RUTHFULLY YOURS

The curfews are accompanied by military assaults against civilian populations — their homes, businesses, offices, historical monuments, reservoirs and infrastructure are being bombed and destroyed.

“No one can go outside. Our water is running out. The food at homes is running out. The telephone lines have been cut. The situation here is terrible. … After declaring the curfew, they [the Turks] deploy soldiers, police and snipers in the evacuated schools. They have piled up their ammunition inside the schools.” — Osman Tetik, a representative in Cizre of the Education and Science Workers’ Union.

“They are shooting bullets at hospitals and ambulances. The Ministry of Health is standing by as hospitals are turned into military quarters and as health institutions and employees become targets.” — Gonul Erden, co-President of the Trade Union of Public Employees in Health and Social Services.

“All those towns will be cleansed of terror elements. If necessary, neighborhood by neighborhood, house by house, street by street.” — Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, December 15.

The curfews and military assaults against Kurdish civilians have reportedly forced at least 200,000 Kurds to flee.

Some 30 Muslim men thought that the woman was in violation of Islamic sharia law, by being in Sweden unaccompanied by a man. They thought that she should therefore be raped and her teenage son killed.

Two Swedish citizens were convicted by a Gothenburg Court of joining an Islamist terror group in Syria and murdering two captives. Video evidence showed one victim being beheaded. “Every night when I have gone to bed, I have seen a head hanging in the air.” — Court Chairman Ralf G. Larsson.

Sometime during the night, the victim was awakened by the Iraqi as he raped her. The woman managed to break free and locate a train attendant. At first, the woman did not want to call the police. “She felt sorry for him [the rapist] … and was afraid he would be deported back to Iraq.”

One week after Sweden raised its terror alert level to the highest ever, the police raised another alarm — saying their weapons are simply not good enough to prevent a potential terror attack.

November 4: The Swedish Immigration Service sent out a press release, saying that it had hired close to a thousand additional employees since June. The Immigration Service now has over 7,000 employees, including hourly workers and consultants — double the 3,350 employees who worked there in 2012. Most of the new recruits work with the legal processing of asylum applications, but the units dealing with receiving migrants and filing their initial applications have also expanded considerably. As if the record influx of migrants this autumn were not crushing enough, the Immigration Service also had trouble retaining its staff. Employees complain about being badly treated: they are always expected to be on call, and possibly even work Christmas Eve.

The most striking thing about that speech — the one given by Hilary Benn in the Commons Syria debate on December 2 — was not that it gave dozens of Labour MPs the courage to rebel against the party line laid down by Jeremy Corbyn, nor that it catapulted this hitherto most shadowy of shadow Foreign Secretaries into the role of Labour leader-in-waiting. It was not even the reminder that great oratory still matters in politics — especially when it comes from an unexpected quarter, the orator in this case having been accustomed all his life to belittling comparisons with his father, Tony Benn. No, it was the revelation that words with a strong moral charge (“fascist” and “evil”), when applied to Islamic State, still have the power to shock, just as the appeal to a sense of duty (“time for us to do our bit”) can still inspire.

In his peroration, which was specifically addressed to his own party, seated behind him, Mr Benn used the f-word twice: “And we are here faced by fascists. Not just their calculated brutality, but their belief that they are superior to every single one of us in this chamber tonight, and all of the people that we represent. They hold us in contempt. They hold our values in contempt. They hold our belief in tolerance and decency in contempt. They hold our democracy, the means by which we will make our decision tonight, in contempt. And what we know about fascists is that they need to be defeated.” He then reminded his colleagues of their forebears’ resistance to Franco, Mussolini and Hitler. (Never mind that from 1931 to 1935 Labour was led by the pacifist George Lansbury and the party voted against conscription as late as April 1939, four months before war broke out.) Mr Benn ended with a straightforward moral choice, cast in a very British idiom: “And my view, Mr Speaker, is that we must now confront this evil. It is now time for us to do our bit in Syria.”

Churchill himself could not have put it better. It was refreshing to see and hear the electric effect that such old-fashioned language can still have. If we are to defeat the enemies of Western civilisation, we have to find the right words and ideas. When George W. Bush used the terms “Islamofascism” and “Islamic fascists” in 2006, he provoked protests from American Muslim organisations. No Western politician has used them since. But the ideology of jihadist organisations such as Islamic State has a great deal in common with fascism — not least its implacable hostility to the West. Historians have even found direct historical connections between the Nazis and the rise of Islamism. And so when Hilary Benn called the IS butchers “fascists” and their ideology “evil”, he struck a chord.

Among many other things 2015 may well be remembered as the year that “social justice warriors” suffered over-reach. The year saw some truly remarkable breakdowns in their movement.

For instance, who will forget Rachel Dolezal? She was the regional head of a national black people’s organisation in America who, not content with campaigning for black rights (a perfectly good thing to do), pretended to be black (not a good thing to do). She managed this by the careful application of bronzer, a somewhat stereotypical frizzing of her hair and the advantage of living in a society too terrified to say, “But aren’t you white?”

