Archive for the ‘Islamic tolerance’ category

Will the Dutch Protect their ‘Decadence’ from Islamic ‘Redeemers’?

March 19, 2017

Will the Dutch Protect their ‘Decadence’ from Islamic ‘Redeemers’? Gatestone InstituteGiulio Meotti, March 19, 2017

The Dutch and the Europeans should be proud of what Islamic fundamentalists call “decadence”, but they also must be ready to fight to defend it. “Safe spaces” are not enough. The world does not provide them. Otherwise, they will all end up in one of the “safe houses” that Geert Wilders’s puritanical tormentors have obliged him to spend his life in. “I am in jail”, he has said; “They are walking around free”.

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

“Erasmus… came to Holland because it was a haven for freedom of thought.” — Han ten Broeke, candidate for foreign minister in Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s government.

The Islamic supremacists in the Netherlands see themselves as redeemers, rescuing the West from Fortuyn’s “decadence”: drugs, prostitution, gay life, a blasphemous press. But will the Dutch establishment be able to defend these freedoms?

You can be gay, decadent and willing to fight for your freedoms. If you are just gay and decadent, you are doomed.

General elections in the Netherlands are over, but now begins a much bigger campaign: who will defend the famous Dutch freedoms?

Only in the Netherlands is it conceivable that a politician such as Geert Wilders, a brave maverick who for 13 years, 24 hours a day, has lived under police protection; held rallies while wearing a bulletproof vest; moved from one secret location to another one and was guarded as if he were an Asian potentate. The country has already had two political assassinations related to Islam: the politician Pim Fortuyn, and the filmmaker, Theo van Gogh. Another Dutch MP at the time, Ayaan Hirsi Ali — whose name, with Wilders’s, was next on the hit-list pinned with a knife to van Gogh’s corpse — ended up fleeing to the United States. Only Wilders’s protection, generously provided by the Dutch government, has so far avoided a third political murder.

The Netherlands has already had two political assassinations related to Islam: the politician Pim Fortuyn (left), and Theo van Gogh (right), a filmmaker. (Image sources: Van Gogh – Wikimedia Commons; Fortuyn – Forza! Nederland video screenshot)

In the Netherlands, the philosopher Baruch Spinoza became the prophet of tolerance, Karl Marx investigated capitalism and John Locke penned his “Letter on Tolerance”. The mainstream media has claimed that Wilders’s rise and the new “populist” shift of Prime Minister Mark Rutte (who, in January, told immigrants to “act normal or leave“) has been a betrayal of that Dutch tolerance. Exactly the opposite is true.

It is from this tolerance that hard Dutch liberalism gets the will to fight against intolerance. Tolerating the intolerant does not sound like the way to have tolerance continue. This is how the Dutch multiculturalists turned their great legacy upside-down. The Dutch see themselves as “Enlightenment fundamentalists“, upholding the values of Enlightenment — even in the Islamic world.

The question now is: will the Dutch defend these freedoms or instead gradually dismantle them? Dutch Minister of Justice Piet Donner recently suggesting introducing Islamic sharia law into the Netherlands by democratic means.

The “hard liberal” Dutch tradition goes back to Pim Fortuyn, a homosexual proud of the supposed “decadence” of his country, its tolerance, and the freedoms it offers. As the late British journalist Alexander Chancellor wrote:

“The Muslim fanatics berate the West for its decadence, and many in the west guiltily agree that they have a point, but Fortuyn did not think so. He crusaded on behalf of what many would regard as decadence, and was so concerned for its survival”.

Fortuyn considered permissiveness the heart of Western culture. He was a “hard liberal”, militantly defending the post-9/11 Judeo-Christian, Western values against Islamic intolerance, in the same way as Oriana Fallaci, Bat Ye’or, Michel Houellebecq and Geert Wilders have been trying to do.

After last week’s Dutch elections, it is time for the Netherlands to rediscover Pim Fortuyn’s legacy and ideas. A flamboyant, shaven-headed homosexual who taught sociology, Fortuyn wore elegant Italian suits, lived in a palatial home in Rotterdam and wrote a great book entitled, “The Islamization of Our Culture“. He promised resistance against Islam, “a cold war against Islam“, as he called it in an interview in Rotterdam’s Dagblad.

“You have said”, the newspaper Volkskrant reported in an interview, “that foreigners snatch all our blonde women, and then turn around and call them ‘whores'”. “No”, Fortuyn calmly corrected him. “I said Islamic men do that. That’s quite different, sir, than ‘foreigners'”. Then, the Volkskrant asked, in what would become the defining moment of Pim Fortuyn’s life, “why the hate toward Islam?”. “I do not hate Islam”, Fortuyn said. “I find it a backward culture. I’ve traveled a great deal in the world; and wherever Islam rules, it is appalling”.

The Islamic supremacists in the Netherlands see themselves as “redeemers,” rescuing the West from Fortuyn’s “decadence”: drugs, prostitution, gay life, a blasphemous press. Will the Dutch establishment be able to defend these freedoms?

“Decadence” can become lethal for a country when it turns into hedonism, devirilization, the decline of education, and loss of historical memory. By “decadence”, however, Islamic supremacists seem to mean all Western freedoms, not just Dutch permissiveness. But these freedoms are what we should be proud of. And these are what we must be ready to fight to protect. Fortuyn did, and he paid the ultimate price: his own life. Theo van Gogh also did with his film on the submission of women under Islam. After van Gogh was slaughtered by Mohammed Bouyeri, the film immediately disappeared from public view.

The Dutch Left also needs to rediscover its roots. A debate about integration was started in the Netherlands not by the “xenophobic” right wing parties, but by Paul Scheffer, a respected academic belonging to the Labour Party, who in 2000 wrote an essay entitled, “The Multicultural Disaster” — before Fortuyn and Wilders had ever entered the picture. Scheffer wrote of a lenient Dutch people whose multicultural policies had failed to promote the Dutch culture in immigrant communities. Unfortunately, the Dutch Left took the opposite path and that is why it was severely beaten in the election last week.

Mark Rutte’s party also has a lot to learn from this hard liberalism. It was the liberals who put into practice many of Fortuyn’s ideas: banning the burqa, which many Muslims call a way of “protecting” their women, but others call a symbol of Islam dominating women. Prime Minister Rutte’s reaction against the Turkish Republic’s interference in Dutch life would be unthinkable in other European countries: Rutte, fearing Wilders’ rise, stood for his country’s independence and refused to bow to Islamist pressure to allow Turkish President Erdogan’s ministers to address a rally in Rotterdam.

In France, in fact, the authorities allowed Turkish rallies, and thereby showed a submissive mentality to political Islam. Rutte and the Dutch would be wise continue on their road, which is what allowed Rutte to retain his government. Fiscal conservatism may be important, but Western values are, too.

After Fortuyn’s murder, Wilders set himself as the “defender of liberalism“: on gender equality, separation of church and state, and personal autonomy. Unlike many liberals in the United States and Canada, however, Wilders is not willing to surrender these freedoms to Islam. Liberals and feminists in the United States refuse to stand for women’s rights in the Muslim world. They never raise the question of the separation of mosque and state. Instead, they blamed the carnage that the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo suffered in 2015 on freedom of expression.

Did the Dutch “hard liberals” ever think about Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s brave battle for female rights under Islam, Theo van Gogh and other Dutch journalists, or the crusade Wilders has been leading to protect the country from Islamist intolerance?

Why are the LGBT militants not condemning the crimes of Islam, as Pim Fortuyn did? The editor of an LGBT magazine in Bangladesh was just hacked to death by Islamists; how come no one from the LGBT community in the West condemned or spoke out about it? Why are gay activists keeping silent about homosexuals being murdered by Islamists after, in Florida, a Muslim terrorist butchered 50 of them?

You can be gay, decadent and willing to fight for your freedom. If you are just gay and decadent, you are doomed.

