Daily Archives: June 18, 2017

Europe: Laughing at the Messenger by Douglas Murray

  • Once again, an American has pointed to a failing in European society, and instead of focusing on the problem identified or even admitting that there is a problem, the European response has been to point at the American and blame him for creating the problem he has in fact merely identified.

  • We are being given an accurate representation of a serious problem.If the response to every problem is denial, and the response to anyone pointing to the problem is opprobrium, legal threats or hilarity, it suggests that Europe is not going to make the softer-landing it could yet give itself in addressing these issues.
  • It might make us feel better, but every time we attack or laugh at the messenger, rather than addressing the message, we ensure that our own future will be less funny.

How can one excavate the minds of so many European officials and the extraordinary mental gymnastics of denial to which they have become prone?

One of the finest demonstrations of this trend occurred in January 2015, after France was assailed by Islamist gunmen in the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and then in a Jewish supermarket. In the days after those attacks, Fox News in the U.S. ran an interview with a guest who said that Paris, and France, as a whole, had “no-go zones” where the authorities — including emergency services — did not dare to go. In the wake of these comments, the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, chose to make a stand. She announced that she was suing Fox News because the “honour of Paris” was at stake.

It appeared that Mayor Hidalgo was rightly concerned about the image of her city around the world, presumably worrying in particular about the potential effects on tourism.

Of course, Mayor Hidalgo’s priorities were all wrong. The reason Paris’s public relations suffered a dent was not because of what a pundit said on Fox News one evening, but because of the mass murder of journalists and Jews on the streets of the “City of Light.” Any potential tourist would be much more concerned about getting caught up in a terrorist firefight than a war of words. Mayor Hidalgo’s manoeuvre, however, turned out not to be a rarity, but a symptom of a wider problem.

Consider the almost precise replay of that 2015 episode after U.S. President Donald Trump referred in a speech to “what’s happening last night in Sweden.” Much of the press immediately seized the opportunity to claim that Trump had asserted that a terrorist attack had occurred the night before in Sweden. This allowed them to laugh at the alleged ignorance of the president and the alleged concoction of what has become known as “fake news.” Except that it swiftly became obvious to anyone who cared that what the president was referring to — a documentary film about the situation in Sweden that had aired the night before on Fox News — showed the extent of the lawlessness in parts of Sweden. While every authority in Sweden was laughing at Donald Trump, a day after his comments. residents of Rinkeby, a suburb of Stockholm, obligingly had a car-burning riot and attacked police.

The troubles that Sweden has gone through in recent years, since mass migration began in earnest, are hard indeed to ignore. These troubles include the setting up of what the American scholar of Islam, Daniel Pipes, most accurately referred to as “semi-autonomous sectors.” Although non-Muslims can enter, the areas are different from the rest of the country. These are areas where, for instance, police, fire and ambulance services refuse to enter because they and other authority figures representing the state frequently come under attack. The filmmaker, Ami Horowitz, experienced the downside of some of these areas. On a recent visit to Sweden he was attacked for taking a film crew into a suburb of Stockholm when some of the locals objected. We are being given an accurate representation of a serious problem.

Car-burnings and riots do break out in Sweden today with considerable regularity, and sexual assaults have sky-rocketed in the country (although these figures are the subject of heated debate over whether they represent a rise in incidents or a rise in reporting). Either way, rapes carried out by immigrants remain a real and underreported issue. The authorities – including the Swedish media – have refused to run stories about these unpleasant facts

In Sweden, more than in perhaps any other European country, the media is homogenous in its support for the left-wing status quo in the country, and this includes a support for the views of recent governments on immigration policy. Anything which could give ammunition to critics of that policy is — as in Germany — deliberately underreported or actively covered over by the majority of the media.

The response to Trump’s comments unfortunately demonstrated this yet further. The desire to pretend that the president had specifically claimed that there had been a terrorist attack the night before was one trick. Another was to simply mock and belittle him and his claims. Former Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt took to Twitter to say, “Sweden? Terror attack? What has he been smoking?” The European press gleefully took up tweets by members of the Swedish public who responded to Trump’s claims by sending photos of people putting IKEA furniture together. A joke which would have been funnier had a failed asylum seeker from Eritrea not stabbed and killed a mother and son in an IKEA store in Västerås in 2015. Elsewhere, the present Swedish foreign minister, Margot Wallström, in her familiar preaching tones announced that diplomacy and democracy “require us to respect science, facts and the media.”

In response to US President Donald Trump’s recent reference to “what’s happening” in Sweden, Swedish Twitter users mocked him by posting photos of people putting IKEA furniture together. The joke would have been funnier had a failed asylum seeker from Eritrea not murdered Carola Herlin (left) and her son in an IKEA store in Västerås, Sweden, in August 2015.

