Category Archives: Dhimmitude

David Wood: An Open Message to Rabbi Jerome Davidson (and Other Critics of Pamela Geller)

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Pamela Geller gagged in Great NeckDavid Wood:

My wife and I were looking forward to hearing Pamela Geller speak at Great Neck Synagogue this Sunday. Unfortunately, her speech was canceled due to a relentless campaign of intimidation by an “interfaith” coalition that included not only Muslims, but Jews and Christians as well. We can only wonder why these Jews and Christians, who find Pamela’s speech unacceptable, have no objection to the hate-filled claims we read in the Qur’an and Hadith.

If you happen to be in the New York area, Sunday’s events have been rescheduled elsewhere.

For those who would like to know what the Muslim sources say about unbelievers, here you go:

Qur’an 3:32—Say: Obey Allah and the Apostle; but if they turn back, then surely Allah does not love the unbelievers.

Qur’an 5:51—O you who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people.

Qur’an 9:29—Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the Religion of Truth, from among the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.

Qur’an 9:30—And the Jews say: Uzair is the son of Allah; and the Christians say: The Messiah is the son of Allah; these are the words of their mouths; they imitate the saying of those who disbelieved before; may Allah destroy them; how they are turned away!

Qur’an 9:73—O Prophet! strive hard against the unbelievers and the hypocrites and be unyielding to them; and their abode is hell, and evil is the destination.

Qur’an 9:111—Surely Allah has bought of the believers their persons and their property for this, that they shall have the garden; they fight in Allah’s way, so they slay and are slain; a promise which is binding on Him in the Taurat and the Injeel and the Quran; and who is more faithful to his covenant than Allah? Rejoice therefore in the pledge which you have made; and that is the mighty achievement.

Qur’an 9:123—O you who believe! fight those of the unbelievers who are near to you and let them find in you hardness; and know that Allah is with those who guard (against evil).

Qur’an 47:35—Be not weary and fainthearted, crying for peace, when ye should be uppermost: for Allah is with you, and will never put you in loss for your (good) deeds.

Qur’an 48:29—Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, and those who are with him are severe against disbelievers, and merciful among themselves.

Qur’an 98:6—Verily, those who disbelieve (in the religion of Islam, the Qur’an and Prophet Muhammad) from among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians) and Al-Mushrikun will abide in the Fire of Hell. They are the worst of creatures.

Sahih Muslim 33—It has been narrated on the authority of Abdullah b. Umar that the Messenger of Allah said: I have been commanded to fight against people till they testify that there is no god but Allah, that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah, and they establish prayer, and pay Zakat and if they do it, their blood and property are guaranteed protection on my behalf except when justified by law, and their affairs rest with Allah.

Sahih Muslim 4366—It has been narrated by ‘Umar b. al-Khattab that he heard the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) say: I will expel the Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula and will not leave any but Muslim.

Al-Bukhari, Al-Adab al-Mufrad 1103—Abu Hurayra reported that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, “Do not give the People of the Book the greeting first. Force them to the narrowest part of the road.”

Sahih al-Bukhari, Ch. 88—Narrated Ibn Umar that the Prophet said, “My livelihood is under the shade of my spear, and he who disobeys my orders will be humiliated by paying Jizya.”

For more on Jihad, click here.

 

Muslim Persecution of Christians: January, 2013

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church-burning1

by Raymond Ibrahim:

Egypt: A court sentenced an entire family – Nadia Mohamed Ali and her seven children – to fifteen years in prison for converting to Christianity.

The year 2013 began with reports indicating that wherever Christians live side by side with large numbers of Muslims, the Christians are under attack. As one report said, “Africa, where Christianity spread fastest during the past century, now is the region where oppression of Christians is spreading fastest.” Whether in Kenya, Nigeria, Mali, Somalia, Sudan, or Tanzania—attacks on Christians are as frequent as they are graphic.

As for the Middle East, the cradle of Christianity, a new study by the Pew Forum finds that “just 0.6 percent of the world’s 2.2 billion Christians now live in the Middle East and North Africa. Christians make up only 4% of the region’s inhabitants, drastically down from 20% a century ago, and marking the smallest regional Christian minority in the world. Fully 93% of the region is Muslim and 1.6% is Jewish.”

How Christianity has been all but eradicated from the region where it was born is made clear in yet another report on the Middle East’s largest Christian minority, Egypt’s Christian Copts. Due to a “climate of fear and uncertainty,” Christian families are leaving Egypt in large numbers. Along with regular church attacks, the situation has gotten to the point that, according to one Coptic priest, “Salafis meet Christian girls in the street and order them to cover their hair. Sometimes they hit them when they refuse.” Another congregation leader said “With the new [Sharia-heavy] constitution, the new laws that are expected, and the majority in parliament I don’t believe we can be treated on an equal basis.”

Elsewhere, Christians are not allowed to flee. In eastern Syria, for example, 25,000 Christians, including Syriac Orthodox, Syriac Catholics, Chaldeans and Armenians, were prevented from fleeing due to a number of roadblocks set up by armed Islamic militia groups, who deliberately target Christians for robbery and kidnapping-for-ransom—then often slaughtering their victims.

