Posted tagged ‘Europe’

Op-Ed: The West Cannot Win this War

January 19, 2015

Op-Ed: The West Cannot Win this War, Israel National News, Giulio Meotti, January 19, 2015

(Can’t win, or refuses to win? — DM)

Take another look at the video filmed under the Charlie Hebdo’s building, the black car of the terrorists who had no fear of death and are advancing by shooting, while the white car of the policemen is forced to retreat.

We are capitulating.

The West cannot win this war. Take the last French mass rally with dozens of heads of states from around the world: it was a silent march, a mute show where nobody took the podium. As if these people didn’t know what to say. As if these Western leaders didn’t really believe in what they were doing in Paris.

A few days ago, Martin Wolf in the British daily Financial Times gave voice to the deep estrangement of Europe’s élite. He suggested using massive doses of multicultural recognition of equality between different cultures in order to combat Islamism. Mr. Wolf is implicitly saying that we must surrender, that we cannot win, that we have to contain terror and finally find a way to coexist with it.

The French horror doesn’t lie in the killings per se. A few hours later, in Nigeria, Boko Haram destroyed many villages and burned hundreds of people to death. Europe’s horror lies in the fact that the terrorists came from the heart of the continent. The Chouaci’s brothers, the British bombers and Theo Van Gogh’s killer didn’t came from Raqqa, in Syria, or Al Qaeda in Yemen. No, they were born and raised in European democracies.

Europe gave everything to these terrorists: schools, education, entartainment, sexual pleasures, salaries and freedom. The French terrorists rejected the French values of liberté, egalité and fraternité; the British suicide bombers rejected British multiculturalism, while Dutch terrorist Mohammed Bouyeri, who slaughtered the film maker in Amsterdam, rejected the Dutch mute values of moral indifference.

A few days ago, I was talking with Flemming Rose, the Danish journalist who first published the cartoons in 2006 and now lives protected by the police. He told me the shocking truth nobody wants to hear:

“I am pretty pessimistic about the future of free speech, though I am delighted that so many people came out to support Charlie Hebdo”, Rose told me. “I knew several of the cartoonists who were killed, and I was a witness in a criminal case against CH in 2007. My fear is that this support will not translate into real decisions and changed behavior when we get back to our day-to-day life. We have seen that before. Madrid 2004, Theo van Gogh 2004, London 2005, Kurt Westergaard 2008 and 2010 (one planned attack and another real attack in which he was nearly killed). Every time lots of support and solidarity with the victims, but very little has changed in reality, quite to the contrary, apart from CH no European newspapers have dared to publish Mohammed cartoons since 2008”.

Charlie Hebdo’s journalists were brave people, defiant, but if they are the Western heroes, we have already lost. “Charb” and the other cartoonists didn’t believe in anything.

A few years ago, at my newspaper in Italy. I suggested we publish a letter that Mohammed Bouyeri released from his Dutch prison. Bouyeri says he does not feel remorse for what he did. The tone of the letter is marked by a kind of puerile candor. Bouyeri never mentions Van Gogh, but he makes it clear that he has fulfilled a religious duty by killing him.

The West cannot win this war. The price it would have to pay is the loss of European values: reducing the civil rights of many people, deporting them, declaring a war of values, sending boots on the ground in the Middle East, imposing Western civilization on them. Europe will never do that. Europe itself doesn’t believe in these values anymore. This is also one of the reason why Europe hates Israeli Jews who daily confront evil and fight it, so deeply.

The terrorists of Charlie Hebdo talk a religious language and use terms like honor, faith, prophet and loyalty, while the West replies to them with words such as freedom, democracy, rights, respect and tolerance. They speak theology, we reply with logic. They use bullets, we march in the streets.

It is a sad joke. The truth is that people in the West are relieved that they don’t have to fight, that we are surrendering, that life goes on as usual. Hurray, we are capitulating!

German Anti-Islam PEGIDA Cancels Rally Over Death Threat from ISIS

January 18, 2015

German Anti-Islam PEGIDA Cancels Rally Over Death Threat from ISIS

via German Anti-Islam PEGIDA Cancels Rally Over Death Threat from ISIS – Breitbart.

 

By Breitbart News 18 Jan 2015

Dresden (Germany) (AFP) – Germany’s anti-Islamic PEGIDA movement said it has cancelled a planned march on Monday, citing a death threat against organisers from the Islamic State jihadist group.

“Cancelled! Dear friends, unfortunately we must cancel our 13th meeting due to security concerns,” the group “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident” said on its Facebook page on Sunday.

“What in police jargon is called an ‘abstract threat’ has changed to a ‘concrete death threat’ against a member of the organising team. IS terrorists have ordered his assassination.”

Germany’s Der Spiegel news weekly reported Friday that foreign intelligence services had picked up communications by some “known international jihadists”, without giving specific details.

The intelligence, which was passed to German authorities, indicated they had discussed possible attacks on PEGIDA rallies.

“We take these leads very seriously,” Spiegel quoted an unnamed high-ranking security official as saying.

PEGIDA said it had discussed the threat with state police and the internal security agency.

It had decided to scrap the event in the eastern city of Dresden as it could not guarantee the security of marchers and feared “collateral damage”.

