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The Extreme Moderates of Islam: Peter Smith

ttps://quadrant.org.au/opinion/muslim-extremists-vs-moderates-how-to-tell-the-difference/

Unless one is coming at you with a knife it can be hard to tell an extremist from a moderate, so here’s a handy guide: Muslim extremists will kill you while moderates deal in excuses and rationalizations for their more ardent brethren. Ultimately, though, both take their cues from the Koran.

Case one: Hassan Khalif Shire Ali drove a truck loaded with gas bottles into Melbourne’s CBD on November 9. After the vehicle became engulfed in flames, Ali attacked passers-by with a knife. He killed café bar owner Sisto Malaspina, 74, and wounded two other men.

Scott Morrison said that the Islamic community must do more to stop extremism. “For those who want to stick their head in the sand, for those who want to make excuses, you are not making Australia safer. You are giving people an excuse to look the other way and not deal with things right in front of you … If there are people in a religious community, an Islamic community, that are bringing in hateful, violent, extremist ideologies into your community, you’ve got to call it out.”

Australia’s Grand Mufti, Ibrahim Abu Mohamed sharply rebuffed Morrison. “This bloody Prime Minister, instead of turning the heat on somebody else, he should answer us about what he did. He has spent billions of dollars — billions — on security services. And what is the end result? We have crazy people in the streets.”

Since 9/11, the Religion of Peace website records 34,150 deadly Islamic terrorist attacks. Over forty since the Melbourne attack. Lots of crazy Muslims around the world apparently.

Case two: Asia Bibi, a Christian, is in hiding in Pakistan after being acquitted of blasphemy. New prime minister Imran Kahn, you might recall he used to play the civilised game of cricket, has refused, under pressure of the rabid Islamic mobs, to let her leave the country pending a review of her acquittal. Her lawyer has already sensibly skedaddled. She spent eight years on death row, despite the intercession some years’ ago of Pope Benedict XVI, who, for his trouble, was sharply rebuffed by Pakistan’s prime minister at the time, Yousuf Raza Gilani.

In 2011, the governor of the Punjab, Salmaan Taseer, was assassinated by one of his police bodyguards. His ‘sin’ was opposing the blasphemy laws which had resulted in Bibi facing execution. The assassin was celebrated by the aforementioned mobs. Reportedly the British government has refused to offer Bib asylum in case it causes unrest among the same kind of mobs which now inhabit Britain.

What have these two quite disparate cases got in common? Yes, they have Islam in common; but it is more than that. They have in common a rejection of Enlightenment values; of civilised values. We like to pretend that differences can be worked through and resolved, but they can’t between people who have quite different value systems. Scott Morrison is whistling in the wind as was Pope Benedict.

Welcome to the Hotel Brexifornia by Mark Steyn

https://www.steynonline.com/9023/welcome-to-the-hotel-brexifornia

The people of the United Kingdom face a political choice between Jeremy Corbyn, who is sincerely appalling, and Theresa May, who is insincerely appalling. Corbyn doesn’t like the Queen, the union, the army, the Jews; on the other hand, he’s quite partial to the IRA and Middle Eastern terrorists. And, somewhat to his credit, he’s either not very good at pretending otherwise or disinclined to do so. Mrs May, by contrast, is a shifty dissembler. Who knows what, if any, are her genuine beliefs – or even if she’s capable of recognizing such a concept.

Nevertheless, it is some considerable achievement for a Tory leader to have inflicted more damage on the nation than a polytechnic Trotskyite would. In June 2016, when David Cameron went flouncing off into the post-referendum sunset, Mrs May seized the prime ministership under a characteristically evasive battle-cry of “Brexit means Brexit”.

Two-and-a-half years on, Brexit means anything but Brexit. The Spectator has a grim hit parade of the Top Forty horrors to emerge from the PM’s “deal” with Brussels. Sample quote from her triumphant “agreement” with the Eurocrats:

All references to Member States and competent authorities of Member States …shall be read as including the United Kingdom.

As I said months back: Welcome to the Hotel Brexifornia. You can check “Out” any time you like, but you can never leave.

