The World’s Shameful Silence on Hamas

The World’s Shameful Silence on Hamas

Six months after the ceasefire went into effect in the Gaza Strip, Hamas remains firmly in power. Despite international promises, diplomatic initiatives, and the much-publicized “Board of Peace,” the Iran-backed Islamist group More »

The Crown’s Moral Voice: King Charles in Washington and the Test of Western Clarity

The Crown’s Moral Voice: King Charles in Washington and the Test of Western Clarity

[P]arts of the West have become too cautious in naming the nature of the threats they face. The question is whether, at a time when the West is confronted by terrorism, tyranny, More »

Uwiteka Imana Nyiringabo ategeka ko Paul Kagame atazabona umusimbura ku ngoma uturuka mu muryango we!!!

Uwiteka Imana Nyiringabo ategeka ko Paul Kagame atazabona umusimbura ku ngoma uturuka mu muryango we!!!

Ijambo ry’Uhoraho Uwiteka Imana Nyiringabo rikomeza kunzaho cyane, maze rirambwira riti, mwana w’umuntu, wisubizemo imbaraga ukomeze umurimo wa data wo mu ijuru kuko abakugambanira nta bwo bafite ububasha bwo ku kugeraho kuko More »

International Law Can’t Stop Tyrannical Regimes

International Law Can’t Stop Tyrannical Regimes

Former head of Human Rights Watch Kenneth Roth and his chorus, including morally blind academics claiming legal expertise, promote an imaginary “rules-based international order” that paralyzes democracies while protecting despotic dictators. Under More »

 

Merkel Government Still in Denial by Vijeta Uniyal

  • Turkey’s Kurdish problem is not a military one. On the contrary, the military aspect of the problem is the consequence, not the root cause. Turkey’s Kurds have been demanding a homeland since the 19th century — long before the modern Turkish state was born in 1923.

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  • It is time that Ankara rethinks its diagnosis about the Kurdish dispute. The Turks can start by asking themselves why their Kurdish compatriots choose to live in mountainous hideouts, fight, kill or be killed.
  • In this year’s Rule of Law Index, released by the World Justice Project, Turkey ranked 99th out of 113 countries, scoring worse than Nigeria and Myanmar.

Turkey can sometimes look like a bad joke. Turkey sits in the lowest ranks of any credible index measuring press freedoms and the rule of law.

Reporters Without Borders, for instance, in its 2016 report, put Turkey into the 151st place out of a list of 180 countries — ranked below Pakistan, Russia and Tajikistan.

In this year’s Rule of Law Index, released by the World Justice Project, Turkey ranked 99th out of 113 countries, scoring worse than Nigeria and Myanmar.

Turkey’s leaders, nevertheless, recently condemned the state of press freedoms in Europe and the United States. An official statement claimed that press freedoms had a problematic and restrictive state in “Western democracies such as, France, Germany, England, Sweden, Spain, Netherlands and the USA.”

But not all Turkish news is equally amusing. On Dec. 10, a twin bomb in Istanbul killed 44 people and injured more than 150. The perpetrators were an urban branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been fighting for a Kurdish homeland since 1984. The conflict has already taken nearly 40,000 lives.

The aftermath of one of the two December 10 bombs in Istanbul. The attacks killed 44 people and injured more than 150. (Image source: CCTV America video screenshot)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan himself announced the more recent bloody picture. Calling for a “national mobilization against all terrorist organizations,” Erdogan said that 1,178 people have been killed since July 2015 in Turkey’s fight with the PKK. Bomb attacks by the Islamic State (ISIS) claimed another 330 lives. Those numbers exclude 248 people who died during the bloody coup attempt of July 15, as well as 9,500 apparent PKK members who were killed by Turkish security forces. Turkey also claims that it killed 1,800 ISIS members since July 2015.

These numbers put the total death toll at 13,056 in a span of less than 17 months.

This is not a winning war for any party. From the point of view of asymmetrical warfare, Erdogan’s struggle looks futile. If, in Erdogan’s numbers, Turkey has killed 9,500 PKK fighters in 17 months and the organization is still capable of striking the heart of Turkey’s biggest city, Turkey’s security and intelligence officials might wish to rethink their warfare strategy. More importantly, politically, Turkey’s diagnosis is problematic. Erdogan claims that terror keeps taking lives in Turkey merely because “dark external forces were acting against Turkey’s interests.”

