RUTHFULLY YOURS

In Islamic symbolism, Córdoba is the lost Caliphate. Political authorities in Córdoba dealt a blow to the Catholic Church’s claim of ownership of cathedral by declaring that “religious consecration is not the way to acquire property”. But this is how history works, especially in the lands where Christianity and Islam fought hard for dominion. Why are secularists not pressing Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to give Christians back the Hagia Sophia? No one has raised an eyebrow that “Christendom’s greatest cathedral has become a mosque”.

The Spanish left, governing the region, would like to convert the church into “a place for the meeting of faiths”. Nice ecumenical words, but a death trap for the Islamic domination over other faiths. If these Islamists, supported by the militant secularists, will be able to bring Allah back inside the Cathedral of Córdoba, a tsunami of Islamic supremacism will submerge Europe’s decaying Christianity. There are thousands of empty churches just waiting to be filled by the voices of muezzins.

The Western attempt to free Jerusalem in the Middle Ages has been condemned as Christian imperialism, while the Muslim campaigns to colonize and Islamize the Byzantine Empire, North Africa, the Balkans, Egypt, the Middle East and most of Spain, to name but a few, are celebrated as a season of enlightenment.

Muslim supremacists seem to have fantasies — as well as a long history — of converting Christian sites to Islamic ones. Take, for example, Saint-Denis, the Gothic cathedral named for the first Christian bishop of Paris who was buried there in 250, and the burial place of Charles Martel, whose victory stopped the Muslim invasion of France in 732. Now, according to the scholar Gilles Kepel, this burial place of most of France’s kings and queens is “the Mecca in Islam of France”. The French Islamists are dreaming of taking it over and replacing the church bells with the call of the muezzin.

In Turkey’s greatest cathedral, Hagia Sophia, a muezzin’s call recently reverberated inside the sixth-century church for the first time in 85 years.

In France, Muslim leaders called for converting abandoned churches into mosques. thereby echoing The late writer Emile Cioran once predicted of Europe: “The French will not wake up until Notre Dame becomes a mosque”.

Now it is the turn of Spain’s greatest Catholic site, the Cathedral of Córdoba. Spanish “leftists” and secularists would now, it seems, like to convert to Islam the cathedral of Córdoba, the symbol of a time when “Islam was on the verge of turning the Mediterranean into a Muslim lake”. Now that Islam is again conquering large swaths of the Middle East and Africa, is it not a coincidence that this campaign is gaining ground?

In 550 the Cathedral of Córdoba was a Christian basilica, dedicated to a saint; then, in 714, it was occupied by the Muslims, who destroyed it and converted it into the Great Mosque of Córdoba during the reign of Caliph Abd al Rahman I. The site was returned to Catholic worship by King Ferdinand III in 1523 and became the current great Cathedral of Córdoba, one of the most important sites of Western Christianity. Now an alliance of secularists and Islamists are trying to turn the church back to Islamic worship.

The Wall Street Journal called it deconquista, playing with the word reconquista, the time when Spain was returned from Islam to Catholicism. “The Great Mosque of Córdoba” is what UNESCO — also torturing, upending and turning history on its head to rewrite the past of Jerusalem and Hebron — calls it. In the last six centuries, however, only Catholic mass and confessions have been officiated there. The WSJ charges “left-wing Spanish intellectuals” with trying to “de-Christianize” the site.

As an ex-Muslim, one intimately versed in the Koran and the mindset of so many who take literally its arrogant and intolerant admonitions, few things distress me more than seeing every latest massacre followed by the warm and fuzzy pieties of those in the West who find it convenient not to understand.

The normalisation of the Western response to Islamic terrorism has arrived at such a state of cognitive dissonance and muddled morality that we expect and see automatic messages of solidarity after every latest terror attack — sympathy not for the victims but for Islam. Think #illridewithyou, for example. As an ex-Muslim who fiercely advocated for the Religion of Peace while trying to absolve my beloved Islam of all responsibility, let me admit that I also hid behind this veil of obfuscation.

