“Nothing to Do with Islam”? Gatestone Institute via YouTube, October 20, 2016
Archive for the ‘Islam and conquest’ category
“Nothing to Do with Islam”?
October 21, 2016The Vatican Submits to Islam (2006-2016)
October 16, 2016The Vatican Submits to Islam (2006-2016), Gatestone Institute, Giulio Meotti, October 16, 2016
“[Pope Benedict XVI] has doubted publicly that it can be accommodated in a pluralistic society… and tempered his support for a programme of inter-religious dialogue run by Franciscan monks at Assisi. He has embraced the view of Italian moderates and conservatives that the guiding principle of inter-religious dialogue must be reciprocità. That is, he finds it naive to permit the building of a Saudi-funded mosque, Europe’s largest, in Rome, while Muslim countries forbid the construction of churches and missions.” — Christopher Caldwell, Financial Times.
In that lecture, Benedict did what in the Islamic world is forbidden: freely discussing faith. He said that God is different from Allah.
Since then, apologies to the Islamic world have become the official Vatican policy. Pope Francis denied that Islam itself is violent and claimed that the potential for violence lies within every religion, including Catholicism. Previously, Pope Francis said there is “a world war” but denied that Islam has any role in it.
“It is clear that Muslims have an ultimate goal: conquering the world…But we find it hard to recognize this reality and to respond by defending the Christian faith (…) I have heard several times an Islamic idea: ‘what we failed to do with the weapons in the past we are doing today with the birth rate and immigration’. The population is changing. If this keeps up, in countries like Italy, the majority will be Muslim (…) And what is the most important achievement? Rome.” — Monsignor Raymond Burke, US Catholic leader.
If 9/11 was the declaration of jihad against the West, 9/12 will be remembered as one of the most dramatic knee-bends of the Western cultural submission to Islam.
On September 12th 2006, Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger) landed in Bavaria, Germany, where he was born and first taught theology. He was expected to deliver a lecture in front of the academic community at the University of Regensburg. That lesson would go down to history as the most controversial papal speech of the last half-century.
On this, the 10th anniversary of the speech, the Western world and the Islamic world both owe Benedict an apology, but unfortunately, the opposite happened: the Vatican has apologized to the Muslims.
In his lecture, Pope Benedict clarified the internal contradictions of contemporary Islam, but he also offered a terrain of dialogue with Christianity and Western culture. The Pope spoke of the Jewish, Greek and Christian roots of Europe’s faith, explaining why these are different from Islamic monotheism. His talk contained a quote from the Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Paleologus: “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman”.
This keg of dynamite was softened by a quotation from a Koranic sura of Mohammed’s youth, Benedict noted, “when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat”, and which says: “There is no compulsion in religion.”
Pope Benedict’s talk was not a surprise. “It is no secret that the Pope worried about Islam”, Christopher Caldwell noted in the Financial Times.
“He has doubted publicly that it can be accommodated in a pluralistic society. He has demoted one of John Paul II’s leading advisers on the Islamic world and tempered his support for a programme of inter-religious dialogue run by Franciscan monks at Assisi. He has embraced the view of Italian moderates and conservatives that the guiding principle of inter-religious dialogue must be reciprocità. That is, he finds it naive to permit the building of a Saudi-funded mosque, Europe’s largest, in Rome, while Muslim countries forbid the construction of churches and missions”.
In Regensburg, Benedict staged the drama of our time and for the first time in the Catholic Church’s history — a Pope talked about Islam without recycling platitudes. In that lecture, the Pope did what in the Islamic world is forbidden: freely discussing faith. He said that God is different from Allah. We never heard that again.
The quotation of Manuel II Palaeologus bounced around the world, shaking the Muslim umma [community], which reacted violently. Even the international press was unanimous in a chorus of condemnation of the “Pope’s aggression on Islam.”
The reaction to Pope’s speech proved that he was right. From Muslim leaders to the New York Times, everybody demanded the Pope’s apologies and submission. The mainstream media turned him into an incendiary proponent of Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations.” In the Palestinian Authority area, Christian churches were burned and Christians targeted. British Islamists called to “kill” the Pope, but Benedict defied them.
At the same time, in Somalia, an Italian nun was shot. In Iraq, a Syrian Orthodox priest was beheaded by al-Qaeda and mutilated after the terrorists demanded that the Catholic Church to apologize for the speech. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood pledged retaliations against the Pope. A Pakistani leader, Shahid Shamsi, accused the Vatican of supporting “the Zionist entity.”Salih Kapusuz, number two in the party of the Turkey’s then Prime Minister (now President) Recep Tayyip Erdogan, compared Pope Benedict XVI to Hitler and Mussolini. The Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, insisted that the words of the Pope belong to “the chain of US-Israeli conspiracy,” and accused Benedict of being part of the “Crusader conspiracy.”
