RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13974/brexit-message-eu

The first problem with the EU is that, though it is called a union, it isn’t really one. The EU is essentially an economic club; not a state.

Brexit has highlighted the key challenges that the EU faces. The first challenge concerns a widespread overestimation of the EU’s role. This is due to its perception as a supra-national state, which it certainly is not.

The EU is also facing the challenge posed by the return of the nation-state as the most popular model of socio-political organization across the globe. Right now all supra-national and/or international organizations, from the United Nations to NATO, are regarded with suspicion, if not outright hostility, not only in Europe but also throughout the world.

With the Brexit saga’s denouement still uncertain, the European Union would do well to re-examine its performance as a daring experience in socio-political engineering on a grand scale. Even if, as expected, the United Kingdom somehow manages to fudge Brexit and remain tied to the EU, the fact remains that millions of Brits and other Europeans are unhappy with aspects of the experience.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13975/uk-unwelcome-christians

In rejecting the claim for asylum of a man who converted from Islam to Christianity, and presumably compelling his return to Iran, the British government is effectively sentencing him to death.

“[O]ut of 4,850 Syrian refugees accepted for resettlement by the Home Office in 2017, only eleven were Christian, representing just 0.2% of all Syrian refugees accepted by the UK.” — Barnabas Fund.

At the same time, the Home Office allowed a Pakistani cleric, Syed Muzaffar Shah Qadri, considered so extreme that he is banned even from his native Pakistan, to come and lecture in UK mosques.

“It’s unbelievable that these persecuted Christians who come from the cradle of Christianity are being told there is no room at the inn, when the UK is offering a welcome to Islamists who persecute Christians…. There is a serious systemic problem when Islamist leaders who advocate persecution of Christians are given the green light telling them that their applications for UK visas will be looked on favourably, while visas for short pastoral visits to the UK are denied to Christian leaders whose churches are facing genocide. That is an urgent issue that Home Office ministers need to grasp and correct.” — Dr. Martin Parsons, Barnabas Fund.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/03/mourning-a-massacre-with-the-veil-of-oppression/

This from BBC News on May 19 last year:

It is five years since Iranian Masih Alinejad started a movement – since joined by thousands of women – protesting against the compulsory wearing of the hijab, or headscarf, in her country. It spread on social media and led to unprecedented demonstrations in the streets …Niloofar (not her real name) was arrested for demonstrating against the mandatory hijab. She says she was held in solitary confinement and subjected to torture and beatings. An active member of the movement who still lives in Iran, she says that through Masih’s campaigns “ordinary people get together to make the government react”.

Now let’s cut to New Zealand and Jacinda Ardern draping herself in a headscarf to signify solidarity with Muslims. Reportedly, New Zealand women generally were encouraged to wear a scarf to show their solidarity. A heavily-armed policewoman is pictured in newspapers with a headscarf while guarding a funeral of one of the victims of the shootings. It is false, it is virtue-signaling, and it is sickeningly unsupportive of brave Muslim women trying to throw off their oppression along with their scarfs.

It was a terrible event in New Zealand. An outpouring of grief and sympathy should be forthcoming. But perspective is required. You don’t have to show sympathy by donning clothing which is used in so many places to keep so many women in check and under the yolk of religious fundamentalists.