Top-circulation daily Bild said in an online report that the threat targeted PEGIDA founder Lutz Bachmann.

Dresden police declined immediate comment.

PEGIDA marches began in Dresden with several hundred supporters three months ago and have steadily grown, to number 25,000 last Monday, five days after the attacks in Paris by Islamists in which 17 people were killed.

Iranian Exports to Europe Jump by 63% in November

January 18, 2015

Iranian Exports to Europe Jump by 63% in November, Tasnim News Agency [Iranian], January 18, 2015

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TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The value of Iran’s exports to the 28 members of the European Union (EU) in November 2014 has witnessed a 63 percent increase, compared to the same month in 2013, data released by the Eurostat showed.

The EU imports from the Islamic Republic in November 2014 reached 134 million euros, showing a 63 percent rise, compared to the same period last year, in which the figure stood at €82 million, according to the Eurostat.

Meanwhile, trade turnover between Iran and the EU member states during November 2014 also jumped by 18 percent hitting €693 million.

The figure in November 2013 had amounted to €585 million, the data indicated.

According to the report, the total value of EU exports to Iran in November 2014 amounted to €559 million, indicating an 11 percent increase compared with November 2013, in which the figure stood at €503 million.

Following the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s “constructive interaction” policy with the world since August 2013, a whole host of Western companies have been vying for Iran’s market, particularly after an interim nuclear deal between Tehran and six major world powers.

 

Don’t ignore the writing on the wall

January 16, 2015

Don’t ignore the writing on the wall, Israel Hayom, Yoram Ettinger, January 16, 2015

(It’s much easier and much less stressful to look forward to hope and change. Briefly. –DM)

Since the 1993 Oslo Accord, Western democracies have refrained from reading the writing on the Palestinian (Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas) wall: hate education in grades K-12; unprecedented terrorism; systematic noncompliance with agreements; naming squares, streets and tournaments after terrorists; monthly allowances for families of terrorists; responding to Israeli withdrawals with intensified terror.

Hitler’s master plan was outlined in 1925-26 in the two volumes of the supremacist, anti-Jewish “Mein Kampf” (“My Struggle”), which is currently a best-seller in the Muslim world, particularly in Iran and the Palestinian Authority.

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In 539 B.C.E., Babylonian King Belshazzar ignored the writing on the wall — as interpreted by the Prophet Daniel — and was, therefore, annihilated by the Persians (Daniel 5).

In 2015, Western civilizations must read the writing on the wall, desist from ambiguity, denial and political correctness and embrace clarity, realism and political incorrectness, in order to survive and overcome the clear and present lethal threat of Islamic takeover, which is gathering momentum via demographic, political and terroristic means.

History proves that Western ambiguity and the refusal to identify enemies — due to ignorance, gullibility, oversimplification, appeasement, delusion and wishful thinking — have taken root, yielding major strategic setbacks and painful economic and human losses. When it comes to reading the writing on the wall, Western eyesight has been far from 20:20, dominated by modern day Belshazzars, ignoring modern day Daniels.

For example, during the 1930s, the writing was on the wall in glaring letters: Germany abrogated the Treaty of Versailles, which called for German disarmament, reparations and territorial concessions; German military spending skyrocketed, military conscription was reintroduced and the Rhineland was remilitarized; Germany withdrew from the League of Nations and annexed Austria. Still, on September 30, 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich Pact, declaring “peace for our time.” He refused to recognize Hitler’s strategic, global, supremacist goal, assuming that Hitler’s appetite could be satisfied with a tactical, limited gain in Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland, signing a “peace accord” that triggered the “war of all wars.”

Hitler’s master plan was outlined in 1925-26 in the two volumes of the supremacist, anti-Jewish “Mein Kampf” (“My Struggle”), which is currently a best-seller in the Muslim world, particularly in Iran and the Palestinian Authority.

During 1977-79, U.S. President Jimmy Carter did not read the writing on the wall, supporting the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s battle against the Shah of Iran, who was, in fact, the U.S.’s policeman in the Persian Gulf. Overwhelmed by denial and wishful thinking, and heavily influenced by the U.S. foreign policy establishment, Carter ignored the litany of sermons delivered by Khomeini, which exposed the Iranian cleric as an enemy of Western civilization and civil liberties. He despised the U.S. and aligned himself with the enemies of the U.S., while protected by a Palestinian PLO praetorian guard. Thus, the U.S. betrayal of the Shah eliminated a most effective and loyal strategic partner of the U.S., gave rise to the most lethal, conventional and nonconventional threat to vital U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf, the Middle East and beyond and generated a robust tailwind to Islamic terrorism.

In 1990, on the eve of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, the U.S. stated that an Iraq-Kuwait military clash would be an intra-Arab, rather than a U.S., concern. The Bush/Baker administration assumed that “the enemy of my enemy [Iran] is my friend [Iraq],” supplying Saddam with dual-use sensitive systems, providing him with $5 billion loan guarantees and concluding a U.S.-Iraq intelligence sharing agreement. The 1990 policy of denial triggered a conventional conflict, a $1.25 trillion cost to the U.S. taxpayer, 4,500 U.S. military fatalities, a surge of anti-U.S. Islamic terrorism and a dramatic destabilization of the Persian Gulf.

