The Reporting of Information of Events associated with Islam

Hugh Fitzgerald: Calculating the Costs of Muslim Terrorism: La Braderie, For Example

August 9, 2016 10:24 am By Hugh Fitzgerald 82 Comments



The mayor of Lille, in northeast France, has just announced the cancellation of La Braderie, the largest flea market in Europe, with 10,000 exhibitors and, last year, 2.5 million visitors. Martine Aubry, the mayor, and a Socialist stalwart, said that the safety of visitors could not be assured – “there are risks we cannot reduce.” By this she meant, of course, risks of an attack by Muslim terrorists. Only once before, during the goose-stepping German occupation, has La Braderie ever been called off. The cancellation of this gigantic event is a severe economic blow to those exhibitors from all over France who depend, for a significant portion of their year’s profit, on that Lille market, but also a blow to those ancillary businesses — cafés, restaurants, and hotels – that benefit from exhibitors and visitors alike. Thus do Muslim terrorists manage to inflict great damage on Western economies without firing a shot or swinging a scimitar.

Of course, the same Islamic threat exists for every large public event in France. And like the Mayor of Lille, other officials, with other fairs, will not want to be held responsible for deaths from terrorist attacks. Since it is clear that the security services cannot possibly protect people always and everywhere, especially when there are large gatherings (and in Lille, officials say, the delivery trucks that would have had to negotiate the fairground’s labyrinth of lanes was a particular worry), it is better, from the politician’s point of view, to err on the side of caution – that is to say, of cancellation. Grumbling over lost sales can be overcome, but fury over lost lives cannot.

The calling-off of La Braderie likely signals a new phase in the war against the Infidels. Will the open-air Christmas markets also become targets? There’s no need to ask, because they already have been — a plot against the Christmas market in Strasbourg was narrowly foiled back in 2000. And in 2014, an allahu-akbaring driver ran over people at the Christmas market in Nantes (the police still call the case “inconclusive”). And last year, the Christmas festivities in many places in France, including those that took place along the Champs-Elysees, were not cancelled outright, but considerably curtailed in time and space (and on the same boulevard, at New Year’s Eve, a video of fireworks, rather than fireworks themselves, was shown). Christmas markets are clearly a target for ISIS and its willing collaborators, for not only are they symbols of hated Christianity, but they conveniently attract large numbers of potential victims to one place.

And what about Germany, where Christmas markets play such a large role in the economy, and in the nation’s sense of itself? These Christmas markets actually run almost a month, opening in late November and closing only on Christmas Eve. So far, they have taken place without any change. Certainly none have been cancelled. But there is anxiety in the air. The fact that they are so much a part of German and Christian identity makes them, for that very reason, especially antipathetic to the Islamic State. The ones at Dortmund (3.5 million visitors) and Nuremberg (2.5 million visitors) in Germany, are the largest of the more than 2,500 seasonal markets in Germany that last year attracted a total of 50 million visitors. But a mood that should have been festive was grim, and the major Christmas markets reported declines of 20% in visitors in 2015. What will be the decline this year, after all the attacks in France, in Germany, in Belgium? And is there any reason to think that these markets will not become prime targets for ISIS, now that it is has announced, in its Dabiq declaration of war, that it will be increasing its European operations, and claims to have many agents already “operational in eighteen countries”? And as we saw in Nice, where large crowds assemble, a lone wolf can cause a lot of damage. How many of these markets will be curtailed, and at what cost, both in money and in the sapping of national morale? A headline last year about the Christmas markets captured the mood then: “Amid stollen and glühwein, terrorism fear haunts Germany’s Christmas markets.” Nothing that has happened since suggests that that fear is about to go away.

An Islamic attack in one country has repercussions elsewhere. The Paris attacks last November led the authorities in Brussels to impose a virtual lockdown: Municipal facilities across the city, such as sports and arts centres, libraries, and swimming pools, were all ordered to close. The Sunday morning market at the Gare du Midi, the Eurostar terminal – one of the biggest outdoor markets in Europe — was called off. The city’s metro system was closed down as shops shut, shopping malls were partly shuttered, professional soccer matches were cancelled, concerts were called off and music venues, museums, and galleries closed their doors for the weekend. This is not merely the future of Brussels, or of Belgium, but of much of Western Europe.
Now, after the attack in Nice, perhaps future Bastille Day celebrations in France will be abridged, or take place under conditions of such tight security as to leach any celebratory mood out of what is supposed to be a national celebration. After all, ISIS is given to choosing symbolic targets. Bastille Day celebrates the despised secular state of the Infidels, their meaningless Revolution, their pointless pride in something that has nothing to do with Islam. ISIS would want to flaunt its power and taunt the French by attacking the same celebration again and, if possible, in the same city, to emphasize its ability to strike anywhere. If you were mayor of Nice, and were threatened by ISIS, what would you do about Bastille Day in 2017? Cancellation makes political sense. But if a country cannot celebrate its most important national holiday in the way it wants to, the damage to that nation’s morale, to its sense of itself, is profound. This, too, is a victory for Islam. And already, in Marseille, France’s second-largest city, a number of events, including the mid-August flyover of the “Patrouille de France,” an air team that streams the French colors across the sky, have been cancelled “for security reasons.” One wonders if the cancellation means that Muslim terrorists now have the means to bring down planes with ground-to-air missiles. Asked about this cancellation of the flyover, Prefect Laurent Nunez told the AP that “this is absolutely not a surrender to terrorism.” Of course not.

La Braderie’s cancellation was quickly followed by another, also for security reasons, this one being the European road cycling championships, which were due to be held in Nice from September 14 to 18. Nice’s mayor said that “given that it was an event that would have required a large police presence, and that we have not received any guarantees about their deployment, the cycling championships that Nice was due to hold in France’s name are cancelled.” And even before that, several major soccer matches had been cancelled — including a Dutch-German friendly in Hannover and a French-German friendly at the Stade de Paris – because of fears of attack in the first case, and an actual attack, by three suicide bombers, in the second. All over Europe, those putting on sports events now have to worry about the possibility of such attacks, and while there is brave talk about everyone conducting “life as usual,” few in France believe that that will ever again be possible. The police are everywhere, and everywhere stretched thin, and it becomes more difficult to pretend that life can go on as before. The list of targets lengthens: Patriotic flyovers and Bastille Day celebrations, cycling championships and soccer matches, Christmas markets and open-air markets of every type, train stations and airports, churches and synagogues, cafes and nightclubs, have been or are deemed likely targets. First a little, thence to more: More insecurity, more attacks, more shutdowns of events in medias res, and more cancellations before they even begin. This is a siege, conducted by Muslims in the midst of what they regard as Dar al-Harb, successfully sowing fear, and transforming daily life. And yet, for reasons few can fathom, more Muslims are still being allowed into Europe, and to settle, by the millions, in what they regard as Dar al-Islam. Who is sanctioning this, and why?

The economic impact from the mere threat of Islamic terrorism is staggering. The cancellation of La Braderie affects 10,000 exhibitors, 2.5 million visitors, with attendant losses to ancillary local businesses that would have served visitors and exhibitors alike. Similarly, when a sports event, a music festival, an observation of a national holiday, is cancelled, or a whole city put on lockdown (as happened in Brussels after the 2015 Paris attacks), the circle of losses widens. When La Braderie was called off, tourists took note of the Lille Mayor’s admission that “there are risks we cannot reduce.” This led to plane and hotel reservations in France being cancelled, or in some cases, apparently not being made in the first place (judging by what could be predicted from last year’s figures). The French government has just announced that for all of France, the number of hotel stays has dropped 10% over the past year. The luxury Parisian hotels have been the hardest hit, so the reduction in hotel revenues is far more than 10%. And that figure was arrived at before the truck massacre in Nice on July 14 and the decapitation of the elderly priest in Rouvray. By this fall, we should know the full effect on French tourism of those latest Muslim atrocities; it won’t be good.

Some of the effects on tourism immediately after attacks have been quite dramatic. Airline bookings to France after the attacks at the Bataclan nightclub plunged by 50%, and though they have recovered somewhat, they are still down by about one-third. The union representing the Paris nightclub, theatre, restaurant and bar owners says “activity remains up to 40% lower [in the last two months of 2015] than in the last two months of 2014, with tourist revenues down 60-80%. Those declines are even more damaging because of affected businesses also being forced to boost security spending.”

Let’s not forget that even as tourist revenues decline, the cost of increased security continues to grow all over Europe, with no end in sight. Governments, private businesses, and even individuals have been affected. These include people who are outspoken on the subject of Islam – for example, Marine Le Pen, Eric Zemmour, Geert Wilders, Lars Vilks — who have all had to pay for their own protection. Similarly, the kind of businesses that have been targets of Muslim attacks in the past now have a felt need for more security, and have to pay for much of it. Le Figaro has to pay a much larger amount for guards because of what happened to Charlie Hebdo. The nightclubs and concert halls now have to post more guards inside their premises because of what happened at the Bataclan, Because of the attack on the kosher market, the Jewish delis on the rue des Rosiers feel compelled to pay for extra security beyond the police patrols on the street. And as a consequence, all these businesses are now less profitable. Finally, the national and local governments keep having to increase the numbers of police (and soldiers) needed to patrol the streets or to stand guard outside likely targets, as the list of those targets keeps lengthening. Last Christmas Eve in France, 120,000 police were deployed to guard churches and other public venues. Fifteen years ago, before Al-Qaeda’s attack in the U.S., about 20,000 of those police would have been deemed sufficient. Now the police and military are all over Paris and other major cities. Because of them, the look and atmosphere of daily life has changed: “Thousands of military and police reinforcements have been deployed across the city [of Paris] and country, with patrolling soldiers in purple berets, matching khaki uniforms and flak vests, automatic weapons gripped to their chests now a common sight.” Anyone who visits France now is struck by the presence of heavily-armed soldiers and police at major tourist sites, thus reinforcing in the minds of tourists the image of a country in peril. Those deployments cost the state lots of money, both in direct payments to the forces involved, and indirectly, through the decision of foreign tourists to go elsewhere. How many billions of dollars has the Muslim terrorist threat already cost France over the past decade? And what will it cost, do you think, over the next decade? And the next? And what will that terrorism, or its threat, cost all the countries of Europe as the Muslim population swells?

The full cost of Muslim terrorism is fiendishly difficult to calculate. The last year for which figures have been given by the Institute for Economics and Peace is 2014; it calculated that worldwide, just the property damage (as from a suicide bombing in a building), and medical care and lost income for the injured victims, and loss of estimated future earnings for the dead, amounted to more than $50 billion. That figure doesn’t include the cost of more security, higher insurance premiums, or — most devastating of all — lost business of all kinds, when, because of fear of terrorism, events are cancelled, shops are shuttered, streets are closed, whole cities may be in lockdown (Brussels, Hanover), and tourism is in free fall.

One of the things the Western world needs, as part of fully understanding the impact of Islamic terrorism, is economists who will be able to recognize, collect, organize, and make sense of the data that will allow them to estimate the full cost of Muslim terrorism. We need researchers who, instead of bewailing the inconvenience of the extra tens of millions of man-hours spent at airports, are able to assign a dollar value to the man-hours lost. And lost not just at airports, but wherever time-consuming security measures now must be imposed at hospitals, government offices, schools, corporate offices. Then they must calculate the additional cost to the government for the extra police and military, standing guard outside or patrolling the streets around the most likely targets of Islamic attack, and the cost to private parties of extra security guards for open-air markets, sports events, concert halls, clubs, restaurants, cafes. And finally, they must calculate the loss in business revenues due to a decrease in tourism, even in the most out-of-the-way places. Not just in Paris and Provence, and the Riviera, but everywhere in France. One startling example of this: at Mont-Saint-Michel, the beautifully bleak medieval abbey situated on its own intermittent island off Normandy, that has always been one of the most important French tourist attractions, business slumped by 70 percent after the Nov. 13, 2014 attacks in Paris, and it has never fully recovered.

Not everyone is stirred to action by such phrases as “a clash of civilisations.” For some, it may be too abstract a notion. But if you start talking about the real cost in dollars of Islamic terrorism for the peoples of Europe, and figures such as $500 billion or $1 trillion (over a decade) are justifiably invoked, you are likely to command attention. Whatever else it is, Muslim terrorism should also be blamed for much of the current economic distress in Europe. For that understanding can only help, at this point, the clear-sighted likes of Wilders and Le Pen to overcome the myopic acquiescence of the Merkels and the Mays.

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Hugh Fitzgerald: Jean-Louis Harouel On France’s “Marche Vers Dhimmitude”

August 30, 2016 3:55 pm By Hugh Fitzgerald 123 Comments



While nearly everyone has expressed an opinion about the burkini ban that was put in place by the mayors of several dozen French municipalities, and then overturned by a decision of the Conseil d’Etat, the views of Jean-Louis Harouel, a French legal historian and polymath, are of unusual significance.
Harouel, a professor emeritus of the History of Law at the University of Paris, criticizes the members of the Conseil d’Etat for their decision, which he says reflects their failure to take into account the difficult period that France is now going through. In the present circumstances, writes Harouel, the “jurisprudential liberalism”’ that might have been acceptable in relatively peaceful times can no longer be justified, given what France is enduring.

