RUTHFULLY YOURS

Because the word of a Christian “infidel” is not valid against the word of a Muslim, accusations of blasphemy, often with little or no evidence, routinely lead to the beating, imprisonment, and possible killing of Christians and other minorities every month in Pakistan.

“The available evidence in all these cases suggests that charges were brought as a measure to intimidate and punish members of minority religious communities… hostility towards religious minority groups appeared in many cases to be compounded by personal enmity, professional or economic rivalry or a desire to gain political advantage.” — Amnesty International.

“Iran sentences a 21-year-old man to death for ‘insulting Islam’ … after confessing when police promised he would be pardoned if he came clean.” — Daily Mail.

A few days ago in Pakistan, a Christian pastor who has been “tortured every day in prison” since 2012 when he was first incarcerated, was sentenced to life in prison. Zafar Bhatti, 51, is accused of sending “blasphemous” text messages from his mobile phone; but human rights activists contend that the charge “was fabricated to remove him from his role as a Pastor.” His wife, Nawab Bibi, says:

“Many Muslim people hated how quickly his church was growing; they have taken this action to undermine his work. Yet despite their actions the church grows. I wish our persecutors would see that Christians are not evil creatures. We are human beings created by God the same God that created them although they do not know this yet.”

She adds, “There have been numerous attempts to kill my husband — he is bullied everyday and he is not safe from inmates and prison staff alike.” In 2014, he “narrowly escaped assassination after a rogue prison officer,” Muhammad Yousaf, went on a shooting spree “to kill all inmates accused of blasphemy against Islam.”

Bhatti is one of countless Christian minorities to suffer under Pakistan’s blasphemy law, which has helped make that country the fourth-worst nation in the world in which to be Christian.

Asia Bibi, a Christian wife and mother, has been on death row since 2010 on the accusation that she insulted the Islamic prophet Muhammad. According to Section 295-C of Pakistan’s penal code:

“Whoever by words, either spoken or written or by visible representation, or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine.”

Because the word of a Christian “infidel” is not valid against the word of a Muslim, accusations of blasphemy, often with little or no evidence, routinely lead to the beating, imprisonment or killing of Christians and other minorities every month in Pakistan.[1] An Amnesty International report from 1994 summarizes the situation:

Several dozen people have been charged with blasphemy in Pakistan over the last few years; in all the cases known to Amnesty International, the charges of blasphemy appear to have been arbitrarily brought, founded solely on the individuals’ minority religious beliefs… The available evidence in all these cases suggests that charges were brought as a measure to intimidate and punish members of minority religious communities… hostility towards religious minority groups appeared in many cases to be compounded by personal enmity, professional or economic rivalry or a desire to gain political advantage. As a consequence, Amnesty International has concluded that most of the individuals now facing charges of blasphemy, or convicted on such charges, are prisoners of conscience, detained solely for their real or imputed religious beliefs in violation of their right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.

Other Christians accused of blasphemy never get the chance for even a mock trial and are dealt “justice” at the hands of angry mobs — such as the young Christian couple burned alive on a spurious accusation of blasphemy in November 2014. A report from 2012 found that “Since 1990 alone, fifty-two people have been extra-judicially murdered on charges of blasphemy” in Pakistan.

In fathoming the failure of Europeans to protect their own interests against the onslaught of Islamic jihadism, one is reminded of Ayn Rand’s quotation that “[r]eason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them[.]”

Bruce Bawer, an astute observer of the European scene, wonders how “Marine Le Pen lost in a landslide” given all the jihadist assaults against the French people and the very culture of France. Bawer offers three possibilities that include:

European guilt about past imperial histories and a “need to atone.”
the postmodern belief that “no culture is better than any other – and it’s racist to say otherwise.”
the influence of the mainstream media, which routinely “soft pedals the Islamic roots of terror”
the fact that “some people don’t want to learn the truth”

In the Autumn 2004 issue of the Wilson Quarterly, Christopher Clausen writes that “for many Europeans in the past 20 years, now-distant memories of both world wars have hardened into a self-righteous conviction that peace outweighs any value that might conflict with it, almost regardless of the threat or provocation.”

Consequently, there is an exquisite disregard in deliberately ignoring the “grim possibility that their children and grandchildren might end up by living under shariah law, if, in fact, they are allowed to live at all.” Consider that London presently has 100 sharia courts that are “based on the rejection of the inviolability of human rights: the values of freedom and equality that are the basis of English Common Law.” Moreover, “a third of UK Muslims do not feel ‘part of British culture.'”

