RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/the-uae-israel-accord-is-a-win-for-every-muslim-1.1072408

For almost twenty years, Muslims across the world have been on the defensive. Muslim identity has been largely under attack. The terrorist incidents of September 11, 2001 on New York and Washington DC cast – in many a popular imagination – every Muslim as suspect in some way. In almost every continent, a dark cloud hung over us. The security checks at airports are only a manifestation of that deep distrust.

Osama bin Laden and a range of extremist organisations hijacked the Palestinian cause: they created nothing but more loss, terrorism and humiliation for the noble Palestinian people. Now, with the visionary accord between the UAE and Israel, three new horizons open: reinstating Muslim dignity, reviving a two-state solution opportunity and creating regional economic prosperity.

I am a British Muslim. In my teens, I helped raise money in London for Hamas. My peers and I believed suicide bombers were martyrs heading for paradise. We were wrong.

The Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, 2,500 years ago taught that there is only one constant in life: change. Life flows ever onwards. After 9/11, I recognised the blunder of my beliefs. I changed. In my twenties, I lived in Damascus next to a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria. In my thirties, I lived in New York and Washington where I advised the US government. I saw the suspicion of Muslims in the eyes of American officials. It always boiled down to something unspoken: show us peace in Islam; stop talking about it.

And that is exactly what the Abraham Accord is doing: showing peace between peoples, not only preaching it. The accord represents an important opportunity to further reject “Islamophobic” accusations of terrorism and anti-Semitism. We can say: “We believe in one God. Peace is possible. A new way of co-existence is achievable. We are not pawns for the mullahs of Iran or the Muslim Brotherhood. Look at the UAE.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/09/21/the-uyghur-genocide/

Call it what it is.

Chinese Communist Party officials say that the Uyghurs, a Turkic minority in the Xinjiang region, are the “happiest Muslims in the world.” The evidence trickling out of western China tells a different story. In July, U.S. customs officials intercepted a 13-ton shipment of beauty products made out of human hair from the region and a video of blindfolded prisoners being led onto train cars went viral. Over the past couple of years, some have compared the human tragedy unfolding there to North Korean totalitarianism and South African apartheid. More recent evidence has inspired comparisons to the Holocaust. “Genocide” is a word that packs a punch, spurring action by connecting “the solemn commitments of the past and a new atrocity unfolding before the world’s eyes,” as a report by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center put it last year. This word, sadly, is now an apt descriptor for the situation in Xinjiang.

Thanks to the fearless work of researchers, journalists, and victims, it’s now widely known that the CCP in 2017 stepped up its repression of the Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities by means of a mass-internment drive and a new, Orwellian surveillance state. When the Uyghurs “graduated” from these “reeducation” and “vocational training” facilities, to borrow the euphemistic terminology of CCP officials, many were forced into slave labor. All told, over a million Uyghurs and other members of Turkic minorities are estimated to have been detained, and a total of 3 million people to have been swept up in various reeducation efforts. Others were charged with bogus crimes and remain imprisoned. Beijing, citing a few terrorist incidents that took place in 2014, claims that it’s stamping out extremism, but its true aim is to solidify Han Chinese dominance over Xinjiang.

For years, experts and activists have called the situation a “cultural genocide.” That label carries a blistering significance and refers to the CCP’s attempts to wipe out Uyghur culture and traditions. The CCP has razed burial sites, closed mosques, and effectively criminalized most expressions of faith. Still, cultural genocide is not recognized as a crime under the U.N.’s 1948 convention on genocide. Invoking cultural genocide rather than simply genocide has been a cautious way to speak out about the situation in Xinjiang without discrediting one’s argument through exaggeration. In light of recent developments, that’s no longer required.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16466/turkey-war-syria-libya

The Turkish regime, about a month ago, cut off the water supply to residents of northern Syria, where the temperature in August easily reaches more than 39° Celsius (103° Fahrenheit). It is a move, human rights advocates said, that “amounts to crimes against humanity.” They called for launching an international investigation into Erdogan’s violations and “crimes.”

Political analyst Mayyar Shehadeh pointed out that although the European Union has objected to Erdogan’s “provocations”, it has not taken any effective action to stop him from pursuing his violations against the civilians in northern Syria.

Maj. Gen. Ahmad Al-Mismari, spokesman of the Libyan National Army, warned Europe against the escalation of illegal immigration across the Mediterranean, and indicated that this migration may not be innocent: there may be terrorist elements among them that cause unrest in Europe.

