Archive for the ‘Multiculturalism’ category

Germany’s Muslim Demographic Revolution

August 31, 2015

Germany’s Muslim Demographic Revolution, The Gatestone Institute, Soeren Kern, August 31, 2015

  • The surge in Germany’s Muslim population — propelled by a wave of migration unprecedented since the Second World War — represents a demographic shift of epic proportions, one that critics of the country’s open-door immigration policy warn will change the face of Germany forever.
  • “There are 20 million refugees waiting at the doorstep of Europe.” — Johannes Hahn, EU Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations.
  • According to Aiman Mazyek, head of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, attendance at many mosques has doubled in the past month alone.
  • A large number (40%) are from countries in the Balkans, including Albania and Kosovo. This implies that nearly half of those arriving in Germany are economic migrants, not refugees fleeing war zones. — Thomas De Maizière, German Interior Minister.
  • Muslim men residing in Germany routinely take advantage of the social welfare system by bringing two, three or four women from across the Muslim world to Germany, and then marrying them in the presence of an imam. Once in Germany the women request social welfare benefits, including the cost of a separate home for themselves and for their children, on the claim of being a “single parent with children.” — From an exposé broadcast by RTL television.
  • “For us today, what is at stake is Europe, the lifestyle of European citizens, European values, the survival or disappearance of European nations, and more precisely formulated, their transformation beyond recognition. Today, the question is not merely in what kind of a Europe we would like to live, but whether everything we understand as Europe will exist at all.” — Viktor Orbán, President of Hungary.

Germany’s Muslim population is set to skyrocket by more than 700,000 in 2015, pushing the total number of Muslims in the country to nearly 6 million for the first time.

The surge in Germany’s Muslim population — propelled by a wave of migration unprecedented since the Second World War — represents a demographic shift of epic proportions, one that critics of the country’s open-door immigration policy warn will change the face of Germany forever.

At a press conference on August 19, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière revealed that a record 800,000 migrants and refugees — the equivalent of nearly one percent of Germany’s total population — are expected to arrive in Germany in 2015, a four-fold increase over 2014. He said that 83,000 migrants had arrived in July alone, and that the figure for August would be higher still.

De Maizière said that although many of the migrants are from the Middle East and North Africa, a large number (40%) are from countries in the Balkans, including Albania and Kosovo. This implies that nearly half of those arriving in Germany are economic migrants, not refugees fleeing war zones.

1229According to German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle, the Berlin refugee center pictured here receives up to 2000 applications for asylum per day. (Image source: Deutsche Welle video screenshot)

Of the 800,000 migrants and refugees arriving in Germany in 2015, at least 80% (or 640,000) are Muslim, according to a recent estimate by the Central Council of Muslims in Germany (Zentralrat der Muslime in Deutschland, ZMD), a Muslim umbrella group based in Cologne. This estimate is not in dispute.

In addition to the newcomers, the natural rate of population increase of the Muslim community already living in Germany is approximately 1.6% per year (or 77,000), according to data extrapolated from a recent Pew Research Center study on the growth of the Muslim population in Europe.

Based on Pew projections, the Muslim population of Germany reached an estimated 5,068,000 by the end of 2014. The 640,000 Muslim migrants arriving in Germany in 2015, combined with the 77,000 natural increase, indicates that the Muslim population of Germany will jump by 717,000, to reach an estimated 5,785,000 by the end of 2015. This would leave Germany with the highest Muslim population in Western Europe.

By way of comparison, the surge in Germany’s Muslim population would be equivalent to the Muslim population of the United States increasing by 3 million in just one year.

Critics say that German officials, under pressure to solve Europe’s migration crisis, are ignoring the long-term consequences of taking in so many migrants from the Middle East and North Africa.

In addition to security concerns (Islamic radicals are almost certainly trying to enter Germany disguised as refugees), they say, the surge in Muslim immigration will accelerate the Islamization of Germany, a process that is already well under way.

Islam is the fastest growing religion in post-Christian Germany. This is evidenced by the fact that an increasing number of churches in Germany are being converted into mosques, some of which are publicly sounding calls to prayer (the adhan) from outdoor loudspeaker systems. The increase is such that some neighborhoods in Germany evoke the sights and sounds of the Muslim Middle East.

Islamic Sharia law is advancing rapidly throughout Germany, with Sharia courts now operating in all of Germany’s big cities. This “parallel justice system” is undermining the rule of law in Germany, experts warn, but government officials are “powerless” to do anything about it. At the same time, German judges are increasingly referring and deferring to Sharia law in German law courts.

Polygamy, although illegal under German law, is commonplace among Muslims in all major German cities. In Berlin, for example, it is estimated that fully one-third of the Muslim men living in the Neukölln district of the city have two or more wives.

According to an exposé broadcast by RTL, one of Germany’s leading media companies, Muslim men residing in Germany routinely take advantage of the social welfare system by bringing two, three or four women from across the Muslim world to Germany, and then marrying them in the presence of an imam (Muslim religious leader). Once in Germany the women request social welfare benefits, including the cost of a separate home for themselves and for their children, on the claim of being a “single parent with children.”

Although the welfare fraud committed by Muslim immigrants is an “open secret” costing German taxpayers millions of euros each year, government agencies are reluctant to take action due to political correctness, according to RTL.

Spiraling levels of violent crime perpetrated by shiftless immigrants from the Middle East and the Balkans have turned parts of German cities into “areas of lawlessness” — areas that are de facto “no-go” zones for police.

In Wuppertal, groups of bearded Muslim radicals calling themselves the “Sharia Police” have tried to enforce Islamic law on the streets by distributing yellow leaflets that explain the Islamist code of conduct in the city’s Sharia zones. In Hamburg, Muslim radicals have infiltrated dozens of primary and secondary schools, where they are imposing Islamic norms and values on non-Muslim students and teachers.

In Berlin, local officials have waived rules prohibiting religious dress in public buildings so that Muslim women can wear headscarves. In Bavaria, Muslim children are being exempted from mandatory visits to former concentration camps as part of Holocaust education programs.

In Bremen, city officials signed an agreement with the city’s 40,000-strong Muslim community. The agreement guarantees the protection of Muslim community properties, the approval of the construction of mosques with minarets and domes, the allotment of land for Muslim cemeteries, the supply of halal food at prisons and hospitals, the recognition of three Muslim holidays, Muslim representation in state institutions and other rights and privileges.

More than 700 German Muslims have joined the Islamic State and traveled to Syria and Iraq, and some of them have continued to receive welfare benefits from the German state while on the battlefields of the Middle East. Jihadists who have returned to Germany and pose an acute threat to national security threat are nevertheless eligible to receive benefits once again.

Germany is home to more than 7,000 Salafists who adhere to a branch of radical Islam that is vehemently opposed to Germany’s democratic order. German officials say that 1,000 of these individuals are especially dangerous (some are believed to have joined sleeper cells) and could attack at any time.

At the same time, however, Salafists are allowed to openly proselytize on German streets to find new recruits and thereby increase their numbers. In a recent recruitment initiative, Salafists launched an unprecedented nationwide campaign, “A Koran in Every Home,” to distribute 25 million copies of the Koran, translated into the German language, to every household in Germany, free of charge.

And yet the guardians of German multiculturalism have been working overtime to silence critics of the rise of Islam in Germany. In Bavaria, for example, German activists opposed to the construction of a mega-mosque in Munich have been classified as “extremists” and are being monitored by German intelligence.

German media consistently accuse commentators on the rise of Islam of engaging in hate speech, in an underhanded effort to try to intimidate them into silence. A particular object of wrath is a very popular German-language website called Politically Incorrect (PI), which over the years has grown into a major information resource for people concerned about the spread of Islam in Germany. PI’s motto reads “Against the Mainstream, Pro-American, Pro-Israel, Against the Islamization of Europe.” Not surprisingly, German media elites want PI shut down.

It is quite possible that German Chancellor Angela Merkel — who recently admitted that German multiculturalism has failed — views mass immigration from the Muslim world as the solution to Germany’s collapsing birth rate, which is among the lowest in the world.

The German government expects the population to shrink from roughly 81 million today to 67 million in 2060, although Germany’s statistics office, Destatis, recently reported that high levels of immigration would cause the country’s population to shrink more slowly than previously expected.

A study by the Hamburg-based World Economy Institute has warned that the low birthrate threatens the long-term viability of the German economy. “No other industrial country is deteriorating at this speed despite the strong influx of young migrant workers,” the report said. “Germany cannot continue to be a dynamic business hub in the long-run without a strong jobs market.”

Germany will need to do a far better job of integrating immigrants if they are to be a net gain for the German economy. A recent study by the Cologne Institute for Economic Research showed that Muslim immigrants were more likely to be unemployed and living off the social welfare state than any other migrant group in Germany. The report said that root cause for the high unemployment rates is the lack of educational attainment and job training qualifications.

Meanwhile, the migration crisis shows no sign of abating. At a summit on migration held in Vienna on August 27, the EU Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, Johannes Hahn, said: “There are 20 million refugees waiting at the doorstep of Europe. Ten to 12 million in Syria, 5 million Palestinians, 2 million Ukrainians and about 1 million in the southern Caucasus.”

