RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-visit-to-islamic-england-1535581583

“Other tourists might remember London for Buckingham Palace, Piccadilly Circus and Big Ben. I’ll remember it for its failed multiculturalism. Or perhaps this is what successful multiculturalism looks like.”

Other tourists may remember London for its spectacular sights and history, but I remember it for Islam. When I was visiting the U.K. as a teenager in 2006, I got lost in an East London market. There I saw a group of women wearing head-to-toe black cloaks. I froze, confused and intimidated by the faceless figures. It was my first encounter with the niqab, which covers everything but a woman’s eyes.

This summer, I found myself heading back to the U.K. as it was plunging into a debate over Islamic dress. Boris Johnson, the country’s former foreign secretary and London’s ex-mayor, wrote a column opposing attempts to ban face-covering veils. Nonetheless, he added, “it is absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes.” The responses could hardly have been more heated.

I wanted to cut past the polemics and experience London’s Muslim communities for myself. My first visit was to Tower Hamlets, an East London borough that is about 38% Muslim, among the highest in the U.K. As I walked down Whitechapel Road, the adhan, or call to prayer, echoed through the neighborhood. Muslims walked in one direction for jumu’ah, Friday prayer, while non-Muslims went the opposite way. Each group kept its distance and avoided eye contact with the other. A sign was posted on a pole: “Alcohol restricted zone.”

Women and girls were dressed in hijabs, niqabs and abayas (robes). Some of the males wore skullcaps and thawbs, Arabic tunics, with their trousers tailored just above the ankles as per Muhammad’s example. The scene could have been lifted out of Riyadh, a testament to the Arabization of Britain’s South Asian Muslims. At the barbershop, women waited outside under the hot sun while their sons and husbands were groomed.

Inside the East London Mosque, visitors were expected to dress “modestly.” Headscarves were provided at reception for any woman who showed up without one. A kind man on staff showed me around the men’s quarters. He gave me a bag filled with booklets about Islam. In one, Muslims are encouraged to “re-establish the Shari’ah,” or Islamic law. Those who ignore this mandate are “of little worth to any society.”

That night, I visited the Houses of Parliament. Rifle-carrying police officers greeted me when I stepped out of the Tube. The extra security was mobilized in response to last year’s car and stabbing attack in Westminster by Khalid Masood, who killed five people. Outside the station, there are roadblocks along Westminster Bridge and a new security fence in front of the palace yard. I asked an officer about Masood’s attack. “I’d rather not talk about it,” he replied. “I was there that day.”

Forty-eight hours later, I woke up to the news that a car had rammed a Westminster security barrier. Police arrested Salih Khater, a 29-year-old Sudanese refugee who had been given asylum and British citizenship. Three people were injured in the attack. London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, expressed support for banning vehicles from parts of Parliament Square. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12936/italy-interior-minister-kidnapping

“The investigation notice sent to [Interior Minister Matteo] Salvini could in fact be seen as a direct attempt to prevent a minister from carrying out his political activity in accordance with the vote expressed by the majority of Italians on the basis of precise electoral commitments.” — Gianni Alemanno, former Mayor of Rome, denouncing the investigation into Salvini as unconstitutional.

“I am amazed at the astonishment of a political left that now exists only to challenge others and believes that Milan should not host the president of a European power, as if the left has the authority to decide who has the right to speak and who does not — and then they wonder why no one votes for them anymore.” — Matteo Salvini, Italian Interior Minister.

Opinion polls show that Salvini’s anti-immigration stance has boosted his League party’s approval rating.

Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini is under formal investigation for “kidnapping” after he refused to allow illegal migrants to disembark from a ship at a Sicilian port. The investigation, a political move aimed at blunting the government’s hardline stance on illegal immigration, has threatened to plunge Italy into a constitutional crisis over the separation of powers.

Sicilian Prosecutor Luigi Patronaggio said that the investigation into Salvini, the head of the anti-immigration League party, would focus on “kidnapping, illegal arrest and the abuse of power.”

Salvini responded:

“If he wants to interrogate me or even arrest me because I defend the borders and security of my country, I am proud and I look forward to it with open arms. Being investigated for defending the rights of Italians is a disgrace.”

Salvini added that we could not be “cowed” and that he would not reserve his right to immunity from prosecution: “I only did my job as minister and I am ready to do it again.”

https://www.algemeiner.com/2018/08/29/antisemitism-in-france-has-moved-from-streets-into-homes-says-head-of-french-jewish-community/

Antisemitism in France has moved “from the streets directly into the homes of Jewish people,” the head of the country’s 465,000-strong Jewish community told The Algemeiner on Wednesday.

