From Creeping Sharia:
Scotland: Muslim ‘honour’ crimes a growing problem
Posted on September 30, 2010 by creeping
As the Islamic population increases, so do the horrors of honor crimes, via Police plea to victims of ‘honour’ crimes – Scotsman.com News.
POLICE are launching a campaign to tackle honour-based violence in Muslim communities by encouraging more victims to come forward.
The number of cases in Scotland is growing, and although there have been only 31 reported in Lothian and Borders since the start of 2009, this is believed to be the tip of the iceberg as few victims are willing or able to come forward.
When they do contact either the police or support agencies, the extent of the violence has often become so severe that it is unbearable.
Assistant Chief Constable Iain Livingstone, the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland’s lead for public protection, said: “The intention is to encourage people to come forward and have confidence that they will be properly dealt with.
“Extreme violence can be used, up to and including rape and potentially murder – we know that from what we have seen in England, in particular.”
However, agencies working with ethnic minorities in Scotland have seen the problem a lot closer to home.
All 31 recorded incidents in Lothian and Borders have been against women, the majority aged 21 to 30. Most of the perpetrators were aged 31 to 50 and male, and motivated by a feeling of loss of honour or disrespect.
Mr Livingstone will chair a conference on honour-based violence today, at which Muslim scholar Shaykh Amer Jamil has been invited to speak.
Mr Jamil said: “I’ve travelled around Scotland getting imams to address it in sermons. They will inevitably implore people to come forward and seek more help. So I would expect figures (of honour-based violence] to go up, not because of an increase in incidents but because of an increase in reporting.
“When people do eventually seek help, they usually do so when they are completely desperate and have no other options.”
Related: Scotland: Law Firm Offering Advice on Sharia Law
Thursday, September 30, 2010
From The American Thinker:
September 30, 2010
Ground Zero Mosque's Stunning Symbolic Design Motif Unveiled
Thomas Lifson
The newly unveiled "official" architectural renderings of the Ground Zero Mosque, now being rebranded and sanitized as the "Park 51 Community Center" reveal a disturbing, insidious message. (Big hat tip: Pamela Geller, Atlas Shrugs)
Look closely at the pattern of the facade. It is quite easy to discern the Star of David (two triangles with points up and down), the pre-eminent symbol of Judaism here:
and here:
But the entire facade shows these shapes dissolving, as if shattered and falling down.
Kind of like a window shattered by rocks and fragmenting into pieces.
New York City has the largest Jewish population in the world. Throughout the Arab and Muslim world, "Wall Street" -- the financial district on lower Manhattan -- connotes "Jewish bankers."
Kristallnacht, anyone?
This no more coy than the crescent shaped monument proposed for Shanksville, PA, where United 92 crashed to earth.
I am disgusted.
Posted at 12:40 PM
September 30, 2010
Ground Zero Mosque's Stunning Symbolic Design Motif Unveiled
Thomas Lifson
The newly unveiled "official" architectural renderings of the Ground Zero Mosque, now being rebranded and sanitized as the "Park 51 Community Center" reveal a disturbing, insidious message. (Big hat tip: Pamela Geller, Atlas Shrugs)
Look closely at the pattern of the facade. It is quite easy to discern the Star of David (two triangles with points up and down), the pre-eminent symbol of Judaism here:
and here:
But the entire facade shows these shapes dissolving, as if shattered and falling down.
Kind of like a window shattered by rocks and fragmenting into pieces.
New York City has the largest Jewish population in the world. Throughout the Arab and Muslim world, "Wall Street" -- the financial district on lower Manhattan -- connotes "Jewish bankers."
Kristallnacht, anyone?
This no more coy than the crescent shaped monument proposed for Shanksville, PA, where United 92 crashed to earth.
I am disgusted.
Posted at 12:40 PM
The Netherlands: Burqa Will Be Banned Say Anti-Islam Members Of Parliament
From AFP and Alliance Defense Fund:
Netherlands to ban the burqa, says anti-Islam MPs
By Mariette le Roux (AFP) – 9 hours ago
THE HAGUE — The Netherlands will ban the burqa and halve immigration under measures agreed in a pact to form a minority coalition government, anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders announced Thursday.
"A new wind will blow in The Netherlands," declared Wilders whose party is part of the deal, standing alongside the leaders of the pro-business VVD party and the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) that will form the minority government.
"There will... be a burqa ban," said the controversial politician, who is to go on trial in Amsterdam next Monday for inciting hatred against Muslims, adding that there would also be 50 percent reduction in immigration.
"We want the Islamisation to be stopped," he said, speaking in The Hague as measures in the agreement were announced.
Wilders -- who campaigns for a ban on Muslim immigration and wants to end the building of new mosques and tax Muslim head scarves -- had a say in the plan's immigration policies in return for supporting its austerity measures.
The "Freedom and responsibility" plan seeks to cut government spending by 18 billion euros (24 billion dollars) by 2015.
It proposes cutting The Netherlands' contribution to the European Union by one billion euros and shaving a billion euros off development cooperation and 1.2 billion off health care costs.
It also wants to reduce the number of MPs from 150 to 100 and the number of senators from 75 to 50.
The longest chapter of the accord -- seven of its 46 pages -- is however devoted to immigration.
"A reduction of immigration is in order and urgent given the societal problems," stated the document.
"The immigration policy ... is aimed at limiting and reducing the arrival of migrants with few prospects."
It proposes stricter conditions for granting asylum and making it harder for the partners and children of immigrant workers to move to The Netherlands. It also wants integration examinations to become harder.
CDA party members, deeply divided over cooperation with Wilders, have yet to approve the new accord which will be debated at a party congress on Saturday.
If they do, the CDA's 21 MPs must put their final stamp on the deal before Queen Beatrix can give presumed prime minister-in-waiting Mark Rutte, the VVD leader, the go-ahead to form his cabinet.
The VVD, or People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, narrowly won the June 9 elections with 31 out of 150 parliamentary seats but needs partners to form a government.
Wilders' Party for Freedom (PVV) will remain outside the envisaged VVD-CDA cabinet but will provide the minority government with the majority it needs to pass decisions through parliament in return for a voice in policy formation.
The three parties started negotiations soon after the polls to reach a balance between Wilders' socialist economic policies and strict budget cuts promised by the VVD and CDA.
CDA leader Maxime Verhagen described the deal as a "very good governing agreement."
"I am convinced that it is an agreement that every Christian Democrat will be able to identify with," he said.
Rutte said his government planned on carrying out "important reforms."
"We want to give the country back to the working Dutch citizen," he said.
The banning of the burqa is controversial in Europe, where the French parliament this month passed a law prohibiting the wearing of a full-face veil in public.
The exact number of women wearing the head-to-toe covering burqa in The Netherlands is not known but are believed to amount to a few dozen. Muslims make up an estimated about 900,000 of the 16.5 million Dutch population.
Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
Netherlands to ban the burqa, says anti-Islam MPs
By Mariette le Roux (AFP) – 9 hours ago
THE HAGUE — The Netherlands will ban the burqa and halve immigration under measures agreed in a pact to form a minority coalition government, anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders announced Thursday.
"A new wind will blow in The Netherlands," declared Wilders whose party is part of the deal, standing alongside the leaders of the pro-business VVD party and the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) that will form the minority government.
"There will... be a burqa ban," said the controversial politician, who is to go on trial in Amsterdam next Monday for inciting hatred against Muslims, adding that there would also be 50 percent reduction in immigration.
"We want the Islamisation to be stopped," he said, speaking in The Hague as measures in the agreement were announced.
Wilders -- who campaigns for a ban on Muslim immigration and wants to end the building of new mosques and tax Muslim head scarves -- had a say in the plan's immigration policies in return for supporting its austerity measures.
The "Freedom and responsibility" plan seeks to cut government spending by 18 billion euros (24 billion dollars) by 2015.
It proposes cutting The Netherlands' contribution to the European Union by one billion euros and shaving a billion euros off development cooperation and 1.2 billion off health care costs.
It also wants to reduce the number of MPs from 150 to 100 and the number of senators from 75 to 50.
The longest chapter of the accord -- seven of its 46 pages -- is however devoted to immigration.
"A reduction of immigration is in order and urgent given the societal problems," stated the document.
"The immigration policy ... is aimed at limiting and reducing the arrival of migrants with few prospects."
It proposes stricter conditions for granting asylum and making it harder for the partners and children of immigrant workers to move to The Netherlands. It also wants integration examinations to become harder.
CDA party members, deeply divided over cooperation with Wilders, have yet to approve the new accord which will be debated at a party congress on Saturday.
