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Islam’s ‘Baby Jihad’

June 12, 2015

Islam’s ‘Baby Jihad,’ Front Page Magazine, , June 12, 2015

Islamic aspirations to dominate the world are set to happen—if not through might of arms, then apparently through sheer numbers.

In 1900, the Muslim population of the world was less than 200 million.  Conversely, the Christian population of the world was almost 560 million—almost three times the number of Muslims.

Times have changed.  According to the findings of a Pew Research Center in America:

The number of Muslims will increase at more than double the rate of the world’s population, which is expected to rise by 35 per cent in the next four decades.

There will be more Muslims than Christians in the world in less than sixty years, new research revealed.

The [Islamic] religion’s share of the world’s population will equal the Christian share – at roughly 32 per cent each – in 2070, analysis by the Pew Research Center showed.

[…]

By 2050 Muslims will make up around ten per cent of Europe’s population.

For a better idea of what is in store for Europe, simply look to the UK’s “Londonistan”—the apt name for London and other regions with a notable Muslim presence: Already with a 10 percent Muslim population, Londonistan is a reflection of Europe 35 years from now when it too is projected to be ten percent Muslim (and by which time the UK will likely have an even much larger Muslim population).

The same sorts of anti-infidel violence and sexual abuse that is a daily fixture in Muslim majority nations is already a normal feature of Londonistan with its mere 10 percent Muslim minority.

Put differently, if “ISIS” and other Islamic groups regularly behead “infidel” men and sexually enslave “infidel” women in the Middle East—so are “average” Muslims doing so in the UK:

Recall how in 2013, two Muslim men shouting “Allahu Akbar” beheaded a British soldier with a cleaver—in a busy intersection and in broad daylight no less.  They even boasted in front of passersby and asked to be videotaped.

Or recall how Muslims were recently busted for running a sex ring in Rotherham, England: 1,400 British children as young as 11 were plied with drugs before being passed around and sexually abused in cabs and kabob shops.

It was at least the fifth sex abuse ring led by Muslims to be uncovered in England—Muslims who only make 10 percent.

During the trial of an earlier Muslim-run sex ring “Several of the men on trial in Liverpool apparently told their victims that it was all right for them to be passed around for sex with dozens of men ‘because it’s what we do in our country.’”

In fact, that is exactly what some Muslim men do to infidel girls in their country.  Seemingly not a day goes by without Christian girls in Egypt, Pakistan, Nigeria, Iraq, Syria, and any number of other Muslim majority nations being abducted, enslaved, raped, and/forced to convert (See Crucified Again, pgs. 186-199 for a sampling, plus the doctrinal justification.)

When a Muslim man savagely raped a nine-year-old Christian girl in Pakistan, he told her “not to worry because he had done the same service to other young Christian girls.”  Commenting on this case, local human rights activists said,  “It is shameful. Such incidents occur frequently. Christian girls are considered goods to be damaged at leisure. Abusing them is a right. According to the community’s mentality it is not even a crime. Muslims regard them as spoils of war.”

Indeed, there is no end of patterns of abuse against Christian minorities in the Muslim world that are now occurring in the West.  While many are now aware that “ISIS” destroys churches and Christian cemeteries, few realize that Muslims—not “ISIS”—just average Muslims—are doing the same thing in the West.

Days ago in Canada, which has a miniscule Muslim population, a Muslim man vandalized and desecrated a church on several different occasions.  Among other things, he covered the Christ statue in front of the church with black paint and broke its fingers and tore up Christian books inside the church.

Weeks earlier in France, 215 Christian gravestones and crosses in the cemetery of Saint-Roch de Castres (Tarn) were damaged and desecrated by a Muslim man later described as follows:  “The man repeats Muslim prayers over and over, he drools and cannot be communicated with: his condition has been declared incompatible with preliminary detention.”

And last March in Germany, a potential jihadi attack on the cathedral and synagogue in Bremen was averted following action by police.

In short, along with all the other forms of jihad to be wary of—the sword jihad, the tongue jihad (deceit/propaganda), the money jihad (financial support to jihadis)—the West should also be aware of the baby jihad.

If the same sorts of crimes being committed against Christian minorities in Muslim majority nations are already being committed in Europe and North America—despite the fact that Muslims are currently minorities—how then when, as projected, Islam becomes the most adhered to religion in the world?

Categories: Britain, Caliphate, Christians, Europe, Foreign policy, Freedom, Human rights, Islam, Islamic jihad, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamic war on women, Islamism, Islamophobia, Jews, Multiculturalism, Religion of Peace, Terrorism
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Death by Lashing: Saudi Arabia

June 11, 2015

Death by Lashing: Saudi Arabia, The Gatestone Institute, Salim Mansur, June 11, 2015

  • Nothing could uplift the universal image of Saudi Arabia and King Salman more than if today he issued a pardon. World leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama, who has so far been silent on the issue, should immediately speak out — as should the media and human rights groups.
  • There was no insult of Islam, of the prophet, or of the Quran, in what Badawi wrote; and, truth be told, God, Islam and the prophet are all beyond insults, and beyond the reach of profanity that occasionally spills forth from the bigoted or tortured minds of individuals.
  • The treatment of Raif Badawi stands out, not merely for its cruelty, but how it has come to symbolize the grotesquely repulsive nature of the Saudi kingdom and what it represents behind the mask of religious austerity.

Tomorrow, Friday, the virtual death sentence by 1000 lashes, delivered “very harshly” according to the flogging order, fifty at a time, might continue for Raif Badawi, a 31-year-old Saudi blogger and father of three, for allegedly “insulting Islam.”

The flogging sentence, plus ten years in prison, was upheld last week by Saudi Arabia’s supreme court, and can now only be overturned by a pardon from King Salman.

Although Badawi, who is ill and frail, would most certainly perish, in Saudi justice there is little concern for sentences to be proportionate to the crimes for which the accused are found guilty, or for adequate legal representation. Badawi’s lawyer, Walid Abu al-Khair, was also jailed, effectively for the crime of representing him.

Badawi was accused of insulting Islam in his blog posts. In a country where thinking is forbidden, Badawi had expressed forbidden thoughts by questioning the nature of his society and going public with them.

