RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-visit-to-islamic-england-1535581583

“Other tourists might remember London for Buckingham Palace, Piccadilly Circus and Big Ben. I’ll remember it for its failed multiculturalism. Or perhaps this is what successful multiculturalism looks like.”

Other tourists may remember London for its spectacular sights and history, but I remember it for Islam. When I was visiting the U.K. as a teenager in 2006, I got lost in an East London market. There I saw a group of women wearing head-to-toe black cloaks. I froze, confused and intimidated by the faceless figures. It was my first encounter with the niqab, which covers everything but a woman’s eyes.

This summer, I found myself heading back to the U.K. as it was plunging into a debate over Islamic dress. Boris Johnson, the country’s former foreign secretary and London’s ex-mayor, wrote a column opposing attempts to ban face-covering veils. Nonetheless, he added, “it is absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes.” The responses could hardly have been more heated.

I wanted to cut past the polemics and experience London’s Muslim communities for myself. My first visit was to Tower Hamlets, an East London borough that is about 38% Muslim, among the highest in the U.K. As I walked down Whitechapel Road, the adhan, or call to prayer, echoed through the neighborhood. Muslims walked in one direction for jumu’ah, Friday prayer, while non-Muslims went the opposite way. Each group kept its distance and avoided eye contact with the other. A sign was posted on a pole: “Alcohol restricted zone.”

Women and girls were dressed in hijabs, niqabs and abayas (robes). Some of the males wore skullcaps and thawbs, Arabic tunics, with their trousers tailored just above the ankles as per Muhammad’s example. The scene could have been lifted out of Riyadh, a testament to the Arabization of Britain’s South Asian Muslims. At the barbershop, women waited outside under the hot sun while their sons and husbands were groomed.

Inside the East London Mosque, visitors were expected to dress “modestly.” Headscarves were provided at reception for any woman who showed up without one. A kind man on staff showed me around the men’s quarters. He gave me a bag filled with booklets about Islam. In one, Muslims are encouraged to “re-establish the Shari’ah,” or Islamic law. Those who ignore this mandate are “of little worth to any society.”

That night, I visited the Houses of Parliament. Rifle-carrying police officers greeted me when I stepped out of the Tube. The extra security was mobilized in response to last year’s car and stabbing attack in Westminster by Khalid Masood, who killed five people. Outside the station, there are roadblocks along Westminster Bridge and a new security fence in front of the palace yard. I asked an officer about Masood’s attack. “I’d rather not talk about it,” he replied. “I was there that day.”

Forty-eight hours later, I woke up to the news that a car had rammed a Westminster security barrier. Police arrested Salih Khater, a 29-year-old Sudanese refugee who had been given asylum and British citizenship. Three people were injured in the attack. London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, expressed support for banning vehicles from parts of Parliament Square. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12936/italy-interior-minister-kidnapping

“The investigation notice sent to [Interior Minister Matteo] Salvini could in fact be seen as a direct attempt to prevent a minister from carrying out his political activity in accordance with the vote expressed by the majority of Italians on the basis of precise electoral commitments.” — Gianni Alemanno, former Mayor of Rome, denouncing the investigation into Salvini as unconstitutional.

“I am amazed at the astonishment of a political left that now exists only to challenge others and believes that Milan should not host the president of a European power, as if the left has the authority to decide who has the right to speak and who does not — and then they wonder why no one votes for them anymore.” — Matteo Salvini, Italian Interior Minister.

Opinion polls show that Salvini’s anti-immigration stance has boosted his League party’s approval rating.

Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini is under formal investigation for “kidnapping” after he refused to allow illegal migrants to disembark from a ship at a Sicilian port. The investigation, a political move aimed at blunting the government’s hardline stance on illegal immigration, has threatened to plunge Italy into a constitutional crisis over the separation of powers.

Sicilian Prosecutor Luigi Patronaggio said that the investigation into Salvini, the head of the anti-immigration League party, would focus on “kidnapping, illegal arrest and the abuse of power.”

