WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

‘It Is the Church that Is Under Attack’: The Persecution of Christians, October 2023 by Raymond Ibrahim

Posted By on November 24th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20174/persecution-of-christians-october

“These rapes are unfortunately customary and serve a specific purpose. It is believed that once no longer a virgin, a girl would become unsuitable for marriage, even if she belongs to a religious minority, and her only choice would be to marry one of her captors. Mishal was then forcibly converted to Islam and married to one of the kidnappers.” – bitterwinter.org, October 24, 2023, Pakistan.

“Some cases do land in courts. But it is not easy for the victims to win them. Sometimes, the victims are treated as if they were the perpetrators….” — bitterwinter.org, October 24, 2023, Pakistan.

“As we returned back to our grass-thatched roof house, we found some of the debris around the house. On entering the house, we found there was a threatening message, ‘Today if we find you around, we shall destroy you with the house. You have become an embarrassment to our Muslim family by joining a wrong religion.'” – morningstarnews.org, October 4, 2023, Uganda.

Regrettably, this scenario—a fire claims Christian lives, only for Muslim authorities to say it was “accidental”—has played out many times in the Middle East.

The following are among the abuses and murders inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of October 2023.

The Sexual Abuse and Forced Conversion of Christians

Pakistan: Three Muslim men abducted and violently gang-raped a 16-year-old Christian girl, Persis Masih, on her way to Sunday church service. The girl’s father, a pastor, and most of the family had left early for church, while Persis continued to get ready. She never appeared at church and was not home when they returned. After immediately filing a report with police, “the family spent a sleepless night contacting relatives in the hope of finding Persis,” according to the Oct. 1 report. Eventually,

“[T]he family heard Persis moaning for help outside their gate. The culprits, realizing the severity of her condition, had callously dropped her off. Supported by her elder brother Yessi Masih, Persis was brought inside the house, her physical and emotional state in shambles… [After rushing her to a hospital, the] medical examination revealed the horrifying truth—Persis had been gang-raped. Despite the trauma, she bravely identified one of the perpetrators, Muhammad Atif, thanks to the assistance of the local police and CCTV footage.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Dutch election: Anti-Islam, far-right Geert Wilders bags shock victory !!!!****

Posted By on November 23rd, 2023

https://www.euronews.com/2023/11/23/political-earthquake-in-the-netherlands-anti-islam-populist-geert-wilders-landslide-victor

The far-right populist has won a huge victory in one of the biggest political earthquakes in the Netherlands since World War II.

He’s been called the Dutch Trump. He’s been threatened with death countless times by Islamic extremists, convicted of insulting Moroccans and Britain once banned him from entering the country.

Now Geert Wilders has won a massive election victory in the Netherlands and is in pole position to form the next ruling coalition and possibly become the country’s next prime minister.

His Party for Freedom (PVV) is projected to win 37 seats, according to the latest estimates, well ahead of their nearest rival: A left-wing alliance. 

However, Wilders will likely have to convince other parties to join him in a coalition – something that could prove tricky. His target is 76 seats in the 150-seat parliament.

An exit poll revealing his landslide appeared to take even a 60-year-old political veteran by surprise.

In his first reaction, posted in a video on X, formerly Twitter, he spread his arms wide, put his face in his hands and said simply “35!” – the number of seats the poll then forecasted his party had won. 

Wilders, with his fiery tongue, has long been one of the Netherlands’ best-known lawmakers at home and abroad. His populist policies and shock of peroxide blond hair have drawn comparisons with the former US President Donald Trump.

But, unlike Trump, he seemed destined to spend his life in political opposition.

The only time Wilders came close to governing was when he supported the first coalition formed by Prime Minister Mark Rutte in 2010. But Wilders did not formally join the minority administration and brought it down after just 18 months in office in a dispute over austerity measures. Since then, mainstream parties have shunned him.

They no longer can.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Islam vs. The West: Conflict Unfortunately Seems Inevitable by Drieu Godefridi

Posted By on November 23rd, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20173/islam-vs-west-conflict

To many on the so-called “Left”, it sometimes appears as if there is no insurmountable conflict between Islam and the West, or between any differing cultures, just old bits of conflict inherited from an obscure past, which will eventually be overcome by greater material equality.

This thesis, which is in fact Marxist — wherein any conflict is always caused by unequal material situations — also is based more on wishful thinking than on historical evidence. Muslims do not massacre Christians, Jews and Hindus because they are richer, but because they are non-Muslims. At least, that is what many mass murderers have been stating for more than ten centuries…

The “clash of civilizations” seems to be about religion, a topic that many in the West thought had been put to bed ages ago.