I have freely translated his words:

Furthermore, the Conseil d’Etat failed to take into account the fact that France is now engaged in a clash of civilizations, that just in the past year has cost it hundreds of deaths on its own territory, and which made it necessary to maintain the State of Emergency. “Islamism” is now making war on France, and there is no real boundary-line between Islam and Islamism.​

The Conseil d’Etat failed to take into account the shock felt by the French people on seeing burkinis deliberately appearing on the beaches so soon after terrible massacres had been committed in France by Muslims acting in the name of their god. So soon after the carnage on the promenade in Nice and the slitting of the throat of a priest while he was fulfilling his priestly duties, such an increase in the flaunting of Muslim identity is truly indecent.​

The Conseil d’Etat failed to take into account the fact that at present a silent conquest of Western Europe is underway. This conquest finds its source in the Qur’an where one can read that Allah has promised to give to the Muslims as the spoils of war the lands of the Infidels. That’s how sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradawi, one of the leaders of the UOIE (Union of Muslim Organizations in Europe), the French branch of which is the UOIF (Union of Muslim Organizations in France) put it: “With your democratic laws, we will colonize you. With our Koranic laws, we will dominate you.”​

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The Conseil d’Etat refused to see that the conquest of our beaches by these burkinis is only one stage in the taking over of France by the forces of political Islam. The Conseil d’Etat refused to see that those wearers of the burkini – like all those who wear variations on the Muslim veil — are the foot-soldiers, whether deeply convinced or merely docile, of a civilizational jihadism which is now trying to conquer our country by stealth.​

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To speak simply, the “rule of law” too often means condemning the peoples of Europe to helplessness when confronted by the mass immigration that is submerging them, and the aggressive Islam that is in the process of conquering their countries. To be able to react, it will be necessary to give the “rule of law” a bit of a shove, as it is currently being imposed on Europeans in this positively suicidal fashion by the secular religion of human rights.​

In this confrontation with Islam, to conceive of the principle of “laicite” as being neutral in regard to different faiths will not work. For Islam is only secondarily a religion in the sense given to that word in Europe. In our country, Islam is now an aggressive civilization that is at war with our own and claims to replace it. Now, facing another civilization bent on our conquest, we cannot be neutral: we have to defend ourselves and counter-attack.​

The main point is this: a Muslim living in Europe should not expect to be able to live as he would in a Muslim country. Muslims who have settled on European soil have constantly to be reminded that they are not in Dar al-Islam but, rather, in the land of the Infidels where, even their own sacred texts tell them, they should keep a low profile. If the Muslims living in Europe come to feel that they are living in Dar al-Islam, that will mean the end of Europe.​

Professor Harouel is neither “far-right” nor “xenophobic.” He is a scholar accustomed to measuring his words. But in taking to task the Conseil d’Etat for its failure to understand the gravity of the menace, and in limning the limitless ambitions of Islam, what he says is absolutely terrifying.



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Hugh Fitzgerald: Never Mind About 50 Million Frenchman – Can 13,000 Chinese Be Wrong?

September 5, 2016 10:54 am By Hugh Fitzgerald 104 Comments
Given the big demonstration in Paris on September 4, I’d like to come back to the same subject I posted about two weeks ago.


“Thousands rally in Paris to protest crime targeting Chinese,” Reuters, September 4, 2016:

At least 13,000 people [the latest figures range from 15,000 to 50,000] attended a rally in Paris on Sunday to protest against what they say is a crime wave targeting the Chinese community in France, police said, after a Chinese textile designer died after being mugged last month.​

Demonstrators waving French flags and sporting T-shirts printed with the slogans “Stop violence, muggings, insecurity” or “Equality for all, security for all” marched from the Place de Republique square to the Bastille in eastern Paris, asking for more police protection.​

Chaoling Zhang, a 49-year-old textile designer, died last month after five days in a coma after being attacked in the northern Paris suburb of Aubervilliers by three men who stole his bag.​

Members of Aubervilliers’ large Chinese community, home to many Chinese immigrants, said that the death of Chaolin Zhang was the latest in a string of targeted assaults.​

At first it was just stealing bags, then it was stealing bags with violence, and now it’s stealing bags and killing. It could happen to anyone,” 31-year-old Wang Yunzhou told Reuters TV.​

The people here are angry. We can’t feel relaxed in the street, and if we don’t even get a basic welcome in the police station people start to wonder,” he said, adding that he moved to France from Wenzhou in south east China twenty years ago.​

Aubervilliers, which has a population of 77,500, is home to a large Chinese community connected to the garment trade. Some 600,000 ethnic Chinese people live in the country overall, including French citizens.​

Last month, 27 Chinese tourists were robbed and their driver sprayed with tear gas as they boarded a bus that was to take them to Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport. The incident raised fears that Chinese tourists, important luxury spenders, would stop coming to Paris.​

Tourist traffic in Paris has dropped significantly since attacks by Islamist militants last November, leading to sharp declines in sales for luxury goods makers but also for the capital’s retailers, hotels and restaurants.​

Attacks on Chinese, Korean and Japanese tourists are also frequent in the French capital as robbers believe they carry large sums in cash and their suitcases are stuffed with luxury goods purchased in Paris, according to police.​

In May, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo traveled to Beijing to reassure Chinese authorities that Paris – the most visited city in the world – had taken measures to beef up its security.​

Now what is striking about this Reuters article is that it nowhere identifies those who are attacking the Chinese. Nor are they identified in this story from Channel News Asia, nor in this one from RFI, nor in this from Le Figaro, nor in any of the half-dozen other versions of the story I’ve checked. Not one of them, that is, dares to make mention of “Islam” or “Muslims,” even though in Paris and in Aubervilliers, the Chinese are protesting the violence visited upon them from Muslims, calling it “anti-Asian racism.”

When I posted my piece on the attacks that the Chinese immigrants in Aubervilliers, a heavily Muslim suburb on the outskirts of Paris, endure from their Muslim neighbors, I noted that Muslims have been robbing, extorting money from businesses, physically attacking, and even killing Chinese immigrants who have the misfortune to live and work near them. I should also have noted that robberies of the Chinese in Aubervilliers have tripled in just one year. Some explain this by suggesting the Muslims feel humiliated because the Chinese clothing and textile warehouses, and import-export shopping malls, are so successful, standing in silent economic reproach of the Muslims, who tend to live off welfare benefits for as long as they can (some are very good at turning it into a lifetime benefit), and have failed to demonstrate any entrepreneurial flair, unlike the Chinese migrants. But that’s nonsense. The Muslims in France aren’t ashamed of living off welfare; they’re proud they can manipulate the system, and claim their informal Jizyah from French taxpayers. The main reason that the Chinese are attacked in Aubervilliers is the same reason that the French are attacked – they are Infidels, and thus a legitimate target for Muslims. Chinese property is as much a form of Jizyah as are the welfare benefits offered by the French state.
This harassment of the Chinese near Paris has been going on for a long time. It got so bad that at one point the Chinese ambassador to France was forced to pay a visit to Aubervilliers to try to calm his countrymen down. And in 2013, the Socialist mayor of Aubervilliers, Jacques Salvator, suggested that the violence against them could be halted if Chinese companies would agree to hire more Arabs and Africans. The Chinese were not assuaged, countering that “Muslims do not work as hard as the Chinese, that they are more demanding, and that they complain too much.” Many — though of course not all — of those familiar with Muslim work habits might well agree.


Since that demonstration in Aubervilliers two weeks ago, apparently little has been done to placate the Chinese. They described to reporters covering their demonstration in Paris their feeling of frustration at not being listened to by the French authorities who, they said, fail to realize what kind of daily terror they endure. And in addition to the attacks on Chinese who live in the suburbs, there has been a steady increase in the number of attacks targeting Chinese (and Korean, and Japanese) tourists in central Paris. These Asian tourists are known both to buy luxury goods to take home with them, and to carry lots of cash. Just the other day, a gang of six (unidentified men) jumped onto a bus just about to leave a hotel for the airport, and made off with luxury-filled luggage belonging to the 27 Chinese tourists on board. The attackers in Aubervilliers have been identified as Muslims, but in the stories about attacks on Chinese tourists the criminals are not identified. But reading between the lines suggests that those attacking the tourists, like those known to be attacking the Chinese in Aubervilliers, are Muslims, and for a simple reason: had any of these criminals been French, the press, which tends to protect Muslims, would certainly have been eager to describe them as such. A refusal to identify them, in the current climate, almost certainly means they were Muslims.
So on September 4, in Paris, according to the police, at least 15,000 Chinese showed up to demand “security for all.” Chinese sources claim that as many as 50,000 people may have turned out to show support. It’s a fantastic showing, in any case, and what’s more, no one can dismiss it as a “right-wing” or “racist” rally because it’s not white Frenchmen, but Chinese who are protesting against the “anti-Asian racism” by their attackers. Since some white Europeans may still be reluctant to stand up for themselves against Muslims, then perhaps they will find it easier to stand up for the Chinese in France as, in the U.K., it may be easier for the British to stand up for Hindus and Sikhs, and then Europeans will begin to realize – as I wrote two weeks ago and will repeat verbatim here – that wherever you look, it’s not a case of Islam against the West, but of Islam against All the Rest.


Hugh Fitzgerald: How Muslims In Europe Treat Non-Muslim Migrants

August 20, 2016 12:09 pm By Hugh Fitzgerald 54 Comments



In the French suburb of Aubervilliers, in the department of Seine-Saint-Denis, a group of Chinese immigrants recently held a rally to protest the latest killing of one of their own:

At least 500 people gathered outside the mayor’s office to remember Zhang Chaolin and protest at violence they say is being directed at them.​

Mr Zhang, a textile designer, 49, died on Friday after five days in a coma.​

The father-of-two had been attacked by three men while walking with a friend, a police source said.​

According to the source, Mr Zhang was kicked in the sternum and fell, striking his head on the pavement. The attackers were allegedly trying to steal his friend’s bag.​

The Mayor of Aubervilliers, Meriem Derkaoui i[of the Communist Party], condemned the killing as a murder “with a racist targeting”. Community representatives quoted by local newspaper Le Parisien (in French) say ethnic Chinese people are falling victim to muggings on a daily basis.​

One Chinese group has recorded 100 cases in Aubervilliers alone since November, the paper says.​

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But what is left out of this report is the real reason for the attacks on the Chinese, and by whom:

The department of Seine-Saint-Denis is full of Muslim immigrants, from the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa, and in some areas, “a third of the population of the town does not hold French nationality, and many residents are drawn to an Islamic identity.”​

Within this department, the town of Aubervilliers, sometimes referred to as one of the “lost territories of the French Republic,” is effectively a Muslim city: more than 70% of the population is Muslim. Three quarters of young people under 18 in the township are foreign or French of foreign origin, mainly from the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa. French police are said to rarely venture into some of the most dangerous parts of the township.​

The southern part of Aubervilliers is well known for its vibrant Chinese immigrant community along with their wholesale clothing and textile warehouses and import-export shopping malls. In August 2013, the weekly newsmagazine Marianne reported that Muslim immigrants felt humiliated by the economic dynamism of the Chinese, and were harassing and attacking Chinese traders, who were increasingly subject to robberies and extortion. The situation got so bad that the Chinese ambassador to France was forced to pay a visit to the area.​

In response, the Socialist mayor of Aubervilliers [in 2013], Jacques Salvator, suggested that the violence could be halted if Chinese companies would agree to hire more Arabs and Africans. The Chinese countered that Muslims do not work as hard as the Chinese, that they are more demanding, and that they complain too much, according to [newsmagazine] Marianne.​

The Muslims in Seine-Saint-Denis are not engaged in a “racist targeting” of the Chinese. True, there is resentment of a group that is comparatively well-off because its members are industrious, as the Chinese in Aubervilliers are, and who are a standing reproach to the Muslims, so many of whom are permanently on the dole.

The Chinese are also seen as “weak and rich” (meaning: they don’t fight back when a gang of Muslims attacks, they carry large sums of cash) and thus an easy target for robbery. But above all, they are fair game because they are non-Muslims, and therefore whatever is taken from them can be justified as an informal exaction of the Jizyah, the traditional tax on non-Muslims. Anjem Choudary famously described welfare benefits as a form of Jizyah: “We are on Jihad Seekers Allowance, we take the Jizya (protection money paid to Muslims by non-Muslims) which is ours anyway. The normal situation is to take money from the [non-Muslims] isn’t it?”

And not just welfare payments, but robbery of the Infidels, too, can be seen as a way for Muslims to help themselves to the Jizyah that is theirs by right.

If the Chinese in Aubervilliers were perceived exactly as they now are (industrious, weak, rich) but were Muslims, they would not be the target of attacks by fellow Muslims.
It would be useful if that all-purpose word “racism” – the Mayor described the attacks as being a “a racist targeting” — were retired, and that journalists covering stories of Muslims making life difficult and dangerous for non-Muslim immigrants would discuss what the Jizyah is, and how it is not race, but faith that explains why Muslims feel they are free to prey on the Chinese in Aubervilliers.
And that raises the larger question of what the large-scale Muslim presence in Europe has meant, not only for the indigenous Europeans, but also for non-Muslim migrants of all kinds, such as the Sikhs and Hindus in the U.K. who have suffered from Muslim attacks on their temples and gurdwaras, and on their girls and women. This year, Hindus and Sikhs yet again reminded the British government that they, too, were Muslim targets:

In a joint statement, the Hindu Council UK (HCUK), the largest Hindu umbrella body in the country, the Sikh Awareness Society, a leading independent Sikh advisory board, and The Sikh Media Monitoring Group have called for the British government to recognise “the targeting of non-Muslim women” as a specific “hate crime”.​

The faith leaders lambasted “political correctness” and said that lessons “must be learnt” from Rotherham, where “mainly Muslim men were allowed to rape, traffic and torture 1400 girls, unimpeded for decades, because authorities were too scared of offending Muslims.”​

And both the Hindus and the Sikhs noted that “these gangs have also targeted Sikh and Hindu girls” and complained that the government ignored their concerns about such attacks.
We have seen what the Chinese in Aubervilliers have suffered, have read about Muslims bombing a Sikh gurdwara in Essen, Germany and attacking Sikhs at another gurdwara in Birmingham,U.K. We have read about Hindu temples being firebombed by Muslims all over the north of England during the last three decades.

