Archive for the ‘Islamic integration’ category

Why is Virginia a Haven for Would-be Jihadists?

July 18, 2016

Why is Virginia a Haven for Would-be Jihadists? Investigative Project on Terrorism, Abigail R. Esman, July 18, 2016

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What is it about Virginia?

Already this year, six men from the “Cavalier State” have been arrested on terror-related charges – two of them in July alone. Another man has joined the Islamic State in Syria. Two of those charged were stopped from making a similar trip.

These most recent arrests, one on July 3, the other on July 8, were based on charges of planning to provide material support to ISIS. Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, a former member of the National Guard who was arrested July 3, allegedly discussed planning an attack against U.S. military in the homeland inspired by fellow Virginian Nidal Hasan’s 2009 shooting at Fort Hood. According to court documents, Jalloh quit the Guard and later attempted to obtain funds and weapons for a domestic attack after being inspired by Anwar al Awlaki’s videos on YouTube.

Five days later, Virginia law enforcement arrested Haris Qamar, following an extended FBI sting operation. According to an FBI affidavit, Qamar made statements to an informant such as, “By-bye, DC, stupid a— kufar [infidels], kill ’em all,” and posted to his Twitter account a prayer for “strength to the mujahedeen to slaughter every single US military officer.”

Earlier arrests this year – two in June and one in January – involved men planning to join the jihad in Syria, rather than waging domestic battles. In one case, Mohamad Jamal Khweis, who had already joined the Islamic State, surrendered to Kurdish forces in Iraq in an apparent effort to escape the hell of life in the new caliphate. Now awaiting sentencing in the United States, he faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Why does this keep happening in Virginia? What makes its young Muslims more susceptible to the radical messages from Awlaki and ISIS social media?

Virginia has proved to be an active center for radical Islamist activity over the years and has bred more than its share of terrorists since 9/11. It was at the Hamas-linked Dar al Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, for instance, that terrorist icon Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni-American whom counter-terrorism officials say inspired hundreds of other Muslims to take arms in violent jihad, once served as imam. Among his disciples: Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan; Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, convicted in 2005 of collaborating with al-Qaida and plotting to assassinate President George W. Bush; and several of the 9/11 hijackers.

And it was in Virginia that, in the still fragile and bewildered aftermath of 9/11, “Beltway snipers” John Allen Mohammed and Lee Boyd Malvo shot and killed more than 12 people, including an FBI analyst, in October 2002.

While internet and social media remain powerful weapons in the terrorist recruitment arsenal, personal connections remain the most potent tool. Honor student Ali Shukri Amin, charged with soliciting donations for ISIS, is also suspected of helping another Virginian, Reza Niknejad, travel to Syria.

While none of the recent cases implicate specific mosques, the influence of Dar al Hijrah and some of its imams appears to have been widespread.

To some extent, this could be thanks to its current imam, Shaker Elsayed. In 2002, hetold a conference hosted by the Muslim American Society and Islamic Circle for North America that deciding whether suicide bombers were martyrs was “an in house business” for Muslims.

In a dramatic speech available online since 2013, Elsayed rants against the West and calls for “the power of faith” and “the power of armament.” In the post-9/11 world, he observes, even world leaders have “bowed down” to the Western pressure. “We the Muslim masses should never bow down except to Allah!” he says, “and this will give us our dignity back.”

But other Virginia religious leaders have gone further. Ali al-Timimi, a cancer researcher, was the “spiritual leader” of a group of 11 men convicted of terrorism in 2003 and 2004, Al-Timimi is now serving a life sentence for recruiting Muslims to travel to Pakistan and train for holy war.

Shortly after 9/11, according to the New York Times’ coverage of his trial, al-Timimi invited a group of young Muslim men to dinner, where he told them they had a religious duty to fight with the Taliban against American forces. Prosecutors described that statement as “treason,” calling al-Timimi a “purveyor of hate and war.”

More than 10 years after his conviction, al-Timimi remains a figurehead among radical groups in Virginia and the Capitol district. The Peace and Justice Foundation, which defended al-Timimi and his followers, refers in online documents to a government conspiracy, while numerous web sites offer recordings of al-Timimi’s lectures. In addition, a Facebook page devoted to his appeal with more than 2,000 “likes,” has built a community in his support. (Followers even raised $12,000 for his mother’s medical care.)

The Saudi-sponsored Islamic Saudi Academy, which shut down abruptly last month,faced criticism for its textbooks that promote Wahhabism, an extreme version of Islam practiced by the Saudis. The textbooks contained passages “that extolled jihad and martyrdom, called for victory over one’s enemies, and said the killing of adulterers and apostates was ‘justified,'” the Washington Post reported. Those passages were found in school textbooks two years after U.S. officials, shocked by the texts in use in 2006, ordered they be revised. Pre-revision books included statements like, “It is said: the apes are the people of the Sabbath, the Jews. The swine are the unbelievers of Jesus’ table, the Christians.”

The school’s 1999 valedictorian, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, was convicted in 2005 for supporting al-Qaida and planning to assassinate the president. (Notably, he also taught Islamic Studies at Dar Al Hijrah.)

As Seamus Hughes of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University’s Center or Cyber & Homeland Security told Fox News, “Northern Virginia has a disproportionate number of people that are drawn to this.”

Ramy Zamzam is a poster child for this observation. He was among five young men who disappeared from their northern Virginia neighborhood in late 2009, only to be arrested by Pakistani authorities who caught them trying to cross into Afghanistan to join jihadists there.

“We are not terrorists,” he said outside a hearing. “We are jihadists, and jihad is not terrorism.”

Muslim groups expressed their horror over the incident and promised a program aimed at de-radicalization.

It’s not clear that any such plan ever emerged. If it did, it’s clearly not working.

How Serious Is Sweden’s Fight against Islamic Terrorism and Extremism?

July 17, 2016

How Serious Is Sweden’s Fight against Islamic Terrorism and Extremism? Gatestone InstituteNima Gholam Ali Pour, July 17, 2016

♦ Jihadists who come to Sweden know that there are many liberal politicians looking for invisible “right-wing extremists”, and feminists who think what is really important is using “gender perspective” in the fight against extremism and terrorism.

♦ Perhaps the Swedish government has a secret plan to convince jihadists to become feminists? As usual, Swedish politicians have chosen to politicize the fight against extremism and terrorism, and address the issue as if it were about parental leave instead of Sweden’s security.

♦ “As soon as these people… say ‘Asylum’, the gates of heaven open.” — Inspector Leif Fransson, Swedish border police.

♦ Experts in Sweden’s security apparatus have clearly expressed that violent Islamism is a clear and present danger to the security of Sweden, but the politicized debate about Islamic terrorism and extremism does not seem capable of absorbing this warning.

