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Human Rights Watch, an organization that is supposed to look out for victims of human rights abuses, not abusers of human rights is begging US decision makers not to designate the Muslim Brotherhood — which, if it had its way, would take away everyone’s human rights and substitute them with sharia law — a foreign terrorist organization.
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“Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope”. — Muslim Brotherhood motto.
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Conveniently, Hamas — which according to article two of its charter, is “one of the wings of Moslem Brotherhood in Palestine” — is, it seems, working on a new charter. The new charter would would declare that Hamas is not a part of the Muslim Brotherhood, despite its always having been so. That way, is the Muslim Brotherhood’s “narrative” of newfound “nonviolence” suddenly supposed to become believable?
Left: The emblem of the Muslim Brotherhood. Right: While being hosted by the State Department on a visit to Washington in January 2015, Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood judge Waleed Sharaby flashed the organization’s four-finger “Rabia” sign.
Gehad el-Haddad, official spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), is on a mission to rewrite the terrorist and radical history of the MB. He seems to be doing this for the consumption of naïve Americans. These seem only too willing to believe — in the name of tolerance, diversity and trying to be non-judgmental — that an organization whose ultimate goal is the supreme reign of Islamic sharia law everywhere — if necessary through violent jihad — could possibly value anything even approximating equality and the rule of (non-sharia) law.
“We are not terrorists,” wrote a political activist for the MB, Gehad el-Haddad, in a recent article in the New York Times.
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by Denis MacEoin • March 30, 2017 at 4:30 am
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It has from the beginning been designed to denounce Israel as an illegal state, all under the cover of supposed neutral academic inquiry.
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It is not, however, in the least surprising that an Irish government would pass a motion like that so wholeheartedly. After all, links with the PLO and other terrorist groups were connived at or even encouraged by the Irish government itself.
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The conference put itself in the welcoming hands of the city council, a body thoroughly in agreement with the aims of the event, to find spurious legal arguments for the delegitimization and eventual destruction of Israel.
The City Hall of Cork, Ireland. (Image source: Klaus Foehl/Wikimedia Commons)
Readers may remember a controversy reported in January. It was proposed that an international “academic” conference about the legitimacy of Israel would take place in University College Cork in the Republic of Ireland. There have been several developments in this sorry enterprise since then.
What the conference, which goes under the revealing title, “International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism”, was about may be summed up in a few sentences. It has from the beginning been designed to denounce Israel as an illegal state, all under the cover of supposed neutral academic inquiry. The organizers had previously tried to hold the event at Britain’s Southampton University and, reportedly, other European universities, each time without success.
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by Alan M. Dershowitz • March 29, 2017 at 8:00 pm
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There is no more evidence that Jews are responsible for economic or social inequality in contemporary America, than there was for Jews being responsible for any of the other crimes that formed the basis for traditional blood libels. Indeed, Jews disproportionately support racial equality and other liberal causes. Most successful Jews, like most successful people of other religions and ethnicities, earned this success by hard work, not special privilege.
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The linking of unrelated “victimizations,” despite their tenuous connections, is reflective of a broader trend in hard-left politics, whereby increasingly, radical activists demand that the demonization of “Zionists”—often used as a euphemism for Jews – be included, indeed featured, in the package of causes that must to be embraced by anyone claiming the label of “progressive.” Lumping seemingly disparate groups under the “umbrella of oppression” leads to the forming of alliances between causes that at best, have nothing to do with each other, and at worst, are averse to one another’s stated mission. Their only common feature is that to join, they must demonize the nation state of the Jewish people.
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The essence of anti-Semitism is the bigoted claim that if there is a problem, then Jews must be its cause. Hitler started by blaming Jews for Germany’s economic downturn. Today, many hard-left activists explicitly or implicitly blame Jews and Zionists for many of the evils of the world. All decent people must join in calling out intersectionality for what it is: a euphemism for anti-American, anti-Semitic and anti- Israel bigotry. Exposing and condemning “intersectionality” for the bigotry that it represents is critical to ensuring that those repressive extremists, who falsely claim the mantle of progressivism, are not able to hijack important liberal causes in support of their own bigoted agenda.