And then there are the Sikh and Hindu girls in the U.K. who were victims, along with white girls, of Muslims for sex and forced conversions. It’s not “racism,” but Islam itself, and what it teaches Muslims they can do to non-Muslims (e.g., robbery, sexual exploitation), that explains what these non-Muslim immigrants have had to endure. One 16-year-old victim stated: “I will never ever understand what has made them so evil and ignorant that still to this day they think they’ve not done anything wrong.” What made them think they’d done nothing wrong was that the girls they exploited were non-Muslims. Mohammed Shafiq, the director of the Ramadhan Foundation, said these “young men did not see [these girls] as equal to their own daughters or sisters.”

Those white Europeans who are still afraid of being charged with “racism” and “Islamophobia” if they dare to criticize Islam may find it easier to stand up for non-white immigrants under Muslim siege than for themselves. And that may not be a bad thing, if in the end it leads them finally to understand that they are in the same boat as those Chinese and Hindus and Sikhs, Kuffars and therefore fair game for Muslims, and to realize that Islam is at war not only with the West, but at war with All the Rest.

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Hugh Fitzgerald: Of Korans and Constitutions

August 11, 2016 1:13 pm By Hugh Fitzgerald 43 Comments



“Have you even read the United States Constitution?” Khizr Kahn asked at the DNC, holding up his pocket version and offering to loan it to Trump. “Look for the words ‘liberty’ and ‘equal protection of law.'” This was declared by many in the Clinton claque to be the most damning indictment of Trump’s awfulness, coming from an aggrieved father, dignified in his righteous anger, and what’s more, an immigrant from Pakistan, who knew more about the fundamental document of our secular religion than Trump the Smirking Plutocrat.

Still, one had to wonder, what exactly is in the Constitution that Khizr Khan thought relevant to Trump’s remarks about Islam? I’ve looked for the appearance of the word “liberty” in the Constitution, and I suspect that Mr. Khan had in mind its appearance in the Fifth Amendment, which declares that no one can be deprived of “life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” I assume that Khizr Khan believes that clause would apply to Trump’s remark: “When I am elected, I will suspend immigration from areas of the world where there is a proven history of terrorism against the United States, Europe or our allies, until we understand how to end these threats.” I suspect that Mr. Khan is counting on the Supreme Court to use the “equal protection of the laws” clause of the 14^th amendment, which applies to the federal government through the 5^th amendment’s Due Process Clause, to strike down any discrimination based on religion (for what Trump’s remark meant was equivalent to a ban on Muslims). Such discrimination is, however, not forbidden, though subject to the highest standard of constitutional review. Discrimination on the basis of religion, like race, involves “suspect classifications,” and triggers strict scrutiny. This means that the government must show a “compelling state interest” to justify the discrimination. National security, or the prevention of major loss of life, are both examples, it could be argued, of such a “compelling state interest.” Those supporting such a ban on Muslim immigration at least have a constitutional case to make that Khizr Khan’s aggrieved rhetoric obscured. Perhaps Trump should have replied to Khizr Khan and said something about “strict scrutiny” and a “compelling state interest,” which would at least dispel the smug conviction of so many that a ban on Muslim immigration “of course is unconstitutional.” That’s what most people think. It’s not nearly that simple.

But the second, and much more important chance, that the Trump camp passed up was this: Trump ought to have appeared a day or two after Khan’s appearance, holding in his hand a “pocket Koran,” which could be the full Koran, or, more usefully, an abridged version, containing the 100-odd “jihad verses.” Trump would hold up that version of the Koran, saying: ““Have you even read the Koran, Mr. Khan? Why don’t you look for the words ‘Jihad’ and ‘Jizyah’ and ‘Kafir’? What do you make, Mr. Khan, of such verses as 9:5 and 9:29? I’m sure you’ve read them. You know, there’s the one about “slay the idolaters whenever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them.” And the other one – “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the Religion of Truth, from among the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.” I’m sure you know those, Mr. Khan. Oh, and by the way, folks, I ordered a few hundred copies of this abridged version of the Qur’an, which you should have found on your seats this morning, but if not, just ask my staff for a copy. It makes for interesting reading. And I’m sure your readers and viewers would like you to tell them more about them.”

What, after all, would Khan reply? That he’s never heard of those verses? Or that he has, but they are being “taken out of context”? Or would he simply try to shut that discussion down: “Never mind about the Koran, I was talking about the Constitution. The Koran is irrelevant.” But most Americans will not be convinced by such a reply and, their curiosity piqued, will want to find out for themselves just what is in this Koran that Khan wants to keep from having discussed. Now that these words – “jihad,” “jizyah,” “kafir” – and specific verses would have been pushed by Trump into the wider public consciousness, even the most partisan of journalists will have to talk about them, and ideally, will feel compelled to discuss not just the particular verses — 9:5 and 9:29 — quoted by Trump, but others in that abridged Koran, and will have to start reporting on that list of “jihad verses” that has been thrust into his hands.
But Trump didn’t do this. He missed an opportunity to help himself and educate the public. Perhaps, even now, there’s still time to hold up that pocket Koran. If not Trump, then could someone else come riding to the pedagogic rescue?


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Hugh Fitzgerald: Howard “Dizzy” Dean and “The Farthest Thing From an Islamic Republic”

August 14, 2016 3:56 pm By Hugh Fitzgerald 33 Comments



Howard Dean, he of the shriek heard round the world, claims to know that present-day Iran has nothing to do with Islam. Of course, he could only conclude that if he knew a lot about Islam (and Iran). Well, so many people seem to know all about Islam these days – Barack Obama, Jeh Johnson, John Kerry, Theresa May, the Pope – so why not Howard Dean? Let’s see what he has to say.

Howard Dean insists that the Islamic Republic of Iran is “the farthest thing from an Islamic Republic.” Strange, then, that Iran should call itself that. Stranger still – given that Howard Dean adds that he “doesn’t consider Iran a Muslim country” — that Iran’s leaders are Shia clerics who have instituted a parliamentary theocracy, with an ayatollah as Supreme Leader and a Council of Guardians who make sure that no law passed by the Majlis, the Iranian parliament, violates the Sharia. But still, let’s hear Howard Dean out. Perhaps he understands something about the hard-to-detect inner essential non-Islamness of Iran that has escaped the rest of us.

Let’s start with his claim that Iran is “a republic that’s been hijacked by thugs and murderers.” It’s not the ”thugs and murderers” part that is troublesome – that’s unarguable — but the part about hijacking, for that implies an illegal seizure of power. All of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s past presidents — Ali Khamenei, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Mohammad Khatami and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — each served for two terms, and Hassan Rouhani is the current President. And all of them, just like all the members of Iran’s unicameral majlis, were duly elected by direct election and universal suffrage. Howard Dean may not like those “thugs and murderers,” but a majority of people in the Islamic Republic of Iran apparently approve of them. There was no illegitimate seizure of power by “thugs” and “murderers.” There was no “hijacking.”

What about the role of Islam in the Iranian government? Can we find a hint of Islam in this country which is, according to Dean, not “a Muslim country” and “the farthest thing from an Islamic Republic”?
The founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran was the Grand Ayatollah Khomeini, the highest ranking cleric in Shia Islam. He was given the title of Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution (“Supreme Leader” for short). His successor, Ayatollah Khamenei, is still in office and, like Khomeini, making sure that Iran is kept safe for Shia Islam. Then there are the twelve members of the Council of Guardians, whose main responsibility is to decide which new laws are compatible with, and which may possibly contradict, the Sharia. And if any law is held to violate the Sharia, it is sent back to the Parliament for revision.
But let’s look a little more into the workings of this country which is the “farthest thing from an Islamic Republic.”

When the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power, within months of the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the 1967 Family Protection Law was repealed; female government workers were forced to observe Islamic dress code; women were barred from becoming judges; beaches and sports were sex-segregated; the legal age of marriage for girls was reduced to 9. Anything here sound as if it might have something to do with Islam? Why did he reduce the marriageable age of girls to 9? Do you think Howard Dean knows the reason? What about that Islamic dress code – might those hijabs and chadors and soorooshes now required of female government workers have something to do with Islam? And why were beaches sex-segregated when Khomeini came to power? Anything to do with Islam, in this polity which is the “farthest thing from an Islamic Republic”?


Just a few more questions before the bell sounds for recess.

What happens to adulterers in the Islamic Republic of Iran?
They are stoned to death.

What happens to those convicted of blasphemy in the Islamic Republic of Iran?
They are subject to long imprisonment or capital punishment.

What happens to those convicted of homosexuality in Iran?
They are executed, usually by hanging.

What can happen to apostates in the Islamic Republic of Iran?
They can be executed.

What happens to those who consume alcohol, or violate the rules for hijab?
They can be flogged.


Where do all these punishments come from? They come from the Sharia, that is, the Holy Law of Islam, on which both the civil and criminal laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran are based, though the Sharia is not followed precisely in every case. For example, long-term imprisonment is sometimes imposed for crimes which, under Sharia, would always be punishable by death. But those rare examples of leniency hardly support Dean’s assertion that the Islamic Republic of Iran is “the farthest thing from an Islamic Republic,” by which he meant, in any case, not that Iran was more lenient, but rather more savage in its punishments than a “real” (good, kind) Islamic Republic would be.

“There is no organized religion which is a legitimate religion which condones this kind of behavior.” Also sprach Howard Dean. Read over that sentence a few times to see if you can make it make sense. I think what Dean may be trying to say is something like this: Islam is an “organized religion” – and not merely a “cult” — because it’s been around a long time, and the sheer number of its adherents commands, for many, respect. And there are two kinds of “organized” religion. The “illegitimate” kind is the one that condones behavior of which Howard Dean disapproves. The “legitimate” kind is the one does not condone behavior of which Howard Dean disapproves. And because Iran has “some of the highest rates of execution in the world, torturing political prisoners, one of the worst human rights records in the world”—all things of which Howard Dean disapproves – then Iran, the Islamic Republic of Iran, run by ayatollahs and other clerics, cannot be “a Muslim country.”

Come again? Oh, if you have to ask, you cannot afford Howard Dean. He doesn’t have to read the Qur’an or Hadith or Sira to know what the real Islam, the legitimate Islam, is like. He doesn’t have to know, doesn’t appear even to want to know, how Muslims have treated non-Muslims over the past 1400 years. He only has to consult with his own interior conscience to decide what is the real Islam, which has nothing to do with today’s Iran, and what is the false Islam, which does. He doesn’t consider Iran to be a Muslim country because he “doesn’t know Muslims who behave like that who I respect.” The kind of Muslims he knows and respects – the “real Muslims” — are ones who would not “behave like that.” Or the kind of Muslims he knows and doesn’t respect because they would “behave like that” cannot be real Muslims. Once they do bad things, “Muslims” cease to be real Muslims, because real Muslims don’t do bad things. If you are feeling dizzy, thank Howard Dean, who is not only incoherent but a cause of incoherence in other men. Round and round his “argument” goes, and where it will stop, nobody knows. Not even Howard Dean.

Howard Dean lives in a dream-world where the bad therefore not-Muslim-at-all Shia Muslims who run the non-Muslim Islamic Republic of Iran are “thugs, murderers,” and those other nothing-to-do-with-Islam Sunni Muslims of the Islamic State are to be dismissed on mental health grounds – according to Dean, “they’re crazy, I think they’re lunatics, pathetic lunatics.” No adducing of facts, no application of logic, no reference to Islamic texts or history, no awareness of how the Islamic State justifies its every move and act of terror by reference to the Qur’an and Hadith. None of that for Howard Dean. These ISIS members whom he dismisses as “pathetic lunatics” seem to have done quite well. They have held off for several years all attempts in Syria by the Syrian Army, and the Russian Air Force, and in Iraq by the Iraqi Army and the American Air Force, to destroy them.

These “pathetic lunatics” have managed to establish operational branches in 18 countries, have carried out or inspired major attacks in Paris, Brussels, Nice, Wurzburg, San Bernardino, and elsewhere, and have killed more than 2,200 victims in two dozen countries. Most importantly, these “pathetic lunatics” have great appeal for many Muslims all over the world, including doctors, lawyers, engineers, academics who have joined or attempted to join them, or have pledged allegiance to help their cause from within the West. Like Obama, Howard Dean doesn’t want “to give them any legitimacy” – as if the legitimacy of any group of Muslims (e.g., Islamic State, Hamas, Hizballah) in the eyes of more than a billion Muslims depended on the likes of Howard Dean.

How many Christians wait to see what some Muslim cleric in Cairo says before making up their minds about whether Mormons, or Seventh Day Adventists, or some other group, are “real Christians”? Neither in Iran, nor in the Islamic State, do Muslims, Shia or Sunni, care what Howard Dean thinks about them; they know who they are, and they will cheerfully quote ayat and surah in justification of their every deed of atrocious derring-do. Howard Dean insists — let’s hold that bewildering sentence up for inspection one final time — “there is no organized religion which is a legitimate religion which condones this kind of behavior.”

Otherwise expressed, also one final excruciating time: if any religion condones the kind of behavior – executions, torture, that sort of thing — that these self-described Muslims engage in in Iran and the Islamic State, then it can’t be a “legitimate” religion. But we know – don’t we? – that Islam is a “legitimate” religion. That’s what everyone says. And therefore, these people in Iran who condone these atrocities, or commit these atrocities themselves, can’t be real Muslims, even if they happen to be grand ayatollahs. Dean knows. Ipse dixit, and dixit, and dixit, and you can rub your eyes all you want in disbelief, till the cows come home from somewhere in upstate Vermont, but Howard Dean will remain dizzily steadfast in his stupidity.


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Hugh Fitzgerald: Just Who is in the “Perpetual Crosshairs of Bigotry”?

August 17, 2016 11:27 am By Hugh Fitzgerald 33 Comments



After the killing of an imam and his assistant in Queens last week, the media were full of stories about Muslims, in Queens, in New York City, all over the country, apparently terrified that yet another “hate crime” had been directed at them.

The headlines all went like this:

“Dread increases for Muslims.”