Categorized by theme, January’s batch of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed by theme and in country alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity:

Church Attacks

Egypt: Reminiscent of the 2011 New Year’s Eve church bombing in Alexandria, which left over 23 Christians dead, a car packed with explosives was discovered by a Coptic church celebrating Christmas [which is in January] and was neutralized before it could detonate. As patrols seized the explosives-packed car, another car with masked men in it sped away. Separately, hundreds of Muslims chanting Islamic slogans in the village of Fanous destroyed a social services building belonging to a Coptic Church. Security forces arrived only after the building had been completely destroyed. According to the AINA report, the social services building “had all the necessary government permits; it had a reception hall on the first floor and a kindergarten on the second. But the Muslims insisted that it would become a church. Mosques in surrounding areas had earlier called on Muslims, through their megaphones, to go and help their Muslim brethren in Fanous, because Christians were “building a church.” Hundreds of other Muslim protesters rioted outside yet another church in Upper Egypt; on claims that a Christian man had sexually assaulted a 6-year-old girl, they threw stones at the building. Four stores owned by Copts were torched. Police are investigating the accusations against the merchant.

Nigeria: A total of 30 Christians were slaughtered in two separate attacks carried out by armed men ahead of the New Year, in the Muslim-majority north: on Sunday December 30, 15 people were killed when armed jihadis stormed a church and opened fire on worshippers. The night before, Muslim terrorists broke into targeted homes and slaughtered 15 other Christians in their sleep. “The victims were selected because they were all Christians, some of whom had moved into the neighbourhood from other parts of the city hit by Boko Haram attacks,” said a relief worker. Meanwhile, Nigerian president Jonathan revealed that Boko Haram has enablers even within his own government: “The saboteurs in government condoning terrorism by Boko Haram, you do not love this nation,” he said. “Those of you who leak secrets to Boko Haram do not love this nation.”

Pakistan: On Christmas day, “when Christian worshipers were coming out of different Churches after performing Christmas prayers, more than one hundred Muslim extremists equipped with automatic rifles, pistols and sticks attacked the Christian women, children and men,” according to a Pakistan Christian Post report.Several were shot or beaten relentlessly. Much of this appears to have been exacerbated by a fatwa, or an Islamic edict, that came out right before Christmas, saying that, “Christmas cannot be celebrated by Muslims because it is against the concept of monotheism in Islam.” Due to the subsequent chaos, Christians “were under siege from Christmas day and running out of food supplies and milk for children on fear of safety and security of life from further attacks of Muslim mob…. The news of this attack on Christians on Christmas Day was intentionally blocked by media and administration of capital city Islamabad.”

Russia: Security forces in a North Caucasus province on Sunday killed three Islamic militants suspected ofplanning attacks on church services during the Russian Orthodox Christmas holiday in January. Security forces tried to stop a van in a Muslim-majority province but its occupants opened fire and, in the ensuing battle, were killed. Guns and ammunition were subsequently discovered in the van, indicating that the men could have been planning attacks on churches during the services that marked the Russian Orthodox Christmas. “Deadly exchanges of gunfire between police and suspected militants at road checkpoints are common in Russia’s North Caucasus, a string of provinces hit by an Islamist insurgency rooted in two separatist wars in Chechnya,” the report added.

Read more at Gatestone Institute

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

The Islamization of Copenhagen

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Bit by bit, it’s getting worse.

 

By Bruce Bawer

Bit by bit, it’s getting worse.

In recent years, life in the city of Copenhagen has hardly been free of, shall we say, problems related to Islam. But for the most part, the worst of it has been confined to Muslim neighborhoods such as Nørrebro. And residents of Copenhagen have at least been able to console themselves that conditions in their city were nowhere near as bad as those right across the Øresund Bridge in the now notorious Swedish burg of Malmö.

Well, as an editorial in Jyllands-Posten acknowledged last week, “conditions such as those in Malmö…are beginning to appear in Copenhagen.”

In a news story that appeared on the same day as the editorial, Jyllands-Posten reported the latest example of these “conditions”: both the Israeli ambassador to Denmark, Arthur Avnon, and the head of Copenhagen’s Jewish community are now advising Jews in that city to stop wearing yarmulkes and Stars of David and speaking Hebrew loudly in public – even in neighborhoods that they think of as “safe.” Asked about this advice, Police Commissioner Lars-Christian Borg told Jyllands-Posten that Jews – and gays, too – should stay away from parts of the city where there is a recognized “risk of clashes and harassment.” (Nice euphemism for “Muslim neighborhoods,” that.)

The Jyllands-Posten editorial bleakly toted up other examples of what they described as the city’s increasing readiness to adapt to the ever-worsening situation in the Danish capital: Copenhagen’s Jewish school “looks like a small fortress,” supplied with an elaborate security system and police protection, a constant reminder to the children that there are people who wish to do them harm; the head of the Danish-Palestinian Friendship Society, who is also a leading figure in Denmark’s ruling Socialist People’s Party, recently opined that Hitler should have killed even more Jews than he did, and went unpunished and all but entirely uncriticized for it; Copenhagen’s mayor called on Jews not to display too many Israeli flags at a recent multicultural festival, an admonition that was generally regarded as sensible: “why pick unnecessary fights?” Why “provoke”? Once again proving itself to be morally head and shoulders above virtually every other major newspaper in Europe, Jyllands-Posten called on Danes to recognize just how dangerous it is to respond in a passive and accommodating way to Muslim hatred, and urged them to  stand up to it before it’s too late.

Read more at Front Page

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Blasphemy as a National Security Threat

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freedomBy Daniel Greenfield

Spain has begun deportation proceedings against Imran Firasat, a Christian refugee from Pakistan, for making a documentary about Mohammed and thereby threatening the national security of Spain. If Firasat is deported back to Pakistan, he will face the death penalty proving that it’s a short step from the Spanish Inquisition to the Pakistani Inquisition.