Dolezal was “outed” as white when her parents appeared on television to show that they are not only Caucasians but Caucasians of German-Czech descent. After some months of denial their daughter finally admitted she was indeed born to them, though she still regards herself as black. Not least among the case’s fascination were the divides it caused, and not only among those who fell on the floor laughing when they heard about it versus those who managed to remain in their seat. A divide also occurred among black activists: “Do we celebrate any sister who argues for our cause, or in the 21st century should we disapprove of people blacking up?” was the nub. Most interesting was the response of one black commentator on MSNBC, Michael Eric Dyson, who stood up for Dolezal, saying, “She’s taking on the ideas, the identities, the struggles. She’s identified with them. I bet a lot more black people would support Rachel Dolezal than would support, say, Clarence Thomas.” All of which suggested that the civil rights movement some time ago morphed into a left-wing politics movement where a white girl who is left-wing is more “black” than a black man who is a conservative Supreme Court Justice.

Germany is basking in a warm glow of self-congratulation, after Chancellor Merkel’s decision to accept up to 500,000 Syrian and other refugees per annum for the next few years. As we go to press, Berlin had abruptly closed its borders, in effect suspending the Schengen agreement, to restore order. Assuming her policy endures, at least two million migrants will make their homes in Germany, adding to the five million German Muslims mainly of Turkish heritage. Thus Muslims, as a proportion of the German population, will have doubled in a decade to some 10 per cent. In England, the proportion of Muslims now exceeds 5 per cent, having likewise doubled in a decade. France is already around the 10 per cent mark. The ultimate demographic impact on Europe of the present wave of migration is totally unpredictable, but the newcomers are on average much younger than the host population.

Over the next generation, Muslims in Europe are certain to multiply rapidly, due not only to migration but to higher birthrates. It is true that Muslim fertility is gradually falling in Western countries, but it has so far remained consistently well above that of non-Muslims. Another factor of growing importance is conversion. A Pew report estimates that Muslims will number “more than 10 per cent” of Europe’s population by 2050, but in France, Germany and England the figure is bound to be much higher. The Islamisation of Europe is no longer a far-Right fantasy, but a real possibility. As the migration crisis unfolds, it becomes more likely by the day.

The retaking of central Ramadi on Monday by Iraqi security forces is good news by itself but even better if it signals an overdue revival of the moderate Sunni forces in Iraq and the region.

The Ramadi victory was accomplished largely by the Iraqi military, mainly by its Sunni forces with the help of local Sunni tribes, who were aided by U.S. training and weapons. That formula could be a model for success in clearing Islamic State (ISIS) from the rest of Western Iraq and Syria.

The U.S. has helped by picking up the pace of its assistance in recent weeks, inserting more special forces into the theater and supplying more arms. Tactical bombing by the U.S. has limited Islamic State movement, and shoulder-fired antitank weapons have been able to stop ISIS truck bombs from a distance. Recapturing Ramadi, which Islamic State captured last May as the Iraqi army fled, also removes an immediate ISIS threat to Baghdad.

Vadim Nikitim is the genius who last week proposed not only that we treat ISIS as a state, but that we grant ISIS diplomatic recognition.

Rather than realizing that the Soviet Union collapsed because of its economic system, Nikitim seems to think it fell apart because countries such as the US and UK recognized it diplomatically — demonstrating that there is no better way to get the present wrong than by getting the past wrong.

The case of Saudi prince Saud bin Abdulaziz Bin Nasir might give the impression that you can rape and kill a manservant in a London hotel and get away with only the lightest of sentences.

Ambassadors from ISIS, on the other hand, will need to prove themselves somewhat, and first funnel many lucrative contracts our way before behavior like this becomes acceptable.

Of course, there is always that pesky problem: What if militant Islam (or Iran) does not want to “forge a long (or short) peace” with us? Is there a Plan B?

It is that Dumb Idea of the Year Award time again, and among the many stellar contenders, one in particular stands out.

Rome — “I was forced to flee the country with my family after a violent attack on my residence by extremists,” said Dr. Paul Bhatti, a surgeon who had to flee his homeland of Pakistan. Speaking to an international conference on religious liberty (titled “Under Caesar’s Sword”) here this month, he said: “One morning, I awoke to find extremists trying to cut the steel security bars on the front windows of my residence. This was unsettling, to say the least.”

He understates it because, in retrospect, it was far from the worst his family would suffer.

Dr. Bhatti decided for the sake of his family and career to move to Italy, disappointing his brother, Shahbaz. Paul wanted Shahbaz to leave too; Shahbaz wanted Paul to return. “He was trying to convince me to return to Pakistan because of the dire and pressing needs of the community, while I was arguing with him that he should move to Europe because his very life was in danger. Shahbaz was no stranger to death threats by men who despised his religion and his work on behalf of the helpless. Looking back, I realize I was arguing from a rational and human perspective with a man whose gaze was fixed on Heaven.” Paul was begging Shahbaz to leave Pakistan, but he was insistent on staying and doing what he could to helping others. One friend recalls a young girl who was raped, whom no one else would help because she came from a Christian family.