Badawi, for instance, had written, “Muslims in Saudi Arabia not only disrespect the beliefs of others, but also charge them with infidelity — to the extent that they consider anyone who is not Muslim an infidel. They also, within their own narrow definitions, consider non-Hanbali [the Saudi school of Islam] Muslims as apostates. How can we be such people and build… normal relations with six billion humans, four and a half billion of whom do not believe in Islam?”

1106Raif Badawi and his children, before his 2012 arrest.

There was naivety in putting such thoughts in writing, as Badawi did, and drawing the attention of Saudi thought police. In another post, Badawi suggested, “Secularism respects everyone and does not offend anyone… Secularism is the practical solution to lift countries (including ours) out of the third world and into the first world.”

It appears Badawi wrote in the first blush of what seemed to have been a breath of fresh air, characterized as the “Arab Spring,” that wafted across the politically bleak landscape of the Arab world in early 2011. There had come news of a Tunisian vendor who had put lit himself on fire protesting police brutality, and had died as a result; his death sparked a movement against Arab despots.

The anguish of the Tunisian vendor, Mohammed Bouazizi, was genuine. His tragic death brought people into the streets, and the Tunisian strongman, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, eventually fled into exile in January 2011. The Tunisian protest stirred Egyptians to rise against their strongman, President Hosni Mubarak, and succeed in toppling him in February 2011.

The “Arab Spring,” for those brief few weeks in early 2011, held forth the promise of change for better across the Arab world. And young men like Raif Badawi could be forgiven for imagining that they, too, in Saudi Arabia, could no longer be denied freedom, democracy, and secularism — the accepted norms in the West.

But the hard realities of the Arab world turned the promise of the “Arab Spring” into the nightmare of religious terror and counter-terror. Saudi Arabia is the incubator and citadel of Islamic fascism, otherwise known as Wahhabism. And here in the land of the two holy cities of Islam — Mecca and Medina — religion and politics are inseparable, and anyone who trespasses either does so at the risk of losing his head — literally — in the public beheadings that are the hallmark of the Saudi kingdom.

Raif Badawi was arrested, and has been held in prison in Jeddah since June 2012. The arrest of Badawi and Souad al-Shammari came after they together set up the web site called Saudi Liberal Network. It was promptly closed by the authorities when Badawi posted criticism of the Saudi religious police.

The initial sentence for Badawi by the Criminal Court in Jeddah for mischief and subverting public order was for 600 lashes and seven years in prison. He appealed, and the court returned the verdict by raising the sentence to 1000 lashes and 10 years in prison. The Saudi supreme court has upheld this sentence.

In the interim Badawi was given 50 lashes in a Jeddah public square in January of this year, while further lashings were suspended on medical grounds. Badawi’s wife, Ensaf Haidar, fears the lashings will resume — according to court order the 1000 lashes are to be completed in 20 sessions in front of a mosque — and could be fatal for her husband.

* * *

There is very little the outside world can do to change the nature of the Saudi regime, or for that matter the regime in Iran, which is indistinguishable from the Saudi regime in terms of tyranny and the cruelty to which, in both countries, dissidents are subjected.

After Raif Badawi was arrested, Ensaf Haidar and her children found refuge in Quebec, Canada. Across Quebec there has been heartfelt popular support expressed for Raif Badawi, and condemnation of his punishment. Quebec has officially protested Badawi’s sentence, while demanding his release from Saudi Arabia so that he might join his family where they have settled.

In response to a Quebec National Assembly resolution, passed unanimously in February, condemning Badawi’s lashings in Jeddah in January 2015, the Saudi ambassador to Canada wrote a letter to the Quebec politicians. The same letter was also sent to the Canadian government in Ottawa.

The letter, signed by the Saudi ambassador, Naif Bin Bandir Alsudairy, was obtained by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). It states, “The Kingdom does not accept at all any attack on it in the name of human rights especially when its constitution is based on Islamic law, which guarantees the rights of humans and preserves his blood, money, honour and dignity.”

The stand taken by the Quebec government apparently rattled the Saudi kingdom sufficiently to have its ambassador write a letter addressed to members of a provincial legislature.

* * *

It is one of the anomalies of our age that when, by a fluke of nature, large deposits of fossil fuels are discovered in a country, as in Saudi Arabia, it is accorded attention and respect by other countries in excess of anything it has done, or achieved, or by the record of its conduct in human affairs.

Apart from the oil reserves of the kingdom, the House of Saud is indistinguishable from the House of Kim ruling North Korea, and it is as deserving of the same contempt.

Oil has not only made the difference for Saudi Arabia, it has also made the West complicit in the evil that Saudi Arabia does at home and perpetrates abroad: spreading its pre-modern and perverted culture as Islam or, more appropriately, Wahhabism; and funding terror as jihadism.

The treatment of Raif Badawi stands out, not merely for its cruelty, but how it has come to symbolize the grotesquely repulsive nature of the Saudi kingdom and what it represents behind the mask of religious austerity.

Saudi Arabia is possessed with the opposite of the “Midas touch”: wherever its money buys influence, there, the natural goodness in society is stained and corroded by its touch.

The tragedy surrounding Raif Badawi is both the savage treatment meted out to a young man by the Saudi regime for simply expressing his thoughts, and of how innocence, when it goes against the culture of Saudi intolerance, is mocked, abused, and strangled.

Raif Badawi is also the face of why “official” Islam — the one portrayed by Saudi Arabia and the other OIC member states, and to which the West routinely defers – is so terribly retarded. Freedom of thought is anathema to “official” Islam and its defenders, as it once was in the former Soviet Union; it is the defining characteristic of a closed, totalitarian society.

Raif Badawi is a young man, and the thoughts he expressed were the unsullied thoughts of the young that are at once universal in expectations and desires, as they are innocent and unburdened by the hardness of life’s experiences.

There was no insult of Islam, of the prophet, or of the Quran, in what Badawi wrote; and truth be told, God, Islam, and the prophet are all beyond insults, and beyond the reach of profanity that occasionally spills forth from the bigoted or tortured minds of individuals.