As further evidence of the ultimate intent of Islamists, Saudi religious scholars include the following in the nine-volume English translation of the Quran.

[D]iscard (all) the obligations (covenants, etc.) … to fight against all the Mushrikun as well as against the people of the Scriptures (Jews and Christians) if they do not embrace Islam, till they pay the Jizya (a tax levied on the non-Muslims who do not embrace Islam and are under the protection of an Islamic government) with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.

As Nonie Darwish has pointed out, 64% of the Quran is devoted to denigrating commentary about kafirs, or non-Muslims.

And yet, while the above quoted words of the Quran should “forever silence any fantasies regarding Islam’s peaceful disposition toward the non-Muslim,” the West continues to avoid the obvious. But as Ayn Rand has noted, “[y]ou can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.”

Hence, France continues to decompose in front of our eyes. Yves Mamou writes that “everything that represents state institutions … is now subjected to violence based on essentially sectarian and sometimes ethnic excesses, fueled by an incredible hatred of our country[.]” Ultimately, France “and all of European society must assimilate Islamic social norms, not the other way around.”

Newly elected President Macron symbolizes the multicultural manifesto when he maintains that “French culture doesn’t exist in and of itself; there is no such thing as a single French culture. There is culture in France and it is diverse and multiple.” Is it then inevitable that “France is going to have to live with terrorism,” as former prime minister Manuel Valls proclaimed?

Coupled with the ongoing Islamic push is the leftist destructive bent. Thus, “Belgium is unique” in that it is the “first nation blending appeasement to Islam and a suicidal form of nihilism[.]” It is not coincidental that in Belgium, “euthanasia is out of control.” With a record number of people killed by lethal injection, it is equally disturbing that “Belgium is the country with the highest per capita number of volunteers for the Caliphate.”

The Danish cartoon controversy prompted a spectacular failure of will and principle in the West, the commentator tells Quadrant. ‘First they come for the cartoonists, ultimately they move on to everybody else. The provocations … get lamer and lamer. We are losing our world.’

I’m cruising down New England country lanes that criss-cross towns that look like Norman Rockwell theme parks—on my way to find Mark Steyn—but I’m not allowed to tell you exactly where I am.

My destination is the equivalent of a military bunker—a hidden television studio where, later today, they’ll be installing the concert grand piano Steyn will be using when he launches his variety talk show. Even though I’m less than an hour from the Canadian border and ninety minutes from Montreal, and even though the last battle fought here was in 1777 (the Green Mountain Boys routed some Brits, Hessians and Iroquois under German command), tactical secrecy is the order of the day.

Mark Steyn is under a fatwa.

In a sane world I would be hoping to find Steyn in a good mood so I could ask him whether he really thinks Gypsy is the greatest musical ever staged, because many people believe that despite the stunning score by Jule Styne (“There’s No Business Like Show Business”, “Everything’s Coming Up Roses”, “All I Need Is the Girl”) and the delightful lyrics of Stephen Sondheim (before he became the mononymous bore Sondheim), the book by Arthur Laurents is, after all, a backstage story, which is the typical refuge of the journeyman Broadway playwright looking to establish excuses for downstage centre belting. I’m of the opinion that, since Laurents was also the director of the best Gypsy revival, the one in the early 1990s starring Tyne Daly as Mama Rose—who was, by the way, far superior to both Ethel Merman and Rosalind Russell—and since the Eleven O’Clock Number, “Rose’s Turn”, was spun entirely from the best scene in the book (“I thought you did it for me, mama”), it’s obvious that Laurents was constantly sacrificing his dialogue to the staging and choreography of the original director, Jerome Robbins.

But, alas, we don’t live in a sane world, so I can’t justify spending valuable interview time asking the author of America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It—the apocalyptic best-seller about how Muslims are taking over the world and destroying Western civilisation—whether the songs of Harry Warren would someday be recognised for their genius, despite the novelty lyrics of “Chattanooga Choo Choo”, “Shuffle Off to Buffalo” and “I’ve Got a Gal from Kalamazoo”. Steyn is indeed the author of Broadway Babies Say Goodnight—in my opinion one of the greatest works in the rarefied world of musical theatre journalism—but spending all our time on it would be, under the circumstances, equivalent to interviewing Ronald Reagan about the nuances of Knute Rockne, All American.

