Posted tagged ‘Islamophobia’

Spain: Courses on Islam in Public Schools

April 2, 2016

Spain: Courses on Islam in Public Schools, Gatestone InstituteSoeren Kern, April 2, 2016

♦ The guidelines for teaching Islam in public schools — drafted by the Islamic Commission of Spain and approved by the Ministry of Education — are aimed at stirring religious fervor and promoting Islamic identity among young Muslims in Spain.

♦ The guidelines, which envision the teaching of every aspect of Islamic doctrine, culture and history, are interspersed with “politically correct” terminology… but the overall objective is clear: to inculcate young people with an Islamic worldview.

♦ According to the guidelines, preschoolers (ages 3- 6) are to learn the Islamic profession of faith, the Shahada, which asserts that “there is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his messenger.” The Shahada is the gateway into Islam: one becomes a Muslim by repeating the Shahada three times in front of a witness. They are also encouraged to “emulate, through different forms of expression, the values observed by Mohammed.”

♦ In primary school (ages 6-12), the guidelines call for children to “recognize Mohammed as the final prophet sent by Allah and accept him as the most important.”

The Spanish government has published new guidelines for teaching Islam in public preschools and primary and secondary schools.

The guidelines are being touted as a way to prevent Muslim children and young people from being drawn into terrorism by exposing them to a “moderate” interpretation of Islam.

On closer inspection, however, the guidelines — drafted by the Islamic Commission of Spain and approved by the Ministry of Education — are aimed at stirring religious fervor and promoting Islamic identity among young Muslims in Spain.

The new plan, which is the most ambitious in all of Europe, amounts to a government-approved program to establish a full-fledged Islamic studies curriculum at public schools nationwide, at a time when Christian religious symbols are being systematically removed from Spanish public schools by official enforcers of secularism.

Although Spanish taxpayers are being expected to pay for the religious education of up to 300,000 Muslim students between the ages of 3 and 18, it remains unclear whether Spanish authorities will have any oversight of the teaching of Islam in public schools. The government has agreed to allow local Muslim organizations to draft the course syllabi, choose the textbooks, and even determine who will teach the classes.

Spain’s Ministry of Education quietly published the guidelines in the official state gazette (Boletín Oficial del Estado) on March 18. The curriculum for teaching Islam in Spanish public preschools can be found here; in public primary schools here; and in public secondary schools here.

The guidelines, which envision the teaching of every aspect of Islamic doctrine, culture and history, are interspersed with “politically correct” terminology — the documents are rife with buzzwords such as coexistence, diversity, equality, human rights, inclusion, integration, intercultural education, interreligious dialogue, moderation, pluralism, religious liberty, respect and tolerance — but the overall objective is clear: to inculcate young people with an Islamic worldview.

According to the guidelines, preschoolers (ages 3- 6) are to learn the Islamic profession of faith, the Shahada, which asserts that “there is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his messenger.” The Shahada is the gateway into Islam: one becomes a Muslim by repeating the Shahada three times in front of a witness.

Block 6 is aimed at instilling “interest for Islamic religious and cultural texts,” stirring “curiosity for the Koran in oral and written language,” and learning “Islamic recitations, narrations and descriptions.”

Children should develop an “attitude of listening to Koranic and prophetic texts” and memorize “short Hadiths [reports about the words, actions or habits of Mohammed] and Koranic stories.” They are also encouraged to “emulate, through different forms of expression, the values observed by Mohammed.”

In primary school (ages 6-12), the guidelines call for children to “recognize Mohammed as the final prophet sent by Allah and accept him as the most important.” Students are to “recite the Shahada in perfect Arabic and Spanish,” and “recognize that the Koran is a guide for all of humanity.” Children are to “know certain Arabisms in the Spanish language and appreciate the linguistic contributions of Islam to the history of Spain, using verbal language to communicate emotions and sentiments.”

Primary school students are to “know examples of Mohammed’s coexistence with non-Muslims,” although there is no indication that Muslim pupils will be taught about the 900 Jews of the Banu Qurayza tribe in Medina that Mohammed ordered to be beheaded in 627AD.

Students are also to “understand that Islam is a religion of peace — spiritual or internal peace and social or communitarian peace. The prophet teaches us to live in peace. Islam promotes solutions to resolve conflicts and social inequality.”

Moreover, the guidelines call for primary students to “comprehend and explain the existence of other monotheistic revelations of Allah: Judaism and Christianity.” But it remains unclear whether students will learn about the three instances in the Koran (Suras 2:65, 5:60 and 7:166) in which Allah turns Jews into apes and/or pigs.

In secondary school (ages 12-18), the guidelines call for students to “know, analyze and explain the affective-emotional attitudes of Mohammed when confronting personal offenses, valuing conflict resolution.” It remains unclear whether students will learn about Suras 5:33 and 33:57-61, which call for curses against those who “annoy Allah and His Messenger.”

Block 4 calls on students to evaluate the “transversality present in the Koran and the Hadiths regarding social relations.” It does not, however, mention whether students will be taught that the Koran and the Hadiths require non-Muslim subjects (dhimmis) residing in Muslim lands to pay a protection tax known as the jizya.

In a section on the “Islamic model for economics and jurisprudence,” students are asked to identify Islamic solutions to world problems. They are also asked to “analyze and explain the benefits of interest-free loans [aka Sharia finance].”

In Block 8, students are asked to “analyze the stages of the establishment and flourishing of Islamic jurisprudence [Sharia law] during the splendor of al-Andalus.”

Al-Andalus is the Arabic name given to those parts of Spain, Portugal and France that were occupied by Muslim conquerors (also known as the Moors) from 711 to 1492. The Islamic State (ISIS) has repeatedly vowed to “liberate” al-Andalus from non-Muslims and make it part of their new Islamic Caliphate.

The guidelines also encourage students to use the internet to learn more about Islam, even though the internet is playing an increasingly important role in the radicalization of young Muslims.

The legal basis for teaching Islam in Spanish public schools can be found in Article 27.3 of the Spanish Constitution of 1978, which establishes that although Spain is non-confessional (meaning that it does not recognize an official state religion), “the State guarantees parents the right for their children to obtain a religious and moral education which conforms to their own convictions.” Muslims (and Roman Catholics) have long understood this to mean that children are entitled to religious education in public schools.

On November 10, 1992, the Socialist government of Felipe González — seeking to end the monopoly of the Roman Catholic Church over Spanish education — negotiated a “Cooperation Agreement between the Government of Spain and the Islamic Commission of Spain” (Comisión Islámica de España, CIE). That agreement, codified in Law 26/1992, recognized Islam as a minority religion in Spain and guaranteed that “Muslim students … receive Islamic religious education in public schools.”

(Also on November 10, 1992, the Spanish government approved the “Cooperation Agreement between the Government of Spain and the Federation of Evangelical Christian Entities in Spain.” That agreement was codified in Law 24/1992. In June 1993, the Spanish government published guidelines for the teaching of evangelical Christianity in public schools.)

In recent years, Muslim leaders in Spain have complained that the Spanish government has failed to implement the 1992 agreement. According to the CIE, 90% of Muslims students in Spain lack access to Islamic studies in public schools. The new guidelines appear to signal the current government’s commitment to follow through on the promises of past governments.

The guidelines were drafted by CIE president Riaÿ Tatary, a Syrian who has lived in Spain for more than 45 years. Tatary, a medical doctor who is also the imam of the Abu-Bakr Mosque, the second-largest mosque in Madrid, is often portrayed as the epitome of Muslim integration and moderation.

Tatary is the chief interlocutor between Spain’s Muslim community and the Spanish government and has received a civilian merit award from the Ministry of Justice for his work on Spain’s law on religious liberty.

But Spanish counterterrorism analysts (here and here) have long suspected that Tatary is closely linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is highly critical of Western concepts of justice and democracy. The Brotherhood’s motto is: “Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Koran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”

1536The Spanish government’s curriculum guidelines for public school Islamic studies were drafted by Riaÿ Tatary, imam of the Abu-Bakr Mosque. Spanish counterterrorism analysts have long suspected that Tatary is closely linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Tatary denies the charges, although members of his mosque have, in fact, been tied to al-Qaeda.

Ahead of municipal elections in May 2015, Tatary admonished Muslims in Spain not to vote for any candidate who “hinders or impedes the establishment of mosques for our faithful, and cemeteries for our dead.” He also said that Muslim voters should not vote for anyone who “hinders or prevents the children of Muslim citizens from receiving Islamic religion courses in public or private schools.”