Han ten Broeke, a candidate for foreign minister in Rutte’s government, recently justified the Dutch ban of Turkish ministers by noting that Erasmus came to the Netherlands “because it was a haven for freedom of thought”. This Erasmian tolerance remains very strong at the heart of the Dutch identity, but the presence, among them, of non-European, illiberal Muslims keeps testing the limits of it. The Dutch libertines and libertarians in line with Fortuyn and Wilders do not seem willing to commit suicide, unlike the liberals of Middlebury College in the US, who seem busy trying to lynch any conservative who stops by their campus.

The Dutch and the Europeans should be proud of what Islamic fundamentalists call “decadence”, but they also must be ready to fight to defend it. “Safe spaces” are not enough. The world does not provide them. Otherwise, they will all end up in one of the “safe houses” that Geert Wilders’s puritanical tormentors have obliged him to spend his life in. “I am in jail”, he has said; “They are walking around free”.

Smoking Out Islamists via Extreme Vetting

January 31, 2017

Smoking Out Islamists via Extreme Vetting, Middle East Forum, Daniel Pipes, January 28, 2017(?)

(Please see also, A Muslim Reformer Speaks Out About His Battle Against Islamism And PC. — DM)

On January 27, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to implement his proposed “extreme vetting” of those applying for entry visas into the United States. This article by Middle East Forum President Daniel Pipes, who has written extensively on the practicality and enforceability of screening for Islamists, is an advance release from the forthcoming Spring 2017 issue of Middle East Quarterly.

3570Smoking Them Out (1906), Charles M. Russell.

Donald Trump issued an executive order on Jan. 27 establishing radically new procedures to deal with foreigners who apply to enter the United States.

Building on his earlier notion of “extreme vetting,” the order explains that

to protect Americans, the United States must ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles. The United States cannot, and should not, admit those who do not support the Constitution, or those who would place violent ideologies over American law. In addition, the United States should not admit those who engage in acts of bigotry or hatred (including “honor” killings, other forms of violence against women, or the persecution of those who practice religions different from their own) or those who would oppress Americans of any race, gender, or sexual orientation.

This passage raises several questions of translating extreme vetting in practice: How does one distinguish foreigners who “do not bear hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles” from those who do? How do government officials figure out “those who would place violent ideologies over American law”? More specifically, given that the new procedures almost exclusively concern the fear of allowing more Islamists into the country, how does one identify them?

I shall argue these are doable tasks and the executive order provides the basis to achieve them. At the same time, they are expensive and time-consuming, demanding great skill. Keeping out Islamists can be done, but not easily.

The Challenge

By Islamists (as opposed to moderate Muslims), I mean those approximately 10-15 percent of Muslims who seek to apply Islamic law (the Shari’a) in its entirety. They want to implement a medieval code that calls (among much else) for restricting women, subjugating non-Muslims, violent jihad, and establishing a caliphate to rule the world.

For many non-Muslims, the rise of Islamism over the past forty years has made Islam synonymous with extremism, turmoil, aggression, and violence. But Islamists, not all Muslims, are the problem; they, not all Muslims, must urgently be excluded from the United States and other Western countries. Not just that, but anti-Islamist Muslims are the key to ending the Islamist surge, as they alone can offer a humane and modern alternative to Islamist obscurantism.

Identifying Islamists is no easy matter, however, as no simple litmus test exists. Clothing can be misleading, as some women wearing hijabs are anti-Islamists, while practicing Muslims can be Zionists; nor does one’s occupation indicate much, as some high-tech engineers are violent Islamists. Likewise, beards, teetotalism, five-times-a-day prayers, and polygyny do not tell about a Muslim’s political outlook. To make matters more confusing, Islamists often dissimulate and pretend to be moderates, while some believers change their views over time.

3567In 2001, the Pentagon invited Anwar al-Awlaki to lunch. In 2011, it killed him by a drone strike.

Finally, shades of gray further confuse the issue. As noted by Robert Satloff of The Washington Institute, a 2007 book from the Gallup press, Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think, based on a poll of over 50,000 Muslims in 10 countries, found that 7 percent of Muslims deem the 9/11 attacks “completely justified,” 13.5 percent consider the attacks completely or “largely justified,” and 36.6 percent consider the attacks completely, largely, or “somewhat justified.” Which of these groups does one define as Islamist and which not?

Faced with these intellectual challenges, American bureaucrats are unsurprisingly incompetent, as I demonstrate in a long blog titled “The U.S. Government’s Poor Record on Islamists.” Islamists have fooled the White House, the departments of Defense, Justice, State, and Treasury, the Congress, many law enforcement agencies and a plethora of municipalities. A few examples:

  • The Pentagon in 2001 invited Anwar al-Awlaki, the American Islamist it later executed with a drone-launched missile, to lunch.
  • In 2002, FBI spokesman Bill Carter described the American Muslim Council (AMC) as “the most mainstream Muslim group in the United States” – just two years before the bureau arrested the AMC’s founder and head, Abdurahman Alamoudi, on terrorism-related charges. Alamoudi has now served about half his 23-year prison sentence.
  • George W. Bush appointed stealth Islamist Khaled Abou El Fadl in 2003 to, of all things, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.
  • The White House included staff in 2015 from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in its consultations, despite CAIR’s initial funding by a designated terrorist group, the frequent arrest or deportation of its employees on terrorism charges, a history of deception, and the goal of one of its leaders to make Islam the only accepted religion in America.

Fake-moderates have fooled even me, despite all the attention I devote to this topic. In 2000, I praised a book by Tariq Ramadan; four years later, I argued for his exclusion from the United States. In 2003, I condemned a Republican operative named Kamal Nawash; two years later, I endorsed him. Did they evolve or did my understanding of them change? More than a decade later, I am still unsure.

Uniform Screening Standards

Returning to immigration, this state of confusion points to the need for learning much more about would-be visitors and immigrants. Fortunately, Trump’s executive order, “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,” signed on Jan. 27, 2017, requires just this. It calls for “Uniform Screening Standards” with the goal of preventing individuals from entering the United States “on a fraudulent basis with the intent to cause harm, or who are at risk of causing harm subsequent to their admission.” The order requires that the uniform screening standard and procedure include such elements as (bolding is mine):

  1. In-person interviews;
  2. A database of identity documents proffered by applicants to ensure that duplicate documents are not used by multiple applicants;
  3. Amended application forms that include questions aimed at identifying fraudulent answers and malicious intent;
  4. A mechanism to ensure that the applicant is who the applicant claims to be;
  5. A process to evaluate the applicant’s likelihood of becoming a positively contributing member of society and the applicant’s ability to make contributions to the national interest; and
  6. A mechanism to assess whether or not the applicant has the intent to commit criminal or terrorist acts after entering the United States.

Elements 1, 3, 5, and 6 permit and demand the procedure outlined in the following analysis. It contains two main components, in-depth research and intensive interviews.

Research

When a person applies for a security clearance, the background checks should involve finding out about his family, friends, associations, employment, memberships, and activities. Agents must probe these for questionable statements, relationships, and actions, as well as anomalies and gaps. When they find something dubious, they must look further into it, always with an eye for trouble. Is access to government secrets more important than access to the country? The immigration process should start with an inquiry into the prospective immigrant and, just as with security clearances, the border services should look for problems.

3572Most everyone with strong views at some point vents them on social media.

Also, as with security clearance, this process should have a political dimension: Does the person in question have an outlook consistent with that of the Constitution? Not long ago, only public figures such as intellectuals, activists, and religious figures put their views on the record; but now, thanks to the Internet and its open invitation to everyone to comment in writing or on video in a permanent, public manner, and especially to social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), most everyone with strong views at some point vents them. Such data provides valuably unfiltered views on many critical topics, such as Islam, non-Muslims, women, and violence as a tactic. (Exploiting this resource may seem self-evident but U.S. immigration authorities do not do so, thereby imposing a self-restraint roughly equivalent to the Belgian police choosing not to conduct raids between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m.)