If they do, the CDA's 21 MPs must put their final stamp on the deal before Queen Beatrix can give presumed prime minister-in-waiting Mark Rutte, the VVD leader, the go-ahead to form his cabinet.
The VVD, or People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, narrowly won the June 9 elections with 31 out of 150 parliamentary seats but needs partners to form a government.
Wilders' Party for Freedom (PVV) will remain outside the envisaged VVD-CDA cabinet but will provide the minority government with the majority it needs to pass decisions through parliament in return for a voice in policy formation.
The three parties started negotiations soon after the polls to reach a balance between Wilders' socialist economic policies and strict budget cuts promised by the VVD and CDA.
CDA leader Maxime Verhagen described the deal as a "very good governing agreement."
"I am convinced that it is an agreement that every Christian Democrat will be able to identify with," he said.
Rutte said his government planned on carrying out "important reforms."
"We want to give the country back to the working Dutch citizen," he said.
The banning of the burqa is controversial in Europe, where the French parliament this month passed a law prohibiting the wearing of a full-face veil in public.
The exact number of women wearing the head-to-toe covering burqa in The Netherlands is not known but are believed to amount to a few dozen. Muslims make up an estimated about 900,000 of the 16.5 million Dutch population.
Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
Opponents Of Murfreesboro, Tennessee Mosque Argue At Hearing That Islam Is Not A Religion
From TPM and Alliance Defense Fund:
At TN Mosque Hearing, Plaintiffs Claim Islam Isn't A Religion
Rachel Slajda
September 30, 2010, 1:30PM48
Opponents of a proposed mosque in Murfreesboro, Tenn., spent the last two days arguing in court that Islam is not a religion and that the leaders of the mosque -- which has been in the town, in a different location, for decades -- preach jihad and a Sharia law takeover.
Three opponents of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro's planned expansion have sued the county, claiming officials broke open meeting law when they approved the mosque's building plan. The officials deny violating any laws. But the case quickly became, not about open meeting laws, but about Islam itself.
"Are you aware that's all the plaintiffs have wanted from day one is to know whether this is a religious institution," the plaintiffs' lawyer, Joe Brandon Jr., asked county commissioner Robert Peay, according to the Murfreesboro Post.
"The United States government recognizes Islam as a religion, and until otherwise they have Constitutional rights," Peay said.
"I want tolerance back in our community," Peay went on.
"Where does tolerance meet Sharia law? What tolerance are you asking the plaintiffs to swallow?" Brandon said.
"Tolerance for people to exercise their right to freely practice their religion in our community as protected by the United States Constitution," Peay replied.
Brandon kept on that line of questioning throughout the hearing.
"Did you do anything to determine this was a religious meeting place?" Brandon asked the county planning director, Doug Demosi, according to the Post.
"The county can make no law that gives preferential treatment or unduly burdens the free practice of religion," Demosi responded. Demosi also told the court that he had never been to a mosque.
"Sounds like you don't know what a mosque is," Brandon said, according to the Daily News Journal.
The hearing began Monday with testimony from renowned Sharia law fearmonger Frank Gaffney, and will resume on Oct. 20. The plaintiffs are asking for an injunction against the building of the mosque.
During questioning, Brandon accused county officials of hiding something -- "Do you have a problem with transparency, sir?" he asked one -- and argued, according to the Daily News Journal, that the mosque would be bigger than a Super Wal-Mart.
Demosi, the planning director corrected him. Each of the county's Super Wal-Mart's is 200,000 square feet -- dwarfing the mosque's planned 42,000 square feet.
Brandon also alleged that the county illegally approved the burial of two members of the Islamic center on their property.
"Are you suggesting you would give approval to a mosque with a connection to Jihad or without any assurances bodies are buried deep enough so they don't stink?" he asked at one point.
At TN Mosque Hearing, Plaintiffs Claim Islam Isn't A Religion
Rachel Slajda
September 30, 2010, 1:30PM48
Opponents of a proposed mosque in Murfreesboro, Tenn., spent the last two days arguing in court that Islam is not a religion and that the leaders of the mosque -- which has been in the town, in a different location, for decades -- preach jihad and a Sharia law takeover.
Three opponents of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro's planned expansion have sued the county, claiming officials broke open meeting law when they approved the mosque's building plan. The officials deny violating any laws. But the case quickly became, not about open meeting laws, but about Islam itself.
"Are you aware that's all the plaintiffs have wanted from day one is to know whether this is a religious institution," the plaintiffs' lawyer, Joe Brandon Jr., asked county commissioner Robert Peay, according to the Murfreesboro Post.
"The United States government recognizes Islam as a religion, and until otherwise they have Constitutional rights," Peay said.
"I want tolerance back in our community," Peay went on.
"Where does tolerance meet Sharia law? What tolerance are you asking the plaintiffs to swallow?" Brandon said.
"Tolerance for people to exercise their right to freely practice their religion in our community as protected by the United States Constitution," Peay replied.
Brandon kept on that line of questioning throughout the hearing.
"Did you do anything to determine this was a religious meeting place?" Brandon asked the county planning director, Doug Demosi, according to the Post.
"The county can make no law that gives preferential treatment or unduly burdens the free practice of religion," Demosi responded. Demosi also told the court that he had never been to a mosque.
"Sounds like you don't know what a mosque is," Brandon said, according to the Daily News Journal.
The hearing began Monday with testimony from renowned Sharia law fearmonger Frank Gaffney, and will resume on Oct. 20. The plaintiffs are asking for an injunction against the building of the mosque.
During questioning, Brandon accused county officials of hiding something -- "Do you have a problem with transparency, sir?" he asked one -- and argued, according to the Daily News Journal, that the mosque would be bigger than a Super Wal-Mart.
Demosi, the planning director corrected him. Each of the county's Super Wal-Mart's is 200,000 square feet -- dwarfing the mosque's planned 42,000 square feet.
Brandon also alleged that the county illegally approved the burial of two members of the Islamic center on their property.
"Are you suggesting you would give approval to a mosque with a connection to Jihad or without any assurances bodies are buried deep enough so they don't stink?" he asked at one point.
Mayfield, Kentucky To Reconsider Permit For Mosque
From The Louisville Courier-Journal and Alliance Defense Fund:
Mayfield panel to reconsider permit for mosque
The Courier-Journal • September 30, 2010
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Buzz up!Twitter FarkIt Type Size A A A The Mayfield Board of Zoning Adjustments will meet Oct. 12 to discuss a request from the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky to reconsider its denial of a permit for a mosque.
The meeting in the western Kentucky city will not involve public comments, but the board will discuss a Sept. 22 letter from the ACLU on behalf of the mosque applicant, Khadar Ahmed, according to City Planner Brad Rodgers.
The board denied his bid for a conditional-use permit on Aug. 24, reversing a decision made two weeks earlier to approve it, citing concerns about limited parking and capacity in the small commercial building where the mosque was planned. The board and other city officials heard opposition to the proposal from critics of Islam at the hearing and in correspondence, and an overflow crowd applauded the vote to deny the permit.
The mosque was sought by Ahmed on behalf of Somalis who had recently moved to Graves County to work in a chicken processing plant.
Mayfield panel to reconsider permit for mosque
The Courier-Journal • September 30, 2010
Comments (0) Recommend (1) Print this page E-mail this article Share
Del.icio.us Facebook Digg Reddit Newsvine
Buzz up!Twitter FarkIt Type Size A A A The Mayfield Board of Zoning Adjustments will meet Oct. 12 to discuss a request from the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky to reconsider its denial of a permit for a mosque.
The meeting in the western Kentucky city will not involve public comments, but the board will discuss a Sept. 22 letter from the ACLU on behalf of the mosque applicant, Khadar Ahmed, according to City Planner Brad Rodgers.
The board denied his bid for a conditional-use permit on Aug. 24, reversing a decision made two weeks earlier to approve it, citing concerns about limited parking and capacity in the small commercial building where the mosque was planned. The board and other city officials heard opposition to the proposal from critics of Islam at the hearing and in correspondence, and an overflow crowd applauded the vote to deny the permit.
The mosque was sought by Ahmed on behalf of Somalis who had recently moved to Graves County to work in a chicken processing plant.
A Credible Terrorist Attack Threat
From The American Thinker:
September 29, 2010
A 'credible' terrorist attack threat
Rick Moran
ABC News is reporting that the US and European intelligence have uncovered what they believe to be a "major, coordinated series of commando-style terror attacks in Britain, France, Germany and possibly the United States."
A senior US official said that while there is a "credible" threat, no specific time or place is known. President Obama has been briefed about the threat, say senior US officials.
Intelligence and law enforcement authorities in the US and Europe said the threat information is based on the interrogation of a suspected German terrorist allegedly captured on his way to Europe in late summer and now being held at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan.
