RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274784/islam-wests-most-formidable-and-persistent-enemy-raymond-ibrahim

At the height of Western dominance over Islam in the early twentieth century, the European historian Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) made a remarkably prescient observation that may have seemed exaggerated at the time:

Millions of modern people of the white civilization—that is, the civilization of Europe and America—have forgotten all about Islam. They have never come in contact with it. They take for granted that it is decaying, and that, anyway, it is just a foreign religion which will not concern them. It is, as a fact, the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilization has had, and may at any moment become as large a menace in the future as it has been in the past (from Belloc’s The Great Heresies, 1938, emphasis added).

Anyone who doubts that Islam has been “the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilization has had,” should familiarize themselves with Islam’s long offensive record vis-à-vis the West.   A succinct summary follows:

According to Islamic history, in 628, the Arabian founder of Islam, Muhammad, called on the Byzantine Emperor, Heraclius—the symbolic head of Christendom—to recant Christianity and embrace Islam.  The emperor refused, jihad was declared, and the Arabs invaded Christian Syria, defeating the imperial army at the pivotal Battle of Yarmuk in 636.

This victory enabled the Muslims to swarm in all directions, so that, less than a century later, they had conquered the greater, older, and richer part of Christendom, including Syria, Egypt, and North Africa.

Their drive into Europe from the east was repeatedly frustrated by the Walls of Constantinople; after the spectacularly failed siege of 717-718, many centuries would pass before any Muslim power thought to capture the imperial city. The Arabs did manage to invade Europe proper through and conquered Spain but were stopped at the Battle of Tours in 732 and eventually driven back south of the Pyrenees.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14767/europe-dreams-immigration

Unfortunately, the European mindset refuses to face the reality, as if the challenge is too severe to be addressed.

“The conference took place under the theme ‘Penser l’Europe’ [‘Thinking of Europe’]… There, I was disturbed to hear Tariq Ramadan speaking of Europe as dar al-Shahada, i.e. house of Islamic belief. The attending audience was alarmed, but did not get the message of the perception of Europe… as a part of house of Islam. If Europe is no longer perceived as dar al-Harb/house of war, but viewed as part of the peaceful house of Islam, then this is not a sign of moderation, as some wrongly assume: it is the mindset of an Islamization of Europe”. — Bassam Tibi, Professor Emeritus of International Relations, University of Goettingen.

It is a false Marxist notion among young people here in Europe that if you are successful or comfortable, it can only have been at the expense of humanity: “If I win, somebody else must lose.” There seems to be no concept at all of “win-win” — “If I win, all of you can win too: everyone can win!” — which underpins the free economy and has lifted so much of the world so spectacularly out of poverty.

It is important to… reject the current fashion of self-abasement. Europe seems to be afflicted with a skepticism about the future, as if the decline of the West is actually a justified punishment and a liberation from its faults of the past…. “For me, today,” notes Alain Finkielkraut, “the most essential thing is European civilization”.

Europe presents itself as the vanguard of the unification of humanity. Europe’s cultural roots, as a result, have been put at risk. According to Pierre Manent, a renowned French political scientist and a professor at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris:

“European pride or European self-consciousness depend on the rejection of European history and European civilization! We want nothing to do with the Christian roots and we absolutely want to be perfectly welcoming to Islam”.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14788/trump-iran-deceiving-mullahs

Both President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair told me at different times that they had identified “men with whom we can work” in Tehran and that the key to success was getting rid of Khamenei and his “hardliners.”

[W]hether we like it or not, it is Khamenei, and not Rafsanjani, Khatami or Rouhani, who set the tune in the Islamic Republic.

Thus if Trump, or anyone else, wish to make a deal with the present regime in Tehran, the man they should talk to is Khamenei, not Rouhani, an actor playing the president.

[T]he two are, in fact, just one creature in two disguises, a witch bent on doing mischief.

Trump has been warned!

For a few hours last weekend, political circles in Tehran were seized with speculative fever regarding a possible meeting between US President Donald Trump and the Islamic Republic’s President Hassan Rouhani. Trump had announced in Biarritz, where the G7’s farcical summit was held, that he would be prepared to meet the Iranian mullah and believed that could happen soon. For his part, Rouhani went on TV to declare readiness to meet “anyone”, with no ifs and buts.

One “reformist” analyst phoned me in the middle of night Paris time to “inform” me that, with help from Trump, his faction was about to win a decisive victory over the “hardline” faction led by Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei.

