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Showing posts with label Middle East and North Africa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Middle East and North Africa. Show all posts

Wednesday 20 August 2014

Libya Before and After the "Treatment"

These pictures speak for themselves.

The first is of Libya under Gaddafi, the second is of Libya under "democracy".

Libya under Gaddafi, Libya under democracy


H/t Alessandra Nucci

Friday 8 August 2014

Archbishop of Canterbury: Give Asylum to Iraqi Christians

Rally in support of Iraqi Christians in Lyon


Is the West waking up, or is it hoping too much? And is it too late anyway, when the genocide is accomplished?

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Most Rev Justin Welby, has called on the UK government to offer asylum to thousands of Iraqi Christians driven from their homes by jihadists. He backed similar calls by several bishops.

The vicar of Baghdad's Anglican church, Canon Andrew White, said the believers' flight is bringing "the end of Christianity very near" in Iraq.

France has already done what the Archbishop proposes. Last week the country declared itself ready to give asylum to any persecuted Christian in Iraq.

On July 26, in the French city of Lyon, over five hundred people held a demonstration about the tragic plight of Iraqi Christians, organised by the Assyro-Chaldean community of Lyon and by the Christians of Lyon. Several religious dignitaries were present, including Philippe Barbarin, archbishop of Lyon.

During the march a letter dated July 24 from His Beatitude Louis Raphaël 1st Sako, Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church, to His Eminence The Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, archbishop of Lyon and primate of the Gauls, was made ​​public. Its last sentence: "Forget us not!"

O July 29 Cardinal Philip Barbarin travelled to north Iraq to meet with Christian refugees expelled from Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city. On his return to France he held a press conference to deliver fresh information on the situation of the Iraqi Christian community.

The Islamic State ethnically cleansed Mosul of almost all its Christians and imposed Sharia law. Christians who fled Mosul by the thousands in the last few days lost absolutely everything.

On the same day as the march in Lyon, a rally was held in Paris to show support for the persecuted Iraqi Christians.

Iraq is at the end of a process of ethnic cleansing of its Christians, once 10% of the population. Ah, but those were the bad old days of Saddam Hussein. Now, with the advent of democracy, all is better. Isn't it? Well, it is better if you are a jihadist.

Here in the UK, my party Liberty GB is planning to organise a Rally for Persecuted Christians in Iraq in London, in front of the Houses of Parliament.

Wednesday 30 July 2014

Tower Hamlets Supports Palestinians: What a Surprise

The Palestinian flag flying on the London Borough of Tower Hamlets Town Hall


Has the London borough of Tower Hamlets become a little Muslim enclave in Britain's capital city?

Lutfur Rahman, the directly-elected mayor of Tower Hamlets, in East London, today ordered the Palestinian flag to be flown from the town hall as a "gesture of humanitarian solidarity" with the victims of the fighting in Gaza.

Who is he to make such decision? What about people living in his council or in London who want to express solidarity with the Israelis killed by Hamas rockets?

Rahman also said that he was supporting a collection by the Tower Hamlets branch of Unison - Britain's biggest trade union - for the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians.

Muslim charities - or organisations giving money to Muslims - have to be treated with great suspicion until they have been subjected to thorough investigation as has been done in the USA, where the largest Islamic charities were shut down and prosecuted for financing terrorism. Britain's Charity Commission must do the same here. Islam's doctrine of zakat prescribes that one eighth of all obligatory Muslim charity must fund jihad, the holy war in the name of Allah.

Interestingly, it has come to light that the Palestinian Authority refused millions of dollars worth of medical aid from Israel twice in the last week.

The area of Tower Hamlets, which has been at the centre of electoral frauds and intimidations, has for years been colonised by Muslims who in local elections tend to vote for candidates of their "faith". Under Lutfur Rahman, Tower Hamlets Council has been trying to enforce Islamic law.

Tuesday 29 July 2014

Students Tired of Studying Support Palestinians

"British students stand with Gaza against Israel’s assault" is the title of an article on the Stop the War Coalition website.

Today, the student movement issued a statement "in solidarity with the people of Palestine", signed by National Union of Students Officers - representing millions of British students - and over 100 pro-Palestine student leaders.

If all these luminaries concentrated on what they are supposed to do - educating themselves - instead of taking up fashionable causes about which they know next to nothing, maybe they could have learned that the correct spelling of the word for writing and other office materials is "stationery":
The Palestinians’ right to education has been particularly hard hit by the siege. Basic educational equipment including books, paper, computers, stationary and desks are all in limited supply and Israel routinely cuts off Gaza’s electricity supply.
Shame that these students don't even have that excuse for their lack of education.

Wednesday 25 June 2014

Iraq Jihadists in the UK

Three British Muslims, two from Cardiff and one from Aberdeen, in an Isis video to recruit jihadists in Iraq and Syria


First published on FrontPage Magazine.

By Enza Ferreri


It's always been obvious that the problem of "British" jihadists coming back from Syria - and now Iraq too - to become terrorists here is not going to go away. The UK government, with its phobia of "Islamophobia", cannot possibly solve it.

From "Iraq crisis: ISIS militants threaten UK, says Cameron":
David Cameron has warned of the threat to the UK if an "extreme Islamist regime" is created in central Iraq.

He said Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) fighters threatening the government in Baghdad were also plotting terror attacks on the UK.

And Britain could not ignore the security threat the UK now faced from jihadists in Iraq and Syria.
Britain may not ignore it, but it's not going to do very much about it.

A BBC reporter said Monday on the TV that this problem is the same all over the world. He should have added - but didn't - "wherever there are Muslims". Muslim-free countries don't experience this problem at all.

The BBC report was about what the government can and cannot do in order to protect British people from this threat, and in general to avoid the "radicalisation" of UK Muslims.

Despite the fact that 9 years have passed without another 7/7, the government measures to fight Muslim radicalisation in this country have been a failure, the journalist went on to say.

What a surprise! The only reason why there are not more terrorist attacks in the UK, I would say, is the constant surveillance of the "Muslim community" by police and intelligence services - with huge expenses for a gravely cash-strapped Britain -, which is now necessary to increase.

Nevertheless, former MI6 director Richard Barrett explained that the security services will not be able to monitor all the "British" jihadists who return to the UK after fighting in Syria.

The implications for UK security of the Iraq and Syrian conflicts due to the "Britons" fighting there is a topic dominating the national newspapers.

"Terror fallout from British jihadists fighting in Syria will be felt for years to come in Britain", headlines The Daily Mail.

This warning came from the top counter-terrorism expert Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police's assistant commissioner and head of specialist operations, who said that Britain will feel the repercussions of Syria and the rise of Islamic extremism within its own borders for "for many, many, many years to come".

She added that young "British" Muslims who have gone to fight in Syria might commit violence and terrorist acts when they return.

Possible links have been found between three Muslims based in Cardiff, Wales, Isis militants who were present in a propaganda video filmed by the group, and two other men from the same part of the city, who are in prison for having planned to blow up London's Stock Exchange.

Shadow justice secretary Sadiq Khan warned that radicalisation in prisons was a big problem. Indeed, this corresponds to the dire predictions of Dr. Peter Hammond in his book Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat (Amazon USA) , (Amazon UK) .

The book says that, when the Muslim population reaches 2% to 5% of a country, they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups, often with major recruiting from jails and among street gangs.

According to the the United Kingdom Census 2011, in that year Muslims were 2.7 million, 4.8% of the country's total population.

Hammond's book, which was first published in 2005 and then in a second edition in 2009, says that, when Muslims are above 5%, they exercise an influence in proportion to their percentage of the population. They will push for the introduction of halal food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims, and will increase pressure on supermarket chains to sell halal, with threats for failure to comply. They will also try to get the government to allow them to rule themselves under Sharia law within their ghettos.