“The Jews in France feel threatened in their own homes,” Francis Kalifat — president of CRIF, the French Jewish communal body — said during a discussion of the antisemitism that has resulted in several deaths and injuries among French Jews over the past decade.

Kalifat underlined that “what used to be attacks on buildings, or insults thrown in the street, has evolved into the most violent acts.”

In the last eighteen months, two elderly Jewish widows in Paris — Sarah Halimi in April 2017 and Mireille Knoll in March 2018 — have been murdered in brutal antisemitic assaults, while several incidents of violent raids on Jewish homes involving gangs of mainly Muslim youths have also been reported.

Sadly, as Kalifat acknowledged, the problem is not new — though the pattern of Jewish response is changing.

Following what Kalifat called “the paroxysm” of antisemitic violence in 2012-13 — a year that witnessed the murders of a rabbi and three young children during a terrorist attack at a Jewish school in Toulouse — French aliyah to Israel climbed precipitously, with 8,000 Jews emigrating to Israel in 2015 alone. That trend has now slowed, Kalifat said, overshadowed by what some call an “internal aliyah.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12921/canada-returning-jihadists

Canada’s intelligence service stated that some 60 “returnees” — fighters who had returned to Canada — “have the potential to pose a significant threat to our national security.” In other words, there are dozens of jihadis roaming free in Canada, without being apprehended or charged by authorities.

The noise surrounding the debate over jihadist returnees has been drowning out the country’s intelligence service assessment about the threat they pose to Canada’s national security — a threat that the Trudeau government is ill-prepared, ill-equipped and ideologically ill-suited to confront.

Prevention, investigation and prosecution of terrorists should be the top priority, ahead of rehabilitation and reintegration.

According to the website of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), under the section “National Security Threats – Terrorism”:

“Terrorism, including terrorist travel and the radicalization of Canadians, is the most prominent threat to Canadian interests and our national security. The intelligence community has never before faced a terrorist threat of this scope, scale, and complexity.”

The CSIS text, last modified on January 27, 2017, also notes that, despite ISIS’s huge losses, “its ideology continues to hold global appeal, including among susceptible Canadians,” and Canadians with extremist Muslim views “continue to engage in a range of terrorist activity, in Canada and abroad.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-crisis-of-democracy-is-overhyped-1535412315

As Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan lashes out against the “interest-rate lobby” for his country’s economic crisis, as Nicaragua’s dictatorship mobilizes against its own people, and as Venezuela’s socialist utopia sinks deeper into chaos, it’s remarkable how often we hear that a “crisis of democracy” is the defining political story of our times. And as Vladimir Putin’s persistent economic failures force him toward deeply unpopular pension reforms, it is even more remarkable how many people attribute this ostensible crisis to Russian cunning and might.

Admittedly, there are signs that consent-based political systems aren’t operating as smoothly as they should, including the rise of extremism and anti-Semitism in the British Labour Party, the collapse of the political center in scandal-plagued Brazil, Viktor Orbán’s determination to build “illiberal democracy” in Hungary, and the disruptive and polarizing Trump administration in the U.S. More generally, according to Freedom House, civil liberties and political rights have declined in 113 countries and improved in only 62 since 2006.

But the failures of authoritarian states are often far graver than the problems that preoccupy the professional hand-wringers of the liberal West. There are no crises in the democratic world that match the economic meltdown in Iran, the hellish conditions in Syria, or the turmoil in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where efforts to eliminate an Ebola epidemic are hampered by armed militias.

http://www.aish.com/jw/s/Sir-Isaac-Newton-and-Judaism.html
The scientist’s recently disclosed private papers reveal his deep reverence for ancient Jewish wisdom.

Sir Isaac Newton was one of the greatest scientists of all time. Some of his most outstanding discoveries include the laws of optics or the physics of light, the three laws of motion, the laws of gravity, and calculus. He is also famous for his Principia Mathematica, the most widely read scientific work of all time, in which he explains the motions of the planets in a single mathematical system. Born in an age that embraced rationalism and shunned religious authority, Newton was also hailed as a hero of his era. Yet, recent divulgement of Newton’s personal writings challenges all common assumptions about his true identity.
Newton’s Private Beliefs

Newton’s private beliefs have been under the radar for hundreds of years, perhaps because of their unfavorable reception. Bernard Cohen’s book Franklin and Newton discusses the first time scientists discovered Newton’s personal manuscripts: He quotes John Maynard Keynes, the British great economist: “‘Upon his death in 1727, a very big box of unusual papers was discovered in his room. Bishop Samuel Horsley, who was also a scientist, was asked to inspect the box with view to publication. He saw the contents with horror and slammed the lid…’ shut.” The recent disclosure of Newton’s private manuscripts revealed that Newton was far from the archetype rationalist he was originally assumed to be.Isaac Newton’s writing featuring, the prayer, in Hebrew,
‘Blessed is His name for eternity.’