US law enforcement officials say they have been told the terrorists were planning a series of "Mumbai-style" commando raids on what were termed "economic or soft" targets in the countries. Pakistani militants killed 173 people with guns and grenades during the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India.
It is believed the attack is being mounted from Pakistan which is why there have been an increase in drone attacks on terrorist targets in that country. It is also thought that Osama bin Laden himself has given the go ahead for these attacks.
The fact that the plot has been discovered probably means it is less likely to be carried out - immediately. The terrorists could wait until we've relaxed a bit and then strike. In the meantime, more strikes inside of Pakistan may disrupt the plot altogether.
Posted at 09:21 AM
September 29, 2010
A 'credible' terrorist attack threat
Rick Moran
ABC News is reporting that the US and European intelligence have uncovered what they believe to be a "major, coordinated series of commando-style terror attacks in Britain, France, Germany and possibly the United States."
A senior US official said that while there is a "credible" threat, no specific time or place is known. President Obama has been briefed about the threat, say senior US officials.
Intelligence and law enforcement authorities in the US and Europe said the threat information is based on the interrogation of a suspected German terrorist allegedly captured on his way to Europe in late summer and now being held at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan.
US law enforcement officials say they have been told the terrorists were planning a series of "Mumbai-style" commando raids on what were termed "economic or soft" targets in the countries. Pakistani militants killed 173 people with guns and grenades during the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India.
It is believed the attack is being mounted from Pakistan which is why there have been an increase in drone attacks on terrorist targets in that country. It is also thought that Osama bin Laden himself has given the go ahead for these attacks.
The fact that the plot has been discovered probably means it is less likely to be carried out - immediately. The terrorists could wait until we've relaxed a bit and then strike. In the meantime, more strikes inside of Pakistan may disrupt the plot altogether.
Posted at 09:21 AM
Iran: The Case Of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani
From The American Thinker:
September 29, 2010
The case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani
Jeannie DeAngelis
If there were ever any question whether the brutal Iranian dictatorship is dedicated to torture, death and terrorism, the case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani should eradicate all doubt.
In 2006, Sakineh was beaten into a confession of adultery and as punishment received 99 lashes. After the beating, Sakineh recanted. Nevertheless, the case was reopened and the crime of adultery with a cousin was commuted to murdering a husband.
Although Sakineh was acquitted of spousal murder, “the adultery charge was reviewed and a death penalty handed down on the basis of ‘judge's knowledge’ -- a loophole that allows for subjective judicial rulings where no conclusive evidence is present.” As a result, Iranian justice acquitted a woman of murder and then sentenced that same woman to death by stoning for infidelity.
Sakineh was condemned to an excruciatingly slow death. When describing stoning, Iranian penal code specifies that stones should be “large enough to cause pain, but not so large as to kill the victim immediately…[or] … large enough to kill the person by one or two strikes.”
However, if the accused manages to avoid being knocked unconscious by the rocks and can “wriggle free during the stoning, the death sentence is commuted.” Men are buried up to the waist, but women to the neck, for “fear that their breasts may be uncovered,” which makes Sakineh’s chance for survival less likely than a man sentenced to the same demise.
Sitting in an Iranian jail cell, torturously waiting to be led to that fateful hole in the ground for almost half a decade, Sakineh supposedly endured yet another brutal lashing after being convicted of spreading “corruption and indecency.” Mohammadi-Ashtiani was accused of posing in a photograph, featured in the Times of London, without a hijab. After it was reported and Sakineh suffered another 99 lashes, it was proven that the photo was of a political activist living in Sweden named Susan Hejrat.
Despite the Iranian government supposedly commuting Sakineh’s stoning sentence and after the blurred image appeared in the Times of a woman identifying herself as Ashtiani and denying ever being whipped or tortured, the British government rightly accused Iran of fabricating a murder charge to justify executing the woman for something – anything.
Iran’s prosecutor general Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei recently announced that “According to the court’s ruling, [Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani] is convicted of murder and her death sentence has priority over her punishment [for committing adultery].” The newly revised sentence means that Ashtiani, “whose husband was killed by her cousin – will not be stoned to death for committing adultery,” but instead “she should first be executed for [a] murder” for which she was originally acquitted.
In lieu of being stoned, Sakineh will instead be hanged until dead. In Iran, dying for murder takes precedence over dying for committing adultery, an argument that makes as much sense as Mahmoud Amadinejad insisting “his government does not want an atomic bomb …and … is only seeking peace and a nuclear-weapons-free world.”
Instead of slowly dying trying to free herself from a hole in the ground, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani will have a cruel cord placed around her slender neck. A hangman will jerk the rope to ensure that the bone in Sakineh’s neck breaks and severs her spinal cord. She will experience brain death and die within twenty minutes, then be cut down and buried by her adult children and a lawyer who fought tirelessly to liberate her from undeserved death.
Thus, in the end a hangman’s noose beckons to Sakineh, offering freedom from the crack of the whip and emancipation from a fate of death by stoning.
Author’s content: www.jeannie-ology.com
Posted at 09:13 AM
September 29, 2010
The case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani
Jeannie DeAngelis
If there were ever any question whether the brutal Iranian dictatorship is dedicated to torture, death and terrorism, the case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani should eradicate all doubt.
In 2006, Sakineh was beaten into a confession of adultery and as punishment received 99 lashes. After the beating, Sakineh recanted. Nevertheless, the case was reopened and the crime of adultery with a cousin was commuted to murdering a husband.
Although Sakineh was acquitted of spousal murder, “the adultery charge was reviewed and a death penalty handed down on the basis of ‘judge's knowledge’ -- a loophole that allows for subjective judicial rulings where no conclusive evidence is present.” As a result, Iranian justice acquitted a woman of murder and then sentenced that same woman to death by stoning for infidelity.
Sakineh was condemned to an excruciatingly slow death. When describing stoning, Iranian penal code specifies that stones should be “large enough to cause pain, but not so large as to kill the victim immediately…[or] … large enough to kill the person by one or two strikes.”
However, if the accused manages to avoid being knocked unconscious by the rocks and can “wriggle free during the stoning, the death sentence is commuted.” Men are buried up to the waist, but women to the neck, for “fear that their breasts may be uncovered,” which makes Sakineh’s chance for survival less likely than a man sentenced to the same demise.
Sitting in an Iranian jail cell, torturously waiting to be led to that fateful hole in the ground for almost half a decade, Sakineh supposedly endured yet another brutal lashing after being convicted of spreading “corruption and indecency.” Mohammadi-Ashtiani was accused of posing in a photograph, featured in the Times of London, without a hijab. After it was reported and Sakineh suffered another 99 lashes, it was proven that the photo was of a political activist living in Sweden named Susan Hejrat.
Despite the Iranian government supposedly commuting Sakineh’s stoning sentence and after the blurred image appeared in the Times of a woman identifying herself as Ashtiani and denying ever being whipped or tortured, the British government rightly accused Iran of fabricating a murder charge to justify executing the woman for something – anything.
Iran’s prosecutor general Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei recently announced that “According to the court’s ruling, [Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani] is convicted of murder and her death sentence has priority over her punishment [for committing adultery].” The newly revised sentence means that Ashtiani, “whose husband was killed by her cousin – will not be stoned to death for committing adultery,” but instead “she should first be executed for [a] murder” for which she was originally acquitted.
In lieu of being stoned, Sakineh will instead be hanged until dead. In Iran, dying for murder takes precedence over dying for committing adultery, an argument that makes as much sense as Mahmoud Amadinejad insisting “his government does not want an atomic bomb …and … is only seeking peace and a nuclear-weapons-free world.”
Instead of slowly dying trying to free herself from a hole in the ground, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani will have a cruel cord placed around her slender neck. A hangman will jerk the rope to ensure that the bone in Sakineh’s neck breaks and severs her spinal cord. She will experience brain death and die within twenty minutes, then be cut down and buried by her adult children and a lawyer who fought tirelessly to liberate her from undeserved death.
Thus, in the end a hangman’s noose beckons to Sakineh, offering freedom from the crack of the whip and emancipation from a fate of death by stoning.
Author’s content: www.jeannie-ology.com
Posted at 09:13 AM
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Denmark: Book About Muhammed Cartoon Controversy To Go Ahead Despite Threats
From The New York Post and Alliance Defense Fund:
Danish book about Muhammad cartoon controversy to go ahead despite threats
AFP / NEWSCORE
Last Updated: 9:37 AM, September 29, 2010
Posted: 8:20 AM, September 29, 2010
Comments: 5 More Print A book about the publication of cartoons in Denmark that angered Muslims by showing images of the Prophet Muhammad will be released despite recent terror threats, the publisher said Wednesday.