Rings a bell? This is the stage which Britain has already reached. The only prediction that hasn't materialised are Muslim threats to supermarkets, only because they are redundant as those companies are all too eager to oblige.

And now look at the next stage: when Muslims approach 10% of the population, they tend to increase lawlessness as a means of protest, example of which are the car-burnings in Paris (and we can now add Sweden), and uprisings and threats for any action which offends Islam, namely any non-Muslim action. The greater the proportion of Muslim population the more frequent these tensions will be, until they become daily occurrences.

How can British people not have noticed that, over the years, their country's Muslims - whose number has steadily increased - have indeed become more vociferous, oppressive, demanding, aggressive and dangerous?

Wednesday 25 December 2013

Queen Christmas Message Does Not Mention the Plight of Christians

Baghdad Church burnt by Muslims



Happy Christmas everyone!

I watched the Queen's 2013 Christmas message on the BBC.

It would have been nice, if she hadn't told two lies, one by action and one by omission.

The former was: "For Christians, as for all people of faith, reflection, meditation and prayer help us to renew ourselves in God's love, as we strive daily to become better people."

It's quite obvious that not in all faiths believers strive to become better people, unless we consider as self-improvement perfectioning suicide-bombing and beheading skills in order to impose one's faith - to be specific, Islam - to the whole infidel world with whatever available means.

And this takes us directly to the lie by omission. Her traditional Christmas message could have been a good opportunity for the Queen to remind her subjects not just in Britain but also in the rest of the Commonwealth that not all Christians are free to celebrate Christmas.

For years now, Christmas has been a time when Christians in many parts of the world - thanks to some faithful of the "religion" mentioned above, in their striving for self-amelioration - are routinely massacred and have to fear for their lives more than ever.

At least 38 Christians have just been killed and 70 wounded in Baghdad by two car bombs, one on Wednesday targeting a Christian market and the other on Christmas Day outside a church, targeting the faithful after a service.

On December 21 in Syria, some of those heroic freedom fighters that Obama and Cameron are so eager to help, anti-Assad "rebels" - otherwise known as bloody, murderous, kill-the-infidels-wherever-you-find-them jihadists - fired multiple mortar shells on a church, killing 12 Christians and injuring many others.

The Christians, clearly having a different concept from Muslims of what self-betterment is, were distributing charity help to the local population.

And, to get closer to the Queen's own home turf, the Commonwealth includes superb examples of countries whose Muslim majority takes a special pride in becoming better and better people at discriminating against and ferociously persecuting the Christian minority.

One of them is Nigeria, which has been rightfully called the most deadly country to be a Christian. Another is Pakistan where, after many years of continuous attacks on the Christian community, 2013 has been one of the worst of them. In September, 96 people were killed and 130 wounded in twin suicide attacks on a church in Peshawar, the most deadly attacks of this kind since independence.

Why hasn't the Queen, who always talks about the Commonwealth in her Christmas messages and this year expanded on the Commonwealth Games, found in herself the courage to speak up for the millions of her fellow Christians who are subjected to psychological and physical torture just for their belief in the same Jesus Christ whose birth we are today celebrating (in case someone, among the trees, cards, shopping and central London's "winter" lights, had forgotten)?

Wednesday 4 December 2013

Why When We Say 'Racism' Do We Think of White Racism?

Dubai Marina


Some time ago I found an interesting post in a blog by an Indian in London.

The post, now removed, was entitled "Dubai - Still Racist?", and said:
Dubai (and the UAE) then and now is arguably one amongst the more institutionally racist places in the world with a strict hierarchy of privilege. Arabs are at the top of the heap, followed closely by Western Europeans and US (called the Whites in Dubai), Eastern Europeans, Philipinos and finally Indians and Pakistanis. The different communities were completely isolated from each other in terms of housing, schools, social clubs – it was like two different worlds – a glittering world inhabited by the Whites and the Arabs, and a more dreary one by us lot…

Advertisements for jobs explicitly state – "No Asians Please". Salary differentials based on nationality abound…

What is really interesting is that most of the younger Whites who live in Dubai often come from pluralistic, tolerant societies and are as embarrassed about the obvious racism as we are.
I find it so interesting that, when people think of racism, they almost invariably think of white racism against other ethnic groups or cultures, whereas in fact white racism is a minuscule phenomenon in comparison with the racism you find among other peoples.

Since then, I encountered many other online sources of information on racism in Dubai, from which I picked up a few lines.

From Dubai: wretched hive of racism and bigotry:
Israelis are not allowed in.
Dubai is a racist state.
From Silent discrimination – a fact of life in Dubai:
[D]iscriminatory job ads, racist door policies in bars and restaurants and stereotypical expectations are still everyday occurrences that – and I’m not condoning this at all – often slip by with barely a raised eyebrow.

While job ads these days don’t tend to mention physical attributes, photos are always required with the application, and it’s still common and accepted for employers to specify “Westerners only”, “Filipinas required” or “Indian national wanted”. Furthermore, there’s an unspoken understanding that the salary offered will depend on the nationality of the applicant. An Indian passport-holder, for example, will be paid less for the same job than a similarly qualified man of Indian origin holding a British passport.

(Interestingly, housemaids, when placing ads seeking work, are also guilty of this: Many request a job with a “white” or “Western” family, the implication being that the terms will be better and the salary higher than from any other type of employer.)

On a daily basis, this “silent” racism translates as a European sometimes getting served ahead of an Indian in a queue; a taxi driver picking up a Westerner rather than the Filipino he saw first; a European biting her tongue when an Emirati pushes in front at the till. While perhaps not agreeing with it, over time, many expats become desensitised to it, which is presumably how the China Times ad – which would have been inconceivable in the West –slipped through the net.
From Ten things I hate about Dubai :
Would it be racist of me to say that the Arabs are kind of racist towards us South Asian folks?

They have their nose in the air and most of the times don’t prefer to interact with South Asians. There is no such thing as labourer rights too, by the way. Most of the labourers are Pathans from Pakistan.

My brother and his South Asian friends are often stopped by the police and told to carry all his identification documents at all times.
From U.A.E Racism Against Immigrant !!!:
I believe U.A.E is one of the worst countries in the world when it comes to justice,fareness [sic] and human rights.
From Racial Discrimination In Dubai:
Those arabs are very racist, the first day I arrived in dubai airport, the immigration officer was speaking english to the rest of the white guys and when it got to my turn he became deaf and dumb and was behaving funny to me, I had to ask him what his problem was and why he was not treating the rest in the same manner he treated me.
From Racism in Dubai:
the emirati arabs are the most racist people i have ever come across. i am a well educated british/pakistani that has had to put up with subhuman treatment. ive been sworn at, gotten into fights and spat on in the street by [expletive] arab knobends.the arabs seem to be very proud of themselves but they dont have much to be proud of, they are just a group of bedouin morons. they are arrogant and are always rude to asians. it is strange to think that i left the uk because of some racist people i was unfortunate to work with, but in dubai it is even worse. i hope the usa decides to bomb the uae next, because these people make me sick!
From Why I left Dubai and won’t come back:
The UAE is a racist country, sometimes playing it subtle and some other times being too awkwardly open about it. This is not the UAE’s fault by the way. It is the collective prejudice of all the different cultures that get mixed up in Dubai.

Ever since I started dating someone from a different race, I noticed this differentiation way more than before. So much that sometimes, eating at a restaurant, after my Indian partner pays the bill, I have heard staff saying things such as “Thank you M’am. Please come again M’am”. As if ‘Sir’ was invisible.