Since the 1993 Oslo Accord, Western democracies have refrained from reading the writing on the Palestinian (Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas) wall: hate education in grades K-12; unprecedented terrorism; systematic noncompliance with agreements; naming squares, streets and tournaments after terrorists; monthly allowances for families of terrorists; responding to Israeli withdrawals with intensified terror.

In 2011, Western democracies denied the eruption of an Arab tsunami, welcoming the violence on the Arab Street as an Arab Spring that would transition the Arabs toward democracy. The Obama administration embraced the Muslim Brotherhood (while giving a cold shoulder to Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi), refusing to recognize its well-documented intra-Arab terrorism, the offshoot of its motto: “Allah is our objective; the Quran is the constitution; the prophet is our leader; jihad is our way; death for the sake of Allah is our wish.”

The 2015 failure to carefully read the Iranian writing on the wall could produce a nuclear conflict that would cost the U.S. taxpayer trillions of dollars, incur an unprecedented level of fatalities, spark a tidal wave of Islamic terrorism throughout the globe, including in the U.S., decimate the pro-U.S. Arab regimes in the Persian Gulf and Jordan, create an unprecedented disruption of the supply of Persian Gulf oil, further radicalization of the anti-U.S. regime in Venezuela with ripple effects in Latin America, including Mexico, and additional tectonic eruptions of insanity throughout the globe.

At stake is not only freedom of expression and the safety of European Jewry, but the survival of Western democracies.

Solidarity demonstrations and eloquent speeches will not spare Western democracies the wrath of Islamic terrorism and domination, unless accompanied by clarity, realism and the willingness to take military, legislative and political action to thwart the writing on the walls of the mosques: submission of humanity to the Prophet Muhammad; submission of the Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh and Jewish kuffar (“infidel”) to Muslims and to Shariah laws; jihad — holy war on behalf of Islam — is the duty of Muslims; waqf — Muslim land — is ordained by Allah; Dar al-Islam (the residence of Islam) must take over Dar al-Harb (the residence of war); and Islam-sanctioned taqiyya (dissimulation, deception and concealment of inconvenient data) aimed at shielding Islam and “believers” from “disbelievers.”

Isolated incidents or global war?

January 16, 2015

Isolated incidents or global war? Israel Hayom, Dore Gold, January 16, 2015

[V]irtually all these radical Islamic leaders see themselves as in no less than a civilizational battle with the West. There have been those who do not want to depict this struggle in this way, including those in the West who, out of political correctness, refuse to discuss the threat of radical Islam.

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In response to the first attack in Paris on the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, a member of a jihadi forum, affiliated with ISIS, wrote a very striking explanation as to why France in particular was targeted. As is usual in the jihadi world, which seeks to return to the early days of Islam centuries ago, history played an important role in his thinking: “France was one part of the Islamic land and it will be Islamic again.

What was he talking about? For years, global jihadi organizations have issued calls to retake al-Andalus, the Arabic name for Spain and those parts of the Iberian peninsula when they were held by the Muslims from 711 until 1492. This last summer ISIS members produced a video calling for the liberation of al-Andalus. But, it is often forgotten that shortly after the conquest of Spain, an Arab army crossed the Pyrenees and occupied territories that today are part of France. Having captured Bordeaux, it was met and defeated in 732 by a Frankish army led by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours — some 200 miles from Paris. Even after this historical battle, Arab armies did not halt their efforts to seize French territory. They in fact reached Lyons and threatened to occupy all of Provence. In fact, parts of France remained under Islamic rule until 759, when Narbonne, the main base of the invading Arab armies, fell.

Whether or not the attack in France was motivated by such historical memories, the passion to recover lost territories that were once under Islamic rule is a theme running through most of the organizations associated with the global jihadist network. It was no less than Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, who first articulated this theme: “Andalusia, Sicily, the Balkans, South Italy and Roman Sea Islands were all Islamic lands that had to be restored to the homeland of Islam; the Mediterranean and Red Sea should equally be part of the Islamic Empire as they were before.” Al-Banna’s writings, which are to this day still revered by most of the radical Islamic movements, are available on the internet today in Arabic and even in English.

In recent times, this ideological orientation of the Muslim Brotherhood has been best represented by Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, who is based in Qatar. Regarded by many as the highest spiritual authority in the Muslim Brotherhood, Qaradawi appeared on Qatari television in 2007 and declared: “I expect that Islam will conquer Europe without resorting to the sword or fighting. It will do so by means of da’wa (proselytizing) and ideology.” The only geographic points he mentioned in relationship to this expansion of the Islamic realm were as follows: “The conquest of Rome — the conquest of Italy, and Europe — means that Islam will return to Europe once again.”

Qaradawi, who appeared weekly on Al Jazeera, gave his patronage to a Muslim Brotherhood facility in a French chateau where Islamists used to train European Imams. Thousand of young Muslims were bussed into this retreat center. In short, Qaradawi’s ideas had multiple platforms through which they could spread.