"The book will come out as planned," said Karsten Blauert, of Jyllands-Posten Editions.
The book, titled "The Tyranny of Silence," is due out Thursday, five years to the day after the cartoons first appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.
Although it will not reprint the drawings separately, its inside pages will feature "a picture of the front page of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper that had the Muhammad cartoons on it," Blauert said.
Asked about the possibility of a strong reaction to its publication, he said, "It's clear that a lot of things are happening, but everything is taking place as planned, and nothing will change that."
The book is by Flemming Rose, who was Jyllands-Posten's cultural editor when on Sept. 30, 2005, the newspaper ran its front-page spread featuring 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
The drawings caused outrage across the Muslim world and led to violent protests against Denmark and Danish interests in 2006. Rose himself subsequently received numerous death threats.
In an August interview, Rose said he was not trying to be provocative with the new book, stressing that he simply wanted to "tell the story of the 12 drawings and put them into a context of [other] pictures considered offensive." It was important to write the book, he said, because "words should be answered with words. That's all we have in a democracy, and if we give that up, we will be locked in a tyranny of silence."
Norwegian police said Tuesday that an Iraqi Kurd being held in Norway on suspicion of planning bombings admitted that his target was the Jyllands-Posten newspaper.
The Danish intelligence service PET, confirming the Norwegian claim, said Denmark was a "priority terrorist target for Islamic extremists."
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/danish_book_about_muhammad_cartoon_9EU68NwfmSaTSvK3hAiqiP?CMP=OTC-rss&FEEDNAME=#ixzz10zPvK0Xx
Danish book about Muhammad cartoon controversy to go ahead despite threats
AFP / NEWSCORE
Last Updated: 9:37 AM, September 29, 2010
Posted: 8:20 AM, September 29, 2010
Comments: 5 More Print A book about the publication of cartoons in Denmark that angered Muslims by showing images of the Prophet Muhammad will be released despite recent terror threats, the publisher said Wednesday.
"The book will come out as planned," said Karsten Blauert, of Jyllands-Posten Editions.
The book, titled "The Tyranny of Silence," is due out Thursday, five years to the day after the cartoons first appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.
Although it will not reprint the drawings separately, its inside pages will feature "a picture of the front page of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper that had the Muhammad cartoons on it," Blauert said.
Asked about the possibility of a strong reaction to its publication, he said, "It's clear that a lot of things are happening, but everything is taking place as planned, and nothing will change that."
The book is by Flemming Rose, who was Jyllands-Posten's cultural editor when on Sept. 30, 2005, the newspaper ran its front-page spread featuring 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
The drawings caused outrage across the Muslim world and led to violent protests against Denmark and Danish interests in 2006. Rose himself subsequently received numerous death threats.
In an August interview, Rose said he was not trying to be provocative with the new book, stressing that he simply wanted to "tell the story of the 12 drawings and put them into a context of [other] pictures considered offensive." It was important to write the book, he said, because "words should be answered with words. That's all we have in a democracy, and if we give that up, we will be locked in a tyranny of silence."
Norwegian police said Tuesday that an Iraqi Kurd being held in Norway on suspicion of planning bombings admitted that his target was the Jyllands-Posten newspaper.
The Danish intelligence service PET, confirming the Norwegian claim, said Denmark was a "priority terrorist target for Islamic extremists."
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/danish_book_about_muhammad_cartoon_9EU68NwfmSaTSvK3hAiqiP?CMP=OTC-rss&FEEDNAME=#ixzz10zPvK0Xx
Muslims In Europe: The Burqa Debate--Are Women's Rights Really The Issue?
From Der Spiegel:
Special: Muslims in EuropeRelated articles, background features and opinions about this topic.
PrintE-MailFeedback06/24/2010
The Burqa Debate
Are Women's Rights Really the Issue?
REUTERS
A woman in Belgium wearing a niqab. Spain on Wednesday introduced legislation that would, as in Belgium, ban such garments.
On Wednesday, Spain became the latest European country to advance legislation to ban burqas and other such face veils. Many of those in favor of such laws cite women's rights, but does criminalizing their clothing help?
When it comes to burqas, everyone, it would seem, is a feminist. In 2006, Dutch right-wing populist Geert Wilders argued that the burqa -- the full-body robes with just a mesh screen to look through -- is "a medieval symbol, a symbol against women." Last year, French President Nicolas Sarkozy called it "a sign of subservience." And on Wednesday, the Spanish Senate gave its approval to an anti-burqa motion supporting the outlawing of "any usage, custom or discriminatory practice that limits the freedom of women."
Spain, in fact, became the latest to join the European movement to ban the burqa and the niqab -- similar to a burqa but with a slit for the eyes instead of mesh. It joins France, Italy and Belgium with Holland, Austria and Switzerland also considering laws to get rid of the garment.
But can the rush to uncover Europe's most pious Muslims be explained solely by a newfound desire to protect the rights of women? The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which advises the council on human rights questions, certainly doesn't think so.
On Wednesday, the Parliamentary Assembly, known as PACE, passed a resolution urging European Union member states not to issue a ban on burqas "or other religious or special clothing." Rather, the resolution read, EU countries should focus their energies on protecting women's "free choice to wear religious or special clothing." In other words, PACE seemed to be saying, religious freedoms and human rights are at the crux of the burqa debate. And preventing them from wearing what they want is anti-feminist.
'Don't Have the Right to Be Human'
It is not an uncontroversial claim. Leading German feminist Alice Schwarzer said late last year that she thinks a burqa ban is "self evident." Women's rights activist Necla Kelek, likewise of Germany, says that burqas "have nothing to do with religion and religious freedoms." She says that the garment comes out of an ideology whereby "women in public don't have the right to be human."
As the debate has moved mainstream, it has become easier to ignore the fact that much of the momentum for bans of the burqa and the niqab come from right-wing populist parties. Wilders has been followed by the Belgian far-right party Vlaams Belang and the anti-Muslim German party Pro-NRW in calling for a ban. All of those groups would also like to see minarets disappear from European cityscapes and have attracted attention primarily due to their radically anti-Muslim rhetoric.
In its Wednesday resolution, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe made that connection as well. It preceded its recommendations by emphasizing the priority of "working towards ensuring freedom of thought, conscience and religion while combating religious intolerance and discrimination." The document then went on to urge Switzerland to revoke its ban on minarets, passed in a nationwide referendum last November.
'Emergency Legislation'
As more and more countries in Europe begin exploring a burqa ban, however, the idea is becoming disassociated from right-wing rhetoric. Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey, from the center-left Social Democratic Party of Switzerland, would like to see a ban. In France, Communist parliamentarian André Gerin has been leading the charge. In Britain, then cabinet minister Jack Straw, of the Labour Party, outed himself as being opposed to the wearing of the full veil in 2006. And in Germany, politicians from across the political spectrum have voiced their support for a burqa ban.
Lost in the debate, perhaps predictably, are the women who wear burqas and niqabs. According to a recent article in the New Statesmen, there aren't many. In France, security services estimate that just one-tenth of 1 percent of Muslim women in the country wear the burqa -- a number that seems to make a mockery of the effort to pass what has been called "emergency legislation" against the garment prior to parliament's summer recess. Sarkozy's cabinet approved a draft law last month. The number of women who wear the full veils in Belgium could be as low as 30.
On a continent where the integration of its ever-increasing Muslim population has caused politicians fits for years, though, it is perhaps not surprising that the burqa debate has grown steadily this year. Europeans are concerned about radical Islam and many associate a burqa ban with combatting extremism.
'Criminalizing Women to Free Them'
The opposite may be true. Last summer, the North African wing of al-Qaida threatened to "take revenge" on France as a result of the swelling debate there over banning the burqa. "We will not tolerate such provocations and injustices, and we will take our revenge from France," said the group's statement.
Human rights workers, for their part, worry that burqa bans may send the wrong message to Muslim women. "Treating pious Muslim women like criminals won't help integrate them," said Judith Sunderland of Human Rights Watch in April. Speaking of the Belgium ban, British writer Myriam Francois-Cerrah, a Muslim, said simply: "The Belgians have a funny idea of liberation, criminalizing women in order to free them."
For all the burqa ban's current popularity in Europe, it seems unlikely that German politicians will be forced to confront such legislation any time soon. According to an analysis carried out by the German parliament last month, a ban on the burqa would very likely find itself in violation of the German constitution. And Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière (of the center-right Christian Democrats) has voiced his opposition to such legislation in Germany. A burqa debate in Germany, he said, "is unnecessary."
cgh
Special: Muslims in EuropeRelated articles, background features and opinions about this topic.
