Archive for the ‘Islamic integration’ category

Creeping Sharia in Health Care

July 28, 2016

Creeping Sharia in Health Care, American ThinkerCarol Brown, July 28, 2016

(If Islamists are to be our masters, we had best make them healthy, wealthy and wise. — DM)

Islamic supremacy is arriving in medical settings using stealth means, or what is often referred to as creeping sharia. Common themes include Muslim health care workers refusing to uphold infection control protocols, Muslim medical students refusing to study topics they deem forbidden according to Islamic law, Muslim visitors in hospitals ignoring hygiene guidelines to protect patients, and hospitals bending over backwards (or is it forwards?) to accommodate Muslim demands above and beyond anything done for members of any other religious or demographic group. Also covered are outright acts of violence perpetrated by Muslim men who attack hospital personnel.

Islamic supremacy + dhimmitude = the end of civilized societies. Before I begin the (by no means exhaustive) list of how this equation is playing out in health care settings throughout the West, I’d like to share a personal story.

Shortly after the 9/11 Islamic terror attacks I had occasion to speak with a Muslim doctor who lived down the street from me. At that point in time I was completely ignorant about Islam and was, in fact, still a leftist (though wouldn’t be for much longer).

The doctor, a meticulously groomed, soft-spoken, modern-appearing man made it clear that, among other things, he believed that Muslim females become “mature” when they turned nine and therefore can be married at that age. I ignored the alarm bell that went off in my head when he made that statement. Of course I’ve long since realized that this highly educated doctor who worked at a prestigious hospital had sanctioned, at the very least, child rape (in keeping with the teachings of his prophet, the king of all pedophiles, Mohammed).

And therein lies the rub with Muslim doctors, as with all Muslims. If they are good Muslims and follow the teachings of the Quran, their values will necessarily be in direct conflict with our own.

So with that in mind, let me begin our tour through Islamic supremacy in medial settings right here in the United States.

An Islamic medical association operating in this country was identified by the Muslim Brotherhood as one among several “organizations of our friends” — friends that could help the MB advance their goal of destroying America from within. Part of the association’s oath includes: “We serve no other God besides [Allah] and regard idolatry as an abominable injustice.”

Islamic supremacy also asserts itself through lawfare as when a Muslim medical student who was dismissed due to poor academic performance sued the medical school on grounds of discrimination. Another case involved a Muslim health care worker who was fired because she refused to get a flu vaccine (required in hospital settings to protect patients) claiming the vaccine violated her Islamic faith because it contained a pork by product and that the entire affair violated her civil rights.

In addition to lawfare there are many other ways Muslims push for special accommodations such as Muslim doctors and advocacy organizations calling on health care personnel to be more knowledgeable about Muslim traditions so they can better meet the needs of their Muslim patients.

And so hospitals across the country are implementing an array of services for Muslim patients,  including halal meals, alternatives to medications that contain alcohol and/or pork derivatives, gowns for women designed to protect their modesty, early morning and late night appointments during the month of Ramadan, hiring more Muslim chaplains, handing out Qurans to the parents of Muslim children after they’re born, providing prayer rugs, hosting Iftar events, and setting up prayers rooms exclusively for Muslims who often find existing multi-faith prayers rooms offensive and/or inconvenient.

One town in Illinois proposed a “Muslim-centric” medical facility replete with many of the features noted above as well as Arabic-speaking staff, private rooms to ensure a Muslim standard of modesty, and space for ritual foot baths. The state rejected the plan but it was resubmitted without any references to sharia law.

There has also been a proliferation of medical outreach programs for the Muslim community along with “sensitivity training” for medical staff who are expected to become so well versed in the array of Muslim patients’ needs that they can discern differences between the needs of a Muslim from Pakistan compared to a Muslim from Saudi Arabia.

The Muslim-as-victim meme rears its head as well, such as the idea that Muslims “don’t have access” to healthcare, as was recently asserted by the vice president of cultural competence at a medical center in Brooklyn, NY.

And when Muslims do access health care, special demands may be made as when a Muslima in New Jersey went to an emergency room complaining of chest pain and insisted on a male technician after she was told she’d need an electrocardiogram. No male technician was available and she was informed of her options. She decided to sit and wait. After several hours her husband requested she be transferred to a different hospital. The couple then sued, claiming the Patient’s Bill of Rights entitled the Muslima to her demands.

The issue of Muslima patients demanding same-sex health care professionals in emergency situations is one I expect to escalate, as is happening in Europe. But first, let’s take a quick detour to Canada where medical professionals banned virginity tests and the issuance of “chastity certificates” (popular in the Muslim culture) after the discovery of four dead Afghan women who were victims of “honor killings.” Elsewhere in Canada on a maternity ward where shared rooms arranged four beds with privacy curtains in between, a Muslim couple received greater levels of privacy than were afforded to others when their demands ejected at least one non-Muslim couple out of the ward and into a much more costly private room that the couple had to pay for.

In Europe the situation is even more dire. And pervasive.

In the UK, an 87-year-old Alzheimer’s patient was forced to wait for care after she fell because the Muslim charge nurse withheld assistance until he finished his prayers. This delay in care lasted five to ten minutes. The patient died shortly thereafter.

Meanwhile, in at least one British hospital, staff were turning the beds of Muslim patients up to five times a day so patients could face Mecca while they pray. Then staff turned them back when the patients were finished. Staff were also expected to provide Muslim patients with running water so they can wash their feet before prayer.

And then there is the issue of traditional Muslim attire, much of which doesn’t meet standards for infection control. The National Health Service requires staff providing direct care to patients to be in short sleeves to reduce the risk of transmitting increasingly deadly pathogens from one patient to another. Since many Muslim women consider it immodest to expose their forearms, some have refused to do so for proper hand-washing or scrubbing in prior to surgery. So the NHS developed disposable sleeves for Muslim health care workers who have direct patient contact.

Naturally the tale above would not be complete without the Muslim-claiming-discrimination story as when a British radiographer who was faced with having to choose between losing her job or complying with the dress code, chose Islam over her job, then complained about having to make the choice. Meanwhile, the Islamic Medical Association in the UK upheld the Islamic tenet that Muslim women out in public must be covered, stating: “No practicing Muslim woman — doctor, medical student, nurse, or patient — should be forced to bare her arms below the elbow.”

But it doesn’t stop there. (It never stops when it comes to Islamic supremacism.) Some Muslimas working in hospitals in the UK also want sterile hijabs to wear in the operating room and a private place to scrub in so their modesty can be protected. Some Muslim health care workers also refuse to use alcohol-based hand sanitizer because they claim it is forbidden according to Islamic law.

And what of British Muslims studying to work in health care? Well, some have refused to attend classes or learn about anything that conflicts with the teachings of the Quran, such as material on evolution and health issues related sexual promiscuity and/or alcohol consumption. The commitment to avoid all things alcohol-related also impacts patient safety when Muslim visitors to hospitals refuse to use anti-bacterial gel before entering patient wards, ignoring signs posted throughout British hospitals asking visitors to use the gel in order to reduce the spread of infection. (Of note, there is nothing in Islamic law that would suggest Muslims cannot use alcohol-based sanitary gels and it appears that some Muslims are using this as a point of leverage to assert supremacy. See here, here, and here.)

The final exhibit of the UK tour is a Muslim dentist who insisted his female patients wear hijabs, keeping a stash of head scarves in his office to give them. He abandoned at least two patients in acute pain who refused to don the hijab and on at least one occasion provided lesser quality care to a patient’s son when the mother agreed to wear the hijab but apparently didn’t answer a question about her son’s prayer habits in a way that pleased the dentist. Of note, the dentist’s younger brother is an Islamic extremist who stated that the 9/11 terror attack served “the pleasure of Allah.”

Throughout Europe it has also become increasingly common for Muslim men to physically attack male doctors. In some cases, women are denied urgently needed medical care because their spouses are adamant that they be attended to by a female, or not be attended to at all.

In France, a newborn’s father called the midwife a “rapist” then broke into the locked delivery room after seeing a nurse remove his wife’s burqa so she could give birth, hit the nurse in the face, and demanded she put the burqa back on his wife. In another case a Muslim male physically attacked a gynecologist who stepped in to assist with his wife’s complicated delivery. A few months prior to that, another doctor was attacked by a knife-wielding Islamist.

In Belgium, when a Muslim woman needed an emergency c-section, her husband blocked the door to the operating room because the anesthesiologist was a male. After being told no female anesthesiologists were available a two-hour stand-off ensued after which time an imam was called upon who allowed the doctor to administer an epidural through a tiny opening in the woman’s burqa. A female nurse performed the surgery while the anesthesiologist remained outside the room shouting instructions to another nurse who was monitoring the anesthesia. An organization of anesthesiologists stated there have been other such incidents involving Muslim patients and their families.

In Sweden, it’s more of the same. When a male doctor answered an urgent call to assist with a mother who was bleeding heavily after giving birth, the woman’s husband screamed at him to leave the room immediately. When the doctor refused, the husband and the brother-in-law physically attacked him.

In addition to Muslim males becoming enraged if a male health care provider attends to their wife, there other things that may set them off. (Like just about everything.) And so a Turkish Muslim went on a violent rampage in a Catholic hospital in Germany because there were too many crosses on the walls.