Israel’s improved ties with China don’t diminish its US alliance A prejudiced double standard has been applied to Israel’s prudent cooperation with China David Goldman and Marc Zell

http://www.atimes.com/article/israels-improved-ties-with-china-dont-diminish-its-us-alliance/

Israel often is called America’s best ally. After the first two years of the Trump Administration no-one can doubt it. Among all of America’s allies, Israel has aligned itself unambiguously and without deviation with Washington’s objectives, while our European and Japanese allies have complained, temporized, and occasionally dealt with China and Russia behind America’s back. The President’s unflinching support for the Jewish State, including the historic move of our Israel embassy to Jerusalem, is reason enough for Israel to cleave to its American alliance.

But there is also a deep confluence of strategic interests at work. There is only one country in the Middle East with the expressed intent and prospective ability to destroy Israel, and that is Iran. China is a major vendor of weapons as well as weapons technology to Iran, especially the know-how to make missiles that can reach Israel and eventually carry nuclear warheads. China also is Iran’s largest trading partner, and its most important provider of industrial goods and hydrocarbon investments. This is a consideration far more pressing than any economic benefits that Israel obtains from trade and investment with China.
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The Trump Administration’s pressure on China in response to its unfair trading practices, technology theft and strategic expansionism offers an inestimable benefit to the Jewish State: China knows that it will suffer consequences for its misbehavior in the form of tariffs, sanctions on individual companies, and possibly other means. That gives China an incentive to act responsibly with respect to Iran, where it exercises great economic influence.

To the extent that China cooperates with the Trump Administration’s economic sanctions on Iran, it will help to suppress the one serious existential threat to Israel. Israel has stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the Trump Administration in its diplomacy towards China, because American pressure on China bears directly on issues of life-and-death concern to the Jewish State. As participants in meetings with Chinese officials and academics in October, we heard Israeli representatives convey this message in the strongest possible terms.

American pressure with Israeli backing may be having an impact. Reuters reported October 23, “The Bank of Kunlun Co, the key Chinese conduit for transactions with Iran, is set to halt handling payments from the Islamic Republic under pressure of imminent US sanctions against the country.” China also has cut back its purchases of Iranian oil. That appears to be a small victory for the Trump’s administration muscular diplomacy, and one of great benefit to Israel.

Autistic Children Pushed to Become Transgender? By Wesley J. Smith ????!!!

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/autistic-children-pushed-to-become-transgender/

The Daily Mail has a shocking story from the UK. A whistleblowing teacher claims that vulnerable autistic children are being persuaded that they are gender dysphoric.

From the story:

An astonishing 17 pupils at a single British school are in the process of changing gender, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Most of the youngsters undergoing the transformation are autistic, according to a teacher there, who said vulnerable children with mental health problems were being ‘tricked’ into believing they are the wrong sex.

The whistleblower says few of the transgender children are suffering from gender dysphoria – the medical term for someone who feels they were born in the wrong body – but are just easily influenced, latching on to the mistaken belief they are the wrong sex as a way of coping with the problems caused by autism.

This isn’t the only indication that something may be amiss:

The Mail on Sunday revealed that a third of youngsters referred to the NHS’s only gender identity clinic for children showed ‘moderate to severe autistic traits’.

It means that 150 autistic teenagers were given puberty blocker drugs which stop the body maturing.

Palestinians Arresting Women; Where are the Media? by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13313/palestinians-arresting-women

Mahmoud Abbas does not want his people and the rest of the world to know that his security forces are arresting women for criticizing a social security law or providing financial aid to Palestinian families in the Gaza Strip.

Unlike Jbara and Marab’eh, Ahed Tamimi was lucky to be arrested by Israel. Had she been arrested by the Palestinian Authority, no one would ever have known.

This attitude is another example of the anti-Israel bias of the international media and community. It is yet another example of how the West gives the Palestinians a pass to violate human rights and crack down on dissent.