So, once again an American has pointed to a failing in European society, and instead of focusing on the problem or even admitting that there is a problem, the European response has been to point at the American and blame him for creating the problem he has in fact merely identified. Such behaviour is a psychological affliction before it is a political one. It must stand somewhere along the continuum of the famed stages of grief. But it bodes exceptionally poorly for Europe’s future. If the response to every problem is denial, and the response to anyone pointing to the problem is opprobrium, legal threats or hilarity, it suggests that Europe is not going to make the softer-landing it could yet give itself in addressing these issues. It might make us feel better, but every time we attack or laugh at the messenger, rather than addressing the message, we ensure that our own future will be less funny.

Douglas Murray, British author, commentator and public affairs analyst, is based in London, England.

Europe: Illegal to Criticize Islam by Judith Bergman

  • While Geert Wilders was being prosecuted in the Netherlands for talking about “fewer Moroccans” during an election campaign, a state-funded watchdog group says that threatening homosexuals with burning, decapitation and slaughter is just fine, so long as it is Muslims who are making those threats, as the Quran tells them that such behavior is mandated.

  • “I am still of the view that declaring statistical facts or even sharing an opinion is not a crime if someone doesn’t like it.” – Finns Party politician, Terhi Kiemunki, fined 450 euros for writing of a “culture and law based on a violent, intolerant and oppressive religion.”
  • In Finland, since the court’s decision, citizens are now required to make a distinction, entirely fictitious, between “Islam” and “radical Islam,” or else they may find themselves prosecuted and fined for “slandering and insulting adherents of the Islamic faith.”
  • As Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said, “These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.” There are extremist Muslims and non-extremist Muslims, but there is only one Islam.
  • It is troubling that Western governments are so eager to crack down on anything that vaguely resembles what has erroneously been termed “Islamophobia,” which literally means an irrational fear of Islam.
  • Considering the violence we have been witnessing, for those Westerners who have studied Islam and listened to what the most influential Islamic scholars have to say, there are quite a few things in Islam of which one legitimately ought to be fearful.

Several European governments have made it clear to their citizens that criticizing European migrant policies or migrants is criminally off-limits and may lead to arrest, prosecution and even convictions. Although these practices constitute police state behavior, European governments do not stop there. They go still farther, by ensuring that Islam in general is not criticized either.

Finland is the European country most recently to adopt the way that European authorities sanction those who criticize Islam. According to the Finnish news outlet YLE, the Pirkanmaa District Court found the Finns Party politician, Terhi Kiemunki, guilty of “slandering and insulting adherents of the Islamic faith” in a blog post of Uusi Suomi. In it, she claimed that all the terrorists in Europe are Muslims. The Court found that when Kiemunki wrote of a “repressive, intolerant and violent religion and culture,” she meant the Islamic faith.

During the trial, Kiemunki was asked why she did not make a distinction between Islam and radical Islam. She replied that she meant to refer to the spread of Islamic culture and religion, and that she “probably should have” spoken of radicalized elements of the religion instead of the faith as a whole. Kiemunki was fined 450 euros. Her lawyer has appealed the verdict.

Kiemunki issued a press release after the verdict, in which she said:

“I am still of the view that declaring statistical facts or even sharing an opinion is not a crime if someone doesn’t like it… I wrote that I don’t want our country to be overtaken by a culture and law based on a violent, intolerant and oppressive religion.”

According to YLE, she added that her essay did not generalize about Muslims, but pointed out that not all Muslims are terrorists. “In these times, specifically in the recent past and today, all of the perpetrators of terrorist acts have turned out to be Muslim,” she said.

In Finland, Terhi Kiemunki, a Finns Party politician, was found guilty by a court of “slandering and insulting adherents of the Islamic faith.” (Image source: YouTube video screenshot)

So in Finland, since the court’s decision, citizens are now required to make a distinction, entirely fictitious, between “Islam” and “radical Islam,” or else they may find themselves prosecuted and fined for “slandering and insulting adherents of the Islamic faith.” As Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, “These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.” There are extremist Muslims and non-extremist Muslims, but there is only one Islam.

It is a pity that Kiemunki did not present the court with quotes from the Quran, such as, “Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them…” (9:5), and “So fight them until there is no more fitna [strife] and all submit to the religion of Allah.” (8:39). Perhaps, then, the court could have at least tried to explain to the public in more concrete detail the differences between “Islam” and “radical Islam.”

In the Netherlands, a state-funded hotline, run by the anti-discrimination bureau MiND, said that it could not act on a complaint about death threats against homosexuals posted to an online forum, in which the Muslim poster called for homosexuals to be “burned, decapitated and slaughtered.” The reason why this anti-discrimination watchdog group could not act on the complaint was that, “The remarks must be seen in the context of religious beliefs in Islam, which juridically takes away the insulting character.” MiND concluded that the remarks were made in

“the context of a public debate about how to interpret the Quran… some Muslims understand from the Quran that gays should be killed… In the context of religious expression that exists in the Netherlands there is a large degree of freedom of expression. In addition, the expressions are used in the context of the public debate (how to interpret the Koran), which also removes the offending character.”

