RUTHFULLY YOURS

In the Dutch province of Friesland, 250 of 720 existing churches have been transformed or closed. The Fatih Camii Mosque in Amsterdam once was the Saint Ignatius Church. A synagogue in The Hague was turned into the Al Aqsa Mosque. In Flanders, in place of a famous church, a luxury hotel now stands. Catholic arches, columns and windows still soar between menus and tables for customers.

“The French will not wake up until Notre Dame becomes a mosque.” — Emile Cioran, author.

Germany is literally selling its churches. Between 1990 and 2010, the German Evangelical Church closed 340 churches. Recently in Hamburg, a Lutheran church was purchased by the Muslim community.

“History teaches us that these transformations are rarely innocent.” — Bertrand Dutheil de La Rochère, assistant to Marine Le Pen.

Last year, at the famous Biennale artistic festival in Venice, Swiss artist Christian Büchel took the ancient Catholic Church of Santa Maria della Misericordia and converted it into a mosque. The church had not been used for Christian worship for more than forty years. Büchel decorated the baroque walls with Arabic writing, covered the floor with a prayer rug, and hid the crucifix behind a prayer niche indicating the direction of Mecca, the holy city of Islam. It was a provocation.

But everywhere else in Europe, the practice of Islam really is outstripping Christianity, while Jews are leaving — not only France but the old continent — en masse.

In January, Zvi Ammar, the president of the Marseille Israelite Consistory, recommended that Jews that stop wearing a kippah (skullcap) when out in the street. Too many anti-Semitic incidents have cast fear into the hearts of Marseille’s 70,000 Jews, who make up a tenth of the city’s population. 500 Jews already left the city in 2015. A few days ago, Mr. Ammar announced another attempt at appeasement: the conversion of a historic synagogue into a mosque.

After the attack, some villagers gathered and started threatening other Christians, demanding they either convert to Islam or move out of the area. Then an Islamic religious decree was issued, to hand over Masih to the local Islamic clerics so that he could be burned alive for blasphemy.

Why was only Masih (a Christian) accused of blasphemy, when Bilal (a Muslim) had obviously watched the video in question?

The Christians who are left are searching to find an alternate place to live, and are now facing hatred in the guise of a boycott. No one is selling them food or any daily essentials.

In Punjab, harassing Christians has become a norm; a way of getting rid of them. Every time Christians are threatened and forced to leave the area, the charge is always blasphemy.

It started as a normal day in the remote Pakistani village of Chak-44 for Imran Masih, a Christian man, and Bilal, his Muslim friend, in mid-April. Masih had revealed to Bilal that the woman he had fallen in love with was a Muslim.

According to media reports, Masih was called away urgently and left his phone with Bilal, who apparently came across a video that appeared in Masih’s Facebook feed, which allegedly contained content against the Muslim Prophet Mohammad. Bilal’s accusation that Masih had viewed that video became the reason to charge Masih with blasphemy.

Germans have an undeserved reputation for humorlessness, but at least one court in Hamburg is guilty of not getting the joke. A panel of judges found this week that satirist Jan Böhmermann libeled Recep Tayyip Erdogan by reading a poem mocking the Turkish President’s anatomy and his alleged relations with farm animals. Mr. Böhmermann is now forbidden from repeating all but a few lines of the poem out of deference to Mr. Erdogan’s rights.

That’s a hoot. Mr. Erdogan’s government has made itself notorious in recent years by shutting down opposition newspapers, imprisoning journalists on flimsy pretexts and filing thousands of criminal charges against Turks he deems guilty of insulting him. He has also opined that Israel is “more barbaric than Hitler.” Earlier this year, his bodyguards assaulted people peacefully protesting his speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.

