Smoky Mountains Sunrise
Showing posts with label Islamic Fascism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Islamic Fascism. Show all posts

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Britain: Catholic Bishops Bowing to Islam Deserve Swift Kick


From Tundra Tabloids

Catholic Bishops in England and in Wales bow to Islam by calling for Catholic schools to accommodate Muslim prayer rooms and religious washing facilities.

And while these Bishops are down on the ground groveling before the Islamic community, it would be a most opportune time to complete the spectacle by delivering to each and every one of them a swift kick in the seat of their pants for good measure. Stupid is as stupid does.

Daily Mail.co.uk:

Muslim prayer rooms should be opened in every Roman Catholic school, church leaders have said. The Catholic bishops of England and Wales also want facilities in schools for Islamic pre-prayer washing rituals.

The demands go way beyond legal requirements on catering for religious minorities. But the bishops - who acknowledge 30 per cent of pupils at their schools hold a non-Christian faith - want to answer critics who say religious schools sow division.

The recommendations were made in a document, Catholic Schools, Children of Other Faiths and Community Cohesion. 'If practicable, a room (or rooms) might be made available for the use of pupils and staff from other faiths for prayer,' the bishops said. 'Existing toilet facilities might be adapted to accommodate individual ritual cleansing which is sometimes part of religious lifestyle and worship.

'If such space is not available on a permanent or regular basis, extra efforts might be made to address such need for major religious festivals.' The Islamic cleansing ritual, called 'Wudhu', is carried out by Muslims before they pray.

Wudhu!? Wudhu you think you're fooling!? Well apparently not everyone, a spark of sanity seen in south London :

Daphne McLeod, a former Catholic head teacher from south London, said it would be 'terribly expensive' for the country's 2,300 Catholic primary and secondary schools to provide ritual cleansing facilities. She said: 'If Muslim parents choose a Catholic school then they accept that it is going to be a Catholic school and there will not be facilities for ritual cleansing and prayer rooms. 'They do their ritual cleansing before they go to a mosque, but they are not going to a mosque. 'I don't think the bishops should go looking for problems. Where will it stop?'

Exactly the point, it won't ever stop, the list of grievances and demands will go on and on until the host society is conforming to Islamic sharia. Those who help the followers of the madman from the Arabian desert, are useful stooges, no matter how well intended their actions may be. Any Christian or Jewish religious leader that allows for any such tomfoolery, show that they do not have their communities best interests at heart.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Melanie Phillips: "War Is Being Waged Against Civilisation"



Melanie Phillips, the British journalist and author, has written the most clear and perceptive analysis of the Islamic terrorist attack in Mumbai. What she sees and so many other commentators do not, is that this atrocity is not a random act or the result of local grievances. It is, rather, another carefully chosen battle in Islam's worldwide war on Western civilization.

While the atrocity in Mumbai was underway, other battles were and are being waged in India's eastern state of Orissa and in scores of other places around the world wherever there is a sizable Muslim population. Indeed, the
more than 10,000 terrorist attacks waged since 9/11 have one, overarching, geopolitical goal -- the worldwide dominion of Islam. Unfortunately, Europe's leaders, and soon America's, continue to welcome enemy infiltrators among us, are willing to bankrupt our national economies with a UN Global Tax that purports to address "the root causes" of terrorism, under the false assumption that these "incidents" are the result of poverty and high unemployment, and in the one area calling for a high degree of multinational collaboration, they fail to see that it is all of the West that is under siege -- Christian, Jew, Hindu, the "I'm spiritual not religious" crowd, secularist and atheist.

The delusion under which the West continues to operate will come to an end; but how many wake-up calls like Mumbai must there be, how many thousands more must die, and how horrific must the catastrophe be before the West arises from its slumber?


Saturday, November 29, 2008

Geert Wilders: 'Our Culture Is Better'


Like Churchill before him, Geert Wilders is a prophet whose message is not yet heard by those with most at stake -- his fellow Europeans. He rightly sees a Western culture that is superior to that which threatens to overwhelm it, but it is a culture that has lost all vitality because it has lost touch with the Christian roots from which it rose. Indeed, the multiculturalist elites that are guiding Europe on its suicidal course cannot even admit the possibility that Western culture is superior to that of Islam and Sharia Law. The Wall Street Journal recently profiled Europe's courageous, lone voice.

By his own description, Geert Wilders is not a typical Dutch politician. "We are a country of consensus," he tells me on a recent Saturday morning at his midtown Manhattan hotel. "I hate consensus. I like confrontation. I am not a consensus politician. . . . This is something that is really very un-Dutch."

Yet the 45-year-old Mr. Wilders says he is the most famous politician in the Netherlands: "Everybody knows me. . . . There is no other politician -- not even the prime minister -- who is as well-known. . . . People hate me, or they love me. There's nothing in between. There is no gray area."

To his admirers, Mr. Wilders is a champion of Western values on a continent that has lost confidence in them. To his detractors, he is an anti-Islamic provocateur. Both sides have a point.

In March, Mr. Wilders released a short film called "Fitna," a harsh treatment of Islam that begins by interspersing inflammatory Quran passages with newspaper and TV clips depicting threats and acts of violent jihad. The second half of the film, titled "The Netherlands Under the Spell of Islam," warns that Holland's growing Muslim population -- which more than doubled between 1990 and 2004, to 944,000, some 5.8% of the populace -- poses a threat to the country's traditional liberal values. Under the heading, "The Netherlands in the future?!" it shows brutal images from Muslim countries: men being hanged for homosexuality, a beheaded woman, another woman apparently undergoing genital mutilation.

Making such a film, Mr. Wilders knew, was a dangerous act. In November 2004, Theo van Gogh was assassinated on an Amsterdam street in retaliation for directing a film called "Submission" about Islam's treatment of women. The killer, Mohammed Bouyeri, left a letter on van Gogh's body threatening Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the film's writer and narrator.

Ms. Hirsi Ali, born in Somalia, had renounced Islam and been elected to the Dutch Parliament, where she was an ally of Mr. Wilders. Both belonged to the center-right People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, known by the Dutch acronym VVD. Both took a hard line on what they saw as an overly accommodationist policy toward the Netherlands' Muslim minority. They argued that radical imams "should be stripped of their nationality," that their mosques should be closed, and that "we should be strong in defending the rights of women," Mr. Wilders tells me.

This made them dissenters within the VVD. "We got into trouble every week," Mr. Wilders recalls. "We were like children going to their parents if they did something wrong, because every week they hassled us. . . . We really didn't care what anybody said. If the factional leadership said, 'Well, you cannot go to this TV program,' for us it was an incentive to go, not not to go. So we were a little bit of two mavericks, rebels if you like."

Mr. Wilders finally quit the party over its support for opening negotiations to admit Turkey into the European Union. That was in September 2004. "Two months later, Theo van Gogh was killed, and the whole world changed," says Mr. Wilders. He and Ms. Hirsi Ali both went into hiding; he still travels with bodyguards. After a VVD rival threatened to strip Ms. Hirsi Ali's citizenship over misstatements on her 1992 asylum application, she left Parliament and took a fellowship at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. Mr. Wilders stayed on and formed the Party for Freedom, or PVV. In 2006 it became Parliament's fifth-largest party, with nine seats in the 150-member lower chamber.

Having his own party liberates Mr. Wilders to speak his mind. As he sees it, the West suffers from an excess of toleration for those who do not share its tradition of tolerance. "We believe that -- 'we' means the political elite -- that all cultures are equal," he says. "I believe this is the biggest disease today facing Europe. . . . We should wake up and tell ourselves: You're not a xenophobe, you're not a racist, you're not a crazy guy if you say, 'My culture is better than yours.' A culture based on Christianity, Judaism, humanism is better. Look at how we treat women, look at how we treat apostates, look at how we go with the separation of church and state. I can give you 500 examples why our culture is better."

He acknowledges that "the majority of Muslims in Europe and America are not terrorists or violent people." But he says "it really doesn't matter that much, because if you don't define your own culture as the best, dominant one, and you allow through immigration people from those countries to come in, at the end of the day you will lose your own identity and your own culture, and your society will change. And our freedom will change -- all the freedoms we have will change."