“But you do really think Gypsy is the greatest musical?” I manage to wedge in later. And, to my great satisfaction, he says, “Yes, I really do.”

But back to the Islamic apocalypse. Apparently Steyn was radicalised by the events of 9/11, because on that day he ceased being a nerdy theatre critic, crooner and exponent of the American songbook, and became instead the Cassandra of Western democracy, doling out an avalanche of columns, articles, books and radio programs telling us that we have given up our Anglo-Saxon Enlightenment souls while the vanguard of the Islamic menace has been advancing toward Kansas. That he’s managed to do so without sacrificing any of the acerbic humour he displayed while describing the libretto of Les Miz or the eccentricities of Andrew Lloyd Webber makes him, sui generis, our singing dancing Tiresias, or, perhaps more accurately, that guy who stands on the side of the road in every Friday the 13th movie, saying “Turn back! Turn back now! Before it’s tooooooo late!” but, in Steyn’s case, with a Catskills-comic rimshot to further confuse the heedless libertines on their way to perdition.

Mark, glad to meet you, you’ve written one of the happiest books I’ve ever read and one of the most depressing books I’ve ever read.

I did say something to this effect when Steyn at length showed up, ambling into a construction site full of exposed electrical wires and bare support beams where, in a few days, The Mark Steyn Show would go into tryouts on the CRTV network. (Be careful when you Google it: CRTV is also the acronym of the national television network of Cameroon.)

“But it’s all part of the same package!” says Steyn with enthusiasm. “The point of politics is to free up time for what really matters in life.”

Like Cole Porter?

“Like Cole Porter.”

Steyn is a large man—above six feet, burly, with a fuzzy red beard that makes him look as if he should be handing William Wallace a halberd at Falkirk, not tinkling piano keys while sipping a Tom Collins—but then that’s his whole point.

“What I’ve learned since 9/11 is that the small pleasures—music, theatre, film—have to be earned. In the Muslim world, there is no music. In Libya they destroyed all the musical instruments—music was considered an abomination. When the demography changes, there will be no concert halls. Artists who take a multicultural view should be aware of this. Count the number of covered women in London’s West End. In Birmingham, where I went to high school, you have a provincial symphony orchestra in a Muslim city—I’m not sure it will survive. All art, all popular culture, is endangered by Islam, because there’s no room for it. It’s considered libertinism. And I’m not even talking about Miley Cyrus twerking at the music awards. What turned Sayyid Qutb against the morality of the West is that he attended a church dance in Greeley, Colorado, which was a dry town in 1948, and he heard the song ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’. He thought it was evil. And now things are getting a lot worse. Ugly things are happening.”

This is what’s simultaneously frustrating and fascinating about talking to Mark Steyn—he understands the connection between Frank Loesser, the creator of Guys and Dolls, and Sayyid Qutb, the Muslim Brotherhood leader executed for plotting the assassination of Nasser. If the Islamic extremists weren’t out there meddling with the canon, we could have spent the next hour discussing the various versions of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”, which Loesser wrote for the Esther Williams movie Neptune’s Daughter. What Steyn failed to mention is that, after six decades as a Christmas standard played over department-store public address systems, the song suddenly became ostracised two years ago because certain moral police officers in various social media fora decided it’s an anthem for date rape. (Apparently the National Organization for Women has more in common with the Muslim Brotherhood than either party would like to admit.) The idea is ludicrous, not only because the song is light-hearted and romantic, but also because it’s been consistently interpreted and reinterpreted to make either sex and both sexes desperate for nookie. Even the original movie uses the song twice—once when Ricardo Montalban is trying to seduce Esther Williams, but again when the man-crazy Betty Garrett is trying to seduce Red Skelton! Not to mention that Idina Menzel and Michael Bublé recorded a video version lip-synched by pre-pubescent actors dressed up as 1920s swells—should they be prosecuted for child abuse?—and, in the Lady Gaga version with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, she is aggressively trying to have sex with him.

But then sometimes Mark Steyn seems like the only conservative you can discuss these issues with, because most Republicans think popular culture is beside the point, if not downright dangerous. Steyn, on the other hand, has performed “Kung Fu Fighting” before thousands of people in civic auditoria more accustomed to Mary Kay Cosmetics conventions, so he gets it.

