RUTHFULLY YOURS

Islam was created 600 years after Christianity not to affirm the Bible, but to discredit it; not to co-exist with “the people of the book” — Jews and Christians — but to replace them.

It is hard to read Islamic law books without concluding that Islamic values are essentially “a rebellion against the Ten Commandments”.

Islam violates the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” when Allah commanded Muslims to kill Allah’s enemies, and in the process, kill and be killed in jihad if they are to be guaranteed heaven.

Accepting a parallel legal system would effectively nullify actual freedom for many of the people possibly forced to use it, and the ability to receive equal justice under law. Sharia is the reason there is a death warrant out on this author, on Salman Rushdie and others, for apostasy.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, of the “Ground Zero mosque”, once again wrote a deeply inaccurate article reprimanding Americans for their supposedly “right-wing caricature” of Islamic law, sharia, which he insists is not a threat to American law. In his recent article “The silly American fear of sharia law”, he denied that sharia is incompatible with US laws and the constitution. Oh, really?

Imam Rauf tries to blame sharia’s amputation and stoning on Biblical Law:

“Sharia is not about amputations and stoning. These extreme punishments carry over from earlier, biblical law” and “Within the history of Islam, they have rarely occurred. What Islamic law does prescribe are the same do’s [sic] and don’ts of the Ten Commandments.”

Imam Rauf’s article is, to say the least, misleading — especially regarding the Ten Commandments. Sharia is not only incompatible with Western legal system but is the direct opposite of Western values; it has violated all ten of the Ten Commandments.

Islam was created 600 years after Christianity not to affirm the Bible, but to discredit it; not to co-exist with “the people of the book” — Jews and Christians — but to replace them. It is hard to read Islamic law books without concluding that Islamic values are essentially “a rebellion against the Ten Commandments.”

Islam has little respect for human life — of either Muslims or non-Muslims. To begin with, Islam violates the commandment “Thou shalt not kill.” Sharia punishes sins against Allah, such as blasphemy and apostasy, with execution. This is while it prohibits prosecuting Muslims who kill apostates, and also parents and grandparents who kill their offspring. Allah commands Muslims to kill Allah’s enemies, and in the process, kill and be killed in jihad if they are to be guaranteed heaven.

“Surely Allah has purchased of the believers their lives and their belongings and in return has promised that they shall have Paradise.106 They fight in the Way of Allah, and slay and are slain. Such is the promise He has made incumbent upon Himself in the Torah, and the Gospel, and the Qur’an.107 Who is more faithful to his promise than Allah? Rejoice, then, in the bargain you have made with Him. That indeed is the mighty triumph.” (9:111)

The concept of adultery and loyalty in marriage is totally different. Loyalty is expected from the woman under penalty of death, but men have a lot of room in that regard, the result of the rights of polygamy and temporary marriage for Muslim men. Thus, in Islam, the concept of marriage as a covenant of loyalty between one man and one woman does not exist.

In an interview Wednesday with Tim Sebastian — host of the program ‎‎”Conflict Zone” on German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle — former Israeli ‎Prime Minister Ehud Barak was at his worst. Not only did he fail at his initial ‎attempt to field Sebastian’s hostile questions; he ended up using the rhetoric of ‎Israel’s sworn enemies to answer them.‎

Sebastian, who was in Israel and the Palestinian Authority this week to record ‎a series interviews pertaining to the anniversary of the Six-Day War (or, as the ‎DW website referred to it, “50 years after Israel captured East Jerusalem, the ‎West Bank and Gaza”), pounded on Barak to acknowledge that the 1967 war ‎was an act of Israeli aggression, and that Israeli government control over a ‎Palestinian population that has no say in its election is immoral. ‎

Rather than blasting Sebastian for misrepresenting the entire issue, Barak ‎replied, “I do not start my consideration from the moral issues.” ‎

‎”Why not? You don’t care about morality?” Sebastian asked.‎

‎”I care about morality,” Barak said. “But I care more about our very survival ‎in life. And I should tell you that I do not disagree with the bottom line of what ‎you are trying to kind of somehow argue. The situation that has been created is ‎such that Israel faces a choice. If we keep controlling the whole area from the ‎Mediterranean to the River Jordan, where some 13 million people are living — ‎‎8 million Israelis, 5 million Palestinians, that if only one entity reigned over ‎this whole area, namely Israel, it would become inevitably — that’s a key word, ‎inevitably — either non-Jewish or non-democratic…”‎

Sebastian interjected, “But the state you have at the moment is an apartheid ‎state, isn’t it?”‎

Barak nodded and continued: “It’s not yet an apartheid [state], but it might ‎come on the slippery slope toward apartheid.”‎

In spite of three attacks in three months, Britain does not seem to be choosing the path of vigilance and determination. June is not even over but the media barely talk about terrorism any more.

Then, in the early hours of June 19, a man who acted alone drove a van into a crowd of Muslims leaving Finsbury Park Mosque in London: the main “threat” to the British right now was soon presented in several newspapers as “Islamophobia”.