Spanish political analysts said Tatary’s attempt to enforce the Spanish Muslim vote was alarming:

“At first glance, it does not seem objectionable that a group, whatever its nature, defends the rights of its members. However, when it comes to an entity that appeals to religion to impose a massive discipline of the faithful in the political arena, we cannot but be alarmed. Especially when that religion is engaged in relentless war within itself and with the rest of the civilized world.”

It seems unlikely, however, that parents and imams will accept many of Tatary’s politically correct non-literal interpretations of the Koran, which apparently are aimed at securing the government’s approval of the guidelines. The challenge of reform-minded Muslims is to convince the majority of Muslims that the Koran and the Hadiths do not actually mean what they say.

In the end, the new guidelines may end up achieving a completely undesired objective: serving as gateway to radical Islam for tens of thousands of young Muslims in Spain.

Op-Ed: The Left stands with the Islamist thought police

April 1, 2016

Op-Ed: The Left stands with the Islamist thought police, Israel National News, Giulio Meotti, April 1, 2016

The interview with Die Zeit is astonishing: “I feel much freer in Algeria than in France.” This shocking disclosure is from an Algerian writer who collected literary prizes in France, from the Mauriac to the Goncourt for his first novel.

On January 31, 2016, Kamel Daoud published an article on the events in Cologne in the French newspaper Le Monde .

What Cologne showed, says Daoud, is how sex is “the greatest misery in the world of Allah”.

So is the refugee a ‘savage?’

“No. But he is different. And giving him papers and a place in a hostel is not enough. It is not just the physical body that needs asylum. It is also the soul that needs to be persuaded to change”.

A few days later, Le Monde ran a response by sociologists, historians and anthropologists who accused Daoud of “recycling orientalist cliches” and of being an “Islamophobe.”

It was anathema for the “bête noire des intégristes”, (the fundamentalists’ bad guy) as Daoud was defined. The writer announced his decision to abandon journalism.

The attacks on this brave Algerian novelist and journalist also came from the London Review of Books, the journal of the Anglo-Saxon liberal elites, which defines Daoud as “irresponsible”. Rafik Chekkat called Daoud “the native informant,” arguing that “his decision to leave journalism would be the only good news in the midst of all this noise.” The Mediapart electronic magazine wondered: “Is Daoud Islamophobic?”, while its patron, Edwy Plenel, asked Daoud to issue an “apology.”

Olivier Roy, an Islamic scholar, published an article in Libération that, without ever naming Daoud, charged the writer of stigmatizing the Muslims. Jeanne Favret-Saada, an orientalist at the Ecole pratique des hautes études, wrote that Daoud “spoke as the European far right.” Jocelyne Dakhlia, professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, charged Daoud with “a culturalist vision of sexual violence.”

Daoud received a supportive phone call from the Prime Minister of his country, Abdelmalek Sellal, and has been openly defended in the press only by a few Arab colleagues.

One is Karim Akouche, who wrote in the magazine Marianne: “Our time is absurd, ridiculous, violent. They shoot without warning to those who dare shake (question, ed.) clichés (…)The voice of Daoud is more essential than ever for healing the ‘disease of Islam’”.

The Franco-Tunisian writer Fawzia Zouari wrote in Libération that the Left is silencing criticism like the bearded terrorists do, while Serenade Chafik, the author of “Repudiation”, pointed that “while the Islamists around the world shouted ‘death to blasphemers’, some journalists accused their colleagues from Charlie Hebdo of xenophobia. ‘Islamophobia’ has become the verdict of the new inquisitors and their Islamo-leftist Western friends.”

The Moroccan entrepreneur Ahmed Charai defended Daoud saying that “the intellectuals, at risk of their lives, are fighting for the universal values, but they are treated as ‘Islamophobic’. This is a great defeat of thought.”

Boualem Sansal, the author of the successful novel “2084” (Gallimard), said that Daoud is attacked by a “thought police lurking in the tall structures of culture and information.” According to Sansal, “saving Daoud means saving freedom, justice and truth.”

It is what happened to Salman Rushdie after the release of the “Satanic Verses”, when so many left-wing writers attacked not the Iranian Khomeini, but the writer: Roald Dahl, celebrated author of amusing children’s books, said that “Rushdie is a dangerous opportunist,” George Steiner, one of the most respected cultural critics, declared that “Rushdie has made sure to create a lot of problems,” Kingsley Amis commented that “if you go looking for trouble, you can not complain when you find it,” while the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper said to enjoy the suffering of Rushdie.

And it will happen again with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the most brave and important Islamic dissident. In the book “Murder in Amsterdam” and in a series of articles for the New York Review of Books and The New York Times, leftist relativists such as Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash attacked Hirsi Ali. Her call for the emancipation of women marked her as an “Enlightenment fundamentalist.”

A few days after the murder of Theo van Gogh, The Index on censorship, the magazine founded by Stephen Spender to defend freedom of expression during the Cold War,  published an essay by Rohan Jayasekera, associate director of Index, which described Hirsi Ali as a silly girl manipulated by Van Gogh in a “relation of exploitation.”

And when the Netherlands deprived Hirsi Ali of the bodyguards she needed for protection, the appeal to assign her protection of the European Union, promoted by French Socialist Benoît Hamon, failed in the absence of a sufficient number of votes, when only 144 of 782 supported the motion.

This is the terrible meaning of the “Daoud Affair.”

A great Arab writer told some important truths and the European intellectuals, instead of thanking and protecting him while Islamists threaten him with death, exhorted this novelist to choose silence, to take refuge in the novel, to surrender to his executioners.

It is an echo of what happened to Tahar Djaout, another famous Algerian writer, killed in 1993 by Islamists. The manuscript of his last novel was found among his papers after the assassination.

It recalls André Glucksmann’s famous title: “Silence on tue.” Silence, it kills!

US Residents Linked to Terrorism Increased 200% in 2015

March 30, 2016

US Residents Linked to Terrorism Increased 200% in 2015, Truth RevoltTiffany Gabbay, March 29, 2016

anwar-al-awlaki-story-top

In the wake of terror attacks in Paris, San Bernardino and Brussels, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) issued a new report that exposes the rise of terrorist activity among US-based Muslims.

ADL reports that in 2015, 80 US residents were inspired by ISIS and linked to terrorism themselves, marking a nearly 200 percent increase from 2014. PRNewswire reports:

“The tragic attacks in Brussels remind us of the need to continuously evaluate the threat posed by foreign terrorist organizations and the influence they have on communities around the world,” said Oren Segal, Director of ADL’s Center on Extremism. “While there are significant differences in the threats to the U.S. and Europe, this report identifies some meaningful similarities, which can help us understand the threats and develop solutions to counteract them.”

As in Europe, the vast majority of U.S. residents linked to terror plots and other activity motivated by Islamic extremist ideology in 2015 acted in support of ISIS. ISIS and other terrorist groups continue to take advantage of technology to mobilize followers, spread their messages and expand their influence worldwide. While in-person networks are stronger and more prevalent in Europe, and particularly in Belgium, than in the U.S., the internet and social media sites remain a pivotal element of the modern radicalization process worldwide.

The ADL report uncovered terror plots across 22 states, with the largest portion occurring in New York, Minnesota and California. The report found that these US resident-terrorists engaged in plotting attacks and furnishing material support for attacks. Key aspects of the report found that 20 of the terror-linked US residents converted to Islam and came from a diverse array of ethnic backgrounds:

“Understanding the backgrounds, demographics, and aspirations of U.S. residents engaged in activity motivated by Islamic extremist ideology can provide valuable insights into the trends and nature of terrorism we currently face and how we can best be equipped to combat it,” said Jonathan A. Greenblatt, ADL CEO. “As we saw the events tragically unfold in Brussels, ISIS terror has far reaching influence across the globe.  And the risk is not only from ISIS members themselves, but from those who might be radicalized by their hateful message.”

The way we can combat it is by abandoning our obsession with multiculturalism and political correctness. Crucial to that is purging the invented term “Islamophobia” from the popular lexicon. Further, our intelligence and law enforcement communities must not be impeded in their responsibility to monitor all mosques and Islamic centers for hate speech and questionable practices among congregates and faith leaders. Nor should they be barred from monitoring self-segregated communities that have refrained from assimilation or engaging in profiling whenever and wherever applicable.

Most important, we must exhibit strength — not capitulation — in our foreign and domestic policy concerning terrorism or the infiltration of any values anathema to our own. We must not turn on our allies. We must not tamp down any regime, however repugnant, that aids us in crushing Islamic extremism. The Islamic world bows only to the iron fist. Diplomacy works on those with whom there is leverage, not on those who aren’t even afraid of losing their own lives or the lives of their children.

