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Islamic “peace,” Imam Obama and multiculturalism

January 13, 2015

Islamic “peace,” Imam Obama and multiculturalism, Dan Miller’s Blog, January 13, 2015

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

Multiculturalism fosters and perpetuates myths that Islam is the religion of peace, not death; that it is benign like other world religions and improves Western civilization. In Obama’s world, such fantasies are reality. They are principal bases of His foreign policies.

Islam

I argued here and here that adherents to Islam, not to “radical” or “extremist” Islam, but to Islam, are the perpetrators and supporters of the Islamic slaughter of those with whose ideologies and actions they disagree. They demand submission and will tolerate nothing less.

In His January 4, 2009 address in Cairo, Obama proclaimed:

America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles – principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

[P]artnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn’t. And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear. [Emphasis added.[

He continues to “fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear,” but who elected Him to do that? Despite massive evidence contrary to Obama’s perceptions of Islam as benign and slandered, He continues to base His perceptions and policies on what Islam is not, not on what it is. Bridget Gabriel, who also lived in Islamic countries, would disagree with many of Obama’s theses:

Here is Ms. Gabriel’s response to a Muslim-American citizen:

As goes Europe so goes the Obama Nation?

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation is the largest Islamic body in the world.

The OIC is comprised of the 57 Muslim-majority nations and the Palestinian Authority. They are the largest bloc at the UN, and when they meet on the head-of-state level, they literally speak for the Muslim world. [Emphasis added.]

Contemporaneously with the attack on Charlie Hedbo and a kosher supermarket in France, it sought

more implementation of the OIC-sponsored UN Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18 and the follow-up Rabat Plan of Action that would criminalize the very type of speech that Charlie Hebdo engaged in.

Such laws — similar to Sharia’s prohibition of “insulting” Islam — would criminalize our once free speech. Western nations, presumably, would jail rather than execute those who “insult” Islam. Although brute governmental force might largely displace Islamic slaughter of those who “insult” Islam, it would be more pervasive and hence probably more effective. It would also contravene what’s left of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Muslim leaders from around the Obama Nation recently assembled in Texas to stand with ~~the murdering, antisemitic pedophile worshiped by billions of Muslims~~ “Prophet”

in Honor and Respect conference, a weekend forum that is being billed as a “movement to defend Prophet Muhammad, his person, and his message,” according to event information.

. . . .

Organizers of the event place the blame for Islam’s bad reputation on the media and so-called American Islamophobes who have “invested at least $160 million dollars to attack our Prophet and Islam,” according to the conference web page.

. . . .

“This is not an event. It is the beginning of a movement,” organizers write on their website, which blames Americans for giving Islam a bad name. “A movement to defend Prophet Muhammad, his person, and his message.”

“All these accusations were invented by Islamophobes in America,” the group claims. “As we celebrate the Prophet in our now annual, nationwide event: Stand with the Prophet, we recommit ourselves to rectify his image, peace be upon him.” [Emphasis added.]

Hirsi Ali, an apostate from Islam and an indomitable (other than by her own eventual murder) voice for freedom, was recently interviewed by several media. Here are videos of three of her interviews:

The thrust of her remarks is that Islamic ideology, including reverence for all of the vile things that Mohamed did and encouraged, is the root of the problem. However, the Western tendency to absolve all other Mohamed worshipers of blame for the acts of their coreligionists — which they often support — is prevalent in multicultural societies. Similarly, it is the position of our “leaders” and “betters” that attacks such as those on Charlie Hedbo have nothing to do with Islam, or even “radical” Islam.

“We” are, therefore, not at war with Islam or “radical” Islam but with those who would “corrupt” it by committing acts of “senseless” terror. That’s comparable to saying that, in the 1940s, we were not at war with Nazism, but with those who corrupted the beautiful Nazi ideology.

Multiculturalism

While denigrating the Western culture of life, multiculturalism and its advocates promote ignorance and fallacies about the Islamic culture of death. Those who accept the fallacy that Islam is a benign religion thereby join a “cult” of cultural suicide which takes advantage of the ignorance, or worse, of many within Western cultures.

According to Victor Davis Hanson, in an article titled Multicultural Suicide,

For the multiculturalist, the sins of the non-West are mostly ignored or attributed to Western influence, while those of the West are peculiar to Western civilization. In terms of the challenge of radical Islam, multiculturalism manifests itself in the abstract with the notion that Islamists are simply the fundamentalist counterparts to any other religion. Islamic extremists are no different from Christian extremists, as the isolated examples of David Koresh or the Rev. Jim Jones are cited ad nauseam as the morally and numerically equivalent bookends to thousands of radical Islamic terrorist acts that plague the world each month. We are not to assess other religions by any absolute standard, given that such judgmentalism would inevitably be prejudiced by endemic Western privilege. There is nothing in the Sermon on the Mount that differs much from what is found in the Koran. And on and on and on. [Emphasis added.]

In the concrete, multiculturalism seeks to use language and politics to mask reality. The slaughter at Ford Hood becomes “workplace violence,” not a case of a radical Islamist, Major Nidal Hasan, screaming “Allahu Akbar” as he butchered the innocent. After the Paris violence, the administration envisions a “Summit on Countering Violent Extremism,” apparently in reaction to Buddhists who are filming beheadings, skinheads storming Paris media offices, and lone-wolf anti-abortionists who slaughtered the innocent in Australia, Canada, and France. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

If the Western establishment were truly moral, it would reject multiculturalism as a deductive, anti-empirical, and illiberal creed. It would demand that critics abroad first put their own house in order before blaming others for their own failures, and remind Western elites that their multicultural fantasies are cheap nostrums designed to deal with their own neuroses. [Emphasis added.]

Finally, it would also not welcome in newcomers who seek to destroy the very institutions that make the West so unlike the homelands they have voted with their feet to utterly abandon. [Emphasis added.]

Unfortunately, Islamists now resident in the United States or in other Western nations did not vote “with their feet to utterly abandon” the hellholes they left; they brought them with them and seek to impose their ideology wherever they go.

No Islamic nation is multicultural. None (with the possible exception of Egypt under President Sisi) welcome those who oppose their Islamic values or otherwise seek to change their ways. Were a Saudi citizen or visiting foreigner to blame the Islamic principles in which Saudi Arabia is grounded for the ills of the Middle East or the evils of Islam, his stay there, if not his life, would be abbreviated, promptly.

Islam is the principal enemy, but the multiculturalists who inflict it upon Western civilization aid and abet it. They attempt to dull our senses of right and wrong by sanitizing and promoting Islam as good.

Perhaps, and I hope that, the very substantial attention paid by the media to the recent Islamic slaughters in France will do as few other such incidents have done: bring about the rejection of Islam, multiculturalism and their advocates.

Categories: Antisemitism, Egypt, Europe, Foreign policy, Freedom, Human rights, Ideology, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Islamophobia, Israel, Kerry, Multiculturalism, Obama, Saudi Arabia, Sharia law, Sisi, Terrorism
Tags: Antisemitism, Charlie Hebdo, Egypt, Europe, Foreign Policy, Freedom, human rights, Ideology, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamism, Islamophobia, Israel, Multiculturalism, Saudi Arabia, Sharia law, Sisi, Terrorism, Western civilization

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Defending Islam from free speech: Column

January 13, 2015

Defending Islam from free speech: Column, USA Today, Robert C. Blitt, January 12, 2015

(Please see also Largest Islamic Body in the World Calls for More Anti-Free Speech Laws in Wake of Charlie Hebdo Attack. The significance of the USA Today article not so much its substance, which should be obvious, but that it was published by a “mainstream media” outlet. — DM)

(Photo: Ahmad Gharabli, AFP/Getty Images)

Clinging to the position that a prohibition on defamation of Islam is somehow a justifiable and measured response to perceived insult will continue inciting attempts to silence critics.

With millions marching in France and increasing unrest across Europe focused on Muslim immigrants, let’s hope the leaders of the Muslim world acknowledge that the effort to turn blasphemy into a crime has done more to breed religious intolerance than any cartoon or YouTube video.

****************

The OIC, whose member states range from moderate U.S. allies such as Jordan to adversaries such as Iran, describes itself as the world’s largest international body after the United Nations. For more than a decade, “the collective voice of the Muslim world” has spread the belief that any insult directed against the Muslim faith or its prophet demands absolute suppression. Quashing “defamation of Islam” is enshrined as a chief objective in the organization’s charter.

