RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274139/trinidad-western-hemispheres-jihadist-hotspot-stephen-brown

It is difficult to believe that a lush, tropical vacation destination like the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago, a relatively prosperous country with full religious and legal freedoms, has produced more fighters per capita for the murderous Islamic State (ISIS) than any other country in the Western Hemisphere.

But, unfortunately for Trinidad and the civilized world, that is the tragic fact of the matter. While Muslims constitute only five per cent of the country’s population, according to the CIA’s World Factbook, a portion is “causing outsized global security concern,” states Todd Benson in the publication Center for Immigration Studies.

Unknown to most and largely unreported by the media, Trinidad, with only a population estimated between 1.2 and 1.5 million people, has sent at least 130 of its citizens to join the Islamic State. The United States, by contrast, with a population about 240 times larger than Trinidad’s, has sent about 250 to 300, about one per cent of the 30,000 foreigners who joined ISIS.

T. and T. citizens in ISIS “are high up in the ranks, they are very respected, and they are English-speaking. ISIL have used them for propaganda to spread their message through the Caribbean,” said John Estrada, former U.S. ambassador, to Trinidad and Tobago, adding Trinidadians did “very well” in ISIS.  

https://www.wsj.com/articles/religious-suppression-north-of-the-border-11561676755

One of New York state’s great civic leaders once began a meeting by observing that I wore a yarmulke at work. I’d just been nominated as president of New York’s economic development agency. I told him that headgear hadn’t seemed to hinder Cardinal Edward Egan’s effectiveness. We got down to business and got along fine. This incident came to mind last week when the National Assembly of Quebec passed a law barring public employees from wearing religious clothing or symbols at work.

Advocates say the bill promotes the separation of church and state. In reality, the law suggests that religious practice is incompatible with public service, that people of faith cannot be trusted to balance their religious beliefs and civic responsibilities, and that employees must choose between their consciences and careers. Public employees won’t be the only ones affected: If the government won’t hire someone who wears a turban or crucifix, why would a private business?

During my decade as a yarmulke-wearing government official in New York, I occasionally encountered those who viewed religious professionals through a lens that magnified their faith while obscuring their abilities.

On two separate occasions when I was in Albany for the State of the State address, senior officials approached me in the holding room for politicians and staffers off the Capitol floor, shook my hand, addressed me as “Rabbi,” and thanked me for coming to deliver the invocation. Mortified colleagues quickly corrected them.

If religiously observant employees are given the chance, eventually people will focus on the job they are doing and not the clothing they are wearing while doing it. The best way to ensure respect for different faiths and cultures is to make them well-represented in all workplaces. That means not excluding them from the workforce or forcing them to hide their identities.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/27/britain-has-far-highest-rate-returning-jihadi-fighters-europe/

Britain has by far the highest rate of “exceptionally dangerous” returning jihadis in Europe, police chiefs have warned.

A report from Europol revealed that of hundreds of Britons who travelled to Syria and Iraq amid the rise of Isil, nearly half have been able to return safely.

It comes amid widespread concern at the low number of returning fighters and so-called jihadi brides successfully prosecuted in British courts.

According to the annual Europol report, roughly 45% of Britons who travelled to Syria and Iraq have already come back to their home country.

The country with the next highest proportion was Germany, where 33% have returned, while in the Netherlands and Spain the return rate is thought to be just 18%.

The report warned that returning jihadis and their supporters pose a serious ongoing threat to national security.

“Those that have returned garner kudos with like-minded individuals,” it said.

“Their training and experience – such as handling weapons and explosives – makes them exceptionally dangerous. 

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14432/uk-clash-educations-ii

“It seems it was far less politically complicated to keep quiet.” — Baroness Cox, address on grooming gangs to the House of Lords, May 14, 2019.

“In the context of schooling, it manifests itself as the imposition of an aggressively separatist and intolerant agenda, incompatible with full participation in a plural, secular democracy…. It appears to be a deliberate attempt to convert secular state schools into exclusive faith schools in all but name. (5:2)” — Peter Clarke, the Deputy Assistant Commissioner and head of the Metropolitan Police’s counter-terrorism branch, in a report for the House of Commons, July 22, 2014.

Is Ofsted, the schools inspectorate, still hampered by an unwillingness to ask hard questions and a desire to “avoid giving offence”?

Recent protests about supposed LGBT lessons in a school in Birmingham, England, have drawn attention from the media, politicians, the High Court, and the National Secular Society. While the protests may well spread to other cities, for the moment they are contained. When these lessons, which are based on the “No Outsiders” curriculum within the international system of “Diversity Education,” become legally compulsory for almost all schools in 2020, either the protests will die out or become more clamorous in a struggle to rescind the law — an act to which the government might well not agree.