Barbarism meets the West. (And I haven’t even touched upon the abject madness that has unfolded in hospitals across Europe as invaders invade en masse, here, here, and here.)

As the Muslim population in a society increases, expressions of Islamic supremacy become more and more aggressive. How it manifests in health care settings is just one of many ways in which the West is slowly and steadily being taken down by those who embrace an ideology that mandates nothing less than world domination.

Hat tips: Atlas Shrugs, Jihad Watch, Islam in Europe, Fox News, NY Times, Washington Post, Fox News, Boston Herald, Front Page Magazine, Discover the Networks, BBC, Daily Mail, Metro UK, Telegraph, The Guardian, Nursing Times, Modern Health Care, Middle East Forum, Islam in Europe, Islamist Watch, The Whig, The Age, Religion News, Europe1, Lancet, Society for Human Resource Management, Wikipedia, and Daniel Pipes whose 2007 comprehensive overview of the subject matter provided a wealth of material.

 

Islamism Rises from Europe’s Secularism

July 24, 2016

Islamism Rises from Europe’s Secularism, Gatestone InstituteGiulio Meotti, July 24, 2016

♦ In France, the Socialist government imposed a “secularism charter” in every school, banning Christianity from the educational system. Municipalities have already changed the enrollment form for schoolchildren by eliminating the words “father” and “mother”, replacing them with “legal manager 1” and “legal manager 2”. It is George Orwell’s “Newspeak”.

♦ After two major terror attacks in 2015, France, instead of promoting a cultural “jihad” based on Western values, responded to Islamic fundamentalism with a ridiculous “Day of Secularism” to be celebrated every 9th of December.

♦ This narrow secularism has also prevented France from openly supporting Eastern Christians under Islamist oppression.

♦ The empty 13th century Oude Kerk church in Amsterdam is now used for exhibitions and can be rented for gala dinners. In front of it there is “Sexyland”, offering “Live F*ck Shows”, a coffee shop for drugs and an “Erotic Supermarket” for dildos. For seven euros one can also visit the church.

On October 2000, in the sunny French city of Nice, the 105-member European Convention drafted the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

Drawn up by the committee of former French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the document only referred to the “cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe”. The European Parliament had rejected a proposal from Christian Democrat MEPs and Pope John Paul II, to include in the text Europe’s “Judaeo-Christian roots”.

In the 75,000-word Charter there is not a single mention of Christianity. Since then, a wind of aggressive secularism has pervaded all EU policies. The European Court of Human Rights, for example, asked to remove crucifixes from classrooms: they were allegedly a threat to democracy.

The city of Nice — where exactly sixteen years ago Europe’s rulers decided to eliminate the Judeo-Christian roots from the (never approved) EU Constitution — has just witnessed the bloody manifestation of another religion: radical Islam. “Nature abhors a vacuum”: This is the truth to which our élites do not want to listen; Islamism rises from what William McGurn, George W. Bush’s speechwriter, called “Europe’s feckless secularism“.

You can see it not only in Europe’s churches, three-quarters empty, and the boom of Europeans converting to Islam, but also from what is happening in Europe’s schools. The trends do not support Viktor Orbán‘s vision for a Christian Europe.

A few days ago, Belgium, which was recently targeted in terror attacks, decided that religion classes in French-speaking primary and secondary schools will be cut in half starting in October 2016, and replaced with an hour of “citizenship classes“: lessons in secularism. In Brussels, half the children in public schools already choose to take classes in Islam.

In France, the Socialist government imposed a “secularism charter” in every school, banning Christianity from the educational system. That charter is the manifesto of the “révolution douce” (“soft revolution”), France’s extreme secularism. It is an attempt to eliminate any claim of identity. A Jewish yarmulke, a Christian cross and an Islamic veil are treated the same way. This secularism is what has been rightly defined “the Left’s blind spot with Islam“.

It is a secularism that has also gone mad. The Yves Codou elementary school in the village of La Môle, for example, celebrated “Parents’ Day” instead of Mother’s Day, in order not to upset gay couples. Municipalities have already changed the enrollment form for schoolchildren by eliminating the words “father” and “mother”, replacing them with “legal manager 1” and “legal manager 2”. It is George Orwell’s “Newspeak”.

After two major terror attacks in 2015, France, instead of promoting a cultural “jihad” based on Western values, responded to Islamic fundamentalism with a ridiculous “Day of Secularism” to be celebrated every 9th of December.

It is not that this secularism “exacerbated” cultural tensions, as many liberals say. It is that this secularism severed French culture from the very ideals that created the West. Severing it made this culture blind to the incompatibility of Islamism with secular-minded values. A French teacher,Isabelle Rey, after the massacre at the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, wrote that

“many of our students do not share our dismay at the events. We can pretend to have a consensus, but it is a fact that a significant portion of our population believes that the journalists deserved their fate or that the Kouachi brothers [the murderers] died as heroes”.

This narrow secularism has also prevented France from openly supporting Eastern Christians under Islamist oppression. The music group “The Priests” had planned to advertise an upcoming concert in Paris with a banner on a poster that said proceeds would go towards the cause of Christians persecuted in Iraq and Syria — but the company operating the Paris subway system initially banned the ad, saying it considered the banner as a violation of secularism.

Sweden, one of the European countries more infiltrated by radical Islam, is listed as “the least religious” nation in the West. According to Statistics Sweden, just 5% of Swedes are regular churchgoers, and one in three couples that get married chooses a civil ceremony. How did Sweden get there? Many years ago, the Swedish government banned any religious activities in schools except for those directly related to religion classes.

Not only has secularism no answers for terrorism; it also leaves Europeans unsure about what is worth fighting, killing, and dying for. If you believe, as the secularists do, that our values are mere accidents of history and that the highest good is comfort, then you will care nothing for the future of civilization.

The symbol of this Euro-Secularism is the Oude Kerk, dating from the 13th century, and one of the most famous churches in Amsterdam. The empty church is now used for exhibitions and can be rented for gala dinners. In front of it there is “Sexyland”, offering “Live F*ck Shows”, a coffee shop for drugs and an “Erotic Supermarket” for dildos. For seven euros one can also visit the church.

1707The symbol of Euro-Secularism is the 13th century Oude Kerk in Amsterdam. The empty church is now used for exhibitions and can be rented for gala dinners. In front of it there is “Sexyland”, offering “Live F*ck Shows”, a coffee shop for drugs and an “Erotic Supermarket” for dildos. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons)

Welcome to Amsterdam, where the most practised religion is Islam.

Germans Debate Use of Force against Jihadists

July 24, 2016

Germans Debate Use of Force against Jihadists, Gatestone InstituteSoeren Kern, July 24, 2016

♦ “I am a soldier of the Caliphate and am launching a martyrdom operation in Germany. … I have lived among you, lived in your homes. I planned this in your own land. And I will slaughter you in your own homes and in the streets. … I will slaughter you with this knife and sever your necks with an axe, if Allah permits. ” – Germany’s axe-attacker, in an Islamic State video.

♦ “Künast should not be watching so many bad movies. Who would believe that if someone attacks the police with an axe and a knife, the police are supposed to shoot the axe out of the attacker’s hands? That is really clueless and stupid. If police officers are attacked in this manner, they will not engage in Kung Fu. Unfortunately, it sometimes ends in the death of the perpetrator. This will not change.” – Rainer Wendt, Chairman of the German Police Union.

♦ The Bavarian Criminal Police Office has now launched an internal investigation to determine if police were justified in shooting a jihadist.

A 17-year-old Afghan asylum seeker brandishing an axe and shouting “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is the greatest”) seriously injured five people on a train in Würzburg, Bavaria. The assailant was shot dead by police after he charged at them with the axe.

The teenager, who had claimed asylum after arriving in Germany in June 2015 as an unaccompanied minor, had been placed with a foster family just two weeks before the attack as a reward for being “well integrated.”

Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said police had found a hand-painted Islamic State flag in his room at his foster home in the nearby town of Ochsenfurt. They also found a farewell letter to his father which read: “Now pray for me so that I can take revenge on these infidels. Pray for me that I can get to paradise.”

Shortly after the attack, the Islamic State released a video purporting to show an Afghan asylum seeker holding a knife and making threats against Germany:

“In the name of Allah, I am a soldier of the Caliphate and am launching a martyrdom operation in Germany.

“Here I am. I have lived among you, lived in your homes. I planned this in your own land. And I will slaughter you in your own homes and in the streets.

“I will make you forget about the spectacular attacks in France, if Allah permits.

“I will fight to the death, if Allah permits. I will slaughter you with this knife and sever your necks with an axe, if Allah permits.”

In the video, the Islamic State identified the attacker as Muhammad Riyad, who can be heard speaking Pashto, a language spoken in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. But German media identified the attacker as Riaz Khan Ahmadzai. The discrepancy raised questions about the teenager’s true identity.

Police found a Pakistani document in the teenager’s room, leading some to believe he may have lied about being from Afghanistan in order to improve his chances of securing asylum. German authorities generally classify migrants from Pakistan as economic migrants and those from Afghanistan as refugees. But Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière said there is no reason to doubt that the attacker was indeed from Afghanistan.