Security around Pope Benedict was soon massively increased. Two years later, the Pope had been barred from speaking at Rome’s most important university, La Sapienza. After the Regensburg affair, Benedict would not be the same anymore. Islamists and Western appeasers had been able to close his mouth.
A few days after the lecture, exhausted and frightened, Pope Benedict apologized. I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address … which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims,” the Pope told pilgrims at his Castelgandolfo summer residence. The quote did not “in any way express my personal thoughts. I hope this serves to appease hearts.”
The Pope may have said that to stop further violence. But since then, apologies to the Islamic world have become the official Vatican policy.
“The default positions vis-à-vis militant Islam are now unhappily reminiscent of Vatican diplomacy’s default positions vis-à-vis communism during the last 25 years of the Cold War,” wrote George Weigel, a US leading scholar. The Vatican’s new agenda seeks “to reach political accommodations with Islamic states and foreswear forceful public condemnation of Islamist and jihadist ideology.”
Ten years since the Regensburg lecture, relevant as ever after ISIS’s attacks on European soil, another Pope, Francis I, has tried in many ways to separate Muslims and violence and always avoided mentioning that forbidden word: Islam. As Sandro Magister, one of Italy’s most important journalists on Catholic issues, wrote: “In the face of the offensive of radical Islam, Francis’s idea is that ‘we must soothe the conflict’. And forget Regensburg.”
The entire Vatican’s diplomatic body today carefully avoids the words “Islam” and “Muslims,” and instead embraces a denial that a clash of civilization exists. Returning from World Youth Day in Poland last August, Pope Francis denied that Islam itself is violent and claimed that the potential for violence lies within every religion, including Catholicism. Previously, Pope Francis said there is “a world war,” but denied that Islam has any role in it.
In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI (left) said what no Pope had ever dared to say — that there is a link between violence and Islam. Ten years later, Pope Francis (right) never calls those responsible for anti-Christian violence by name and never mentions the word “Islam.” (Image source: Benedict: Flickr/Catholic Church of England | Francis: Wikimedia Commons/korea.net)
In May, Pope Francis explained that the “idea of conquest” is integral to Islam as a religion, but he quickly added that some might interpret Christianity, the religion of turning the other cheek, in the same way. “Authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence,” the Pope claimed in 2013. A year later, Francis declared that “Islam is a religion of peace, one which is compatible with respect for human rights and peaceful coexistence.” He claimed that it is the ills of global economy, and not Islam, that inspire terrorism. And a few days ago, the Pope said that “people who call themselves Christians but do not want refugees at their door are hypocrites.”
Pope Francis’s pontificate has been marked by this moral equivalence between Christianity and Islam, which also obfuscates the crimes of Muslims against their own people, Eastern Christians and the West.
But there are brave cardinals who still speak the truth. One is the US Catholic leader Raymond Burke, who is featured in a recent interview with the Italian media, in which he said:
“It is clear that Muslims have an ultimate goal: conquering the world. Islam, through the sharia, their law, wants to rule the world and allows violence against the infidels, such as Christians. But we find it hard to recognize this reality and to respond by defending the Christian faith (…) I have heard several times an Islamic idea: ‘what we failed to do with the weapons in the past we are doing today with the birth rate and immigration’. The population is changing. If this keeps up, in countries like Italy, the majority will be Muslim (…) Islam realizes itself in the conquest. And what is the most important achievement? Rome.”
Unfortunately, Rome’s first bishop, Pope Francis, seems deaf and blind to these important truths. It took five days for Benedict XVI to apologize for his brave lecture. But he opened a decade-long season of the Vatican’s excuses for Islamic terrorism.
Pope Francis is still awaited for a visit at the church of St.-Étienne-du-Rouvray, where Father Jacques Hamel was murdered by Islamists this summer. That killing, ten years after the Regensburg lecture, is the most tragic proof that Benedict was right and Francis wrong.
Refugees or an Occupation Army?
October 11, 2016Refugees or an Occupation Army? Gatestone Institute, Maria Polizoidou, October 11, 2016
“Allah requires from the believers to be masters of the land where they live, and only they can have property, and only we will be able to own the land.” — Muslim migrants in Crete, Greece.
The migrants were ready to wage jihad because they believed a rumor about an event for which, even had it been true, the Greek State and its inhabitants had no responsibility.
The establishment in Greece is a miniature of the American establishment: politicians and institutions of government corrupted to the bones.
We Greeks have already been crushed by Islam, by the twentieth century genocide in Turkey and the more recent Turkish occupation of Cyprus, again with the world’s complicity.
What is happening in Greece, as in much of Europe, is actually a massive replacement of its population, its values and its way of life.
The mainstream political parties obey the self-destructive EU policies on immigration that could eventually cause the end of the Hellenic-Judeo-Christian values of Europe, such as individual freedom, critical thinking and dispassionate inquiry.
What does an occupation army do when it is installed in a country? It occupies the land, forcing residents to follow its own way of life. It implements measures against the country’s inhabitants, it propagandizes its beliefs and uses force to have them imposed.
