RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/this-isnt-obamas-middle-east-11604963875?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

Even in the closing weeks of America’s presidential campaign, the grisly murder of French schoolteacher Samuel Paty made an impression. As part of a civics lesson, Mr. Paty showed his class of 13-year-olds the Charlie Hebdo caricatures of the prophet Muhammad. Soon afterward, Mr. Paty was attacked and beheaded in the street. President Emmanuel Macron, whose government has been moving right on law and order as the electoral competition with Marine Le Pen of the National Rally heats up, announced a series of measures aimed at limiting what he called “Islamist separatism.”

The reaction from Muslim religious and political leaders around the world ranged from supportive (the United Arab Emirates and some imams) to perfunctory (Kuwait and Saudi Arabia) to sulfurous, with Malaysian former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad helpfully tweeting that Muslims had the right to kill “millions of French people” in retribution for French colonialism.

But the most significant reaction came from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country is embroiled in confrontations with France in the Eastern Mediterranean. “Macron needs mental treatment,” Mr. Erdogan said, calling for a Turkish boycott against French products. “What is the problem of this person Macron with Muslims and Islam?”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/why-biden-presidency-would-be-gift-iran-joseph-klein/

Unlike the Obama-Biden administration, President Trump saw right through the Iranian regime’s deceptive veneer all the way through to its malevolent core. Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran had the regime on its knees. If President Trump had been reelected, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his henchmen would have had no choice but to agree to major concessions in order to get any sanctions relief.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s claim last week that “the next US administration will surrender to the Iranian nation” no matter who won the election was empty braggadocio. Behind the scenes, the Iranian regime did its best to interfere in the U.S. election on behalf of Joe Biden. Iran’s leaders have now reaped the fruits of their efforts as they look forward to the Biden-Harris administration’s return to the Obama-Biden administration’s appeasement policies.

On Sunday, after the media projected Biden as the election winner, Rouhani proclaimed, “The next US administration has now an opportunity to make up for the past mistakes and return to the path of commitment to international undertakings by respecting the global rules.” Joe Biden will almost certainly take Rouhani’s advice to heart, falling again for the Iranian regime’s siren song.

Expect Biden to immediately set about reversing President Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran. This will mean trying quickly to lift at least some of the harsh sanctions imposed by Trump to force the Iranian regime to the negotiating table, which Trump will reportedly be adding to every week until Biden’s inauguration on January 20, 2021. Biden has already proposed to “streamline channels for banking and public health assistance from other countries in response to the health emergency in Iran,” as if Iran’s brutal regime could give a hoot about the health of its people.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16732/pope-francis-encyclical-fratelli-tutti

The Pope, for instance, implies that the twilight of the planet’s centuries old diplomatic nation-state system has arrived, prompting the need for a more globalist political system. Regrettably, that usually brings with it no transparency, no accountability and no recourse. Think of the United Nations, the UN Human Rights Council, the International Criminal Court or the European Union.

In the Pope’s encyclical, the “stranger” is always a desperate, impoverished refugee seeking solace, never an aggressor with the will to conquer.

Although Francis may have been especially aware of his Muslim guests, Catholics must wonder if they, too, were included as part of the intended audience. There was simply little or no mention in the encyclical of core Catholic beliefs.

In truth, however, “Fratelli Tutti” seems more a contrived, secular attempt to fashion a model for the governance of humankind that could attract the support of believer and non-believer alike. Unfortunately, it may also rally those hoping to bring down Judeo-Christian civilization to assume that the West is unfurling a flag of surrender.

The Pope’s Encyclical “Fratelli Tutti” (“Brothers All”) sadly seems more a massive and unwieldy political document than a religious guide to the Catholic faithful. The encyclical’s intended audience appears to be secular world rather than people of faith. The 43,000-word tome contains almost no discussion of Catholic dogmas. Although the Pontiff’s diagnosis of the world’s ills seems accurate enough, unfortunately his proposed antidotes — equality of result rather than equality of opportunity and individual liberty, the bedrocks of Western democracies — would seriously threaten freedom.

The Pope, for instance, implies that the twilight of the planet’s centuries old diplomatic nation-state system has arrived, prompting the need for a more globalist political system. Regrettably, that usually brings with it no transparency, no accountability and no recourse. Think of the United Nations, the UN Human Rights Council, the International Criminal Court or the European Union.

The Pope denigrates the concept of nationalism by referring to it as “local narcissism.” His support for “open borders” would deny nations the right to sovereignty over their national territories. Pope Francis, a lifelong priest of the Jesuit order, appears to be calling for a system of international organizations that would possess the power to override the will of individual states and have the potential to become a global despotism.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16731/turkey-return-of-demons

Though Empire-builders of the first order, the Ottomans were always careful not to bite more than they could chew. Erdogan, however, is leading Turkey into empire-building adventures which it does not want and cannot afford.