The progressive global elite is breathing a sigh of relief after “centrist” newcomer to electoral politics, Emmanuel Macron, defeated Marine Le Pen to become the next president of France. After the shocks of last year’s Brexit and the election of populist Donald Trump as president, the rejection of populist, nationalist, and anti-EU parties in Austria, the Netherlands, and now the second most important EU country suggests the tide has turned. But the Eurocrats and Europhiles shouldn’t start popping champagne corks yet. Like all of Europe, France’s problems run deep.

Macron is the consummate establishment insider, with the youth, pleasing personality, and “hope and change” rhetoric of Barack Obama, who endorsed him because he represents, as Obama said, “the values that we care so much about.” He is the opposite of the fiery, true political outsider Le Pen, who is nearing 50 and focuses on the gloomy problems of immigration and terrorism, and has hard things to say about the EU and the Euro.

Macron also got lucky when his first-round opponent in the voting, center-conservative François Fillon, was weakened by a nepotism scandal. Macron’s other opponent, radical socialist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, is too unhinged even for a basically socialist electorate. And the long demonization of Le Pen as an anti-Semitic Petainist throwback and an Islamophobic, racist fascist has made her a political pariah despite her basically socialist and redistributionist policies, and her promise to do something about the immigration and terrorism that so many French people find threatening.

Macron had another advantage: he put forth a seemingly reasonable program for curing France’s economic ills, which are critical: government spending at 57% of GDP, the highest in Europe; a retirement age of 62 and a 35-hour workweek; 3,500 pages of employment regulations; an unemployment rate of nearly 10% (double that for those under 25); a GDP growth rate barely over 1%; public debt at nearly 90% of GDP; an income tax rate topping out at 45%; nine million people living below the poverty line; and welfare spending at nearly 32% of GDP. Macron promises to tackle the job and growth-killing policies that have created these dismal numbers, but he’s unlikely to have a parliamentary coalition big enough to get such reforms through. Don’t forget, about a third of the French voters cast a “pox on both your houses” vote, either abstaining or casting a blank or spoiled “white ballot.” This suggests a fragile foundation for Macron’s future government.

And if he tries to follow through on his campaign promises, he will likely meet stiff resistance from critics of “neoliberalism,” the epithet in Europe for free-market capitalism. In March 2006, 2.7 million mostly young French people protested against a minor reform of employment law that would allow entry-level workers to be more easily let go. And that was when the president was Jacques Chirac, a socialist who decried “Anglo-Saxon ultraliberalism,” Euro-speak for laissez-faire capitalism. Ten years later, socialist prime minister Manuel Valls faced nationwide riots and protests, some broken up with tear gas, over other employment reforms, which he had to get passed by invoking special powers and bypassing parliament. President Macron and his “neoliberal” reforms are unlikely to be any more successful, given the strength of Mélanchon’s support, the disaffection with Macron of a third of French voters, and the French people’s enduring love for their short work-week and generous subsidies.

Dr. Susan Carland is an Australian academic who, like Women’s March leader Linda Sarsour, is supposedly a feminist Muslim.

Recently, Carland continued to spread false information about Islam and women while speaking about how Sharia law isn’t actually contrary to feminism, as it’s just being misinterpreted:

“For those of you that don’t know, if a woman is raped she can be punished for adultery,” Dr Carland told her audience at Gleebooks, promoting her new book ‘Fighting Hislam: Women, Faith and Sexism’.

Despite concerns that Sharia law gives rape victims no rights, Dr Carland explained a US lawyer’s campaign to challenge adultery laws in Pakistan arguing “there is no justification under Sharia for a woman who is raped to be punished”.

“You can have secular feminism, you can have Islamic feminism, you can have all different types of feminism.

“I could go to them with these human rights justifications for why it’s wrong,” Dr Carland recalled the lawyer telling her.

“But I know that if I do that, they will double down on this law because they will feel it’s an insult to their culture and their tradition and their religion’, why would I just not use the Sharia to make the argument this is wrong?’”

Carland is simply twisting the truth into a revolting, immoral argument.

Under Sharia Law, either the rapist must confess to the crime, or four male witnesses must testify that the victim was raped.

Mike Konrad is the pen name of an American who wishes he had availed himself more fully of the opportunity to learn Spanish in high school, lo those many decades ago. He writes on the Arabs of South America at http://latinarabia.com.

Chile is becoming instructive on what happens when a well coordinated minority can turn a decent republic to its own ends. That minority is the Palestinian community in Chile, and it has completely distorted Chile’s foreign policy.