In the case of virulent, overt, outspoken jihadis, this research usually suffices to provide evidence to exclude them. Even some non-violent Islamists proudly announce their immoderation. But many Islamists adopt a milder and subtler tone, their goal being to appear moderate so they can enter the country and then impose Shari’a through lawful means. As suggested by some of the examples above, such as Abou El Fadl or CAIR, research often proves inadequate in these instances because cautious Islamists hide their goals and glibly dissimulate. Which brings us to entrance interviews.

Entrance Interviews

Assuming that lawful Islamists routinely hide their true views, an interview is needed before letting them enter the country. Of course, it is voluntary, for no one is forced to apply for immigration, but it also must be very thorough. It should be:

Recorded: With the explicit permission of the person being questioned (“You understand and accept that this interview is being recorded, right?”), the exchange should be visibly videotaped so the proceedings are unambiguously on the record. This makes available the interviewee’s words, tone, speech patterns, facial expressions, and body language for further study. Form as well as substance matters: does the interviewee smile, fidget, blink, make eye contact, repeat, sweat, tremble, tire, need frequent toilet breaks, or otherwise express himself in non-verbal ways?

Polygraph: Even if a lie detector machine does not, in fact, provide useful information, attaching the interviewee to it might induce greater truth-telling.

Under oath: Knowing that falsehoods will be punished, possibly with jail time, is a strong inducement to come clean.

Public: If the candidate knows that his answers to abstract questions (as opposed to personal ones about his life) will be made public, this reduces the chances of deception. For example, asked about belief for the full application of Islamic laws, an Islamist will be less likely to answer falsely in the negative if he knows that his reply will be available for others to watch.

3568Look for inconsistency by asking the same thing in different ways. An example: “May a woman show her face in public?” and “Is a male guardian responsible for making sure his women-folk don’t leave the house with faces uncovered?

Multiple: No single question can evince a reply that establishes an Islamist disposition; effective interviewing requires a battery of queries on many topics, from homosexuality to the caliphate. The answers need to be assessed in their totality.

Specific: Vague inquiries along the lines of “Is Islam a religion of peace?”, “Do you condemn terrorism?” “How do you respond to the murder of innocents,” depend too much on one’s definition of words such as peace, terrorism, and innocents to help determine a person’s outlook, and so should be avoided. Instead, questions must be focused and exact: “May Muslims convert out of Islam, whether to join another faith or to become atheists?” “Does a Muslim have the right to renounce Islam?”

Variety in phrasing: For the questions to ferret out the truth means looking for divergence and inconsistency by asking the same question with different words and variant emphases. A sampling: “May a woman show her face in public?” “What punishment do you favor for females who reveal their faces to men not related to them by family?” “Is it the responsibility of the male guardian to make sure his women-folk do not leave the house with faces uncovered?” “Should the government insist on women covering their faces?” “Is society better ordered when women cover their faces?” Any one of the questions can be asked in different ways and expanded with follows-up about the respondent’s line of reasoning or depth of feeling.

Repeated: Questions should be asked again and again over a period of weeks, months, and even longer. This is crucial: lies being much more difficult to remember than truths, the chances of a respondent changing his answers increases with both the volume of questions asked and the time lapse between questionings. Once inconsistencies occur, the questioner can zero in and explore their nature, extent, and import.

The Questions

Guidelines in place, what specific questions might extract useful information?

3574Zuhdi Jasser (L) with the author as teammates at a 2012 Intelligence Squared debate in New York City.

The following questions, offered as suggestions to build on, are those of this author but also derive from a number of analysts devoting years of thinking to the topic. Naser Khader, the-then Danish parliamentarian of Syrian Muslim origins, offered an early set of questions in 2002. A year later, this author published a list covering seven subject areas.

Others followed, including the liberal Egyptian Muslim Tarek Heggy, the liberal American Muslims Tashbih Sayyed and Zuhdi Jasser, the ex-Muslim who goes by “Sam Solomon,” a RAND Corporation group, and the analyst Robert Spencer. Of special interest are the queries posed by the German state of Baden-Württemberg dated September 2005 because it is an official document (intended for citizenship, not immigration, but with similar purposes).

Islamic doctrine:

1. May Muslims reinterpret the Koran in light of changes in modern times?

2. May Muslims convert out of Islam, either to join another faith or to be without religion?

3. May banks charge reasonable interest (say 3 percent over inflation) on money?

4. Is taqiya (dissimulation in the name of Islam) legitimate?

Islamic pluralism:

5. May Muslims pick and choose which Islamic regulations to abide by (e.g., drink alcohol but avoid pork)?

6. Is takfir (declaring a Muslim to be an infidel) acceptable?

7. [Asked of Sunnis only:] Are Sufis, Ibadis, and Shi’ites Muslims?

8. Are Muslims who disagree with your practice of Islam infidels (kuffar)?

The state and Islam:

9. What do you think of disestablishing religion, that is, separating mosque and state?

10. When Islamic customs conflict with secular laws (e.g., covering the face for female drivers’ license pictures), which gets priority?

11. Should the state compel prayer?

12. Should the state ban food consumption during Ramadan and penalize transgressors?

13. Should the state punish Muslims who eat pork, drink alcohol, and gamble?

14. Should the state punish adultery?

15. How about homosexuality?

16. Do you favor a mutawwa’ (religious police) as exist in Saudi Arabia?

17. Should the state enforce the criminal punishments of the Shari’a?

18. Should the state be lenient when someone is killed for the sake of family honor?

19. Should governments forbid Muslims from leaving Islam?

Marriage and divorce:

20. Does a husband have the right to hit his wife if she is disobedient?

21. Is it a good idea for men to shut their wives and daughters at home?

22. Do parents have the right to determine whom their children marry?

23. How would you react if a daughter married a non-Muslim man?

24. Is polygyny acceptable?

25. Should a husband have to get a first wife’s approval to marry a second wife? A third? A fourth?

26. Should a wife have equal rights with her husband to initiate a divorce?

27. In the case of divorce, does a wife have rights to child custody?

Female rights:

28. Should Muslim women have equal rights with men (for example, in inheritance shares or court testimony)?

29. Does a woman have the right to dress as she pleases, including showing her hair, arms and legs, so long as her genitalia and breasts are covered?

30. May Muslim women come and go or travel as they please?

31. Do Muslim women have a right to work outside the home or must the wali approve of this??

32. May Muslim women marry non-Muslim men?

33. Should males and females be separated in schools, at work, and socially?

34. Should certain professions be reserved for men or women only? If so, which ones?

35. Do you accept women occupying high governmental offices?

36. In an emergency, would you let yourself be treated by or operated on by a doctor of the opposite gender?

Sexual activity:

37. Does a husband have the right to force his wife to have sex?

38. Is female circumcision part of the Islamic religion?

39. Is stoning a justified punishment for adultery?

40. Do members of a family have the right to kill a woman if they believe she has dishonored them?

41. How would you respond to a child of yours who declares him- or herself a homosexual?

Schools:

42. Should your child learn the history of non-Muslims?

43. Should students be taught that Shari’a is a personal code or that governmental law must be based on it?

44. May your daughter take part in the sports activities, especially swimming lessons, offered by her school?

45. Would you permit your child to take part in school trips, including overnight ones?

46. What would you do if a daughter insisted on going to university?

Criticism of Muslims:

3575Denying the Islamic nature of ISIS reveals much about a Muslim.

47. Did Islam spread only through peaceful means?

48. Do you accept the legitimacy of scholarly inquiry into the origins of Islam, even if it casts doubt on the received history?

49. Do you accept that Muslims were responsible for the 9/11 attacks?

50. Is the Islamic State/ISIS/ISIL/Daesh Islamic in nature?

Fighting Islamism:

51. Do you accept enhanced security measures to fight Islamism, even if this might mean extra scrutiny of yourself (for example, at airline security)?

