RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12633/being-pro-muslim

No doubt those who ignore or cover up abuses such as beatings, female genital mutilation or general repression do so out of cultural sensitivity, deferring to traditionalist leaders and self-appointed representatives of various communities, including Muslim bodies. Their sensitivity, however, can end up gravely impairing the lives of literally hundreds of millions of Muslim women in allowing harmful practices to be perpetuated.

Genuine humanitarian concerns about injustice to Muslims, however, have been mingled with a political and religious attitude that condemns anyone who expresses even the mildest questioning of Islam — so much so, in fact, that many well-intentioned Western politicians, human rights advocates, church leaders and journalists have turned Islam into the one and only ideology that must never be criticized, and have called anyone who so much as comments on some of the precepts of Islam as “racist.”

The view that Islam should not be questioned, seems to have led to a lack of reciprocity: radical Islamic individuals and bodies are often permitted to preach hatred for the West in mosques, centres, and university campuses, but non-Muslims commenting on genuine concerns are frequently the objects of public abuse and even criminal prosecution.

What is needed are more organizations that stand out as pro-Muslim in support of bettering the lives of Muslims; many are often too fearful of retribution to speak out.

My, how the world changes. When, in late 1978, your humble correspondent presented the first translations into English of passages from Ayatollah Khomeini’s book, Velayat-e Faqih (“Governance of the Jurist”), bought in Tehran in 1977, I knew the religious extremists would challenge the shah’s rule, but I was certain they had no chance against his army, police, and security services.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271029/death-france-stephen-brown

If radical Islamic clerics thought they were immune to terror threats themselves, then they have now been disabused of that notion. Last month in France, instead of the predictable pattern of arrests of Islamic jihadists plotting deadly terrorist attacks; this time, the jihadists were apparently the targets themselves. This turn of events signals France’s accelerated spiral into lawless violence.
The French newspaper Le Figaro reported that police in June took ten people into custody for allegedly targeting for attack “radical imams, veiled women and convicted jihadists released from prison.” (There are currently 512 people convicted on terrorism charges in French prisons.) The arrests were made in the Paris region, Corsica, and in Charante-Maritime.

“This group was aiming for ‘targets presumed in connection with radical Islam,’ ” a source told Le Figaro.

Raids on several homes turned up “rifles, pistols, and homemade grenades” and police reported this “groupuscule” (small group) “trained regularly at sport shooting clubs and had prepared arms caches and food supplies in case of a major crisis.” (Which makes one wonder whether they were “ultra-right” terrorists or simply survivalists.)

https://amgreatness.com/2018/08/16/the-genocidal-elite-part

Sarah Jeong and her defenders in the media truly have given America a gift. Where once it was only dark speculation that media elites, at best, are ambivalent toward openly genocidal and bigoted statements about white Americans, now we are certain that these sentiments exist.

We know, too, that the most common defense of these sentiments—that they cannot possibly lead to any sort of bad situation, because the privilege of whites is simply too impregnable for attacks on them to land—is deeply flawed. Anti-white rhetorical excesses can and do lead to terrible human rights abuses, and are often used to justify them, particularly in countries with weaker economies and non-white majorities such as South Africa.

For the New York Times, a paper with a global reach, to normalize such rhetoric by placing someone who spews it on their editorial board at the same time they blacklist people for much tamer statements about other races is cavalier and uninformed at best. Further, it suggests that our elite are already prepared to make excuses in case of third world style interracial violence against white citizens. As I noted at the end of my last piece in this series:

[W]hat South Africa shows us is something grimmer: namely, a society where elite status is such a blinder on the wealthiest people of one race that they willingly ignore policies and behaviors that approach genocidal character against what Dickens would have called “their hungry brothers in the dust.” A society where an arrogant elite assumes that its status is so impregnable that they can tolerate hate speech, violence, and persecutory policies explicitly directed at all people like them, just because they assume their own privilege is so great that tolerating that behavior is magnanimous. In other words, a society where Hannah Arendt’s notion of the “banality of evil” is inflicted not by one race against outsiders, but by one race against others like themselves out of sheer indifference, contempt, or desire to reinforce their own status.

This is not only an attitude that we have to fear here, but an attitude I believe already exists among today’s elite. In this piece, I will attempt to establish the existence of this attitude, to explain it, and to provide a warning about how it could become increasingly problematic in the face of future American demographic trends.

https://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/

Speak no evil about Islam. Or else your so-called allies will roast you and call for your genuflection to political correctness, or insist that you audit a diversity course and absorb some sensitivity instruction. You will be tested upon completion of the course. But nodding off during a diversity lecture would also be offensive, too.

When you mock Muslims or their dress, you automatically mock Islam. Muslims adhere to Islam. If you say a Muslima looks like a bank robber or a mail box in a burqa, you are making a joke about Islam. But there is no humor in Islam.

Likewise, if you acknowledge that Pakistani Muslims are responsible for the unending rapes of white British girls, you will be charged with Islamophobia. You may even be seized on the street and tossed into prison, as Tommy Robinson was.

