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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.

Categories: Caliphate, Europe, Foreign policy, France, Free world, Freedom, Hamas, Human rights, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Muslim Brotherhood, Sharia law, Spain, Terrorism
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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.

Categories: Charlie Hedbo, Europe, France, Freedom, Human rights, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Israel, Kerry, Obama, Terrorism
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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.

Categories: Europe, Foreign policy, Free world, Freedom, Human rights, International Community, Islam, Islamic State, Islamophobia, Moral equivalence, Obama, Sharia law, Terrorism
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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)

Abubakar_Shekau_2_octobre_2014-450x295

[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.

Categories: Africa, Europe, Freedom, Holocaust, Human rights, International Community, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Moral equivalence
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A thought experiment about Islam

January 15, 2015

A thought experiment about Islam, Dan Miller’s Blog, January 15, 2015

(The views expressed in this article are mine, and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)

A religion which blesses and encourages the slaughter of those who offend it or its “prophet” should be condemned, not praised, unless and until it stops doing both. 

On January 14th, I posted an article titled Obama plans to restrain media offensiveness to Islam. As a thought experiment, this less than obviously relevant cartoon appeared at the top:

Islamic pig

I considered the cartoon offensive and hope that everyone else did too. It might depict Mohamed, or it might not. Beyond vague descriptions, likely of questionable value, we have little information about Mohamed’s physical appearance. The cartoon could depict any obese human male wearing a turban. The same is true of other cartoons purporting to depict Mohamed in various poses.

Had a similar cartoon shown instead a Roman Catholic priest or a rabbi on a roasting spit, with a giant pencil extending into his anus and thence through his body and mouth, present day Christians, Jews and those of most other world religions, as well as those of no religion, would quite likely be offended; far less because of the religious significance of the victim than because we do not do that sort of thing to people. We would not on either account murder the cartoonist. Many Muslims might well consider the cartoon funny and approve of what they consider an appropriate consequence of being Jewish or Christian.

As far as I am aware, no world religion other than Islam worships, and seeks to have its followers emulate, a “prophet” or saint who condoned and demanded the killing of those who mocked or otherwise offended him. Mohamed did. Neither Jesus nor Moses did. Nor, as far as I am aware, did any prophet or saint of any other current world religion.

Other Mohamed cartoons of which I am aware do not show him being killed or tortured. For example this cartoon, which inspired the vicious animosity of many Muslims, merely depicts him with a bomb in his turban and gazing with hatred at someone or some thing. It does not depict him being tortured or killed.

turbanbomb1

Rather than consider it offensive, I consider it a humorous way of depicting one (of the many) barbaric things done by Muslims in the name, and with the blessing, of their religion. Current day non-Muslims also use bombs and some of the same weapons. They use more advanced weapons as well. However, they do not generally do it in the name and with the blessings of their religions because of what they perceive as insults to those religions. That is a significant difference.

Modern cultures should not seek to prevent the publication of cartoons presenting Mohamed, or anyone else, in an unfavorable light. Nor should they seek to prevent cartoons of the objectionable type I posted on January 14th. They can also generate controversy and, hopefully, peaceful discussion. A cartoon of the sort suggested above, depicting a Roman Catholic priest or Jewish rabbi instead of Mohamed, probably would generate nothing more than peaceful controversy, aside from the pleasure of some Muslims.

If cartoons cause bad people to kill those who create or publish them, all of the subsequent adverse consequences should befall those who kill, not those who would create or publish more cartoons.Obama is intent upon imposing adverse consequences on the latter, while claiming that those who kill or attempt to kill in the name of Allah act on behalf of no religion. He would, and would have the rest of us, shield the murderers’ coreligionist supporters even from our displeasure. Obama is a disgrace to civilized humanity.

ISIS scared

ADDENDUM

Categories: Charlie Hedbo, Christians, Europe, France, Freedom, Human rights, Humor, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamism, Islamophobia, Jews, Jihad, Koran, Multiculturalism, Obama, Sharia law, Terrorism, Torture
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Free Fire Zone- A Strategy to defeat Global Jihad

January 15, 2015

Free Fire Zone- A Strategy to defeat Global Jihad, Blackfive, January 15, 2015

(I look forward to learning the substance of their proposal. — DM)

The Islamists are attacking all over the world. They are enslaving and killing innocents and the best the free world can come up with is more hashtags. I am glad to see some organizations standing up for freedom of speech and liberty, but it is maddening to watch the United States of America unwilling to even name the enemy facing us all. It is Islamist Extremists and they are proud to let us know.

