Archive for the ‘Saudi Arabia’ category

Only Islam Can Save Us From Islam

May 18, 2016

Only Islam Can Save Us From Islam, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, May 18, 2016

Quran and Islam

In the Washington Post, Petraeus complained about the “inflammatory political discourse that has become far too common both at home and abroad against Muslims and Islam.” The former general warned that restricting Muslim immigration would “undermine our ability to defeat Islamist extremists by alienating and undermining the allies whose help we most need to win this fight: namely, Muslims.”

At Rutgers, Obama claimed that restricting Muslim immigration “would alienate the very communities at home and abroad who are our most important partners in the fight against violent extremism.”

If we alienate Muslims, who is going to help us fight Muslim terrorism?

You can see why Obama doesn’t mention Islamic terrorism in any way, shape or form. Once you drop the “I” word, then the argument is that you need Islam to fight Islam. And Muslims to fight Muslims.

This is bad enough in the Muslim world where we are told that we have to ally with the “moderate” Muslim governments of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to fight the Muslim terrorists whom they sponsor.

Petraeus has troublingly close ties to the Saudis. He defended their oil dumping program, praised the role of Islamic law in fighting Islamic terrorism and endorsed their Syria plans. While defending the Saudis as allies, he blamed Israel for America’s problems with the Muslim world. The narrative he was using there was the traditional Saudi one in which Israel, not Islam, is the source of the friction.

He defended Pakistan as an ally and claimed to believe the Pakistani excuses that they did not know Osama bin Laden was living right in their military center and that they really wanted to fight the Taliban.

Obama’s “partners” against “violent extremism” have included Muslim Brotherhood terror supporters at home and abroad. He backed Al Qaeda’s LIFG in Libya, Iran’s Shiite terror militias in Iraq, Al Qaeda allies in Syria and those are just a few of the worst examples of his partners against extremism.

Petraeus and Obama view terrorists and state sponsors of terror as important allies. Their policies have led to multiple terrorist attacks against Americans. And they still insist that we need Islamic terrorists as allies to protect us from Islamic terrorists. We need moderate theocrats to protect us from extremist theocrats. We need the Saudis and Pakistanis to save us from the terrorists whom they arm and fund.

But it’s Muslim immigration where their argument really shines.

The United States faces a terror threat because a certain percentage of the Muslim population will kill Americans. Every increase in the Muslim population also increases the number of potential terrorists. Muslim immigration increases the terrorism risk to Americans every single year.

These are undeniable facts.

When you’re in a hole, stop digging. Muslim populations are a hole. Immigration is the shovel. Dig deep enough and you’re six feet under.

Even if the mainstream narrative about a moderate majority and extremist minority were true, how could the cost of Islamic terrorism justify the expansion of even moderate Muslim communities?

9/11 cost us $3.3 trillion, over 10,000 dead, a national loss of privacy and traumas inflicted on millions. What could any number of moderate Muslims possibly contribute to outweigh all that? If it were a debt, it would take a thousand years to even begin balancing out those scales. And instead of trying to make amends, Muslim groups like CAIR and ISNA have waged a relentless campaign to undermine national security and defame Americans. They have refused to cooperate with law enforcement, defended terrorists and denounced America. These are our “moderate” partners.

But the Obama/Petraeus narrative about needing partners in Muslim communities in America implicitly concedes that Muslim communities at home, like the Saudis and Pakistanis abroad, create environments in which Islamic terrorists can safely operate. They admit the existence of Islamic no-go zones where the FBI and local law enforcement are ineffective so that we have to treat parts of Michigan or New Jersey like Pakistan or Iraq, trying to work with untrustworthy allies to gain intelligence on enemy territory.

We have to work with CAIR or ISNA, the way we do with the Saudis or Pakistanis, even though they’re untrustworthy, because they’re all we have in parts of America that have become enemy territory.

This argument is terrible enough in the Middle East. But it’s horrifying in the Midwest.

It’s bad enough that we sign off on “partners” who finance terrorists and then pretend to fight them in Syria or Afghanistan, do we really want to be doing this in Illinois or California?

The real problem, as Obama and Petraeus indirectly concede, is that Muslim communities create an ideal environment for Muslim terrorists. The last thing that we should be doing is building them up.

Even if Muslim communities were an asset, the Obama/Petraeus narrative is that they benefit us by helping us deal with the problems that they cause. The obvious question would be to wonder why we need them in the first place to help us cope with a problem that wouldn’t exist without them.

Obama insists that we need Muslim immigration so that Muslims will help us fight Muslim terror. But if we didn’t have Muslim immigration, we wouldn’t need Muslims to help us fight Muslim terrorism.

Muslim immigration isn’t a solution. It’s a problem posing as a solution. And we are told that we need to make the problem bigger in order to solve it. Muslim immigration has yet to reduce terrorism in any country. The increase in Muslim populations has not made Europe any safer. On the contrary, it has increased the risk of terrorism. The same is also true in Africa, Asia and across the Middle East.

The plan to reduce the risk of terrorism by increasing the Muslim population has failed around the world. Nor has it ever worked in the United States. What are the odds that it suddenly will now?

Building a counterterrorism strategy around creating more terrorism is not a strategy, it’s a suicide mission. Using Muslim immigration to fix a terrorism problem caused by Muslim immigration is like drilling a hole in a boat and then trying to plug it with water. Europe is sinking and if we don’t stop importing hundreds of thousands of Muslims, we’ll be facing the same problems that Europe does.