There are also unresolved questions about the teenager’s ties to the Islamic State. Herrmann, the Bavarian interior minister, said the video is authentic: “The man in the video is the Würzburg attacker.” The federal prosecutor’s office in Karlsruhe said it believed “the attacker committed the offense as a member of the Islamic State.”

1708Left: The 17-year-old Afghan asylum seeker who seriously injured five people on a train in Germany, while shouting “Allahu Akbar,” is shown in an Islamic State video saying, “In the name of Allah, I am a soldier of the Caliphate and am launching a martyrdom operation in Germany… I will slaughter you in your own homes and in the streets.” Right: The attacker’s body is removed from the place where police shot him, after he charged at them with the axe.

By contrast, De Maizière said the attacker was a self-radicalized “lone wolf” who had been incited by Islamic State propaganda. The public prosecutor in Bamberg, Erik Ohlenschlager, said “We have no evidence that he was in direct contact with the Islamic State.”

After the blood-filled train — an eyewitness said it “looked like a slaughterhouse” — came to a stop at a station in Heidingsfeld near Würzburg, the teenager jumped off and tried to escape. Surrounded by police, he lunged at them with an axe. Police shot the attacker dead because “there was no other option.”

Green Party MP Renate Künast criticized the police for using lethal force. In a tweet, she wrote: “Why could the attacker not have been incapacitated without killing him???? Questions!”

Künast’s comments provoked a furious backlash, with many accusing her of showing more sympathy for the perpetrator than for the victims. The outpouring of anger against Künast indicates that Germans have had enough of their politically correct politicians.

The chairman of the German police union, Rainer Wendt, said:

“The final rescue shot is clearly regulated by law. The policemen were attacked and used their firearm to defend against an immediate danger to life and limb. That is their statutory duty. The Green MP Renate Künast has absolutely no idea about reality of dangerous police actions.”

Speaking on N24 television, Wendt added:

“Künast should not be watching so many bad movies. Who would believe that if someone attacks the police with an axe and a knife, the police are supposed to shoot the axe out of the attacker’s hands? That is really clueless and stupid.

“If police officers are attacked in this manner, they will not engage in Kung Fu. Unfortunately, it sometimes ends in the death of the perpetrator. This will not change.”

The head of the police union in Bavaria, Peter Schall, said: “If a police officer is not allowed to shoot in such situations, he might as well stop carrying a weapon.”

Mike Mohring, a politician with the ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU), called for stiffer penalties for those who attack police officers. He said attacks against police are on the rise across Germany and “the only effective deterrent is that the law provides an appropriate penalty.” He also said German police should be outfitted with body cameras to protect both the police and the public.

Bavarian Justice Minister Winfried Bausback called on Künast to resign: “Anyone who publicly suspects police in such a situation without any knowledge of the matter — as Künast has done in her tweet — is unacceptable as chairman of the parliamentary legal committee.”

Green leader Cem Özdemir distanced himself from Künast:

“I did not understand what she wrote there. It is always a good idea to think about what you are writing before you send a tweet. What are police officers supposed to do if they are attacked? They protected others and they protected themselves. Her view is not the position of my party.”

Andreas Scheuer, the general secretary of the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU, said Künast’s comments were “perverse.” He added: “The CSU’s policy is: protection of victims takes priority over protection of perpetrators.”

German commentator Klaus Kelle wrote:

“Our police in Germany do an excellent job and are hardly ever thanked for it. They are poorly paid … and repeatedly are whipping boys for errors of policy. Endless overtime, violent attacks, even in harmless situations such as illegal parking, is part of everyday life for our sons and daughters, who serve all of us.

“Where are the politicians who support our policemen, rather than those who mindlessly criticize them, as now? Ms. Künast, does the presumption of innocence apply to police officers in this country?”

The Bavarian Criminal Police Office has now launched an internal investigation to determine if police were justified in shooting a jihadist.

When It Comes to Islam, Western Leaders Are Liars or Idiots

July 23, 2016

When It Comes to Islam, Western Leaders Are Liars or Idiots, PJ MediaRaymond Ibrahim, July 22, 2016

Idiots

Most politicians — practically every Democrat but also a majority of Republicans, with the notable exception of Donald Trump — make the same claims.

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

When it comes to the connection between Islam and violence against non-Muslims, one fact must be understood: the majority of those in positions of leadership and authority in the West are either liars or fools, or both.

No other alternative exists.

The reason for this uncharitable assertion is simple: If Islam was once a faraway, exotic religion, today we hear calls for, and see acts of, violence committed in its name every day. And many of us still have “ears that hear and eyes that see,” so it’s no secret: Muslims from all around the world and from all walks of life — not just “terrorists” or “ISIS” — unequivocally and unapologetically proclaim that Islam commands them to hate, subjugate, and kill all who resist it, including all non-Muslims.

This is the official position of several Muslim governments, including America’s closest “friends and allies” like Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

It’s the official position of Islamic institutions of lower and higher learning: from Bangladeshi high schools to Egypt’s Al Azhar, the world’s most prestigious Islamic university.

It’s the official position broadcast in numerous languages on Islamic satellite stations that air in Muslim homes around the world.

In short, there’s no excuse today for anyone to still be ignorant about Islam, and especially for those in positions of leadership or authority. Yet it is precisely this group that most vehemently denies any connection between Islam and violence.

Why?

On July 18 in Germany, an axe-waving Muslim refugee attacked a number of train passengers and critically injured three. Although an ISIS flag was found in his room, although he called for the slaughter of any Muslim who dares leave Islam, although he yelled “Allahu Akbar” — Islam’s unequivocal war cry — authorities claimed “it was too early to speculate about the motives of the attacker.”

Catholic Bishop Friedhelm Hofmann of Wuerzburg, where the axe attack took place, was bewildered: “One is speechless at such a moment. This fact can not be understood.”

Instead of being vigilant around Muslim migrants, he said: “Maybe we need to help the unaccompanied young refugees even more and help them to overcome their own traumas.”

About a month earlier in Germany, this same scene played out. While screaming “Allahu Akbar” and “infidels must die,” another Muslim man in another train station stabbed to death one man and injured three others. Still, German authorities “found no evidence of Islamist motive.”

In neighboring France — which has “Europe’s largest Muslim minority” and is also (coincidentally?) the “most threatened country” — this sequence of events (a Muslim attacks in the name of Islam, authorities claim difficulty in finding “motive”) is becoming endemic.

On July 19, a Muslim man vacationing with his pregnant wife and children stabbed a neighboring woman and her three daughters for being “scantily dressed.” The youngest girl, 8, was in critical condition with a punctured lung.

Although this is a common occurrence throughout the Muslim world — many Muslim women wear the hijab because they know the consequences of not in public — and although French television was brave enough to say that the man, named Mohamed B, 37, “may have acted out of religious motives,” Mayor Edmond Francou said he preferred “not to speculate about the motive of the attack.”

A few days earlier, another “Allahu Akbar”-screaming Muslim killed 84 people in Nice.

Yet according to French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, the killer’s “motives [were] not yet established.” Asked if he could at least confirm the attacker’s motives were linked to jihadism, he said, “No.”

Reuters went so far as to write an article blaming France for its own terrorization.

Turning to the United States, one finds the same pattern. Most recently, a Muslim man entered a gay nightclub in Orlando and killed 49. Despite the fact that ISIS regularly kills homosexuals and that the killer — who “recited prayers to Allah during the attack” — pledged his allegiance to ISIS, “Attorney General Loretta Lynch said that the investigation is still ongoing, and a motive has yet to be established,” while “the FBI was confused about [his] motive.”

Earlier this year, Edward Archer — a convert to Islam — shot and wounded Philadelphia police officer Jesse Hartnett. He later explained his motive: “I follow Allah. I pledge my allegiance to the Islamic state. That is why I did what I did.”

Yet after showing a surveillance video of Archer in Islamic dress shooting at Hartnett, Philadelphia mayor Jim Kenney emphatically declared:

In no way shape or form does anyone in this room believe that Islam or the teaching of Islam has anything to do with what you’ve seen on the screen.…

It is abhorrent. It is terrible and it does not represent the religion or any of its teachings. This is a criminal with a stolen gun who tried to kill one of our officers. It has nothing to do with being a Muslim or following the Islamic faith.

 One can go on and on. From California alone:

  • Despite the evidence that the Muslim couple that massacred 14 people in San Bernardino was motivated by Islamic teachings of jihad against the hated “infidel,” Obama claimed: “We do not know their motivations.” Chris Hayes and MSNBC were also “baffled” in their search for a motive.
  • Despite the many indicators that the Muslim student who went on a stabbing spree in UC Merced was described as a “devout Muslim,” had an ISIS flag, and praised Allah in his manifesto — “local and federal authorities continue to insist that Faisal Mohammad, 18, carried out the vicious attack because he’d been banished from a study group.”
  • Despite the fact that a man named “Jihad” went to an El Monte police station, where he “used the word ‘jihad’ several times” while making a bomb threat, police “so far don’t have a motive.”

Most politicians — practically every Democrat but also a majority of Republicans, with the notable exception of Donald Trump — make the same claims.