The murder of van Gogh lends credence to this warning, as does the Muhammad cartoon controversy of 2005 in Denmark. As for "Fitna," it has not occasioned a violent response, but its foes have made efforts to suppress it. A Dutch Muslim organization went to court seeking to enjoin its release on the ground that, in Mr. Wilders's words, "it's not in the interest of Dutch security." The plaintiffs also charged Mr. Wilders with blasphemy and inciting hatred. Mr. Wilders thought the argument frivolous, but decided to pre-empt it: "The day before the verdict, I broadcasted ['Fitna'] . . . not because I was not confident in the outcome, but I thought: I'm not taking any chance, I'm doing it. And it was legal, because there was not a verdict yet." The judge held that the national-security claim was moot and ruled in Mr. Wilders's favor on the issues of blasphemy and incitement.

Dutch television stations had balked at broadcasting the film, and satellite companies refused to carry it even for a fee. So Mr. Wilders released it online. The British video site LiveLeak.com soon pulled the film, citing "threats to our staff of a very serious nature," but put it back online a few days later. ("Fitna" is still available on LiveLeak, as well as on other sites such as YouTube and Google Video.)

An organization called The Netherlands Shows Its Colors filed a criminal complaint against Mr. Wilders for "inciting hatred." In June, Dutch prosecutors declined to pursue the charge, saying in a statement: "That comments are hurtful and offensive for a large number of Muslims does not mean that they are punishable." The group is appealing the prosecutors' decision.

In July, a Jordanian prosecutor, acting on a complaint from a pressure group there, charged Mr. Wilders with blasphemy and other crimes. The Netherlands has no extradition treaty with Jordan, but Mr. Wilders worries -- and the head of the group that filed the complaint has boasted -- that the indictment could restrict his ability to travel. Mr. Wilders says he does not visit a foreign country without receiving an assurance that he will not be arrested and extradited.

"The principle is not me -- it's not about Geert Wilders," he says. "If you look at the press and the rest of the political elite in the Netherlands, nobody cares. Nobody gives a damn. This is the worst thing, maybe. . . . A nondemocratic country cannot use the international or domestic legal system to silence you. . . . If this starts, we can get rid of all parliaments, and we should close down every newspaper, and we should shut up and all pray to Mecca five times a day."

It is difficult to fault Mr. Wilders's impassioned defense of free speech. And although the efforts to silence him via legal harassment have proved far from successful, he rightly points out that they could have a chilling effect, deterring others from speaking out.

Mr. Wilders's views on Islam, though, are problematic. Since 9/11, American political leaders have struggled with the question of how to describe the ideology of the enemy without making enemies of the world's billion or so Muslims. The various terms they have tried -- "Islamic extremism," "Islamism," "Islamofascism" -- have fallen short of both clarity and melioration. Melioration is not Mr. Wilders's highest priority, and to him the truth couldn't be clearer: The problem is Islam itself. "I see Islam more as an ideology than as a religion," he explains.

His own view of Islam is a fundamentalist one: "According to the Quran, there are no moderate Muslims. It's not Geert Wilders who's saying that, it's the Quran . . . saying that. It's many imams in the world who decide that. It's the people themselves who speak about it and talk about the terrible things -- the genital mutilation, the honor killings. This is all not Geert Wilders, but those imams themselves who say this is the best way of Islam."

Yet he insists that his antagonism toward Islam reflects no antipathy toward Muslims: "I make a distinction between the ideology . . . and the people. . . . There are people who call themselves Muslims and don't subscribe to the full part of the Quran. And those people, of course, we should invest [in], we should talk to." He says he would end Muslim immigration to the Netherlands but work to assimilate those already there.

His idea of how to do so, however, seems unlikely to win many converts: "You have to give up this stupid, fascist book" -- the Quran. "This is what you have to do. You have to give up that book."

Mr. Wilders is right to call for a vigilant defense of liberal principles. A society has a right, indeed a duty, to require that religious minorities comply with secular rules of civilized behavior. But to demand that they renounce their religious identity and holy books is itself an affront to liberal principles.


Mr. Taranto, a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board, writes the Best of the Web Today column for OpinionJournal.com.



Monday, October 6, 2008

Geert Wilders: "The Lights May Go Out In Europe"


In 1946 Winston Churchill delivered the historic "Iron Curtain Speech" at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. It was a defining event and the historic moment when Western democracies were summoned to a new, epic struggle for the freedom of man.

On September 25, at a forum in New York sponsored by the Hudson Institute, the Dutch Member of Parliament, Geert Wilders, gave a speech which was no less important, and may in time be seen as the great clarion call in the growing worldwide struggle with Islam.

At great person
al risk, Wilders has been the foremost opponent of a totalitarian ideology conceived in the pit of hell. All who care about freedom, Christian civilization and national survival need to read this great speech.

Dear friends,

Thank you very much for inviting me. Great to be at the Four Seasons. I come from a country that has one season only: a rainy season that starts January 1st and ends December 31st. When we have three sunny days in a row, the government declares a national emergency. So Four Seasons, that’s new to me.

It’s great to be in New York. When I see the skyscrapers and office buildings, I think of what Ayn Rand said: “The sky over New York and the will of man made visible.” Of course. Without the Dutch you would have been nowhere, still figuring out how to buy this island from the Indians. But we are glad we did it for you. And, frankly, you did a far better job than we possibly could have done.

I come to America with a mission. All is not well in the old world. There is a tremendous danger looming, and it is very difficult to be optimistic. We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe. This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself, it is a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West. The danger I see looming is the scenario of America as the last man standing. The United States as the last bastion of Western civilization, facing an Islamic Europe. In a generation or two, the US will ask itself: who lost Europe? Patriots from around Europe risk their lives every day to prevent precisely this scenario form becoming a reality.

My short lecture consists of 4 parts.

First I will describe the situation on the ground in Europe. Then, I will say a few things about Islam. Thirdly, if you are still here, I will talk a little bit about the movie you just saw. To close I will tell you about a meeting in Jerusalem.

The Europe you know is changing. You have probably seen the landmarks. The Eiffel Tower and Trafalgar Square and Rome’s ancient buildings and maybe the canals of Amsterdam. They are still there. And they still look very much the same as they did a hundred years ago.

But in all of these cities, sometimes a few blocks away from your tourist destination, there is another world, a world very few visitors see – and one that does not appear in your tourist guidebook. It is the world of the parallel society created by Muslim mass-migration. All throughout Europe a new reality is rising: entire Muslim neighbourhoods where very few indigenous people reside or are even seen. And if they are, they might regret it. This goes for the police as well. It’s the world of head scarves, where women walk around in figureless tents, with baby strollers and a group of children. Their husbands, or slaveholders if you prefer, walk three steps ahead. With mosques on many street corner. The shops have signs you and I cannot read. You will be hard-pressed to find any economic activity. These are Muslim ghettos controlled by religious fanatics. These are Muslim neighbourhoods, and they are mushrooming in every city across Europe. These are the building-blocks for territorial control of increasingly larger portions of Europe, street by street, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, city by city.

There are now thousands of mosques throughout Europe. With larger congregations than there are in churches. And in every European city there are plans to build super-mosques that will dwarf every church in the region. Clearly, the signal is: we rule.

Many European cities are already one-quarter Muslim: just take Amsterdam, Marseille and Malmo in Sweden. In many cities the majority of the under-18 population is Muslim. Paris is now surrounded by a ring of Muslim neighbourhoods. Mohammed is the most popular name among boys in many cities. In some elementary schools in Amsterdam the farm can no longer be mentioned, because that would also mean mentioning the pig, and that would be an insult to Muslims. Many state schools in Belgium and Denmark only serve halal food to all pupils. In once-tolerant Amsterdam gays are beaten up almost exclusively by Muslims. Non-Muslim women routinely hear “whore, whore”. Satellite dishes are not pointed to local TV stations, but to stations in the country of origin. In France school teachers are advised to avoid authors deemed offensive to Muslims, including Voltaire and Diderot; the same is increasingly true of Darwin. The history of the Holocaust can in many cases no longer be taught because of Muslim sensitivity. In England sharia courts are now officially part of the British legal system. Many neighbourhoods in France are no-go areas for women without head scarves. Last week a man almost died after being beaten up by Muslims in Brussels, because he was drinking during the Ramadan. Jews are fleeing France in record numbers, on the run for the worst wave of anti-Semitism since World War II. French is now commonly spoken on the streets of Tel Aviv and Netanya, Israel. I could go on forever with stories like this. Stories about Islamization.