What do the terrorist group Hamas and the anti-violence group Black Lives Matter have in common? What does the democracy of Israel have in common with the anti-Semitic Ku Klux Klan? What does the Islamic Republic of Iran, which throws gays off rooftops, have in common with gay right activists? What do feminists have in common with radical Islamic sexists who support the honor killing and genital mutilation of women? Nothing of course. Unless you subscribe to the pseudo-academic concept of intersectionality.
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by Bassam Tawil • March 29, 2017 at 5:00 am
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The Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas wish to continue teaching children that the conflict with Israel is not over a two-state solution, but the “liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea,” which means the annihilation of Israel. The goal is for the students to believe that Israel is one big settlement that has no place in the Middle East.
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Along with Hamas, Abbas and his PA plan to continue inculcating Palestinian children with the idea that they should look to terrorists who kill Jews as their role models. It might be illuminating if the conversation between Trump and Abbas were to be informed by these uncomfortable facts.
A girls’ school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees. (Image source: UNRWA)
In an ironic turnaround, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) is now the object of intimidation and threats made by many Palestinians.
UNRWA is reportedly planning to introduce some changes to the curriculum in its schools in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the Palestinians are rather unhappy about it. They claim that UNRWA has “succumbed” to Israeli pressure to make the changes.
The proposed changes are based on leaks to Palestinians and have not been confirmed by UNRWA. Palestinians claim that they learned about the plans to introduce the changes during meetings with senior UNRWA officials.
According to the Palestinians, the changes are intended to “eradicate” their “national identity” and “history” and distort their “struggle” against Israel.
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by Giulio Meotti • March 29, 2017 at 4:00 am
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“The problem in Europe is that there are far too many people in uniform, and too few of them able to go into action.” — NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson.
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“A majority of the German public opposes combat missions, and supports the Bundeswehr [German military] only as a quasi-humanitarian organization, a kind of Médecins Sans Frontières with guns”. — Konstantin Richter, Politico.eu.
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The relative abundance enjoyed by the Western post-war generations have created a kind of shame instead of pride.
Soldiers of the German army on parade in 2009. (Image source: Włodi/Flickr)
It has been said that when German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer signed the reconstitution of the military in 1955, he proclaimed: “It is crazy, gentlemen, that I have to create a German army, it is just crazy”.
Sixty years have passed, but that sentiment still seems very strong in Germany. A few days ago Sigmar Gabriel, the German foreign minister, said: “We have to be a bit careful here that we don’t over-interpret the 2 percent target.” Gabriel then became clearer: “Maintain perspective, stay focused on the target, but avoid being consumed by the bliss of a new rearmament spiral!”
A few days earlier, Germany had made an announcement: to raise the number of soldiers from 170,000 to 198,000 by 2024 — a modest “rearmament”.
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by Shireen Qudosi • March 28, 2017 at 5:00 am
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The long game of Western Muslims averse to Western values, was largely unaffected by an altered political landscape as they transitioned to a new arena: culture.
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“[F]ashion is one of the outlets in which we can start that cultural shift in today’s society to normalize the hijab in America.” — Melanie Elturk, CEO of Haute Hijab.
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Beautiful Nura Afia in an advertising campaign is a far more appealing and consumer-friendly alternative to CAIR’s Nihad Awad or the political complexities of the Muslim Brotherhood. The face has changed but the message is constant.
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Here you have the two faces of Islamist thought, one which underscores the myth of peace while privately exiling dissenting voices as ignorant, racist or bigoted. Meanwhile, CoverGirl and other brands upholding the hijab as a new standard of beauty, ignore the hijab’s very ugly origins.
Left: Marks & Spencer’s Paisley Print Burkini. Right: An outfit from the Dolce & Gabbana Abaya and Hijab Collection.
As 2016 drew to a close, many people were on the edge of their seats after a defining presidential election between one choice (Clinton) who stood for the status quo and the other (Trump), seen as the harbinger of a resolute victory against radical Islam. For many Muslims, there was a third choice. Unanchored to the changing tides of elections, the long game of Western Muslims who are averse to Western values was largely unaffected by an altered political landscape. They had transitioned to a new arena: culture.
In 2016, the élite fashion label Dolce and Gabbana launched an “Abaya and Hijab Collection.” Months later, at New York Fashion Week, a sartorial Mecca, hosted the first catwalk spotlighting models fully donned in hijabs.