“Official” Islam is an insult to Muslims and non-Muslims alike — for “official” Islam is politics devoid of any redeeming quality found in faith, which nourishes the spiritual yearning of people and uplifts them in a broken world. Through betrayal and hypocrisy, “official” Islam insults God, Islam, and the prophet, every minute of each day, and has become a torment to Muslims.

It is “official” Islam, and Wahhabism in its most perverted expression among Sunni Muslims, that has turned God — Allah in Arabic — repeatedly invoked in the Quran as the “Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful,” into a vengeful and capricious deity.

The Quran states that on the Day of Reckoning the prophet will speak forth, “O my Lord! Lo! mine own folk make this Qur’an of no account” (25:30). In another verse, the Quran instructs the prophet to tell the wandering Arabs of the desert that they have merely submitted, but they have no belief “for the faith hath not yet entered into your hearts” (49:14). And then there is the verse stating categorically, “There is no compulsion in religion” (2:256).[1]

When religion is reduced to politics then it is the logic of politics, hence power and coercion, that takes precedence. In Albert Camus’s striking formulation, “Politics is not religion, or if it is, then it is nothing but the Inquisition.”[2] In Saudi Arabia, religion is a daily dose of inquisition, and the executioner with his sword is both the reality and the symbol of the vengeful deity that bears little resemblance to the merciful and compassionate God of the Quran.

Raif Badawi’s innocence betrayed him. Age and experience would have taught him the hard reality of his culture, veiled by the mask of “official” Islam. This hard reality of Arab culture has been best understood by Arab poets through the years of Arab and Muslim history. Here is one example of a poet’s disgust with the hard reality of his country’s culture and politics. These are lines from a poem of Nizar Qabbani (1923-98), a much-loved Syrian-Arab poet:

When a helmet becomes God in heaven
and can do what it wishes
with a citizen – crush, mash
kill and resurrect
whatever it wills,
then the state is a whorehouse,
history is a rag,
and thought is lower than boots.

When a breath of air
comes by decree
of the sultan,
when every grain of wheat we eat,
every drop of water we drink
comes only by decree
of the sultan,
when an entire nation turns into
a herd of cattle fed in the sultan’s
shed, embryos will suffocate
in the womb, women will miscarry
and the sun will drop
a black noose over our square.[3]

The Sultan’s power is vainglorious, whimsical, easily insulted, and secured by perpetrating fear, and the realm he rules by decree is by necessity a slaughterhouse.

If Raif Badawi survives the thousand lashes in the slaughterhouse that is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, it will be a testimony of how an individual’s courage, born of innocence, might well defy the Sultan’s decree.

Nothing could uplift the universal image of Saudi Arabia or King Salman more than if today he issued a pardon.

World leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama, who has so far been silent on the issue, should immediately speak out — as should the media and human rights groups.

________________________

[1] Verses quoted from the Quran are from The Meaning of the Glorious Koran, translated by Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall (New York: Alfred A. Knopf and Everyman’s Library, 1930, 1992).

[2] A. Camus, The Rebel (New York: Vintage Books, Random House, 1956), p. 302.

[3] Nizar Qabbani, “From The Actors” in Salma Khadra Jayyusi (editor), Modern Arabic Poetry: An Anthology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), pp. 378-379.

Categories: Foreign policy, Freedom, Human rights, Iran, Islam, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Islamophobia, Middle East, Obama, Oil, Saudi Arabia, Secularism, Sharia law
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As ISIS Brutalizes Women, a Pathetic Feminist Silence

June 9, 2015

As ISIS Brutalizes Women, a Pathetic Feminist Silence, The New York Post via Middle East Forum, Phyllis Chester, June 7, 2015

1354

While the most recent Women’s Studies annual conference did focus on foreign policy, they were only interested in Palestine, a country which has never existed, and support for which is often synonymous with an anti-Israel position. Privately, feminists favor non-intervention, non-violence and the need for multilateral action, and they blame America for practically everything wrong in the world.

Feminists strongly criticize Christianity and Judaism, but they’re strangely reluctant to oppose Islam — as if doing so would be “racist.” They fail to understand that a religion is a belief or an ideology, not a skin color.

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

Oh, how the feminist movement has lost its way. And the deafening silence over ISIS’s latest brutal crimes makes that all too clear.

Fifty years ago, American women launched a liberation campaign for freedom and equality. We achieved a revolution in the Western world and created a vision for girls and women everywhere.

Second-wave feminism was an ideologically diverse movement that pioneered society’s understanding of how women were disadvantaged economically, reproductively, politically, physically, psychologically and sexually.

Feminists had one standard of universal human rights — we were not cultural relativists — and we called misogyny by its rightful name no matter where we found it.

As late as 1997, the feminist majority at least took a stand against the Afghan Taliban and the burqa. In 2001, 18,000 people, led by feminist celebrities, cheered ecstatically when Oprah Winfrey removed a woman’s burqa at a feminist event — but she did so safely in Madison Square Garden, not in Kabul or Kandahar.

Six weeks ago, Human Rights Watch documented a “system of organized rape and sexual assault, sexual slavery, and forced marriage by ISIS forces.” Their victims were mainly Yazidi women and girls as young as 12, whom they bought, sold, gang-raped, beat, tortured and murdered when they tried to escape.

In May, Kurdish media reported, Yazidi girls who escaped or were released said they were kept half-naked together with other girls as young as 9, one of whom was pregnant when she was released. The girls were “smelled,” chosen and examined to make sure they were virgins. ISIS fighters whipped or burned the girls’ thighs if they refused to perform “extreme” pornography-influenced sex acts. In one instance, they cut off the legs of a girl who tried to escape.

These atrocities are war crimes and crimes against humanity — and yet American feminists did not demand President Obama rescue the remaining female hostages nor did they demand military intervention or support on behalf of the millions of terrified Iraqi and Syrian civilian refugees.

An astounding public silence has prevailed.

1355The National Organization for Women (NOW) apparently doesn’t think ISIS is a problem.

The upcoming annual conference of the National Organization for Women (NOW) does not list ISIS or Boko Haram on its agenda. While the most recent Women’s Studies annual conference did focus on foreign policy, they were only interested in Palestine, a country which has never existed, and support for which is often synonymous with an anti-Israel position. Privately, feminists favor non-intervention, non-violence and the need for multilateral action, and they blame America for practically everything wrong in the world.