“It is precisely because the danger of Islamist extremism is so great that politicians here and abroad who toy with anti-Muslim bigotry must consider the effects of their rhetoric,” Petraeus insists. It’s a compelling argument, but not in the way that he thinks it is.

If Muslims can’t handle the full spectrum of argument, debate and namecalling that is a part of life in a free country without turning homicidal, then something has to go. According to Petraeus, it’s freedom of speech. According to others, it’s Muslim migration. Americans will have to decide whether they would rather have freedom of speech or Muslim immigration. Because even the advocates for Muslim migration are increasingly willing to admit that we can’t have both. The choice is ours.

Either we can hope that Islam will save us from Islam. And that Muslims will protect us from other Muslims. Or we can try to protect ourselves and save our lives and our freedoms from Islam.

IRGC routed in Syria by new missile

May 16, 2016

IRGC routed in Syria by new missile, DEBKAfile, May 16, 2016

Khan_tuman_ambush_5.16

[N]either the Iranians nor Hizballah can win the war for Assad.

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The battle on May 6 in the village of Khan Touman, located southwest of Aleppo near Route 5, the main highway leading to Damascus, will go down in the annals of the Syrian war as the biggest defeat suffered by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Hizballah, as well as the battle that changed the face of the war.

DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources report that an Iranian force consisting of IRGC troops and Hizballah was ambushed by fighters from the Jaysh al Fath organization, part of the Nusra Front.

Until this battle took place, Iranian and Hizballah commanders in Syria did not know that the rebels had received a shipment of MILAN antitank missiles provided by Turkey and funded by Saudi Arabia.

The encounter with the advanced weapon system brought the IRGC and Hizballah to rout.

The Iranians admitted that 17 of their fighters fell in the battle, including 13 from the IRGC’s “Karbala” Division that is usually based in Iran, and 22 were wounded. Among the dead were two Iranian brigadier generals. At least ten IRGC troops were taken prisoner by the rebels. Five or seven Iranian troops were executed immediately, and an unknown number were taken from the area to an undisclosed location.

Hizballah claimed that none of its troops were killed or taken prisoner. However, that statement was actually an attempt to hide that at least 15 of its fighters were killed. According to intelligence sources that monitored the battle, Hizballah’s death toll was even higher.

The defeat was a major shock to the Iranian and Hizballah hierarchies In Tehran and Beirut, and officials vowed that revenge would be coming soon.

The immediate result of the shock was the appointment of Gen. Mohsen Rezaei, commander of the IRGC 26 years ago in the 1980s, who retired years ago and was a candidate in several presidential elections.

DEBKAfile’s sources report that Rezaei is one of the only IRGC commanders to have visited many times in the West, mainly to participate in international conferences, and has spoken freely with Western military and intelligence officers on the situation in Iran and the Middle East.

It is hard to believe that he will succeed in turning the clock back for Iran and Hizballah in Syria. Rezaei’s appointment indicates confusion   or panic in the Iranian hierarchy that does not know how to respond to the defeat.

KhanTuman480

In addition, it is still not clear whether Rezaei will replace Gen. Qassem Soleimanias commander of Iran’s forces in Syria, or be subordinate to him.

DEBKAfile’s military sources point out that bringing Rezaei to Syria does not resolve Iran and Hizballah’s main military problem, as the battle in Khan Touman showed. If the rebels continue to receive advanced weapons like antitank and antiaircraft missiles, they will become superior to the three military forces fighting for Syrian President Bashar Assad, namely Iran’s standing army and IRGC troops, the Syrian army and Hizballah.

In other words, neither the Iranians nor Hizballah can win the war for Assad.

Seven days after the battle, the commander of Hizballah’s forces in Syria, Mustafa Bader Al-din, was killed by a ground-to-ground missile strike near the Damascus international airport. Later claims by various sources that he was killed in battle at Khan Touman were actually attempts to conceal the two biggest military blows suffered by the Iranians and Hizballah in Syria

American Homegrown ‘Violent Extremists’ All Linked to Islamists

May 15, 2016

American Homegrown ‘Violent Extremists’ All Linked to Islamists, Clarion Project, May 15, 2016

New-Jersey-Report-HVE-IPMap showing violent extremists in the U.S. from the recent report by the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness

[T]he Washington Free Beacon states, “Congressional attempts to investigate the immigration histories of at least 113 foreign-born individuals snagged on terror charges since 2014 have been stymied by the Obama administration. There remain at least 1,000 open investigations into ISIS members residing in the United States.”

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Amid the unprecedented rise in foiled terrorist attacks in the United States, a recent report found at least 75 “homegrown violent extremists” were operating across the U.S. in 2015. Of those extremists, nearly half tried to travel overseas – presumably to join terror groups – but only four percent succeeded.

Close to one third were found to be plotting terrorist attacks in the United States and were caught either before or after executing the attack.

Figures issued by New Jersey’s Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness show that 65 of these extremist were affiliated with the Islamic State, while the rest were linked to al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the Nusra Front, or other Islamic extremist groups and ideologies.

In addition, the New Jersey agency reported radicalized extremists were able to enter, operate and thrive in the U.S.