Like all other European countries, Sweden is trying to fight against jihadists and terrorists, but it often seems as if the key players in Sweden have no understanding of what the threats are or how to deal with them.

In 2014, for instance, the Swedish government decided to set up a post called the “National Coordinator Against Violent Extremism.” But instead of appointing an expert as the national coordinator, the government appointed the former party leader of the Social Democrats, Mona Sahlin. Apart from Sahlin having a high school degree, she is mostly known for a corruption scandal. As a party leader of the Social Democrats, she lost the 2010 election, and as a minister in several Socialist governments, she has not managed to distinguish herself in any significant way. Göran Persson, who was Prime Minister of Sweden from 1996 to 2006, described Mona Sahlin this way:

“People believe she has a greater political capacity than she has. What comes across her lips is not so remarkable. Her strength is not thinking, but to convey messages.”

With such a background, it was no surprise that she was ineffective as National Coordinator Against Violent Extremism. But the fact that she used her high government agency to help her friends came as a shock to the Swedish public. Sahlin had hired her former bodyguard for a position at her agency and signed a false certificate that he earned $14,000 dollars monthly, so that he could receive financing to purchase a $1.2-million-dollar home.

Sahlin also gave the man’s relative an internship, even though the application had been declined. Before Sahlin resigned in May 2016, she said, “I help many of my friends.”

Despite the fact that Sweden has a Ministry of Justice responsible for issues that would seem far more related to violent extremism, Sweden has, for some reason, placed the agency to combat violent extremism under the Ministry of Culture.

While the U.S sees the fight against Islamic extremism as a security issue, Sweden evidently believes that combating violent extremism should be placed in a ministry responsible for issues such as media, democracy, human rights and national minorities. With such a delegation of responsibility, the government seems either to be trying to hamper efforts to combat violent extremism, or it does not understand the nature of the threat.

The lack of understanding of violent extremism, combined with politicizing the problem, has been evident, for instance, in Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city. After the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, the city councilor responsible for safety and security in Malmö, Andreas Schönström, said that European right-wing extremism is a bigger threat than violent Islamism. And on June 5, 2016, Jonas Hult, Malmö’s security manager, wrote: “The right-wing forces in Malmö are the biggest threat.”

With such statements, one would think that perhaps Malmö is a city filled with neo-Nazi gangs. Not so. Malmö is a city that usually ends up in the news because of Islamic anti-Semitism or extremist activists working to destroy Israel. There have been no reports of any neo-Nazi movements in Malmö in the recent past.

When supporters of Pegida (an anti-Islamic migration political movement in Europe) came to Malmö, they had to be protected by the police due to thousands of extremist activists and Muslims protesting the presence of Pegida. Of Malmö’s residents, 43.2% were either born abroad or their parents were.

Further, the Social Democrat politicians have held local municipal power in Malmö since 1919. To say that Malmö is somehow a place where right-wing extremism is a threat is simply not based on facts. Instead of seriously combating violent extremism, many in Sweden have chosen — possibly imagining it easier — to politicize the problem.

Sweden also has not yet reached the point where the authorities distance themselves from violent extremism. The association Kontrakultur (a cultural and social association in Malmö)receives about $37,000 annually from the municipal cultural committee of Malmö. On its website, Kontrakultur writes that it cooperates with an organization called Förbundet Allt åt alla (“The Association Everything for Everyone”). This organization, in turn, according to the National Coordinator Against Violent Extremism, consists of violent extremist activists.

The idea that municipal funds should in no way go to organizations that cooperate with violent extremists is something not yet rooted in Sweden. In June 2016, for example, a 46-year-old Islamic State jihadi arrived in Malmö. He was taken into custody by the police for speedy deportation. But when he applied for asylum, the Swedish Migration Agency took over the matter to examine his asylum application, and ordered the deportation stopped. Inspector Leif Fransson of the border police described the situation:

“As soon as these people throw out their trump card and say ‘Asylum’, the gates of heaven open.”

In August 2015, the Swedish government submitted a document to Parliament outlining the Swedish strategy against terrorism. Among other things, the document stated:

“It is important that there is a gender perspective in efforts to prevent violent extremism and terrorism.”

Under the headline “Gender Perspective” in a committee directive from the Swedish government on the mission of the National Coordinator Against Violent Extremism you can observe:

“The violent extremist environments consist mainly of men, and in the extremist movements there are individuals who oppose gender equality and women’s rights. It is therefore important that there is a gender perspective in efforts to prevent violent extremism, and that norms that interact and contribute to the emergence of violent environments are effectively counteracted.”

Perhaps the Swedish government has a secret plan to convince jihadists to become feminists? But as usual, Swedish politicians have chosen to politicize the fight against extremism and terrorism, and address the issue as if it were about parental leave instead of Sweden’s security.

914Mona Sahlin, who was Sweden’s “National Coordinator Against Violent Extremism,” until she resigned in May amid corruption allegations, is shown posing with Swedish soldiers in Afghanistan in July 2010. The Swedish government’s directives to her agency stressed that it is “important that there is a gender perspective in efforts to prevent violent extremism.” (Image source: Social Democratic Party)

There is no evidence that “gender perspective” is relevant or useful in the fight against extremism and terrorism, yet we see that the Swedish government, in several documents related to terrorism and extremism, evidently believes that “gender perspective” is what should be used in the fight against those threats. This gives just some idea of how strenuously Sweden wants to disregard the problem, or even ask experts for help.

One might argue that this is because Sweden has never been exposed to Islamic terrorism or that extremism is not something that concerns the nation. Sweden has, however, had experience in facing Islamic terrorism. On December 11, 2010, a jihadist blew himself up in central Stockholm. Taimour Abdulwahab did not manage to hurt anyone, but Sweden got a taste of Islamic terrorism and has every reason to want to defend itself against more of it.

Islamic extremism is, unfortunately, becoming more widespread, especially in Sweden’s major cities. Gothenburg, for example, has been having major problems with it. In November 2015, there were reports that 40% of the 300 Swedish jihadists in Syria and Iraq came from Gothenburg. The only country that has, per capita, more of its citizens as jihadists in Iraq and Syria than Sweden, is Belgium.

As facts accumulate, there is much information indicating that Sweden has huge problems dealing with Islamic extremism and jihadism. The Swedish Security Service (Säpo), in the beginning of 2015, published a press release using the words “historic challenge” to describe the threat from violent Islamism. Already in May 2015 the head of Säpo, Anders Thornberg, expressed doubts that the agency could handle the situation if the recruitment of jihadists in Sweden continued or increased.