Shahbaz Bhatti stayed, explaining that, as Paul recounted, “he had surrendered his life into Jesus’ hands and would follow Jesus until his last breath.” During their last conversation, in which Shahbaz urged his brother to come home, Paul replied, “You are calling me to leave paradise for hell.” Shahbaz insisted: “The road leading to paradise starts in Pakistan.”

Shahbaz was murdered in March 2011, while serving as minister for minority affairs. “His determination to stop all kinds of injustices and to protect the oppressed and marginalized communities cost him his life,” his brother explains.

Paul’s reaction was the natural one. “The news of Shahbaz’s murder shook me to the core. I was devastated, disheartened, and furious all at the same time. I immediately flew to Pakistan to attend my brother’s funeral. My intention was to retrieve members of my family and move them to safety in Italy and Canada, and say farewell to Pakistan forever. My conviction, at that moment, was that Pakistan was unworthy of the services of my family.”

In 1965 Elizabeth Warnock Fernea joined her husband, a social anthropologist, in a southern Iraqi village. Her time there is recorded in Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village. Although balking at first, she decides to wear the “servile garment” [or abayah] in order to be “well thought of in [her] new home.” She discovers that in this society “an uncovered woman is an immoral woman” and “women don’t appear in the market.” These same women are often illiterate, make camel dung pancakes for fuel, may be one of the many wives of the sheik, and prepare food for any guests that appear since “tradition decrees that any guest may expect food and a bed for three days without any questions asked.”

Fernea also learns that “a Shiite Moslem . . . would not eat food which had been touched by Christians, and any dish from which a Christian guest had eaten or drunk was smashed so that the infidel wouldn’t contaminate the faithful.” Since she and her husband were Christian, no one in the village would do their laundry.

In addition, “paternal first-cousin marriage was the preferred marriage arrangement.”

One young girl, Amina had been “married to a sixty-five year old man when she was fifteen. Her marriage brought nothing but grief for she nearly died delivering a stillborn son.” When her husband died, she was purchased for twenty pounds and given to the sheik’s wife. Yet, Aimna considered herself very fortunate since she could “have as much bread as she want[ed] every day.”

Fernea describes the period of deepest mourning in the Islamic month of Muharram. In the seventh century, Hussein, grandson of the prophet Mohammed was slain in battle on the plains of Karbala. His death contributed to the split into Shiite and Sunni sects. During this month, the Shiite communities in Iraq, Iran and India commemorate Hussein’s martyrdom. Though some Iraqis found the ceremonies, i.e., flagellation, uncivilized and backward, the ritual persists to present day.

Fernea explains that while every Moslem hopes to visit Mecca, the Shiite Moslem has an additional duty to visit the shrines of the twelve imams of the Shiite sect and “the essential character of the pilgrimage has not changed much in a thousand years.

Fast forward to Mahtob Mahmoody’s book entitled My Name Is Mahtob where the reader learns of the events following the daring escape of Betty Mahmoody recounted in Not Without My Daughter. On August 1, 1984, Mahtob’s father took his wife and daughter back to Iran for a two-week vacation. But it was not until 1986, that Betty and her daughter would escape the tyranny of her husband and return to America. Now in 2015, Mahtob writes about the trials and triumphs that have colored her life. She describes how “the women wore black chadors . . . revealing only a portion of the face. The chador was held in place from the inside, so even the skin of their hands was hidden.” She had a glimpse of her future when her father stated “you are in Iran until you die. Now you’re in my country. You’ll abide by my rules.” Betty and Mahtob constantly feared for their lives.

These barbarians are now called “Islamic State Militants” instead of terrorists?……rsk

BAGHDAD—Islamic State fighters fled their last bastion in the center of the city of Ramadi on Sunday, putting Iraqi forces and their allies within reach of their third major victory in as many months against the extremist group.
Though the Iraqi forces have built up momentum against the militants, Islamic State still controls major cities and vast territory in both Iraq and Syria and has carried out or inspired recent terror attacks from Paris to California.
State television beamed images of young men cheering, dancing and singing in streets across Iraq while greeting passing soldiers, even though the army hadn’t yet declared Ramadi completely under its control.
Security forces have encircled a former government compound that was the last area of the city held by Islamic State and prepared a final push to clear out any remaining fighters and explosives, Iraqi officials said. A number of Iraqi leaders said they were confident the city would fall imminently, once the army cleared hundreds of land mines and other explosives.
“Our forces reached the government compound and surrounded it,” said Capt. Rami Emad, a military spokesman. “We don’t think the forces will enter the compound tonight since it has become dark and they are clearing the surrounding roads and buildings of improvised explosive devices.”