In Erdogan’s laughable narrative, the entire world of major powers has united to conspire against Turkey, solely with the aim of stopping the rise of this Muslim nation where per capita GDP is less than $10,000. The goal of this allegation is to keep a majority of Turks united behind their beloved leader. But it has not, and will not, solve Turkey’s decades-long dispute with its Kurdish minority.

Turkey’s Kurdish problem is not a military one. On the contrary, the military aspect of the problem is the consequence, not the root cause. Turkey’s Kurds have been demanding a homeland since the 19th century — long before the modern Turkish state was born in 1923. Both the Ottoman and Turkish states, however, have viewed the Kurdish problem as a military matter that should have a military solution. They have been wrong. It is time that Ankara rethinks its diagnosis about the Kurdish dispute. The Turks can start by asking themselves why their Kurdish compatriots choose to live in mountainous hideouts, fight, kill or be killed. They have a sentimental, romantic longing for a homeland.

Erdogan’s theory, that the evil West is trying to stop Turkey’s rise, fails to explain any of the several Kurdish uprisings during a failing Ottoman Empire and a newborn, poor republic.

Turkey’s Kurdish problem is a political one. It can only be solved through political means, most notably through peaceful negotiations. Otherwise, many more days of national mourning will be awaiting Turks and Kurds.

Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a Turkish columnist for the Hürriyet Daily and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

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Members of US Congress Call for Shutdown of PLO’s US Office

Standing with Israel during a time of crisis, US lawmakers have demanded that the Obama administration close the PLO embassy in Washington while Palestinian incitement and terror attacks against Israelis continue. 


Members of Congress sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry calling for the shutdown of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) semi-official embassy in Washington, in wake of continued Palestinian terror attacks in Israel that have killed 21 victims and wounded over 250.

Senators Ted Cruz (R, Tx) and Congressman Mark Meadows (R, NC) co-authored the letter which was signed by 30 other members of Congress, who demanded that the administration revoke the PLO’s waiver permitting it to maintain an office in the US capital.

In the letter, the senators accuse the PLO of inciting to terror, funding terrorism and paying imprisoned Palestinian terrorists a salary as an award for acts of terrorism, and bring materials provided by the Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) to substantiate their assertions.

Israel has been facing a wave of attacks, and “the spike in violence in Israel is directly connected to the Palestinian government’s teaching of hate and glorification of terrorism,” the letter stated.

Ted Cruz

Sen. Ted Cruz. (AP/Charlie Neibergall)

“Shockingly, despite being complicit in spreading hatred and terror, the PLO retains an office in Washington, D.C.,” the lawmakers wrote. “We ask that the State Department revoke the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s waiver to maintain an office in the United States.”

“Closing the PLO office in Washington, D.C., would send a clear statement that the kind of incitement to violence perpetrated by the PLO and its leaders will not be tolerated,” they stressed in the letter. “The United States government has an obligation to publicly denounce the PLO’s actions and should immediately revoke its waiver. Allowing the PLO to maintain an office in Washington, D.C. provides no benefit to the United States or the peace process.”

Meet the Western Charlatans Justifying Jihad by Giulio Meotti

  • Why has the philosopher, Michel Onfray, become so popular among the French jihadists fighting in Syria and Iraq? Journalist David Thomson, a specialist in jihadi movements, explained that “Onfray is translated into Arabic and shared on all pro-ISIS sites.”

  • Onfray recognizes that we are at war. But this war, to him, was started by George W. Bush. He “forgets” that 3,000 Americans were killed on September 11, 2001. If you remind him that “ISIS kills innocent people”, Onfray will reply: “We have also killed innocent people.” It is the perfect moral equivalence between ISIS and the West. Barbarians against barbarians! With his moral relativism, Onfray opens the door to Islamist cutthroats.
  • The French intellectual Thomas Piketty, after the massacres in Paris, pointed at “inequality” as the root of ISIS’s success. Another well-known German philosopher, Peter Sloterdijk, claimed that the September 11 attacks were attacks were just “small incidents”.
  • Famous representatives of European culture also embraced Adolf Hitler’s dream. Their heirs now justify jihad as the ultimate punishment for Western freedoms and democracy.

