RUTHFULLY YOURS

Last week marked the 17th anniversary of Jordan’s King Abdullah’s coronation after the death of his father, King Hussein.

Abdullah’s ascension to the monarchy was unanticipated. His uncle Hassan was his father’s long-serving crown prince and was expected to inherit the throne. Hussein made the change in succession from his deathbed.

Today it is hard to believe that Abdullah will have the power to decide who succeeds him.

For generations, the largest looming threat to Jordan was its Palestinian majority. Although estimates of the size of Jordan’s Palestinian population vary widely, some placing it at just over 50 percent, and other estimates claiming that Palestinians made up 70% of the overall population, all credible demographic studies have agreed that most Jordanians are Palestinians.

It was due to fear of his Palestinian citizenry that for the past decade or so, Abdullah has sought to disenfranchise them. Beginning around 2004, Abdullah began throwing Palestinians out of the Jordanian armed forces. He also began canceling their citizenship.

According to a 2010 report by Human Rights Watch, between 2004 and 2008, the kingdom revoked the citizenship of several thousand Palestinian Jordanians and hundreds of thousands were considered at risk of losing their citizenship in an arbitrary process.

Today, concerns that Palestinians may assert their rights as the majority and so threaten the kingdom have given way to even greater fears. Demographic changes in Jordan in recent years have been so enormous that Palestinians may be the least of Abdullah’s worries. Indeed, it is far from clear that they are still the majority of the people in Jordan.

Since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, between 750,000 and a million Iraqis entered Jordan. Current data are not clear regarding how many of those Iraqis remain in Jordan today.

But whatever their number, they have been eclipsed by the Syrians.

Because almost every religious and/or ethnic community in Syria is divided, some siding with Assad and others fighting against him, it is difficult to establish clear sectarian demarcation lines. Syria today is a patchwork of emirates.

The Islamic Republic of Iran needed Syria to complete the “Shiite Crescent” which it saw as its glacis and point of access to the Mediterranean. Iran is estimated to have spent something like $12 billion on its Syrian venture. By the time of this writing, Iran had also lost 143 ranking officers, captain and above, in combat in Syrian battlefields.

Turkey’s “soft” Islamic leadership, the main source of support for anti-Assad forces, has always had ties to the global movement of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is likely that Turkey’s leaders see the Syrian imbroglio as an opportunity for them to “solve” the problem of Kurdish-Turkish secessionists based in Syrian territory since the 1980s.

Turkey has become host to more than 2.5 million Syrian refugees, posing a long-term humanitarian and security challenge. Ankara’s decision to goad large numbers of refugees into the European Union was an attempt at forcing the richer nations of the continent to share some of Turkey’s burden.

The country most dramatically, and perhaps permanently, affected by the Syrian conflict is Lebanon. More than 1.8 million Syrian refugees have arrived, altering the country’s delicate demographic balance. If the new arrivals stay permanently, Lebanon would become another Arab Sunni majority state.

Next March will mark the fifth anniversary of what started as another chapter in the so-called “Arab Spring” morphed into a civil war, degenerated into a humanitarian catastrophe and, finally, led to the systemic collapse of Syria as a nation-state.

That sequence of events has had a profound impact on virtually the whole of the region known as the Greater Middle East, affecting many aspects of its component nations ranging from demography, ethno-sectarian composition and security. Since the purpose of this presentation is not to offer an historic account of the events, a brief reminder of some key aspects would suffice.

The winds of change in Europe have circled back to the 1930’s as public attitudes have grown dark and bitter. It was recently reported that more than forty percent of European Union citizens hold anti-Semitic views and agree with the oft repeated claim that Israel is committing genocidal acts against Palestinians. In fact, there is the common refrain that Israelis are the new Nazis.

Reasons for this remarkable condition – as the blood of the Holocaust still soaks the soil of Europe – abound. Obviously radical Islam promotes this calumny even as it engages in violence from Paris to Moscow. Refugees from Syria attribute their plight to Jews, a form of scapegoating that downplays the role of ISIS in population displacement. The BDS movement has a role in using boycott, divestment and sanctions as instruments to delegitimize the state of Israel. When Jewish organizations themselves climb on to BDS, e.g. J Street and the New Israel Fund, it is difficult to refute the claims, albeit claims that should be refuted. And last, is the rise of extremist parties on the right and the left that have often exhibited hostility to Israel. While Jean-Marie Le Pen of the French National Front, Jeremy Corbyn of the British Labor party have deep seated philosophical differences, they are united in their hostility to Israel.

When the leaders of ISIS declared the caliphate of the Islamic State in June 2014, the world already had a strong idea of who they were: a jihadist group so violent, so barbaric, so extreme, that even al-Qaida, with whom they had once been affiliated, wanted nothing more to do with them.

But as the world soon learned, it would get even worse.

