RUTHFULLY YOURS

Last decade, Ronald and Penelope Jones were being feted for their work as foster parents. Now their suburban Surrey home was raided in an investigation into the train bombing in London.

The Joneses had won praise for fostering hundreds of children. But their growing interest in taking in refugees from Muslim countries turned their pleasant home with its wooden fences and green backyard into a ticking time bomb.

And that bomb may have gone off at the Parsons Green station leaving behind flash burns and horror.

Earlier, the Joneses had admitted that, “We’ve had a real mix of children from Iraq, Eritrea, Syria, Albania and Afghanistan.” The tidal wave of refugees from these countries has swept across Europe bringing terror and death.

Ronald Jones, 88, and Penelope Jones, 71, like so many well-meaning Westerners, had no idea what they were letting themselves in for until the police were hammering at their door. Now they themselves have been turned into refugees, seeking shelters with relatives, while the police search for clues to the latest terror attack.

The couple became interested in fostering “refugees” when the media barraged helpless listeners with sob stories of Syrian suffering. But while they spoke often of children, the actual migrants are adults.

At the center of the case is Yahyah Farroukh, a Syrian, in his twenties. Farroukh was no child.

Neighbors described a constant flow of traffic to the Jones home. The visitors wore the traditional Islamic clothing often associated with the Jihadists who are the core of the European terror threat.

Prayer mats were set out in the garden. And there were constant cell phone conversations.

Farroukh allegedly invaded Europe by taking a migrant boat from Egypt to Italy.

Another of the alleged Jones “refugees” is an 18-year-old Iraqi from Baghdad who had apparently been monitored by law enforcement. And may have even been previously arrested. A refugee charity allegedly helped bring him to the UK. And arranged to have him placed with the Joneses.

The Iraqi had overloaded even the endless generosity of the Joneses who reportedly found him troublesome and dangerous. And that must have taken some doing.

It was this Iraqi whom police may suspect planted the bomb at Parsons Green station. And when the bomb went off on a crowded train on Friday, the holiest day in the Islamic religion, the manhunt began.

The Iraqi refugee was arrested trying to buy a ticket to Calais.

Calais to Dover is the route that refugees take to penetrate the UK. The Joneses had spoken of one “boy” in their care who had “managed to get in a lorry travelling through Calais.”

The Iraqi refugee suspect had originally come through Calais, but now he was headed the other way.

Have Islamic terrorism and violence – in Muslim and non-Muslim countries – been extrinsic or intrinsic elements of Islam?http://bit.ly/2wooego

Since September 11, 2001, there have been 31,722 Islamic terrorist attacks, mostly hitting Muslims. In August, 2017, there were 180 Islamic terrorist attacks in 32 countries, resulting in 1,014 murdered and 1,090 injured.

Christianity is on the verge of extinction in the Middle East. In the past century, over 50% of Middle East Christians emigrated or were killed. According to the May 13, 2015 US House Foreign Affairs Committee testimony, “Christianity could be eradicated from large swaths of the Middle East in the next five years…. In the last decade, the Christian community in Iraq has plummeted from 1.5 million to under 300,000, half of whom are displaced…. [In Muslim countries], there is also real persecution of [Muslim] Yazidis, Turkomen, Shia and Sunni….”

The New York Times reported: “Nearly every day seems to bring a new horror to the streets of Western Europe…. Death and injury have been dealt out by truck, ax, handgun, kebab knife and bomb….”

11 million Muslims have been killed since 1948, of which 35,000 (0.3%) were killed during Arab-Israeli wars. Over 90% were killed by fellow Muslims.

This background – which is consistent with inter-Muslim relations since the rise of Islam in the seventh century – begs the following questions:

1. Is it logical to assume that dramatic concessions to rogue Muslim regimes would convince them to accord “the infidel” that which they have denied their fellow-“believers” for 1,400 years: peaceful-coexistence and tolerance?

2. What are the roots of Muslim aggression against “believers” and “infidels”?

3. Is Muslim contempt toward Western culture extrinsic or intrinsic to Islam?

4. Has the absence of democracy and civil liberties, in all Arab countries, been consistent or at variance with Islam?

5. Why is Muslim violence intensifying in Europe – as Muslim immigration to Europe is expanding – despite the goodwill showered upon the Muslim world and Muslim immigrants by most European governments and societies?