Experts in Sweden’s security apparatus have clearly expressed that violent Islamism is a clear and present danger to the security of Sweden, but the politicized debate about Islamic terrorism and extremism does not seem capable of absorbing this warning.

This general politicization, combined with the failure to prioritize the fight against terrorism and extremism, is the reason Sweden is, and continues to be, a magnet for extremists and terrorists. Jihadists who come to Sweden know that there are many liberal politicians looking for invisible “right-wing extremists”, and that there are feminists who think what is really important is using “gender perspective” in the fight against extremism and terrorism.

Jihadists also know that there are large gaps in the Swedish bureaucracy and legislation that can be exploited. These are the policies that have been created by Swedish politicians. One can therefore only question if Sweden seriously wants to fight the threats of terrorism and extremism.

France: The Coming Civil War

July 16, 2016

France: The Coming Civil War, Gatestone InstituteYves Mamou, July 16, 2016

♦ For French President François Hollande, the enemy is an abstraction: “terrorism” or “fanatics”.

♦ Instead, the French president reaffirms his determination to military actionsabroad: “We are going to reinforce our actions in Syria and Iraq,” the president said after the Nice attack.So confronted with this failure of our elite who were elected to guide the country across nationals and internationals dangers, how astonishing is it if paramilitary groups are organizing themselves to retaliate?

♦ “Western elites, with a suicidal obstinacy, oppose naming the enemy. Confronted with attacks in Brussels or Paris, they prefer to imagine a philosophical fight between democracy and terrorism, between an open society and fanaticism, between civilization and barbarism”. — Mathieu Bock-Côté, sociologist, in Le Figaro

♦ In France, the global elites made a choice. They decided that the “bad” voters in France were unreasonable people too stupid to see the beauties of a society open to people who often who do not want to assimilate, who want you to assimilate to them, and who threaten to kill you if you do not.

♦ Similarly, the British took the first tool that was given to them to express their disappointment at living in a society they did not like anymore. They did not vote to say: “Kill all these Muslims who are transforming my country or stealing my job or soaking up my taxes”. They were just protesting a society that a global elite had begun to transform without their consent.

♦ The global elite made a choice: they took the side against their own old and poor because those people did not want to vote for them any longer. They also made a choice not to fight Islamism because Muslims vote collectively for this global elite.

 

1697French police shoot dead a Tunisian-born Islamist terrorist who murdered 84 people in Nice, France, July 14, 2016. (Image source: Sky News video screenshot)

“We are on the verge of a civil war.” That quote did not come from a fanatic or a lunatic. No, it came from head of France’s homeland security, the DGSI (Direction générale de la sécurité intérieure), Patrick Calvar. He has, in fact, spoken of the risk of a civil war many times. On July 12th, he warned a commission of members of parliament, in charge of a survey about the terrorist attacks of 2015, about it.

In May 2016, he delivered almost the same message to another commission of members of parliament, this tme in charge of national defense. “Europe,” he said, “is in danger. Extremism is on the rise everywhere, and we are now turning our attention to some far-right movements who are preparing a confrontation”.

What kind of confrontation? “Intercommunity confrontations,” he said — polite for “a war against Muslims.” “One or two more terrorist attacks,” he added, “and we may well see a civil war.”

In February 2016, in front of a senate commission in charge of intelligence information, he said again: ” We are looking now at far-right extremists who are just waiting for more terrorist attacks to engage in violent confrontation”.

No one knows if the truck terrorist, who plowed into the July 14th Bastille Day crowd in Nice and killed more than 80 people, will be the trigger for a French civil war, but it might help to look at what creates the risk of one in France and other countries, such as Germany or Sweden.

The main reason is the failure of the state.

1. France is at War but the Enemy is Never Named.

France is the main target of repeated Islamist attacks; the more important Islamist terrorist bloodbaths took place at the magazine Charlie Hebdo and the Hypercacher supermarket of Vincennes (2015); the Bataclan, its nearby restaurants and the Stade de France stadium, (2015); the failed attack on theThalys train; the beheading of Hervé Cornara (2015); the murders at a school in Toulouse (2012); the three week torture and murder of young Ilan Halimi (2006); the assassination of two policemen in Magnanville in June (2016), and now the truck-ramming in Nice, on the day commemorating the French Revolution of 1789.

Most of those attacks were committed by French Muslims: citizens on their way back from Syria (the Kouachi brothers at Charlie Hebdo), or by French Islamists (Larossi Abballa who killed a police family in Magnanville last June) who later claimed their allegiance to Islamic State (ISIS). The truck killer in Nice was also French, of Tunisian descent, living quietly in Nice until he decided to murder more than 80 people and wound dozens more.

At each of these tragic episodes, the head of state, President François Hollande, refused to name the enemy, refused to name Islamism — and especially refused to name French Islamists — as the enemy of French citizens.

For Hollande, the enemy is an abstraction: “terrorism” or “fanatics”. Even when the president does dare to name “Islamism” the enemy, he refuses to say he will close all Salafist mosques, prohibit the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist organizations in France, or ban veils for women. No, instead, the French president reaffirms his determination for military actions … abroad: “We are going to reinforce our actions in Syria and Iraq,” the president said after the Nice attack.

For France’s head of state, the deployment of soldiers on the national ground is for defensive actions only: a dissuasive policy, not an offensive rearmament of the Republic against an internal enemy.

So confronted with this failure by our elite — who were elected to guide the country across national and international dangers — how astonishing is it if paramilitary groups are organizing themselves to retaliate?

As Mathieu Bock-Côté, a sociologist in France and Canada says in Le Figaro: “Western elites, with a suicidal obstinacy, oppose naming the enemy. Confronted by attacks in Brussels or Paris, they prefer to imagine a philosophical fight between democracy and terrorism, between an open society and fanaticism, between civilization and barbarism”.

2. The Civil War Has Already Begun and Nobody Wants to Name It.

The civil war began sixteen years ago, with the second Intifada. When Palestinians invented suicide attacks in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, French Muslims began to terrorize Jews living peacefully in France. For sixteen years, Jews — in France —were slaughtered, attacked, tortured and stabbed by French Muslim citizens supposedly to avenge Palestinian people in the West Bank.

When a group of French citizens who are Muslims declares war on another group of French citizens who are Jews, what do you call it?

For the French establishment, it is not a civil war, just a regrettable misunderstanding between two “ethnic” communities.

Until now, no one has wanted to establish a connection between these attacks and the murderous attack in Nice against people who were not necessarily Jews — and name it as it should be named: a civil war.