President Obama has no strategy and is anything has shown a complete unwillingness and inability to deal with the reality we face. The Center for Security Policy has taken the ball and in the absence of leadership from the Commander in Chief, written a comprehensive strategy for dealing with and defeating the Global Jihad. We will release the document tomorrow Friday, January 16 at 12 Noon at the National Press Club in DC.

 

Categories: Combat troops, Foreign policy, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Obama, Obama administration, Rules of war, Terrorism
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Pegida: The New German Revolution

January 15, 2015

Pegida: The New German Revolution, The Gatestone Institute, Peter Martino, January 15, 2015

Pegida’s worries about the Islamization of Germany concern the seeming intolerance and religious fanaticism that have grown hand in hand with the arrival of Muslim populations unwilling to adapt to Western values.

But by decrying Pegida’s views as “xenophobic,” “narrow minded” and even “inhuman,” Germany’s ruling establishment shows how deeply out of touch it is with the worries of a large segment of the population.

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Pegida’s worries about the Islamization of Germany concern the seeming intolerance and religious fanaticism that have grown hand-in-hand with the arrival of the Muslim populations unwilling to adapt to Western values.

The terror attacks in France Had “nothing to do with Islam.” — German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière.

By decrying Pegida’s views as “xenophobic,” narrow minded” and even “inhuman,” Germany’s ruling establishment shows how deeply out of touch it is with the worries of a large segment of the population.

Perhaps the people in the East just want to avoid the situation that the Western part of the country is in. Having gone through decades of Communist dictatorship, perhaps they are less inclined to trust that their political leaders have the people’s best interests in mind with their policies.

Every Monday evening since last October, thousands of citizens have marched through the city of Dresden as well as other German cities to protest the Islamization of their country. They belong to an organization, established only three months ago, called Pegida, the German abbreviation for “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West.”

834 (1)PEGIDA on a Monday “evening walk” in Dresden, November 10, 2014. (Image source: Filmproduktionen video screenshot)

Pegida is a democratic grassroots organization, without origins in the far-left, far-right or links to any political parties, domestic or foreign. The French Front National [FN] of Marine Le Pen even made it clear that it wants nothing to do with “spontaneous initiatives” such as Pegida. According to the FN, “something like Pegida cannot be a substitute for a party.”

In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders of the Freedom Party [PVV] is more positive. He sees Pegida as a sign of the growing discontent of ordinary people with the political elite now governing them. “A revolution is on its way,” he says. Ironically, Wilders’s PVV, currently by far the largest party in the Dutch polls, is itself more of a spontaneous movement, driven by the energy and charisma of one single man with a mission to liberate his country from Islamic extremism, rather than an established and structured political party.

That Pegida is a spontaneous and diffuse organization of citizens expressing their discontent, seems to be worrying the German political establishment. German Chancellor Angela Merkel knows how powerful these movements can become. In 1989, when thousands of people shouting, “Wir sind das Volk” [“We are the people”] took to the streets in cities such as Dresden, the Communist regime in East Germany was toppled.

Apart from slogans such as: “Against Religious Fanaticism,” and: “For the Future of our Children,” the anti-Islamization protesters of Pegida are using exactly the same slogan — “Wir sind das Volk” — of the anti-Communist demonstrators a quarter of a century ago, as they march against the open-door policies of the German government.

The use of the 1989 liberation slogan has infuriated Merkel, who reproaches Pegida for using it. In her New Year’s speech, Merkel attacked the Pegida demonstrators. “Their hearts are cold, full of prejudice and hatred,” she said, while defending her government’s policies of welcoming asylum seekers and immigrants. She pointed out that Germany had taken in more than 200,000 asylum seekers in 2014, making it the country that is accepting the largest number of refugees in the world.

Merkel has been backed by church leaders, who are slamming Pegida and calling for solidarity with migrants. The Confederation of German Employers has been blaming Pegida for damaging Germany’s international reputation. Meanwhile, so-called anti-fascist demonstrators, shouting “Wir sind die Mauer. Das Volk muss weg!” [“We are the Wall. Down with the people!”], last week blocked a Pegida march in Berlin.