6. Why has there been an expansion of no-go zones in European cities – forbidden to Christian “infidels” – simultaneously with the proliferation of Muslim organizations, in Europe, calling for Jihad (holy war against the “infidel”)?

7. Is the motto of the Muslim Brotherhood – the largest Islamic transnational terror organization – consistent or at variance with Islam: “Allah is our objective, Muhammad is our leader, the Quran is our constitution, Jihad (holy war) is our venue and Shuhada (martyrdom) on behalf of Allah is our wish”?

8. Why has the US – which has never ruled Muslim societies – been targeted by Islamic violence/terrorism, while the USSR/Russia – which has aggressively ruled over millions of Muslims – enjoyed preferential Arab/Muslim treatment?

In 2002, on the BBC TV show Question Time, I was accused of dual loyalty in front of a jeering studio audience. My crime had been to defend Israel against demonization and double standards by both the audience and other members of the panel.http://www.melaniephillips.com/britains-alarming-antisemitism-problem/

At that time I had visited Israel only twice in my life, two years previously. No matter. A British Jew defending Israel was – and is – immediately accused in some quarters of incipient treachery toward Britain, just as throughout history antisemites have accused Diaspora Jews of dual loyalty or treachery merely because they are Jews.

I thought of my own experience, of course, when I read the report on antisemitism in the UK published this week by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research.

There is currently much disquiet over the Labour Party’s conspicuous failure to address significant antisemitism within its ranks. But there has long been far wider concern among many British Jews about the antisemitic discourse, harassment and physical attacks which have become sickeningly commonplace in Britain over the past few years.

The report’s author, Daniel Staetsky, describes a situation which is complex.

Only around 5% of the population are out-and-out antisemites holding multiple anti-Jewish attitudes. Nevertheless, about 30% subscribe to some kind of antisemitic views.

The key is Staetsky’s distinction between antisemites and antisemitism. For while the number of antisemites is very small, the amount of antisemitism diffused throughout British society is much greater.

That’s because, while people may not feel personal hostility toward Jews, they may believe certain things which are in themselves antisemitic. As Staetsky says: “Antisemitic ideas are not as marginal in Great Britain as some measures of antisemitism suggest, and they can be held with and without open dislike of Jews.”

As a result, the probability for a British Jew of encountering “potentially offensive or, at the very least, uncomfortable” views is about one in three. That’s high.

Staetsky states, however, that 70% of British people hold a “favorable” attitude toward Jews. He reaches that optimistic figure, though, only by reducing respondents’ options to categorize their attitudes. When offered more options, the scenario for British Jews becomes less rosy: only around 39% have “somewhat” or “very” favorable opinions of Jews, more than 5% are classed as “somewhat” or “very” unfavorable and nearly 56% are classed as neither favorable nor unfavorable or as “didn’t know.”

Two groups are shown to be principally responsible for problematic attitudes: Muslims and the Left.

While “significant proportions of Muslims reject all such prejudice,” antisemitism and anti-Israel attitudes are two to four times higher among Muslims than in the general population.

And contrary to the claim by those on the Left that they can’t be antisemitic because they are opposed to racism and fascism, the report says levels of antisemitism on the Left are “indistinguishable” from in the rest of the population.

When it comes to Israel, however, the Left is worse. Even those who are “slightly left-of-center” or “fairly left-wing” are more anti-Israel than the general population, while the more left-wing people are the more they hate Israel. You don’t say!

Moreover, says Staetsky, while only 12% of the population are out-and-out Israel-bashers, close to a quarter of Britons believe, to some extent at least, that Israel is deliberately trying to wipe out the Palestinian population, and about one in five that Israel is an apartheid state.

These are huge numbers for such poisonous lies. And no fewer than 56% hold at least one anti-Israel attitude.

So as Staetsky says, the feeling among so many Jews that they encounter anti-Israel positions all the time becomes immediately comprehensible.

The true extent of antisemitism has, of course, been masked by claims that being anti-Israel is not the same as being anti-Jew. Staetsky, however, states: “The existence of an association between the antisemitic and the anti-Israel attitudes tested is unambiguous.”