The question of demands placed on Western governments to alter national laws in order to accommodate religious rulings remains an issue that is divisive, notably between secular states and citizens who might not want a secular state but a religious one instead.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14389/turkey-sudan-ally

Erdogan’s close ties to Bashir appear to have had the goal of expanding Turkey’s economic and military influence in Africa as well as in the Gulf. After the ouster of Bashir, however, all of Turkey’s endeavors in Sudan, including a key Turkish strategic project on the Red Sea, could now be in jeopardy — bad news for a Turkish government that already facing serious economic problems.

Bashir granted Erdoğan the use, near Egypt and Saudi Arabia, of Suakin Island, a Sudanese port city in the Red Sea…. The Turkish press reported that Ankara was preparing to build a “military base” on the island, which would turn it into the “second Turkish eye in the Mediterranean after Cyprus.”

According to the Turkish financial newspaper, Dünya, billion-dollar business deals — including Turkey’s investment in a new airport in Khartoum, as well as in the fields of agriculture, textiles, and oil — could also be in jeopardy.

The April 11 military coup that ousted Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir after 30 years of Islamist rule seems to have the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan extremely worried.

The Turkish government, in its attempts to prop up Bashir’s ailing government, had invested heavily in Sudan. The ouster of Bashir, after months-long protests, has thrown the cooperation between the Turkish and Sudanese regimes in intelligence, economics and military, among other matters, into uncertainty.

Although Turkey is a member of NATO with long-standing aspirations to become part of the European Union — while Bashir came to power in 1989 by overthrowing Sudan’s democratically elected government and was later indicted by the International Criminal Court as a war criminal — Erdoğan and his loyalists are blaming the United States, Israel and other “global powers” for toppling their ally.

Turkish newspapers aligned with Erdoğan are even claiming that Bashir’s ouster was indirectly aimed at Ankara. The reason for this false accusation is that Sudan — which borders Egypt and Libya, and is close to Saudi Arabia — has held both strategic and political significance for Turkey. Erdogan’s close ties to Bashir appear to have had the goal of expanding Turkey’s economic and military influence in Africa as well as in the Gulf. After the ouster of Bashir, however, all of Turkey’s endeavors in Sudan, including a key Turkish strategic project on the Red Sea, could now be in jeopardy — bad news for a Turkish government that already facing serious economic problems.

https://www.andrewbostom.org/2010/08/uriel-heyd-on-turkeys-re-islamization-circa-

Professor Uriel Heyd (d. 1968) described Turkey’s tenuous secularization and aggressive re-Islamization fully 42 years before todays “learned analysts” have finally come to the same pathetically belated realization…

…

Since the recent Mavi Marmara flotilla affair—facilitated, and perhaps even orchestrated by the Turkish government—we have been inundated with excruciatingly belated, if not downright delinquent hand-wringing assessments by so-called “expert analysts” of Turkey. These “experts” lament what they view as Turkey’s “precipitous” return to Islamic fundamentalism under the current Erdogan-led AKP regime—as if this dangerous phenomenon emerged suddenly and fully formed from the head of Zeus al-Zawahiri.

A sobering, highly informed corrective to this cacophony of ill-informed Johnny and Janey-Come –Lately “learned analyst” voices was provided by the Israeli scholar of Ottoman and Republican Turkey, Professor Uriel Heyd (1913-1968)—just over forty-two years ago!

First, a brief biography of Heyd, derived from Professor Gabriel Baer’s opening tribute and Preface (pp. 5-6) to Heyd’s “Revival of Islam in Modern Turkey,” The Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1968, pp. 5-27, and Professor Aharon Layish’s, “Uriel Heyd’s Contribution to the Study of the Legal, Religious, Cultural, and Political History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey,” Bulletin of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1, 1982, pp. 35-54.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274134/teen-leah-sharibu-remains-boko-haram-captivity-jamie-glazov

Today, 16-year-old Leah Sharibu, a Christian girl from the town of Dapchi, Nigeria, remains in the monstrous hands of the Islamic terror group Boko Haram – which keeps Leah in its barbaric captivity because she refuses to deny Jesus Christ and convert to Islam.

Leah was just 14 years old when, with 109 other girls, she was abducted from her school in Dapchi by Boko Haram on February 19, 2018. The other kidnapped girls were freed (5 were killed) in March of that same year, but Leah remained in the Jihadist group’s hands because she refused to renounce Christ.