After September 11, 2001, the cream of European intellectuals immediately started to find justifications for jihad. They evidently were fascinated by the Kalashnikov assault rifle, “the weapon of the poor”. For them, what we had seen in New York was a chimera, an illusion. The mass killings were supposedly the suicide of the capitalist democracy, and terrorism was the wrath of the unemployed, the desperate weapon of a lumpenproletariat offended by the arrogance of Western globalization.

These intellectuals have sown seeds of despair in a large Western echo-chamber. From 9/11 to the recent massacres on European soil, the murdered Westerners are portrayed as just collateral victims in a war between “the system” and the damned of the earth, who are only claiming a place at the table.

One of these intellectuals is Michel Onfray. It has been a while since we heard the expression: “Useful idiot.” The cynical expression is often attributed to Lenin, and was used to designate Western sympathizers who justified the horrors of Communism. The French magazine L’Express used it for Onfray: “the useful idiot of Islamism“.

When his “Atheist Manifesto” was published in 2005, Onfray could never have imagined that ten years later, he would become the darling of the jihadist group, Islamic State (ISIS). Yet, on November 21, 2015, a week after the massacres in Paris, Onfray appeared in a propaganda video of the Islamic State. A few days later, Onfray, this idol of the reflexive European middle class, said that a “truce could be signed between ISIS and France“.

Onfray just gave another interview to the magazine Famille Chrétienne, where he explained that there is no moral difference between “killing innocent lives of women, children and elderly” and “state terrorism” — between ISIS and the Western war on terror.

Onfray is the most widely read French philosopher in the world and has dethroned Michel Serres, Michel Foucault and Jean-Paul Sartre. This philosopher, drunk with the Enlightenment, has written 80 books, translated into nearly 30 languages. He is not a Marxist, but a libertarian hedonist. According to Onfray, the entire Judeo-Christian heritage prevents free, loving enjoyment. Hence his insistence, ultimately, that the Western civilization is “dead.”

How did this great hedonist, the theorist of materialism and atheism, become the darling of Islamist cutthroats? Prime Minister Manuel Valls accused him of having “lost his bearings.”

When Onfray calls for a truce with the Islamic State, it is because he believes that France is responsible for what happened to itself. In his recent book Penser l’islam (“Thinking Islam“), Onfray wrote: “If we look at the historical facts and not at the emotions, the West attacked first.” France is supposedly reaping what it has sown. Of course Islamists kill and massacre, but it is not their fault, as the West, in his view, previously attacked them.

Onfray also gave the impression of finding more excuses for ISIS by speaking a French “Islamophobia.” Why has Onfray has become so popular among the French jihadists fighting in Syria and Iraq? Journalist David Thomson, a specialist in jihadi movements, explained that “Onfray is translated into Arabic and shared on all pro-ISIS sites.” Talking to Jean-Jacques Bourdin in 2013, Onfray even defended the right of Islamists to apply Islamic sharia law in Mali.

The German philosopher Martin Heidegger (left) was one of many European intellectuals and artists who embraced Adolf Hitler’s dream. Today, French philosopher Michel Onfray (right) has become the darling of the jihadist group, Islamic State, with his view that, while Islamists kill and massacre, it is not their fault; he blames the victims, because “the West attacked first.”

Onfray recognizes that we are at war. But this war, to him, was started by George W. Bush. He “forgets” that 3,000 Americans were killed on September 11, 2001. If you remind him that “ISIS kills innocent people”, Onfray will reply: “We have also killed innocent people.” It is the perfect moral equivalence between ISIS and the West. Barbarians against barbarians! The 130 French people killed on November 13, 2015 are just puppets of the West. With his moral relativism, Onfray opens the door to Islamist cutthroats.

Onfray belongs to a long list of charlatans who abound among Europe’s intellectuals. Writing for Le Monde, the most famous living German philosopher, Jürgen Habermas, claimed that “jihadism is a modern form of reaction to the living conditions characterized by uprooting.” Someone should have explained to him that all the terrorists were well integrated into the French and Belgian democracies, and living with welfare subsidies.

Another celebrity-philosopher, the Slovenian neo-Marxist guru Slavoj Zizek, argued that Islamism may seem reactionary, but “in a curious inversion religion is one of the possible places from which one can deploy critical doubts about today’s society. It has become one of the sites of resistance.” Zizek also claimed that “Islamo-Fascists” and “European anti-immigrant racists” are “the two sides of the same coin.”