What is going on?

Feminists are, typically, leftists who view “Amerika” and white Christian men as their most dangerous enemies, while remaining silent about Islamist barbarians such as ISIS.

Feminists strongly criticize Christianity and Judaism, but they’re strangely reluctant to oppose Islam — as if doing so would be “racist.” They fail to understand that a religion is a belief or an ideology, not a skin color.

The new pseudo-feminists are more concerned with racism than with sexism, and disproportionately focused on Western imperialism, colonialism and capitalism than on Islam’s long and ongoing history of imperialism, colonialism, anti-black racism, slavery, forced conversion and gender and religious apartheid.

And why? They are terrified of being seen as “politically incorrect” and then demonized and shunned for it.

The Middle East and Western Africa are burning; Iran is raping female civilians and torturing political prisoners; the Pakistani Taliban are shooting young girls in the head for trying to get an education and disfiguring them with acid if their veils are askew — and yet, NOW passed no resolution opposing this.

Twenty-first century feminists need to oppose misogynistic, totalitarian movements. They need to reassess the global threats to liberty, and rekindle our original passion for universal justice and freedom.

Categories: Christians, Feminists, Freedom, Human rights, Ideology, Iran, Islamic jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic war on women, Islamophobia, Israel, Jews, Leftists, Middle East, Palestinians, Political correctness, Terrorism
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Why Does the Iranian Regime Rape its Own Citizens?

June 7, 2015

Why Does the Iranian Regime Rape its Own Citizens? The Clarion Project,  Elliot Friedland, June  7, 2015

(Don’t worry. Once The Islamic Republic of Iran gets the bomb, it may become as civilized as the Islamic State. — DM)

Iran-Basij-Hooded-Men-IP_1In 2009 the Basij militia (pictured here) raped protesters as a matter of policy. (Photo: Reuters)

In prisons, virgin girls who are sentenced to death (the death penalty covers a wide variety of crimes, including the nebulous charge of Moharabeh, “enmity against God”) are typically forced into “temporary marriages” with the prison guards and raped on the night before their execution.

According to the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center this is “because the guards believed young girls executed while virgins would go to heaven” and they wanted to prevent that.

Rape and other forms of sexual assault are a means of humiliation and degrading the regime’s opponents – and are also a potent means of intimidating others into cowed obedience.

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

Like all countries which use sharia law as state law, the Islamic Republic of Iran institutionalizes a litany of women’s rights abuses.

These include:

  • The husband is the head of the family, and his wife is legally bound to obey him. Article 1,105 of the civil code states: “In relations between husband and wife, the position of the head of the family exclusively belongs to the husband.”
  • A married woman cannot leave the country without her husband’s permission.
  • A woman’s testimony as a witness is worth half that of a man, in compliance with the Sharia basis of the legal system.
  • Women are forced to wear the hijab, a headscarf, in all public places. More broadly, Islamic modesty requirements are enforced by a morality police.
  • Polygamy and temporary marriage are permitted for men (up to four wives are allowed, subject to certain restrictions), but not for women.

Moreover, women are frequently subject to honor killings. In cases where the father kills his daughter, he is not liable for the death penalty, but only for imprisonment. This is further compounded as when someone is murdered, the family of the victim can forgive the murderer and choose to forgo punishment.

As harsh as the everyday discrimination is, however, the most serious violations are meted out against dissenters.

Use of rape as a method of torture against political opponents has been deployed widely against both men and women, as well as sexual taunts, threats and other forms of assault.

The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran told PBS that in the aftermath of the disputed 2009 election, “rape was routinely practiced as a matter of policy to intimidate young ordinary people from ever coming out to protest again.”

In prisons, virgin girls who are sentenced to death (the death penalty covers a wide variety of crimes, including the nebulous charge of Moharabeh, “enmity against God”) are typically forced into “temporary marriages” with the prison guards and raped on the night before their execution.

According to the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center this is “because the guards believed young girls executed while virgins would go to heaven” and they wanted to prevent that.

A former Iranian Basij militia man spoke to The Jerusalem Post on the condition of anonymity and recorded his role in perpetrating these rapes when he was a prison guard.

He said, “I could tell that the girls were more afraid of their ‘wedding’ night than of the execution that awaited them in the morning. And they would always fight back, so we would have to put sleeping pills in their food. By morning, the girls would have an empty expression; it seemed like they were ready or wanted to die. I remember hearing them cry and scream after [the rape] was over. I will never forget how this one girl clawed at her own face and neck with her fingernails afterwards. She had deep scratches all over her.”

Rape and other forms of sexual assault are a means of humiliation and degrading the regime’s opponents – and are also a potent means of intimidating others into cowed obedience.

Thus, the Islamic Republic inflicts on the bodies of its citizens the purest demonstration of raw power, reminding them who rules Iran.

Categories: Dishonor, Executions, Foreign policy, Freedom, Human rights, Iran, Iran scam, Obama, P5+1, Terrorism
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Spain in the Eye of the Storm of Jihad

June 6, 2015

Spain in the Eye of the Storm of Jihad, The Gatestone Institute, Soeren Kern, June 6, 2015

(Right of return? — DM)

  • The Islamists are especially interested in converts who have not yet taken on Muslim names and whose official IDs still have their Christian names, so they can purchase weapons without drawing the attention of police.
  • At least 50,000 Muslim converts are currently living in Spain. Police say that converts are especially susceptible to radicalization because they are facing increasing pressure from Islamists who are calling on them to carry out attacks to “demonstrate their commitment” to their new faith.
  • Spain has also become a key entry point for human trafficking mafias being used by jihadist veterans seeking to return to Europe after fighting in the Middle East.
  • “Turkey is the Seven-Eleven of false passports.” — Spanish agent working on a human trafficking case.

Spanish security forces have arrested a total of 568 jihadists over the past ten years in 124 separate operations against Islamic terrorism, Spanish Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz revealed at an African security conference in Niger on May 14.

Fernández Díaz said that “constant police and judicial actions” have helped Spanish authorities prevent another large-scale terrorist attack similar to the March 2004 Madrid train bombings, in which nearly 200 people were killed and more than 2,000 were injured.

