RUTHFULLY YOURS

CAIRO, EGYPT–The killing outside his home in Cairo yesterday of a top general responsible for anti-terrorism operations in the restive Sinai province was part of an assassination plot involving Muslim Brotherhood splinter groups and top terror operatives from Hamas in Gaza, Egyptian security sources told PJ Media last night.

The murdered general was responsible for shutting down the smuggling tunnels between Hamas-controlled Gaza and Egypt, and it is believed that the joint operation was intended to relieve some pressure from the Egyptian army’s operation that had placed a stranglehold on one of Hamas’ main sources of income and slowed the movement of weapons and fighters from Gaza into Sinai waging battle against the Egyptian government, including the Islamic State’s group in Sinai.

A statement published after the assassination also invoked the death of a senior Muslim Brotherhood operative killed in a shootout with police earlier this month.

The New York Times reports:

Gunmen suspected of being Islamist militants killed a senior Egyptian Army officer on Saturday in a brazen daylight shooting outside the man’s home in a Cairo suburb.

The state media identified the officer as Brig. Gen. Adel Ragai, commander of the army’s Ninth Armored Division.

General Ragai, according to multiple pro-state papers, had previously been deployed to Egypt’s restive Sinai Peninsula, where the military is fighting Islamic State militants.

The military did not issue a statement.

“I heard the gunshots and saw him die before my eyes,” Sumaya Zein el-Abedeen, the general’s wife, told the state media. She said neighbors had told her that they saw three gunmen with assault rifles in a vehicle outside the couple’s home. The men fired on General Ragai and his driver. Both men were taken to a hospital, where they were declared dead.

A group called Liwa al-Thawra, the Revolution Brigade, claimed responsibility on Twitter for the attack. The group’s account was then suspended.

General Ragai was also responsible for an armored division in Sinai:

The head of an armored division in #Sinai was tragically murdered today in Cairo outside of his home. Liwa Al Thawra claimed the murder.

A court in The Hague recently ruled that Geert Wilders can be tried on charges of “inciting racial hatred.” In response to this attack on free speech and truth-telling about Islam, the Glazov Gang is running its interview with Mr. Wilders, which became one of the program’s most popular episodes.

Mr. Wilders came on the program to crystallize the only way the West will be able to preserve itself.http://jamieglazov.com/2016/10/23/video-geert-wilders-on-the-wests-battle-for-freedom-on-the-glazov-gang/

Don’t miss it!

And make sure to watch Jamie Glazov introduce Geert Wilders at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s 20th Anniversary Restoration Weekend:

If an imam violently protests something, the liberal elite always supports the false charge of “Islamophobia.” If a peaceful protest is led by a Catholic bishop, the same elite always rejects it under the name of “freedom of expression.”

The “Caliph” of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ridiculed by Charlie Hebdo, triggered self-censorship because of “hate speech,” while the work of Chris Ofili “The Holy Virgin Mary,” in which the mother of Jesus is covered with feces and images of genitalia, was defended by the New York Times as “free speech.” Does this now mean that some religions are more equal than others?

On Halloween night, only the “Sexy Nun” is available, while “Caliph” Baghdadi can rape his Yazidi and Christian sex slaves with impunity.

The world’s biggest shopping portal, Amazon, sells many Halloween costumes. One of the novelties in 2016 has been the “Sexy Burka”, the typical obscurantist cloak that the Taliban and the Islamic State impose on women. But the sexy burqa, which on Amazon UK was priced at £18.99, did not last long.

The commercial colossus of Jeff Bezos removed the item from the website, after Amazon had been swamped with accusations of “racism”, “Islamophobia,” of marketing an Islamic garment with the white face of a model and using “a religious garment for commercial purposes”. “You are disgusting, my culture is not your costume”, wrote many users of the Islamic faith. Others used a less adorable tone: “Whoever you are, you should fear Allah. This is not a joke.”

A spokesman for Amazon promptly responded: “All Marketplace sellers must follow our selling guidelines and those who don’t will be subject to action including potential removal of their account. The product in question is no longer available”.

So that Halloween parody of the global symbol of female oppression has been censored. It is because Islamic veils contradict Western values of freedom, equality and human dignity so totally that this relativistic progressive mentality defends these Islamic veils, as it does the burkini, with loyalty.

But here also lies a double standard. What about the “Sexy Nun” Halloween costume that mocks the Catholic Church? Despite the protests of many Catholics customers, the “Sexy Nun” is still on sale at Amazon. Is it not a form of “Christianophobia”? Also, a nun is a religious figure, while a burqa is mere cloth.