With countless internal resolutions, relentless lobbying of the international community and block voting on resolutions advocating a prohibition on defamation of religion at the U.N., the OIC continuously pushes to silence criticism of Islam.

Translated into practice inside Islamic nations and increasingly elsewhere, this toxic vision breeds contempt for freedom of religion and expression, justifies the killing of Muslims and non-Muslims alike, and casts a pall of self-censorship over academia and the arts.

By building the expectation that dissent or insult merits suppression, groups such as the OIC and the Arab League have emboldened extremists to take protection of Islam to the next level. With the most authoritative Muslim voices prepared to denounce violence but not to combat the idea that Islam should be immune from criticism, a meaningful response to counteract the resulting violence continues to be glaringly absent.

An OIC statement released after a 2011 Charlie Hebdo issue “guest-edited” by the prophet Mohammed typifies this troubling position: “Publication of the insulting cartoon … was an outrageous act of incitement and hatred and abuse of freedom of expression. … The publishers and editors of the Charlie Hebdo magazine must assume full responsibility for their … incitement of religious intolerance.”

This ominously prescient declaration tepidly closed by urging that Muslims exercise restraint.

Blasphemy is a crime

Likewise, after the attack last week, the OIC “strongly condemned the terrorist act,” but quickly added “that such acts of terror only represent the criminal perpetrators.”

It had nothing to say about the principle of free speech. Perhaps that is because blasphemous speech is a crime in a vast arc of Islamic countries from Morocco in the West to Indonesia in the East.

If the OIC, Arab League and Muslim states genuinely want to distance themselves and the religion of Islam from such ghastly acts of terror, they must reversethe years spent advancing the motive that spawned them. As a start, they should stop punishing their own citizens for failure to properly respect Islam.

Support for a prohibition on defamation of religion must be decisively repudiated. To counteract the damage that has been done, OIC members should embrace the promotion of tolerance, including sponsorship of moderation and tolerance efforts in mosques and madrassas globally. The OIC and its members should compensateCharlie Hebdo and the victims’ families.

Clinging to the position that a prohibition on defamation of Islam is somehow a justifiable and measured response to perceived insult will continue inciting attempts to silence critics.

With millions marching in France and increasing unrest across Europe focused on Muslim immigrants, let’s hope the leaders of the Muslim world acknowledge that the effort to turn blasphemy into a crime has done more to breed religious intolerance than any cartoon or YouTube video.

.

Categories: Charlie Hedbo, Human rights, Islam, Islamophobia, Koran, Multiculturalism, OIC, Sharia law, Terrorism, United Nations
Tags: Charlie Hedbo, free speech, human rights, Islam, Islamophobia, Koran, Multiculturalism, OIC, Sharia law, Terrorism, United Nations

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Millions March in Paris; Gov’ts & Media Scrub Islamist Motive

January 13, 2015

Millions March in Paris; Gov’ts & Media Scrub Islamist Motive, Clarion Project, Meira Svirsky, January 12, 2015

France-We-Are-Charlie-Reuters-IP

A banner that reads ‘We Are Charlie’ at the march in Paris in support of slain journalists from the Charlie Hebdo magazine. (Photo: © Reuters)

[T]he Islamists will have won on many accounts. The fact that leaders of the Western world have demurred to differentiate between Islam and Islamism (the implementation of Islam on a political level, including the instituting of sharia law) due to desire not to offend Muslims or be labelled racists means that they will not implement the measures needed to stamp out the Islamist ideology and its resulting violence.

**************

By refusing to censor themselves and bow to the requests of sharia law, the publishers of Charlie Hebdo refused to be part of this sabotage.The Western world needs to take up their gauntlet.

World leaders joined a march of one and a half million people today in Paris in a show of unity to the 17 slain in the Islamist terrorist attacks across France last week.

“Unity against extremism” was the theme in Paris’ Republique plaza, as reflected in the words of France Prime Minister Manuel Valls, who said Saturday, “We are all Charlie, we are all police, we are all Jews of France.”

The French prime minister was referring to the attacks on theCharlie Hebdo magazine on Wednesday that left 10 journalists and 2 policemen dead, another policewoman dead in a separate attack on Thursday and four hostages killed in a take-over of a kosher mini-market on Friday.

Two brothers armed with AK-47s along with another gunmen stormed the Charlie Hebdo magazine’s offices after deeming cartoons they had published offensive to Islam. The magazine’s headquarters had been firebombed in 2011 for the same “offense.” The magazine had police protection and its editor, who was killed in the attack, employed a policeman as a personal bodyguard.

In a video of the attack as it played out afterwards on the street taken by a Parisian who had escaped to the roof of a neighboring building, the attackers could be heard shouting “Allahu Akhbar” (“God is Great” in Arabic) as they shot a policeman on the street, then finishing him off at point blank while he lay wounded.

Witnesses also reported hearing the gunmen yell, “We have avenged the Prophet Mohammed.”

As explained by British Islamist Anjem Choudary – and as well understood by the French president as well as every other world leader who will be attending Sunday’s rally — insulting the prophet of Islam is a crime punishable by the death penalty according to sharia (Islamic) law.

Which make it even more surprising that, in one of Francois Hollande’ s first statements following the attack on the magazine, the French president said, “These madmen, fanatics, have nothing to do with the Muslim religion.”

The White House press secretary Josh Earnest, took the obfuscation one step further when he kept referring to the attack as “violence,” prompting his CNN interviewer to pin him down saying, “Josh, when you talk about countering the message, you keep using the word violence. I mean, this is an act of terrorism, that’s what the president of France called it — an act of terrorism … Do you see this as an act of terrorism, and is this something that has to be condemned on that level?”

To which Earnest replied obscurely, “Based on what we know right now, it does seem that’s what we’re confronting here. And this is an act of violence that we certainly do condemn, and if based on this investigation it turns out to be an act of terrorism, then we would condemn that in the strongest possible terms, too.”

After the beheading of journalist James Foley, U.S. President Barack Obama declare that the Islamic State “is not Islamic.” Following this stance, Obama initially released a statement which read, “I strongly condemn the horrific shooting at the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris that has reportedly killed 12 people.”

Later, he managed to refer to the attack simply as “terrorism.”

For their part, many media outlets were busy scrubbing the frames of the video where “Allahu Akhbar” could be heard. The New York Times originally reported a quote from a survivor of the magazine attack, Sigolène Vinson, a freelancer who was at the magazine’s office that morning and later spoke to French media.

Relating how she thought she would be killed when one of the attackers put a gun to her head, Vinson reported that the gunman said instead, “I’m not going to kill you because you’re a woman. We don’t kill women, but you must convert to Islam, read the Quran and cover yourself.”

The quote was short-lived on the Times, who later edited Vinson’s quote from the attacker to read, “Don’t be afraid, calm down, I won’t kill you. You are a woman. But think about what you’re doing. It’s not right.”

CNN, for their part, managed to question whether the kosher store was chosen by the Islamist attacker for anti-Semitic reasons since “many Muslims shopped there” and because there were a “variety of shops” in the non-Jewish neighborhood. The network chose to ignore a widely circulated report by a French reporter who spoke to the terrorist by phone. “He said he did it to defend oppressed Muslims, especially in Palestine, and he chose a kosher supermarket because it served Jews,” said the French reporter.

Amid the reporting was the recurring question asked by the media, “What can be done?” as well as the implied answer given by the French president when he said, “France has not seen the end of the threats it faces” – an answer unfortunately relevant to the rest of the Western world.

Hollande’s response will, regrettably, be the correct assessment if those in charge refuse to face the reality of the threat: Failure to address the “Islamist” component of the terrorism that is striking the West is not only disingenuous but erects an impenetrable barrier to overcoming it.

And so, the Islamists will have won on many accounts. The fact that leaders of the Western world have demurred to differentiate between Islam and Islamism (the implementation of Islam on a political level, including the instituting of sharia law) due to desire not to offend Muslims or be labelled racists means that they will not implement the measures needed to stamp out the Islamist ideology and its resulting violence.

“Everyone is focusing on the fact that that the jihadists went after cartoonists,“ said Clarion Project’s national security analyst Ryan Mauro in an interview on national news (see below for full interview). Yet, “there is always going to be a target [emanating] from this ideology that says that ‘Things like this are so illegal undersharia that they must be retaliated against violently in order to make societies conform to our belief system of sharia.’”

Our leaders must realize that speaking about terror motivated by Islamist ideology does not connote anti-Muslim sentiment.