Work discrimination based on country of origin is ridiculously common. Where else in the world would you read job ads that include sentences such as:
“Only UK/Australians”
“Seeking maid. Filipino only”
“Indians please abstain”
“Job position for Arabs only”.

With work discrimination comes salary discrimination. There is an unofficial rule that the job market in Dubai seems to follow: a person should get double the salary that he/she would earn in their country of origin. This should be enough to justify someone to move but… how does this make sense when everyone living in the same city would have the same level in expenses?

This ad leads me to think that an [sic] European hairdresser makes more money than many Asians in higher positions

This changes it all from here onwards. Depending on your race and country of origin, you will be more inclined to live in certain parts of the city that you can afford according to your job category. You will eat at certain places, you will use certain means of transportation. And you will feel outraged and, not so unlikely, be racist yourself, not by discriminating others directly, but by developing prejudices that will end up serving as fundament to racist and ethnocentric behavior.

If you ever have trouble with a local, it will probably be your fault. You don’t want to be in a car accident that involves an Emirati, even if he/she was the person colliding with you. In many cases, the law will tend to help the local person, in detriment of the other, no matter who’s fault the event was to begin with. Depending on your nationality and race, you might be better off. If you are white (specially US American or British) you will probably do fine. If you are from Southern Asia… good luck to you. For everyone else: it’s 50/50.

Photo by Fabio Achilli (Creative Commons CC BY 2.0).

Thursday 11 July 2013

Christians in Syria: Separating Grim Reality from Islamist Propaganda

christians


First published on FrontPage Magazine.

By Enza Ferreri

A recently released video of an interview with a Syrian rebel — and would-be-martyr – gives extraordinary insight into the mentality of the Syrian opposition. Believing that he’s speaking to European jihadist volunteers, the rebel says that Christians must be killed to impose a Sharia state in Syria, after which they will be given the classic choice: pay the jizya, convert or die. He also says that the rebels intend to move on from Syria to attack Europe and America.

Similarly, another rebel clearly explains that Islam must be the sole source of authority of the future Syrian state.  In the meantime, Syrian militants just massacred a Christian village’s population. Many Syrian Christians have been kidnapped and killed or never seen again.

Targeting Syrian Christians for kidnapping and attacks on churches is condemned by Human Rights Watch.  An U.N. Independent Inquiry on Syria concludes: “Entire communities are at risk of being forced out of the country or of being killed inside the country”—two cautiously worded reminders of the reality of Christian suffering in Syria at the hands of Islamist militants.  During a recent Congressional hearing on Syria’s minorities, witnesses rightly testified that Christians are more fearful for their lives than other group, because they are targeted for religious cleansing.

Despite the overwhelming amount of evidence concerning the plight of Syria’s Christians, there are those who are not convinced that Syrian Christians are being deliberately targeted in a religious purification campaign.

One of them is Muslim college student, Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, who lives in the UK and authored the report Christians in Syria: Separating Fact from Fiction, published by The Henry Jackson Society, a UK neoconservative think tank.

Through psychological tactics, like his title Fact and Fiction, and the questioning of absolute figures, percentages and details, Al-Tamimi tries to use the conflicting reports regarding some specific events in order to generate doubts about the veracity of Syrian Christians’ persecution.

Among other things, by claiming that the narrative of those concerned about the Christians’ fate is not the only possible one, he subtly and surreptitiously creates suspicions that those people lie or distort the evidence.

The main problem with his report isn’t so much that it disputes specific details of events. Initially the Western media was rehashing the stories created by the insurgents’ anti-Assad propaganda. Later it became clear that these reports were one-sided and adjustments were made:
For nearly two years, SOHR [Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an organization of Syrian rebels in exile] has reported only acts of violence by the regime against the rebels. Mainstream international media like the BBC, al-Jazeera and al-Arabya, have relied on it as their sole source of news.

In recent months, several experts and Syrians interviewed by AsiaNews accused Western and Gulf State media of selective reporting. More recently, coverage has become more impartial, but SOHR continues to defend Islamic extremists to avoid losing support among rebel forces.
The jihadists are particularly ruthless in their hide-and-seek mind games, reminiscent of Hamas in its conflict with Israel.

In these conflicts many media reporters on the ground aren’t dispassionate observers but have a stake in the matter. As in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which several freelancers supplying news materials are under Hamas’ control, Western media’s flirtation with the Syrian rebels is well-documented.

For example, from Biased War Photography in Western Media:
[T]he portrayal of the “Syrian revolution” is decidedly one-sided… the images taken to supply Western Media all portrayed the Syrian rebels in a way to render sympathy and support.
Here are some other examples.

The Vatican’s news-gathering facilities are a welcome counterbalance to mainstream Western media’s bias.  Of course, there can be a margin of error or doubt concerning the details of some events. Yet what is problematic with the Henry Jackson Report is the arbitrariness with which its author, Al-Tamimi, cherry-picks his favorite sources and rejects those he doesn’t like, without giving reasons or criteria.

This is his account about Qusayr:
Modeled on the story of the ethnic cleansing of 90 per cent of Homs’ Christian population, stories began to circulate that 9,000 out-of-a-supposed population of 10,000 Christians had left the city of Qusayr on the basis of an ultimatum issued by a rebel battalion. However, the rebels in Qusayr denied this story. The truth about what happened, most likely, lies in the account given by a couple of reports in the Wall Street Journal.
So, reports from Jihad Watch and from the Vatican news agency Fides, Vatican Insider, and Barnabas Fund, aren’t to be trusted, but the rebels, who are, for all intents and purposes, the suspects of heinous crimes and so naturally deny it, are more trustworthy?

Or the truth, he moderately suggests, is “in the middle”—that is, in places like The Wall Street Journal, that supports Obama’s decision to arm the Syrian rebels and he only regrets Obama didn’t make this decision sooner, and in The Independent, whose senior Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk had the honor of a personal recommendation from Osama Bin Laden and demonizes Christians for supporting Assad.

Al-Tamimi offers no reason for adopting those two pro-Arab-Spring newspapers’ version of the events.

“The rebels deny it,” Al-Tamimi pronounces. Here’s what the rebels also say:
Syrian opposition spokesmen have repeatedly said that Syrian rebels do not target Christians or other minorities and believe in creating a democratic society once Assad is ousted.
To which we can add: and pigs might fly. To believe that al-Qaeda-linked Islamists want a democratic society—in the Western sense of giving everyone equal rights, and not in the Muslim Brotherhood’s interpretation of it as a means to impose an Islamic state—is, at best, naïve. That part of the Syrian opposition’s statement should throw doubt on the other part, that rebels don’t target Christians.

But Al-Tamimi, who must surely know about taqiyya—lying to non-believers to advance the cause of Islam—behaves as if he didn’t.

The conclusion of Al-Tamimi’s report looks like a highly precarious assembling of statements counterbalancing, if not contradicting, each other to produce a very confused and confusing result.
He writes:
The evidence surveyed here does not, as of yet, suggest the existence of an organized campaign of militant Islamic persecution of Christians throughout Syria… Have there been incidents of anti-Christian violence in Syria? Undoubtedly, but one should always be alert to those pro-Assad propaganda outlets which are willing to exploit, for their own ends, what they see as Western concerns about the status of Christians in the country. In addition, analysts should be more nuanced… At the same time, one must avoid complacency: the ever-growing infiltration of Syria by foreign jihadists (e.g. from Jordan to the south) poses an increasing threat to the survival of the various Christian communities of Syria.
First, that the evidence doesn’t suggest “an organized campaign” is puzzling. What evidence of an “organized” campaign would Al-Tamimi accept?

The Syrian opposition has no effective centralized political or military leadership, so how could there be an organized campaign of any sort?

Muslim persecution of Christians doesn’t require central, bureaucratic coordination. Its organization derives from Islamic law and the hostility it breeds for Christians.