“In 2015, [homegrown violent extremists] demonstrated an ability to operate in New Jersey and throughout the United States while connecting with like-minded individuals online and acting independently from organized terrorist groups,” security officials said. “Since late 2014, a variety of radical groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) have encouraged [extremists] to attack in their home countries.”

Extremists were found be operating particularly up and down the East Coast as well as in Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Alabama, Kansas, Texas and southern California.

Commenting on the report, the Washington Free Beacon states, “Congressional attempts to investigate the immigration histories of at least 113 foreign-born individuals snagged on terror charges since 2014 have been stymied by the Obama administration. There remain at least 1,000 open investigations into ISIS members residing in the United States.”

In other news, a former member of the 9/11 Commission that investigated the most lethal terrorist attack in the history of the U.S. said that, contrary to the official report, a classified section said six Saudi individuals may have been involved in the attack.

John Lehman, the former commission member, revealed that one of the Saudis involved is a man who worked at the King Fahad Mosque in Culver City, California (near Los Angeles).

Lehman, along with former federal prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste called for a new investigation and the release of the 28 pages of classified documents from the original investigation.

Obama’s Animus toward Israel May Lead to War

May 15, 2016

Obama’s Animus toward Israel May Lead to War, American ThinkerVictor Sharpe and Robert Vincent, May 15, 2016

Will the looming conclusion of the Obama presidency lead him to engineer an all-out war by Iran’s terror surrogates, Hamas and Hezbollah, against the embattled Jewish state?  Will that war conveniently occur in December 2016, as Obama serves out the final days of his presidency?

Is it conceivable that the pro-Muslim president of the United States will use such a conflict to predictably and mendaciously blame Israel as a means to permanently fracture the U.S.-Israeli alliance in a manner that would be difficult for any successor to repair?  As extreme as this may sound, it is entirely possible in view of Obama’s past acts of blatant hatred toward America’s one and only true democracy and ally in the Middle East.

As should be obvious by now, Obama believes that Islam has suffered from British and European Christian colonization and oppression.  After being thoroughly prepared to be receptive to this message by his stridently anti-Western mother and maternal grandparents, such was the indoctrination Obama received from Khaled al-Mansour – a Muslim high-level adviser to Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal and anti-Jewish hate-monger – during his formative years.

It was al-Mansour who helped Obama gain admittance to the Harvard Law School.  Edward Said, an outspoken anti-Israel professor of Obama’s at Columbia University, and Rashid Khalidi, a former press agent for Yasser Arafat’s PLO, served as Obama’s mentor in the former case and friend in the latter.

These figures, whose entire professional adult lives had been essentially dedicated to eliminating Israel, focused on influencing Obama to support the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians – along with their thugocracy known as the Palestinian Authority.  These overwhelmingly Muslim terrorists amount to little more than cannon fodder in the ongoing Islamist quest to effectively perpetrate yet another Holocaust.

Thus, while Obama weakens America and disparages Western values and the tenets of Judeo-Christian civilization, he always chooses to suppress the reality of Islamic triumphalism and its appalling and inhumane history of slavery, hatred of non-Muslims, brutal Muslim conquests, and slaughter dating back to its 7th-century origins in Arabia.

This is why no one should be surprised that he would bow to a Saudi king and venerate the Islamic call of the muezzin.

Given his background, it is no wonder that Obama fell for the monumental lie that the Jewish state is also a modern colonizer, just as the European powers were.  After all, Obama’s other confidants included, as the principled and worthy Victor David Hanson recently pointed out, “the obscene Reverend Wright and reprobates like Bill Ayers and Father Michael Pfleger.”

But unlike the European colonizers who had no ancestral roots in the Middle Eastern territories they occupied, Israel is the biblical and post-biblical homeland of the Jewish people, and as the native people of its ancestral homeland, the Jews predate the Muslim invasion of Israel by millennia, as is clearly evident in the Bible, which could not have been written when and where it was otherwise.

Even though sovereignty was lost to them after the Roman destruction of the Jewish state, Jews have always lived in their native land in whatever numbers they could sustain under a succession of alien occupiers.

Despite these clearly established historical facts, modern reborn Israel and her democratically elected leader, Prime Minister Netanyahu, have been treated with unprecedented contempt by Obama and his sycophants.

This was evident early on with Obama’s support of and friendship to the Islamist Erdoğan in Turkey, who has reduced once secular Turkey to a growing totalitarian Islamic state that has openly supported terrorism against Israel, as demonstrated by the Gaza flotilla incident of 2010.

Erdoğan’s perfidy – which has included all but open support for ISIS – has in no way dampened Obama’s preferential treatment of this dictator, in contrast to his appalling treatment of Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Routinely, the State Department promotes the hypocrisy of the Obama administration by ignoring the aggression and terror of the Palestinian Authority, led by the Holocaust-denying Mahmoud Abbas and the Hamas and Islamic Jihad thugs who rule over the Gaza Strip.

In deplorable contrast, the State Department routinely attacks Israel for building homes in Jerusalem for young couples, or chiding Israel to exercise “restraint” when Israel is forced to defend itself from relentless Palestinian brutality and murder of Israeli civilians.  Was France or Belgium similarly asked to exercise “restraint” in the face of recent Muslim terrorist attacks in those countries?

This spitefulness was exhibited when the U.S., at the behest of a high-level individual in the Obama administration (wonder who!), denied visas to Israelis during Israel’s defensive Gaza war in 2014 against Hamas aggression.

