RUTHFULLY YOURS

The president’s potential meeting with Kim Jong Un would come at a time when American foreign policy is rapidly changing.

The world has been stunned by North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s announcement last week that he was suspending his country’s nuclear tests in preparation for the impending meeting with President Trump. Even critics have had to concede that Trump’s bellicose rhetoric since last summer regarding the North Korean threat may have actually paid off — especially when his “speak loudly and wave a big stick” approach to foreign policy is backed by the real use of force, as demonstrated by the recent air strikes in Syria.

How sincere are Kim’s promises? Trump skeptics like to point out that Kim has announced suspensions of his nuclear program before. But Kim made one other concession last week that has gone largely unnoticed but is even more significant for the future: He withdrew his previous demand that U.S. troops leave the Korean peninsula before any discussion of denuclearization. That means any deal struck on shutting down North Korea’s nuclear program may well be separate from the status of U.S. forces in Korea — and America’s strategic role in the region.

Trump’s success points the way to a major realignment of the balance of power in East Asia. For that reason, it’s time to pause to consider how Trump’s approach to foreign-policy issues such as North Korea, and that of national-security adviser John Bolton, differs from the approach of his predecessors — and represents a revolution in America’s relations with the rest of the world.

The contrast with Trump’s two immediate predecessors, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, could not be sharper. Both Obama and Bush were animated by grand visions of the U.S. leading the world toward a new era of peace and stability, either (in Bush’s case) through an ever-widening process of coalition-building on the multilateral level and state-building on the bilateral level, or (in Obama’s) via “strategic patience” and “leading from behind,” phrases Obama’s foreign-policy team made famous — or rather notorious.

Forget the beheading videos, the ISIS propaganda on social media, even the terrorist attacks themselves. Europe, says counterterrorism expert Afshin Ellian, is Islamizing itself, and in the process, the Western values on which its democracies are built are increasingly put at risk.

Take, for instance, Belgium’s ISLAM Party, which now hopes to participate in the country’s October local elections in 28 regions. (Its name serves as an acronym for “Integrité, Solidarité, Liberté, Authenticité, Moralité.)

Its ultimate aim: transforming Belgium into an Islamic state. Items high on its agenda include separating men and women on public transportation, and the incorporation of sharia law – as long as this does not conflict with current laws –according to the party’s founder, Redouane Ahrouch. His own behavior, however, suggests that his respect for “current laws” and mores has its bounds: He reportedly refuses to shake hands with women, and in 2003, he received a six-month sentence for beating and threatening his wife. Currently, the Islam Party has two elected representatives in office – one in Anderlecht, the other in Molenbeek – both regions that happen to be known as hotbeds of extremism.

Or consider DENK, Holland’s pro-Islam party founded in 2015 by Turkish-Dutch politicians Selçuk Ozturk and Tunahan Kuzu. The party platform, which supports boycotts and sanctions against Israel, also discourages assimilation, calling instead for “mutual acceptance” of multiple cultures. Non-Muslims, for instance, would apparently be required to “accept” the Muslim extremist father who beats his daughter for refusing an arranged marriage, or for becoming too “Westernized” for his taste. It’s his culture, after all.

DENK also calls for a “racism police force” to monitor allegedly racist comments and actions. Those found guilty would be placed in a government “racism register,” and banned from government jobs and other employment.

So far, such pro-Islamist views have served the party well. In local Dutch elections last month, DENK (which means “think” in Dutch) gained three seats in Rotterdam, totaling four seats among 45 total and edging out Geert Wilders’ far-right Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV), which fell from three seats to one. In Amsterdam, which also has 45 seats, a full 50 percent of Dutch-Moroccans and about two-thirds of Dutch-Turks gave the party a three-seat win in its first election there, as well. Many of these voters, according to post-election analyses, moved to DENK from the center-left Labor Party (PvdA), clearly feeling more at home with a more overtly pro-Muslim politic.

Similarly, France’s Union of Muslim Democrats (UDMF) has taken a number of voters from the Green Party by promising to defend Muslims. UDMF’s online program statement condemns burqa and headscarf bans. What’s more, in its pretense of supporting what it calls the “sweet dream of Democracy, Union and Human Rights,” the party loudly (though rightly) condemns “anti-Muslim speeches” that “lead the most psychologically fragile people to commit acts of unprecedented violence.” Examples of such “unprecedented violence” follow: a German white supremacist, who killed an Egyptian woman wearing a veil in 2009, and the stabbing of a French Muslim in Vaucluse. “Heavy weapons attacks have exploded in Europe since the beginning of the year against Muslim places of worship,” the statement reads.

To survive the fast-spreading cancerous metastases of the Political Islamic movement, liberal democracies must adopt a wide range of immunotherapeutic methods to inoculate their national cultural, political, and economic systems to withstand aggressive assaults on freedom.