A total of fifty-four million Muslims now live in Europe. San Diego University recently calculated that a staggering 25 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim just 12 years from now. Bernhard Lewis has predicted a Muslim majority by the end of this century.

Now these are just numbers. And the numbers would not be threatening if the Muslim-immigrants had a strong desire to assimilate. But there are few signs of that. The Pew Research Center reported that half of French Muslims see their loyalty to Islam as greater than their loyalty to France. One-third of French Muslims do not object to suicide attacks. The British Centre for Social Cohesion reported that one-third of British Muslim students are in favour of a worldwide caliphate. A Dutch study reported that half of Dutch Muslims admit they “understand” the 9/11 attacks.

Muslims demand what they call ‘respect’. And this is how we give them respect. Our elites are willing to give in. To give up. In my own country we have gone from calls by one cabinet member to turn Muslim holidays into official state holidays, to statements by another cabinet member, that Islam is part of Dutch culture, to an affirmation by the Christian-Democratic attorney general that he is willing to accept sharia in the Netherlands if there is a Muslim majority. We have cabinet members with passports from Morocco and Turkey.

Muslim demands are supported by unlawful behaviour, ranging from petty crimes and random violence, for example against ambulance workers and bus drivers, to small-scale riots. Paris has seen its uprising in the low-income suburbs, the banlieus. Some prefer to see these as isolated incidents, but I call it a Muslim intifada. I call the perpetrators “settlers”. Because that is what they are. They do not come to integrate into our societies, they come to integrate our society into their Dar-al-Islam. Therefore, they are settlers.

Much of this street violence I mentioned is directed exclusively against non-Muslims, forcing many native people to leave their neighbourhoods, their cities, their countries.

Politicians shy away from taking a stand against this creeping sharia. They believe in the equality of all cultures. Moreover, on a mundane level, Muslims are now a swing vote not to be ignored.

Our many problems with Islam cannot be explained by poverty, repression or the European colonial past, as the Left claims. Nor does it have anything to do with Palestinians or American troops in Iraq. The problem is Islam itself.

Allow me to give you a brief Islam 101. The first thing you need to know about Islam is the importance of the book of the Quran. The Quran is Allah’s personal word, revealed by an angel to Mohammed, the prophet. This is where the trouble starts. Every word in the Quran is Allah’s word and therefore not open to discussion or interpretation. It is valid for every Muslim and for all times. Therefore, there is no such a thing as moderate Islam. Sure, there are a lot of moderate Muslims. But a moderate Islam is non-existent.

The Quran calls for hatred, violence, submission, murder, and terrorism. The Quran calls for Muslims to kill non-Muslims, to terrorize non-Muslims and to fulfil their duty to wage war: violent jihad. Jihad is a duty for every Muslim, Islam is to rule the world – by the sword. The Quran is clearly anti-Semitic, describing Jews as monkeys and pigs.

The second thing you need to know is the importance of Mohammed the prophet. His behaviour is an example to all Muslims and cannot be criticized. Now, if Mohammed had been a man of peace, let us say like Ghandi and Mother Theresa wrapped in one, there would be no problem. But Mohammed was a warlord, a mass murderer, a pedophile, and had several marriages – at the same time. Islamic tradition tells us how he fought in battles, how he had his enemies murdered and even had prisoners of war executed. Mohammed himself slaughtered the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza. He advised on matters of slavery, but never advised to liberate slaves. Islam has no other morality than the advancement of Islam. If it is good for Islam, it is good. If it is bad for Islam, it is bad. There is no gray area or other side.

Quran as Allah’s own word and Mohammed as the perfect man are the two most important facets of Islam. Let no one fool you about Islam being a religion. Sure, it has a god, and a here-after, and 72 virgins. But in its essence Islam is a political ideology. It is a system that lays down detailed rules for society and the life of every person. Islam wants to dictate every aspect of life. Islam means ‘submission’. Islam is not compatible with freedom and democracy, because what it strives for is sharia. If you want to compare Islam to anything, compare it to communism or national-socialism, these are all totalitarian ideologies.

This is what you need to know about Islam, in order to understand what is going on in Europe. For millions of Muslims the Quran and the live of Mohammed are not 14 centuries old, but are an everyday reality, an ideal, that guide every aspect of their lives. Now you know why Winston Churchill called Islam “the most retrograde force in the world”, and why he compared Mein Kampf to the Quran.

Which brings me to my movie, Fitna.

I am a lawmaker, and not a movie maker. But I felt I had the moral duty to educate about Islam. The duty to make clear that the Quran stands at the heart of what some people call terrorism but is in reality jihad. I wanted to show that the problems of Islam are at the core of Islam, and do not belong to its fringes.

Now, from the day the plan for my movie was made public, it caused quite a stir, in the Netherlands and throughout Europe. First, there was a political storm, with government leaders, across the continent in sheer panic. The Netherlands was put under a heightened terror alert, because of possible attacks or a revolt by our Muslim population. The Dutch branch of the Islamic organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir declared that the Netherlands was due for an attack. Internationally, there was a series of incidents. The Taliban threatened to organize additional attacks against Dutch troops in Afghanistan, and a website linked to Al Qaeda published the message that I ought to be killed, while various muftis in the Middle East stated that I would be responsible for all the bloodshed after the screening of the movie. In Afghanistan and Pakistan the Dutch flag was burned on several occasions. Dolls representing me were also burned. The Indonesian President announced that I will never be admitted into Indonesia again, while the UN Secretary General and the European Union issued cowardly statements in the same vein as those made by the Dutch Government. I could go on and on. It was an absolute disgrace, a sell-out.

A plethora of legal troubles also followed, and have not ended yet. Currently the state of Jordan is litigating against me. Only last week there were renewed security agency reports about a heightened terror alert for the Netherlands because of Fitna.

Now, I would like to say a few things about Israel. Because, very soon, we will get together in its capitol. The best way for a politician in Europe to loose votes is to say something positive about Israel. The public has wholeheartedly accepted the Palestinian narrative, and sees Israel as the aggressor. I, however, will continue to speak up for Israel. I see defending Israel as a matter of principle. I have lived in this country and visited it dozens of times. I support Israel. First, because it is the Jewish homeland after two thousand years of exile up to and including Auschwitz, second because it is a democracy, and third because Israel is our first line of defense.

Samuel Huntington writes it so aptly: “Islam has bloody borders”. Israel is located precisely on that border. This tiny country is situated on the fault line of jihad, frustrating Islam’s territorial advance. Israel is facing the front lines of jihad, like Kashmir, Kosovo, the Philippines, Southern Thailand, Darfur in Sudan, Lebanon, and Aceh in Indonesia. Israel is simply in the way. The same way West-Berlin was during the Cold War.

The war against Israel is not a war against Israel. It is a war against the West. It is jihad. Israel is simply receiving the blows that are meant for all of us. If there would have been no Israel, Islamic imperialism would have found other venues to release its energy and its desire for conquest. Thanks to Israeli parents who send their children to the army and lay awake at night, parents in Europe and America can sleep well and dream, unaware of the dangers looming.

Many in Europe argue in favor of abandoning Israel in order to address the grievances of our Muslim minorities. But if Israel were, God forbid, to go down, it would not bring any solace to the West. It would not mean our Muslim minorities would all of a sudden change their behavior, and accept our values. On the contrary, the end of Israel would give enormous encouragement to the forces of Islam. They would, and rightly so, see the demise of Israel as proof that the West is weak, and doomed. The end of Israel would not mean the end of our problems with Islam, but only the beginning. It would mean the start of the final battle for world domination. If they can get Israel, they can get everything. Therefore, it is not that the West has a stake in Israel. It is Israel.

It is very difficult to be an optimist in the face of the growing Islamization of Europe. All the tides are against us. On all fronts we are losing. Demographically the momentum is with Islam. Muslim immigration is even a source of pride within ruling liberal parties. Academia, the arts, the media, trade unions, the churches, the business world, the entire political establishment have all converted to the suicidal theory of multiculturalism. So-called journalists volunteer to label any and all critics of Islamization as a ‘right-wing extremists’ or ‘racists’. The entire establishment has sided with our enemy. Leftists, liberals and Christian-Democrats are now all in bed with Islam.