The founding of the Islamic State brought some of the most inhumane violence of modern civilization: captives held in cages and burned alive; beheadings captured on video and broadcast on the Internet; mass enslavement and rape of non-Muslim women; and the genocide of Iraq’s Yazidi tribe.

Coupled with this has been a perverse propaganda campaign that makes the Caliphate look like a teenage summer camp, aimed at recruiting Westerners to join the jihad and enjoy life in their idyllic, Allah-blessed commune-on-the-sea. And for thousands of Western Muslims, it has worked, either by inducing them to make the journey, or hijrah, to Syria and Iraq, or by motivating them to carry out terrorist attacks on Western towns and cities.

This is what we know.

What we have not known has been the reality of life in the Islamic State, including the social order, the availability of housing and health care and other basic necessities and the treatment of women and children.

Really, they have only themselves to blame for the CSIRO’s mass axing of global warming careerists. If only the high priests of the movement had been more persuasive in casting random weather events as specific symptoms of our planet’s death agonies, the gravy train might not have been derailed
Shrinking the CSIRO’s multi-million dollar climate cookie jar in the Year of the Monkey was bound to cause a rumble in the jungle and shrieks of alarm. But the primal screams of self-preservation from near and far were a surprise. Allowing that one has no objection to rubbing salt into wounds, here’s a tweet it would be satisfying to send to those smart folk who swear they can “re-engineer global simulations to make predictions down to catchment and paddock scales”. The message: Don’t be surprised when, one day, a lot more of you are put out to grass.

Hell, however warm, hath no fury like an atmospheric astrologer scorned, as CEO Dr Larry Marshall discovered when he revealed new plans for the agency last week (ABC 7.30 report video here).

In a letter to staff, Marshall noted that

CSIRO pioneered climate research … But we cannot rest on our laurels as that is the path to mediocrity. Our climate models are among the best in the world and our measurements honed those models to prove global climate change. That question has been answered, and the new question is what do we do about it, and how can we find solutions for the climate we will be living with?

How, indeed? Just as the ‘underpinning science’ had been overcooked, so was the reaction. The purveyors of ‘settled science’ would have none of it. (See Joanne Nova here.) Professor Matthew England, Deputy Director at the University of NSW’s Climate Change Research Centre, described the letter as ‘jaw-droppingly shocking’. “There seems to be no appreciation of how much this science underpins our nation’s interests,” he said.

The French are raiding mosques and not liking what they are finding: hundreds of war-grade weapons, and large quantities of Kalashnikov ammunition.

French Interior Minister Cazeneuve reported, “In 15 days we have seized one third of the quantity of war-grade weapons that are normally seized in a year.”

The liaison between French imams and the French government has told Aljazeera “according to official figures and our discussions with the interior ministry, between 100 and 160 mosques will be closed.”

France has 2,600 mosques. In addition, 2,235 Muslim businesses and homes have been searched. There have been 232 arrests.

Meanwhile, in America, we are being mercilessly lectured to by the Democratic Party that questioning the importation of citizens from a jihadi culture is racist.

How do the Republican candidates approach this threat? Trump is calling for a moratorium on all Muslim immigrants. Senator Cruz has introduced legislation designating the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organization (which would enable us to deal with many jihadi front groups in America); introduced the Terrorist Refugee Infiltration Prevention Act of 2015, to bar refugees from countries with substantial territory controlled by a foreign terrorist organization; legislation to allow state governors the power to bar refugees from their states; and twice introduced the Expatriate Terrorist Act, which bars Americans who join ISIS or other terrorist groups from re-entering the country. Rubio voted against the Musim immigration moratorium bill and has no proposals to limit jihadi refugees. His Gang of Eight bill would have allowed unlimited Islamic immigrants.

Iran has created an Islamist empire through its loyal proxies in dozens of countries. More recently, these Iranian Islamist proxies have become empowered and emboldened to an unprecedented level. Their leaders are publicly announcing their desire to create Islamist states, which are modeled after the Islamic Republic of Iran.

For example, this week, the Deputy Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, pointed out in an interview, to a state-owned Iranian outlet, that he truly believes that “Islam is the solution to all of man’s problems, in all places and at all times.” As a result, he contends that it is a “doctrinal and cultural imperative” to overthrow the secular state in Lebanon and set up an Islamic Shiite political system. He also desires the new state to precisely resemble the one created by Ayatollah Rooh Allah Khomeini, the autocrat founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran who tried to establish a political establishment similar to that of Muhammad over 1400 years ago.

Hezbollah is not the only ideological Islamist proxy that is coming out with such blatant announcements. Others of Iran’s proxies−including Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq (AAH), Badr Organization, Liwa Abu Fadl al-Abbas (LAFA), Kataib Al Imam Ali−have publicly reasserted their mission of creating a state similar to that of Khomenei’s.