This, sadly, is what has been happening in Greece from the migrants who seem to “forget” that they are hosted in Greece and force the Greeks to feel like guests in their own country.
If someone is a war refugee or his life is in danger in his homeland, it would seem appropriate, when he arrives in the country which offers him asylum, to be grateful to this country, respect its history, its people its values and its laws. The same would hold true for an immigrant who wants to go to a country where he hopes he will find a better future.
In Greece, conversely, illegal immigrants — all of whom the media call “refugees,” apparently trying artificially to legalize them in the moral consciousness of citizens — have been occupying spaces that do not belong to them, using violence, blocking roads, committing crimes against public property, acting aggressively toward residents and the police, and saying that they feel offended when they see symbols that represent Christianity. The guests seem to be trying to take over the house.
A few weeks ago, 200 North Africans and Pakistanis rioted in the middle of the night, demanding to leave Mytilene Island. They were chanting, “Jihad! Jihad!”, smashing the residents’ cars in the center of the island and disrupting the local community. The migrants claimed that someone told them about the death of seven migrants on a ship, so they rose up against the authorities. The police and NGO workers explained that this was misinformation, but the 200 migrants were evidently not interested in hearing that. The migrants were ready to wage jihad because they believed a rumor about an event for which, even had it been true, the Greek state and its inhabitants had no responsibility. The authorities were unsuccessful at calming them down and trying to make them return to their living area.
As it turned out, there were no dead migrants; the uprising was a “mistake,” but the police and the locals had to spend the night tracking down refugees and migrants on the streets of Mytilene.
The illegal immigrants stated that the information about the seven dead migrants came through phone calls to them during the night. Police sources say, off the record, that this incident has all the hallmarks of covert “black operations.”
A few days later, on September 19, 2016, on Mytilene Island again, there was a new eruption from migrants in the Moria district. This time, the information the migrants heard, which again turned out to be false, was that they were about to be returned to Turkey. Immediately they set fire to 16 acres of olive trees, as well as to the camp in which they were living.
Now 300 migrants, who had earlier escaped from their camp and tried to protest in the center of the island, were burning everything in the camp and the area around it, until the police stopped them and made them to return to the camp, where again they tried to burn everything.
Residents saw their groves of olive trees turn to cinders as well as much of the migrant camp, three shipping containers, clothing and footwear.
Some of the illegal immigrants were taking selfies during the burning and chanting, “Allahu Akbar” [“Allah is the Greatest”].
The Port of Mytilene Island was turned into a battlefield, where migrants and many Greek “leftists” tried to prevent the military contingent from lowering the Greek flag in front of the town’s old port. Many Greeks hate the national flag. They appear to prefer multinational states without any references to the state’s national foundations. They were chanting slogans and provoking both the military contingent and the people of Mytilene Island, who watched amazed from the opposite side of the road. It was a demonstration of power from behalf of “leftists” and illegal immigrants. Many citizens of Mytilene Island evidently could not stand to see the illegal immigrants and other Greeks provoke them and try to halt the lowering of the flag. So some citizens moved aggressively against them and engaged them in street fights.
Every Sunday morning on Mytilene Island, soldiers hoist the flag and in the evening, an hour before sunset, soldiers lower the flag. A week after this incident, thousands of Greeks gathered around the soldiers and the flag in Mytilene Port and were singing Greek National Anthem, showing their faith and honoring the national symbol. People are scared. They are gathering around the flag and the Army apparently because they feel they are losing their homeland and their sovereignty to the thousands illegal immigrants who have occupied their island.
On September 26, 2016, in the Tympaki region of the island of Crete, people found all over the streets quotes from the Quran. The text, signed by the “Muslim Brotherhood of Crete Island”,stated among other things:
- “You are the senior people of the whole world, Only your faith counts and no one else has the right of life and death and ownership over every other person who dares to challenge your leadership and will not embrace your faith.
- “Allah requires from the believers to be masters of the land where they live, and only theycan have property, and only we will be able to own the land.
- “Allah said that we should conquer all the planet, and the faithful ones should own the land and the crops.
- “Unbelievers cannot have land and crops because it belongs only to us – the believers.
- “Unbelievers will have from us – as the holy Quran assures us – only alms.”
On the same day, September 26, in the Asprovalta region near the city of Thessaloniki, a 49-year-old man from France who came to Greece through Turkey was followed by police officers because he was suspected of being a jihadist. The moment he saw the police car, he rammed it, while chanting “Allahu Akbar”. [Allah is the greatest”] The attacker was arrested and the district attorney ordered his deportation.
A month ago, the inhabitants of Vavilon, a small village in Chios, another island that received a large number of illegal immigrants, decided to take the law into their hands, because, it seems, the state was not protecting them. The residents set up a militia to protect their families and their property from illegal immigrants. Within a week, they had recorded more than ten burglaries and vast property damage.