Moreover, the stronger the hostility to Israel the more likely it is to be accompanied by antisemitic attitudes such as that “Jews exploit Holocaust victimhood for their own purposes.” And that correlation puts left-wing Israel-bashers squarely in the antisemitism camp.

Staetsky makes the link solely through a statistical overlap between anti-Israel and antisemitic attitudes. I’d go further. Anti-Israel discourse has exactly the same unique characteristics as antisemitism.

PARIS — Four American college students were attacked with acid by a woman on Sunday at a train station in southern France, injuring at least two of them, according to the local police.https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/17/world/europe/marseille-france-acid-attack.html?mcubz=0

The assailant, a 41-year-old woman, was quickly arrested in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille. The police prefecture said they were not treating the attack on the American women as a terrorist assault.

The suspect has “a psychiatric history,” a spokeswoman for the police prefecture in Marseille said. “For now, nothing suggests that this was a terrorist attack.”

The four American women, all in their early 20s, were in front of the Saint-Charles train station when a woman threw hydrochloric acid on them shortly before 11 a.m., the police said.

Two of the women were burned, and the other two appeared to have escaped injury, but they were in a state of shock, according to police. All four were treated at a hospital on Sunday.

Boston College said in a statement on Sunday that the four women were students at the college and were enrolled in study-abroad programs. They were identified as Courtney Siverling, Charlotte Kaufman, Michelle Krug and Kelsey Kosten, all juniors.

Nick Gozik, who directs Boston College’s Office of International Programs, said in an email that the women had “recently arrived to start the fall semester.”

In the college’s statement, he added, “It appears that the students are fine, considering the circumstances, though they may require additional treatment for burns.”

The prosecutor’s office could not be reached for comment, but told France 3 that one of the women had been hit in the eye with acid and had trouble seeing.

France has been on high alert for terrorism since 2015, after a series of attacks killed more than 230 people. There have also been a number of attacks by psychologically unstable residents who have sometimes imitated terrorist acts, officials say.

La Provence, the main local newspaper, quoted police sources as saying that after the attack, the suspect had displayed pictures of herself with burns on her body. The prosecutor’s office said the suspect also had a criminal record for violent theft, according to France 3.

In 2013, two American women, Kirstie Trup and Katie Gee, both 18, who were teaching on the island of Zanzibar, were attacked with acid by two men on a moped who stopped, smiled and doused them, severely burning their faces, chests and hands, before speeding away.

In London this year, two teenage boys went on a violent, 72-minute spree in the northeast, spraying acid on five people, the authorities said. The teenagers were arrested on suspicion of robbery and of causing grievous bodily harm.

“Not long ago Professor Koopmans found that as much as seventy percent of Muslims find Islamic rules more important than secular laws.” – Geert Wilders.

“Research also points out that 11 percent of Dutch Muslims in the Netherlands are prepared to use violence on behalf of their religion. That is a 110,000 people, twice the size of the Dutch army!” – Geert Wilders.

I personally believe there are extremist people and moderate people. But I do not believe in two kinds of Islam. There is only one…. You get your head chopped off should you wish to interpret Islam…. People who want to come to the Netherlands from Islamic countries should think: this is not a place we want to go to! And we do not do this to bully Muslims, but to keep the Netherlands of the future a free Netherlands.” – Geert Wilders.

Party for Freedom leader Geert Wilders is deeply concerned about Muslim integration. In our series Islam in the Netherlands he is warning about the “perishing”of our culture. “It is not five to twelve or two to twelve, it is almost morning!” The leader of the second party in the country is pondering about very far-reaching measures.

Geert Wilders (54) is not surprised at the shocking poll results released by daily newspaper De Telegraaf. The fact that only thirteen percent of the Dutch population feel that the problem of integration will solve itself is a writing on the wall, according to him. And that only eleven percent of the Dutch see Islam as an enrichment proves in his opinion that what he has been calling for years. “If I had said that three years ago, I would have had tens of thousands of police reports thrown at me. But people are completely fed up with it. ”

How do you explain the figures?