For the very politically correct French establishment, the danger of a civil war will begin only if anyone retaliates against French Muslims; if everyone just submits to their demands, everything is all right. Until now, no one thinks that the terrorist attacks against Jews by French Muslims; against Charlie Hebdo’s journalists by French Muslims; against an entrepreneur who was beheaded a year ago by a French Muslim; against young Ilan Halimi by a group of Muslims; against schoolchildren in Toulouse by a French Muslim; against the passengers on the Thalys train by a French Muslim, against the innocent people in Nice by a French Muslim were the symptoms of a civil war. These bloodbaths remain, still today something like a climatic catastrophe, a kind of tragic mistake.

3- The French Establishment Considers the Enemy the Poor the Old and the Disappointed

In France, who most complains about Muslim immigration? Who most suffers from local Islamism? Who most likes to drink a glass of wine or eat a ham-and-butter sandwich? The poor and the old who live close to Muslim communities, because they do not have the money to move someplace else.

Today, as a result, millions of the poor and the old in France are ready to elect Marine Le Pen, president of the rightist Front National, as the next president of the Republic for the simple reason that the only party that wants to fight illegal immigration is the Front National.

Because, however, these French old and poor want to vote for the Front National, they have become the enemy of the French establishment, right and left. What is the Front National saying to these people? “We are going to restore France as a nation of French people”. And the poor and the old believe it – because they have no choice.

Similarly, the poor and the old in Britain had no choice but to vote for Brexit. They took the first tool given them to express their disappointment at living in a society they did not like anymore. They did not vote to say, “Kill these Muslims who are transforming my country, stealing my job and soaking up my taxes”. They were just protesting a society that a global elite had begun to transform without their consent.

In France, the global elites made a choice. They decided that the “bad” voters in France were unreasonable people too stupid to see the beauties of a society open to people who often who do not want to assimilate, who want you to assimilate to them, and who threaten to kill you if you do not.

The global elites made another choice: they took the side against their own old and poor because those people did not want to vote for them any longer. The global elites also chose not to fight Islamism, because Muslims vote globally for the global elite. Muslims in Europe also offer a big “carrot” to the global elite: they vote collectively.

In France, 93% of Muslims voted for the current president, François Hollande, in 2012. In Sweden, the Social Democrats reported that 75% of Swedish Muslims voted for them in the general election of 2006; and studies show that the “red-green” bloc gets 80-90% of the Muslim vote.

4. Is the Civil War Inevitable? Yes!

If the establishment does not want to see that civil war was already declared by extremist Muslims first — if they do not want to see that the enemy is not the Front National in France, the AfD in Germany, or the Sweden Democrats — but Islamism in France, in Belgium, in Great Britain, in Sweden — then a civil war will happen.

France, like Germany and Sweden, has a military and police strong enough to fight against an internal Islamist enemy. But first, they have to name it and take measures against it. If they do not — if they leave their native citizens in despair, with no other means than to arm themselves and retaliate – yes, civil war is inevitable.

 

Newt Gingrich: Deport every Muslim who believes in Sharia

July 15, 2016

Newt Gingrich: Deport every Muslim who believes in Sharia, Fox News via YouTube, July 14, 2016

“Gangster Islam” in Europe

July 12, 2016

“Gangster Islam” in Europe, Gatestone Institute via YouTube, July 12, 2016

The blurb beneath the video states,

“Gangster Islam,” a crime wave packing prisons and overtaking Europe, is a problem the mainstream media will not report. Ordinary Europeans — for fear of being called “racist” or even being imprisoned for “hate speech” — are afraid even to talk about it.

Stabbing Policemen, “Slut-Shaming” and New Death Threats

July 12, 2016

Stabbing Policemen, “Slut-Shaming” and New Death Threats -One Month of Islam and Multiculturalism in France: June 2016, Gatestone InstituteYves Mamou, July 12, 2016

♦ Muslim perpetrators rationalize their violence by convincing themselves that they live in a racist society that rejects them and their religion. And the government legitimizes them when it asks Parliament to vote for a law that favors “diversity” on public television channels.

♦ Islamist terrorist Larossi Abballa, 26, stabbed to death police officer Jean-Baptiste Salvaing and his wife, police administrator Jessica Schneider, in front of their son, at their home in the Paris suburb of Magnanville. The murderer then live-streamed a video on Facebook, in which he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS).

♦ After the Islamist, anti-gay attack in Orlando, left-wing politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon wrote in his blog that he fears a possible “wave of hatred against Muslims”. For many Islamists in France, the Muslim is always the victim, even when he is the killer.

Islamization is gaining ground in the Muslim community of France. For a long time, this trend remained restricted to the cultural sphere and created strong controversies between Islamists and secular intellectuals (such as the ban on face-covering veils in schools and public places). But the debate stopped being a debate. Sometimes Islamic intolerance takes on the appearance of a civil war. The violence, which was mostly concentrated in the suburbs prior to the January 2015 terrorist attack on the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, is spreading now to the heart of French cities. Murders, assaults, death threats and “slut-shaming” happens almost every day here and there.

Muslim perpetrators rationalize their violence by convincing themselves that they live in a racist society that rejects them and their religion. And the government legitimizes them when it asks Parliament to vote for a law that favors “diversity” on public television channels. What is interesting is that judiciary system seems in disarray and does not know how to treat these types of conflicts: two jihadists back from Syria are condemned to a suspended sentence of six months in prison and a Muslim who slapped a female waiter because she served alcohol during the Ramadan was sentenced to eight months in prison.

The absence of political guidelines spreads fear and aids the rise of the right-wing political party, the Front National.

June 1. Karim Benzema, a French soccer star of Algerian descent, declared, in the Spanish sports newspaper Marca, that French national team’s coach, Didier Deschamps “bowed to the pressure of a racist part of France” by not including him in the team. Benzema was not included in the national soccer team for the UEFA Euro 2016 championship because he is apparently involved in a sex-tape extortion scandal targeting his colleague, Mathieu Valbuena.

June 2. Patrick Kanner, Minister of Urban Affairs, Youth and Sport, said in Le Parisien that Karim Benzema plays an “unfair and dangerous” game when he implies that “ethnic reasons” might have played a role in the decision not to include him in the French soccer team.

June 2. It was reported that the Saudi preacher, Mohammed Ramzan Al-Hajiri, was banned from entering France until 2050. The daily, La Voix du Nord, reported that on May 15, the salafist Abou Bakr Essedik mosque of Roubaix had arranged for him to preach by phone. In April 2014, the same Saudi preacher had declared in public: “Losing your faith makes you no better than an animal” and “to kill a Muslim is a less serious crime than to make him an infidel.”

June 5. A 25-year-old Frenchman was arrested at the border between Ukraine and Poland. According to the TV channel M6, his truck was loaded with three portable rocket launchers, more than 100 kilograms of TNT, 100 detonators and half a dozen Kalashnikov assault rifles. He was unknown to security services and was planning terrorist attacks against synagogues and mosques in France.

