RUTHFULLY YOURS

It must be so convenient, while marching in the safe confines of Washington DC, to advocate that other women — far away — be genitally mutilated, married off in childhood, and beaten and violated in their own homes. These women in hijabs marching on Washington do not have to live in this “Utopia.” They are comfortably living in the “infidel West,” protected from such barbarity.

The Western culture that allows women to shout into microphones is not even necessarily the culture these women believe in; it is often just a tool they use to promote totalitarian ideas such as anti-Semitism, religious intolerance and imposition of theocratic beliefs.

Does Linda Sarsour really think that people have gone so mad that they will give up the civil liberties that their ancestors earned through the centuries, merely for interest-free loans?

The hypocrisy is that Sarsour’s bold lifestyle in the US portrays that deep down she herself loathes the suppressing conditions that she promotes for the poor women of the Muslim world, who actually have to live with them. Coming from a conservative Muslim society, I know the culture she yearns for would never allow her to launch such activism without permission from her “guardian” men.

The dissenting voices of the oppressed are fighting on two fronts. They are being crushed by their own totalitarian regimes and at the same time by Western apologists for these tyrants.

Why do women who believe in equal rights for women, pick as their spokesperson someone who one minute boasts of her supposed dissent as “patriotism,” while the next minute advocating chopping off other womens’ genitals? It is like choosing a hangman to campaign against the death penalty, or the head of ISIS to campaign for same sex marriages.

The principles of “dissent,” of which they claim to be so proud, and to have borrowed from religious sources, are actually the modern world’s liberal values and human rights — just those rights values they seem to be trying to destroy.

From the other side of their mouths, however, they are trying to impose Islamic sharia law on the West. Unfortunately, sharia is openly antagonistic to Western values and human rights.

How can cults that believe in dominating others call themselves progressive, when their entire message runs counter to the spirit of tolerance and social coexistence?

The champions of sharia have always said they wish to establish a “righteous” form of government, made by divine law, and presumably to that end, they implant their set of rules — such as allowing no debate or criticism on their beliefs, or such as segregating sexes — to destroy modern democracies.

It must be so convenient, while marching on Washington DC, to advocate that other women — far away — be genitally mutilated, married off in childhood, and domestically beaten and violated — and all the while, in the safe confines of Washington, to stay silent on issues of truly massive abuse: floggings; acid burnings; chopping off limbs or heads, or burning, drowning or burying people alive.

These women in hijabs marching on Washington DC do not have to live in this “Utopia.” They are comfortably living in the “infidel West’, protected from such barbarity.

The values they are enjoying here are the values of the enlightened world and have nothing to do with the culture they are trying to impose on others.

The culture that is allowing women such as Linda Sarsour to shout into microphones is not even necessarily the culture these women believe in; it is often just the culture they are using to promote totalitarian ideas such as anti-Semitism, religious intolerance and the imposition of theocratic beliefs through infiltration or force.

PARIS—Police detained four people in southern France on Friday on suspicion of planning an attack using the same explosive employed by suicide bombers in Islamic State assaults in Paris and Brussels.

Three men—aged 20, 26 and 33—and a 16-year-old girl were taken into police custody in and around the city of Montpellier, according to people familiar with the investigation. At the home of one of the men, police found a liter each of acetone, hydrogen peroxide and sulfuric acid, chemicals used to make the explosive material TATP.

Three of the detainees were suspected of direct involvement in an “imminent attack on French soil,” French Interior Minister Bruno Le Roux said.

In November 2015, Islamic State gunmen, all but one wearing suicide vests containing TATP, killed 130 people in attacks across the French capital. Months later, another group of Islamic State militants using TATP bombed the airport in Brussels and a nearby metro station, leaving 32 people dead.

Friday’s arrests in southern France cap a week of police action across Europe against suspected Islamist radicals.

Two men, one Algerian and the other Nigerian, were taken into custody in Germany on suspicion of planning an imminent attack. Belgian police targeting returnees from Syria detained 11 people in the capital Brussels on Wednesday and released them a day later following questioning.

In the U.K., police on Thursday arrested a 44-year-old man from the southern county of Hertfordshire on suspicion of terror offenses. The man was taken into custody at Gatwick Airport after returning from Iraq, police said, giving no further details.

France has been on high alert after a spate of terrorist attacks in the past 18 months that have left more than 200 people dead.

With presidential elections scheduled for April 23, the country’s Socialist government is under pressure to show it is doing all it can to prevent new attacks. Conservative candidate François Fillon and far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who is leading in the polls, have criticized the government for what they say is its complacency over the threat of terrorism.

French security forces have been granted sweeping powers to hunt and apprehend potential terrorists, and since the beginning of 2016 more than 400 people with suspected links to terrorist groups have been detained.

It was unclear whether the people detained Friday have any links to the militant networks that have carried out attacks in Europe in recent years.

Even as Islamic State loses territory in Syria and Iraq, the militant group has claimed responsibility for terrorist attacks across Europe, which has enabled it to keep the public on edge without being forced to train and equip teams to pull off highly sophisticated operations.

Last week, a man believed to be visiting from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates attacked soldiers near Paris’s Louvre museum while shouting “Allahu akbar.” CONTINUE AT SITE

TEHRAN—Iran’s annual celebration of its 1979 Islamic Revolution found a new villain on Friday in President Donald Trump, as the country marked the anniversary amid renewed friction between the two countries.

Anti-Americanism has long been a domestic political force in Iran, routinely invoked by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Such sentiments were stoked by Mr. Trump’s recent moves to impose new sanctions in response to an Iranian missile test and bar Iranians from entering the U.S.—and by Mr. Khamenei’s response denouncing the U.S. president.

The annual march in Tehran on Friday featured the ritual burning of American flags, augmented this year with shows of hostility such as an effigy of the American president hanging by a noose and a poster of Mr. Trump with rifle sights on his face.

An Iranian woman holds an anti-Trump poster during an annual event in Tehran on Friday marking the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

An Iranian woman holds an anti-Trump poster during an annual event in Tehran on Friday marking the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Photo: abedin taherkenareh/European Pressphoto Agency

Such displays were also routine during the Obama administration, even as President Barack Obama sought to ease tensions and helped bring about the 2015 deal that lifted sanctions on Iran in exchange for the country’s shelving of its nuclear ambitions.

“Iranian people are like this,” said Ali Farhadi, a retired member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite military force. “When they get threatened, they get motivated and are enticed to come out and show resistance.” CONTINUE AT SITE