Know that I have opposed bigotry and baseless hate towards the Muslims community my entire life, and that I will always do so. As a law student, protecting the rights of individuals is of paramount importance to me, and I cannot stress this enough. However, this does not equate to the automatic and mindless defence of Islamic doctrine.

The political correctness movement, which dominates and restricts “acceptable” Western public responses to terror, has produced a dangerous and delusional conflation: the belief that protecting Muslims and protecting Islam are inherently the same thing. The generic “not all Muslims are terrorists” is a staple of social media posts and mainstream media commentary after every latest replay of 9/11, 7/7, Nice, Paris, Manchester, London….

Asserting the obvious, that only a relative few Muslims are prepared to visit terror and death upon unbelievers, tells us nothing of value. A more useful response would be “only idiots think all Muslims are terrorists, but it requires a much bigger idiot to believe there is no link between Islam and terrorism.”

The distinction between protecting people (Muslims) and protecting Islam (an ideology) must be made and addressed by politicians and commentators if there is to be any resistance to Islamism. Instead we see the coddling of Islam which plagues all discussion and dominates the West’s public stage. Rather than protecting Muslims this attitude serves only to shield Islamist doctrine from the scrutiny and response it deserves.

The depiction of a terrorist is a peculiar thing. The media, Muslims, apologists and politicians alike approach terrorism as some offshoot ideology, as if terrorists are spawned in a vacuum. I say this not to tarnish the image of the general Muslim community but to illustrate how the West scrambles to divorce terrorism from a religious motivation, the considerate goal being to ensuring Muslim feelings aren’t hurt. Rather than venturing to uncover the truth about Islamic teachings, the regressive left instead treats Islam as a cultural construct in which extremist elements can be eradicated by cradling and coddling.

The unrecognised truth — a truth those comfortable nostrums will not permit to be recognised — is that Islam does not subscribe to the same moral principles which shaped and govern Western civilisation and, therefore, is non-responsive to such an approach. Vital to bear in mind is that Islam differs fundamentally from most religions in that it does not call for the peaceful interaction of diverse and tolerant humanity; rather, it is a political ideology whose advocacy of “peace” translates as global domination. When the world submits, then peace will reign and not before.

A five-minute reading of the Koran should suffice to illustrate the Islam’s supremacist philosophy and ambitions, yet we are told to dismiss those violent, sexist, homophobic and anti-Semitic sentiments as misinterpretations. This stifling of dialogue and any proper critique of the doctrines results in a viciously self-enforcing cycle of denial and the subverting of any productive approach to tackling the issue. The pronounced and deeply disturbing depiction of non-believers in the Quran — the kuffar — is freighted with supremacist connotations, not least in the repeated emphasis on non-Muslims’ perversion of the truth and their distance from the “true” morality as outlined by Muhammad. This dangerous concoction of ideas is reinforced by the precept that all humans are in fact born Muslims (even if they don’t know it), and non-believers are simply those who have strayed from Allah’s word, never been exposed to it or mulishly reject it. Can there be any surprise in noting how these dangerous undertones facilitate extremist interpretations that animate so many terrorists?

The civilized world wants to end the carnage in Venezuela, but Cuba is the author of the barbarism. Restoring Venezuelan peace will require taking a hard line with Havana.

Step one is a full-throated international denunciation of the Castro regime. Any attempt to avoid that with an “engagement” strategy, like the one Barack Obama introduced, will fail. The result will be more Venezuelas rippling through the hemisphere.

The Venezuelan opposition held its own nationwide referendum on Sunday in an effort to document support for regularly scheduled elections that have been canceled and widespread disapproval of strongman Nicolás Maduro’s plan to rewrite the constitution.

The regime was not worried. It said it was using the day as a trial run to prepare for the July 30 elections to choose the assembly that will draft the new constitution.

The referendum was an act of national bravery. Yet like the rest of the opposition’s strategy—which aims at dislodging the dictatorship with peaceful acts of civil disobedience—it’s not likely to work. That’s because Cubans, not Venezuelans, control the levers of power.