The “no-go” Islamic zones in Europe, the attacks on 9/11, London’s 7/7 attacks… the murder of Theo Van Gogh, the massacre at the Bataclan, the constant censorship (blasphemy laws), and more: a brief look at recent history of the immigrants bears witness to what seems a pervasive inability, or lack of desire, to adapt to the values of their new host countries.

That, sadly, may be one of the reasons multiculturalism in the West has been such a failure — a failure of the West. When westerners stopped having children, they started importing people en masse, indiscriminately, as if people were all the same. People are not all the same. Many Muslims, or at least a significant proportion of them, seem to have no intention of integrating, or of discarding the values they brought with them, which they appear to prefer to Western values.

Samuel Huntington’s insight into the clash of civilizations is brilliant and true, but a few details in his thesis might benefit from a bit of updating. Moreover, some of his critics, especially on the “Left”, might wish to rethink a few of their “conclusions”.

According to Huntington, since 1989 the clash between civilizations has been essentially cultural, rather than economic or political. The collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked the transition from a world dominated by ideological oppositions — between communism and capitalism, imperialism and its counter-movement — to an era of cultural divergence, with the international political scene simultaneously verging on the multipolar and multicultural.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Irrelevance of Proportionality Nils A. Haug

Posted By on November 22nd, 2023

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/israel/2023/11/the-irrelevance-of-proportionality/

Voted into power by the Palestinian people of Gaza during 2006, and with extensive support in the West Bank (Samaria and Judea), but designated a terror group by Western nations, Hamas is a jihadist Islamist mob of fanatics determined to create a Sharia law-based Caliphate free of non-believers. Specific animosity is directed at followers of the monotheist faiths of Judaism and Christianity which compete with radical Islamist ideology over critical ideals of identity, land, religion, and divine promise.

The actualization of Hamas’ intended utopia depends upon fulfilment of an apocalyptic event which would lead to a grand finale at the end of time. This would be the period of redemption and blessing of all faithful devotees of Allah and his prophet, Mohammed. Together with certain passages in the Quran which mention violence against non-Muslims, jihadists embrace authoritative scriptures known as the Hadith. This collection of Islamic writings in Arabic, attributed to Mohammed, contain an overriding prescription pertinent to apocalyptic destiny:

The time will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and the Muslims kill them, until the        Jew hides behind the stones and the trees and the stones or the trees say, ‘O Muslim, O Servant         of God, this is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him.’

The excerpt describes genocidal intent against which Israel and its people are forced to defend their right to exist. To justify this agenda, Islamism propounds a dichotomous ethical construction for humankind: a glorious destiny for Muslim faithful but with death and destruction for all non-believers. Religious convictions enable radical actors to ignore Western laws regarding ethical war behaviour. Yet, Israel as a democratic nation is bound by the just-war theory and is carefully monitored by Western powers, which compromises their ability to respond as necessary in a permanently hostile environment. In the world’s eyes, it is becoming increasingly difficult for Israel to hold the high moral ground due to unintended civilian casualties in Gaza however much the Israeli military machine, the IDF, complies with traditional rules of war and humanitarian concerns. To the contrary, Hamas eschews any limiting rules of war or considerations of human decency. 

ISRAEL Comments turned off

How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways Christopher Akehurst

Posted By on November 22nd, 2023

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/society/2023/11/how-do-i-hate-thee-let-me-count-the-ways/

“Abhorrence of Israel is now near universal and few apart from politicians with Jews in their electorates make any pretence at distinguishing between the race and the nation. But why the concentrated hate? Why the coordinated mobs worldwide, why is there not even a vestige of sympathy for butchered victims whose only offence was to have been Israelis? Why is it the Israelis whose “war crimes” are condemned in our federal parliament, with the sinister Adam Bandt, showing all the compassion of a judge in a Moscow show trial, parroting Hamas about “illegal occupation of  Palestinian territories”? Doesn’t he know Israel no longer “occupies” Gaza? Doesn’t he know that the “ceasefire” he and the rest of the Left harp on about would leave Hamas unopposed in its crusade to destroy a state and its population? Leftists are always going about the evils of genocide. Ah, but this would be an acceptable genocide, the triumph of justice, evil “occupiers” and “colonialists” getting their just deserts – you wouldn’t put it past some on the Left to want to try the same thing here.”