52. When institutions credibly accused of funding jihad are shut down, is this a symptom of anti-Muslim bias?

53. Should Muslims living in the West cooperate with law enforcement?

54. Should they join the military?

55. Is the “war on terror” a war on Islam?

Non-Muslims (in general):

3573Praying at the Hindu Temple in Dubai, founded 1958.

56. Do all humans, regardless of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation or religious beliefs, deserve equal rights?

57. Should non-Muslims enjoy completely equal civil rights with Muslims?

58. Do you accept the validity of other monotheistic religions?

59. Of polytheistic religions (such as Hinduism)?

60. Are Muslims superior to non-Muslims?

61. Should non-Muslims be subject to Islamic law?

62. Do Muslims have anything to learn from non-Muslims?

63. Can non-Muslims go to paradise?

64. Do you welcome non-Muslims to your house and go to their residences?

Non-Muslims (in Dar al-Islam):

65. May Muslims compel “Peoples of the Book” (i.e., Jews and Christians) to pay extra taxes?

66. May other monotheists build and operate institutions of their faith in Muslim-majority countries?

67. How about polytheists?

68. Should the Saudi government maintain the historic ban on non-Muslims in Mecca and Medina?

69. Should it allow churches to be built for Christian expatriates?

70. Should it stop requiring that all its subjects be Muslim?

Non-Muslims (in Dar al-Harb):

71. Should Muslims fight Jews and Christians until these “feel themselves subdued” (Koran 9:29).

72. Is the enslavement of non-Muslims acceptable?

73. Is it acceptable to arrest individuals who curse the prophet of Islam or burn the Koran?

74. If the state does not act against such deeds, may individual Muslims act?

75. Can one live a fully Muslim life in a country with a mostly non-Muslim government?

76. Should a Muslim accept a legitimate majority non-Muslim government and its laws or work to make Islam supreme?

77. Can a majority non-Muslim government unreservedly win your allegiance?

78. Should Muslims who burn churches or vandalize synagogues be punished?

79. Do you support jihad to spread Islam?

Violence:

80. Do you endorse corporal punishments (mutilation, dismemberment, crucifixion) of criminals?

81. Is beheading an acceptable form of punishment?

82. Is jihad, meaning warfare to expand Muslim rule, acceptable in today’s world?

83. What does it mean when Muslims yell “Allahu Akbar” as they attack?

84. Do you condemn violent organizations such as Boko Haram, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, the Islamic State, Al-Qaeda, Shabaab, and the Taliban?

Western countries:

85. Are non-Islamic institutions immoral and decadent or can they be moral and virtuous?

86. Do you agree with studies that show non-Muslim countries such as New Zealand to be better living up to the ideals of Islam than Muslim-majority countries?

87. Is Western-style freedom an accomplishment or a form of moral corruption? Why?

88. Do you accept that Western countries are majority-Christian or do you seek to transform them into majority-Muslim countries?

89. Do you accept living in Western countries that are secular or do you seek to have Islamic law rule them?

90. What do you think of Shari’a-police patrolling Muslim-majority neighborhoods in Western countries to enforce Islamic morals?

91. Would you like to see the U.S. Constitution (or its equivalents in other countries) replaced by the Koran?

This interview:

92. In an immigration interview like this, if deceiving the questioner helps Islam, would lying be justified?

93. Why should I trust that you have answered these questions truthfully?

Observations about the Interviews

Beyond helping to decide whom to allow into the country, these questions can also help in other contexts as well, for example in police interrogations or interviews for sensitive employment positions. (The list of Islamists who have penetrated Western security services is a long and painful one.)

3569Islamists are hardly the only ones who condemn Israel. Here Jewish Voice for Peace activists protest.

Note the absence of questions about highly charged current issues. That is because Islamist views overlap with non-Islamist outlooks; plenty of non-Islamists agree with Islamists on these topics. Although Leil Leibowitz in contrast sees Israel as “moderate Islam’s real litmus test,” Islamists are hardly the only ones who demand Israel’s elimination and accept Hamas and Hezbollah as legitimate political actors – or believe the Bush administration carried out the 9/11 attacks or hate the United States. Why introduce these ambiguous issues when so many Islam-specific questions (e.g., “Is the enslavement of non-Muslim acceptable?”) have the virtue of far greater clarity?

The interviewing protocol outlined above is extensive, asking many specific questions over a substantial period using different formulations, probing for truth and inconsistencies. It is not quick, easy, or cheap, but requires case officers knowledgeable about the persons being interviewed, the societies they come from, and the Islamic religion; they are somewhat like a police questioner who knows both the accused person and the crime. This is not a casual process. There are no shortcuts.

Criticisms

This procedure raises two criticisms: it is less reliable than Trump’s no-Muslim policy and it is too burdensome for governments to undertake. Both are readily disposed of.

Less reliable: The no-Muslim policy sounds simple to implement but figuring out who is Muslim is a problem in itself (are Ahmadis Muslims?). Further, with such a policy in place, what will stop Muslims from pretending to renounce their religion or to convert to another religion, notably Christianity? These actions would require the same in-depth research and intensive interviews as described above. If anything, because a convert can hide behind his ignorance of his alleged new religion, distinguishing a real convert to Christianity from a fake one is even more difficult than differentiating an Islamist from a moderate Muslim.

Too burdensome: True, the procedure is expensive, slow, and requires skilled practitioners. But this also has the benefit of slowing a process that many, myself included, consider out of control, with too many immigrants entering the country too quickly. Immigrants numbered 5 percent of the population in 1965, 14 percent in 2015, and are projected to make up 18 percent in 2065. This is far too large a number to assimilate into the values of the United States, especially when so many come from outside the West; the above mechanism offers a way to slow it down.

As for those who argue that this sort of inquiry and screening for visa purposes is unlawful; prior legislation for naturalization, for example, required that an applicant be “attached to the principles of the Constitution” and it was repeatedly found to be legal.

Finally, today’s moderate Muslim could become tomorrow’s raging Islamist; or his infant daughter might two decades later become a jihadi. While any immigrant can turn hostile, such changes happen far more often among born Muslims. There is no way to guarantee this from happening but extensive research and interrogations reduce the odds.

Conclusion

Truly to protect the country from Islamists requires a major commitment of talent, resources, and time. But, properly handled, these questions offer a mechanism to separate enemy from friend among Muslims. They also have the benefit of slowing down immigration. Even before Trump became president, if one is to believe CAIR, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency (CBP) asked questions along the lines of those advocated here (What do you think of the USA? What are your views about jihad? See the appendix for a full listing). With Trump’s endorsement, let us hope this effective “no-Islamists” policy is on its way to becoming systematic.


Appendix

On January 18, 2017, just hours before Donald Trump became president of the United States, the Florida office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) filed ten complaints with the Customs and Border Protection Agency (CBP) for questioning Muslim citizens about their religious and political views. Among the questions allegedly asked were:

1. Are you a devout Muslim?

2. Are you Sunni or Shia?

3. What school of thought do you follow?

4. Which Muslim scholars do you follow?

5. What current Muslim scholars do you listen to?

6. Do you pray five times a day?

7. Why do you have a prayer mat in your luggage?

8. Why do you have a Qur’an in your luggage?

9. Have you visited Saudi Arabia?

10. Will you every visit Saudi or Israel?

11. What do you know about the Tableeghi-Jamat?

12. What do you think of the USA?

13. What are your views about Jihad?

14. What mosque do you attend?

15. Do any individuals in your mosque have any extreme/radical views?

16. Does your Imam express extremist views?

17. What are the views of other imams or other community members that give the Friday sermon at your mosque?

18. Do they have extremist views?

19. Have you ever delivered the Friday Prayer? What did you discuss with your community?

20. What are your views regarding [various terrorist organizations]?

21. What social media accounts do you use?

22. What is your Facebook account username?

23. What is your Twitter account username?

24. What is your Instagram account username?

25. What are the names and telephone numbers of parents, relatives, friends?

CAIR also claims a Canadian Muslim was asked by CBP the following questions and then denied entry:

1. Are you Sunni or Shia?

2. Do you think we should allow someone like you to enter our country?

3. How often do you pray?

4. Why did you shave your beard?

5. Which school of thought do you follow?

6. What do you think of America’s foreign policy towards the Muslim world?

7. What do you think of killing non-Muslims?

8. What do you think of [various terrorist groups]?

Finally, CAIR indicates that those questioned “were held between 2 to 8 hours by CBP.”