It has… launched a war of words with the European Union as a whole. Ostensibly, Turkey’s beef is about old maritime demarcation lines that deny it the right to tap underwater oil and gas resources. What Erdogan does not realize is that the potential market for those resources is the very European Union he is now casting as enemy. In any case, the disputed resources cannot be tapped without massive investment from the West, not to mention the technology needed.

By promoting a strategic break with Europe, Erdogan is leading Turkey into the unknown, with demons whispering in his ears.

“Our past was in Asia but our future is in Europe!” This was how Mesut Yilmaz portrayed his vision for Turkey in a panel debate in Davos in the 1990s.

At the time, Yilmaz, who died last week at the age of 73, was one of the rising stars of Turkish politics and a generation that seemed destined to complete a revolution that had started in the 1880s in the Ottoman Empire. That revolution had aimed at transforming the moribund empire into a modern Western-style state capable of reversing more than a century of decline that had earned the caliphate the sobriquet of “Sick man of Europe.”

By the start of the 20th century, however, it had become clear that building a modern European-style state, based on the Westphalian principles, required the existence of a nation also in the European sense of the term; an impossible task as long as the Ottoman state remained a multi-national empire whose legitimacy was based on religion which, by definition, excludes the very concept of a nation-state.

https://lawliberty.org/treating-evil/

The ease with which Kujtim Fejzulai, the young North Macedonian terrorist responsible for the recent terrorist outrage in Vienna, was able to deceive psychologists, police, and other supposed experts into believing that he had abjured Moslem extremism, would have been funny, even hilarious, had its consequences not been so terribly tragic and deadly.

Fejzulai, a citizen of both Austria and North Macedonia, was released early from a prison sentence, imposed because he had tried to cross from Turkey into Syria in an attempt to fight for ISIS, with which he sympathised. He was released early from prison for two reasons: his youth (he was 20) and because he claimed to have seen the error of his extremist ways.

On statistical grounds, his youth might more sensibly have been a reason for detaining him in prison for longer, even for much longer, because it is precisely during their youth that young men such as he, who are attracted to violence, are most likely to commit it. A sentimental view of youth, however, prevailed over a more realistic one.

But the second reason for his release was even more absurd, and revealed the arrogant technocratic mindset of so many western authorities and governments, which suppose not only that there is a technical solution to all human problems, but that they have found it. They imagine that, since they are representatives of the richest and most advanced societies in the world, they must have techniques to change the “primitive” mindsets of Moslem extremists. Surely it is not possible for people with a world outlook that belongs more to the seventh than to the twenty-first century, to fool people with doctorates from reputable and even venerable universities, who have access to the latest technology and all the information in the world?

The fact is, however, that any ignorant and stupid seventh century-minded extremist is more than a match for any number of psychologists, criminologists, sociologists, computer scientists, etc. While I cannot sympathize with his outlook to the slightest extent, in a sneaking or convoluted way, I am glad that he is up to the task. His ability so easily to deceive means that technocracy is still not triumphantly successful—as I hope that it never will be. Our humanity is preserved by the fact that so-called deradicalization is a charade. What Fejzulai needed was not a technical procedure, with a technical assessment as to whether or not it had worked, but thirty years or more in prison to cool his heels: for society’s sake, of course, rather for than his, though it is probable also that it would have saved his life.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16700/erdogan-jihad-europe

Middle Eastern politics is always a trap for radical ideologues. In Erdoğan’s mindset the “infidel West” is militarily helping Armenia (the evil) and Turkey is militarily helping Azerbaijan (the righteous).

Although Ankara and Baku categorically deny accusations, press reports and independent human rights observers have confirmed the arrival of hundreds of jihadists in Azerbaijan to fight Armenia.

After the Turkish military’s direct armed engagement on Iraqi and Syrian territories, proxy wars in Syria, Libya and Yemen, military tensions on the Aegean and Mediterranean seas, Erdoğan’s new jihadist adventurism has found a new theater of war in the Caucasus. What’s next?

The jihad against Europe by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is probably based on both ideology and opportunism. Fierce anti-Western rhetoric is an ideological sine qua non for Turkish political Islam; it is also a secure vote-catcher targeting conservative and nationalist masses.

Erdoğan’s jihadism is not seasonal or a newfound system of political ideas. It is also not a reflection of peaceful sufism. Erdoğan comes from the ranks of Turkey’s militant political Islamism that emerged in late 1960s under the leadership of the ideologue, Necmettin Erbakan, Turkey’s first Islamist prime minister and Erdoğan’s mentor. In Erbakan’s rhetoric universal politics is simply about a struggle between the righteous (Islam) and a coalition of Zionists and racist imperialists — all else is just details. In his thinking, the Zionists support Turkey’s membership in the European Union in order to “get Turkish Muslims to melt in a pot of Christianity.”