The United States has a man sitting in prison for making another blasphemous movie, which the government spent weeks blaming for worldwide attacks on American embassies. And he isn’t the first man persecuted or prosecuted for offending Islam. Offending Islam has become a national security issue involving all levels of government.

When Bubba the Love Sponge, a Tampa DJ, proposed to burn a Koran, the commander of the Afghanistan war contacted his girlfriend, who would later be stalked by Petraeus’ girlfriend, to contact the Mayor of Tampa to keep Bubba from burning a Koran. Instead of explaining how the American system works to the Lebanese temptress and her four-star general, the mayor wrote back that the city was working on it.

That month 50 percent more Americans were killed in Afghanistan in the long slow death march of the war, but a Koran was not burned in Tampa. Mission accomplished.

Muslims did not have to kill a great number of Americans to enforce blasphemy law in this country. Counting the various reactions to burnt Korans, rumors of a flushed Koran and assorted things of that nature, the number is still well below a hundred. Even counting every casualty in the war from September 11 onward, it took fewer deaths to make the United States give up on the Bill of Rights than it took to liberate it in the War of Independence.

But it’s not really about the deaths, if it were, then the United States wouldn’t be senselessly squandering the lives of American soldiers in Afghanistan to avoid offending the natives. It’s not the death of men that our leaders are worried about, but the death of stability.

Knowing that a hundred men will die today in car accidents does not alarm anyone, but knowing that somewhere a dozen men might die in a bomb explosion, anywhere and at any time, can bring a nations to its knees. That is the difference between predictable and unpredictable death. Predictable death makes it possible for most everyone to go about doing what they normally do. Unpredictable death, however, erodes daily order.

Blasphemy makes terrorism seem predictable

Blasphemy makes terrorism seem predictable. It delivers that false sense of control that is at the root of Stockholm Syndrome, the seductive illusion that the thug can be reasoned with and that we can restore control over our perilous environment by accepting responsibility for the enemy’s violence. If we meet a set of conditions, then we will have peace. And what kind of lunatic wouldn’t want peace? The kind who needs to be deported or locked up in the name of peace.

When an entire country goes Stockholm, then it is no longer interested in winning the war, only in surviving the peace. In a Stockholm country, national security consists of locking up anyone who can be blamed for sabotaging the peacemaking. The less peace there is, the more the peacemakers go on the hunt for “extremists” who are to blame for the lack of it. The more their vision of a better world fails, the more stern measures they must take against their own people. Peace is always one more denunciation of extremism away.

The same countries whose leaders have spent a century and a half blathering incessantly about a truly progressive order under international law have shown no ability to cope with the old-fashioned kind of war. They can quote verbatim the laws of war, but understand poorly that war makes its own laws. War’s simplest law is that you pick a pretext, any popular pretext, make your demands and then go on the attack. If the other side is foolish enough to meet your demands, then it has shown its weakness and must be attacked again and again.

Muslims have restored blasphemy prosecutions to the United States and Europe through violence.

Muslims have restored blasphemy prosecutions to the United States and Europe through violence. Like Khrushchev banging his shoe on the United Nations delegate desk, they did their best to convince the rest of the world that they were violently irrational and liable to do all sorts of things if their demands weren’t met. And their demands were met. Rather than going medieval on their asses, the civilized world instead went medieval on anyone who offended the medieval cult of Islam.

Muslim blasphemy, like the ghetto hood’s respect, is an assertion of supremacy by identity. It isn’t a grievance, it’s a right of violence, and if you give into it, then you accept the inferior status that comes from being weak in a system where might makes right and killing people, or threatening to, is what makes one man better than another.

Islam is submission. If you submit to Islam, then you’re a Muslim. If you submit to a Muslim, then you’re a slave

Islam is submission. If you submit to Islam, then you’re a Muslim. If you submit to a Muslim, then you’re a slave. The western blasphemy trial is not the enforced submission of an Islamic legal system that would be crude and brutal, but at least comparatively respectable, it is the enforced submission to Muslim violence. The judges who preside over our blasphemy cases do not believe in Islam, they believe in the danger of Muslim violence. This is not theocracy, is it slavery.

For the moment blasphemy prosecutions still involve trying offenders on some charge other than the obvious one. Low-hanging fruit like Imran Firasat or Mark Youssef are the easiest to deal with. Any man whose freedom depends on the whim of a judge can already be locked up or deported any time without the need for actual charges of heresy to be brought. When that isn’t possible, there is always the ubiquitous hate crime which increasingly extends to anything that offends anyone regardless of consequences or intent.

These trials are a contradiction, 21st Century legal codes built on sensitivity and tolerance being used to prosecute deviations from a medieval code of insensitivity and intolerance. But that very same contradiction runs through the modern state’s entire approach to Islam. It is impossible to embrace medievalism without becoming medieval. The need to accommodate Islamic medievalism is forcing the medievalization of the modern world’s political and legal systems.

The conflict between the modern world and the Muslim world is being waged by the modern rules of international law and peacemaking on one side and by the medieval rules of brutal violence, insincere offers of peace and bigoted fanaticism on the other. Rather than fighting it on its own terms, the modern world is instead trying to accommodate it on its own terms by accommodating its blasphemy codes.