“Fear among Muslims in Ozone Park.”

“Muslims decry ‘hate crime.’’

“Muslims blame Trump for ‘hate crime’.”


And the stories under the headlines painted a picture of Muslims terrified of being attacked by those hate-filled Infidels who, we are asked to believe, make the lives of ordinary Muslims so scary:
“I’m scared to walk in the street.” said one Muslim.

““We’re scared now to walk in the street,” said Gousuddin Khan, who worships at the mosque.”
“It makes all the Muslims scared,” Choudry [a Muslim resident of Ozone Park] said. “Last time someone got shot in this neighborhood that I know of was probably 2001.” This wording implies that that “someone” was a Muslim, shot “in this neighborhood” by a non-Muslim – but there is no record of this happening.
CAIR, of course, was all over the case, offering a reward and taking the occasion to report, hysterically, about “an unprecedented spike in anti-Muslim incidents nationwide since Trump’s bigoted call for a complete ban on Muslims entering the United States.”

And Muslim “residents demanded authorities treat the brazen daylight shooting as a hate crime.” They did this before any suspect had been identified, certain that establishing in the public’s mind the idea that yet again “a hate crime” had been committed against Muslims could only help promote the notion that they were constantly the victims, rather than the perpetrators (as in fact they so often are), of “hate crimes.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio added his own log to the bonfire of the bigotries:

“While we do not yet know the motivation for the murders of Maulama Akonjee and Thara Uddin, we do know that our Muslim communities are in the perpetual crosshairs of bigotry.”

On the basis of what facts did the Mayor make his inflammatory remarks that fit perfectly with CAIR’s script of Muslims being terrified of “hate crimes,” because they keep claiming they are? The Mayor might have been asked to list all the attacks on Muslims that support his claim that they are in the “perpetual crosshairs of bigotry.” (Incidentally, he needs to be reminded that the number of genuine anti-Muslim attacks are far fewer than the number of anti-Semitic attacks in this country). Does the sober discussion of what is in the Qur’an and Hadith count, for Mayor de Blasio, as a “hate crime,” because all kinds of unpleasant Qur’anic quotes might alarm non-Muslims about Muslims? Does unadorned information about the texts and tenets of Islam become part of the “crosshairs of bigotry”? You know, the kind of thing you can read at Jihad Watch? I’m afraid it does.

Even if we were to accept as true all claims by Muslims about “attacks” on them, the numbers are very small. Professor Brian Levin has compiled a complete list of “anti-Muslim” attacks for the past five years, of 150.8 anti-Islamic “hate crimes” per year for a monthly average of 12.6, little more than one attack every third day, for the entire United States, with a population of several million Muslims. And what qualifies as an example of anti-Muslim bigotry? It includes not only a pig’s head thrown at a mosque, or attempted arson, but also such things as someone being yelled at once, or a letter sent to a mosque calling Islam “evil.” Not exactly Kristallnacht. We know that many well-publicized examples of supposed anti-Muslim attacks or discrimination ultimately turned out to be unsubstantiated. Consider the Muslim husband in New Jersey, Kashif Parvaiz, who claimed a group of armed men entered his house and one of them shot his wife while screaming “terrorist” (proving that the crime was prompted by hatred of Muslims) when, in reality, the husband had conspired with his mistress to kill his wife, and figured he could blame her death on a “hate crime.”

And for an example of supposed “discrimination,” take the group of hijabbed Muslim women who decided to sue a California restaurant because they were asked to vacate a table on the restaurant’s patio (so that other customers could take turns enjoying these, the most desirable tables) after 45 minutes and when they refused to do so, had to be escorted out. It turned out that the 45-minute rule was prominently posted on all the patio tables, that the women in question were politely offered alternative (non-patio) seating after the 45 minutes had expired, that the restaurant was often full of Muslim women customers, many of them hijabbed, who had never had any complaint, and had always been served without incident, and finally, that one of the restaurant’s co-owners was herself a Muslim. The restaurant is counter-suing, and the restaurant will win.

Of such trumped-up cases, that initially inculpate non-Muslims – for everything from discrimination to murder – is much of the Muslim victimhood narrative fashioned. But even when the truth comes out, the public often remembers only the initial charges and pays less attention to the subsequent correction of the record. CAIR well knows that, as Mark Twain said, “a Lie can go half-way round the world, while the Truth is still putting on its shoes.”

Now how many cases in this country of the killing of non-Muslims by Muslims, beginning with the attack of 9/11/2001, do we know about? Here’s a short list of the best-known examples: the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, Fort Hood, San Bernardino, the Pulse nightclub, the Boston Marathon. But there are dozens more of smaller scope — such as the Chattanooga and Little Rock attacks on Navy recruitment and reserve centers — and hundreds more if we were to include all the attacks that were planned but foiled before they could take place. And the non-Muslim victims so far run into the thousands.

How many Muslims, do you think, have been killed for being Muslims, by non-Muslims, in this country, up to last week? 300? 150? 100? 25? 5? None? The correct answer is “None.” In all this time – since 2001 — there has not been a single proven case of a Muslim being killed by a non-Muslim because he was a Muslim. (I am not including the case of the Sikh man who was murdered, presumably because he was mistaken for a Muslim.) The man who shot three Muslims in North Carolina did so, the evidence showed, because of a long-simmering feud over parking spaces. After all the “dread” and “fear” reported among Muslims, all the “I feel scared” and “we feel scared” stories, after Mayor de Blasio’s insistence that Muslims are “in the perpetual crosshairs of bigotry,” an unwary reader could be forgiven for thinking many Muslims must have been enduring a wave of terror in this country to have felt all this “fear” and “dread.” But if Oscar Morell turns out to have been the killer, and if he did kill the imam and his assistant because they were Muslims, this will have been the first such case, rather than one in a long line of such cases.

Now perhaps some intrepid journalist will dare to ask the Mayor, in public, to tell us how many Muslims he thinks have been killed in this country in “hate crimes,” where all Muslims are supposedly in the “perpetual crosshairs of bigotry.” The Mayor almost certainly will not know the right answer, and when he haltingly tries to supply some guesstimate, it can be held up for examination and, when the inquiring journalist supplies the correct answer, ridicule. And a follow-up question for him: how many terrorist attacks by Muslims on non-Muslims have there been in this country, or in Western Europe. Here he will stumble again. There is no need to be gentle with Mayor Bill de Blasio. He deserves what he gets. If he can’t be shamed, then let him be mocked, into sense.

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gh Fitzgerald: Should Germans be Forced to Study Arabic?

August 26, 2016 9:16 am By Hugh Fitzgerald 120 Comments

A senior German educator has called for all pupils in the country to be forced to study Arabic until they graduate in the interests of the multicultural state.​

Professor of Computer Science Thomas Strothotte and President of a private Hamburg university has argued that German children should be forced to learn Arabic alongside German so they would better understand the country’s 1.5 million new migrants and make them feel more welcome. He said it would help Germany become “a country of immigration, and a multilingual society.​

​

Germany is discussing frankly the problems of integrating over one million migrants that have arrived over the past year, especially in the light of the brutal sex attacks that have been blamed by some on a clash of cultures.​

Some have called for newly arrived migrants to be taught about European norms, culture, and language, but professor Strothotte has suggested that teaching Germans Arabic instead will “strengthen integration”, reports Die Welt.​

​

Prof. Strothotte predicts that the continued migrant invasion presents an opportunity for Germany’s youth to access the emerging Arabic market and justifies his call for required Arabic courses by saying that the next few decades will see a “profound transformation” of Europe and the Middle East in which he believes the Arabic language will be vitally important for business and cultural integration.​

He claims the move will put Germany forward as an “economic, cultural, and political partner” for the Middle East.​

Learning a foreign language is already compulsory in German schools, but students have a choice in what they chose to take besides German. Presently, most choose English. — Breitbart News​

This is a curious example of a flag being waved in seeming triumph, but on closer inspection, turns out to be semaphoring civilizational surrender. Professor Strothotte makes the disturbing (but no longer surprising) claim that if all Germans were required to learn Arabic, that would do much to help Germans “understand” these new migrants, by which it is clear he means Muslim migrants, and “make them feel welcome,” and help Germany to truly become “a country of immigration, and a multilingual society.”
Let’s examine what his proposal would entail, and whether it makes sense.

First of all, compulsory Arabic classes, he says, will make Germany a “multilingual society.” But Germany is already a “multilingual society”: 95% Germans study English, and learn it very thoroughly. When Strothote says that Arabic should be made compulsory in German schools, he means either that Arabic should replace English as the one foreign language studied, or he is arguing that German children should learn two foreign languages, with Arabic being the one that is compulsory.

If he means to stick to the study of one foreign language, as now, and insists that it be Arabic, he would be depriving German pupils of the chance to learn English, the one universally recognized world language, the international language of science, business, finance, culture, sport, entertainment, in order that they study Arabic, which is the international language of nothing but terrorism.
How likely is it that German parents or pupils would stand for this? And if he thinks that German children should study three languages, with German and Arabic being the two compulsory ones, taught from first grade to the end of high school, and English presumably chosen by almost all as their third language, that would require that other subjects be cut to make room for Arabic.
The German curriculum is famous for its rigor; there is no dispensable fluff. So every semester, from first grade right through to the end of high school, important subjects would have to be abridged to make room for this exercise in “understanding” and “welcoming” Muslim migrants. What will be sacrificed for the dubious sake of this Arabic study? How many semesters of biology? Physics? Chemistry? History? Philosophy? Art? Music? German parents would be maddened at every bit of class time devoted to Arabic. For what is Arabic’s usefulness, as compared to English? If in addition to German another language is to be made compulsory, everyone – except Professor Stotthotte — would insist that it be English. But if some German pupils do choose a second foreign language, that language is likely to be either of great cultural (literary, artistic, musical) significance, such as French and Italian, or of great commercial importance (Chinese, Spanish for the Latin American market), or of geopolitical significance (Russian).

Knowledge of Arabic, Professor Strothotte insists, will help Germans in commercial dealings in a future Europe that has undergone a “profound transformation,” where Arabic “will be vitally important for business.” Will it? It isn’t now. Perhaps Professor Strothotte is unaware that in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, and all around the Gulf, the language of business is English, as it is elsewhere in the Middle East; there is little or no commercial advantage to be gained from learning Arabic, certainly nothing to justify the enormous effort that would have to be devoted to the task of teaching all German students that difficult language. And there is no reason to expect Arab businessmen will suddenly start to insist on business dealings in Arabic if they have not done so until now.
But business advantage is not Professor Strothotte’s main justification for making study of Arabic compulsory in German schools. He thinks that Germans will “better understand” these new (Muslim migrants) if they learn Arabic, and consequently, “make them feel welcome.”

As to this dreamy belief that Germans can acquire a “better understanding” of Muslim migrants by learning Arabic, Professor Strothotte overlooks the fact that most Muslim migrants in Germany are not speakers of Arabic, but mainly Turks, who far outnumber the Arabs, with Afghans and Pakistanis and other non-Arabic-speakers rounding out the Muslim mix. Learning Arabic will not help Germans to better “understand” them. Turks in Germany will certainly resent that Arabic, rather than Turkish, was made compulsory, thus causing new problems, new sources of discontent and unrest among the already unruly Muslim population.

Professor Strothotte is eager to redefine Germany: it is, he says, a “country of immigration.” Germany is not quite there yet, but he wants to help it along, rather than try to stem the immigrant tide. He seems happy to accept what he predicts will be the “profound transformation” in Germany and Europe as a result of this ever-increasing population of Muslim migrants, rather than to think of ways to prevent it. Unlike the United States, a “nation of immigrants,” Germany only became a nation with significant numbers of immigrants in recent decades; most of those migrants have been from Muslim lands. Many of those Muslim immigrants (except for the first generation of Turkish “guest workers” who did, in fact, work) are content to remain unemployed for very long periods; 80% of Turks in Germany have been on the dole.

These Muslim migrants choose to come to Germany because of its generous system of benefits, and they take full advantage of the welfare payments for the unemployed, free medical care, education, housing, and family allowances. They are in no hurry to go to work, and when they do, they have not proven to be models of industriousness (as compared not just to the native Germans, but to other immigrant groups, such as the Chinese). The levels of Muslim criminality are much higher than for non-Muslims; the disciplinary problems with Muslim students can wreak havoc in classrooms. Though as yet there have been no grooming-gang scandals in Germany as in the U.K., groups of Muslim men have sexually attacked German girls and women in Cologne and Hamburg. And why not? For the Muslim predators, these girls and women are Infidels, they have it coming. And then, of course, there is the constant threat of Muslim terrorism (for recent examples of such terrorism, see Munich, Reutlingen, Ansbach, Grafing).

But, some will argue, even if what you say is true, doesn’t Germany “need” some of those Muslim immigrants as workers, despite these problems? No, it doesn’t. If Germany (or France, or the U.K., or any other European nation) needs immigrants, there are tens of millions of them, in South America, in Mexico, in the Philippines, in Eastern Europe (Filipinas and East Europeans, it might be noted, have already become the caregivers of choice for aging Italians) who would come in a heartbeat, bringing with them their rosaries and crosses instead of the Qur’an. Europeans have not made a systematic effort to admit these Christian workers, but for their own safety and general well-being, perhaps they will now recognize the wisdom of doing so.
More and more Germans are coming to a conclusion very different from that of Professor Strothotte: they don’t want to make Germany still more “welcoming” to Muslim migrants; they don’t want to accept this Muslim presence as inevitable; they don’t want to endure the transformation of their own country or to make it still more Muslim-friendly; they want to halt the flow of Muslim migrants and, wherever possible, to make their country not more but less welcoming for Muslim migrants, at first by limiting the generous benefits now available to them, and requiring them to be employed. And they certainly don’t want to be forced to learn Arabic.