Havana doesn’t care about Venezuelan poverty or famine or whether the regime is unpopular. It has spent a half-century sowing its ideological “revolution” in South America. It needs Venezuela as a corridor to run Colombian cocaine to the U.S. and to Africa to supply Europe. It also relies heavily on cut-rate Venezuelan petroleum.

To keep its hold on Venezuela, Cuba has embedded a Soviet-style security apparatus. In a July 13 column, titled “Cubazuela” for the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba website, Roberto Álvarez Quiñones reported that in Venezuela today there are almost 50 high-ranking Cuban military officers, 4,500 Cuban soldiers in nine battalions, and “34,000 doctors and health professionals with orders to defend the tyranny with arms.” Cuba’s interior ministry provides Mr. Maduro’s personal security. “Thousands of other Cubans hold key positions of the State, Government, military and repressive Venezuelan forces, in particular intelligence and counterintelligence services.”

Every Venezuelan armed-forces commander has at least one Cuban minder, if not more, a source close to the military told me. Soldiers complain that if they so much as mention regime shortcomings over a beer at a bar, their superiors know about it the next day. On July 6 Reuters reported that since the beginning of April “nearly 30 members of the military have been detained for deserting or abandoning their post and almost 40 for rebellion, treason, or insubordination.”

The idea of using civilian thugs to beat up Venezuelan protesters comes from Havana, as Cuban-born author Carlos Alberto Montaner explained in a recent El Nuevo Herald column, “Venezuela at the Edge of the Abyss.” Castro used them in the 1950s, when he was opposing Batista, to intimidate his allies who didn’t agree with his strategy. Today in Cuba they remain standard fare to carry out “acts of repudiation” against dissidents.

The July 8 decision to move political prisoner Leopoldo López from the Ramo Verde military prison to house arrest was classic Castro. Far from being a sign of regime weakness, it demonstrates Havana’s mastery of misdirection to defuse criticism. CONTINUE AT SITE

OttawaMr. Kent is a member of the Canadian Parliament and official opposition critic for foreign affairs.

Omar Khadr pulled the pin from a grenade and tossed it at Sgt. First Class Christopher Speer, a U.S. Army Delta Force medic, on July 27, 2002. Those are the facts to which Mr. Khadr, a Canadian citizen, confessed when he pleaded guilty before a Guantanamo Bay war-crimes commission.

For several years Mr. Khadr had been living and training with al Qaeda in Afghanistan under the tutelage of his father, Ahmed. The Khadrs reportedly lived in Osama bin Laden’s Kandahar-area compound.

Speer died of his wounds 1½ weeks after the attack, which left another soldier, Sgt. First Class Layne Morris, partly blind. Mr. Khadr, badly wounded, was treated and transferred to the Cuba base. In 2012 the U.S. returned him to Canada to serve the remainder of his eight-year sentence.

Mr. Khadr was just shy of his 16th birthday at the time of the attack. In 2010 Canada’s Supreme Court held that the interrogation of Mr. Khadr at Guantanamo Bay by Canadians in 2003-04 violated Canadian standards for the treatment of detained youths. These violations occurred during the mandates of Liberal Prime Ministers Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin. The Supreme Court left it to the government, then headed by Conservative Stephen Harper, to determine an appropriate remedy, and to the civil courts to rule on any damages.

A few months later Mr. Khadr entered his guilty plea on five war-crimes charges. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison, reduced by pretrial agreement to eight years. The Harper government determined that returning Mr. Khadr to Canada would be the appropriate remedy. In 2012 he was repatriated to serve the remaining years of his sentence. He was released on bail in 2015.

Mr. Khadr wasn’t satisfied. He sued the Canadian government for 20 million Canadian dollars (about US$16 million at current exchange rates).

