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BRUTAL REALITIES: BRUCE BAWER

On CNN and Fox News, one politician after another professed to be “shocked” by the massacre in Orlando. “Who would have expected such a thing?” people kept asking. Actually, I’ve been expecting just such a thing for years. The only shock was that it took this long for some jihadist to go after a gay establishment.

Islamic law, after all, is crystal clear on homosexuality, though the various schools of sharia prescribe a range of penalties: one calls for death by stoning; another demands that the transgressor be thrown from a high place; a third says to drop a building on him. In Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Sudan, Yemen, Mauritania, Pakistan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, as well as in parts of Nigeria, Somalia, Syria and Iraq, homosexuality is indeed punishable by death.

Nor do Muslims magically change their views on the subject when they move to the West. As long ago as 2005, the head of the Netherlands’ leading gay rights group said that, owing to the growth of Islam in Amsterdam, tolerance of gay people was “slipping away like sand through the fingers”; over the last 10 or 15 years, Dutch gays have fled the cities in droves to escape Muslim gay-bashing. In Norway, several high-profile Muslims have refused publicly to oppose executing gays, and when challenged on their views have gone on the offensive, demanding respect for orthodox Muslim beliefs. This past April, a poll established that 52 percent of British Muslims want homosexuality banned.

Many on the left (and some on the right, too) refuse to face these facts. In 2004, when gay activist Peter Tatchell urged London’s then-mayor Ken Livingstone to rescind an invitation to Koranic scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi—who supports the death penalty for gays—Livingstone issued a report calling Qaradawi a liberal and Tatchell a racist.

Yes, there are self-identified Muslims who harbor no antigay prejudice; I suspect that more than a few of them are actually apostates who—aware that Islam considers apostasy, too, a capital crime—choose to keep quiet about their infidel status. Some gays who were born into Islam claim that they’ve worked out for themselves a version of their faith not inconsistent with their homosexuality; good luck to them, but they’re in a tiny minority. Whenever a Muslim commits some atrocity, we’re reminded that the world contains some 1.5 billion Muslims, the great majority of them tolerant, peace-loving, etc.; the fact is that the great majority of those 1.5 billion Muslims also belong to varieties of Islam that preach contempt for, and severe punishment of, homosexuals.

ISIS and ‘Domestic’ Terrorism In reacting to terrorism, Obama cannot bring himself to say the words ‘radical Islam.’ By Victor Davis Hanson

There are many threads to the horror in Orlando.

Most disturbing is the serial inability of the Obama administration — in this case as after the attacks at Fort Hood and in Boston and San Bernardino — even to name the culprits as radical Islamists. Major Hasan shouts “Allahu akbar!” and Omar Mateen calls 911 in mediis interfectis to boast of his ISIS affiliation — and yet the administration can still not utter the name of the catalyst of their attacks: radical Islam. It is hard to envision any clearer Islamist self-identification, other than name tags and uniforms. The Obama team seems to fear the unwelcome public responses to these repeated terrorist operations rather than seeing them as requisites for changing policies to prevent their recurrence.

On receiving news of the attack, Obama almost immediately called for greater tolerance for the LGBT community — as if American society, rather than jihadism and the cultural homophobia so characteristic of the Middle East, had fueled the attack; or as if Mateen had not phoned in his ISIS affiliation. Obama strained to find vocabulary equivalent to “workplace violence” and was reduced to suggesting that the Orlando club was a nexus for gay solidarity and thus a target of endemic LGBT hatred, a half- but only half-right summation. Why is Obama’s first reaction always to find perceived fault within American society rather than with radical Islamism, an ideology certainly at odds with all progressive notions of gay rights, feminism, and religious tolerance?

In Obama’s view, it appears, the problem was a dearth of the community-organizing spirit, not of anti-terrorist measures. And then he channeled the gun-control narrative — forgetting apparently that the Islamist security officer Mateen had passed the requisite background checks to get his guns (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?), and that the Boston massacre, the beheading in Oklahoma, and the stabbings at UC Merced had nothing to do with firearms, and that the strictest firearms legislation in the world did little to prevent Islamist terrorism in Belgium and France. Obama, both ideologically and temperamentally, apparently is not up to the task of putting the security of American citizens at a higher priority than his preconceived multicultural ideas of Middle Eastern “difference” and his domestic agendas. Or perhaps he believes, as do many, that there is no practicable way to prevent these sorts of radical-Islamist killers from murdering Americans. Banning knives, box-cutters, pressure cookers, ball-bearings, and all guns will not stop the Tsarnaevs and Mateens of the world, although holding accountable authorities who ignore warning signals about radical Islamists might.

