Biden’s Pier Is a Gift to Hamas Terrorists

Biden’s Pier Is a Gift to Hamas Terrorists

There are mounting concerns that the Biden administration’s pier plan could ultimately boomerang, especially, as Netanyahu himself has warned, if the US aid and the port itself end up in the hands More »

Ubwami bw’Ubupersi na bamedi (Persian’s Kingdom and Med’s Kingdom)

Ubwami bw’Ubupersi na bamedi (Persian’s Kingdom and Med’s Kingdom)

‘Yoseri’ Museveni ari kumwe n’ababyeyi be, Kuki Museveni yanga u Rwanda akomokamo? Umugambi w’Abatutsi bo munzu (y’Abasinga, Abashambo. Abega, Abashingwe) mu karere kibiyaga bigari uhereye mu gihugu cy’Ubuperesi (Uganda) aho bafashe ubutegetsi More »

Hamas’s Industrial Murder: Why Is Senator Chuck Schumer Not Demanding a Change of Leadership in Hamas and Iran?

Hamas’s Industrial Murder: Why Is Senator Chuck Schumer Not Demanding a Change of Leadership in Hamas and Iran?

When the terrorist organization Hamas murders, tortures, rapes and abducts Jews in Israel, do not be surprised that the Jews of today will respond with the righteous might of a nation that More »

Israel’s Strategic Game of Survival

Israel’s Strategic Game of Survival

“They wanted Israel’s counterattack, and then they wanted to hold in the tunnels and use the hostages just to buy time for the international community namely, the United States to stop the More »

“Biden’s actions are a violation of Israel’s sovereignty.”

“Biden’s actions are a violation of Israel’s sovereignty.”

  Israel Betrayed? It seems clear that the Biden administration would like to see the rapid creation of a Palestinian state or at least a “Palestinian unity government” — unfortunately composed of More »

 

Jihad: “All the Fault of the West!” by Lars Hedegaard

  • As long as we in the West are not prepared to take Muslims at their word when they claim to be waging bloody jihad because it is their religious obligation, we have no chance of repelling the current onslaught on the West.

  • First to go will be the welfare states. Shrinking native populations cannot generate enough taxes to accommodate masses of immigrants with so few skills as to be effectively unemployable, or who do not want to contribute to “infidel” societies. Well before mid-century, the number of Muslims in Denmark will be large enough irreversibly to have changed the composition and character of the country.
  • In the United States, a House of Representatives bill, H. Res. 569, has been sponsored that would censor one of the few countries left with freedom of speech. The bill, in accordance with the 10-year plan of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), would criminalize all criticism of Islam, worldwide.
  • Will Muslim non-integration spell the end of the secular state as we have known it? Probably. Religion – or more accurately, Islamic ideology, which knows no distinction between religion and politics – is on the ascendant.

It was not supposed to have happened this way. In 1995 a number of EU member states signed the Schengen Agreement, integrated into European Union law in 1999. The signatory powers promised to abandon their internal border protection in exchange for a promise by the EU authorities that they would police Europe’s external borders. Then the EU authorities, while demanding that the Schengen states keep their borders open, spectacularly failed to honor their part of the agreement. There can be little doubt that the EU packed up, walked out and left its populations to their own devices.

Sadly, their policies have achieved the exact opposite of what they claimed to strive for. Instead of tolerance, we have witnessed division and irreconcilable enmity between cultures and ethnicities that often have nothing in common except a desire to squeeze as much out of the public coffers as they can. Instead of “inclusion,” Europeans have seen exclusion, low-intensity warfare, terror, no-go zones, rape epidemics, murder and mayhem.

Governments, parliamentary majorities and the stars of academia, the media and the commanding heights of culture cannot have failed to notice that their grand multicultural, Islamophile game did not produce the results they had promised their unsuspecting publics. Yet to this day, most of them persist in claiming that unfettered immigration from the Muslim world and Africa is an indisputable boon to Europe.

Recently, in the wake of the so-called “refugee crisis,” some of these notables have thrown out the script and are expressing concern that immigration is out of control. European governments are still allowing millions of so-called refugees to cross all borders and settle anyplace. According to the EU agency Frontex, charged with protecting Europe’s external borders, more than a million and a half illegals crossed Europe’s frontiers between January and November 2015.

Thousands of migrants cross illegally into Slovenia on foot, in this screenshot from YouTube video filmed in October 2015.

Right now there is an ever-widening gap between the people and their rulers. In a conference recently organized by the Danish Free Press Society to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the famous Muhammed cartoons, the British political analyst, Douglas Murray, noted that the European populations are reacting to decades of lies and deception by voting for political parties which, just a few years ago, were vilified as “racist” and “fascist.” Marine Le Pen, of the National Front party, has emerged as a strong candidate in France’s 2017 presidential election.

