RUTHFULLY YOURS

In the past few days, we’ve witnessed unspeakable acts of brutality perpetrated by Muslims against non-Muslim nationals, principally American, French, Canadian and Israeli. The carnage began last Wednesday night when two “Palestinian” Muslim gunmen drew automatic weapons in a posh Tel Aviv café and began shooting everyone in sight. Four Israeli civilians, including two women were murdered in that attack to revolting cheers of Gazan and West Bank Muslims.

That bestial incident was followed by the largest act of mass murder ever committed by a lone gunman in the U.S. The attack by an ISIS inspired gunman at an Orlando night club claimed the lives of at least 49, with the death toll likely to climb as several of the wounded remain in critical condition. Barely a day later, a Muslim terrorist stabbed a French police chief to death in the town of Magnanville while chanting Allahuakbar. He then proceeded to torture to death the man’s wife in front of their toddler son. And yesterday in the Philippines, Muslims belonging to the Islamist Abu Sayyaf terrorist group beheaded a Canadian national after their ransom demands for his release were not met.

But the victims of Islamist terror and barbarism have not been limited to Westerners or those whose values are otherwise rooted in the Judeo-Christian faith. Hindus too have recently come under attack in the Indian subcontinent.

In Bangladesh, Muslims, who constitute 90% of the population, have carried out a series of deadly attacks targeting Hindus, Christians, gay rights activists and secularists. The most recent victim, named Nitya Ranjan Pandey, was an elderly Hindu monastery worker who was hacked to death. His decapitated body was found in a rice field. A few days prior to that gruesome discovery, another Hindu, a 69-year old priest, was found hacked to death. Hindus, who constitute roughly 9% of the population, have always been victims of discrimination in Bangladesh but oppression by the Muslim majority has worsened in recent years.

Mayar Mohamed Mousa, a young 17-year-old girl, died the other day in a hospital in the province of Suez in Egypt while undergoing female genital mutilation surgery.

Don’t wait for Obama to repeat her name and to say that she could have been one of his daughters. If she had died while having a back-alley abortion because her evil white Christian father forbade her to have a safe one in a medical clinic, Obama would be up for it. But Mayar died at the cruel and sadistic hands of Islamic theology and so she doesn’t make the cut.

Mayar was in the process of being maimed and mutilated the way a vast number of Egyptian women are. They usually undergo the horror as young girls, but if they avoid the knife and broken glass, then they undergo the barbarity before they begin dating and get married.

A United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report explains:

“Many Egyptians believe that for a girl or woman to be ‘clean,’ ‘pure’ and ‘feminine,’ she must have her genitals cut at a young age. . . .Many parents will have their daughters cut as a proactive measure so that they will be ‘marriageable’… In some communities, men refuse to marry any woman who has not been cut.”

Get ready, of course, to hear from media darling Reza Aslan and many other leftists that what happened to Mayar, and what is happening to millions of Muslim girls like her, is not because of Islam. You will be told that it is only some kind of “extreme” Muslim fringe that is supposedly practicing this crime, and, yes, you guessed it, non-Muslims do it too!

But here is a question:

If Islamic genital mutilation is not Islamic, where are all the Muslim imams, muftis and clerics in the world, and in Egypt in particular, who will be vociferously denouncing and repudiating what happened to Mayer just recently and that continues to happen to millions like her? Why aren’t they shouting from the rooftops about the un-Islamic nature of this crime and coming to the defense of Muslim girls and women? Why haven’t they shut down FGM under Islam since it is so un-Islamic?

Israel responded to a Palestinian terror attack in Tel Aviv which claimed four lives by revoking 83,000 travel permits for Palestinians to enter the country during Ramadan. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights suggests that response amounts to “collective punishment” and is, thus, illegal under international law.

High Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein’s comments last week received a somewhat sympathetic ear in Washington, where State department spokesman Mark Toner refused to agree or disagree with his “collective punishment” characterization but noted the inconvenience that the travel ban would prove to Palestinians.

“We strongly support Israel’s right to ensure the security of its citizens,” Toner said, adding, “We hope that any measures that it does take will be designed to minimize the impact on the lives of Palestinian civilians who are going about their daily lives.” While “understanding the precautions and the understandable security measures that Israel is taking in the wake of these kinds of attacks,” Toner said the United States asks that “we don’t see measures taken that will add to tensions.”

Rather than fret that reasonable Israeli security efforts will somehow “add to tensions,” U.N. and U.S. officials should focus on the cause of ongoing slaughter in Israel – a Palestinian society that nurtures it. Rather than debate Israeli “collective punishment,” those truly interested in a path to Israeli-Palestinian peace should confront the reality of Palestinian “collective responsibility.”

Accept for argument’s sake that the vote on June 23 favours the Leave case, what next? No longer in the thrall of Brussels technocrats and having rejected the political project that is the EU, Britain would have a free hand to innovate. A move to a flat-tax, for example.
‘Uncertainty’ is a term in common usage. Both the Leave and Remain campaigns would have to admit to using negative tactics while economic fears are hawked in almost biblical language. Many Britons feel afraid of leaving. They have had to endure President Hollande’s “consequences”[1] and his heir apparent M. Macron warning that he will “roll out the red carpet” for the bankers who will leave London for Paris[2]. They have had warnings from the International Monetary Fund (with more yet to come), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the Leader of the Free World himself[3]. President Obama’s remark that Britain would be “at the back of the queue” as regards to any trade deals was slightly at odds with his speech in Germany two days later where he said he wanted the US-EU TTIP trade deal concluded by the end of the year. How long is this queue again?

The IMF report mentions Britain only four times[4]: In the foreword; predictably in the “Outlook for Individual Countries and Regions”; that the potential of Brexit is one of the “Heightened downside risks” facing the world economy[5]; finally in a special section of a hundred odd words[6]. The actual risk from Brexit is quantified as that dreaded word “uncertainty” again as well as potential damage to trading relationships[7]. It is undermined by the report itself pointing out that Britain’s strong economic performance will offset any “heightened uncertainty ahead of the June referendum”[8]. All these are potential risks and are hedged with many ‘coulds’ and ‘likelys’. None of the report’s authors, no matter how experienced, have ever witnessed such an event and all forecasts should be treated as the worst scenario they wish to imagine.

The OECD report, while more detailed, can be dismissed out of hand. A hatchet job deliberately painting the most damaging picture. In presenting the report one almost expected that OECD head, Señor Gurría[9], would unveil the younger Bill Murray of Ghostbusters drily warning of “human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!” but relations between the US and Mexico seemed to have soured of late. The underlying assumptions of the report, in all of its scenarios, are so flawed as to be laughable. They surmise that Britain would become inward looking, with little trade, immigration or investment. Even its most neutral assessments rest on premises such as “most of this stems from the decline in trade openness” and “a failure to undertake regulatory reforms”[10] which completely misses the point of why Britain would wish to leave.

Both the OECD and the IMF base their hypotheses on the idea that Brexit is a “turn toward more nationalistic policies, including protectionist ones”[11]. The OECD do concede Britain may wish to “improve the business climate” post Brexit but even its best case assumes it would only do so at a speed it calculates partly from Mr Brown’s Ministry, hardly known as a great de-regulating one, and in its worst case that it would do nothing[12]. Its fundamentally flawed view of the UK is highlighted by its pointing out that despite business opposition to labour market regulation and the Working Time Directive, the “political constellation after Brexit” would probably not heed that[13]. Perhaps the best example of its partisan nature is in its summation of the financial sector. Highlighting the risks it then, apropos of nothing, mentions that Switzerland exports an even greater proportion of its banking services to the EU but that they got a good deal[14].