So, while Geert Wilders was prosecuted in the Netherlands for talking about “fewer Moroccans” during an election campaign, a state-funded watchdog group says that threatening homosexuals with burning, decapitation and slaughter is just fine, so long as it is Muslims who are making those threats, as the Quran tells them that such behavior is mandated. This might be one of the most astounding examples of voluntary submission to sharia law in the West thus far.

A spokesman for the MiND hotline later admitted that, after “further research” on the issue, it had concluded that the complaint had been “unjustly assessed” — after Dutch MPs called for the hotline to be stripped of public funding.

In February 2016, a Danish district court found a man guilty of making statements on Facebook that the court found to be “insulting and demeaning towards adherents of Islam.” The man had written:

“The ideology of Islam is as loathsome, disgusting, oppressive and as misanthropic as Nazism. The massive immigration of Islamists into Denmark is the most devastating thing to happen to Danish society in recent history.”

He was fined for “racism.” The High Court subsequently overturned the verdict in May 2016. The court found that the man was in fact innocent of racism, as his statements were “directed at the ideology of Islam and Islamism.”

It is troubling that Western governments are so eager to crack down on anything that vaguely resembles what has erroneously been termed “Islamophobia,” which literally means an irrational fear of Islam. Considering the violence we have been witnessing, it would be irrational not to have fear of its threats. As Shabnam Assadollahi recently pointed out in an open letter to Canadian Members of Parliament, there are quite a few things in Islam of which one legitimately ought to be fearful.

All these governments need to do is consult the speeches of one of the most influential living Islamic scholars of Sunni Islam, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Qaradawi hosts one of Al Jazeera’s most popular programs, Sharia and Life, which reaches an estimated 60 million viewers worldwide. Already in 1995, Qaradawi told a Muslim Arab Youth Association convention in Toledo, Ohio, “We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America! Not through the sword, but through dawa [outreach].”

Dawa, the Islamic call to conversion, is the Islamic summons for the non-violent conquest of non-Muslim lands, including Europe. As explained by Qaradawi in a recording from 2007, the aim of the conquest consists mainly the introduction of sharia law. According to Qaradawi, sharia law should be inserted gradually, over a five-year period in a new country, before implementing it in full. This sharia law includes chopping off hands for theft; killing apostates and homosexuals, denigrating and oppressing women, as in polygamy, beating them as a means of “disciplining” them, and so on. For those Westerners who have studied Islam and listened to what the most influential Islamic scholars have to say, there is quite a bit to be “phobic” about. It would be refreshing to hear the views of European leaders and courts on these aspects of sharia law instead of their almost ritual condemnations of those who have actually studied Islamic sources and seek to raise awareness of the nature of sharia law.

While prosecuting and sanctioning people who criticize Islam is becoming more common in Europe, this practice used to be reserved only for Muslim countries officially governed by sharia law, such as Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, where it is forbidden to insult Islam.

It is a pity that European courts and other state bodies have begun taking their cues from Islamic law. Apparently, European judges and politicians are no longer capable of appreciating the immense freedoms that used to be the norm on the continent, and which they seem all too willing, of their own free will, to abolish.

Judith Bergman is a writer, columnist, lawyer and political analyst.

Europe: Denying the Threat of Islamic Imperialism by Maria Polizoidou

  • The UN report and Erdogan’s rhetoric both evidently expresses the Muslim world’s thoughts about what it apparently thinks should be the fate of Israel and Europe. So far, not a single Muslim state has condemned or opposed Erdogan’s aggression against Judeo-Christian civilization.

  • The enemy is already inside the gates; many European regimes seem unaware that there is even a threat.
  • The logic of much of Europe’s religious and political community seems to be that if the elephant in the room is spoken to nicely and made to look cute and adorable, people will not think of it as a threat to their safety.

The Western world can no longer ignore the problem of the latest the elephant in the room: Islamic imperialism. Europe has come to such a state of free speech trials, threats of censorship or, out of fear, self-censorship, that it seems to prefer putting the safety of its citizens at risk than admit that this elephant exists.

Meanwhile, Muslim countries make not the slightest effort to hide their intentions, as recent actions of 18 such states at the United Nations illustrate. They cooperated in the preparation of the report released in March by the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UNESCWA), which accused Israel of “the crime of apartheid,” despite knowing full well that such a baseless claim would be rejected by the world body now that Donald Trump is at the helm of the free world. The reason they went ahead with it anyway was to convey to the West that delegitimizing the Jewish state was merely the first step in a master plan to unravel all of Judeo-Christian civilization and values.

For a body such as UNESCWA to declare the State of Israel in an official Institute’s report, as being guilty of “the crime of apartheid” according to international law, shows that Islamic expansionism is a real and an active political problem.

