RUTHFULLY YOURS

“Islam is a French religion and the French language is a language of Islam.” — Tariq Ramadan.

In 1989, Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, justified the persecution of Salman Rushdie by Ayatollah Khomeini. Last year, Boubakeur called for the conversion of churches into mosques.

In Britain, mainstream Muslim organizations are dispensing “Islamic justice” through more than 85 sharia courts attached to mosques.

Civil war in France is what the Islamic State is looking for: unleashing a blind repression so that the Muslim population will show solidarity with the revolutionary minority. Yet, there is still worse possible outcome: that nothing happens and we continue as is.

Real “moderate Muslims” are silenced or murdered.

Last month, the Wall Street Journal published an interview with France’s director of domestic intelligence, Patrick Calvar. “The confrontation is inevitable,” Mr. Calvar said. There are an estimated 15,000 Salafists among France’s seven million Muslims, “whose radical-fundamentalist creed dominates many of the predominantly Muslim housing projects at the edges of cities such as Paris, Nice or Lyon. Their preachers call for a civil war, with all Muslims tasked to wipe out the miscreants down the street.”

These Salafists openly challenge France’s way of life and do not make a secret of their willingness to overthrow the existing order in Europe through violent means, terror attacks and physical intimidation. But paradoxically, if the Islamists’ threat to Europe were confined to the Salafists, it would be easier to defeat it.

There is in fact another threat, even more dangerous because it is more difficult to decipher. It has just been dubbed by the magazine Valeurs Actuelles, “the quiet conquest”. It is “moderate” Islam’s sinuous project of producing submission. “Its ambition is clear: changing French society. Slowly but surely”.

That threat is personified in the main character of Michel Houellebecq’s novel, Submission: Mohammed Ben Abbes, the “moderate” Muslim who becomes France’s president and converts the state to Islam. And from where does President Ben Abbes start his Islamization? The Sorbonne University. It is already happening: Qatar recently made a significant donation to this famous university, to sponsor the education of migrants.

In France, the quiet conquest has the face of the Union of the Islamic Organizations of France (UOIF), which a Simon Wiesenthal Center report charged with “anti-Semitism, advocacy and financing of terrorism and call to Jihad… ”

Not only does UOIF not encourage the integration of Moslems in France,” the report states, “it actually provides a nursery for the most radical Islamist positions.”

In Italy we have just witnessed the strategy of this “moderate Islam.” The largest and most influential Islamic organization, l’Unione delle comunità ed organizzazione islamiche in Italia (Ucoii), sponsored Milan’s first Muslim councilwoman, Sumaya Abdel Qader, a veiled candidate of the center-left coalition. Qader’s husband, Abdallah Kabakebbji, openly called for the destruction of the State of Israel: “It is a historical mistake, a scam”, he wrote on Facebook. His solution? “Ctrl + Alt + Delete”.

Qader won the race over a real moderate Muslim, the unveiled Somali activist, Maryan Ismail. I met Mrs. Ismail at a pro-Israel forum in Milan. After losing the election, she broke with Italy’s Democratic Party in an open letter: “The Democratic Party has chosen to dialogue with obscurantist Islam. Once again, the souls of modern, plural and inclusive Islam were not heard”.

Take two “stars” of this French “moderate Islam.” The first one is Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, the motto of which is: “Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”

Germany’s migrant rape crisis has now spread to cities and towns in all 16 of Germany’s federal states. Germany now finds itself in a vicious circle: most of the perpetrators are never found, and the few who are frequently receive lenient sentences. Only one in 10 rapes in Germany is reported and just 8% of rape trials result in convictions, according to Minister of Justice Heiko Maas.

Up to 90% of the sex crimes committed in Germany in 2014 do not appear in the official statistics, according to André Schulz, the head of the Association of Criminal Police.

“There are strict instructions from the top not to report offenses committed by refugees. It is extraordinary that certain offenders are deliberately NOT being reported about and the information is being classified as confidential.” — High-ranking police official in Frankfurt, quoted in Bild.

Sexual violence in Germany has reached epidemic proportions since Chancellor Angela Merkel allowed into the country more than one million mostly male migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Gatestone Institute first reported Germany’s migrant rape crisis in September 2015, when Merkel opened up the German border to tens of thousands of migrants stranded in Hungary. A follow-up report was published in March 2016, in the aftermath of mass attacks against German women by mobs of migrants in Cologne, Hamburg and other German cities.

Germany’s migrant rape crisis has now spread to cities and towns in all 16 of Germany’s federal states. Germany is effectively under siege; public spaces are becoming increasingly perilous. Police have warned about a potential breakdown of public order this summer, when young male migrants are likely to see women lightly dressed.

During the month of July 2016, hundreds of German women and children were sexually assaulted by migrants (see Appendix below). The youngest victim was nine; the oldest, 79. Attacks occurred at beaches, bike trails, cemeteries, discotheques, grocery stores, music festivals, parking garages, playgrounds, schools, shopping malls, taxis, public transportation (buses, trams, intercity express trains and subways), public parks, public squares, public swimming pools and public restrooms. Predators are lurking everywhere; safety nowhere.

Dozens of women and children have been assaulted by migrants at summer festivals and public swimming pools — staples of ordinary German life.

Sexual violence in Germany has reached epidemic proportions since Chancellor Angela Merkel allowed into the country more than one million mostly male migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. The government has been facing a rising voter backlash to the open-door migration policy, including public protests (left). In some areas, authorities have distributed cartoon guides, to “educate” migrants that sexual assault is not acceptable (right).