Meanwhile in Utah, Sgt. Speer’s widow, Tabitha, his two young children and Mr. Morris sued Mr. Khadr and received a judgment for $134.1 million in damages. Their goal was to preserve possible future action against Mr. Khadr’s assets—at the time a remote possibility.

But last week Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau issued a formal apology to Mr. Khadr and a massive cash settlement, though no court had ordered him to do so. Mr. Trudeau refuses to disclose the amount of the settlement, but leaked reports peg it at C$10.5 million. That’s an extravagant sum in the Canadian justice system, which is much more restrained in awarding damages than U.S. courts.

The three countries that started the Korean War in June 1950—Russia (USSR), China and North Korea—are still manoeuvring to secure a better outcome. When World War II ended in August 1945, American and Soviet troops had met more or less amicably at about the 38th parallel on the Korean peninsula. In 1949, both those powers withdrew their forces, leaving behind feeble local administrations in the north and the south that each aspired to lead the first government of the whole of Korea following the decades of Japanese colonial rule.

Kim Il-sung, a northerner who had fought in the resistance against Japanese rule and was accepted by the occupying Soviet forces as the leader of the north, lobbied the Soviet leader to support using force to take over the south and bring the whole of the peninsula into the socialist camp. Stalin eventually agreed that that was an attractive and feasible objective. On the condition that Kim Il-sung also secure China’s support for the venture, Stalin undertook to provide equipment, training and planning but ruled out any direct involvement by Soviet forces.

China’s Mao Tse-tung approved the plan and North Korean forces launched the attack on 25 June 1950. The north overran the southern forces, who retreated to a small enclave around the southern port of Pusan before the American-led UN forces reversed those gains and routed the north’s forces only to encounter, in October 1950, a large force of Chinese ‘volunteers’.

This US–China phase of the conflict lasted for two more years before a truce was negotiated that recognised the original informal dividing line—the 38th parallel—as the de facto border between the Republic of Korea in the south, allied to the US, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the north, a socialist state closely tied to the USSR and China.

That truce is still in place, which means that all the belligerents are still, in formal terms, at war with one another. And the peninsula did indeed evolve quickly into an arena of essentially permanent tension, provocation and imminent conflict. The USSR and China took care to ensure that Pyongyang lacked the capacity to contemplate renewed unilateral military adventurism. That remained the case even as the DPRK veered off towards becoming the most highly militarised and uniquely repressive authoritarian regime in the world.

The narrative that underpinned the DPRK’s political trajectory has been founded on the contention that the country had narrowly escaped naked American aggression in June 1950 and that the enemy, a superpower bristling with nuclear weapons, had since embedded itself in the south while it searched for another opportunity to invade.

Russia and China have never had the courage to contest this narrative or, indeed, to seriously encourage the DPRK to take a different path. The US has for some 70 years borne the lion’s share of the burden of deterrence and alliance management emanating from the machinations of the DPRK. Even when Pyongyang began, in the late 1980s, to explore the possibility of a nuclear option, Russia and China kept their distance. China, in particular, openly informed Washington at subsequent points of nuclear crisis—notably 1993–94 and 2002—that responsibility for the issue lay with the US and the DPRK.

“Has any soldier who fought FOR Canada ever received as generous a reward as this soldier who fought against us?” — Canadian Senator Linda Frum.

In 2003, Khadr confessed to throwing the grenade that killed U.S. Special Forces Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer and caused Sgt. 1st Class Layne Morris to lose an eye. Years later, he retracted his confession, claiming it had been extracted under duress. In fact, it was part of a plea deal that enabled him to be extradited to Canada to serve the rest of his sentence there.

“There was a Canadian flag flying along with the American flag at our base there, so it’s quite a thing that now Canada is giving millions to a guy who would attack a compound where Canadians were serving. I don’t see this as anything but treason. As far as I am concerned, Prime Minister Trudeau should be charged.” — Sgt. 1st Class Layne Morris, who lost an eye from the grenade thrown by Omar Khadr.

