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2016

Turkey: Between Atatürk’s Secularism and Fundamentalist Islam Harold Rhode

(NOTE: This was written more than 6 years ago, but relevant today, because it explains Erdogan, his attempt to “re-Islamisize” Turkey politically. The article is still continuously cited.)

Vol. 9, No. 24 http://jcpa.org/article/turkey-between-ataturk%E2%80%99s-secularism-and-fundamentalist-islam/

From the remnants of the Ottoman Empire, Atatürk founded a modern democratic state by forging the entirely unprecedented notion in the Islamic world of a secular Turkish identity. Moreover, this identity was to be based on the Western notion of loyalty to a geographic entity rather than religious solidarity.

Today there is an internal battle among Turkish Muslims between forces that want to be part of the Western world and those that want to return Turkey’s political identity to be based primarily on Islamic solidarity. But it isn’t Ottoman Islam that these Islamist Turks seek to revive. Their Islam is more in tune with the fanatically anti-Western principles of Saudi Wahhabi Islam.

It is not clear whether the present government of Turkey really cares to be part of the EU. Thus, when European leaders insist that Turkey has no place in Europe, they may be playing into the hands of the Islamist forces in Turkey who can say, in effect, “The EU is a Christian club which will never accept us, so we need to look elsewhere, to our Muslim brothers.”

In addition, American involvement has not always proven helpful. The U.S. attempted to reach out to radical leaders in a mistaken belief that they were forces of moderate Islam, thus inadvertently granting them legitimacy.

If a moderate form of Turkish Islam is to be revived, it must stand up to the onslaught of Wahhabism and the temptations of Islamism.

Inventing the Modern Turkish Identity

In the nineteenth century, Ottoman Turks borrowed the Arabic word watan, to signify loyalty to the geographic entity called the Ottoman Empire. Until that time, the word at most conjured in people’s minds the very local place where someone was born. The definition of identify defined by place and language is a European concept – not an Islamic or Middle Eastern one. In the Middle East, identity is defined by religion and then by genealogy, which can become ethnicity. The Ottomans were attempting to instill the Western concept of loyalty to a geographic entity into the minds of the people under Ottoman rule. It was Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey, who created a Turkish identity – a loyalty to a land – from the remnants of the Ottoman Empire. It is he and his associates who set Turkey on the road to democracy.

Jamie Glazov Moment: Why is Maoist Van Jones on CNN? Why exactly does a communist who heroizes a mass murderer get to be a star on a major cable news network? Video

In this new Jamie Glazov Moment, Jamie focuses on Why is Maoist Van Jones on CNN?, asking: Why exactly does a communist who heroizes a mass murderer get to be a star on a major cable news network?http://jamieglazov.com/2016/12/10/jamie-glazov-moment-why-is-maoist-van-jones-on-cnn-2/ Don’t miss it! And make sure to watch Jamie discuss Soledad O’Brien’s Disgrace on Castro, unveiling the […]

The Dutch Death Spiral From Paradise to Bolshevik Thought Police by Giulio Meotti

“It would have been better if the Dutch state had sent a clear signal (to terrorists) via a Dutch court that we foster a broad notion of the freedom of expression in the Netherlands”. – Paul Cliteur, Professor of Jurisprudence, Leiden University

The historic dimension of Wilders’s conviction is related not only to the terrible injustice done to this MP, but that it was the Netherlands that, for the first time in Europe, criminalized dissenting opinions about Islam.

“You can count in it. I will never be silent. You will not be able to stop me…And that is what we stand for. For freedom and for our beautiful Netherlands.” – Geert Wilders, Dutch MP and head of the Party for Freedom (PVV)

“We have a lot of guests who are trying to take over the house.” – Pym Fortuyn, later shot to death “to save Muslims from persecution.”

Before being slaughtered, clinging to a basket, Theo van Gogh begged his assassin: “Can we talk about this?”. But can we talk?

A country whose most outspoken filmaker was slaughtered by an Islamist; whose bravest refugee, hunted by a fatwa, fled to the U.S.; whose cartoonists must live under protection, had better should think twice before condemning a Member of Parliament, whose comments about Islam have forced him to live under 24-hour protection for more than a decade, for “hate speech.” Poor Erasmus! The Netherlands is no longer a safe heaven for free thinkers. It is the Nightmare for Free Speech.

The most prominent politician in the Netherlands, MP Geert Wilders, has just been convicted of “hate speech,” for asking at a really if there should be fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands. Many newly-arrived Moroccans in the Netherlands seem to have been responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime there.