Trapped in a long-term war, our leaders are looking for ways of making the conflict more manageable. If they can’t win the war, they can at least limit the number of attacks. It’s not the open book kind of appeasement, but the double book kind. The open book is still patriotic, but the second book in the bottom drawer is running payments to the terrorists and finding ways to accommodate them. And anyone who runs afoul of the second book, also runs afoul of national security.

War often compromises freedoms, but it rarely compromises the freedom to hurt the enemy’s feelings. But this is a different sort of war. A war with no enemies and no hope of victory. A war whose only hope is that one day our enemies will become better people and stop trying to kill us. Our enemies are fighting to take away our freedoms and we are fighting to take away our own freedoms in the hopes that if we give up some of them to the enemy, he will settle for them and give up on the rest.

Read more at Canada Free Press

See also:

Threat to Free Speech (counterjihadreport.com)

SOS: Save Uncle Sam

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afghan21Written by: Diana West

The Wall Street Journal reports this week about a new draft handbook for US troops in Afghanistan designed to prevent their Afghan “partners” from murdering them. (And yes, we’ve seen this same material before.)

The problem, according to  the Army, is  “ignorance of, or lack of empathy for Muslim and/or Afghan cultural norms” on the part of US troops.

The solution, according to the Army, is for  troops to accept these same Muslim and/or Afghan norms — or else be killed. In effect, then, Uncle Sam is  ordering  Americans  to submit to Islam or die — exactly the choice offered to infidels vanquished by jihad. As far I can tell, the main difference is Uncle Sam will require them to salute while submitting.

I simplify, of course, but I do not exagerate. Say, Joe American hears about  boys being sodomized by Afghan Army personnel. Such pederasty is in accordance with “Muslim and/or Afghan cultural norms.” According to Uncle Sam, Joe American must say  nothing, must ignore the issue altogether — or  risk being killed.

Say Joe American observes the enslavement of Muslim and/or Afghan women — another “Muslim and/or Afghan cultural norm.” It makes Joe mad. But zip it, Joe — or die.

Christians and Jews who have lived under Islamic law across the centuries would recognize the diminished state of the American soldier circa 2012 as that of the classic dhimmi: the non-Muslim subject to Islamic law; his silence, his acquiesence the humiliating price of existence. Similarities to the janissaries, the Islamized forces stolen as children from Christian populations by the Ottomans to enforce Islamic law under the caliph, are also increasingly evident.

In our time, we may also understand this as  another  iteration of  the Hair-Trigger Moderate (introduced back in The Death of the Grown-Up). The syndrome describes  the society-wide phenomenon of curbing speech about Islam to prevent something, anything from setting the hair-trigger moderate off (tick, tick, tick…). This  should, but doesn’t, reveal the “moderation” to be the fraud that it is. We saw this  when George W. Bush recanted the word “crusade” after 9/11/01 (mustn’t offend, or else alienate our  “friends”). We see it in this Army draft manual in 2012  (mustn’t offend, or else receive a bullet/axe in the  head). We see it everywhere in between: in the elimination of “jihad,” “Islamic terrorism,” etc., from contemporary debate, in the Danish cartoon “crisis,” in government prosecutions and persecutions of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, of Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff in Austria,  Lars  Hedegaard in Denmark, Tommy Robinson in England, in the Obama administration’s scapegoating and incarceration of the maker of “Innocence of Muslims,”   in the “Istanbul Process.” Such self-gagging  reflects the influence — the ascendance — of Islamic law. It reflects our own rush to  dhimmitude.

And especially so in the US military, now mired in  Islamic quagmires for more than a decade. Other  “cultural norms” US forces must accept without objection include dog torture, desertion, drug use, and even sympathy for the Taliban.

Yes. Among the Army draft handbook’s “taboo conversation topics” are  “making derogatory comments about the  Taliban.”

You can rub your eyes, but that’s what it says. The US and Afghans are  partnering in the first place because We and They are supposed to have this common enemy, the Taliban. But say something bad about the Taliban and  your “brother in arms “  might get mad enough to kill you.

On first glance, we can read this as evidence of Uncle Sam’s certifiable dementia.  But maybe we should think of it instead as a clear admission: Uncle Sam knows we have met the enemy and he is … in our pup tent. Uncle Sam knows our Afghan “allies” have more in common with the enemy than with Us, the People, but he continues with the doomed, damned mission anyway. Why? Have we been subverted to Islam’s ends? In a word, yes. Is there hope of reversal? Not much, not really, unless something changes in the body (and brain) politic. When/if that happens,  we might look back on this Army draft handbook  as plea for help: Uncle Sam crying out to be rescued from the tiny band of extremists that has seized control of American interests.

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Why Our Forces Were Told to ‘Stand Down’ in Benghazi

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By Daniel Greenfield:

To understand what went wrong in the Benghazi mission, it’s important to begin by looking at what was so unique about it.

When the Islamist mobs began their September 11 rampage, they found embassies with high walls, heavy security and police protection. Even in Tunis and Cairo, where the Arab Spring Islamist regimes have been accused of collaborating with their fellow Salafists, there were credible military and police forces capable of preventing the kind of full scale assault that took place in Benghazi.

The mission in Benghazi, however, was an American diplomatic facility with few defenses in a city where the police were virtually helpless against the Islamist militias and where the national government had announced that it would allow the Salafists to destroy Sufi tombs rather than intervene.