Boris Johnson, former British Secretary of State, and Labor Member of Parliament, Sarah Champion (for Rotherham), learned too late the negative consequences of freedom of speech in an authoritarian culture.

Champion apologized for her remarks about the Muslim rape gangs in her constituency and resigned from her party’s “shadow cabinet. “ All she said did was make a remark in a newspaper article about the gangs, in which she spoke of the “common ethnic heritage” of the men involved in the town’s sexual abuse scandal. “There. I said it,” she wrote. “Does that make me a racist? Or am I just prepared to call out this horrifying problem for what it is?”

The “common ethnic heritage” of the rapists is that the rapists are Pakistani, thus missing the fact that they are Muslims. The rapists could just as well be Afghani or Sudanese or Somali.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/notable-quotable-swedish-car-fire-1534374103

Paul Dallison and Stephen Brown reporting Aug. 14 in Politico Europe:

Cars were set alight across Sweden overnight in what police believe was a coordinated attack orchestrated on social media. . . .

“I am really surprised. My question for these people is ‘what the hell are you up to?’ ” Prime Minister Stefan Löfven said.

“You’re ruining things for yourselves, for your parents, for the whole community, for the neighbors and most of Swedish society is dead against this,” he told Swedish national radio’s news show Ekot.

“It seems very coordinated, almost like a military operation. Eighty cars—what is that all about?” asked Löfven.

Appeared in the August 16, 2018, print edition as ‘Notable & Quotable.’

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/08/real-fascists/

When leftists brand conservatives as ‘Nazis’ they strip away all meaning, just as they have succeeded in doing with ‘marriage’ and ‘racist’. When words are twisted to mean anything, what they convey is nothing but the speaker’s presumed right to silence and assault all who disagree.

The West has a plague of homegrown terrorists. True, their body count does not match that of Islamic extremists, but the ferocity of their attacks is of a kind. I’m talking about Antifa, an umbrella term for a loose collection of groups and individuals who process to be “anti fascist”. Oh, the irony!

The only problem with their self-given label (as with so many leftist self-given labels) is that they are the opposite. Antifa embody just about everything defining a fascist. The dictionary defines fascism as promoting nation and often race above individuals, standing for a centralised, autocratic government, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition. Antifa aren’t strictly nationalistic, but rather socialistic, promoting the collective above individual liberty.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/08/16/protecting-taiwan-from-chinese

The Chinese want to regain Taiwan as much as Abraham Lincoln desired to keep the southern states in the Union. Since the day that Taiwan became home of Chiang Kai-shek and his displaced Chinese Nationalist forces, the United States has vowed to uphold Taiwan’s place as an independent country. China views Taiwan as a breakaway province. The United States sees Taiwan as a democracy besieged by a larger, bullying neighbor. Taiwan simply wants to be free and sovereign.

A Complex Relationship: China, Taiwan, and the United States
For its part, the United States strives to maintain a posture of strategic ambiguity. At first, the United States unequivocally stood behind Taiwan as a counterweight to Red China in the Cold War. During the Nixon Administration, however, U.S. policy toward China fundamentally changed. Nixon went to Mao and the two leaders opened up their countries to each other.

Later, as part of the Carter Administration’s diplomatic efforts with China, the United States no longer recognized its long-time ally of Taiwan as the legitimate government of China.Until then, Washington had only recognized Taiwan’s government as the government of China. But under Carter, Washington conceded the “one China, two systems” model that there is only one Chinese government—and that government is in Beijing, not Taipei.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12850/emmanuel-macron-rise-fall

France’s Justice Department is not independent of the government; no judge will seek to know more about Macron’s scandal. No thorough and deep investigation will take place. The French media are largely subsidized by the government and no more independent of the government than the Justice Department is.

Even the French media that are not funded by the state self-censor what they report, because they are supported by businesses that depend on government contracts. No French journalist will try to discover a thing.

The economist Charles Gave recently used statistical data to demonstrate that if nothing changes, the non-Muslim population of France could be a minority in 40 years. He added: “What happened to Spain or Asia Minor in the 10th and 11th centuries will happen to Europe in the 21st century, that is a certainty.”

When Emmanuel Macron was elected president of France in May 2017, he was portrayed as a reformer who was going to change everything in France and beyond.

Fourteen months later, illusions are gone. The reforms carried out have been essentially cosmetic and failed to slow France’s sclerotic decline. Economic growth is close to zero: 0.2 per cent in the second quarter of 2018. Unemployment, at around 8.9%, remains high. French public spending as a percent of GDP is, at 56.4%, still the highest in Europe. The country is still frequently paralyzed by public transportation strikes. No-go zones continue to spread, and Macron himself recently admitted his helplessness by asking for a “general mobilization” of the population. Riots are frequent; large-scale public events lead to looting and arson. The night after the French team’s victory at the soccer World Cup, hundreds of thugs mingling with the crowds broke windows, vandalized banks and ATMs, destroyed street signs and torched cars.

As most economic activity in France stops in July and August, Macron might have thought he could enjoy a summer break. He could not.