“The issue we face is not, as Islamist groups falsely claim in the United States – ironically the very ones invited to the White House, Homeland Security, Department of Justice, and State Department — that using the term Islamic terrorism connotes a generalization that all Muslims are terrorists any more than using the term “Hispanic drug cartels” means that all Hispanics are druggies or that the term “Italian mafia” means that all Italians are mobsters or that the term “German Nazis” mean that all Germans were Nazis, “ writes Steve Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

“The term Islamic terrorism means just that: terrorist attacks with an Islamic motivation — whether they attempts to silence critics of Islam, impose Sharia, punish Western ‘crusaders,’ commit genocide of non-Muslims, establish Islamic supremacy (or a Caliphate), or destroy any non Muslim peoples (e.g. the Jews and Christians) that are ‘occupying Muslim lands,’” says Emerson.

Failure to identify the Islamist ideology driving terrorism necessarily means we will not succeed in our battle against it. Moreover, we will be willingly complicit in our demise.

If we don’t want to be part of that, the events in France teach us, “Don’t censor yourself,” says Mauro. “Recognize that this attack is a means to an end. Victory for them isn’t the attack itself, the victory comes when we censor ourselves. Because they are not powerful enough to enforce their form of sharia governance upon us, what they can do is to intimidate us into implementing it on ourselves.”

In a document recovered from a 1991 meeting which outlines the Muslim Brotherhood‘s strategic goals for North America, the founders of the Islamist movement in America wrote, “The Ikhwan[Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers…”

By refusing to censor themselves and bow to the requests of sharialaw, the publishers of Charlie Hebdo refused to be part of this sabotage.

The Western world needs to take up their gauntlet.

Categories: Antisemitism, Charlie Hedbo, Christians, Europe, Foreign policy, France, Freedom, Human rights, Humor, International Community, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamism, Islamophobia, Jews, Koran, Multiculturalism, Muslim Brotherhood, Sharia law, Terrorism
Tags: Antisemitism, Charlie Hebdo, Charlie Hedbo, Christians, Europe, Foreign Policy, France, Freedom, human rights, Humor, International Community, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamism, Islamist ideology, Islamophobia, Jews, Koran, Multiculturalism, Muslim Brotherhood, Paris, Sharia law, Terrorism

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“Radical” “Extremist” Islam is mainstream Islam

January 11, 2015

“Radical” “Extremist” Islam is mainstream Islam, Dan Miller’s Blog, January 11, 2015

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

Many who consider themselves our “betters” continue to tell us that only “radicals” or “extremists” slaughter people for “insulting” Allah and Mohamed or try otherwise to force submission to Islam upon us. They refuse even to use the word “Islamic,” except when pretending that such actions are “not Islamic.” They are wrong and it’s time to wake up. Apathy and ignorance can be deadly.

As explained in my January 10th post, citing and quoting from an article in Catholic World Report by Father James V. Schall, S.J, the Islam we saw in Paris, France is neither “radical” nor “extremist.” It is mainstream Islam, as commanded by the Koran and Sharia law. It is the purpose of this article to explain further why that is the case.

A National Review article by Andrew C. McCarthy is titled Don’t Blame the Charlie Hebdo Mass Murder on ‘Extremism.’ It explicates the Sharia law bases of “radical” Islam as set forth in Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law. It is the authoritative Sharia manual:

Reliance is not some al-Qaeda or Islamic State pamphlet. It is a renowned explication of sharia’s provisions and their undeniable roots in Muslim scripture. In the English translation, before you get to chapter and verse, there are formal endorsements, including one from the International Institute of Islamic Thought — a U.S.-based Muslim Brotherhood think tank begun in the early Eighties (and to which American administrations of both parties have resorted as an exemplar of “moderation”). Perhaps more significantly, there is also an endorsement from the Islamic Research Academy at al Azhar University, the ancient seat of Sunni learning to which President Obama famously turned to co-sponsor his cloyingly deceptive 2009 speech on relations between Islam and the West. [Emphasis added.]

In their endorsement, the al-Azhar scholars wrote:

We certify that the . . . translation corresponds to the Arabic original and conforms to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni Community. . . . There is no objection to printing it and circulating it. . . . May Allah give you success in serving Sacred Knowledge and the religion.

There could be no more coveted stamp of scholarly approval in Islam.

Mr. McCarthy’s article provides many quotations from Reliance. Here are some of them:

Apostasy from Islam is “the ugliest form of unbelief” for which the penalty is death (“When a person who has reached puberty and is sane voluntarily apostatizes from Islam, he deserves to be killed”). (Reliance o8.0 & ff.) [Emphasis added.]

Apostasy occurs not only when a Muslim renounces Islam but also, among other things, when a Muslim appears to worship an idol, when he is heard “to speak words that imply unbelief,” when he makes statements that appear to deny or revile Allah or the prophet Mohammed, when he is heard “to deny the obligatory character of something which by consensus of Muslims is part of Islam,” and when he is heard “to be sarcastic about any ruling of the Sacred Law.” (Reliance o8.7; see also p9.0 & ff.)

Jihad means to war against non-Muslims. (Reliance o9.0.) [Emphasis added.]

It is an annual requirement to donate a portion of one’s income to the betterment of the ummah (an obligation called zakat, which is usually, and inaccurately, translated as “charity”); of this annual donation, one-eighth must be given to “those fighting for Allah, meaning people engaged in Islamic military operations for whom no salary has been allotted in the army roster. . . . They are given enough to suffice them for the operation even if they are affluent; of weapons, mounts, clothing and expenses.” (Reliance, h8.1–17.) [Emphasis added.]

As commanded in the aforementioned Sura 9:29, non-Muslims are permitted to live in an Islamic state only if they follow the rules of Islam, pay the non-Muslim poll tax, and comply with various conditions designed to remind them that they have been subdued, such as wearing distinctive clothing, keeping to one side of the street, not being greeted with “Peace be with you” (“as-Salamu alaykum”), not being permitted to build as high as or higher than Muslims, and being forbidden to build new churches, recite prayers aloud, “or make public displays of their funerals or feast-days.” (Reliance o11.0 & ff.) [Emphasis added.]

The penalty for spying against Muslims is death. (Reliance p50.0 & ff; p74.0 & ff.)

The penalty for homosexual activity (“sodomy and lesbianism”) is death. (Reliance p17.0 & ff.) [Emphasis added.]

A woman is required to be obedient to her husband and is prohibited from leaving the marital home without permission; if permitted to go out, she must conceal her figure or alter it “to a form unlikely to draw looks from men or attract them.” (Reliance p42.0 & ff.) [Emphasis added.]

A woman has no right of custody of her child from a previous marriage when she remarries “because married life will occupy her with fulfilling the rights of her husband and prevent her from tending to the child.” (Reliance m13.4.) [Emphasis added.]

The penalty for theft is amputation of the right hand. (Reliance o14.0.)

The penalty for accepting interest (“usurious gain”) is death (i.e., to be considered in a state of war against Allah). (Reliance p7.0 & ff.)

The testimony of a woman is worth half that of a man. (Reliance o24.7.) [Emphasis added.]

If a case involves an allegation of fornication (including rape), “then it requires four male witnesses.” (Reliance o24.9.) [Emphasis added.]

The establishment of a caliphate is obligatory, and the caliph must be Muslim and male. “The Prophet . . . said, ‘Men are already destroyed when they obey women.’” (Reliance o25.0 & ff; see also p28.0, on Mohammed’s condemnation of “masculine women and effeminate men.”) [Emphasis added.]

Great Zeus! It almost as bad as the (alleged) “Republican war on women,” about which many “feminists” complain. There is no “Republican war on women.” Islam and Sharia exist and are growing. It does seem at least a tad strange that many quite vocal “feminists” remain silent about the Sharia laws imposed on millions of their sisters. Perhaps they should savor those quaint laws, personally, for a month or three and then (if still alive) return to tell us of their experiences.

Mr. McCarthy concludes,

This anti-liberty, supremacist, repulsively discriminatory, and sadly mainstream interpretation of Islam must be acknowledged and confronted. In its way, that is what Charlie Hebdo had been attempting to do — while, to their lasting shame, governments in the United States and Europe have been working with Islamist states to promote sharia blasphemy standards. That needs to end. The future must not belong to those who brutalize free expression in the name of Islam. [Emphasis added.]

