RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271938/islam-classes-germany-hugh-fitzgerald

DORTMUND, Germany — It was the second week of Islam class, and the teacher, Mansur Seddiqzai, stood in front of a roomful of Muslim teens and pointed to the sentence on the chalkboard behind him: “Islam does not belong to Germany.”

He scanned the room and asked, “Who said this?”

Hands shot up. “The AfD?” one student with a navy blue headscarf said, referring to Germany’s far-right anti-refugee party. “No,” Seddiqzai shook his head. “Seehofer,” tried another. “Yes, and who is that?” “A minister,” said a third.

Finally, someone put it all together, identifying Horst Seehofer, the head of Bavaria’s conservative Christian Social Union and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s interior minister and coalition partner, who has on multiple occasions threatened to torpedo her government over the issue of immigration.

“Yes, that’s right,” Seddiqzai said, turning to the others. “And what do you think? Is he correct?”

The article on teaching Islam to Muslims in German schools starts right off the bat by affixing labels to the AfD party: “far-right” and “anti-refugee.” The party is not “far-right” in any meaningful sense, unless of course being critical of Islam is enough to make a person or a party “far right.” Nor is the party “anti-refugee,” but rather, “anti-Muslim refugees.” There is a difference.

Then comes the remark made by Horst Seehofer, a Bavarian politician and a putative poster-child for intolerance. He is quoted as saying “Islam does not belong to Germany.” We are meant to be offended by this remark, not to stop and consider what Seehofer meant. The teacher, Mansur Seddiqzai, might have told his students that Seehofer had both a historical and an ideological justification for his remarks. First, Muslims were never part of Germany’s history until the 1960s, with the influx of Turkish gastarbeiter, male guest workers, who came to work in West Germany’s mines and factories, sent money home, and upon retirement most moved back to their families in Turkey. It is only in the last few decades that vast numbers of Muslim migrants, including families, have been allowed in to Germany, with the consequences we can all see. Second, ideologically Islam was never part of Germany’s religious, political, or intellectual history, but rightly regarded as an alien creed. Third, Seehofer may also have been thinking of how Muslims themselves are taught to regard non-Muslims — that is, with contempt and hostility — and further told to keep their distance from them, not to befriend them, for “they are friends only with each other.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-best-bad-brexit-deal-1542239961

Theresa May has finally struck a deal with Brussels for Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, and it reminds us of what Winston Churchill said about democracy—the worst form of government except for all the others.

Mrs. May sold the plan to her balky cabinet in a five-hour meeting on Wednesday. And if her plan survives vetting in Parliament, the policy outline will manage Britain’s departure from the EU, with a second round of talks on the post-Brexit trading relationship to come.

Most details aren’t controversial. Those include provisions on the status of EU citizens in Britain and Brits living in the EU, and the money Britain will contribute to the EU budget under commitments made before the 2016 Brexit referendum.

The rub concerns the indefinite trading agreement that Brussels demanded to avoid imposing a hard border between Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K., and the Republic of Ireland that is remaining in the EU. Mrs. May has agreed that the entire U.K. will remain within the EU customs union if some other U.K.-EU trade deal isn’t struck. Britain will accept some EU regulations, and economic rules still could diverge over time between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K.

Pro-Brexit Tories are right to call this a bad deal—“vassal state stuff,” in the words of the always colorful Brexiteer Boris Johnson. It limits Britain’s ability to negotiate its own trade deals unless Britain can first negotiate a new trading arrangement with Brussels.

But it’s the best, and currently the only, serious option on the table. Reimposing a hard border for Northern Ireland, which would be necessary without a withdrawal deal, would renege on Britain’s commitments under the Good Friday peace agreement of 1998 and risk re-igniting sectarian strife. Britain also has refused to accept a Brussels proposal to create a new customs border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K., though this would make the most economic sense.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/its-a-crisis-of-civilization-in-mexico-250-000-dead-37-400-missing-1542213374?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=3&cx_tag=collabctx&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

EL FUERTE, Mexico—One recent day, a line of grieving mothers armed with picks and shovels worked their way across a muddy field looking for Mexico’s dead and missing, their own children among them.