Supporters of the Political Islamic movement invade societies, much like cancerous cells invade the human body. Like cancer, they deceive a nation’s ill-informed secular liberal vulnerable democratic system by mimicking a society’s traditional factions. These stealthy strategies allow them to remain hidden for a long time until, as with cancer, they are difficult to eradicate.

Liberal democratic societies, like normal body cells, fail to recognize the distinction between the healthy, politically different factions of society, and the parasitic Political Islamic invaders, who mimic other civil groups, pretending to be equally harmless elements of the national system. Emulating exceptionally parasitic biological cells, Political Islam’s sinister operatives employ a variety of tactics to invade their targets, to undermine social norms, and convert and lure non-Muslims to their cause.

Their disinformation campaigns are often joined by progressive leftist “Human Rights,” “Transparency,” and “Social Justice” organizations enabled by sympathetic media and politicians. These dangerous campaigns typically are carried out by nongovernmental local and international organizations, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR); Human Rights Watch; the Muslim Council of Britain, Muslims for Progressive Values; the American Muslim Association; Muslim Advocates; the Islamic Circle of North America; and the Muslim Students Association, to mention but a few. They relentlessly undermine the existing system by decrying and often suing anyone who dares to criticize their activities and expose their agenda to replace tolerant, free societies with Political Islam’s intolerant, repressive sharia.

“If I speak about Islam, they interpret it as hating Muslims. But I do not hate Muslims. I believe that this ideology is dangerous for all mankind. The Muslim community will also suffer under the Sharia.” — Mona Walter, Swedish activist from Mogadishu, Somalia.
“Jesus said we should love our enemies, but not that we should be stupid.” — Mona Walter.
“I always say to my Christian friends, ‘What do you think, what will happen to you if Islam becomes dominant here?'” — Mona Walter.

Mona Walter, age 45, is a Swedish activist from Mogadishu, Somalia. In the early 1990s, she fled as a refugee to Sweden. There, she abandoned Islam and converted to Christianity. The act resulted in criticism and death threats. The mainstream media consider her a person working for religious freedom. Other organizations accuse her of fueling anti-Islamic movements.

Natalia Osten-Sacken: I have heard your statements stigmatizing Islam as an intolerant and hateful culture. If it is so, why did you not notice it in Somalia?

Mona Walter: In my country, we had our own African culture. People did not deal with religion so much. There was no Sharia, we had our own secular law. We came here as young, secular people. It is worth mentioning, that we belonged to the Sufi Sunni faction.

When I came from Somalia to Sweden, I experienced a huge clash of cultures, because Islam here is more extreme and fanatical than in my country. What is very important – we were Islamized after 1991, here in Sweden. In these closed areas, immigrant ghettos are deprived of democracy.

Research conducted in March by 50 teachers from the Imam Hatip schools revealed that students are moving away from Islam.

“[Mosques] no longer serve people, but rather serve as a source of income for certain people.” – Young imam, later fired.

Another cause of upset on the part of many religious Muslims is the content of the Diyanet-prepared Friday sermons, which frequently advocates violent jihad.

What is clearly on the rise, however, is great disappointment in the Erdogan government’s version of Islam, especially when accompanied by corrupt politics and a deteriorating justice system.

For decades, prominent Islamist figures would rarely criticize Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and when they did, it would be directed at his policies, rather than his personality. That trust seems beginning to change.

On March 26, for instance, Temel Karamollaoglu, the head of the tiny but increasingly influential Saadet (Felicity) party, railed against Erdogan and the members of the public “under his spell.” Karamollaoglu’s repeated reference to Erdogan as having performed “magic” on the Turkish people is significant. Accusing the leader of the ruling Islamist party of violating Islam, which bans sorcery and witchcraft, goes against the grain of the prevailing culture of unconditional loyalty and obedience. In fact, the 76-year-old Karamollaoglu has been a devoted follower of the political Islamic ideology of dawa (religious outreach) and a former supporter of both Erdogan and his Justice and Development (AKP) Party. Today, outspoken in his opposition, he says that his movement is the only one “that can stop the polarization in Turkey because we can sit down and speak with everyone, accepting our differences. Ours can be a platform of social democrats, nationalists, Kurdish voters and those who previously supported the AKP but are now disillusioned.”

After Donald Trump’s victory in 2016, I predicted that Russia’s stance toward the U.S. would become more antagonistic. Vladimir Putin always needs a foreign enemy to rally his nation around him and divert attention from the poor Russian economy. Mr. Putin’s aggression has indeed managed to raise tension between the U.S. and Russia. But instead of reinforcing Mr. Putin’s narrative by punishing Russia as a whole, the U.S. should target its response toward Mr. Putin and his inner circle.