UK: National Union of Teachers rejects teaching “fundamental British values” as “cultural supremacism”

March 30, 2016

UK: National Union of Teachers rejects teaching “fundamental British values” as “cultural supremacism” Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer, March 29, 2016

“We need to fight to reject this notion of British values.” The alternative is cultural and national suicide, but few seem to care in Britain, and those who do are being closely watched by authorities, lest they get out of line. As a free society, Britain is finished.

EDUCATION Leaders 084154

 

“Teaching children fundamental British values is act of ‘cultural supremacism,’” by Javier Espinoza,Telegraph, March 28, 2016:

Teaching children fundamental British values is an act of “cultural supremacism”, teachers have said, as members of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) vote to replace the concept with one that includes “international rights”.

A legal duty on teachers to promote so-called British values was passed two years ago after the “Trojan Horse” controversy.

However, teachers argue “fundamental British values” set an “inherent cultural supremacism, particularly in the context of multicultural schools and the wider picture of migration”.

The motion, which was passed at the NUT’s annual conference in Brighton, also calls for a campaign to promote “policies that welcome migrants and refugees into Britain” and called on members to “gather and collate materials on migrants and refugees” to be used in schools.

Following the motion, teachers were accused of looking to play “the role of fifth columnists” and that they risked making children feel guilty about being British.

The motion said migrants make a “huge economic, political and social contribution to the country” and condemned the Prime Minister for “racial stereotyping”.

Michel Holland, a teacher from Lambeth, said: “I am the grandson of Irish refugees. We’re all refugees in this country.” He added: “Refugees are welcome here.”

Christopher Denson, a teacher from Coventry, said he had reservations about using the term “fundamental British values” in schools because many of his students had ancestry in countries which had been at the mercy British colonialism.

He said: “The inherent cultural supremacism in that term is both unnecessary and unacceptable. And seen with the Prevent agenda, it belies the most thinly veiled racism and a conscious effort to divide communities.”

He added: “It’s our duty to push a real anti-racist work in all schools. And that doesn’t mean talk of tolerating other’s views, but genuine, inclusive anti-racist work.”

He said every year his school discussed topics such as apartheid and the rise of Islamaphobia. He added: “This year we focussed on the migrant crisis in Calais, the Mediterranean and beyond.

“We organised a politics day for Year 8s in the week before Easter. They had a day to form a political party in their tutor groups to come up with a manifesto, film a broadcast, and make banners and take part in a debate.

“Apart from the quality of the work, the other thing that really made my proud was that every single tutor group had as a policy, ‘refugees welcome, open the borders’.”

He said: “We need to be pushing at every level for anti-racism to be in the core curriculum for every child. We need to continue to gather, collate and publicise such materials and we need to fight to reject this notion of British values, to fight for notions of human values and human rights.

“We have to stand together across communities to bring down barriers, bring down borders, to say no to Islamaphobia, no to anti-Semitism, no to facism and any form of racism. As my Year 8s said, refugees welcome, open the borders.”

Their motion was met with fierce criticism. Chris McGovern of the Campaign for Real Education, said: “Teachers should not be playing the role of fifth columnists in the ideological war currently being fought over our national identity and our national sovereignty.

“Teaching children that British values are part of “cultural supremacism” will, at best, make them feel guilty about being British and, at worst, radicalise them in order to ‘make up’ for the sins of their fathers.

“If one wishes to destroy a nation and build a ‘brave new world’ you begin by indoctrinating and brainwashing the children. This process of ‘re-education’ has started some years ago in our schools and we are, now, seeing its consequences in the suppression of free speech on our university campuses.”

Separately, teachers rejected the Government’s anti-radicalisation strategy over concerns it is silencing conversation in the classroom and damaging community cohesion.

The union called on the Government to withdraw the Prevent strategy regarding schools, which since summer 2015, has obliged teachers to refer to police pupils they suspect of engaging in some sort of terrorist activity or radical behaviour…. (Bold face type in original. — DM)

Op-Ed: EXPOSE: Belgium accepted Islamization for electoral reasons

March 29, 2016

Op-Ed: EXPOSE: Belgium accepted Islamization for electoral reasons, Israel National News, Giulio Meotti, March 29, 2016

The conversation opens with a proverb: “In the land of the blind the one-eyed is a king, but not in Belgium, where those who have tried to raise the alarm have been left alone.” These are the words of Alain Destexhe, a prominent figure among the liberals in Brussels, former secretary of Médecins Sans Frontières and president of the International Crisis Group.

He is also author of “Lettre aux progressistes qui flirtent avec l’islam réac” (a letter to the progressives who flirt with reactionary Islam – Editions du Cerisier),  a letter-pamphlet that Destexhe dedicated to Philippe Moureaux, the man considered responsible for the transformation of a large suburb of Brussels into the European hub of Islamic holy war.

Two days ago, the Belgian Prime Minister, Charles Michel, said that Moureaux bears a “huge responsibility.”

“For twenty years, he reigned in a sort of conspiracy of silence” continues Destexhe as he talks to us. “At the heart of this system was the powerful Philippe Moureaux, mayor of Molenbeek, media darling, who has had a real moral and political domination over Brussels’ policy. He has created a climate of intellectual terror against the few who dared to stand up. Philippe Moureaux had realized that the future of socialism would depend on the immigrants who would become, symbolically, the new proletariat”.

But who is Moureaux? Professor of Philosophy at the University of Liege, Senator, Director of the Institut Emile Vandervelde (the think tank of the Socialist Party), deputy prime minister in the Martens government, but since 1983 city councilor and then, more importantly, mayor of Molenbeek for twenty years (1992- 2012). Son of minister Charles Moureaux, Philippe has long been the darling of the anti-racist left. The “loi Moureaux”, the Moureaux law, is in fact the rule that in 1981 criminalized acts inspired by xenophobia.

Nicknamed “Moustache” for his mustache, married to a Muslim Tunisian woman, Philippe Moureaux, even before becoming mayor of Molenbeek, had always boasted of defending the rights of immigrants. He included, for the first time in the history of Belgium, Muslim representatives in municipal and regional lists. This scion of the Belgian policy has been the mayor of Molenbeek for so long that the strategic suburb has come to be embodied in Isis’ plans.

His pro-Arab sympathies date back to the war in Algeria, when Moureaux defended the representatives of the Algerian National Liberation Front, also secretly hiding them in the heights of Lustin, in the Namur region.

Merry Hermanus, activist of the Socialist Party in Brussels for decades, also has accused Moureaux: “Without the immigrant populations, the Socialist Party would have been reduced to eight percent of the electorate in Brussels. We have become prisoners.” A few days ago, Moureux published his book, “The Truth About Molenbeek”. He wrote it after the massacres of November 13, in Paris, when the political class began to question his leadership of the Brussels ghetto. In the volume, Moureaux refers to “my Muslim brothers,” writes that one of the engines of jihadism is our “Islamophobia” and punishes “a society that treats immigrants like the Jews before the war”.

“Multiculturalism has failed because we have allowed them to exclude themselves without integrating communities, causing a fragmentation of society,” tells me Alain Destexhe, former Secretary General of Doctors Without Borders. “We’re talking about Belgian citizens who reject the values of our country. Salah Abdeslam is a typical example of a guy who could lead a comfortable life. He had a decent salary and a guaranteed job for life “.

Why did you write the Lettre aux progressistes qui flirtent avec l’islam réac? To denounce the left that you could not criticize, while we were becoming the first country in Europe in number of jihadists and Brussels the weakest link in the fight against this reactionary Islam.

It was an electoral strategy: Moureaux used immigrants to stay in power. Today half of the officers in local councils and in Parliament of the Socialist Party are of foreign origin.

Why did they never demand conditions to give citizenship to immigrants? “It was a political electoral pact. Legal immigration (and illegal) was encouraged. Family reunification was facilitated. There was the granting of voting rights to foreigners, the fight against racism became the new paradigm of political discourse. And more: frequent visits to mosques, subsidies to Muslim associations, the provision of services to the Koranic schools, participation in the festival Eid El Kebir, anti-Israeli marches”.

When he was mayor, Moureaux also urged people to avoid driving during Ramadan, so as not to offend Muslims.

“Most politicians chose not to listen to sermons that became increasingly radical and in this climate radical organizations such as the Belgian Islamic Centre and others have prospered freely. Molenbeek has thus become the fastest growing area of the Brussels region of Belgium. The population of the district increased by 12 percent in 5 years and 30 percent in 15 years. The Islamization is taking place before our eyes. Already 30 percent of Brussels is Islamic”.