On January 10, fearing that the recent Islamic terror attacks in France might lead to even more public support for Pegida, Dresden Mayor Helma Orosz, a member of Chancellor Merkel’s Christian-Democratic CDU Party, co-sponsored in her town a so-called “Lovestorm” event. The aim was to conquer the “xenophobia” of Pegida through “open mindedness and humanity.” Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière, another leading CDU politician, claimed that the terror attacks in France had “nothing to do with Islam” and warned against “political pyromaniacs” such as Pegida who suggest otherwise.

Pegida’s worries about the Islamization of Germany concern the seeming intolerance and religious fanaticism that have grown hand in hand with the arrival of Muslim populations unwilling to adapt to Western values.

But by decrying Pegida’s views as “xenophobic,” “narrow minded” and even “inhuman,” Germany’s ruling establishment shows how deeply out of touch it is with the worries of a large segment of the population.

A recent poll, dating from before the terror attacks in France, found that one in three Germans support the Pegida anti-Islamization marches. Further, a new study by the Bertelsmann Foundation found that German attitudes toward Islam are hardening, with 61% saying in 2014 that Islam is “not suited to the Western world” — up from 52% in 2012. Also, up to 57% of the Germans see Islam as a threat, 40% feel that they are becoming foreigners in their own country because of the Muslim presence, and 24% want to ban Muslim immigration.

Looking at the numbers of demonstrators that join the Pegida demonstrations every Monday in various German cities, Pegida is clearly an overwhelmingly East German phenomenon. Indeed, in the provinces formerly belonging to the Communist German Democratic Republic [GDR], many thousands of people are drawn to the demonstrations, while in the West the numbers are far lower. Political analysts admit to being puzzled by this, given that the number of immigrants, including Muslims, is far lower in the East than in the West. Some blame the higher unemployment figures in the East; the “backwardness,” the lack of “civil society,” the lack of “liberal open mindedness,” and that “people in the East feel that they are losers.”

There might, however, be two other explanations that make more sense. Perhaps the people in the East just want to avoid the situation that the Western part of the country is in, as a result of the large Islamic presence. While the West might already be lost as a result of Islamization, the East is still capable of avoiding the West’s fate. Moreover, having gone through decades of Communist dictatorship, perhaps the Easterners are less inclined to trust that their political leaders have the people’s best interests in mind with their policies.

Perhaps they feel that, rather than trust that Frau Merkel knows what is best for the German people — as she welcomes in record numbers these new Islamic immigrants — the German people need to show her clearly that they think she is wrong.

Categories: Britain, Charlie Hedbo, Europe, Geert Wilders, Germany, Human rights, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Multiculturalism, Pediga, Political correctness
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After the Paris murders: Islam and the West, and blaming the Jews

January 15, 2015

After the Paris murders: Islam and the West, and blaming the Jews | Anne’s Opinions, 14th January 2014

The horrific terrorist murders in Paris have led to much thinking and opining about the root causes of the attacks and Muslim hostility towards the West and the Jews. The prime root cause in my humble opinion is Western denial about such hostility in the first place. The Blaze for example has a detailed article about President Obama’s denial of the link of Islam to any one of the multiple terror attacks that have taken place around the world in recent years.

David Horovitz in an excellent article (all his articles are excellent) in the Times of Israel really hits the nail on the head in The death cult ideology that France prefers not to name:

The obsession with Netanyahu’s words and deeds in Paris, and with what Hollande did or didn’t want, might seem trivial in the context of the day’s great exhibition of determined resistance to terrorism. The question of whether France would have mobilized in the way it did solely for Jewish victims might seem jaundiced and small-minded after a day of such grand display.

Netanyahu at the Grand Synagogue in Paris

But now that the 3.5 million marchers have all gone home, we are left with the question: What are the French actually going to do about the mounting challenge of Islamist terrorism? More security? Evidently so. More vigilance? Doubtless, at least for a while. More substantive action, truly designed to eliminate the danger? Don’t bet on that.

France promised the world to its Jewish community after the murderous Toulouse attacks. Hollande vowed time and again that France would do everything to counter anti-Semitism, to fight hatred, “to tear off all the masks, all the pretexts.” This time, too, he pledged unity and vigilance in the battles against racism and anti-Semitism. What he didn’t explicitly promise, then or now, however, was to tackle violent Islamic extremism. On Friday, indeed, he asserted in an address to the nation that “these terrorists and fanatics have nothing to do with the Islamic religion.”