Al-Tamimi warns that we should be alert to pro-Assad propaganda exploiting Western concerns about Christians—without bothering to mention that the propaganda war is fought on both fronts. So why should we be more alert to one side of it than the other?

Apparently simply because one source confirms what Al-Tamimi wants to believe and validates his agenda.

In the end, however, after another series of self-limiting statements, his final conclusion is that there’s an increasing threat to the survival of the various Christian communities of Syria.

Isn’t that enough reason for concern? Why nitpick—why write this convoluted report trying to minimize the persecution of Syrian Christians in the first place—if in the end you must, perhaps begrudgingly, admit that there is “an increasing threat to the survival of the various Christian communities of Syria.”

This research doesn’t lead to a new interpretation of the events. Its conclusion is remarkably similar to that of most counterjihad analysts.

What’s its point then? It’s not immediately clear until one remembers that it was published by the neoconservative think tank The Henry Jackson Society, calling for Western intervention to assist Syrian rebels. Hence the “nuances” that Al-Tamimi mentions, which would help erase any black and white contrast and paint the rebels a uniform, unintelligible gray.

Monday 25 February 2013

UK: Jihad Seekers Allowance Is the New Form of Jizya



Jihad Seekers' Allowance (a pun on Jobs Seekers' Allowance that unemployed British people receive as state welfare benefits) is considered by many Muslims as a form of jizya, the tax that only non-Muslims have to pay as dhimmis, the condition of submission they are forced to live in under Islamic rule.

In the remarkably candid video above Anjem Choudary, a Muslim cleric and preacher, tells other Islamists that they should follow his example and live on welfare paid for by British taxpayers who, as infidels, are slaves and are supposed to give money to their Muslim masters. This is nothing other than Islamic law:
Anjem Choudary, who in the past has planned to disrupt the minute's silence on Remembrance Sunday, also openly mocked hard-working Britons, calling them 'slaves'.

The Sun newspaper secretly filmed him saying Islam will overrun Europe, David Cameron and Barack Obama should be killed and calling the Queen 'ugly'.

But today he said he had been 'joking' and his words had been misconstrued.

He also maintained that Osama Bin Laden was his 'hero'.

The father-of-four takes home more than £25,000 a year in benefits and lives in a £320,000 house in Leytonstone, East London.

He told a crowd of around 30 fanatics: 'People will say, 'Ah, but you are not working'. But the normal situation is for you to take money from the kuffar (non-Muslim).

'So we take Jihadseeker's Allowance. You need to get support.'

In another video a grinning Choudary is recorded telling his disciples that it is justifiable to take money from non-believers.

He said: 'The normal situation is to take money from the kuffar. You work, give us the money, Allahu Akhbar (God is great).

'Hopefully there's no one from the DSS listening to this.'

He also called Mr Cameron, Mr Obama and the leaders of Pakistan and Egypt the 'shaitan', or devil, and said he wanted them to be killed.

Choudary spoke glowingly of the 9/11 attacks and urged his followers to have 'hate' in their hearts for core British concepts like democracy, freedom and freedom of religion.

The 45-year-old former lawyer added: 'We are going to take England — the Muslims are coming. Brussels is 30 per cent, 40 per cent Muslim and Amsterdam. Bradford is 17 per cent Muslim.

'These people are like a tsunami going across Europe. And over here we're just relaxing, taking over Bradford brother. The reality is changing.'


Saturday 2 February 2013

Italian Priest Offers Reward for Weddings

In the small village of Volania, in Northern Italy, home to about 300 families and 1,000 people, the local priest Father Giancarlo Pirini has decided to offer a "bounty" of 500 euros, in cash, of his own money to every couple who will get married.

The Father is worried about the crisis of marriage.

"Some time ago, leafing through the marriage register of the parish - says Fr Pirini - I noticed that it was still at the first volume, which began in 1955." Scanning it, the parish priest ended in despair: in 1960 only 17 weddings were celebrated, in 2006 and 2012 none.

Europeans, if the current rates of marriage and reproduction continue, are going to die out.

Saturday 1 December 2012

Yes, There Is a Link between Islam and Paedophilia

The members of an Oxford Muslim paedophile ring found guilty of raping and trafficking girls aged as young as 11



People often make comments to the effect that there is no relationship between being Muslim and paedophilia, that this non-indigenous religious group has been unjustly targeted.

As an example, here's what I found posted in a student forum:
What I've never been able to grasp is why whenever middle-eastern men commit a crime, they are not identified by their nationality, but by their religion? This is blatantly an attempt to make Islam look bad. If a brit were to rape a teenager, it wouldn't say "Chrisitan [sic] male rapes teenager". How do you even know that these people are in fact muslims? Is it their names?

This might seem irrelevant, but if their seemingly muslim heritage is the only thing that links them together, then it is not at all an epidemic. I could just as easily find an epidemic of increasing Christian murderers in the UK.

PS: I'm not a muslim myself. I just find this extremely hypocritical.
Someone else in the forum corrected the poster saying that these childrens' sexual abuse crimes are not commited by "middle-eastern men" but mostly by UK Pakistanis.

Putting aside the factual errors of the comment quoted above and its naivety, it nevertheless expresses a recurring opinion that we hear frequently.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

First, far from being targeted, Muslim paedophiles have been let off the hook for decades by police, social services and media, who were too afraid to establish the connection between Muslims and paedophilia and left them undisturbed to go about their business sometimes for as long as 40 years.

It is interesting to note that one of the people responsible for the cover-up, Joyce Thacker, Rotherham Council's Strategic Director of Children and Young People’s Services, is the same woman who took three children away from their foster parents because these were members of the right-wing UK Independence Party. In the end, both these scandals helped UKIP and the BNP achieve second and third place in the recent Rotherham by-election, which gave UKIP in particular a record result.

Second, even today, after the truth has been exposed, there is a strong reluctance in public discourse to make this link, reluctance of which the comments I described above are an example. Just look at this video clip of an episode of the BBC programme Question Time to see a glaring case of people falling over backwards in order not to say the "M" word. So great is in many the fear to be called racist and Islamophobic, that they resort to any way to avoid saying "Muslim" and "paedophile" in the same breath, even if it means offending others.

Non-Muslim Asians like Hindus and Sikhs have resented the fact that Muslim paedophiles have been called "Asian men", implying an involvement of the Asian community as a whole which does not exist.

And, as is so blatantly and painfully obvious in the Question Time video clip, Catholicism and the Catholic Church have been dragged into this discussion for no other reason than to distract the public, to draw attention away from the fact that the paedophiles we are talking about are indeed Muslim.

So other, innocent religious groups have been unjustly blamed to avoid accusing the real culprits.

Third, there is a high statistical correlation between the UK's Muslim community and paedophile gangs. The Times and The Daily Mail in 2011 reported some illuminating figures:
Charities and agencies working in conjunction with the police to help victims of sexual abuse in such cases have publicly denied there is a link between ethnicity and the on-street grooming of young girls by gangs and pimps.

But researchers identified 17 court prosecutions since 1997, 14 of them in the past three years, involving the on-street grooming of girls aged 11 to 16 by groups of men.

The victims came from 13 towns and cities and in each case two or more men were convicted of offences.

In total, 56 people, with an average age of 28, were found guilty of crimes including rape, child abduction, indecent assault and sex with a child.

Three of the 56 were white, 53 were Asian. Of those, 50 were Muslim and a majority were members of the British Pakistani community.

Those convicted allegedly represent only a small proportion of what one detective called a ‘tidal wave’ of offending in Yorkshire, Lancashire, Greater Manchester and the Midlands.
The fourth is a very strong argument that goes straight to the core and deep to the foundations of the correlation between Islam and paedophilia.