And there’s not only Molenbeek: “There are Anderlecht, Brussels City, Schaerbeek, Saint-Josse and Forest. When I was Secretary of Doctors Without Borders, in the ’90s, I often worked in Molenbeek. The population was already largely of immigrant origin, but nobody was trying to assert its own Islamic identity, like today. Women were not wearing the veil, no one asked halal food in schools, few went to the mosque. For this reason, if I look at Belgium today, I am very pessimistic. Perhaps it is too late”.

Patrol Muslim Neighborhoods or Jewish ones

March 29, 2016

Patrol Muslim Neighborhoods or Jewish ones, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, March 29, 2016

leiby-home

When I go to the synagogue on Passover, there will be a police officer at the door. There will be an NYPD officer in front of every synagogue. Police brass will make the rounds of each synagogue to check security and alertness. Local precincts will be on alert anticipating a Muslim terrorist attack.

As they are on every Jewish holiday.

In France, there are heavily armed soldiers outside synagogues. In Israel, the soldiers are more likely to be found inside the synagogues.  That is what Jewish life is like under the shadow of Muslim terrorism.

The ADL, which was not outraged when Bernie Sanders posed with members of anti-Semitic hate groups such as SJP and CAIR, put out a press release denouncing Ted Cruz for calling for heightened police scrutiny of Muslim neighborhoods. But the alternative to a police presence in Muslim areas is a police presence in Jewish areas. If you can’t stop Muslim terrorism at the source, then you have to try and secure all the potential targets. That means police officers in front of synagogues and TSA agents checking your shoes. It means police forces that look like armies and soldiers in the streets.

The ADL denounced Cruz for calling for a return to the NYPD’s old tactics for breaking up Muslim terror plots. One of those “controversial” methods led to the breakup of a Muslim terror plot to blow up a synagogue in Manhattan. Ahmed Ferhani had been interfaith enough to also consider blowing up a church, but he settled on plotting to plant a bomb and then open fire inside a synagogue.

The same left that is now outraged by Cruz’s statement fought for Ferhani. They fought for a Muslim terrorist who boasted at his sentencing, “I intended to create chaos and send a message of intimidation and coercion to the Jewish population of New York City.” In the zero sum game of civil rights, the left fights for the civil rights of Muslim terrorists and against the civil rights of their Jewish victims.

Muslim civil rights is not a matter between the government and Muslims. It is a zero sum game in which protecting the “rights” of Muslims to plan terror attacks takes away the right of their victims to live. It’s a choice between having police informants in a mosque or police officers in front of synagogues. Both send a chilling message. But the former sends a chilling message to terrorists. The latter to their targets.

Liberal groups protesting the idea of Muslim surveillance are offering a false and dishonest choice.

The choice is not whether there will be government surveillance and a police presence. The choice is where will it be? Will it be at a mosque run by the Muslim Brotherhood that terror preachers visit to spread their hate? Or will it be at every church and synagogue that Muslim terrorists might target.

None of the above is not an option. It stops being an option after the first, second and third terror attacks. France tried to ignore Muslim violence against Jews for as long as it could. But even a left-wing government was forced to station armed soldiers in front of Jewish schools and synagogues.

Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s new boss, whines that “special patrols of Muslim neighborhoods” will make Muslims “more vulnerable, more frightened”. What exactly does he think that police patrols of Jewish neighborhoods do? What message does it send to Jewish children going to synagogue that there is a cop at the door because a Muslim terrorist might try to kill them?

Why isn’t Greenblatt more concerned about how those children feel than how their killers do?

Muslim terrorism is not a matter between Muslims and an abstract state. The victims of Muslim terror are not abstractions. They are real people who suffer and bleed. After every Muslim terror attack, the media rushes the victims off the stage to make way for Muslims whining about an imaginary backlash after someone gave them a dirty look on the bus, because it wants us to forget who the real victims are.

The real victims are not in the mosque. They are in the church, the synagogue and the Hindu temple. They are in a New York office building shuffling their papers at 8:45 AM on a Tuesday morning. They are at a Christmas party in California. They are near the finish line in Boston watching the runners pass.

Muslim civil rights violate their civil rights. Muslim civil rights violate their bodies. Muslim civil rights drive nails and ball bearings into their arms and legs. Muslim civil rights lead them to stagger through the smoke and then plummet one hundred stories headfirst into the New York cement. Muslim civil rights force non-Muslims to walk in fear to their own houses of worship waiting for the next attack.

Muslim terrorism forces us to choose between the civil rights of Muslims and those of everyone else.

How we handle Muslim terrorism will define who we are as a people. Will we side with the victims or the perpetrators? Anyone who speaks of the civil rights of the perpetrators instead of those of the victims has chosen the side of the perpetrators. The ADL, like Obama and the media, stands with the perpetrators. It would rather see police in front of synagogues than in front of mosques.

That is a choice. And it is a choice that says a great deal about what the ADL’s real values are.

Liberals used to pride themselves on standing with the oppressed, not with the oppressors. Today, they stand unambiguously with the oppressors. They stand with hate groups and synagogue bombers.

Dutch journalist Elma Drayer complained about Muslims throwing stones at Jews leaving the synagogue after September 11. The police told her not to talk about it because the Muslims were “already being stigmatized”. It wasn’t the stigmatism of the Jewish victims being stoned that the police were concerned with, but the stigmatism of the Muslims who were throwing the stones at them.

This is Muslim civil rights.

We can be concerned about the “stigmatism” of the Muslims whose mosques are being used to plot attacks. Or the stigmatism of their victims. We can worry about how “vulnerable” and “frightened” Muslims feel at the extra police scrutiny or how vulnerable and frightened non-Muslims are because instead of proactively fighting terrorism, they have to reactively hope to stop the next terrorist attack.

The NYPD brass that attacked Ted Cruz’s proposal is reactively deploying police officers to potential targets because it has been prevented from fighting Islamic terrorism proactively by investigating mosques and other Jihadist coordinating hubs. And so there are police officers in front of synagogues and heavily armed ESU tactical teams hanging around high traffic areas hoping that will be enough.

Under Bill de Blasio, New York made a choice between proactively targeting Muslim neighborhoods and reactively deploying everywhere that Muslim terrorists might strike. It was the wrong choice.

In Europe, those same choices were also made. Synagogues were turned into fortresses with bulletproof windows and armored doors. Jews were told not to wear religious clothing outside. Worshipers travel in fear to prayer, passing armed soldiers outside, entering one at a time to avoid becoming bigger targets.

While politicians wrung their hands over Muslim feelings, their victims were left frightened, vulnerable and stigmatized. And now the same pattern is repeating itself in the United States all over again.

The fundamental moral question of every crime, every atrocity and every act of violence against the innocent is do we concern ourselves with the pain of the victims or do we make excuses for the killers. The answer to that question defines who we are, individually and as a people. It also determines whether we will defend ourselves or go on making excuses for the killers even as they are killing us.

When we choose the killers over their victims, we not only betray them, but we betray ourselves.

U.S. at Easter: When Christians Are Slaughtered, Look the Other Way

March 27, 2016

U.S. at Easter: When Christians Are Slaughtered, Look the Other Way, Gatestone InstituteRaymond Ibrahim, March 27, 2016

♦ “Over 500 Christian villagers were slain in one night.” — Emmanuel Ogebe, Nigerian human rights lawyer, March 2, 2016.

♦ What Christians in Nigeria are experiencing is a live snapshot of what millions of Christians and other non-Muslims have experienced since the seventh century, when Islam “migrated” to their borders: violence, persecution, enslavement, and the destruction of churches.

♦ The Obama Administration refuses to associate Boko Haram — an organization that defines itself in purely Islamic terms — with Islam, just as it refuses to associate the ISIS with Islam.

♦ In all cases, the Obama Administration looks the other way, while insisting that the jihad is a product of “inequality,” “poverty” and “a lack of opportunity for jobs” never of Islamic teaching.

Boko Haram, the Nigerian Islamic extremist group, has killed more people in the name of jihad than the Islamic State (ISIS), according to the findings of a new report. Since 2000, when twelve Northern Nigerian states began implementing or more fully enforcing Islamic sharia law, “between 9,000 to 11,500 Christians” have been killed. This is “a conservative estimate.”

In addition, “1.3 million Christians have become internally displaced or forced to relocate elsewhere,” and “13,000 churches have been closed or destroyed altogether.” Countless “thousands of Christian businesses, houses and other property have been destroyed.”