This is the most painful thing to see: the betrayal by our elites. At this moment in Europe’s history, our elites are supposed to lead us. To stand up for centuries of civilization. To defend our heritage. To honour our eternal Judeo-Christian values that made Europe what it is today. But there are very few signs of hope to be seen at the governmental level. Sarkozy, Merkel, Brown, Berlusconi; in private, they probably know how grave the situation is. But when the little red light goes on, they stare into the camera and tell us that Islam is a religion of peace, and we should all try to get along nicely and sing Kumbaya. They willingly participate in, what President Reagan so aptly called: “the betrayal of our past, the squandering of our freedom.”

If there is hope in Europe, it comes from the people, not from the elites. Change can only come from a grass-roots level. It has to come from the citizens themselves. Yet these patriots will have to take on the entire political, legal and media establishment.

Over the past years there have been some small, but encouraging, signs of a rebirth of the original European spirit. Maybe the elites turn their backs on freedom, the public does not. In my country, the Netherlands, 60 percent of the population now sees the mass immigration of Muslims as the number one policy mistake since World War II. And another 60 percent sees Islam as the biggest threat to our national identity. I don’t think the public opinion in Holland is very different from other European countries.

Patriotic parties that oppose jihad are growing, against all odds. My own party debuted two years ago, with five percent of the vote. Now it stands at ten percent in the polls. The same is true of all smililary-minded parties in Europe. They are fighting the liberal establishment, and are gaining footholds on the political arena, one voter at the time.

Now, for the first time, these patriotic parties will come together and exchange experiences. It may be the start of something big. Something that might change the map of Europe for decades to come. It might also be Europe’s last chance.

This December a conference will take place in Jerusalem. Thanks to Professor Aryeh Eldad, a member of Knesset, we will be able to watch Fitna in the Knesset building and discuss the jihad. We are organizing this event in Israel to emphasize the fact that we are all in the same boat together, and that Israel is part of our common heritage. Those attending will be a select audience. No racist organizations will be allowed. And we will only admit parties that are solidly democratic.

This conference will be the start of an Alliance of European patriots. This Alliance will serve as the backbone for all organizations and political parties that oppose jihad and Islamization. For this Alliance I seek your support.

This endeavor may be crucial to America and to the West. America may hold fast to the dream that, thanks tot its location, it is safe from jihad and shaira. But seven years ago to the day, there was still smoke rising from ground zero, following the attacks that forever shattered that dream. Yet there is a danger even greater danger than terrorist attacks, the scenario of America as the last man standing. The lights may go out in Europe faster than you can imagine. An Islamic Europe means a Europe without freedom and democracy, an economic wasteland, an intellectual nightmare, and a loss of military might for America - as its allies will turn into enemies, enemies with atomic bombs. With an Islamic Europe, it would be up to America alone to preserve the heritage of Rome, Athens and Jerusalem.

Dear friends, liberty is the most precious of gifts. My generation never had to fight for this freedom, it was offered to us on a silver platter, by people who fought for it with their lives. All throughout Europe American cemeteries remind us of the young boys who never made it home, and whose memory we cherish. My generation does not own this freedom; we are merely its custodians. We can only hand over this hard won liberty to Europe’s children in the same state in which it was offered to us. We cannot strike a deal with mullahs and imams. Future generations would never forgive us. We cannot squander our liberties. We simply do not have the right to do so.

This is not the first time our civilization is under threat. We have seen dangers before. We have been betrayed by our elites before. They have sided with our enemies before. And yet, then, freedom prevailed.

These are not times in which to take lessons from appeasement, capitulation, giving away, giving up or giving in. These are not times in which to draw lessons from Mr. Chamberlain. These are times calling us to draw lessons from Mr. Churchill and the words he spoke in 1942:

“Never give in, never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy”.





Tuesday, September 23, 2008

We Are Losing Europe to Islam


By Diana West

With Wall Street convulsing, and the White House race intensifying, the question “Who lost Europe” is on no one’s lips, let alone minds. Indeed, the question begs another: “Is Europe lost?”

The answer to the second question is, “No, not yet.” And losing Europe, I would add, is by no means inevitable. But that doesn’t mean the continent isn’t currently hell-bent to accommodate the dictates of Islamic law, bit by increasingly larger bit. Such a course of accommodation, barring reversal, will only hasten Bernard Lewis’ famous prediction that Europe will be Islamic by century’s end.

And what do I mean by “accommodation”? Well, to take one tiny example, one snowflake in a blizzard of such examples, there are schools in Belgium that not only serve halal food to Muslim and non-Muslim alike (old news), but, according to a recent French magazine report, no longer teach authors deemed offensive to Muslims, including Voltaire and Diderot; the same is increasingly true of Darwin. (Don’t even ask about the Holocaust.)

For a more substantial, indeed, keystone example of accommodation, we can look to England, where, it pains me to write, Sharia courts are now officially part of the British legal system. According to press reports this week, the British government has quietly, cravenly elevated five Sharia courts to the level of tribunal hearings, thus making their rulings legally binding.

It may be difficult to quantify the impact of a Voltaire vacuum on the continent, but we can instantly see the inequities of British Sharia (I can’t believe I’m writing that phrase). Among the first official verdicts were those upholding the Islamic belief in male supremacy. These included an inheritance decision in which male heirs received twice as much as female; and several cases of domestic violence in which husbands were acquitted and wives’ charges were dropped.

In a decidedly minuscule minority, I say we ignore the spread of Islamic law across Europe, from the schoolroom to the courtroom, at our peril, particularly given that in so doing, we also ignore the vital political parties that have arisen in reaction to this threat to Western civilization. Why at our peril? Because the same type of liberty-shrinking, Sharia-driven accommodation is happening here.

Is advocating freedom of speech “extreme” or “fascist”? Is opposing Islam’s law, which knows no race, “racist”? Is supporting Israel (which these parties do far more than other European parties) “Nazi”? The outrageously empty epithets of the Islamo-socialist left seem calculated to stop thought cold and trigger a massive rejection reflex. In this way, resistance becomes anathema, and Islamic law, unchecked, spreads across Europe.

Does that sound “Islamophobic”? You bet. How can anyone who values freedom of conscience, equality before the law and other such Western jewels not have a healthy fear of Islamic law, which values none of these things? Incredibly, this is an emotion that is supposed to be suppressed — and, in Europe, on pain of prosecution. Indeed, because Filip Dewinter admitted to such “Islamophobia” in an interview, his party, the Vlaams Belang, has been taken to court in Belgium on charges of racism, and, if convicted, will be effectively shut down through defunding by the government.

That hasn’t stopped Dewinter, who, in accepting an award at a memorial event dedicated to Oriana Fallaci in Florence, last week, said: “Islamophobia is not merely a phenomenon of unparalleled fear, but it is the duty of every one who wants to safeguard Europe’s future.”

Of course, even as Dewinter admits to fearing the Islamization of Europe, he and his colleagues act with exceptional political — and physical — bravery in rallying voters against it. This coming weekend, he joins several other politicians on the Sharia-fighting right in Europe — among them two other men I interviewed, Mario Borghezio of Lega Nord, which is part of Italy’s ruling coalition, and Heinz-Christian Strache of Austria’s Freedom Party, which is expected to become part of Austria’s ruling coalition after elections this month — in Cologne, Germany. In that ancient cathedral city, where the city council recently approved the construction of a long-controversial mega-mosque, these men will address a rally against European Islamization. (Contrary to initial reports, Jean-Marie Le Pen will not be at the demonstration.) The Sharia-fighters expect 1,500 demonstrators. Police expect 40,000 counter-demonstrators.

These are frightening odds — a metaphor, perhaps, for Europe’s chances of staving off Islamic law. Who lost Europe? If it does happen, we certainly won’t be able to say we weren’t warned.

Diana West is a columnist for The Washington Times. She can be contacted via dianawest@verizon.net.




Monday, September 8, 2008

Islamic Group Urges Forest Fire Jihad


By Josh Gordon

AUSTRALIA has been singled out as a target for "forest jihad" by a group of Islamic extremists urging Muslims to deliberately light bushfires as a weapon of terror.

US intelligence channels earlier this year identified a website calling on Muslims in Australia, the US, Europe and Russia to "start forest fires", claiming "scholars have justified chopping down and burning the infidels' forests when they do the same to our lands".