On August 21, Germany suspended the so-called Dublin Regulation — a law that requires people seeking refuge within the EU to do so in the first European country they reach — for asylum seekers from Syria. This means that Syrians reaching Germany will be allowed to stay while their applications are being processed. Critics say the move will encourage even more migrants to make their way to Germany.

Most Germans seem to be unfazed by what is happening to their country. An August 21 poll for German broadcaster ZDF showed that 60% of Germans thought their country could cope with the high number of refugees, and 86% said that Germany was a country of immigration.

In an interview with the newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, Aiman Mazyek, the head of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, said that so many Muslims have been flowing into the country that attendance at many mosques has doubled in the past month alone. Commenting on the demographic revolution sweeping Germany, Mazyek summed it up with an understatement: “The number of Muslims in Germany will increase significantly.”

In nearby Hungary, President Viktor Orbán has been one of the few European heads of state to sound the alarm. “A year ago I said that we live in times when anything can happen, and I still say so today,” he said recently. “Who would have thought that Europe would not be capable of protecting its own borders against unarmed refugees?” He added:

“For us today, what is at stake is Europe, the lifestyle of European citizens, European values, the survival or disappearance of European nations, and more precisely formulated, their transformation beyond recognition. Today, the question is not merely in what kind of a Europe we would like to live, but whether everything we understand as Europe will exist at all.”

“There are monkeys of Jewish origin; none deny this who believe in the Quran”

August 27, 2015

There are monkeys of Jewish origin; none deny this who believe in the Quran,” Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, August 27, 2015

ham_the_chimp-635x357

Critics of Islam are often accused of bigotry. The accusers tend to overlook the kind of crazy racism that Islam teaches. And we are talking really, really crazy racism. (via Religion of Peace)

Al-Mosharraf, whose Elaph blog posts often contain anti-Semitic overtones, argues that some monkeys are Jews whom Allah punished for desecrating the Sabbath, as is told in the Quran. He included numerous photos of macaque monkeys in his post, and pointed out the similarities between their behavior and Jewish behavior.

Sure. Who can forget the time that six Muslim armies were defeated by an army of monkeys.

The term “offspring of apes and pigs” originates from the Quran: 2:65, 5:60, and 7:163-169 tell the story of the “Sabbath people’s” — i.e., the Jews’ — violation of Allah’s instructions and Allah’s punishment of them by turning them into apes and pigs.

Apes and pigs is one of the favorite racist taunts aimed at Jews. That and the usual Khaybar, Khaybar Ya Yahud call for genocide which you encounter at finer universities these days. And the claim that Jews are planting Gharkad trees in the hopes of escaping the coming Muslim genocide.

Because Islam is a religion of peace. And to have peace, you first have to kill everyone else. Because they’re really monkeys.

morsi

The [Jews who had become monkeys] continued to multiply, and were finally forced to disperse throughout the world. It seems that they chose to settle in the countries of Southeast Asia and the Far East, as can be seen today. “What is interesting is that there are two species of macaque — black and silver. This corresponds to the two types of Jews, of two [skin] colors: the Ashkenazim of European origin and the Sephardim of Asian origin.

Islam is racist? Who knew.

“It is noteworthy that [Charles] Darwin ([who was] of Jewish descent) kept the world preoccupied for a long time with his theory that man is descended from apes. Apparently, he arrived at this assumption from his study [of] the history of some of his forefathers amongst the Jewish monkeys.”

This is Islamic racism. This is Islamic racism ‘evolved’.

“It is indisputable that there are monkeys of Jewish origin; none deny this but those who do not believe in the Quran that Allah brought down to Muhammad. Allah said of these monkeys of Jewish descent: ‘And you had already known about those who transgressed among you concerning the Sabbath, and we said to them be apes, despised. And we made it a deterrent punishment for those who were present and those who succeeded [them] and a lesson for those who fear Allah’ (Quran 2:65-66).

Indisputable. I don’t think that word means what you think it does.

But I think we can conclusively prove that Jews aren’t monkeys even to Al-Mosharaff’s satisfaction. If these monkeys really were Jews, Muslims around the world would be trying to kill them.

islamic_antisemitism

Mass Immigration and the Undoing of Europe

August 25, 2015

Mass Immigration and the Undoing of Europe, The Gatestone Institute, Vijeta Uniyal, August 25, 2015

  • In Germany, where traffickers are now dropping off illegal immigrants on Autobahns, authorities have reacted — not by trying to intercept or discourage traffickers, but by putting up new road signs alerting drivers of potential pedestrians on the highway.
  • Last month alone, more migrants landed on the shores of Greece than in the whole of 2014.
  • If the mainstream media keep reminding everyone how the rioting immigrant youths in France or Britain are driven by economic inequality now, imagine the scale of unrest once European welfare states cannot finance “half the planet” anymore and are forced to cut welfare benefits.
  • No one, however, especially the media, blames migrants for their own actions.
  • This is the real tragedy of the unfolding refugee crisis in Europe: apart from those fleeing combat zones, most migrants swarming European borders and coastlines do not appear to be in any real or dire need.

With the European Union surrendering its immigration policy to people smugglers, the immigration crisis in Europe keeps reaching staggering new heights. The word has gone out that Fortress Europe is scalable. From Morocco to Turkey, people smuggling has turned into an irresistibly big business.

From small-time thugs to the terror outfit Hamas — for $2500-$3000 per person smuggled — many evidently want to seize a slice of this lucrative business that was created by the EU’s collective inaction.

In Germany, where traffickers are now dropping off illegal immigrants on Autobahns, authorities have reacted — not by trying to intercept or discourage the traffickers, but by putting new road-signs alerting drivers of potential pedestrians on the highway.

Even before this year’s mass immigration began, Germany was struggling to deal with roughly a quarter of a million asylum applicants — without even accounting for the illegal immigrants already in the country. The recent wave of migration would push those figures to record heights.

The trend in Germany merely reflects the overall scale of the European immigrant crisis. In July 2015, an estimated 50,000 refugees entered Greece, a surge of 750 percent. Last month alone more migrants landed than in the whole of 2014.

In Germany, the head of Lower Saxony’s Municipal Federation, Marco Trips, told local reporters that the “system has already collapsed.” This sentiment is apparently shared by municipalities across Germany. In a historic move, the German federal government has now called in the military to assist in setting up new tent cities and providing basic amenities for ever-rising number of refugees.

The majority of those entering Europe illegally seem not to be fleeing armed conflicts, but seeking a better life in a welfare paradise. Europe’s answer is to throw money at the problem — money Europe does not have. Britain’s Defence Secretary has suggested that the UK’s £12 billion ($19 billion USD) foreign aid budget can “discourage” mass migration.

The European welfare system, funded increasingly by governments’ debt in recent decades, is showing signs of an impending collapse. There is no end in sight for Greece’s debt crisis, despite repeated bailout packages to the tune of €326 billion ($375 billion USD). Slow economic growth, high youth unemployment and an aging population makes the European welfare model increasingly untenable.

If the mainstream media keep reminding everyone how rioting immigrant youths in France or Britain are driven by economic inequality now, imagine the scale of unrest once European welfare states cannot finance “half the planet” anymore and are forced to cut welfare benefits.

1221African migrants camp out on the beach in the northern Italian town of Ventimiglia, along the French border, as they wait for the opportunity to cross into France. (Image source: AFP video screenshot)

Europe’s answer to this imminent financial doom is to create still more welfare dependents or, even better, “invite” them by failing to secure the borders.

EU bureaucrats not only refuse to implement basic border controls but rebuke any EU member state moving to secure its borders. European politicians and the mainstream media are up in arms against Hungary’s move to erect a border fence along its southern border. American public broadcaster PBS ran a report telling its viewers about Hungary’s “new Iron Curtain.” The Associated Press quoted unnamed “critics” who compared the Hungarian fence to “Communist-era barriers like the Berlin Wall.”

The EU bureaucrats in Brussels want to force a single asylum policy on all 28 member states, asking that they take in more migrants. According to this common asylum policy proposed by Brussels, asylum seekers entering EU would be divided among EU members.

Hungary, with 60,000 migrant arrivals so far just this year, entering mainly from Serbia, remains the most vocal opponent of the EU’s proposed policy.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been virtually ostracized by European politicians and media, for not complying with EU’s immigration policy. Contrary to the EU’s position, he has called for a “distinction” between EU member-state citizens moving within Europe and non-EU foreigners. “There are economic immigrants who are just in search of a better life… Unfortunately in Hungary we can’t give jobs to all of these immigrants,” Orbán said, and called the EU’s proposal for member states to take in more refugees “absurd, bordering on insanity.”

Europe, itself reeling under a financial crisis, cannot provide housing, employment and social benefits to the thousands who each day land on European shores and cross over borders. German newspapers are full of countless reports of immigrants disappointed after arriving in Europe, almost always followed by a reporter’s plea for urgent action to address the said grievance. These “disappointments” often turn into violent clashes. Police across Germany have their hands full just to keeping rival migrant gangs from turning on each other or on officials.