Brutalizing free expression is bad enough. But that is not all that Islam tries to do to us. In the following video, Sean Hannity interviews Imam Anjem Choudary, who lives and preaches in Londonstan. As the Imam explains, “Islam” does not mean peace. It means total submission.

In the next video, Mr. Hannity and guests discuss the threat of “radical” Islam. It should, however, be referred to simply as Islam, because it is not radical; it is mainstream:

In a generally facetious article, Bernard Goldberg suggested that Muslims who disapprove of Islamic slaughter and demands for submission should engage in a million man march against them in Paris. Here is an also facetious video of the Million Muslim march as it happened. Watch closely.

I saw only one Muslim, and he was cleverly disguised as a pigeon.

Imam Obama frequently uses the phrase “on the wrong side of history.” He doubtless considers “Islamophobes” to be among those on the wrong side. There are, however, few if any “Islamophobes,” because the term means an irrational fear of Islam. Anyone other than a Muslim, who is capable of rational, reality based analysis and even occasionally indulges in it with respect to Islam, is very afraid of it. Fear, however, is not a solution and can lead to submission, the meaning and goal of Islam. We recently saw submission by most of the “legitimate news” media, which declined to republish any of the Charlie Hedbo cartoons, even as news. They were news, dammit, because they were the basis for the Charlie Hedbo slaughters.

Steve Emerson, of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, contends that Europe is finished. I am afraid that he is correct.

In America, there may still be time to deal with Islam to prevent it from gaining ascendancy as it has in much of Europe. The first steps — taken thus far by very few — are to recover from denial and apathy, to recognize the problem and give it a name: Islam. Not “extremist” or “radical” Islam. That will be a worthy beginning, but it is not sufficient.

Appeasement won’t work. Until we find and implement viable ways to deal with the Islamic problem, there will be less and less peace as we understand it, and more and more Islamic “peace,” in our time.

I offered some suggestions here. Comments suggesting additional or alternative ways to deal with the Islamic problem will be greatly appreciated.

Categories: Caliphate, Charlie Hedbo, Christians, Diversity, Europe, Foreign policy, Freedom, Human rights, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamophobia, Jews, Multiculturalism, Obama, Sharia law, Terrorism, Torture
Tags: Caliphate, Charlie Hedbo, Christians, DIversity, Europe, Foreign Policy, Freedom, human rights, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamophobia, Jews, Multiculturalism, Sharia law, Terrorism, Torture

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How Paris attacks are a wake up call to radical Islam threat?

January 11, 2015

How Paris attacks are a wake up call to radical Islam threat? You Tube, January 10, 2015

(Why do they refer to “radical” and “extremist” Islam when, as noted in the video, a majority of Muslims want to impose Sharia law and all of the “blessings” it brings? The actions of the “radicals” are clearly commanded by the Koran. Please see also this article, which provides a Koranic analysis. — DM)

Categories: Australia, Caliphate, Charlie Hedbo, Christians, Europe, Freedom, Heresy, International Community, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamophobia, Jews, Multiculturalism, Obama, Sharia law, Terrorism
Tags: Australia, Caliphate, Charlie Hedbo, Christians, Europe, Freedom, Heresy, International Community, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamophobia, Jews, Multiculturalism, Sharia law, Terrorism

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Charlie, Muhammad, and the Saudi 1000 Lashes of Raif Badawi

January 11, 2015

Charlie, Muhammad, and the Saudi 1000 Lashes of Raif Badawi, The Gatestone Institute, Denis MacEoin, January 11, 2014

(Is Saudi Arabia “not-Islamic,” like the Islamic State and its many cohorts? Nope, all are Islamic to the core and it’s high time for our “betters” to realize and acknowledge it. — DM)

“My commitment is… to reject any repression in the name of religion… a goal we will reach in a peaceful and law-abiding way.” — Raif Badawi.

If he ever leaves prison, his life will have been destroyed — by voyeurs as sexually twisted as those of ancient Rome.

“Our Prophet,” Malik said, “would have been crystal clear and unequivocal in condemning [the Charlie Hebdo massacre]. But his statement points out why there is a problem. Malik was — quite innocently, I am sure — completely wrong. Muhammad did the same thing – many, many times.

Today we all are Charlie, and we are all Raif.

His first 50 lashes were administered Friday. After the noon prayers, outside the mosque, Saudi writer and blogger Raif Badawi, 30, received a sentence perhaps worse than death. Accused of “insulting Islam,” he is to receive 1000 lashes: 50 per week for 20 weeks — nearly half a year. “The lashing order says Raif should ‘be lashed very severely,'” a twitter notice read. “If they lash him again next week we do not know if he is going to survive. He has no medical assistance,” another notice said.

After that, he is to spend ten years in prison and pay a fine of $266,000. If he ever leaves prison, his life will have been destroyed — by voyeurs as sexually twisted as those of ancient Rome.

His wife and three children have been given asylum in Canada. Her family has filed for divorce on the grounds of his supposed apostasy.

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Raif Badawi and his children

His crime is said to have been “insulting Islam.” Badawi had written, “My commitment is… to reject any repression in the name of religion… a goal that we will reach in a peaceful, law-abiding way.”

He is alleged to have criticized the Wahhabi clergy who run his country hand in hand with the royal family.[1] Muslims seem not to be able to handle questions, reasoned criticism or satire. Perhaps where many come from, there is only one opinion — the dominant majority one. If there are more, as there are, there seems a wish to stamp them out. Here in the West, a major role of government is to protect the minority from the majority.

The day before, January 8, 2015, just after the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, BBC News in London broadcast a report that contained short interviews with a number of moderate Muslims who decried the attack and feared repercussions on their own communities.[2]

One of the interviewees was Nadeem Malik, the UK Director of the Bahu Trust, a Sufi Muslim charity that “espouses the virtues of tolerance, peaceful co-existence and equality.” Malik said: “Our Prophet would have been absolutely crystal clear and unequivocal in condemning any such action. That’s not in the name of Islam at all, and Muslims are sick of having their faith hijacked in this manner.”

I do not doubt Mr. Malik’s sincerity, and I respect the Islamic tradition (Barelwi) from which he comes as one more in keeping with a non-violent interpretation. But his statement sharply points out why there is a problem. He was — quite innocently, I am sure — completely wrong.

There is an inspiration for attacks like those on writers, cartoonists, and film-makers: France’s Charlie Hebdo journalists; Amsterdam’s Theo van Gogh; Denmark’s Kurt Westergaard, Carsten Juste, and Flemming Rose, and Sweden’s Lars Vilks — as well as the assassination attempt on the Nobel Prize winning Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz and the fatwa for the murder of the British writer Salman Rushdie. The inspiration for this behavior is not that the Prophet Muhammad was lampooned or criticized or mocked. The inspiration for this behavior is that Muhammad himself would have ordered or approved such attacks as revenge for assaults on his honour.

How can one make such an outrageous suggestion? The answer is that Muhammad did exactly the same thing — many, many times. This may appear to be an Islamophobic calumny, perhaps something concocted by medieval churchmen in Europe (who did make up some fancy legends about Muhammad), but it is solidly recorded in the almost canonical biography of the Prophet by Ibn Hisham and in the canonical collections of prophetic traditions (hadith) by Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim.[3]

Shortly after his move from Mecca to Medina in 622 CE, for instance, when he became the effective ruler of the town, opponents emerged in the Jewish and wider communities. Poets wrote lampoons and disrespectful verses. Muhammad had them killed. Not just poets, but almost anyone who disagreed with him and his “revelations.”

In 624, for example, a Jewish poet named Ka’b ibn al-Ashraf wrote verses condemning the killing of notables from Mecca. He later became a one-man Charlie Hebdo, writing obscene and erotic verses about the Muslim women. Muhammad took offense and instructed one of his companions, Muhammad ibn Maslama, to assassinate Ka’b. When Ibn Maslama expressed doubts about having to lie to Ka’b in order to trick him into going with him, Muhammad told him lying was permissible for such purposes. Ibn Maslama and some other Muslims went out with Ka’b under false pretenses and murdered him.

Ka’b ibn al-Ahraf was not Muhammad’s only victim. The poets Asma’ bint Marwan (a woman), Abu Afak, and Al-Nadir ibn al-Harith, and Abu Rafi’ ibn Abi Al-Huqaiq were all assassinated in the same year for the same offence of mockery. In the next few years, several other poets were killed, such as Abdullah ibn Zib’ari, Al-Harith bin al-Talatil, Hubayra, Ka’b ibn Zuhayr ibn Abi Sulama, and Huwayrith ibn Nafidh. Abdullah bin Khatal and two of his slave girls were murdered for having recited poems insulting the Prophet. There is a list in WikiIslam of 43 people — as well as all the men from the Jewish tribe of the Banu Qurayza — who were killed on Muhammad’s orders or whose murders were sanctioned by him.