Decolonization added the idea that the Europeans had oppressed other peoples and were guilty of crimes they now had to redeem. There was no mention of how, throughout history, recruits to Islam had colonized the great Christian Byzantine Empire, Greece, Sicily, Corsica, North Africa and the Middle East, most of the Balkans and eastern Europe, Hungary, northern Cyprus and Spain.

While most jihadist movements were banned by the British government, more discreet organizations have emerged and demurely sent the same message. The Islamic Forum for Europe, for example, depicts itself as “peaceful”, but many of those it invites to speak are anything but that. The Islamic Human Rights Commission uses the language of defending human rights to disseminate violent statements against the Jews and the West.

London, June 5, 2017. A minute of silence is held at Potters Field Park, next to the City Hall, to pay tribute to the victims of the London Bridge jihadist attack three days before. Those who came have brought flowers, candles and signs bearing the usual words: “unity”, “peace” and “love”. Faces are sad but no trace of anger is visible. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, a Muslim, gives a speech emphasizing against all evidence that the killers’ ideas have nothing to do with Islam.

A few hours after the attack, Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May also refuses to incriminate Islam, but dares to speak of “Islamic extremism”. She was immediately accused of “dividing” the country. On election day, June 8, her Conservative party lost the majority in the House of Commons. Jeremy Corbyn, a pro-terrorist, “democratic socialist”, who demands the end of British participation in the campaign against the Islamic State (ISIS), led the Labour party to thirty more seats than it had earlier. In spite of three attacks in three months, Britain does not seem to choose the path of vigilance and determination. June is not even over but the media barely talk about terrorism any more. A devastating fire destroyed a building in North Kensington, killing scores of residents. Mourning the victims seems to have completely erased all memory of those killed in the terrorist attacks.

Then, in the early hours of June 19, a man who acted alone drove a van into a crowd of Muslims leaving Finsbury Park Mosque in London: the main “threat” to the British right now was soon presented in several newspapers as “Islamophobia”.

The United Kingdom is not the main Muslim country in Europe, but it is the country where, for decades, Islamists could comfortably call for jihad and murder. Although most jihadist movements were banned by the British government, more discreet organizations have emerged and demurely spread the same message. The Islamic Forum for Europe, for example, depicts itself as “peaceful”, but many of those it invites to speak are anything but that. One was Anwar al-Awlaki, who for years planned al-Qaeda operations until he was killed in Yemen in 2011 in an American drone strike. The Islamic Human Rights Commission uses the language of defending human rights to disseminate violent statements against Jews and the West.

A spate of terrorist attacks has hit Europe in the past month, not only in Manchester and London but also in Paris and Brussels, where incidents this week were mercifully terminated before they could do any real damage. In Britain, a man seeking vengeance rammed a van into a crowd exiting a mosque, giving rise to real and justified fears of an anti-Muslim backlash. The incidents have left the Continent, and especially Britain, in a state of nervous agitation, fearful of a prolonged period of social unrest and heightened tensions between Muslim communities and their secular neighbors.

On the issue of free speech, the response from authorities has been sad but predictable. Reports the New York Times: “In a coordinated campaign across 14 states, the German police on Tuesday raided the homes of 36 people accused of hateful postings over social media, including threats, coercion, and incitement to racism. Most of the raids concerned politically motivated right-wing incitement.” In Sussex, in southern England, a man has been charged with “publishing written material intending to stir up religious hatred against Muslims” on his Facebook account in 2015; he faces a year in prison. The Sussex police say they hope the lengthy sentence will deter those looking to “spread messages of fear and hate” on the Internet.

There are two things that come to mind in the wake of this suppression. The first is that Americans should never forget the value of free speech. Free speech — not its anodyne, Continental form — is by and large a uniquely American institution. It simply does not exist in Europe. Those who yearn for an America that looks more like the orderly, regulated, universal-health-care systems of Western Europe should keep this fact in the back of their mind always.

The second thing to say is that the crackdown on free speech is not occurring in absentia. The ongoing suppression interacts with decisions taken or not taken in other domains of policy and public debate. The most important of those decisions is that politicians and the culture more broadly have chosen not to inquire into the specifically Islamic roots of terrorism. To decline to blame Muslims en masse for terrorism is well and good and should continue. But the unwillingness to ask how Islam may provide a wellspring of justification for terrorist actions is harder to rationalize. It comes with a certain set of implications and corollaries.

By Kejal Vyas in Irapa, Venezuela and Sara Schaefer Muñoz in Chaguaramas, Trinidad and Tobago

Struggling to find basic staples in her own country, Mariana Revilla and five neighbors here took to crossing a treacherous 60-mile gulf under the cover of night to the island of Trinidad.

On her last trip, they made a good haul, securing seven tons of flour, sugar and cooking oil from the former British colony in exchange for fresh shrimp from home. But on the way back their rickety 46-foot boat capsized, leaving Ms. Revilla and her companions clinging to the wreckage for nearly two days before she and two others ran out of strength and drowned, according to survivors. Her stepfather says her 3-year-old daughter, Isabel, keeps asking, “Where is my mama?”

