RUTHFULLY YOURS

The German people are suffering the consequences of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s reckless open door “refugee” policy. Merkel laid down the welcome mat for around a million migrants last year, many of them from troubled areas of the Middle East and South Asia, including Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. There have been four violent attacks in Germany within just the past week. Two of them were committed by Syrian migrants. A third was committed by an Afghan asylum seeker. The fourth, a mass shooting in Munich, was committed by the German-born son of Iranian asylum-seekers.

ISIS had forewarned that attacks in Germany were coming. Shortly after the Brussels airport attack, ISIS sent out a call for an attack on Germany’s Cologne airport. An ISIS video threatened to turn Germany into a “battle field” and targeted Chancellor Merkel for murder. After the attack in Nice, ISIS supporters celebrated on social media and said that Germany was next.

Now that the attacks have started, German government officials are trying to calm peoples’ fears, minimizing as much as possible any connection to ISIS. Chancellor Merkel’s Chief of Staff Peter Altmaier actually claimed early last week, after the first attack, that terrorist acts committed by refugees are “not larger or smaller than that in the rest of the population.”

However, the official explanations, including claims as to the mental instability of the perpetrators, ignore the reality that the attackers find legitimacy for acting on their hatred from the “new normal” of violence created by the successful actions of ISIS.

At least two of the most recent attacks in Germany have been directly linked to ISIS.

A Syrian asylum seeker, whom had pledged his allegiance to ISIS, blew himself up last Sunday and injured twelve other people, outside of a wine bar in the town of Ansbach. It could have been far worse. His original target appeared to have been a music festival, but fortunately he was turned away because he did not have a ticket to the event. ISIS claimed that the suicide bomber “was a soldier of the Islamic State.”

The Afghan refugee who attacked train passengers in Germany early last week, injuring four people, two of them critically, was found to have had an ISIS flag in his room. He is reported to have shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) several times. A news agency linked to ISIS claimed the assailant “carried out the operation in answer to the calls to target the countries of the coalition fighting the Islamic State.”

A machete-wielding Syrian asylum-seeker, who killed a pregnant woman in Germany, was arrested on Sunday. The police claim that, based on the current evidence, “there is no indication that this was a terrorist attack.” Nevertheless, ISIS exploited the incident to urge more so-called “lone wolf” attacks.

In a celebratory infographic posted online, the Islamic State is claiming major victory in killing and injuring up to 5,200 people over the holy month of Ramadan.

The infographic, lauding the “results” of a bloodthirsty Ramadan, published by ISIS’ Al Naba weekly magazine notes the 14 terror attacks around the globe attributed to ISIS including the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida and the Dhaka, Bangladesh bakery attack.

They also mention the Magnanville, France stabbing of a police officer and his wife and a suicide bomb attack that killed 14 Nepalese soldiers who worked at the Canadian Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Recent attacks against Nigerian, Jordanian and Somali troops as well as the downing of six drones and demolition of 440 tanks are also among their listed successes.

The infographic also gives a breakdown of the 5,200 victims with 1,988 Shiites, 965 Kurdish soldiers, 752 Libyan militiamen, 580 Syrian Alawites, 285 Christians who are labeled ‘Crusaders,’ 100 Yemeni soldiers, 50 Egyptian troops, 74 Pakistani and Afghani soldiers and 50 Iraqi military men.

Despite recent reports of the Islamic State’s significant loss of territory, attacks around the world were meant by the terror groups as a wake-up-call demonstrating their intended growth and reach.

When it comes to the connection between Islam and violence against non-Muslims, one fact must be embraced: the majority of those in positions of leadership and authority in the West are either liars or fools, or both.

No other alternative exists.

The reason for this uncharitable assertion is simple: If Islam was once a faraway, exotic religion, today we hear calls for, and see acts of, violence committed in its name—or the name of its deity “Allahu Akbar!”—practically every day. And many of us still have “ears that hear and eyes that see.”

It’s no secret: Muslims from all around the world and from all walks of life—not just “terrorists” or “ISIS”—unequivocally and unapologetically proclaim that Islam commands them to hate, subjugate or kill all who resist it, including all non-Muslim “infidels.”