Islamist influence is now using Western culture to solidify Islamist values in society’s more coveted circles: fashion and beauty.
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by Giulio Meotti • March 28, 2017 at 4:30 am
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“[A] section of the Western left has adopted the ideology of the Salafists, Khomeinists and Islamists. It supports their blasphemy codes, and apologias for murder.” — Nick Cohen, The Spectator.
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“Thus the defenders of liberty are styled as fascists, while the fanatics are portrayed as victims!” — Pascal Bruckner, Perlentaucher.
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“It is putting bounties on the heads of Muslims like Maajid Nawaz, who are opposed to Muslim extremism (…) The document is simply an enemies’ list, of the kind that fascists, Stalinists, and other totalitarian thinkers can’t help producing.” — Lee Smith, Tablet.
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“Is the concept of holy war compatible with our ideal of religious toleration? Is it blasphemy—punishable by death—to question the applicability of certain seventh-century doctrines to our own era?” — Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wall Street Journal.
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Most of the solidarity to French cartoonists under threat has come from even braver — but ostracized — Muslim intellectuals.
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At the time of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the literary “Left” stood with the Muslim “anger”, not with the persecuted writer — while all around, translators and publishers were being killed and wounded by the Iranian murderers.
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In the global struggle for the confrontation of ideas between the West and political Islam, too often the Western values are represented by Muslim dissidents and downplayed by the liberals who should be safeguarding them. It is an unpleasant spectacle.
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“The current situation in Europe is deeply troubling: not only are Muslim women within Europe subject to considerable oppression in many ways, such norms now risk spreading to non-Muslim women who face harassment from Muslim men. One would think that Western feminists in the United States and Europe would be very disturbed by this obvious misogyny. But sadly, with few exceptions, this does not appear to be the case”. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has attacked principled and courageous critics of radical Islamism such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali (left), a prominent ex-Muslim writer, and Maajid Nawaz (right), a moderate practising Muslim writer, radio host and politician. (Images source: Wikimedia Commons)
The French daily Le Figaro captured the tragic condition of Muslim dissidents: “Seen as ‘traitors’ by their communities, they are accused by the elites in the West of ‘stigmatizing'”.
Le Point called it “the malediction of the dissident”: “For the European left, a bright danger threatens humanity. This is not terrorism or religious fundamentalism. But dissident intellectuals in the Muslim world”.
This is the meaning of a recent list of fifteen “anti-Islamic extremists,” published by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Among them are, for example, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former member of the Dutch parliament and the most famous dissident from Islamic world, and Maajid Nawaz, a British Muslim who founded the Quilliam Foundation to fight radicalism, and who has been a consultant to Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron.
Nick Cohen, in The Spectator, explained:
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by Douglas Murray • March 27, 2017 at 5:00 am
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Would we be allowed to ask who ISIS are inspired by?
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Would they be allowed to say that the perpetrator was a Muslim?
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Would they be allowed to say that there is a tradition of violence within the Islamic religion which has sadly permitted just such actions for a rather long time. Or would they have to lie?
After deliberately driving a car into crowds of people in London last week, Khalid Masood crashed the vehicle into the fence surrounding Parliament, and stabbed a police officer to death. (Image source: Sky News video screenshot)
The Canadian government suffers from many things. Among them is bad timing.
On Thursday of last week, the Canadian Parliament voted through a blasphemy law specifically designed to protect Islam. As Al-Jazeera was happy to report on Friday, the previous day’s vote condemned “Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination.” The non-binding motion that the Parliament passed also requested that a Parliamentary committee should launch a study to look at how to “develop a whole-of-government approach to reducing or eliminating systemic racism and religious discrimination, including Islamophobia”. The motion passed by 201 votes to 91.
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by Thomas Quiggin • March 27, 2017 at 4:00 am
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The application for judicial review made by IRFAN and Majid also attempts to distance themselves from the Muslim Brotherhood. This seems a bit difficult. Hamas itself was founded as the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, according to Article Two of the Hamas Charter.
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This support for Hamas goes back to at least 1992.
The International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy (IRFAN) has been listed as a terrorism entity in Canada since 2014. It was also identified as a Muslim Brotherhood front group during testimony to the Canadian Senate along with the Muslim Association of Canada, the National Council of Canadian Muslims and Islamic Relief Canada.