Perhaps the most momentous political earthquake in Europe was the recent 180-degree about-face by the Danish Social Democratic Party. Only a few years ago, it was a staunch proponent of Muslim immigration, and hammered away at anyone daring to deny the “cultural enrichment” brought about by the spread of Islam.

The leader of Denmark’s Social Democratic parliamentary group, Henrik Sass Larsen MP, on December 18 wrote:

“The massive migration and stream of refugees now coming to Europe and Denmark are of a magnitude that challenges the fundamental premises of our society in the near future… According to our analysis, the stark economic consequences of the current number of refugees and immigrants will consume all room for maneuver in public finance within a few years. Non-Western immigrants have historically been difficult to integrate into the labor market; the same applies to the Syrians that are now arriving. The more, the harder, the more expensive… Finally, it is our analysis that given our previous experience with integrating non-Western people into our society, we are facing a social catastrophe when it comes to handling many tens of thousands that are soon to be channeled into society. Every bit of progress in terms of integration will be put back to zero. … Therefore our conclusion is clear: We will do all we can to limit the number of non-Western refugees and immigrants coming to the country. That is why we have gone far — and much farther than we had dreamed of going… We are doing this because we will not sacrifice our welfare society in the name of humanitarianism. For the welfare society … is the political project of the Social Democratic Party. It is a society built on the principles of liberty, equality and solidarity. Mass immigration — as we have seen in, for example, Sweden — will undermine … our welfare society.”

Clearly, the Danish Social Democratic Party — the architect of Denmark as we have known it — has understood that there is political capital to be defended. It seems finally to have realized that it cannot persist in whittling away its accomplishments if it wants to keep its dwindling share of the votes.

One may speculate that if the Social Democratic Party means what it says, it might have an impact among Social Democratic and Socialist parties in other European countries.

However, as Douglas Murray also pointed out, Westerners suffer from the notion that regardless of how many jihadis, murderers and terrorists claim that their actions are motivated by their love of Allah, they cannot possibly mean it. There must be some other underlying “root cause” that the men of violence are not aware of, but which well-meaning Westerners are keen to tell them about: old Western imperialism, centuries of humiliation, racism, Israel, the Crusades, poverty, exclusion, the Muhammad cartoons, etc. And, of course, that it is all the fault of the West!

As long as we in the West are not prepared to take Muslims at their word when they claim to be waging bloody jihad because it is their religious obligation, we have no chance of repelling the current onslaught on the West. The latest sighting of this shift was just this week, in the form of a U.S. House of Representatives bill, H. Res. 569, to censor one of the few countries left with free speech. The bill, in accordance with the 10-year plan of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to implement UN Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18, would criminalize, worldwide, all criticism of Islam. [1]

As long as the authorities are unwilling to protect their own populations from being overrun by foreigners, many of whom seem prepared to do them harm, we are likely to see the natives take protection into their own hands. On December 16, for instance, there was a violent protest in the small Dutch city of Geldermalsen, as the local authorities were trying to set up an asylum center behind the backs of the local population. No doubt the authorities were taken aback by the activism.

Western societies are based on an implied contract between the sovereign and the people: The sovereign — the king, the president, the government — promises to uphold law and order, protect his people from violence and foreign encroachment and apprehend and punish criminals. In exchange, the citizens promise not to take the law into their own hands. It follows that if the state fails to uphold its part of this social bargain, then the right — indeed the obligation — to protect oneself, one’s family, neighbors and the community, returns to the citizens.

There was also the recent spate of asylum-house burnings in Sweden. According to the Danish-Swedish website, Snaphanen, there have been 40 occasions during the past six months in which buildings intended to house asylum seekers have mysteriously burned to the ground — without anyone being hurt or killed. None of the perpetrators has been caught; no one has claimed responsibility. It all appears organized quite well.

Will citizen activism save Europe? Probably not. Vast areas are too far gone to be saved. Sweden is a broken country, as pointed out by Ingrid Carlqvist in several articles at Gatestone. By 2020, Germany may have 20 million Muslim residents.

We are probably beyond the point where effective change can be obtained by politics in the old sense, for the simple reason that central authorities are not strong enough to make their writ run throughout their national territories. This will spell the end of Europe as we know it, and people who cannot leave, or who choose to stand and fight, will be left to their own devices — and quite possibly entirely new modes of social organization.