Professor Strothotte allows himself to believe that Germans should learn Arabic in order to “understand” these new Muslim migrants. But exactly how will this gigantic pedagogical effort, requiring many years of study, help Germans to “understand” Muslims? Since all over Europe Muslims have not been able to integrate successfully into the larger society, this suggests that the problem is not a German, or a French, or a British one, but lies rather with the Muslims themselves.
What is it that causes Muslims to despise Infidels, to treat their manmade laws with indifference or contempt, to treat government benefits paid for by the Infidels as well-deserved Jizyah, to denounce the polytheism (shirk) of the Christians and the enmity of the poisonous Jews, to be permanently enraged at the refusal of both Christians and Jews to recognize Muhammad as the Seal of the Prophets? It is the ideology of Islam.
It is true that Muslims – or at least Arab Muslims – would take grim satisfaction in the news that Arabic were to be made compulsory. They would view this as an act of submission, signifying that the Infidels accept their fate: that Muslims are in Germany to stay, that they cannot be dislodged, that many more will be coming unopposed, and that compulsory Arabic for all Germans is a way to signal acceptance of this thoroughly multicultural New Order. The Infidels are yielding, and by imposing on themselves the study of Arabic, the language of Islam, they are not just adding another language to the required curriculum, but announcing that Islam is on the march, and that there is nothing they can do to stop it. (cf. Manuel Valls, the French minister who recently advised his countrymen about Muslim terrorism, “Get used to it”).

A few years ago a senior German civil servant, Thilo Sarrazin, startled his countrymen with a sober study of the effects of Muslim migration on Germany. He saw Muslim immigration as the undoing of Germany, and insisted it had to be opposed in every possible way. Sarrazin titled his first book on the Muslim invasion of his country Germany Abolishes Itself. To Professor Strothotte, that sounds not like a problem to be avoided but a solution to be embraced. His prescription is to give up trying to make Muslims assimilate into German society, and instead for Germans to meet their demands, or even, as with his astonishing Arabic proposal, to anticipate them.
Certainly Germans need to understand their Muslim immigrants. But understanding may make them even more alarmed and determined to halt Muslim immigration. Perhaps Professor Strothotte knows this, and that’s why he is so intent on promoting the study of Arabic, in order to deflect attention from the real problem. More and more Germans are discovering that no matter how generously they welcome these immigrants, they do not display either gratitude or a willingness to integrate. This is not what Germans expected, and not a state of affairs they should be forced to endure. Germans are not against all immigration, though often described as such (“racist,” “right-wing,” “anti-immigrant” – these are the media’s standard mix-n’-match epithets), but through unhappy experience they have slowly come to the conclusion that one kind of immigration, that of the Muslims who have been flooding into Germany, is dangerous for them and for their children.

Even the United States, famously a “nation of immigrants,” historically was not open to the whole world; until recently, its voluntary immigration was almost entirely from Europe. Our language, our literature, our laws, our customs, our music and art, were all based on what was brought from Europe. And Germany was never a “nation of immigration” until the last few decades. But misdirected guilt over World War II prevents many Germans from properly defending their own country from a Muslim-immigrant invasion that proceeds, insidiously, on every front. To make up for murderous antisemitism in the past, Germans are paradoxically easing the entry of today’s main carriers of antisemitism, Muslims, into the heart of Europe. That’s not the way to make amends.
Germans have come only reluctantly to the realization that not all immigrants fit in equally; they have drawn the melancholy conclusion that Muslim migrants pose special problems; that their presence has made life for non-Muslims more difficult, dangerous, and expensive; that Muslims are happy to exploit the welfare system, but receive benefits as a matter of right, an unofficial Jizyah.
Again and again the unavoidable question poses itself: Why is it that Christian Arabs — Arabic Copts, Assyrians, Maronites — have had no difficulty assimilating into German as into other European societies? Why is it that the Chinese, the Hindus, the South American Christians, the Sikhs, the Vietnamese Buddhists, have all been integrating without incident into the societies of Western Europe? And finally, why is it that all Muslim migrants, in no matter what country in Europe they may be, and no matter what their ethnic identity — Arabs or Turks, Afghans or Iranians, Bangladeshis or Pakistanis — have exhibited an inability to integrate into European societies?

Making Arabic compulsory would signal to Arabs, and Muslims in Germany, and around the world, that the language of Islam, of the Holy Qur’an, of Jihad, is now to be imposed on Germans, that Arabic will become Germany’s second language, that Muslims are in Germany to stay, and if problems arise, it is the duty of the Germans to change their behavior, their laws, their customs, even their school curricula.That’s also the view of Professor Strothotte; for him it is the Germans who must do the assimilating.

If Germany needs immigrants for economic reasons, shouldn’t it try to make those Muslim migrants feel “welcome” through these compulsory courses in Arabic, and thereby further the great business of that “profound transformation” of Europe through its Muslim population that Professor Strothhotte deems both inevitable and desirable? No. It would make more sense to rely on Christian immigrants who do not regard non-Muslims with contempt, and who are not in thrall to a belief-system that, over 1400 years, from the Atlantic to the East Indies, has always meant trouble for non-Muslims. There is no need for Germany to admit migrants into their midst who regard Germans, because they are Infidels, as acceptable targets for crime, including both the unofficial exaction of the Jizyah, and the sexual assaults on Infidel women we saw in Cologne and Hamburg. Too many of the Muslims in Germany have shown an unwillingness to work or, when they deign to be employed, exhibit an incapacity to produce at the level that the advanced German economy requires. As Sarrazin put it when discussing Muslim employment in Germany Abolishes Itself: “there is only room for so many fruit and vegetable vendors.”

Were Arabic to be made compulsory, instructors would have to be chosen from among native speakers of Arabic. In the West such teachers have often been found to offer, along with their language lessons, large doses of Arab and Islamic propaganda. Even the U.S. Army found this true of the Arabic-language instructors it employed in Iraq, and Christian Arabs were quickly brought in to replace the more egregious purveyors of Muslim propaganda among the language teachers. A penetrating analysis of how Muslim Arabs mix their language instruction with Islamic apologetics is offered by Franck Salameh, a Lebanese Christian who taught in Middlebury’s Arabic Summer School.
And thus the German government would likely find itself innocently paying for a vast army of teachers of Arabic who are also apologists for Islam: a pedagogic fifth column.
But it will not come to this. Professor Strothotte’s suggestion will be rejected. And though his suggestion is outrageous, it does raise the matter of what, if not Arabic, needs to be taught to all German adults? The German government presumes to protect and instruct its citizens, and it ought at this point in the history of a thoroughly confused West, recognize the need to offer courses on the rudiments of Islam.

Who would teach such a course? The teachers should not be Muslims, nor non-Muslim apologists for Islam. They ought, rather, to be Germans who have undergone rigorous training in both the ideology of Islam, and in the history of Islamic conquests. They ought to be able to discuss the contents of the Qur’an, Hadith, and Sira, to go through the most important “Jihad verses,” to explain the main events in Muhammad’s life, including his marriage to little Aisha when she was nine, and how he had the bound prisoners of the Banu Qurayza decapitated, and how he attacked the Jewish farmers of the Khaybar Oasis and divvied up the loot (including the women), and how he took pleasure in the assassinations of the mocking poetess Asma bint Marwan and the 120-year-old Jewish man, Abu Afak. And they should be able to explain that because Muhammad is seen as the Perfect Man (al-insan al-kamil) and Model of Conduct (uswa hasana) by Believers, his example affects the conduct of Muslims today.

These instructors should be able to explain the interpretive doctrine of “naskh” or abrogation, which effectively nullifies the more moderate, Meccan verses. They should be ready to explain that Qur’an 2:256 (“there is no compulsion in religion”) doesn’t quite mean what it appears to say, because the imposition of the Jizyah and many other economic, social, political disabilities on non-Muslims clearly amounts to such “compulsion.” They would be taught how 5:32, which seems to forbid killing innocents, can only be understood when read along with 5:33, which spells out exceptions so large a truck-bomber could drive right through them. (It is 2:256 and 5:32 without 5:33 that are usually trotted out by Muslim apologists, so these verses need to be given special attention.)
And these instructors ought, further, to be able to discuss 1,400 years of Muslim conquest of many different lands and the subjugation of many different peoples, and of what happened when Islam dominated, and Muslims ruled.

If such courses on Islam of this type were to be offered to Germans, adults rather than schoolchildren, would Muslim migrants claim to feel less “welcome”? Of course. But so what? Would such courses, on the other hand, help Germans to better “understand” those Muslim migrants? Yes, certainly. The Germans have been making Muslims feel welcome for the last few decades, and it has gotten them Cologne and Hamburg, Munich and Ansbach, Reutlingen and Gafing. It’s time to stop with the Welcome Wagons, it’s time to try the truth. Would Muslims try to prevent the government from offering such a course, insisting that “only Muslims” can teach courses about Islam? Yes, undoubtedly. But again, so what? The contents of that government-sponsored course on Islam should be transparent, with a fixed syllabus of readings (from the Qur’an, Hadith, Sira), posted online, accessible to all. The classes that are given live should be taped and made similarly available online. If Muslims claim to find inaccuracies in the government-sponsored course, they must make their complaints public for everyone to examine and corrections, if called-for, will be made by a government-appointed committee of experts. Complaints that are seen to be preposterous will only strengthen the case against Islam. If the course instructors are well-trained, intellectually nimble, and careful always to adduce supporting textual authority, they will be able to stand their ground, and unhappy Muslims will be at their wit’s end, for nothing upsets them more than Infidels who know their Islam.

Germans, now immunized against the sanitized version of Islam that they have been fed for so long, will realize that the problem with Muslim migrants has nothing to do with, and cannot be ameliorated by, compulsory instruction in Arabic. Alle deutschen Schüler sollen Arabisch lernen? Nein, a thousand times nein. And Germans will focus less on trying to sympathetically “understand” the Muslim migrants who have invaded their country, less on making them feel still more“welcome,” — there’s been far too much of both already — and more on understanding the meaning, and permanent menace, of Islam, and on ensuring that Germany does not “abolish itself” after all.

And who might be put in charge of this vital pedagogic effort? Not the benighted Professor Strothotte, with his sweetly sinister dream of a “profound transformation” of Europe by its burgeoning Muslim population but, if he’s willing to take on the task, that former German civil servant and dour truth-teller, Herr Thilo Sarrazin.


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Germany: Security guards posted at pools to stop Muslim migrant assaults


September 8, 2016 2:08 pm By Christine Williams 67 Comments

Germany just announced that its military will be teaming up with police in preparation for a possible Islamic State attack. Now comes the announcement that the country is hiring pool guards to stop Muslim refugees from sexually assaulting young boys, girls and women.
It’s certainly a more effective strategy than Sweden’s police “unveiling of the force’s latest weapon in the fight against sexual assault: wristbands reading ‘Don’t touch me,'” albeit a sad state of affairs for Germany.
Let’s hope Germany didn’t forget to put security or police around nudist camps too, given the gang of Muslims who stormed a nudist pool, shouting “Allahu akbar” and threatening to exterminate the women, calling them “sluts.”

“Germany Hires Pool Security Guards To Stop Refugees From Touching Women”, by Saagar Enjeti, Daily Caller, September 7, 2016:

German pools are now forced to hire burly security guards in black uniforms to deter Muslim refugees from touching women.​

The security guards are reportedly Middle Eastern, to make the refugees more comfortable, according to USA Today. One of Berlin’s largest pools is adjacent to two major refugee housing centers, which attract people from countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.​

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German civil society organizations have created councils to teach refugees Western norms at pools — chief among these norms is not touching women.​

One of the social workers trying to teach refugee’s German cultural norms told PRI that many of them “don’t know how to behave.” Social workers are distributing cartoons at refugee centers, and putting up posters at local pools as part of their campaign to educate refugees.​

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In some cases, German girls have taken to wearing temporary tattoo’s at public pools that say “no,” to stop unwanted sexual attention. A leaked German police report from July reveals that “sexual offences are recording a huge increase.”​

“In particular, offenses of rape and sexual abuse of children in bathing establishments is significant,” according to the report. The police report identifies the offenders as “for the most part immigrants.”​

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“The ‘new citizens’, as we call them, have three main problems. They do not speak German, they have no knowledge of German or European bathing culture, and few are powerful swimmers,” Berthold Schmitt, a German manager of nearly 6,000 pools told German media in July.​

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Social workers have also had to grapple with teaching refugees to shower before entering the pool, and with teenagers who don’t know how to swim. “They don’t like to be told they can’t swim,” one social worker elaborated to PRI.​

The German town of Bornheim was forced to ban adult male refugees from swimming at its local pool in January 2016, after repeated accounts of sexual assault….​

Hugh Fitzgerald: Those Danish Right-Wing "Racists," Their "Harsh" Demands and "Hate" Speech
Belgium: Son of imam was planning jihad attack on Christians with chainsaw in mall

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Hugh Fitzgerald: Why It’s Mostly Quiet on the Eastern Front, Or, How a Czech Parliamentarian Sees Islam

September 3, 2016 4:46 pm By Hugh Fitzgerald 94 Comments



Sometimes life sends along something to cheer us up. It did so for me, when I came across a stemwinder of a speech made in the Czech Parliament a few months ago by one of its members, Klara Samkova. Samkova is a left-of-center — not “far-right,” even if the Western press would like to label her as such — politician mainly known as a defender of minorities, especially the Roma. In the past, she was even prepared to collaborate with the Union of Czech Muslims, though after being mugged by Muslim reality, that collaboration has stopped. Her speech was part of a parliamentary hearing on the topic “Should We Be Afraid Of Islam?” (Imagine any Congressman in Washington daring to frame a debate in that way, given that in this country, whatever explanation we give for terrorist acts committed by Muslims, It Has Nothing To Do With Islam).

There are two alternative answers to that parliamentary question.

Either:

1) No, Islam is being maligned by Islamophobes using scare tactics, so don’t be worried.
2) Yes, Islam is definitely a danger wherever it spreads – be worried!