UNESCWA must have had some idea, before publishing the report, that such a loopy conclusion could not be adopted, even by the UN, which has been doing its utmost to rewrite historical facts. In the last few years, UNESCO has repeatedly declared pre-Islamic historical sites Islamic.

Nevertheless, UNESCWA proceeded to pass this surreal political concoction, probably to declare to the Western world again its attempts to delegitimize the State of Israel and all the freedoms it represents in the Judeo-Christian world that might threaten the expansion of Islam.

It was an attempt to project power.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, which even before his new, absolute powers, wanted to represent all of Sunni Islam, shows to the Western world the true face of Islamic imperialism and the conventional, irregular and cyber war it appears to have declared on the Christian world.

The UN report and Erdogan’s rhetoric both evidently expresses the Muslim world’s thoughts about what it apparently thinks should be the fate of Israel and Europe. So far, not a single Muslim state has condemned or opposed Erdogan’s aggression against Judeo-Christian civilization.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gives a speech in Ankara on April 17, celebrating his victory in the referendum the previous day, which granted him new, absolute powers. (Image source: Getty Images)

According to Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Mevlut Cavusoglu, “[T]here will soon be religious wars inside Europe”. The enemy is already inside the gates; many European regimes seem unaware that there is even a threat.

Corrupted elites, with the help of many in the international community, try to suffocate Israel economically; and the biased and dishonest media seem to be trying to hide from the public that they work as proxies of Islamic imperialism, promoting Islamic ideology and condemning the values of the West.

Pope Francis and Greek Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew use Jesus’s phrase “Love each other as I have loved you” as a religious justification to love people who are ordered — under threat of eternal hellfire — not only never to love you, but to have nothing whatever to do with you, apart from trying to win you over to their firmly-held belief:

“O you who have believed, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies. They are [in fact] allies of one another. And whoever is an ally to them among you – then indeed, he is [one] of them.” — Qur’an 5:51

The logic of much of Europe’s religious and political community seems to be that if the elephant in the room is spoken to nicely and made to look cute and adorable, people will not think of it as a threat to their safety.

Left-wing ideologues and unwitting fellow travelers hide the nature of the elephant. This was the approach of President Obama, who, along with European leaders, provided space in which the elephant could operate, grow and undermine the fabric of Western societies.

Key to this enabling has been a Western focus on fake politics — such as the obsession with issues such as transgender bathrooms and rights for women who are already blessed with rights — while Islamists are actually oppressing gays and women in the most rigid fashion.

The Obama administration metamorphosed real politics into fake politics, where people talk — instead of about freedom and democracy — about feminism, gender studies, transgender bathrooms, feeling offended and endless vaginology.

Christian leaders have also been trying to deflect from the threat. Both Pope Francis and Greek Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I use Jesus’s phrase, “Love each other as I have loved you” to disguise and minimize it.

Meanwhile, the elephant in the room gets bigger and bigger and is ready, according to the Turkish president’s statements, to destroy the house.

The West seems addicted to prettying up terrorist organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood or the PLO. Wishing away danger is nothing new to the West. It was not until President Ronald Reagan exposed the Soviet Union as an “evil empire,” for example, that the threat of Communism began to be taken seriously. Within six years, the USSR collapsed.

The behavior of many Western political leaders, jumping from one definition to another about the “true nature of Islam,” has so far been disastrous. The tenets of Islam are there or all to see; people in the West seem not to want to look.

What are we Westerners doing trying to tell Muslims what their religion is, in the first place? Do they try to tell us what “real Christianity” is?

Sadly, too much of what we have seen of Islam in the West has been violent. Countless attacks, with shouts of “Allahu Akbar” have been claimed in the name of Islam. In terms of what their religion stands for, you at least have to give them credit for being forthright. We in the West are the ones who have lied.

Ultimately, if we do not confront this problem, this problem will confront us.

Maria Polizoidou, a reporter, broadcast journalist, and consultant on international and foreign affairs, is based in Greece.

Europe: Combating Fake News by Fjordman

  • If present demographic trends continue, in a few decades, native Swedes could easily become a minority in their own country.Swedish ambulance personnel want gas masks and bulletproof vests to protect their staff against the escalating attacks, similar to equipment used by staff working in war zones.

  • Most dangerous, however, is our inability to deal forcefully with problems undermining Western societies, because some Western media refuse to admit that the problems exist.

In January 2015 The New York Times denied that there are “no-go-zones” — areas that are not under the control of the state and are ruled according to sharia law — dominated by certain immigrant groups in some urban areas in Western Europe. The American newspaper mentioned this author, alongside writers such as Steven Emerson and Daniel Pipes, for spreading this alleged falsehood. The article was published shortly after Islamic terrorists had massacred the staff of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris on January 7, 2015. Other established media outlets such as the magazine The Atlantic also dismissed claims of no-go-zones.

Fox News issued an unusual on-air apology for allowing its anchors and guests to repeat the suggestion that there are Muslim “no-go zones” in European countries such as Britain and France.