First to go will be the welfare states. Shrinking native populations cannot generate enough taxes to accommodate masses of immigrants with so few skills as to be effectively unemployable, or who do not want to contribute to “infidel” societies.

What might post-European Europe look like? Think of Northern Ireland in the time of the Troubles or of ex-Yugoslavia during the civil wars of the 1990s.

When states break down, people’s first concern will be security. Who can and will protect my family and me?

For a long time in Europe there has been talk of “parallel societies” — in which the state ceases to function as a unitary polity — due to the cultural, religious and politico-judicial separation of non-Muslims and Muslims into incompatible and antagonistic enclaves.

There appears to be a growing realization among Danish demographers that third-world immigrants and their descendants, with or without citizenship, will constitute the majority of the Danish population before the end of the century.[2] A sizable segment of this third-world population will be Muslim, and well before the middle of the century, the number of Muslims will be large enough irreversibly to have changed the composition and character of the country.

Will Muslim non-integration spell the end of the secular state as we have known it? Probably. Religion — or more accurately, Islamic ideology — which knows no distinction between religion and politics, is on the ascendant as the constitutive principle among Danish Muslims. As Muslim institutions grow stronger, the Islamic court, or “din,” is bound to become even more powerful as the organizing principle of the Muslim parallel societies.

How will the old Danish, and nominally Christian, population react to this metamorphosis? To a large extent, that will depend on what organizing principle will determine the character of the Danish parallel society. Two possibilities stand out: “Danishness” and “Christianity.” “Danishness” would probably entail a society founded on a nationalistic or ethnic myth, whereas “Christianity” might be more ethnically inclusive and stress society’s Judeo-Christian and humanistic roots.

In either event, it is difficult to see how the secular state could survive, because the parallel societies will not be free to define themselves or determine their political systems or modes of governance. They will constantly be forced to maneuver in response to “the other’s” long-term objectives and immediate actions — as has been seen, for example, in Bosnia, Kosovo, Lebanon, Northern Ireland and the Basque provinces.

Under these conditions, the modern system of sovereign territorial states is likely to break down. We can only guess at what will replace it.

Jihad in Denmark by Judith Bergman

  • Danish Minister of Justice Søren Pape hopes to solve the issue by prosecuting the imam. However, Danish politicians appear to miss the critical fact that there is clearly a thirsty audience for sermons like this.This sermon is a call to violence against Jews.

  • As the Quran cannot be changed, it is crucial to make more broadly known what is in it, so at least people can see the facts confronting them, to help them determine what choices they might care to make for their own future and that of their children.

In 2015, Omar El-Hussein listened to the imam Hajj Saeed, at the Hizb-ut-Tahrir- linked Al-Faruq-mosque in Copenhagen, decry interfaith dialogue as a “malignant” idea and explain that the right way, according to Mohammed, is to wage war on the Jews. The next day, El-Hussein went out and murdered Dan Uzan, the volunteer Jewish guard of the Jewish community, as he was standing in front of the Copenhagen synagogue. El-Hussein had also just murdered Finn Nørgaard, a film director, outside a meeting about freedom of speech.

Two years later, nothing has changed. A visiting imam from Lebanon at the Al-Faruq mosque, Mundhir Abdallah, is preaching to murder Jews:

“[Soon there will be] a Caliphate, which will instate the shari’a of Allah and revive the Sunna of His Prophet, which will wage Jihad for the sake of Allah, which will unite the Islamic nation after it disintegrated, and which will liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Zionists, so that the words of the Prophet Muhammad will be fulfilled: ‘Judgement Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them. The Jews will hide behind the rocks and the trees, but the rocks and the trees will say: ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’ …”

The “words of the Prophet” are from a well-known hadith, number 6985.

Far from hiding this incitement, the mosque posted the sermon, delivered on March 31, on the YouTube page of Al-Faruq Mosque on May 7. The invaluable research organization, MEMRI, translated it.

A reporter from Danish TV channel TV2 news, who recently spent two hours around the Al-Faruq mosque, could not find a single Muslim willing to condemn the imam. “I don’t think he meant anything bad by it,” said Bayan Hasan, a female student. Another Danish Muslim, Mohammed Hussein, incorrectly replied, “According to Islam, Muslims are not allowed to kill”. The Quran verse 8:12, to mention one of many examples, says otherwise: “…I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved, so strike [them] upon the necks and strike from them every fingertip.”

Denmark’s Minister of Integration, Inger Støjberg, called on the mosque and all Muslims in Denmark to condemn the sermon. “If this had happened in a Danish church, it would not have been necessary to ask people to condemn it. It would have been automatic”, she said.

Muslim organizations and imams have, in fact, been completely quiet on the matter. One leading imam, Naveed Baig, from the Danish Islamic Center, simply dismissed the sermon: “Islam as a religion cannot be anti-Semitic, as Islam itself is a Semitic religion”, he said.

The Quran and the hadiths are in fact brimming with anti-Semitism, not to mention exhortations to kill Jews and other “infidels”, and calls for jihad (war in the cause of Islam) — a fact of which Naveed Baig is doubtless well aware.

According to the Quran, people who refuse to acknowledge Allah as the one true god are unbelievers destined for hell: “Verily Allah has cursed the unbelievers and prepared for them a blazing fire” (Quran 33:64). Muslims therefore are superior to all others:

“Ye are the best of peoples, evolved for mankind… believing in Allah… If only the People of the Book had faith, it were best for them: among them are some who have faith, but most of them are perverted transgressors.” (Quran 3:110).

“Soon shall we cast terror into the hearts of the unbelievers… their abode will be the fire: And evil is the home of the wrong-doers.” (Quran 3:151).

As for specific passages about the Jews, the Quranic passages 5:60 and 7:166 talk of the Jews being cursed and transformed by Allah into apes and pigs: “…those who incurred the curse of Allah and his wrath, those of whom some he transformed into apes and swine, those who worshipped evil…” This is the reason Jews today in large parts of the Muslim world are commonly called apes and pigs. Furthermore, “Jews and pagans [are] among the worst of the enemies of the believers”. (Quran 5:82).

The Jews are described as hypocrites (Quran 2:14), and “slayers of His [Allah’s] messengers” (Quran 2:61), who are “cunning” and “hate to see your success and rejoice if any misfortune befalls you” (Quran 3:120). These examples constitute only a part of the innumerable examples in the Quran and the hadiths, not to mention the writings of Islamic scholars.

Therefore, there is nothing unusual about imams calling for the murder of Jews in certain mosques, even in the West. In Canada, for example, in 2016, at Montreal’s Dar Al-Arqam Mosque, an imam recited the same hadith about stones and trees asking Muslims to come and kill Jews hiding behind them.

In Denmark, however, among politicians, news of the sermon generated the usual “shock”. Minister of Justice Søren Pape said it is “insane” that people such as the imam “exist in Denmark”: “It is deeply unsympathetic,” he said. “These are medieval thoughts and it makes me very sad that in Denmark in 2017 there are still people who really have not evolved further.”

Other Danish politicians reacted with similar degrees of “shock” — appearing utterly surprised by basic tenets of Islam, which have only been public for 1400 years.

Søren Pape hopes to solve the issue by prosecuting the imam. In December 2016, Denmark introduced a new provision in the penal code aimed at religious preachers. It is known in Denmark as the “imam provision,” as it is, in practice, mainly aimed at imams. According to the provision, speaking approvingly of terror, murder, rape, violence, incest, pedophilia, coercion and polygamy, whether at private or public events, is prohibited and punishable by fine or prison of up to three years. The “imam provision” exists in addition to the general provision in the penal code, according to which it is prohibited and punishable by fine or prison publicly to threaten, insult or demean a group of persons because of their race, skin color, national or ethnic origin, faith or sexual orientation.

However, even if a Danish court should succeed in convicting the imam, Danish politicians appear to miss the critical fact that there is clearly a thirsty audience for sermons like this.

The Danish Jewish Community reported the imam to the police. Jewish community leader Dan Rosenberg told the newspaper Politiken: “We are concerned that weak and impressionable people may perceive this kind of preaching as a clear call to violence and terror against Jews.” This sermon, however, is not a question of “perception”: This sermon is a call to violence against Jews.

Danish Jews also have more reasons to feel threatened. In October 2015, a Danish girl, then 15, converted to Islam and immediately planned to bomb the Jewish school in Denmark (in addition to a plan to bomb her own school). Her mother, who was concerned about the girl’s new behavior, desperately sought to alert the Danish authorities. The Danish police intelligence service (PET), told the mother not to worry, and assured her that her daughter would not “do anything”, despite being told that her daughter was “desperate” to wage jihad. According to the mother:

“The only advice I got was to do with the food. They thought that if [my daughter] refused to eat pork and I insisted on making it for dinner, then I would have to make two separate dinners.”

A few months after her daughter’s conversion, in January 2016, the mother found a stash of chemicals in her basement and a note where her daughter had written the name of the Jewish school and its opening hours, and the words “jihad” and “Allah is great”. The girl also apparently looked up to Omar El-Hussein, the terrorist who killed Dan Uzan and Finn Nørgaard, and even took his name as her own. After finding the chemicals, the mother reported the girl to the police. The girl is considered so dangerous that she spent part of her detainment in solitary confinement. Her trial recently ended; sentencing is expected mid-May.

As the Quran cannot be changed, it is crucial to make more broadly known what is in it, so at least people can see the facts confronting them, to help them determine what choices they might care to make for their own future and that of their children.

Copenhagen, Denmark. (Image source: Romina Amato/Red Bull via Getty Images)

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

Jihad in Brussels by Judith Bergman

  • “Islam belongs in Europe…. I am not afraid to say that political Islam should be part of the picture.” — Federica Mogherini, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.

  • The Western narrative represents a complete refusal to examine the doctrines of Islam, out of fear of offending Muslims. This is not a purely European phenomenon. The Obama Administration ordered a cleansing of training materials that Islamic groups deemed offensive.
  • One crucial aspect of sharia that the West refuses to internalize is the injunction to perform jihad, both violent and non-violent.
  • “[T]he most important factor is Belgium’s culture of denial… Observers who point to unpleasant truths such as the high incidence of crime among Moroccan youth and violent tendencies in radical Islam are accused of being propagandists of the extreme-right, and are subsequently ignored and ostracized.” — Teun Voten, a Dutch cultural anthropologist who lived in a Muslim area of Brussels between 2005 and 2014.

Federica Mogherini, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, said on June 24, 2015, at a conference aptly named “Call to Europe V: Islam in Europe”:

“The idea of a clash between Islam and ‘the West’… has misled our policies and our narratives. Islam holds a place in our Western societies. Islam belongs in Europe…. I am not afraid to say that political Islam should be part of the picture.”

Nine months later, the ignorance, willful blindness and sheer incompetence regarding even the most basic tenets of Islam, which Mogherini betrayed in her statement has reaped yet another lethal result. What she said is fairly representative of the view aired in public by the European political and cultural establishment.

Thirty-one people were killed and around 300 wounded in Brussels on March 22, in the bombings of Brussels airport and Maalbeek metro station, at the heart of the European Union itself. ISIS took responsibility for these latest terrorist attacks

Mogherini, at an official press conference in Jordan, broke down in tears during her comments on the day’s terrorist attacks. But the pain she, as one of the highest-profile representatives of the EU, exhibited on behalf of the many killed and wounded in Europe, is self-inflicted. It is Europe’s immunity to facts that has led directly to the current state of utter chaos in European security matters.

Predictably, ISIS tried to justify the attacks by claiming that Belgium was targeted because it was “a country participating in the international coalition against the Islamic State” — despite Belgium having participated only in a limited bombing campaign in Iraq that ended nine months ago. Clearly, the Iraq campaign had nothing to do with the Brussels attacks, but served as a useful excuse because this kind of reasoning feeds into the dominant narrative in Europe, as expounded by Federica Mogherini.

The current Western narrative represents a persistent and unfaltering refusal to examine the doctrines of Islam, out of fear of offending Muslims. This refusal is not a European phenomenon. The White House ordered a cleansing of training materials that Islamic groups deemed offensive as far back as five years ago. In 2013, the Washington Times also reported that countless experts on Islamic terrorism were banned from speaking to any U.S. government counterterrorism conferences, which include those of the FBI and the CIA. Government agencies were instead ordered to invite Muslim Brotherhood front groups.

Western political and military establishments, as well as media and cultural elites, refuse to examine the political and military doctrines of Islam, and make them a subject of honest intellectual inquiry. When they are facing an enemy that uses these very doctrines as its reason for being, this refusal can only be described as gross malfeasance and reckless endangerment.

The political and cultural elites regularly communicate a deep fear that the fight against terrorism, if taken too far, may compromise the very democratic values and freedoms that this fight is meant to preserve. What they ignore is the irony that, by abdicating the right freely to inquire about — and discuss — the nature of Islam, they have already compromised the most fundamental democratic value: freedom of thought, expressed by freedom of speech.

Political Islam is indeed already very much a part of the picture in Europe, but not quite in the way Mogherini imagined it.

The political and military doctrines of Islam — the political Islam to which Mogherini so casually refers — are codified in Islamic law, sharia, as found in the Quran and the hadiths. Unlike prevailing misconceptions on Islam, these doctrines are not, in mainstream Islam, subject to mitigating interpretations.

The Islamic injunction to perform jihad, both violent and non-violent, seems an aspect of sharia the West refuses to internalize. CIA director John Brennan, in a 2010 speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, when he was deputy national security advisor for homeland security, described jihad as,

“a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community, and there is nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women, and children.”

This is simply not true. As Dr. Majid Rafizadeh writes, the Quran is not open to interpretation:

“The Qur’an has descended, word for word, from the creator Allah, through Muhammad. This is accepted throughout the entirety of the Islamic word… a true Muslim, who represent[s] the real Islam, should be the one who follows and obeys Allah’s words (from the Qur’an) completely. As a result, anyone who ignores some of the rules is not, and cannot be, considered a reflection of Islam, a good Muslim, or even a Muslim.”

Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah Nasr, a scholar of Islamic law and graduate of Egypt’s Al Azhar University, explained in November 2015 why the prestigious institution, which educates mainstream Islamic scholars, refuses to denounce ISIS as un-Islamic:

“The Islamic State is a byproduct of Al Azhar’s programs. So can Al Azhar denounce itself as un-Islamic? Al Azhar says there must be a caliphate and that it is an obligation for the Muslim world. Al Azhar teaches the law of apostasy and killing the apostate. Al Azhar is hostile towards religious minorities, and teaches things like not building churches, etc. Al Azhar upholds the institution of jizya [extracting tribute from religious minorities]. Al Azhar teaches stoning people. So can Al Azhar denounce itself as un-Islamic?”

Yusuf al-Qaradawi is an extremely influential Islamic cleric and jurist. He is the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as chairman of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, president of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, and the host of a popular Al-Jazeera TV program about sharia. Qaradawi has stated that,

“the shariah cannot be amended to conform to changing human values and standards. Rather it is the absolute norm to which all human values and conduct must conform.”

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, also an Islamist leader, has repeatedly rejected Western attempts to portray his country as an example of “moderate Islam.” He states that such a concept is “ugly and offensive; there is no moderate Islam. Islam is Islam.”

The jihadists who carry out terrorist attacks in the service of ISIS are merely following the commands in Quran 9:5, “Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them…” and Quran 8:39, “So fight them until there is no more fitna [strife] and all submit to the religion of Allah.”

Of course, not all Muslims adhere to this view of sharia. Many devout Muslims, including Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, have said they wish to reform it.

There is, however, a persistent refusal by many in the West to acknowledge that sharia is the doctrine with which jihadists justify the war they wage on the West. This refusal is a most dangerous form of dishonesty; it has arguably already cost hundreds of lives on both American and European soil.

Unless Islam is radically reformed, and progressive Muslims are supported in a serious way (instead of bypassed in favor of Muslim Brotherhood fronts and other questionable organizations), these kind of terrorist attacks — and worse — could well become even more common throughout the West.

The infantile refusal of many government leaders to face the hard facts about the nature of Islam’s tenets, as opposed to indulging in fanciful utopian fantasies, will not change the plans of jihadists; it will only embolden them.

There is now speculation that the terrorist attacks in Brussels might have been revenge for the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, who was apprehended last week as a suspect in the Paris terrorist attacks of November 13, 2015. This speculation misses the point. This time, the excuse is the arrest of a high-profile terrorist; with the next attack, the excuse will be something else. There is never any shortage of things that “offend” jihadists. The heart of the matter, however, is the criminally negligent way in which European and American officials deal with the fundamental issue of the doctrines of Islam.

In a revealing article published November 21, 2015, Teun Voten, a cultural anthropologist who lived in the Muslim majority Molenbeek district of Brussels between 2005 and 2014, asks himself how Molenbeek became the jihadi base of Europe. His answer:

“…the most important factor is Belgium’s culture of denial. The country’s political debate has been dominated by a complacent progressive elite who firmly believes society can be designed and planned. Observers who point to unpleasant truths such as the high incidence of crime among Moroccan youth and violent tendencies in radical Islam are accused of being propagandists of the extreme-right, and are subsequently ignored and ostracized.

“The debate is paralyzed by a paternalistic discourse in which radical Muslim youths are seen, above all, as victims of social and economic exclusion. They in turn internalize this frame of reference, of course, because it arouses sympathy and frees them from taking responsibility for their actions. The former Socialist mayor Philippe Moureax, who governed Molenbeek from 1992 to 2012 as his private fiefdom, perfected this culture of denial and is to a large extent responsible for the current state of affairs in the neighborhood.

“Two journalists had already reported on the presence of radical Islamists in Molenbeek and the danger they posed — and both became victims of character assassination.”

This terror-enabling culture of willful ignorance and denial continues up until today — compounded by the lack of a central and unified security authority in Brussels. The city has 19 mayors, one for each borough assembly — as exemplified by the current mayor of Molenbeek, Françoise Schepmans.

One month prior to the Paris attacks, Schepmans received a list “with the names and addresses of more than 80 people suspected as Islamic militants living in her area,” according to the New York Times. The list was based on information from Belgium’s security apparatus, and included three of the terrorists behind the Paris attacks, including Salah Abdeslam. “What was I supposed to do about them? It is not my job to track possible terrorists,” Mayor Schepmans said. “That is the responsibility of the federal police.”

Federica Mogherini, the EU’s de facto foreign minister (posing at left with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif) said last year, “Islam belongs in Europe…. I am not afraid to say that political Islam should be part of the picture.” Françoise Schepmans (right), mayor of the Molenbeek district of Brussels, received a list with the names and addresses of over 80 suspected Islamic militants living in her area. “What was I supposed to do about them? It is not my job to track possible terrorists,” she said. “That is the responsibility of the federal police.”

This lack of accountability can only exacerbate an already dire situation. Far more damning, according to reports, is that Belgian authorities had accurate advance warnings that terrorists planned to launch attacks at Brussels airport and in the subway — yet they failed to act. This extremely lax approach to security appears to be a widespread problem in the Belgian — and probably European — political and security apparatus.

If there is to be any hope of fighting the terror threats against the West, and actually bringing public life back to a semblance of normality, at an absolute minimum the politics of willful ignorance, political correctness, and denial will have to go.

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

Jews Under Assault in Europe by Robbie Travers

  • A German court actually ruled that firebombing a place where Jews worship is somehow different from attacking Jews.
  • Why was the Israeli embassy not attacked, rather than a synagogue whose worshippers were presumably not Israeli? Presumably the worshippers were German. What happened in the German court was pure Nazi-think and the most undisguised antisemitism: that Jews are supposedly not Germans.

  • Meanwhile, another German Court again rejected an action against your friendly neighborhood “sharia police.”
  • In Germany, it seems, firebombing synagogues is merely “anti-Israeli” even if there are no Israelis there, and “police” who use Islamic sharia law — without legal authority and within a system of law that persecutes women, Christians, Jews and others — are acceptable and legal.
  • The anti-Semitism facing Jews at UK universities led the Baroness Deech to declare British University campuses “no-go zones” for Jews.
  • Simply defining and identifying anti-Semitism is only the start. It is also necessary to start tackling the anti-Semitic attitudes of Islamic communities across Europe and the attitudes of immigrants coming to our nations.
  • What needs to be made clear is that you are welcome here as long as you respect Jews, Christians and all others, as well.

Antonio Tajani, the new President of the European Parliament, has made a bold opening statement of intent: “No Jew should be forced to leave Europe.” While this is an admirable position to hold, it sadly could not be farther from the truth. The poison of anti-Semitism festers in Europe once again.

Europe is seeing yet again another rise in the number of Jews leaving the continent. Jonathan Boyd, Executive Director of the Institute of Jewish Policy Research (IJPR), notes that the number of Jews leaving France is “unprecedented”

The results of the study show that 4% of the French and Belgian Jewish populations had emigrated those countries to reside in Israel.

The IJPR attributes this demographic transformation to the inflow of migrants from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. Is this really surprising? Sadly, when individuals come from nations that have culturally a high dislike of Jews, many of these immigrants might hold anti-Semitic views that eventually get spread.

In France, anti-Semitic incidents more than doubled between 2014 and 2015, from 423 reported incidents to 851. From January to July, anti-Semitic incidents in the UK increased by 11% according to the UK’s Common Security Trust. And this prejudice is increasing.

With such spikes in Jew-hatred, is it surprising that Jews are leaving Europe? Equally concerning is Europe’s blindness to this anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitic graffiti [Illustrative]. (Image source: Beny Shlevich/Flickr)

Recently, a German court decided that the firebombing of a synagogue in Wuppertal was only the expression of “anti-Israeli sentiment.”

Really? Why, then, was not the Israeli embassy attacked rather than a synagogue whose worshippers presumably were not Israeli? They worshippers were German. What happened in the German court was pure Nazi-think: the most undisguised anti-Semitism: that Jews supposedly are not Germans.

The old wine of pure anti-Semitism is now dressed up in new “politically correct” bottles of criticism of Israel. At heart, however, it is your grandmother’s same old Jew-hate, much of it still based on racist tropes. The Jews in that firebombed synagogue were German nationals and may have had absolutely no links to Israel. They do however, have a connection to Judaism.

The German court actually ruled that that attacking a place where Jews worship is somehow different from attacking Jews. Your pet slug would not believe that.

Meanwhile, another German Court again rejected an action against your friendly neighborhood “sharia police.”

In Germany, it seems, burning down synagogues is merely “anti-Israeli” even if there are no Israelis there, but “police” who use Islamic sharia law — without legal authority and within a system of law that persecutes women, Christians, Jews and others — are acceptable and legal.

And people cannot understand why Jews are leaving Europe?

Even though German authorities evidently struggle to identify anti-Semitism, the Israeli government claims there has been an 50% increase in anti-Semitic incidents in Germany just since 2015.

Jew-hatred in Europe is spreading to the workplace and the hubs of supposedly enlightened discourse: universities. At Goldsmith’s University, students scrawled on a public feedback board that they wanted “No more David Hirsch, no more Zionism — a bitter Jew.”

The message and tone here is clear: Jews are not welcome. The suggestion that academics would also not be welcome because of their religion is deeply worrying and should be unacceptable.

Goldsmith’s have since condemned the action, but it is telling that someone felt he could comfortably post such anti-Jewish abuse. The anti-Semitism facing Jews at UK universities led the Baroness Deech to declare British University campuses “no-go zones” for Jews.

Students at Exeter University wear T-shirts glorifying the Holocaust; the Labour Party Chair at Oxford University commendably resigned over members calling Auschwitz a “cash cow” and mocking the mourners of the Paris terrorist attacks; SOAS University is under investigation for lectures likening Zionism to Nazism and delusionally arguing that it was Zionists who were conspiring to increase anti-Semitism to encourage Jews to leave the UK and go to Israel.

The Israeli government also believes there was an increase in anti-Semitic incidents in Britain by 62%.

While it is praiseworthy that UK Prime Minister Theresa May has backed and adopted a new definition of anti-Semitism to attempt to deal with the rising hate crime, simply defining and identifying anti-Semitism is only the start. It is also necessary to start tackling the anti-Semitic attitudes of Islamic communities across Europe and the attitudes of immigrants coming to our nations. What needs to be made clear is that you are welcome here as long as you respect Jews, Christians and all others, as well.

Robbie Travers, a political commentator and consultant, is Executive Director of Agora, former media manager at the Human Security Centre, and a law student at the University of Edinburgh.

Japan: The Grateful Generation by Amir George

  • “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.

  • 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.

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.

When I was growing up in Japan, a strange event seemed to happen almost every day: Someone would stop, bow deeply and say “Arigato” (“thank you”) sometimes accompanied by an awkward handshake or hug.

One day at a noodle shop, the owner said, “What nationality are you?”

“American”, I said.

“Son”, he said, “everything we have is because of Americans. We fought against them 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.”

Throughout the world, particularly in Japan, Korea, Europe, the islands of the Pacific and so many other places, there were, and still are, people scattered throughout the world who were loved and cared for by the Americans.

The most important reason for decades of relative peace and stability in the world is not the United Nations or the European Union or the World Bank.

The real reason is that a hidden group of people, called “The Grateful Generation” fell in love with America and that love never left them.

One of the reasons for a rise in instability in the world is that this Grateful Generation — for all America did for us — is passing.

There is, however, a new “Grateful Generation” — not the same in number and perhaps a bit more subdued, but in a most unlikely place: Iraq.

In Baghdad, we were with millions of America’s best and brightest fanned out — one for every ten Iraqis. We fixed the roads, fed the people, treated their wounds and, as one of my Iraqi relatives put it, “Loved us back to sanity.”

The war in Iraq was steeped in the anti-American propaganda of Saddam Hussein and his insane sons as they looked fearfully out of the curtains, fearing what the Americans would do.

One of my relatives would look fearfully out the window and say, “It looks as if they are sweeping the streets and repairing the school.”

“No,” another would say, “They are probably laying bombs or landmines.”

A few weeks into this strange situation, my family called a meeting.

“Something is going on with these Americans,” they said. “We need to find out what they are planning.” They then concluded that no matter how bad the Americans were, they would not harm the children.

So, the next morning they sent out the children; they came back in the evening laden with toys and candy and gum.

“No,” my family said. “Put all the toys outside — they are probably booby-trapped.”

The next morning, one brave cousin ventured outside to check; there all the toys still sat.

Coming inside, he announced to the huddled family, “I am not sure how to put this, but I think the Americans are all right.”

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)

Another day, a man walked up, put three fingers up to his lips in the traditional Arab style, kissed them and lifted them to the sky. “God bless George Bush!” he said. “God bless America!”

Just think of Afghanistan, or Syria or Africa or Indonesia or the Philippines — the list goes on and on — each place where America went to bind up the wounds of war, help after a natural disaster, treat people for illnesses and more.

Do not listen to those who say that America needs to withdraw from the world because all we get is criticism for the good we do.

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.

Amir George is the author of the book, Liberating Iraq.

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