Islam does not forbid paedophilia, indeed it allows and even rules about it. The following Quranic verse refers to times when divorce is allowed  - notice "those too who have not had their courses", meaning prepubescent girls (wives) who had not started menstruating:
And (as for) those of your women who have despaired of menstruation, if you have a doubt, their prescribed time shall be three months, and of those too who have not had their courses; and (as for) the pregnant women, their prescribed time is that they lay down their burden; and whoever is careful of (his duty to) Allah He will make easy for him his affair.

Qur'an 65:4
And from the Bukhari, a collection generally regarded as the most authentic of all hadith (saying or act of Muhammad) collections:
The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with 'Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death). Bukhari 7.62.88

"Allah's Apostle said to me, "Have you got married O Jabir?" I replied, "Yes." He asked "What, a virgin or a matron?" I replied, "Not a virgin but a matron." He said, "Why did you not marry a young girl who would have fondled with you?" Bukhari 59:382
Another hadith compilation confirms what he meant by "young girl":
'A'isha (Allah be pleased with her) reported: “Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) married me when I was six years old, and I was admitted to his house at the age of nine.” (Sahih Muslim 3309)
It seems hard to believe that Islam has no problem with paedophilia if you don't know that Muhammad, who is for Muslims the ideal man, the "perfect example", the supreme example of conduct, the model to follow and imitate, just as Jesus is for Christians, was indeed a paedophile. He married Aisha, one of his wives, when she was 6 and had complete sexual intercourse with her when she was 9.

The argument that in those times the law and public moral code were different is irrelevant here. First of all, a religion, to be worthy of that name, must give ethical guidance and directions. The self-proclaimed founder of a new religion who passively follows the diktats of contemporary mores without questioning them, without having a vision for the future - as Jesus Christ did, whose ethics is modern and in fact pioneering even today, after 2 millennia -, does not deserve the title of prophet and his is not a religion.

Secondarily, that argument must be overturned. Paradoxically, saying that Muhammad just followed the rules of his day not only gives him and his pseudo-religion the coup de grace, but also encapsulates in one sentence what is wrong with Islam: a 7th-century AD warlord who was simply a slave of his time, killing, slaughtering, having multiple wives, having sex with children, was no better and no worse than many others of his contemporaries; but what has made him so perverse is that he enshrined all these terrible behaviours into moral guidelines for the posterity, so that what could have been consigned to history long time ago, barbarism, gratuitous violence, oppression of women, paedophilia - among his other abominable activities -, has now been set in stone for all future generations to obey to and adopt as an ideal way to conduct one's life.

And this leads us to the fifth point, that paedophilia is commonly practiced with the blessing of the law in Muslim countries today, in 2012, as child marriage. From WikiIslam:
A second look at the question; was Muhammad a pedophile? One of the most disturbing things about Islam is that it does not categorically condemn pedophilia. Indeed, it cannot, for to do so would draw attention to the pedophilia of Muhammad, the founder of Islam. Many Muslims cannot condemn pedophilia even if they would like to, for they would have to abandon Islam. Muslims tacitly approve of pedophilia, even if they are embarrassed to say so. So mesmerized are Muslims by the example of Muhammad's pedophilia that they are unable to categorically denounce pedophilia or feel shame. It is prevalent in many Muslim countries disguised as child marriage. The UN is today trying to stop the evil of child marriage among the backward Islamic regions of Asia and Africa. The future of some 300 million young girls depends on it.
Scholar of Islam Raymond Ibrahim writes:
Article 1041 of the Civil Code of the Islamic Republic of Iran states that girls can be engaged before the age of nine, and married at nine: "Marriage before puberty (nine full lunar years for girls) is prohibited. Marriage contracted before reaching puberty with the permission of the guardian is valid provided that the interests of the ward are duly observed."

The Ayatollah Khomeini himself married a ten-year-old girl when he was twenty-eight. Khomeini called marriage to a prepubescent girl "a divine blessing," and advised the faithful: "Do your best to ensure that your daughters do not see their first blood in your house."

Tuesday 20 November 2012

HuffPo: Hamas Tactic Is to Require Israel to Cause Civilian Victims

Has the world finally come to its senses?

Even far-left publications recognize that Hamas is the most responsible for what is going on in Gaza or at least open the debate to this view.

After The Guardian, now The Huffington Post has started publishing commentaries defending Israel. Criminal and civil liberties lawyer Alan Dershowitz writes in "Hamas' Tactic: Require Israel to Cause Civilian Casualties" in the HuffPo:
As the rockets continue to fall in Israel and Gaza, it is important to understand Hamas's tactic and how the international community and the media are encouraging it. Hamas's tactic is as simple as it is criminal and brutal. Its leaders know that by repeatedly firing rockets at Israeli civilian areas, they will give Israel no choice but to respond. Israel's response will target the rockets and those sending them. In order to maximize their own civilian casualties, and thereby earn the sympathy of the international community and media, Hamas leaders deliberately fire their rockets from densely populated civilian areas. The Hamas fighters hide in underground bunkers but Hamas refuses to provide any shelter for its own civilians, who they use as "human shields." This unlawful tactic puts Israel to a tragic choice: simply allow Hamas rockets to continue to target Israeli cities and towns; or respond to the rockets, with inevitable civilian casualties among the Palestinian "human shields."

Every democracy would choose the latter option if presented with a similar choice. Although Israel goes to great efforts to reduce civilian casualties, the Hamas tactic is designed to maximize them. The international community and the media must understand this and begin to blame Hamas, rather than Israel, for the Palestinian civilians who are killed by Israeli rockets but whose deaths are clearly part of the Hamas tactic.

Every reasonable commentator has agreed with President Obama that Hamas started this battle by firing thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians. Every reasonable commentator also agrees with President Obama that Israel has the right to defend its citizens. But many commentators fault Israel for causing Palestinian civilian casualties. But what is Israel's option, other than to simply allow rockets to be aimed at its own women and children. As President Obama observed when he went to Sderot as a candidate:

"The first job of any nation state is to protect its citizens. And so I can assure you that if...somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing."

Israel should continue to make every effort to reduce civilian casualties, both because that is the humane thing to do and because it serves their interests. But so long as Hamas continues to fire rockets from densely populated civilian areas, rather than from the many open areas outside of Gaza City, this cynical tactic--which constitutes a double war crime--will guarantee that some Palestinian women and children will be killed. And the Hamas leadership prepares for this gruesome certainty by arranging for the dead babies to be paraded in front of the international media. In one such case, the Palestinian radicals posted a video of a dead baby who turned out to have been reportedly killed in Syria by the Assad government, and in another case, they displayed the body of a baby who had been killed by a Hamas rocket that misfired, falsely claiming that it had been the victim of an Israeli rocket.

As Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan has said, the Israeli Army does "more to safeguard civilians than any Army in the history of warfare." This includes dropping leaflets, making phone calls and providing other warnings to civilian residents of Gaza City. But Hamas refuses to provide shelter for its civilians, deliberately exposing them to the risks associated with warfare, while it shelters its own fighters in underground bunkers.

The Hamas tactic is also designed to prevent Israel from making peace with the Palestinian Authority. Even Israeli doves are concerned that if Israel ends its occupation of the West Bank, Hamas may take over that territory, as it took over Gaza shortly after Israel ended its occupation of that area. The West Bank is much closer to Israel's major population centers than the Gaza. If Hamas were to fire rockets from the West Bank at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Israel would then have to respond militarily, as it has in Gaza. Once again, civilians would be killed, thus provoking international outcry against Israel.