On September 1, I wrote that the real implication of these remarks was that the Libyan government had given the Islamists a free hand and would take no action no matter what they did. And bloodshed was sure to follow. Ten days later it did.

After the fall of Saddam, American diplomatic facilities in Iraq did not remain unguarded or protected only by local militias. It was always understood that American diplomatic facilities in a country whose government had recently fallen were sitting ducks and needed heavy protection. The State Department cables show that this was something that quite a few of the Americans on the ground also understood. The Benghazi consulate had been attacked, and its next attack would only be a matter of time.

When Al Qaeda decided to commemorate September 11 with a wave of attacks on American diplomatic facilities across the Muslim world, from Tunis all the way to Indonesia, in a recreation of its own 1998 embassy attacks, its planners paid special attention to the one facility that was a soft target and surrounded by jihadist fighters. A facility that was a perfect target because it was completely exposed.

Benghazi should have either had the same protection that a similar facility in Iraq would have or it should have been closed down. Instead the State Department chose to rely on its friendly relations with the jihadists, having forgotten the story of the scorpion and the frog, trusting in an Islamist militia linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and to its future Al Qaeda-affiliated Ansar Al Sharia attackers to protect it.

The State Department was not being cheap. Its budget had climbed steadily under Obama and it could have set up another Green Zone in Benghazi if it chose to. But that would have been a flashback to the Bush era that represented everything the appeasement lobby had hated about those eight years.

Libya was meant to be a new kind of war. Not a display of American arrogance and unilateralism, but a show of submissiveness to the goals and ambitions of the Muslim world. In post-American diplomacy, the Americans did not arrive with a show of force, surrounded by Marines and heavy fortifications, but bent humbly under the defensive shield of the Islamist Ummah. Rather than exporting the Dar Al Harb, the Americans would ask for the protection of the Dar Al Islam.

The reason that the Navy SEALS were denied the support of a Spectre C-130U gunship was the same reason that the consulate had been left nearly unguarded. And it was the same reason that so many soldiers had died in Afghanistan because they had been denied air and artillery support or even the permission to open fire.

What happened in Benghazi was only extraordinary because it caught the attention of the public, but American soldiers in Afghanistan had been suffering under the same conditions ever since it was decided that winning the hearts and minds of Afghan civilians was more important than the lives of American soldiers.

The four Americans killed in Benghazi lived and died by the same code as thousands of Americans in Afghanistan. And that code overrode loyalty to one’s own people in favor of appeasing Muslims. The two former SEALS broke that code, violating orders by going to protect the consulate and were abandoned in the field by an administration that prioritized Muslim opinions over American lives.

From the post-American diplomatic perspective, the lives of a few Americans, who knew what they were getting into, was a small sacrifice to make when weighed against the potential of turning the entire Muslim world around. A Spectre gunship blasting away at an Islamist militia in the streets of Benghazi would have ended the fiction of a successful war in Libya and infuriated most of the Islamist militias. Worst of all, it would have made Americans seem like imperialists, instead of helpful aides to the Islamist transition of the Arab Spring. It would have ruined everything and so it was shut down.

Read more at Front Page

Treating Islam with Special Reverence is Cultural Suicide and Just Plain Wrong

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by JAMES  DELIN

My brilliant niece Freya was talking to my brother the other day about the  religious education curriculum at her predominately white, middle-class state  school in a pretty English cathedral city. She happened to mention ‘Mohammed,  Peace Be Upon Him.’ ‘Eh?’ said my brother. ‘It’s what we’re taught at school.  After we mention “Mohammed” we have to say “Peace be upon him”.’

Now I know what you’re thinking: that Freya must surely have got the wrong  end of the stick. ‘If this were a madrassa in Bradford, well maybe,’ you’ll be  thinking. ‘But at a white, middle-class state school in a pretty English  cathedral city? No way. Things aren’t that bad. At least not yet, anyway…’

But Freya is not stupid. That’s why, at the beginning, I referred to her as  my ‘brilliant’ niece as opposed to my ‘incredibly thick’ one. Apparently, she  assures me, they’ve been taught to use the ‘peace be upon him’ formula since  Year 7 and though they’re allowed to shorten it to PBUH, they’re definitely not  supposed to call him just Mohammed. ‘There’s sometimes the odd snigger when the  phrase comes up but we’ve been conditioned pretty much to accept it as normal,’  says Freya. ‘It’s a bit weird, given that there’s only two Muslim kids in my  year of 100.’

I find this scary for at least two reasons. The first is what it says about  the death of our national identity. When Freya’s father and I were at school, we  had to go to ‘chapel’ once a day, and twice on Sundays. In our scripture classes  we were taught all the key bible stories, even to the point of having to learn  the names of all the apostles. It didn’t turn us into religious freaks – anything but. What it did instil in us, however, was a sense of history and  tradition. Like generations before us we were members of the Anglican Church,  familiar with the same tales, the same liturgy, the same hymns and psalms, the  same rituals, the same boredom.

Before the 1980s, I suspect, this was the experience of most British  children, regardless of their race or religious background. It wasn’t a question  of forcing Christianity down anyone’s throat – merely an accepted part of the  fabric of British life. You went to church (at least occasionally – Christmas at  any rate) in the same way you watched Top of the Pops and Morecambe  and Wise, or you had roast beef and Yorkshire pud for Sunday lunch. It just  was what you did.