German court gives Muslims who attacked synagogue suspended sentences, says attack justified

January 13, 2017

German court gives Muslims who attacked synagogue suspended sentences, says attack justified, Jihad Watch

“A German regional court in the city of Wuppertal affirmed a lower court decision last Friday stating that a violent attempt to burn the city’s synagogue by three men in 2014 was a justified expression of criticism of Israel’s policies.”

Meet the new Germany, same as the old Germany. This ruling is the apotheosis of Islamopandering. Would a German court say that the attempted torching of a mosque was a justified criticism of jihad terror attacks? Of course not. Nor should it. But this ruling shows how desperate German authorities are to appease their rapidly growing and increasingly aggressive Muslim population.

What’s next? A statue of Hitler at the Brandenburg Gate?

german-synagogue-wuppertal

“German court calls synagogue torching an act to ‘criticize Israel,’” by Benjamin Weinthal, Jerusalem Post, January 13, 2017:

A German regional court in the city of Wuppertal affirmed a lower court decision last Friday stating that a violent attempt to burn the city’s synagogue by three men in 2014 was a justified expression of criticism of Israel’s policies.

Johannes Pinnel, a spokesman for the regional court in Wuppertal, outlined the court’s decision in a statement.

Three German Palestinians sought to torch the Wuppertal synagogue with Molotov cocktails in July, 2014. The local Wuppertal court panel said in its 2015 decision that the three men wanted to draw “attention to the Gaza conflict” with Israel. The court deemed the attack not to be motivated by antisemitism.

Israel launched Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014 to stop Hamas rocket attacks into Israeli territory.

The court sentenced the three men – the 31-year-old Mohamad E., the 26 year-old Ismail A. and the 20-year-old Mohammad A.—to suspended sentences. The men tossed self-made Molotov cocktails at the synagogue. German courts frequently decline to release the last names of criminals to protect privacy.

The attack caused €800 damage to the synagogue. The original synagogue in Wuppertal was burned by Germans during the Kristallnacht pogroms in 1938. Wuppertal has a population of nearly 344,000 and is located in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

The court said the men had consumed alcohol and there were no injuries to members of the synagogue.

A 13-year-old who lived near the synagogue and noticed the flames informed the police. Several days before the fire, a person sprayed “Free Palestine” on a wall of the synagogue….

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah

December 25, 2016

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah, Dan Miller’s Blog, December 25, 2016

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

merry-christmashanukkah

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We were delighted with the “surprising” election outcome this year and look forward to a reawakened America under President Trump. He — and the rest of us — have an Augean stable to muck out. We hope for a revitalized and far better America than we have seen for the past eight years and for a better world for all, with no more disgraces of this sort:

Desire for a “two state solution” does not mean that there would be one state for the Jews and another for the Palestinians, living separately but in peace and harmony. Palestinian hatred for non-Muslims would not permit Israelis to live at peace in their separate state. Ultimately, if the Palestinians are successful, it would mean one Palestinian state with no Jews and few if any Christians.

Gaza, which had been controlled by the Palestinian Authority’s Fatah, has been controlled by Hamas since 2007. Despite an annual population growth rate of  2.91% (2014 est.), there are now few Christians.

In 2006, there were 5,000 Christians living in Gaza when hard-line Hamas took power from the more moderate Fatah party. Ten years later, there are just 1,100 left. . . .

In Israel, where Arab Christians have comparatively more opportunities than their Palestinian counterparts, the Christian population has stayed stable. The Christian population grew by about 5,000 in the past 20 years. Today Christians in Israel number 164,700, about 2 percent of the population, a similar ratio to past decades.

If the Palestinian Authority permits free and fair Palestinian elections throughout Israel, Hamas is quite likely to displace the PA as Israel’s “partner for peace.” Hamas is funded and otherwise supported by The Islamic Republic of Iran.

This violence is brought to you by the Religion of Peace and tolerance:

To end on a humorous but nevertheless sad note,

Again, Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah, with hopes for a better, more peaceful world with less hatred.

xmas2016

Ruff, Dan, Sunshine and Jeanie

Sunni Muslims Storm Ahmadi Mosque On Prophet’s Birthday

December 13, 2016

Sunni Muslims Storm Ahmadi Mosque On Prophet’s Birthday, Clarion Project, Elliot Friedland, December 13, 2016

pakistan-rangers-copyright-rizwan-tabassum-afp-gettyimages-594355186-size-640-420Illustrative picture of Pakistani Rangers. (Photo: © Rizwan Tabassum/AFP/Getty Images)

The Ahmadis are regarded as heretical by mainstream strands of Islam, due to their belief that their founder, the 19th century preacher Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, is the second coming of Jesus Christ and a prophet. This is considered by orthodox Muslims as a direct violation of the foundational Islamic belief that Mohammed was the last of the prophets.

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

A procession of approximately 2,000 Sunni Muslims descended onto an Ahmadi mosque yesterday in Pakistan, firing weapons at worshippers and hurling bricks, reported Reuters. The attack took place in the Punjab province. The mob was able to wound several people before the police dispersed the crowd, which they had been unable to prevent from reaching and attacking the mosque.

“Police tried its best to stop the attackers but failed because of slim deployment,” Malik Nawaz, the highest ranking police officer in the Choa Saiden Shah area told Reuters. “Later, high officials reached the spot with more troops and chased out the occupants.”

A spokesman for the Ahmadi community, Amer Mahmood, told reporters the mob had been fired up by clerics who said the Ahjmadi community should not be allowed to worship on the prophet’s birthday.

The Ahmadis are regarded as heretical by mainstream strands of Islam, due to their belief that their founder, the 19th century preacher Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, is the second coming of Jesus Christ and a prophet. This is considered by orthodox Muslims as a direct violation of the foundational Islamic belief that Mohammed was the last of the prophets.

In 1974, this foundational belief was codified into Pakistani law and Ahamadis were prohibited from calling themselves Muslims. The Ahmadiyya dispute this and regard themselves as Muslims.

As a result of their beliefs, the Ahmadiyya are routinely persecuted in Pakistan.

Whether or not Ahmadis are authentically Muslim or are a heretical offshoot is completely irrelevant. Persecution and violence against a religious minority is unacceptable. Those who support freedom of religion for Muslims around the world must support the rights of Ahmadis to live in peace without persecution for their beliefs.

Refugees or an Occupation Army?

October 11, 2016

Refugees or an Occupation Army? Gatestone Institute, Maria Polizoidou, October 11, 2016

“Allah requires from the believers to be masters of the land where they live, and only they can have property, and only we will be able to own the land.” — Muslim migrants in Crete, Greece.

The migrants were ready to wage jihad because they believed a rumor about an event for which, even had it been true, the Greek State and its inhabitants had no responsibility.

The establishment in Greece is a miniature of the American establishment: politicians and institutions of government corrupted to the bones.

We Greeks have already been crushed by Islam, by the twentieth century genocide in Turkey and the more recent Turkish occupation of Cyprus, again with the world’s complicity.

What is happening in Greece, as in much of Europe, is actually a massive replacement of its population, its values and its way of life.

The mainstream political parties obey the self-destructive EU policies on immigration that could eventually cause the end of the Hellenic-Judeo-Christian values of Europe, such as individual freedom, critical thinking and dispassionate inquiry.

 

What does an occupation army do when it is installed in a country? It occupies the land, forcing residents to follow its own way of life. It implements measures against the country’s inhabitants, it propagandizes its beliefs and uses force to have them imposed.