No one, however, especially the media, blames migrants for their own actions. The mainstream media in Germany apparently refuse to connect the dots, so as not to “feed into negative stereotypes.” A columnist for Germany’s Tageszeitung even wrote of an elaborate government conspiracy that drives immigrants to turn violent — allegedly just to give them a bad name.

Tageszeitung also ran a story lamenting the “alarming conditions” of refugees landing on Greek islands. The article was accompanied by a photograph of smiling, well-fed, sturdy young men, posing for “selfies” on their smartphones while holding cigarettes in their hands. One of them was thoughtful enough to bring along a selfie-stick for his smartphone, to capture the moment he fled a “war zone” or acute “economic misery.”

This, however, is the real tragedy of the unfolding refugee crisis in Europe: apart from those fleeing combat zones, most migrants swarming European borders and coastlines do not appear to be in any real or dire need. Economic disparity on other continents should not oblige Europeans to open its own floodgates for mass migration.

This crisis seems to be one of Europe’s own making — that seems to be the logical conclusion of Europe’s debt-driven welfare system and the EU’s contempt for national boundaries.

The IKEA Murders: Sweden in Crisis

August 23, 2015

The IKEA Murders: Sweden in Crisis, The Gatestone InstituteIngrid Carlqvist, August 23, 2015

  • The mosque fire received huge attention, while the rape epidemic is basically ignored. When a Swedish woman and her son are brutally knifed to death in the most Swedish of all places – an IKEA store – the Prime Minister has nothing to say.
  • The normal democratic order, where citizens can contact politicians or the media to make their voices heard, has all but evaporated in Sweden. Newspaper websites have removed the reader comment fields, and the politicians hide behind a wall of officials who brand callers expressing concern “racist,” and hang up. Sweden is governed by a power that has shut down the democratic process.
  • Questions flooded the social media: Who are these people that are let into Sweden? How many of them are not innocent victims of war, but in fact war criminals and other criminals, hiding among the refugees?
  • The most relevant question is: Why has one government after another chosen to spend Swedish taxpayers’ money to support and shelter citizens of other countries, while some of them try to kill us?
  • None of the mainstream media has confronted the government about the violent crimes committed by asylum seekers against Swedes. On the contrary – the media have done the utmost to convince Swedes that everything is safe and sound in Sweden. Better than ever, in fact.
  • “Where do I apply for asylum… when the day comes that I can no longer live here?” – “Ewa,” on Facebook.
  • Violent crime is up 300% and rape is up 1,472% since 1975, the year the Swedish Parliament decided to turn homogenous Sweden into a multicultural country.

A surge of rage has washed over otherwise docile Sweden. After a double homicide at an IKEA store in Västerås, where an illegal alien stabbed two random Swedes to death, more and more people are questioning why the government is exposing Swedish citizens to murderers from across the globe.

On August 10, news of the IKEA murders shocked Sweden. Two asylum seekers from Eritrea (the second largest source of asylum applicants in Sweden), were suspected of having grabbed knives from the kitchenware department and attacked two random Swedes. The victims were 55-year-old Carola Herlin and her 28-year-old son, Emil.

1218Carola Herlin, Director of the Moro Backe Health Center, was murdered on August 10, along with her son, in the IKEA store in Västerås, Sweden.

The elder of the two asylum seekers, a 36-year-old man, had twice been denied residency status in Sweden — because he had already been granted residency it in Italy — but he had not yet been deported. (Eritreans without residence permits in other EU-countries automatically get to stay in Sweden.)

The killer also inflicted life-threatening injuries on himself, and underwent several surgeries before the police could finally question him. On August 14, he confessed. His 23-year-old compatriot was released from custody, because the police no longer believe he had anything to do with the murders or had even known what his friend was planning to do.

Fear has now struck the Swedes. Even those who had routinely brand critics of immigration and multiculturalism racist, were shaken to the core. Questions flooded the social media: Who are these people that are let into Sweden? How many of them are not innocent victims of war, but in fact war criminals and other criminals, hiding among the refugees? And should we pay billions in taxes to support and shelter citizens of other countries, while some of them try to kill us?

The fact that the police refuse to deny the persistent rumor that one of the IKEA victims was beheaded, only adds fuel to the fear.

So many questions and no answers. No one from the government has even bothered to make a statement about the horrific double murder. None of the mainstream media has confronted the government about the violent crimes committed by asylum seekers against Swedes. On the contrary – the media have done the utmost to convince Swedes that everything is safe and sound in Sweden. Better than ever, in fact. The day after the double murder, Sweden’s largest morning paper, Dagens Nyheter, published an article titled, “After all, deadly violence on the decline.” The article begins:

“In recent weeks, several brutal murders have been committed, and many people ask themselves where society is headed. The answer is that Sweden has, after all, become a safer place. Deadly violence has been on the decline for some time.”

Nowhere does the article explain that the reason deadly violence has been on the decline is that emergency medicine is now able to save the lives of a lot more victims of knife- and gunshot-injuries. The so-called Laser Man, for example, shot a number of immigrants in Sweden in the 1990s. Forensic pathologist Jovan Rajs commented, “The Laser Man shot eleven people, and one of them died. In the 1930s eight or nine would have died, in the 1970s about five, and today probably none.”

Ergo, deadly violence remains on an even level thanks to better health care in Sweden, but all other kinds of violent crime (including attempted homicide) has gone off the charts. Violent crime is up 300% and rape is up 1,472% since 1975, the year the Swedish Parliament decided to turn homogenous Sweden into a multicultural country.

Ninety percent of asylum seekers to Sweden lack proper identification papers, so in reality no one knows how many murderers, rapists and thugs hide among the 100,000 or so people granted asylum in Sweden every year.

Frustrated Swedes are now howling with powerlessness on social media. The normal democratic order, where citizens can contact politicians or the media to make their voices heard, has all but evaporated. Newspaper websites have removed the reader comment fields, and the politicians hide behind a wall of officials, who brand callers expressing concern “racist,” and hang up. Thousands bear witness to this on Facebook. One person who actually got to talk about her uneasiness is Ewa, who writes on Facebook about calling Immigration Services:

“Well, I’ve unleashed the devil now. I called Immigration Services and demanded to talk to a Unit Manager. … I gave him an earful about every injustice I could think of, like how badly we treat our elderly and how we take away their homes and give them to asylum seekers. I also told him how unsafe Swedish women feel due to all these gang rapes perpetrated by asylum seekers and other foreigners. Also asked him if we all have to be beheaded before they stop taking in these kinds of people. … Now I’m sitting here, feeling completely empty after crying, screaming, discussing, raging and getting all this frustration out of me. Told him there are many of us who feel depressed because of what Immigration is doing. He was really sorry I feel this way. Yes, I told him, a lot of people feel this way but they are afraid to open their mouths because then they are labeled racist. You don’t even have to be a Sweden Democrat to see that our country is falling apart more and more with each passing day. Something you and all the rest at Immigration Services are responsible for. Where do I apply for asylum, I asked, when the day comes and I can no longer live here? Our country is ruined economically, socially and so forth and you are responsible. He answered that it was the politicians who decided about this, but that they would do everything in their power to make things better.”

Another woman, Amanda, wrote on Facebook that she e-mailed Prime Minister Stefan Löfven. She noted that “nothing may change, but at least I’ve made my voice heard.” Her e-mail read:

“Hi, why did the Prime Minister feel it was essential and urgent to go and talk about the fire at the mosque in Eskilstuna, no one even knew what started it when he held his speech? But now, he’s as silent as the grave. Why? It’s his/your unconditional and lax immigration policies that have enabled this culprit to move freely in society, despite having received a deportation order not just once, but twice. Can you tell me if this is something the citizens of this country should get used to, that immigrants, upon receiving deportation orders, kill people in order to get a lifelong contract with the Swedish state? It is your personal responsibility every time this happens, I hope you know that. Because this is nothing if not a political issue regarding immigration, and… its massive consequences to an entire nation.”

The mosque fire in Eskilstuna that Amanda referred to happened December 25, 2014, and is one of many incidents affecting Muslims and other immigrants that have received huge attention, while the rape epidemic in Sweden is basically ignored. After the fire, the Prime Minister was quick to make a statement:

“It is despicable, a despicable act. We will never tolerate this type of crime. People who want to practice their religion should have the right to do so. Today I feel great sympathy and empathy for those affected.”

Three months later, it turned out no crime was behind the mosque fire, and police dropped the investigation. Most likely, it was caused by an accident or children playing with fire.

But when a Swedish woman and her son are brutally knifed to death in the most Swedish of all places – an IKEA store – the Prime Minister has nothing to say.

The Swedes are not prone to rebellion. To find a citizen that took up arms and marched on the citadels of power, one has to go back to the days of Gustav Vasa – the king who during his reign, 1523-1560, founded the nation-state of Sweden.