Not any more. Sure, the old religion is still covered in RE classes, but at  state schools like Freya’s only as an equally valid and certainly by no means  preferable alternative to Judaism, Sikhism, Islam and the rest. ‘Jesus was the  son of God! Do you agree?’ asks a sample Key Stage 3 question from Freya’s  school website. Well, what a bloody stupid question to ask an 11-year-old. How  are they possibly going to be intellectually equipped to produce any kind of  meaningful answer?

A teacher at my old school, Malvern, told me that when new kids arrive he can  no longer rely on their being familiar with even the most basic prayers and  bible stories. No doubt the progressives who devised the new God-free curriculum  will congratulate themselves on having finally freed young minds from the  shackles of organised religion. (Probably they read somewhere that religion has  caused more wars than, like, anything, man). But what they’ve really done is  impoverished and deracinated and dumbed down a generation. They’ve denied Freya  and her contemporaries the key that might one day have helped them unlock  everything from ‘The Dream of the Rood’ to ‘The Whitsun Weddings’. They’ve  vandalised 1,400 years of the history, literature and traditions which bound us  as a nation.

But our failure to defend our culture is only the second scariest part of the  PBUH story. The scariest, of course, is what it tells us not just about the  growing dominance of Islamism but about our cowardice, fear and ignorance in so  easily surrendering to it.

Read more: Family Security Matters

James Delingpole is a British writer,  journalist and broadcaster who is  (he says) right about everything. He is the  author of numerous fantastically  entertaining books including Welcome  to Obamaland: I’ve Seen Your Future and it Doesn’t  Work. His  website is http://www.jamesdelingpole.com/ and  he also  has a blog at the Daily  Telegraph.

 

Terrorists Winning? Ivy League Professor Calls for Censorship

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Columbia law professor Tim Wu thinks YouTube should censor videos that could offend people in the Middle East. Is the liberal establishment raising the white flag to Islamic extremists? Are academics willing to sacrifice free speech and the First Amendment to satisfy the demands of radical Muslim terrorists? Find out.

 

Egypt Shuts Down Last Jewish Synagogue

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By Daniel Greenfield

The Anti-Israel crowd likes to pretend that the ethnic cleansing of the Middle East’s Jews was an economic phenomenon. And every few weeks there is a reminder of how precarious the situation is even for the few Jews still remaining, in what was once an Egyptian city with a tremendous Jewish population.

For the first time in 2,000 years, this year there will be no Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur services at the Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue in Alexandria.

The synagogue was the last ‘working’ synagogue in Egypt. The Egyptian authorities have banned High Holiday services for ‘security’ reasons.

Levana Zamir, who heads the International Association of Egyptian Jews in Israel, comments: “It seems this is really the end of Jewish life in Egypt. The authorities have found a way to take over the last Jewish bastion, since all the remaining synagogues are already archaeological and tourist sites. It is very sad.”

If even High Holiday services can’t be held in the only synagogue in Egypt, then this is another demonstration that Jewish life in the Muslim world is simply impossible because of Muslim bigotry.

It was that bigotry which forced Jews out of Egypt.

The first Nationality Code was promulgated by Egypt on May 26, 1926. According to this Nationality Code, a person born in Egypt of a ‘foreign’ father, (who  himself was also born in Egypt), was entitled to Egyptian nationality only if the foreign father “belonged racially to the majority of the population of a country whose language is Arabic or whose religion is Islam.”

It is making life impossible for the last few who remain.

The Case for Israel can be seen in Alexandria, it can be seen in the attacks on Jews everywhere from Berlin streets to California campuses. As long as Muslim bigotry and persecution continues, an attack on the Jewish State is an attack on the only place in the world where Jews are free of Muslim persecution.

Published at Front Page

Muslim Persecution of Christians: July, 2012

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by Raymond Ibrahim:

Several reports appearing in July indicate that Christian minorities all around the Muslim world—especially women and children—are being abducted, tortured, raped, forced to convert to Islam, and/or enslaved. In Egypt, at least 550 such cases have been documented in the last five years, and have only increased since the revolution. Christians who manage to escape back to their families often find the government siding with the Muslim abductors. One young mother who recently testified before the Helsinki Commission explained how she was snatched in broad daylight, as her abductor shouted to bystanders while dragging her to a waiting taxi, “No one interfere! She is an enemy of Islam.”

Identical reports are emerging from Pakistan, where “persecution, kidnapping and abduction of Christian women and girls,” including many married women with children, are on the rise. Last year the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) said that 1800 Christian and Hindu girls were forcibly converted to Islam. Most recently, the sister of a pastor was “kidnapped raped and forcibly converted to Islam.” She “was kidnapped around a month ago by some Muslim men while returning home from college. She was held for days, suffered sexual abuse, threats and violence. In such a state of terror and exhaustion, first she was coerced into converting to Islam, and then marriage. Her family reported the incident to the police station in Chunian, but no investigations have been conducted and instead her abductors have presented a report to the court attesting to the girl now being Muslim and legally married. Among other things, the girl is a minor and, according to the law, marriage is not permitted to minors.”

The tiny Palestinian Christian community in the Hamas-run Gaza strip is also under siege, and charges that five Christians were abducted and pressured into converting to Islam. Because they made this forced conversion charge known, “members of the Christian community now fear reprisal attacks by Muslim extremists.” Some have appealed to the Vatican and Christian groups and churches in the West for help. Yet “we only hear voices telling us to stay where we are and to stop making too much noise,” said a Christian man living in Gaza City. “If they continue to turn a blind eye to our tragedy, in a few months there will be no Christians left in Palestine. Today it’s happening in the Gaza Strip, tomorrow it will take place in Bethlehem.”