The claims begin with President Barack Obama, who insists that the Islamic State “is not Islamic.” He calls for the “rejection by non-Muslims of the ignorance that equates Islam with terror.” He classified the Fort Hood massacre as “workplace violence,” despite the overwhelming evidence that it was jihad.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton admonished us to bear in mind that “Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.” Republican leaders like John McCain gush about how “unequivocally, without a doubt, the religion of Islam is an honorable and reasonable religion. ISIS has nothing to do with the reality of Islam.”

“Conservative” talking heads like Bill O’Reilly flippantly dismiss jihad as “a perversion of Islam, we all know that.”

What is to be made of all these claims from our “leaders” that fly in the face of reality?

Only immensely deranged or immensely deceitful people can claim that a Muslim who cites the Koran and calls on Allah is not acting in the name of Islam. Take your pick, but there are no other alternatives.

Regardless of the cause behind the lies that defend Islam — stupidity or deceitfulness — the same damage is done. Remember, Islam is not threatening the West due to its own innate capabilities, but because the West allows Islam to threaten the West.

The real battle revolves around getting the West to see reality, a battle which involves rooting out the liars and fools from government, media, education, and other positions of influence. This is an admittedly herculean task, considering that the lie is the narrative and the truth is considered evil.

France: After the Third Jihadist Attack

July 23, 2016

France: After the Third Jihadist Attack, Gatestone InstituteGuy Millière, July 23, 2016

(Please see also, Another Day, Another Jihad Massacre. — DM)

♦ Successive French governments have built a trap; the French people, who are in it, are thinking only of how to escape. The situation is more serious than many imagine. Whole areas of France are under the control of gangs and radical imams.

♦ Prime Minister Manuel Valls repeated what he already said 18 months ago: “France is at war.” He named an enemy, “radical Islamism,” but he was quick to add that “radical Islamism” has “nothing to do with Islam.” He then repeated that the French will have to get used to living with “violence and attacks.”

♦ The French are increasingly tired of attempts to exonerate Islam. They know perfectly well that all Muslims are not guilty. But they also know that all those who committed attacks in France in recent years were Muslims. The French have no desire to get used to “violence and attacks.” They do not want to be on the losing side and they feel that we are losing.

Nice, July 14, 2016: Bastille Day. The evening festivities were ending. As the crowd watching fireworks was beginning to disperse, the driver of a 19-ton truck, zig-zagging, mowed down everyone in his way. Ten minutes and 84 dead persons later, the driver was shot and killed. Dozens were wounded; many will be crippled for life. Dazed survivors wandered the streets of the city for hours.

French television news anchors quickly said that what happened was almost certainly an “accident,” or when the French authorities started to speak of terrorism, that the driver could just be a madman. When the police disclosed the killer’s name and identity, and that he had been depressed in the past, they suggested that he had acted in a moment of “high anxiety.” They found witnesses who testified that he was “not a devout Muslim” — maybe not a Muslim at all.

President François Hollande spoke a few hours later and affirmed his determination to “protect the populace.”

Prime Minister Manuel Valls repeated what he already said 18 months ago: “France is at war.” He named an enemy, “radical Islamism,” but he was quick to add that “radical Islamism” has “nothing to do with Islam.” He then repeated what he emphasized so many times: the French will have to get used to living with “violence and attacks.”

The public reaction showed that Valls convinced hardly anyone. The French are increasingly tired of attempts to exonerate Islam. They know perfectly well that all Muslims are not guilty. They also know that, nevertheless, all those who committed attacks in France in recent years were Muslims. They do not feel protected by François Hollande. They see that France is attacked with increasing intensity and that radical Islam has declared war, but they do not see France declaring war back. They have no desire to get used to “violence and attacks.” They do not want to be on the losing side and they feel that we are losing.

Because the National Front Party uses more robust language, much of the public votes for its candidates. The National Front’s leader, Marine Le Pen, will undoubtedly win the first round of voting in the presidential election next year. She will probably not be elected in the end, but if nothing changes quickly and clearly, she will have a very good chance next time.

Moderate politicians read the public opinion polls, harden their rhetoric, and recommend harsher policies. Some of them might demand harsher measures, such as the expulsion of detained terrorists who have dual citizenship and the detention of people that praise attacks. Some have even called for martial law.

Calm will gradually return, but it is clear that the situation in France is approaching the boiling point.

The recent attacks served as an accelerant. Four years ago, when Mohamed Merah murdered soldiers and Jews in Toulouse, the population did not react. Most French did not feel directly concerned; soldiers were just soldiers, and Jews were just Jews. When, in January 2015, Charlie Hebdo cartoonists were slaughtered, an emotional reaction engulfed the country, only to quickly vanish. A huge demonstration was organized in the name of “freedom of speech” and the “values of the republic.” Hundreds of thousands claimed, “Je Suis Charlie” (“I am Charlie”). When, two days later, Jews were murdered again in a kosher grocery store, hardly anyone said “I am a Jew.”

Those who tried to speak of jihad were promptly reduced to silence. Not even a year later, in November, the Bataclan Theater bloodbath did not lead to protests, but was a deeper shock. The mainstream media and the government could no longer hide that it was an act of jihad. The number killed was too overwhelming; one could not just turn the page. The mainstream media and the government did their best to downplay anger and frustration and to emphasize sadness.Solemn ceremonies with flowers and candles were everywhere. A “state of emergency” was declared and soldiers were sent into the streets.

But then the feeling of danger faded. The Euro 2016 soccer championship was organized in France, and the French team’s good performance created a false sense of unity.

The Nice attack was a wake-up call again. It brutally reminded everyone that the danger is still there, deadlier than ever, and that the measures taken by the authorities were useless gesticulations. Memories of the previous killings came back.

Attempts to hide that Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, the terrorist in Nice, was a jihadist fooled no one. Instead, it just created more anger, more frustration, and more desire for effective action.

Days before the Nice attack, the media reported that the parliamentary inquiry commission report on the Bataclan Theater attack revealed that the victims had been ruthlessly tortured and mutilated, and that the government had tried to cover up these facts. Now the entire public discovered the extent of the horror, adding fuel to the fire.

France seems now on the verge of a revolutionary moment; it would not take much to cause an explosion. But the situation is more serious than many imagine.

Whole areas of France are under the control of gangs and radical imams. The government delicately calls them “sensitive urban zones.” Elsewhere they are bluntly called “no go zones.” There are more than 570 of them.

Hundreds of thousands of young Muslims live there. Many are thugs, drug traffickers, robbers. Many are imbued with a deeply rooted hatred for France and the West. Recruiters for jihadists organizations tell them — directly or through social networks — that if they kill in the name of Allah, they will attain the status of martyrs. Hundreds are ready. They are unpinned grenades that may explode anywhere, anytime.

Although possessing, carrying and selling weapons are strictly regulated in France, weapons of war circulate widely. And, of course, the Nice attack has shown once again that a firearm is not necessary to commit mass murder.

Twenty-thousand people are listed in the government’s “S-files,” an alert system meant to identify individuals linked to radical Islam. Most are unmonitored. Toulouse murderer Mohamed Merah, the murderers of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, and many of the terrorists who attacked the Bataclan Theater were in the S-files. Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, the terrorist who acted in Nice, was not.

France’s intelligence chief said recently that more attacks are to come and that many potential killers wander freely, undetected.

Doing what the French government is doing today will not improve anything. On the contrary. France is at the mercy of another attack that will set the powder keg ablaze.

Doing more will lead to worse before matters get better. Regaining control of many areas would entail mobilizing the army, and leftists and anarchists would certainly add disorder to disorder.

Imprisoning whoever could be imprisoned in the name of public safety would imply more than martial law; it would mean the suspension of democratic freedoms, and even so, be an impossible task. The jails in France are already full. The police are outnumbered and showing signs of exhaustion. The French army is at the limit of its capacity for action: it already patrols the streets of France, and is deployed in Africa and the Middle East.

1578 (1)The French army is at the limit of its capacity for action: it already patrols the streets of France and is deployed in Africa and the Middle East. Pictured above: French soldiers guard a Jewish school in Strasbourg, February 2015. (Image source: Claude Truong-Ngoc/Wikimedia Commons)

Successive governments have built a trap; the French, who are in it, are thinking only of how to escape.

President François Hollande and Prime Minister Manuel Valls bear all the guilt. For years, many in France supported any movement that denounced “Islamophobic racism.” They passed laws defining criticism of Islam as a “hate crime.” They relied more and more on the Muslim vote to win elections. The most important left-wing think tank in France, Terra Nova, which is considered close to the Socialist Party, published several reports explaining that the only way for the left to win elections is to attract the votes of Muslim immigrants and to add more Muslims to the France’s population.

The moderate right is also guilty. President Charles de Gaulle established the “Arab policy of France,” a system of alliances with some of the worst dictatorships in the Arab-Muslim world, in the belief that France would regain its lost power thanks to this system. President Jacques Chirac followed in the footsteps of de Gaulle. President Nicolas Sarkozy helped overthrow the Gaddafi regime in Libya and bears a heavy responsibility for the mess that followed.

The trap revealed its lethal effects a decade ago. In 2005, riots across France showed that Muslim unrest could lead France to the brink of destruction. The blaze was extinguished thanks to the appeals for calm from Muslim organizations. Since then, France has been at the mercy of more riots.

The choice was made to practice appeasement. It did not stop the rot gaining ground.