Today the lashes of Raif Badawi stand with the slaughter at Charlie Hebdo as further symbols of the determination of many extremists to reject the norms of reason, tolerance, pluralism, equality, the Universal Declaration human rights and the value that begins every chapter but one of the Qur’an: mercy.

Some people ask what inspires those who kill authors, cartoonists and journalists, while others insist that it has nothing to do with Islam. If we do not learn, if our leaders do not learn, what hope is there for us?

Today, we are all Charlie. And we are all Raif.

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[1] The Al al-Shaykh are descendants of Wahhabi founder Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792), who allied himself and his puritan belief system with the Al Sa’ud, an Arabian family with pretensions to grandeur.

[2] BBC News at Ten, 8 January 2010.

[3] For details, see Uri Rubin, “The Assassination of Kaʿb b. al-Ashraf”, Oriens, Vol. 32. (1990), pp. 65-71; the entries on Ka’b in both editions of the authoritative Encyclopedia of Islam; Sahih Bukhari 5:59:369, Sahih Muslim 19:4436

Categories: Blasphemy, Diversity, Europe, France, Freedom, Heresy, Human rights, International Community, Islam, Islamophobia, Koran, Moral equivalence, Saudi Arabia, Torture
Tags: Blasphemy, Charlie Hebdo, DIversity, Europe, France, Freedom, Heresy, human rights, International Community, Islam, Islamophobia, Koran, Moral equivalence, Raif Badawi, Saudi Arabia, Torture

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‘What?!’ Gutfeld Calls Out CNN’s Amanpour for Labeling Terrorists ‘Activists’

January 11, 2015

‘What?!’ Gutfeld Calls Out CNN’s Amanpour for Labeling Terrorists ‘Activists’ You Tube, January 9, 2015

Categories: Freedom, Human rights, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamophobia, Moral equivalence, Multiculturalism
Tags: Freedom, human rights, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamophobia, Moral equivalence, Multiculturalism

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Let’s laugh at Islam

January 11, 2015

Let’s laugh at Islam, Sultan Knish’s Blog, January 9, 2015

(It might well help at least a bit. — DM)

“Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand” Mark Twain

A billion plus Muslims around the world are shouting angrily demanding that we take their perverted homicidal mania of a religion seriously. Let’s laugh at them instead.

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Anyone who seriously believed after 9/11 that victory against the ongoing Islamic conquest would be accomplished by military force has by now been steadily disabused of that illusion after over a decade of political correctness, passivity and misguided campaigns to bring democracy to the Muslim world.

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The war against Islam is not going to be won with guns or bombs. Force is merely the final solution to settling conflicts but Islam’s violence is for now only the tip of the iceberg of a much larger campaign to make the world into an Islamic domain.

While we fight with police actions and holding elections, Islamists are seizing control of governments by force or by democratic elections. They are conquering African nations and staging civil wars in pacific ones. They are importing millions of Muslims to Europe and America as Europe’s ‘Palestinians’ for a coming European Intifada. They are rewriting history to claim that Arab explorers originally discovered America and Australia giving them claim to the land. They are aggressively evangelizing hundreds of thousands a year to convert to Islam through misleading claims and marriages of Western women to Muslim men.

What we believe is a war, is merely a minor skirmish in a global conquest. While we spend billions of dollars and thousands of lives to stabilize a single Muslim country, dozens of non-Muslim countries including our own are being destabilized day by day.

The true war against Islam is not a military war, it is a cultural war. For Islam it is a religious conflict by an empire intent on transforming every aspect of life into one defined by Islam. For us it is about preserving our way of life. The cartoon controversy woke many Europeans to the fact that free speech and many of the other attributes of democracy that they take for granted are incompatible with Islam. Under the relentless pressure of multi-culturalism, they and we are increasingly deciding that our way of life has to bow to theirs.

This is the ultimate victory of Islam. Not the fall of the Twin Towers or any single act of terrorism is as great a victory for Islam as when our own government and press repeat their propaganda and muzzle their critics. This represents the submission of the West to their rule. It turns Islam into the only legally sanctioned religion in Western nations that have long since instituted separations of Church and State.

Islam cannot be criticized by any public figure without violence quickly following. Islam cannot be criticized by the press without violence quickly following. No disrespect, real or perceived, towards Islam can be tolerated either. This is the lesson Muslim violence is teaching in Europe and much of the European and American media, politicians and clergy are becoming quick students. Criticism of Islam by individuals will get you condemned as a bigot by those very same people who are for all intents and purposes collaborating with our new tyrants.

While the entertainers, academics and pundits of a liberalized West are free to criticize and impugn Christianity and Judaism, Islam is a No-Go Zone. While Judaism and Christianity cannot be taught in the schools of a liberalized West, Islam can and is. Muslim religious artifacts can be displayed, Muslim religion taught and its holy books present, where those of other religions cannot. This elevates Islam to a special status. It gives Muslims power over other religions and they use that power. In a society where traditional religion is mocked, theirs is held sacred. Is it any wonder that sheltered from any criticism or negative appraisal by the same comedians and academics who tear apart Judaism and Christianity; that the view of many will be that Islam is a better religion. And this is exactly what Muslims want.

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Our culture is being invaded. Our nations are being overrun. In England some government offices banned mugs featuring Piglet on them. In Israel a woman was sentenced to jail for drawing a cartoon of Mohammed as a pig. In America defaced Korans are being investigated as hate crimes. This is the power of the law backing up the power of the cultural consensus of our politicians and press which prevents any criticism or mockery of Islam as if this were Saudi Arabia.

We can defeat Islam. We can stop this. If we fight back.

When Mark Twain said that, “Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand”, he was speaking as part of a long tradition of American humorists who satirized the great and powerful, who knew that nothing so much cuts a puffed up ego to size and the insecure man hiding behind it, as a well told joke. Islam in our time is the biggest puffed up ego there is. A fraudulent religion based on the plagiarism of a vicious desert warlord turned into a global empire. There is not one thing new in Islam. Its only claim to power is that it is wielded by men more ruthless and murderous than any other today.

Muslim rage is not a strength. When Muslims riot screaming in the streets every time they’re offended in some way, this is not the mark of a strong faith but a weak insecure one. So weak and insecure that it cannot turn the cheek or look down from a superior position of belief in the true God. Instead like all pagan savages it goes into a murderous rage because inside its worshipers know they are not the servants of a living God who can avenge all insults, but of a faith cribbed from Jews and Christians by an illiterate bandit who proceeded to win convert by terrorizing everyone who didn’t join his gang of bandits.

Muslim rage does not emerge from a deep respect for Allah but from the knowledge that their entire system of belief is a fraud that could never stand up to any scrutiny. If the world’s religions were paintings in a museum, Islam would be a child’s dirty smeared finger painting all in one color.

Islam’s drive for world conquest is a sign of weakness. It is a sign of a deeply insecure faith. But then most killers are driven by their own insecurities too. The man who opens fire on a crowded cafeteria is weak inside but that only makes his explosive violence more dangerous and it makes coddling him more dangerous because sooner or later he will kill.

The way to defeat Islam is never to coddle it, to enable its rages or its conquest of our lands. It is to stand up to it over and over again. It’s to laugh at it. Yes laugh it and ridicule it. America is a collection of immigrants with the humorous traditions of dozens of cultures, Irish, Jews, Italians, Scots, Russians, Asians. We’re not just the reservoir of the world’s talent but its humor too and humor is the ultimate weapon against the balloon that is Islam. Islam can only expand by force. It can’t leverage any real military force against us. Instead it expands by intimidation, by conformity, by deception, by political correctness. It has no defense against laughter. Men who are so insecure they would kill over a stray word here or there, can’t stand up to being laughed at, to being ridiculed, to have their cherished values transformed into a laughingstock.

We’re fighting a cultural war and humor is our best weapon. We’ve spent the last 50 years laughing and mocking every aspect of our societies. Let’s turn that laughter on Islam full bore. And Islam’s defenders will find it difficult to censor and silence humor, the way they can silence and discredit political commentary. To try and silence humor is to look like a prig and if there’s anything our politically correct cultural overlords hate, it’s to come out looking like the stuffy humorless totalitarian-minded fascists that they really are.