The listing as a terrorism entity followed the Canada Revenue Agency’s (CRA) 2011 revocation of their charitable status after a multi-year investigation showed that IRFAN had been funding Hamas, otherwise known as the Muslim Brotherhood in the Palestinian territories. The CRA also made it clear that IRFAN was the successor organization to the Jerusalem Fund for Human Services (JFHS) which had also been funding Hamas. The CRA also observed that IRFAN was deliberately constructed to circumvent the Government of Canada so that it could fund Hamas after the Government of Canada refused to grant the JFHS charitable status.
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by Giulio Meotti • March 26, 2017 at 5:00 am
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Jihadists seem to be leading an assault against freedom and against secular democracies.
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Sunni Islam’s most prominent preacher, Yusuf al Qaradawi, declared that the day will come when, like Constantinople, Rome will be Islamized.
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It is Islam, not Christianity, that now saturates Europe’s landscape and imagination.
Hundreds of Muslims engage in a mass prayer service next to the Coliseum in Rome, on October 21, 2016. (Image source: Ruptly video screenshot)
According to US President Trump’s strategic advisor Steve Bannon, the “Judeo-Christian West is collapsing, it is imploding. And it’s imploding on our watch. And the blowback of that is going to be tremendous”.
The impotence and the fragility of our civilization is haunting many Europeans as well.
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by Amir George • March 26, 2017 at 4:00 am
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“We fought against them [Americans] and instead of harming us, they fed, clothed and rebuilt us. If it had been the Russians who had won the war instead, we would now be like North Korea.” — Owner of a noodle shop, Japan.
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Now is not the time to withdraw from the world, but to love, support and build a hurting and needy world that simply needs to know there is hope.
Soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 4th Battalion hand out small American flags and gifts to children during a goodwill visit to a village outside of Tikrit, Iraq, on April 1, 2006. (Image source: U.S. Army)
People may be familiar with the term “The Greatest Generation,” now almost past, who fought World War II and rebuilt America in the shadow of the Great Depression.
Now there is “The Grateful Generation” — those who were touched by “The Greatest Generation,” their kindness and love in rebuilding the world after World War II. We in Asia and parts of the Middle East have a special place in our hearts for America.
From the graves of brave Americans at Normandy to freeing East Germany from Soviet domination, the United States has been the major force in leading the world for good.
After the end of World War II, General Douglas McArthur put out a call for 10,000 young men and women to help rebuild postwar Japan. Decades of abuse under a terrible dictator began slowly to heal.
My parents came to Japan, separately, from the West, met in Japan, married there, had their family and served the country for nearly 60 years.
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by Majid Rafizadeh • March 25, 2017 at 5:00 am
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It is the fear of this violence, torture and death, wielded by extremist Muslims, that keeps every person desperate to obey.
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If liberals are in favor of freedom of speech, why do they turn a blind eye to Islamist governments such as Iran, which execute people for expressing their opinion? And why do they not let people in the West express their opinion without attacking them or even giving them the respect of hearing what they have to say? They seem, in fact, like the autocratic people from whom I was fleeing, who also did not want their simplistic, binary way of thinking to be threatened by logic or fact.
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As, in Islam, one is not allowed to attack except to defend the prophet or Islam, extremist Muslims need to keep finding or creating supposed attacks to make themselves appear as victims.
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Finally, a short message to liberals might go: Dear Liberal, If you truly stand for values such as peace, social justice, liberty and freedoms, your apologetic view of radical Islam is in total contradiction with all of those values. Your view even hinders the efforts of many Muslims to make a peaceful reformation in Islam precisely to advance the those values.
Anjem Choudary, a radical British Muslim cleric, was sentenced late last year by a British judge to five and a half years in prison for encouraging people to join the Islamic State. (Image source: Dan H/Flickr)
If you had grown up, as I did, between two authoritarian governments — the Islamic Republic of Iran and Syria — under the leadership of people such as Hafez al Assad, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, you would have seen your youth influenced by two major denominations of Islam in the Muslim world: the Shia and the Sunni. I studied both, and at one point was even a devout Muslim. My parents, who still live in Iran and Syria, come from two different ethnic Muslim groups: Arab and Persian.