The media covers these disruptions only when they are like earthquakes, when one large one causes major disasters; the small ones are evidently not interesting. The same indifference of the media can also be seen regarding daily problems caused by the illegal immigrants. The media covers drug trafficking, conflicts between migrants of different Islamic doctrines, rebellions in migrant shelters, conflicts between countries and races, and underage boys and girls being raped. On September 24, in the Moria area of Mytilene Island, four 17-year-old migrants from Pakistan raped an underage Pakistani migrant, age 16, and recorded the rape with their phones. The police arrested the perpetrators, who had been blackmailing the boy before they raped him.
Illegal immigrants have also been blocking roads in many cities; halting traffic for hours. They occupy the roads whenever they feel like it; the police do not stop them and there are no arrests.
The Greek government has been friendly to the migrants. Illegal immigrants have, in an apparent demonstration of power, been asking Greek drivers to show their IDs and driver’s licenses. They have established checkpoints as an occupation army does. The government and the police did nothing to stop them. People showed their documents because of the great numbers of migrants; the drivers were evidently scared for their lives and their cars, and did not want things to get nasty. If you consider that the police were just watching all this passively, the drivers did not have much choice.
Another day, illegal immigrants blocked a road because they apparently did not have a good enough internet connection in the “refugee shelter.”
How would Americans feel if Muslim illegal immigrants living in America said that they were offend by the Statue of Liberty because she was not wearing a burqa?
The Archbishop of Athens and All Greece, Hieronymus, last March removed his cross, the symbol of Christianity, from his vestments during his visit to the Port of Piraeus, in order, he said, not to “offend” the Muslim migrants.
Archbishop Hieronymus of Athens and All Greece is pictured distributing food to migrants at the Port of Piraeus. The Archbishop removed his cross from his vestments during the visit to Piraeus, in order, he said, not to “offend” the Muslim migrants. (Image source: HellasNewsTv video screenshot)
Who warned him that Muslim migrants would be offended by his cross? What would they do if the Archbishop visited them while wearing his cross? Would they kill him? Would they burn the city of Piraeus? They would wage jihad against the Greek people?
Why are we hiding the symbols of our faith from people who come illegally and uninvited into our countries? What power could make an Archbishop remove the symbol of his faith, apart from a country’s political power?
The problem in Greece is not only the government or the mismanagement of illegal immigration. All traditional mainstream political parties in Greece, directly or indirectly, have been encouraging illegal immigration and the transfer of huge Muslim populations into Greek society. They obey the self-destructive EU policies on immigration that could eventually cause the end of the Hellenic-Judeo-Christian values of Europe, such as individual freedom, critical thinking and dispassionate inquiry.
We Greeks have already been crushed by Islam, by the twentieth century genocide in Turkey — that even now targets anyone not Muslim such as Christians, Alevis and Kurds — and the more recent Turkish occupation of Cyprus, again with the world’s complicity.
In spite of that, the mainstream political parties clearly do not care about protecting the nation, its identity or the safety of its citizens.
The establishment in Greece is a miniature of the American establishment: politicians and institutions of government corrupted to the bones, mainstream media and oligarchical fans of globalization. Greece is, in fact, being paid 198 million euros for the refugees.
The Greek establishment suffers from the same symptoms as Western European and American regimes. They no longer believe in the foundations of the Republic: “Vox Populi, Vox Dei”: the voice of the people is the voice of God.
The political establishment, when the public does not agree with their policies about illegal immigration and the protection of national identity, prefers to blame the voters for immaturity, stupidity or fascism. So as the voters persist in retaining their views for national identity and against illegal immigration, the elites in Greece are replacing the native population by giving the illegal immigrants citizenship.
That is their solution to the migration crisis and Greece’s economic meltdown, from failed authoritarian policies of the unelected, unaccountable and untransparent EU. What is happening in Greece, as in much of Europe, is actually a massive replacement of its population, values and way of life. There is only one way now to save what is left of Greece: The British way. Exit. Now.
Islamic State, a new and deadlier enemy
September 27, 2016Islamic State, a new and deadlier enemy, The Gorka Briefing, Sebastian Gorka, PhD, September 26, 2016
An analysis/opinion piece that my wife Katharine and I wrote that was published in the Washington Times:
On the evening of May 2, 2011, America had a chance at closure.
We had lost thousands of our fellow Americans nine years earlier on that beautifully sunny September morning, and thousands more of our citizen-soldiers on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq.
But now President Obama gave the word: The master jihadi is dead.
In an audacious operation deep within Pakistan, Osama bin Laden had been located. And killed. Al Qaeda would soon be described by the commander in chief, as “on the ropes,” condemned to ever-increasing irrelevance. But this was not the end. There would be no closure for our nation.
A new, deadlier enemy has since emerged. A foe responsible for the carnage of San Bernardino and Orlando, and scores of attacks around the world. Now we are at war with the Islamic State — a threat group that has already claimed responsibility for one of the recent attacks — and its new caliph, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. Al Qaeda may no longer frighten us, but the Islamic State has dethroned it and is on the march.