This is the official position of several Muslim governments, including America’s closest “friends and allies,” like Saudi Arabia and Qatar; it’s the official position of Islamic institutions of lower and higher learning—from Bangladeshi high schools to Egypt’s Al Azhar, the world’s most prestigious Islamic university; and it’s the official position broadcast in numerous languages on Islamic satellite stations that air into Muslim homes around the world.

In short, there’s no excuse today for ignorance about Islam—especially for those in positions of leadership or authority. Yet it is precisely they who most vehemently deny any connection between Islam and violence.

Why?

The most recent example (as of this writing, that is) took place on July 18 in Germany. An axe-waving Muslim refugee attacked a number of train passengers and critically injured three. Although an ISIS flag was found in his room, although he called for the slaughter of any Muslim who dares leave Islam, although he yelled “Allahu Akbar”—Islam’s unequivocal war cry—authorities claimed “it was too early to speculate about the motives of the attacker.”

Catholic Bishop Friedhelm Hofmann of Wuerzburg, where the axe attack took place, was bewildered: “One is speechless at such a moment. This fact can not be understood.” Instead of being vigilant around Muslim migrants, he suggested “Maybe we need to help the unaccompanied young refugees even more and help them to overcome their own traumas.”

About a month earlier in Germany, this same scene played itself over: while screaming “Allahu Akbar” and “infidels must die,” another Muslim man in another train station stabbed to death one man and injured three others. Still, German authorities “found no evidence of Islamist motive.”

In neighboring France—which has “Europe’s largest Muslim minority” and is also (coincidentally?) the “most threatened country”—this sequence of events (a Muslim attacks in the name of Islam, authorities claim difficulty in finding “motive”) is becoming endemic. On July 19, a Muslim man vacationing with his pregnant wife and children stabbed a neighboring woman and her three daughters for being “scantily dressed.” The youngest girl, 8, was in critical condition with a punctured lung.

Judging by Moscow’s delighted reaction to the news that its athletes will be free to compete at the Rio Games, the IOC has confirmed perceptions of the West as corrupt, weak, easily intimidated and, most of all, lacking the courage of its alleged convictions.
There is a contemptuous saying in the Russian language which, loosely translated, sgoes something like this: ‘Piss in his eyes but he will still say it is a God’s dew’. Despite its crudity, this saying perfectly reflects the habitual pattern of deception by the Russian authorities, who lie, prevaricate and stonewall despite whatever weight of evidence condemns them.

Doping in sport? Never! Crimea? We had no Russian soldiers there! Ukraine? Nothing to do with us. Malaysian aircraft shot down with horrific civilian casualties? Someone else’s fault! And always, “You have no proof!”

The doping scandal and the near miss at the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is a humiliation for the entire country of incomparable magnitude. And, I regret to say, a wasted opportunity by the IOC to declare, clearly and strongly, ‘Enough is enough!’

The IOC did not have the guts to kick out the dope cheats and to send a message to the world that doping is unacceptable. Instead, it preferred to pass the buck and “leave it to the discretion of the individual sports bodies” to decide the fate of the Russian Olympic sports team. Judging by the delighted Russian reaction, this decision has confirmed their contemptuous opinion of the Western institutions, especially European ones, as corrupt, weak and easily controllable by discrete (or should I say – hybrid?) means.

The IOC has made a mockery of integrity. It let countries aspiring to the same level of corruption as in Russia know that all they have to do is respect the Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not get caught. And if they do get caught, the appropriate response is to deny and lie, despite all evidence. If that doesn’t work, get the IOC to refer the cheaters to individual sports bodies. Countries, like China, Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, North Korea and their ilk will understand the message quite clearly.

The harm IOC inflicted by this decision goes much deeper than sports. It strengthens the Russian and similarly autocratic, corrupt and oppressive countries’ opinion that everyone is as corrupt as they are; that the rule of law is just a figment of the Western propaganda; that Europeans are weak and cowardly; that the niceties of international civilised behaviour and the primacy of individual freedom over the collective predominance is nonsense; that a state can and should interfere wherever it wishes and is not answerable to anyone, least of all to the rule of law.

In effect, the IOC has colluded with the Russian government in blatantly breaching international decency. Declaring its decision as motivated by the desire to be inclusive, it has, by a simple exercise of intellectual dishonesty, approved of the Russian government’s behaviours. The meek and mild IOC decision, in effect, gave the Russian government, which committed a hanging offence, a slap on the wrist. In exchange for what?