At the same time, Fernández Díaz has warned that it is “very probable” that Islamic terrorists will strike Spain at some point in the future; he has estimated the probability of an attack to be 70%.

At a two-day terrorism conference held in Madrid on April 23 and 24, Fernández Díaz said that at least 115 Spanish jihadists — including at least 15 women — are now known to have joined the Islamic State. He added that 14 jihadists had returned to Spain; nine of those are in prison and five remain free.

In January, Fernández Díaz said the number of Spanish jihadists abroad was 70, which implies a jump of more than 40 new jihadists in the first four months of 2015 alone. In August 2014, the first time that Fernández Díaz provided an official estimate, he said there were 51 Spanish jihadists fighting abroad.

Meanwhile, “dozens” of jihadists and other Islamic radicals are entering Spain from neighboring France, where they are said to be “asphyxiating” due to a government crackdown following theCharlie Hebdo attacks in Paris in January. (On April 29, French President François Hollande announced that a force of 7,000 troops would be deployed to patrol French streets on a permanent basis.)

According to an anonymous Spanish intelligence operative interviewed by El Confidencial, a media outlet based in Madrid, French jihadists are moving to Spain because they feel they have “greater room for movement” on the Iberian Peninsula. They include individuals “suspected” of being Islamic radicals, but for whom there is insufficient proof for either government to arrest them.

The report says that most of the jihadists from France are moving to Catalonia and Spain’s Mediterranean coast, where they are attempting to “blend in” with Muslim communities there. Also known as the Spanish Levant, the region roughly corresponds with what was once known as Xarq al-Ándalus, territories that were occupied by Muslim invaders for nearly five centuries.

Al-Andalus is the Arabic name given to those parts of Spain, Portugal and France occupied by Muslim conquerors (also known as the Moors) from 711 to 1492. Many Muslims believe that territories Muslims lost during the Christian Reconquista of Spain still belong to the realm of Islam. They claim that Islamic law gives them the right to return there and re-establish Muslim rule.

In July 2014, jihadists with the Islamic State produced a video in which they vowed to liberate al-Andalus from non-Muslims and make it part of their new Islamic Caliphate. The video showed a jihadist speaking in Spanish with a heavy North African accent, warning:

“I say to the entire world as a warning: We are living under the Islamic flag, the Islamic caliphate. We will die for it until we liberate those occupied lands, from Jakarta to Andalusia. And I declare: Spain is the land of our forefathers and we are going to take it back with the power of Allah.”

639A tweeted photo of an Islamic State supporter holding the Islamic State’s black flag of jihad in front of Aljafería Palace in Zaragoza, Spain

Counter-terrorism authorities are now warning that the Islamic State is actively looking for Spanish converts to Islam who possess gun licenses and who can legally purchase rifles and shotguns. The Islamists are especially interested in converts who have not yet taken on Muslim names and whose official IDs still have their Christian names, so that they can purchase weapons without drawing the attention of police.

At least 50,000 Muslim converts are currently living in Spain. Police say that converts are especially susceptible to radicalization because they are facing increasing pressure from Islamists who are calling on them to carry out attacks to “demonstrate their commitment” to their new faith. “Converts are the perfect breeding ground for Islamism,” according to a Spanish intelligence operative.

These concerns have been confirmed in a new report published by the Spanish Institute of Strategic Studies, an organ of the Ministry of Defense, which warned that so-called lone wolves pose the biggest threat to Spain and other European countries.

“They are activists who secretly swear allegiance to [Islamic State leader] Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and act independently without making contact with anyone, so locating them becomes a living hell,” the report said. It added:

“Terrorists no longer need to communicate directly with the leadership of the organization to which they belong, or use the telephone or emails to know exactly what to do, when and under what circumstances. There is no longer any need for prior contact to establish the type of signals to be used, the conditions and dimensions of an attack or any restrictions.

“These tactics end the dream of the intelligence services to control everything through the systematic interception of communications and the use of satellite imagery. If there is no communication, it is not possible to intercept anything.”

Spain has also become a key entry point for human trafficking mafias being used by jihadist veterans seeking to return to Europe after fighting in the Middle East. A report prepared by Spanish border police identifies three main routes of entry — Africa, South America and Europe — and warns that human trafficking is “more lucrative than cocaine trafficking.”

According to the report:

“The proliferation of organizations trafficking in human beings and taking advantage of counterfeit documentation is resulting in the introduction of thousands of people into European countries. The problem is compounded when one considers that European jihadist veterans who have fought in Syria and Iraq on behalf of the Islamic State are using the same networks to facilitate their return. Many have arrest warrants in different countries (Spain, France, UK, etc.) and Islamic State members may cross our borders to carry out terror attacks in Europe.”

In November 2014, police in Madrid arrested 18 individuals — eight Lebanese, four Spaniards, three Syrians, one Ecuadorian, one Moroccan and one Ukrainian — accused of running smuggling operation to bring people from Syria into Spain. Police estimate that the cell, which had branches in Lebanon and Turkey, generated earnings of between €50,000 ($55,000) and €100,000 ($110,000) each month. According to one of the agents working on the case, “Turkey is the Seven-Eleven of false passports.”

Meanwhile, at least 60 jihadists in Catalonia are said to be waiting for a signal from the Islamic State to attack, according to the Madrid-based El País newspaper. The warning was given during a closed-door meeting of anti-terrorism police held in late April in Viladecans, a town near Barcelona.

The unofficial meeting was convened after a counter-terrorism operation in Catalonia was compromised, when some jihadists were allegedly tipped-off that they were about to be arrested. Although the exact circumstances of the imbroglio remain unclear, it appears to have been the result of poor inter-agency coordination between counter-terrorism police in Madrid and Catalan police known as the Mossos d’Esquadra. The two groups were apparently investigating the same Islamist cell without consulting each other.

The meeting in Viladecans, attended by 130 agents from different police forces — Mossos, Civil Guards, national and local police — from across the country, got together to discuss their mutual concerns about “the lack of training of law enforcement to combat jihadist terrorism.”