Regarding the subject of “no-go-zones,” this is largely a question of semantics. If you say that there are some areas where even the police are afraid to go, where the country’s normal, secular laws barely apply, then it is indisputable that such areas now exist in several Western European countries. France is one of the hardest hit: it has a large population of Arab and African immigrants, including millions of Muslims.

I have been writing about the problems in Sweden and the rest of Europe for many years. The problems are unfortunately all too real. Here are a few facts:

Sweden surpassed ten million inhabitants in early 2017. The recent population growth is almost entirely due to mass immigration. If present demographic trends continue, in a few decades native Swedes could easily become a minority in their own country. The economist Tino Sanandaji suggests that this transformation could happen within the coming generation.

Statistics from January 2017 indicate that for people born in Sweden, the unemployment rate is 4.3%. Yet for people born abroad, the unemployment rate is a staggering five times higher, at 22.1%. This constitutes a huge economic and social burden for the taxpayers. The famous Swedish welfare state has been quietly cut back for many years.

In an essay published in February 2016, Stockholm police inspector Lars Alvarsjö warned that the Swedish legal system is close to collapse. The influx of asylum seekers and ethnic gangs has overwhelmed the country and its understaffed police force. In many suburbs, criminal gangs have taken control and determine the rules. The police, fire brigades and ambulance personnel in these areas are routinely met with violent attacks.

Malmö, Sweden’s third-largest city, houses over 300,000 people, as of 2017. Despite its modest size, the town has a crime rate equal to that of vastly larger cities. The local police are barely able to investigate murders. Less serious crimes often go unpunished. Malmö probably has the highest percentage of Muslim immigrants of any city in Scandinavia. The most Islamic city in Scandinavia also happens to be the most criminal and the most violent.

In November 2016, Malmö’s chief prosecutor Ola Sjöstrand publicly admitted that his office was approaching a total collapse in terms of criminal investigations. “If people are hit by crimes which then aren’t investigated, they will lose faith in the rule of law,” Sjöstrand told the regional newspaper Sydsvenskan.

During New Year’s Eve celebrations at the beginning of 2017, parts of central Malmö resembled a war zone. Young immigrants shouted “Jihad!” while throwing fireworks at people. Swedish teenagers gathered in a large group to avoid being robbed.

A janitor in Malmö was shot and sustained life-threatening injures while clearing snow in February 2017. Police detained several suspects, understood to be linked to gang violence, for questioning. A 15-year-old boy was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder.

Meanwhile, officials at a local electrical firm announced that they would no longer expose their staff to risk by taking jobs in Malmö; there is just too much violent crime in the city.

Beginning in March 2017, the emergency ward at the hospital in Malmö will lock the doors at night. This is a security precaution that became necessary due to repeated violent threats from certain gangs or clans against patients and staff.

In July 2015, the police in Malmö asked for assistance from the national police to stop the wave of violence. Apparently, even that response was not enough. In January 2017, the police chief, Stefan Sintéus, publicly appealed to residents in Malmö for help in containing violent crime and deadly gang shootings: “Help us to tackle the problems. Cooperate with us.”

Peter Springare, a police officer in the town of Örebro in central Sweden, finally vented his frustration in February 2017. Migrants are to blame for the vast majority of serious crime in Sweden, causing the police force to become overloaded, he wrote on Facebook. When dealing with drug crimes, rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults, murders, extortion or violence against the police, the suspected perpetrators very often have names such as Ali, Mahmoud or Mohammed. They usually have a family background from Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Afghanistan or Somalia. Others do not have valid papers.

Gothenburg, Sweden’s second largest city, has been for several years one of the most important recruitment centers in Europe for jihadists seeking to join the terrorist group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). A survey carried out in 2016 showed that about one in nine school students aged 12-18 in certain Gothenburg suburbs openly expressed sympathy with militant Islamic groups.

Nordstan in Gothenburg is one of the largest shopping malls in Sweden, located in the heart of the city. 3,250 crimes were reported to the police from Nordstan in 2016. That number is from a single shopping mall in one year. Aggressive groups of Muslim immigrants, especially young men from North Africa, Syria or Afghanistan, partly dominate the mall. “I’ve had people in front of me that look like they are 35, but who claim to be 15. I can’t prove they’re lying so we have to release them,” Rikard Sörensen from the police said.

Stockholm suburbs such as Husby, Rinkeby and Tensta house large concentrations of recent immigrants. These districts are riddled with crime, violence and social problems. The Swedish police have repeatedly been attacked by criminal gangs there, even with hand grenades.

One day in December 2016, shopkeepers in Husby closed their stores as a protest. Salam Kurda is the chair of the local shopkeepers’ association. He says he has had enough after his shop was burgled. Politicians and the police have abandoned Husby to the criminals, states Kurda, who plans to give up his shop. He says it is not profitable and he doesn’t feel safe.