Even as the barrage of thousands of rockets aimed at Israeli villages and towns from Gaza continued, this outrage was compounded when President Obama banned the much needed resupply of armaments to Israel at the height of the Hamas terror blitz and temporarily banned U.S. airlines from flying to Israel on the flimsiest of pretexts (23 international carriers – including British Airways – continued flights to Israel in spite of this ban).

Obama has also treated America’s other traditional allies with insolent disdain and cozied up to the worst enemy of freedom and liberty – namely, the Islamo-Nazi regime of Iran.

Iran’s ongoing implicit threats of nuclear warfare – against the U.S. as well as Israel – including its aggressive development of potentially nuclear-armed ICBMs, which can eventually reach the U.S., does not faze this incumbent in the White House.

The fact that this supposed nuclear “agreement” with Iran was reached, even as his very own State Department admits that Iran has yet to actually sign the agreement and even as Iranian mobs continue to chant “Death to America” to the approving nods of the Iranian mullahs, also fits into Barack Hussein Obama’s distorted world view – a deliberate policy of lies, deception, and dissimilitude.

This was admitted to by one of his closest advisers, Ben Rhodes, who recently disclosed that the Obama administration had deliberately deceived Congress and the American public about the Iran deal – as if this was something to be proud of.

Perhaps one of the most blatant examples of Obama’s anti-Western, anti-American, and anti-Israeli ideology was his support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and his reluctance to sell arms to President El-Sisi, who overthrew the Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi and his vicious anti-Christian regime after it had been in power for only two years and had wrought havoc on that country.

Obama’s support for Morsi should have come as no surprise, given the endless flow of Muslim Brotherhood activists visiting Obama’s White House and the filling of senior positions within the administration, as documented by former CIA analyst Clare Lopez.

Even today, El-Sisi fights al-Qaeda terrorism in the Sinai and the Hamas terrorists in Gaza without any apparent support or approval from Obama.

These examples of the president’s bias, his pro-Islamic sympathies, and his agenda point to a seminal hatred of not only America itself, but most pointedly of the Jewish state – this hatred may override all other practical considerations in the remaining few months of his term in office.

His parting shot at Israel may well be to force her expulsion from the United Nations and turn the Jewish state into another Taiwan.

As suggested at the beginning of this article, he might well encourage both Iranian terror proxies, Hamas in Gaza and Hezb’allah in Lebanon, to attack Israel with a massive missile bombardment sometime this coming December.

Hamas, for its own part, has thousands of lethal rockets and mortars and is feverishly building tunnels into Israeli territory in the hope of sending its terrorist hordes into Israeli villages and towns and slaughtering as many civilians as possible.  Hezb’allah, on the other hand, is estimated to have more than 150 thousand missiles and rockets aimed at all of Israel, hidden in Lebanese schools, hospitals, and apartments.

Even as the deliberate use of civilians as human shields is explicitly spelled out by the Geneva Conventions as a crime against humanity, and though Israel would have no choice but to inflict substantial civilian casualties in her own defense, this circumstance would naturally be used as a pretext by the U.N. to punish Israel in an unprecedented manner.

They would do so knowing that for the first time, an American president would likely stand by and approve whatever the U.N. anti-Israel “lynch mob” might concoct in order to further isolate and delegitimize the Jewish state.  This might include severe economic sanctions or embargoes or might even involve expulsion of Israel from the U.N. entirely.

It should be emphasized here that once the American national election is over, there will be nothing to stop Obama from doing this.  Obama’s entire foreign policy has revolved around undermining Israel.  Such an action on his part in the closing weeks of his administration can be seen as not only possible, but likely, given the pattern of his behavior toward Israel for the whole of his presidency.

This latter punishment would suit Israel’s enemies very well, even though it would change nothing on the ground.  An Israel reduced to a Taiwan-like status – i.e., a de facto sovereign state not officially recognized as such by the U.N. – would obviate the need for Gulf Arabs (who are covertly making common cause with Israel against Iran) to establish any formal diplomatic relations with her.

The “Zionist entity,” as their official propaganda impudently puts it, would remain just that.  This might even, in rhetorical terms, satisfy the requirement of Iran’s mullahs to “wipe Israel from the map.”  What is more, once Israel is expelled from the U.N., it would be very difficult for any future U.S. president, no matter how pro-Israel, to successfully support Israel’s re-admittance into the U.N.

As is the case with Taiwan, the U.S. may maintain a commitment to supplying Israel with arms and supporting her efforts at self-defense, but in practical terms, that may be the extent of the relationship, even in the best-case scenario surrounding Israel’s expulsion from the U.N. under Obama during his final days in office.

While such a turn of events may sound far-fetched to even some of those most critical of Obama, it is entirely possible in view of Obama’s past acts of blatant hatred toward America’s one and only true ally and democracy in the Middle East.

 

Germany: “We Need an Islam Law”

April 28, 2016

Germany: “We Need an Islam Law” Gatestone InstituteSoeren Kern, April 28, 2016

♦ “All imams need to be trained in Germany and share our core values. … It cannot be that we are importing different, partly extreme values from other countries. German must be the language of the mosques. Enlightened Europe must cultivate its own Islam.” – Andreas Scheuer, the General Secretary of the Christian Social Union party (CSU).