The French intellectual Thomas Piketty, after the massacres in Paris, pointed at “inequality” as the root of ISIS’s success. Another well-known German philosopher, Peter Sloterdijk, claimed that the September 11 attacks were attacks were just “small incidents“.

José Saramago, a Nobel laureate for literature, claimed that flying two planes into the Twin Towers was “revenge against the humiliation”.

There were also those, like the French thinker Jean Baudrillard, who said that the attacks on the Twin Towers were actually desired by the United States. In short, Islamic terrorists did it, but we had really wanted it. Or to quote from the famous German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, the attack on the World Trade Center was “the greatest work of art that is possible in the whole cosmos.”

The peak of cynicism was reached by Dario Fo, the winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize for literature, who said after 9/11:

“The great speculators wallow in an economy that every year kills tens of millions of people with poverty — so what is 20,000 dead in New York? Regardless of who carried out the massacre [of 9-11], this violence is the legitimate daughter of the culture of violence, hunger and inhumane exploitation”.

It has happened before. Philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt, writers such as Knut Hamsun and Louis Ferdinand Céline, musicians such as Wilhelm Furtwangler and Ernst von Karajan, are just some of the most famous representatives of European culture who embraced Adolf Hitler’s dream. Their heirs now justify jihad as the ultimate punishment for the Western freedoms and democracy.

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

Meet the First Muslim Mayor of London by Soeren Kern

  • Conservative Party candidate Zac Goldsmith accused Khan of giving “platform, oxygen and cover” to Islamic extremists. He also accused Khan of “hiding behind Britain’s Muslims” by branding as “Islamophobes” those who shed light on his past.

  • “The questions are genuine, they are serious. They are about his willingness to share platforms with people who want to ‘drown every Israeli Jew in the sea.’ It’s about his having employed someone who believed the Lee Rigby murder was fabricated. It’s about his career before being an MP, coaching people in how to sue the police.” — Conservative Party candidate Zac Goldsmith.
  • In 2008, Khan gave a speech at the Global Peace and Unity Conference, an event organized by the Islam Channel, which has been censured repeatedly by British media regulators for extremism. Members of the audience were filmed flying the black flag of jihad while Khan was speaking.
  • “I regret giving the impression I subscribed to their views and I’ve been quite clear I find their views abhorrent.” — Sadiq Khan.
  • “A Muslim man with way too many extremist links to be entirely coincidental is now the Mayor of London. I suppose this is hardly a shock, though. The native English are a demographic minority (and a rapidly dwindling one) in London, whilst Muslims from Pakistan and Bangladesh are a rapidly expanding demographic.” — British politician Paul Weston.

Labour Party politician Sadiq Khan has been sworn in as mayor of London. He is the first Muslim to lead a major European capital.

Khan, 45, is the London-born son of Pakistani immigrants. His father was a bus driver and he grew up with seven siblings in a government-subsidized apartment. He studied law, became a university professor and served as chairman of the civil liberties pressure group Liberty. He was elected to Parliament in 2005. Khan’s supporters say he is the epitome the Muslim immigrant success story.

Khan — who won 57% of the ballot, or 1.3 million votes, a number which happens to be roughly equal to Muslim population of London — has promised to be “the British Muslim who takes the fight to the extremists.” Others are not so sure. During the election campaign, Khan faced a steady stream of allegations about his past dealings with Muslim extremists and anti-Semites.

has promised to be “the British Muslim who takes the fight to the extremists.” Others are not so sure. During the election campaign, Khan faced a steady stream of allegations about his past dealings with Muslim extremists and anti-Semites.

Khan’s opponent, Conservative Party politician Zac Goldsmith, drew attention to Khan’s past career as a human rights lawyer that included repeated public appearances alongside radical Muslims.

Goldsmith accused Khan of giving “platform, oxygen and cover” to Islamic extremists. He also accused Khan of “hiding behind Britain’s Muslims” by branding as “Islamophobes” those who shed light on his past.

In an interview with the London Evening Standard, Goldsmith said:

“To be clear, I have never suggested he [Khan] is an extremist but without a shadow of doubt he has given platform, oxygen and cover to people who are extremists.

“I think he is playing with fire. The questions are genuine, they are serious. They are about his willingness to share platforms with people who want to ‘drown every Israeli Jew in the sea.’