Although Sweden today is not occupied territory, it is governed by a power that has shut down the democratic process by the “December Agreement” of 2014. In the general election that year, the only party critical of mass immigration, the Sweden Democrats (SD), became the third-largest party in Parliament. The left-wing and center-right blocs then agreed to lock SD out of political power, but SD refused to be silenced. When the left-wing minority government budget was presented one month after the election, SD voted for the opposition’s budget – a shocking and unique occurrence in the Swedish Parliament. Here, it is considered “good manners and decorum” to vote for your own budget proposition first, then lay down your vote and let the government win. But after the Sweden Democrats’ “coup,” Prime Minister Stefan Löfven (of the Social Democratic Party) was forced to govern with a center-right budget during his first year in office.

One would think that this came as a pleasant surprise to the center-right opposition, but that was not what happened. No one wants support from the “racist” Sweden Democrats. Rather than call a snap election, the two blocs entered into an agreement in which the center-right opposition promises to abstain from voting when it comes to important issues such as a proposed budget.

Thus, the December Agreement is in reality a kind of “relay-race” dictatorship: The left-wing government gets to do what it wants for the next four years, and after that, for next the four years (if there is a change of power), it will be the center-right government’s turn. This means both parties are free to ignore the 58% of Swedes who now feel that immigration is too high, and may choose to vote for the Sweden Democrats in the next election.

When the Swedes got the news about the December Agreement, they did what they usually do – clenched their fists in their pockets, formed Facebook groups and wrote angry comments on Twitter and Facebook. But the politicians congratulated each other on once again restoring order; they ignored the people’s concern that democracy had now become even more eroded.

A well-known stand-up comedian, Magnus Betnér, thought it a good idea to mock frightened Swedes in a YouTube clip:

“Yes, it’s really tragic two people were murdered in IKEA. … but… it’s not dangerous; Sweden has never been safer than it is now. … Very few of you guys watching this clip will be murdered. And those of you who are, will be murdered in your own homes.”

When the establishment refuses to take people’s concerns seriously, rumors on social media spread fast. A stubborn rumor claims that Carola Herlin was beheaded by the Eritrean murderer. According to sources interviewed by Gatestone, the woman had her throat slit and was also stabbed in the abdomen. Her son tried to defend himself, but received a deadly stab wound to the stomach.

When Dispatch International called Per Ågren, the police investigator in charge of the case, and asked him about the rumor, he said: “I’m not going to confirm… describe anything at all about what happened, except to say that two people were murdered. You won’t find out how from me.”

One of the first measures taken by the police after the IKEA murders was to start guarding all the buildings housing asylum seekers in the county. There was some apprehension concerning “dark forces,” the police claimed, without specifying who these “dark forces” were. The night of August 15, an asylum house in Arboga had to be evacuated after someone shouted something about a bomb outside. Now the mainstream media were really on their toes: Carola and Emil Herlin, according to their reports, had been “at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

The newspaper Aftonbladet interviewed an anonymous woman who said, “My cousin has lived here for over a year. He told me the Swedes are the nicest people in Europe. Then something like this happens. I could never have imagined.”

Once again, it is supposedly the Swedes who should bow their heads in shame. Supposedly, we are not the ones grieving; we do not have the right to be frightened to death over the immigration policy of our rulers – it is the asylum seekers who are the victims, even when they kill, rape, rob and abuse.

The burning question is: What will the people do, whom no one will listen to? In East Germany of 1989, the people took to the streets, scaled the Berlin wall and made the government to resign. The other communist dictatorships of Eastern Europe fell in similar ways. The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (the right to bear arms), exists to ensure that the citizens are able to seize power from a tyrannical government.

If powerlessness drives people to answer violence with violence, maybe one should not ask why Swedes are “racists” if they do not want the highest immigration level in Europe?

The most relevant question is why one government after another has chosen to spend Swedish taxpayers’ money on citizens of other countries. While Swedish students take a plunge in the PISA tests, 60% of the welfare benefits go to immigrants who make up about 15% of the population. Healthcare and other social services are deteriorating, according to many Swedes, while violence is exponentially increasing. When more and more Swedes feel that they are being badly treated in their own country, the politicians have created a powder keg ready to explode at any minute.

The truth is that even the docile Swedish people have a limit. When those in power expose us to bloodbaths, whether in the Big Square of Stockholm in 1520 or at IKEA in Västerås in 2015, there will always be those who are ready to overthrow the mighty. Just as in Gustav Vasa’s day, a lot of Swedes have firearms. They are not as easy to come by as in the United States, but more and more Swedes are getting hunting licenses, and are thereafter legally able to buy guns. From now on in Sweden, anything can happen.

Britain: The “Struggle of Our Generation”

August 10, 2015

Britain: The “Struggle of Our Generation”, The Gatestone InstituteSamuel Westrop, August 10, 2015

  • “We’ve got to show that if you say ‘yes I condemn terror — but the Kuffar are inferior’, or ‘violence in London isn’t justified, but suicide bombs in Israel are a different matter’ — then you too are part of the problem. Unwittingly or not, and in a lot of cases it’s not unwittingly, you are providing succour to those who want to commit, or get others to commit to, violence.” — Prime Minister David Cameron.
  • In a series of religious rulings published on its website, the Islamic Network charity advocated the murder of apostates; encouraged Muslims to hate non-Muslims; stated that when non-Muslims die, “the whole of humanity are relieved;” and described Western civilisation as “evil.”
  • The Charity Commission’s solution, however, was to give the charity’s trustees booklets titled, “How to manage risks in your charity,” and warn them not to do it again.

On July 20, Prime Minister David Cameron outlined his government’s plans to counteract Islamic extremism, which he described as the “struggle of our generation.”

In a speech before Ninestiles School, in the city of Birmingham, Cameron articulated a view of the Islamist threat that, just a couple of years ago, few else in British politics would have dared to support.

In a report for BBC Radio 4, the journalist John Ware described Cameron’s speech, and the government’s proposed counter-extremism measures, as “something no British government has ever done in my lifetime: the launch of a formal strategy to recognize, challenge and root out ideology.”

Cameron’s speech was wide-ranging. It addressed the causes, methods and consequences of Islamist extremism.

1199(Image source: BBC video screenshot)

We must recognize, Cameron reasoned, that Islamist terror is the product of Islamist ideology. It is definitely not, he argued, “because of historic injustices and recent wars, or because of poverty and hardship. This argument, what I call the grievance justification, must be challenged. … others might say: it’s because terrorists are driven to their actions by poverty. But that ignores the fact that many of these terrorists have had the full advantages of prosperous families or a Western university education.”

“Extreme doctrine” is to blame — a doctrine that is “hostile to basic liberal values … Ideas which actively promote discrimination, sectarianism and segregation. … which privilege one identity to the detriment of the rights and freedoms of others.” This is a doctrine “based on conspiracy: that Jews exercise malevolent power; or that Western powers, in concert with Israel, are deliberately humiliating Muslims, because they aim to destroy Islam.”

People are drawn to such extremist ideas, Cameron argued, because:

“[Y]ou don’t have to believe in barbaric violence to be drawn to the ideology. No-one becomes a terrorist from a standing start. It starts with a process of radicalisation. When you look in detail at the backgrounds of those convicted of terrorist offences, it is clear that many of them were first influenced by what some would call non-violent extremists.

“It may begin with hearing about the so-called Jewish conspiracy and then develop into hostility to the West and fundamental liberal values, before finally becoming a cultish attachment to death. Put another way, the extremist world view is the gateway, and violence is the ultimate destination.”

To counteract the extremist threat, Cameron concludes, the government will “tackle both parts of the creed — the non-violent and violent. This means confronting groups and organisations that may not advocate violence — but which do promote other parts of the extremist narrative.”

Further, no longer will extremist groups be able to burnish their moderate credentials by pointing to ISIS as the Islamic bogeyman:

“We’ve got to show that if you say ‘yes I condemn terror — but the Kuffar are inferior’, or ‘violence in London isn’t justified, but suicide bombs in Israel are a different matter’ – then you too are part of the problem. Unwittingly or not, and in a lot of cases it’s not unwittingly, you are providing succour to those who want to commit, or get others to commit to, violence.

For example, I find it remarkable that some groups say ‘We don’t support ISIL’ as if that alone proves their anti-extremist credentials. And let’s be clear Al-Qaeda don’t support ISIL. So we can’t let the bar sink to that level. Condemning a mass-murdering, child-raping organisation cannot be enough to prove you’re challenging the extremists.”

Rather radically for a Western leader, Cameron also asserted that, “simply denying any connection between the religion of Islam and the extremists doesn’t work… it is an exercise in futility to deny that. And more than that, it can be dangerous. To deny it has anything to do with Islam means you disempower the critical reforming voices; the voices that are challenging the fusing of religion and politics…”

Cameron’s speech was groundbreaking. No previous Prime Minister in past decades would have dared to make such statements. This is not to say, however, that it is without fault.

Cameron is not just talk. An “Extremism Analysis Unit” has been set up within the Home Office, which will serve to tackle Islamist extremism, including “non-violent” groups. According to the journalist John Ware, the new body is currently preparing lists of extremist preachers and groups.

More importantly, a variety of new legislation is being brought before Parliament. However, some of the proposed laws, critics argue, are draconian. “Banning Orders” will outlaw designated “extremist groups.” “Extremism Disruption Orders,” meanwhile, will restrict designated “extremists” from appearing on television, or publishing without the authorities’ approval. And “Closure Orders” will allow the government to close any institution deemed guilty of promoting extremism.