The report alludes to a number of other factors that connect the growth of the Nigerian jihad to the growth of the global jihad. The rise of anti-Christian, Islamic supremacism

“did not emerge in Northern Nigeria until the 1980s, when Nigerian scholars and students returned from Arabic countries influenced by Wahhabi and Salafist teaching. Each year, thousands of West African Muslims get free scholarships to pursue their studies in the Sunni Arab countries; this has had a major impact on Nigerian culture.”

This “major impact” is not limited to Nigeria. Saudi Arabia annually spends over $100 billion disseminating “Wahhabi and Salafist teaching” — or what growing numbers of Muslims refer to as “true Islam”. They also do so through European mosques and those in the United States. Behind the radicalization of ISIS, Boko Haram, and Lone Wolf Muslims, stand America’s best Muslim friends and allies.

Another important finding from the report is that,

“Not just radical Islam, Boko Haram being the most notable example, but also Muslim Hausa-Fulani herdsmen and the Northern Muslim political and religious elite are also major actors of targeted violence towards the Christian minority.”

Most recently, on March 2, Nigerian human rights lawyer Emmanuel Ogebe sent an email saying: “I arrived Nigeria a few days ago to investigate what appears to be the worst massacre by Muslim [Hausa-Fulani] herdsmen… Over 500 Christian villagers were slain in one night.”

Similarly, according to a West African source, “Once Boko Haram is defeated, the problem will not be solved. Christians living under Sharia law are facing discrimination and marginalization and have limited to no access to federal rights.”

The report finally finds that much of the anti-Christian violence derives from the historical “migration of Muslims into non-Muslim territories in northern Nigeria to promote the Islamic religious and missionary agenda in all parts of northern Nigeria.” In other words, what Christians in Nigeria are experiencing is a live snapshot of what millions of Christians and other non-Muslims have experienced since the seventh century, when Islam “migrated” to their borders: violence, persecution, enslavement, and the destruction of churches.

All of these findings contradict the Obama Administration’s official narrative concerning the unrest in Nigeria. For years, the administration refused to list Boko Haram — which has slaughtered more Christians and “apostates” than even ISIS — as a terrorist organization. It finally did so in November 2013, after several years of pressure from lawmakers, human rights activists, and lobbyists.

1529For years, the Obama Administration refused to list Boko Haram — which has slaughtered more Christians and “apostates” than even ISIS — as a terrorist organization. It finally did so in November 2013, after several years of pressure. Pictured above: Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau (center).

Even so, the Obama Administration refuses to associate Boko Haram — an organization that defines itself in purely Islamic terms — with Islam, just as it refuses to associate the ISIS with Islam. Although Boko Haram and its allies have yet to miss a year when they do not bomb or burn several churches during the Christmas or Easter celebrations, on Easter Day, 2012, after the organization had murdered 39 Christian worshippers, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson said: “I want to take this opportunity to stress one key point and that is that religion is not driving extremist violence” in the Muslim-majority north.

So what is? The administration attributes to Boko Haram the same motivation it attributes to the Islamic State — or as President Bill Clinton once memorably put it in a reference to Boko Haram’s murder campaign: “inequality” and “poverty” are “what’s fueling all this stuff.”

That assessment is similar to the Obama Administration’s claim that “a lack of opportunity for jobs” is what created ISIS; or CIA John Brennan’s claim that the jihadi ideology the world over is “fed a lot of times by, you know, political repression, by economic, you know, disenfranchisement, by, you know, lack of education and ignorance, so there — there are a number of phenomena right now that I think are fueling the fires of, you know, this ideology.”

Appeasing the jihadis has been the administration’s policy, or in the words of Clinton’s advice to the Nigerian government: “[I]t is almost impossible to cure a problem based on violence with violence.” Countless decapitated Christian heads later, when Nigerian forces killed 30 Boko Haram members in a particularly powerful offensive carried out in May 2013, Reuters reported that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry “issued a strongly worded statement” to the Nigerian president: “We are … deeply concerned,” he said, “by credible allegations that Nigerian security forces are committing gross human rights violations, which, in turn, only escalate the violence and fuel extremism” from Boko Haram.

Christian life in Muslim-majority areas of Nigeria is merely a microcosm of Christian life in Muslim-majority nations around the world. Christians are being persecuted and killed, their churches banned, burned or bombed. Thanks to Saudi petrodollars, the men behind the persecution are almost always “influenced by Wahhabi and Salafist teaching,” and include not just “extremists,” but also the “political and religious elite.” In all cases, the Obama Administration looks the other way, while insisting that the jihad is a product of “inequality,” “poverty” and “a lack of opportunity for jobs” never of Islamic teaching.

USA Today: U.S. cities face anti-Muslim backlash

March 27, 2016

USA Today: U.S. cities face anti-Muslim backlash, Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer, March 26, 2016

Here we go again. After every Islamic jihad massacre, the mainstream media acts as if Muslims, not non-Muslims, were killed. Notice that while this headline portends Muslims being persecuted all over the nation, the article doesn’t give any examples other than vague and unsubstantiated assertions from the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which wants and needs hate crimes against Muslims, because they’re the currency they use to buy power and influence in our victimhood-oriented society, and to deflect attention away from jihad terror and onto Muslims as putative victims. Hamas-linked CAIR, designated a terror organization by the United Arab Emirates, and other Muslims have on many occasions not hesitated to stoop even to fabricating “hate crimes,” including attacks on mosques. Most notably, in February, a New Jersey Muslim was found guilty of murder that he tried to portray as an “Islamophobic” attack, and in 2014 in California, a Muslim was found guilty of killing his wife, after first blaming her murder on “Islamophobia.”

sad-Muslims

“‘Islamophobia’: U.S. cities face anti-Muslim backlash,” by Mike James and Linda Dono, USA TODAY, March 24, 2016 (thanks to Christian):

WASHINGTON — Cities across the USA are preparing for the next phase that inevitably follows a terror attack: anti-Muslim backlash.

Across social media, in public forums on college campuses, and even in mainstream political rhetoric from presidential candidates, anger over the deadly terror attacks in Brussels has spawned discontent and suspicion directed at Muslim groups. After the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks, leaders in California, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and spoke out quickly to dissuade anti-Muslim sentiment.

The aftermath of an attack “is always a difficult time for Muslims in the United States,” said Nabil Shaikh, a leader of the Muslim Students Association at Princeton University.

“On Princeton’s campus, students took to anonymous forums like Yik Yak to comment that there are Muslims at Princeton who are radical and would therefore condone yesterday’s attacks,” Shaikh said. “These comments not only are appalling and inaccurate but also threaten the well-being of Muslim students.”

Unlike in Belgium and Paris following the November terror attacks, the backlash in the U.S. is not as confrontational.

Europe has seen occasional anti-Muslim rallies in Flemish cities such as Antwerp and Ghent. Some Muslim leaders have accused police in Europe of overtly targeting Muslim communities in lockdowns and raids of homes.

“The average Muslim still feels intimidated, still feels scared, still feels insecure.” Khusro Elley, Chappaqua, N.Y.

Muslim communities in the U.S. face opposition more in the form of rhetoric — but in an election year, such rhetoric can lead to sweeping change.

The day of the Brussels attack, Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz said that the U.S. needs to “empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.” His comments struck an already raw nerve in Muslim communities throughout the U.S. although Donald Trump praised Cruz’s idea.

President Obama called the approach “wrong and un-American.”

“I just left a country that engages in that kind of surveillance, which by the way the father of Senator Cruz escaped, to America, the land of the free,” he said, referring to Cuba.

Politics plays a role in fostering anti-Islamic sentiment, said Khusro Elley of Chappaqua, N.Y., a trustee at Upper Westchester Muslim Society in Thornwood, N.Y.

“The average Muslim still feels intimidated, still feels scared, still feels insecure,” especially in a political climate where it’s become common to depict Muslims as terrorists, he said.

While brutal attacks on Muslims in the United States haven’t been reported to the Council on American-Islamic Relations since the Brussels attack, bullying and hate speech are growing, said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Washington-based civil-liberties group.

“For girls, it’s pulling on the hijab and calling them terrorists, and for boys it’s saying that they have a bomb in their backpack and calling them terrorists,” Hooper said. Some politicians make the problems worse. “They really have mainstreamed Islamophobia.”

Children hear the hate speech on TV and hear their parents agreeing with it, he said. Increasingly, they’re taking the language to school.

In Louisville, more than two dozen Islamic leaders gathered Wednesday to condemn the attacks and urge the public not to link all Muslims with terrorism, describing a growing level of Islamophobia.