“It smells bad here,” said Lizbeth Ortega, a member of Las Rastreadoras de El Fuerte, or the Trackers of El Fuerte, a group of mothers who look for missing people.

The mothers literally wear their pain. Some don white T-shirts, like Ms. Ortega’s, which has a blown-up photograph of her daughter Zumiko, kidnapped almost three years ago and still missing. On the back, her shirt says “I’ll search for you until I find you.”

Other mothers wear green shirts with the words “Promise Fulfilled.” They are the ones who have found the bodies of their missing children.

That day, the mothers scoured the site outside El Fuerte, a town in Sinaloa state, on Mexico’s northern Pacific Coast, looking for one of two men presumably kidnapped by cartel gunmen in recent weeks. One body had already been found in a field. The women believed the other may be nearby. In the end, they came up empty.

“This is my life,” said Mirna Medina, a forceful woman who holds the group together. “Digging up holes.”

Her son, who sold CDs by a gas station, was kidnapped in 2014. Three years later to the day, she and the other mothers of the search group dug up his remains. “I felt his presence,” she said, remembering the day and breaking out in tears. “I wanted to find him alive, but at least I found him.”

Some 37,000 people in Mexico are categorized as “missing” by the government. The vast majority are believed to be dead, victims of the country’s spiraling violence that has claimed more than 250,000 lives since 2006. The country’s murder rate has more than doubled to 26 per 100,000 residents, five times the U.S. figure.

Because the missing aren’t counted as part of the country’s official murder tally, it is likely Mexico’s rate itself is higher.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/uk-reaches-draft-brexit-deal-with-eu/

The United Kingdom has agreed to a draft agreement with the EU to withdraw from the European Union. But analysts warn that there is much uncertainty over whether the deal will be accepted by a majority of Prime Minister Theresa May’s cabinet and Tories in parliament.

The New York Times explains May’s dilemma:

Details of the agreement were not immediately available. Presumably, it contains language pertaining to the “backstop” plan to settle the contentious issue of the Irish border, the part of the agreement that is likely to set off the most sparks in the cabinet discussions.

The breakthrough followed months of discussions over an issue that has divided Britons and split the governing Conservative Party. But the prime minister’s problems are far from over.

Even assuming she gains the cabinet’s approval on Wednesday without a politically damaging raft of resignations — not a given — Mrs. May faces daunting odds in pushing the compromise plan through Parliament, where it has many opponents.

Britain is scheduled to quit the European Union on March 29. The draft agreement, if approved, would at least avert the prospect of a disorderly and chaotic departure without any deal — something that could clog ports and lead to shortages of food and some medicines.

If Mrs. May’s cabinet signs off on the draft agreement, the next step is for European Union leaders to give it their blessing at a meeting at the end of the month.

It would then need the approval of the European Parliament and of British lawmakers in London. If that is forthcoming, the agreement would lead to a standstill transition period during which very little would change before the end of 2020.

This is a long, slow, treacherous path to a Brexit. If May can convince her cabinet to back the deal — a big if — the parliamentary brawl to approve it could very easily lead to May’s ouster. If that happens, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, a hardline Brexiteer , is waiting in the wings to replace her.

A change in Conservative leadership at this point would almost certainly lead to a “no deal” Brexit and widespread chaos, the effects of which could plunge the UK into an economic and political crisis that would drive the Tories from power and hand the government to the odious ant-Semites of the Labor Party. CONTINUE AT SITE

http://thefederalist.com/2018/11/14/macron-picking-fight-trump-empty-arrogance/
Trump and Macron alternate between clashing with and fawning over one another, because although they are quite different people, they seek similar goals.

President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron have a unique and often strained relationship. They alternate between clashing with and fawning over one another, because even though they are quite different people, they seek similar goals: the greatness of their countries.

The age difference and generational dynamic explain some of the ups and downs of this relationship, as do the different political cultures of the two countries. But there is more to it than that. There is the history of each country and our relationship across history; there is the current state of world affairs with the United States’s continuing dominance while France is in its second century of declining importance and influence; and there is the failure of the European Union to create the kind of home and institutions that would satisfy the great powers of Europe vis a vis a power like the United States.
Latest Battle in This War of Words: The United Nations

The latest clash between Trump and Macron was Macron’s strong rebuttal Saturday to Trump’s United Nations speech in September. That Trump speech was the clearest and starkest explanation of Trump’s views on international affairs and his plans for the U.S. role in the world. Trump rejected globalism and embraced patriotism, which many of his critics say is really nationalism. Trump seems to be fine with that term nationalism, too, because he has embraced it as meaning patriotism.