Last August, the Palestinian Authority (PA) protested because Israel arrested a Palestinian woman from Hebron on charges of incitement and affiliation with Hamas. The 42-year-old woman, Lama Khater, is also known as a strong critic of the President Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority.

Khater’s scathing attacks on Abbas and his government, however, did not stop the Palestinian Authority from condemning Israel and demanding her immediate release.

This was not the first time that the Palestinian Authority has condemned Israel for arresting a Palestinian woman who voiced criticism of Abbas and his policies. Last year, the Palestinian Authority condemned Israel for arresting Khaleda Jarrar, a senior member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, one of several PLO terrorist groups. Jarrar was arrested by Israel for membership in a terrorist group and incitement.

Report: Merkel urged Romania’s president not to move embassy to Jerusalem By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/11/report_merkel_urged_romanias_president_not_to_move_embassy_to_jerusalem.html

Has Germany changed course on Israel under Angela Merkel toward active, if private, hostility? In an exclusive report that is not being denied by either government, Benjamin Weinthal of the Jerusalem Post writes:

German chancellor Angela Merkel called Romania’s President Klaus Iohannis in April, urging him to stop Bucharest’s declared announcement to move its diplomatic building to Israel’s capital.

A Western source told The Jerusalem Post that Merkel lobbied the Romanian president to put a halt on the relocation of its embassy to Jerusalem. It is believed that Merkel called other European politicians as part of a campaign to block the relocation of European embassies to Jerusalem.

Representatives of Romania, Germany, and Israel all do not deny, but rather refuse to comment on the report, generally a sign that it is true.

With its historical guilt over the Holocaust, and previously-expressed commitments to Israel’s security, this marks a strong, if covert, change of direction, assuming it is true. Merkel, of course, also admitted more than a million Muslim so-called refugees last year, predominantly military-age males, and it is not clear if this new group is adding anti-Israel weight to the German Chancellor’s calculus, through fear of unrest.

CAROLINE GLICK: A DESPERATE MACRON ATTCKS TRUMP

http://carolineglick.com/a-desperate-emmanuel-macron-attacks-donald-trump/

French President Emmanuel Macron has apparently decided that with his approval ratings in the toilet, his best bet for a political resurgence is to attack the United States.

This isn’t a bad move, for a French president. Hatred for America has been a powerful mobilizing force in France since shortly after the American army liberated the French from Nazi German occupation in 1944.

In his speech at the official ceremony marking a hundred years since the U.S. saved France from Germany and ended World War I, Macron took a direct swipe at President Donald Trump and his voters. Macron said that the “ancient demons” that caused World War I and millions of deaths are growing stronger.

“Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism. Nationalism is the betrayal of patriotism,” Macron pronounced, as Trump and other world leaders looked on.

He added, “In saying ‘Our interests first, whatever happens to the others,’ you erase the most precious thing a nation can have, that which makes it live, that which causes it to be great and that which is most important: Its moral values.”

Macron’s speech on Sunday was his second rhetorical assault against America in under a week. In a radio interview last Tuesday, Macron called for Europe to raise “a true European army,” to defend against the U.S., Russia and China.

In Macron’s words, “We have to protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia and even the United States of America.”

The Brexit Crisis

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/theresa-may-brexit-deal-negotiations-crisis/

After what seem like years of a phony war, British and European Union negotiators finally agreed on the terms of Britain’s departure from the EU earlier this week, and Theresa May announced it in the House of Commons. The deal covers more than 500 pages of legal and bureaucratic prose, and few but the negotiators have read it in full. But those who have say that it confirms the earlier leaks: After leaving, Britain will continue to be subject to EU rules and regulations more or less indefinitely but, as a non-EU-member state after March, the country will have no say or vote in designing them.

It doesn’t sound like a very attractive package, but May argues that this deal fully achieves the Brexit that the voters chose two years ago. It’s hard to square this claim with the “red lines” she vowed a year ago to never cross:

Red Line: Britain will leave the single market and its regulations.

Deal: Britain will sign on to a “common rulebook” of regulations that will in fact be the EU single-market rulebook.

Red Line: Britain will leave the Customs Union in order to sign free-trade deals with non-EU countries such as the U.S.

