RUTHFULLY YOURS

What does it say about Messrs. Obama, Trudeau & Co. that their farewells to Fidel could have been voiced by communist toadies?

The retrospectives on Fidel Castro continue, even as the entombment of the Cuban dictator has passed. New photographic essays, retrospectives and interviews appear on our computer screens. So symbolic has this figure proved that I expect to see apologias and indictments into the New Year, if only because the former necessitate the latter.

Ponder the inability in some quarters to name unpleasant facts. President Obama never quite could bring himself to say “radical Islam” or to tell us what the “extremists” of which he spoke instead were extreme about. Here, he went a step further, silent on the ideology that animated Castro as well as the crimes to which they gave rise.

Indeed, the language deployed by some world leaders has been no more honest or creditable than that heaped upon Castro by veteran KGB stooges and communist fellow-travelers. Note the common resort to the purposely evasive, syrupy valedictory language normally reserved for the passing of a pioneering CEO or a charismatic motivational speaker — “powerful emotions” for someone who “altered the course of individual lives” (President Obama), “deep sorrow” for “a larger than life figure” (Canada’s Justin Trudeau), a “beacon of light,” an “absolute giant of the 20th century” (Marxist former London mayor Ken Livingstone), “a really great man” who “controlled things very firmly” (KGB agent of influence historian Richard Gott).

Note, too, the substitution of real or imagined successes to the exclusion of the dread, deadly deeds dispositive of the lives hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Nothing here of the show trials, the mass executions, the forced labor camps or the decades-long confinement of dissidents to windowless cells. Nothing of the 5,300 people killed resisting Castro’s forces; the one-fifth of Cubans who voted with their feet to escape totalitarian oppression; the lives of the still less fortunate 78,000 Cubans, lost in shark-infested waters fleeing in horror the only home they had known; the 14,000 Cubans killed in Castro’s wars abroad; the 6,800 politically motivated assassinations; the gulag of labor camps, known by their Spanish acronym UMAPs, holding tens of thousands for infractions as arbitrary as being gay, a Jehovah’s Witness or a Seven Day Adventist.

Indeed, the destruction of the lives of opponents was raised to a new virtue and the very concept of law explicitly subordinated to the enforcement of control through brute force. As Castro’s executioner, Che Guevara, put it, “To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution. And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate.” These were not the aberrant words of a maverick henchman. Castro himself put it no less forcefully: “revolutionary justice is not based on legal precepts, but on moral conviction.”

ISIS has found another radical-Islamic Brit willing to butcher innocent hostages:

Mohammed Reza Haque, 36, is depicted in the video using a serrated hunting knife to cut off a prisoner’s head in the middle of a barren desert.

The vile killer was likened to extremist Mohamed Emwazi – dubbed ‘Jihadi John’ – who beheaded five western hostages on video, after murdering his victim in an almost-identical fashion.

Emwazi was known as “Jihadi John,” ISIS’ most infamous executioner. Before he was finally taken out by an American drone, Emwazi slaughtered at least five prisoners: David Haines and Alan Henning from Britain, and Americans James Foley, Peter Kassig and Steven Sotloff. Although it was a great day for humankind when Emwazi was finally killed, he’s now been succeeded by another radical Muslim from Britain: Mohammed Reza Haque.

Haque was radicalized many years ago. From 2011 onwards, Haque was a bodyguard of Anjem Choudary, perhaps Britain’s most infamous radical-Islamic preacher. Choudary was imprisoned in September for inciting support for ISIS.

On Remembrance Sunday in Britain back in 2011, Haque could be seen burning poppies near the Royal Albert Hall in London. When the crowd observed a two-minute silence for British soldiers fallen in war, Haque and his radical friends chanted, “Burn British soldiers; burn in hell.”

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In other words, the British authorities knew Haque was a radical Muslim and terrorist sympathizer. Yet, they did nothing. He was just charged with a “public offense.” Amazingly, the politically correct judge decided that there wasn’t enough evidence to convict him. His boss and main mentor, Choudary, was found guilty but was also let off the hook with a 50-pound fine.

A report by Machteld Zee, a Dutch Academic raised the issue that sharia councils “frustrate women in their requests [for divorce], especially if the husband is unwilling to co-operate,” and she also suggested that women are treated as “second-class citizens.”

Sharia councils, however, can demand that the parties involved in a dispute sign contracts beforehand, demanding that women agree to the results of the arbitration. To force a woman, who has been denied rights to any legal representation, to agree to an illegal or wrongful contract before trial, is a travesty that the British justice system cannot allow to continue.

As Dr Taj Hargey, Imam of the Oxford Islamic Congregation argues, “Sharia is not divine law, it is just medieval opinion.”

Is Britain really agreeing to allow women to be sentenced in England, then to be stoned to death elsewhere?

This ruling actually reveals to the husband the process required to have his wife stoned to death. It arguably even encouraging men to have their wives taken abroad and have them murdered. The court has therefore condemned someone to murder solely the words of her husband without allowing her a chance to speak.

How can these groups that not only fail to protect the rights of women but actually undermine them, be considered charitable organisations, funded by British taxpayers?

It is considered a fundamental principle in liberal democracies that individuals should have equality under the law, with equal access to justice, despite race, gender, or religious belief and that the same laws of a single legal system should apply equally to everyone.

To have two simultaneously functioning rules of law, applied on differing judicial bases, would create a challenge of which precedents to follow, or why individuals from different groups should be treated differently. How long before people form one group would claim to be from a different group to be exempt from the first group’s laws? Such a system invites abuse.

Dealing with minorities by differing legal systems rather than creating a more pluralist utopia simply leads to a divided society in which minorities and majorities have justified mutual distrust.