Much of the daylong meeting was used to share information about how to detect “radicalization processes” and how to distinguish ordinary Muslims from Salafists and jihadists. A counter-terrorism specialist said that one of the key problems faced by police is that “jihadists have infiltrated society, they drink alcohol, eat pork and dress like a Westerner and are undetectable.”

One of the organizers of the event, Alex Pérez of a local branch of the International Police Association, said:

“We go out on the street every day but we do not have the tools needed to combat threats against the public. Some of us are digging into our own pockets to train ourselves, protect ourselves and provide an adequate service to society.”

Another police officer summed it up this way: “We are screwed and will be much worse off in the future because there are radicals increasingly inclined to attack.”

Categories: Caliphate, Charlie Hedbo, Diversity, Freedom, Human rights, Ideology, Islam, Islamic jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism, Sharia law, Spain, Terrorism
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D-Day invasion and Those were the days

June 6, 2015

(Please see also, Forfeiting America’s Military Leverage. Are “we” still willing to sacrifice our lives and those of others, including “collateral damage,” to defeat even our relatively weak enemies?– DM)

Categories: Britain, British Military, Canadian Military, D Day, Europe, Foreign policy, Freedom, German Military, Germany, Heroes of War, Ideology, Obama, Obama's America, U.S. Military
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Goodbye to the First Amendment

June 5, 2015

Goodbye to the First Amendment, Pat Condell via You Tube, January 5, 2015

(What’s left of it, anyway. — DM)

 

Categories: Diversity, Freedom, Ideology, Islam, Obama's America, Pat Condell, U.S. Congress
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The “Speech-Denialists”

June 2, 2015

The “Speech-Denialists,” The Gatestone Institute, Daniel Mael, June 2, 2015

  • In denying the average college student the opportunity to hear, think, question and learn, these minority organizations violated the basic principles of a liberal arts education and what higher learning should presumably be about: challenging assumptions and talking openly about issues that might cause discomfort.
  • Both micro-sensitivity and political correctness require at best, obfuscating information, and at worst, silencing it.

On college campuses, teachers, students and sometimes even administrators seem to have become ever more eager to block any idea with which they disagree.

Often it appears as if their first impulse is to demonize the individual or organization presenting the offending idea, rather than to address the substance of the argument and open a discussion in the “free marketplace of ideas.”

On the campus of Lake Superior State University, wall postings “deemed offensive, sexist, vulgar, discriminatory or suggestive will not be approved.” The campus code of conduct states that if students fail to comply, they may be disciplined — a rule that was named “Speech Code of the Month” for May by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).

1092Lake Superior State University’s campus code of conduct states that wall postings “deemed offensive, sexist, vulgar, discriminatory or suggestive will not be approved.” (Image source: Bobak Ha’Eri/Wikimedia Commons)

Increasingly, individuals and groups, perhaps unknowingly betraying the spirit of classic liberalism, seek to shame or ridicule dissenting opinion into silence. Both in politics and on college campuses, it seems as if aggressive shaming has replaced the art of persuasion as the favored means of argumentation. Substantive, non-politically correct discussion is now at a premium.

In her recently published book The Silencing, life-long liberal and Fox News contributor Kirsten Powers documents the escalating efforts of people claiming to be liberal to silence dissent on issues they regard as contentious. The tactic follows what Powers calls the “authoritarian impulse to silence.”

On issues ranging from campus “speech codes” to feminism, these self-described liberals are unwilling to entertain the notion that a well-intentioned individual from the other side of the aisle might have a different remedy for the problems of the day.

When feminist scholar Christina Hoff Sommers of the American Enterprise Institute gave a lecture on the campus of Oberlin University on the topic of campus sexual assault and due process, protesters labeled her a “rape denialist” and claimed that they felt “unsafe.” Perhaps we should begin calling such protesters “due-process denialists.”

When the subject is religion, these “liberals” maintain a disingenuous double standard. “While the illiberal left seems to hold a special animosity to Christianity,” Powers notes, in a remark that could also apply to Israel, “it is strangely protective of Islam, despite the fact that orthodox Muslims oppose same-sex marriage.” Not only are Muslim attitudes toward gay marriage overlooked or roadsided completely, but if anyone dares to discuss the issue of minorities in the Muslim-majority world, they are labeled “racist,” “Islamophobic,” or other slurs at arm’s reach.

Meanwhile, critics are unrelenting in their animosity toward observant Christians’ views of homosexuality. “If you think about it, we are at the water’s edge of the argument that mainstream Christian teaching is hate speech,” Senator Marco Rubio recently told CBN News. “Because today we’ve reached the point in our society where if you do not support same-sex marriage you are labeled a homophobe and a hater.”

Last year, at Brandeis University, when I sought to bring a human rights display highlighting the oppression of LGBTQ individuals in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Iran, the initiative was blocked in a flood of administrative bureaucracy. The member of the administration with whom I met was clearly not thrilled by the idea.

Meetings with a gay rights group and the Muslim Students Association (MSA), however, were just as telling. Hoping to solicit partnerships in the initiative, I explained to leaders and members of both organizations that the project was not about Islam, but about how, on a routine basis, certain governments murder people who identify as LGBTQ. Members of the gay rights organization expressed concern about “Islamophobia,” while members of the Muslim Students Association expressed concern about “homophobia.” The initiative was rejected. Both groups evidently prioritized the emotional and intellectual comfort of the campus community over drawing attention to the plight of innocent LGBTQ individuals in the Muslim world.

In denying the average college student the opportunity to hear, think, question and learn, these minority organizations violated the basic principles of a liberal arts education and what higher learning should presumably be about: challenging assumptions and talking openly about issues that might cause discomfort. It is still puzzling why the LGBTQ club and the MSA are not at the forefront of defending other members of their respective groups, regardless of where they may live.

Both micro-sensitivity and political correctness require at best, obfuscating information, and at worst, silencing it. It is incumbent upon those who recognize the dangers of the ever-expanding “speech-denialists” in the “political correctness” movement to put up a fight — figuratively, of course.