“Decades ago, a few thousand people from Islamic countries would stay temporarily. But temporarily turned out to be permanently. Those thousands of guest workers became hundreds of thousands. And in Europe millions of people by now. Back then those people were called upon to integrate and assimilate. But Islam, the word says it already, seeks to dominate. Not long ago Professor Koopmans found that as much as seventy percent of Muslims find Islamic rules more important than secular laws. In Europe almost weekly innocent people are slaughtered in name of Allah and Islam. Proudly. We have been declared war and we refuse to defend ourselves.”

Who is responsible for this?

“I think that probably the worst of all is that Western European politicians have allowed this to happen. Last week Sybrand Buma of the Christian democratic party CDA was suddenly critical of Islam. That is like a bank robber who, twenty years after the robbery, has spent all the money and apologizes for doing so. He is the one who did it. CDA has been in power in the Netherlands for 50 years. ”

Is it not a bit blunt to say …

“No!”

… that Muslims do not integrate?

“I am talking about Islam. But research also points out that 11 percent of Dutch Muslims in the Netherlands are prepared to use violence on behalf of their religion. That is a 110,000 people, twice the size of the Dutch army! ”

But perhaps many Muslims in fact take Islam less serious and profess their faith behind the front door, peacefully. Secretary Asscher of Integration said in this paper last week that those people should not be held accountable for terrorist attacks.

The Nord-Vest Private School in Copenhagen, came under investigation by Danish authorities during an unannounced visit after teaching materials were found extolling and encouraging young people to commit jihad. Luqman Pedersen, a Danish convert to Islam, admitted to the authorities that the school wishes to create a parallel Muslim society.

Two former teachers at the Nord-Vest school described how the children at the school spoke of Danes in terms of “them and us”. In a school poetry contest, several of the children composed poems that detailed their wish to beat up and break the legs and hands of the “Danish pigs”.

“I teach religion, but I was not allowed to teach Christianity. Instead, a visiting imam from Iraq taught Christianity… I could imagine that some of the boys I taught could have been radicalized,” a teacher said. The teachers tried to alert both politicians and authorities to some of the problems they had witnessed, but no one would listen.

Some Muslim schools in Denmark appear to be employing anti-Semitic teachers, enforcing gender inequality, employing violence against students, offering poor education in general, and teaching jihad.

There are 26 Muslim schools in Denmark. While they operate independently of the public schools, the state sponsors them heavily — as it does other independent schools in Denmark — covering 75 % of their budget. The demand for Muslim schools in Denmark has grown in the last decade, as Muslim schools have increased their number of pupils by almost 50% since 2007; they now cater to almost 5,000 pupils. (It is unknown, however, how many Muslim children learn in the so-called “Koran schools,” where Islam and Arabic are taught after school to those children who do not attend a Muslim day school. Koran schools — as revealed in the Danish TV documentary “Sharia in Denmark”) — are not under any supervision from state or municipal authorities).

Danish educational authorities are currently investigating seven Muslim schools for failing to follow the laws of independent schools, including the requirement that they prepare the students for life in Danish society, and teaching them about democracy and gender equality. That amounts to more than one quarter of all Muslim schools. The first Muslim school opened in Denmark in 1980. Nearly forty years later, Danish politicians appear to be only beginning to comprehend or take seriously the challenges that several of these schools present to Danish society.

“No one wants to demonise a particular community but the fact that this is happening again and again in the same circumstances and communities is a fact we cannot ignore. I think there needs to be a national approach…” — Greg Stone, Liberal Democrat party.

If we look at a list of 265 convictions for grooming gangs and individuals in the UK between November 1997 and January 2017 (and if we add on another 18 for the recent Newcastle gang), we will note that more than 99% are for Muslim men, mainly young men in their 20s and 30s.

It is, however, not just white (that is, non-Muslim) women whom Muslim men hold in such contempt. This abuse starts at home in Islamic countries in the treatment of Muslim women. Its roots lie in aspects of Islamic law and doctrine that are retained in the 21st century, despite having been formulated in the 7th century and later.

The idea that a man is not responsible for rape or other sexual assault and that women bear the blame for such a crime goes far to help explain why Muslim men in Britain and elsewhere may feel themselves justified in grooming and sexually abusing young women and girls far less well covered.