In his narrative, Rouhani would meet Trump in September when both are to attend the United Nations’ General Assembly in New York. They would establish a “roadmap” leading to an agreement incorporating the Obama “nuke deal” plus additional demands by Trump. That, in turn, would lead to a lifting of US sanctions, saving the Iranian economy from a meltdown.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274735/mexico-bleeding-stephen-brown

It is a very tragic story currently unfolding in America’s southern neighbor where deadly violence is now almost a way of life.

According to data released by Mexico’s National System for Public Security, murders this year in the Latin American country are at an all-time high. Statistics show there has been more killings in the first six months of 2019 than ever before in the country’s history. (Mexicans started keeping records on their country’s murder rate in 1996.)

The total number of victims for the first half of 2019 comes to more than 17,000 people, a new record. This represents a 5.6 per cent increase in killings over the same time period last year. And also amounts to about 90 people slaughtered per day.

Three thousand murders were recorded in June, 2019, alone, which is an increase of 232 over the same month last year. This is the most murders ever recorded for a single month.

These figures do not include victims of other serious crimes such as, for example, kidnapping, attempted murder or extortion.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274765/jihad-christian-cemeteries-raymond-ibrahim

Although the Islamic persecution of actual, living Christians is certainly more deplorable, Islamic attacks on inanimate Christian symbols are often more indicative of the existential hate borne for the other.

Consider, for instance, the phenomenon of Muslims desecrating and destroying Christian cemeteries and their crosses.  While the act itself is largely “symbolic”—in that no living person gets hurt—it is also reflective of a committed, viral hatred that transcends subjective circumstances.  In other words, whereas the persecution of this or that Christian can be motivated by particular circumstances—conflicts, sexual attraction, convenience, gain, etc.—attacks on inanimate Christian symbols reflect an objective, transcendent hatred for Christianity and its followers, one that needs no “reason” and gains nothing in its expression.

From one end of the Islamic world to the other—in Arab, African, and Asian nations, and increasingly in the West—this sort of hate is becoming a regular occurrence.  A brief list follows; it is ordered by desecrations committed by formal terrorists (“ISIS,” etc.), informal terrorists (Muslim mobs), and Muslim governments:

Libya: In March 2012, a video of a Muslim mob attacking a commonwealth cemetery near Benghazi, where WWII British officers were buried, appeared on the Internet. As the vandals kick down and destroy headstones with crosses on them, the man videotaping them urges them to “Break the cross of the dogs!” while he and others cry “Allahu Akbar!” At one point, he chuckles as he tells an overly zealous desecrater to “calm down.” When another Muslim complains that he is unable to kick down a particular stone, wondering if it is because “this soldier must have been good to his parents,” the man videotaping replies, “Come on, they are all dogs, who cares?” Finally the mob congregates around the huge Cross of Sacrifice, the cemetery’s cenotaph monument, and starts hammering at it, to more cries of “Allahu Akbar.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14773/iranian-women-freedom

“The Islamic Republic authorities say ‘compulsory hijab’ is the law and must be obeyed. However, bad laws must be challenged and changed.” — Masih Alinejad, Iranian-American journalist and award-winning activist.

“The basis of this tyranny is the religious law that the government has been enforcing since the 1979 revolution. Women are second-class citizens, and essentially slaves in Iran. The international community needs to have the courage to delegitimize religious law and call it out for its tyrannical nature. Just as the free world delegitimized communism during the Cold War, it should do the same to religious law.” — Nasrin Mohammadi, author of Ideas and Lashes: The Prison Diary of Akbar Mohammadi, about the torture and death in prison of her late brother; to Gatestone Institute.

“The international community should also focus on Iran, struggle to end that regime and other similar governments across the world. With Iran, it should also point out the corruption, where religion is used as an excuse to steal money and power from the people.” — Nasrin Mohammadi.

“But we need support of the international community to raise this issue with Iranian authorities and take action.” — Masih Alinejad.

Three Iranian women held in Tehran’s notorious Qarchak prison were sentenced recently to what could amount to more than 10 years in prison. Their “crime”? Failing to wear headscarves, thereby defying the country’s Islamic dress code.

The women were apprehended after a video they posted online during International Women’s Day went viral. In the clip, they are seen walking bear-headed on a Tehran metro and distributing flowers to female passengers.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14783/hong-kong-protests

The real “elephant in the room” not being addressed, however, is what the Hong Kong protests are really about: 2047, when Hong Kong is supposed to be handed over to China without any “one country, two systems” protection. What then?