Categorized by theme, July’s assemblage of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed in alphabetical order by country, not severity.

Church Attacks

Indonesia: Muslim protesters forced a church to shut down during a Sunday worship on claims that it was operating without a permit, and hung a banner on the church’s gate reading “We the people … hardily reject the use of this building … for religious activities.” The church’s committee secretary said the church has the necessarily permits to hold services,” yet “the majority of the people still reject the church’s activity.”

Iran: Both the Central Assembly of God Church in Tehran and its summer campsite—once a popular site for Christian gatherings and conferences—were closed by authorities of the Islamic Republic, who also posted a large notice on the gates “warning of severe consequences should anyone try to enter the premises.” These latest closures follow the official termination of Friday Persian language services and the compulsory cancellation of all Bible classes and the distribution of Christian literature. Also, as part of the crackdown on house churches, plainclothes agents of the Ministry of Islamic Guidance continued raiding, arresting, and “aggressively interrogating” assembled worshippers.

Lebanon: Ahead of the Maronite Patriarch’s visit to Akker, flyers signed by the “Soldiers of the Great Prophet” threatened the Christians and churches in what has traditionally been the safest Mideast country for Christians, calling “on the infidels to stop their blasphemy … We will start from the infidel’s church in Akker and we won’t stop … this is not the end but the beginning,” read the flyer.

Kenya: Seven Islamic jihadis launched simultaneous grenade and gunfire attacks on two churches, while the congregations were at prayer. Five militants attacked the Africa Inland Church, killing 17 people and wounding approximately 60, including many women and children. The other two Muslim terrorists attacked the nearby Catholic Church, wounding three.

Kuwait: After approval was issued for the construction of a church, a group of Islamic preachers, echoing the words of the Saudi Grand Mufti, reasserted that churches are not permitted to be built in Muslim countries. One sheikh “expressed displeasure” against those approving the construction of the church, “stressing that it is not permissible as per the Sharia,” adding that “excuses” such as saying that the building of a church “is a matter of human rights and international norms is not acceptable, as Islam comes first, and people should respect religion first before serving humanity or anything else.”

Turkey: The existence of the oldest functioning Christian monastery in the world, 5th century Mor Gabriel Monastery near the Turkish-Syrian border is at risk after a ruling by Turkey’s highest appeals court. Inhabited today by only a few dozen Christians dedicated to learning the monastery’s teachings, the ancient Aramaic language spoken by Jesus and the Orthodox Syriac tradition, neighboring Muslims with the support of an MP member of the Islamic Justice and Development Party (AKP) filed a lawsuit accusing the Christians of practicing “anti-Turkish activities” and of illegally occupying land which belongs to Muslim villages. The highest appeals court in Ankara, which is close to the government, ruled in favor of the Muslim villagers, saying the land that has been part of the monastery for 1,600 years is not its property, and even claimed that the monastery was built over the ruins of a mosque, forgetting that Mohammed was born 170 years after its foundation.

Apostasy and Blasphemy

Egypt: A Christian teacher was arrested and detained after being accused of posting cartoons insulting to Islam and its prophet on Facebook. The man faces up to five years in jail if convicted of blasphemy. While admitting he manages the site in question, he said the site was hacked. Earlier in April, a Christian teenager was sentenced to three years in prison for posting cartoons perceived to mock Islam’s prophet on his Face book page. Likewise, Christian business tycoon Naguib Sawiris posted Disney’s Mickey and Minnie Mouse dressed in Islamic attire, which landed him in court, though he was acquitted.

Iran: Pastor Youssef Nadarkhani, who has spent over 1,000 days in prison awaiting execution for refusing to recant Christianity, is only one of many persecuted in Iran for their faith. A six-year prison sentence for pastor Farshid Fathi Malayeri—another Muslim convert to Christianity—was recently upheld following an unsuccessful appeal hearing. Also, another prominent house church pastor, Benham Irani, remains behind bars, even as his family expresses concerns that he may die from continued abuse and beatings, leading to internal bleeding and other ailments; authorities refuse to give him medical treatment. The verdict against him contains text that describes the pastor as an apostate, adding that apostates “can be killed.”

Pakistan: A Christian couple have been on the run since they embraced Islam back in 2006, only to reconvert to Christianity. Upon learning that the couple returned to Christianity, neighboring Muslims attacked and persecuted them; one of the husband’s best friends abducted and tortured him, while beating the wife. “[One] should have the freedom to choose the religion one wishes to follow,” said the Christian husband. “They have subsequently been on the run.”

Saudi Arabia: A court is looking into an apostasy case concerning a 28-year-old Muslim woman’s conversion to Christianity. The father alleges that a Saudi and a Lebanese played a role in converting his daughter to Christianity and smuggling her to Lebanon, where she has received sanctuary in an anonymous church.

Jihad Death and Destruction

Nigeria: In what is described as an ongoing genocide of Christians over 65 people, including two politicians, were killed in a triple attacks on Christians. First, Muslims destroyed 43 Christian-owned farms. Nobody was arrested. Then they attacked nine Christian villages around the city of Jos, killing dozens of people. “They came in hundreds,” said an official, “Some had police uniforms and some even had bulletproof vests.” In one instance, Christians fleeing the violence took refuge in the house of a local church leader, which was bombed and more than 50 Christians were burned alive, including the pastor’s wife and children. Then the Muslims attacked the funeral for the victims of the village raids, killing several more people. Security forces said Muslim Fulani herdsmen were responsible but Islamist militant group Boko Haram issued a statement saying: “We thank Allah for the successful attack.” Separately, Islamic motorcycle assassins gunned down four Christians.