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The front line of the cultural war between Islam and the West is right here. It’s the internet. It can’t be silenced or shut down. It’s the interface point between two colliding cultures. It’s the gateway for information and disinformation. It will also help determine which will stand and which will fall.

So go on telling those jokes. When the arguments run out and the rhetoric is exhausted, humor can always be fresh and a weapon no one can argue against. There’s one thing Muslims can’t stand above all else and that’s mockery. It drives them mad and when that happens they show their true face beneath the false polite masks they so often wear, in a way that not even liberals can long ignore.

Battling Islam with humor quickly clarifies the stakes for the west in an undeniable way showing that our choice is between maintaining our freedoms or losing them forever. Islam’s apologists, our press, our politicians, our academics have been cooking us like lobsters in a pot, slowly raising the temperature until we’re broiling and barely notice it. Muslim rage raises the temperature a lot. It wakes up some of those in the lobster pot as the murders of Theo VanGogh and the Cartoon controversy did.

A billion plus Muslims around the world are shouting angrily demanding that we take their perverted homicidal mania of a religion seriously. Let’s laugh at them instead.

Categories: Humor, Islam
Tags: cultural war, Humor, Islam, Muslims

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Christians Burned Alive

January 10, 2015

Christians Burned Alive, Gatestone Institute, Raymond Ibrahim, January 10, 2015

Muslim Persecution of Christians, November 2014

“They picked them up by their arms and legs and held them over the brick furnace until their clothes caught fire. And then they threw them [alive] inside the furnace.” — Javeed Maseeh, family spokesman, concerning a Christian couple in Pakistan murdered on rumors they had burned verses from the Qur’an.

“I would appeal to your honor to put pressure on the government of Pakistan to end misuse of blasphemy laws against Christians, Ahmadiyyia and other religious minorities and condition US Aid on human rights and repeal of blasphemy laws.” — From a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama by Dr. Nazir S. Bhutti, President of the Pakistan Christian Congress, expressing surprise that the U.S. did not even bother to condemn the burning of Christians alive.

East Jerusalem: Despite constant and ever bolder attacks on a church, police refuse to respond to pleas for help from the Christian congregation.

Denmark: Muslim refugees are persecuting Christian refugees. “Christian asylum seekers are repeatedly exposed to everything from harassment to threats and physical abuse….” — Niels Eriksen Nyman, 10news.dk

“Young Christian men are made scapegoats to show police performance, while the real culprits are carrying out their illegal activities right under the police’s nose.” — Brother-in-law of “Mithu,” 35, Christian father of five, who was arrested in Pakistan on false charges and tortured to death in prison.

The youngest [slave] being the most expensive. 20-30 years old: 100,000 dinars [$86]; 10-20 years old: 150,000 dinars [$129]; 9 years old: 200,000 dinars [$172]. — The Islamic State.

The Islamic State called on its followers to take the jihad to Egypt.

Qaiser Ayub, a 40 year old professor of computer science in Pakistan, of Christian background, was arrested and charged with insulting Islam’s prophet Muhammad.

Both in the Islamic world and the Western world, Muslims continued to attack and slaughter Christians.

In Pakistan, “A mob accused of burning alive a Christian couple in an industrial kiln in Pakistan allegedly wrapped a pregnant mother in cotton so she would catch fire more easily, according to family members who witnessed the attack,” reported NBC News:

Sajjad Maseeh, 27, and his wife Shama Bibi, 24, were set upon by at least 1,200 people after rumors circulated that they had burned verses from the Quran, family spokesman Javed Maseeh told NBC News via telephone late Thursday. Their legs were also broken so they couldn’t run away.

“They picked them up by their arms and legs and held them over the brick furnace until their clothes caught fire,” he said. “And then they threw them inside the furnace.”

Bibi, a mother of four who was four months pregnant, was wearing an outfit that initially didn’t burn, according to Javed Maseeh. The mob removed her from over the kiln and wrapped her up in cotton to make sure the garments would be set alight.

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Shama Bibi (left) and Sajjad Maseeh, a Christian couple and parents of four children, were burned to death by a Muslim lynch mob in Pakistan because of a false blasphemy accusation.

Discussing this latest atrocity against Pakistan’s Christian minorities, an AFP report states:

Blasphemy is a hugely sensitive issue in the majority Muslim country, with even unproven allegations often prompting mob violence.

Anyone convicted, or even just accused, of insulting Islam, risks a violent and bloody death at the hands of vigilantes.

A Christian woman [Asia Bibi] has been on death row since November 2010 after she was found guilty of making derogatory remarks about the Prophet Mohammed during an argument with a Muslim woman.

An elderly British man with severe mental illness, sentenced to death for blasphemy in Pakistan in January, was shot by a prison guard last month.

Two days after the Christian couple were burned alive, a policeman in Pakistan hacked a man to death for allegedly making blasphemous remarks against Islam.

About the Christian couple, Dr. Nazir S. Bhatti, President of the Pakistan Christian Congress, wrote a letter to U.S. President Obama expressing surprise that the U.S. did not even bother to condemn this crime:

It is surprising that neither US Administration under your honor nor US State Department even bothered to condemn this horrific crime of burning live of Christian couple by a mob living in country named Islamic Republic of Pakistan which is receiving billions of aid of US taxpayers.

I would appeal your honor to put pressure on government of Pakistan to end misuse of blasphemy laws against Christian, Ahamadiyyia and other religious minorities and condition US Aid to Pakistan on human rights and repeal of blasphemy laws.

Meanwhile, in America itself, in Oklahoma, Jimmy Stepney, a Muslim, stabbed Jerome Bullock, a Christian, after Stepney had said that Muslims need to “step up” beheadings. According to Koco5 News:

The [police] report went on to say Stepney had been making comments about beheading people.

“We were watching the news,” said Bullock. “He said he felt like more Muslims need to step up to the plate and do certain thing. He was talking about beheading people.”

The severity of the plight of Christians in the Middle East was further underscored by Dr. Alexander Yakovenko, Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom, who wrote:

Russia is currently considering the possibility of initiating a draft decision of the UN Human Rights Council on the protection of Christians in the Middle East and North Africa. Russian experts are now working on this document.[…]

The scale of the problems demands the coordination of international efforts to protect Christians in the Middle East.

Further initiatives, new measures and relevant discussions aimed at finding durable solutions in this regard are strongly needed. Of course, we believe that Europe, including the UK, should make its contribution to these efforts, taking into account the Christian roots of the European civilization, which are now often forgotten for the sake of political correctness.[…]

The fate of the region’s religious minorities is of the greatest concern. The mass exodus of Christians, who have been an integral part of the Middle Eastern mosaic for centuries, is particularly troubling.

The rest of November’s roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed by theme and country in alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity:

Muslim Attacks on Christian Churches

Bangladesh: Two Christian pastors from the Faith Bible Church of God were arrested for preaching the Gospel to Muslims . They could face two years in prison if convicted for “hurting religious sentiments” and luring Muslims to convert by offering them money. The pastors deny both charges. Police arrested the pastors and 41 other people, including Muslims, after a throng of Muslims disrupted a house meeting. According to a witness: “More than 100 Muslims headed by local Jamaat-e-Islami party members and Muslim clerics gathered at the house and started barking questions at the pastors—why did they propagate Christianity in the locality and convert some of them,” and who gave them permission to preach to Muslims. “The pastors replied that it did not take any permission from any authority to propagate any religion and convert people to any religion. Suddenly the Muslims became apoplectic with rage, tried to pick a fight and started jabbing the pastors’ faces.”

Egypt: Father Timothy Shakar, priest of St. Mina Church in Port Said, confirmed that two homemade bombs were planted near the St. Mina Church but caused no injuries, or losses of life or property. Police searched other churches in the region for more bombs.

Germany: Nine men who had earlier broken into, vandalized, and robbed several Christian churches in the Cologne area—including by stealing money from the collection boxes and liturgical vessels—were caught during a massive raid. Apparently, all of the arrested are German by nationality, but Muslim by background and heritage. Some were also identified as “Salafis”—especially fundamentalist Muslims—connected to international terrorist organizations. Some had even raised hundreds of thousands of Euros from native Germans to support overseas “charities,” the proceeds of which actually went to terrorist groups such as ISIS.

