They opened fire for several minutes. Two suspects were killed and a third was arrested.” He added that “even after one of the suspects was lying on the ground injured, he continued to fire.”

They were, in other words, what Western authorities have shown no indication of being: determined and tenacious, even to the point of death. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo jihad murders, there have been very few Western media outlets with the courage to stand up to the jihadis’ violent Sharia intimidation and demonstrate their commitment to defending the freedom of speech by republishing the Muhammad cartoons. Instead, most have given the jihadis exactly what they killed for: submission to Islamic laws forbidding criticism of Muhammad.

This submission heralds the death of free society. Once an idea – any idea — is established as beyond criticism, its adherents are free to exert their will on the larger population unchallenged. If that idea is Islam, it involves the imperative to kill or subjugate unbelievers that jihadis worldwide are acting upon. The shared objective of groups like the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and of jihadis who kill cartoonists is to intimidate the West into criminalizing criticism of Islam, which will hinder or obliterate altogether the ability of Western officials to understand the motives and goals  of the jihadis. Then the jihad can proceed unopposed.

That’s why it isn’t just ill-judged, it is nothing short of disastrous that so many Western media outlets declined to reprint the cartoons, and that so many Western leaders have made statements assuring us that they believe in free expression, but of course within proper limits, and one should not offend people’s religious sensibilities. The free world is under siege. And its appointed guardians are swinging wide the gates.

Suppose Islam Had a Holocaust and No One Noticed

January 16, 2015

Suppose Islam Had a Holocaust and No One Noticed, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, January 16, 2015

(Nothing to see here. Islam is the “religion of peace,” as its adherents demonstrate daily. Right? — DM)

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[W]e don’t pay much attention to what happens in Nigeria unless there’s a hashtag. No one has yet thought up a clever hashtag for the murder of 2,000 people. #Bringbackourdead doesn’t really work.

The Islamic wars from Nigeria to Israel, from Iraq to Kashmir, are genocidal. Israel may become the first Western country to suffer Islamic genocide, but it will not be the last. 9/11 was the first Islamic mass murder of thousands of Americans, but it will not be the last.

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While Western newspapers were debating whether or not to reprint the Mohammed cartoons, in Nigeria as many as 2,000 people were massacred by the Islamic State in Nigeria, also known as Boko Haram, in what is being called the deadliest attack by the Muslim group to date.

Survivors described the Islamic State setting up efficient killing teams and massacring everyone while shouting “Allahu Akbar”.

“For five kilometers (three miles), I kept stepping on dead bodies until I reached Malam Karanti village, which was also deserted and burnt,” one survivor said.

There’s a word for that. It’s genocide.

The Islamic State in Nigeria had reportedly managed to kill 2,000 people last year. This year they did it in one week.

But we don’t pay much attention to what happens in Nigeria unless there’s a hashtag. No one has yet thought up a clever hashtag for the murder of 2,000 people. #Bringbackourdead doesn’t really work.

The Islamic State’s next target is Maiduguri, the largest city in Borno with a population of over a million. Known as the “Home of Peace”, if Maiduguri falls, the death toll will be horrific.

The Catholic Archbishop, Ignatius Kaigama, warned that the killing wouldn’t stop in Nigeria. “It’s going to expand. It will get to Europe and elsewhere.”

Of course it already has, but not on the same scale.

“We will conquer Europe one day. It is not a question of (if) we will conquer Europe, just a matter of when that will happen,” an Islamic State spokesman had warned. “The Europeans need to know that when we come, it will not be in a nice way. It will be with our weapons.”

“Those who do not convert to Islam or pay the Islamic tax will be killed.”

Imagine that the burning towns and villages aren’t in Nigeria or Syria. Imagine them in France or Sweden. It’s not that great of a leap from armed cells carrying out attacks to a militia capturing entire towns and villages. They’re different phases in the same conflict.