In December 2016, the American Jewish documentary filmmaker Ami Horowitz told the story of his venture into Husby. A few seconds after they arrived, five men approached them. They said “You guys gotta get out of here right now.” The film crew, being Swedish, turned around and ran for it. Horowitz decided to stay and try to figure this thing out with the men.

The five men then immediately attacked Horowitz, punching, choking and kicking him. Nobody came to his aid, even though this attack took place in a public area outside Stockholm. Horowitz recalls his assailants saying something in Arabic as they beat him to the ground.

“Let’s define what a ‘no-go area’ means, really, at least in Sweden,” Horowitz says.

“What’s interesting is, there’s an actual debate out there whether or not these places even exist, right? You go to CNN, the BBC, and you listen to people discuss no-go areas in France, in Belgium, in Sweden, in Germany. And there’s an actual debate whether this is real or the figment of the conservative imagination. I can tell you for a fact they exist. And in Sweden what that means is, and this is what the police tell me, they use the words ‘no-go area.’ They said, in their words, ‘If we’re chasing a suspect, and they cross into this no-go area, we simply stop pursuit.’ And if we want to enter this area, we have to go in with an armed convoy, as if you’re going into like the kill zone in Afghanistan.”

In 2014, the Swedish police themselves estimated that there were 55 areas in which they are no longer able to uphold law and order. That number is increasing. The country also experiences shocking levels of violence against ambulance personnel in some areas. Swedish ambulance personnel want gas masks and bulletproof vests to protect their staff against the escalating attacks, similar to equipment used by staff working in war zones.

In February 2017, the local police chief Erik Åkerlund in Botkyrka near Stockholm denied that “no-go zones” exist in Sweden. This claim does not sound very credible.

When dissident writers such as this author wrote about these issues 10-15 years ago, the real problems we raised were falsely dismissed as the “xenophobia” of alleged “right-wing extremists.”

Unfortunately, the “multicultural” problems in Sweden have grown so large and visible that some international media now regularly write about them. Swedish authorities apparently find this hugely embarrassing. They try to conceal this unpleasant reality as much as possible. In 2016, the Swedish embassy in London complained that Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper was running a campaign against Sweden’s immigration policy.

In February 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump made some critical remarks about the situation in Sweden, regarding immigration and security. This triggered protests from the Swedish government and the mass media. At the same time, violent riots once again erupted in Rinkeby, a Stockholm suburb with many Muslim immigrants. A Swedish press photographer was assaulted by around 15 people when arriving in Rinkeby to report on the riots.

Cars burn during a riot in Stockholm, on February 20, 2017. (Image source: YouTube/gladbecker82 video screenshot

Two leading politicians from the Sweden Democrats supported Trump’s comments in the Wall Street Journal. Immigration, they argued, has indeed caused major problems in Sweden.

In Malmö, violent crime is no longer limited to districts such as Rosengård. Gang-related shootings happen in different parts of Malmö, and in other cities such as Gothenburg.

A survey from 2016 indicated that nearly half of all Swedish women are afraid to go outside after dark. 46% of women feel very unsafe or somewhat unsafe when they exercise alone in the dark — an indication that there is a widespread sense of fear and uncertainty across much of the country, not just in a few urban areas. “Feminist” Sweden has very high rape rates.

Swedish women have never had more feminism, and have never been less safe.

In January 2017, Magnus Olsson, a politician from the Sweden Democrats in Malmö, suggested that the military should be deployed in the city. “There is a great lack of police officers in Sweden and Malmö. For this reason, it is perhaps time to let the military and police stand together to reestablish order in the country,” he said.

Sweden’s military forces have been drastically reduced since the Cold War. However, the authorities suddenly seem to have realized that there could be potential for armed conflict in the future. There are now plans to reintroduce compulsory military service.

In early 2017, the Swedish police were instructed to increase their preparations for war. They were not told who this potential war would be against, although the authorities like to talk about an alleged threat of an invasion from Russia.

It is not, however, the Russians who now routinely burn cars and commit gang-rapes in Swedish cities. These crimes are largely committed by recent immigrants, many of them Muslims coming from war zones. These immigrants have for decades been allowed in by the ruling political elites, applauded by the mass media and supported by the EU and the UN.

The Islamic terror threat in Western Europe is now endemic. In late 2016, the police at Brussels International Airport detained 30 terror suspects in one month. That is one potential terrorist per day, at one European airport. Belgium’s highest-ranking police chief warned in February 2017 that the terror threat remains “grave” after the Brussels bombings on March 22, 2016. Because of the many radical Muslims living in Belgium, the authorities are concerned that Belgian citizens may lose their visa-free access to the United States.

Due to the threat of terrorism, robberies and street crime, many Chinese, Japanese and Korean travelers have dropped their holiday plans in France. Chronic instability and violence have damaged the country’s reputation as a travel destination. Even a prolonged state of emergency and large numbers of police and soldiers deployed in the streets are not enough to uphold law and order.