Iraq: As cries of “Allahu Akbar” emanated from surrounding mosques, Islamic State militants blew up yet another Christian church — St. George’s Church and its associated nunnery in the city of Mosul — along with other non-Sunni sites. Separately, after breaking the cross from off the dome of the St. Ephrem Church dome (before and after pictures here) and selling its pews and other furnishings, the IS transformed the church into a mosque and council seat for the jihadis.

East Jerusalem: Despite constant and ever bolder attacks on a church, police refuse to respond to pleas for help from the Christian congregation. According to Morning Star News, “The attacks, driven by both intent to seize property and opposition to Christianity, have been mounted by young men with ties to Palestinian militants who for more than three months have been trying to force Living Bread Church from its rented building. Church pastor Karen Dunham and others have filed at least eight police reports about the assaults.” The most recent incident took place on November 5, when the gas tank of a car owned by a church volunteer was filled with sugar. On November 2, a car owned by one of the pastor’s relatives was stolen. And on October 16, three American Christians were injured while trying to repair a metal security door: A crowd of Palestinian men attacked them with box cutters, sticks, clubs and pepper spray. According to the church’s attorney, authorities “have their [the assailants’] pictures, they have their names, they even have their national ID numbers, and still they do nothing…. The level of brute force compared to the level of lack of response of the police force there is pretty shocking…. It almost seems like if someone is going to go in and murder her [Dunham], that no one is going to lift a finger.”

Malaysia: Approximately 70 local residents in Petaling Jaya protested the construction of a church. They claimed the growing number of Christian places of worship in the area is part of an attempt to evangelize and convert Muslims to Christianity. An NGO, the local branch of Pertubuhan Sahabat, supported the claims of the Muslims. They argued that there are three churches in the vicinity, although close to 70 percent of the residents in the area are Muslims. According to a spokesman, “Even before the church is built, flyers on Christianity have been distributed to our homes, and this could confuse our children and divert them from the path of Islam.” The vacant plot was previously occupied by squatters, a car park and several food stalls. Another local Muslim added “None of our neighbours are Christians, we can vouch for that… it is an insult to Muslims to allow a church to be built here, but none of our representatives seem to have the time to listen to us.” One demonstrator hurled large rocks at the temporary steel fence around the vacant plot.

Jihadi Slaughter of Christians

Kenya: Members of neighboring Somalia’s Islamic group Al Shabaab—”the Youth”—hijacked a bus carrying 60 passengers in the town of Mandera, near Kenya’s border with Somalia. They singled out and massacred 28 non-Muslims, the overwhelming majority of whom were Christian. According to an eyewitness, “When we got down, passengers were separated according to Somali and non-Somalis. The non-Somalis were ordered to read some verses of the holy Koran, and those who failed to read were ordered to lie down. One by one they were shot in the head at point blank range.”

Nigeria: On November 10, a suicide bomb attack on a Christian secondary school as students gathered for morning assembly killed at least 47 people. The Islamic group Boko Haram— meaning: “Western education is forbidden”—is believed to be behind the blast. In a separate incident, Christians from the predominantly Christian city of Mubi in Adamawa state were tortured and killed after Boko Haram took control of the town. Churches and homes were torched throughout the city, which was renamed Madinat al-Islam, or “the City of Islam.” In yet another separate incident, Boko Haram militants raided the mostly Christian town of Shani. According to a resident speaking to Reuters, “They rode on motorcycles and were more than 30 men. They started throwing bombs into houses… then the Boko Haram fired shots at people fleeing. They set ablaze the police station, houses and a telecom mast… I saw people fleeing, some bodies on the ground.” Reuters continues: “The Sunni jihadist movement is fighting to revive a medieval Islamic caliphate in Nigeria’s north.”

Pakistani Persecution

A few days after the Christian couple, mentioned earlier, was burned alive, a 35-year-old Christian father of five known as “Mithu” was arrested on false charges by police and tortured to death in prison. According to the deceased’s brother-in-law: “It was a fake allegation, because the raiding party failed to recover any contraband from Mithu’s person and his house… On the morning of Nov. 22, we were informed by Ilyas Gill, a local councilor, that Mithu had died in police custody because of heart failure…. Young Christian men are made scapegoats to show police performance while the real culprits are carrying out their illegal activities right under the police’s nose.” Morning Star News adds: “Area police routinely round up young, impoverished Christians on false charges of drug peddling and bootlegging, and then force their families to pay heavy bribes in return for their release… family elders had seen signs of torture on the body…”

Christian families in a Punjabi village were forced to flee after a Christian man married a Muslim woman—an act forbidden by Islamic law. According to the Pakistani report, “The Muslims in this village became enraged when this occurred and began threatening them…. When the news of the marriage was learned, the Muslims in Sahiwal attacked Shahab’s [the Christian husband’s] family as well as other Christian families in the village. The Muslims demanded that Ruksana [the Muslim wife] be returned immediately, according to Sharia which prohibits Muslim women from marrying a man from another religion…. the entire Muslim community was threatening to kill Shahab’s father and all of the village’s Christians…. The Christians’ pleas for help from the local police were all in vain.”

And Qaiser Ayub, a 40-year-old professor of Christian background, was arrested and charged with insulting Islam’s prophet Muhammad. The computer science professor had been a fugitive avoiding the police since 2011, when he was first accused of having written blasphemous comments on his blog.

Dhimmitude: Generic Contempt and Hostility

Denmark: In an apparent replication of the Islamic world’s modus operandi, Muslim refugees in the European nation are persecuting Christian refugees. According to 10news.dk, “Christian asylum seekers are repeatedly exposed to everything from harassment to threats and physical abuse by other refugees in the asylum centers, simply because they have converted from Islam to Christianity.” According to Niels Eriksen Nyman, who led the study, “There are certainly many more cases around the country than the ones we hear about in the church. I hate to say it, but I’m afraid that on some of the asylum centers there are some very unhealthy control mechanisms when the staff turns their back… I refuse to support Islamophobia, but we have a serious problem here.” Two recent examples: “An eight year old Christian at the Center Sandholm was bullied and beaten by the larger Arab boys on their way to school. Now the boy nolonger [sic] dares to go to school. On the island Bornholm, somebody had tampered with a Christian asylum seeker’s bike so that he crashed and broke both hands.”

Egypt: The Islamic State called on its followers to take the jihad to Egypt. Abu Mus’ab al-Maqdisi, a leader in the Islamic State, said in a statement titled “Advice to Egypt’s Mujahidin” that “It is necessary to take the battle to Cairo, until the Sinai is safeguarded from the apostates [reference to Egyptian government] and becomes a rear base [qaeda] from which to expand the jihad.” He also called on the jihadis in Egypt to “target the Copts,” the nation’s indigenous, Christian minority: “For targeting them, following them, and killing them is one of the main ways to serve the cause of our virtuous male and female hostages of the tyrants.”

Iraq: Christian homes in Tel Isqof were looted by Kurds who, after fighting the Islamic State, took control of the area on August 17. According to Agenzia Fides, “The city of Tel Isqof was occupied on August 7 by jihadist militias who already in June had conquered Mosul. Faced with the advancing of jihadists, the civilian population, mainly Christians, had fled to the autonomous Region of Iraqi Kurdistan, leaving the city deserted. Ten days later [on August 17], with a counter-offensive the Kurdish Peshmerga had regained control of the city. But it is precisely since then that [Christian] residents periodically return to the city to check the status of their homes, and acknowledge that the doors of a growing number of homes and businesses have been forced and property looted: money and jewelry, technical equipment and electronic instruments.” As in the Islamic State, most Kurds are Sunni Muslims.

Islamic State: IS issued a document breaking down the purchase prices of Christian and Yazidi women being sold as sex-slaves. Apparently these enslaved unfortunates are priced based on age— the youngest being the most expensive. The breakdown is as follows (with USD equivalency in brackets): 40-50 years old: 50,000 dinars [$43]; 30-40 years old: 75,000 dinars [$64]; 20-30 years old: 100,000 dinars [$86]; 10-20 years old: 150,000 dinars [$129]; 9 years old: 200,000 dinars [$172].

Spain: Real Madrid, a professional football (soccer) team, stripped the traditional Christian cross from its club crest as part of a deal with the National Bank of Abu Dhabi. “It is believed the European champions’ new crest, minus the Christian cross, was created so as not to offend Muslim sensibilities in the United Arab Emirates, where a marketing drive will take place,” wrote the Telegraph. Club president Florentino Perez said, “This agreement will help the club to keep conquering the hearts of followers in the United Arab Emirates.”