Al Qaeda in Iraq went from a terror group carrying out suicide bombings to running a state in a decade. So did Hamas in Israel. There are already zones in Europe under the control of unofficial Sharia police. France has fewer Muslims than Nigeria and a more stable government with professional police and military forces. These two factors are the only ones keeping Islamic genocide at bay.

The massacres in France were carried out by the same types of men and movements responsible for the killings in Nigeria and Iraq. They just aren’t organized enough and still lack the numbers to conduct the same large scale genocide that they are already carrying out in Nigeria, Syria and Iraq.

Two Islamic States, one in Nigeria and another in Iraq/Syria, are engaged in genocide. Obama delayed responding to ISIS until it was already engaged in genocide and was moving on Baghdad. His people have done everything possible to avoid responding to the Boko Haram genocide in Nigeria.

The usual excuses are there. The central governments are compromised, incompetent and corrupt. The only possible solution is political. The real issue is poverty. Meanwhile the killing and the denial go on.

The foreign policy infrastructure, the human rights NGOs and the self-important scribblers who presume to tell the world what is important in the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post have fought hard to avoid connecting the killings by the Islamic State in Nigeria to the killings by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. And they have fought hardest of all to avoid connecting these killings to the thousands murdered in the streets of New York and the latest bodies strewn about Paris.

The killings can be connected with three simple words; global Islamic genocide.

The European intellectuals of the last century were too fixated on their vision of a better world to understand what was happening in Germany and Japan. And what had to be done about it. While they dreamed of a world government that would do away with war, the killing had already begun.

The intellectuals of this century are equally unwilling to take their attention away from microfinance, climate change and world government to see the beginnings of a worldwide Holocaust underway.

Genocide isn’t new to Africa or the Middle East so they put it down to local tribal conflicts. Terrorism isn’t new to America or Europe, so they blame political extremism. Like the elephant and the blind men who touched its trunk and thought it was a snake, they respond to the local manifestation of Islamic genocide by seeing a familiar local phenomenon; tribal war, political extremism or minority problems.

And anyone who sees the big picture is instantly denounced as an Islamophobe.

But what if the Muslim genocide of Hindus and Buddhists in Asia and the Muslim genocide of Christians and Jews in the Middle East are part of the same phenomenon?

What if the Islamic State killers in Nigeria who shout “Allahu Akbar” during their massacres share a motive with the 9/11 hijackers who were told to “shout ‘Allahu Akbar,’ because this strikes fear in the hearts of the non-believers”?

What if a common bloody thread of Koran verses runs through the massacres of non-Muslims in the Philippines and Kenya, in Israel and Australia, in France and China, in Thailand and Syria?

What if the acts of terror on the evening news are not random events, workplace violence, mental illness and political extremism, but the beginning of another global Islamic genocide?

The rise of Islam was not based on faith, but on mass murder.

Within a few centuries of the time that Mohammed had ordered the ethnic cleansing of Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula, the massacre of millions of Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists was underway across the Middle East through India and as far as Afghanistan.

The Islamic Holocaust was the greatest act of mass murder in human history. And it is still taking place today over a thousand years later.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” George Santayana wrote.

It would be a terrible thing indeed if we were condemned to repeat the mass murder of hundreds of millions and the eradication of entire civilizations under the black flag of the Jihad because we refused to remember the past or acknowledge the present.

Because we were too afraid of being called Islamophobic to speak out for the dead around the world.

It would be a terrible thing if the Nigerian village of today were to become a Swedish village tomorrow. It would be an even worse thing if the Muslim conquests of India were to be repeated in Europe.

Genocide is an ugly word.

It’s a word that we have come to associate with villages in Africa or with old concentration camps in Europe. We don’t think of it as something that can happen to us or to our children.

But we should.

The Islamic wars from Nigeria to Israel, from Iraq to Kashmir, are genocidal. Israel may become the first Western country to suffer Islamic genocide, but it will not be the last. 9/11 was the first Islamic mass murder of thousands of Americans, but it will not be the last.

In the face of genocide, our first duty is to warn the world.