In the last four years, more than 100 Christian pastors and other religious officials have been deported from Turkey, and banned from reentering.

“When Jesus reached 30 years of age, Allah gave him the duty of being a prophet. He then began inviting people to believe in Allah.” — Turkish textbook on Christianity.

“[R]eligious minority students are faced with the option of taking the class or sitting alone somewhere else on the school premises during the classes, thus separating them from their peers and singling out their religious differences.” — U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, Turkey Textbook Report.

It is high time that the activists of the global “human rights community” condemned or at least publicly discussed this “culture of hate” in the Muslim communities — and particularly the Christianophobia.

American pastors in Turkey are being arrested hand over fist.

American Pastor Andrew Brunson, of the Resurrection Protestant Church, was arrested in Izmir (Smyrna)on October 7 alongside his wife, Norine Lyn Brunson, for “threatening the national security of Turkey.” Brunson is expected to be deported in 15 days. The couple is still being held in detention.

Turkish authorities also seized the residence permit of Ryan D. Keating, an American student pursuing a PhD in the philosophy of religion at Ankara University. Keating is a Christian who heads the Ankara Refugee Ministry for the Kurtulus Church. While he was leaving Turkey for work purposes, he was told at the airport that his residence permit in Turkey had been cancelled in September for “national security”, meaning that he will not be able to reenter the country. His wife and children are still in Ankara.

Yet another American Protestant pastor, Patrick Jansen, was not allowed to reenter Gaziantep, where he served. And still another American Protestant was ordered to leave Turkey upon landing at the airport.

They are not the first. In the last four years, more than 100 Christian pastors and other religious officials have been deported from Turkey — the visas of some of them were not renewed or were completely cancelled. They have been banned from reentering.

Pastor Brunson had also been exposed to an armed attack in front of the church in 2011, by a Turkish Muslim from the city of Manisa who shouted: “Al-Qaeda will bring you to account”, called members of the congregation “traitors” and threatened them with “bombing the church in Manisa.”

In the meantime, the Protestant Life Bridge Church, in the southern city of Antakya (Antioch), has been closed and sealed upon a complaint of the National Education Directorate and the order of the governor’s office for “giving education illegally.” The church, officials of which are also American citizens, was giving Bible lessons to its members.

The congregation has started looking for a new place to hold their Sunday services, the Turkish Christian news channel SAT-7 TURK reported on October 8.

The Protestant community in Turkey has been exposed to discrimination and persecution for a long time.

According to a global report by the organization Open Doors,

BEIJING—Ahead of a top-level Communist Party conclave, Chinese President Xi Jinping is sending an unmistakable signal about what he expects from the tens of millions in the party’s ranks: total loyalty.

Culminating a weekslong state-media blitz hailing the sacrifice of Communist forces that trekked thousands of miles in the mid-1930s to find a haven to continue their revolution, Mr. Xi on Friday called for an equal display of commitment. “In our Long March of today, we must strengthen the party’s leadership, persist with strict party discipline,” he said in a speech carried on national television and emblazoned across the web.

His rallying cry was also a warning. As China’s ruling party braces for a year of intense political jostling ahead of a major leadership shuffle, its leader will brook no dissent within party ranks.

When more than 300 top party officials gather Monday for a four-day policy meeting themed on discipline, Mr. Xi’s own clout will also come in for a test. The Central Committee’s closed-door plenum comes after an anticorruption drive that has punished more than a million officials over nearly four years, and ahead of a party congress due late 2017 that will be his chance to install his allies in top posts.

The plenum “marks the start of a critical year” for the party, as it grapples with uncertainties in leadership transition and pushback against Mr. Xi’s domineering style, said Matthias Stepan, a specialist in Chinese domestic politics at the Berlin-based Mercator Institute for China Studies.

Already, more than a dozen provincial party chiefs have been replaced in the past six months, with some succeeded by up-and-coming officials seen as being close to Mr. Xi. Speculation has also grown within party ranks over whether Mr. Xi may break from existing retirement norms to keep his anticorruption chief, Wang Qishan, in office.

Such a move, analysts say, may destabilize a party already wary of Mr. Xi’s stature as China’s most dominant leader in decades. Discord at the party’s highest levels spilled into the open this summer, when Mr. Xi and China’s No. 2 leader, Premier Li Keqiang, disagreed over economic policies, creating confusion among officials as they grappled with a slowing economy.

Mr. Xi has cashiered generals and is putting the politically powerful military through its most thoroughgoing reorganization in a half-century. Restructuring is also being pushed onto large state-owned industries, some of which have resisted, leading to a reminder from Mr. Xi this month that they must obey the party.