In Chile, they have a saying: “Three things one would definitely find in every city and village: a priest, a policeman and a Palestinian.”

Chile’s Palestinians go way back, some even to the 19th century. Many are now third- and fourth-generation Chilean, often intermarried with Chile’s other ethnic stock: the Spanish, the Basque, the Italians, the Germans, et al. Though small in number, about 3%, they are highly overrepresented in all the professions, as well as in banking, manufacturing, and real estate.

If this sounds like a similar ethnic group in America, it is. Gabriel Zaliasnik, the 2010 head of Chile’s Jewish community, said, “The Palestinian community is to Chile what the Jewish community is to the US.”

These Palestinians are continuing to wield power in Chile. Now they seem to be paralyzing the government.

Recently, a Palestinian-Chilean BDS activist and former director of the Palestinian Federation of Chile, named Anwar Makhlouf, was denied entrance attempting to visit the Palestinian areas by Israel authorities at the border.

Chilean anti-Israel activist turned away at West Bank border crossing

Head of the Palestinian Federation in Chile barred over alleged efforts to promote boycott of Jewish state

The turning away of Palestinian activists at the border, even at the Allenby Crossing, is rather common. The U.S. government does all but nothing about it when it concerns American citizens. Nor do many other Western governments. What can they do?

Several months after the New York Times published its hagiography of Shashaa, he was arrested for physically assaulting his third wife, who was hospitalized with a broken nose and shoulder. “The attack was obviously very brutal,” a hospital spokesperson said at the time. “What a man does with his wife does not concern the authorities,” Shashaa said.

Spanish High Court Judge Eloy Velasco ordered Shashaa — who lives in a 10,000 square meter (108,000 square foot) mansion in Teulada-Moraira, a small coastal town on Spain’s Mediterranean coast, with his four wives and 18 children — to be held in prison without bail.

Spanish authorities are now investigating the source of Shashaa’s wealth. His mosque in Munich was shuttered in October 2015 due to financial difficulties, while the mansion he purchased in Spain in February 2015 is said to be worth more than half a million euros.

More than two weeks after Shashaa was arrested, the New York Times still has not reported on the fate of its poster boy for Salafist pacifism.

Spanish authorities have arrested a Muslim cleric — whom the New York Times once praised for his efforts to fight radicalization within Germany’s Islamic community — for alleged ties to the Islamic State.

Hesham Shashaa (aka Abu Adam), a 46-year-old Egyptian-Palestinian, was detained near Alicante in southeastern Spain on April 26 on charges of aiding the Islamic State, extolling terrorism and promoting Salafi-jihadism.

The Spanish Interior Ministry said that Shashaa had facilitated the travel to Spain of Islamic State jihadists from Syria and Iraq by providing them with money, refuge and fake documents.

Most recently, Shashaa had made arrangements for two jihadists — who are the subjects of international arrest warrants for their membership of the Islamic State — to travel from Turkey to Spain by providing them with false passports.

“But, as regards the reward and blessing, there is one deed which is very great in comparison to all the acts of worship and all the good deed­[s] — and that is Jihad!” — Saudi publisher’s prefatory note, Jihad in the Qu’ran and Sunnah by Sheikh ‘Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Humaid.

The rewards of Paradise are also promised to the observant Muslim, but the highest grades of Paradise, of which there are 100, are reserved only for those who perform jihad.

Jihad is, by all appearances, first and foremost an act of religious devotion and only secondarily an act of economic and political rebellion.

About four decades have passed since Sheikh ‘Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Humaid (1908-1981), ex-Chief Justice of Saudi Arabia, published his lengthy, impassioned, essay on jihad.[1] This essay, still available on the Internet, is the only one that Saudi religious scholars chose to include with the Noble Quran — a modern, nine volume, English translation of the Quran, which includes ancient commentary.[2]

A cursory reading of Sheikh bin Humaid’s essay should forever silence any fantasies regarding traditional Islam’s peaceful disposition toward the non-Muslim world.[3] As the Saudi publisher says in his prefatory note:

“But, as regards the reward and blessing, there is one deed which is very great in comparison to all the acts of worship and all the good deed­[s] — and that is Jihad!”

The publisher continues:

“Never before such an article was seen, describing Jihad in its true colours­ — so heart evoking and encouraging!… We are publishing this article and recommend every Muslim not only to read it himself but to offer every other Muslim brother within his read.”