The first is what we keep being told by political and media elites all over Western Europe and North America, who are willing to mislead because they don’t know how, at this point, to handle the truth about the ideology of Islam. The second is what you are more likely find in countries whose recent history has taught their people, and governments, some tough lessons; in Europe, those countries were formerly under Communist rule.

After the Brussels attack, the head of Poland’s largest party announced that “after recent events connected with acts of terror, [Poland] will not accept refugees, because there is no mechanism that would ensure security.”

Victor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary, declared that “we do not like the consequences of having a large number of Muslim communities that we see in other countries, and I do not see any reason for anyone else to force us to create ways of living together in Hungary that we do not want to see….”

Robert Fico, Prime Minister of Slovakia, announced that “Islam has no place in Slovakia.” The Czech Republic, which had in the past taken in a few thousand Muslim migrants, regrets even that, to judge by the remark of its President, Milos Zeman, this January, that “it is practically impossible to integrate Islam into Europe,” and made clear that the Czechs will not be taking any more.

On the Eastern Front of the war of self-defense against Islam, experience has taught people to recognize Islam as what Klara Samkova describes, as not so much a religion as a “totalitarian ideology,” akin to Nazism and Fascism and Communism, that attempts to regulate every facet of a Muslim’s life through the Sharia, or Holy Law of Islam:

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“The law [Sharia] is an intrinsic and inseparable part of the Islamic ideology. It constitutes the core of the content of Islam while the rules claimed to be religious or ethical are just secondary and marginal components of the ideology. From the viewpoint of Islam, the concept of religion as a private, intimate matter of an individual is absolutely unacceptable.”​

Islam is a collectivist faith (Samkova: “the concept of religion as a private, intimate matter of an individual is absolutely unacceptable”). For those, like the Czechs, whose history includes enduring the collectivism of Nazism and Communism, this aspect of Islam must be particularly troubling. Muslims often pray together in very large numbers, in serried ranks of zebibah-thickening submission, and receive their understanding of Islam together in the madrasa and the mosque. They are taught to defend the Umma, the world-wide community of Believers, and as a community to spread the message of Islam, employing the many instruments of Jihad, from combat [qitaal] to demography.

As for the morality of Islam, Samkova says that this “is not a matter for individual judgment,” but consists in following the rules derived from what was set out long ago in Qur’an, Hadith, and Sira, and codified in the Sharia. Another source of Islamic morality – if it can be called that – is the behavior of Muhammad, as both the exemplary model of conduct, uswa hasana, and the Perfect Man, al-insan al-kamil. Few non-Muslims would agree that the Muslim Prophet’s life – including the murders of those who mocked him, his raid on the Khaybar Oasis, his marriage to little Aisha, the decapitation of bound prisoners – corresponds to their moral code.

According to Samkova, in Islam, the period of the Prophet Muhammad and of the earliest Muslims is that to which devout Muslims must always strive to return:

Islam doesn’t share the Enlightenment’s idea of the social progress associated with the future. According to Islam, the good times have already taken place – in the era of Prophet Mohammed. The best things that could have been done have already been done, the best thing that could have been written has already been written, namely the Quran.​

Muslims such as the Wahhabis look not to some imagined future, but back to the Golden Age of Islam – and their mission as Believers is to bring back an Islam that resembles that of its earliest period, to strip Islam of its later, illegitimate excrescences. And for non-Muslims, that “pure” Islam of the early period is even more dangerous than the Islam that, in the centuries since, through accommodation with custom, had its hard edges softened. That belief in a Golden Age of Islam helps explain why, in a recent poll, fully a third of Muslims, though living comfortable and well-subsidized lives in today’s Germany, expressed a desire to live as they did in the earliest days of Islam, the time of the Prophet and the Companions.
Samkova keeps blasting away:

Unfortunately, Islam doesn’t want to be miserable on its own. It wants to take the rest of the world down with it.​

Islam doesn’t respect development, progress, and humanity. In its despair, it is attempting to take the rest of the mankind with it because from the Islamic viewpoint, the rest of the world is futile, useless, and unclean.​

Islam is a static faith; there is no “progress” in Islam. For the True Believer (and we should, to be fair, recognize that not all Muslims are such True Believers), the just society will attempt to conform to the earliest, truest Islam of Muhammad. Its “morality” is derived not from the workings of the individual conscience, but from taking the Qur’an literally, solving internal contradictions in that book by applying where necessary the interpretative doctrine of naskh (or “abrogation”) and, especially, following as closely as possible the moral example of the Prophet Muhammad as he is depicted, in word and deed, in the Hadith. As for the “rest of the world” – that is, all non-Muslims – they indeed lead “futile, useless, and unclean” lives, in the view of devout Muslims, unless and until they embrace Islam. According to the Qur’an, it is the Muslims who are the “best of peoples,” the non-Muslims who are the “vilest of creatures,” and it is the solemn duty of Muslims to spread Islam until it everywhere dominates, and Muslims rule everywhere. This has nothing to do with naive Western hopes placed on “coexistence” with Muslims; “coexistence” is what Muslims in the West will give lip service to, until such time as they are strong enough to drop even the pretense of wanting to continue that state of affairs.

Samkova is not fooled by the “Muslim” version of the International Declaration of Human Rights — the so-called “Cairo Declaration” – which is presented by Muslims as almost the equivalent of the original, but in its 22^nd Article severely limits the free speech rights to that speech which does not violate the principles of the Sharia, or otherwise “violate sanctities and the dignity of Prophets”: “Islam and its Sharia law is incompatible with the principles of the European law, especially with the rights enumerated in the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights (and Freedoms) [or with the International Declaration of Human Rights]:

One has only to compare the International Declaration of Human Rights with its so-called “Islamic” version, the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights, to see how widely they differ on freedom of expression: the latter is based firmly on the Sharia and does not protect freedom of speech and the press as we in the West define it:​

“Everyone shall have the right to express his opinion freely in such manner as would not be contrary to the principles of the Sharia.” (Cairo Declaration, Art. 22.a)​

“(Information) may not be exploited or misused in such a way as may violate sanctities and the dignity of Prophets, undermine moral and ethical values or disintegrate, corrupt or harm society or weaken its faith.” (Cairo Declaration, Art. 22c)​

Samkova observes that Muslims are well-versed at exploiting the much greater freedoms the West offers them than the countries they came from, to undo that very West:

Islam likes to hide behind the religious mask [for] its permanent, deliberate, and purposeful abuse of the Euro-American legal system and values that the civilizations built upon the Judeo-Christian foundations have converged to. There’s nothing better or more efficient than to abuse the value system of one’s enemy, especially when I don’t share that system. And that’s exactly how Islam behaves. It wants to be protected according to our [Western] tradition which it exploits in this way, while it is not willing to behave reciprocally. It relies on our traditions, it claims that the traditions are important, while behind the scenes, it is laughing at us and our system of values.​

Muslims in Europe want to have their own relentless assault on Western religions protected by freedom of speech guarantees, but are determined to try to censor, as undeserving of such guarantees, any criticism of Islam, which they are quick to describe as “hate speech” directed at Muslims. The freedom of conscience they have in mind is aimed at non-Muslims only, and only for one thing: they should be “free” to revert to Islam; Muslims, on the other hand, have no freedom to leave Islam. That kind of apostasy is punishable by death. Thus, this “freedom” is distinctly one-sided.
And Samkova is keenly aware that Muslims present themselves as constant “victims” because, having been allowed to settle within the West, they are sometimes thwarted in their multifarious attempts to transform, steadily and systematically, that very West, so that it becomes, ultimately, part of Dar al-Islam. Samkova suggests that we need a lot more of such thwarting, but she believes that the West won’t muster the energy and courage to do what needs to be done, and that force will ultimately be necessary. In that respect, she’s a pessimist. But she thinks the West will in the end rise to the occasion, and ultimately “crush” Islam, the way it crushed, she says, Nazism and Communism. This, I suppose, is a kind of ultimate optimism.
Islam is, Samkova continues, a belief system based on a regressive view of the world. The idea of progress does not exist; in Islam, nothing supersedes the time of the Prophet.

Rather than working with the world – as Judaism and Christianity, or at least the civilizations that have arisen from them do – Islam is filled with hatred for it.​

Judaism, Christianity, and the civilization that arose from them have surpassed this unjustifiable skepticism, this contempt of people for themselves. At the same moment, Islam remained a stillborn infant of gnosis, deformed into a monstrously mutated desire to blend with the Universe again, into a retarded obsessively psychopathic paranoiac vision about the exceptional nature of one’s own path towards the reunification of the essence of one’s devotee with God.​

Samkova delivered much more in this relentless and ferociously anti-Islamic vein before the Czech Parliament. And it was not only her speech that gave me hope, but even more, the overwhelmingly positive reaction to it by her audience. Instead of denouncing her, as would have happened in Western Europe, and in the United States, too, virtually the entire Czech political establishment and the Czech media endorsed her views. One commentator noted: “The speech was generally applauded by almost all Czech commenters at Internet newspapers of all political colors. But she’s not really exceptional, if you get the logic. It’s a speech that she gave, it was tough …But the underlying ideas are absolutely generically accepted by the Czech society…. what she said simply isn’t taboo in our society.”

No doubt a history of having been betrayed at Munich has made Czechs acutely wary of entrusting their security to others (such as attempts by the E.U. to dictate policy on migrants), and having had to endure both the Nazi occupation and Communist rule has made Czechs aware that all-embracing ideologies must be taken seriously, whatever the post-Christian nullifidians of Western Europe may think. And when you do not take your freedoms for granted, as they do not in the Czech Republic, or in Hungary, or in Poland, or in Slovakia, with their defensive steel tempered in the fires of both Nazism and Communism, you become keenly aware of threats to them early on. And while in Western Europe there are such outstanding personages as Marine Le Pen in France, and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, and Thilo Sarrazin in Germany, and Magdi Allam in Italy, all of whom have been warning about Islam, these are still regarded as political figures out of the mainstream, who stand out precisely because they still are assumed to speak only for a minority. That is changing, of course, as every day brings fresh news of people becoming firmer in their opposition to Islam, with the general run of politicians far behind those in whose name they claim to govern.

In Western Europe, even as many of the politicians dither, the people seem to have had their fill of aggressive Islam. At the end of August, 67% of the British, and 80% of Germans declared themselves in favor of a burqa ban. In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders’ party, the PVV, is now predicted to come out first in the next elections. In France, despite being struck down by the Conseil d’Etat, the burkini ban remains so popular that many of the mayors continue to flout the court’s finding. But despite these welcome developments, eastern Europe is still far ahead of western Europe in its grasp of the meaning and menace of Islam.

When Klara Samkova speaks in the Czech Parliament on Islam, she speaks for practically everybody in the Czech Republic (“her underlying ideas are absolutely generically accepted by the Czech society”). Almost no one in Eastern Europe is taken in by apologists for Islam, because they have within living memory experienced other enormous curtailments to their freedom. Right now, in Europe, the threat to human freedom comes not from Communists or Nazis, but from the Total Belief-System of Islam. Whatever one makes of Klara Samkova’s own prediction of unavoidable violence in Europe, followed by inevitable for the indigenous non-Muslims – her pessimism morphing into optimism — we should all be grateful to her for stating forthrightly about Islam home-truths that politicians, and not only in Prague, can’t restate often enough.


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Hugh Fitzgerald: Those Danish Right-Wing “Racists,” Their “Harsh” Demands and “Hate” Speech

September 8, 2016 2:23 pm By Hugh Fitzgerald 82 Comments



The other day the New York Times published a story about how Danes are souring on Muslim immigrants, and how some feel guilty about it:

Johnny Christensen, a stout and silver-whiskered retired bank employee, always thought of himself as sympathetic to people fleeing war and welcoming to immigrants. But after more than 36,000 mostly Muslim asylum seekers poured into Denmark over the past two years, Mr. Christensen, 65, said, “I’ve become a racist.”​

He believes these new migrants are draining Denmark’s cherished social-welfare system but failing to adapt to its customs. “Just kick them out,” he said, unleashing a mighty kick at an imaginary target on a suburban sidewalk. “These Muslims want to keep their own culture, but we have our own rules here and everyone must follow them.”​

When Christensen says “I’ve become a racist,” he has internalized the false charge made by Muslims, and their willing collaborators, that those who are sensibly anxious about Islam are “racists.” Since that scare-word automatically consigns one to the outer darkness, when even perfectly intelligent people with perfectly reasonable grievances turn that word on themselves, it is clear that something is amiss. Mr. Christensen needs to be unapologetic for his views, and he should start by watching his language: Islam is not a race, antipathy to Muslims does not constitute “racism.” Leave that word alone.
If Mr. Christensen wishes to feel guilty, he ought to feel guilty only about what future generations of Danes will inherit: a country which, because of the numbers of Muslims allowed in during Mr. Christensen’s time, will be far more unpleasant, expensive, and physically dangerous for native Danes than it might otherwise have been.

As the Times story notes, “Denmark, a small and orderly nation with a progressive self-image, is built on a social covenant: In return for some of the world’s highest wages and benefits, people are expected to work hard and pay into the system. Newcomers must quickly learn Danish — and adapt to norms like keeping tidy gardens and riding bicycles.”
But just look at how the Times reporter then slants the story at every point: “The center-right government has backed harsh measures targeting migrants, hate speech has spiked, and the anti-immigrant Danish People’s Party is now the second largest in Parliament.”
“Harsh measures targeting migrants,” “hate speech has spiked,” “anti-immigrant party.” It all sounds so terrible, until you ask a few questions.