Sadly, these principles which have sculpted a strong judicial system in the United Kingdom for so long are now facing a significant threat.

In Britain, the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) recognises and protects women’s rights to equality, and not to be discriminated against in legal proceedings. But the rule of law in Britain is being eroded by the legitimisation of sharia councils. This has occurred under the Arbitration Act (1996), even though their operation in the Britain has been recorded since 1992.

There are valid reasons why sharia councils and sharia itself should not be given any legitimacy under British law.

First, these alternative judicial systems can mislead Muslim women to believe that sharia, and the fatwas pronounced by clerics, are binding and that such a marriage is recognised under UK law. In fact, it is estimated that 70-75% of all Islamic marriages in Britain are not recognized, according to the findings in the Dame Louise Casey report.

Islamic women also might be misled into believing that they have more marital rights than they actually have – a cruel deception that must end. And they further seem misled into believing they are compelled to approach a sharia council, rather than a UK civil court, for a divorce.

Second, these sharia councils often offer themselves as “an alternative,” to people seeking a civil law judgement, but the elders who hold the proceedings do not use juridical standards compatible with existing British legal ones. In cases arbitrated by sharia councils, as opposed to British law, for example, women lack the legal ability to initiate any divorce proceedings without the explicit agreement of her husband, and often women have no legal representation at these trials.

In Ludwigshafen, Germany, a “‘strongly radicalized” 12-year-old boy “of Iraqi heritage” planted a bomb at a Christmas market at the end of November.

Previously, the festive shopping tradition of Christmas markets had become “potent symbols of freedom,” with Germany’s Interior Minister, Thomas de Maizière, urging people to stick to unserem Leben — “our way of life.”

In Birmingham, England, the Christmas market has concrete barriers installed to deter vehicular suicide bombers. According to the head of Britain’s foreign intelligence service, the magnitude of the terrorism faced by the UK is “unprecedented.”

French security forces thwarted attacks planned for December 1, against Disneyland Paris and the Christmas market on the main thoroughfare of the French capital, the Champs-Elysée.

With a pro-Sharia (Islamic law) advocate now secretary of state in the Berlin regional senate, and other Muslims even refusing to shake the hand of the German President Joachim Gauck at events designed to promote integration, Germany’s “way of life” is changing fast.

As the winter nights lengthen, an even darker shadow is falling across the run-up to the Christmas holidays in several European nations. Families in markets and shopping districts across the continent are buying presents in the knowledge that jihadists mean to target them.

On November 21, the U.S. Department of State cited a “heightened risk of terror attacks” in an advisory statement set to expire only on February 20, 2017.

“Credible information,” quotes Newsweek, prompted a warning to American travellers to “exercise caution at holiday festivals, events, and outdoor markets,” given planned attacks by Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Those attending “large holiday events, visiting tourist sites, using public transportation, and frequenting places of worship, restaurants, hotels, etc.” were likewise urged to exercise vigilance.

On December 16, German media reported that:

“a 12-year-old boy was suspected of planning two different bomb attacks in the western German city of Ludwigshafen. The German magazine ‘Focus’ said he had first tried to target a Christmas market at the end of November, before placing a backpack with explosives near a high-rise building containing both city hall and a shopping center.”

Three Christians were sentenced to be flogged for sipping wine during a communion Mass. “In a shock move,” however, “oppressive officials in Tehran have charged the three with ‘acting against national security’ for taking part in the Christian ritual.” — Iran.

“One begins to wonder if Catholic priests have become an endangered species.” Clergyman discussing latest murder of priest. — Nigeria.

“We are at a breaking point. People can’t put up with any more of this.” — Christian bishop, Egypt.

“They said all Christians should be killed. They said we were evil demons and made Pakistan impure.” — Christian survivor of Muslim mob attack, Pakistan.

Officials arrested 27 Christians — including several women and children — for the crime of “conducting Christian prayers” and being “in possession of Bibles.” — Saudi Arabia.

In September 2016, a group of escaped ISIS sex slaves finally revealed the true fate of Kayla Mueller — the 26-year-old American aid worker in Syria whom ISIS had reported dead more than a year ago. Her former fellow captives said Mueller had “refused to deny Jesus Christ despite being repeatedly raped and tortured.” In February 2015, ISIS claimed their captive had been killed during a Jordanian airstrike and sent photos of her dead body in a white burial shroud, apparently as a sign of respect. One former sex slave said that Mueller “put others before herself,” and once even refused a chance to escape with the other girls because she thought her American appearance would stand out and endanger the others.

Kayla Mueller was a 26-year-old American Christian aid worker in Syria. The Islamic State abducted her, and repeatedly raped and tortured her, then claimed that she was killed during a Jordanian airstrike. Above, Mueller is shown before her enslavement and death (left), and during her captivity (right), taken from an ISIS propaganda video.

An ISIS-related plot to butcher Christians with chainsaws in a Belgian shopping center was exposed in September after authorities interrogated a Muslim youth. The teen — the son of a man being described as a “radical imam” — was arrested for calling for the execution of Christians while walking down a street. Theo Francken, a Belgian official, said:

“I already signed the order to remove the Imam from Belgian soil. But he appealed the decision, so I can only hope for a quick sentence. Clearly radicalism runs in the family.”

Speaking for the first time about the slaughter of the 86-year-old French priest Jacques Hamel, eyewitness Guy Coponet — who was himself stabbed several times, including in the neck, and was not expected to survive — revealed how the jihadi murderers also forced him to hold a camera and record them slitting the throat of the elderly priest: “They even checked the quality of the image and that I wasn’t trembling too much. I had to film the assassination of my friend Father Jacques!” He said the assailants planned on using the video as propaganda, “which would allow them to earn their fame as a ‘martyr’ of Allah.”