The globalism he rejects maintains that each nation-state should defer to international organizations or other nation-states when confronting challenges both at home and abroad. In the patriotism, or nationalism, he embraces, each nation-state naturally prefers itself and seeks its own interests above all others.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13306/asia-bibi-asylum

Asia Bibi is expected to remain in Pakistan until her case is once again “reviewed in an appeal process” ordered by the Prime Minister. Bibi’s judicial process now looks infinite. Meanwhile, thousands of Islamists fill the Pakistani streets, calling for her execution.

Many of the values that make the West “the West” are now at stake in her fate: freedom of expression, religious freedom, freedom of movement, the rule of law, human dignity, and the separation of church and state. If the West does not fight for Asia Bibi, for whom should it fight?

“If Asia Bibi is denied asylum in the UK then what the heck is the point of the asylum system?” — Ayaan Hirsi Ali, refugee from Somalia, author and human rights campaigner.

A London where an ISIS-supporting preacher of Pakistani descent, Anjem Choundary, is free and comfortable, while a Pakistani Christian woman, Asia Bibi, would be unsafe and threatened, is the end of the West as we know it.

Asia Bibi’s case looks as if it is coming from “another, medieval world.”

Her “guilt,” as an “unclean” Christian, was for drinking water from a communal well, used by Muslim neighbors. Two Muslim women alleged that because she, a Christian, had touched the water from the well, the entire well was now haram (forbidden by Islamic law). Bibi responded by saying “I think Jesus would see it differently from Mohammed,” that Jesus had “died on the cross for the sins of mankind,” and asked, “What did your Prophet Muhammad ever do to save mankind?” She was accused of insulting the Islamic prophet Muhammad and put on trial for “blasphemy.” She was told to convert to Islam or die.

Bibi spent more than eight years in a Pakistani prison, in solitary confinement, much of that time on death row. On October 3, 2018, Pakistan’s Supreme Court acquitted her. Then, for a whole week, her fate remained unclear. After violent protests by “hard-line Islamists call[ing] for her execution” that “paralyzed large parts of the country for two days,” the government made “concessions” to the Islamists, and capitulated to their demands. The government pledged not to oppose adding Bibi to a “no-fly list,” which would prevent her from leaving the country.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271937/theyre-not-waving-eu-flags-bruce-bawer

I’ve always enjoyed being in German-speaking cities, even though my German isn’t what it used to be (and wasn’t even much back then), and even though it’s hard not to be reminded, now and then, of, well, you know. In Germany, to be sure, they go out of their way to remind you of that unpleasant interval from 1939 to 1945, filling their cities with hideous examples of what you might call the architecture of atonement – brutalist eyesores that we’re supposed to perceive as heartfelt proclamations of sincere Holocaust remorse. At the same time, however, paradoxical though it may sound, they’re determined to put their past behind them.

And behind you, too. In Berlin, that once gray but increasingly shiny city, you get the distinct impression that the inhabitants desperately want to pretend that the world was reborn anew after World War II and that a dynamic, hyper-contemporary Deutschland, its sins washed entirely clean by all those flagrant public gestures of apology for Auschwitz, is leading us all into a post-national, post-historical utopia, hoisting the EU banner aloft and singing Beethoven’s Ode to Joy in joyful chorus. Yes, if you’re visiting Berlin, by all means do your duty by wandering around that dreary landscape of stone near the Brandenburg Gate that purportedly memorializes the dead of the Shoah – but then get your ass out of there, head down the Eberstraße, and start shopping like crazy at the high-end boutiques of ultra-glitzy Potsdamerplatz.