François Hollande made hasty decisions that placed France at the center of the target. Seeing that strategic interests of France were threatened, he launched military operations against Islamist groups in sub-Saharan Africa. Realizing that French Muslims were going to train and wage jihad in Syria, he decided to engage the French army in actions against the Islamic State.

He did not anticipate that Islamist groups and the Islamic State would hit back and attack France. He did not perceive the extent to which France was vulnerable — hollowed out from within.

The results put in full light a frightening landscape. Islamists view the landscape and do not dislike what they see.

On their websites, they often quote a line from Osama bin Laden: “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, they will naturally want to side with the strong horse.”

They appear to think that France is a weak horse and that radical Islam can bring France to its knees in a pile of dust and rubble. Time, they seem to think, is on their side as well — and demography. Muslims now make up about 10% of the French population; 25% of teenagers in France are Muslims.

The number of French Muslims who want Islamic sharia law applied in France increases year after year, as does the number of French Muslims who approve of violent jihad. More and more French people despise Islam, but are filled with fear. Even the politicians who seem ready to fight do not take on Islam.

Islamists seem to think that no French politician will to overcome what looks more and more like a perfect Arab storm. They seem to feel that the West is already defeated and does not have what it takes to carry the day. Are they wrong?

Another Day, Another Jihad Massacre

July 23, 2016

Another Day, Another Jihad Massacre, Front Page MagazineRobert Spencer, July 22, 2016

munich massacre

The events unfolded in predictable fashion: a young Iranian Muslim opened fire at a shopping mall in Munich while screaming “Allahu akbar,” and initial mainstream media reports were that the gunman was a “right-wing extremist,” lashing out on the fifth anniversary of the Norwegian madman Anders Breivik’s massacre, while screaming out his hatred for foreigners. 

As it happened, it was someone else screaming his hatred for foreigners at the jihad murderer, not the other way around, but once again, the lie had gotten halfway around the world before the truth had a chance to put on its shoes.

And the same old comedy, the familiar one that plays out every week now in modern, multicultural Europe and North America, duly played out again, to an increasingly bored and indifferent crowd. Munich police chief Hubertus Andrae informed the world that the young jihadi had no known links to jihad terror groups, and added: “The motive or explanation for this crime is completely unclear.”

Unclear? Really? What is it about “Allahu akbar” and the gunning-down of innocent civilians that you don’t understand, Herr Andrae? And the answer, of course, is: everything. Hubertus Andrae, and Angela Merkel, and Theresa May, and Manuel Valls, and John Kerry, and Barack Obama, and every last one of the other Western leaders are resolutely and determinedly ignorant about what it means when a young Iranian Muslim screaming “Allahu akbar” opens fire in a shopping mall.

What, after all, could it possibly mean? This young man must have come from a troubled home, no? He must have grown up in poverty and been denied access to all sorts of economic opportunities that were open to native Germans of his age, right? He must have been “radicalized on the Internet” by shadowy forces that somehow possess the magic power to turn benign, peaceful Muslims who are a benefit and asset to every Western nation into misunderstanders of their own religion who suddenly and inexplicably discard the peaceful Islamic teachings they have imbibed from youth in their Western mosques, in favor of a twisted and hijacked version of their religion that leads them to think that treason and mass murder are not only commendable, but blessed by the Almighty – isn’t that the case?

The Munich shooter’s motive is completely unclear, because we don’t yet know if he was teased in school or on the job, or if he had trouble getting a job in the first place, or if he had psychological problems, or if he was a brooding loner who always left his moderate Muslim friends disquieted – the only thing we do know is that he couldn’t possibly have been motivated by a religion that exhorts its adherents to “slay them wherever you find them” (cf. Qur’an 2:191, 4:89, 9:5).

No, none of that is true, and one wonders if even the European and North American political and media elites believe in their own nonsense anymore. The Munich mass murderer was motivated by Islam, pure and simple – by its teachings of warfare against unbelievers and the necessity to subjugate them. His war cry of “Allahu akbar,” revered by jihadis for its power to “strike terror in the hearts of the enemies of Allah” (Qur’an 8:60), demonstrates that.

The Islamic State’s repeated calls for the mass murder of civilians in Western countries also demonstrate that. Hubertus Andrae, and Angela Merkel, and Theresa May, and Manuel Valls, and John Kerry, and Barack Obama, and every last one of the other Western leaders persist in pretending that incidents such as the mass murder in Munich on Friday, and the mass murders in Nice, Orlando, Brussels, Paris, San Bernardino, Chattanooga, and elsewhere recently are all separate, discrete criminal acts, unrelated to one another and all requiring extensive investigation to determine the motives of the perpetrators.

That proposition is not only false; it’s a Goebbelsian Big Lie. These are not criminal acts. These are not the acts of the psychopathic or the disenfranchised. These are acts of war, battles in a larger war that has been going on for 1,400 years and is picking up speed in our own age, courtesy of our willfully myopic and feckless leaders. Unless and until Western authorities begin to treat each of these incidents as part of a larger war, they will continue to misdiagnose the problem and apply the wrong solutions.

And that is the one thing they are certain to do. And so there will be many, many more Munichs. Watch this space next week for my comments on the next jihad massacre and the next flurry of predictable denials and obfuscations. My comments next week will be much like my comments here, because the actions of the elites after the next jihad attack will be much like what they have been today. What is it going to take to get leaders who are in touch with reality? Seriously, is that really too much to ask?

The President’s Beloved Islamic Grievance Monger

July 22, 2016

The President’s Beloved Islamic Grievance Monger, Front Page MagazineDiscover The Networks, July 22, 2016

linda-sarsour

Linda Sarsour – a well-trained grievance monger whose very livelihood is founded upon her ability to convince large numbers of people that they are victims of an irredeemably bigoted and oppressive American society. In short, she has a great deal in common with President Obama. No wonder she’s always welcome at the White House.

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

Linda Sarsour is a Palestinian-American community activist who since 2005 has served as executive director of the Arab American Association of New York (AAANY), which views the U.S. as a nation awash in racism and Islamophobia. She is also a board member of the Muslim Democratic Club of New York, whose mission is to help elect as many Democrats as possible to political office.

An outspoken critic of Israel, Sarsour supports the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) movement, a Hamas-inspired initiative that uses various forms of public protest, economic pressure, and court rulings to advance the Hamas agenda of permanently destroying Israel as a Jewish nation-state.

Vis-a-vis the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict, Sarsour favors a one-state solution where an Arab majority and a Jewish minority would live together within the borders of a single country. She made clear her opposition to Israel’s existence as a Jewish state when she tweeted in October 2012 that “nothing is creepier than Zionism.”

Falsely maintaining that “Palestine existed before the State of Israel,” Sarsour seeks to help “bring back a Palestinian State for the Palestinian people.” To advance this agenda, Sarsour has tweeted images of fraudulent maps claiming to depict the “Palestinian loss of land” that supposedly occurred between 1946 and 2000.

As the head of AAANY, Sarsour has played a central role in pressuring the New York Police Department to terminate its secret surveillance of Muslim mosques and organizations suspected of promoting extremism or terrorism, and to curtail its use of “stop-and-frisk” anti-crime measures. In 2011 she worked in conjuction with Communities United for Police Reform, a coalition to advance the passage of the Community Safety Act (which expanded the definition of bias-based profiling and created an independent inspector general to review police policy in New York City). Sarsour also succeeded in pressuring City Hall to close New York’s public schools for the observance of the Islamic holidays Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha.

In May 2012 Sarsour tweeted that the so-called “underwear bomber,” an al-Qaeda operative who on Christmas Day 2009 had tried to blow up a Detroit-bound passenger jet with explosives hidden inside his underwear, was actually a CIA agent participating in America’s “war on Islam.”

In a February 2015 appearance on Rachel Maddow‘s television program, Sarsour lamented that a nationwide epidemic of “Islamophobia” was responsible for “anti-sharia bills trying to ban us [Muslims] from practicing our faith,” “mosques being vandalized,” and Muslim “kids being executed” in the United States.

In August 2015 Sarsour spoke out in support of the incarcerated Palestinian Islamic Jihad member Muhammad Allan, a known recruiter of suicide bombers.

In October 2015, Sarsour posted on Twitter a photo of a young Palestinian boy clutching two stones as he stared down a group of Israeli soldiers, and labeled it “The definition of courage.” When numerous Twitter users, including Queens Councilman Rory Lancman, subsequently criticized Sarsour’s controversial post, she tweeted in response: “The Zionist trolls are out to play. Bring it. You will never silence me.”

On Melissa Harris-Perry‘s television program on December 12, 2015, Sarsour lamented the allegedly long list of “attacks on [Muslim] individuals and on mosques” that had been perpetrated by Americans who — by misperceiving all Muslims as potential terrorists — were themselves “engaging in terrorism against the innocent [Muslim] community that has nothing to do with [terrorism].” Sarsour also scoffed at the notion of Muslim integration into American society: “We can’t change who we are. This is how we look [with Muslim attire]. We can’t integrate and assimilate…. We’re gonna look like this when we walk out into the streets of our cities when we’re traveling in this country.”

According to CounterJihad.com, Sarsour “has attended numerous rallies sponsored by Al-Awdapromoted and solicited donations for their events, and … spoken at their rallies. Sarsour has also solicited donations for the Hamas-affiliated Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.