Categories: Colleges in U.S., Culture, Diversity, Education, Freedom, Ideology, Islamism, Islamophobia, Leftists, Multiculturalism, Obama's America, Religion, U.S. Constitution
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The rational Ayatollah hypothesis

May 29, 2015

The rational Ayatollah hypothesis, Power Line, Scott Johnson, May 28, 2015

In his Wall Street Journal column this past Tuesday, Bret Stephens took up “The rational ayatollah hypothesis” (accessible via Google here). That hypothesis — asserted, I would say, as a thesis if not a fact by our Supreme Leader about Iran’s Supreme Leader — holds that economics and other such considerations constrain the anti-Semitic behavior of the Islamic Republic of Iran. So about those nuclear weapons that Iran is developing on — Israel is not to worry. Neither are we. It’s the Alfred E. Newman approach writ large.

Obama articulated his thesis in response to a question posed by Jeffrey Goldberg in his recent interview of Obama. I wrote about it in “Obama expounds the limits of Iran’s anti-Semitism.” I struggled because Obama’s observations are both ignorant and obtuse. Stephens takes up Obama’s thesis somewhat more elegantly than I did:

Iran has no border, and no territorial dispute, with Israel. The two countries have a common enemy in Islamic State and other radical Sunni groups. Historically and religiously, Jews have always felt a special debt to Persia. Tehran and Jerusalem were de facto allies until 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini came to power and 100,000 Jews still lived in Iran. Today, no more than 10,000 Jews are left.

So on the basis of what self-interest does Iran arm and subsidize Hamas, probably devoting more than $1 billion of (scarce) dollars to the effort? What’s the economic rationale for hosting conferences of Holocaust deniers in Tehran, thereby gratuitously damaging ties to otherwise eager economic partners such as Germany and France? What was the political logic to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s calls to wipe Israel off the map, which made it so much easier for the U.S. and Europe to impose sanctions? How does the regime shore up its domestic legitimacy by preaching a state ideology that makes the country a global pariah?

Maybe all this behavior serves Tehran’s instrumental purposes by putting the regime at the vanguard of a united Shiite-Sunni “resistance” to Western imperialism and Zionism. If so, it hasn’t worked out too well, as the rise of Islamic State shows. The likelier explanation is that the regime believes what it says, practices what it preaches, and is willing to pay a steep price for doing so.

So it goes with hating Jews. There are casual bigots who may think of Jews as greedy or uncouth, but otherwise aren’t obsessed by their prejudices. But the Jew-hatred of the Iranian regime is of the cosmic variety: Jews, or Zionists, as the agents of everything that is wrong in this world, from poverty and drug addiction to conflict and genocide. If Zionism is the root of evil, then anti-Zionism is the greatest good—a cause to which one might be prepared to sacrifice a great deal, up to and including one’s own life.

This was one of the lessons of the Holocaust, which the Nazis carried out even at the expense of the overall war effort. In 1944, with Russia advancing on a broad front and the Allies landing in Normandy, Adolf Eichmann pulled out all stops to deport more than 400,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz in just two months. The Nazis didn’t even bother to make slaves of most of their prisoners to feed their war machine. Annihilation of the Jews was the higher goal.

Modern Iran is not Nazi Germany, or so Iran’s apologists like to remind us. Then again, how different is the thinking of an Eichmann from that of a Khamenei, who in 2012 told a Friday prayer meeting that Israel was a “cancerous tumor that should be cut and will be cut”?”

Walter Russell Mead has more here, all of it worth reading. I thought readers who have been tracking the deep thoughts of our Supreme Leader, as we all should, might find Mead’s thoughts and Stephens’s column of interest.

Categories: Antisemitism, Foreign policy, Freedom, Human rights, Iran, Iran scam, Iranian anti-semitism, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Israel, Jews, Khamenei, Obama, P5+1, Supreme Leader
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The Pope and the Palestinians

May 20, 2015

The Pope and the Palestinians, Front Page Magazine, , May 20, 2015

(The article also deal with Islam in general, as to which the Pope’s fantasies reflect those of the Obama Administration and others. — DM)

francis-and-abbas-450x253

Perhaps the ultimate expression of this faith in Islam was Pope Francis’ assertion in Evangelii Gaudium that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.”

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Contrary to reports in the mainstream press, Pope Francis did not call Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas “an angel of peace.” The correct translation of the pope’s words is “I have thought of you: that you could be an angel of peace.”

Why, then, was it so easy to believe the initial reports? Perhaps because the initial reports seemed to align with previous papal overtures to Palestinian leaders. Pope Francis had previously called Abbas a “man of peace,” he has shown sympathy for Palestinian grievances, and other popes have given the appearance of lending legitimacy to the Palestinian cause. For example, Pope John Paul II is reported to have received PLO leader Yasser Arafat on twelve different occasions.

Arafat was a terrorist. One would think that the Vatican would have wanted to limit its contacts with him. The same goes for Abbas. He has repeatedly honored and praised Palestinian “martyrs” who have slaughtered innocent Jews. There is evidence that he helped fund the 1972 operation that killed eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games. Why is he accorded such a cordial reception at the Vatican?

Although the Church has often declared its spiritual bond with Jews, it has had a less harmonious relationship with the nation where approximately half the world’s Jews now reside. The Vatican was the last Western government to accord diplomatic recognition to the State of Israel (in 1993). In addition, on several occasions, prominent prelates have likened Israel to King Herod, the murderer of innocents; and others have accused Israel of being an apartheid state. Meanwhile, Catholic NGOs such as Pax Christi and Trocaire have been major players in the boycott, divest, and sanctions campaign against Israel.

Of course, the BDS campaign directly impinges on Israeli security. So do the calls by numerous Christian leaders to tear down the security barrier that divides Israel from the West Bank. On his trip to the Holy Land a year ago, Pope Francis allowed himself to be photographed in prayer at a section of the wall where a large graffiti message compared Bethlehem to the Warsaw Ghetto. In a naïve gesture of solidarity with Palestinians, the pope was unwittingly lending credence to the idea that the Israelis could be compared to the Nazi occupiers of Poland.