We may be in the final stages of a presidential campaign which has polarized opinion on all matters, mundane and significant, but the facts speak for themselves.
According to the National Counterterrorism Center, part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Islamic State currently has “fully operational” affiliates in 18 nations around the world. Two years ago, the number was seven. Some of these branches are far from Iraq and Syria, including Afghanistan, where numerous Taliban commanders have sworn allegiance to Abu Bakr, and Nigeria, where Boko Haram — one of the deadliest jihadi groups active today — has changed its name to the West Africa Province of the Islamic State. According to the analysts of the SITE Intelligence Group, the totalitarian message of jihadism is so popular around the world that since June 2, outside the war zones of Iraq and Syria, there has been a jihadi attack somewhere around the world every 84 hours.
But does this mean that Americans are in greater danger today than on Sept. 10, 2001? Unfortunately, the answer is a resounding yes, and the empirical data is merciless in its incontrovertibility.
In its latest report titled “Muslim-American Involvement with Violent Extremism,” the University of North Carolina has compiled all the metadata on jihadi plots on U.S. soil since 2001. The trend they describe is an exponential one. The number of successful and intercepted terrorist attacks has grown every year (with an inordinate spike in 2009), and most disturbingly, with 2015 witnessing the greatest number of jihadi plots in America since the Sept. 11 attacks 15 years ago. Jihadism has not been weakened. Not abroad. Not in the States. With the attacks in California, Florida, and now apparently Minnesota, and potentially New York and New Jersey, ISIS has displaced al Qaeda, and it has done so here in America, too, not just in the Middle East or Africa.
In our report “ISIS: The Threat to the United States,” we answer the same question for the Islamic State that the University of North Carolina answered for all jihadists secreted within America.
The facts prove than our new enemy is more prevalent than al Qaeda ever was, with federal and state law enforcement arresting three times as many ISIS supports per month than the average for al Qaeda arrests since 2001. Here are the numbers: Since Abu Bakr declared the new caliphate from the pulpit of the Grand Mosque of Mosul at the end of June 2014, we have killed or interdicted 110 terrorists linked to ISIS, (the last one being two weeks ago in Roanoke, Va). And when one looks at what they were actually doing the picture is grimmest of all.
Just over 40 percent had sworn allegiance to ISIS and were set on leaving the United States to fight for jihad in Iraq and Syria. Just under 20 percent were management-level terrorists, the talent-spotters and recruiters who were facilitating the foreign passage of the “travelers,” as the FBI euphemistically calls them. But a full third of the ISIS suspects, like the San Bernardino killers, and Omar Mateen, the Orlando jihadi, had already decided that they could best serve the new Islamic State not by leaving but by killing infidels here on U.S. soil. This is the reality of life in the West today. Whether it is in California or Florida, or in Brussels, Paris or Nice.
As we start the 16th year of what has turned into our longest war ever, we must radically reassess our strategy for victory. The Islamic State has displaced al Qaeda and it is richer, better at propaganda, and has more fighters than bin Laden ever had.
November represents not only a choice of who the new commander in chief should be, but also what our new strategy to defeat ISIS and the global jihadi movement should be. We owe at least this to the memories of those lost on the beautifully sunny morning 15 years ago.
Islam’s “Quiet Conquest” of Europe
August 10, 2016Islam’s “Quiet Conquest” of Europe, Gatestone Institute, Giulio Meotti, August 10, 2016
♦ “Islam is a French religion and the French language is a language of Islam.” — Tariq Ramadan.
♦ In 1989, Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, justified the persecution of Salman Rushdie by Ayatollah Khomeini. Last year, Boubakeur called for the conversion of churches into mosques.
♦ In Britain, mainstream Muslim organizations are “justice” through more than 85 sharia courts attached to mosques.
♦ Civil war in France is what the Islamic State is looking for: unleashing a blind repression so that the Muslim population will show solidarity with the revolutionary minority. Yet, there is still worse possible outcome: that nothing happens and we continue as is.
♦ Real “moderate Muslims” are silenced or murdered.
Last month, the Wall Street Journal published an interview with France’s director of domestic intelligence, Patrick Calvar. “The confrontation is inevitable,” Mr. Calvar said. There are an estimated 15,000 Salafists among France’s seven million Muslims, “whose radical-fundamentalist creed dominates many of the predominantly Muslim housing projects at the edges of cities such as Paris, Nice or Lyon. Their preachers call for a civil war, with all Muslims tasked to wipe out the miscreants down the street.”
These Salafists openly challenge France’s way of life and do not make a secret of their willingness to overthrow the existing order in Europe through violent means, terror attacks and physical intimidation. But paradoxically, if the Islamists’ threat to Europe were confined to the Salafists, it would be easier to defeat it.