Mr. Putin’s conflicts with the U.S. are clearly intended to improve his reputation among the Russian people. Through his policy and rhetoric, Mr. Putin has spread the notion that the U.S. is a cunning enemy trying to undermine Russia and is responsible for Russia’s every problem at home and abroad.

Kremlin propaganda makes clear that Russia’s fights in eastern Ukraine and in Syria are aimed specifically at opposing the U.S. Mr. Putin sees the rest of the West—with the exception of the United Kingdom—as nothing but feeble U.S. puppets. And even the U.K. is a weak but crafty opponent.

But to sustain his illusion of strength at home, Mr. Putin must be seen scoring victories over the entire U.S. alliance. This is why he has targeted the internal cohesion of Western nations. The Kremlin has funded fringe movements in France and Germany, provoked conflict in Catalonia, attempted to influence elections in the U.S., and brutally punished Russian defectors in the U.K. and Austria.

While the Kremlin sees its target in clear focus, the West has often failed to identify its enemy correctly. It is only in recent statements by British Prime Minister Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, following the Kremlin’s poisoning of a Russian defector to the U.K., that a gradual awareness has begun to appear. The enemy is not Russia, a country of nearly 150 million people like you. It is not even the Russian government as a whole, which is composed of nearly three million civil servants, most of whom receive a modest salary and work for the benefit of society as best they can. CONTINUE AT SITE

Finally, a world leader, President Donald Trump, took a stance against the war criminal who rules Syria. Instead of supporting that action, however, many people have been attacking Trump for the clear message he sent Bashar Assad: He cannot use illegal weapons to target civilians and enjoy immunity.

Whoever appeases Assad and legitimizes his actions should be aware that they are complicit in crimes against humanity.

Many people claim to champion the pursuit of justice and the defense of human rights around the globe. If there is an opportunity for them to make promises, they will. But when a true need arises, when their voices and rallying could make a genuine difference, many of those promises prove false.

Recently, Syria’s dictator, President Bashar Al Assad, attacked his own people with banned chemical weapons — at least 50 times. The victims were mainly civilians. Innocent people — men, women and children — were suffocated by these attacks, but not before burning their eyes and drowning their lungs in fluid.

Finally, a world leader, US President Donald Trump, took a stance against this war criminal. Instead of supporting that action, however, many people have been attacking Trump for the clear message he sent Assad: He cannot use illegal weapons to target civilians and enjoy immunity.

Why would people take the side of a man who murders his own people? If we look at the history of the relationship between the Syrian regime and the public, it is clear that this is not the first time that many have leaned towards Assad.

Former US President Barack Obama set several “red lines” for the Syrian regime, but Assad freely crossed them without eliciting any response from either Obama. In international politics, when a world leader sets red lines and does not take action against those who cross them, he shows only weakness — immensely damaging to his country’s security on the global stage. A weak leadership empowers dictators and emboldens extremists. It indicates that there will be no consequences for illegal actions. It also gives Assad and his ally, the Islamic Republic of Iran, the green light to give chemical weapons to militias and terrorist groups that target the United States and its allies.

The leaders of Belgium’s ISLAM Party apparently want to turn Belgium into an Islamic State. They call it “Islamist democracy” and have set a target date: 2030.

“The program is confusingly simple: replace all the civil and penal codes with sharia law. Period”. — French magazine Causeur.

“The European capital [Brussels] will be Muslim in twenty years”. — Le Figaro.

The French acronym of Belgium’s ISLAM Party stands for “Integrity, Solidarity, Liberty, Authenticity, Morality”. The leaders of the ISLAM Party apparently want to turn Belgium into an Islamic State. They call it “Islamist democracy” and have set a target date: 2030.

According to the French magazine Causeur, “the program is confusingly simple: replace all the civil and penal codes with sharia law. Period”. Created on the eve of the 2012 municipal ballot, the ISLAM Party immediately received impressive results. Its numbers are alarming.

The effect of this new party, according to Michaël Privot, an expert on Islam, and Sebastien Boussois, a political scientist, could be the “implosion of the social body”. Some Belgian politicians, such as Richard Miller, are now advocating banning the ISLAM Party.

The French weekly magazine Le Point details the plans of the ISLAM Party: It would like to “prevent vice by banning gaming establishments (casinos, gaming halls and betting agencies) and the lottery”. Along with authorizing the wearing the Muslim headscarf at school and an agreement about the Islamic religious holidays, the party wants all schools in Belgium to offer halal meat on their school menus. Redouane Ahrouch, one of the party’s three founders, also proposed segregating men and women on public transport. Ahrouch belonged in the 1990s to the Belgian Islamic Center, a nest of Islamic fundamentalism where candidates for jihad in Afghanistan and Iraq were recruited.