This, sadly, is what has been happening in Greece from the migrants who seem to “forget” that they are hosted in Greece and force the Greeks to feel like guests in their own country.

If someone is a war refugee or his life is in danger in his homeland, it would seem appropriate, when he arrives in the country which offers him asylum, to be grateful to this country, respect its history, its people its values and its laws. The same would hold true for an immigrant who wants to go to a country where he hopes he will find a better future.

In Greece, conversely, illegal immigrants — all of whom the media call “refugees,” apparently trying artificially to legalize them in the moral consciousness of citizens — have been occupying spaces that do not belong to them, using violence, blocking roads, committing crimes against public property, acting aggressively toward residents and the police, and saying that they feel offended when they see symbols that represent Christianity. The guests seem to be trying to take over the house.

A few weeks ago, 200 North Africans and Pakistanis rioted in the middle of the night, demanding to leave Mytilene Island. They were chanting, “Jihad! Jihad!”, smashing the residents’ cars in the center of the island and disrupting the local community. The migrants claimed that someone told them about the death of seven migrants on a ship, so they rose up against the authorities. The police and NGO workers explained that this was misinformation, but the 200 migrants were evidently not interested in hearing that. The migrants were ready to wage jihad because they believed a rumor about an event for which, even had it been true, the Greek state and its inhabitants had no responsibility. The authorities were unsuccessful at calming them down and trying to make them return to their living area.

As it turned out, there were no dead migrants; the uprising was a “mistake,” but the police and the locals had to spend the night tracking down refugees and migrants on the streets of Mytilene.

The illegal immigrants stated that the information about the seven dead migrants came through phone calls to them during the night. Police sources say, off the record, that this incident has all the hallmarks of covert “black operations.”

A few days later, on September 19, 2016, on Mytilene Island again, there was a new eruption from migrants in the Moria district. This time, the information the migrants heard, which again turned out to be false, was that they were about to be returned to Turkey. Immediately they set fire to 16 acres of olive trees, as well as to the camp in which they were living.

Now 300 migrants, who had earlier escaped from their camp and tried to protest in the center of the island, were burning everything in the camp and the area around it, until the police stopped them and made them to return to the camp, where again they tried to burn everything.

Residents saw their groves of olive trees turn to cinders as well as much of the migrant camp, three shipping containers, clothing and footwear.

Some of the illegal immigrants were taking selfies during the burning and chanting, “Allahu Akbar” [“Allah is the Greatest”].

The Port of Mytilene Island was turned into a battlefield, where migrants and many Greek “leftists” tried to prevent the military contingent from lowering the Greek flag in front of the town’s old port. Many Greeks hate the national flag. They appear to prefer multinational states without any references to the state’s national foundations. They were chanting slogans and provoking both the military contingent and the people of Mytilene Island, who watched amazed from the opposite side of the road. It was a demonstration of power from behalf of “leftists” and illegal immigrants. Many citizens of Mytilene Island evidently could not stand to see the illegal immigrants and other Greeks provoke them and try to halt the lowering of the flag. So some citizens moved aggressively against them and engaged them in street fights.

Every Sunday morning on Mytilene Island, soldiers hoist the flag and in the evening, an hour before sunset, soldiers lower the flag. A week after this incident, thousands of Greeks gathered around the soldiers and the flag in Mytilene Port and were singing Greek National Anthem, showing their faith and honoring the national symbol. People are scared. They are gathering around the flag and the Army apparently because they feel they are losing their homeland and their sovereignty to the thousands illegal immigrants who have occupied their island.

On September 26, 2016, in the Tympaki region of the island of Crete, people found all over the streets quotes from the Quran. The text, signed by the “Muslim Brotherhood of Crete Island”,stated among other things:

  • “You are the senior people of the whole world, Only your faith counts and no one else has the right of life and death and ownership over every other person who dares to challenge your leadership and will not embrace your faith.
  • “Allah requires from the believers to be masters of the land where they live, and only theycan have property, and only we will be able to own the land.
  • “Allah said that we should conquer all the planet, and the faithful ones should own the land and the crops.
  • “Unbelievers cannot have land and crops because it belongs only to us – the believers.
  • “Unbelievers will have from us – as the holy Quran assures us – only alms.”

On the same day, September 26, in the Asprovalta region near the city of Thessaloniki, a 49-year-old man from France who came to Greece through Turkey was followed by police officers because he was suspected of being a jihadist. The moment he saw the police car, he rammed it, while chanting “Allahu Akbar”. [Allah is the greatest”] The attacker was arrested and the district attorney ordered his deportation.

A month ago, the inhabitants of Vavilon, a small village in Chios, another island that received a large number of illegal immigrants, decided to take the law into their hands, because, it seems, the state was not protecting them. The residents set up a militia to protect their families and their property from illegal immigrants. Within a week, they had recorded more than ten burglaries and vast property damage.

The media covers these disruptions only when they are like earthquakes, when one large one causes major disasters; the small ones are evidently not interesting. The same indifference of the media can also be seen regarding daily problems caused by the illegal immigrants. The media covers drug trafficking, conflicts between migrants of different Islamic doctrines, rebellions in migrant shelters, conflicts between countries and races, and underage boys and girls being raped. On September 24, in the Moria area of Mytilene Island, four 17-year-old migrants from Pakistan raped an underage Pakistani migrant, age 16, and recorded the rape with their phones. The police arrested the perpetrators, who had been blackmailing the boy before they raped him.

Illegal immigrants have also been blocking roads in many cities; halting traffic for hours. They occupy the roads whenever they feel like it; the police do not stop them and there are no arrests.

The Greek government has been friendly to the migrants. Illegal immigrants have, in an apparent demonstration of power, been asking Greek drivers to show their IDs and driver’s licenses. They have established checkpoints as an occupation army does. The government and the police did nothing to stop them. People showed their documents because of the great numbers of migrants; the drivers were evidently scared for their lives and their cars, and did not want things to get nasty. If you consider that the police were just watching all this passively, the drivers did not have much choice.

Another day, illegal immigrants blocked a road because they apparently did not have a good enough internet connection in the “refugee shelter.”

How would Americans feel if Muslim illegal immigrants living in America said that they were offend by the Statue of Liberty because she was not wearing a burqa?

The Archbishop of Athens and All Greece, Hieronymus, last March removed his cross, the symbol of Christianity, from his vestments during his visit to the Port of Piraeus, in order, he said, not to “offend” the Muslim migrants.

1938Archbishop Hieronymus of Athens and All Greece is pictured distributing food to migrants at the Port of Piraeus. The Archbishop removed his cross from his vestments during the visit to Piraeus, in order, he said, not to “offend” the Muslim migrants. (Image source: HellasNewsTv video screenshot)

Who warned him that Muslim migrants would be offended by his cross? What would they do if the Archbishop visited them while wearing his cross? Would they kill him? Would they burn the city of Piraeus? They would wage jihad against the Greek people?

Why are we hiding the symbols of our faith from people who come illegally and uninvited into our countries? What power could make an Archbishop remove the symbol of his faith, apart from a country’s political power?

The problem in Greece is not only the government or the mismanagement of illegal immigration. All traditional mainstream political parties in Greece, directly or indirectly, have been encouraging illegal immigration and the transfer of huge Muslim populations into Greek society. They obey the self-destructive EU policies on immigration that could eventually cause the end of the Hellenic-Judeo-Christian values of Europe, such as individual freedom, critical thinking and dispassionate inquiry.

We Greeks have already been crushed by Islam, by the twentieth century genocide in Turkey — that even now targets anyone not Muslim such as Christians, Alevis and Kurds — and the more recent Turkish occupation of Cyprus, again with the world’s complicity.

In spite of that, the mainstream political parties clearly do not care about protecting the nation, its identity or the safety of its citizens.