There is in fact another threat, even more dangerous because it is more difficult to decipher. It has just been dubbed by the magazine Valeurs Actuelles, “the quiet conquest“. It is “moderate” Islam’s sinuous project of producing submission. “Its ambition is clear: changing French society. Slowly but surely”.
That threat is personified in the main character of Michel Houellebecq’s novel, Submission:Mohammed Ben Abbes, the “moderate” Muslim who becomes France’s president and converts the state to Islam. And from where does President Ben Abbes start his Islamization? The Sorbonne University. It is already happening: Qatar recently made a significant donation to this famous university, to sponsor the education of migrants.
In France, the quiet conquest has the face of the Union of the Islamic Organizations of France (UOIF), which a Simon Wiesenthal Center report charged with “anti-Semitism, advocacy and financing of terrorism and call to Jihad… ”
Not only does UOIF not encourage the integration of Moslems in France,” the report states, “it actually provides a nursery for the most radical Islamist positions.”
In Italy we have just witnessed the strategy of this “moderate Islam.” The largest and most influential Islamic organization, l’Unione delle comunità ed organizzazione islamiche in Italia (Ucoii), sponsored Milan’s first Muslim councilwoman, Sumaya Abdel Qader, a veiled candidate of the center-left coalition. Qader’s husband, Abdallah Kabakebbji, openly called for the destruction of the State of Israel: “It is a historical mistake, a scam”, he wrote on Facebook. His solution? “Ctrl + Alt + Delete”.
Qader won the race over a real moderate Muslim, the unveiled Somali activist, Maryan Ismail. I met Mrs. Ismail at a pro-Israel forum in Milan. After losing the election, she broke with Italy’s Democratic Party in an open letter: “The Democratic Party has chosen to dialogue with obscurantist Islam. Once again, the souls of modern, plural and inclusive Islam were not heard”.
Take two “stars” of this French “moderate Islam.” The first one is Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, the motto of which is: “Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”
Ramadan does not hide in Raqqa or shoot at French citizens. By applying for French citizenship, he would like to become one of them. His office is in the Parisian suburb of Saint Denis; he has written 30 books and he has two million Facebook followers. Ramadan has academic chairs all over the world, he is the director of the Research Center for Islamic Law in Doha (Qatar) and the president of the European Muslim Network. He publicly campaigns for Islam along with Italy’s former prime minister, Massimo D’Alema. Ramadan recently explained his vision for Europe and France: “Islam is a French religion and the French language is a language of Islam”.
Ramadan’s project is not the hoped-for Europeanization of Islam, but the not-hoped-for frightful Islamization of Europe. He opposes the assimilation of Muslims into French culture and society. A few days before the election in Milan, Ramadan was in Italy to endorse the candidacy of Sumaya Abdel Qader.
The second French “star” is Dalil Boubakeur, the rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris. In 1989, Boubakeur justified the persecution of Salman Rushdie by Ayatollah Khomeini. In 2002, he testified for the prosecution against the writer Michel Houellebecq. In 2006, he sued Charlie Hebdo in court, after the publication of the Danish Mohammed cartoons. Last year, Boubakeur called for the conversion of churches into mosques and asked to “double” the number of mosques in France.
Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, last year called for the conversion of churches into mosques and asked to “double” the number of mosques in France. (Image source: TV5 Monde)
In the United Kingdom, mainstream Muslim organizations are dispensing “Islamic justice” through more than 85 sharia courts attached to mosques. Divorce, polygamy, adultery and wife-beating are only some of these courts’ matters of jurisprudence. In Germany, vice-chancellor Sigmar Gabriel criticized Saudi Arabia for financing Islamic extremism in Europe. It is the same kingdom which last year offered to build 200 new mosques in Germany.
Qatar, with its Al Jazeera television megaphone, is also very active in sponsoring Muslim Brotherhood Islamic radicalism all over Europe. The Qatari royal family, for example, in 2015 donated £11 million to Oxford’s St. Anthony’s College, where Tariq Ramadan teaches. Qatar also announced that it was willing to spend $65 million in the French suburbs, home to the vast majority of the six million Muslims in France.
Today in Europe, several scenarios are possible, including the worst. Among them, there is a civil war, which many are beginning to talk about, including Patrick Calvar, the director of domestic intelligence. This is what the Islamic State is looking for: unleashing a blind repression so that the Muslim population will show solidarity with the revolutionary minority. Yet, there is still worse possible outcome: that nothing happens and we continue as is.
The end is more important than the means. The Islamic State has the same goal as most of the members of so-called “moderate Islam”: domination under the sharia. Many supposedly “moderate Muslims”, even if they do not commit violent acts themselves, support them quietly. They support them by not speaking out against them. If they do speak out against them, they usually do so in coded terms, such as that they are “against terrorism,” or that what concerns them about violent acts by Muslims is the possibility of a “backlash” against them.