The government of Canada recently issued an official apology — and acknowledged awarding an “undisclosed” sum of money — to Toronto-born Islamist terrorist Omar Khadr for his “ordeal” at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and “any resulting harm” he was caused by the “torture” (specifically, sleep deprivation, solitary confinement and threats) that led to his confession.

On July 7, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Ralph Goodale released a statement announcing the “hope that this expression, and the negotiated settlement reached with the Government, will assist him in his efforts to begin a new and hopeful chapter in his life with his fellow Canadians.”

The civil settlement was reached with Khadr, 30, who was 10 when his family returned to the Middle East, and 15 when he was arrested fighting in Afghanistan with al Qaeda and the Taliban, the terrorist organizations to which his father was affiliated — on the basis of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In 2003, Khadr confessed to throwing the grenade that killed U.S. Special Forces Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer and caused Sgt. 1st Class Layne Morris to lose an eye. Years later, he retracted his confession, claiming it had been extracted under duress. In fact, it was part of a plea deal that enabled him to be extradited to Canada to serve the rest of his sentence there.

With news of the large settlement he received — 10,500,000 Canadian dollars (approximately USD $8,000,000) — he gave an extensive interview to CBC’s Power & Politics host Rosemary Barton, in which he said he thinks that the apology from the Canadian government “restores a little bit my reputation here in Canada, and I think that’s the biggest thing for me.” He declined to comment on having just received multi-millions in tax-free dollars.

He also had the effrontery to say that he just wants “to be a normal person” and finish his nursing degree to help under-served communities. “I have a lot of experience with… and appreciation of pain,” he explained, expressing only sorrow that the Speer and Morris families consider him responsible for their own pain.

Amid harsh criticism against the Liberal government by opposition Conservatives and members of the public outraged that their tax dollars are going to a convicted terrorist, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded to reporters’ questions on the matter during a press conference marking the July 8 close of G20 summit in Hamburg.

Trudeau said that the settlement had nothing to do with Khadr’s 2002 actions on the battlefield in Afghanistan, but rather with the fact that his rights had been violated. This is precisely what the Canadian Supreme Court ruled in 2008 and 2010, after Khadr’s lawyers sued for damages.

Trudeau added that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects all Canadians, “even when it is uncomfortable. When the government violates any Canadian’s Charter rights, we all end up paying for it.”

Meanwhile, Goodale tried to evade responsibility, by casting aspersions on the previous government, headed by Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in power when Khadr was returned to Canada in 2012 to serve the remainder of his prison sentence for five counts of war crimes. Goodale accused Harper of having “refused to repatriate Mr. Khadr or otherwise resolve the matter.”

Yesterday the world lost a hero of liberty and freedom. Liu Xiaobo, a voice for the voiceless and a defender of the oppressed in Communist China, passed away. Although the physical cause of his death was cancer, Dr. Liu’s primary battle was one of the soul. Ever since leaving the safety and comfort of America to lead the protests at Tiananmen Square in 1989, Dr. Liu sealed his fate as a persistent focus of persecution from the authoritarian PRC. From “reeducation through labor” and deprivation of property to unjust imprisonment and physical abuse, Dr. Liu bore the brunt of the Communist Party’s wrath for daring to challenge their system of political oppression by coauthoring of “Charter 08,” a manifesto of Chinese freedom that reverberates today more than ever.

Before his soul passed on from this world, Dr. Liu had one dying wish: to spend his final days with his wife Liu Xia in America. International physicians, including one from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, attested that Dr. Liu was fit to travel if released immediately. One man stood in the way of this final request: Xi Jinping. China has been known in select circumstances to release wrongfully imprisoned foreigners, and even the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un allowed Otto Warmbier to spend his final hours with his family. But something about Liu Xiaobo seemed particularly threatening to Xi and the apparatchiks in the Chinese Politburo. Perhaps it was his dignified commitment to speaking the truth about their regime in the face of every attempt on their part to silence him, something that Beijing has been so successful in doing with tens of millions of others since the founding of the PRC.