It would be nice to think that they didn’t. But it is their perverted interpretation of obligation to that religion that they invoke in carrying out their acts of terror and fanaticism. And it is the growing brutal resonance of their kill-and-be-killed ideology, and the failure of mainstream Islam to effectively challenge it, that led Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to appeal to Muslim clerics in a remarkable speech on January 1 to promote a more “enlightened” interpretation of Islamic texts. As things stand, el-Sissi warned, the Islamic world is “making enemies of the whole world. So 1.6 billion people (in the Muslim world) will kill the entire world of 7 billion? That’s impossible … We need a religious revolution.” [I blogged about Sisi’s speech last week -anneinpt.]

Islamist jihad cannot and will not be defeated if it is not honestly acknowledged. The enemies of freedom will not be picked out at border crossings, tracked on the internet, targeted, thwarted and ultimately marginalized if insistent self-defeating political correctness means those enemies are not even named.

Jonathan Spyer, writing in “Reflections on the murders in Paris” in Middle East Forum provides some background to the motivations of political Islam which lead to Jihad and offers some remedies:

The Islamic world is currently in the midst of a great historic convulsion. This process is giving birth to political trends and movements of a murderously violent nature. These movements offer a supposed escape route from the humiliation felt at the profound societal failure of the Arab and to a slightly lesser extent the broader Muslim world.

The escape is by way of the most violent and intolerant historic trends of Islam, into a mythologized and imagined past. The route to this old-new imagined utopia is a bloody one. All who oppose or even slight it must die. The simple and brutal laws of 7th century Muslim Arabia are re-applied, in their literal sense. The events of last week in Paris were a manifestation of this trend.

…

The political trend in question is called political Islam. It manifests itself in its most extreme form in the rival global networks of the Al Qaeda movement and the Islamic State. But these, alas, are only the sharp tip of a much larger iceberg.

Political Islamists are not all, or mainly, young men from slums. On the contrary, its adherents include heads of state, powerful economic interests and media groups, and prominent cultural figures. Some of these, absurdly, were even present at the “solidarity rally” in Paris.

They rendered this event an empty spectacle by their presence.

…

Political Islam is a reaction to profound societal failure. It is also a flight into unreality. It has nothing practical to offer as an actual remedy to Arab and Islamic developmental problems. Economic, legal and societal models deriving from the 7th century Arabian desert are fairly obvious impediments to success in the 21st.

Where they are systematically imposed, as in the Islamic State, they will create something close to hell on earth. Where they remain present in more partial forms — as in Qatar, Gaza, Iran, (increasingly) Turkey, and so on — they will merely produce stifling, stagnant and repressive societies.

But the remedy for failure that political Islam offers is not a material one. It offers in generous portions the intoxicating psychological cocktail of murderous rage and self-assertion, and the desire to strike out and destroy those deemed enemies — infidels who transgress binding religious commandments, Jews and so on.

…

In contemporary western European societies, political Islam meets a human collectivity suffering, by contrast, from a profound loss of self. No one, at least in the mainstream of politics and culture, seems able to quite articulate what western European countries are for, or what they oppose — at least beyond a sort of vapid belief in everyone doing what they want and not bothering each other.

The result is that when violent political Islam collides with the satiated, lost societies of western Europe, the response is not defiance on the part of the latter, but rather fear.

This fear, as fear is wont to do, manifests itself in various, not particularly edifying, ways.

The most obvious is avoidance (“the attacks had nothing to do with Islam,” “unemployment and poverty are the root cause,” “the Islamic State is neither Islamic nor a state,” etc etc).

Another is appeasement — “maybe if we give them some of what they want, they’ll leave us alone.”

This response perhaps partially explains the notable adoption in parts of western Europe of the anti-Jewish prejudice so prevalent in the Islamic world.

The ennui of the western European mainstream will almost certainly prevent the adoption of the very tough measures which alone might serve to adequately address the burgeoning problem of large numbers of young European Muslims committed to political Islam and to violence against their host societies.

Such measures — which would include tighter surveillance and policing of communities, quick deportations of incendiary preachers, revocation of citizenship for those engaged in violence, possible imprisonment of suspects and so on — would require a political will which is manifestly absent. So it wont happen. So the events of Paris will almost certainly recur.

And lastly, since the elites will not be able to produce resistance, it will come from outside of the elites. Hence the growth of populist, nationalist parties and movements in western Europe. But Europe being what it is, such revivalist movements are likely to contain a hefty dose of the xenophobia and bigotry which characterized the continent of old.