June 6. One thousand migrants from Afghanistan, Sudan and Somalia, who were living in tents in the 18th district of Paris (Les Jardins d’Eole), were evacuated peacefully by police. According to the media, it is the 23rd operation of this kind in Paris since 2015

June 6. Swastikas and the words “white power” were tagged on the walls of the synagogue of Verdun. A similar incident of vandalism took place two months prior, said Jean-Claude Lévy, leader of the Jewish community in Verdun.

June 6. Gérard Tardy, mayor of Lorette, a small city in the Loire region of France, posted two messages on the electronic information boards of the city:

  • “Ramadan must be lived in peace without noise”
  • “In the Republic, nobody covers his face.”

The far left and Muslims organizations said these messages were “outrageous” and “disrespectful” to Muslims.

June 7. A waitress at a bar in Nice was violently slapped by a Muslim because she was serving alcohol to customers on the first day of Ramadan. Both the owner of the bar and the victim filed a complaint at the police station. The attacker escaped.

June 8. In Grigny, an outer suburb of Paris, people filmed used their smartphones to film a riot between “youths” [the French media’s euphemism for young Muslims] and police, and aired it live on Periscope, an “app” for instant video. No one knows what caused the riot. A father living in Grigny said, “In my time, violence with cops had always a motive: arrest, a stolen car… But now, it is different. It looks like people fight with police for fun”.

June 8. At midnight, Aya Ramadan, a female activist of the Parti des Indigènes de la République, posted on Twitter her congratulations to the two Palestinian terrorists who shot people in a bar in Tel Aviv, killing three. She wrote; “Dignity and pride! Cheers to the two Palestinians who have led a resistance operation in Tel Aviv.”

Gilles Clavreul, the High Commissioner of the Fight against Racism and anti-Semitism, said he would sue Ramadan for acting as an “apologist for terrorism.” The maximum punishment for such an offense is two years in prison and €100,000 fine. The Parti des Indigènes de la République is a racialist organization developing a political ideology to take the power from the “whites” to give it to the “colored people” in France.

June 8. The Observatory of Secularism (Observatoire de la laïcité), an official body linked to the prime minister’s office, published its annual report. According to the report, anti-Semitic attacks remain at a high level (808 attacks) and anti-Muslim attacks have tripled (from 133 last year to 429 in 2015). The report failed to establish a proportion between the number of Jews in France (half a million) and the number of Muslims (between six to ten million). The report also does not relate that most anti-Jewish acts are committed by Muslims. The Observatory of Secularism found itself in the eye of a storm last year for its complacency towards Islamism.

June 9. Jacqueline Eustache-Brinio, Mayor of Saint-Gratien, declared war on shops with veiled saleswomen. She wrote on her Facebook page. “I have decided to boycott all shops who impose veiled cashiers and veiled saleswomen on me.” She says she is committed to support, by all means possible, women who refuse to wear veil.

June 9. Provocation? The Parti des Indigénes de la République issued a public invitation to all Muslims to begin the night of Ramadan in front of Saint Denis Basilica, a huge Catholic monument that played an important role in history of France. The Catholic kings of France were crowned and are buried in the Basilica.

June 9. Soldiers protecting a synagogue in Garges (a Paris suburb) were attacked with a barrage of stones launched by a group of twenty people. One soldier was wounded.

June 8. Twenty MPs co-signed and published an open letter in the news magazine Valeurs Actuelles, addressed to Minister of Education Najat Vallaud-Belkacem. They were protesting the decision of the Ministry of Education to promote teaching Arabic at schools to young children of five or six years old. “This decision is stupid. Priority must be given to teaching French, the language of the Republic”.

June 13. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, of left-wing New Anticapitalist Party (NPA), wrote in his blog after the Islamist, anti-gay attack in Orlando, that he fears a possible “wave of hatred against Muslims”. For many Islamists in France, the Muslim is always the victim, even when he is the killer.

June 13. Islamist terrorist Larossi Abballa, 26, stabbed to death police officer Jean-Baptiste Salvaing and his wife, police administrator Jessica Schneider, in front of their son, at their home in the Paris suburb of Magnanville. The murderer then live-streamed a video on Facebook, in which he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS). When police stormed the house, they rescued the three-year-old boy. According to Le Figaro, the killer had been sentenced in 2013 to three years of prison for participating in recruiting jihadists and funneling them into Pakistan, but was released almost immediately.

1691 (1)Paris police officer Jean-Baptiste Salvaing (left) and his wife, police administrator Jessica Schneider (right), were stabbed to death in front of their son by Islamist terrorist Larossi Abballa (inset) on June 13. The murderer then live-streamed a video on Facebook, in which he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

 

June 14. A 19-year-old female student was stabbed at a bus station in the city of Rennes. Passersby succeeded in capturing her attacker, a Muslim man who said he was obeying “voices” that ordered him to make a “sacrifice for Ramadan.” The young woman was taken to a hospital, and the attacker was taken to a psychiatric hospital.

June 14. In reaction to the June 13 murder of two police officers by an Islamist terrorist, the government authorized all policemen to keep their gun on them when they are not on duty.

June 15. According to the Belgian daily La Dernière Heure, the Belgian antiterrorism service informed police departments that ISIS fighters left Syria at the beginning of June to be sent to France and Belgium to commit terrorist attacks.

June 15. Maude Vallet, 18 years old, was harassed, insulted and threatened by five women in a bus because she was wearing shorts on her way back from the beach. She wrote her story on Facebook: “Hi, I am a bitch”. She denounced traditions and the clergy, but refused to mention that these “slut-shaming” attackers were Muslim women. She said the ethnicity to which they belonged was not relevant.

June 15. Ali S, 32, a Tunisian who slapped a female waiter in a bar in Nice because she was serving alcohol during Ramadan was sentenced to eight months in prison and ordered to pay 1000 euros to the waitress. Because he was residing illegally in France, he will be deported and prohibited from returning to France for three years.

June 16. A street encampment of around 400 Sudanese and Afghan migrants, mostly men, was evacuated by the police in the 18th district of Paris. It is the 24th evacuation since June 15, 2015.

June 16. In reaction to the June 13 murder of two police officers by an Islamist terrorist, the right-wing politicians began campaigning to send 13,000 people registered as an “S” (people who live in France and suspected of being affiliated with a terrorist organization) to special “camps”.

June 16. A 22-year-old convert to Islam was arrested in Carcassonne with a knife and a machete. He confessed to the police that he wanted to kill American and English tourists before stabbing a policeman or a soldier. He is being held in custody in Toulouse. The man is registered as an “S”.