What “harsh measures” are these? Apparently the “harshest” measure, passed in January, empowers the Danish authorities to confiscate valuables from new arrivals, both Muslim and non-Muslim, to offset the cost of settling them. It has seldom been enforced, and does not apply to the first $1,500 a migrant possesses.
Why exactly is this considered “harsh”? Should migrants not be expected to contribute, when they are capable of doing so? After all, they arrived uninvited, are immediately the recipients of a cornucopia of expensive benefits, and these benefits now flowing to them were paid for by generations of Danish taxpayers, who thought they were providing for poorer members of their own, that is Danish, society.
Is it “harsh” to require immigrants to pass exams in Danish? At present, only 72%, or a little more than 2/3, manage to learn even elementary Danish. Is it “harsh” to make immigrants take a citizenship exam, requiring them have studied the laws and mores of the Danes, given that they have the great good fortune to have been admitted to this peaceful pleasant land? Is it wrong to require immigrants to study the history of Denmark, since they have decided they’ve come to Denmark to stay? If the goal is to integrate these foreigners, the free courses and tests required will only further that goal.

And why are these putatively “harsh” measures described as “targeting immigrants,” rather than, in less loaded words, described simply as “applying to immigrants”? Since these are measures to further the successful integration of immigrants, of course they apply only to — but do not “target,” which has a distinctly menacing ring — immigrants. As to the casual assertion that “hate speech has spiked,” where is the evidence for this? Since not a single example of such “hate speech” appears in the entire Times piece, the reader must simply take it on faith that Danes – again labelled as “right-wing” – have been guilty of “hate speech.”

Let’s try to figure out what the reporter had in mind as conceivable “hate speech.” Suppose a member of the Danish People’s Party points out that Muslim Somalis in Denmark commit ten times as many crimes per capita as native Danes. That is a statement of fact, not “hate speech.” Or suppose a member of the Danish People’s Party notes that Muslim immigrants receive a much larger benefits package, and for a longer period, given their high unemployment, as compared to what non-Muslim immigrants and native Danes receive. Would that be “hate speech,” or simply a statement of fact?

“There is new tension between Danes still opening their arms and a resurgent right wing that seeks to ban all Muslims and shut Denmark off from Europe.”
So the reporter sees a Morality Play with two kinds of Danes: the Good Danes, “still opening their arms,” and the Bad Danes, “a resurgent right wing that seeks to ban all Muslims.” But even the Good Danes did not invite the Muslims in, and never quite were “opening their arms.” And even if the Bad Danes want to end Muslim immigration, none have as yet called for removing all of the Muslims already in Denmark. Not quite a Morality Play.

The Times reporter continues:

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There is tension, too, over whether the backlash is really about a strain on Denmark’s generous public benefits or a rising terrorist threat — or whether a longstanding but latent racial hostility is being unearthed.​

First, what does it mean to write “there is tension” over whether the “backlash” is about “a strain on generous public benefits” OR “a rising terrorist threat”? “Tension” over trying to apportion blame for the anxiety Muslims have caused? Why can’t there be anxiety among Danes about both the cost to their welfare system of Muslim migrants, and about the threat of Islamic terrorism to their very lives? Why can’t there be more than one reason for growing antipathy to Muslim migrants in Denmark?
And then there is that other proffered reason, which Muslims and their apologists find much to their liking: Could anxiety about the effect of Muslim migrants on Danish society reveal “a longstanding but latent racial hostility”? Just think, this “racial hostility” has been so longstanding but so very latent that no one noticed it, and strange to say, now that the Danes have revealed themselves as “racists,” their “racism” apparently doesn’t apply to all black people, for black African Christians in Denmark have rarely had any troubles, while, strange to say, even white Muslims (as from Syria) have engendered antipathy. So this hostility must have to do not with race but with Islam. The Danes are not revealing “racial hostility,” but well-grounded fears about Islam and the behavior of Muslims. Those who talk about a “latent racial hostility” in this famously tolerant country are deliberately trying to make the Danes feel guilty about their well-justified fears, and to deflect attention away from Islam

The Times reporter does concede that “perhaps the leading — and most substantive — concern is that the migrants are an economic drain. In 2014, 48 percent of immigrants from non-Western countries ages 16 to 64 were employed, compared with 74 percent of native Danes.” There then follows the sensible comments of immigration officials about the need to avoid “parallel societies,” and the story of one Muslim immigrant family’s success (but no similar stories about the many cases of immigrant unemployment and crime), that of an Iraqi engineer who allows his children to eat pork at school, and who with his family attends church to learn about Christianity. How typical do you think this Muslim immigrant family is?

This report from Denmark, with its loaded words – “right-wing,” “hate speech,” “targeting immigrants,” “harsh measures” – does not leave much room for thoughtful analysis of what is clearly a grave problem everywhere in Western Europe. That problem, let me repeat, is that Muslim migrants, in large numbers (one million arrived in Germany alone in 2015), have been moving into Europe, bringing Islam with them in their mental luggage, putting great strain on the welfare systems of every country in which they end up, and on the criminal justice systems because of their sky-high crime rate, and, given Muslim terrorist attacks in nearly a dozen Western countries, on the security services too.

Yet it is amazing that even now, after all the murder and mayhem that has been committed by Muslims, and not only those of ISIS who dutifully cite Islamic texts to justify their every act, people in Denmark are embarrassed to admit to an anxiety about Islam, and instead accuse themselves (“I’ve become a racist”) rather than ask what it is about the ideology of Islam that makes it uniquely difficult, perhaps even impossible, for Muslim migrants – always with a few remarkable exceptions — to integrate.

That is the question to be asked again and again: what explains the success of so many non-Muslim immigrants in managing to integrate into many different European countries, and the failure of so many Muslim immigrants to do so in those same countries? And why do the peoples of Western Europe allow themselves to feel so apologetic about their anxiety about, and antipathy toward, Islam? And when will we, the world’s Infidels, dare to study the texts that explain Muslim acts and attitudes, or shall we forever deny ourselves the right to engage in such study, that is, from doing the one thing that makes the most sense?


Italy expels Muslim cleric who said Islam "fully incompatible" with Italian law
Germany: Security guards posted at pools to stop Muslim migrant assaults

 

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Netanyahu: “The UN, begun as a moral force, has become a moral farce”

September 23, 2016 6:47 pm By Robert Spencer 46 Comments

This is a magnificent speech, one of the few times in recent years that the truth has been told at the UN about the jihad against Israel, and about the UN’s obsessive OIC-driven hatred of the Jewish State. His saying “I remain committed to a vision of peace based on two states for two peoples” is understandable but unfortunate, as a Palestinian state would only become a new jihad base for attacks on Israel, but that doesn’t outweigh Netanyahu’s calling-out of the UN, and of “Palestinian” jihad indoctrination of children, and much more.