Paul Cliteur, Professor of Jurisprudence at Leiden University, who was called as an expert witness, summed up the message coming from the court: “It would have been better if the Dutch state had sent a clear signal (to terrorists) via a Dutch court that we foster a broad notion of the freedom of expression in the Netherlands.”

Here are just a few details to help understand what Wilders experiences every day because of his ideas: No visitors are allowed into his office except after a long wait to be checked. The Dutch airline KLM refused to board him on a flight to Moscow for reasons of “security.” His entourage is largely anonymous. When a warning level rises, he does not know where he will spend the night. For months, he was able to see his wife only twice a week, in a secure apartment, and then only when the police allowed it. The Parliament had to place him in the less visible part of the building, in order better to protect him. He often wears a bulletproof vest to speak in public. When he goes to a restaurant, his security detail must first check the place out. His life is a nightmare. “I am in jail,” he has said; “they are walking around free.”

The Guilty Verdict Dutch Politicians Wanted So Much Left Wing Politicians Who Insulted Moroccans Worse, Not Prosecuted by Douglas Murray

Remarks, incomparably more damning icepicks than “fewer Moroccans”, [were] made by members of the Netherlands’ Labour Party, who of course were never prosecuted.

The irony cannot have been lost on the wider world that on the same day that news of Wilders’s conviction came out the other news from Holland was the arrest of a 30 year-old terror suspect in Rotterdam suspected of being about to carry out ‘an act of terrorism’.

Internationally it will continuously be used against Wilders that he has been convicted of ‘inciting discrimination’ even though the charge is about a proto-crime – a crime that has not even occurred: like charging the makers of a car chase movie for ‘inciting speeding’. As with many ‘hate-crime’ trials across the free world, from Denmark to Canada, the aim of the proceedings is to blacken the name of the party on trial so that they are afterwards formally tagged as a lesser, or non-person. If this sounds Stalinist it is because it is.

In the long-term, though, there is something even more insidious about this trial. For as we have noted here before, if you prosecute somebody for saying that they want fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands then the only legal views able to be expressed about the matter are that the number of Moroccans in the country must remain at precisely present numbers or that you would only like more Moroccans in the country. In a democratic society this sort of matter ought to be debatable.

If there is one great mental note of which 2016 ought to have reminded the world, it is how deeply unwise it is to try to police opinion. For when you do so you not only make your society less free, but you disable yourself from being able to learn what your fellow citizens are actually – perhaps ever more secretly – feeling. Then one day you will hear them.

The trial of Geert Wilders has resulted in a guilty verdict. The court – which was located in a maximum security courthouse in the Netherlands near Schipol airport – found the leader of the PVV (Freedom Party) guilty of ‘insulting a group’ and of ‘inciting discrimination’. The trial began with a number of complaints, but the proceedings gradually honed down onto one single comment made by Wilders at a party rally in March 2014. This was the occasion when Wilders asked the crowd whether they wanted ‘fewer or more Moroccans in your city and in the Netherlands’. The crowd of supporters shouted ‘Fewer’.

On Friday morning the court decided not to impose a jail sentence or a fine, as prosecutors had requested. The intention of the court is clearly that the ‘guilty’ sentence should be enough.

For Wilders himself this will have been another unpleasant ordeal. But he may have become used to them by now. Five years ago Wilders was put on trial for insulting a religion. The first trial fell apart after one of the judges was found to have attempted to influence the evidence of one of Wilders’s defence witnesses. Once the trial restarted, it resulted in an acquittal. So the Dutch Justice system turn out to have been “second-time lucky” in getting the conviction they appear to have so badly wanted.

This is apparent from remarks, incomparably more damning icepicks than “fewer Moroccans”, made by members of the Netherlands’ Labour Party, who of course were never prosecuted:

“We also have s*** Moroccans over here.” Rob Oudkerk, Dutch Labour Party (PvDA) politician.
“We must humiliate Moroccans.” Hans Spekman, PvDA politician.
“Moroccans have the ethnic monopoly on trouble-making.” Diederik Samsom, PvDA politician.

Trump’s Transition: So Far, So Good Conservatives should be encouraged by the way the new administration is taking shape. By Andrew McCarthy

Conservatives have to be delighted by the administration Donald Trump is building. There is, as one would expect, a showman’s flair to the exercise. But what do I care about Trump’s meeting with Al Gore to shoot the warming breeze if two days later he gives me Scott Pruitt to make actual environmental policy — or, better, to gut EPA’s oppressive, unconstitutional policy?