June 18. Abou Kamel Chahid threatened on Facebook to commit terrorist attacks in France. “We are four brothers, each has a mission. I swear by Allah, France is going leave the coalition. They won’t have choice. These kouffars [infidels] will never feel well in this country. Be careful, brothers and sisters, things are going to accelerate”.

June 18. For a year, the public multimedia library of Lannion (Britany) has been suffered a rash of vandalizations of its books, comics and DVDs — all relating to the Jews, such as books about the Holocaust and comics by Johan Sfar, the author of “La chat du rabbin” (“The Rabbi’s Cat”), a bestselling comic book.

June 19: An inmate of the Beziers prison in the south of France was sentenced to an additional six months in prison because he said he wanted to commit a terrorist attack against the nudist beach of the Cap d’Agde. The man, Alain G, a convert to Islam, was reported by other inmates.

June 19: 4000 French Muslims responded to a call launched by a group of Mosques in the area of Magnanville, a Paris suburb, to participate in a silent march in tribute to two police officers stabbed to death at their home. It is the first time that French Muslims showed some collective solidarity with non-Muslims against Islamic terrorism. Pressure from the media had been huge to make the demonstration into a show. There was, however, some criticism: MP Guénhaël Huet tweeted “sincerity or duplicity?”. Many other critics observed the absence of women among the marchers, which was analyzed as a sign of the deepening of Islamist ideology among the French Muslims. When the marchers arrived in front of the police station to lay down flowers, no policemen came out to thank them or shake hands.

June 20. After three days of controversy on social media, it appeared that the policeman who refused to shake hands with President François Hollande at a memorial ceremony for the two police officers murdered by the Islamist, Larossi Abballa, was not a member of right-wing Front National party. According to Le Monde, the policeman just wanted to protest against the shrinking budget of the police.

June 21. The NGO “Action by Christians for the Abolition of Torture” (“Action des chrétiens pour l’abolition de la torture”) released a poll about the perception of torture by the French. The results were astounding:

  • 36% said it is acceptable to use torture “in exceptional circumstances.” The number was 25% in 2000 [Poll Amnesty/CSA. 2000].
  • 54% of those polled found it “justifiable” to use electric shocks to torture a terrorist suspected of planting a bomb.
  • 45% said they considered torture an efficient tool against terrorism.
  • 18% said they thought they could torture a terrorist themselves. 40% of Front National supporters said they thought they could torture a terrorist themselves.

June 21. More than 1000 women (mostly Muslims) signed a petition demanding separate hours for women at the public swimming pool of Mantes la Jolie, a Paris suburb. The petition included a request for only female employees to be present during women’s hours. Officials, in the name of secularism, refused the request.

June 21. The daily, Libération, published a report on the Turkish government’s strategy to gain control of Islamic institutions in France.

June 21. A Muslim security guard operating in the “fan zone” of the UEFA Euro soccer tournament in Nice was seen praying while on duty. Police were called to expel him; bystanders were afraid he was a terrorist.

June 22. The investment company Mayhoola, affiliated with the royal family of Qatar, the al-Thanis, spent half-a-billion euros for a controlling interest in the French fashion company Balmain. The same day, the news magazine Marianne published a full survey about the real estate properties of the royal Qatari family in France: 3 billion euros ($3.3 billion USD) in villas, buildings, malls, etc.

June 22. A Muslim from La Chapelle-Basse-Mer (western France) was given a four month suspended prison sentence, a €300 fine, and ordered to pay €1000 in damages each to the two people he threatened to kill, as well as €300 for court costs. In December 2015, he drove his car into a schoolyard and threatened to kill the cook and deputy cook of the school, because his eight-year-old son had eaten pork at the school cafeteria. The boy was hungry and apparently did not want to wait for a substitute meal for vegetarians and Muslims.

June 23: At 3am, in the heart of Barbes, the Muslim quarter of Paris, two men on a motor-scooter opened fire on a group of young men walking in the street. No one was wounded. The police found two 9mm bullet casings on the scene.

June 24: In Toulon, a hundred women demonstrated in the street, all of them wearing shorts. They said they wanted to support Maude Vallet who had been attacked in a bus by five women; the attackers had said that by wearing shorts, she did not respect herself. Like Maude Vallet, the demonstrators refused to mention that all the attackers had been Muslims. Instead, the demonstrators repeated the traditional litany that “it has nothing to do with Islam”.

June 24: In Portes-lès-Valence, an Islamist under surveillance by security services was convicted and imprisoned for the murder of his three-year-old stepdaughter. He had beaten the child to death. The mother was also charged for failing to report the abuse.

June 25: Can a female lawyer testify in court while wearing a veil? This controversy engulfed the bar association of Seine Saint Denis, a suburb of Paris. On June 24, at a students’ moot court competition, a young woman appeared with a tuque, a traditional hat which no lawyers in France wear anymore. But, in a visible way, under the tuque, she was wearing a Muslim veil. The controversial question of whether this is now a hot topic. Many observers think that the tuque will be reintroduced in France by Islamist lawyers in the next few months.

June 26: Bernard Cazeneuve posthumously admitted Hervé Cornara to the Order of Légion d’Honneur. A year ago, Cornara, a businessman, was murdered and beheaded by his Muslim employee, Yassine Salhi, who claimed to act on behalf of the Islamic State. Salhi placed Cornara’s severed head on display, alongside twin ISIS flags, at the gas factory near Lyon where they worked.

June 27: The press reported that two days earlier, 300 hundred migrants from Sudan, Eritrea and Afghanistan engaged in a mass brawl in the 18th district of Paris. The brawl apparently erupted because a woman was sexually harassed by a man from a different ethnic group. The police used tear gas grenades to stop the violence.

June 27: In Ales (southern France), Abdellah, a Moroccan, apparently had no money to pay for his meal at the Sushi bar where he had eaten, so he ran out of the restaurant with his girlfriend. When the police caught him, he began to shout:

“You pork-eaters! You sausage-eaters… We are going to kick France’s ass. Long live the Kouachis [brothers who murdered the Charlie Hebdo journalists in January 2015]! I swear to God, I have a Kalashnikov…”

Abdellah was sentenced to two years in prison for “defending terrorism,” and was ordered to pay the Sushi bar bill.

June 28: Azzeddine Taïbi, a communist, was elected mayor of Stains, a suburban city known for its Salafist population. On the same day, the Administrative Court of Montreuil rejected an appeal by the Seine-Saint-Denis Prefecture demanding the removal of a banner in support of Marwan Barghouti. Barghouti is currently serving five life sentences in an Israel prison for

“orchestrating three shooting attacks that killed 5 people: one attack in Jerusalem… in which Greek monk Tsibouktsakis Germanus was murdered… and one shooting and stabbing attack at the Sea Food Market restaurant in Tel Aviv (March 5, 2002). When arrested by Israel in 2002, Barghouti headed the Tanzim (Fatah terror faction).”