The Orlando Jihad Carnage, and A Mainstream, Authoritative U.S. Muslim Fatwa on “Atrocious” Homosexuality and Its Lethal Punishment by Andrew Bostom

The late Taher Jaber al-Alwani (d. March, 2016), trained at Al-Azhar University, founded in 973 C.E., and Sunni Islam’s most prestigious religious teaching institution since the mid-13th century, till now. Receiving his Ph.D in Islamic Law from Al-Azhar in 1973, al-Alwani subsequently taught Islamic Law at the Imam Muhammad b. Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Al-Alwani participated in the founding of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) in the United States in 1981. He was also a founding member of the Council of the Muslim World League in Mecca, a member of the international Organization of Islamic Cooperation Islamic Fiqh [Islamic Jurisprudence] Academy in Jeddah, since 1987, and President of the Fiqh Council of North America from 1988, till his recent death. In short, al-Alwani was a highly trained, greatly respected, mainstream Muslim authority on Islamic Law, internationally, and within the US.

Al-Alwani’s June 18, 2003 “fatwa” on homosexuality—an Islamic “legal” ruling per Islam’s theo-political totalitarian “legal” system, the Sharia, merits careful consideration in the wake of pious Muslim jihadist Omar Marteen’s mass murderous attack on an Orlando gay night club early yesterday, Sunday, June 12, 2016.

Citing precedent from the Koran itself, and the most trusted hadith or “traditions” of Muhammad, Islam’s prophet, and human behavior prototype, al-Alwani makes plain homosexuality is a “moral atrocity,” punishable by death in the corporeal world, and eternal torment in the hereafter.

[I]t should be clear that homosexuality is sinful and shameful. In Islamic terminology it is called ‘Al-Fahsha’ or an atrocious and obscene act. Islam teaches that believers should neither do the obscene acts, nor in any way indulge in their propagation. Allah says, “Those who love (to see) obscenity published broadcast among the Believers will have a grievous Penalty in this life and in the Hereafter: Allah knows, and you know not.” (Al-Nur [chapter 24]: 19)

Occupied Orlando To them, we are all infidels, but our president keeps inviting them in. And Trump is getting it right. JackEngelhard

Last Wednesday it was Tel Aviv, and only a few days later it was Orlando when Muslim hotheads came to kill.

Everything about it was the same, except that in one place, Israel, the world blamed it on the victims.

“It’s the occupation.” Thus spoke voices from among the Palestinian Arabs beginning with Mahmoud Abbas.

No wait. He also said that “both sides” share the blame.

The Left agreed. From CNN, from the BBC, from The New York Times, from TheWashington Post, from the leftist mayor of Tel Aviv and others, we heard that the Tel Aviv killer was “enraged” because of the “occupation” — to have us believe that this particular Muslim Arab murderer was NOT under the influence of mandatory Jihad.

He was not crazed by calls from the mosques to slaughter nonbelievers.

Nope. He got up one morning and said to himself, what troubles me today? Ah, yes. The occupation.

So who is occupying Orlando, U.S.A?

Must be the same reason that caused the atrocity in Orlando, the occupation…the good old convenient occupation.

Therefore, at any moment we should be hearing about a “peace process” to “bring both sides together.”

From that logic, the United States must be prepared to make “painful concessions” for the sake of peace and security. Orlando must be divided.

After all, what’s good for Tel Aviv must be just as good for Orlando. In their eyes we are all equal, equally guilty for occupying Muslim territory.

We are all infidels, only under different skies.

To Jihadist Islam everything belongs to them and we are all targets. BDS thinks so and on nearly every campus they won’t let anyone forget.

They use every beer hall tactic available to stomp home the message.

The FBI is on the job and the rest of our law enforcement officers are likewise on alert for more of the same. They are monitoring Jihadist terror cells in every state throughout the U.S.A. We are not at the end of this war against Islamic terrorism, which is not “workplace violence,” Mr. President.

We are at the beginning as I’ve been prophesying since this book went to print.

It’s Islamic Terrorism and the 72 virgins awaiting a job well done.
Nor is it generic terrorism, like the kind that keeps killing people in Chicago. No, it’s Islamic Terrorism and the 72 virgins awaiting a job well done.

That’s the imperative that’s got these people “enraged.”

Our cops can’t keep up with them because as soon as they’ve got the ones in the house squared and tabulated, here’s what happens: Obama brings more of them into our homes, and by the boatload from Syria and elsewhere. Hillary keeps asking for more. There are not enough minarets to satisfy her.

She likewise won’t say what IS is. Nor will Bernie, and from a leading spokesman on the Radical Left, something else is bothering him. Immediately after the event, The New Yorker’s David Remnick took to the pages of his own magazine to express his outrage…not against Radical Islam, but against Donald Trump.

Radical Islam is too hot to handle. For Radical Leftists like Remnick, Trump is a far more convenient target. He barks, but he won’t bite.