“I do feel that with the attacks in Brussels and especially after Paris, people feel like they are entitled to speak hatefully. It’s actually a lot worse than what happened after 9/11.”
Maira Salim, Muslim Student Association at Wichita State University

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer, a Democrat, called some Republican political candidates’ responses in wake of the Brussels attack “naive and unrealistic.”

“For them to play to people’s basest fears” to gain political support is “contrary to American values,” Fischer said at an interfaith prayer vigil, contending that such candidates are “masquerading as presidential timber.”

Muslims in Louisville haven’t felt fearful, especially since non-Muslim volunteers came out in force to paint over anti-Islam graffiti two days after the Louisville Islamic Center was vandalized Sept. 16, said Mohammed Wasif Iqbal, head of the center. But Iqbal said some have criticized Islamic leaders for not condemning attacks strongly enough.

“We will stand here every single time and condemn it,” he said, arguing that extremists should not define the Islamic religion.

Muhammad Babar, a Louisville Islamic leader with Muslim Americans for Compassion, called the Brussels attack heartbreaking.

“Do not see us through the actions of ISIL,” he said. “We are as American as you are.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Florida chapter has seen a fivefold increase in reports of hate incidents during 2015 compared with 2014, 26 vs. five, said Hassan Shibly, the chapter’s chief executive director. A grand majority occurred in the final two months of the year, after the Paris terrorist attacks.

“Unlike what happens after the mass shootings committed by white supremacists that happen almost daily in America, whenever an act of terrorism involves those who identify themselves as Muslims, politicians respond by calling for the curtailment or the rights of American Muslims,” he said. “Our enemies can never destroy us. We can only destroy ourselves if we allow fear and hate to turn us against each other.”

The national Council on American-Islamic Relations, founded in 1994, called for Cruz to retract his demand for law enforcement to secure Muslim neighborhoods.

“Mr. Cruz’s call for law enforcement to ‘patrol and secure’ neighborhoods in which American Muslim families live is not only unconstitutional, it is unbefitting anyone seeking our nation’s highest office and indicates that he lacks the temperament necessary for any president,” the national council’s executive director, Nihad Awad, said in a statement.

Awad called Cruz’s plan fascist-like.

“I do feel that with the attacks in Brussels and especially after Paris, people feel like they are entitled to speak hatefully,” said Maira Salim, president of the Muslim Student Association at Wichita State University. “It’s actually a lot worse than what happened after 9/11. … I’m all for free speech, but hate speech is not OK.”

American Fascists and delicate little snowflakes

March 26, 2016

American Fascists and delicate little snowflakes, Dan Miller’s Blog, March 26, 2016

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

Fascists want to take away our freedom of speech. So do the delicate little snowflakes infesting our institutions of “higher learning.” How much worse will it get over the next few years? Substantially worse, I fear.

In the above video, Bill Whittle recounts numerous Fascist attempts to shut down those with different ideas. I’ll not repeat what he says. Instead, I’ll point out a few other Fascist efforts.

Islamist Fascists

In line with its “misconception” that Islam is the religion of peace and tolerance, the Obama administration has consistently courted the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliate, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) — which do everything they can to shut down all discussion of whether Islam is peaceful and tolerant and whether it should change. The Obama administration, following its lead, has ignored Muslim voices for reform.

What does Hillary Clinton think? Apparently that Islam is fine the way it is.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali has a different view.

220px-ayaan-hirsi-ali-vvd-nl-1200x1600

As I noted here, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a former Muslim. She had been scheduled to receive an honorary degree from Brandeis University in April of 2014. However,

Brandeis University in Massachusetts announced Tuesday that it had withdrawn the planned awarding of an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a staunch critic of Islam and its treatment of women, after protests from students and faculty.

The university said in a statement posted online that the decision had been made after a discussion between Ali and university President Frederick Lawrence.

“She is a compelling public figure and advocate for women’s rights, and we respect and appreciate her work to protect and defend the rights of women and girls throughout the world,” said the university’s statement. “That said, we cannot overlook certain of her past statements that are inconsistent with Brandeis University’s core values.” [Emphasis added.]

Ali, a member of the Dutch Parliament from 2003 to 2006, has been quoted as making comments critical of Islam. That includes a 2007 interview with Reason Magazine in which she said of the religion, “Once it’s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now. They’re not interested in peace. I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle ground in wars.”

Ali was raised in a strict Muslim family, but after surviving a civil war, genital mutilation, beatings and an arranged marriage, she renounced the faith in her 30s. She has not commented publicly on the issue of the honorary degree.

. . . .

More than 85 of about 350 faculty members at Brandeis signed a letter asking for Ali to be removed from the list of honorary degree recipients. And an online petition created Monday by students at the school of 5,800 had gathered thousands of signatures from inside and outside the university as of Tuesday afternoon.

“This is a real slap in the face to Muslim students,” said senior Sarah Fahmy, a member of the Muslim Student Association who created the petition said before the university withdrew the honor.

“But it’s not just the Muslim community that is upset but students and faculty of all religious beliefs,” she said. “A university that prides itself on social justice and equality should not hold up someone who is an outright Islamophobic.” [Emphasis added.]

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) also got into the act:

“It is unconscionable that such a prestigious university would honor someone with such openly hateful views.”

The organization sent a letter to university President Frederick Lawrence on Tuesday requesting that it drop plans to honor Ali.

This makes Muslim students feel very uneasy,” Joseph Lumbard, chairman of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, said in an interview. “They feel unwelcome here.” [Emphasis added.]

On September 15, Hirsi Ali spoke at Yale University. The usual suspects did not want her to speak.

WFB Program president Rich Lizardo tells the story of events that followed the WFB Program’s public announcement of the event in the Yale Daily News column “We invited Ayaan Hirsi Ali to speak at Yale–and outrage ensued.”

Following the public announcement, the Muslim Students Association at Yale went through its usual routine, first seeking to have Ms. Hirsi Ali disinvited (though it disputes this), then to limit the subject matter of her speech, then to impose conditions on her speech that would stigmatize her. In the spirit of WFB himself, Lizardo stood firm.

The MSA routine worked at Brandeis; at Yale, not so much. Not this time.

Poor delicate little snowflakes. Isn’t it a shame that they might be exposed to new ideas that are alien to them? That they were not required to attend and listen to those ideas is, apparently, inconsequential. They did not anyone to listen to them.

Here’s a video of her remarks. The introductions are a trifle long and add little value. The questions she was asked at the end and her answers are, however, interesting. They begin at 55 minutes into the video.

When I posted the video here, I observed that

She seemed to be speaking less to the “choir” and more to a broader audience which she was trying to convince. To that end, she was as conciliatory as she could be without abandoning her thesis that Islam is the religion of repression, submission and death, not peace; that it is highly dangerous to Western civilization, including our concepts of freedom and democracy. “Radical” Islam is rising, becoming even worse and it must be defeated.

Even to try to defeat Islam, we need to defeat the increasing efforts to eliminate freedom of speech at home in favor of speech that is politically and multiculturally correct and therefore not free. [Emphasis added.]

On April 7, 2015, Hirsi Ali spoke at the National Press Club. Here’s a video of her remarks on the Clash of Civilizations, largely based on her book Heretic, which I later reviewed here. There, she writes optimistically of the possibility (but not the probability) of an Islamic revolution, someday.

There is a clash of civilizations. Muslims in Western countries generally refuse to help the police prevent Islamic terror attacks, such as recently occurred in Brussels.

There is a reason why Israel razes the homes of terrorists. It is because Israelis know that a terrorist cannot plot and carry out an attack without the knowledge and help of his or her immediate relatives, and further, the entire community. Punitive home demolition is meant to serve as a deterrent, the idea being that a would-be terrorist’s family will fear losing their home and thus persuade him or her against the attack.

In fact, knowing that it “takes a village” to aid and abet a terrorist is precisely why the terrorists responsible for the Paris and recent Brussels bombings could operate “right under the noses” of their victims. And it is why some are calling for heightened scrutiny of Muslim communities across the West, and right here in the U.S., despite cries of Islamophobia.

The MailOnline reports that police in Molenbeek — a district known for spawning jihadis like the France and Brussels attackers — have pleaded with local Muslims for help in finding the terror suspects only to have their pleas rebuffed.

Western nations which welcome and care for them are spit upon. “See something, say something” did not work before the San Bernardino Islamic attack. Perhaps those who saw something but said nothing remained silent because they feared being characterized as Islamophobes.

Here is a recent video of an interview with a teenage Yazidi girl who escaped the Islamic State. Is Islam the religion of peace and respect for females? For people of other religions?