Cameron has correctly and radically diagnosed the problem of Islamic extremism. His solutions, however, do not appear promising.

A more useful next step would be for the government to tackle its own relationships with extremist groups. Britain’s registered charities offer a particularly vivid example of Islamist extremism going unchallenged.

In 2014, I wrote about the Islamic Network, a group that describes itself as “a da’wah[proselytizing] organisation which aims to promote awareness and understanding of the religion of Islam.”

In a series of religious rulings published on its website, the Islamic Network charity advocated themurder of apostates; encouraged Muslims to hate non-Muslims; stated that when non-Muslims die, “the whole of humanity are relieved;” and described Western civilisation as “evil.” Further, the Islamic Network directed a great deal of hatred towards the Jews. Its website claimed: “The Jews strive their utmost to corrupt the beliefs, morals and manners of the Muslims. The Jews scheme and crave after possessing the Muslim lands, as well as the lands of others.”

In spite of these views, the Islamic Network is a registered charity, which means it is entitled to subsidy from the taxpayer.

As a result of revealing the material published on the Islamic Network’s website, as well as several complaints submitted to the Charity Commission, the government opened an inquiry into the charity. After a year of deliberation, the Charity Commission published its report, which concluded that the Islamic Network had indeed published extremist material.

The Charity Commission’s solution, however, was to give the charity’s trustees booklets titled, “How to manage risks in your charity,” and warn them not to do it again.

Britain may finally have a government that understands the problem of Islamist extremism, but if government bodies fail to challenge extremist charities such as the Islamic Network, then what use is this enlightenment?

The Islamic Network is but one of many dozens of examples. Why is the British organizationInterpal, for example, still allowed to be a registered charity? Interpal is a designated terrorist organization under United States law. Its trustees regularly meet with senior leaders of the terror group Hamas. In 2013, for instance, Interpal trustee Essam Yusuf took part in a ceremony with the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, at which they expressed praise for Hamas’ military wing, the Al Qassam Brigades, and glorified “martyrdom.”

Or what of Islamic Relief, one of Britain’s largest charities? Established by the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic Relief’s directors have included Ahmed Al-Rawi, a Muslim Brotherhood leader who, in 2004, supported jihad against British and American troops in Iraq; and Essam El-Haddad, who is accused by an Egyptian court of divulging Egyptian state secrets to Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, and using Islamic Relief to finance global terrorism.

Despite Islamic Relief’s links to Islamist extremism, the charity continues to receive millions of pounds from the British government.

David Cameron’s speech on July 20 should be applauded. If another political party had won the recent general election, no such speech would have been made. But before the Prime Minister turns his hand to censorship, perhaps the government should address extremist groups closer to home.

UK: Anjem Choudary Charged With Supporting Islamic State

August 9, 2015

UK: Anjem Choudary Charged With Supporting Islamic State, The Gatestone InstituteSoeren Kern, August 9, 2015

(With which of Choudary’s precepts do the Mad Mullahs of Iran disagree? — DM)

  • A recent BBC poll found that 45% of British Muslims believe extremist clerics who preach violence against the West are not “out of touch” with mainstream Muslim opinion.
  • “Allah said very clearly in the Koran ‘Don’t feel sorry for the non-Muslims.’ So as an adult non-Muslim… if he dies in a state of disbelief then he is going to go to the hellfire… so I’m not going to feel sorry for non-Muslims.” — Anjem Choudary.
  • “Under the Shari’ah, the false Gods that people worship instead of Allah will be removed, like democracy, freedom, liberalism, secularism etc.” — Anjem Choudary.
  • “We are Muslims first and Muslim last. Passports are no more than travel documents. If you are born in a barn that doesn’t make you a horse!!” — Anjem Choudary.
  • Choudary urged his followers to quit their jobs and claim unemployment benefits so that they could have more time to plot holy war against non-Muslims. He said Muslims are entitled to welfare payments because they are a form of jizya, a tax imposed on non-Muslims in countries run by Muslims… as a reminder that non-Muslims are permanently inferior and subservient to Muslims.
  • Choudary says he is not afraid of going to prison, which he describes as a fertile ground for gaining more converts to Islam. “If they arrest me and put me in prison…” he warned, “I will radicalize everyone in prison.”

Anjem Choudary, one of the most outspoken and provocative Islamists in Britain today, has been remanded in custody, charged with the terrorism offense of encouraging people to join the Islamic State.

The charge is related to Choudary sending messages to his nearly 33,000 followers on Twitter, allegedly encouraging them to join the Islamic State — the radical Sunni Islamist group that has taken control over large parts of Syria and Iraq, and has threatened to attack targets in Europe and North America.

The effort to prosecute Choudary — well known for his relentless efforts to implement Islamic Sharia law in the UK — indicates that the British government intends to follow through on its recent pledge to crack down on radical Islam in the country.

It remains to be seen, however, if Choudary’s detention will serve as a deterrent to other Islamists in Britain. A recent BBC poll found that 45% of British Muslims believe extremist clerics who preach violence against the West are not “out of touch” with mainstream Muslim opinion.

Choudary was originally arrested in September 2014 during police raids in London, as part of an ongoing Metropolitan Police investigation into Islamist-related terrorism. He was subsequently released on bail while police continued their investigation.

On August 5, Choudary, 48, and an associate, Mohammed Rahman, 32, appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court and were charged with repeatedly violating Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000 between June 2014 and March 2015.

Addressing the court, Sue Hemming, the head of special crime and counter-terrorism at the Crown Prosecution Service, said:

“It is alleged that Anjem Choudary and Mohammed Rahman invited support for ISIS [also known as the Islamic State] in individual lectures which were subsequently published online. We have concluded that there is sufficient evidence and it is in the public interest to prosecute Anjem Choudary and Mohammed Rahman.”

When asked by the judge to indicate how he would plead, Choudary said: “Cameron and the police are guilty.” The judge replied that he took that to mean that he would be pleading not guilty. Choudary will remain in police custody until August 28, when he is set to appear at the Old Bailey, the Criminal Court of England and Wales. If convicted, Choudary faces up to ten years in prison.

Until now, Choudary, a lawyer by training, has managed to avoid prison by treading the fine legal line between the inflammatory rhetoric of Islamic supremacism and the right to free speech. He has never been convicted of any offense.

Choudary is the former leader of the Muslim extremist group, al-Muhajiroun (Arabic: “The Emigrants”). Al-Muhajiroun, which celebrated the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001, was banned in January 2010.

Since then, al-Muhajiroun has repeatedly reinvented itself under an array of successor aliases. These include, among others: Islam4UK, Call to Submission, Islamic Path, Islamic Dawa Association, London School of Sharia, Muslims Against Crusades and Need4Khalifah, all of which have also been banned.

A study published by the London-based Henry Jackson Society in September 2014 found that one in five terrorists convicted in Britain over more than a decade have had links to al-Muhajiroun.

A report published by the British anti-extremist group Hope Not Hate in November 2013 concluded that al-Muhajiroun was “the single biggest gateway to terrorism in recent British history.”

Al-Muhajiroun is said to have also played a major role in radicalizing Michael Adebolajo, who was found guilty of murdering (and attempting to decapitate) the British soldier Lee Rigby outside London’s Woolwich Barracks in May 2013.

Choudary said Rigby would “burn in hellfire” as a non-Muslim, and also praised Adebolajo as a “martyr.” He said:

“Allah said very clearly in the Koran ‘Don’t feel sorry for the non-Muslims.’ So as an adult non-Muslim, whether he is part of the Army or not part of the Army, if he dies in a state of disbelief then he is going to go to the hellfire.

“That’s what I believe so I’m not going to feel sorry for non-Muslims. We invite them to embrace the message of Islam. If they don’t, then obviously if they die like that they’re going to the hellfires.”

720Islamist preacher Anjem Choudary (right) praised one of the murderers of British solider Lee Rigby (left) as a “martyr” and said Rigby would “burn in hellfire” as a non-Muslim.

Police say that Choudary’s rhetoric has become more incendiary since June 2014, when the Islamic State proclaimed itself to be an Islamic Caliphate, a theocracy ruled according to Sharia law. Since then, police say, Choudary has repeatedly crossed the legal threshold for criminal prosecution for encouraging terrorism, such as justifying the beheading of the American journalist, James Foley, and the British aid worker, Alan Henning.

Choudary believes that the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is “the caliph of all Muslims” and that Shariah law will eventually “be in command even in America and in Britain and in China and in Russia and everywhere else.”

The expansion of the Caliphate, the global implementation of Sharia law and Islamic supremacism are common themes in Choudary’s Twitter universe, where — through a daily barrage of anti-Western tweets — he repeatedly admonishes his nearly 33,000 followers to avoid assimilating into British culture.

In one tweet, Choudary wrote:

“Eventually the whole world will be governed by Shari’ah & Muslims will have authority over China Russia USA etc. This is the promise of Allah.”

He also tweeted:

“Under the Shari’ah, the false Gods that people worship instead of Allah will be removed, like democracy, freedom, liberalism, secularism etc.”