There were other organizations that took Qardawi’s declarations a step further. Hamas, which is after all the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, has also made similar statements. Sheikh Younus al-Astal, who has had a leading role within the supreme religious body of Hamas (the Association of the Religious Scholars of Palestine) gave the following sermon in 2008 that was broadcast on Hamas television: “Very soon, Allah willing, Rome will be conquered, just like Constantinople was, as was prophesied by our Prophet Muhammad.” He then spoke about how the “Islamic conquests … will spread through Europe in its entirety” and beyond.

Dabiq, a journal published by ISIS, also deals with the conquest of Rome. The journal recently put on its cover a picture of Saint Peter’s Square in Rome; the editors manipulated the photograph and put the flag of ISIS on the obelisk in the center. The journal also quotes the founder of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as saying: “We fight here while our goal is Rome.” Before he led the insurgency in Iraq against the U.S. and its allies, Zarqawi actually set up a terrorist network for operations on European soil.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, under the ruling AKP Party, has also taken up the cause of recovering lost Islamic lands. In 2004, a U.S. State Department official sent a cable to Washington warning that at an event held at the AKP’s main think tank, he heard the idea voiced that Turkey’s role is to spread Islam in Europe, and “avenge the defeat at the siege of Vienna in 1683.” The cable linked a high level Turkish official with this view. It was made public by WikiLeaks.

What all these statements teach us is that virtually all these radical Islamic leaders see themselves as in no less than a civilizational battle with the West. There have been those who do not want to depict this struggle in this way, including those in the West who, out of political correctness, refuse to discuss the threat of radical Islam. They also cling to the mistaken idea that the Muslim Brotherhood can become an ally against al-Qaida and its affiliates.

Last week, on January 9, the American journal National Review published emails, leaked from an Al Jazeera producer, about the attacks in France. He sought to play down the significance of the terror in Paris, rejecting the notion that this was a “civilizational attack on European values.” He insisted that no one knows the motivation behind the attacks, suggesting perhaps that it was a reaction to France’s military actions against ISIS, or its operations in Libya and Mali.

In other words, the Al Jazeera producer did not want his network to admit that the attack in Paris was motivated by an aggressive Islamist ideology, but rather preferred to blame Western policies, which if it became widely accepted would cripple its leaders and deny them the self-confidence to take any effective action. That is what has largely happened until now. It is no wonder that Al Jazeera, whose headquarters is located in Qatar, has been correctly described as the satellite channel of the Muslim Brotherhood.

In contrast, Ghassan Charbel, the editor-in-chief of Al Hayat, the leading newspaper in the Arab world, on Monday refused to play down the Paris attacks as a unique, one-time event: “No one can disregard the scale of the problem and the extent of the threat any more.” Defying the political correctness of many of the world’s capitals, he bravely told the truth about what was happening: “What is clear is that the Paris attack is just the opening shot of a global war that the Islamist extremists will be waging in the West and the rest of the world.” He had no qualms about saying that the problem was the threat of radical Islam. Until the West internalizes his warning of what it is facing, unfortunately a new wave of attacks in the West will only be a matter of time.

Allies Know They Haven’t “Got a Friend” in Obama’s America

January 16, 2015

Allies Know They Haven’t “Got a Friend” in Obama’s America, Commentary Magazine, January 16, 2015

[T]he French and the rest of Europe know very well that the last thing they can count on in a crisis is the willingness of the Obama administration to “be there” for their oldest ally or anyone else for that matter.

In a week when French officials were rightly calling on the world to join them in the fight against Islamist terror, Washington was dithering and couldn’t even force itself to say the word “Islamist.”

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One of the basic rules of satire is that it is virtually impossible to satirize something that is already inherently ridiculous. That axiom is brought to mind as America belatedly sought to reaffirm its friendship with France in the wake of the administration’s decision to snub the Paris unity rally that commemorated the terror attack on the Charlie Hebdo office and a kosher market. Neither the president nor the vice president or even Secretary of State John Kerry bothered to come to a gathering attended by over 40 world leaders. But to make up for this, Kerry brought folk rock singer James Taylor to Paris to serenade French officials with a version of Carol King’s classic ballad, “You’ve Got a Friend.” This is something so absurd that it isn’t clear even the cleverest minds at Saturday Night Live or even Charlie Hebdo could adequately convey the sophomoric nature of a lame attempt to make up for a gaffe. While the real problem is the administration’s lack of comfort in standing up for the rights of cartoonists to offend Islamists as evidenced by the decision to stay away from the rally, it also tells us something significant about the inadequate man who is serving as the nation’s chief diplomat.

That Kerry would think schlepping an aging rock icon from his youth to Paris to tell the French that “all you’ve got to do is just ca-aall” if they need us is the sort of thing that makes one longs for the diplomacy of an earlier era when envoys wore uniforms, swords, and feathered hats and stuck to rigid formality.

That’s not just because such a gesture is jejune as well as puerile, though it is both of those things as well as a clear reflection of Kerry’s lack of seriousness as a public official. It’s that the French and the rest of Europe know very well that the last thing they can count on in a crisis is the willingness of the Obama administration to “be there” for their oldest ally or anyone else for that matter.