After being tucked away for 200 years, Newton’s manuscripts were finally auctioned off in 1936. Keynes, The Babson family in America, and Israeli Professor Avraham Shalom Yahuda bought the majority of them and donated them to university libraries around the world. These manuscripts have been made available in the past 25 years.
Newton’s “strange” interests

It’s no wonder that both Christian and secular-minded scientists who had originally revered Newton had little incentive to publicize their findings. Newton’s manuscripts revealed that he took a keen interest in “archaic” Jewish wisdom. Newton’s knowledge of Jewish thought was not superficial; he referred to rabbinic works such as the Aramaic Version of Esther, Vayikra Rabba, the commentaries of Sa’adia HaGaon, Ibn Ezra, Rashi, Sifra, R. Aharon ibn Hayyim; Seder Ma’amadot (about the daily sacrifices) the Bartinurah and Talmudic passages from the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmud in Latin. One of Newton’s manuscripts was entitled “On Maimonides,” where he quoted the Latin translation of Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah. 1

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271141/under-fire-faith-nigeria-jack-kerwick

Recently, via social media, I’ve become friends with a Catholic priest in Nigeria. Because of the brutal persecution to which Christians in his country are routinely subjected by Muslims, I will not disclose his name. Just a couple of days ago, he posted on his Facebook page a link to a story regarding a fellow Nigerian priest, a man of God who was doing some shopping at the local market for the poor when Muslim gunmen shot him dead.

Knowing that I’ve made it a mission of sorts to draw what attention I can to the plight of persecuted Christians throughout the world, particularly throughout the Middle East and Africa, my new friend private messaged me, thanking me for my “love.” He also underscored the unadulterated evil of Islamic-on-Christian oppression in his country, adding: “The Muslims want our lives!”

On August 18, Father Michael Akawu, “the first indigenous priest of the Catholic Archdiocese of Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, was gunned down in cold blood while shopping at a “supermarket” in Gwagwalada, a suburb of Akawu.

Father Michael was ordained as recently as February of last year.

https://wp.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/
EX-CHIEF RABBI WARNS: “CORBYN HAS LEGITIMIZED THE PUBLIC EXPRESSION OF HATE, AND WHERE HE LEADS, OTHERS WILL FOLLOW”

[Note by Tom Gross]

For the past three years, since he became leader of the British Labour party and a favorite to become prime minister, I have noted that the New York Times (unlike other papers) has failed properly to cover Jeremy Corbyn and left-wing anti-Semitism in Britain, while writing about Corbyn.

Yesterday the New York Times opinion pages finally ran a piece clearly explaining the situation, by a Labour-voting journalist, the New York correspondent for the Sunday Times of London. The piece is below.

Also, yesterday evening, the widely respected former British Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks lashed out at Corbyn calling him an “anti-Semite” who “defiles our politics”.

The Labour leader, Sacks said, uses “the language of classic prewar European anti-Semitism… He has legitimized the public expression of hate, and where he leads, others will follow.”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/Venezuela_bridge

The humanitarian crisis in Venezuela has led to one of the largest mass migrations in Latin America’s history.

President Nicolás Maduro blames “imperialists” – the likes of the US and Europe – for waging “economic war” against Venezuela and imposing sanctions on many members of his government.

But his critics say it is economic mismanagement – first by predecessor Hugo Chávez and now President Maduro himself – that has brought Venezuela to its knees.

The country has the largest proven oil reserves in the world. It was once so rich that Concorde used to fly from Caracas to Paris. Now, its economy is in tatters.

Four in five Venezuelans live in poverty. People queue for hours to buy food. Much of the time they go without. People are dying from a lack of medicines. Inflation is at 82,766% and there are warnings it could exceed one million per cent by the end of this year.

Venezuelans are trying to get out. The UN says 2.3 million people have fled the country – 7% of the population. More than a million have arrived in Colombia in the past 18 months.