RUTHFULLY YOURS

As one major European city after another gives way to the invader, one measure of how far along the conquest has advanced is the frequency of car-burnings.

These acts of arson are especially common on one annual holiday – New Year’s Eve – and during one season, namely summer. Earlier this year Robert Spencer quoted an article that traced the “custom” of European car burnings back to “Strasbourg, Germany and eastern France during the 1990’s.” They’re since spread elsewhere, notably to Muslim neighborhoods in the Swedish cities of Stockholm Gothenburg, and Malmö. They’re also especially big in Paris and other French cities, where in on New Years Eve 2012-13, at least 1,193 cars were torched.

On January 3, 2013, Time ran a piece by Bruce Crumley that, bizarrely, made light of all the car-burning. “Burn out the old year; torch in the new,” Crumley began, joking that France had kicked off 2013 “in its uniquely pyromaniac fashion.” He quipped about “France’s distinctive car-burning penchant,” about its “auto roasts,” about “flame-happy France,” about France’s “flaming-auto fetish.” Although Crumley brushed up against the truth – referring euphemistically to the fact that all these acts were taking place in “disadvantaged areas” and the so-called “projects” – he was careful to avoid using the word “Islam” or “Muslim.” No, the whole point of his piece was to spin the annual car fires as a quirky French tradition.

But then it’s par for the course for journalists, politicians, and police spokespeople alike to treat these car fires as a joke, a quirk, a temporary problem, a minor inconvenience – and, most important, to pretend not to know who’s setting them and why. “This crime is very hard to investigate,” said Malmö cop Lars Forstell last January. “We don’t see any patterns and we don’t have any suspects.” Last August, responding to the fact that car-burning was now becoming a familiar activity in Copenhagen, police spokesman Rasmus Bernt Skovsgaard said, “It is still too early to say anything on the extent to which this could have a connection to the fires that have happened in Sweden.” A month later, in a report on the Copenhagen car-burnings, the New York Times quoted a Danish detective inspector, Jens Moller Jensen, as saying: “It is a mystery why this is happening, and there has been a big increase over the last few months and that is worrying.” Jensen added: “I am working on several hypotheses….One theory is that cars in Denmark are being burned by individuals from an angry underclass in a country where far-right groups have organized bitter protests against immigration, calling it a threat to the nation’s identity.” In other words, the firebugs are immigrants whose feelings have been hurt by far-right bigotry. So the fires are, ultimately, the fault of Islamophobes.

Routinely, the mainstream media attribute the car fires to unnamed perpetrators whom they vaguely identify as “youths” and “hooligans.” Last September, the Atlantic’s urban-policy website, CityLab, actually ran a piece headlined “The Mystery of Scandinavia’s Car-Burning Spree.” Noting that dozens of cars had been set ablaze over the summer in Stockholm, Gothenberg, and Malmö, and that Copenhagen was now not far behind, author Feargus O’Sullivan spent 500 words puzzling over the phenomenon. What could possibly be the cause of all this arson? After all, “no particular group [was] claiming responsibility.” Could car owners themselves be doing this to collect insurance money? Could these crimes be “an expression of rage from young men who see no other outlet for it, or find that the attention it gets them a kick”? Like Crumley, O’Sullivan then brushed against the truth, noting that the car burnings “have mainly been concentrated in relatively deprived areas such as Malmö’s Rosengård, neighborhoods where social and ethnic segregation and a perceived lack of opportunities have left many young people, especially those from a non-Swedish background, frustrated that their futures are being overlooked.” In short, the car burnings are a cry for help by those who’ve been “deprived” and “overlooked.”

“The whole system failed and that is what has been happening for the last 30 years. And it is PC. People are just too, too afraid to, you know, just too, too afraid to speak the truth.” — Mohan Singh, founder of the Sikh Awareness Society.

MI5, Britain’s domestic security agency, revealed that it has identified 23,000 jihadist extremists living in the country.

Manchester bomber Salman Abedi used taxpayer-funded student loans and benefits to bankroll the terror plot, according to the Telegraph. Abedi is believed to have received thousands of pounds in state funding in the run-up to the attack even while he was overseas receiving bomb-making training. It also emerged that the chief imam of Abedi’s mosque fought with militants in Libya. The mosque was also reported to have hosted hate preachers who called for British soldiers to be killed and non-believers to be stoned to death.

“It is no secret that Saudi Arabia in particular provides funding to hundreds of mosques in the UK, espousing a very hardline Wahhabist interpretation of Islam. It is often in these institutions that British extremism takes root.” — Tom Brake, Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesman.

May 1. Army cadets in Scotland were warned not to wear their uniforms in public because they could be targeted by jihadists.

May 1. Three female teenagers were arrested in East London on terrorism charges. The arrests were in connection with an anti-terror operation in London on April 27 in which a woman wearing a burqa was shot by police. Police said that an active terror plot had been foiled.

May 2. Samata Ullah, a 34-year-old jihadist from Cardiff, was sentenced to eight years in prison for five terror offenses, including membership of the Islamic State, as well being involved in training terrorists and preparing for terrorist acts. Ullah, a British national of Bangladeshi origin, was a key member of a group calling itself the “Cyber Caliphate Army” and gave other members of IS advice on how to communicate using sophisticated encryption techniques.

May 3. Damon Smith, a 20-year-old convert to Islam, was found guilty of making a bomb filled with ball bearings and leaving it on a subway train in London. Jurors at the Old Baily court were told that Smith had downloaded an al-Qaeda article entitled, “Make a bomb in the kitchen of your Mom,” which contained step-by-step instructions on how to make a homemade bomb. The court also heard that Smith had a keen interest in Islam, guns and explosives, and had collected pictures of extremists, including the alleged mastermind of the 2015 Paris terror attacks. Smith, who suffers from autism, admitted to making the device but claimed he only meant it as a prank.