Barghouti’s supporters try to paint him as the “Palestinian Mandela.” So, today, the portrait of Barghouti is back covering “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” on the pediment of the Seine-Saint-Denis Hall.

June 29: The prosecutor’s office in Paris opened in inquiry into death threats posted on social networks against the magazine, Charlie Hebdo. Some twenty “very threatening” messages, including the death threats, were posted on Charlie Hebdo’s Facebook page for three or four days in mid-June, Le Parisien reported. Police are investigating.

June 30: The French government introduced amendments to the “Equality and Citizenship” bill, to fight against “prejudice” and make “diversity” (ethnic minorities) more visible on public television.

According to the latest “barometer of diversity,” only 14% of people perceived as “non-white” (in the terminology) are present on the air. Erika Bareigts, secretary of state in charge of “real equality,” said that “diversity is the reality of French society, and we must show it. This soothes the debate, and everybody needs it.” She added: “The media do not show non-whites in positive or starring roles. That must change.”

June 30: Two jihadists, back from Syria, where they joined the Islamic State, were sentenced to six-month suspended prison terms. The jihadists are 16 and 17 years old. They stayed only six months in Syria and said they left ISIS because of the “rotten ambiance” in their battalion, which was composed of French volunteers.

Refugee Activists Worry Anti-Rape Laws Will Hurt Muslim Migrants

July 11, 2016

Refugee Activists Worry Anti-Rape Laws Will Hurt Muslim Migrants, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, July 11, 2016

(Please see also, Germany’s New “No Means No” Rape Law. — DM)

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This is one of those clarifying moments that show what the left really stands for. The left claims to fight for women. It claims to want gay rights. And yet Muslims come first. They always come first.

After mass sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year’s Eve, the German Parliament voted Thursday in favor of a stricter sexual-assault law that also could ease deportation rules for refugees convicted of sex-related offenses.

The changes appear aimed at two overlapping targets: closing legal loopholes over sexual assaults amid complaints that German codes are too lax and addressing mounting public backlash after the country absorbed the bulk of the wave of migrants and refugees from the Middle East and beyond last year.

But some lawmakers and activists oppose linking the two issues, claiming it could further stigmatize refugees and others as German public opinion increasingly turns against them.

Further stigmatize them… after the mass rapes that they carried out in which 2,000 men assaulted 1,200 women. This was the sexual assault equivalent of 9/11.

The parliamentary vote came on the same day that a court in Cologne sentenced two men in the New Year’s Eve assaults. Iraqi national Hussein A., 21, and Algerian Hassan T., 26, were handed suspended one-year sentences. They were the first suspects to be convicted over the assaults. Both had arrived in Germany in the past two years, a court spokesman said.

They got off with a slap on the wrist. But let’s not stigmatize them.

Bernward Ostrop, an expert on asylum law at the Berlin office of the Catholic charity Caritas, said Germany’s new sex assault law would most probably not make the country safer and was instead meant to send a message to voters. “We already have very good possibilities to deport persons who have committed crimes,” Ostrop said.

Yes, that would be why Hassan and Hussein got suspended one-year sentences.

Opposition politicians and activists have argued that amending the law to make it easier to deport foreign nationals guilty of sexual offenses could create the impression that foreigners are more likely to commit such crimes, stoking tensions further.

I wonder what could possibly create that impression?

A. The fact that it’s true

B. The fact that it’s true

or

C. The time that 2,000 Muslims sexually assault 1,200 women in one day

Halina Wawzyniak, a lawmaker from the Left Party, said that she was generally in favor of stronger sexual-assault laws but that sex assaults and immigration should not be linked.

Wawzyniak said she feared that the new law could lead to “disproportionate” sanctions for relatively minor offenses by asylum seekers and that they could face a “double punishment” by being deported.

This is the left. Remember that. They pretend to be feminists, but they put Muslim rapists over female victims.

To counter Muslim migrant sex assaults, Swedish cops giving girls “Do not molest me” bracelets

July 2, 2016

To counter Muslim migrant sex assaults, Swedish cops giving girls “Do not molest me” bracelets, Jihad Watch

This will work. Can’t you picture it? A Muslim migrant is about to attack an Infidel girl and make her a “captive of the right hand” (cf. Qur’an 4:3, 4:24, 23:1-6, 33:50, 70:30), but then he spies her “Do not molest me” bracelet, apologizes, and hurries away.

Is there no one left in Sweden, or Europe in general, who has any spine? Is every last Western leader determined to stand up to jihad terror and Islamic supremacism in the wimpiest possible manner?

Dan-Eliasson-bracelets-do-not-molest-me

“‘Do not molest me’: Swedish police giving out bracelets to girls in the wake of immigrant attacks,” Fria Tider (Google Translate), June 30, 2016 (thanks to Maurice):

Domestic. In the aftermath of last year’s asylum-related sexual attacks at the “We Are Stockholm” youth festival, the Swedish police are now launching a new campaign. Officers will give out bracelets with the text “Do not molest me” to girls attending this year’s festival, of according to Dan Eliasson, head of the country’s national police force.

“The police are taking the reports of sexual molestation seriously, especially when it happens to young people,” Eliasson said in an official press release.

As a part of the new campaign, police officers equipped with bracelets with the text “Do not molest me” will be late to the Streets of Stockholm. The bracelets will be given out During The Summer Festival in the Swedish capital, and also in connection to other major events frequented by young people.

“This way, we can draw attention to the issue and urge Those Concerned to report,” Mr. Eliasson Continued.

Recently, the Swedish police published a report on sexual crimes in public swimming pools and other public places. : According to the report from May this year, the perpetrators are in most cases male asylum seekers from the Third World. One hypothesis put forward in the report Is that the asylum seekers are attacking Swedish girls as a “result of the Nordic alcohol culture, but overpriced Because of non-traditional gender roles” in the Scandinavian country.

Anger, Honor and Freedom: What European Muslims’ Attack On Speech Is Really About

June 30, 2016

Anger, Honor and Freedom: What European Muslims’ Attack On Speech Is Really About, Investigative Project on Terrorism, Abigail R. Esman, June 30, 2016

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Indeed, much of the Muslim violence in Europe is about exactly this: intimidating non-Muslims into a fearful capitulation, where words like “I hate Muslims” and drawings of Mohammed become extinct because the Muslim communities insist that it be so. It is about forcing Westerners to rearrange their lives, their culture, to accommodate the needs and values and culture of Islam. It is about control, and the power over freedom. And it is about creating a culture in which honor is injured by words and restored through violence and terror.