For such a young girl under such circumstances not to give up her faith, staying true to what she believes in spite of these horrible consequences it has had for her through all these past months, is mind blowing to me.

That quote is from Sonja Dahlmans, a researcher on the abduction, rape, and forced conversions of Christian girls and women, and also of other non-Muslim women, in several countries from Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. A student of Theology and Orthodox Christianity at two universities in the Netherlands, Sonja is currently heading a petition on behalf of Leah that she hopes will add pressure on Nigerian authorities to squeeze her captors for her release.

Sonja kindly agreed to answer a few of my questions about her petition, where exactly Leah’s frightening situation stands, and about the overall nightmarish conditions for Christians in Nigeria.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14448/africa-christians-persecution

“In some regions, the level and nature of persecution is arguably coming close to meeting the international definition of genocide, according to that adopted by the UN.” — The Independent Review of FCO support for Persecuted Christians.

“The assailants asked the Christians to convert to Islam, but the pastor and the others refused. They ordered them to gather under a tree and took their Bibles and mobile phones. Then they called them, one after the other, behind the church building where they shot them dead.” — World Watch Monitor, May 2, 2019.

As the British report demonstrates, persecution against Christians and other non-Muslims is not about the ethnicity, race or skin color of either the perpetrators or the victims; it is about their religion.

If these crimes are not stopped, it is highly likely that the fate of the African Continent will be like that of the Middle East: Once it was a majority-Christian region; now, Christians are a tiny, dying, defenseless minority.

According to a recent interim report published in the U.K., “it is estimated that one third of the world’s population suffers from religious persecution in some form, with Christians being the most persecuted group.”

Although the full report — commissioned by British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and conducted by the Bishop of Truro, the Right Reverend Philip Mounstephen — was due to be released by Easter this year, “the scale and nature of the phenomenon [of Christian persecution] simply required more time,” according to the report. As a result, Mounstephen explained, the “interim” findings released in April are incomplete, and the final report will be published at the end of June.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14447/iran-attacks-escalate

Iran’s actions are clear; there has been virtually no attempt on its part to disguise hostile intentions. Why is there no international outrage? The mainstream media continue to fail to report adequately Iran’s attacks. There has been no focus placed on the increase over the past two months of these attacks.

On several occasions, the Trump administration invited Iran to the negotiating table in an attempt to deescalate tensions. It is Iran that rejects the talks and continues to act aggressively, all while openly threatening the U.S. and its allies.

How many people must be threatened, tortured, or slaughtered, before Trump’s response will be deemed warranted?

Criticism continues to fly at the Trump administration in response to the White House’s attempts to deter Iran’s threats. Despite increasing acts of violence, and aggressive behavior towards the US, President Trump is criticized by some people for his determination to hold the Iranian government accountable.

By using its military to attack the US and its allies, the Islamic Republic has been unabashedly resorting to hard power tactics. Iran’s actions are clear; there has been virtually no attempt on its part to disguise hostile intentions. Why is there no international outrage? The mainstream media continue to fail to report adequately Iran’s attacks. There has been no focus placed on the increase over the past two months of these attacks.

The Iranian government’s policy appears to be two-pronged. The first facet seems linked to instructing its proxies across the region to attack and wreak havoc on entities linked to the United States, European countries, and Gulf states.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/iran-says-new-u-s-sanctions-mark-permanent-closure-of-diplomacy/

Iranian officials said Tuesday that new U.S. sanctions mean “closing the doors of diplomacy” between the two countries amid increasingly acrimonious relations.

The sanctions, which target the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other top Iranian officials, are “outrageous and idiotic,” President Hassan Rouhani said.

“You sanction the foreign minister simultaneously with a request for talks,” Rouhani complained, before calling the White House “mentally retarded.”

“Trump’s government is annihilating all the established international mechanisms for keeping peace and security in the world,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi wrote on Twitter, calling the Trump administration “desperate.”

In response, President Trump issued a warning that attacking American targets will result in disaster for Iran.

“The wonderful Iranian people are suffering, and for no reason at all. Their leadership spends all of its money on Terror, and little on anything else,” Trump wrote Tuesday on Twitter. “Iran’s very ignorant and insulting statement, put out today, only shows that they do not understand reality. Any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force. In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration.”

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Last week, Trump called off airstrikes planned as retaliation for Iran’s downing of an unmanned American drone with just minutes to spare. He later cited concerns about the potential casualties, which he said would have been around 150, in justifying the decision.

Tensions with Iran have been escalating ever since the White House backed out of the 2015 nuclear weapons deal last year, brokered by the Obama administration and consistently disparaged by Trump.