And after eight years of “workplace violence” and “man-caused disasters” in which the administration’s knee-jerk response to jihadist terror was to suppress mention of jihadist terror while anguishing over phantom “blowback” against Muslims, I’ll take a president — okay, a president-elect — who prefers to console the Ohio State victims and celebrate the heroism of the cop who took out the jihadist.

This is good. I don’t like everything Trump has done so far, but I like an awful lot of it. And saying so is only fair.

I was never in the immovably #NeverTrump camp, but I’ve been a critic. Despite my reservations, I tried to help the campaign craft national-security and immigration policies. (I am, for example, the principal author of the immigration memo Josh Rogin reported on in the Washington Post this week). I voted for Trump because, unlike some colleagues whose opinions carry a lot of weight with me, I was never persuaded against the reality that the election was a binary choice between him and Hillary Clinton. Since I was immovably #NeverHillary, the choice was easier than I thought it would be once I closed the voting-booth curtain.

All that said, though, I did repeatedly argue that Trump’s history was that of a New York limousine-liberal spouting all the hidebound pieties while digging into his wallet for Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Andrew Cuomo, Harry Reid, and the rest of the gang. I was hopeful, more because of the advisers he’d surrounded himself with than because of his campaign rhetoric, that Trump would be marginally better than Clinton — a low bar he could surmount with just one good Supreme Court pick (and had arguably surmounted even before Election Day by picking Mike Pence as his running mate). But I stressed that, if he won, we’d have to be skeptical that he’d govern much differently than Hillary would have until he proved otherwise, given his gushing admiration for the Clintons over the years.

Well, if there had been a second Clinton administration, do you think we’d have gotten Pruitt? How about Jeff Sessions at Justice, or General James Mattis at Defense? Or Trump’s promised upgrade in immigration enforcement to be carried out by General John Kelly, the clear-eyed So-Com commander who has warned about radical Islam’s inroads in Central and South America (and a Gold Star dad whose son laid down his life in Afghanistan, fighting our jihadist enemies)? Do you figure Hillary would have tapped teachers-union scourge Betsy DeVos for the Education Department? Or a staunch Obamacare critic such as congressman (and doctor) Tom Price to run HHS?

Michael Copeman :A New World If We Want It

Donald Trump’s victory signifies much more than a slap to the elites so certain he didn’t have a chance. More than the satisfaction of seeing the chattering classes confounded, it is an assault on political correctness and the anti-growth nostrums it peddles.
When Sir Tim Rice penned “A whole new world” for Disney’s Aladdin back in 1992, the world was indee a very different place. A Clinton, Bill, was running for the White House. The Middle East, devastated by war, remained on knife edge, with a murderous dictator, Saddam, allowed to stay in power when Bush the Elder called off the drive to Baghdad. In Finland, an exciting new (2G) mobile telephone network had just been installed. In Australia, almost everyone was humming along to “Weather with you” by Crowded House.

Twenty-five years later, Rice’s magic lamp may finally be starting to shine. Castro is dead. Britain is leaving Europe, or at least getting ready to unhitch her moorings. The US has a new leader unlikely to bow to the King of Saudi Arabia, as Obama infamously did. And some of the political millstone-round-the-neck issues of the last two decades — infantile political correctness in the media, intent to destroy the enormous benefits of the global industrial economy in a vain attempt to reverse non-existent global warming, and obeisance to primitive cultures in place of civilization – look set to be rejected at last.

As Julie Andrews sang in Oscar and Hammerstein’s Sound of Music, “somewhere in (our) wicked miserable past, (we) must have had a moment of truth”. A majority of the US Electoral College is poise to confirm Donald Trump, a dis-inhibited braggart and billionaire, age 70, as the popular choice of voters in the states that matter as the more likely of the two contenders likely to propel America back to greatness. When America gets over a cold, the rest of the world recovers from influenza, malaria, dysentery and the Zika virus combined.

Post-communist Russia is now led by an ex-KGB agent — plus ca change! — while China’s still-Communist leader is married to a baby boomer pop star. Britain’s leader, for the third time since Boadicea, is “a bloody difficult woman”, as veteran Tory Ken Clarke was heard to opine when he thought the microphone had been turned off. And Japan, of recent years one of the most peaceful countries, is led by the grandson of a member of General Tojo’s WW2 cabinet.

We are told the 21st century belongs to the “agile and innovative” citizens of Asia upon whose coat-tails we hang in the quarry Down Under, otherwise known as Australia. If China ever stops buying our iron, coal, wheat, beef, lamb, wool, wine and milk it will be time to call the national taxidermist. Our former heavy manufacturing centres in Victoria and South Australia are already stuffed, so no hope of alternate sustenance there.