♦ The Turkish government has sent 970 clerics — most of whom do not speak German — to lead 900 mosques in Germany that are controlled by a branch of the Turkish government’s Directorate for Religious Affairs. Turkish clerics in Germany are effectively Turkish civil servants who do the bidding of the Turkish government.

♦ Erdogan has repeatedly warned Turkish immigrants not to assimilate into German society. During a trip to Berlin in November 2011, Erdogan declared: “Assimilation is a violation of human rights.”

A senior German politician has called for an “Islam law” that would limit the influence of foreign imams and prohibit the foreign financing of mosques in Germany.

The proposal — modelled on the Islam Law promulgated in Austria in February 2015 — is aimed at staving off extremism and promoting Muslim integration by developing a moderate “European Islam.”

The move comes amid revelations that the Turkish government is paying the salaries of nearly 1,000 conservative imams in Germany who are leading mosques across the country. In addition, Saudi Arabia recently pledged to finance the construction of 200 mosques in Germany to serve migrants there.

In an interview with the newspaper Die Welt, Andreas Scheuer, the General Secretary of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), said that Berlin should restrict Turkish financing of mosques in Germany and begin training and certifying its own imams. Otherwise, he argued, Muslim integration will be difficult or impossible to achieve. He said:

“We need to become more critical in our dealings with political Islam, because it hinders Muslim integration in our country. We need an Islam Law. The financing of mosques or Islamic kindergartens from abroad, e.g. from Turkey or Saudi Arabia, should be banned. All imams need to be trained in Germany and share our core values.

“It cannot be that we are importing different, partly extreme values from other countries. German must be the language of the mosques. Enlightened Europe must cultivate its own Islam.

“We are still at the beginning of our efforts. We must start now. We cannot on the one hand enact an Integration Law and on the other side close our eyes to what is being preached in mosques and by whom.”

Scheuer’s comments come amid reports that the Turkish government has sent 970 clerics — most of whom do not speak German — to lead 900 mosques in Germany that are controlled by the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB), a branch of the Turkish government’s Directorate for Religious Affairs, known in Turkish as Diyanet.

Successive German governments are responsible for this state of affairs. An essay in Der Tagesspiegel states: “Over past decades, the federal government has welcomed the fact that the Turkish religious authority exercises a great influence on German mosques. Turkey was considered a secular state, and their influence was viewed as a shield against religious extremism.”

This was before Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan embarked on a mission to turn the formerly secular nation an Islamic country.

According to Die Welt, Erdogan has increased the size, scope and power of the Diyanet, which now has a budget of 6.4 Turkish lira ($2.3 billion; €1.8 billion), which is more than the budgets of 12 Turkish government ministries, including the interior ministry and the foreign ministry. The Diyanet now has 120,000 employees, up from 72,000 in 2004.

The Turkish clerics in Germany are effectively Turkish civil servants who do the bidding of the Turkish government. Critics accuse Erdogan of using DITIB mosques to prevent Turkish migrants from integrating into German society.

German politician Cem Özdemir, co-chairman of the Green Party, said that DITIB is “nothing more than an extended arm of the Turkish state.” He added: “Rather than being a legitimate religious organization, the Turkish government has turned DITIB into a political front organization of Erdogan’s AKP party. Turkey must let go of the Muslims in Germany.”

Erdogan has repeatedly warned Turkish immigrants not to assimilate into German society.

1567 (1)The Cologne Central Mosque, run by DITIB, is used as a key base in Germany for Turkey’s intelligence agency, where they run a local “thug squad” to mete out “tough punishments” to Turkish dissidents in Germany. (Image source: © Raimond Spekking/CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

During a trip to Berlin in November 2011, Erdogan declared: “Assimilation is a violation of human rights.” In February 2011, Erdogan told a crowd of more than 10,000 Turkish immigrants in Düsseldorf: “We are against assimilation. No one should be able to rip us away from our culture and civilization.” In February 2008, Erdogan told 16,000 Turkish immigrants in Cologne that “assimilation is a crime against humanity.”

For his part, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman recently announced a plan to finance the construction of 200 mosques in Germany to provide for the spiritual needs migrants and refugees who arrived there in 2015. The mosques would, presumably, adhere to Wahhabism, the official and dominant form of Sunni Islam in Saudi Arabia. Wahhabism is an austere form of Islam that insists on a literal interpretation of the Koran.

On April 11, Hans-Georg Maassen, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (BfV), expressed alarm at the growing number of radical Arab-language mosques in Germany. “Many mosques are dominated by fundamentalists and are being monitored because of their Salafist orientation,” Maassen said in an interview with Welt am Sonntag. He added that many of the mosques were being financed by donors in Saudi Arabia.

It remains uncertain, however, whether Merkel will back the “Islam Law,” which is certain to antagonize Erdogan, who effectively controls the floodgates of Muslim mass migration to Europe. If Merkel were openly to support a ban on foreign financing of mosques in Germany, Erdogan likely would threaten to pull out of the EU-Turkey deal on migrants, a deal Merkel desperately needs to stanch the flow of mass migration to Germany. It is yet another indication of the tremendous leverage Erdogan has gained over Merkel and German policymaking.

Germany’s coalition government has, however, reached a compromise deal on a new “Integration Law.”

On April 14, Merkel announced the broad outlines of the law, which will spell out the rights and responsibilities of migrants in Germany. Under the law, the text of which will be finalized by May 24, asylum seekers must attend German language classes and integration training or have their benefits cut.