Now he’s trying to extend his misuse of the legal system to Europe. Erdogan filed his complaint against Mr. Böhmermann using an archaic German law forbidding insults against foreign leaders. German Chancellor Angela Merkel had the legal authority to stop the suit but allowed it to go forward, largely out of fear that Mr. Erdogan might renege on his deal to curb the flow of refugees into Europe. CONTINUE AT SITE

2016.05.20 (Tanzania)
Islamic extremists hack three people at a rival mosque to death with machetes. 2016.05.19 (Afghanistan)
Five children and two women are among a family of eleven exterminated by Taliban bombers. 2016.05.17 (Iraq)
Thirty people at a market are exterminated by a Fedayeen suicide bomber. 2016.05.17 (Iraq)
A female suicide bomber murders over forty people who gathered to help victims of an earlier blast. 2016.05.15 (Syria)
Two locals are brutally murdered by teenage French ISIS. 2016.05.15 (Iraq)
A suicide bomb attack on a cooking gas factory leaves fourteen others dead.

2016.05.20 (Tanzania)
Islamic extremists hack three people at a rival mosque to death with machetes.

2016.05.19 (Afghanistan)
Five children and two women are among a family of eleven exterminated by Taliban bombers.

2016.05.17 (Iraq)
Thirty people at a market are exterminated by a Fedayeen suicide bomber.

2016.05.17 (Iraq)
A female suicide bomber murders over forty people who gathered to help victims of an earlier blast.

2016.05.15 (Syria)
Two locals are brutally murdered by teenage French ISIS.

2016.05.15 (Iraq)
A suicide bomb attack on a cooking gas factory leaves fourteen others dead.

Two French festivals on Friday cancelled shows by Eagles of Death Metal, the band whose November 13th show in Paris turned into a bloodbath, after the frontman made remarks critical of Muslims.

The Rock en Seine and Cabaret Vert festivals took issue with an interview by singer and guitarist Jesse Hughes, who renewed allegations that Muslim staff at the Bataclan club was involved in the attack.

“Being in total disagreement with Jesse Hughes’ recent allegations given in an interview with an American media (outlet), both Cabaret Vert and Rock en Seine festivals have decided to cancel the band’s performance,” said a statement by the two festivals, which take place in late August.

Eagles of Death Metal had briefly become heroes in France after Islamic extremists assaulted their concert, killing 90 people in the deadliest of a series of coordinated attacks that claimed 130 lives across the metropolis. But Hughes has since proved controversial in his remarks. Unlike many rockers, he is known for his right-wing politics and champions gun ownership as well as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.#In an interview published last week, Hughes called for greater scrutiny of Muslims in the West and alleged that conservative Christians were unfairly being blamed for global problems.

“I saw Muslims celebrating in the street during the attack. I saw it with my own eyes. In real time! How did they know what was going on? There must have been coordination,” he told Taki’s Magazine, a publication of Greek-born conservative commentator Taki Theodoracopulos that has faced criticism for its writings on race.

This is my favorite story in some time. And it’s not even a “narrative” — it really happened.

First, though, the disgraceful background: Just when you thought German chancellor Angela Merkel had run out of nails to hammer into the coffin of Western liberalism, she permitted a criminal prosecution to proceed against Jan Böhmermann, a young German comedian, for the “crime” of insulting Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, our Islamic-supremacist, jihad-supporting NATO “ally,” who — if we may borrow a phrase from a good friend of his — has “fundamentally transformed” Turkey from a Western-leaning democracy to a suffocating sharia state.

Herr Böhmermann performed an edgy stand-up routine that featured a poem in which he described Erdogan as a “goat f***er,” among other not-niceties. A few months earlier, the comic had similarly poked fun at the Turkish president as a way of illuminating the obscenities of Erdogan’s dictatorial rule. This prompted the thin-skinned despot’s government to lodge a formal complaint with Berlin. Böhmermann’s latest skit was intended to draw attention to the fact that, with all the talk of bringing Turkey into the EU, Erdogan — far from embracing Western liberalism — was seeking to impose his blasphemy fatwa on Germany.

In Imam Erdogan’s emirate, which was the main focus of my book Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy, such insolence lands a person in jail — as, by the way, does political dissent and what used to be known as news reporting.