You also would have seen how the religion of Islam intertwines with politics, and how radical Islam rules a society through its religious laws, sharia. You would have witnessed how radical Islam can dominate and scrutinize people’s day-to-day choices: in eating, clothing, socializing, entertainment, everything.
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by Khadija Khan • March 24, 2017 at 5:00 am
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What is agonizing is that people either enjoyed or criticized the joyful act of a teenager, but no one seems to be noticing that this public trial and her forced apologies only mean further isolation for the young Muslim women.
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Most horrifying is that it seems that even the West has started to buy into the version of “modesty” that these extremists in the Middle East have been forcing on women.
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Why has no one — especially politicized, self-absorbed women’s groups — come to help? Instead, as in the recent Women’s March, they have been advocating for more women’s imprisonment.
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It is important for as many people as possible, both in Britain and world-wide, to say how much they love her beautiful spirit and that they totally stand by her right to dance, sing, play or have fun.
An image from the video “Right to choose: Spotting the signs of forced marriage – Nayana”, produced by the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office. In 2013, 1,302 victims of forced marriage sought help from the British government’s Forced Marriage Unit.
The growth in systematic abuse of women, especially by Islamists in the West, requires democratic governments to introduce strong measures to stop this abuse, before abusive mullahs start harassing women of all faiths, to force them to submit to their wishes.
The recent threats and harassment of a British “Hijabi girl” by Islamists in Birmingham, England, merely for a video showing her dance, have re-exposed the ugly face of this autocratic mindset that owes its existence to extremist states such as Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Enslaving women in general and inflicting repressive agendas — such as domestic violence, sexual abuse, segregation, allowing no say in choosing a partner, education or profession, with abysmal living standards often part of the abuse — is just a small measure of the jihad that the Islamists have managed to unleash across the globe.
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by Alan M. Dershowitz • March 23, 2017 at 5:30 pm
“Fake news” has become a subject of real news. But there’s nothing new about “fake news.” Holocaust deniers have generated fake news for decades. The deniers have funded “research” “institutes,” “journals,” books, magazines, videos, websites, newsflashes – all designed to provide a patina of academic respectability to demonstrable falsehoods.
This entire enterprise is devoted to proving that the holocaust – the systematic murder of more than six million Jews in gas chambers, mass shootings, mobile killing units and other means of implementing the carefully planned genocide – simply did not occur. It was made up whole cloth out of “The Jews” for financial and political gain.
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by Judith Bergman • March 23, 2017 at 5:00 am
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The mayor of Brampton, Ontario, Linda Jeffrey, was also seemingly unconcerned about the calls in Toronto to murder Jews.
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The political establishment also does not seem concerned that imams are saying that the Islamic ruling allowing slaves is still in force. Meanwhile, statistics show that when it comes to hate crimes, Jews are by far the most targeted group.
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No one — neither media, nor politicians — even bothered to ask whether there is a significant connection between the virulent Jew-hatred being preached in mosques and the disproportionately high occurrence of hate crimes against Jews. Instead, the entire Canadian parliament is preoccupied with banning “Islamophobia”.
Ayman Elkasrawy, imam of the Masjid Toronto mosque (front row, wearing white), said on video: “… slay them one by one and spare not one of them… Give us victory over the disbelieving people… Give victory to Islam… Purify Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Jews!” (Image source: Video screenshot from Masjid Toronto via The Rebel)
Imams in Canadian mosques have been inciting the killing of “infidels”, primarily Jews, for years. This agitation appears to have had no visible impact on Canadian parliamentarians, evidently too busy with petitions and motions banning alleged “Islamophobia”.
In 2009, for example, Toronto-area imam Said Rageah, at the Abu Huraira Centre, called on Allah to “destroy” the enemies of Islam from within and “damn” the “infidel” Jews and Christians.
“Allah protect us from the fitna [sedition, affliction] of these people; Allah protect us from the evil agenda of these people; Allah destroy them from within themselves, and do not allow them to raise their heads” prayed the imam.
In 2012, Sheikh Abdulqani Mursal, imam at Masjid Al Hikma mosque in Toronto, explained that Jews are destined to be killed by the Muslims. Citing text from a hadith, he said:
