Terror Attacks Against Israelis Occur Regularly

From the United Nations to the European Union and the mainstream press, it seems that the Jews living in Judea and Samaria are the obstacle for the Middle East coexistence. But have these well-known “observers” really observed what is going on in the areas self-governed by the Palestinian Authority, and that two-thirds of the world’s nations want to turn into another Arab-Islamic state?

Recently, one of the brightest Palestinian novelists, Abbad Yahiya, saw his fourth book, Crime in Ramallah, seized by the Palestinian police in the West Bank. The order came from Palestinian Attorney General Ahmed Barak, who ruled that the book “threatens morality“. The novel’s publisher was arrested and a warrant was issued for Yahiya’s arrest.

When Palestinian novelist Abbad Yahiya recently published his fourth book, Crime in Ramallah, the Palestinian Authority police seized all copies the book, claiming it “threatens morality”. The novel’s publisher was arrested and a warrant was issued for Yahiya’s arrest. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons)

His novel revolves around the murder of a Palestinian girl in Ramallah, and follows the lives of three other boys, from a homosexual to a drinker of alcohol. The novel takes aim at Palestinian taboos such as fanaticism, Islamic extremism and homosexuality. The young gay protagonist of the novel ends up moving to France.

“I do not know what to do”, said Yahiya, who fled to Qatar. “If I return, I will be arrested”.

The head of the Union of Palestinian Writers, Murad Sudani, attacked Yahiya and called for an exemplary punishment as happened with Boris Pasternak and other Soviet novelists. According to Sudani, Yahiya’s novel “violates national and religious values”. He went on to say that “my freedom as a writer ends when the freedom of the country begins”. So Palestinian writers should behave like the Soviet “engineers of souls”, then at the service of Communism, now of Islamic extremism and the Palestinian war against Israel.

Yahiya was also threatened on social media. Ghassan Khader, a Facebook user, wrote on his page that Yahiya “should be killed“. Yahiya should apparently meet the same fate of the Algerian writer Tahar Djaout, murdered by Islamists in 1994. Yahiya’s publisher, Fuad Akleek, was arrested in a library “in a very humiliating way”. The Palestinian police are reported to have entered five hundred libraries and bookshops of the West Bank to seize all the copies of the novel.

Yahiya’s fate is reminiscent of many others under the Palestinian Authority:

• Waleed al Husseini is a Palestinian blogger who has spent ten months in a Palestinian prison for the same “crime” as the one for which the Charlie Hebdo magazine’s journalists were murdered: “Blasphemy”. Like the gay man in Yahiya’s novel, Waleed now lives in France, protected and blessed by Europe’s freedom.
• Haidar Ghanem, the Palestinian human rights activist, was less lucky. He was shot to death by Islamic extremists.
• Mohammed Dajani, the Palestinian professor who took his students on a field trip to Auschwitz, had to resign to save his own life after months-long campaign of death threats, campus riots and intimidation. He broke the Palestinian taboo of Holocaust denial. “I put my job on the line to expose the double-talk we live”, Dajani told Haaretz. “We say we are for democracy and we practice autocracy, we say we are for freedom of speech and academic freedom, yet we deny people to practice it”.
• Many Palestinian Christian activists have also been found dead.

We could go on with this list of Palestinian intellectuals who paid a high price for daring to speak the truth to Abbas and his corrupt circle on many issues: coexistence with the Jews, secularism, sexual freedom, freedom of conscience, human rights, or telling the truth about the Holocaust.

Famous Israeli writers such as David Grossman, Amos Oz and Abraham Yehoshua, the “peaceniks” most pampered by the Western newspapers, should, instead of blaming their own country, ask themselves what Abbad Yahiya’s case means for the Arab-Israeli conflict, and if they should denounce the Palestinian Authority for what it is doing to him.

What happened to Yahiya’s novel contains the real reason for the failed negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. Negotiations did not founder over few houses in Judea and Samaria. The failure is the result of the abyss between an open society, Israel, and a closed regime, the Palestinian entity; between a democracy based on Western liberal principles and a gangster autocracy based on an Islamic dictatorship determined to destroy the Jewish state.

And that abyss is just four kilometers wide, the distance between the Palestinian town of Tulkarem and the Israeli city of Netanya.

A Palestinian State created with the current Palestinian Authority would ethnically cleanse Jews, as Jordan did when it attacked and seized Jerusalem in 1948.

It would be led by Holocaust-enablers such as Hamas, or by a Holocaust-denier such as Mahmoud Abbas. It would destroy freedom of conscience for journalists and writers; exile Christians and homosexuals (hundreds of Palestinian gays now live beyond Israel’s security fence); torture Arab inmates; continue to accept funding from Iran and Sunni Islamic extremists in the name of “the caliphate or death”; impose sharia (Islamic law) as the only law; put people to death for “atheism” and “apostasy” (read, conversion to Christianity). It would most likely oblige women to wear burqas and hijabs as in Saudi Arabia; commemorate terrorists and baby-killers who butchered 1,500 Israeli civilians during the Second Intifada; abolish democratic elections; fill libraries with anti-Semitic and anti-Western books; ban alcohol in public, and ask plainclothes officers to stop young couples to show marriage licenses, as in Iran.

How would you describe that state, if not as a carbon copy of a Nazi government? And what is the only country that would allow the creation of such a state on its own shoulders? The world’s only Jewish State? Of course.

Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.

May 1. The anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), now the third-most popular political party in Germany, adopted a manifesto calling for curbs to migration and restrictions on Islam. The document calls for a ban on minarets, Muslim calls to prayer and full-face veils.

May 2. Hans-Georg Maaßen, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, revealed that around 90 “predominately Arabic-speaking” mosques in Germany are under surveillance. He said they involve mostly “backyard mosques” where “self-proclaimed imams and self-proclaimed emirs” are “inciting their followers to jihad.” He called on moderate Muslims to work with the government to fight extremism and defend the constitutional order. Maaßen was speaking ahead of a security conference in Berlin at which he said that his agency we receiving on average four terror alerts every day: “The Islamic State is committed to attacking Germany and German interests.”

May 2. During an investigation into the mass sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year’s Eve, a chief superintendent from the Cologne police department revealed that he was ordered to remove the term “rape” from an internal police report about the assaults. The superintendent, identified only as Jürgen H., said that he received a telephone call on January 1 from an official at the interior ministry in North-Rhine Westphalia, who told him in an angry tone: “This is not rape. Remove this term from your report. Submit a new report.” The revelation adds to suspicions that there was a political cover-up to avoid fueling anti-immigration sentiments.

May 3. A 20-year-old migrant from Afghanistan sexually assaulted a six-year-old boy in the changing room of a sports hall in Munich. Police said the same migrant had sexually assaulted an 11-year-old girl at a public swimming pool in 2013.

May 3. A high court in Düsseldorf ruled that a group of eight German Islamists who dressed up in orange vests with the words “SHARIA POLICE” and who attempted to enforce Islamic law on the streets of Wuppertal in 2014 would face trial. The ruling overturned a lower court decision in December 2015 that the men would not face trial. The upper court said that the men had violated a law banning the wearing of uniforms at public rallies. The law, which prohibits uniforms that express common political views, was originally designed to ban neo-Nazi groups from parading in public. If convicted, the Islamists face up to two years in prison.

A high court in Düsseldorf, Germany ruled that a group of eight Islamists who dressed up in orange vests with the words “SHARIA POLICE” and who attempted to enforce Islamic law on the streets of Wuppertal in 2014 would face trial. They are charged under a law that prohibits the wearing of uniforms at public rallies — a law originally designed to ban neo-Nazi groups from parading in public.

May 5. A new INSA poll found that 60% of the Germans surveyed believe that Islam does not belong to Germany. By contrast, only 22% said they believe Islam is an integral part of German society. Nearly half (46%) of those surveyed said they are worried about the “Islamization” of Germany. In a similar poll conducted in January 2015, 37% of respondents said Islam belongs to Germany, 15% more than now. The results indicate that German attitudes toward Islam are changing after the decision by Chancellor Angela Merkel to allow more than 1.1 million mostly Muslim migrants to enter the country in 2015.

May 6. A YouGov poll found that 62% of the Germans surveyed do not have any Muslims among their close personal friends. Around 60% of those surveyed also said that in their daily life they had noticed an increased number of Muslims in the country. German multiculturalists blamed Germans for their lack of openness to diversity. Others said the poll proved that Muslims in Germany are isolating themselves from the larger society.

May 7. A gourmet hamburger restaurant in Cologne closed after receiving threats over its “Erdogan Burger.” In April, Jörg Tiemann, the manager of “Urban Burgery,” added to his menu a burger with goat cheese and named it the Erdogan Burger. He was responding to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s effort to prosecute the German comedian Jan Böhmermann for a poem mocking the Turkish leader. In a Facebook post, Tiemann wrote:

“Urban Burgery is forced to close until further notice. Because of concrete threats, we can no longer guarantee the safety of our employees. But one thing is certain: We will not be muzzled by the enemies of democracy, rule of law and civil liberties.”

May 9. Frank-Jürgen Weise, the director of Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge, BAMF), said that his agency will process more than one million asylum requests in 2016. This number includes 430,000 applications from 2015 that are currently being processed; another 300,000 applications from migrants who arrived in Germany in 2015 but have not yet filed claims; and 500,000 applications from migrants who will arrive in Germany in 2016.

May 9. The German branch of Open Doors, a non-governmental organization supporting persecuted Christians, reported that thousands of Christians in German refugee shelters are being persecuted by Muslims, sometimes even by their security guards. The report, which asserts that in most cases German authorities have done nothing to protect the victims, alleges that German authorities and police have deliberately downplayed and even covered up the “taboo issue” of Muslim attacks on Christian refugees, apparently to avoid fueling anti-immigration sentiments.

May 10. A German man shouting “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is the Greatest”) and “infidels must die” stabbed one person to death and slashed three others in an early morning attack at a train station near Munich. Police said the suspect, a 27-year-old unemployed carpenter identified only as Paul H., was mentally ill and did not appear to have any ties to Islamist groups.

May 11. The Federal Police (Bundeskriminalamt, BKA) revealed that federal and state authorities are investigating 40 cases in which Islamic militants entered Germany while posing as refugees. “German security officials have indications that members and supporters of terrorist organizations are being smuggled in with refugees in a targeted, organized way in order to launch attacks in Germany,” according to a BKA spokeswoman.

May 11. The first Muslim woman was elected as speaker of the state parliament in Baden-Württemberg. Muhterem Aras, 50, was born in Turkey and moved to Stuttgart at the age of 12. She is a tax accountant and financial affairs spokeswoman for the Green party. Her election has been widely hailed as a Muslim integration success story. “We wrote history today,” Aras said, adding that Baden-Württemberg had sent “a message of openness, tolerance, and successful integration.” Aras has been a proponent of allowing migrants without German citizenship to vote in local elections.

May 12. In an interview with Deutsche Welle, Germany’s most prominent feminist, Alice Schwarzer, talked about her new book on the sexual assaults in Cologne on December 31. She said that although more than 600 women have filed complaints, she does not expect any of the perpetrators to be convicted:

“For one, because of the method they used: from a huge group of over a thousand men, small groups split off, surrounded and mistreated the women, only to disappear in the large mass again. It was difficult for the victims to identify the perpetrators. Also, what is trivialized as ‘sexual harassment’ in German penal law isn’t punishable to this very day.”

May 12. Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox leaders issued a joint statement calling on Christians in Germany to welcome Muslim migrants with “openness, with the spirit of charity.” The letter — which does not distinguish between legitimate asylum seekers and hundreds of thousands of economic migrants posing as refugees — said:

“The right to asylum, which is laid down in the Basic Law, and the obligations arising from the Geneva Convention, requires our country to grant anyone who seeks refuge with us access to an individual, fair and impartial procedure, regardless of how many people are currently in need of protection and irrespective of the country of origin.

…

“Refugees are people with individual stories; they expose us to new experiences, hopes and ideas. We are convinced: The more people we meet, the less space remains for prejudice, hatred and rejection.”

May 14. The newsmagazine Der Spiegel reported the contents of a leaked document from the Finance Ministry which revealed that the migrant crisis would end up costing German taxpayers €93.6 billion ($105 billion) between now and 2020. About €25.7 billion would be for social spending, especially unemployment benefits and housing support. About €5.7 billion would be destined for language courses and €4.6 billion for integrating refugees into the workforce.

May 15. Nearly a dozen women between the ages of 16 and 48 reported being sexually assaulted by groups of male migrants at a music festival in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin. The attacks at the Carnival of Cultures, where groups of men encircled the women and assaulted and robbed them, were similar to those in Cologne on New Year’s Eve.

May 16. In an interview with Die Welt, Beatrix von Storch, the deputy leader of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, called on Germany’s main Islamic associations to “explicitly distance” themselves from Islamic sharia law, something they so far refused to do. She said the AfD had nothing against individual Muslims, but it opposed political Islam, which she said contradicts the German constitution.

May 17. A court in Hamburg ruled that the author of a poem lampooning Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was prohibited from publicly reciting passages of his work. The court said that comedian Jan Böhmermann was allowed to recite only six of the 24 lines of his poem, thereby handing Erdogan a legal victory in a case that prompted a debate in Germany over freedom of speech. Chancellor Angela Merkel personally authorized criminal proceedings against the comic. She was accused of pandering to Erdogan’s autocratic government.

May 18. The Berliner Morgenpost reported that a Turkish-born Salafist had been given access to the secure areas of both of the Tegel and Schönefeld airports in Berlin for nearly a year after authorities discovered his ties to fundamentalist Islam. The 24-year-old man, identified only as Recep Ü., was fired after he attempted to smuggle brass knuckles into the secure area of the Schönefeld airport. Wisag Airport Service Berlin, the company that directly hired the man, said that neither German police nor German intelligence had passed on information that the man was an active member of Germany’s Salafist scene.

May 18. The Berliner Morgenpost reported that large groups of male migrants have been gathering at the Boulevard Berlin shopping mall in the Steglitz district of the capital, where they have been sexually assaulting female passersby. At least 35 teenage migrants have been loitering at the mall for several weeks, in part because there is free access to the Internet. When security guards asked them to leave the premises, the youths called for back-up and soon dozens more teenage migrants arrived to taunt and harass the guards, who were required to use pepper spray to defend themselves.

May 22. A doctor in Cologne is being sued for discrimination after he declined to treat a Muslim woman who refused to shake his hand. The woman said she could not shake the doctor’s hand on religious grounds, but the doctor noted that the Koran does not prohibit handshakes. After the woman became confrontational, the doctor declined to treat her on the grounds that there was no basis of trust between doctor and patient. The woman’s husband is now suing the doctor for religious discrimination. The doctor faces a fine of €2,000 ($2,250).

May 23. A 23-year-old asylum seeker from Iraq who was wearing a T-shirt saying “I’m Muslim Don’t Panic” was assaulted by fellow refugees for offending Islam. After ripping his T-shirt to shreds, a 27-year-old Syrian and a 33-year-old Lebanese beat the man so badly that he was hospitalized. The two men were arrested and charged with causing grievous bodily harm.

May 23. Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann announced a new plan to recruit migrants to the police force regardless of whether they have acquired German citizenship. He said he hoped the initiative would create a “more direct line” to people with an immigrant background by hiring those who speak their language and understand their mentality. Herrmann said the plan was motivated not by the threat of Islamic terrorism, but by a series of xenophobic murders committed between 2000 and 2007 by a now defunct neo-Nazi group called the National Socialist Underground (Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund, NSU).

May 24. Police arrested a 26-year-old migrant from Pakistan suspected of murdering a 70-year-old woman in her home near Heilbronn. The man, who was living in an asylum shelter in Öhringen, had left documents in Arabic and English “of an overwhelmingly religious nature” at the scene of the crime.

May 25. Germany’s coalition government agreed on a new “Integration Law” aimed at regulating the rights and responsibilities of asylum seekers in Germany. The main focus of the law is to encourage refugees to learn enough German to be able to find a job and help pay for their living expenses. Critics say the new law is a largely symbolic measure directed at reassuring German voters and blunting the rise of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party. They say the new law is inadequate to deal with Germany’s integration problems, in part because it applies only to legitimate asylum seekers, not to the hundreds of thousands of economic migrants who have entered Germany illegally by posing as asylum seekers.

May 25. A 19-year-old migrant from Iraq was sentenced to two years in prison for raping a 21-year-old woman at the train station in Bad Schwartau, a town in northern Germany. The man —who admitted to dragging the woman into the men’s restroom and raping her — received the minimum possible sentence according to Section 177 of Germany’s criminal code.

May 26. A 26-year-old migrant from Afghanistan was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for raping a woman who had offered him accommodation in her home in Cologne. The woman had offered the room by means of a website called “Refugees Welcome” (Flüchtlinge Willkommen), which “supports decentralized housing solutions for refugees.” According to the website: “Through our work, we aspire to contribute to nurturing an open society based on principles of solidarity and equality of all. One of our core principles as an organization is that no one is illegal.”

May 26. The newsmagazine Focus reported that increasing numbers of Germans are relocating to Hungary because of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open door migration policy. A real estate agent in a town near Lake Balaton, a popular tourist destination in western Hungary, said that eight out of ten Germans who want to relocate there cite Germany’s migration crisis as the reason for their desire to leave the country.

May 27. The head of the Protestant Church in Germany, Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, called for Islam to be taught in all German public schools as a way to distance young Muslims from radical ideologies. In an interview with the Heilbronner Stimme, Bedford-Strohm said that teaching Islam in schools nationwide would give Muslim students the opportunity to take a critical approach to their own religion: “Tolerance, freedom of religion and freedom of conscience should apply to all religions. These principles can be best taught if religion is part of the state’s educational mission.” Bedford-Strohm said German Islamic associations — many of which have ties to foreign governments, including Turkey and Saudi Arabia — should be responsible for developing and teaching these courses.

May 27. A Protestant church in Hamburg held a funeral service for a convert to Islam who was killed fighting for the Islamic State in Syria. The controversial funeral at the St. Pauli church was for a teenager named Florent, who was born in Cameroon and raised as a Christian in Hamburg. When he was 14, Florent converted to Islam and changed his name to Bilal. He quickly became radicalized and joined the German Salafist movement. He left for Syria on a false passport in May 2015 and was killed three months later. Pastor Sieghard Wilm, who organized the “interfaith” funeral, was criticized for “idealizing” the life of the terrorist. He responded by saying that the church should be a “place of learning for the respect of other religions.”

May 29. Green party politician Stefanie von Berg called for new mosques to be built in every district of Hamburg so that the city’s burgeoning Muslim population has enough space to pray. She said the construction of visible new mosques is essential for integrating the Muslim community. The Heinrich Böll Foundation, a think tank linked to the Green party, estimates that there are more than 150,000 Muslims in Hamburg, the second-largest city in Germany, but less than 50 mosques.

May 31. Groups of male migrants sexually assaulted at least 18 women at an outdoor festival in Darmstadt. The attacks at the Schlossgrabenfest, in which large numbers of men surrounded women and sexually assault them, were similar to those that occurred in Cologne on New Year’s Eve and the Carnival of Cultures in Berlin on May 15. The phenomenon whereby women are encircled by groups of men and sexually harassed, assaulted, groped and raped is known in Arabic as “taharrush” (al-taharrush al-jinsi, Arabic for “sexual harassment”).

May 31. In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Dalai Lama said that Germany has accepted “too many” migrants and that they should eventually be returned to help rebuild their home countries. “Germany cannot become an Arab country,” he said. “Germany is Germany.”

Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter. His first book, Global Fire, will be out in 2016.

May 1. Mubashir Jamil, a 21-year-old man from Luton, was arrested on suspicion of attempting to travel to Syria and engage in “violent jihad” with the Islamic State. He was charged with “engaging in conduct in preparation for committing acts of terrorism.”

May 2. A senior British jihadi who boasted of recruiting hundreds of Britons for the Islamic State was killed in a drone strike in Syria, according to the Independent. Raphael Hostey, also known as Abu Qaqa al-Britani, left Manchester to join the Islamic State in 2013. The 23-year-old graphic designer became a key recruiter of British fighters and jihadi brides for the terror group and was also heavily involved in its propaganda. At least 700 people from the UK have travelled to support or fight for jihadist groups in Iraq and Syria.

May 4. The “Department of Theology” of the Blackburn Muslim Association ruled that it is “not permissible” for a woman to travel more than 48 miles — deemed to be the equivalent of three days walk — without her husband or a close male relative. The group also ruled that men must grow beards and women must cover their faces. The rulings were accompanied by the catchphrase: “Allah knows best.”

May 7. Labour Party politician Sadiq Khan was sworn in as mayor of London. He is the first Muslim to lead a major European capital. During the election campaign, Khan faced a steady stream of allegations about his past dealings with Muslim extremists and anti-Semites.

British politician Paul Weston warned that Khan’s rise is a harbinger of things to come:

“The previously unthinkable has become the present reality. A Muslim man with way too many extremist links to be entirely coincidental is now the Mayor of London. … In a couple more decades Britain may well have its first Muslim Prime Minister. … Reality cannot argue with demographics, so the realistic future for Britain is Islamic.”

May 7. Mohammed Shaheen, a 43-year-old father of seven, was sentenced to 16 years in prison for raping underage schoolgirls. Shaheen, an immigrant from Pakistan, told the court he was a devout Muslim who had been framed by his victims. Judge Martin Steiger QC said: “He masqueraded as religious when all along he was behaving in this hypocritical way.”

May 8. The Times reported that Britain’s biggest Muslim charity will brand hundreds of buses around the country during Ramadan with a slogan proclaiming glory to Allah. The initiative by Islamic Relief, a government-backed organization, is an attempt to “break down barriers” and portray Islam in a positive light. Islamic Relief has paid for hundreds of buses in Birmingham, Bradford Leicester, London and Manchester to carry advertisements with the slogan “Subhan Allah,” which means “Glory be to Allah” in Arabic.

May 8. Six Algerian terror suspects with links to al-Qaeda were allowed to stay in Britain after winning a protracted legal battle. The Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) ruled that there was a “real risk” the men would be tortured by the Algerian security services if they were deported. This would have violated Article 3 of the Human Rights Act, which guards against “torture or degrading or inhuman treatment.”

May 9. A Muslim man who was found guilty of threatening to behead a candidate of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) had his sentence overturned on appeal. Aftab Ahmed, 45, had been found guilty of making threats to kill David Robinson-Young, but a Newcastle Crown Court judge said he believed that Ahmed did not intend to act on his threat.

May 10. The Greater Manchester Police (GMP) apologized for a counter-terrorism exercise in which a mock suicide bomber shouted “Allahu Akbar” (Allah is the Greatest). Eight hundred volunteers took part in the overnight drill to make it as realistic as possible. Manchester peace activist Erinma Bell criticized the use of a “Muslim terrorist.” She said “a terrorist can be anyone” and “we need to move away from stereotypes.” A local Muslim leader, Syed Azhar Shah, said it was “shocking to portray Muslims as terrorists” and accused the GMP of “institutional racism.” A statement released by GMP said:

“The scenario for this exercise is based on an attack by an extremist Daesh-style organization and the scenario writers have centered the circumstances around previous similar attacks of this nature, mirroring details of past events to make the situation as real life as possible for all of those involved. However, on reflection we acknowledge that it was unacceptable to use this religious phrase immediately before the mock suicide bombing, which so vocally linked this exercise with Islam. We recognize and apologize for the offense that this has caused.”

May 10. The trial began of three Muslims who plotted to behead British citizens after being inspired by an Islamic State order “to kill civilians everywhere in the West.” The court heard that Haseeb Hamayoon, 29, Yousaf Syed, 20, and his cousin Nadir Syed, 22, planned to carry out a terrorist atrocity after a fatwa was issued by Islamic State spokesman Abu-Mohammad al-Adnani. Hamayoon, who has a Pakistani passport, had bought a “Rambo First Blood II” hunting knife online using his wife’s bank account. British born Nadir Syed had stored images of Lee Rigby’s killers, and the three men had allegedly shared images of beheadings.

May 11. Prime Minister David Cameron apologized to Suliman Gani, a Muslim extremist, for saying he is a supporter of the Islamic State. Gani said accusations that he backs the Islamic State are defamatory and must be retracted. In a statement, Cameron said he was referring to reports that Gani supports “an” Islamic state rather than “the” Islamic State. The Muslim Council of Britain called on Cameron to repeat his apology in Parliament, and for an “urgent review” of Islamophobia in the Conservative party.

May 15. The BBC’s religious output is too Christian, an internal review concluded. A report by Aaqil Ahmed, the BBC’s head of religion and ethics, argued that that Muslim, Hindu and Sikh faiths should get more airtime. One Muslim leader suggested the review could lead to Friday prayers from a mosque being broadcast in the same way that Christian church services currently feature in the BBC’s programming. Ahmed’s appointment to the BBC in 2009 was controversial because of allegations he had shown a pro-Islam bias in his previous role at Channel 4, according to the Telegraph.

May 16. The government confirmed that Sharia-compliant student loans will be offered for the first time in Britain as part of an effort to boost the number of young Muslims applying to university. The new halal (permitted or lawful) finance model complies with Sharia law, which forbids Muslims from taking out loans on which they would be charged interest. In a white paper, the government said:

“We will introduce an alternative finance system to support the participation of students who, for religious reasons, might feel unable to take on interest-bearing loans…. To ensure participation and choice are open to all, we plan to legislate for the creation of an alternative model of student finance.”

May 17. One-third of Muslim adults in Britain do not feel “part of British culture,” according to a new report on British multiculturalism. Nearly half (47%) of Muslims consider their Islamic faith to be the most important part of their identity. Only half (54%) of British adults believe there are a set of values that all nationalities and religions in Britain can agree upon in the future.

May 17. Belmarsh, a maximum-security prison in London, has become “like a jihadi training camp,” according to testimony from a former inmate. Now a whistleblower, the former inmate said that a group of jihadists who call themselves “the Brothers,” or “the Akhi” (Arabic for brother), have gained control of the prison, where many convicted terrorists and terror-related offenders mix freely with ordinary prisoners. “The problem is that Belmarsh is also a holding prison and so young people who are brainwashed and indoctrinated then go out into the wider prison system and create wider Akhi networks.” In the five years to December 31, 2014, the number of Muslim inmates at Belmarsh has more than doubled to 265, or 30% of the total prisoners.

May 17. A Muslim convert who was arrested for a plot to behead a British soldier had his sentence reduced. Brusthom Ziamani, 20, was arrested in east London; he was carrying a 12-inch knife, a hammer and an Islamic flag. At his trial, the court was told that he had researched the location of Army bases in London and had shown his ex-girlfriend weapons, described Lee Rigby’s killer, Michael Adebolajo, as a “legend” and told her he would “kill soldiers.” The judges reviewing his sentence said: “Given his youth, we consider that the custodial part of the sentence, namely 22 years, was too long.” Instead they gave him 19 years.

May 18. Ofsted, the official government agency responsible for inspecting and regulating British schools, admitted that it failed properly to inspect a school run by the Deobandis, a conservative Muslim sect, because the inspector was “prohibited” from talking to pupils or staff. The inspector’s report into child safety at the private Zakaria Muslim Girls’ High School in Batley said that celebrations for the Islamic festival of Eid meant he could only speak to senior managers. After Sky News reported on the issue, Ofsted said it was taking “appropriate action” against the inspector concerned and has re-inspected the school, which teaches 149 girls aged 11 to 16. Deobandis, many of whom are said to shun non-Muslims, are thought to control around half of Britain’s private Islamic schools.

May 18. The Queen’s Speech, setting out the government’s program for the next session of parliament, unveiled a controversial new counter-extremism bill that includes powers to gag individuals and ban organizations deemed as extremist. The bill does not, however, include a definition of extremism. Until now the main focus of British policy has been to prevent violent extremism. Simon Cole, the police lead for the government’s Prevent anti-radicalization program, said that the proposals targeting alleged extremists are not enforceable and risk creating “thought police” in Britain by making police officers judges of “what people can and cannot say.”

May 18. A Muslim man who was arrested after giving police a false name filed a lawsuit against the City of London Police for discrimination. Akmal Afzal, 23, claims he was arrested at the 2012 Olympics because he was an “Asian man with a beard.” Afzal, a Briton of Pakistani descent, was released without charge but is suing for false imprisonment, assault and discrimination. His lawyer said: “His position is he did nothing wrong and he says the reason he was treated in the way he was relates to his ethnic origin and/or his religion.”

May 22. The government was accused of burying a report on prison extremism which warns that staff have been reluctant to tackle Islamist behavior for fear of being labelled “racist,” according to the Sunday Times. The independent review, commissioned by Secretary of State for Justice Michael Gove, says that Islamist inmates have exploited the “sensitivity to racism” among prison staff by making false complaints that they are victims of discrimination. The review recommended the creation of “specially designated units” in high-security prisons to house the most “dangerous, extreme and subversive” Islamists. There are more than 12,000 Muslims in prisons across England and Wales, according to the latest figures.

May 23. British and American intelligence services identified 27-year-old El Shafee Elsheikh as the fourth member of the Islamic State execution cell responsible for beheading 27 hostages. The four guards, led by “Jihadi John,” were nicknamed the “Beatles” because of their English accents. Elsheikh, who was granted asylum in Britain when he was seven, left for Syria in 2012 after being radicalized in just 17 days after attending mosques in London.

May 23. A British Muslim woman who wanted raise her children in the Islamic State in Syria was jailed for two and a half years. Lorna Moore, 34, who failed to tell authorities that her husband, Sajid Aslam, 34, had left for Syria, was planning to take her three young children, one of them 11 months old, to the war zone. During sentencing at the Old Bailey, Judge Charles Wide said Moore, a Muslim convert from Walsall, West Midlands, “knew perfectly well of [her] husband’s dedication to terrorism.”

May 23. A survey conducted by ComRes on behalf of Ahmadiyya Muslim Community UK found that 33% of British adults believe that Islam promotes violence in the UK. The study also found that 56% of Britons disagree with the view that Islam is compatible with British values.

May 24. The BBC reported that a National Health Service (NHS) doctor who spent seven years working in Britain left his wife and two children in Sheffield to join the Islamic State. Issam Abuanza, 37, a Palestinian doctor with British citizenship, is the first practicing NHS doctor known to have joined the Islamic State.

May 25. Police in West Yorkshire revealed that they are currently investigating 220 alleged cases of child sex grooming in Keighley and Bradford. The cases involve 261 suspects and 188 victims. The revelation came after Keighley’s former MP, Ann Cryer, called for the perpetrators of the crimes to be brought to justice. Cryer suffered verbal abuse and was accused of “demonizing” the Asian community when she began a campaign more than a decade ago to get the authorities to tackle child sex grooming in Keighley.

May 25. A Nigerian man launched an appeal against a decision by the Home Office to strip him of his British nationality. The man, known only as L2 for legal reasons, is directly associated with close friends of Michael Adebolajo, who murdered Lee Rigby in London in May 2013, and Mohammed Emwazi, or “Jihadi John.” L2 was deemed such a national security threat that Home Secretary Theresa May personally signed an order removing his British nationality in 2013.

May 26. Home Secretary Theresa May established an independent review into the “misuse” of Sharia law in Britain. The inquiry will examine if Sharia ideas are being “misused or exploited” to discriminate against women. The review will not, however, examine whether Sharia law itself is discriminatory against women. A Home Office statement said: “It will not be a review of the totality of Sharia law, which is a source of guidance for many Muslims in the UK.” According to May, many British people “benefit a great deal” from Sharia teaching.

Baroness Cox, who has spearheaded a parliamentary drive to rein in unofficial Sharia courts in Britain, said:

“My reservation is that it won’t get to the root of the problem. … a lot of Muslim women I know say that the men in their communities just laugh at this proposed investigation, that they will go underground so the investigation will have to be very robust.

“But the aspects which are causing such concerns — such as that a man can divorce his wife by saying ‘I divorce you’ three times — that is inherent; the right to ‘chastise’ women is inherent; polygamy is inherent. I don’t think those things are a distortion of Sharia law. These are aspects of Sharia law which are unacceptable.”

May 27. A British citizen who plotted to carry out a suicide bomb attack at Heathrow Airport was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Minh Quang Pham, 33, was sentenced in New York for travelling to Yemen to train with members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Pham pled guilty to three counts of terrorist-related activity based on his support for the group, but denied he intended to carry out his plot and no attack ever occurred. Pham, a Vietnamese born British convert to Islam, was first arrested in Britain in June 2012 and was extradited to the U.S. in February 2015.

May 29. Music festivals, big sports venues and nightclubs have been placed on “high alert” for potential jihadist attacks, according to a senior anti-terrorism officer interviewed by the Sunday Times. Neil Basu, the deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said that crowded places — including Glastonbury, billed as the world’s largest music festival, which will draw 135,000 people to Somerset from June 22 to 26 — are a major concern for police this summer. Basu warned: “These people are perfectly happy to target civilians with the maximum terror impact. Crowded places were always a concern for us, but now they are right at the top of the agenda.”

May 31. The trial began of a Muslim man who tried to decapitate a random stranger in the London Underground. Somalia-born Muhiddin Mire, 30, attacked musician Lyle Zimmerman, 56, at Leytonstone Underground station on December 5 with a knife while yelling, “This is for my Syrian brothers; I am going to spill your blood.” The jury was told that after the attack, police found images of Islamic State hostages having their throats cut on Mire’s cellphone. The prosecutor said:

“At the end of the assault, when Mr. Zimmerman was lying motionless and defenseless on the floor of the ticket hall, the defendant crouched over him and quite deliberately began to cut Mr. Zimmerman’s throat with a knife blade. Mercifully, Mr. Zimmerman survived the ordeal because, although he suffered three jagged wounds to the front of his neck, none of them caused any damage to any of the major blood vessels in that area.”

Left: Muhiddin Mire, a Somalia-born Muslim, tried to behead musician Lyle Zimmerman at a London Underground station with a knife while yelling “this is for my Syrian brothers.” Right: Belmarsh maximum-security prison in London has become “like a jihadi training camp,” according to testimony from a former inmate.

Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter. His first book, Global Fire, will be out in 2016.