What we are seeing in Gaza today is a replay of what happened in 2008 and 2009, when Israel went into Gaza to stop the rocket fire. The result was the Goldstone report which put the blame squarely on Israel. This benighted report--condemned by most thoughtful people, and eventually even critiqued by Goldstone himself--has encouraged Hamas to go back to the tactic that resulted in international condemnation of Israel. This tactic will persist as long as the international community and the media persist in blaming Israel for civilian deaths caused by a deliberate Hamas tactic.

Monday 19 November 2012

The Guardian: Israel Is Only Justly Defending Itself

Citizens of Nitzan in southern Israel take cover in a concrete tube during a rocket attack from Gaza on 19 November


If even The Guardian publishes online a comment siding with Israel, by no less than Israel's Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Danny Ayalon, it must really mean that it is becoming obvious to everyone with an ounce of brain that, defending itself after years of restraint, the Jewish state is only doing what any other country in the same situation would do.

Are The Guardian's falling readership numbers making the paper take into more consideration the opinions of people who are not totally blinded by ideology?

Hamas leaves Israel no choice:
Israel will not allow the lives of its citizens to be endangered. If only Gaza's leaders felt the same.

Hamas's charter includes the aspiration that "The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews)". While many concentrate on its death-cult worship, its bloodthirsty killing of adversaries, or its contempt for women, Christians and homosexuals, it is this aspiration for genocide that is at the root of Hamas activities. This is the primary reason why Hamas, the governing regime in Gaza, will never recognise or accept a peace accord with Israel in any form.

Since Israel left Gaza in 2005, thousands of rockets have rained down on Israeli cities and towns in deliberate contravention not just of international law, but all humanity and morality. While some might suggest the so-called blockade is the cause of the attacks, it is actually a consequence. The restrictions were only implemented two years after Israel left Gaza, when it was clear that instead of building a "Singapore of the Middle East", Hamas was interested in importing stockpiles of weapons from places like Iran. Instead of building a future for its people, Hamas built an open-air prison for the million and a half inhabitants who fell into its grasp.

However, Gaza was never enough for an organisation whose raison d'etre is the annihilation of Israel, and whose charter begins with the ominous warning that "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it".

Every rocket from Gaza is a double war crime. First, the rockets are aimed at civilians; second, they are fired from built-up civilian areas, often close to schools, mosques and hospitals. And about 10% of Hamas rockets fired from Gaza don't reach Israel, exploding in Gaza. Mohammed Sadallah – a four-year-old killed on Saturday, his body displayed in a press conference with Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas's leader – was, according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, most likely killed by an errant Hamas rocket.

Hamas leaders frequently declare that their people actively seek death. Fathi Hamad, a senior member of Hamas, stated in 2008 that "for the Palestinian people, death became an industry, at which women and children excel. Accordingly we created a human shield of women, children and elderly. We seek death as you [Israelis] desire life."

Hamas seeks conflagration and war. Death and destruction is seen as a win-win calculation, as any Israeli death is considered a glorious achievement and every Palestinian death that of a "holy martyr", providing badly needed propaganda locally and internationally. Seemingly there are not enough deaths for them, so Hamas's military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, has been busy sending out pictures of massacres in Syria, claiming they were taken in Gaza.

Israel has been left with little choice but to root out this nest of hate and destruction. No nation on earth would allow a third of its population to live in constant fear of incessant fire emanating from a neighbouring territory. Our government exercised restraint.
We gave the international community time to act. However, there was a deafening silence, demonstrating to Israelis that we had to take action to protect our citizens.

Those who refused to condemn the attacks on Israeli citizens have no right to condemn Israel's response to establish peace and quiet for its citizens. This is the basic obligation of any sovereign nation, and we will continue taking any action necessary to achieve this aim.

In the face of this undeniable truth, the usual accusation is that Israel is responding with "disproportionate force" or carrying out "collective punishment". I urge all who make this accusation to consider that Israel has successfully targeted in excess of 1,300 weapons caches, rocket launchers and other elements of Hamas's terrorist infrastructure. Yet despite this, the number of Palestinian casualties remains around one for every 13 strikes, the majority killed being active members of Hamas and combatants.

Israel will not allow its citizens' lives to be endangered. The international community must call on the Palestinian leadership in the Gaza Strip to take the same approach with its own people.

Islam, Racism and Slavery. Blacks in Morocco: "I Get Called a Slave"




Islam is a supremacist doctrine that affirms not only Muslim superiority over non-Muslims, but also Arab superiority over other ethnic groups and races. Both Islam's holy texts - the Quran and the Hadith, namely Muhammad's official biography - and scholars are testament to that.

Muhammad himself bought, sold and kept African slaves.

Historically, Muslims' slave trade of black Africans has been by far the world's greatest numerically and the most long-lasting, spanning over 1400 years (watch the above video, "The Arab Muslim Slave Trade Of Africans, The Untold Story").

Arab Muslims initiated slavery of ethnic Africans and breathed new life into slavery and the slave trade.

All over the world, only Christianity brought an end to slavery of all races. The Roman Empire abolished slavery after converting to Christianity, and Christians banned slavery in 19th century America.

Anti-black racism in Morocco

But slavery still exists in Muslim countries of the Middle East and north-central Africa. Watch the video "Muslim Slavery Still Exists" below:



Islamic racism against black people is well documented in its theological foundations as it is in today's practices. Here is a recent report from Morocco.

Being black in Morocco: 'I get called a slave':
The latest cover of Maroc Hebdo magazine—seen as racist by some, defended by others—has launched a national debate on the struggles faced by sub-Saharan Africans living in Morocco.

“The Black Peril.” That's the controversial headline that the Moroccan weekly ran on its cover last week to tease to an article about the rise in the number of immigrants from sub-Saharan African, many of whom come to Morocco in the hopes of making it to Europe. Many are turned back and end up staying in Morocco, where they live in poverty. Some end up taking part in illegal activities to make a living. According to Morocco’s Interior ministry, there are about 10,000 illegal immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa living in the country. Human rights organisations estimate this number higher as closer to 15,000.

Moroccan authorities are taking an increasingly strict approach to immigration from sub-Saharan Africa. Immigrants without residency permits are quickly expelled. The European Union’s ambassador to Morocco, Eneko Landaburu, recently called the treatment of these immigrants “problematic”, a sentiment echoed by the Moroccan Human Rights Organisation. Meanwhile, the Moroccan labour minister, Abdelouahed Souhail, accused sub-Saharan African immigrants of being in part responsible for the country’s employment crisis.

The International Organisation for Migration recently launched a campaign to raise 620,000 euros to help send some 1,000 illegal migrants from sub-Saharan Africa home.


"Young Moroccans have physically assaulted me on several occasions, for no reason"

Joseph (not his real name) is from Guinea. He lives in Casablanca, where he studies computing at a local university. He is a legal resident.
I came here to study computing thanks to a grant from my country. I’ve been here for four years, and for four years I’ve been a victim of racism. It happens all the time, everywhere.

The most awful incident took place at the airport. I was with my aunt, who was heading back to Guinea and had a lot of luggage. Other passengers from sub-Saharan countries, seeing her struggle to carry it, came to help her get it onto the plane, but an airline employee stopped them, saying she had to deal with it on her own because she was black. I replied in Arabic, and he replied by hitting me in the head. I told him I was going to file a complaint, and he said, sarcastically: “That’s right, go complain to the king!” I never did file a complaint.

Often, when I’m just walking down the street, people will call me a “dirty black man” or call me a slave. Young Moroccans have physically assaulted me on several occasions, for no reason, and passers-by who saw this didn’t lift a finger to help me. All my friends are black and they have all had similar experiences. Even the girls get insulted in the street. To avoid getting hurt, I now try to ignore the insults. But if someone starts to hit me, what can I do? I have to defend myself...