This is an administration that has spent six years offending and snubbing allies all the while seeking in vain to appease old foes and rivals such as Russia and Iran. Though U.S. and French policies often intersect, Paris and the rest of Europe have come to understand that Obama is as uninterested in their point of view or their needs as he is of those of congressional Republicans. In a week when French officials were rightly calling on the world to join them in the fight against Islamist terror, Washington was dithering and couldn’t even force itself to say the word “Islamist.”

As is well known, French opinion about the United States is decidedly mixed with resentment of American wealth and culture often overwhelming the basic commonality of interests shared by two great democracies. A James Taylor concert won’t make things much worse but neither will it improve the situation. What it will do is to remind Europe and those enemies once again that this is an administration that neither understands symbolism or how to reaffirm an alliance.

It is no small irony that an administration that came into office determined to work with the international community, and our allies rather than to be Bush-like unilateral cowboys, is now reduced to this sort of nonsense. What the French or any ally wants is not a touchy-feely Oldies song but a sense that the U.S. believes it is still part of the war against international terror. To the contrary, Obama’s instincts are such that allies have come to expect his contempt or disinterest in their problems.

Kerry’s cringe-inducing turn hosting his friend Taylor isn’t the dumbest thing he has done at the State Department by a long shot. Having faith in Mahmoud Abbas as a champion of peace and signing a weak nuclear deal with Iran are hard to top. But is an iconic moment that will symbolize Obama and Kerry’s ham-handed approach to allies. A song, even a folk rock classic that allows Kerry to reminisce about his youth spent falsely testifying against his fellow Vietnam vets, can’t substitute for a strong stand against Islamists or even the ability to say the word. Prior to this, it was possible to argue that U.S. foreign policy had become a joke. But after Taylor had finished warbling, even the president and his inner White House circle must be wondering what sort of a fool they’ve unleashed on the world.

The Free World Under Siege

January 16, 2015

The Free World Under Siege, Front Page Magazine, Robert Spencer, January 16, 2015

(As “radical” Islam becomes stronger and more assertive, the collective we become weaker and more compliant. — DM)

belgium

The free world is under siege. And its appointed guardians are swinging wide the gates.

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Twelve cartoonists are dead in Paris for violating Islam’s blasphemy law. Four Jews are dead for being among the people that the Qur’an claims are “the most intense of the people in animosity toward the believers” (5:82). Muslims have recently attacked and killed police officers in New York City, Canada, and France. And Thursday, Muslims fired on police who were raiding their terror operations, and two of the jihadis were killed. Europe is under siege. As is the free world.

Murderous jihad attacks are coming more frequently than ever, and there is no reason to think they’re going to slow down. In a new Islamic State video, a jihadi declares: “I say to all French people who think that the Islamic State won’t arrive in Europe, with God’s help, we will arrive in Europe. We will expand across all of Europe, to France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and also the USA. I say to all my brothers that cannot immigrate and join the Islamic caliphate, try to resist with all means, kill them, slaughter them, burn their cars and homes. I say to my brothers, if you see a police officer—kill him. Kill them all. Kill all infidels that you see in the streets.”

Regarding Belgium in particular, “three Islamic State militants threatened attacks on Belgium in a video broadcast on Wednesday, the Belga news agency reported.” And the next day jihadis carried through on their threats. “I heard a sort of explosion, followed by several gunshots,” said a witness. Another added that “machine guns were firing for about 10 minutes.” A third said he saw two North African men “dressed all in black carrying a bag of the same color.” Still another said: “I heard two explosions. I left, then I saw two young people run — Arab types between 25 and 30 — who hurtled down in the dark with woolly hats on their heads.”

Said Thierry Werts of the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office: “This operational cell of about ten people, some of whom had returned from Syria, was on the point of launching significant terrorist attacks in Belgium. During the search, certain suspects immediately opened fire at special forces of the police with automatic weapons. They opened fire for several minutes. Two suspects were killed and a third was arrested.” He added that “even after one of the suspects was lying on the ground injured, he continued to fire.”

They were, in other words, what Western authorities have shown no indication of being: determined and tenacious, even to the point of death. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo jihad murders, there have been very few Western media outlets with the courage to stand up to the jihadis’ violent Sharia intimidation and demonstrate their commitment to defending the freedom of speech by republishing the Muhammad cartoons. Instead, most have given the jihadis exactly what they killed for: submission to Islamic laws forbidding criticism of Muhammad.

This submission heralds the death of free society. Once an idea – any idea — is established as beyond criticism, its adherents are free to exert their will on the larger population unchallenged. If that idea is Islam, it involves the imperative to kill or subjugate unbelievers that jihadis worldwide are acting upon. The shared objective of groups like the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and of jihadis who kill cartoonists is to intimidate the West into criminalizing criticism of Islam, which will hinder or obliterate altogether the ability of Western officials to understand the motives and goals  of the jihadis. Then the jihad can proceed unopposed.

That’s why it isn’t just ill-judged, it is nothing short of disastrous that so many Western media outlets declined to reprint the cartoons, and that so many Western leaders have made statements assuring us that they believe in free expression, but of course within proper limits, and one should not offend people’s religious sensibilities. The free world is under siege. And its appointed guardians are swinging wide the gates.