The government pledged to make it easier for asylum seekers to gain access to the German labor market by promising to create 100,000 new “working opportunities.” The government will also suspend a law requiring employers to give preference to German or EU job applicants over asylum seekers.

In an effort to prevent the spread of migrant ghettoes in Germany, the new law, which is expected to enter into force this summer, will prohibit refugees from choosing where they live until they have secured asylum. Migrants who abandon state-assigned housing would face unspecified sanctions.

The new law also includes a counter-terrorism provision, which would allow German intelligence agencies to work more closely with their European, NATO and Israeli counterparts.

“We will have a German law on integration,” Merkel said. “This is the first time in post-war Germany that this has happened. It is an important, qualitative step.”

But critics say the proposed law does not go far enough because it does not threaten with deportation those migrants who refuse to integrate. In his interview with Die Welt, Scheuer insisted that Muslim immigrants must integrate or be deported:

“Anyone who fails to attend integration and language courses attests that they are not prepared to integrate and accept our values. Moreover, it is important that people who want to stay in Germany register with the Federal Employment Agency [Bundesagentur für Arbeit] and provide for their own livelihood. The message is clear: Those who are not integrated cannot stay here. We need to cease having romantic views of integration. Multiculturalism has failed. Those who are not integrated must count on deportation.”

US Sinai pullback payback for islands handover

April 27, 2016

US Sinai pullback payback for islands handover, DEBKAfile, April 27, 2016

RedSeaBab2

The US withdrew its forces from the Sinai Peninsula last weekend in retaliation for Egypt’s transfer of sovereignty over Tiran and Sanafir islands to Saudi Arabia, according to DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources. They also report that the move came after Washington protested to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi over its exclusion from the consultations and military coordination between Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Israel regarding the islands.

The US message was clear. Since Riyadh, Cairo and Jerusalem do not report their military steps in the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea to Washington, the US sees no need to inform them of its military steps in the Sinai.

That message was conveyed by the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joseph F. Dunford, to the Egyptian president during their meeting on Saturday, April 23 in Cairo.

On Tuesday, DEBKAfile’s military sources reported that several days earlier the US military secretly withdrew about 100 of its officers and enlisted men from the multinational peacekeeping force in the northern part of the Sinai. As far as Riyadh, Cairo and Jerusalem are concerned, there is no doubt that it was a retaliatory measure.

US sources refused to specify the current location of the troops. The American force was withdrawn from El Gorah base, located next to the town of Sheikh Zuweid. Gen. Dunford told al-Sisi that the Obama administration is no longer willing to maintain forces in the northern Sinai following the recent shelling of the base by the ISIS affiliate in the restive area. The incident marked the terrorist organization’s first attack on US troops in the Sinai, but its second on an American force in the Middle East.

On March 19, ISIS shelled Fire Base Bell, a US marine base in Makhmur, northern Iraq, about 77 kilometers southeast of the terrorist organization’s de facto capital of Mosul. One marine was killed.

It was not by chance that shortly before he visited Cairo, Gen. Dunford made a visit lasting no more than 90 minutes to the US forward base to award purple hearts to four marines for their bravery during the ISIS shelling.

But while Washington is determined to maintain Fire Base Bell, where it has deployed HIMARS rocket launchers that can fire GPS-guided rockets known as GMLRS capable of reaching Mosul, and awards medals to soldiers serving at the base, it is not ready to treat its soldiers in the Sinai in the same manner because they have the status of multinational observers. Rather than giving out medals, it withdrew those soldiers immediately after the first ISIS attack.

At the same time, US sources launched an unprecedented personal attack on Egypt’s president over his decision to hand over the two islands to Riyadh. Articles attacking El-Sisi’s policy started to appear in the American media, with one saying “The decision to transfer the islands to Saudi Arabia may be the final nail in Sissi’s coffin.” It also described Egypt as being on the verge of a revolution against al-Sisi.

Two other Middle Eastern figures who were involved in Cairo’s decision regarding the islands were Saudi Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammad bin Salman and Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, who said recently that Cairo consulted Jerusalem regarding the transfer of the islands. However, his comment was not mentioned in US media reports, as if the development was not related to Saudi Arabia or Israel.

DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources report that one of the main reasons for Washington’s rage was the fact that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel decided to establish and coordinate by themselves a regional defense mechanism covering the Suez Canal, the gulfs of Suez and Aqaba, and the Red Sea.

The Obama administration prefers to ignore the fact that the US withdrawal of its naval and air forces from those areas over the last three years has enabled the Iranian fleet to start operating in those waters.

The Sweet Face of Islam

April 23, 2016

The Sweet Face of Islam, American Thinker, Richard Butrick, April 23, 2016

(The reference to Trump’s “misguided remarks that due to terrorist attacks (San Bernardino) Muslims in America needed to wear identification. . . .” provides no citation as to where he said it. Even Snopes, a generally left wing site, states that he did not say it.– DM) 

After a nasty terrorist attack one can expect to read about how unrepresentative of the true doctrines of Islam such acts are. Not infrequently we are treated to the remarks of an attractive young Muslim woman explaining that Islam is the religion of peace, inclusion and justice for all. Usually we are reassured that Muslims love America and are patriotic, Constitution-supporting citizens. Recently, Republican Muslim Coalition President Saba Ahmed draped in an American flag, proclaimed that she was a proud, patriotic American. After Trump’s misguided remarks that due to terrorist attacks (San Bernardino) Muslims in America needed to wear identification, the Facebook post of Marwa Balkar went viral:

I chose the peace sign because it represents my #Islam. The one that taught me to oppose #injustice and yearn for #unity. The one that taught me that killing one innocent life is equivalent to killing humanity.