The establishment in Greece is a miniature of the American establishment: politicians and institutions of government corrupted to the bones, mainstream media and oligarchical fans of globalization. Greece is, in fact, being paid 198 million euros for the refugees.

The Greek establishment suffers from the same symptoms as Western European and American regimes. They no longer believe in the foundations of the Republic: “Vox Populi, Vox Dei”: the voice of the people is the voice of God.

The political establishment, when the public does not agree with their policies about illegal immigration and the protection of national identity, prefers to blame the voters for immaturity, stupidity or fascism. So as the voters persist in retaining their views for national identity and against illegal immigration, the elites in Greece are replacing the native population by giving the illegal immigrants citizenship.

That is their solution to the migration crisis and Greece’s economic meltdown, from failed authoritarian policies of the unelected, unaccountable and untransparent EU. What is happening in Greece, as in much of Europe, is actually a massive replacement of its population, values and way of life. There is only one way now to save what is left of Greece: The British way. Exit. Now.

Trump should propose real debates

October 4, 2016

Trump should propose real debates, Dan Miller’s Blog, October 4, 2016

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

The first presidential “debate” was a farce. The next presidential “debates” will likely be as well. Rather than submit to biased mainstream media moderators (but I repeat myself), Trump should propose real debates, in addition to or as substitutes for those currently scheduled. The article is also a bit of a rant about Ms. Clinton.

demdebatemoderator

In a real debate, one resolution is proposed. The candidate in favor of the proposition speaks first and gets a specified amount of time to say why it’s a good idea. Then the candidate against the proposition gets a specified amount of time for rebuttal and the other candidate a specified amount of time to respond. A timekeeper would alert the candidates when time is almost up and then up. There would be no moderator to help one debater and to trash the other; the debaters would be on their own. Both would know the issue in advance and could prepare to address it however they please and with or without prepared notes. Were our presidential debates so conducted, viewers might well learn about the candidates’ positions on the issues by how the candidates address them, rather than via the moderator.

Here are a few possible debate propositions, for illustrative purposes only:

Latin American Immigration

In a recent article, in Spanish, Hillary wrote

that no other region in the world is “more important” for the prosperity and security of the United States than Latin America.

“There is power in our proximity, which means we are not only close geographically but also in our values, interests and in our common cultural heritage,” Clinton said, adding that the “interdependence” of the economies of the two regions, as well as the ties between communities and families, is a tremendous advantage.

“We shouldn’t build a wall between us because of that truth, but rather accept it,” she said, a clear reference to her rival, Republican candidate Donald Trump, who has promised more than once to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico if elected to the White House.

Ms. Clinton has disagreed with Trump’s assertion that “No one has the right to immigrate to this country.”

092216-hillary-retweet

A real debate grounded on the following resolution would deal with the matter raised by Ms. Clinton. Hillary could take the affirmative and Trump the negative:

Resolved: no other region in the world is more important for the prosperity and security of the United States than Latin America.

There is power in our proximity, which means we are not only close geographically but also in our values, interests and in our common cultural heritage. The interdependence of the economies of the two regions, as well as the ties between communities and families, is a tremendous advantage.

We shouldn’t build a wall between us because of that truth, but rather accept it. The wall along our southern border would keep our the good immigrants we need and there is a right to immigrate to America.

Trump would probably point out that his wall would prevent not even one legal immigrant from coming to the United States. He might also suggest that were our immigration laws and procedures more rational (like those of Mexico?) and reflected American interests as well as those of the immigrants, it would be much easier for the immigrants we want to come, legally: those who haven’t committed significant law violations, can soon become self-supporting instead of relying on welfare, do not have serious contagious diseases and appear likely to accept American values rather than, for example, joining gangs and/or importing drugs. Trump could easily provide legal support for the proposition that there is, in fact, no legal right to immigrate to America.

Islam, the religion of peace, tolerance and women’s rights

There has been substantial discussion in the few media outlets providing an “honest discussion” of Islam about the extent to which Hillary and her colleague Huma Abedin have similar views on Sharia law. Under a Clinton presidency, Huma would likely have a high place at the White House, if not as Secretary of State.

Even if Huma were to state that she disagrees with her father, mother and other close relatives about Islam and Sharia law, would she tell the truth or engage in Al-taqiyya (lying to non-Muslims to advance Islamist doctrine)?

Huma

worked on an Islamist journal for 12 years, beginning the year she became a White House intern. She hasn’t commented on that job.

. . . .

In 2012, Rep. Michele Bachmann and four other members of Congress requested information about the influence of Muslim Brotherhood-tied groups and individuals in the U.S. government, including Abedin, who worked for 12 years as an assistant editor of an Islamist journal that spewed extremism.

Abedin’s tenure at the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs began in 1996, the year she began working as an intern at the White house.

While it is certainly possible to disavow the ideology of one’s parents, Abedin has remained silent on their extremism as well as her work with on journal. It remains to be seen whether or not she will repudiate these new findings.

. . . .

Syed Abedin, Huma Abedin’s father who died in 1993, was a Muslim scholar connected to the Saudi Arabian government. According to exclusive video footage from 1971 recently obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, Syed Abedin advocated the following:

As Muslim countries evolve, he said, “The state has to take over. The state is stepping in in many countries … where the state is now overseeing that human relationships are carried on on the basis of Islam. The state also under Islam has a right to interfere in some of these rights given to the individual by the sharia.”

In addition, he is quoted as saying, “The main dynamics of life in the Islamic world are still supplied by Islam. Any institution, as I said before, any concept, any idea, in order to be accepted and become a viable thing in the Islamic world has to come through … Islam.”

Abedin’s mother, Saleha, has an especially strong Islamist ties. She is a member of the female counterpart of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Muslim World League. She leads a group called the International Islamic Committee for Women and Child, a subsidiary of a Muslim Brotherhood-led group that is banned in Israel for its links to Hamas.

In 1999 and three years after Huma began working for the journal, the journal and Saleha Abedin’s group published a book in Arabic titled “Women in Islam: A Discourse in Rights and Obligations.”

The book states that man-made law is inherently oppressive towards women, while sharia law is liberating. According to the text, Muslim women have an obligation to contribute to jihad, apostates are to be put to death, adulterers should be stoned or lashed, freedom of speech should be conformed to the boundaries set by sharia and wives must have sex with their husbands on command, “even if she is not in the mood.“

In addition, the organization led by Huma Abedin’s mother “advocates for the repeal of Mubarak-era prohibitions on female genital mutilation, child marriage and marital rape, on the grounds that such prohibitions run counter to Islamic law, which allows for their practice,” according to an analysis by the Center for Security policy.

The book advocates against laws to assure equality of women, saying, “Man-made laws have in fact enslaved women, submitting them to the cupidity and caprice of human beings. Islam is the only solution and the only escape.”

In terms of women working in high positions, the book states, “Her job would involve long hours of free mixing and social interaction with the opposite sex, which is forbidden in Islam. Moreover, women’s biological constitution is different from that of men. Women are fragile, emotional and sometimes unable to handle difficult and strenuous situations. Men are less emotional and show more perseverance.”

As noted in an article titled PIGGY-Headed,

Honor killings of their own maimed and maltreated women.  Forced conversions and kidnappings and abductions of whole school-loads of girls and women.  Selling these captives on the open market as slaves for the slugs who then abuse the women and girls unto death.  Not to mention torture as a rule, not exception, for captured women.  Nor, of course, the overall banning of women from driving, traveling alone, working outside the home, or suing for their own lives, domestic arrangements, or unheard-of gay right to not have a male husband/overlord.

For all these, the “Ms. Piggy”- quoting smartest woman in the world has done and said…nothing.

What do Muslims worldwide believe?

How about,

Resolved: America is not merely a Judeo-Christian nation and Islam is no less peaceful and tolerant than Christiany and Judaism. To become more diverse, we need more Muslim refugees and should strive to accommodate them by making our laws less offensive.

Hillary could take the affirmative and Trump the negative.