In February 2017, Paris and other French cities were once more rocked by days of rioting by Muslim and African immigrant. The trigger was an allegation of police violence. However, discontent seems to be endemic. Riots among immigrants could erupt again at any moment.

After a firebomb attack on four police officers near Paris in 2016, France’s prime minister insisted there were no no-go zones in the country. However, this is not what the police themselves say.

“Of course there are no-go zones in France where the police cannot intervene and do their jobs in safety,” says Denis Jacob from the union Alternative Police-CFDT.

“And it’s the same for fire fighters or pretty much any representative of the state. The police can’t apply the law in these areas, they are attacked. If the police can’t do their work it’s because there are criminals and delinquents who don’t respect the law.”

Yet it would be very bad for business and tourism if the authorities openly acknowledged this. “Governments will never admit there are no-go zones because it’s a sign of a failed state,” Jacob adds.

As Soeren Kern writes at Gatestone Institute:

“The problem of no-go zones is well documented, but multiculturalists and their politically correct supporters vehemently deny that they exist. Some are now engaged in a concerted campaign to discredit and even silence those who draw attention to the issue.”

What does it take for the New York Times and other established media to define an area as a no-go zone?

It is an indisputable fact that a number of areas exist in several Western European countries where criminal ethnic gangs dominate the streets and where even the police find it very difficult to walk in safety. The number and size of these areas, fueled by mass immigration, seems to be growing.

If the New York Times and other mass media deny this fact, then they are engaged in producing “fake news.” People who truthfully warn about these problems thus risk being unfairly vilified and smeared for doing so.

Most dangerous, however, is our inability to deal forcefully with problems that are undermining Western societies, because some Western media refuse to admit that the problems exist.

Mass immigration from incompatible cultures, particularly from the Islamic world, is gradually undermining law and order in many Western cities. If Western media refuse frankly to acknowledge this fact, they are putting the long-term survival of our societies seriously at risk.

Fjordman, a Norwegian historian, is an expert on Europe, Islam and multiculturalism.

Europe: Christmas Shoppers in Jihadist Crosshairs by George Igler

  • In Ludwigshafen, Germany, a “‘strongly radicalized” 12-year-old boy “of Iraqi heritage” planted a bomb at a Christmas market at the end of November.Previously, the festive shopping tradition of Christmas markets had become “potent symbols of freedom,” with Germany’s Interior Minister, Thomas de Maizière, urging people to stick to unserem Leben — “our way of life.”

  • In Birmingham, England, the Christmas market has concrete barriers installed to deter vehicular suicide bombers. According to the head of Britain’s foreign intelligence service, the magnitude of the terrorism faced by the UK is “unprecedented.”
  • French security forces thwarted attacks planned for December 1, against Disneyland Paris and the Christmas market on the main thoroughfare of the French capital, the Champs-Elysée.
  • With a pro-Sharia (Islamic law) advocate now secretary of state in the Berlin regional senate, and other Muslims even refusing to shake the hand of the German President Joachim Gauck at events designed to promote integration, Germany’s “way of life” is changing fast.

As the winter nights lengthen, an even darker shadow is falling across the run-up to the Christmas holidays in several European nations. Families in markets and shopping districts across the continent are buying presents in the knowledge that jihadists mean to target them.

On November 21, the U.S. Department of State cited a “heightened risk of terror attacks” in an advisory statement set to expire only on February 20, 2017.

“Credible information,” quotes Newsweek, prompted a warning to American travellers to “exercise caution at holiday festivals, events, and outdoor markets,” given planned attacks by Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Those attending “large holiday events, visiting tourist sites, using public transportation, and frequenting places of worship, restaurants, hotels, etc.” were likewise urged to exercise vigilance.

On December 16, German media reported that:

“a 12-year-old boy was suspected of planning two different bomb attacks in the western German city of Ludwigshafen. The German magazine ‘Focus’ said he had first tried to target a Christmas market at the end of November, before placing a backpack with explosives near a high-rise building containing both city hall and a shopping center.”

“The suspect was born in Germany but is of Iraqi heritage,” reported NBC News, adding: “the ‘strongly radicalized’ youth was likely ‘incited and instructed’ by an ‘unidentified member of ISIS.'”

This comes just two weeks after a December 2 report, Changes in Modus Operandi of Islamic State Revisited, from the European policing agency, Europol, cited the possibility of “several dozen” attacks against civilian soft targets.

 

In Ludwigshafen, Germany, a “‘strongly radicalized” 12-year-old boy “of Iraqi heritage” planted a bomb at a Christmas market at the end of November. (Image source: Focus video screenshot)

 

With terrorists claiming to act in the name of ISIS already able to plan “relatively complex attacks — including those on multiple targets — quickly and effectively,” according to the Europol report, the tactics of the battlefields of the Middle East, “such as the use of car bombs, extortion and kidnappings,” may well be exported into Europe.