May 3. The trial began of four Muslim men who gang-raped a 16-year-old girl in Ramsgate, Kent. The girl was attacked when she got lost after a night out and asked for directions at a Kebab shop. Restaurant owner Tamin Rahani, 37, Rafiullah Hamidy, 24, Shershah Muslimyar, 20, and an unnamed teenager are accused of taking turns raping the girl in an apartment above the restaurant.

May 9. Aine Davis, a 33-year-old British convert to Islam, was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison by a court in Turkey for being a member of the Islamic State. The BBC reported that Davis was one of a four-man IS cell nicknamed “The Beatles” responsible for beheading more than two dozen hostages in Syria. Davis, the only one of the group to face a trial, had denied the charges against him. Davis left his home in West London in 2013 to join the Islamic State. His wife, Amal El-Wahabi, after a trial at the Old Bailey court, was jailed in November 2014 for funding his terrorism.

May 11. A mother and daughter, along with another woman, appeared at Westminster magistrates’ court on charges of plotting a jihadist attack near the British Parliament. Mina Dich, 43, her daughter Rizlaine Boular, 21, and Khawla Barghouthi, 20, are accused of plotting a random knife attack. Dich and Boular appeared in court wearing burkas covering their faces. Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot asked them to lift their veils to reveal their eyes when they were identified in the dock. Barghouthi wore a niqab with her face showing. All three are accused of conspiracy to murder.

May 12. Female drivers in Stockport were warned about a gang of young Muslim males who have been attempting to get into cars stopped at intersections. Several women in the area reported that they had been approached by the men while waiting for traffic lights to change.

May 13. A divorce practice that allows Muslim men instantly to terminate an Islamic marriage simply by repeating the word talaq, meaning divorce, three times to his wife, has been described as “really common” among Muslims in Britain, according to the Times. Women cannot use the method, known as “triple talaq.” Under civil law in Britain, Islamic marriages are not acknowledged, leaving women with little power to escape an unhappy or abusive marriage, or to defend their interests in court when a marriage breaks down. Women often face homelessness and a loss of financial support after divorce. Campaigners have called for an update to Marriage Act 1949 to demand the civil registration of all religious marriages. Christian, Jewish or Quaker marriages must be registered under the law, but Muslim, Hindu and Sikh unions do not. Qari Asim, an imam at the Leeds Makkah mosque, suggested that talaq should initially be uttered just once, and only spoken a second and third time after cooling-off periods of at least three months.

May 14. Mohan Singh, founder of the Sikh Awareness Society, said that Muslim grooming gangs have been allowed to prosper in Britain because the authorities are afraid they will be labelled racist if they speak out. In an interview with Katie Hopkins at LCB radio, Singh said that political correctness had allowed the gangs to succeed:

“I think it is due to political correctness, but it is also down to nobody wants to be called a racist…. Nobody really is grabbing the bull by the horns and saying ‘No, abuse is abuse.’ But they do not want to be labeled that we are after one community, we are targeting one community. We can see all the reports coming out Rotherham, the failings of the police, the failings of the local councilors. The whole system failed and that is what has been happening for the last 30 years. And it is PC. People are just too, too afraid to, you know, just too, too afraid to speak the truth.”

How will Iraq get rid of the Iranians? Or will it? The chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Qassem Soleimani, has been seen several times in Iraq, most recently near the Syrian border, an indication that Iran has bigger plans than the liberation of Mosul.

The Sunni part of Iraq actually is an essential part of the land bridge being built from Iran to the Mediterranean Sea. There is a second and equally compelling issue for Iran to the southwest: encircling Saudi Arabia in the water.

If Iran is allowed to solidify its Shiite Crescent and its naval obstructionism, American allies across the Middle East and North Africa will pay a heavy price.

We have been looking in the wrong direction. While the West was hoping temporarily to check Iran’s nuclear aspirations, Iran was making plans to advance on the ground and in the water — and the plans are unfolding nicely. For Iran.

After the U.S. withdrew from Iraq in 2011, large swaths of Iraqi territory were easily brought under Islamic State (ISIS) control, culminating in the proclamation in 2014 of “The Caliphate” with its seat in Mosul. Having denigrated its capabilities as “the JV team,” the Obama administration was desperate to get rid of ISIS, but the Iraqi army (trained and armed at a cost of $26 billion between 2006 and 2015 with another $1.6 billion spent in 2016) was unable to handle the job, even with American air power and Kurdish fighters as allies.

The Iraqi army has since been improved, but in the Sunni heartland of Iraq, Shiite “militias” have become America’s ally in the battle for Mosul. Some militias are Iraqi Arab Shiites and some are sponsored and commanded by Persian Shiite Iran. There is no love between the two, and certainly no love between any of the Shiite militias and the U.S.-sponsored Iraqi military. But the battle has largely gone against ISIS. Militias on one side and Iraqi forces on the other are recapturing territory amid evidence of outrageous human rights abuses against Iraqi civilians by all sides. At some point soon, Iraqis (army and militias), Iranians, Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds and Americans will be eyeball-to-eyeball in Mosul. This run-in raises two questions:

Could Sunni Iraqi civilians prefer ISIS to Shiite militias, whether Iraqi or Iranian? If they do, Mosul may be liberated, but ISIS may still find havens from which to conduct a grinding guerrilla war.
How will Iraq get rid of the Iranians? Or will it? Some Iraqi Shiite militias have been loosely but legally incorporated into the Iraqi military; the Iranian ones have not. The chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Qassem Soleimani, has been seen several times in Iraq, most recently near the Syrian border, an indication that Iran has bigger plans than the liberation of Mosul.