The website, posted by a group called the Al-Ikhlas Islamic Network, argues in Arabic that lighting fires is an effective form of terrorism justified in Islamic law under the "eye for an eye" doctrine.

The posting — which instructs jihadis to remember "forest jihad" in summer months — says fires cause economic damage and pollution, tie up security agencies and can take months to extinguish so that "this terror will haunt them for an extended period of time".

"Imagine if, after all the losses caused by such an event, a jihadist organisation were to claim responsibility for the forest fires," the website says. "You can hardly begin to imagine the level of fear that would take hold of people in the United States, in Europe, in Russia and in Australia."

With the nation heading into another hot, dry summer, Australian intelligence agencies are treating the possibility that bushfires could be used as a weapon of terrorism as a serious concern.

Attorney-General Robert McClelland said the Federal Government remained "vigilant against such threats", warning that anyone caught lighting a fire as a weapon of terror would feel the wrath of anti-terror laws.

"Any information that suggests a threat to Australia's interests is investigated by relevant agencies as appropriate," Mr McClelland said.

Adam Dolnik, director of research at the University of Wollongong's Centre for Transnational Crime Prevention, said that bushfires (unlike suicide bombing) were generally not considered a glorious type of attack by jihadis, in keeping with a recent decline in the sophistication of terrorist operations.

"With attacks like bushfires, yes, it would be easy. It would be very damaging and we do see a decreasing sophistication as a part of terrorist attacks," Dr Dolnik said.

"In recent years, there have been quite a few attacks averted and it has become more and more difficult for groups to do something effective."

Dr Dolnik said he had observed an increase in traffic on jihadi websites calling for a simplification of terrorist attacks because the more complex operations had been failing. But starting bushfires was still often regarded as less effective than other operations because governments could easily deny terrorism as the cause.

The internet posting by the little-known group claimed the idea of forest fires had been attributed to imprisoned Al Qaeda leader Abu Musab Al-Suri. It said Al-Suri had urged terrorists to use sulphuric acid and petrol to start forest fires.






Wednesday, September 3, 2008

British Muslims Offended by Christians Praying During Ramadan


A Christian group in Oxford has apologised to the city’s Muslims for having the audacity to organise a day of prayer during Ramadan. Oxfords Muslims found it ‘ill-conceived and insensitive’, not to mention ‘grossly insulting and inflammatory’.

The Muslim Education Centre of Oxford (MECO) has accused the Evangelical group ‘Open Doors UK’ of preaching ‘evangelical propaganda’.

Do not Muslims preach Islamic propaganda? Do the Christians in Oxford complain about this? Would the Muslims of Oxford apologise or even care if the Christians did complain about it?

But the greatest offence was taken because the Christians had dared to refer to their event as a ‘Call to Prayer’. Apparently, only Muslims may now use this term.


Thursday, August 28, 2008

Lights Out on Liberty


By Mark Steyn

On August 3, 1914, on the eve of the First World War, British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey stood at the window of his office in the summer dusk and observed, "The lamps are going out all over Europe." Today, the lights are going out on liberty all over the Western world, but in a more subtle and profound way.

Much of the West is far too comfortable with state regulation of speech and expression, which puts freedom itself at risk. Let me cite some examples: The response of the European Union Commissioner for Justice, Freedom, and Security to the crisis over the Danish cartoons that sparked Muslim violence was to propose that newspapers exercise "prudence" on certain controversial subjects involving religions beginning with the letter "I." At the end of her life, the Italian writer Oriana Fallaci—after writing of the contradiction between Islam and the Western tradition of liberty—was being sued in France, Italy, Switzerland, and most other European jurisdictions by groups who believed her opinions were not merely offensive, but criminal. In France, author Michel Houellebecq was sued by Muslim and other "anti-racist groups" who believed the opinions of a fictional character in one of his novels were likewise criminal.

In Canada, the official complaint about my own so-called "flagrant Islamophobia"—filed by the Canadian Islamic Congress—attributes to me the following "assertions":

America will be an Islamic Republic by 2040. There will be a break for Muslim prayers during the Super Bowl. There will be a religious police enforcing Islamic norms. The USS Ronald Reagan will be renamed after Osama bin Laden. Females will not be allowed to be cheerleaders. Popular American radio and TV hosts will be replaced by Imams.

In fact, I didn’t "assert" any of these things. They are plot twists I cited in my review of Robert Ferrigno’s novel, Prayers for the Assassin. It’s customary in reviewing novels to cite aspects of the plot. For example, a review of Moby Dick will usually mention the whale. These days, apparently, the Canadian Islamic Congress and the government’s human rights investigators (who have taken up the case) believe that describing the plot of a novel should be illegal.

You may recall that Margaret Atwood, some years back, wrote a novel about her own dystopian theocratic fantasy, in which America was a Christian tyranny named the Republic of Gilead. What’s to stop a Christian group from dragging a doting reviewer of Margaret Atwood’s book in front of a Canadian human rights court? As it happens, Christian groups tend not to do that, which is just as well, because otherwise there wouldn’t be a lot to write about.

These are small parts of a very big picture. After the London Tube bombings and the French riots a few years back, commentators lined up behind the idea that Western Muslims are insufficiently assimilated. But in their mastery of legalisms and the language of victimology, they’re superbly assimilated. Since these are the principal means of discourse in multicultural societies, they’ve mastered all they need to know. Every day of the week, somewhere in the West, a Muslim lobbying group is engaging in an action similar to what I’m facing in Canada. Meanwhile, in London, masked men marched through the streets with signs reading "Behead the Enemies of Islam" and promising another 9/11 and another Holocaust, all while being protected by a phalanx of London policemen.

Thus we see that today’s multicultural societies tolerate the explicitly intolerant and avowedly unicultural, while refusing to tolerate anyone pointing out that intolerance. It’s been that way for 20 years now, ever since Valentine’s Day 1989, when the Ayatollah Khomeini issued his fatwa against the novelist Salman Rushdie, a British subject, and shortly thereafter large numbers of British Muslims marched through English cities openly calling for Rushdie to be killed. A reader in Bradford wrote to me recalling asking a West Yorkshire policeman on the street that day why the various "Muslim community leaders" weren’t being arrested for incitement to murder. The officer said they’d been told to "play it cool." The calls for blood got more raucous. My correspondent asked his question again. The policeman told him to "Push off" (he expressed the sentiment rather more Anglo-Saxonly, but let that pass) "or I’ll arrest you." Mr. Rushdie was infuriated when the then Archbishop of Canterbury lapsed into root-cause mode. "I well understand the devout Muslims’ reaction, wounded by what they hold most dear and would themselves die for," said His Grace. Rushdie replied tersely: "There is only one person around here who is in any danger of dying."

And that’s the way it’s gone ever since. For all the talk about rampant "Islamophobia," it’s usually only the other party who is "in any danger of dying."

War on the Homefront

I wrote my book America Alone because I wanted to reframe how we thought about the War on Terror—an insufficient and evasive designation that has long since outlasted whatever usefulness it may once have had. It remains true that we are good at military campaigns, such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our tanks and ships are better, and our bombs and soldiers are smarter. But these are not ultimately the most important battlefronts. We do indeed face what the strategists call asymmetric warfare, but it is not in the Sunni triangle or the Hindu Kush. We face it right here in the Western world.

Norman Podhoretz, among others, has argued that we are engaged in a second Cold War. But it might be truer to call it a Cold Civil War, by which I mean a war within the West, a war waged in our major cities. We now have Muslim "honor killings," for instance, not just in tribal Pakistan and Yemen, but in Germany and the Netherlands, in Toronto and Dallas. And even if there were no battles in Iraq and Afghanistan, and if no one was flying planes into tall buildings in New York City or blowing up trains, buses, and nightclubs in Madrid, London, and Bali, we would still be in danger of losing this war without a shot being fired.

The British government recently announced that it would be issuing Sharia-compliant Islamic bonds—that is, bonds compliant with Islamic law and practice as prescribed in the Koran. This is another reason to be in favor of small government: The bigger government gets, the more it must look for funding in some pretty unusual places—in this case wealthy Saudis. As The Mail on Sunday put it, this innovation marks "one of the most significant economic advances of Sharia law in the non-Muslim world."