Violent jihadis, however, are not the only means of transforming Europe, and perhaps are even counterproductive: they could awaken the nations they attack. Soft and more discreet means, such as social pressure and propaganda, are even more dangerous, and possibly even more effective: they are harder to see, such as the West’s acceptance of dual judiciary and legal systems; sharia finance (if there had been a “Nazi finance” system, in which all financial transactions went to strengthening the Third Reich, what effect might that have had on World War II?), and the proliferation in the West of mosques and extremist Islamic websites. Although there are indeed many real “moderate Muslims”, there are also still many who are not.
To conservative Muslims, however, any Muslim who does not accept every word of Allah — the entire Koran — is not a true Muslim, and is open to charges of “apostasy”, the punishment for which is death. According to a leading Sunni theologian, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, based in Qatar, “If they [Muslims] had gotten rid of the punishment for apostasy, Islam would not exist today.”
That is why the late writer Oriana Fallaci once said to The New Yorker: “I do not accept the mendacity of the so-called Moderate Islam”. That is why real “moderate Muslims” are silenced or murdered.
This might summarize the current Islamic mainstream mentality: “Dear Europeans, continue to think about a shorter working week, early retirement, abortion on demand and adultery in the afternoon. With your laws, we will conquer you. With our laws, we will convert you”.
The “Anti-Normalization” Campaign and Israel’s Right to Exist
August 8, 2016The “Anti-Normalization” Campaign and Israel’s Right to Exist, Gatestone Institute, Khaled Abu Toameh, August 8, 2016
(Please see also, Israeli-Saudi Ties Warming; Hizballah and Iran Livid. — DM)
♦ For many Arabs and Muslims, the conflict with Israel is not about a withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines. These opponents have no intention of recognizing Israel’s right to exist, even if it allows for the creation of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
♦ A leading cleric, Dr. Ali Daghi, Secretary-General of the International Muslim Scholars, wrote: “There is a consensus among Muslims, in the past and present, that if an Islamic land is occupied, then its inhabitants must declare jihad until it is liberated from the occupiers.”
♦ “Anyone who calls for peace with the Zionists should brought to trial for high treason. Normalization is treason.” — Ramzi Al-Harbi, Saudi writer.
♦ Let us be clear: these are not fringe voices. This is mainstream Arab and Islamic society. What bothers them is not the “normalization” with the “Zionist entity,” but the fact that Israel exists. For the masses, jihad against Israel is the solution, not another peace initiative endorsed by unelected Arab dictatorships.
Arabs and Muslims are up in arms over a controversial visit to Israel by a retired Saudi general, Dr. Anwar Eshki, who is being accused of promoting “normalization with the Jews and the Zionist entity.” If “normalization” with Israel is being denounced as a major crime and sin, one can only imagine what “peace” with Israelis would be considered in the Arab and Islamic countries.
General Eshki and a delegation of Saudi academics and businessmen met with Israeli Foreign Ministry Director-General Dore Gold, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Maj.-Gen. Yoav Moderchai and several Knesset members from the opposition. The Saudi delegation also travelled to Ramallah, where its members met with Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinian officials.
Retired Saudi general Anwar Eshki (center, in striped tie) and members of his delegation, meeting with Knesset members and others during a visit to Israel, on July 22, 2016. (Image source: Twitter)
The anger engendered by the unprecedented visit by the Saudi delegation to Israel shows that many Arabs and Muslims continue to believe that Israel has no right to exist despite the optimism voiced over the so-called Arab Peace Initiative of 2002.
Several Arab and Muslim leaders insist that, according to this initiative, an Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital would lead to the creation of “normal relations” between their countries and Israel.
However, the outrage the Saudi delegation’s visit to Israel has triggered throughout the Arab and Islamic countries points to one conclusion: that for many Arabs and Muslims, the conflict with Israel is not about a withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines. Nor is the conflict about Palestinian rights and “normal relations” between Israel and the Arab and Islamic countries.
Those opposed to the visit are expressing their feelings under the banner of “Anti-Normalization” with Israel. The existence of Israel on “Muslim-owned” land, however, is the real problem. These opponents have no intention of recognizing Israel’s right to exist, even if it withdraws to the pre-1967 lines and allows for the creation of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. This, of course, stands in sharp contrast with the spirit of the Arab Peace Initiative, which many in the Western world mistakenly believe would put an end to the Israeli-Arab conflict.
The first to express outrage over the visit were thousands of Saudis, including top Islamic clerics, who took to social media to express their poison and hatred for Israel and Jews. Many reminded their listeners of fatwas (Islamic religious decrees) banning any form of “normalization” with Israel and Jews, who are referred to as “infidels and polytheists.” The fatwas also forbid Muslims from giving up any part of “Muslim-owned” land to non-Muslims.
In Islam, if land has ever been under Muslim control, like southern Spain, el-Andalus, it must belong to Muslims to be as an endowment, or waqf, held in trust for Allah, in perpetuity. As the entire Middle East was under the control of the Muslim Ottoman Empire from 1259-1924, many Arabs and Muslims believe that the entire area belongs only to Islam, regardless of who may have lived there before.