Newcastle upon Tyne is a small city in the North-East of England which, in 2017, was acclaimed the best city in the UK in which to raise children (London was the worst). Imagine, then, the shock when the city again became national news on August 9 when a trial at the Crown Court ended in the conviction of 18 people for the sexual grooming of children. Juries “found the men guilty of a catalogue of nearly 100 offences – including rape, human trafficking, conspiracy to incite prostitution and drug supply – between 2011 and 2014.”

Of the 18, one was a white British woman. The rest were males of Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Indian, Iraqi, Turkish and Iranian backgrounds, all with Muslim names.

Newcastle has a fairly small Muslim population, quite unlike those in other northern and Midlands towns such as Bradford, Blackburn, or Dewsbury. Based on the 2011 census, Bradford’s Muslim population reaches 24.7%, that of Blackburn 27.4%, and that of Dewsbury 34.4%. The highest in the country is only fractionally larger – the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, at 34.5%. The lowest out of 20 local authorities in England and Wales was the London Borough of Hackney with 14.1%. Newcastle’s Muslim population is much smaller, at 6.3%. The city boasts around 15 mosques, the vast majority of which are located in the less prosperous south-west sector. The Central Mosque (Masjid-at-Tawheed) is run by the Jamiat Ahle Hadith, a radical Pakistani religious movement and political party.[1] The Islamic Diversity Centre is also connected to a fundamentalist organization based in London. Finally, only 2 terrorist offenders have ever come from Newcastle (see p. 932 in link).

Compared with many other places, Newcastle does not figure high on any list of radical Islamic activity, even if it has a moderate share of fundamentalists. Indeed, following the revelation of the grooming gang in August, a representative of the local Muslim community, city councillor Dipu Ahad,[2] said to the national press that local Muslims were “absolutely disgusted” by their crimes and feared a possible backlash.

It would be churlish and inaccurate to assume that the entire Muslim community of Newcastle, or even a minority, view such criminal activities as acceptable. Islamic law and ethics would condemn the actions of these men as immoral and anti-Islamic. At the same time, efforts by Ahad and others to divorce Muslim grooming gangs from Islam itself raise deeper questions. As in earlier grooming cases, it was important to ask how the crimes had gone unmentioned by those members of the Muslim community who would be closest to the men involved. Ahad said that “fellow Muslims should not feel the need to “apologise” for grooming gangs. He added, “Did the white community come out and condemn the crimes of Jimmy Savile?”

Savile was one of the most popular characters in the UK in his day, awarded an OBE and knighted by the Queen for his services to entertainment and charity. His overwrought celebrity status, his image as a person of good works and compassion served to cover a long career as Britain’s greatest sexual predator, who had preyed on at least 500 women and girls, some as young as two. But he was a national celebrity, not a member of a small “white community” that might have been aware of his depredations and capable of alerting the police.

Ahad’s reply was an ingenious way to deflect the question of whether Muslims had covered up the crimes by failing to pass on even suspicions of illegality out of feelings of solidarity with members of what they might see as a beleaguered community. This same question has frequently surrounded cases of terrorism by Muslims — cases that go unreported by the often tight-knit communities.

Like Ahad, Chi Onwurah, the Labour Member of Parliament for Newcastle Central, tried to diffuse the concerns by diminishing any responsibility for the Muslim community. She said:

“those who sought to use the abusers’ Asian or Muslim backgrounds to create division were putting other girls at risk. Assuming that grooming and child abuse is [sic] prevalent in one group helps potential abusers hide in plain sight if they are not part of that group.

“Crimes of sexual exploitation can be and are committed by members of all communities and indeed it remains regrettably true that sexual abuse is most likely to come from within the family circle.”

However, another city councillor, Greg Stone, from the Liberal Democrat party, took a more robust approach. He saw problems precisely in places that the leftist Ahad and Onwura chose to draw attention away from:

“No one wants to demonise a particular community but the fact that his is happening again and again in the same circumstances and communities is a fact we cannot ignore.

“I think there needs to be a national approach – this is happening in too many places for it to be local circumstances.”

He said sexual exploitation would not “go away until we ask difficult questions”, adding:

“I don’t think we can eliminate the scale of abuse, which has national implications, unless we ask some tough questions of the Pakistani and Bangladeshi community in particular.”