Although prevented from doing so during his 2009 sentencing, Liu Xiaobo was prepared to defend himself by claiming that “I have no enemies.” The power of nonviolent resistance has shown through the passing of time to strike terror into the heart of oppression, as evidenced by heroes Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi. Today, Liu Xiaobo joins their ranks. And in this, Xi Jinping’s worst fear has become reality: Dr. Liu’s spirit and bravery in life will endure as an inspiration to the countrymen he so desperately sought to liberate. His dream of a free, democratic China will persist. Although Xi has aligned himself with the ignominious and shameful company of dictators who imprisoned and killed Nobel laureates — and there are few in number — Liu Xiaobo’s dream will live on, and the United States must do everything in its power to ensure that it never perishes. Far from being an act of strength or defiance, Xi’s decision shows the weakness and fear of an increasingly cynical, technocratic, and frightened authoritarian clique.

As we grieve his loss, our immediate focus must be his widow Liu Xia. Because Xi Jinping refused their departure to America, their rightfully earned Nobel-prize money remains unclaimed, and Liu Xia is in danger. Although it is of no consolation regarding the death of her husband, I was pleased to hear yesterday from Liu Xiaobo’s counsel that the Norwegian Nobel Institute has now confirmed that it has found a legal way for Liu Xia to be able to inherit the $1.5 million monetary award for the Nobel Peace Prize that Liu Xiaobo was never able to collect. I intend to continue my longstanding effort to honor Liu Xiaobo and to secure Liu Xia’s livelihood, and I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, Republican and Democrat: If there is a cause that should unite us all, it is that the wife a Nobel Peace laureate speaking out for peace and democracy should not be kept hostage in Communist China.

— Ted Cruz is a U.S. senator from Texas.

One of the hallmarks of jihadists is their grotesque savagery against women. The classic Hollywood picture of a jihadist as a pure, pious young Muslim man is largely nonsense. The reality is far more brutish. The tales of sex slavery in ISIS-held Iraq and Syria should chill thinking people to the bone. During my own time in Iraq, al-Qaeda terrorists were known for systematically raping women as part of an effort to shame them into becoming suicide bombers. After brutal gang rapes, they were told that the only way they could “redeem” their allegedly lost honor was to strap a bomb on their broken bodies and blow themselves up at restaurants, checkpoints, and hospitals. It was pure evil.

Also striking was the nonchalance and fearlessness of the most hardened jihadists after their capture by Americans. By the end of my deployment, I could almost predict whether we’d snagged a committed jihadist by his attitude in detention. Al-Qaeda leaders would often laugh, act like they were on vacation, and sometimes attempt to engage their captors in casual conversation. I’ll never forget the arrogant confidence of an Oxford English-speaking leader of an al-Qaeda rape ring. They knew they were safe, and they gloried in their invulnerability.

It’s against this backdrop — savage treatment of women and contempt for Western justice — that I read with alarm a stunning report on “Europe’s Afghan crime wave.” The piece is notable not just for its content, but for its author. Cheryl Benard has worked sympathetically with refugees and was a subject-matter expert at the RAND corporation. In other words, this piece isn’t from the anti-Muslim fever swamps but from the heart of the elite national-security establishment. Her thesis is simple: European nations are grappling with a wave of vicious immigrant attacks against women, and the attackers are coming disproportionately from Afghanistan.

The stories are horrifying, sometimes involving attacks in broad daylight and in public spaces like parks, trains, and train stations. Read these stories and try to imagine them happening here:

In one recent case that raised a huge public outcry, a woman was out for a walk in a park on an elevation above the Danube. With her she had her two children, a toddler plus her infant in a baby carriage. Out of the blue, an Afghan refugee leapt at her, threw her down, bit her, strangled her and attempted to rape her. In the struggle, the baby carriage went careening towards the embankment and the infant almost plunged into the river below. With her second child looking on aghast, the woman valiantly fought off her assailant, ripping the hood off his jacket, which later made it possible for an Austrian police dog to track him down.