South Africa: The Islamic terror group Al Shabaab is accused of murdering 14 Christians, all Ethiopians, in the Western Cape. A Christian bishop, also a former police inspector, fears more of his flock will be targeted: “We want authorities to do something because we know this is the work of al-Shabaab. If nothing is done, the Ethiopian population will be depleted… [those who died are] holy martyrs who have died because they are Christians.” Meanwhile, Father Mike Williams of the Anglican Catholic Church also revealed that members of his congregation have been targeted by gunmen “with connections to Muslim extremists,” saying that “In July, we have lost seven members of our church.”

Syria: Syrian “freedom fighters” continue showing their true colors as they destroy churches and kill Christians, which has resulted in the mass migration of tens of thousands of Christians, including practically the entire populations of Homs and Qusayr. Surrounding nations that once might have offered refuge—Iraq, Turkey, even now Lebanon—are also increasingly inhospitable to Christians. One Christian girl who escaped said: “They sermonized on Fridays in the mosques that it was a sacred duty to drive us [Christians] away…. Christians had to pay bribes to the jihadists repeatedly in order to avoid getting killed.” After making the sign of the cross, her grandmother added: “Anyone who believes in this cross suffers.”

Turkey: An article titled “Who Ordered the Murder of Christians?” asserts that a Muslim undercover agent who had worked for the government “penetrated the Christian community and gathered a lot of information, while he was pretending to be a missionary. He became a church leader, and upon receiving another order, he became ‘Muslim’ again and launched a campaign against missionaries across the country,” which culminated in the massacre of Christians.

Dhimmitude

[General Abuse, Debasement, and Suppression of Non-Muslims as "Tolerated" Citizens]

Egypt: After a Christian laundry worker burned the shirt of a Muslim man, several quarrels ensued and culminated with the death of a Muslim. Accordingly, thousands of Muslims rampaged the village, causing 120 Christian families to flee. They looted Christian businesses and homes “despite hundreds of security forces being deployed in the village. Eyewitnesses reported that security forces did not protect most Coptic property.” Family members of the deceased Muslim insist that the Christians must still pay with their lives. Also, during Ramadan, several Christians were attacked and beaten. Dr. Yassir al-Burhami, a prominent figure in Egypt’s Salafi movement issued a fatwa forbidding Muslim taxi-drivers and bus-drivers from transporting Coptic Christian priests to their churches, which he depicted as “more forbidden than taking someone to a liquor bar.” And a charitable medical center that performs free heart operations on both Muslim and Christian children is under threat from some Muslims, who want it closed down because it was founded by a Christian surgeon.

Pakistan: Days after a Muslim mob doused a man with gasoline and literally burned him alive for “blaspheming” the Koran (graphic picture here), a Pakistani Christian woman, now living in the U.S., explained how when she lived in Pakistan, Muslims disfigured her in an acid attack for being Christian: After one man noticed her wearing a crucifix, he “became abusive,” telling her “that she was living in the gutter and would go to hell for shunning Islam. He left and returned half an hour later, clutching a bottle of battery acid which he savagely chucked over her head. As she ran screaming for the door a second man grabbed her by the hair and forced more of the liquid down her throat, searing her esophagus. Teeth fell from her mouth as she desperately called for help, stumbling down the street. A woman heard her cries and took her to her home, pouring water over her head and taking her to hospital. At first the doctors refused to treat her, because she was a Christian. ‘They all turned against me… Even the people who took me to the hospital. They told the doctor they were going to set the hospital on fire if they treated me.’ … 67 per cent of her esophagus was burned and she was missing an eye and both eyelids. What remained of her teeth could be seen through a gaping hole where her cheek had been. The doctors predicted she would die any day. Despite the odds she pulled through.” Separately, Muslim landowners and their police accomplices continue annexing land owned by Christians. “The police pulled away our headscarves from heads and started hitting us with clubs and punches” reported Christian women, “after news spread that police is harassing and torturing Christian women and men … to grab their agricultural land.”

About this Series

Because the persecution of Christians in the Islamic world is on its way to reaching epidemic proportions, “Muslim Persecution of Christians” was developed to collate some—by no means all—of the instances of persecution that surface each month. It serves two purposes:

  1. To document that which the mainstream media does not: the habitual, if not chronic, Muslim persecution of Christians.
  2. To show that such persecution is not “random,” but systematic and interrelated—that it is rooted in a worldview inspired by Sharia.

Accordingly, whatever the anecdote of persecution, it typically fits under a specific theme, including hatred for churches and other Christian symbols; sexual abuse of Christian women; forced conversions to Islam; apostasy and blasphemy laws that criminalize and punish with death those who “offend” Islam; theft and plunder in lieu of jizya (financial tribute expected from non-Muslims); overall expectations for Christians to behave like dhimmis, or second-class, “tolerated” citizens; and simple violence and murder. Sometimes it is a combination.

Because these accounts of persecution span different ethnicities, languages, and locales—from Morocco in the West, to India in the East, and throughout the West wherever there are Muslims—it should be clear that one thing alone binds them: Islam—whether the strict application of Islamic Sharia law, or the supremacist culture born of it.

Published at Gatestone Institute

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.