In another tweet, Choudary wrote:

“A Muslim always prefers: Shari’ah over Democracy, Submission over Freedom, Khilafah over Secularism, Jihad over oppression, Allah over [Prime Minister David] Cameron!”

Again, he tweeted:

“Cameron needs to accept that Islam is the fastest growing religion/way of life in Britain today & that one day Shari’ah will be implemented!”

On July 14, Choudary tweeted:

“The Khalifah [Caliphate] must ensure that no non-Muslim criticizes Islam or tries to convert Muslims to their own false belief, only Islam is propagated.”

On July 10, he tweeted:

“When the Shari’ah comes to UK/France/US/Russia/China we’ll ban Alcohol, Gambling, Fornication, Pornography, Usury, Democracy, Freedom, The UN etc.”

On July 6, Choudary wrote:

“The only time Muslims, Christians & Jews lived together peacefully with their honor protected in Europe was under the Shari’ah in Spain.”

After the July 2015 shootings of American servicemen by a Muslim in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Choudary tweeted:

“There’s a conflict in the world between those who believe Sovereignty belongs to Allah & those who believe it belongs to Obama! #Chattanooga.”

And again:

“The cycle of violence that we find ourselves in can be resolved. Muslims, Christians & Jews can live peacefully under Shari’ah! #Chattanooga.”

Choudary, who was born in the UK, has also explained how he feels about his British citizenship:

“We are Muslims first and Muslim last. Passports are no more than travel documents. If you are born in a barn that doesn’t make you a horse!!”

Choudary, who is married and has four children, enjoys a comfortable lifestyle that is being paid for, year after year, by British taxpayers. In 2010, the newspaper The Sun reported that he takes home more than £25,000 (€35,000; $38,000) a year in welfare benefits.

In February 2013, Choudary urged his followers to quit their jobs and claim unemployment benefits so that they could have more time to plot holy war against non-Muslims. He said Muslims are entitled to welfare payments because they are a form of jizya, a tax imposed on non-Muslims in countries run by Muslims. According to Sharia law, the jizya is a reminder that non-Muslims are permanently inferior and subservient to Muslims.

In a video, Choudary said:

“We [Muslims] take the jizya, which is ours anyway. The normal situation is to take money from the kuffar [non-Muslim]. They give us the money. You work, give us the money, Allahu Akhbar. We take the money.”

Meanwhile, Choudary’s Twitter followers have threatened violence unless he is released. In one tweet, a supporter used the hashtag #FreeAnjemChoudary with a picture of Big Ben and the flag of the Islamic State. Another tweet said: “The black days is coming to Britain if it doesnt [sic] release the Muslims.” Yet another said: “O Allah! Whoever has harmed them, then harm him, n whoever has shown enmity to them, then show enmity to them.” And another: “The shariah of Allah is the only solution for UK. #democracy is rotten.”

According to data compiled by an online analytics company, the hashtag #FreeAnjemChoudary was shared nearly 600 times in first the 24 hours after Choudary’s detention, potentially reaching 700,000 people. The data shows that most of Choudary’s supporters are living in the West: 69% of Choudary’s supporters are tweeting from Britain, Canada and the United States, and another 10% tweeting from Australia.

Choudary says he is not afraid of going to prison, which he describes as a fertile ground for gaining more converts to Islam. “If they arrest me and put me in prison, I will carry on in prison,” he warned. “I will radicalize everyone in prison.”

Obama’s Strategy Of Equilibrium

August 6, 2015

Obama’s Strategy Of Equilibrium, Middle East Media Research Institute, Yigal Carmon and Alberto M. Fernandez, August 5, 2015

(The conflict between Shiite and Sunni factions has been going on since shortly after the death of Mohamed. Obama is not likely to bring reconciliation. — DM)

This article will analyze the strategy of creating an equilibrium between Sunnis and Shiites as a means to promote peace in the Middle East. It will examine the meaning of the strategy in political terms, how realistic it is, and what its future implications might be on the region and on the United States.

“It is worth noting that the first Islamic State created in the Middle East in the last 50 years was not the one created in the Sunni world in 2014 and headed by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.” Rather, it was the Islamic Republic of Iran created in 1979 by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and currently ruled by his successor, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who maintains – even following the Iran deal – the mantra “Death to America,” continues to sponsor terrorism worldwide, and commits horrific human rights violations.

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

Introduction

In an interview with Thomas Friedman of The New York Times (“Obama Makes His Case on Iran Nuclear Deal,” July 14, 2015), President Obama asked that the nuclear deal with Iran be judged only by how successfully it prevents Iran from attaining a nuclear bomb, not on “whether it is changing the regime inside of Iran” or “whether we are solving every problem that can be traced back to Iran.” However, in many interviews he has given over the last few years, he has revealed a strategy and a plan that far exceed the Iran deal: a strategy which aims to create an equilibrium between Sunnis and Shiites in the Muslim world.

President Obama believes that such an equilibrium will result in a more peaceful Middle East in which tensions between regional powers are reduced to mere competition. As he told David Remnick in an interview with The New Yorker, “…if we were able to get Iran to operate in a responsible fashion…you could see an equilibrium developing between Sunni, or predominantly Sunni, Gulf states and Iran in which there’s competition, perhaps suspicion, but not an active or proxy warfare” (“Going the Distance,” January 27, 2014).

In discussing the Iran deal, the President recalled President Nixon negotiating with China and President Reagan negotiating with the Soviet Union in order to explain the scope of his strategy for the Middle East and the Muslim world. President Obama seeks, as did Presidents Reagan and Nixon with China and the Soviet Union, to impact the region as a whole. The Iran deal, even if major, is just one of several vehicles that would help achieve this goal.

This article will analyze the strategy of creating an equilibrium between Sunnis and Shiites as a means to promote peace in the Middle East. It will examine the meaning of the strategy in political terms, how realistic it is, and what its future implications might be on the region and on the United States.

The Meaning Of The Equilibrium Strategy In Political Terms

Examining the strategy of equilibrium requires the recollection of some basic information. Within Islam’s approximately 1.6 billion believers, the absolute majority – about 90% – is Sunni, while Shiites constitute only about 10%.  Even in the Middle East, Sunnis are a large majority.

What does the word “equilibrium” mean in political terms? In view of the above stated data, the word “equilibrium” in actual political terms means empowering the minority and thereby weakening the majority in order to progress toward the stated goal. However, the overwhelming discrepancy in numbers makes it impossible to reach an equilibrium between the two camps. Therefore, it would be unrealistic to believe that the majority would accept a policy that empowers its adversary and weakens its own historically superior status.

Implications For The Region

Considering the above, the implications of the equilibrium strategy for the region might not be enhancing peace as the President well intends; rather, it might intensify strife and violence in the region. The empowered minority might be persuaded to increase its expansionist activity, as can be already seen: Iran has extended its influence from Lebanon to Yemen. Iranian analyst Mohammad Sadeq al-Hosseini stated in an interview on September 24, 2014, “We in the axis of resistance are the new sultans of the Mediterranean and the Gulf. We in Tehran, Damascus, [Hizbullah’s] southern suburb of Beirut, Baghdad, and Sanaa will shape the map of the region. We are the new sultans of the Red Sea as well” (MEMRITV Clip No. 4530). Similarly, in a statement dedicated to the historically indivisible connection between Iraq and Iran, advisor to President Rouhani Ali Younesi stressed that, “Since its inception, Iran has [always] had a global [dimension]; it was born an empire” (MEMRI Report No. 5991).

In view of this reality, this strategy might create, against the President’s expectations, more bitterness and willingness on the part of the majority to fight for their status. This has already been realized; for example, when Saudi Arabia intervened in Yemen after facing the Houthi/Shiite revolution, which it perceived as a grave danger to its survival, and created a fighting coalition within a month to counter it. Similarly, Saudi Arabia has previously demonstrated that it regards Bahrain as an area where any Iranian attempt to stir up unrest will be answered by Saudi military intervention. According to reports, Saudi Arabia has been supporting the Sunni population in Iraq, and in Lebanon, a standstill has resulted because Saudi Arabia has shown that it will not give up – even in a place where Iranian proxy Hizbollah is the main power. Hence, the strategy of equilibrium has a greater chance of resulting in the eruption of regional war than in promoting regional peace.

Implications For The United States

Moreover, this strategy might have adverse implications for the United States and its interests in the Sunni Muslim world: those countries that feel betrayed by the strategy might, as a result, take action against the United States – hopefully only politically (such as changing international alliances) or economically. These countries might be careful about their public pronouncements and might even voice rhetorical support to U.S. policy, as the GCC states did on August 3, but the resentment is there.

Realpolitik Versus Moral Considerations

The analysis presented here is based on principles of realpolitik: in politics, one does not align with the minority against the majority. However, sometimes other considerations take precedence. Morality is such an example: the Allies could not refrain from fighting Nazi Germany because it was a majority power – ultimately, they recognized the moral obligation to combat the Third Reich. However, with regard to the Middle East, the two adversaries are on equal standing: the Islamic Republic of Iran is no different than the Wahhabi Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. President Obama and Secretary Kerry would be wrong to think that Mohammad Javad Zarif, the sophisticated partygoer in New York City, represents the real Iran. Zarif, his negotiating team, and President Rouhani himself, all live under the shadow and at the mercy of the Supreme Leader, the ayatollahs, and the IRGC.