“It’s about his having employed someone who believed the Lee Rigby murder was fabricated. It’s about his career before being an MP, coaching people in how to sue the police.

“It just goes on and on and on. To pretend those are not legitimate questions, to pretend that by asking those questions newspapers, Londoners or my campaign are engaging in Islamophobia is unbelievably irresponsible.

“It is just obscene that somebody who wants to be the mayor of the world’s greatest city, to be in charge of our police and security, should behave not only with such bad judgment but in a way that is totally shameless.”

Goldsmith also drew attention to Khan’s ties with Suliman Gani, a Muslim cleric in Tooting, the constituency in South London where Khan is an MP. “To share a platform nine times with Suliman Gani, one of the most repellent figures in this country, you don’t do it by accident,” Goldsmith said.

Goldsmith was referring to a Sunday Times exposé, which revealed that between 2004 and 2013, Khan had spoken alongside Gani on at least nine occasions, “even though Gani has called women ‘subservient’ to men and condemned homosexuality, gay marriage, and even organ transplants.”

Gani — who has ties to the extremist Islamist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir, and has rallied in support of Shaker Aamer, an al-Qaeda terrorist who was detained at Guantanamo Bay — is also linked to the London-based Tayyibun Institute, which the British government says “tolerates or promotes non-violent extremism.”

According to the Times, on the night of the Paris attacks in November 2015, Gani appeared at an “Islamic question time” event in Bedford, where speakers reportedly told British Muslims to “struggle” for an “Islamic state.”

Khan and Gani first shared a platform in August 2004 at an event organized by Stop Political Terror, a group supported by Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American imam who was killed in 2011 by a CIA-led drone strike in Yemen. According to the Times, Khan spoke at least four times at events organized by Stop Political Terror, which has since merged with CAGE, a group that called the Islamic State butcher Jihadi John a “beautiful young man.”

In an interview with the Times, Davis Lewin, deputy director of the Henry Jackson Society, an anti-extremism think tank, said:

“Gani has campaigned on behalf of convicted terrorists, appeared at events designed to undermine government counter-radicalization strategies, including sharing platforms with a pro-terrorist organization such as CAGE, and is said to hold repugnant views about women and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans community.

“Given that the UK, and London in particular, is a major target for Islamist-inspired terrorist attacks, it is intolerable to see any politician, much less one seeking such a vitally important office as mayor of London, associate with an individual such as this.

“Mr Khan’s reportedly repeatedly sharing a platform with this man, whose views are widely available, is deeply alarming.”

Khan also spent years campaigning to prevent Babar Ahmad from being extradited to the United States on charges of providing material support to terrorism. Ahmad, who admitted his guilt, later said that his support for the Taliban was “naïve.”

In 2002, Khan represented the leader of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan. Khan tried to reverse a decision by the Home Office, which had banned Farrakhan from entering the UK due to fears that his anti-Semitic views would stir up racial hatred. Farrakhan has called Jews “bloodsuckers” and referred to Judaism as “a gutter religion.”

At the time, Khan said: “Mr. Farrakhan is not anti-Semitic and does not preach a message of racial hatred and antagonism.” Khan added:

“Farrakhan is preaching a message of self-discipline, self-reliance, atonement and responsibility. He’s trying to address the issues and problems we have in the UK, black on black crime and problems in the black community. It’s outrageous and astonishing that the British Government is trying to exclude this man.”

Khan now says: “Even the worst people deserve a legal defense.”

In 2004, Khan was the chief legal advisor to the Muslim Council of Britain, a group linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. Khan defended Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian-born Islamist who has been banned from entering the UK. Al-Qaradawi has expressed support for Hamas suicide bombings against Israel: “It’s not suicide, it is martyrdom in the name of Allah.” According to Khan, however, “Quotes attributed to this man may or may not be true.”

Also in 2004, Khan shared a platform with a half-dozen Islamic extremists in London at a political meeting where women were told to use a separate entrance. One of the speakers was Azzam Tamimi, who has said he wants Israel destroyed and replaced with an Islamic state. Another speaker was Daud Abdullah, who has led boycotts of Holocaust Memorial Day. Yet another speaker was Ibrahim Hewitt, a Muslim hardliner who believes that adulterers should be “stoned to death.”