Over the years, Sarsour’s activism has extended also to racial matters within the United States. For instance, when the black, hoodie-donning Florida teenager Trayvon Martin was killed by a “white Hispanic” man in an infamous 2012 altercation, Sarsour penned an article titled “My Hijab Is My Hoodie” and declared herself “among the millions mourning the killing of Trayvon.” “Blacks in America continue to face racism on a daily basis,” she wrote, “from the workplace to interactions with law enforcement. And yet racism against African-Americans is publicly acknowledged as unacceptable…. Unfortunately, that’s not the case for Muslims in America. Bigotry against Muslims is quite acceptable.”

In the aftermath of an August 2014 incident where a white policeman in Ferguson, Missouri had shot and killed a violent black criminal named Michael Brown, Sarsour co-founded Muslims for Ferguson, to draw a parallel between the respective forms of oppression allegedly suffered by black and Muslim Americans.

According to a New York Times report, Sarsour is “deeply involved in the Black Lives Matter movement.”

In October 2011, Sarsour, who holds free-market economics in low regard, expressed, on behalf of “Muslim New Yorkers,” “solidarity and support” for the anti-capitalist Occupy Wall Street movement. In 2011 as well, the Obama Administration honored Sarsour as a “champion of change.” Thus far, she has visited the Obama White House on seven different occasions.

This, then, is Linda Sarsour – a well-trained grievance monger whose very livelihood is founded upon her ability to convince large numbers of people that they are victims of an irredeemably bigoted and oppressive American society. In short, she has a great deal in common with President Obama. No wonder she’s always welcome at the White House.

 

Germany: The Terrifying Power of Muslim Interpreters

July 22, 2016

Germany: The Terrifying Power of Muslim Interpreters, Gatestone InstituteStefan Frank, July 22, 2016

♦ “Everything I told you then is true. … But the interpreter there told me that a faithful woman must not use words like sex and rape. Words like that would dishonor my husband and our family. She also said that I was a blasphemer, because I went to the police. No woman should report her own husband. The husband must be honored.” — “Sali,” in an apparent suicide note to her lawyer, Alexander Stevens.

♦ “I am aware of statements in which interpreters have pressed and supposedly said to Christians on the way to the police or beforehand: If you complain, you can forget your application for asylum. I often noticed that statements were retracted because Christians were threatened.” — Paulus Kurt, Central Committee of Eastern Christians in Germany (ZOCD).

♦ “The interpreters are neither employed by the Federal Agency, nor are they in any way sworn in to the legal system of the Federal Republic of Germany. Ultimately, examination of the asylum application is left solely to these interpreters… In our view, a decision-making process such as this, which is practiced on a massive scale, is not in keeping with due process.” — Open letter from employees of Germany’s Federal Agency for Migration and Refugees.

 

Alexander Stevens is a lawyer at a Munich law firm specializing in sexual offenses. In his recent book, Sex in Court, he describes some of his strangest and most shocking cases. One such case raises the question: What do you do when interpreters working for the police and courts lie and manipulate? As no one monitors translators, it is likely that in many instances, the dishonesty of interpreters goes undetected — Stevens’ book chronicles the devastating effects one dishonest interpreter had on a case.

The parents of a Syrian girl, “Sali,” had promised their daughter to a man named Hassan, who, at the time, was still living in Syria. The arrangement was seen as mutually beneficial: Sali’s parents would receive money and Hassan would be allowed to enter Germany. Sali would never willingly have married a man 34 years her senior, but the family’s honor required it. However, Sali did not receive any benefits from this arrangement. Hassan’s interest in Sali was apparently confined to her body. He forced Sali to perform all kinds of sexual practices several times a day, and brutally abused the girl in the process.

Sali was unable to hide the fact that she took no pleasure in these rapes and she became ill, so Hassan reproached her and “openly threatened to demand a large compensation payment from her family, for the cost of the wedding reception and lost pleasures of love.” Sali sought help from a women’s shelter, where an employee took her to a lawyer: Stevens. At the shelter, Sali described her misfortune, but was careful repeatedly to come to her husband’s defense. She was more worried about her family’s honor, should Hassan decided to divorce her, than about herself.

“After two hours of painstaking depictions of sexual abuse, corporal punishment, and mental humiliation,” Stevens writes, “I had no doubt that everything had actually happened as she said.”

The next day, Stevens tried to get an appointment for questioning with the police and an interpreter. But he was surprised when he got to the shelter. Sali was like a different person. Suddenly, she wanted nothing to do with him or the women’s shelter employee.

Sometime later, an employee of the women’s shelter sent him a letter that Sali had left behind for him. It read:

Dear Mr. Stevens,

I am very sorry to have caused you so much inconvenience. Please believe me when I say I did not want to. Everything I told you then is true. I also wanted to make a statement to the police regarding what I told you. But the interpreter there told me that a faithful woman must not use words like sex and rape. Words like that would dishonor my husband and our family. She also said that I was a blasphemer, because I went to the police. No woman should report her own husband. The husband must be honored. I did not know what to do, Mr. Stevens. Because I think she is right. I should never have disgraced my husband and my family. Therefore, I would ask you not to tell anyone. I do not want to create any more trouble for my family and my husband’s family. Please forgive me. You were very good to me.

Sali

By this time, Sali was already dead. According to the employee from the women’s shelter, the police suspected suicide.

Interpreters Decide on Asylum

Non-Muslim refugees, in particular, complain of the pressure exerted on them by Muslim interpreters. As Gatestone Institute has already reported, Christians and other non-Muslims are beaten, threatened, and harassed in German refugee homes. One of the reasons that German authorities do not intervene has to do with the Muslim interpreters, says Paulus Kurt, head of the work groups for the Central Committee of Eastern Christians in Germany (ZOCD):

“Interpreters belonging to the Islamic religion often stick with the defendants. I am aware of statements in which interpreters have pressured and supposedly said to Christians, on the way to the police or beforehand: ‘If you complain, you can forget your application for asylum.’ I often noticed that statements were retracted because Christians were threatened.”

The effects of these abuses of power are devastating: interpreters in Germany have great influence on who is granted asylum. In a November 2015 open letter to Frank-Jürgen Weise, the head of their agency, employees of the Federal Agency for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), pointed out the potential problems of this system within their agency:

“A Syrian is someone who identifies himself as a Syrian in writing (checks the proper box on the questionnaire), and the interpreter (usually not sworn in, or from Syria) confirms it. The interpreters are neither employed by the Federal Agency, nor are they in any way sworn in to the legal system of the Federal Republic of Germany. Ultimately, examination of the asylum application is left solely to these interpreters — insofar as it involves the verification of nationality and, therefore, the country of persecution. In our view, a decision-making process such as this, which is practiced on a massive scale, is not in keeping with due process.”

Television Reports

In May 2016, the German public television station Bayerischer Rundfunk broadcast a report on Muslim interpreters who lie. The report, entitled “Treason in the Refugee Home: When Translators Mistranslate,” exposed several instances of the same issue:

Moderator: With the growing number of refugees, the demand for interpreters has also rapidly increased. Ultimately, translators play a central role in the asylum procedures, for example. Since there is an overall shortage of qualified and sworn interpreters, the Federal Agency for Migration and Refugees has recently been advertising for translators with this flyer [title: “We are Looking for Interpreters”]. Inside, it says: “You take on great responsibility in your work, and we expect you to be neutral and reliable.” But there is often a gaping hole between expectations and reality.

Reporter: Bullied and threatened by other refugees. A nightmare, what this Iraqi refugee is telling us. He asks one of the translators for help, but he [the translator] takes the side of the attacker.

Hassan: “They wanted to beat us; they insulted us. And the interpreter thought about everything while translating, and alleged that none of it had happened.”

Reporter: Hassan, as we call the young man, belongs to a small religious community of Yezidis. Radical Sunni Muslims despise Yezidis, even in Germany. Instead of conveying the message, the translator cheated him.

Hassan: “The interpreter translated that we merely had a dispute on the street.”

Reporter: That was a conscious mistranslation. Not an isolated incident, says Gian Aldonani. She fled to Germany as a young Yezidi girl. As a student in Cologne, she got involved in working with refugees. In the process, it became apparent to her again and again:

Gian Aldonani: “It is purposefully mistranslated. At first, we thought these were isolated cases out of Cologne and the surrounding area. But in documenting all of the cases, we recognized that translators all over Germany were very purposefully mistranslating. […] The social workers are reliant on the translators. The translators take advantage of this situation. These people are doing the same thing here that they do with minorities in their countries of origin.”

1706Hasan (left), a Yezidi refugee in Germany who was threatened by Muslims, speaks to a reporter from German public television about how a government-employed translator deliberately mistranslated his complaint and took the side of his attackers. (Image source: Bayerischer Rundfunk video screenshot)

More “Isolated Cases”

Similar cases — always labelled “isolated cases” — are found in German and Austrian newspapers again and again.

In Austria, in June 2016, the Salzburg regional court sentenced a jihadist to two years in prison. He had fought for the Al-Nusra Front in Syria. Incidentally, it became known that: “The 29-year-old came to Salzburg as a refugee in October 2015 and helped at the Freilassing border crossing as an interpreter.”