At about the same time, The Times of London reported that "Knorbert the piglet has been dropped as the mascot of Fortis Bank, after it decided to stop giving piggy banks to children for fear of offending Muslims." Now, I’m no Islamic scholar, but Mohammed expressed no view regarding Knorbert the piglet. There’s not a single sura about it. The Koran, an otherwise exhaustive text, is silent on the matter of anthropomorphic porcine representation.

I started keeping a file on pig controversies a couple of years ago, and you would be surprised at how routine they have become. Recently, for instance, a local government council prohibited its workers from having knickknacks on their desks representing Winnie the Pooh’s sidekick Piglet. As Pastor Martin Niemoller might have said, "First they came for Piglet and I did not speak out because I was not a Disney character, and if I was, I’d be more of an Eeyore. Then they came for the Three Little Pigs and Babe, and by the time I realized the Western world had turned into a 24/7 Looney Tunes, it was too late, because there was no Porky Pig to stammer, ‘Th-th-th-that’s all folks!’, and bring the nightmare to an end."

What all these stories have in common is excessive deference to—and in fact fear of—Islam. If the story of the Three Little Pigs is forbidden when Muslims still comprise less than ten percent of Europe’s population, what else will be on the black list when they comprise 20 percent? In small but telling ways, non-Muslim communities are being persuaded that a kind of uber-Islamic law now applies to all. And if you don’t remember the Three Little Pigs, by the way, one builds a house of straw, another of sticks, and both get blown down by the Big Bad Wolf. Western Civilization is a mighty house of bricks, but you don’t need a Big Bad Wolf when the pig is so eager to demolish the house himself.

I would argue that these incremental concessions to Islam are ultimately a bigger threat than terrorism. What matters is not what the lads in the Afghan cave—the "extremists"—believe, but what the non-extremists believe, what people who are for the most part law-abiding taxpayers of functioning democracies believe. For example, a recent poll found that 36 percent of Muslims between the ages of 16 and 24 believe that those who convert to another religion should be punished by death. That’s not 36 percent of young Muslims in Waziristan or Yemen or Sudan, but 36 percent of young Muslims in the United Kingdom. Forty percent of British Muslims would like to live under Sharia—in Britain. Twenty percent have sympathy for the July 7 Tube bombers. And, given that Islam is the principal source of population growth in every city down the spine of England from Manchester to Sheffield to Birmingham to London, and in every major Western European city, these statistics are not without significance for the future.

Because I discussed these facts in print, my publisher is now being sued before three Canadian human rights commissions. The plaintiff in my case is Dr. Mohamed Elmasry, a man who announced on Canadian TV that he approves of the murder of all Israeli civilians over the age of 18. He is thus an objective supporter of terrorism. I don’t begrudge him the right to his opinions, but I wish he felt the same about mine. Far from that, posing as a leader of the "anti-hate" movement in Canada, he is using the squeamishness of a politically correct society to squash freedom.

As the famous saying goes, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. What the Canadian Islamic Congress and similar groups in the West are trying to do is criminalize vigilance. They want to use the legal system to circumscribe debate on one of the great questions of the age: the relationship between Islam and the West and the increasing Islamization of much of the Western world, in what the United Nations itself calls the fastest population transformation in history.

Slippery Slope

Our democratic governments today preside over multicultural societies that have less and less glue holding them together. They’ve grown comfortable with the idea of the state as the mediator between interest groups. And confronted by growing and restive Muslim populations, they’re increasingly at ease with the idea of regulating freedom in the interests of social harmony.

It’s a different situation in America, which has the First Amendment and a social consensus that increasingly does not exist in Europe. Europe’s consensus seems to be that Danish cartoonists should be able to draw what they like, but not if it sparks Islamic violence. It is certainly odd that the requirement of self-restraint should only apply to one party.

Last month, in a characteristically clotted speech followed by a rather more careless BBC interview, the Archbishop of Canterbury said that it was dangerous to have one law for everyone and that the introduction of Sharia to the United Kingdom was "inevitable." Within days of His Grace’s remarks, the British and Ontario governments both confirmed that thousands of polygamous men in their jurisdictions are receiving welfare payments for each of their wives. Kipling wrote that East is East and West is West, and ne’er the twain shall meet. But when the twain do meet, you often wind up with the worst of both worlds. Say what you like about a polygamist in Waziristan or Somalia, but he has to do it on his own dime. To collect a welfare check for each spouse, he has to move to London or Toronto. Government-subsidized polygamy is an innovation of the Western world.

If you need another reason to be opposed to socialized health care, one reason is because it fosters the insouciant attitude to basic hygiene procedures that has led to the rise of deadly "superbugs." I see British Muslim nurses in public hospitals riddled with C. difficile are refusing to comply with hygiene procedures on the grounds that scrubbing requires them to bare their arms, which is un-Islamic. Which is a thought to ponder just before you go under the anaesthetic. I mentioned to some of Hillsdale’s students in class that gay-bashing is on the rise in the most famously "tolerant" cities in Europe. As Der Spiegel reported, "With the number of homophobic attacks rising in the Dutch metropolis, Amsterdam officials are commissioning a study to determine why Moroccan men are targeting the city’s gays."

Gee, whiz. That’s a toughie. Wonder what the reason could be. But don’t worry, the brain trust at the University of Amsterdam is on top of things: "Half of the crimes were committed by men of Moroccan origin and researchers believe they felt stigmatized by society and responded by attacking people they felt were lower on the social ladder. Another working theory is that the attackers may be struggling with their own sexual identity."

Bingo! Telling young Moroccan men they’re closeted homosexuals seems certain to lessen tensions in the city! While you’re at it, a lot of those Turks seem a bit light in their loafers, don’t you think?

Our Suicidal Urge

So don’t worry, nothing’s happening. Just a few gay Muslims frustrated at the lack of gay Muslim nightclubs. Sharia in Britain? Taxpayer-subsidized polygamy in Toronto? Yawn. Nothing to see here. True, if you’d suggested such things on September 10, 2001, most Britons and Canadians would have said you were nuts. But a few years on and it doesn’t seem such a big deal, nor will the next concession, or the one after that.

The assumption that you can hop on the Sharia Express and just ride a couple of stops is one almighty leap of faith. More to the point, who are you relying on to "hold the line"? Influential figures like the Archbishop of Canterbury? The politically correct bureaucrats at Canada’s Human Rights Commissions? The geniuses who run Harvard, and who’ve just introduced gender-segregated swimming and gym sessions at the behest of Harvard’s Islamic Society? (Would they have done that for Amish or Mennonite students?) The Western world is not run by fellows noted for their line-holding: Look at what they’re conceding now and then try to figure out what they’ll be conceding in five years’ time. The idea that the West’s multicultural establishment can hold the line would be more plausible if it was clear they had any idea where the line is, or even gave any indication of believing in one.

My book, supposedly Islamaphobic, isn’t even really about Islam. The single most important line in it is the profound observation, by historian Arnold Toynbee, that "Civilizations die from suicide, not murder." One manifestation of that suicidal urge is illiberal notions harnessed in the cause of liberalism. In calling for the introduction of Sharia, the Archbishop of Canterbury joins a long list of Western appeasers, including a Dutch cabinet minister who said if the country were to vote to introduce Islamic law that would be fine by him, and the Swedish cabinet minister who said we should be nice to Muslims now so that Muslims will be nice to us when they’re in the majority.

Ultimately, our crisis is not about Islam. It’s not about fire-breathing Imams or polygamists whooping it up on welfare. It’s not about them. It’s about us. And by us I mean the culture that shaped the modern world, and established the global networks, legal systems, and trading relationships on which the planet depends.

To reprise Sir Edward Grey, the lamps are going out all over the world, and an awful lot of the map will look an awful lot darker by the time many Americans realize the scale of this struggle.



Saturday, August 2, 2008

Pakistani Authorities Refuse to Intervene in Abduction and Forced Conversion of Christian Girls, 10 and 13



Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) today urged the Pakistani Government to take action to ensure the return of two abducted Christian children to their family.

Anila and Saba Masih, aged 10 and 13 respectively, were abducted in southern Punjab, Pakistan on 26 June, while on the way to visit their uncle. They are subsequently reported to have been forced to convert to Islam, and Saba was married off to one of the abductors.