In 2006, Khan attended a mass rally in Trafalgar Square to protest the publication of cartoons of Mohammed by Western newspapers. One of those present at the rally was Tamimi, who told Sky News: “The publication of these cartoons will cause the world to tremble. Fire will be throughout the world if they don’t stop.” Khan defended Tamimi: “Speakers can get carried away but they are just flowery words.”

In 2008, Khan gave a speech at the Global Peace and Unity Conference, an event organized by the Islam Channel, which has been censured repeatedly by British media regulators for extremism. Members of the audience were filmed flying the black flag of jihad while Khan was speaking.

Also in 2008, Khan wrote that Turkey should be allowed to join the European Union in order to prove that the bloc is not a “Christian Club” that discriminates against Muslims:

“Muslims across Europe will see the question for Turkish admission to the EU as a clear test of European inclusion. If the door is slammed shut it will be understood by 20 million Muslim citizens of the EU that the basis of the decision to treat Turkey differently to new members like Bulgaria or Romania has been made on the basis that Europe is a ‘Christian Club.’

“Some will see this as a clear indication that Muslims can never be a part of the story of Europe or the West. That will undermine everybody working to say that of course one can be British, European and Muslim, or French, European and Muslim.”

In 2009, when Khan was the Minister for Community Cohesion in charge of government efforts to eradicate extremism, he gave an interview to the Iran-backed Press TV. He described moderate Muslims as “Uncle Toms,” a racial slur used against blacks to imply that they are too eager to please whites.

In the same interview, Khan expressed support for boycotts of Israeli products: “You know, there’s nothing wrong, and I encourage people to protest, to demonstrate, to complain, to write into newspapers and TV, to, if you want to boycott certain goods, boycott certain goods — all lawful means open in a democratic society.”

In 2012, Khan addressed and praised the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS), an umbrella group founded by activists from the Muslim Brotherhood. The British government has criticized FOSIS for promoting Islamic extremism.

In 2014, Khan expressed support for Baroness Warsi, who resigned from Prime Minister David Cameron’s cabinet because she felt that Cameron was insufficiently critical of Israel. In an essay for the Guardian, (which has now been removed from the Guardian’s website) Khan wrote:

“Warsi must be listened to when she says, ‘our response to [Gaza] is becoming a basis for radicalization that could have consequences for us for years to come’ […] The government’s failure to criticise Israel’s incursion is not just a moral failure — it goes directly against Britain’s interests in the world and risks making our citizens less safe as a result.”

Commentator Anthony Posner wrote:

“Although Khan has assured Londoners that he would not use the mayoral office as ‘a pulpit to pronounce on foreign affairs,’ one wonders if he would really be able to remain neutral if London was once again dealing with large anti-Israel demos. On the basis of his response to Warsi’s resignation, it seems unlikely that he would show restraint.”

In March 2016, Khan was pressured to fire a top aide, Shueb Salar, after the Daily Mail revealed that Salar was sending misogynistic messages on social media: “Along with homophobic and sexist comments, Salar jokes about rape and murder, claims Bengali people ‘smell’ and said he thought the slaying of soldier Lee Rigby by extremists in 2013 may have been fabricated.”

In May, a close ally of Khan, Labour politician Muhammed Butt, apologized for sharing a Facebook post which compared Israel with Islamic State.

In an election debate aired by the BBC on April 18, Khan said he had “never hidden” the fact that he had represented “some pretty unsavory characters.” When asked if he regretted sharing a platform with extremists, he said: “I regret giving the impression I subscribed to their views and I’ve been quite clear I find their views abhorrent.”

Former Labour Party manager Rob Marchant said he was worried about Khan’s links to extremists, but that he should be given the benefit of the doubt:

“While this dabbling with Islamist politics may well have been more to do with a streak of ruthless populism in Khan in building political support, than a genuine meeting of minds with the Islamists, it does cast some doubt upon both his judgement and his values.”

By contrast, British politician Paul Weston, who has long cautioned about the Islamization of Britain, 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. I suppose this is hardly a shock, though. The native English are a demographic minority (and a rapidly dwindling one) in London, whilst Muslims from Pakistan and Bangladesh are a rapidly expanding demographic…..

“In a couple more decades Britain may well have its first Muslim Prime Minister, and I think we can safely assume he will be of the same ideological stock as Sadiq Khan…. Reality cannot argue with demographics, so the realistic future for Britain is Islamic.”

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.

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