PrintE-MailFeedback06/24/2010
The Burqa Debate
Are Women's Rights Really the Issue?
REUTERS
A woman in Belgium wearing a niqab. Spain on Wednesday introduced legislation that would, as in Belgium, ban such garments.
On Wednesday, Spain became the latest European country to advance legislation to ban burqas and other such face veils. Many of those in favor of such laws cite women's rights, but does criminalizing their clothing help?
When it comes to burqas, everyone, it would seem, is a feminist. In 2006, Dutch right-wing populist Geert Wilders argued that the burqa -- the full-body robes with just a mesh screen to look through -- is "a medieval symbol, a symbol against women." Last year, French President Nicolas Sarkozy called it "a sign of subservience." And on Wednesday, the Spanish Senate gave its approval to an anti-burqa motion supporting the outlawing of "any usage, custom or discriminatory practice that limits the freedom of women."
Spain, in fact, became the latest to join the European movement to ban the burqa and the niqab -- similar to a burqa but with a slit for the eyes instead of mesh. It joins France, Italy and Belgium with Holland, Austria and Switzerland also considering laws to get rid of the garment.
But can the rush to uncover Europe's most pious Muslims be explained solely by a newfound desire to protect the rights of women? The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which advises the council on human rights questions, certainly doesn't think so.
On Wednesday, the Parliamentary Assembly, known as PACE, passed a resolution urging European Union member states not to issue a ban on burqas "or other religious or special clothing." Rather, the resolution read, EU countries should focus their energies on protecting women's "free choice to wear religious or special clothing." In other words, PACE seemed to be saying, religious freedoms and human rights are at the crux of the burqa debate. And preventing them from wearing what they want is anti-feminist.
'Don't Have the Right to Be Human'
It is not an uncontroversial claim. Leading German feminist Alice Schwarzer said late last year that she thinks a burqa ban is "self evident." Women's rights activist Necla Kelek, likewise of Germany, says that burqas "have nothing to do with religion and religious freedoms." She says that the garment comes out of an ideology whereby "women in public don't have the right to be human."
As the debate has moved mainstream, it has become easier to ignore the fact that much of the momentum for bans of the burqa and the niqab come from right-wing populist parties. Wilders has been followed by the Belgian far-right party Vlaams Belang and the anti-Muslim German party Pro-NRW in calling for a ban. All of those groups would also like to see minarets disappear from European cityscapes and have attracted attention primarily due to their radically anti-Muslim rhetoric.
In its Wednesday resolution, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe made that connection as well. It preceded its recommendations by emphasizing the priority of "working towards ensuring freedom of thought, conscience and religion while combating religious intolerance and discrimination." The document then went on to urge Switzerland to revoke its ban on minarets, passed in a nationwide referendum last November.
'Emergency Legislation'
As more and more countries in Europe begin exploring a burqa ban, however, the idea is becoming disassociated from right-wing rhetoric. Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey, from the center-left Social Democratic Party of Switzerland, would like to see a ban. In France, Communist parliamentarian André Gerin has been leading the charge. In Britain, then cabinet minister Jack Straw, of the Labour Party, outed himself as being opposed to the wearing of the full veil in 2006. And in Germany, politicians from across the political spectrum have voiced their support for a burqa ban.
Lost in the debate, perhaps predictably, are the women who wear burqas and niqabs. According to a recent article in the New Statesmen, there aren't many. In France, security services estimate that just one-tenth of 1 percent of Muslim women in the country wear the burqa -- a number that seems to make a mockery of the effort to pass what has been called "emergency legislation" against the garment prior to parliament's summer recess. Sarkozy's cabinet approved a draft law last month. The number of women who wear the full veils in Belgium could be as low as 30.
On a continent where the integration of its ever-increasing Muslim population has caused politicians fits for years, though, it is perhaps not surprising that the burqa debate has grown steadily this year. Europeans are concerned about radical Islam and many associate a burqa ban with combatting extremism.
'Criminalizing Women to Free Them'
The opposite may be true. Last summer, the North African wing of al-Qaida threatened to "take revenge" on France as a result of the swelling debate there over banning the burqa. "We will not tolerate such provocations and injustices, and we will take our revenge from France," said the group's statement.
Human rights workers, for their part, worry that burqa bans may send the wrong message to Muslim women. "Treating pious Muslim women like criminals won't help integrate them," said Judith Sunderland of Human Rights Watch in April. Speaking of the Belgium ban, British writer Myriam Francois-Cerrah, a Muslim, said simply: "The Belgians have a funny idea of liberation, criminalizing women in order to free them."
For all the burqa ban's current popularity in Europe, it seems unlikely that German politicians will be forced to confront such legislation any time soon. According to an analysis carried out by the German parliament last month, a ban on the burqa would very likely find itself in violation of the German constitution. And Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière (of the center-right Christian Democrats) has voiced his opposition to such legislation in Germany. A burqa debate in Germany, he said, "is unnecessary."
cgh
Continent Of Fear: The Rise Of Europe's Right-Wing Populists
From Der Spiegel and Alliance Defense Fund:
Special: Muslims in EuropeRelated articles, background features and opinions about this topic.
PrintE-MailFeedback09/28/2010
Continent of Fear
The Rise of Europe's Right-Wing Populists
Photo Gallery: 6 Photos
AFPAll across Europe, right-wing populist parties are enjoying significant popular support. Led by charismatic politicians like Geert Wilders, they are exploiting fear of Muslim immigration and frustration with the political establishment -- and are forcing mainstream parties to shift to the right. By SPIEGEL Staff.
He is a politician who claims to have nothing against Muslims, and that he only hates Islam. He is a charismatic man with peroxide-blonde hair, elegant, eloquent and precisely the type of politician that has put fear into the hearts of Germany's mainstream political parties in recent weeks.
He is Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician of a stripe that doesn't yet exist in Germany: a populist who stirs up hatred against Islam and the establishment, and who has taken away many votes from the traditional parties in his native Netherlands. So many, in fact, that they now can hardly form a government without giving him a share of power.
Wilders is the central figure of a movement that has been expanding its following in Europe for years, entering parliaments and governments, and ensuring that minarets were banned in Switzerland and burqas in Belgium. It is a sort of popular uprising against Islam, spearheaded by right-wing politicians and journalists throughout Europe. They portray themselves as people who are willing to express a sentiment they claim no one else dares to express: that Muslims are undermining Europe and that the West must be saved. And the approach has been successful.
'An Ideology that Opposes Everything that Matters to Us'
The man who invited Wilders to speak in the German capital Berlin this coming Saturday would like to emulate the Dutch politician. René Stadtkewitz, 45, a well-dressed man with a short haircut, was recently ejected from the Berlin branch of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which he represented for years as a backbencher in the Berlin city-state parliament. He has now founded a new party called "Die Freiheit" ("Freedom"), named after Wilders' Freedom Party.
Wilders is traveling to Berlin to help Stadtkewitz inaugurate the new party. Anyone who hopes to catch a glimpse of the prominent guest must register online and pay an admission fee in advance. For security reasons, only registered attendees who have paid the admission fee are told where the event will take place.
Stadkewitz, eating Moroccan couscous in the cafeteria of the Berlin city-state parliament, says that "Geert's" call for the institution of a headscarf tax in the Netherlands is really a great idea. Wilders' visit has cost him €12,000 ($16,200). Stadkewitz sees it as a worthwhile investment. "Islam may also be a religion," he says. "But mainly it's an ideology that opposes everything that matters to us."
Stadkewitz is in a hurry. He is about to give a Dutch television team a tour of Berlin in his BMW. He wants to show them the Muslim parallel society that is supposedly being kept under wraps in the German media.
A Lightning Rod for Popular Anger
A debate has been triggered in Germany by a new book by Thilo Sarrazin, a controversial politician with the center-left Social Democrats, in which he describes Muslim immigrants as an existential threat for Germany. Ever since the book was published and met with popular approval, many columnists, academics and politicians have been asking themselves whether Germany will remain an exception in terms of its political landscape. It is still the only country in Western Europe that lacks a right-wing populist party that acts as a lightning rod for popular anger targeted at Islam and the political establishment.
In recent months, right-wing populist parties have thwarted majority governments in three European Union countries: Belgium, the Netherlands and, most recently, Sweden. Although right-wing populists in the latter country only captured 5.7 percent of the vote, it was enough to deprive the incumbent center-right coalition of an absolute majority. All three countries were long known for their liberalism, but now political parties are gaining influence that see Islam as "our biggest foreign threat since World War II," as Jimmie Akesson, the 31-year-old chairman of the Sweden Democrats, puts it.