“The move against Palestine is not a step that can be stomached,” Erdogan said. The thirst-ravaged Syrian civilians near the border with Turkey and the victims of the civil war in Libya, however, do not seem to be worried about the Israel-UAE deal. Erdogan’s victims want to see him held to account for his crimes against innocent civilians.

“The spirit of conquest is dominant in the modern Turkish political scene and their regional interventions. Rooted in the Ottoman ‘law of the sword’ – or the idea that the conqueror can rule a conquered country or territory according to his desires – Turkey has returned to its Ottoman ambitions.” — Costas Mavrides, Cypriot member of the European Parliament and committee chair at The Union for the Mediterranean.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is committing “horrific violations” against civilians in northern Syria, according to a report in the Abu Dhabi-based newspaper Al-Roeya on August 30.

As a result of these violations, a million civilians living in the area, parts of which are controlled by Turkey, are facing “an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.”

Arab political analysts and human rights advocates who spoke to Al-Roeya said that the Turkish regime, about a month ago, cut off the water supply to the residents of the region, where the temperature in August easily reaches more than 39° Celsius (103° Fahrenheit). It is a move, they said, that “amounts to crimes against humanity.” They called for launching an international investigation into Erdogan’s violations and “crimes.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16457/sweden-violence-crime

“The police must ensure that the criminals are arrested and can be prosecuted. The criminals need to disappear from our streets and squares so that no more ruthless crimes are committed… We work intensively, around the clock, despite this, the severe violence continues.” — Sweden’s National Police Chief Anders Thornberg, August 29, 2020.

Gothenburg’s Ali Khan clan has been reported to the police more than 200 times but the police had to close almost all cases because the gang threatens the victims and witnesses to stay silent.

“This weekend, two boys were subjected to terrible atrocities in a cemetery in Solna for an entire night. On Tuesday, a teacher in Gothenburg was kidnapped and beaten after contacting the police. What we now experience almost daily is not normal… Sweden should start by making it a crime to be part of a criminal gang, in the same way that it should be a crime to be part of a terrorist organization.”. — Ulf Kristersson, leader of the opposition Moderate Party, Facebook post, August 27, 2020.

“Unfortunately, there is a grudge against Christian culture among certain groups and the Church of Sweden in Malmö cannot be passive while the Christian cultural heritage is vandalized” — Sweden Democrats Party, August 26, 2020.

Things in Sweden have now deteriorated to such a degree that on August 29, the Swedish police published a statement titled “The trends in violence are extremely serious.” It said:

“Recently, there have been serious incidents and serious acts of violence linked to criminal networks, in which several people have been murdered and others seriously injured…

“In Stockholm, two people were murdered in the past week, and in Gothenburg, criminal groups have tried to demonstrate power by controlling vehicles entering certain districts. Earlier in August, an innocent 12-year-old girl was murdered… [during a gang incident], and in other parts of the country there are conflicts between various criminal networks and other ruthless crime, as well. On Friday night, a violent riot also occurred in Malmö where several police officers were injured…”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16308/sweden-confiscating-books

The confiscation of books and the upcoming case against author and comedian Aron Flam has ignited a debate in Sweden about the value of freedom of speech. As Flam has pointed out, a Swedish writer who happens to be Jewish having his books, critical of Swedish-Nazi collaboration during the war, seized by the Swedish state is a bit ironic.

Uppsala, once a picturesque and peaceful university town, is now the town in Sweden with the most shootings per capita. “The gangs have been allowed to grow” Manne Gerell, a criminologist at Malmö University told SVT Nyheter in December 2019, adding that the police had “woken up” a little too late.

Perhaps it is time for Sweden’s government to spend fewer resources on prosecuting the speech crimes of pensioners and comedians, and more on fighting violent crime.

In June, four armed Swedish police officers seized and confiscated the entire stock of the book Det här är en svensk tiger (“This is a Swedish Tiger”), written by Swedish author and standup comedian, Aron Flam. The book tells the story of how Sweden’s claim of neutrality during World War II covered up a reality of Swedish collaboration with the Nazi war effort and the profits that the Social Democratic government made from the war.