Critics of Islam on Trial in Europe: Wilders Convicted by Giulio Meotti

On December 9, for the first time in Dutch history, a court criminalized freedom of expression: The truly heroic Dutch Member of Parliament, Geert Wilders, was found guilty of the “crime” of “hate speech.”

The death sentence against Salman Rushdie in 1989 by Iran’s supreme leader looked unreal. The West did not take it seriously. Since then, however, this fatwa has been assimilated to such an extent that today’s threats to free speech come from ourselves. It is now the West that put on trial writers and journalists.

The Red Brigades, the Communist terror group which devastated Italy in the 1970s, coined a slogan: “Strike one to educate one hundred.” If you target one, you get collective intimidation. This is exactly the effect of these political trials about Islam.

“Hate speech” has become a political weapon to dispatch whoever may not agree with you. It is not the right of a democracy to quibble about the content of articles or cartoons. In the West, we paid a high price for the freedom to write them and and read them it. It is not up to those who govern to grant the right of thought and speech.

In Europe now, the same iron curtain as in the Soviet era is descending.

After the Second World War and the horrors of Nazism and Stalinism, a central tenet of Western democracies has been that you can put people on trial, but not ideas and opinions. Europe is now allowing dangerous “human rights” groups and Islamists to use tribunals to restrict the borders of our freedom of expression, exactly as in Soviet show trials. “Militant anti-racism will be for the 21st century what communism was for the 20th century,” the prominent French philosopher, Alain Finkielkraut has predicted.

A year ago, Christoph Biró, a respected columnist and editor of the largest Austrian newspaper, Kronen Zeitung, wrote an article blaming “young men, testosterone-fuelled Syrians, who carry out extremely aggressive sexual attacks” (even before mass the sexual assaults of New Year’s Eve in Cologne, Hamburg and other cities). The article sparked much controversy, and it received a large number of complaints and protests. Biró needed four weeks off work because of these attacks and later (under pressure) admitted that he had “lost a sense of proportion”. Prosecutors in Graz recently charged Biró with “hate speech” after a complaint by a so-called human rights organization, SOS Mitmensch. The case will be decided in court.

Reaction of Geert Wilders to His Conviction by Geert Wilders

Dear friends, I still cannot believe it, but I have just been convicted. Because I asked a question about Moroccans. While the day before yesterday, scores of Moroccan asylum-seekers terrorized buses in Emmen and did not even had to pay a fine, a politician who asks a question about fewer Moroccans is sentenced.

The Netherlands have become a sick country. And I have a message for the judges who convicted me: You have restricted the freedom of speech of millions of Dutch and hence convicted everyone. No one trusts you anymore. But fortunately, truth and liberty are stronger than you. And so am I.

I will never be silent. You will not be able to stop me. And you are wrong, too. Moroccans are not a race, and people who criticize Moroccans are not racists. I am not a racist and neither are my voters. This sentence proves that you judges are completely out of touch.

And I have also a message for Prime Minister Rutte and the rest of the multicultural elite: You will not succeed in silencing me and defeating the PVV. Support for the Party for Freedom is stronger than ever, and keeps growing every day. The Dutch want their country back and cherish their freedom. It will not be possible to put the genie of positive change back in the bottle.

And to people at home I say: Freedom of speech is our pride. And this will remain so. For centuries, we Dutch have been speaking the unvarnished truth. Free speech is our most important possession. We will never let them take away our freedom of speech. Because the flame of freedom burns within us and cannot be extinguished.

Millions of Dutch are sick and tired of political correctness. Sick and tired of the elite which only cares about itself and ignores the ordinary Dutchman. And sells out our country. People no longer feel represented by all these disconnected politicians, judges and journalists, who have been harming our people for so long, and make our country weaker instead of stronger.

But I will keep fighting for you, and I tell all of you: thank you so much. Thank you so much for all your support. It is really overwhelming; I am immensely grateful to you. Thanks to your massive and heartfelt support, I know that I am not alone. That you back me, and are with me, and unwaveringly stand for freedom of expression.

Today, I was convicted in a political trial, which, shortly before the elections, attempts to neutralize the leader of the largest and most popular opposition party. But they will not succeed. Not even with this verdict. Because I speak on behalf of millions of Dutch. And the Netherlands are entitled to politicians who speak the truth, and honestly address the problems with Moroccans. Politicians who will not let themselves be silenced. Not even by the judges. And you can count on it: I will never be silent.