Yesterday, following an appeal by the girls’ father, Younis Masih, a Lahore High Court judge in Multan overturned an earlier ruling by the Muzaffargarh Sessions Court that had granted custody of the children to their kidnappers. The girls will now be placed temporarily in a government-run women’s shelter, after the judge said he did not believe they had converted by choice. However, the court has forbidden them to see either their parents, or their Muslim abductors.

The children are from the predominantly Muslim village of Chak 552/TDA, where 14 Christian families live alongside 158 Muslim ones. According to the Catholic Church’s National Commission on Justice and Peace (NCJP), Saba and Anila were abducted by three men from Chowk Munda, a small town in Tehsil Kot Aadoo, Muzaffargarh district. Local police reportedly refused to take any action, despite pleas for assistance from the girls’ parents and the local Christian community.

Both the NCJP and the Pakistan Catholic Women’s Organisation have appealed to the Chief Minister of Punjab for the children to be returned to their family. The NCJP alleges that the local Member of the Provincial Assembly, Mr Ehsan ul-Haq, is protecting the culprits, and the kidnappers have threatened the family with death if they persist in complaining.

CSW’s National Director Stuart Windsor said: “This is a tragic case and it is essential that the authorities intervene to secure the release of these two children and their safe return to their family. Their abduction, the local authorities’ lack of action, and an increase in similar abductions and forced conversions in recent months is creating a climate of terror and a culture of impunity which must be challenged. We call on the international community to raise this case with the Government of Pakistan as a matter of urgency.


Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Iran: Sixteen Christian Converts Arrested


From Adnkronos

Sixteen Iranians who converted from Islam to Christianity were arrested on Tuesday in Malakshahr, on the outskirts of the central Iranian city of Isfahan.

The six women, eight men and two adolescents who were arrested were assisting in a conversion ceremony and baptism of three new members of the church at a private house that had been transformed into an evangelical church.

The owners of the home, an elderly couple, were allegedly beaten up before they were
locked up in an unmarked lorry.

In April, 10 Christian converts were arrested in Shiraz.

The official evangelical churches in Isfahan received orders not to allow any Muslims to attend their ceremonies and not to facilitate in any way the conversions.


Iranian law does not stipulate any punishment for those who convert from Islam to other faiths, even if the converts are subject to repression.


A few months ago, the government presented a bill which is currently being discussed in parliament, to include in the penal code the crime of "Ertedad" which is the act of abandoning the Muslim faith.


If the parliament does approve the law, the punishment for abandoning Islam will be the death penalty.


Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Legislation Introduced in Congress to Account for American Children in Radical Islamic Madrassas in Pakistan


Congress Responds to the Release of the "Karachi Kids" Documentary

In follow-up to our earlier posts regarding American children studying at radical Islamic madrassas in Pakistan, U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) has introduced legislation seeking an accounting of how many American children are being held in those institutions. H. Res. 1336 encourages "the United States Secretary of State to work with the government of Pakistan to secure the return to the United States of all American children being educated in madrassas in Pakistan."

The legislation was introduced as a response to the release of the film the "Karachi Kids," a documentary of American children in a Taliban-backed madrassa in Karachi, Pakistan. The former deputy director of counterterrorism at the FBI said the film also raised the "antennae of the FBI."

Friday, July 11, 2008

STATEMENT OF IMRAN RAZA REGARDING RELEASE OF AMERICAN CHILDREN FROM PAKISTANI TALIBAN MADRASSA

Since we informed Sunlit Uplands readers two days ago about a new documentary disclosing that American children are receiving training in a Taliban-backed madrassa in Pakistan, two children have been returned to their homes in Atlanta.

Imran Raza, the director and executive producer of the documentary "Karachi Kids" who discovered up to 80 American children in a Taliban-backed madrassa in Pakistan released the following statement regarding the return of two American children:

I am grateful for the safe return of the two American children from Atlanta from a Taliban- backed madrassa but the mullah claims to have up to 78 more in his institution. The headmaster comes to the United States once a year and personally recruits American children to enroll in his madrassa.

The remaining 78 children must be returned to the United States. This pipeline to jihad must be closed.

Let me be clear - these children do not learn math, or science, or liberal arts. They learn one thing - they memorize over the course of seven years every verse of the Koran coupled with the radical interpretation of their teachers.

This is just the first step in integrating these children back to American society. I am proud we did our part so we could say 'Welcome Home."

It is imperative that Members of Congress and the State Department undertake an accounting of just how many Americans are in the other 20,000 madrassas in Pakistan. Hundreds remain behind.

The Karachi Kids is a documentary about American children in the Jamia Binoria madrassa in Karachi Pakistan. A trailer of the film is available at www.karachikids.com.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

American Children Indoctrinated Against Their Will in Taliban-Backed Madrassa in Pakistan


Up to 80 Americans Instructed by Taliban
"Karachi Kids" Documentary Highlights Their Plight


A Muslim father, a taxi driver in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States on a green card, flew his American born-boys against their will to Saudi Arabia, and then to the a radical, Taliban-backed Jamia Binoria madrassa in Karachi, Pakistan with instructions to the head master for his sons to memorize the entire Koran before returning to America. This is their story.

Children in the documentary film "The Karachi Kids" describe beatings and human rights violations for those who reject the radical teachings of their Taliban masters. Children from California and Georgia are interviewed in the film from inside the madrassa and discuss coming back to the United States to spread extremism within our borders.

The trailer of the documentary can be seen at www.KarachiKids.com.

Film producer Imran Raza, a Southern California native, discovered the children and captures on film the hard-core Islamic indoctrination and radical transformation of these kids. "American children are being indoctrinated by a radical and violent Islamic sect," Raza said. "Kids as young as five live in an Islamic version of the walled compound of religious radicals with little contact with their parents or any information not allowed inside the walls," Raza said. "I hope release of 'The Karachi Kids' will help end the abuse and sever the pipeline between Jihadists who want war on the values of freedom and American children who are being trained to spread radicalism back home."

There are now, according to the founder of the madrassa, between 70 and 80 other American children at the Jamia Binoria madrassa - and more than 100 Americans have already graduated from this diet of 24/7 Koran.

Raza said "This is a not only personal tragedy for the children but a new and dangerous national security question." In a chilling interview for the documentary, the headmaster of the madrassa -- who visits the United States to personally recruit American children during Ramadan -- tells Raza: "We work on altering the mindset of the students we are training, so when they return to their home countries, their mindset is such that they will work on altering the minds of others. That is why I'm appealing to you that at least 1000 to 2000 boys come to us so we can train them.


Wednesday, June 25, 2008

A Thin Line Separating Islamism from Nazism? An Interview with Algerian Novelist Boualem Sansal



From World Politics Review
By Grégoire Leménager


A former official in the Algerian civil service and the author of four previous novels, the Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal has recently published a new book titled Le village de l'Allemand: "The German's Village." Via the reflections of two brothers of Algerian origin living in the Parisian banlieues, it tells the story of the brothers' father: Hans Schiller, a hero of the Algerian war of independence as a member of the National Liberation Front (FLN) -- and, as so happens, before that an officer in the dreaded Nazi paramilitary force, the SS. For Boualem Sansal, "the line separating Islamism from Nazism is a thin one." Grégoire Leménager spoke with him for the French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur. The interview appears in English for the first time in World Politics Review.

Le Nouvel Observateur: Your novel takes its title from the story of a Nazi war criminal, a former member of the SS, who went into exile in Algeria, where he trained FLN fighters and became a hero of the Algerian war of independence. . . . Is this a real story? How did the novel come about?

Boualem Sansal: "The German's Village" comes from a real story and the flood of questions that it inspired. One day, at the beginning of the 1980s, while I was on a business trip in the Sétif region of Algeria, I stopped in a small town [identified as Aïn Deb in the novel] whose exotic "look" intrigued me. It didn't blend in to the local landscape, it had a certain feel of "somewhere else." I had a coffee in the town and then when I arrived at my destination, I asked the people who were waiting for me there about it. I barely was able to say "On my way here, I stumbled upon a strange town that made me think of [the French comic book character] Astérix the Gaul" and they proudly exclaimed, "Oh! That's the German's village." They explained to me that the village was "governed" by a German man: a former SS member and former mujahideen, who was a naturalized Algerian citizen and who had converted to Islam. He was regarded as a hero in the region: as a kind of saint who had done a lot for the village and its inhabitants. I sensed that my interlocutors felt real admiration when they talked about the man's Nazi past. This didn't surprise me: the Hitler salute has always had its partisans in Algeria, like in many Arab and Muslim countries - and undoubtedly even more so today by virtue of the Israel-Palestinian conflict and the Iraq war. In order really to impress me, they underscored that this German had been dispatched by [Egyptian president Gamal Abdel] Nasser to serve as an expert advisor to the general staff of the ALN [Armée de libération nationale -- the armed wing of the FLN] and that after the war he taught at the prestigious military academy of Cherchell. He was "somebody," in effect. . . .