In two years, I’ll be done with my studies, and I certainly don’t intend to stay in Morocco to look for work. Even if someone were to offer me a job here, I would rather go home to Guinea.

Friday 26 October 2012

Douglas Murray and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown Debate




I've chosen this video of a debate between Douglas Murray and renowned UK Muslim leftist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a columnist for the (self-proclaimed) Independent newspaper, because it is very representative of several things.

Alibhai-Brown starts by saying that the last time the two of them debated they were very civilized and "British", which we must assume she now regrets because this time she was anything but.

Then, after reprimanding Murray for his - in her view - generalizations about Muslims and fundamentalism, she berates British culture which, she says, is a drinking culture. So he is accused of what he does not do and she, on the other hand, does: tarring everyone in a group with the same brush.

After this nice example of inconsistency, we are treated to her description of herself as "very well-integrated", in the same breath as her protest against imposing "Britishness" on everybody living in the UK.

Many similar inanities follow before the conversation begins revolving around freedom of speech and then Iran, Israel and nuclear arms.

About freedom of speech, I'm glad to see that Douglas Murray appears to believe what I believe regarding Holocaust denial. The gist of what he says is that imprisoning David Irving for denying the Holocaust gives the President of Iran, the madman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a pretext to accuse the West of double standards by showing its Achilles' heel in the defence of free speech.

Murray seems to think what I also believe about freedom of speech in general, namely that criminalizing Holocaust denial, Nazi and fascist speech is a violation of freedom of expression.

In fact, as many people have observed during the recent Muslim riots against the Muhammad film, making crimes of Holocaust denial and the rest paves the way to the Islamic world's request to impose on the West blasphemy laws outlawing criticism of Islam.

About Iran, the "very well-integrated" Yasmin Alibhai-Brown makes several attempts at morally equating it to Israel and Britain, saying that nobody should have nuclear weapons but, if some countries have them, then all countries ahould be allowed to have them too.

I found the best answer to that in a comment to the video:
In the words of Salman Rushdie:"There is only one group in the world that wishes to get nuclear weapons to use them... radical Islamists". Every country that is armed with them has them for deterrence. There are those who have them not to use them and there are those who want them to use them. Yasmin simply does not get it.
As we well know, Islamists have among their midst many suicide - nuclear or not - bombers.

The most revealing thing in this very enlightening video is the parallel in the irrationality of Alibhai-Brown's performance: she talks as irrationally as she acts irrationally during the discussion.

The lack of logic in her words is not only mirrored but confirmed and reinforced by her continuous interrupting, shouting, patronizing, forcing the others to pay attention to her, treating them like idiots, telling them what to do, pointing fingers under their nose and other hysterical behaviours.

If, at any moment, you may be tempted to take her pseudo-arguments seriously her behaviour serves as a reminder of what degree of irrationality we are dealing with here.

BBC Question Time Panellist Mehdi Hasan Calls Non-Muslims Animals




On Question Time tonight, the BBC invited as a member of the programme's esteemed panel Muslim journalist Mehdi Hasan, former senior political editor of the left-wing The New Statesman and now political director at the leftist website The Huffington Post, regular contributor to The Guardian, in short one of the mainstream Islam's public figures that the UK elites and media are so keen on.

If you want to know a bit more about his views and see how much of a moderate Muslim he is, watch the video above in which he is caught comparing non-Muslims to "animals": so he is speciesist as well as Islamic supremacist.

Hasan is also in support of Iran's nuclear program.

The BBC's invitation of the leader of the BNP Nick Griffin to Question Time, which provoked so many protests, not only pales in comparison but also Griffin, despite the constant attacks he receives, has done nothing to deserve them.

If people want to continue calling Griffin and his party "racist" and "fascist", they have to support these accusations with real evidence, not demagoguery.


Friday 19 October 2012

AFDI Ads Put Anti-Jihad on the UK Media’s Agenda

Jihad Watch has published my article AFDI Ads Put Anti-Jihad on the UK Media’s Agenda:
Pamela Geller’s subway ads have achieved the very important objective of making anti-jihad reach the headlines in the UK.

Even though the coverage was, as was to be expected, mostly unsympathetic to the ads, it’s not often that an ordinary person in Britain turns the TV on and hears the word “jihad” and even less “anti-jihad”, unless in connection with terrorist activities. Counterjihad posters in US main cities’ subways are a revolutionary novelty.

So I think that even if the media reports can distort and give the wrong impression about the campaign, the very fact that the general public learns about it has the positive effect of letting people know that there is a resistance to Islamic violence and arrogance, and a response to anti-Israel ads.

There are many in Britain who don’t believe the propaganda by the political classes and the media. The idea that the BBC, for example, is strongly politically biased is becoming increasingly popular, so we can expect that lots of people will take what it says with a pinch of salt.

The BBC covered the judge ruling in favour of the ads in the New York subway with “Pro-Israel 'Defeat Jihad' ads to hit New York subway”, clearly and predictably sympathetic with the MTA and CAIR point of view:

"Pro-Israel adverts that equate jihad with savagery are to appear in 10 of New York's subway stations next week, after officials failed to block them.
…Aaron Donovan, spokesman for New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), told the BBC they had no choice but to run the ad.

"'Our hands are tied,' he said. 'The MTA is subject to a court-ordered injunction that prohibits application of the MTA's existing no-demeaning ad standard.

"'That standard restricted publication of ads that demean people on the basis of their race, sex, religion, national origin or other group classification. The judge recognised our intention but found our attempt to be constitutionally deficient.'"

What “race, sex, religion, national origin or other group classification” is jihad? It is linked to a particular religion, yes, which is why we should be free to criticize Islam. But the ads don’t demean people for being Muslim, but just for embracing arms and killing other people. Who could object to “demeaning” murderers and terrorists?

Paradoxically, it is those like the MTA spokesman and the others who keep telling us how the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful, who in practice, when they hear “jihad”, have the knee-jerk reaction of thinking “Muslims”.

Sky News similarly headlined: “Anti-Jihad Adverts To Run In New York Subway”:

"The controversial leader of the group behind the adverts says she believes that America is at risk from some Muslims.

"The head of a group that has won its fight to run controversial adverts in New York subway stations referring to some Muslims as 'savage' has told Sky News that she will fight 'to the death' for the right to offend people.

"Ms Geller told Sky News that she was unconcerned the adverts might make the subway network a target for violence.

"She said: 'Were there similar ads on the London buses and trains on 7/7? You know
there weren't.

"'I will not abridge my freedoms so as not to offend savages.

"'I won't take responsibility for other people being violent.

"'I live in America and in America we have the first amendment.'

"Ms Geller, who is a prominent supporter of Israel, stressed that she was not referring to all Muslims as savages, only those who engaged in what she characterises as ‘Jihad’.

"She believes that America is under threat from some Muslims who wish to impose Sharia law on the country, and her group has launched similar campaigns before."


She believes that. And so believes everybody who has taken the time to look at the evidence as objectively as possible. That reference to “some Muslims” is ambiguous because it seems to imply, again, that Pamela Geller targets Muslims, although, for some unknown reason, not all of them.

Reporting on this without any attempt to explain the reasons behind someone’s actions is in itself deceiving. Telling that Geller “believes that America is under threat from some Muslims who wish to impose Sharia law on the country” to an audience that has never been informed about what Islam preaches, how its history unfolded, what its effects globally today are, and what Sharia law involves, is implicitly portraying her as a conspiracy theorist.

Russia Today, another news channel that broadcasts in Britain, reported on the Washington court ruling:

"Judge Collyer openly described the posters as ‘hate speech’, but said the message was protected under the First Amendment as ‘core political speech’ and did not accept the Metro’s argument that it incited violence and constitutes ‘a gamble with public safety’.
AFDI, whose poster has been condemned by over 200 public organizations, had to fight a similar legal battle in New York, again winning the right to place the ads."