Right-wing populist parties have been a part of coalition governments in Italy and Switzerland for years, and they hold seats in the parliaments of Denmark, Austria, Norway and Finland. Jean-Marie Le Pens' National Front captured 9 percent of the vote in last spring's French regional elections with a targeted anti-Islamic campaign. In March, Italy's Northern League gained control of the regions of Venice and Piedmont. During the election campaign, party supporters handed out soap samples, to be used, as they said, "after having touched an immigrant."
Part 2: Parties Discover the Power of Islamophobia
Right-wing populism itself isn't anything new. It has been a fixed entity for about 30 years in many European countries, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. What is new, however, is that the right-wing populists have discovered an issue that is much more appealing to voters than the usual anger against foreigners and the political class. They have found a powerful new issue in resistance against the growing visibility of Islam in Europe. They portray themselves as the defenders of European values, and yet both they and their voters seem to care very little that some of those values, such as freedom of religion, are being trampled on in the struggle.
The fear that Muslim immigrants could change the character of European society penetrates deeply into the middle of society. In German opinion polls, about three-quarters of respondents say they are concerned about the influence of Islam. Similar sentiments are voiced in other countries, even though immigration to Europe has been in decline for years.
Barbaric practices in some Islamic countries -- when women are forced to wear burqas, gays and lesbians are persecuted and adulterers are stoned, all under the pretext of religion -- are undoubtedly deeply contrary to modern European values. And there is no question that many countries face severe problems with integrating immigrants into society. But these things alone do not explain the discomfort. Rather, it stems from the fact that the established parties have failed to give their voters the feeling that they are addressing these issues. The economic crisis of the past couple of years has also unnerved the middle class. Europe is aging, and other, younger regions of the world are catching up. Many people are worried about the future in a globalized world, one in which the balance of power is shifting.
Decline of Traditional Center-Left Parties
In the northern European countries, in particular, the rise of the populists goes hand-in-hand with a decline in support for the traditional center-left social democratic parties. This is partly because immigrants are as likely as anyone to abuse the system in the kind of social welfare states promoted by social democratic parties. But it is also because the traditional parties have become bogged down in the details of integration policy.
They have created integration specialists, immigration offices and integration conferences, but they have lost sight of citizens' concerns. And because they are also in favor of free speech, feminism and secularism, they are incapable of defending themselves against right-wing populists, who cite the same values of free speech, feminism and secularism in defending their battles against headscarves, minarets and mosques. The only difference is that the right-wing populists are more vocal and simplify the issues to the point that their position seems logical.
The Sweden Democrats, which have their origins within the extreme right, have learned from modern right-wing populists like Wilders as well as the Danish People's Party (DF) and its chairwoman, Pia Kjaersgaard. During the recent election campaign, the Sweden Democrats had a television ad showing an elderly woman who, as she is struggling along with her wheeled walker, is almost run over by women in burqas pushing their strollers. The women in burqas are hurrying toward a desk labeled "Government Budget." "On Sept. 19, you can pull the immigration brake -- and not the pension brake," says a voice.
Conservativism Meets Left-Wing Policies
Pitting immigrants against pensioners is one of Wilders' tactics. He brings together right-wing and left-wing policies, Islamophobia and the fear of exploitation of the social welfare state. "It is one of our biggest successes, this combination of being culturally conservative, on the one hand, and leftist on other issues," says Wilders, who characterizes himself as someone who is against immigration but has "a warm heart for the weak and the elderly."
Wilders was one of the first politicians to consistently use Islam as an issue, and many have followed his example. It is telling that the anti-Islam movement did not get underway directly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, even though they were the main trigger of the current uncertainty and fear of Islamist terror. Instead, it has only reached its climax today, years later.
On the surface, this new right wing has little in common with the old right wing, even though the first far-right European politician began inveighing against Muslims as long ago as the 1970s and 80s. That was Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of France's National Front, who targeted immigrants from the former French colonies in North Africa. Le Pen made a career for himself as an angry outsider. He was primitive and old-fashioned, often racist and anti-Semitic, and yet he managed to upend the political landscape. In the first round of the 2002 presidential elections, he even captured more votes than the Socialist candidate, Lionel Jospin. It was a shock for the French elite.
What happened in France has happened in many other countries since then, countries in which the traditional parties have sought to sideline the far right: The centrist politicians have moved to the right. This was the case in Denmark, where the Danish People's Party has given its parliamentary support to a right-liberal minority government since 2001. And even though the populists are not part of the government, Denmark has tightened its immigration laws considerably.
Part 3: France's New National Front
When the current French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, began his campaign in 2007, it was difficult to distinguish some of his rhetoric from Le Pen's. For example, he suggested that people who "slaughter sheep in their bathtubs" were unwelcome in France, and he won the election because he brought together votes from the right. Now Sarkozy will probably soon be confronted with a new National Front, a toned-down -- but perhaps more dangerous -- version of its former self. Marine Le Pen, the daughter of the party's founder, will campaign for the party's chairmanship in January and intends to create a party that could also appeal to the political center.
Marine Le Pen portrays herself as non-dogmatic and intellectual. She wears business suits and distributes kisses during her campaign appearances at markets in the Paris metropolitan area. "I want to unite all the French," she says. At the same time, like Wilders, she raves against the burqa and Islamization. She too has recognized that targeted Islamophobia is more promising than traditional xenophobia.
Le Pen poses a threat to Sarkozy, whose own shift to the right this year reveals how seriously he takes that threat. The debate he has launched in France over "national identity" is clearly directed against Muslims, and he has also embarked on a campaign to deport the Roma. So far, these tactics have done nothing for Sarkozy in the polls.
Borrowing Ideas
The transformation of the National Front is only one example of the new anti-Islamic mainstream among Western Europe's right-wing populist parties. This is the issue that unites all of these parties throughout Europe, which have even taken to borrowing each other's marketing ideas. For example, the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) copied a game from the website of Swiss People's Party (SVP), in which players shoot at minarets popping up in their familiar landscape. The only difference was that the Austrian version also included the option of shooting at the muezzins.
This is a new phenomenon, and it cannot hide the fact that there are still many differences among the parties that are being lumped together under the heading of right-wing populism. It is certainly true that most of them have always been anti-immigration, have positioned themselves against the political elite, have had charismatic leaders and have done particularly well in countries in which the established parties cultivate a culture of consensus. But a neoliberal with rural roots like Swiss politician Christoph Blocher of the SVP has very little in common with the French demagogue Le Pen. Their origins are too different, as are many of the details of their policies.
It is the shared concept of Islam as the enemy that now makes them ideological allies. Still, it is unlikely that these parties will continue to cooperate across borders in the future, despite Wilders' dream of spearheading such a movement throughout Europe. The "International Freedom Alliance" he established in July has two goals: to "defend freedom" and "stop Islam." In a video which is currently the only content on the alliance's website, Wilders says that he wants to pool the existing forces against Islam, in Germany, France, Britain, Canada and the United States.
When asked about Wilders' initiative, Marine Le Pen told SPIEGEL: "Without a concerted revolution, our civilization is ultimately doomed." This may be an acknowledgement of common goals, but it doesn't sound like she necessarily wants to join Wilders' organization.
Handsome Speaking Fees
So far, Wilders has only been successful abroad with right-wing Islamophobic groups in the United States. At the invitation of these groups, he has traveled around the United States for years, collecting awards for his supposed battle to uphold freedom of speech and giving talks to enthusiastic fans -- and collecting handsome speaking fees in the process.
David Horowitz, a millionaire conservative online journalist with anti-Islamic views, told the Dutch television station Avro that he pays Wilders a $20,000 speaking fee. Horowitz describes Wilders as the "Winston Churchill" of the war against Islam. On the ninth anniversary of 9/11, Wilders attended a rally at Ground Zero, where he spoke out against the planned construction of an Islamic community center two blocks away from the site.
American audiences are more enthusiastic about Wilders, who tells them horror stories about how Muslims have infiltrated Europe, than his fans in any other country. Muslims make up only 1 percent of the US population, and while the anger of voters of right-wing populists in Europe is directed against actual immigrants in their countries, conservative American groups cultivate an Islamophobia without Muslims. Some 50 percent of Americans now say that they have a negative impression of Islam, a higher percentage than after the 9/11 attacks.
'Thank You, Thilo Sarrazin!'
This weekend, Wilders will appear in Berlin as the representative of a political movement for which a market also seems to exist in Germany, even if it currently lack an effective salesman or saleswoman.