Salvini responded:

“If he wants to interrogate me or even arrest me because I defend the borders and security of my country, I am proud and I look forward to it with open arms. Being investigated for defending the rights of Italians is a disgrace.”

Salvini added that we could not be “cowed” and that he would not reserve his right to immunity from prosecution: “I only did my job as minister and I am ready to do it again.”

https://www.algemeiner.com/2018/08/29/antisemitism-in-france-has-moved-from-streets-into-homes-says-head-of-french-jewish-community/

Antisemitism in France has moved “from the streets directly into the homes of Jewish people,” the head of the country’s 465,000-strong Jewish community told The Algemeiner on Wednesday.

“The Jews in France feel threatened in their own homes,” Francis Kalifat — president of CRIF, the French Jewish communal body — said during a discussion of the antisemitism that has resulted in several deaths and injuries among French Jews over the past decade.

Kalifat underlined that “what used to be attacks on buildings, or insults thrown in the street, has evolved into the most violent acts.”

In the last eighteen months, two elderly Jewish widows in Paris — Sarah Halimi in April 2017 and Mireille Knoll in March 2018 — have been murdered in brutal antisemitic assaults, while several incidents of violent raids on Jewish homes involving gangs of mainly Muslim youths have also been reported.

Sadly, as Kalifat acknowledged, the problem is not new — though the pattern of Jewish response is changing.

Following what Kalifat called “the paroxysm” of antisemitic violence in 2012-13 — a year that witnessed the murders of a rabbi and three young children during a terrorist attack at a Jewish school in Toulouse — French aliyah to Israel climbed precipitously, with 8,000 Jews emigrating to Israel in 2015 alone. That trend has now slowed, Kalifat said, overshadowed by what some call an “internal aliyah.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12921/canada-returning-jihadists

Canada’s intelligence service stated that some 60 “returnees” — fighters who had returned to Canada — “have the potential to pose a significant threat to our national security.” In other words, there are dozens of jihadis roaming free in Canada, without being apprehended or charged by authorities.

The noise surrounding the debate over jihadist returnees has been drowning out the country’s intelligence service assessment about the threat they pose to Canada’s national security — a threat that the Trudeau government is ill-prepared, ill-equipped and ideologically ill-suited to confront.

Prevention, investigation and prosecution of terrorists should be the top priority, ahead of rehabilitation and reintegration.

According to the website of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), under the section “National Security Threats – Terrorism”:

“Terrorism, including terrorist travel and the radicalization of Canadians, is the most prominent threat to Canadian interests and our national security. The intelligence community has never before faced a terrorist threat of this scope, scale, and complexity.”

The CSIS text, last modified on January 27, 2017, also notes that, despite ISIS’s huge losses, “its ideology continues to hold global appeal, including among susceptible Canadians,” and Canadians with extremist Muslim views “continue to engage in a range of terrorist activity, in Canada and abroad.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-crisis-of-democracy-is-overhyped-1535412315

As Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan lashes out against the “interest-rate lobby” for his country’s economic crisis, as Nicaragua’s dictatorship mobilizes against its own people, and as Venezuela’s socialist utopia sinks deeper into chaos, it’s remarkable how often we hear that a “crisis of democracy” is the defining political story of our times. And as Vladimir Putin’s persistent economic failures force him toward deeply unpopular pension reforms, it is even more remarkable how many people attribute this ostensible crisis to Russian cunning and might.

Admittedly, there are signs that consent-based political systems aren’t operating as smoothly as they should, including the rise of extremism and anti-Semitism in the British Labour Party, the collapse of the political center in scandal-plagued Brazil, Viktor Orbán’s determination to build “illiberal democracy” in Hungary, and the disruptive and polarizing Trump administration in the U.S. More generally, according to Freedom House, civil liberties and political rights have declined in 113 countries and improved in only 62 since 2006.

But the failures of authoritarian states are often far graver than the problems that preoccupy the professional hand-wringers of the liberal West. There are no crises in the democratic world that match the economic meltdown in Iran, the hellish conditions in Syria, or the turmoil in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where efforts to eliminate an Ebola epidemic are hampered by armed militias.