In the unlikely event that any delicate little snowflakes watch it, will they be offended by its presence on You Tube, by the “lies” told by the Yazidi girl or by the truth of her statements?

Multicultural Fascists

Europe has many multicultural Fascists and Obama’s America has fewer. However, those who propagate the multicultural fantasy are winning. In the past, we sought immigrants who brought with them cultures compatible with ours. Now, Obama demands that we accept immigrants whose cultures of violence, drugs, gangs, crime and the like are not compatible. We have sanctuary cities where gang, other violence and drug smuggling and use are endemic. Although state efforts to enforce Federal immigration laws which the Obama administration refuses to enforce have been struck down by the judiciary, the Obama administration somewhat impotently challenged the sanctuary cities this year, only following pressure from the Congress.

Here is a video of remarks made by Victor Davis Hanson about one year ago on the travesty of “illiberal illegal immigration.” Illegal immigration breeds illegality across the board.

https://vimeo.com/122160603

A transcript of his remarks is available here. Here’s just a short snippet:

[I]t’s a controversial topic.  If I had said to you 20 years ago, 10 years ago, we’re going to get in a situation in the United States where 160,000 people are going to arrive at the border and break immigration law and we’re going to let them all in at once without any prior check, medical histories, you would think I was a right-wing conspiracist.  If I had said to you, we’re going to have a president who is going to not only nullify existing federal immigration law, but on 22 occasions prior to that nullification warn us that he couldn’t nullify it, or, if I had said, he’s not only going to nullify federal immigration law, which he said would be unconstitutional, but that he is going to punish members of ICE, the border patrol, who follow existing law rather than his own unlawful existing order, I could go on, but you’d all think this was surreal, Orwellian, it couldn’t happen.  Yet that’s the status quo as we look at it today.

Our borders are worse than porous; they are open and little effort is being made to keep criminals, drug dealers, gang members and other violent people out. While Obama has many “top” priorities, doing that is not among them.

As noted in a post at American Thinker,

Cultures are either consciously abandoned, or consciously enforced. The theory of multiculturalism has always been a tonic for simpletons, since it celebrates the perpetuation and imposition of an incompatible culture, still being practiced by those who carry it, upon a host culture with which it is mutually exclusive. Multiculturalism is entirely subversive. It is intended to force one or more cultures upon the hosts who do not want or need them. Since both cultures cannot successfully coexist within the host, which has its own successful working culture, the purpose of the exercise has always been fraudulent. The “melting pot” concept worked not because of the concept of multiculturalism, but as testament against it. Those who came here in our parents’ and grandparents’ generation consciously chose to abandon the cultures they left in favor of the American culture. They became Americans, embracing one culture.

If one was being less generous than to call multiculturalism a tonic for simpletons, it would be more accurate to say that modern leftist multiculturalism is actually a weapon. Its purpose is not to enhance the host, but to consume it. If the host’s culture is peaceful, it has no use for malcontents who insist upon the dominance of their native culture. Malcontents, in the form of angry and entitled guests, foment chaos and disorder. And yet, the leftists insist that we demonstrate our cultural superiority by abandoning the superiority of our own culture and importing incompatible languages, traditions, practices, and morals.

Here’s a snapshot of our current Southern border by Sharyl Attkisson:

Conclusions

The delicate little snowflakes who demand safe spaces from reality in what were once institutions of higher learning seem to be increasing in number. They are our next generation and will soon begin to elect those with whose milquetoast views they agree. It will be a sad day for America when our nation mirrors those “educational” institutions. Solutions? I have none to offer, other than the development of backbones by their university administrators and teachers; perhaps even by their own parents. Perhaps some little snowflakes will be told, “If you don’t want to be exposed to views inconsistent with those you already hold, don’t come here.”

Living in America should be an honor not granted those who despise and abuse her by coming illegally, by illegally bringing crime and violence or by supporting those who do. Falsely characterizing Islam as the religion of peace and tolerance should not be “who we are” as Obama claims. Most of us are not deluded fools, I hope.

Oh well. Somehow we got Obama as the Commander in Chief. Twice.

This message was posted just eight days before the recent Islamic attack in Brussels, Belgium:

 

Sweden? Negative Image? What Could You Be Thinking?

March 26, 2016

Sweden? Negative Image? What Could You Be Thinking? One Month of Islam and Multiculturalism in Sweden: February 2016, Gatestone InstituteIngrid Carlqvist, March 26, 2016

♦ Two “unaccompanied refugee children,” remanded in January on suspicion of the aggravated rape of a younger boy at an asylum house in Alvesta, were revealed to be much older than 15 years old — the age they claimed to be. One of them, an Afghan man, wrote on Facebook that he was 44.<

♦ On Sweden’s most popular TV show, host Gina Dirawi and a children’s choir rewrote Sweden’s national anthem — instead of “I want to live, I want to die in the North”, they sang, “I want to live, I want to die on Earth.” The producer stated that the show “is not for those who get upset if the national anthem is changed. The focus should be on the people of this country who have ‘different roots.'”

♦ Adult migrants with residence permits now have a right to bypass Swedes in waiting lists for housing. There is a massive shortage of housing, which has led to young Swedes, well into their 30s, being forced to live with their parents.

No one seems to have given any thought as to where all the people who are granted asylum in Sweden are supposed to live. There is a massive shortage of housing, which has led to young Swedes, well into their 30s, being forced to live with their parents. In 2014, a report from the Swedish Union of Tenants (Hyresgästföreningen) disclosed that close to 300,000 young people between the ages of 20-27 do not have their own place to live. The Immigration Service has the right to send “unaccompanied refugee children,” who are often, in fact, undocumented adults, to the local municipalities — and then it is their problem to procure accommodation. It was also recently reported that adult migrants with residence permits have a right to bypass Swedes in waiting lists for housing. The municipality of Skellefteå now plans to inventory all the empty houses in the countryside, looking for possible alternatives for migrants.

February 3: Teenage girls attending the Vårboskolan high school in the Malmö suburb of Arlöv were sexually assaulted and stalked by young migrants in their 20s who take Swedish language classes at the school, according to the local daily newspaper, Sydsvenskan. As most of the migrants are male, the gender balance at the school has been severely skewed. 14-year-old Emilia and Nora told Sydsvenskan:

“The guys stared at us and made kissing noises. They said things we did not quite understand, told us we were sexy and good looking and stuff like that. And they took pictures of us and other girls with their phones. During recess, they stand outside waiting for us and then they follow us. Sometimes guys have groped us in the lunch line.”

February 6: A gang of youths threw stones at a police patrol in the immigrant-heavy neighborhood of Hageby in Norrköping. The police officers were monitoring traffic when one of their cars was set on fire by a gang of 15 or 20 youths, who then proceeded to throw stones at the officers. Four youths, aged 16-18, were removed from the scene, but inexplicably not arrested.

February 7: An ambulance was vandalized by unknown persons in the immigrant-heavy suburb of Tensta in northwestern Stockholm. Three windows of the vehicle were smashed. If the patient for whom the ambulance had come had been critically ill, “the consequences,” as the police reported, “could have been dire.”

Åke Östman, head of Emergency Medical Services in the Greater Stockholm area, told the daily, Dagens Nyheter:

“I cannot understand why anyone would do this — we are not a government authority; we are there to help. The next time, it might be their parents. If the ambulances have to wait for a police escort, people living in certain areas may get inferior service.”

February 8: According to an opinion poll commissioned by the daily, Dagens Nyheter, immigration and integration are now the leading political issues for Swedish voters. 40% of respondents said that immigration was the most important issue — double the number from previous poll. Johanna Laurin Gulled, a research analyst at the Ipsos polling institute, told the paper that this was the biggest shift the institute has ever seen in any poll. Education, the most important issue in June of last year, is now in second place.

February 11: A Kurdish immigrant in Stockholm was sentenced to 18 years in prison for killing his wife. The apparent motive was that a few months before the murder, his wife had worn to her brother’s wedding a dress that, according to the husband, “made her look like a whore.” The couple was separated at the time of the murder, but the husband had come to their apartment to collect some things for their young son. The argument over the dress resumed. The husband claims he does not remember what happened next; he just suddenly found himself covered in blood and holding a knife. The autopsy found that he had stabbed his wife 66 times.