Regarding “interpreter and cultural mediator Besnik S.,” the Hamburger Morgenpost newspaper wrote:

“Besnik S. also interpreted for the young refugees — until one of his colleagues became suspicious of him. Besnik S. was consistently translating incorrectly. Instead of facilitating communication for the young men, he allegedly tried to bring them closer to his ideology. “

Particularly grotesque is the March 2016 case of a Chechen interpreter, who worked as a court translator in Graz, Austria:

“The interpreter had already interpreted several people’s statements. As another witness was supposed be questioned at that point, the woman [interpreter] explained that the witness in question was her husband. But she claimed that he could not come that day, and sent his apologies, because he was in Russia at the moment and had already informed the court of that. The man was accused in another proceeding of a similar type. … Observers had already noticed that, during recesses in the proceedings, the interpreter had talked with about 20 Chechens among the courtroom spectators.”

Alexander Stevens, the Munich lawyer, often gets the impression that there is a “fraternal solidarity” between interpreters and criminal defendants, he tells Gatestone. From his own experience and from conversations with judges, prosecutors, and fellow attorneys, he knows that Muslim interpreters in particular often violate their duty of neutrality:

“My personal feeling is that not only the defendants [but also the interpreters] of Islamic society are cunning, sly, and sometimes crafty. In this room, organized crime, gang violence, theft, and fraud are frequently dealt with. They are often very smart, and there is an incredible cohesion within the respective cultural and religious community, particularly among Albanians, Turks, Syrians and Moroccans. The common denominator is possibly Islamist conditioning. They are very close, almost like family, but without being related by blood.”

Negligence on the Part of the Authorities

This problem is well known among judges and defense lawyers, says Stevens: “It starts as soon as the judge asks: ‘What is your name?'” Instead of simply translating those three words, the interpreter often talks “forever.”

“Conversely, the interpreter then only says one sentence where you expect a lengthy testimony. Often, you are not really sure what the interpreter and the defendant are discussing.”

Stevens cites negligence on the part of German authorities as exacerbating this problem. While there are strict admission requirements for court interpreters in languages such as English or Spanish, this is not the case in Germany for many other languages. He points out that the German state of Bavaria’s Court Interpreters Act clearly states: “The recognition of foreign degrees falls under the responsibility of the Bavarian Ministry of Education” — meaning that even applicants with flimsy degrees can be hired if the Ministry feels that there is a shortage of interpreters in a particular language.

Stevens criticizes the naïveté of the Germans:

“The swearing-in process goes like this: The judge reads aloud to him from the Judiciary Act, proclaiming that he [the interpreter] will translate faithfully and diligently. That’s it! With that, he is sworn in, and according to German law, he is absolutely credible.”

Stevens points out that although this problem has existed for a long time, it has become even more harmful since the start of “the refugee problem, which involves a whole potpourri of crime, including sexual assault.”

Human Rights Activists: “No Trust for Muslim Translators”

Karl Hafen, the former longtime Executive Chairman of the German section of the International Society for Human Rights (ISHR), is concerned about the situation faced by non-Muslims in German refugee housing, where interpreters seem complicit. He told Gatestone that

“Most of what is reported to us about translators involves threats that they will not translate if the affected victims blame Muslims for their misfortune, or that interpreters try to point out that what happened is mandated by the Koran.”

Many refugees are already intimidated by the mere presence of a Muslim interpreter.

“Some victims complain that they can no longer speak openly when an interpreter reveals she is Muslim by wearing a headscarf. Others tell us that they are afraid to go to the doctor with a Muslim interpreter, because based on what was done to them, they cannot trust her.”

Hafen does not want to label those interpreters as Islamists — they are normal, conservative Muslims:

“Again, there is a strong return to Islamic rules, a kind of de-integration. It also depends on how the interpreters themselves live, whether alone or in a family that practices Islam. The Muslim interpreters refuse to believe that what happened actually took place as described. And among other things, this practice is encouraged, because part of our media — but especially politicians and bishops — downplay the brutalities and simply refuse to recognize that the people who have become victims, or who have had to witness crimes with their own eyes, no longer trust Muslims.”

We cannot allow translators to continue misrepresenting and manipulating an already vulnerable refugee population. The German authorities need to reform the system for employing translators for courts, police and government agencies, so that all refugees receive the due process they deserve.

The UK’s Broken Labour Party

July 20, 2016

The UK’s Broken Labour Party, Gatestone Institute, Douglas Murray, July 20, 2016

(As the morass continues, how will the UK deal with its exit from the European Union? — DM)

♦ With the prospect of another Labour leadership election now gathering pace, tens of thousands more activists have joined the Labour party. It seems unlikely that they will be “moderates.”

♦ The election of an Islamist-sympathising, terrorist-sympathising, Israel-bashing hardliner at the head of the second largest party in the House of Commons undoubtedly changes the parameters of political discourse in the UK.

♦ However solidly Theresa May’s new Conservative government performs, it will always seem the point — so long as Corbyn is in office — that you are either for Britain or against it, for the Conservative party or against the country.

♦ A fractured and in-fighting opposition also means that there is no meaningful, organised voice challenging the government in Parliament. That principle — the principle on which our system is based — needs to work well even (perhaps especially) if you support the government of the day, because the government of the day needs to be kept alert to error and on top of sensible criticisms if it is going to pass the best legislation it can for the country.

 

Herbert Stein’s law, “Things that cannot go on, won’t,” is one of the best laws of politics. It works for fiscal issues and it usually works for politics as a whole. The British Labour party, however, is currently working to try to disprove this rule. To do them justice they are having a good stab at doing so, which suggests that the maxim should perhaps be re-written: “Things that cannot go on sometimes do.”

Consider the latest developments in the party’s recent unhappy history. Earlier this month the party’s specially commissioned inquiry into anti-Semitism within the party found the party not guilty of this bigotry for the second time in six months. Yet at the launch of these findings, a grassroots member of Jeremy Corbyn’s wing of the party verbally bullied a female Jewish Labour MP until she left in tears, and Jeremy Corbyn himself appeared to compare the Jewish state with ISIS. Although this episode captured some headlines, it was a mere footnote alongside the other catastrophes in the Labour party.

1678UK Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn (left) appears at a press conference with left-wing campaigner Shami Chakrabarti (right), to present the findings of an inquiry into the Labour party’s anti-Semitism, June 30, 2016.

At the same time as this was going on, Labour MPs attempted a coup to get Jeremy Corbyn out of his position as head of the party. A carefully orchestrated set of resignations from his Shadow Cabinet came in every couple of hours until almost all of the Shadow Cabinet had resigned. Corbyn also lost the support of the deputy leader of the party, Tom Watson. A no-confidence motion saw 172 Labour MPs vote to say that they had no confidence in their party leader, while only 40 Labour MPs supported the party leader. This move meant that Jeremy Corbyn began to have significant trouble finding enough supporters in the Parliamentary Labour party to fill up his shadow cabinet. The joke in Westminster was that those few who did stay loyal to him would find themselves having to hold multiple briefs, so that somebody might easily find themselves being appointed Shadow Home Secretary and Shadow Foreign Secretary.

The trouble appears that all of Corbyn’s politics has a distinctly unfunny, nasty air. It emerged this week (from another declaration of no confidence in the leader) that earlier this year the Labour MP Thangam Debbonaire was both appointed and then sacked as the party’s Culture spokesperson, all within 24 hours and all without even being told, while she was undergoing treatment for cancer. Such stories of non-communication and cruelty towards individual MPs have fanned the rather understandable feeling that Jeremy Corbyn may not be suited to the highest peaks of politics.

Unfortunately for the Labour party, it is not only MPs who have a say. Under new rules unwisely drawn up under Corbyn’s predecessor, Ed Miliband, the Labour party can now be joined by anyone with £3 to spare. All such people then have the right to vote on who the Labour leader should be. Although the idea of having a say in any political party’s future for little more than the price of a cup of coffee may sound appealing, it also leaves a party open to the possibility of a hostile takeover from the most fanatical people in the country — whether they have the Labour party’s interests at heart or not. This is exactly what happened last year when Mr. Corbyn entered the Labour leadership race. Tens of thousands of people from the grassroots, who were soon to form themselves into the ‘Momentum’ movement, saw their chance to bring hard-left politics into the UK mainstream. Jeremy Corbyn won almost 60% of the vote in that election. In recent weeks, despite the formal no-confidence vote of the Labour MPs, this grassroots support for Corbyn only appears to have galvanised further. With the prospect of another Labour leadership election now gathering pace, tens of thousands more activists have joined the Labour party. It seems unlikely that they will be “moderates.”

Nevertheless, two “moderate” candidates for leader stepped forward, inevitably splitting the anti-Corbyn vote, until they seemed to realise this and one dropped out. Nevertheless, polls of party members suggest it looks overwhelmingly likely that in the coming weeks Corbyn will entrench his position by winning a landslide in a second ballot of the party’s members within a year.

Why does this matter? For two reasons. First, because the election of Corbyn has poisoned British politics. The election of an Islamist-sympathising, terrorist-sympathising, Israel-bashing hardliner at the head of the second largest party in the House of Commons undoubtedly changes the parameters of political discourse in the UK. However solidly Theresa May’s new Conservative government performs, it will always seem the point — so long as Corbyn is in office — that there is no party of the decent left available for the large proportion of voters who would like such a thing. This leaves countless patriotic, left-wing voters without a meaningful voice in Parliament.