Suppose Islam Had a Holocaust and No One Noticed

January 16, 2015

Suppose Islam Had a Holocaust and No One Noticed, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, January 16, 2015

(Nothing to see here. Islam is the “religion of peace,” as its adherents demonstrate daily. Right? — DM)

Abubakar_Shekau_2_octobre_2014-450x295

[W]e don’t pay much attention to what happens in Nigeria unless there’s a hashtag. No one has yet thought up a clever hashtag for the murder of 2,000 people. #Bringbackourdead doesn’t really work.

The Islamic wars from Nigeria to Israel, from Iraq to Kashmir, are genocidal. Israel may become the first Western country to suffer Islamic genocide, but it will not be the last. 9/11 was the first Islamic mass murder of thousands of Americans, but it will not be the last.

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While Western newspapers were debating whether or not to reprint the Mohammed cartoons, in Nigeria as many as 2,000 people were massacred by the Islamic State in Nigeria, also known as Boko Haram, in what is being called the deadliest attack by the Muslim group to date.

Survivors described the Islamic State setting up efficient killing teams and massacring everyone while shouting “Allahu Akbar”.

“For five kilometers (three miles), I kept stepping on dead bodies until I reached Malam Karanti village, which was also deserted and burnt,” one survivor said.

There’s a word for that. It’s genocide.

The Islamic State in Nigeria had reportedly managed to kill 2,000 people last year. This year they did it in one week.

But we don’t pay much attention to what happens in Nigeria unless there’s a hashtag. No one has yet thought up a clever hashtag for the murder of 2,000 people. #Bringbackourdead doesn’t really work.

The Islamic State’s next target is Maiduguri, the largest city in Borno with a population of over a million. Known as the “Home of Peace”, if Maiduguri falls, the death toll will be horrific.

The Catholic Archbishop, Ignatius Kaigama, warned that the killing wouldn’t stop in Nigeria. “It’s going to expand. It will get to Europe and elsewhere.”

Of course it already has, but not on the same scale.

“We will conquer Europe one day. It is not a question of (if) we will conquer Europe, just a matter of when that will happen,” an Islamic State spokesman had warned. “The Europeans need to know that when we come, it will not be in a nice way. It will be with our weapons.”

“Those who do not convert to Islam or pay the Islamic tax will be killed.”

Imagine that the burning towns and villages aren’t in Nigeria or Syria. Imagine them in France or Sweden. It’s not that great of a leap from armed cells carrying out attacks to a militia capturing entire towns and villages. They’re different phases in the same conflict.

Al Qaeda in Iraq went from a terror group carrying out suicide bombings to running a state in a decade. So did Hamas in Israel. There are already zones in Europe under the control of unofficial Sharia police. France has fewer Muslims than Nigeria and a more stable government with professional police and military forces. These two factors are the only ones keeping Islamic genocide at bay.

The massacres in France were carried out by the same types of men and movements responsible for the killings in Nigeria and Iraq. They just aren’t organized enough and still lack the numbers to conduct the same large scale genocide that they are already carrying out in Nigeria, Syria and Iraq.

Two Islamic States, one in Nigeria and another in Iraq/Syria, are engaged in genocide. Obama delayed responding to ISIS until it was already engaged in genocide and was moving on Baghdad. His people have done everything possible to avoid responding to the Boko Haram genocide in Nigeria.

The usual excuses are there. The central governments are compromised, incompetent and corrupt. The only possible solution is political. The real issue is poverty. Meanwhile the killing and the denial go on.

The foreign policy infrastructure, the human rights NGOs and the self-important scribblers who presume to tell the world what is important in the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post have fought hard to avoid connecting the killings by the Islamic State in Nigeria to the killings by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. And they have fought hardest of all to avoid connecting these killings to the thousands murdered in the streets of New York and the latest bodies strewn about Paris.

The killings can be connected with three simple words; global Islamic genocide.

The European intellectuals of the last century were too fixated on their vision of a better world to understand what was happening in Germany and Japan. And what had to be done about it. While they dreamed of a world government that would do away with war, the killing had already begun.

The intellectuals of this century are equally unwilling to take their attention away from microfinance, climate change and world government to see the beginnings of a worldwide Holocaust underway.

Genocide isn’t new to Africa or the Middle East so they put it down to local tribal conflicts. Terrorism isn’t new to America or Europe, so they blame political extremism. Like the elephant and the blind men who touched its trunk and thought it was a snake, they respond to the local manifestation of Islamic genocide by seeing a familiar local phenomenon; tribal war, political extremism or minority problems.

And anyone who sees the big picture is instantly denounced as an Islamophobe.

But what if the Muslim genocide of Hindus and Buddhists in Asia and the Muslim genocide of Christians and Jews in the Middle East are part of the same phenomenon?

What if the Islamic State killers in Nigeria who shout “Allahu Akbar” during their massacres share a motive with the 9/11 hijackers who were told to “shout ‘Allahu Akbar,’ because this strikes fear in the hearts of the non-believers”?

What if a common bloody thread of Koran verses runs through the massacres of non-Muslims in the Philippines and Kenya, in Israel and Australia, in France and China, in Thailand and Syria?

What if the acts of terror on the evening news are not random events, workplace violence, mental illness and political extremism, but the beginning of another global Islamic genocide?

The rise of Islam was not based on faith, but on mass murder.