As previously noted here, Erdogan is one of the pioneers of the Muslim Brotherhood–crafted “integrate but don’t assimilate” strategy for overrunning Europe and, in time, the United States. The plan urges Muslims to relocate to the West but maintain Islamic mores while pressuring the home governments to accommodate sharia (Islamic law).

A few years back, Erdogan gave a speech to a throng of Muslim migrants in Cologne, decrying Western pressure on Muslims to assimilate in their new European homelands as “a crime against humanity.” His goal is to transport repressive Islamic standards to the West, where they will snuff out free speech and other liberties inconvenient to tyrants. The game-plan is working to a fare-thee-well, feeding the explosion of Islamic enclaves that gradually assert their autonomy from Western governance while serving as incubators of jihadist radicalization.

Merkel is supposed to be part of the West’s defense against such aggression. But she is not the West. She is modern, feckless Europe. So when Erdogan complained about a harmless comic bit, she snapped to. Under an antiquated German law, Böhmermann could be sentenced to five years in prison for a “deliberate insult” of a foreign head of state.

Taken to its extremes, the urge to cleanse a culture of elements that do not live up to the politically correct orthodoxy currently in political vogue unsettlingly echoes the Taliban and ISIS credos of destroying everything that does not accord with their Quranic views. The desire “not to offend,” taken to its logical conclusion, is a totalitarian impulse, which threatens to destroy everything that disagrees with its doctrines. Crucially, who gets to decide what is offensive?

The question arises: How much purging and expiation will be needed to render a country’s culture politically correct?

“When we have days of carnivals and music the goal is that these days should be experienced as positive by everyone. The Swedish flag is not allowed as part of carnival dress. … Positive and bright feelings must be in focus. … School photos must obviously be free of national symbols.” — Swedish school in Halmstad.

Rome covered up its classical nude statues for a visit from Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, in January 2016. A decade ago, who would have even imagined such sycophancy?

In 1966, one of Sweden’s most popular children’s writers, Jan Lööf, published Grandpa is a Pirate, an illustrated children’s book, which featured, among other characters, the wicked pirate Omar and the street peddler, Abdullah. The book has been a bestseller ever since, and has been translated into English (as My Grandpa is a Pirate), Spanish, French and other languages. Ten years ago, 100,000 copies of it were even distributed to the Swedish public with McDonald’s Happy Meals, as part of an initiative to support reading among children.

Ah, but those were the days of yesteryear! Now, fifty years later, the book is no longer tolerable. The now 76-year-old author told Swedish news outlets that his publisher recently said that unless he rewrites the book and changes the illustrations, it will be taken off the market. The publisher also threatened to withdraw another of his books unless it is redone: it features an illustration of a black jazz musician who sleeps with his sunglasses on.

The Iranian regime has been escalating the advancement of its ballistic missile program ever since the nuclear agreement went into effect in January 2016. Some of Iran’s dangerous ballistic missiles can carry multiple warheads.

In the last four months, Iran has launched ballistic missiles several times. Some of these missiles had a phrase “Israel should be wiped off the Earth” written on them in Hebrew.

The Iranian regime is increasingly provoking other countries in the region and has made it clear that the ballistic missiles are aimed at targeting other nations. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the head of Iran’s Aerospace forces, said to FARS news agency (Iran’s state-controlled media outlet) that “Iran has built missiles that can hit targets at 2,000 Km. They are designed to hit Israel at such a distance.” He added that Islamic countries have surrounded Israel and “its [Israel’s] life is short. So it will collapse in any given war – long before a missile is even fired.”

This week, an Iranian general acknowledged that Iran has recently launched ballistic missiles again. This means that Iran has breached the nuclear deal and UN resolutions for the third time in the last four months.

Although President Obama and the Iranian regime argue that Iran’s launching of ballistic missiles is not violating anything, the UN resolutions and the nuclear agreement indicate otherwise.