Both these articles clearly illustrate the West’s problem with facing up to the awful brutal reality of religiously inspired political Islam which leads to the Jihadism that we are facing today on the streets of Europe and Israel.

Much of the media however appears to blame Israel, or even the Jews as a whole, for the murders of the four French Jews at the supermarket on Friday.

The BBC’s Tim Wilcox hit a new low by comparing Palestinian deaths to the murder of the French Jews, and then compounding the insult by claiming the Palestinians deaths were “at the hands of the Jews” – not Israel. BBC Watch reports:

Tim Willcox interrupts an interviewee talking about the recent antisemitic attacks in France to inform her – forty-eight hours after four Jewish hostages had been murdered in a terror attack on a kosher supermarket – that:

“Many critics of Israel’s policy would suggest that the Palestinians suffer hugely at Jewish hands as well.”

He then goes on to lecture her:

“But you understand; everything is seen from different perspectives.”

Here’s a short clip of his interview:

Wilcox later apologized but the “apology” was such a travesty that it itself became a further insult:

The reporter later took to social media platform Twitter to offer an apology of sorts. “Really sorry for any offense caused by a poorly phrased question in a live interview in Paris yesterday – it was entirely unintentional,” Willcox wrote.

Campaigners against anti-Semitism were unimpressed, however. “Tim Willcox is right to have apologized for the question, but the thinking behind it was just as problematic as the way he phrased it,” Dave Rich, Deputy Director of Communications for the Community Security Trust, the official communal security body of British Jews, told The Algemeiner. “There are simply no grounds on which to suggest that random Jewish shoppers in a Paris kosher grocery might be responsible for the fate of the Palestinians.”

Michael Salberg of the Anti-Defamation League accused Willcox of engaging in “anti-Semitism, plain and simple,” describing the reporter as “a proponent of anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and stereotypes.” As The Algemeiner reported last November, Willcox caused a separate furore during a BBC television panel discussion when he suggested that Jewish voters uncomfortable with British Labour Party leader Ed Miliband’s stance on Israel were motivated by financial concerns. “A lot of these prominent Jewish faces will be very much against the mansion tax,” Willcox said, referring to a Labour proposal for an additional tax on properties worth $3.5 million or more.

Wilcox is a disgrace and the fact that he hasn’t been fired by the BBC reflects as much on the BBC as on himself.

CNN downplayed the targeting of the Jews:

On CNN, meanwhile, reporters Chris Cuomo and Isa Soares implied that the assault on kosher supermarket Hyper Casher had not intentionally targeted Jews since the store was located in an “ordinary” part of Paris and Muslims also shopped there.

WATCH the CNN video below:

It was only a “surprise” to anyone who has not been following the huge rise in antisemitism in France. CNN is a prime example of politically-correct blindness.

CNN’s Jim Clancy went on a total anti-semitic meltdown in a Twitter screed documented by the Elder of Ziyon, yet Clancy, like Wilcox, is still employed by CNN. Again, this reflects as much on CNN as on Clancy.

Meanwhile the New York Times found the eve of the funerals of the Jewish victims the perfect timing to publish an anti-Israel op-ed by an Israeli:

Even a week of terrorist outrages in Paris wasn’t enough to convince the New York Times editorial page to temporarily suspend its obsession with the supposed evils of Israeli policy.

On Monday morning, alongside a piece signed by the Times Editorial Board which discussed anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment in France in several places – but did not deign to mention the fear among French Jews of rising anti-Semitism – readers of the “newspaper of record” were confronted with another article, entitled “Why I Won’t Serve Israel.”

…

Gilead Ini, a senior analyst with media watchdog CAMERA, slammed the Times for “perversely using the emigration of over one percent of the French Jewish population as an occasion to do what the newspaper does so often: Undermine Israel’s right to exist or, in this case, its ability to defend itself, by giving the country’s most marginal and hateful critics a platform.”

Added Ini: “It is a reminder that the New York Times opinion editor recently admitted to treating Israel with a harsher standard.”

For Rabbi Cooper, however, the publication of the piece “inadvertently highlighted an important truth.”

“Israel the only democracy in the neighborhood,” he said. “Good luck to the author if he had dared pen such a piece from Beirut, Damascus or Tehran.”

Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post quotes Canadian PM Stephen Harper and Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu’s statements on the terror attacks and then notes:

Israel is the beacon of light, the representative of democratic values and civilization itself in the Middle East. This is obviously why jihadists seek to destroy “Little Satan”; it is a warm-up to taking on Big Satan, the United States.

Like it or not, the Europeans and the left more generally have taken up anti-Israel doctrine as part of their creed, not realizing that Israel is essential to their survival and the values of democracy, pluralism and tolerance. It is not merely that Israel battles the jihadists in the Middle East, although this is crucial to the West. More important, Israel’s existence is confirmation that the West will defend itself, that those who yearn for a new caliphate do not get a free pass. Its presence is a refutation of the Islamists’ vision.

Killing Jews as the first step in a barbaric onslaught is, alas, not unique to the Islamic terrorists. It is an uncomfortable truth that whatever the latest “ism,” forces of tyranny and suppression target Jews, whether it is Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union or the jihadists in Gaza and Tehran. If ever there is confusion about who is the enemy of civilization itself, look at who is seeking to kill Jews.

The trouble is that the West, its leadership and its media, are having great difficulty in internalising and acknowledging that Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Israel or Jews per se, nor with anything Israel is perceived to have done.

The West has a problem understanding or agreeing that those same Hamas terrorists that Israel is fighting in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon are of the same jihadist mindset as the Paris murderers or the 9/11 terrorists or the Muslim terrorists who blew up buses and trains in Madrid and London on 7/7, and committed mass murder in Bali and Mumbai, and who killed hostages in an Australian cafe. Israel’s building settlements or demanding the right to pray on the Temple Mount is irrelevant to the Jihadis, no matter what they say to willing ears in the Western media. The Muslim terrorists’ problem with Israel is that it exists, full stop.

It’s long beyond high time that the world stopped hectoring Israel on what it “must” or “must not” do. As long as Israel exists we will be the target of terrorism, and Western antagonism to us only encourages the terrorists.

Moreover this Western hostility to Israel makes the Jihadists miscalculate and think that since the world blames Israel for the terrorism targeting it, they can similarly get away with targeting the West. And thus the roundabout continues. As one Twitter user observed:

https://twitter.com/ThisIsPalestine/status/555036840496209921

Categories: Antisemitism, Europe, France, Islam, Terrorism
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Oxford University Press Bans Pork Related Material From Books

January 15, 2015

Oxford University Press Bans Pork Related Material From Books, The Investigative Project on Terrorism, January 14, 2015

Oxford University Press (OUP) has banned authors from depicting pork-related products in their children’s books in an apparent attempt to avoid offending Jews and Muslims, the Daily Mail reports.

The new prohibition came up during a conversation about free speech on Radio 4’s Today program and was referred to as “nonsensical political correctness.”

“I’ve got a letter here that was sent out by OUP to an author doing something for young people. Among the things prohibited in the text that was commissioned by OUP was the following: Pigs plus sausages, or anything else which could be perceived as pork,” state Radio 4’s Today presenter Jim Naughtie.

An OUP spokesman justified the new regulations.

“Many of the educational materials we publish in the UK are sold in more than 150 countries, and as such they need to consider a range of cultural differences and sensitivities.”

However, these new measures have received considerable backlash from prominent figures.

Tory Member of Parliament (MP) Philip Davies stated that “no word is offensive. It is in the context in which it is used that is offensive … we have to to get a grip on this nonsensical political correctness.”

“That’s absolute utter nonsense. And when people go too far, that brings the whole discussion into disrepute,” agreed Muslim Labour MP Khalid Mahmood.

These new rules have serious implications for the freedom of speech, particularly in context of the recent deadly terrorist attacks in Paris initially targeting the satirical Charlie Hebdo publication.

“Jewish law prohibits eating pork, not the mention of the word, or the animal from which it derives,” said a spokesman for the Jewish Leadership Council.

This is not the first time that non-Muslims in Britain have attempted to self-censor in an effort to avoid actions they believed would offend Muslims. In 2007, organizers of a performance of a children’s play by Roald Dahl at a school in West Yorkshire originally removed the “Three Little Pigs” from the show, in favor of the “Three Little Puppies.” Councillors reversed that decision.

Likewise, two major banks in England in 2005 banned the use of piggy-banks in advertising or as gifts for children because of a perception that the banks would offend Muslims.