In July, at least 24 women were sexually assaulted at the Breminale music festival in Bremen. Women were also assaulted at outdoor festivals in Aschheim, Balve, Gerolzhofen, Grenzach-Wyhlen Heide, Loßburg, Lütjenburg, Meschede, Poing, Reutlingen, Sinsheim, Wolfhagen and Wolfratshausen.

In July, women and children were also sexually assaulted at public swimming pools in Babenhausen, Dachau, Delbrück, Hamm, Hilchenbach, Kirchheim, Lörrach, Marklohe, Mönchengladbach, Mörfelden-Walldorf, Oberursel, Remagen, Rinteln, Schwetzingen and Stuttgart-Vaihingen.

For today’s terrorist, whether in Paris, Orlando or Nice, the mass murder of noncombatants is a typically satisfying expiation, a scapegoating operation that brings to mind certain ritualistic processes of bloodletting, religious sacrifice and an outlet for sadistic sexual excitement. For the jihadist in particular, terror may find a ready ideological shelter in Islam, but the expressed theology is likely little more than a useful cover for acting on otherwise forbidden wishes. The ready supply of adherents only indicates how widespread these forbidden wishes are — but have little to do with politics.

“Man differs from the animal by the fact that he is a killer; he is the only primate that kills and tortures members of his own species without any reason… and who feels satisfaction in doing so.” — Erich Fromm, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness.

Throughout the world, many people suffer from some form or other of mental illness. Of these, a substantial number are also inclined to various expressions of aggression. When conditions arise to dignify their irrepressible violent urges under the purifying rubric of some “higher cause” — such as revolution, rebellion, or jihad — some will gratefully seize upon those “exculpatory” opportunities.

There is a singularly important lesson for the West’s growing struggle against terrorism. It is that in many instances, the events that occur in religion and politics do not do so for the reasons given. Rather, allegedly noble causes that are ascribed are merely after-the-fact rationalizations of certain barbarous human inclinations.

“Homo homini lupus,” said Freud: “Man is a wolf to man.” In essence, this observation lies at the heart of all forms of terrorism, as it also does of war, genocide, and many iterations of violent crime. It follows that if we should ever really want to declare a sincere “war on terrorism,” we would first have to seek beyond the usual assemblage of military remedies. They can generally never exceed a more-or-less futile tinkering at the margins of what is really most important.

Years back, Harold Lasswell, the great American political scientist, described political figures as those who would “displace their private motives on public objects, and rationalize the displacement in terms of public advantage.” What he meant by this psychological explanation was that the core motives of politicians may be deeply personal, relate primarily to apprehensions over deference or status, and still be reassuringly justified or “sanitized” by their owners in terms of some elevated motive. No candidate for the American presidency will ever acknowledge that he or she is running for office to maximize compelling private needs, but all candidates will readily affirm that they have somehow been “called” to rescue an imperiled nation from one or another of the “usual suspects.”

Whenever the cry of ‘Allahu-Akbar’ rings out and yet more innocents are slain, Muslims disassociate themselves, organisations, communities and, most of all, their religion from the violence against unbelievers that their holiest scriptures quite specifically endorses
Tricky Dick had a dirty secret or two, as did Bill Clinton. Probably if you put some effort into it you could find lots of dirty secrets in history. They would have one thing in common. They were hidden before being uncovered. After all, that is the nature of dirty secrets. Except, that is, for one. One dirty secret is on open display.

Come on, you might say, how can that be. Easy, people systematically look the other way. Journalists look the other way. Politicians look the other way. Christian leaders look the other way. “Nothing to see here,” they all proclaim. Of course not everyone looks the other way, but such people, like, say, blogger Robert Spencer (banned from entering the UK by the Home Office in 2013 for not looking the other way), tend to be on the fringes of debate and the main players double down by ignoring them.

These days with so much widespread, vicious and well-publicised Islamic terror, so-called moderate Muslim leaders are often asked to comment. To a man and hijab’d woman they disassociate themselves, their organisations, their communities and, prominently, their religion from violence. Whenever “Allahu-Akbar” violence occurs, it has nothing to do with Islam – the religion of peace, we are told. And that surely must be true; Pope Francis says so.

At the back of the papal plane, hopes are raised; hopes are dashed. Following two Islamic terrorists slitting the throat of Fr. Jacques Hamel, an 85-year-old French priest, the Pontiff declares that we are at war. At last, muscular Christianity on show, a not-before-time holy war of words is in the offing to protect Christians! Alas, his minders at the front of the plane quickly re-educate their man. He dutifully returns to the back of the plane and recants. “When I speak of war, I am not speaking of a war of religions. No. There is war, a war for interests, for money, for natural resources, for domination of peoples … All religions want peace; others want war.”

So there we have it on papal authority. It is beyond parody. The bloody mayhem stretching from the Middle East and North Africa into the heart of Europe and America is not about religion, it is all about money. And all the while the jihadist playbook is in full view. If only someone from the great and good would take a look.

So it was that I tuned last week into the Bolt Report on Sky News. Andrew Bolt is interviewing Keysar Trad, the new President of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils. Bolt does something that is exceedingly rare among his fellow journalists. He quotes from the Koran. He opens the playbook at verse 9:29. He outs the dirty secret.

“Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture – until they give the jizya willingly while they are humbled.”