In a 2016 speech, Erdoğan talked of European countries: “These are not just our enemies… Behind them are plans and plots and other powers.” Also in 2016, he said that jihad is never terrorism. “It is resurrection…. It is to give life, to build… It is to fight the enemies of Islam.” In 2017, Erdoğan added that the German government’s actions resembled those of Nazi Germany.

Last month, the Gaza-based leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), Dawood Shihab, said that Turkey was the bravest Muslim country to fight French President Emmanuel Macron’s hostility toward Muslims. Turks thought flattering words from PIJ were not enough crucify an infidel disguised as the president of a big European nation.

Erdoğan had to take the stage. Venue: A party convention in the heart of Anatolia. Décor: Huge posters of Erdoğan and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev. Two more photographs: Azeri landscape and the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. Slogan: “Karabakh and Al-Aqsa mosque [in Jerusalem] are waiting for us!” [Nagorno-Karabakh is a disputed territory under Armenian occupation since the 1990s.]

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/

Two teachers face long prison sentences for educating Baha’is, who are banned from pursuing further education in Iran. After repeated harassment and intimidation, married couple Azita Rafizadeh and Peyman Kushak-Baghi have been convicted for their involvement with the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE). Rafizadeh recently received a summons notice to begin her sentence, and will be forced to leave her six-year-old son behind.

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/macron-radical-islam-france/

France has declared a state of emergency following the recent terrorist attack in Nice, and violent demonstrations are being held across the Arab and Muslim worlds amid calls for boycotts and terrorist attacks against France. Exacerbated by the severe economic and social consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, this crisis reflects France’s failure to integrate its Muslim minority and to set and enforce clear boundaries against anti-democratic and separatist tendencies within it.

The shocking murder of teacher Samuel Paty by a teenaged Islamist Chechen immigrant provoked a tumultuous emotional response in France. Paty was killed after he showed his students the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad published by the satirical publication Charlie Hebdo that led to the January 2015 Islamist massacre of that paper’s journalists. Paty’s object in displaying the cartoons was to prompt a class discussion on the values of freedom of speech and expression that characterize French society.

This murderous blow to the heart of the liberal French republic, which welcomes refugees and immigrants and grants them civil and economic rights, provoked a heated debate. In the past five years, France has experienced 33 terrorist attacks by French Muslim citizens. The targeting of Paty for assassination, his gruesome public beheading, and the posting of video of the murder on the internet illustrated that Islamic zealots pose an existential threat to France’s basic republican order.

Over the years, French governments have tried to address the problem through two main venues: reforms to improve the economic and social situation in the suburbs and vigorous measures against extremist Islamist elements. The latter included overseeing religious teaching institutions; closing down radical institutions and associations; deporting foreign imams who incite violence, citizens with dual citizenship who were involved in terrorist activities, and illegal immigrants; monitoring extremist social networks; and increasing budgets and manpower for intelligence and surveillance operations. President Macron’s attempt to advance legislation to monitor more illegal immigrants failed due to political disagreements between right- and left-wing parties and the proposed laws’ disqualification by the Constitutional Court on the grounds that they violate human rights.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-administration-set-to-sanction-top-pro-hezbollah-politician-11604627966

The Trump administration is expected on Friday to impose sanctions on one of Lebanon’s most powerful Christian politicians in an effort to chip away at Hezbollah’s grip on power, according to people briefed on the move.

The U.S. is preparing to sanction former Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil for assisting his key ally, the pro-Iranian political movement Hezbollah, said a U.S. official and another person briefed on the plan. The move is likely to upend attempts to form a new cabinet in crisis-ridden Lebanon.

The White House has been expediting key sanctions targeting American foes in the Middle East, just 11 weeks before the end of the current presidential term.

Though a last-minute change is still possible, the decision has been approved in principle by the Treasury Department and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is expected to unveil the sanctions in Washington Friday before noon, one person said.

Treasury Department representatives didn’t return requests for comment. A spokesman for the State Department declined to comment.

Mr. Bassil couldn’t be reached late Thursday for comment. Earlier this year, when asked about the possibility of being sanctioned by the U.S. for his ties to Hezbollah, Mr. Bassil told The Wall Street Journal that working with the group was a political reality in a country in which the Shiite group is a dominant player.

“Everybody should be sanctioned in Lebanon, because everybody deals with Hezbollah in Lebanon, on all terms,” he said.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/raymond-ibrahim-video-fatal-terror-attack-vienna-frontpagemagcom/