Vienna, where I am right now, is of course a German-speaking city, but it’s different in key ways from Berlin – or, for that matter, from any burg I know in Germany. Like Rome (also a Catholic capital), Vienna has a feel of being utterly at ease with its history, its cultural heritage, and its national identity. Around the corner from where I’m staying is a shop crammed with immense early nineteenth-century portraits of Austrian aristocrats. In the front window of a nearby chocolatier is a big poster of a court painting of the same period. And a local taproom is decorated with framed photographs of Franz Josef-era military officers. All over town, national, but not EU, flags abound – the opposite of Germany.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-modernizing-dictator-is-no-myth-1542153977

The murder of Jamal Khashoggi has led to justified misgivings about Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s declared effort to modernize Saudi society. Critics argue that the killing disproves what Robert Kagan calls “the myth of the modernizing dictator”: the notion that repressive strongmen sometimes pave the way for socioeconomic development, which eventually may also lead to democratization.

Curiously, the most spectacular modernizers since World War II—South Korean, Taiwan and Singapore—have been absent from the debunking. South Korea alternated between authoritarian elected presidents and sheer dictatorships until 1987. Taiwan was under martial law until the 1990s. Under such regimes, both countries went from being among the world’s poorest to the most advanced within a generation, while laying the ground for subsequent democratization. In Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew led a similarly meteoric process of modernization in a semiauthoritarian system he created.

The main secrets of success in all these cases were market-friendly policies and a concerted investment in modern education. Less spectacular examples, such as Francisco Franco’s Spain and Augusto Pinochet’s Chile—abhorrent as both regimes were—also enabled economic modernization and eventual democratization.

It is historically rare for a country to become a fully liberal democracy before modernizing—the U.S. and now India are prominent exceptions. The first modernizer, Britain, became democratic—rather than merely parliamentary and increasingly liberal—only around 1900, after it had industrialized. Its modernization had involved uprooting the peasants, the vast majority of the population, from the countryside and turning them into an urban proletariat. Their hardship was immense and the long-term benefits to their children and grandchildren were far from obvious. They wouldn’t have consented if they had the vote. Similar problems plague modernization attempts in today’s developing societies.

To be sure, many dictators in developing societies fail to modernize: some because they adopt the wrong policies, some because of intractable cultural obstacles. That may turn out to be the case for Crown Prince Mohammed. But democracies in such countries also face daunting obstacles to modernization—and are highly susceptible to collapse. Moreover, the main hazard in such countries isn’t modernizing dictatorships but regressive populist regimes, reactionary dictatorships and authoritarian socialism. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.wsj.com/articles/macrons-faux-pas-on-nationalism-1542066344

Can the trans-Atlantic relationship be saved? That’s the question the world faces 100 years after the end of World War I.

The signs from the centennial commemorations in Paris were not good. French President Emmanuel Macron publicly condemned nationalism as “the opposite of patriotism” as self-proclaimed nationalist Donald Trump looked on stonily. The relationship between the U.S. and its three principal European allies—Germany, Britain and France—is arguably cooler than at any time since the Truman administration.

Paradoxically, the chill has occurred just as the security, economic and even ideological interests of the leading Western states have grown increasingly aligned. Russia and China both seek a weaker European Union, a divided Western alliance, and a decline in American power. China’s aggressively mercantilist economic plans target the capital-goods and automotive industries at the core of the German economy. In a world with better leadership, the major European states and the U.S. would deepen their partnership to prepare for a challenging new era in world politics. In our world, however, bitterness and resentment fester on both sides of the ocean, and the alliance weakens as the need for it grows.

The oracles of conventional wisdom naturally blame Mr. Trump—and they’re not all wrong. His negotiating style with Germany and France has been abrasive. From Iran to trade to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty to the environment, he assaults what most Europeans see as their interests even as his “America First” rhetoric grates on their sensibilities.

But if Mr. Trump is wrong about many things, on one big issue he is right. However tangled its history, nationalism is an important force in global affairs that world leaders should respect. Mr. Macron’s disdainful remarks made for good headlines, but his inability to appreciate the role of nationalism in world politics exemplifies the failure of imagination at the root of many of Europe’s troubles.

The instinctive antinationalism of leaders like Mr. Macron is rooted in the belief that Western Europe is the real Europe and that its history is a universal history with lessons equally compelling for the rest of the world. These egotistical beliefs are so deeply held among elites in Western Europe that they are often unconscious.