Barry Shaw: Liberal progressive values meet Muslim terror Israel is a case in point. Palestinian terror conflicts with Israeli liberal progressive values as well of those of the rest of the West.

When Israel displays so-called “liberal progressive values” to people intent on attacking our state and killing Jews the direct and immediate result is Palestinian Arab terror and the murder of Israelis.

When the Israeli government lifted restrictions on Palestinians as a gesture during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan Palestinian Arabs, particularly those belonging to Hamas, exploited the gesture by disguising themselves, arming themselves, traveling into the heart of Tel Aviv, perhaps the most liberal progressive city in Israel, to kill and injure Israelis, including many who have supported their cause.

When the terrorists entered the busy Sarona entertainment center they entered the soft underbelly of Israel and mingled with the part of Israeli society who have bought into the notion that Israel should not“occupy” the Palestinians, that it is wrong to “oppress” them. In other words, they have adopted the language of the Palestinians without understanding that, by living in Israel, according to the killers and those who motivated them, they are illegally occupying Palestine, even if they live in Tel Aviv.

These Israelis, including Ron Huldai, the mayor of Tel Aviv, think that the terror outrage was a result of “Israeli occupation.” They have blinded themselves to the fact that both side of the Palestinian Arab political divide look on Israel as “Palestinian occupied territory.”

To the Palestinian Arab leadership, both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, there is no such thing as an Israeli Arab. They are, in their language “Palestinians of the Interior” or “Palestinians of “48” symbolizing the Arabs that remained when five Arab armies invaded the nascent Jewish state of Israel in 1948 in order to destroy it.

That is why Mahmoud Abbas, the undemocratic Chairman of the Palestinian Authority, elected to a four year term nine years ago, cannot, and will not, recognize Israel as the Jewish state. To do so would put an end to the final solution of the Jewish problem in the Middle East, namely the establishment of a Palestine on all the land they desire. Accepting a Palestinian state on what are called “1967 lines” is simply a temporary stage on the way to completing the task of eliminating Israel.

Just look at Palestinian maps, read what they are teaching their children. Their “Palestine” includes Jaffa, Haifa, Acre and the Galilee. They have even turned the wandering Bedouin of the Negev into Palestinians.

The 1300 year old Muslim origins of hate Islam’s hate does not stop with Jews, but Jew-hatred is one of its malignancies Victor Sharpe

Islamists hate Jews, gays, Christians – and the world ignores this at its peril.

This resistant and malignant infection of hate is able to evolve and poison human beings generation after generation.

One of its most virulent infestations of Islamic Jew-hatred today takes the form of the so-called Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) scourge, which targets the only true and vibrant democracy – Israel – in the hellish Muslim dominated Middle East.

The areas of the world, which are perpetrating hideous crimes against humanity, are ignored by the myrmidons who support the anti-Jewish bigotry and prejudice of BDS.

For the indoctrinated supporters of BDS, there is no apparent interest whatsoever in the horrors taking place daily in N. Korea, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Mali, Guinea-Bissau or in so many of the countries that make up the 197 members of the United Nations.

For the BDS rabble only the Jewish state is the target. Proof, if ever it was needed, that BDS is primarily and demonically anti-Jewish.

Ask the BDS supporters about the continuing illegal occupation and ethnic cleansing of the native Greek population of northern Cyprus by Turkey, or the decades of illegal occupation of Tibet by Communist China,and they remain ignorant of or deathly silent about those crimes against humanity, thus exposing their deplorable hypocrisy.

Jamie Glazov: Boys of the Taliban The taboo pathology that fuels Islamic rage.

The worst mass shooting ever on American soil has now transpired in Orlando, Florida. Omar Mateen, a Muslim who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, opened fire at the Pulse gay nightclub on Saturday night, murdering at least fifty people and wounded another 53. With the issue of Islam’s teachings about homosexuality now confronting a shocked world, we are re-running Jamie Glazov’s article “Boys of the Taliban,” from Frontpage’s Jan 1, 2007 issue, to help shed light on a taboo pathology that underlies the structures of Islam — and that serves as one of the primary ingredients of Islamic rage and terror. The article has been edited and updated.

*Just recently, the Taliban issued a new set of 30 rules to its fighters.

Many of the instructions were to be expected: rule No. 25 commands the murder of teachers if a warning and a beating does not dissuade them from teaching. No. 26 outlines the exquisite delicacy of burning schools and destroying anything that aid organizations might undertake — such as the building of a new road, school or clinic. The essence of the other rules are easily left to the imagination, basically involving what Islamic Jihad is all about: vile hate, death and destruction.

But there is a curious rule that the Western media has typically ignored. Rule No. 19 instructs that Taliban fighters must not take young boys without facial hair into their private quarters.

