RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15152/germany-imams

The latest annual report of Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution…. warned that the Erdoğan-aligned Islamist movement Millî Görüş is strongly opposed to Muslim integration into European society….

The Konrad Adenauer Foundation also reported that the German government’s initiative to offer Islamic theology courses at five German universities has failed to produce German-speaking imams. This failure stems, in part, from the fact that the Turkish government has refused to cooperate with the initiative.

The German government is unlikely to ban the foreign financing of mosques anytime in the near future. Such a move would, presumably, infuriate Erdoğan, who controls the floodgates of mass migration to Europe. Turkey continues to hold effective veto power over Germany’s Islam policy.

The German government, after years of equivocating, has approved a measure that would require clergy from abroad to prove that they have sufficient German language skills before they are allowed to work in Germany.

The move, aimed at cracking down on foreign government control over Muslims in Germany, comes after an academic study found that approximately 90% of the imams leading the 2,000 or so mosques in Germany are from abroad.

The new measure, approved by the Cabinet on November 6, would amend two German laws — the Employment Regulation for Foreigners (Beschäftigungsverordnung) and the Residence Act (Aufenthaltsverordnung) — to stipulate that, in the future, anyone seeking to obtain a residence permit for the exercise of religious employment must demonstrate a sufficient knowledge of German.

Important details about the measure, which must still be approved by the German Parliament, remain unclear. The government said that during a transition period, proof of “simple knowledge” of German would be acceptable. It did not, however, clarify how long that transition period would be, define what is a “sufficient” level of German, or say what will happen to the foreign imams currently leading German mosques. Will those imams be exempt from the measure, will they be required to learn German, or will they be replaced by other imams who have the requisite language skills?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15153/turkey-hate-christians-jews

Member of Parliament Garo Paylan hinted that the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has not only failed to do enough to prevent hate speech, but actually has been instrumental in spreading it.

According to a study conducted by the Hrant Dink Foundation, in 2018, there were 4,839 editorials and news stories targeting national, ethnic and religious groups. Chief among those targeted were Jews and Armenians… The verbal attacks on those groups appear to have concrete consequences.

Perhaps when US President Donald J. Trump meets with Erdoğan in the White House this week, he might ask, as did Paylan: What kinds of activities does your government carry out to prevent hate speech?

Billboards with images of blood-splattered crosses and Stars of David that began to appear in October on bus stops in central Turkey were removed recently, after eliciting an explosive response from a concerned opposition parliamentarian and a complaint by the country’s main human rights organization.

The disturbing images on the billboards — created by the Islamist Anadolu Youth Association and the National Youth Foundation, affiliated with Islamist Felicity Party — were accompanied by the Qur’anic verse, 5:51:

“O believers, take not Jews and Christians as friends; they are friends of each other. Whoso of you makes them his friends is one of them. God guides not the people of the evildoers.” (Arberry translation)

“Ey iman edenler! Yahudileri ve Hristiyanları dost edinmeyin. Onlar birbirlerinin dostudurlar ve sizden kim onları dost edinirse, O’da onlardandır. Allah zalimler topluluğunu doğru yola eriştirmez.”

In a motion submitted to the Interior Ministry, Garo Paylan, a Member of Parliament from the opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) questioned how such posters could have been displayed or approved by the Konya Municipality. Paylan also hinted that the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has not only failed utterly to do enough to prevent hate speech but actually has been instrumental in spreading it.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/11/berlin-wall-gone-lessons-remain/

Socialism is not cuddly or compassionate, and it has been tried many times, to ruinous effect. Will today’s young people have to learn this all over again?

The Berlin Wall stood for 28 years until in 1989 a wave of citizen protest forced the East German Communist government to open its gates. We’ve now gone longer without the Berlin Wall than it existed.

As we marked the anniversary, on November 9, of its demise, I couldn’t help but recall with wonder how astonishingly quickly the ugly scar of the wall along with its guards, dogs, and mines were all swept away in a wave of euphoria.

I visited the Berlin Wall and crossed into East Germany several times during the 1980s while I worked at the Wall Street Journal. I will never forget the brave dissidents I met on the Eastern side who never accepted the wall, or the bureaucrats who ran the state machinery that sustained it.

While it now appears easy to simply divide the East German population into oppressors and the people they oppressed, I learned that the truth was a bit more complicated even for someone like me who grew up with anti-Communism in his bloodstream.

Here are some snapshots of people I met before the fall of the wall whom I will never forget.

One: Christa Luft, was the last person to serve as minister of economics in the East German government. Appointed just after the wall fell, she faced the daunting challenge of holding together a collapsing centrally planned economy. When I interviewed her just before Christmas 1989, I asked her how long East Germany could have preserved Communism if the wall hadn’t collapsed. With remarkable candor she said: “We had at most six months to a year.” The economy, she explained, was so inefficient at the end that if a machine tool broke down in Leipzig there would likely be no spare part available. A factory manager desperate to produce his quota of goods would often pay to have the needed part stolen for him from a factory in another city.