The title of the book is a play on the words of a 1941 wartime poster of a tiger drawn in the blue and yellow colors of the Swedish flag with the title “En svensk tiger” (“A Swedish Tiger”) and made by Swedish illustrator Bertil Almqvist. The word “tiger” in Swedish means tiger, but it also means to keep silent. The original poster was part of a Swedish government campaign to warn Swedes to keep silent, presumably not to rattle Sweden’s wartime relationship with Nazi Germany.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16469/iran-human-rights-violations

Last week, the Iranian regime’s Supreme Court issued two death sentences to wrestling champion Navid Afkari, along with six-and-a-half years in prison and 74 lashes, according to Persian-language news broadcaster Iran International. His two brothers were also arrested; Vahid Afkari was given a prison sentence of 54 years and 74 lashes, and Habib Afkari received 27 years and 74 lashes.
“For around 50 days I had to endure the most horrendous physical and psychological tortures… They would place a plastic bag on my head and torture me until I suffocated to the very brink of death. They also poured alcohol into my nose.” — Navid Afkari, Iranian wrestling champion, in a letter.
You would think that the EU or the UN would at least condemn the ruling mullahs of Iran for this brutality. Instead, they reward the regime. On August 14, the UN Security Council voted to allow the 13-year arms embargo on the Iranian regime to expire in October 2020. The ruling means that the ruling mullahs of Iran will be permitted to buy, sell and export as many conventional weapons they wish.
The ruling mullahs now have enough enriched uranium to refine and build a nuclear bomb if they wish to do so. Approximately 1000 kg of uranium enriched at just 5% can be further refined to create one nuclear bomb.
The UN and the EU need to hold the Iranian leaders accountable, or be discarded for irrelevance, where they appear to belong.

The Iranian regime has significantly ratcheted up its human rights violations. The United Nations and the European Union, which preach about human rights, completely turn a blind eye to the regime’s abuses.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16422/pakistan-american-murdered

Although Tahir Naseem’s teenage killer was apprehended and is being charged with murder, he is, among many people in Pakistan, a great hero.

“Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are often used against religious minorities and others who are the target of false accusations.” — Amnesty International, December 21, 2016.

Worse, if many have already decided on a guilty verdict for blasphemy before any of the facts are even presented, they will take “justice” into their own hands. Radicals have been also known to threaten or murder lawyers and public figures who defended the accused.

From the point of view of many in Pakistan, by killing the American blasphemer Naseem in court, all that the 15-year-old Khan did was to implement Pakistani law as stated in Section 295. His actions are then seen as a reflection of the zealous love he bears for Islam, and rather than being punished, Khan deserves only the highest praise.

A recent murder has cast a “fresh spotlight on Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.” On July 29, 2020, Tahir Naseem, 57, a U.S. citizen, was shot dead in a Pakistani courtroom during a bail hearing for a charge of blasphemy, which included “denigrating the Koran and the Prophet Muhammad,” Reuters reported. Although his teenage killer was apprehended and is being charged with murder, he is, among many people in Pakistan, a great hero:

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16458/black-christian-lives

In Nigeria, over the past twenty years, 100,000 Christians have been killed…. Nigeria is becoming the “biggest killing ground of Christians in the world”.

Nigeria, already the most populous African country, could have a population of about 800 million people in the year 2100, according to a study by The Lancet, and could become the ninth-largest economy in the world.

How many could be saved if the media, the chancelleries and international organizations had put pressure on the Nigerian leadership to protect its Christians? Why has the West never linked trade, diplomatic, military and political exchanges with Nigeria to protecting its Christians?

US President Donald Trump, in 2018, raised the issue with Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari. “We have had very serious problems with Christians who are being murdered in Nigeria”, Trump told him. President Trump, however, is almost alone among Western leaders to raise the issue. When his predecessor, President Barack Obama, met with Buhari, he never talked about the murders of Christians.

“Stop the killings”, “Enough is enough”, “Our lives matter”, said Nigerian Christians and church leaders gathered in London on August 20 to demonstrate against the massacre of Christians in their country. They sent British Prime Minister Boris Johnson a letter accusing the international media of “a conspiracy of silence”.

At the same time, a report by three organizations — the International Organization for Peace Building and Social Justice, the International Committee on Nigeria and the All-Party Parliamentary Group for International Freedom of Religion or Belief — disclosed that in Nigeria, over the past 20 years, 100,000 Christians have been killed. Boko Haram, Al Qaeda, Fulani herdsmen and other Islamist groups are responsible for the deaths of more than 96,000 Christians in 21,000 separate attacks. According to the report, 43,242 Christians were killed by Boko Haram, Islamic State and Al Qaeda; 18,834 died in Fulani attacks and 34,233 from other armed groups. Nigeria is becoming the “biggest killing ground of Christians in the world”.