And this conviction only makes me stronger. This is a shameful sentence, which, of course, I will appeal. But I can tell you, I am now more vigorous than ever. And I know: together, we aim for victory.

Standing shoulder-to-shoulder, we are strong enough to change the Netherlands.

To allow our children to grow up in a country they can be proud of.
In a Netherlands where we are allowed to say again what we think.
Where everybody can safely walk the streets again.
Where we are in charge of our own country again.

And that is what we stand for. For freedom and for our beautiful Netherlands.

Geert Wilders is a member of the Dutch Parliament and leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV).

‘The Band’s Visit’ Review: Nothing Lost in Translation An Egyptian orchestra’s fumbles in Israel propel this big-hearted, small-scale musicalBy Terry Teachout

…….the Atlantic Theater Company’s off-Broadway premiere of “The Band’s Visit,” a huge-hearted small-scale musical directed by David Cromer that has warmth and charm to burn.

Adapted for the stage by Itamar Moses (“Nobody Loves You”) and David Yazbek (“The Full Monty”) from Eran Kolirin’s 2007 Israeli film, “The Band’s Visit” is a tender comedy of international manners that is cleverly disguised as a farce. The protagonists are the members of the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, who have come to Israel from their home in Egypt to perform at the opening of a new Arab cultural center in the city of Petah Tikva. But there is no “p” in Arabic, and most Egyptians therefore unconsciously replace that consonant with “b” when speaking English. As a result, the musicians, unable to pronounce the name of their destination in a way that is fully intelligible to Israelis, instead end up in Beit Hatikva, a tiny town somewhere in the middle of the Negev Desert. It’s the Middle Eastern counterpart of…well, perhaps we might emulate the Egyptian musicians and call it “Bodunk.”

If you think that sounds like a sitcom plot, you’re right. But here as in the film, the underlying comic situation serves as a pretext for a subtle exercise in group storytelling in which we watch the members of the orchestra interact with the citizens of Beit Hatikva. To be sure, plenty of preposterous things happen along the way, many of which arise from the fact that the characters speak English, not Arabic or Hebrew, to one another. Some speak it better than others, but none is quite fluent, thus leading to all kinds of comic complications. I especially liked the jazz-loving trumpeter (Ari’el Stachel) whose standard pickup line is to ask women whether they like the music of “Shit Baker,” after which he sings them a few bars of (what else?) “My Funny Valentine.” But it also makes for complications that are more touching than funny, above all when Tewfiq (Tony Shalhoub), the stiffly inhibited widower who leads the band, and Dina (Katrina Lenk), the lonely café owner who offers to put the hapless musicians up for the night, realize that they are attracted to one another.
As this plot twist indicates, “The Band’s Visit” is an “of course” show: Of course Tewfiq and Dina fall in love (though there is nothing at all obvious about what happens next). Of course there is a brief moment of tension when an overzealous Israeli soldier regards the Egyptian musicians with glowering suspicion. Of course the moment passes without incident, and everybody ends up getting along so well that you can all but hear Ernest Hemingway muttering “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” in the distance. But even if “The Band’s Visit” is a fairy tale, it is one so unabashedly open-hearted that you won’t hesitate to buy into it.

James Delingpole: Trump’s EPA Pick Proves He’s Serious About Slaying the Green Monster

Anyone who doubts that President-elect Donald Trump means business on slaying the “Green Blob” really needs to look at the guy he has just appointed to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt is a friend of the fossil fuel industry and an outspoken critic of the EPA’s activist agenda.

Though his academic degrees are in political science and law, Pruitt has been a vocal public denier of the overwhelming consensus of the world’s climate scientists that the Earth is warming and that man-made carbon emissions are to blame. In an opinion article published earlier this year by National Review, Pruitt suggested that the debate over global warming “is far from settled” and claimed “scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind.”
Does Pruitt sound to you like the pick of a president-elect who is having second thoughts on his aggressive stance towards the environmental lobby?
Yet still some people are worried — for understandable reasons.
First, there were reports that Trump had softened his position on global warming: “Trump now believes that climate change is real,” claimed Mother Jones.
Next came the shocking news that Trump — encouraged by his eco-friendly daughter Ivanka — had sat down for a meeting with Al Gore, who claimed afterwards that they’d had an “extremely interesting conversation.”
Then Trump met with yet another green advocate, Leonardo DiCaprio, apparently to discuss “how to create millions of secure, American jobs in the construction and operation of commercial and residential clean, renewable energy generation.”

So what exactly is going on here?
In two words: fake news.