“It is worth noting that the first Islamic State created in the Middle East in the last 50 years was not the one created in the Sunni world in 2014 and headed by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.” Rather, it was the Islamic Republic of Iran created in 1979 by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and currently ruled by his successor, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who maintains – even following the Iran deal – the mantra “Death to America,” continues to sponsor terrorism worldwide, and commits horrific human rights violations.

Iran Deal: Europe’s Chief Negotiator Sympathized with Iran

July 21, 2015

Iran Deal: Europe’s Chief Negotiator Sympathized with Iran, Gatestone InstituteGeorge Igler, July 21, 2015

  • “Islam belongs in Europe… I am not afraid to say that political Islam should be part of the picture.” — Federica Mogherini.
  • Under the treaties establishing the EU, there are no democratic checks on figures such as Mogherini or on the enormous power they wield.
  • “It was Hamas’s strategy, not illegal Israeli action — as this report shamefully alleges without a shred of evidence — that was the reason why over 1,000 civilians died in Gaza.” — Col. Richard Kemp.
  • As a result of the border policies imposed by Mogherini, ISIS’s scheme to augment such a migrant flow with jihadists is now being accomplished.
  • Mogherini, the official responsible for the EU’s borders represents a sheltered elite, convinced that the solution to problems in the Middle East and North Africa is importing their populations into Europe.

Given the capitulation to Iran’s geopolitical ambitions represented by the agreement reached in Vienna on July 14, a spotlight is likely to fall on the pivotal role played by Europe’s chief diplomat.

Few guessed that while stating the “security of the world” was at stake during negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran, Federica Mogherini also felt “political Islam” should be a part of Europe’s future.

1163Not funny. Federica Mogherini (left) represented the European Union in nuclear negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran, a millenarian Shi’ite theocracy that calls for the annihilation of America and Israel. At right, Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif. (Image source: European Union)

The European Union’s unelected High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy made her pro-Islamist remarks in a speech delivered last month in Brussels.

While heading up Europe’s combined delegation in the Austrian capital, and purportedly tasked with staving off Iran’s nuclear capabilities, Mogherini, a former member of the Italian Communist Youth Federation, also took to tweeting in Arabic.

The assertions made by Mogherini to the Islam in Europe conference, before she left for Vienna, reveal the thinking of a key figure behind the dangerous concessions given to Iran as a result of its continued intransigence and the West’s continued surrender to it.

It should therefore surprise no one that Syria’s President Assad has congratulated Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on his “great victory” in negotiations from which the Jewish state — which had the most to lose based on Iran’s constant threats to obliterate it — was excluded.

As talks progressed, the Supreme Leader of Iran was pictured trampling on an Israeli flag, with the accompanying caption on Khamenei’s official website reading: “The Zionist regime is condemned to vanish.”

Mogherini first gained notoriety after her statement to the United Nations Security Council on May 11, during which she dismissed pushbacks against the flood of migrants illegally crossing the Mediterranean.

As a consequence of the border policies of the European Commission, of which Mogherini is also Vice-President, the number of immigrants pouring into Europe by land has now exceeded those crossing by sea.

Local authorities in Hungary are struggling to cope with refugee camps filled with rioting migrants shouting “Allahu Akbar!” (Arabic for “Allah is Greater!”).

There seems no recognition of the generosity of a nation that is exhausting its resources to give Muslims asylum from conflict.

The speech given by Mogherini in Brussels on June 24 demonstrates why she believes that the growing migration crisis her actions have orchestrated should be welcomed:

“Islam holds a place in our Western societies. Islam belongs in Europe. It holds a place in Europe’s history, in our culture, in our food and — what matters most — in Europe’s present and future. Like it or not, this is the reality.”

She continued:

“We need to show some humble respect for diversity. Diversity is the core feature of our European history, and it is our strength. … We need to understand diversity, understand complexity. … For this reason I am not afraid to say that political Islam should be part of the picture.”

Under the treaties establishing the EU, there are no democratic checks on figures such as Mogherini or on the enormous power they wield. Only representatives elected to the European Parliament can quiz members of the European Commission.

There is also no democratic way for MEPs to repeal any of the laws applied across the EU, authored by the commission’s bureaucrats, or to fire any of its officials.

Regrettably, Mogherini’s speech chose not to delve into which aspects of the “diversity” represented by “political Islam” Europe should embrace: The subhuman status afforded to non-Muslims such as Christians and Jews, perhaps; or the death sentence faced by Muslims who seek to leave Islam or reform it? Or maybe the codified inferiority of females, or the view that democracy, made by man and not Allah is illegitimate, or that it is permissible to counter free speech with violence?

Mogherini’s speech in Brussels — added to the July 3 vote at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) of several European nations in favor of a resolution condemning Israel for war crimes — also highlight a grim reality when viewed in the context of the West’s concessions to Iran.

While political leaders in Europe seek to placate their Muslim populations, Israel is faced with even fewer reliable allies on the world stage as the prospect of a nuclear Iran looms larger.

The UNHRC’s resolution targeting Israel had been prompted by a UNHRC report into last year’s Gaza conflict, during which the Israeli Defense Force had sought to protect the country’s population against constant and indiscriminate rocket attacks.

In an address on June 29, Britain’s Col. Richard Kemp urged the UNHRC to deal with the reality of events in Gaza last summer:

“Hamas sought to cause large numbers of casualties among their own people, in order to bring international condemnation against Israel, especially from the United Nations. … It was Hamas’s strategy, not illegal Israeli action as this report shamefully alleges without a shred of evidence, that was the reason why over 1,000 civilians died in Gaza.”

With only the US voting against the resulting “anti-Israeli manifesto” it was nevertheless endorsed by European nations including France, Germany, the UK, Ireland, and the Netherlands.

As a consequence of several international treaties, these countries and 23 others have unified executive authority on issues of foreign policy into the institutions of the European Union.

To those arguing with the EU’s head of security policy that, “more Muslims in Europe will be the end of Europe,” Mogherini has a curt answer:

“These people are not just mistaken about Muslims: these people are mistaken about Europe – that is my core message – they have no clue what Europe and the European identity are.”

Claiming that “Islam is a victim,” Mogherini went on to stress that the “caliphate” declared last year by ISIS under the name of the Islamic State, represents “an unprecedented attempt to pervert Islam.”

Led by “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in February ISIS announced its intention to export 500,000 migrants to Europe to create chaos. As his nom de guerre suggests, the PhD in Islamic Studies possessed by Dr. Ibrahim al-Badri comes from the city where the Koran was compiled.

Federica Mogherini’s claim to have a better grasp of political Islam stems from an undergraduate paper she once authored on the subject.

As a result of the border policies imposed by Mogherini, the president of the EU’s judicial cooperation agency, Michèle Coninsx, confirmed on July 6 that ISIS’s scheme to augment such a migrant flow with jihadists is now being accomplished.

It is hard not to conclude that the official responsible for the EU’s borders represents a sheltered elite, convinced that the solution to problems in the Middle East and North Africa is importing their populations into Europe.

Using an Arabic euphemism to describe the Islamic State, Mogherini’s speech concluded:

“Western media like to refer to Da’esh with the word ‘medieval’. This does not help much to understand the real nature of the threat we are facing. Da’esh is something completely new.”

The EU’s chief representative to the talks in Vienna could have done with visiting the museum located on the city’s Karlsplatz. There can be found the following demand for surrender, issued against the Viennese, which post-dates the medieval period by two centuries:

“We order you to wait for us at your residences in the city so we can decapitate you. It will be a pleasure for me to publicly establish my religion and to pursue your crucified god. I will put your sacred priests to the plough and rape your nuns. Forsake your religion or else I will give the order to consume you with fire.”

It was authored by the Muslim caliph reigning in 1683.

When it comes to political Islam, Federica Mogherini is evidently incapable of differentiating between behaviors that are “completely new,” and those that form an established pattern.

That failure makes the diplomatic surrender to the Islamic Republic of Iran, being portrayed by President Obama as a path to a “more hopeful world,” easier to comprehend.

The West’s negotiations were conducted with a millenarian Shi’ite theocracy that calls for the annihilation of America and Israel.

How to insult a “progressive”

July 6, 2015

How to insult a “progressive,” Pat Condell via You Tube, July 6, 2015

 

Leftist and Islamic Policymakers Outlaw the Truth

July 4, 2015

Leftist and Islamic Policymakers Outlaw the Truth, American ThinkerSonia Bailley, July 4, 2015

No need to worry, the recent Ramadan triple slaughter fest in Tunisia, France and Kuwait has nothing to do with Islam.  There is no linkage between Islam and terrorism, and the word Islamic need not be used to describe the terrorists because their murderous and barbaric ideology has nothing to do with Islam.  Islam is, after all, a religion of peace that is being hijacked, perverted and distorted by only a small percentage of savage extremists.  