Aside from the question of what is permitted if a young boy does have facial hair, this new Taliban commandment brings light to a taboo pathology that underlies the structures of Islam. And it is crucial to deconstruct the meaning of this rule — and the horrid reality that it represents — because it serves as a gateway to understanding some of the primary ingredients of Islamic rage and terror.

Killing Homosexuals Is Not ISIS Law, It Is Muslim Law For nearly 25 years, we’ve been clinging to the fiction that groups such as ISIS are anti-Islamic. By Andrew C. McCarthy

Various reports indicate that the death toll from the jihadist attack overnight at a popular gay club in Orlando may exceed 50 people, with more than 50 others wounded. The terrorist’s identity has been reported: He is Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old American citizen and devout Muslim from Fort Pierce, Fla., the son of immigrants from Afghanistan.

The FBI has indicated that Mateen, who was killed in a shootout with police at about 5 a.m., was an Islamic extremist. Representative Peter King (R., N.Y.), who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, says the shooter was “trained in the use of weapons.” As we have noted here many times, military training is generally the key that separates competent terrorists from wannabes. But whether actual or would-be jihadists, these Muslims are motivated by Islamic supremacism, the belief that sharia, Islam’s ancient, totalitarian law, must be imposed on society.

Based on all this, there is abundant Washington and media speculation that the attack is “ISIS-inspired.” This is consistent with the bipartisan, government-approved inanity we have been following for a quarter-century, what I often call the political class’s concoction of “An Islam of Their Very Own.” It goes something like this:

Islam is a religion of peace, period. End of discussion. “Violent extremist” outfits such as ISIS and al-Qaeda kill wantonly, with no real ideological motivation. ISIS and al-Qaeda are thus not Islamic, but actually anti-Islamic — and if they cite Islamic scripture to justify their atrocities, they are “hijacking” and “perverting” Islam. Because we must see these groups as “anti-Islam” rather than Islam, it is acceptable to call a mass-murder attack “terrorism” only if law-enforcement develops some plausible tie to these groups. Otherwise, if a Muslim is involved, stick with “workplace violence” and the like. Finally when an attack committed by a Muslim is too obviously terrorism to deny, call it “ISIS-inspired,” or “al-Qaeda-inspired,” or “Hamas political resistance,” etc. — but by all means do not, absolutely do not, ascribe it to Islam in any way shape or form.

This is idiocy. Will today’s event, the worst mass shooting in American history, help us see that?

We need to consider separately Islam and its sharia law.

Gov. Cuomo’s Order on Israel Stirs N.Y. Campus Activists Columbia, NYU and the City University of New York have all said that they wouldn’t divest from Israel By Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Mike Vilensky

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s executive order pressuring institutions and businesses to maintain ties with Israel has riled college campuses in the state, where students have called for divestment from the country.

Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, issued the order earlier this month, saying New York would discontinue investments with organizations boycotting Israel.

College students have long called for their universities to divest funds from institutions they object to, including private-prison and fossil-fuel companies. Initiatives to pressure Israel economically have become known as the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, or BDS.

Alphonso David, Mr. Cuomo’s counsel, said the new executive order wouldn’t pertain to schools that heeded requests for divestment, but those that did so could violate existing state laws against discrimination. He also said student groups calling for their schools to divest from Israel wouldn’t be affected by the order.
Still, students have expressed concern that the order would weaken their efforts.

“NYU can use this as another excuse as why they refuse to divest,” said Ellis Garey, a New York University graduate student who said she voted this year in favor of a student-union resolution calling for boycotting Israel. She was part of a group of students and activists who protested outside Mr. Cuomo’s Manhattan office on Thursday. CONTINUE AT SITE

Obama’s Underwater Manhattan Doesn’t Come from Science, but from Science Fiction :Daniel Greenfield

So Obama decided to warn everyone that Manhattan is about to turn into Atlantis.

“The majority of people believe in things like science — and scientists. And so when scientists tell us that the planet is getting warmer and we need to do something about it, the majority of people think that’s a good idea, let’s do something about that, because we don’t want Manhattan to be underwater.”

Manhattan going underwater isn’t science. It’s science fiction.

It’s the sort of thing you get from watching movies like The Day After Tomorrow where evil Republican politicians neglect the Flying Global Warming Monster and suddenly waves cover Manhattan and everything freezes.

That’s not science. It’s hardly even science fiction.

Here’s what Obama’s science really looks like.

New York City underwater? Gas over $9 a gallon? A carton of milk costs almost $13? Welcome to June 12, 2015. Or at least that was the wildly-inaccurate version of 2015 predicted by ABC News exactly seven years ago. Appearing on Good Morning America in 2008, Bob Woodruff hyped Earth 2100, a special that pushed apocalyptic predictions of the then-futuristic 2015.