Councillors in what was known until recently as the Victorian city of Moreland in Melbourne’s inner north feel that their municipal talents should not be limited to such tiresome tasks as collecting rubbish and filling in potholes. They ought to have a voice, they think – even as they reel from the blow of the ignominious collapse of their other cherished “Voice”– a voice this time that ‘racists’ and rednecks can’t torpedo, that will carry beyond their dreary municipality of jerry-built apartment blocks and unenticing cafés, one that will be heard in the counsels of the world. So they sign up to the idiocy that currently reigns supreme in the West (they’ve long been on board with the earlier idiocies of race and sex) and pass a resolution that goes beyond the usual wishy-washy requests for a ceasefire in Israel’s war of self-defence against Hamas but actually condemns Israeli military action in Gaza full stop. They mutter about “war crimes”, though not those committed by the terrorists of Hamas, and they wouldn’t mind a boycott too.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

U.S.-Mexico Border Becomes Global Terrorism Hotspot Under Biden Aaron Flanigan

Posted By on November 22nd, 2023

https://amac.us/newsline/national-security/u-s-mexico-border-becomes-global-terrorism-hotspot-under-biden/

For nearly three years, the American people have watched in horror as the crisis on the southern border has injected deadly drugs, violent crime, and human trafficking into American communities. But even as the nation continues to reel from these consequences, one crucial element of the border catastrophe has gone largely overlooked – the rising threat from radical Islamic extremism.

Thanks to the Biden administration’s eradication of nearly every border security measure enacted by President Donald Trump, the southern border is now becoming the next hotspot for terrorism and violence—particularly as war rages in the Middle East and Hezbollah and Hamas seek to infiltrate the United States.

According to a September report released by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) analyzing the “Homeland Threat Assessment” for fiscal year 2024, “[t]errorists and criminal actors may exploit the elevated flow and increasingly complex security environment to enter the United States.”

The report further notes that “individuals with potential terrorism connections continue to attempt to enter the Homeland” as the border crisis rages onward—a shocking admission that has elicited little public acknowledgment from Democrats, White House officials, or the mainstream media.

As of July, months before the end of the 2023 fiscal year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) had already encountered roughly 160 individuals on the Terrorism Watchlist—an approximately 60 percent increase in encounters from fiscal year 2022.

Even more terrifying, those numbers only represent the people apprehended by CBP. There is no telling how many more were among the estimated 1.7 million “gotaways” who have escaped completely undetected into the interior of the country.

ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

Accusing Israel of genocide is despicable doublethink Gary Lineker’s Israel-bashing has exposed the moral rot of the woke West. Brendan O’Neill

Posted By on November 22nd, 2023

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/11/22/accusing-israel-of-genocide-is-despicable-doublethink/

Gary Lineker is taking the piss now, isn’t he? He’s had his knuckles rapped by the BBC numerous times for sharing his centrist-dad blather online. For using the public platform gifted to him by us licence-fee payers – on pain of criminal conviction – to advertise his milquetoast views that most people think are bollocks. And yet now, in studied defiance of his bosses, he’s given voice to his most ignorant political opinion yet. To a dinner-party prejudice that isn’t only irritating but will feel genuinely hurtful to many who are forced by law to make Lineker rich. He’s tweeted a link to a video in which Israel is accused of committing genocide against the Palestinians.

Yes, as if Israel hadn’t suffered enough at the murderous hands of Hamas, now it must endure the indignity of a football pundit wondering out loud if it might be guilty of the worst war crime of all. What next, Wayne Rooney sitting in judgement on the Democratic Republic of Congo? ‘Worth 13 minutes of anyone’s time’, said the Match of the Day presenter turned amateur Hague sleuth in his retweet of a conversation between the Guardian’s Owen Jones and Raz Segal, an associate professor of genocide studies at Stockton University in New Jersey. In that chat, Segal says that what Israel is doing in Gaza is a ‘textbook genocide’. Textbook. That is, it conforms precisely to the definition of genocide, which is the murder of a large number of people from an ethnic group with the aim of destroying that ethnic group. This is what Lineker is sharing to his 8.9million followers on X. The lie that the Jewish State has a bloodlust to vaporise all Palestinians.

This is serious, no? Mr Lineker is a representative of Britain’s public broadcaster, the BBC. He is the face of BBC Sport. Did he not stop to think how the Jewish section of the public might feel about his sharing of a clip damning Israel as genocidal? Did it not cross his mind that our Jewish citizens who are compelled to pay his wages might now feel a lesser part of ‘the public’ that the Beeb is meant to embody? The vast majority of British Jews support Israel (if not the Netanyahu government). They consider it ‘the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people’. Call me a contrarian, but I think people paid by the public to provide a service to the public ought not to alienate any section of that public by sharing inflammatory ideological claims.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Maryland Hate-Crime Commission Official Suspended after Comparing Israel to Nazi Germany By Haley Strack

Posted By on November 22nd, 2023

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/maryland-hate-crime-commission-official-compares-israel-to-nazi-germany/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=blog-post&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=top-bar-latest&utm_term=second

Maryland’s attorney general has temporarily suspended an official on the state’s Commission on Hate Crime Response who compared Israel to Nazi Germany in a series of social-media posts and claimed that reports of Hamas murdering Jewish babies were “fake.”