As Venezuela’s economy crumbles, an increasingly desperate people are doing all they can to get food and medicine. Here that can involve great peril.Venezuelans make trips as long as 10 hours to hawk shellfish, plastic chairs, house doors, ceramic pots and even exotic animals like iguanas and brightly feathered macaws. They are exchanged for basic goods—rice, detergent, diapers—that Caracas is increasingly unable to provide.“It’s thanks to Trinidad that we have any food here,” said 49-year-old Angela Caballero, a resident of this town on a peninsula that extends toward the island. “If that didn’t come, we’d be dead.”

If you’ve ever been to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, chances are that you visited the glass pavilion containing the Temple of Dendur. One of only three such temples outside Egypt, it was built by the Roman emperor Augustus around 10 B.C. as part of an effort to cultivate the local Nubian population. This month marks its 50th anniversary overlooking Central Park, where it provides an unforgettable glimpse of Egypt’s ancient culture for millions of tourists who will never travel to the Middle East.

But more important, at a time when the U.S. is questioning the nature of its longstanding relationships with countries across the world, the temple is a symbol of international cooperation. In the 1960s, 50 nations united to save 22 irreplaceable monuments—including the Temple of Dendur—set to be submerged during the construction of Lake Nasser. These countries were motivated not by their own national interests, but by an understanding that mankind has a common interest in protecting historic monuments.

With a final investment of $16 million, the U.S. became the largest contributor to the $100 million preservation project. As a demonstration of gratitude, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser gave the Temple of Dendur to the U.S. in 1965. After a competition led by the newly created National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities, President Lyndon Johnson decided that the 2,000-year-old temple should go to the Met.

The Middle East’s fragile cultural heritage was in the news again this week. On Wednesday Islamic State blew up the historic Grand al-Nuri Mosque in Mosul, obliterating a cultural and religious site that had stood since 1173. Religious fundamentalism, illicit excavation, black-market trade and simple neglect have destroyed historic sites in the Middle East at an alarming rate. Wednesday’s bombing underscores the most urgent problem: ISIS and its affiliates have turned cultural destruction in Iraq and Syria into propaganda, even as they sell looted works of art on the black market to raise money for arms.

Why should we worry about a bunch of old monuments when the human cost of the unrest is so high? There are two reasons. First, the Middle East is the cradle of civilization. As our forebears recognized when they acted to save the cultural heritage of Lower Nubia, these monuments are integral to our collective human story. Architectural monuments illuminate the complexity of our common past. So much has already been lost. We have a moral obligation to save what remains.

Otto Warmbier’s family and friends laid him to rest on Thursday, at a funeral in Ohio, after North Korea’s Kim regime destroyed Otto’s life and devastated his family.

Warmbier went to North Korea in late December, 2015, a 21-year-old American college student, on a short package tour. He was arrested there on Jan. 2, 2016 and accused of taking a propaganda sign off a wall in his Pyongyang hotel in the early hours of Jan. 1. On Feb. 29, 2016, Warmbier was presented publicly to deliver a forced “confession,” and just over two weeks later, on March 16, 2016, again on camera, he was sentenced to 15 years at hard labor. It took more than a year before his family, or the American public, heard any further news of what had happened to him.

As we learned only this month, shortly after Warmbier received North Korea’s hideous sentence he suffered brain damage so extensive that when North Korea finally released him early last week, at the demand of the Trump administration, he arrived home on June 13 to his family in Cincinnati in what his American doctors called a condition of “unresponsive wakefulness.” He was unable to see, speak or make any sign of conscious response. By North Korea’s much belated account, provided via U.S. envoys to Otto’s parents early this month, Otto had been in that condition, in North Korean custody, for well over a year. Surrounded by his family, six days after his return, Otto died this past Monday.

This awful display of Pyongyang’s raw and manifold official cruelties leaves a stricken family in Cincinnati mourning their horribly murdered son. It ought to drive home to all Americans the unrelenting monstrosity of North Korea’s totalitarian Kim Jong Un regime.

Yet, there’s a qualifier that keeps creeping into the U.S. press coverage of this story, a touch of ersatz journalistic due diligence, which suggests that too many American reporters have yet to grasp the full extent of North Korea’s totalitarian horrors. This qualifier, to which too many journalists seem wedded in mentioning Otto’s “confession,” is that they’re not sure whether Otto was coerced.

To pick just one of many examples, in an NBC news article about Otto, published today, up pops that phrase: “it was not apparent whether his confession was coerced.” Or, as NPR put it on Feb. 29, 2016, immediately after North Korea first released Otto’s “confession”: “It’s unclear whether Warmbier, 21, spoke of his own volition or whether he was pressured into making the statement.”

Actually, there is nothing unclear about it. Isolated from family, friends or any form of genuine defense, held under terrible threat, in utterly hostile surroundings, Otto gave a forced confession. He was clearly coerced. As his father, Fred Warmbier, accurately told the press last week, Otto was “brutalized and terrorized” by the North Korean regime.