Conclusions

Trump should offer Ms. Clinton an opportunity to provide additional resolutions for debate which he might support.

Were Trump to propose supplemental or replacement debates along these lines, Hillary would very likely reject his offer because she needs support from the moderators and would understand the dangers a real debate would present. If Ms. Clinton declines Trump’s offer, he should feel free to decide whether to participate in the partisan “debate” farce as currently established.

BRUTAL MURDER: Trans Rights Advocate Raped, Burned Alive

August 22, 2016

BRUTAL MURDER: Trans Rights Advocate Raped, Burned Alive, Counter Jihad, August 22, 2016

Hande Kader was 22 years old.  Kader made a living through what Buzzfeed gently refers to as “sex work,” but was not in any sense ashamed of it.  Rather, Kader was an outspoken advocate for transgender rights and regularly appeared in public to appeal for those rights.  On the 12th of August, Kader was raped and burned alive.

Turkey recently had a shadow report submitted for United Nations inquiry regarding the Turkish culture of violence targeting gays, lesbians, and transgender citizens.  Dozens of murders have targeted these communities.  Turkish politics have been swinging in the direction of Islamist parties in the same period, and since the purge following a coup attempt last month those moves towards political Islam will be strongly cemented.  Islamist parties generally call for strict enforcement of Islam’s sexual mores as codified in traditional understandings of sharia.

Yet the submitted United Nations report does not mention the word “Islam” even one time, nor the word “Sharia.”  For those who prefer to make the distinction between sharia and fiqh, which not all Islamists do, the word “fiqh” does not appear either.  The submitted report, which was compiled by a set of LGBT advocates, does mention that the Turkish military continues to use an old version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) that codified homosexuality as a mental disorder.  They do not speculate on what would cause Turkish military psychologists to refuse to accept the revisions to the DSM, now generations old, that changed this understanding of homosexuality.  Even if you think the connection between codified religious law and a refusal to move off the old DSM is not obvious, surely it is a question that deserves to be asked.  Yet even these LGBT organizations refuse to ask the question.

A similar but far lighter story played out this weekend in the United States.  There lesbian newscaster Sally Kohn denied the connection between sharia and violence against her community.  A satirical petition began to get her to spend a week without guards in a sharia-compliant city:

A lot of right-wing nazi bigots are saying Sally Kohn is an idiot for showing support for Sharia Law, especially considering that she is a gay woman. As progressives, we know both Sharia Law and Muslims are tolerant and very LGBTQ friendly.

In order to show how LGBTQ friendly the Sharia, and it’s practitioners, are, Sally Kohn should spend a week’s holiday proudly displaying her homosexuality in Raqqa/Riyadh or any other place where Sharia is the law of the land, without guards of course, to show how safe, and how pro LGBTQ these practitioners of Sharia Law are.

Kohn’s response to this petition was instructive.  She said that she opposes what she characterized as “authoritarian right wing extremism” in countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran.  However, she said, there were at least two non-Muslim nations on the list of nations in which homosexuality is punished by death.  Likewise, there were several Muslim majority nations in which homosexuality is not punished by death.  (Sometimes, she did not mention, it is merely punished with prison.)  Thus, she denied any necessary connection between sharia and violence against LGBT citizens.

Rather, she would like to try to paint this as an issue of a broad political left versus a broad political right — broad enough that it is somehow sensible to speak of “authoritarian right wing extremism” in Iran and Saudi Arabia as being like right wing politics anywhere else.

Perhaps Kohn should investigate her assumption here by checking with Hillary Clinton, whom Kohn has endorsedin the Presidential election.  Yet according to a report by Paul Sperry, Clinton’s liberal attitudes on sexual rights turn out to be constrained — just when she’s speaking to audiences in places like Saudi Arabia.

[I]n 2010, Huma Abedin arranged for then-Secretary of State Clinton to speak alongside Abedin’s hijab-wearing mother at an all-girls college in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. According to a transcript of the speech, Clinton said Americans have to do a better job of getting past “the stereotypes and the mischaracterizations” of the oppressed Saudi woman. She also assured the audience of burqa-clad girls that not all American girls go “around in a bikini bathing suit.”

At no point in her long visit there, which included a question-and-answer session, did this so-called champion of women’s rights protest the human rights violations Saudi women suffer under the Shariah laws that Abedin’s mother actively promotes. Nothing about the laws barring women from driving or traveling anywhere without male “guardians.”

What does Hillary Clinton know that Kohn does not, that causes Clinton to agree that bikinis are shameful and unworthy of female dignity when speaking to an Islamist audience?  What does she know that causes her to avoid raising these most obvious of issues, or to challenge sharia’s legitimate power to force the submission of women as well as LGBT citizens?  Clinton has no trouble challenging American “right wing extremists.”  Doesn’t that suggest that there’s an important difference here, one that explains both why the oppression is so much stronger in Islamist nations and also why even ordinarily outspoken liberals like Clinton are afraid to challenge it there?

One can understand the hesitance of the LGBT groups in Turkey to raise the issue, as they might be burned alive.  Kohn and Clinton have no such excuse.  If they are not going to provide aid and comfort to these LGBT groups in Turkey, who will?  Would Donald Trump?

Christians Forced to Hide Bibles Amid Migrant Muslim Death Threats

August 11, 2016

Christians Forced to Hide  Bibles Amid Migrant Muslim Death Threats, BreitbartVirginia Hale, August 11, 2016

(Please see also, Pope Francis and the Decline of the West. — DM)

A-worshiper-holds-a-small-Bible-640x480STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images

Bundestag member Erika Steinbach and Iranian-born pastor Mahin Mousapour called for much stronger sanctions for Muslims who abuse Christians in Germany at a press conference on Monday.

Highlighting the fact Christians suffer violence, harassment, and death threats in migrant lodgings, Ms. Mousapour criticised Germany for granting Islam “too much respect”.  Declaring anti-Christian hate attacks an affront to German values, politician Erika Steinbach advocated the government deport migrants who insult or attack Christians.

At the press conference Ms. Mousapour, who converted to Christianity more than 25 years ago, reported that Christians face various forms of persecution in migrant housing.

Ms Mousapour warned that Christians living in migrant housing are told they are “impure as a dog” and deserved death for rejecting Islam.

“Toys of Christian children are being destroyed, Christian asylum seekers are told not only to wash their dishes after eating but also that they must clean the entire kitchen as it would otherwise be ‘unclean’. Many Muslim asylum seekers call all Christians unclean. Church services are held in secret, bibles and crucifixes have to be hidden,” she explained.

Ms Mousapour, pastor of the Evangelical Free Church, disclosed that even converts who no longer live in migrant housing attract Muslims’ ire, and recounted her experience of being threatened at knifepoint on the street.

The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) politician called the anti-Christian hate crimes “horrific attacks on our fundamental values and our Constitution.

“This kind of crime weighs on me more heavily than shoplifting. If we do nothing about it we will lose our foundations in this country,” she added.

Ms. Steinbach advocated deportation for Muslims who attack or insult Christian migrants on the basis of their religion.

A vocal critic of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s policy to open Germany’s borders, Ms. Steinbach called for the European Union to set up refugee camps outside the bloc’s external borders. Here, the popular MP said, migrants would “stay until the war is over, then go back home”.

The pastor said she felt that a “misconceived tolerance” had led Germany to be overly respectful to Islam, pointing to Ramadan arrangements as a “disastrous” example of this.

During the Islamic month of fasting, migrant shelters in Germany catered to Muslim eating schedules, with Christians receiving only leftovers. The timing saw Christians disturbed by Muslims eating and reciting surahs before sunrise and then staying up very late for dinner.

Ms. Steinbach called for the system to be overhauled for next year. She suggested migrant housing serve “”breakfast, lunch and dinner as usual”, and that people who want to fast can save their meal to eat later on.

Ms. Mousapour commented: “We are here in Germany, in a Christian country! We must not allow others to change that.”

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.