One is naturally inclined to believe that someone who is a Muslim and is brought up in a Muslin community knows whereof he/she speaks. And that may be quite correct as regards their assessment of the attitudes of their own community. But it does not follow that that they speak with great knowledge of the Koran or Sunnah or of Sharia law. Even less does it follow that they understand the ultimate agenda of the various Islamic front groups in the U.S. that are affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood or the Wahhabi supported fronts of Saudi Arabia. They may be recruited by such organizations to put a nice face on Islam but that hardly means that that is what the ultimate agenda is of such organizations.

As a case in point, here is an interesting account of the rude awakening of a Muslim American who grew up in a patriotic Muslim community in Hamtramck, Michigan.

As a Muslim growing up in the United States, I was taught by my imams and the community around me that Islam is a religion of peace. My family modeled love for others and love for country, and not just by their words. My father served in the U.S. Navy throughout my childhood, starting as a seaman and retiring as a lieutenant commander. I believed wholeheartedly a slogan often repeated at my mosque after 9/11: “The terrorists who hijacked the planes also hijacked Islam.”

Yet as I began to investigate the Quran and the traditions of Muhammad’s life for myself in college, I found to my genuine surprise that the pages of Islamic history are filled with violence. How could I reconcile this with what I had always been taught about Islam?

The point being that in the last analysis the rank and file and acolytes of Islam can be led to believe whatever their handlers at the time find it tactically expedient for them to believe as they are led down road to Islam Uber Alles. In particular, what matters is the real agenda and beliefs of Islam’s front organizations and their leaders. And what is maddeningly incompressible about that is the extent to which the Muslim Brotherhood and the Saudis have been able to dupe U.S. leadership. Hiding behind the Islamophobia ruse, front groups in the U.S. have suckered the Obama administration into believing in the patriotic, constitution supporting sweet face of Islam, here are the real agendas.

The Saudi agenda. For decades, the Saudis sent ambassadors who were “just like us,” drinking expensive scotch, partying hard, playing tennis with our own political royalty, and making sure that American corporations and key individuals made money. A lot of money. In return the Saudi’s got to fund their Wahhabi supremacist, Jew hating, female subjugating message in their mosques and madrassahs. This despite the fact that the Saudis would never let us fund a church or synagogue in Saudi Arabia.

And the 28 pages excised from the 9/11 Commission’s report? Those pages allegedly document Saudi complicity. Our own government kept those revelations from the American people. Because, even after 9/11, the Saudis were “our friends.”

The Muslim Brotherhood agendaThe Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 by Islamic cleric (and Hitler admirer) Hassan al-Banna after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

The group seeks as its end-game to install a Sunni Islamic caliphate throughout the world. The explicit goal of the Muslim Brotherhood. as stated by al-Banna, is that given that is the nature “of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.” Both former Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden and ISIS “caliph” Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi were members of the Brotherhood. Its current spiritual leader, Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, has a knack for bashing Jews and praising Nazis. The Muslim Brotherhood’s motto remains: “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”

Yet the president continues to regard the various front groups of MB as legitimate organization combating Islamophobia and acting as “rational agents” in the political arena. In fact, he has just had the leaders of the following Islamic front organization over to the White House on Muslim Brotherhood Day: CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations); MPAC (Muslim Public Affairs Counci); ISNA (Islamic Society of North America).

All these groups have funneled money to terrorist groups, regard Israel as a terrorist nation and reject the designation of Hamas and Hizb’allah as terrorist groups. And, most importantly, support the imposition of Sharia.

Hijacked Islam? When Muslims (Sunni, Shia) have the upper hand is there any other kind? Meanwhile Islam’s useful idiots dance the taqiyya on the yellow brick road to dhimmitude.

 

Saudi Influence in Washington Must End

April 22, 2016

Saudi Influence in Washington Must End, Front Page Magazine, Robert Spencer, April 22, 2016

buddies

The 28 pages of a Congressional report detailing where the 9/11 hijackers got their financing have been classified for years, but what they contain is an open secret. Former Senator Bob Graham explained: “The 28 pages primarily relate to who financed 9/11, and they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier.” So why keep this information secret? Because the Saudis wield undue influence in Washington, among both parties – an influence that has deformed our response to the global jihad threat, and continues to do so.

Responding to a bill that would allow 9/11 victims’ families to sue governments linked to terror attacks inside the U.S., the Saudis have acted like neither an ally nor an innocent party: they’ve threatened to sell $750 billion in U.S. asserts, vividly demonstrating why their influence in Washington is so detrimental.

Nonetheless, they still have a friend in Barack Obama, a man who has never hesitated to reach out in friendship to those who threaten the United States. Obama is trying to get Congress to reject the bill, and his solicitude for the Saudis is drawing criticism even from members of his own party. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) called on him to release the 28 pages: “If the president is going to meet with the Saudi Arabian leadership and the royal family, they think it would be appropriate that this document be released before the president makes that trip, so that they can talk about whatever issues are in that document.”