Leaders of Hezbollah and other Shiite Islamist groups funded by Iran have made their allegiances to Iran by believing in the concept of “Absolute Wilayat al-Faqih” (Guardianship of the Jurist) which was coined by Ayatollah Khomeini. The concept of “Absolute Wilayat al-Faqih” follows that all domestic, social, economic, political and foreign policy maters are in the hand of one person (who is elected by Allah: The Supreme Leader). This is similar to how things were ruled in Muhammad’s era. The Supreme leader has the right to enact, suspend, and abolish any laws based on his discretion, Shari law and Islamic Jurisprudence.

As the referendum on Brexit (i.e., Britain’s departure from the European Union) gets closer, advocates of Britain remaining a member, such as prime minister David Cameron, are looking and sounding more and more like “Baghdad Bob” denying the arrival of the U.S. Army even as, over his shoulder, we see GIs pulling down Saddam Hussein’s statue.

Over David Cameron’s shoulder, we can see the young migrant men storming Europe’s porous borders, the scenes of mass sexual assault in Cologne, the long lines of people in southern Europe made permanently jobless by the Euro, the toppling of moderate governments (left and right) weakened by the Eurozone’s “austerity” policy, the relentless rise of populist, nationalist, and Trotskyist parties across the continent, and the dithering and incompetence of the EU’s central institutions in the face of these massive problems.

Seemingly oblivious, Cameron tells us how the European Union guarantees Britain’s prosperity and security today, but that soon it will be even more beneficial as a result of the reforms he has just secured in his European negotiations. On even cursory examination, however, these reforms don’t do what they’re supposed to do, and even if they did, they would still be inadequate because they are dependent upon future EU agreements rather than being firmly agreed now.

The best example is immigration because, by 80–20 majorities, British voters want to see it cut drastically and control of Britain’s borders regained by London. Cameron promised to meet these demands until recently. But when he realized that the EU would never agree to limits on the free movement of labor, he quietly shelved them and instead called for a “waiting period” of four years before new EU migrants to Britain became eligible for social benefits. It was argued that this fulfilled Cameron’s pledge to reduce immigration levels by making “benefits migration” less attractive.

This maneuver was both a cheap appeal to popular prejudices and completely ineffective as a means of reducing immigration. Most — the great majority — of intra-European migrants come to Britain to work, not to go on welfare. They would be largely unaffected by this “reform.” Immigration levels would not fall or even moderate significantly. After four years, however, the immigrant workers would be able to claim welfare benefits for themselves and their dependents — including those dependents living in their country of origin.

Straining at gnats while swallowing camels is increasingly how Islam’s apologists rationalize away the violence and hate Sharia engenders for the “infidel,” the non-Muslim. Consider the significance of yet another video of yet another learned Muslim justifying the enslavement and rape of non-Muslim women.

Suad Saleh, a female professor of doctrine at Al Azhar University, correctly defines the Arabic phrase melk al-yamin — “right hand possession” (see Koran 4:3):

[Non-Muslim] female prisoners of wars are “those whom you own.” In order to humiliate them, they become the property of the [Muslim] army commander, or of a Muslim, and he can have sex with them just like he has sex with his wives.

Ms. Saleh’s comments are not new or unique. Countless Muslims — beginning with Muhammad himself — have confirmed that Islam permits the sexual enslavement of non-Muslim women seized during the jihad.

Saleh cannot even take the “honor” of being the first Muslim woman to support this inherently misogynistic creed.

Of interest here to the West is how the Al Azhar professor claims the Islamic institution of sex slavery is fair and just — it’s just that too many Muslims exploit it, to the detriment of Islam:

Some [Muslim] opportunists and extremists, who only harm Islam, say: “I will bring a woman from East Asia, as [as a sex slave] under the status of ‘right hand possessions.’ And with the consent of my wife, I will allocate this woman a room in the house, and will have sex with her as a slave girl.”

It is commonly repeated by Palestinians that there were never any Jews in the Holy Land before the 19th century and that the first and second Jewish Temples never stood in Jerusalem. Not only do these claims fly in the face of over a century of archaeological work and the records of Greek, Roman and other historians in antiquity, they flatly contradict and annul the texts of both the Old and New Testaments. By their own rejection of Jewish rights in Israel, Christians unwittingly repudiate their own rights and history.

Christians in St Thomas Church did not once criticize or deplore the Palestinian glorification of violence, this delight at the murders of children, this dancing in the streets when innocent throats are cut.

Is it the Christian thing to demand that hospitals and doctors across the globe should refuse to use Israeli medicines or surgical devices or advanced medical equipment? Would Christians who work with bodies like Christian Aid call on countries damaged by natural and man-made calamities to ban Israeli aid teams?

Abandoning Israel will not soothe the hearts of the Palestinian people or make the Christians less vulnerable — as we are now seeing from the throat-slittings and mass displacements throughout the Middle East, done not by Jews but by Muslim fanatics.