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“Full text of Netanyahu’s speech at 2016 UN General Assembly,” Times of Israel, September 22, 2016:
Remarks by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the 71st sessions of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, September 22, 2016.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
What I’m about to say is going to shock you: Israel has a bright future at the UN.
Now I know that hearing that from me must surely come as a surprise, because year after year I’ve stood at this very podium and slammed the UN for its obsessive bias against Israel. And the UN deserved every scathing word – for the disgrace of the General Assembly that last year passed 20 resolutions against the democratic State of Israel and a grand total of three resolutions against all the other countries on the planet.
Israel – twenty; rest of the world – three.
And what about the joke called the UN Human Rights Council, which each year condemns Israel more than all the countries of the world combined. As women are being systematically raped, murdered, sold into slavery across the world, which is the only country that the UN’s Commission on Women chose to condemn this year? Yep, you guessed it – Israel. Israel. Israel where women fly fighter jets, lead major corporations, head universities, preside – twice – over the Supreme Court, and have served as Speaker of the Knesset and Prime Minister.
And this circus continues at UNESCO. UNESCO, the UN body charged with preserving world heritage. Now, this is hard to believe but UNESCO just denied the 4,000-year connection between the Jewish people and its holiest site, the Temple Mount. That’s just as absurd as denying the connection between the Great Wall of China and China.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
The UN, begun as a moral force, has become a moral farce. So when it comes to Israel at the UN, you’d probably think nothing will ever change, right? Well think again. You see, everything will change and a lot sooner than you think. The change will happen in this hall, because back home, your governments are rapidly changing their attitudes towards Israel. And sooner or later, that’s going to change the way you vote on Israel at the UN.
More and more nations in Asia, in Africa, in Latin America, more and more nations see Israel as a potent partner – a partner in fighting the terrorism of today, a partner in developing the technology of tomorrow.
Today Israel has diplomatic relations with over 160 countries. That’s nearly double the number that we had when I served here as Israel’s ambassador some 30 years ago. And those ties are getting broader and deeper every day. World leaders increasingly appreciate that Israel is a powerful country with one of the best intelligence services on earth. Because of our unmatched experience and proven capabilities in fighting terrorism, many of your governments seek our help in keeping your countries safe.
Many also seek to benefit from Israel’s ingenuity in agriculture, in health, in water, in cyber and in the fusion of big data, connectivity and artificial intelligence – that fusion that is changing our world in every way.
You might consider this: Israel leads the world in recycling wastewater. We recycle about 90% of our wastewater. Now, how remarkable is that? Well, given that the next country on the list only recycles about 20% of its wastewater, Israel is a global water power. So if you have a thirsty world, and we do, there’s no better ally than Israel.
How about cybersecurity? That’s an issue that affects everyone. Israel accounts for one-tenth of one percent of the world’s population, yet last year we attracted some 20% of the global private investment in cybersecurity. I want you to digest that number. In cyber, Israel is punching a whopping 200 times above its weight. So Israel is also a global cyber power. If hackers are targeting your banks, your planes, your power grids and just about everything else, Israel can offer indispensable help.
Governments are changing their attitudes towards Israel because they know that Israel can help them protect their peoples, can help them feed them, can help them better their lives.
This summer I had an unbelievable opportunity to see this change so vividly during an unforgettable visit to four African countries. This is the first visit to Africa by an Israeli prime minister in decades. Later today, I’ll be meeting with leaders from 17 African countries. We’ll discuss how Israeli technology can help them in their efforts to transform their countries.
In Africa, things are changing. In China, India, Russia, Japan, attitudes towards Israel have changed as well. These powerful nations know that, despite Israel’s small size, it can make a big difference in many, many areas that are important to them.
But now I’m going to surprise you even more. You see, the biggest change in attitudes towards Israel is taking place elsewhere. It’s taking place in the Arab world. Our peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan continue to be anchors of stability in the volatile Middle East. But I have to tell you this: For the first time in my lifetime, many other states in the region recognize that Israel is not their enemy. They recognize that Israel is their ally. Our common enemies are Iran and ISIS. Our common goals are security, prosperity and peace. I believe that in the years ahead we will work together to achieve these goals, work together openly.
So Israel’s diplomatic relations are undergoing nothing less than a revolution. But in this revolution, we never forget that our most cherished alliance, our deepest friendship is with the United States of America, the most powerful and the most generous nation on earth. Our unbreakable bond with the United States of America transcends parties and politics. It reflects, above all else, the overwhelming support for Israel among the American people, support which is at record highs and for which we are deeply grateful.
The United Nations denounces Israel; the United States supports Israel. And a central pillar of that defense has been America’s consistent support for Israel at the UN. I appreciate President Obama’s commitment to that longstanding US policy. In fact, the only time that the United States cast a UN Security Council veto during the Obama presidency was against an anti-Israel resolution in 2011. As President Obama rightly declared at this podium, peace will not come from statements and resolutions at the United Nations.
I believe the day is not far off when Israel will be able to rely on many, many countries to stand with us at the UN. Slowly but surely, the days when UN ambassadors reflexively condemn Israel, those days are coming to an end.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Today’s automatic majority against Israel at the UN reminds me of the story, the incredible story of Hiroo Onada. Hiroo was a Japanese soldier who was sent to the Philippines in 1944. He lived in the jungle. He scavenged for food. He evaded capture. Eventually he surrendered, but that didn’t happen until 1974, some 30 years after World War II ended. For decades, Hiroo refused to believe the war was over. As Hiroo was hiding in the jungle, Japanese tourists were swimming in pools in American luxury hotels in nearby Manila. Finally, mercifully, Hiroo’s former commanding officer was sent to persuade him to come out of hiding. Only then did Hiroo lay down his arms.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Distinguished delegates from so many lands,
I have one message for you today: Lay down your arms. The war against Israel at the UN is over. Perhaps some of you don’t know it yet, but I am confident that one day in the not too distant future you will also get the message from your president or from your prime minister informing you that the war against Israel at the United Nations has ended. Yes, I know, there might be a storm before the calm. I know there is talk about ganging up on Israel at the UN later this year. Given its history of hostility towards Israel, does anyone really believe that Israel will let the UN determine our security and our vital national interests?
We will not accept any attempt by the UN to dictate terms to Israel. The road to peace runs through Jerusalem and Ramallah, not through New York.
But regardless of what happens in the months ahead, I have total confidence that in the years ahead the revolution in Israel’s standing among the nations will finally penetrate this hall of nations. I have so much confidence, in fact, that I predict that a decade from now an Israeli prime minister will stand right here where I am standing and actually applaud the UN. But I want to ask you: Why do we have to wait a decade? Why keep vilifying Israel? Perhaps because some of you don’t appreciate that the obsessive bias against Israel is not just a problem for my country, it’s a problem for your countries too. Because if the UN spends so much time condemning the only liberal democracy in the Middle East, it has far less time to address war, disease, poverty, climate change and all the other serious problems that plague the planet.
Are the half million slaughtered Syrians helped by your condemnation of Israel? The same Israel that has treated thousands of injured Syrians in our hospitals, including a field hospital that I built right along the Golan Heights border with Syria. Are the gays hanging from cranes in Iran helped by your denigration of Israel? That same Israel where gays march proudly in our streets and serve in our parliament, including I’m proud to say in my own Likud party. Are the starving children in North Korea’s brutal tyranny, are they helped by your demonization of Israel? Israel, whose agricultural knowhow is feeding the hungry throughout the developing world?
The sooner the UN’s obsession with Israel ends, the better. The better for Israel, the better for your countries, the better for the UN itself.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
If UN habits die hard, Palestinian habits die even harder. President Abbas just attacked from this podium the Balfour Declaration. He’s preparing a lawsuit against Britain for that declaration from 1917. That’s almost 100 years ago – talk about being stuck in the past. The Palestinians may just as well sue Iran for the Cyrus Declaration, which enabled the Jews to rebuild our Temple in Jerusalem 2,500 years ago. Come to think of it, why not a Palestinian class action suit against Abraham for buying that plot of land in Hebron where the fathers and mothers of the Jewish people were buried 4,000 years ago? You’re not laughing. It’s as absurd as that. To sue the British government for the Balfour Declaration? Is he kidding? And this is taken seriously here?
President Abbas attacked the Balfour Declaration because it recognized the right of the Jewish people to a national home in the land of Israel. When the United Nations supported the establishment of a Jewish state in 1947, it recognized our historical and our moral rights in our homeland and to our homeland. Yet today, nearly 70 years later, the Palestinians still refuse to recognize those rights – not our right to a homeland, not our right to a state, not our right to anything. And this remains the true core of the conflict, the persistent Palestinian refusal to recognize the Jewish state in any boundary. You see, this conflict is not about the settlements. It never was.
The conflict raged for decades before there was a single settlement, when Judea Samaria and Gaza were all in Arab hands. The West Bank and Gaza were in Arab hands and they attacked us again and again and again. And when we uprooted all 21 settlements in Gaza and withdrew from every last inch of Gaza, we didn’t get peace from Gaza – we got thousands of rockets fired at us from Gaza.
This conflict rages because for the Palestinians, the real settlements they’re after are Haifa, Jaffa and Tel Aviv.
Now mind you, the issue of settlements is a real one and it can and must be resolved in final status negotiations. But this conflict has never been about the settlements or about establishing a Palestinian state. It’s always been about the existence of a Jewish state, a Jewish state in any boundary.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Israel is ready, I am ready to negotiate all final status issues but one thing I will never negotiate: Our right to the one and only Jewish state.
Wow, sustained applause for the Prime Minister of Israel in the General Assembly? The change may be coming sooner than I thought.
Had the Palestinians said yes to a Jewish state in 1947, there would have been no war, no refugees and no conflict. And when the Palestinians finally say yes to a Jewish state, we will be able to end this conflict once and for all.
Now here’s the tragedy, because, see, the Palestinians are not only trapped in the past, their leaders are poisoning the future.
I want you to imagine a day in the life of a 13-year-old Palestinian boy, I’ll call him Ali. Ali wakes up before school, he goes to practice with a soccer team named after Dalal Mughrabi, a Palestinian terrorist responsible for the murder of a busload of 37 Israelis. At school, Ali attends an event sponsored by the Palestinian Ministry of Education honoring Baha Alyan, who last year murdered three Israeli civilians. On his walk home, Ali looks up at a towering statue erected just a few weeks ago by the Palestinian Authority to honor Abu Sukar, who detonated a bomb in the center of Jerusalem, killing 15 Israelis.
When Ali gets home, he turns on the TV and sees an interview with a senior Palestinian official, Jibril Rajoub, who says that if he had a nuclear bomb, he’d detonate it over Israel that very day. Ali then turns on the radio and he hears President Abbas’s adviser, Sultan Abu al-Einein, urging Palestinians, here’s a quote, “to slit the throats of Israelis wherever you find them.” Ali checks his Facebook and he sees a recent post by President Abbas’s Fatah Party calling the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics a “heroic act”. On YouTube, Ali watches a clip of President Abbas himself saying, “We welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem.” Direct quote.
Over dinner, Ali asks his mother what would happen if he killed a Jew and went to an Israeli prison? Here’s what she tells him. She tells him he’d be paid thousands of dollars each month by the Palestinian Authority. In fact, she tells him, the more Jews he would kill, the more money he’d get. Oh, and when he gets out of prison, Ali would be guaranteed a job with the Palestinian Authority.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
All this is real. It happens every day, all the time. Sadly, Ali represents hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children who are indoctrinated with hate every moment, every hour.
This is child abuse.
Imagine your child undergoing this brainwashing. Imagine what it takes for a young boy or girl to break free out of this culture of hate. Some do but far too many don’t. How can any of us expect young Palestinians to support peace when their leaders poison their minds against peace?
We in Israel don’t do this. We educate our children for peace. In fact, we recently launched a pilot program, my government did, to make the study of Arabic mandatory for Jewish children so that we can better understand each other, so that we can live together side-by-side in peace.
Of course, like all societies Israel has fringe elements. But it’s our response to those fringe elements, it’s our response to those fringe elements that makes all the difference.
Take the tragic case of Ahmed Dawabsha. I’ll never forget visiting Ahmed in the hospital just hours after he was attacked. A little boy, really a baby, he was badly burned. Ahmed was the victim of a horrible terrorist act perpetrated by Jews. He lay bandaged and unconscious as Israeli doctors worked around the clock to save him.
No words can bring comfort to this boy or to his family. Still, as I stood by his bedside I told his uncle, “This is not our people. This is not our way.” I then ordered extraordinary measures to bring Ahmed’s assailants to justice and today the Jewish citizens of Israel accused of attacking the Dawabsha family are in jail awaiting trial.
Now, for some, this story shows that both sides have their extremists and both sides are equally responsible for this seemingly endless conflict.
But what Ahmed’s story actually proves is the very opposite. It illustrates the profound difference between our two societies, because while Israeli leaders condemn terrorists, all terrorists, Arabs and Jews alike, Palestinian leaders celebrate terrorists. While Israel jails the handful of Jewish terrorists among us, the Palestinians pay thousands of terrorists among them.
So I call on President Abbas: you have a choice to make. You can continue to stoke hatred as you did today or you can finally confront hatred and work with me to establish peace between our two peoples.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I hear the buzz. I know that many of you have given up on peace. But I want you to know – I have not given up on peace. I remain committed to a vision of peace based on two states for two peoples. I believe as never before that changes taking place in the Arab world today offer a unique opportunity to advance that peace.
I commend President el-Sissi of Egypt for his efforts to advance peace and stability in our region. Israel welcomes the spirit of the Arab peace initiative and welcomes a dialogue with Arab states to advance a broader peace. I believe that for that broader peace to be fully achieved the Palestinians have to be part of it. I’m ready to begin negotiations to achieve this today – not tomorrow, not next week, today.
President Abbas spoke here an hour ago. Wouldn’t it be better if instead of speaking past each other we were speaking to one another? President Abbas, instead of railing against Israel at the United Nations in New York, I invite you to speak to the Israeli people at the Knesset in Jerusalem. And I would gladly come to speak to the Palestinian parliament in Ramallah.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
While Israel seeks peace with all our neighbors, we also know that peace has no greater enemy than the forces of militant Islam. The bloody trail of this fanaticism runs through all the continents represented here. It runs through Paris and Nice, Brussels and Baghdad, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Minnesota and New York, from Sydney to San Bernardino. So many have suffered its savagery: Christian and Jews, women and gays, Yazidis and Kurds and many, many others.
Yet the heaviest price, the heaviest price of all has been paid by innocent Muslims. Hundreds of thousands unmercifully slaughtered. Millions turned into desperate refugees, tens of millions brutally subjugated. The defeat of militant Islam will thus be a victory for all humanity, but it would especially be a victory for those many Muslims who seek a life without fear, a life of peace, a life of hope.
But to defeat the forces of militant Islam, we must fight them relentlessly. We must fight them in the real world. We must fight them in the virtual world. We must dismantle their networks, disrupt their funding, discredit their ideology. We can defeat them and we will defeat them. Medievalism is no match for modernity. Hope is stronger than hate, freedom mightier than fear.
We can do this.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Israel fights this fateful battle against the forces of militant Islam every day. We keep our borders safe from ISIS, we prevent the smuggling of game-changing weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon, we thwart Palestinian terror attacks in Judea and Samaria, the West Bank, and we deter missile attacks from Hamas-controlled Gaza.
That’s the same Hamas terror organization that cruelly, unbelievably cruelly refuses to return three of our citizens and the bodies of our fallen soldiers, Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin. Hadar Goldin’s parents, Leah and Simcha Goldin, are here with us today. They have one request – to bury their beloved son in Israel. All they ask for is one simple thing – to be able to visit the grave of their fallen son Hadar in Israel. Hamas refuses. They couldn’t care less.
I implore you to stand with them, with us, with all that’s decent in our world against the inhumanity of Hamas – all that is indecent and barbaric. Hamas breaks every humanitarian rule in the book, throw the book at them.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
The greatest threat to my country, to our region, and ultimately to our world remains the militant Islamic regime of Iran. Iran openly seeks Israel’s annihilation. It threatens countries across the Middle East, it sponsors terror worldwide.
This year, Iran has fired ballistic missiles in direct defiance of Security Council Resolutions. It has expended its aggression in Iraq, in Syria, in Yemen. Iran, the world’s foremost sponsor of terrorism continued to build its global terror network. That terror network now spans five continents.
So my point to you is this: The threat Iran poses to all of us is not behind us, it’s before us. In the coming years, there must be a sustained and united effort to push back against Iran’s aggression and Iran’s terror. With the nuclear constraints on Iran one year closer to being removed, let me be clear: Israel will not allow the terrorist regime in Iran to develop nuclear weapons – not now, not in a decade, not ever.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
I stand before you today at a time when Israel’s former president, Shimon Peres, is fighting for his life. Shimon is one of Israel’s founding fathers, one of its boldest statesmen, one of its most respected leaders. I know you will all join me and join all the people of Israel in wishing him refuah shlemah Shimon, a speedy recovery.
I’ve always admired Shimon’s boundless optimism, and like him, I too am filled with hope. I am filled with hope because Israel is capable of defending itself by itself against any threat. I am filled with hope because the valor of our fighting men and women is second to none. I am filled with hope because I know the forces of civilization will ultimately triumph over the forces of terror. I am filled with hope because in the age of innovation, Israel – the innovation nation – is thriving as never before. I am filled with hope because Israel works tirelessly to advance equality and opportunity for all its citizens: Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze, everyone. And I am filled with hope because despite all the naysayers, I believe that in the years ahead, Israel will forge a lasting peace with all our neighbors.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am hopeful about what Israel can accomplish because I’ve seen what Israel has accomplished. In 1948, the year of Israel’s independence, our population was 800,000. Our main export was oranges. People said then we were too small, too weak, too isolated, too demographically outnumbered to survive, let alone thrive. The skeptics were wrong about Israel then; the skeptics are wrong about Israel now.
Israel’s population has grown tenfold, our economy fortyfold. Today our biggest export is technology – Israeli technology, which powers the world’s computers, cellphones, cars and so much more.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
The future belongs to those who innovate and this is why the future belongs to countries like Israel. Israel wants to be your partner in seizing that future, so I call on all of you: Cooperate with Israel, embrace Israel, dream with Israel. Dream of the future that we can build together, a future of breathtaking progress, a future of security, prosperity and peace, a future of hope for all humanity, a future where even at the UN, even in this hall, Israel will finally, inevitably, take its rightful place among the nations.
Thank you.


Islamic Republic of Iran threatens to "turn Tel Aviv and Haifa to dust"



Islamic Republic of Iran threatens to “turn Tel Aviv and Haifa to dust”

September 21, 2016 9:23 pm By Robert Spencer 77 Comments
“We’ve taken away terrorist safe havens, strengthened the nonproliferation regime, resolved the Iranian nuclear issue through diplomacy….When Iran agrees to accept constraints on its nuclear program that enhances global security and enhances Iran’s ability to work with other nations.” — Barack Obama at the UN yesterday


“Iran parades new weapons at time of Gulf tension with U.S.,” by Babak Dehghanpisheh, Reuters, September 21, 2016:


Iran marked the anniversary of its 1980 invasion by Iraq by showing off its latest ships and missiles and telling the United States not to meddle in the Gulf.
At a parade in Tehran on Wednesday, shown on state TV, the military displayed long-range missiles, tanks, and the Russian-supplied S-300 surface-to-air missile defense system.
At the port of Bandar Abbas on the Gulf, the navy showed off 500 vessels, as well as submarines and helicopters, at a time of high tension with the United States in the strategic waterway.

U.S. officials say there have been more than 30 close encounters between U.S. and Iranian vessels in the Gulf so far this year, over twice as many as in the same period of 2015.
On Sept. 4, a U.S. Navy coastal patrol ship changed course after an Iranian Revolutionary Guard fast-attack craft came within 100 yards (90 meters) of it in the central Gulf, at least the fourth such incident in less than a month, U.S. Defense Department officials said.
“We tell the Americans that it’s better that the capital and wealth of the American people should not be wasted on their inappropriate and detrimental presence in the Persian Gulf,” said Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The Tasnim news site quoted him as saying: “If they want to extend their reach and engage in adventurism they should go to the Bay of Pigs” – a reference to the location of a botched U.S. attempt to overthrow Cuban leader Fidel Castro in 1961.

In Tehran, the Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, Major General Mohammad Hossein Baqeri, declared that Iran wanted peace.

“BROTHERS IN FAITH”

But he said Iran’s lessons in the 1980-88 war against Iraq now served as a guide for “our brothers in faith” in Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Bahrain, countries where Iran has political, religious or military allies.
Among the weapons displayed was the new long-range “Zolfaqar” ballistic missile, named after a legendary sword said to have given by the Prophet Mohammad to Imam Ali. It has “a cluster warhead capable of hitting targets spread over the ground”, according to Tasnim.
A banner on the side of a truck carrying the new missile bore a threat to Iran’s arch-foe Israel: “If the leaders of the Zionist regime make a mistake then the Islamic Republic will turn Tel Aviv and Haifa to dust.”…


NYC jihad bomber was flagged twice in 2014, but passed scrutiny
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