Welcome to the false narrative that Western leaders, mainstream media outlets, and academic elites are enforcing on civil society to help shape the public’s perception of Islam so that it is always presented in a positive light.  Any form of expression that reflects badly on Islam is in violation of Islamic law, which forbids any criticism of Islam, even what that criticism expresses the truth.  Stories that are reported according to this narrative need not have anything to do with factual accuracy or truth.  Both the 2009 Fort Hood massacre in Texas and the beheading in Vaughan Foods in Oklahoma last September were reported as workplace violence and not Islamic terrorism.

With the aid of leftist and Islamic policymakers shaping the course of international relations and security policies, that false narrative is finding its way into international policy to destroy the West’s hard-won, cherished core values.  Realities and facts that might tarnish Islam’s name are deemed hate speech and becoming lost through censorship. The 57-state Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which is the world’s largest security-oriented intergovernmental organization that happens to be rooted in communism, and the 57-state Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which is the most influential and largest Muslim organization in the world pushing to criminalize any criticism of Islam, are two such policymakers who are influencing world leaders and the news media.

Most Western world leaders are bleating the same empty platitudes about the recent Ramadan terrorist attacks in Tunisia, France and Kuwait, carefully avoiding the word “Islam.”  UK Prime Minister David Cameron explained to the media that Islam is a religion of peace, and that the terrorists who “do these things…do it in the name of a twisted and perverted ideology.” When asked if it’s right to say that the recent Ramadan attacks have nothing to do with Islam, UK Home Secretary Theresa May responded to BBC’s Andrew Marr in the positive, “that it has nothing to do with Islam. Islam is a peaceful religion,” and that the terror attacks are “about a perversion of Islam.”

Instead of issuing travel warnings not to vacation in Islamic countries especially during Ramadan, the Islamic “sacred” month of feasting — a month rife with bloodshed and battle since Islam’s inception, when armed raids on Meccan trade caravans and bloody battles were waged by Mohammed and his followers (including the 1973 Yom Kippur War on the 10th of Ramadan), not to mention the ISIS Ramadan message that jihad is 10 times more obligatory during Ramadan, and that those who die will be rewarded by Allah ten times more than during the rest of the year — Western leaders like Cameron continue to nourish the official politically correct narrative of Islam being a religion of peace not linked to terrorism.

The twisted and perverted ideology to which both Cameron and May refer, pervades pages and pages of the Koran and other Islamic doctrine, inspiring jihadists and religious Muslims to “do these things,” including operating child sex slave grooming gangs throughout Europe, especially in the UK, to rape, pimp, torture and sometimes kill non-Muslim underage schoolgirls.  The Koran itself contains over 100 verses  promoting violence against non-Muslims who, to this very day, remain victims of the verse.

What lies at the heart of Islam is an antipathy towards non-Muslims, as well as a deeply-entrenched duty and commandment from Allah to wage Jihad and eventually subjugate non-Muslims worldwide to Islamic rule in the name of Allah.  Massive street prayer is one form of subjugation conducted only to intimidate and Islamize Western society, to remind non-Muslims who’s really in control. Similarly, forcing non-Muslims in their own countries, in the UK for example, to eat halal slaughtered meat — an utterly inhumane and barbaric Islamic practice, not to mention a multi-billion dollar industry controlled by Muslim Brotherhood organizations that fund jihad worldwide — when only a mere 5% of the UK population is Muslim, and when the Koran specifically exempts its followers from eating halal if it’s not available, is another way to subjugate non-Muslims.

People are becoming sitting duck targets for Islamic terrorists in Western countries and abroad because of the little-known but powerful world policymakers like the OSCE and OIC who influence world leaders to kowtow to Islamic interests.  Western leaders fail to convey an accurate picture and understanding of what is really going on in the world because it might reflect badly on Islam, and they don’t want to appear “Islamophobic” for fear of more terrorist attacks.  By failing to report the truth, they are denying citizens the opportunity to take appropriate action that could save their lives when faced with something that could be considered a threat, such as a beach vacation in an Islamic country over Ramadan.

The dead European tourists in Tunisia might still be here today had there been an undistorted flow of information to warn them that warfare and killing in the name of Islam are encouraged during the month of Ramadan.  Furthermore, people might choose to avoid Islamic countries at all times if they were aware that these countries rely upon the most non-liberal draconian and barbaric Islamic or sharia-based corporal punishments imaginable.

The anti-blasphemy narrative pushed by the highly influential but little-known OIC, ehich speaks on behalf of over 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide, not only silences any expression considered to be offensive and insulting to Islam, but punishes the offenders, as Mohammed did to his dissenters and insulters.  They were either condemned to hell or killed.  Because Muslims consider Mohammed as the ideal model for mankind to follow, many Islamic countries such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran, have also made blasphemy subject to the death penalty with their anti-blasphemy laws.

It is this anti-blasphemy law that the OIC is striving to legally enforce on the world in order to curtail speech and expression when it comes to Islam — not so much for religious compliance as for the global subjugation of non-Muslims to Islam.  Since 2005, the OIC has been pushing relentlessly for a UN blasphemy resolution (Resolution 16/18 passed in 2011) to silence so-called Islamophobia — a term deliberately coined and marketed in the 1990s by the International Institute of Islamic Thought, one of the thousands of Muslim Brotherhood front groups worldwide, to drive public discourse and policy.  However, the OIC’s top priority is to globally criminalize any criticism of Islam, and is working with the Muslim Brotherhood to accomplish this. Ten years later, in 2015, telling the truth about Islam has become a crime in some European countries.

The highly influential yet little-known OSCE that is rooted in communism, is supposed to protect and promote civil liberties.  Instead, it is negotiating them away by capitulating to the OIC narrative of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose stated goal from the 1990s is to destroy Western civilization from within.  Its goal of global domination is to be accomplished not through violence, at least not yet, but rather through the slow infiltration of Western government, military, judicial and academic institutions.

So far, there has been practically no opposition from  any Western administration in power, only cooperation from world leaders, government officials, and leftist policymakers.  In fact, the cooperation from Western leaders with OSCE and OIC policymakers has been so great, that the U.S. co-sponsored Resolution 16/18 with Pakistan, and helped usher it through in 2011, despite this resolution being a direct assault on the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

At an OSCE May session in Vienna (on how the media can help prevent violent radicalization that leads to terrorism), OSCE panelist Leila Ghandi, producer and TV show host on the most popular Moroccan TV channel (2MTV) that is over 60% government-owned, maintained that the truth or facts about “a community” can sometimes constitute hate speech when those facts are offensive and therefore should not be said.  The panelist’s words echo those of the new OIC Secretary General, Iyad Amin Madani, who tweeted earlier this year following the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack in Paris, that “freedom of speech must not become a hate speech and must not offend others.”  In other words, truth about Islam is designated as hate speech.

Furthermore, OSCE panelist Victor Khroul, correspondent for Rossiya Segodnya, a Russian state-owned international news agency, questions why the mainstream media throughout the world still refer to the “self-proclaimed self-established state in the Middle East” as the Islamic State. His words echo those of Madani, who proclaimed last year that the Islamic State has no connection with Islam.  Khroul claims it’s a mistake for these people to be called Muslim and their state Islamic, which only “confuses the audience with this correlation with Islam.”  He maintains that it’s still possible “to find other words to describe this so-called state and its activity,” discounting the facts that Islamic State is what ISIS named itself and its state, and that ISIS clearly credits its motivation to Islam and its acts to Allah. The name Islamic State does not have to be rectified because it accurately reflects reality, defines the organization in question, and is therefore a correct term that would sit well in the world of Confucius and his doctrine on rectifying names.

Major Stephen Coughlin, an attorney, former U.S. Army intelligence officer, and the Pentagon’s leading expert on Islamic law and jihad (until he was dismissed in 2008 for linking Islam with terrorism with his Red Pill Briefings), stresses the urgency of defining the enemy as he defines himself:  “you cannot target what you will not define…if I can’t use the concepts of Jihad that Al-Qaeda say they rely on, then I can’t understand what they are going to do.”

Author of Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad, Coughlin attended the OSCE May session and responded to the OSCE jargon as follows:

“Once you decide that facts on the ground as they present themselves, can be considered hate speech, this is no longer about truth…you are subordinating facts that the public has a right to know when they formulate their decisions, and replacing them with narratives to keep them from coming to the understanding of events that can be articulated and verified.  That can never be considered hate speech. We’re not talking about speech at all. We’re talking about brazen disinformation.”

Rather than disseminate vital information to the public that can save lives, Western world leaders are betraying their citizens by submitting to the OSCE and OIC narrative of outlawing any criticism of Islam and rendering truth illegal.  Reassuring citizens that Islam is a religion of peace merely renders them incapacitated from exercising sound judgment, crippling their ability to make the right decision in the face of potential harm.

While global institutions and national security policies are being shaped, and compromised, by highly influential but ill-known world organizations such as the OSCE and OIC, it’s critical that citizens get to know who those policymakers really are, and become more engaged in public affairs and the political process in order to arrest the Islamization process of the West…before it’s too late to reverse.