Within a few centuries of the time that Mohammed had ordered the ethnic cleansing of Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula, the massacre of millions of Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists was underway across the Middle East through India and as far as Afghanistan.

The Islamic Holocaust was the greatest act of mass murder in human history. And it is still taking place today over a thousand years later.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” George Santayana wrote.

It would be a terrible thing indeed if we were condemned to repeat the mass murder of hundreds of millions and the eradication of entire civilizations under the black flag of the Jihad because we refused to remember the past or acknowledge the present.

Because we were too afraid of being called Islamophobic to speak out for the dead around the world.

It would be a terrible thing if the Nigerian village of today were to become a Swedish village tomorrow. It would be an even worse thing if the Muslim conquests of India were to be repeated in Europe.

Genocide is an ugly word.

It’s a word that we have come to associate with villages in Africa or with old concentration camps in Europe. We don’t think of it as something that can happen to us or to our children.

But we should.

The Islamic wars from Nigeria to Israel, from Iraq to Kashmir, are genocidal. Israel may become the first Western country to suffer Islamic genocide, but it will not be the last. 9/11 was the first Islamic mass murder of thousands of Americans, but it will not be the last.

In the face of genocide, our first duty is to warn the world.

A thought experiment about Islam

January 15, 2015

A thought experiment about Islam, Dan Miller’s Blog, January 15, 2015

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

A religion which blesses and encourages the slaughter of those who offend it or its “prophet” should be condemned, not praised, unless and until it stops doing both. 

On January 14th, I posted an article titled Obama plans to restrain media offensiveness to Islam. As a thought experiment, this less than obviously relevant cartoon appeared at the top:

Islamic pig

I considered the cartoon offensive and hope that everyone else did too. It might depict Mohamed, or it might not. Beyond vague descriptions, likely of questionable value, we have little information about Mohamed’s physical appearance. The cartoon could depict any obese human male wearing a turban. The same is true of other cartoons purporting to depict Mohamed in various poses.

Had a similar cartoon shown instead a Roman Catholic priest or a rabbi on a roasting spit, with a giant pencil extending into his anus and thence through his body and mouth, present day Christians, Jews and those of most other world religions, as well as those of no religion, would quite likely be offended; far less because of the religious significance of the victim than because we do not do that sort of thing to people. We would not on either account murder the cartoonist. Many Muslims might well consider the cartoon funny and approve of what they consider an appropriate consequence of being Jewish or Christian.

As far as I am aware, no world religion other than Islam worships, and seeks to have its followers emulate, a “prophet” or saint who condoned and demanded the killing of those who mocked or otherwise offended him. Mohamed did. Neither Jesus nor Moses did. Nor, as far as I am aware, did any prophet or saint of any other current world religion.

Other Mohamed cartoons of which I am aware do not show him being killed or tortured. For example this cartoon, which inspired the vicious animosity of many Muslims, merely depicts him with a bomb in his turban and gazing with hatred at someone or some thing. It does not depict him being tortured or killed.

turbanbomb1

Rather than consider it offensive, I consider it a humorous way of depicting one (of the many) barbaric things done by Muslims in the name, and with the blessing, of their religion. Current day non-Muslims also use bombs and some of the same weapons. They use more advanced weapons as well. However, they do not generally do it in the name and with the blessings of their religions because of what they perceive as insults to those religions. That is a significant difference.

Modern cultures should not seek to prevent the publication of cartoons presenting Mohamed, or anyone else, in an unfavorable light. Nor should they seek to prevent cartoons of the objectionable type I posted on January 14th. They can also generate controversy and, hopefully, peaceful discussion. A cartoon of the sort suggested above, depicting a Roman Catholic priest or Jewish rabbi instead of Mohamed, probably would generate nothing more than peaceful controversy, aside from the pleasure of some Muslims.

If cartoons cause bad people to kill those who create or publish them, all of the subsequent adverse consequences should befall those who kill, not those who would create or publish more cartoons.Obama is intent upon imposing adverse consequences on the latter, while claiming that those who kill or attempt to kill in the name of Allah act on behalf of no religion. He would, and would have the rest of us, shield the murderers’ coreligionist supporters even from our displeasure. Obama is a disgrace to civilized humanity.

ISIS scared

ADDENDUM

Pegida: The New German Revolution

January 15, 2015

Pegida: The New German Revolution, The Gatestone InstitutePeter Martino, January 15, 2015

Pegida’s worries about the Islamization of Germany concern the seeming intolerance and religious fanaticism that have grown hand in hand with the arrival of Muslim populations unwilling to adapt to Western values.

But by decrying Pegida’s views as “xenophobic,” “narrow minded” and even “inhuman,” Germany’s ruling establishment shows how deeply out of touch it is with the worries of a large segment of the population.

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

Pegida’s worries about the Islamization of Germany concern the seeming intolerance and religious fanaticism that have grown hand-in-hand with the arrival of the Muslim populations unwilling to adapt to Western values.

The terror attacks in France Had “nothing to do with Islam.” — German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière.

By decrying Pegida’s views as “xenophobic,” narrow minded” and even “inhuman,” Germany’s ruling establishment shows how deeply out of touch it is with the worries of a large segment of the population.