The credibility of such intelligence data has been further strengthened by a wave of arrests and increased troop deployments in several European countries. Germany, for instance, is associated with the ice rinks, outside stalls, and warm spiced wine of Christmas markets; an estimated 1,500 are spread across the country.

The strengthened security followed a credible bomb threat against an international soccer match on November 17, 2015, which forced the lockdown of the northern city of Hanover and a cancellation by Chancellor Angela Merkel, who had planned to attend.

On the basis of attacks in the country to date, the cities of Munich, Ansbach, Berlin, Ochsenfurt, Grafing, Reutlingen and Frankfurt — which contains the country’s largest Christmas market — are Germany’s danger hotspots.

The festive shopping tradition across Europe is causing headaches, however, to security officials in several other nations.

In France, twin swoops against an alleged jihadist cell, operating from the European parliamentary city of Strasbourg and the port city of Marseilles, thwarted attacks planned for December 1, against Disneyland Paris and the Christmas market on the main thoroughfare of the French capital, the Champs-Elysée.

Reports also suggest that this anti-terror operation may have come just in time to intercept a weapons shipment.

As the Europol report explains:

“[A]utomatic firearms still seem to be the weapons of choice of terrorist cells committing large scale attacks, because of their relative ease of access, use and effectiveness. Firearms can be obtained from criminal sources, in some cases from those the terrorists already know from their own criminal pasts.” (p.10)

The Daily Mirror reports: “It is feared that the current military operation on Mosul will force Islamic State to change tactics and rather than hold ground, concentrate on attacking Europe.” With returnees expected as a result of the eventual collapse of ISIS strongholds — 2,000-2,500 jihadists originating from Europe are still said to be fighting in Iraq and Syria — the terror group is predicted to start launching attacks against Europe from bases in Libya.

According to Jean-Charles Brisard, a leading French security expert, despite the more rigorous measures introduced by the French government as a consequence of the major attacks that have struck France since 2015, the capacity of the nation’s latent ISIS networks “has not been affected.” An increased presence of troops on French streets has already given the nation a paramilitary character.

Meanwhile, in Britain, the entirety of the country’s elite Special Forces, the SAS, have had their leave cancelled as a consequence of undercover deployments across the nation’s Christmas shopping districts.

Under Operation Temperer, run by the British Army, 5,000 troops are covertly patrolling busy streets, with police in cities such as London, Manchester and Birmingham all having asked for extra assistance. Outdoor Christmas markets, originally a feature of Germany’s holiday celebrations, have become increasingly popular in recent years across many British cities.

On December 11, officers armed with assault rifles raided locations in London, Burton upon Trent, and Derby, in an investigation believed to center on an ISIS plot to target Christmas markets. In “international terrorism-related” arrests, according to police sources, four men from Derby, aged 22, 27, 35 and 36, in addition to a 27-year old man from Burton upon Trent, have all been detained.

A 32-year old woman from London was also arrested “on suspicion of engaging in the preparation of an act of terrorism,” on behalf of the suspected ISIS terror cell. One of those being detained, according to the Daily Mail, is said to be an asylum seeker, “who may not have been in Britain for long.”

In Birmingham, the Christmas market has concrete barriers installed to deter vehicular suicide bombers. According to the head of Britain’s foreign intelligence service (MI6), the magnitude of the terrorism faced by the UK is “unprecedented.”

“The risks at stake are profound and represent a fundamental threat to our sovereignty,” said the MI6 chief, Alex Younger, who also cited the extreme dangers posed by “hybrid attacks,” in which conventional terrorism is combined with cyber-security breaches. Up to 3,000 Islamic extremists presently reside in Britain, according to Andrew Parker, head of its domestic intelligence agency, MI5.

The porosity of European borders has necessitated the need to ramp up cooperation between domestic and transnational security agencies across the continent. This makes the report issued by Europol instructive, issued as it was under the auspices of its British-born director, Robin Wainwright, as it goes to great lengths to play down the significance of cyber-attacks.

British security officers, however, have “never been under so much pressure, and the lack of agreement and effectiveness of international cooperation may well be one cause why.

Last year, the sense of nervousness was “palpable” among Germans, despite increased police deployed to Christmas markets in the states of Berlin, Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Hessen, North Rhine Westphalia and Thuringia.

This of course came before the New Year’s Eve wave of mass sexual assaults, which targeted Cologne, Hamburg and other cities, with the police failures which allowed for the assaults recently described in a new book entitled, The Night that Changed Germany.

Previously, the festive shopping tradition of Christmas markets had become “potent symbols of freedom,” with Germany’s Interior Minister, Thomas de Maizière, urging people to stick to unserem Leben — “our way of life.”

With a pro-Sharia law advocate now secretary of state in the Berlin regional senate, and other Muslims even refusing to shake the hand of the country’s president, Joachim Gauck, at events designed to promote integration, that way of life is changing fast.

George Igler, between 2010 and 2016, aided those facing death across Europe for criticizing Islam.

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