There will undoubtedly be an audience when former CDU politician René Stadtkewitz greets Wilders in Berlin. The German polemical website Politically Incorrect, a gathering place for the sharpest critics of Islam for years, is heavily promoting the appearance. The website is even selling T-shirts, for €19.90 apiece, imprinted with the words "Geert Wilders - Berlin - October 2, 2010" -- available in 19 different colors.
There are no Stadtkewitz T-shirts for sale, although the website does sell T-shirts imprinted with the words "Thank You, Thilo Sarrazin!"
MARKUS DEGGERICH, MANFRED ERTEL, JULIANE VON MITTELSTAEDT, MATHIEU VON ROHR, HANS-JÜRGEN SCHLAMP, STEFAN SIMONS
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
Special: Muslims in EuropeRelated articles, background features and opinions about this topic.
PrintE-MailFeedback09/28/2010
Continent of Fear
The Rise of Europe's Right-Wing Populists
Photo Gallery: 6 Photos
AFPAll across Europe, right-wing populist parties are enjoying significant popular support. Led by charismatic politicians like Geert Wilders, they are exploiting fear of Muslim immigration and frustration with the political establishment -- and are forcing mainstream parties to shift to the right. By SPIEGEL Staff.
He is a politician who claims to have nothing against Muslims, and that he only hates Islam. He is a charismatic man with peroxide-blonde hair, elegant, eloquent and precisely the type of politician that has put fear into the hearts of Germany's mainstream political parties in recent weeks.
He is Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician of a stripe that doesn't yet exist in Germany: a populist who stirs up hatred against Islam and the establishment, and who has taken away many votes from the traditional parties in his native Netherlands. So many, in fact, that they now can hardly form a government without giving him a share of power.
Wilders is the central figure of a movement that has been expanding its following in Europe for years, entering parliaments and governments, and ensuring that minarets were banned in Switzerland and burqas in Belgium. It is a sort of popular uprising against Islam, spearheaded by right-wing politicians and journalists throughout Europe. They portray themselves as people who are willing to express a sentiment they claim no one else dares to express: that Muslims are undermining Europe and that the West must be saved. And the approach has been successful.
'An Ideology that Opposes Everything that Matters to Us'
The man who invited Wilders to speak in the German capital Berlin this coming Saturday would like to emulate the Dutch politician. René Stadtkewitz, 45, a well-dressed man with a short haircut, was recently ejected from the Berlin branch of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which he represented for years as a backbencher in the Berlin city-state parliament. He has now founded a new party called "Die Freiheit" ("Freedom"), named after Wilders' Freedom Party.
Wilders is traveling to Berlin to help Stadtkewitz inaugurate the new party. Anyone who hopes to catch a glimpse of the prominent guest must register online and pay an admission fee in advance. For security reasons, only registered attendees who have paid the admission fee are told where the event will take place.
Stadkewitz, eating Moroccan couscous in the cafeteria of the Berlin city-state parliament, says that "Geert's" call for the institution of a headscarf tax in the Netherlands is really a great idea. Wilders' visit has cost him €12,000 ($16,200). Stadkewitz sees it as a worthwhile investment. "Islam may also be a religion," he says. "But mainly it's an ideology that opposes everything that matters to us."
Stadkewitz is in a hurry. He is about to give a Dutch television team a tour of Berlin in his BMW. He wants to show them the Muslim parallel society that is supposedly being kept under wraps in the German media.
A Lightning Rod for Popular Anger
A debate has been triggered in Germany by a new book by Thilo Sarrazin, a controversial politician with the center-left Social Democrats, in which he describes Muslim immigrants as an existential threat for Germany. Ever since the book was published and met with popular approval, many columnists, academics and politicians have been asking themselves whether Germany will remain an exception in terms of its political landscape. It is still the only country in Western Europe that lacks a right-wing populist party that acts as a lightning rod for popular anger targeted at Islam and the political establishment.
In recent months, right-wing populist parties have thwarted majority governments in three European Union countries: Belgium, the Netherlands and, most recently, Sweden. Although right-wing populists in the latter country only captured 5.7 percent of the vote, it was enough to deprive the incumbent center-right coalition of an absolute majority. All three countries were long known for their liberalism, but now political parties are gaining influence that see Islam as "our biggest foreign threat since World War II," as Jimmie Akesson, the 31-year-old chairman of the Sweden Democrats, puts it.
Right-wing populist parties have been a part of coalition governments in Italy and Switzerland for years, and they hold seats in the parliaments of Denmark, Austria, Norway and Finland. Jean-Marie Le Pens' National Front captured 9 percent of the vote in last spring's French regional elections with a targeted anti-Islamic campaign. In March, Italy's Northern League gained control of the regions of Venice and Piedmont. During the election campaign, party supporters handed out soap samples, to be used, as they said, "after having touched an immigrant."
Part 2: Parties Discover the Power of Islamophobia
Right-wing populism itself isn't anything new. It has been a fixed entity for about 30 years in many European countries, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. What is new, however, is that the right-wing populists have discovered an issue that is much more appealing to voters than the usual anger against foreigners and the political class. They have found a powerful new issue in resistance against the growing visibility of Islam in Europe. They portray themselves as the defenders of European values, and yet both they and their voters seem to care very little that some of those values, such as freedom of religion, are being trampled on in the struggle.
The fear that Muslim immigrants could change the character of European society penetrates deeply into the middle of society. In German opinion polls, about three-quarters of respondents say they are concerned about the influence of Islam. Similar sentiments are voiced in other countries, even though immigration to Europe has been in decline for years.
Barbaric practices in some Islamic countries -- when women are forced to wear burqas, gays and lesbians are persecuted and adulterers are stoned, all under the pretext of religion -- are undoubtedly deeply contrary to modern European values. And there is no question that many countries face severe problems with integrating immigrants into society. But these things alone do not explain the discomfort. Rather, it stems from the fact that the established parties have failed to give their voters the feeling that they are addressing these issues. The economic crisis of the past couple of years has also unnerved the middle class. Europe is aging, and other, younger regions of the world are catching up. Many people are worried about the future in a globalized world, one in which the balance of power is shifting.
Decline of Traditional Center-Left Parties
In the northern European countries, in particular, the rise of the populists goes hand-in-hand with a decline in support for the traditional center-left social democratic parties. This is partly because immigrants are as likely as anyone to abuse the system in the kind of social welfare states promoted by social democratic parties. But it is also because the traditional parties have become bogged down in the details of integration policy.
They have created integration specialists, immigration offices and integration conferences, but they have lost sight of citizens' concerns. And because they are also in favor of free speech, feminism and secularism, they are incapable of defending themselves against right-wing populists, who cite the same values of free speech, feminism and secularism in defending their battles against headscarves, minarets and mosques. The only difference is that the right-wing populists are more vocal and simplify the issues to the point that their position seems logical.
The Sweden Democrats, which have their origins within the extreme right, have learned from modern right-wing populists like Wilders as well as the Danish People's Party (DF) and its chairwoman, Pia Kjaersgaard. During the recent election campaign, the Sweden Democrats had a television ad showing an elderly woman who, as she is struggling along with her wheeled walker, is almost run over by women in burqas pushing their strollers. The women in burqas are hurrying toward a desk labeled "Government Budget." "On Sept. 19, you can pull the immigration brake -- and not the pension brake," says a voice.
Conservativism Meets Left-Wing Policies
Pitting immigrants against pensioners is one of Wilders' tactics. He brings together right-wing and left-wing policies, Islamophobia and the fear of exploitation of the social welfare state. "It is one of our biggest successes, this combination of being culturally conservative, on the one hand, and leftist on other issues," says Wilders, who characterizes himself as someone who is against immigration but has "a warm heart for the weak and the elderly."
Wilders was one of the first politicians to consistently use Islam as an issue, and many have followed his example. It is telling that the anti-Islam movement did not get underway directly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, even though they were the main trigger of the current uncertainty and fear of Islamist terror. Instead, it has only reached its climax today, years later.
On the surface, this new right wing has little in common with the old right wing, even though the first far-right European politician began inveighing against Muslims as long ago as the 1970s and 80s. That was Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of France's National Front, who targeted immigrants from the former French colonies in North Africa. Le Pen made a career for himself as an angry outsider. He was primitive and old-fashioned, often racist and anti-Semitic, and yet he managed to upend the political landscape. In the first round of the 2002 presidential elections, he even captured more votes than the Socialist candidate, Lionel Jospin. It was a shock for the French elite.
What happened in France has happened in many other countries since then, countries in which the traditional parties have sought to sideline the far right: The centrist politicians have moved to the right. This was the case in Denmark, where the Danish People's Party has given its parliamentary support to a right-liberal minority government since 2001. And even though the populists are not part of the government, Denmark has tightened its immigration laws considerably.