Perhaps the people in the East just want to avoid the situation that the Western part of the country is in. Having gone through decades of Communist dictatorship, perhaps they are less inclined to trust that their political leaders have the people’s best interests in mind with their policies.

Every Monday evening since last October, thousands of citizens have marched through the city of Dresden as well as other German cities to protest the Islamization of their country. They belong to an organization, established only three months ago, called Pegida, the German abbreviation for “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West.”

834 (1)PEGIDA on a Monday “evening walk” in Dresden, November 10, 2014. (Image source: Filmproduktionen video screenshot)

Pegida is a democratic grassroots organization, without origins in the far-left, far-right or links to any political parties, domestic or foreign. The French Front National [FN] of Marine Le Pen even made it clear that it wants nothing to do with “spontaneous initiatives” such as Pegida. According to the FN, “something like Pegida cannot be a substitute for a party.”

In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders of the Freedom Party [PVV] is more positive. He sees Pegida as a sign of the growing discontent of ordinary people with the political elite now governing them. “A revolution is on its way,” he says. Ironically, Wilders’s PVV, currently by far the largest party in the Dutch polls, is itself more of a spontaneous movement, driven by the energy and charisma of one single man with a mission to liberate his country from Islamic extremism, rather than an established and structured political party.

That Pegida is a spontaneous and diffuse organization of citizens expressing their discontent, seems to be worrying the German political establishment. German Chancellor Angela Merkel knows how powerful these movements can become. In 1989, when thousands of people shouting, “Wir sind das Volk” [“We are the people”] took to the streets in cities such as Dresden, the Communist regime in East Germany was toppled.

Apart from slogans such as: “Against Religious Fanaticism,” and: “For the Future of our Children,” the anti-Islamization protesters of Pegida are using exactly the same slogan — “Wir sind das Volk” — of the anti-Communist demonstrators a quarter of a century ago, as they march against the open-door policies of the German government.

The use of the 1989 liberation slogan has infuriated Merkel, who reproaches Pegida for using it. In her New Year’s speech, Merkel attacked the Pegida demonstrators. “Their hearts are cold, full of prejudice and hatred,” she said, while defending her government’s policies of welcoming asylum seekers and immigrants. She pointed out that Germany had taken in more than 200,000 asylum seekers in 2014, making it the country that is accepting the largest number of refugees in the world.

Merkel has been backed by church leaders, who are slamming Pegida and calling for solidarity with migrants. The Confederation of German Employers has been blaming Pegida for damaging Germany’s international reputation. Meanwhile, so-called anti-fascist demonstrators, shouting “Wir sind die Mauer. Das Volk muss weg!” [“We are the Wall. Down with the people!”], last week blocked a Pegida march in Berlin.

On January 10, fearing that the recent Islamic terror attacks in France might lead to even more public support for Pegida, Dresden Mayor Helma Orosz, a member of Chancellor Merkel’s Christian-Democratic CDU Party, co-sponsored in her town a so-called “Lovestorm” event. The aim was to conquer the “xenophobia” of Pegida through “open mindedness and humanity.” Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière, another leading CDU politician, claimed that the terror attacks in France had “nothing to do with Islam” and warned against “political pyromaniacs” such as Pegida who suggest otherwise.

Pegida’s worries about the Islamization of Germany concern the seeming intolerance and religious fanaticism that have grown hand in hand with the arrival of Muslim populations unwilling to adapt to Western values.

But by decrying Pegida’s views as “xenophobic,” “narrow minded” and even “inhuman,” Germany’s ruling establishment shows how deeply out of touch it is with the worries of a large segment of the population.

A recent poll, dating from before the terror attacks in France, found that one in three Germans support the Pegida anti-Islamization marches. Further, a new study by the Bertelsmann Foundation found that German attitudes toward Islam are hardening, with 61% saying in 2014 that Islam is “not suited to the Western world” — up from 52% in 2012. Also, up to 57% of the Germans see Islam as a threat, 40% feel that they are becoming foreigners in their own country because of the Muslim presence, and 24% want to ban Muslim immigration.

Looking at the numbers of demonstrators that join the Pegida demonstrations every Monday in various German cities, Pegida is clearly an overwhelmingly East German phenomenon. Indeed, in the provinces formerly belonging to the Communist German Democratic Republic [GDR], many thousands of people are drawn to the demonstrations, while in the West the numbers are far lower. Political analysts admit to being puzzled by this, given that the number of immigrants, including Muslims, is far lower in the East than in the West. Some blame the higher unemployment figures in the East; the “backwardness,” the lack of “civil society,” the lack of “liberal open mindedness,” and that “people in the East feel that they are losers.”

There might, however, be two other explanations that make more sense. Perhaps the people in the East just want to avoid the situation that the Western part of the country is in, as a result of the large Islamic presence. While the West might already be lost as a result of Islamization, the East is still capable of avoiding the West’s fate. Moreover, having gone through decades of Communist dictatorship, perhaps the Easterners are less inclined to trust that their political leaders have the people’s best interests in mind with their policies.

Perhaps they feel that, rather than trust that Frau Merkel knows what is best for the German people — as she welcomes in record numbers these new Islamic immigrants — the German people need to show her clearly that they think she is wrong.