Zainab Chaudry is the Maryland director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and was appointed to the hate-crime commission by Maryland attorney general Anthony Brown in August. Made up of 20 stakeholder representatives, the group is designed to “develop strategies to prevent and respond to hate crime activity and evaluate state laws and policies relating to hate crimes.” The commission’s first annual report to the General Assembly is slated for December 2024 and will detail recommendations on addressing hate crimes.

Following Hamas’s October 7 massacre of 1,200 Israelis, Chaudry made a series of antisemitic social media posts. On October 17, she posted a photo of Israeli flags at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin next to a photo of Nazi Germany flags at the same gate in 1936. She captioned the post: “That moment when you become what you hated most.”

“The Commission must serve as a model for the entire State on how to respond to incidents of hate and bias,” Brown said on Tuesday. “The Commission is facing its first test. How we respond has deep implications. I take this very seriously, and I will do everything possible to bring people together to move forward the critical work of this Commission.”

Directly after Hamas invaded Israel, Chaudry referred to the attack on Facebook as an “uprising in Palestine.” She asked followers to remember that Palestinians “are a people who are illegally occupied.”

“Militarized occupation is inherently evil and violent,” she continued. “The state of Israel was created through the oppression, persecution and subjugation of Palestinians. It sits on the graves of martyrs and people forcibly displaced from their homes, forced to endure humiliation, terror, desecration of their holy spaces.”

Chaudry accompanied her post with a Malcolm X quote: “If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”

On Facebook two days later, Chaudry criticized elected officials for showing “support for an apartheid government that has been waging terror against Palestinians for decades.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

USC Professor Relegated to Remote Teaching after Criticizing Hamas in Front of Pro-Palestinian Students By David Zimmermann

Posted By on November 22nd, 2023

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/usc-professor-relegated-to-remote-teaching-after-criticizing-hamas-in-front-of-pro-palestinian-students/

The University of Southern California relegated economics professor John Strauss to a remote-teaching position after he denounced Hamas in front of students.

Strauss, who is a Jewish supporter of Israel, is barred from holding classes on campus for the rest of the fall semester. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression is speaking out on behalf of Strauss, so that other professors don’t have to face the same treatment.

“By requiring Professor Strauss to teach remotely for the remainder of the semester, USC has violated its own clear commitments to protect faculty free speech,” FIRE program officer Jessie Appleby told National Review. “Universities are supposed to be places of free inquiry and debate, but debate is impossible without the freedom to disagree and dissent — even when disagreement might be upsetting to others.”

On November 9, Strauss criticized Hamas terrorists as he was walking past pro-Palestinian student protesters for the second time that Thursday. The professor remarked, “Hamas are murderers. That’s all they are. Every one should be killed, and I hope they all are.”

One of the protesters posted a deceptively edited video which took the last sentence out of context, making it appear as if Strauss wished all Palestinians would die. He attested he wasn’t advocating for that.

A longer clip showed the exchange in full.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Jihad on Churches in France by Raymond Ibrahim

Posted By on November 22nd, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20171/jihad-on-churches-in-france

A map, published by Christianophobie.fr, which marks with a red pin every spot where a church in France was attacked between just 2017-2018, looks like a war zone. Virtually the entire map of France is covered in red. Even Snopes, which presents itself as the final arbiter on what is real or fake news, admitted the accuracy of the map, while trying to minimize its findings…

One wonders if [Snopes] would be so casual if a Christian vandalized a mosque, or broke into a mosque while screaming Christian slogans?

Christian churches are under attack throughout Western Europe, with very recent examples from Austria, Germany, Italy and Sweden.

No Western nation, however, seems to experience as many attacks on its churches as France, once known as the “Eldest Daughter of the Church.”

Investigative journalist Amy Mek tweeted on July 1, 2023:

“Attacks on Churches are the norm in France; two Churches a day are vandalized — they are being burned, demolished, and abandoned, and their adherents are being sacrificed on the altar of political correctness. Priests are under constant threat. At what point will France’s open border politicians be held responsible?”

That last question inadvertently identifies the culprits — namely, migrants from the Muslim world, where attacks on churches are not abnormal.