The New York Daily News, normally a reliable Democratic Party organ, fumed: “If the President allows himself to get pushed around this way in front of the world, then he earns every bit of the anger being directed at him by the extended family of September 11.”

Of course, all too many Republicans are just as much in the tank for the Saudis as the Democrats. CBS News reported on September 30, 2001, on George W. Bush’s watch, that “two dozen members of Osama bin Laden’s family were urgently evacuated from the United States in the first days following the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, according to the Saudi ambassador to Washington.” If Hitler had had twenty-four relatives on U.S. soil on December 8, 1941, would FDR have urgently evacuated them to Berlin?

The FBI under both Bush and Obama has likewise been an apparently willing servant of the Saudis. The Miami Herald reported on July 1, 2014 that “freshly released but heavily censored FBI documents include tantalizing new information about events connected to the Sarasota Saudis who moved suddenly out of their home about two weeks before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, leaving behind clothing, jewelry and cars….This release suggests that the FBI has covered up information that is vitally important to public safety.” These “Sarasota Saudis” were a family that abruptly fled the country shortly before 9/11, “leaving behind three vehicles, food in the refrigerator and toys in the swimming pool.” Mohammed Atta may have visited their home. Yet for years, the FBI insisted that they had nothing to do with the 9/11 jihad plot, and has been extremely reticent about sharing information about their investigation. Whom is the FBI protecting, and why?

Meanwhile, the Saudis have spent untold billions of dollars spreading their Wahhabi ideology, including material such as “Jihad: The Forgotten Obligation,” in areas of the Islamic world where jihad had indeed been forgotten, largely if not completely. The Saudis have, in reawakening Muslims to this obligation, set the world on fire: al-Qaeda was a product of the Wahhabi ideology, and the Islamic State, with its unquenchable desire to commit as many jihad mass murder attacks as possible on American soil, despises the House of Saud and is determined to overthrow it but is nevertheless its demon child. The Saudis remain one of the world’s chief financiers of jihad terror.

This is an ally of the United States? No. The Saudis are not an ally of the U.S. and have not been since 9/11 and before. A presidential candidate who really wants to strike a blow against the global jihad would vow to release the 28 pages and to stand up to the Saudis’ threats, and to break the Saudis’ economic hold on the U.S. by putting the full weight of the U.S. government behind offshore drilling, oil pipelines, fracking, and the development of alternative energy sources.

In 1942, Franklin Delano Roosevelt not only wasn’t making sure that Hitler’s relatives were safely back home; he also wasn’t meeting with the Führer to discuss a German-U.S. alliance. It is long past time that the United States stop behaving like a weak client state of the House of Saud.

 

Obama in Riyadh: Iran nuclear deal sign of ‘strength, not weakness’

April 21, 2016

Obama in Riyadh: Iran nuclear deal sign of ‘strength, not weakness’ Washington ExaminerSusan Crabtree, April 21, 2016

Obama in Saudi ArabiaPresident Obama said, “Even as Iran is calling us the great Satan, we were able to get a deal done that reduces their nuclear stockpiles. That’s not a sign of weakness, that’s a sign of strength.” (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Obama vigorously defended his nuclear negotiations at the end of a summit of Persian Gulf state leaders and a rocky visit to Saudi Arabia aimed at reassuring the anxious ally and seeking more support for the fight against the Islamic State.

While the president acknowledged Saudi concern that the United States should not be “naïve” when dealing with Iran, he cited previous presidents’ willingness to engage in talks with Russia during the height of the Cold War as models to follow.

“John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan still negotiated with the Soviet Union even when the Soviet Union was threatening the destruction of the U.S.,” he said.

“That’s the same approach we have to take. Even as Iran is calling us the great Satan, we were able to get a deal done that reduces their nuclear stockpiles. That’s not a sign of weakness, that’s a sign of strength.”

Obama said he told Gulf leaders that the U.S. has to operate on a “dual track” with Iran in order to “be effective in our defense and hold Iran to account.

“But we also have to have the capacity to enter into a dialogue to reduce tensions and identify ways in which we [can engage] more reasonable forces inside of Iran and negotiate with the countries in the region so we don’t see an escalation and proxy fight across the region.”

Obama’s statement came the day after tensions flared between Obama and Saudi King Salman during a meeting Wednesday night that lasted more than two hours.

Afterward, the White House tried to tamp down talk of the frayed relationship by saying the meeting helped “clear the air” between the two leaders.

“I think it was a very open and honest discussion where they were able to address a whole range of issues … some of which we have been in agreement on and some [which have been] a source of tensions,” said Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes.

Saudi Therapist Gives Advice on Wife Beating: Women’s Desire for Equality Causes Marital Strife

April 20, 2016

Saudi Therapist Gives Advice on Wife Beating: Women’s Desire for Equality Causes Marital Strife, MEMRI-TV via You Tube, April 19, 2016

According to the blurb following the video,

In an online video, Saudi family therapist Khaled Al-Saqaby imparted advice on marital strife. Beating one’s wife, said Al-Saqaby, should be intended as a means of discipline, rather than to vent one’s anger, and should be carried out not with a rod or a sharp object, but with a tooth-cleaning twig or a handkerchief. “Unfortunately, some wives want to live a life of equality with their husband,” he said. “This is a very grave problem.” The video was posted on the Internet on February 24, 2016.