“A Pure Genocide”: Extremist Persecution of Christians, June 2018 by Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13312/pure-genocide

The majority of those 6,000 Christians massacred this year were “mostly children, women and the aged… What is happening in … Nigeria is pure genocide and must be stopped immediately.” — Christian Association of Nigeria.

“There is no doubt that the sole purpose of these attacks is aimed at ethnic cleansing, land grabbing and forceful ejection of the Christian natives from their ancestral land and heritage.” — Christian Association of Nigeria.

“Realistically speaking, Christianity is on the brink of extinction in Nigeria. The ascendancy of Sharia ideology in Nigeria rings the death toll for the Nigerian Church.” — Christian Association of Nigeria.

“Just one in 400 Syrian refugees given asylum in the UK last year were Christians despite them being subjected to ‘horrendous persecution.'” — Express, UK.

The Jihad on Nigerian Christians

In what the Christian Association of Nigeria called a “pure genocide,” 238 more Christians were killed and churches desecrated by Muslims throughout the month of June. This brings the death toll of Christians to more than 6,000 between January and June of 2018 alone. According to a joint statement by the Christian Association, an umbrella group of various Christian denominations, “There is no doubt that the sole purpose of these attacks is aimed at ethnic cleansing, land grabbing and forceful ejection of the Christian natives from their ancestral land and heritage.” In one of the attacks, “over 200 persons were brutally killed and our churches destroyed without any intervention from security agencies in spite of several distress calls made to them.”

The majority of those 6,000 Christians massacred this year were “mostly children, women and the aged… What is happening in … Nigeria is pure genocide and must be stopped immediately.” The details of the murder of these thousands, though seldom reported, are often grisly; many were either hacked to death or beheaded with machetes; others were burned alive (including inside locked churches or homes); and women are often sexually assaulted or raped before being slaughtered.

TERRORISM STUDIES: KEITH WINDSCHUTTLE

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/terrorism-studies/

The murder and attempted murder in Bourke Street, Melbourne, last month by the Somali-born terrorist Hassan Khalif Shire Ali produced one positive outcome. It prompted Prime Minister Scott Morrison to break the mold of over-cautious political statements that has so far determined responses to acts of this kind. Morrison declared radical Islam a threat to the Australian way of life. “We would be kidding ourselves if we did not call out the fact that the greatest threat of religious extremism in this country is the radical and dangerous ideology of extremist Islam.” He called on Islamic religious leaders to use their unique position to prevent the radicalisation of youth, “to ensure that dangerous teachings and ideologies do not take root here.”

While Morrison’s comments appeared well-received in the wider electorate, Islamic religious leaders did not like the advice to take a more proactive stand against terrorists. Instead, they reacted as they have in the past. They not only rejected Morrison’s appeal but demanded an apology for his statement which, in their view, insulted the whole Muslim community. At the same time, they absolved the terrorist of any moral responsibility for his actions. The Forum on Australia’s Islamic Relations (FAIR) said:

The Muslim community will not be scapegoated and we will endeavour to keep Australia safe where we can, but the actions of a mentally ill person suffering from a psychotic episode, is not the fault of a whole religious community … We demand the withdrawal of his comments and an apology to the Muslim community.

An even more belligerent response came from Labor’s Anne Aly, the first Muslim woman elected the Australian Parliament. She mocked the idea that Islamic terrorism was a major threat to Australia and also absolved the Bourke Street terrorist of moral responsibility. “The biggest victims of violence in Australia aren’t victims of violent terrorism,” she said, “they are victims of domestic violence.” She said violence by jihadists “pales in comparison to the number of women who are being killed every week in domestic and partner violence.”

Some readers will recall this last statement reprises an argument made on the ABC’s Q&A program in May last year when Aly shared a platform with the American physicist Laurence Krauss. To downplay the threat of Islamic terrorism, Krauss claimed that in the United States “you’re more likely to be killed by a refrigerator falling on you”. Aly’s comparison of domestic violence with terrorism deploys the same kind of moral contortion.