RUTHFULLY YOURS

The same week that Mr Yousaf was extolling the idea that Britain is a proto-Nazi state and Pakistan a potential safe-haven, the Pakistani authorities saw the latest round of the interminable and unforgivable saga of Asia Bibi. This is the woman who has been on death-row in Pakistan for no crime other than the crime of being a Christian. Bibi has been awaiting execution for five years, purely because a neighbour claimed that Bibi had insulted Mohammed during an argument.

They attack the Conservative government of the UK for Nazism while not merely praising, but lauding as a safe haven, a state which actually persecutes and murders people because of their religion.

Which means that he is doing what many other people today are doing, which is knowingly to cover for a racist despotism, so long as it is despotism with an Islamic face.

Is Britain becoming a Nazi state? It would seem unlikely, but to listen to some of the critics of the Conservative government in recent days it would appear that we are only moments away from become a racist despotism.

Last week the convener of the Scottish Parliament’s Equalities and Human Rights Committee, one Christina McKelvie, pronounced that the Conservative party is displaying “some of the most right-wing reactionary politics that I’ve heard in my lifetime” and claimed that the Conservative party’s recent conference showed what will happen in Britain “if we become bystanders and do not speak out against discrimination.” She said that some recent Conservative proposals were “reminiscent of the rise of Nazism in the 1930s.”

Higher up the Scottish Nationalist Party food-chain, one of their MPs, Mhairi Black last week also compared the recent Conservative party conference to the Nazi party. She wrote without irony that she was vexed by its alleged “nationalism’, all the more “when that “nationalism” is used as a motivation or an excuse for racist, bigoted and small minded policy.” The policies of the Conservative party, she claimed, were increasingly “reminiscent of early 1930s Nazi Germany.” As though to demonstrate how sparse her knowledge of that period is, she concluded her piece by citing — as though no one could possibly have come across the quotation before — Pastor Martin Niemoller. “First they came for the Jews.”

Having sparked some criticism, other nationalists soon came to the aid of Ms Black. Notable among them was Humza Yousaf, one of the ministers of the SNP and himself a member of the Scottish Parliament. While many people on social media criticised Ms Black’s absurd rhetoric, he chose to back her up. “Those criticising, I have friends/family who have applied for dual nationality with Pakistan. Feel UK will be unbearable for Muslims in future.” This gained headlines of its own. But nobody pointed out the twin outrages of this grotesque nonsense.

PARIS—A predawn attack on a French policeman’s home, the killing of a priest during Mass and a car bomb planted near Notre Dame Cathedral in recent months were plots that appeared isolated until investigators discovered a common thread.

Their authors had all allegedly been in contact with a man whom authorities identify as 29-year-old Rachid Kassim.

From somewhere in Islamic State-held territory in Iraq or Syria, authorities say, the French national had used the encrypted Telegram chat app and other social-media tools to contact people back home—mainly French teenagers who are believed to have little or no previous connection to the terror group or each other—and instruct them on how to mount attacks.

Investigators across Europe are alarmed by the rise of militants such as Mr. Kassim, who they suspect have developed a way to “remote control” attacks from far away. That is blurring the lines between assaults carried out by militants trained in Islamic State territory and those by so-called lone wolves who authorities assumed were acting without the direction or support of terror groups.

“What worries us is a new type of attacker who only appears to be acting alone,” said Hans-Georg Maassen, head of Germany’s domestic intelligence. “Such assailants are being steered virtually from abroad via instant messaging.”

Followers of Mr. Kassim’s private channel on Telegram received instructions in mid-August on how to buy cooking-gas canisters for a car bomb, according to a copy of the channel’s content provided to The Wall Street Journal by a person with access to it. The content was confirmed by French authorities.

CELLE, Germany—The trial of a teenage girl accused of stabbing a policeman, in what officials allege was the first attack ordered by Islamic State on German soil, began on Thursday behind closed doors.

The case casts light on the growing phenomenon of radicalization among teens and the new challenge it presents for authorities, given the extensive legal protections juveniles enjoy in most Western countries.

This special status was on evidence on Thursday when the court in this small northern German town ordered reporters and the public out of the courtroom. The minor’s right to a closed-door trial, the judges argued, trumped even the “great public interest given the growing threat of Islamist terrorism.”

The 16-year-old, identified only as Safia S., is charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault and support of a foreign terrorist organization. Federal prosecutors say Islamic State operatives ordered her to commit an “act of martyrdom” and helped plan her knife attack on a policeman in Hannover in late February.

“We believe she was motivated and steered in her act by supporters of IS,” said Simon Henrichs, senior federal prosecutor, after the first day of the trial.

The defendant’s lawyer, Mutlu Günal, denied a terrorist motive, however. “That the attack happened is a fact and she apologized for it,” Mr. Günal said. “But there is no terrorist background.”

The accused faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

The case marks the first terror plot linked directly to the terror militia in Germany, a country that has seen a spate of attacks by Islamist extremist in recent months. Several of these followed a pattern observed around Europe of Islamic State operatives in the Middle East steering supporters remotely.

Reminiscent of the Third Reich, Jew hatred and agitating against Jews are in full bloom in Germany. And it is not guilt over Nazism that has Germany protecting parasitic Muslim refugees, most of whom are anti-Semitic.

In their recent documentary, Germans and Jews, filmmakers Tal Recanati and Junina Quint, portray Germany as having reached a nuanced reconciliation with its Nazi past by breaking the silence about it and facing it head-on. Yet, several recent surveys of German attitudes toward Jews and the Jewish homeland reveal the persistence of strong, anti-Semitic attitudes that belie the filmmakers’ conclusions.

Indeed, Germany may actually be stoking anti-Semitism with its official policy of acceptance and open-mindedness toward Muslim immigrants, even to the point of allowing them expression of hatred toward Jews. One of Germany’s major trade partners is Iran, hostile to Israel since the first Gulf War, and Germany continues to blame Israeli settlements for Middle East unrest. Thus, Germany’s policy of acceptance and tolerance toward Muslims may actually mask an underlying anti-Semitism that stubbornly remains despite the passage of time.

The Surveys and Anti-Semitism Revealed

In 2011, a survey by the Freidrich Ebert Foundation, Intolerance, Prejudice and Discrimination, found that 49% of German respondents agreed with the statement that Jews were trying to take advantage of their people’s suffering during the Holocaust. Another 20% of Germans agreed that Jews have too much influence in their country, 30% agreed, “Jews don’t care about anything or anyone but their own kind.”

A 2015 study by the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence from the University of Bielefeld found that 49% of Germans don’t want to hear anything about the Holocaust, 55% are angry that Germans are still accused of crimes against Jews, 28% responded that they can understand why people don’t like Jews considering Israel’s policies, and 27% say that Israeli policy toward Arab-Palestinians is not different from what the Nazis did to the Jews during the Third Reich.

The deep resentment and demonization of Jews revealed in surveys are not indicative of a guilt-wracked…people anxious to rise above the atrocities of the Nazi generation. Clearly, large percentages of Germans still harbor harsh, anti-Jewish sentiments.
In 2012, an Anti-Defamation League survey of Attitudes Toward Jews in 10 European Countries discovered the following about German respondents: 24% felt that Jews have too much power in international financial markets, 43% agreed that Jews talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust, 14% believe that Jews are responsible for the death of Christ, and 77% believed the government was doing enough to ensure the safety and security of its Jewish citizens.