The United Nations Security Council resolution (section 3 of Annex B of resolution 2231, 2015) is crystal clear. The resolution “calls upon Iran not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology.”

Up to now, most of the anti-boycott activity has been basically defensive. It assumes that Israel can be vindicated by providing relevant information.

Regarding the anti-Israel activists themselves, however, defensive strategies are ineffective, These people have no intention whatsoever to be fair; they treat information offered on behalf of Israel with derision. To deter them and drive them off, one must use strategies that fall under the rubric “This is going to hurt you more than us!”

So there are two principal questions. What activities are best carried out by government itself and what are best delegated to private organizations? And should organizations specialize in particular strategies or can a given single organization draw upon all the available strategies?

An earlier article defined and classified various strategies for combating both boycotts directed against Israel other kinds of hostile activity. Not discussed, however, were questions about who or what bodies should be implementing which strategies.

Such questions have become more acute, now that the Israeli government has designated substantial means for defending Israel from boycotts. We shall consider these questions after briefly reviewing the range of available strategies.
Kinds of Strategy

Up to now, most of the anti-boycott activity has been basically defensive. It assumes that Israel can be vindicated by providing relevant information. Either one complains that the anti-Israel activists are misrepresenting reality, by lying or omitting relevant facts or whatever. Or one complains that there are other countries that obviously deserve to be targeted in the alleged respects, but Israel alone is picked out for criticism and attack. Both strategies fall under the rubric “It’s not fair!” They are so familiar as to need no further elaboration here.

This week, five Muslim firebrands refused to stand for the magistrate before whom they appeared, as did their supporters in the body of the court. The defendants understand that their creed submits to no authority but Allah — a fundamental principle lost on all too many in the politically correct West
The election of Sadiq Khan, a Muslim, as mayor of London is only the latest example of someone professing the Islamic faith rising to occupy a powerful, influential position in a secular country. So what, some might ask? What does it matter how and where one worships? Public officials the world over belong to many faiths or none of them. So why the fuss over Islam? Isn’t Islam just another religion? After all, it is presented by all Muslims, and many non-Muslims agree, that Islam is one of the great Abrahamic religions, alongside Judaism and Christianity.

That assertion concerning Islam is categorically incorrect, and here is why: Christianity existed for centuries and Judaism for millennia before Muhammad began to proclaim Islam, based on messages he claimed came to him from Allah — the name he ascribed to the One God — that were delivered by the archangel Gabriel. The fact that some of those messages contained references to events and people of the Torah and the Bible is no authentication of the claimed Abrahamic nature of Islam. There certainly is no mention of Islam in either of those holy scriptures, even though Muhammad asserted that Islam, as the only true religion, existed from the beginning of time and all other religions were a distortion of the original true faith.

Far more important is the simple fact that Islam is not just another religion. Islam is drastically different from all other religions, Abrahamic or not. Indeed, Islam is not a religion so much as a political ideology in a similar vein to communism and Nazism, two doctrines with which it happens to have much in common. It regulates the lives of its adherents down to the most minute detail, instructing them how to behave, what to do and what to avoid in order to please Allah and thereby earn the reward of Paradise. These edicts extend even so far as a ban on wishing non-believers “Merry Christmas” and sending Festive Season greeting cards. One of the most important of the instruction is that Muslims must remain true and faithful to Islam at all times, although they are allowed, in fact encouraged, to fake other loyalties when such deception is to the benefit of Islam or to their personal advantage. There are also dire warnings of eternal hellfire for disobedience. The religious element in Islam is simply the means of enforcing the compliance in all matters of believers by constantly evoking the supreme authority of Allah. Reference to “political Islam” as an aspect of the doctrine is a misnomer. Islam is all political and only political.

The vast majority of Muslims, including most of their religious leaders, are not conscious of this — the true nature of Islam — although it was perfectly well understood and acted upon by many notable champions of the faith. It could be fairly said that most Muslims live in innocent ignorance. That, however, does not alter reality.