Jews, who have lived continuously in Biblical Canaan and Judea for three thousand years, might well wonder how they can be accused of “occupying” their own land.
One of the leading clerics, Dr. Ali Daghi, Secretary-General of the International Muslim Scholars, wrote: “There is a consensus among Muslims, in the past and present, that if an Islamic land is occupied, then its inhabitants must declare jihad until it is liberated from the occupiers.”
Clearly the two-state solution is not the goal of this cleric and his friends. Nor are they interested in “Palestinian rights.” Rather Dr. Daghi is concerned about the “right” of Muslims to all the land, including those parts on which Israel exists today.
Another senior Saudi religious leader, Adel Al-Kalbani, the former imam of the Grand Mosque of Mecca, joined the “anti-normalization” campaign by declaring: “When we were young, they used to call them the Zionist enemy. For sixty years, this enemy has not changed. But we have changed!” The “change” he is talking about relates to those few Arabs and Muslims who are willing to recognize Israel’s right to exist.
Saudi sheikh Esam Al-Zamel said, “The hatred for Israel and the Zionist enemy is inscribed in the hearts of our generation. We must inscribe these values and principles in the hearts of our children.”
Another Saudi citizen, Sultan Al-Jumeri, said, “Normalization and extending a hand to the Zionist entity must remain a disgrace and sin that will chase the perpetrators to their last day. This is a betrayal of the history, the land and the martyrs.”
Fahd Al-Shumri, also of Saudi Arabia, remarked, “Normalization means recognition of “Israel.” This will lead to another phase: relinquishing the Al-Aqsa Mosque and recognizing the Jews’ right to the land of Palestine.”
For his part, Hassan Al-Mutairi, a Saudi preacher, wondered, “Is there any Muslim who supports normalization with the Zionists? The stone and tree will remain witness to our enmity to the Jews.”
He is referring to a hadith (the words and actions of Mohammed), which is also a part of theHamas Charter, that states:
“Judgment Day will not come before the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Jews will hide behind the rocks and the trees, but the rocks and the trees will say: Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him — except for the gharqad tree, which is one of the trees of the Jews.”
Some Saudi and Arab writers described the visit by the Saudi delegation as a “stab in the back” against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS) against Israel. They urged the Saudi government to take immediate punitive measures against the former general and his delegation members, in order to deter others from committing such a “big crime” against Arabs and Muslims.
“Israel will remain our number one enemy in spite of the Zionists,” remarked Saudi writer Amal Zahid. Ramzi Al-Harbi, another writer from Saudi Arabia, commented, “Anyone who calls for peace with the Zionists should be brought to trial for high treason. Normalization is treason.”
Many Palestinians also joined the bandwagon by adding their incendiary and hateful remarks against the Saudis who visited Israel.
“We salute every Saudi who rejects normalization with the occupation,” said Palestinian political analyst Ibrahim Al-Madhoun.
Not surprisingly, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian groups also issued statements strongly condemning the visit of the Saudi delegation to Israel and calling for a ban on such trips. These groups even went as far as condemning a number of Palestinian Authority officials, such as Jibril Rajoub, for participating in the meetings between the Saudi delegation and Israeli officials.
The Palestinian “Resistance Committees,” a coalition of various Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza Strip, denounced the visit as a “crime against Palestine and its people.” The groups described the visit as “shameful” and warned against attempts by some Arabs and Muslims to “accept the existence of the Zionist terrorist entity on the land of Palestine.”
The widespread campaign against the visit of the Saudi delegation to Israel is the direct result of decades of anti-Israel indoctrination in the Arab and Islamic countries, including the Palestinians. At the core of this campaign is the denial of Israel’s right to exist and a denial of any Jewish link to “Muslim-owned” land.
Let us be clear: these are not fringe voices. This is mainstream Arab and Islamic society. The Palestinians, too, have long been part of this campaign, promoting their own “anti-normalization” drive to prevent anyone from meeting with Israelis.
By allowing (and sometimes endorsing) such campaigns, the Palestinian Authority is shooting itself in the head. Each time a PA official, including President Mahmoud Abbas, meets with Israelis, a large group of Palestinian “anti-normalization” activists react by denouncing the encounters and calling for a total boycott of Israel.
The anti-Israel BDS movement provides an inspiration to these haters. As far as the enemies of Israel are concerned, the campaign should not be only about boycotts, divestment and sanctions. As the fury over the visit to Israel clearly shows, what bothers them is not the “normalization” with the “Zionist entity,” but the fact that Israel exists.
The world can continue talking about the Arab Peace Initiative for as long as it wants. The facts on the ground show that the Arab and Muslim masses continue to see Israel as an alien body that was forcibly planted on “Muslim-owned” land. For the masses, jihad against Israel is the solution, not another peace initiative endorsed by unelected Arab dictatorships.
WarSclerotic 
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