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“Clash of civilizations,” some say. Others call it the “failure of multiculturalism.” Either way, the cultural conflicts between some Muslims and non-Muslims worldwide continue to play out as Western countries struggle to reconcile their own cultures with the demands of a growing Muslim population.

But herein lies the problem: in many ways, the two cultures are ultimately irreconcilable. There is no middle ground. And hence, the conflicts and the tugs-of-war continue.

Over the past two months, the events surrounding controversial Dutch columnist Ebru Umar have encapsulated that “clash” at its core, a salient metaphor for the tensions, particularly in Europe, between the West’s Muslim populations and its own. More, they illuminate the enormity of the problems we still face.

Umar is no stranger to the spotlight, or to the wrath of Dutch Muslims who read her many columns, most of them published in the free newspaper, Metro. For years, the Dutch-born daughter of secular Turkish immigrants has raged against the failure of other Dutch-born children of immigrants, mostly Moroccan, to assimilate into the culture of their birth. She loudly condemns Dutch-Moroccan families for the shockingly high rates of criminality and violence among Dutch-Moroccan boys – as much as 22 times the rate of Dutch native youth – a phenomenon she ascribes to their Islamic upbringing and their parents’ refusal to allow their children to mingle among the Dutch.

But her critiques have earned her no converts. Instead, Dutch-Moroccan youth, whom she calls “Mocros,” have regularly taunted her, both online and in the street.

This past April, however, Umar added a new team of enemies to her portfolio: when, in response to Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erodogan’s demand that a German satirist be prosecuted for insulting him on TV, Umar tweeted “f***erdogan,” Dutch Turks turned on her in fury. “How dare you insult our president!” cried these Dutch-born subjects of Holland’s King Willem-Alexander. And while Umar took a brief holiday on the Turkish coast, one such Dutch-Turk turned her in to the police. She was arrested at her vacation home in Kusadasi, and though released the following day, was forbidden to leave the country. The charge: Insulting the Turkish president. It took 17 days before discussions between Holland’s prime minister and Turkish authorities enabled her to return to the Netherlands.

But she could not return home. In her absence, Umar’s home had been burgled and vandalized, the word “whore” scrawled on a stairway wall. Death threats followed her both in Turkey and on her return. When it became clear she could not ever return to the apartment she had lived in for nearly 20 years, she announced on Twitter (Ebru Umar posts constantly on Twitter) that she would be moving out.

Meantime, in Metro and elsewhere, she continued her criticism of Moroccans and, as she herself notes, of Islam overall.

And so it was that on the day Ebru Umar moved out of her apartment in Amsterdam, a group of Dutch-Moroccans in their twenties came to see her off, taunting her with chants: Ebru has to mo-o-ve, nyah nyah.” Though furious, she ignored them – until one of them began to film her loading her belongings into her car. For Umar, being taunted by the very people whose threats had forced her from her home in the first place was bad enough: but this violation of what little privacy remained for her was more than she could take. She grabbed her iPhone and began filming them right back. “Go ahead,” she challenged. “Say it for the camera.”

Scuffles ensued, and soon one of the Moroccans had her iPhone in his hand. The others laughed. Then they ran away. Umar filed a police report and, still smarting, took to Twitter once again: “C**t Moroccans, I hate you,” she posted. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you and I hate your Muslim brothers and sisters, too. F**k you all.” (It is important to note that, however offensive, the expression “c**t Moroccans” is a common epithet in the Netherlands.)

But, hey – she was angry. Her phone had been snatched from her hand in a brutal, aggressive gesture that left her feeling violated and, vulnerable. She had just been forced to leave her home. She had endured prison, a criminal inquiry, and death threats, all at the hands of the same group on whom she now spewed her fury.

Her words may have been harsh or inappropriate, but they were words. She had not struck her tormenters as they filmed her. She did not call for their demise, or strap a bomb around her waist and visit the local mosques.

She took to Twitter and said: I hate you.

“But hate,” she tells me later in an e-mail, “is just an emotion.” And in a column penned more than two years ago, she observed, “Hate me till you’re purple, but keep your claws off me.”

Here is where Ebru Umar’s story becomes the story of the Western world. In response to her words (“I hate you. F*** you”), several Muslims – Moroccans and others – filed charges against her for hate speech. (Though ironically, “I hate you” does not legally qualify as “hate speech.”) Such words are an attack upon their honor, a humiliation: and if there is one thing experts on Arab and Muslim culture will agree on, it is the significance of humiliation and honor in governing their lives. For this, Dutch Moroccan youth threaten Umar on the streets, and have done so, she says, for years: after all, she insults them.

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But in truth, it isn’t just the youth. The broader Muslim community stands by, silent: they do not condemn the youth who taunt her, who rip her telephone from her hands, or post things on the Internet like “We hate you, too – can you please kill yourself?” or “Oh, how I hope she ends up like Theo van Gogh.”

Theo van Gogh, also a controversial columnist, was shot and stabbed to death in 2014 by a radical Dutch-Moroccan Muslim.The commenter wishing her the same fate used the name “IzzedinAlQassam,” the founder of modern Palestinian jihad, and an icon of Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal.

For people like this, it doesn’t matter that Umar – or van Gogh – inflicted no violence, any more than it mattered that the editors of Charlie Hebdo were not violent. It was the insult, the humiliation – to them, to Islam, to Mohammed – that mattered: and an insult, a humiliation, deserves a violent response.

Indeed, much of the Muslim violence in Europe is about exactly this: intimidating non-Muslims into a fearful capitulation, where words like “I hate Muslims” and drawings of Mohammed become extinct because the Muslim communities insist that it be so. It is about forcing Westerners to rearrange their lives, their culture, to accommodate the needs and values and culture of Islam. It is about control, and the power over freedom. And it is about creating a culture in which honor is injured by words and restored through violence and terror.

When Umar says “I hate you,” what she hates, really, isn’t the Moroccans who attacked her or their “Muslim brothers and sisters.” What she hates is this – this effort, this battle over honor and speech and freedom, and this clash between violence and expression, guns and conversation.

“I don’t want Muslims to leave,” she tells me, again by e-mail. “I want them to embrace the Enlightenment, Western society, the Netherlands.” And in turn, she calls on the Dutch to “set rules: no violence in any sense. And stop using culture or religion as an excuse for behavior.”

Ebru Umar’s words. More of us should listen.

VIDEO — Geert Wilders: Stand for Freedom!

June 30, 2016

VIDEO — Geert Wilders: Stand for Freedom! Gatestone Institute via YouTube, June 30, 2016