Protests in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China (SAR) — which began in early June with demonstrators denouncing a proposed law to permit the extradition of SAR residents to the mainland to be tried in Chinese Communist courts — have entered their 12th week and show no signs of abating. If anything, they are becoming increasingly strident, with calls for the resignation of Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s administration, among other broadening demands . The unfolding events present the Communist Party leadership in Beijing with a serious dilemma: to quell the protests with military force or wait until they die down.

According to a recent analysis in Bloomberg:

“In theory, [Chinese President] Xi [Jinping] could quickly do away with Hong Kong’s autonomy and activate the city’s garrison overnight. But the likelihood of mobilizing troops remains low and the fallout from doing so — for both China and Xi personally — is potentially much higher than dealing with the political and economic repercussions of the protests, not least because he’s already engaged in a damaging trade war with U.S. President Donald Trump.”

The Hong Kong protests reportedly were a topic of debate at this year’s annual meeting of current and former Communist Chinese leaders, which was held in Beidaihe in early August. The discussions likely included possible courses of action that the Xi government could take, such as encouraging Hong Kong’s business community to call for an end to the demonstrations, for the purpose of restoring economic stability by reversing recent negative trends in retail sales, tourist-generated income and nervousness among foreign investors.

https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2019/8/27/bahrain-backs-israeli-airstrikes-on-iranian-forces-as-self-defence

The New Arab

Bahrain and other Gulf states have found common cause with Israel over Iran tensions. [Getty]

Bahrain’s foreign minister on Monday appeared to back alleged Israeli airstrikes on Iranian-backed militia forces in the Middle East, defending the military action as ‘self-defence’.

Israel has reportedly struck targets in three different countries within the past two days, widening its military campaign against Iranian-backed forces.

Late on Saturday, the Israeli army launched strikes in Syria to thwart what it said was an impending Iranian drone attack.

Just hours later, Lebanon’s army said two Israeli drones had violated Lebanese airspace over south Beirut, and the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement said one damaged a media centre it runs.

On Sunday, a purported Israeli strike killed a commander from the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), or Hashd al-Shaabi, near Iraq’s desert western border with Syria.

Lebanese President Michel Aoun and the powerful PMF militia in Iraq both declared the strikes on their countries as “declarations of war”.

Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa took to Twitter to throw his support behind the Israeli military strikes.

https://spectator.us/trade-war-brexit-courage-hong-kong/

Over the past several months, we have witnessed remarkable courage in the streets of Hong Kong. What began as limited protest against a single act of pro-Beijing legislation now has the markings of existential struggle, if not revolution. As the people of Hong Kong understand, the city government’s proposed extradition bill — enabling removal of its citizens to mainland China for trial — was not an isolated event. It was, instead, a sign of things to come, the gradual encroachment of Beijing upon the rights and freedoms promised Hong Kong for 50 years in the 1997 Basic Law. These constitutional guarantees — negotiated with the United Kingdom before it transferred the city — have come steadily under attack as the clock ticks ineluctably towards midnight. When 2047 dawns, Beijing surely wants the ‘transition’ to be ‘seamless’, a mere legal technicality ratifying what would be, by then, a matter of practical fact: full control and dominance of Hong Kong by the Communist, mainland power.

President Trump has pulled his punches thus far. He has not taken a tough, public line against Beijing on human rights or fully acknowledged the protesters’ legitimate grievances. Interestingly, however, in a culture where rhetoric usually outpaces action — one recalls Michelle Obama holding a makeshift sign, asking Boko Haram terrorists to ‘Bring Back Our Girls’ — Trump has taken actions that place real pressure on Beijing. It may be that Trump’s main, or only, contention with China rests with its economic abuses — among other things, its currency manipulation and the pilfering of American intellectual property. Whatever his motivations, though, Trump’s actions in the current trade dispute have the potential to evolve beyond economic matters, important as they are.
It is likely already the case that Trump’s trade war has energized the protests in Hong Kong. Protesters rightly intuit that Beijing, for all its bluster, has been knocked off kilter. The rising Bully of Asia is finally receiving a reciprocal dose of strength; America has finally questioned China’s way of doing business. The people of Hong Kong are now questioning it, too. These are people who, of course — notwithstanding the spirit of the United Nations Charter and the postwar, international settlement in favor of self-determination — were never consulted about their own governance in the first place.