The word “hate” is another of those over-used and abused words, like “racism”. The politically correct and those protected by them never hate, they are just righteously angry (against injustice, presumably). Anti-jihadists who write ads hate, but Muslims violently rioting are just angry (even rightly so, because someone provoked them with – how dared they! - a film). The English Defence League staging a peaceful demonstration in Walthamstow is hate, but the far-left extremists and Muslims who pelted them with bottles and bricks only showed their anger against these “bigots”.

Hate has obviously come to mean the thought crime of not thinking politically correctly.

In the press, both The Daily Mail and The Guardian have run several articles on the subject.

They both reported, among other things, on the Mona Eltahawy incident. The MailOnline had an interview with Pamela Hall in which she talked about her plans to sue Eltahawy for the damages she caused to her clothing and equipment during her 'defense of free speech'.

The Guardian, in Comment in Free, asked its readers, “Mona Eltahawy and the anti-Muslim subway ads: is hers the right approach?”. The comments to the post are mostly answering no, drawing a distinction between exercising the freedom of speech and vandalism, and concluding that Eltahawy’s action was damaging public property and therefore illegal. This is one of the ever increasing number of cases in which the people who comment on liberal media’s articles reveal themselves to be much less on the left than the paper itself.

A commenter noticed the “anti-Muslim” in the headline, and wrote: “Strictly speaking, these ads are anti-violent-Jihad rather than anti-Muslim. That is, unless you believe that all Muslims automatically support violent Jihad. But, as we are told here so often, only a tiny, tiny minority of Muslims -- who misunderstand their Religion of Peace -- support violent Jihad. It is these people who are described in the ads as savages.”


Thursday 11 October 2012

Douglas Murray Video on Iran and Israel on the BBC


Douglas Murray is a very brave British commentator, not afraid of defying the political correctness dominating every UK public debate, even when he has to face the sancta sanctorum of that orthodoxy: the BBC.

Douglas Murray is former director of the British think tank Centre for Social Cohesion and is now an associate director of another UK think tank, the conservative, pro-Israel Henry Jackson Society.


Tuesday 2 October 2012

Is Assad Worse Than The Alternatives?

While Western leaders were fretting over films and cartoons depicting Muhammad without giving a thought to the killing of many Christians for their faith around the world and especially in Muslim countries, this is what was happening in Egypt.
In events being ignored not only by the Egyptian authorities, but also by the mainstream media and human rights organizations in the West, Muslim terrorists have in recent weeks attacked Christian families and forced them out of their homes and businesses in the Sinai town of Rafah. The terrorists have threatened to pursue their jihad against Christians until all of them leave the Sinai.

This, just one of the many attacks, is the new reality for Christians living in the "liberated" areas of the Middle East after the "Arab Spring".

The persecution of Christians in the Islamic world, ignored by the mainstream media, is habitual, almost chronic and is escalating towards reaching epidemic proportions.

As well documented by the scholar and thinker Raymond Ibrahim at raymondibrahim.com and other sources like persecution.org, barnabasfund.org and aina.org, this persecution takes several forms, ranging from the most violent to the "merely" humiliating: sexual abuse of Christian women; attacks against churches, crosses and other symbols of Christianity; apostasy and blasphemy laws punishing with death those who leave or "offend" Islam; forced conversions to Islam; theft and pillage in place of jizya, the tax imposed on non-Muslims; general treatment of Christians as subjugated and intimidated dhimmis, "tolerated", second-class citizens; physical aggression and murder.

These persecutions derive either from the application of Islamic Sharia law or from the Islamic supremacist ideology.

According to the organization International Christian Concern, an estimated 200 million Christians suffer some kind of persecution worldwide.

The problem has been worsened by the Middle East uprisings which began a year ago. Many thought that the "Arab Spring", led by young, Western-educated people using Facebook and Twitter on their mobile phones, would bring democracy, moderation and reform, stop human rights violations, protect the rights of women and religious minorities, lead to the cessation of terrorism and extremist views.

As authors and commentators with an in-depth knowledge of Islam had predicted in early 2011, far from getting better things have got worse in practically all the above areas. They predicted that Islamists, being the only organized opposition with sufficient money and resources, would replace the dictators who had, at least, one positive characteristic: they were secularists who protected the minorities and guaranteed a certain degree of peace among the various sects, tribes or other divisions in the populations they governed.

In Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and Libya, a survey by Abu Dhabi's Gallup Polls found that people feel less safe now than before the revolts took place.

In all those countries Muslim fundamentalists have now more power than they had before. Now Syria is on the same route.

We can already see what lies ahead when we know that in Syria on February 26, for the first time in Syria's modern history, an armed attack has been made on a Catholic monastery: 30 armed and masked jihadis attacked it demanding money.

The Syrian Christian community has suffered a series of brutal murders and kidnappings, with hundreds of Christians killed so far since the anti-government protests started.

A report from the Barnabas Fund charity says that "children were being especially targeted by the kidnappers, who, if they do not receive the ransom demanded, kill the victim." In one tragic case, "a young Christian boy was killed by the rebels, who filmed the murder and then claimed that government forces had committed the act." A kidnapped man "was found hanged with numerous injuries", another "was cut into pieces and thrown in a river".

As Raymond Ibrahim describes, "Christian minorities, who, as 10% of the Syrian population, have the most to gain from a secular government and the most to suffer from a state run by Islamic Sharia law, have no choice but to prefer Assad. ...prefer the devil they know to the ancient demon their forefathers knew."

And another report from the Barnabas Fund says: "Christians have mostly stayed away from the protests in Syria, having been well treated and afforded a considerable amount of religious freedom under President Assad's regime. ...Should Assad fall, it is feared that Syria could go the way of Iraq, post-Saddam Hussein. Saddam, like Assad, restrained the influence of militant Islamists, but after his fall they were free to wreak havoc on the Christian community; hundreds of thousands of Christians were consequently forced to flee the violence. Many of them went to Syria."

This does not mean that all Syrian rebels are Islamists: some are and some are not. But, in conclusion, Islamists are the only ones capable of filling the power vacuum after the toppling of Assad as the only organized opposition and in the meantime, in the chaos created by the unrest, they are the ones who are allowed free reign in their anti-Christian feeling and its expressions in the form of kidnapping, ransoming, pillaging and killing people they consider their enemies and inferiors, the "infidel" Christians.

Thursday 27 September 2012

Geller's Anti-Jihad Ad Makes Headlines



Courageous USA counter-jihadist activist Pamela Geller, Executive Director of the of American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), has brought anti-jihad to national and international media attention, with her ad in New York subway.

The poster, which is a response to anti-Israel ads previously displayed there, has been repeatedly vandalized since its first day, Monday.

Says Pamela Geller about this vandalism:
In a rational society, it would be looked down upon, but more importantly, the defacement is a metaphor for this entire conversation. Hundreds and hundreds of anti-Israel posters ran all over the country. Not one was defaced. One anti-jihad poster goes up, and it's defaced within an hour, while its creator faces defamation, smears and libel. Islamic supremacists and leftist thugs criminally defaced these ads within an hour. This is a physical manifestation of the entire conversation, or lack thereof. Anyone who speaks about jihad and sharia is attacked, defamed, destroyed -- just like these ads. This is exactly what’s happening in the media regarding jihad coverage in general. Anti-American, anti-Israel, pro-sharia hate is all over the airwaves, but anyone who dares to speak the truth about Islam and jihad in the media is immediately smeared and defamed. You can't have this conversation in the media, any more than I can present these pro-Israel ads, and receive any semblance of fair treatment.