Syria: As of November, Raqqa, which once had approximately 1,500 Christian families, had only 23 Christian families remaining in it—the others were driven out or killed by the Islamic State. Those few remaining were unable to leave the city for lack of resources or for reasons of age and health. On November 16 they were told that they must pay $535, an exorbitant sum (human sex-slaves are being sold for as little as $43). “In all likelihood Christian families, impoverished by the war, will not be able to pay the tax and will have to leave their homes” or convert to Islam, as many elderly, debilitated Christians unable to flee have already done.

About this Series

While not all, or even most, Muslims are involved, persecution of Christians is expanding. “Muslim Persecution of Christians” was developed to collate some—by no means all—of the instances of persecution that surface each month.

It documents what the mainstream media often fails to report.

It posits that such persecution is not random but systematic, and takes place in all languages, ethnicities and locations.

Categories: Christians, Executions, Foreign policy, France, Freedom, Heresy, International Community, Islam, Islamic jihad, Islamic slaughter, Jerusalem, Koran, Kurds, Obama, Terrorism, Torture
Tags: Christians, Executions, Foreign Policy, France, Freedom, Heresy, International Community, Islam, Islamic Jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Koran, Kurds, Terrorism, Torture

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Can Charlie Hebdo’s Spirit Include Israel?

January 9, 2015

Can Charlie Hebdo’s Spirit Include Israel? Algemeiner, Noah Beck, January 9, 2015

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Grieving Parisians gathered to mourn the victims of the Charlie Hebdo shooting. Photo: Screenshot, Vice News.

[H]ad Palestinian gunmen similarly attacked Israel’s most important daily newspaper and then escaped, would the event inspire such constant coverage or international sympathy? Israel has suffered countless massacres followed by a suspenseful manhunt for the Islamist terrorists; in each of these incidents, the world hardly noticed until Israel forcefully responded and Palestinians died (prompting global condemnation of Israel).

The best response to the Charlie Hebdo attack is to redouble the free expression Islamists meant to stifle. Similarly, the best response to Islamist attacks on the only Mideast democracy, Israel, is to increase support for it.

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The Islamist massacre at Charlie Hebdo has understandably captured global attention because it was a barbaric attack on France and freedom of expression. In a moment of defiant moral clarity, “je suis Charlie” emerged as a popular phrase of solidarity with the victims. Hopefully such clarity persists and extends to those facing similar challenges every day in the Middle East.

Christians and other religious minorities have been beheaded by Islamists for years, but it wasn’t until US journalist James Foley was beheaded that the West cared. The Islamic State raped and slaughtered thousands of Yazidis — leaving the surviving refugees stranded on Mount Sinjar — before the West took notice. But one Islamist besieging a cafe in Sydney, killing two, dominated global coverage for the entire 16-hour incident.

Western leaders and media must realize that religious minorities in the Middle East are the canary in the coalmine for the West when it comes to Islamist threats. And Israel provides the clearest early warning of all, precisely because — despite Israel’s location in a region of Islamists and dictatorships — the Jewish state has free elections, freedom of speech, a vigorous political opposition and independent press, equal rights and protections for minorities and women (who are represented in all parts of civil, legal, political, artistic, and economic life), and a prosperous free market economy.

But had Palestinian gunmen similarly attacked Israel’s most important daily newspaper and then escaped, would the event inspire such constant coverage or international sympathy? Israel has suffered countless massacres followed by a suspenseful manhunt for the Islamist terrorists; in each of these incidents, the world hardly noticed until Israel forcefully responded and Palestinians died (prompting global condemnation of Israel).

However, when there is an attack in Europe, North America, or Australia, there is widespread grief, solidarity, and an acceptance of whatever policy reaction is chosen. But when Israel is targeted, there is almost always a call for “restraint,” as happened last November after fatal stabbings by Palestinian terrorists in Tel Aviv and the West Bank.

If two Palestinians entered a European or North American church and attacked worshipers with meat cleavers, killing five people, including priests, the outrage would be palpable in every politician and journalist’s voice. But when Israelis were victims of such an attack, Obama’s reaction was spineless and tone deaf. Did Obama condemn the Charlie Hebdo massacre by noting how many Muslims have died at the hands of French military forces operating in Africa and the Middle East? Of course not. Such moral equivocation would be unthinkable with any ally or Western country except Israel.

Similarly, would Secretary of State John Kerry ever suggest that the Islamic State is somehow motivated by French policies (whether banning Muslim headscarves at public schools or fighting Islamists in Mali)? Obviously not. Yet Kerry did just that sort of thing with Israel when he suggested that the Islamic State is driven by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

And the media’s anti-Israel bias is well known but became even more obvious when they couldn’t get a simple story about vehicular terrorism against Israelis correct. Compare how The Guardian writes accurate headlines when France or Canada suffers an Islamist car attack but not when Israel does.

Consider all of the justifiable news coverage and outrage over the 2013 Boston bombings, and imagine if one of those happened every week. Would anyone dare suggest that the US make peace with any Islamists demanding changes to US policy? And yet Israel had such bomb attacks almost every week of 2002 and was invariably asked to restrain itself and make concessions to the very people bombing them (as happened again last summer, when Hamas fired thousands of rockets at Israel).

As Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has ruefully observed, “There is a standard for dictatorships, there is a standard for democracies, and there is still a third standard for the democracy called Israel.”

Even when compared to Western democracies, what other country gives incredibly forgiving medical care to terrorists and agrees to treat the children of those working to destroy it? Israel is where a Hamas family member finds refuge when he is a gay convert to Christianity but this is yet another inconvenient fact for the mainstream media (as is the fact that some Israeli Arabs supported the IDF’s 2014 war against Hamas). Why report what contradicts the one-sided, anti-Israel narrative that the media and groups like Human Rights Watch have adopted? That narrative is only reinforced on college campuses (leftist college history professors openly supported Hamas last summer). Nevertheless, US funding of anti-Israel groups continues to aggravate the misinformation problem.

Israel is still the country that everyone loves to hate. So it’s the cheap way to please Muslim voters in Europe and oil producers in the Gulf. But what happens to Israel eventually comes to the West, because Israel is an extension of the West. And just as surrendering Czechoslovakia failed to appease the expansionist appetite and murderous rampage of Nazi totalitarianism, so too will feeding Israel to Islamist totalitarianism fail to appease that movement. In the end, there is no set of concessions — short of civilizational surrender — that the Islamists will accept.

Nevertheless, an EU court decided to remove Hamas from the European Union’s terror list, even though Hamas is responsible for scores of terrorist attacks that have murdered hundreds of Israelis, North Americans, and Europeans, and has a charter calling for the destruction of Israel. And Western European countries have voted for Palestinian statehood at the UN and in their parliaments, effectively rewarding Palestinian terrorism and intransigence. Europe supports the Palestinian Authority as if Hamas couldn’t overthrow it in the West Bank as easily as Hamas did in Gaza Strip in 2007. How can Europe not know that Hamas has designs on the West Bank and that any Israeli withdrawal from that territory will only facilitate such a takeover? And how can Europe believe that Israel could ever make peace with Hamas, which has launched three unprovoked wars on Israel in the last five years (in the decade since Israel withdrew from Gaza)?

Moreover, if lofty concerns about self-determination and human rights are the true motivation behind Europe’s vocal support for Palestinian independence (despite its undemocratic and violent record), why is Europe deafeningly quiet on Kurdish statehood? Given that six million Jews were annihilated by a genocide on European soil, Europe’s hypocrisy on Israel should embarrass the continent even more.

Worse still, Europe’s gestures of appeasement only encourage the Islamists. The best response to the Charlie Hebdo attack is to redouble the free expression Islamists meant to stifle. Similarly, the best response to Islamist attacks on the only Mideast democracy, Israel, is to increase support for it.

Categories: Charlie Hedbo, Europe, Foreign policy, Freedom, Gaza, Golan Heights, Hamas, International Community, Islam, Islamic jihad, Islamic slaughter, Israel, Jerusalem, Kerry, Kurds, Middle East, Moral equivalence, Obama, Terrorism, West Bank
Tags: Charlie Hedbo, Europe, Foreign Policy, Freedom, Gaza, Golan Heights, Hamas, International Community, Islam, Islamic Jihad, Islamic slaughter, Israel, Jerusalem, Kurds, Middle East, Moral equivalence

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