February 11: Aside from the housing shortage for migrants to Sweden, there is also a severe absence of appropriate jobs. Rather than talk about the problems that come with the illiteracy of so many immigrants, the Swedish government announced that it is now going to introduce a “fast track” for immigrants claiming to have a teaching degree. Recently, Swedish schools have gone from being top-rated among the OECD countries to being among the worst. Thus, fewer and fewer people want to work in the school system. In 2013 the Swedish Teachers’ Union described the situation as “extremely serious.” The government still claims that many of the new arrivals are highly educated, and now it wants to speed up the process of approving foreign teaching degrees. Critics maintain that the “fast track” for immigrants is probably a euphemism for lowering school standards even more.

February 13: One person was killed and three wounded in a knife fight at an asylum seekers’ house in Ljusne. When the police finally entered the building, they took three people into custody. Lars Ulander, the Immigration Service Unit Chief in Söderhamn, told the daily, Aftonbladet: “I thought, damn it. We had a conference … I actually said that we should be thankful things that have happened in other places have not happened here, and then this happens. It is incredibly sad.” A man in his 20s is being held, but three other suspects remain at liberty. The police investigation is expected to take some time due to a shortage of interpreters.

February 16: A Danish actor, Kim Bodnia, star of the acclaimed Swedish-Danish TV show, The Bridge (Bron), revealed in an English-language interview on Israeli television that it was the rampant antisemitism in Malmö was one of the reasons he left the show. Antisemitism “is growing, especially in Malmö, where we shot ‘The Bridge’, in Sweden. It’s not very nice and comfortable to be there as a Jewish person. … I don’t feel so safe there, you know. It’s not funny, it’s growing and we have to deal with it every day…”

February 16: The Administrative Court supported the decision of the municipal government of Örnsköldsvik that the children of traveling Roma beggars are entitled to go to school, free of charge.

During the past few years, as a result of European Union rules on free movement, Sweden has been flooded by thousands of Bulgarian and Romanian Roma. They have a right to stay in the country for three months, after which, if they are not employed, they are required to go back to their own country. However, many choose to stay in Sweden illegally and earn a living through begging; there are now beggars sitting outside virtually every store in the country.

Last year, the government appointed Martin Valfridsson as “National Coordinator for Vulnerable EU Citizens,” to investigate what could be done about the problem. His conclusion was that long-term efforts and co-operation between Sweden, Bulgaria and Romania are necessary to get to the root of the problem. Just to give the Roma money and social benefits is actually not “kind”, but rather, exacerbates the problem. As he explained in an interview with the TT news agency, “Children of beggars should not be offered schooling as a general rule. And to put money in the beggars’ cups is not a good idea in the long run.”

February 16: Swedish public television reported that more and more “refugees,” tired of waiting for a decision on their asylum application, return home. This year more than 1,100 people have retracted their asylum applications; in 2015, there were 4,200 retractions. The most common reasons for retractions are that it takes a long time for cases to be processed; that there are long waiting periods for family reunions, and that there is a strained housing situation. SVT public television interviewed “Ahmed” from Iraq, who arrived in Sweden in April 2015, after crossing the Mediterranean in a rubber boat and walking several weeks across Europe:

“We were told by people around us that the asylum process would not take more than a few months, but it has almost been a year and I am still waiting for a decision. My family cannot wait any more, I have small children who need me; my eldest son is not able to provide for the entire family.”

February 18: A Somali-Swedish girl, 17, who was arrested in Vienna on suspicion of planning to join the Islamic State in Syria, was sentenced to one year in prison. However, as eleven months were a suspended sentence, and she had already spent one month in custody, she was immediately released. Pictures of executions performed by ISIS were found on her mobile phone, as well as a chat history in which she wrote delightedly about the Paris terror attacks. During her trial, she refused to answer any questions.

February 18: A trial began against an 18-year-old man, accused of throwing a hand grenade at a police van in August 2015. The prosecutor, Stefan Creutz, demanded eight years in prison for the accused, saying that the young man seemed “indifferent to whether people lived or died.” Four policemen were inside the van at the time of the attack.

The defendant was arrested after his DNA was found on the lever of the grenade. But the District Court of Södertörn apparently did not find it beyond a reasonable doubt that the man’s DNA had wound up on the grenade at the time of the attack, and acquitted him. He was, however, sentenced to three years in prison for weapons offenses and two aggravated robberies.

1527Left: A police van, riddled with shrapnel from a hand grenade attack in Stockholm last year. The man accused of the attack was recently acquitted, because the court doubted that his DNA, found on the grenade’s lever, had gotten there at the time of the attack. Right: Kim Bodnia, star of the acclaimed Swedish-Danish TV show, The Bridge (Bron), revealed last month that one of the reasons he left the show was the rampant antisemitism in Malmö (the filming location).

February 18: Two “unaccompanied refugee children,” remanded in January on suspicion of the aggravated rape of a younger boy at an asylum house in Alvesta, were revealed to be much older than 15 years old — the age they claimed to be. One of them, an Afghan man, wrote on Facebook that he was 44. Prosecutor Emma Berge said during a press conference that x-rays of the men’s teeth also showed that the other suspect was decidedly older than 18. According to the indictment, the men had lured the victim to a wooded area and took turns raping the boy, while filming the act with a mobile phone camera. The municipality has reported itself to the supervisory authority, the Health and Social Care Inspectorate (IVO), for allowing a child to share a room with older men.

February 18: A 27-year-old asylum seeker from Iran was sentenced to 10 months in prison for sexually assaulting a mentally disabled woman. In the verdict, the woman is described as living “in a supportive housing facility with a guardian. Developmentally, she is far behind a normal person. She can neither read nor write. She is naïve and immature and has trouble remembering things.”

The Iranian man lured the victim into a public restroom, where he molested her. Thanks to DNA evidence, he was sentenced to 10 months in prison, then to deportation, but will be banned from Sweden for only five years.

February 19: The daily newspaper GT reported that the management of the housing facility for “unaccompanied refugee children,” where Alexandra Mezher was murdered on January 25, was aware that her killer had severe psychological problems. The facility had even been granted extra funds from social services, yet Alexandra Mezher was working there alone that night.

Mezher’s murderer initially claimed to be 15 years old and from Somalia, turned out in fact to be a 25-year-old man from Ethiopia. He had at first lived with a foster family and gone to school, but when it became clear that he had serious problems, the family demanded that he be moved to a facility where he could get “professional help.” Before the murder, he was twice committed to a psychiatric care unit. According to the forensic psychiatric investigation, has a “distorted perception of reality.”

Stefan Alexandersson, a spokesperson for the company that managed the facility, HVB Living Nordic, told GT that the “scope of the problems had not been evident until one or two days before the murder.”

February 27: The people at the public television channel Sveriges Television seem to be working hard to alienate the Swedish people. First, they chose a Muslim, Gina Dirawi, as last year’s Christmas Show host; two months later, Dirawi hosted Sweden’s most popular TV show — the music contest Melodifestivalen. This show selects the song that will compete in the next Eurovision Song Contest. During the show, Dirawi and a children’s choir sang Sweden’s national anthem “Thou ancient, Thou free” (“Du gamla, du fria“), but with the lyrics partly rewritten. Instead of “I want to live, I want to die in the North”, they sang, “I want to live, I want to die on Earth.” The show’s producer, Edvard Sillén, explained to the newspaper Göteborgs-Posten: “Melodifestivalen is not for those who get upset if the national anthem is changed. The focus should be on the people of this country who have ‘different roots.'”

February 27: An immigrant doctor, who as it turned out did not speak Swedish, sent a young man home with a prescription for antidepressants, even though the young man displayed clear signs of a having a brain tumor. The young man had come to the hospital, deeply concerned that one half of his face was drooping and that his speech was slurred. A few weeks later, it became clear that the young man had a brain tumor. The doctor has since been reported to the Health and Social Care Inspectorate, who may or may not end up giving him a warning. Why he works in Swedish health care without understanding Swedish, or possibly medicine, is still unclear.

February 27: Two “unaccompanied refugee children,” suspected of being behind a large number of mobile phone thefts in Stockholm and Uppsala, were apprehended by police. The “children” had snatched phones out of the hands of two girls, who were able to provide a physical description. The thieves, who claim to be 15 and 17, were arrested in a restaurant, but did not have the girls’ phones on them at the time. They did, however, have another stolen phone. They were taken into custody under the Aliens Act, but were later released.

February 28: The Swedish embassy in London says it thinks that the British newspaper Daily Mail has got Swedish immigration policy all wrong. According to the Swedish daily, Dagens Nyheter, the embassy has written a report to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. The report claims that the paper is “campaigning against Sweden and Swedish immigration policy” and that “Sweden is being used as a bad example [of failed immigration and integration policies].”

The embassy says it is now trying to counter the negative image.