A fractured and in-fighting opposition also means that there is no meaningful, organised voice challenging the government in Parliament. That principle — the principle on which our system is based — needs to work well even (perhaps especially) if you support the government of the day, because the government of the day needs to be kept alert to error and on top of sensible criticisms if it is going to pass the best legislation it can for the country.

The other reason why this principle matters is because it suggests that vested interests matter more than truth. Herbert Stein’s dictum lacked one crucial ingredient: people’s desire to look after themselves. There are Labour party MPs already looking for a way out, including looking to found a new party or parties. But they fear that way lies electoral oblivion. So they stay, in a party wracked with in-fighting and led by the most corrosive person their party has ever chosen in what had been a noble history. And all the while that person in charge of their party is busily mainstreaming the worst bigotries of our time. When pushed to decide between their morals and their careers, the dictum holds in the Labour party that things that cannot go on, find some way to do so.

Sharia in Denmark – Part II

July 20, 2016

Sharia in Denmark – Part II, Gatestone InstituteJudith Bergman, July 20, 2016

♦ “All the bullying happens in Arabic… The hierarchy of the Arab boys creates a very violent environment. … I have filmed the particularly vile bullying of a Somali boy. You can see the tears in his eyes. They are destroying him; it is very violent. ” — From a dissertation by Jalal El Derbas, Ph.D.

♦ Danish teachers are the least respected and are spoken of in denigrating and humiliating terms.

♦ “I am not saying that all the Arab children did ugly things, but we witnessed on a regular basis… using derogatory Arabic language towards Somalis and girls.” — Lise Egholm, former head of the Rådmandsgade school in Copenhagen.

♦ Whether Danish parliamentarians wish to acknowledge this problem or not, they are up against far wider issues than that of religious incitement in mosques by radical preachers.

After the television documentary, “Sharia in Denmark“, embarrassed Danish authorities by revealing how widespread the preaching of sharia is in mosques in Denmark, the Danish government, in May, concluded a political agreement about “initiatives directed against religious preachers who seek to undermine Danish laws and values and who support parallel legal systems”.

“We are doing everything we can without compromising the constitution and international agreements,” Bertel Haarder, the Minister for Culture and Church, said about the political agreement.

The agreement centers on a number of initiatives, which are supposed to compensate for the detrimental effects of all the years in which sharia was allowed to spread in Denmark while most authorities paid only scant attention to what was happening. Part of the new effort, therefore, will be the mapping of all existing mosques in Denmark.

It will now be obligatory, according to the agreement, for all priests, imams and others who are not part of the Church of Denmark, and who wish to be able to perform weddings — as well as for foreign preachers who apply for residence permits — to learn about Danish family law, freedom and democracy. At the end of the course, all will have to sign a statement that they will accept Danish law, including freedom of speech and religion, gender equality, freedom of sexual orientation, non-discrimination and women’s rights.

The government will examine how to create more transparency in foreign donations to faith communities in Denmark, including controlling and, if necessary, preventing such donations. As part of this work, on May 4 the government presented a law making it a crime to receive funding from a terror organization to establish or run an institution in Denmark, including schools and mosques.

Another element in the political agreement is the establishment of national lists with the names of traveling foreign (non-EU) religious preachers who will be excluded from entry into Denmark on the grounds that they are a threat to public order in Denmark. These named preachers will not be granted an entry visa and will be denied entry at the border. In addition, a non-public list, containing the names of such preachers who are EU citizens, will be established. The purpose of this list is to create awareness of the existence of these preachers, as, due to EU rules on free movement, they cannot be denied entry.

The final component of the agreement is the criminalization of certain speech. According to the agreement, it will become illegal explicitly to support terrorism, murder, rape, violence, incest, pedophilia, the use of force and polygamy as part of religious training, and whether or not the speech was made in private or in public. Both the activities of religious preachers and the activities of others, who speak as part of religious training, are included in the criminalization.

The political agreement is expected to become law when the Danish parliament reconvenes after the summer vacation.

Danish parliamentarians are aware that it will be difficult to measure whether these initiatives have any effect — how do you measure whether religious preachers are indeed not explicitly supporting terrorism, murder, rape and pedophilia, unless you place them under constant surveillance? But lawmakers are nevertheless confident that the new initiatives will have an effect. “This will have an impact on what people put up with from their religious leaders.” Culture and Church Minister Bertel Haarder says.

Another parliamentarian, Naser Khader, who appears more realistic, says,

“We are well aware that more initiatives are needed. But this stops hate preachers from coming to Denmark, preachers who only want to come here in order to sow discord between population groups and who encourage violence, incest and pedophilia.”

 

1703After the documentary “Sharia in Denmark” embarrassed Danish authorities, the government reached a new a political agreement, which Danish Member of Parliament Naser Khader supported, saying, “this stops hate preachers from coming to Denmark, preachers who only want to come here in order to sow discord between population groups and who encourage violence, incest and pedophilia.”

While Danish politicians have taken yet another step on an uncertain road that may or may not succeed in stemming the rise of sharia in Denmark, other problems abound, which compound the impression that this initiative will not amount to much more than a symbolic band-aid.

A recent Ph.D. dissertation by Jalal El Derbas, as reported by the Danish newspaper, Berlingske Tidende, shows that in several Danish schools with Arab students, the latter, mainly boys, use Arabic as a means to sexually and racially harass and bully other students as well as their teachers, especially girls, Somalis and ethnically Danish teachers, who do not understand the insults hurled at them in Arabic.

According to the article, El Derbas was shocked when he went through the video footage of 12- and 13-year-olds in two different Danish public schools with a majority of pupils with minority background. The purpose of his Ph.D. was to examine the possible causes of why bilingual boys — who speak both Danish and Arabic — continue to lag behind other Danish students. He wanted to see what those bilingual boys actually do in the classroom. The footage was taken over five months and it displayed a world characterized by hierarchy, sexual and religious harassment, bullying and racism, in which the first language of the students, Arabic, played a central and leading role. According to El Derbas:

“I could see that the students used Arabic as a secret code and they only used it negatively to disturb the schoolwork. If they did not want to do the work, they simply shifted to Arabic. The schools were very flexible and allowed the students to use Arabic both inside and outside the classroom. But all that this freedom accomplished was that the students shifted from Danish to Arabic if they were getting into a fight and if there was a teacher nearby whom they did not want to understand what they were saying.”

The video footage also revealed a hierarchy consisting of sexual harassment and racism, because the Arab boys consider themselves higher-ranking than girls and Somali students.

“All the bullying happens in Arabic. All the ugly and mean words are uttered in Arabic. The hierarchy of the Arab boys creates a very violent environment. I have video footage of severe sexual harassment against Arab girls and I have filmed the particularly vile bullying of a Somali boy. You can see the tears in his eyes. They are destroying him; it is very violent.”

According to El Derbas, Sunni and Shia Muslim strife is also imported into the grounds of these Danish schools. With the majority of the boys being Sunni Muslims, they look down on the Shia Muslim students and a teacher who is a Shia Muslim is called “Satan” or “witch”, whereas a Sunni Muslim teacher is addressed courteously as “uncle” or “aunt”. Danish teachers are the least respected, and are spoken of in denigrating and humiliating terms.

El Derbas, stressed that the pupils come from ghetto areas, saying:

“Many of the teachers have given up on engaging the parents in any way, but if this is to change it has to happen through the parents. Maybe it would help if the parents took turns of being present in the classroom to see how their children behave. Most of them [the parents] are not working or studying anyway. I think that could lead to an improvement. Because no parents will accept that their children behave in this manner”.

The results of the dissertation come as no surprise to Lise Egholm, now retired, but who for 18 years, until 2013, was the head of Copenhagen’s Rådmandsgade school, which has many Arab students.

“I am not saying that all the Arab children did ugly things,” says Egholm, “but we witnessed on a regular basis exactly the phenomenon of using derogatory Arabic language towards Somalis and girls… Back then the biggest group of children in the school was Arabic speaking, and the words which in Arabic mean ‘whore’ and ‘f— your mother’ they all knew.”

In a written statement to Berlingske Tidende, Minister of Education, Ellen Trane Nørby, wrote,

“It is never all right to bully, whether this happens in Danish, Arabic, or in a third language. That is why I have initiated a large initiative, which has as its purpose to prevent and combat bullying. The teachers have to signal very strongly that there has to be room for all children and that you have to treat other pupils with respect. If some pupils do not understand this and speak in ‘code language’ or use a language that excludes and bullies other pupils, the schools must intervene. Danish is the language used for teaching in Denmark, and pupils should not be excluded or bullied because of parallel languages in school”.

However, what the minister of education fails to mention is that the problems with this kind of behavior are not likely to remain inside the school, but will inevitably spill into the streets. Then what? No amount of lists of radical religious preachers and laws is going to change that fact.

Whether Danish parliamentarians wish to acknowledge this problem or not, they are up against far wider issues than that of religious incitement in mosques by radical preachers. Notably, El Derbas’s findings have not caused any debate remotely resembling that, which was caused by the “Sharia in Denmark” documentary. They should.