The wall was constructed to prevent suicide attacks against Israeli citizens. It’s estimated that its construction has saved thousands of lives. To suggest that the wall is offensive, as many Christians have done, is to suggest that Jewish lives don’t matter. Moreover, such judgments betray an entirely lopsided view of the situation. Take the Gaza conflict. The Catholic hierarchy typically had little to say about the daily rocket barrages launched against Israeli citizens from Gaza, but it was quick to condemn Israel on those occasions when it finally retaliated. In a similar vein, Fouad Twal, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, blamed last year’s Gaza war on the Israeli embargo which, he said, had turned Gaza into “a factory of desperate people, designed to easily turn into extremists.”

In short, many Catholic leaders have shown a tendency to blame Israel for defending itself. The implication, of course, is that there would be no need for defense if Israel would only go to the peace table and make the concessions demanded of it by the Palestinians. The Vatican’s recent recognition of the “State of Palestine” reflects this naïve view of the situation. The supposition is that the Palestinians only want to be left in peace, whereas there is abundant evidence that the deepest desire of Palestinian leaders is for the extermination of Israel. Have Vatican officials never seen the photos of Abbas holding up a map of Palestine that encompasses all of the territory currently known as Israel? Are they unaware that he has personally called for a Palestine that is Judenrein? Didn’t they notice that when Israel gambled on disengaging from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Gaza soon turned into a terrorist state governed by an obsession to destroy Israel?

From the Israeli point of view, the call to cooperate with the Palestinian “peace” agenda is a call to cooperate in its own demise. Whenever I hear a UN representative or a Vatican spokesman call for peace talks between Israel and Palestine, I think of that scene from Goldfinger in which James Bond is about to be sliced in two by a laser beam. “Do you expect me to talk?” he asks. “No, Mr. Bond,” replies Goldfinger, “I expect you to die.” The Vatican hasn’t yet grasped the point that the Palestinian leadership doesn’t want the Israelis to talk, it wants them to die.

By words and by actions, the Vatican continues to suggest that there is a moral equivalence between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. This policy not only does a disservice to Jews, it also does a disservice to Catholics and other Christians. The main effect of the moral equivalence stance is to sow confusion among Catholics at a time when they need to be clear and unconfused—clear about Islam, that is. The Vatican policy toward Palestine reflects it overall stance toward the Islamic world. In other words, let’s overlook the dark side—the terrorism, the anti-Semitism, the oppression of Christians and other minorities—and let’s put the best face on the Mohammedan faith. For the sake of peace. And also for the sake of maintaining the threadbare narrative that Islam is a close cousin of Catholicism and, therefore, a religion of peace. Perhaps the ultimate expression of this faith in Islam was Pope Francis’ assertion in Evangelii Gaudium that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.”

How well has this policy worked? Not very. Catholics and other Christians who lived in Muslim lands and who took seriously the Catholic version of “this has nothing to do with Islam” soon found that the tiny minority of misunderstanders were legion and had murder on their minds. Many found out too late. Years of indoctrination in the myth of Islam’s pacific nature had left them unprepared for the violence. Not that the Church was the only culprit. The secular opinion-makers had been preaching the same gospel. The irony is that the Church wants Israel to adopt the same policy of make-believe about Islam that has contributed to the death and displacement of millions of Christians.

The policy requires an almost total denial of facts. In the case of the Arab-Israeli crisis it means ignoring the terrorist ties of the Palestinian government, its unity coalition with Hamas, the massive state-sponsored indoctrination of Palestinian children, and the oft-stated goal of eliminating Israel. Ironically, it also necessitates that one ignore the ongoing persecution of Christians in the Palestinian territories.

The Palestinian leaders do a good job of hijacking Christian themes and imagery in order to gull Christians into thinking that they are, indeed, brothers in Christ. Thus, Palestinians have milked the massacre-of-the-innocents meme for all its worth. They also like to claim that Jesus was the first Palestinian. Another favorite theme is that the Palestinian people are the “new Jesus” who is being crucified by the Israelis.

Many in the Catholic hierarchy seem to fall for the ruse, but the steady exodus of Christians from the Palestinian territories tells a different story. The overall population of Christians in the Palestinian areas has declined from 15 percent in 1950 to 2 percent today. After the Palestinian Authority took control over Bethlehem in 1995, the Christian population there declined by half. In the Gaza Strip, only a few hundred Christians remain. That’s because Christians in Palestine, like Christians in most Muslim-majority societies, are treated as second-class citizens—subject to rape, intimidation, and legalized theft.

Meanwhile, the Christian population of Israel continues to grow. Palestinian Christians want to live there and so do persecuted Christians in other parts of the Middle East. Despite years of propaganda to the contrary, they have come to realize that Israel is a safe haven in a world of Islamic chaos.

Do Christians who migrate to Israel know something that the Vatican doesn’t know? The facts are there for everyone to see, but not everyone sees them. Why do Catholic leaders persist in assigning moral equivalence when there is no moral equivalence? Normally, a belief in moral equivalence grows out of a relativistic outlook. But presumably we can rule that out in the case of Catholic prelates. A more likely cause of their moral neutrality is a misapplication of the principle of “judge not.” Christians today are highly conscious of the sins of Western civilization and are therefore reluctant to judge those who lie outside it—in this case, Muslims. However, the principle is meant to apply to judgments about the state of an individual’s soul, not his behavior. And it was never meant to apply to withholding judgments about ideologies and belief systems.

The reluctance to see the mote in the other’s eye can eventually slide over into willful blindness. There are numerous warnings in the New Testament about spiritual blindness and they apply to those within the Church as well as to those without. The big danger for Church leaders is not that they will be seen as judgmental in the eyes of the world, but that they will be seen as foolishly naïve in the eyes of history.

“First comes Saturday, then comes Sunday” is a well-known slogan in the Middle East. It means that after the Islamists finish with the Jews, they will come after the Christians. The fate of the Saturday people and the Sunday people is intertwined. And the fate of both is put in jeopardy when Christian leaders insist on holding on to a fantasy-based picture of Islam.

Categories: Abbas, Antisemitism, Appeasement, Christianity, Christians, Diversity, Fatah, Foreign policy, Freedom, Gaza, Human rights, Ideology, Islam, Islamic jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic supremacy, Islamic war on women, Islamism, Islamophobia, Israel, Jerusalem, Jews, Moral equivalence, Multiculturalism, Muslims, Obama, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Peace process, Pope, Terrorism, Two state solution, West Bank
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