Since that time, I've often thought of his story. I find that there are lots of interesting aspects: the romantic and adventurous side of this European coming to Algeria to fight for its independence, his retirement in a small town in the middle of nowhere, his conversion to Islam, the esteem he came to enjoy in the eyes of the locals. And then there is the dark side of the story: that of an SS officer who served in the death camps.

N.O.: How could this latter aspect remain hidden?

B. Sansal: In thinking about that, I came to reflect on something of which I was somehow aware, but to which I had never attached particular importance: the Shoah was never spoken about at all in Algeria -- or if it was spoken about, then it was presented as a sordid invention of the Jews. I was shocked when I realized this. The fact is that to this day Algerian television has never shown a film or documentary on the subject, no Algerian official has ever said a word about it and, as far as I know, no Algerian intellectual has ever written on the topic. . . .

N.O.: Your novel presents a new and extremely dark vision of the relations between "the crescent and the swastika" (as the title of a book that appeared in 1990 [in French] put it). Especially inasmuch as in the background one can make out the role played by the Egyptian secret services of Nasser. . . . This aspect of the past is largely unknown, if not indeed purposely obscured, and it takes us far away from the Manichean visions of the process of decolonization that are so common. Doesn't this amount to a new way for you to deconstruct the history of Algeria's national liberation?

B. Sansal: When I decided to make the history of this German man the guiding thread of the novel, I found that I was confronted by numerous questions without answers. . . . I gathered some testimonials here and there and I dug into the historical literature, in order to reconstruct the possible trajectory of this man and, more generally, of the Nazi war criminals who found refuge in the Arab countries.

As I progressed in my research on Nazi Germany and the Shoah, I more and more had the feeling that there is a substantial similarity between Nazism and the political order that prevails in Algeria and in many other Arab and Muslim countries. One finds the same ingredients, and we know just how powerful they are. In Germany, they managed to transform a cultured nation into a narrow-minded sect devoted to the extermination of the Jews; in Algeria, they led to a civil war that attained extremes of horror -- and we still don't know everything about what happened. The ingredients are the same in both cases: a one-party state, the militarization of the country, brainwashing, the falsification of history, the exaltation of the race, a Manichean vision of the world, a tendency to claim victimhood, the constant assertion that there is a conspiracy against the nation (Israel, the United States, and France are invoked one after another by Algerian authorities when they find themselves in trouble -- and sometimes too our neighbor Morocco), xenophobia, racism and anti-Semitism elevated to the status of dogmas, a cult of the hero and of the martyr, glorification of the supreme leader, omnipresence of the police and of police informants, inflammatory speeches, highly disciplined mass organizations, large public demonstrations, religious indoctrination, incessant propaganda, the generalization of a wooden repetitive public discourse [langue de bois] that is deadly for thought, gargantuan projects that exalt the sense of power (for example, [Algerian President Abdelaziz] Bouteflika's plan to build the third largest mosque in the world in Angers, whereas we already have more minarets than schools), verbal attacks against other countries concerning anything and nothing at all, the resuscitation of old myths for current purposes. . . .

N.O.: What is especially striking in reading your novel is clearly this mirroring of the Nazism of the past and the Islamism of today. In his journal, Rachel insists on the specificity of the Shoah. But his brother Malrich, who sees the imam of his banlieue as a sort of SS, goes so far as to write: "When I see what the Islamists do here and elsewhere, I say to myself that if they ever come to power they'll outdo the Nazis." To what extent do you share this point of view?

B. Sansal: We live under a "National-Islamist" regime and in an environment that is marked by terrorism. We know well that the line separating Nazism from Islamism is a thin one. Algeria is perceived by its own children as an "open-air prison," as some say, or a "concentration camp," as others say who die little by little in its ghettoes. One doesn't only feel imprisoned by walls and impenetrable borders, but also by a shadowy and violent political order that leaves no place even for dreams. . . .

N.O.: How does one fight against the terrorist threat? Your book poses the question repeatedly, but it hardly gives any response. . . .

B. Sansal: The struggle against Islamism, which is the matrix of terrorism, requires the engagement of Muslims and of their theologians. It is up to them to save their religion and to reconcile it with modernity. If they don't, Islam will end up being nothing but Islamism. But the danger in the Arab and Muslim countries is that no theologian dares to undertake this necessary labor of itjihad. And the intellectuals who are engaged in this sort of work in the Western democracies (Soheib Bencheikh, Malek Chebel, Mohamed Arkoun, Abdelwahab Meddeb. . .) are barely heard in our countries. My humble opinion is that Islam has already suffered too much under the influence of Islamism and of Arab-Muslim nationalism. I don't see how it can resume the path of Enlightenment that was once its own. . . .

N.O.: The only solution that is indicated by your novel . . . is language, the word: the care taken to say the truth in defiance of forgetfulness, lies, and silence. Do you think that writing can be a political weapon? When September 11 occurred, you were one of the very first and one of the rare Muslim intellectuals to denounce the fanaticism involved. Do you feel less isolated today?

B. Sansal: The word is everything. It can kill and it can bring to life again. Of course, I'm not saying that I can do that. I write in order to talk to people: to brothers, to friends, to calm passers-by -- and even, if they want, to those who dream of destroying humanity and the planet. . . .

September 11 was a terrible shock for all of us. On that day, we began to understand that Islamism was engaged in an undertaking that is far more radical than we had imagined: We thought its project was to fight against tyrants in the lands of Islam and to institute the sharia. But its real aim is the extermination of the other: the "crusader," the Jew, the atheist, the secular Muslim, the emancipated woman, the democrat, the homosexual -- the list gets longer and longer. It is only limited in carrying out its project by the fact that it lacks weapons of mass destruction. The mobilization in face of such madness has been notably timid. Worse still: here and there one has come to an arrangement with Islamism, one has made concessions (concerning the headscarf, the management of mosques, education, televised sermons, the closing of schools teaching in French), one has abandoned whole geographical areas to its influence (in the cities and in the banlieues). Very few people nowadays dare to confront the question of Islamism head-on and still less that of Islam itself, which has been taken hostage by Islamism. In Algeria, in carrying out the government's policy of national "reconciliation," the very word "Islamism" -- like the word "terrorists" and many others -- has simply disappeared from the official vocabulary. One speaks instead of "those who have gone astray" and who have "been manipulated by foreign influences." One always comes back to this idea of a conspiracy against the Algerian nation.

N.O.: The narrator of your book notes that the book contains "dangerous parallels that could cause him problems." Don't you worry about having problems yourself? You had to retire from your official functions in 2003. And in 2006 your previous book, Poste restante: Alger, was banned in Algeria. Do you think your new book will be authorized? And, more fundamentally, why do you stay in Algeria, when many others have preferred to go into exile?

B. Sansal: The censors are legion in our countries and they are very vigilant. They monitor every word and comma and attitude. Poste restante: Alger was banned even before it got to Algeria. "The German's Village" will certainly be banned too. . . .

Like many other Algerians, young people and less young people, I'm constantly nagged by the desire to "escape" from the camp. And just when I'm about to pack up my bags and get on my way, I always say to myself that it's more intelligent, after all, to disrupt the camp than to leave. Algeria is a big and beautiful country that has come a long way: It has a long and highly interesting history, having rubbed shoulders with all the peoples of the Mediterranean. Algeria was not born with the FLN: It has nothing to do with its culture, its camps, its apparatchiks and its kapos. One sunny day, Algeria will rediscover its way and its land will turn green again. I would like to be there to see it happen.


Grégoire Leménager's interview with Boualem Sansal first appeared in January in the French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur. The above English version has been abridged. The English translation is by John Rosenthal. The full French version is available here on Bibliobs.com, the literary site of Le Nouvel Observateur.

Photo: Boualem Sansal in conversation with Le Nouvel Observateur (video here).