Categories: Diversity, Europe, Islam, Jews, Multiculturalism, Oxford University Press
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Obama plans to restrain media offensiveness to Islam

January 15, 2015

Obama plans to restrain media offensiveness to Islam, Dan Miller’s Blog, January 14, 2015

(The views expressed in this article are mine, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)

All the “news” that is fit to print serves Obama.

Islamic pig

In keeping with Obama’s policy and practice of pressuring “legitimate news media” to follow His desires vis a vis news coverage (see generally Sharyl Attkisson’s Stonewalled), Josh Earnest announced on January 12th:

President Barack Obama has a moral responsibility to push back on the nation’s journalism community when it is planning to publish anti-jihadi articles that might cause a jihadi attack against the nation’s defense forces, the White House’s press secretary said Jan. 12. [Emphasis added.]

“The president … will not now be shy about expressing a view or taking the steps that are necessary to try to advocate for the safety and security of our men and women in uniform” whenever journalists’ work may provoke jihadist attacks, spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters at the White House’s daily briefing.[Emphasis added.]

The unprecedented reversal of Americans’ civil-military relations, and of the president’s duty to protect the First Amendment, was pushed by Earnest as he tried to excuse the administration’s opposition in 2012 to the publication of anti-jihadi cartoons by the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. [Emphasis added.]

 

Here’s what Obama said on January 7th about the Islamic jihad attacks in France. Please note that He expressed approval of a free press and mentioned terrorism, but mentioned neither jihad nor Islam, “radical,” “extremist” or any other flavor.

Earnest’s January 12 statement, generally not reported by the “legitimate news media,” is a masterpiece of ambiguity and hence of obfuscation. Hence, we will have to wait to learn what “anti-jihadi” means, how and under what circumstances Obama, in His capacity as President and Commander in Chief of active duty U.S. armed forces, and His minions, will know in advance which media organizations are planning to publish what material and what tactics He will employ if expressing His views is insufficient.

What, in Obama’s view, are “jihadi” activities? Are they un-Islamic?

What types of “anti-jihadi articles” “might cause a jihadi attack against our nation’s armed forces”? Those criticizing Muslim attacks on members of the U.S. or allied military forces? Those criticizing Muslim slaughter of Christians, Jews and other non-Muslims? Those critical of Sharia law? Those critical of a Muslim clerics, perhaps Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, or its President, Rouhani (also a cleric)? Those critical of a nuclear deal with Iran? Those critical of Mohamed and/or Allah? Those critical of Islam in general — perhaps televised interviews with Ayaan Hirsi Ali or with other apostates from Islam? Interviews with reformist Muslims, such as Egyptian President Sisi? Any of these, as well as others casting even minimal aspersions on the “religion of peace” might (or might not) have that effect.

Would media reports about attacks on members of  U.S. or allied military by forces of the Islamic State and its various cohorts fit within Obama’s parameters? Since the Islamic State, et al, are “not Islamic,” perhaps Obama does not consider such attacks to be true jihad.

How about reports of “anti-Muslim” backlash? Obama most likely wants as many as quickly as possible, whether real or imagined.

When the media rushes to print interviews with Muslims claiming to suddenly be terrified of an imaginary backlash, it is marginalizing and silencing the real victims of Muslim violence who have been the subjects of a Muslim assault for over a thousand years complete with literal lashings.

Earnest threatened that Obama will “will not now be shy about expressing a view or taking the steps that are necessary” to restrain the media. That suggests that if, after expressing His views, a media outlet does not oblige Him, He will take additional steps. How? What? Ms. Attkisson provided many examples of what His administration has done to make media accede to His views on what should be reported and how, and what should not be reported. For example, Government employees have been instructed to refuse or restrict access to journalists out of favor with the Obama administration, they have been excluded from photo ops and other, more important, events and, if Ms. Attkisson is correct, as I think she is, her computers and those of others less than favorable to Obama have sometimes been hacked and their other electronic devices have been tampered with by Government agents. “That’s a nice newspaper/radio station/television station you have there. I sure hope nothing unfortunate happens to it.”

Whatever Earnest may mean and whatever Obama may intend, the ambiguous warning to the media — even standing alone and even without further public clarification — seems likely to have an unwholesome restraining effect on what is reported about Islam and how.

Categories: Charlie Hedbo, Foreign policy, Humor, Islam, Islamic jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism, Obama, Sisi, Terrorism
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