Part 3: France's New National Front
When the current French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, began his campaign in 2007, it was difficult to distinguish some of his rhetoric from Le Pen's. For example, he suggested that people who "slaughter sheep in their bathtubs" were unwelcome in France, and he won the election because he brought together votes from the right. Now Sarkozy will probably soon be confronted with a new National Front, a toned-down -- but perhaps more dangerous -- version of its former self. Marine Le Pen, the daughter of the party's founder, will campaign for the party's chairmanship in January and intends to create a party that could also appeal to the political center.
Marine Le Pen portrays herself as non-dogmatic and intellectual. She wears business suits and distributes kisses during her campaign appearances at markets in the Paris metropolitan area. "I want to unite all the French," she says. At the same time, like Wilders, she raves against the burqa and Islamization. She too has recognized that targeted Islamophobia is more promising than traditional xenophobia.
Le Pen poses a threat to Sarkozy, whose own shift to the right this year reveals how seriously he takes that threat. The debate he has launched in France over "national identity" is clearly directed against Muslims, and he has also embarked on a campaign to deport the Roma. So far, these tactics have done nothing for Sarkozy in the polls.
Borrowing Ideas
The transformation of the National Front is only one example of the new anti-Islamic mainstream among Western Europe's right-wing populist parties. This is the issue that unites all of these parties throughout Europe, which have even taken to borrowing each other's marketing ideas. For example, the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) copied a game from the website of Swiss People's Party (SVP), in which players shoot at minarets popping up in their familiar landscape. The only difference was that the Austrian version also included the option of shooting at the muezzins.
This is a new phenomenon, and it cannot hide the fact that there are still many differences among the parties that are being lumped together under the heading of right-wing populism. It is certainly true that most of them have always been anti-immigration, have positioned themselves against the political elite, have had charismatic leaders and have done particularly well in countries in which the established parties cultivate a culture of consensus. But a neoliberal with rural roots like Swiss politician Christoph Blocher of the SVP has very little in common with the French demagogue Le Pen. Their origins are too different, as are many of the details of their policies.
It is the shared concept of Islam as the enemy that now makes them ideological allies. Still, it is unlikely that these parties will continue to cooperate across borders in the future, despite Wilders' dream of spearheading such a movement throughout Europe. The "International Freedom Alliance" he established in July has two goals: to "defend freedom" and "stop Islam." In a video which is currently the only content on the alliance's website, Wilders says that he wants to pool the existing forces against Islam, in Germany, France, Britain, Canada and the United States.
When asked about Wilders' initiative, Marine Le Pen told SPIEGEL: "Without a concerted revolution, our civilization is ultimately doomed." This may be an acknowledgement of common goals, but it doesn't sound like she necessarily wants to join Wilders' organization.
Handsome Speaking Fees
So far, Wilders has only been successful abroad with right-wing Islamophobic groups in the United States. At the invitation of these groups, he has traveled around the United States for years, collecting awards for his supposed battle to uphold freedom of speech and giving talks to enthusiastic fans -- and collecting handsome speaking fees in the process.
David Horowitz, a millionaire conservative online journalist with anti-Islamic views, told the Dutch television station Avro that he pays Wilders a $20,000 speaking fee. Horowitz describes Wilders as the "Winston Churchill" of the war against Islam. On the ninth anniversary of 9/11, Wilders attended a rally at Ground Zero, where he spoke out against the planned construction of an Islamic community center two blocks away from the site.
American audiences are more enthusiastic about Wilders, who tells them horror stories about how Muslims have infiltrated Europe, than his fans in any other country. Muslims make up only 1 percent of the US population, and while the anger of voters of right-wing populists in Europe is directed against actual immigrants in their countries, conservative American groups cultivate an Islamophobia without Muslims. Some 50 percent of Americans now say that they have a negative impression of Islam, a higher percentage than after the 9/11 attacks.
'Thank You, Thilo Sarrazin!'
This weekend, Wilders will appear in Berlin as the representative of a political movement for which a market also seems to exist in Germany, even if it currently lack an effective salesman or saleswoman.
There will undoubtedly be an audience when former CDU politician René Stadtkewitz greets Wilders in Berlin. The German polemical website Politically Incorrect, a gathering place for the sharpest critics of Islam for years, is heavily promoting the appearance. The website is even selling T-shirts, for €19.90 apiece, imprinted with the words "Geert Wilders - Berlin - October 2, 2010" -- available in 19 different colors.
There are no Stadtkewitz T-shirts for sale, although the website does sell T-shirts imprinted with the words "Thank You, Thilo Sarrazin!"
MARKUS DEGGERICH, MANFRED ERTEL, JULIANE VON MITTELSTAEDT, MATHIEU VON ROHR, HANS-JÜRGEN SCHLAMP, STEFAN SIMONS
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
Denmark: Government Seeks To Avoid Renewed Cartoon Uproar
From CNS News.com and Alliance Defense Fund:
Denmark Seeks to Avoid Renewed Cartoon Uproar
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
By Jan M. Olsen, Associated Press
Copenhagen, Denmark (AP) - Denmark's foreign minister met Wednesday with ambassadors from 17 Muslim countries in a move to avoid tensions ahead of the five-year anniversary of the Prophet Muhammad cartoons.
The drawings first appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten on Sept. 30, 2005, and sparked fiery protests in Muslim countries four months later.
Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet, even favorable, for fear it could lead to idolatry.
Denmark has remained a target of extremists ever since. Police say they have thwarted a series of terror plots against the newspaper and the creator of the most controversial cartoon, which showed Muhammad wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a lit fuse.
Foreign Minister Lene Espersen said she met with the Muslim ambassadors Wednesday and with the heads of the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Arab League last week "to prevent a new confrontation" over the cartoons.
"My key message is that we have freedom of speech in Denmark," Espersen said in a statement. "Accordingly, anybody has the right to write and print books as long as the content is within the framework of the law.
"At the same time, I would like to make it very clear that Denmark wants to maintain and strengthen our good and friendly relations to the Muslim world."
Espersen said the government "respects all religious creeds and communities, including Islam as one of the world's major religions, and the religious feelings of all people."
Calls to the embassies seeking comment about the meeting were not immediately returned on Wednesday.
Flemming Rose, the newspaper editor who supervised the cartoon project, told reporters Wednesday he was surprised how offended many Muslims were by the 12 drawings.
"I didn't intend to offend or insult anybody," Rose said, adding that he stands by the decision to print the drawings.
Rose is releasing a book about the cartoon uproar in which he states that the purpose of the drawings was to test whether the cartoonists would apply self-censorship when asked to portray Muhammad. The cartoons are reprinted in his book.
Rose said the idea for the project came from reports that the illustrator of a Danish children's book on religion demanded anonymity because he feared retaliation for a drawing of the prophet.
The cartoon crisis escalated as the drawings were reprinted in a range of Western media, triggering massive protests from Morocco to Indonesia, and rioters torching Danish and other Western embassies and diplomatic missions.
Denmark's government distanced itself from the cartoons but doggedly resisted calls to apologize to Muslims, citing the freedom of speech and saying the government could not be held responsible for the actions of Denmark's free press.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Klavs Holm said Danish embassies abroad were "more on their toes than usual" this week but had not received any threats.
"We are alert but not alarmed," Holm said.
(Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
Denmark Seeks to Avoid Renewed Cartoon Uproar
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
By Jan M. Olsen, Associated Press
Copenhagen, Denmark (AP) - Denmark's foreign minister met Wednesday with ambassadors from 17 Muslim countries in a move to avoid tensions ahead of the five-year anniversary of the Prophet Muhammad cartoons.
The drawings first appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten on Sept. 30, 2005, and sparked fiery protests in Muslim countries four months later.
Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet, even favorable, for fear it could lead to idolatry.
Denmark has remained a target of extremists ever since. Police say they have thwarted a series of terror plots against the newspaper and the creator of the most controversial cartoon, which showed Muhammad wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a lit fuse.
Foreign Minister Lene Espersen said she met with the Muslim ambassadors Wednesday and with the heads of the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Arab League last week "to prevent a new confrontation" over the cartoons.
"My key message is that we have freedom of speech in Denmark," Espersen said in a statement. "Accordingly, anybody has the right to write and print books as long as the content is within the framework of the law.
"At the same time, I would like to make it very clear that Denmark wants to maintain and strengthen our good and friendly relations to the Muslim world."
Espersen said the government "respects all religious creeds and communities, including Islam as one of the world's major religions, and the religious feelings of all people."
Calls to the embassies seeking comment about the meeting were not immediately returned on Wednesday.
Flemming Rose, the newspaper editor who supervised the cartoon project, told reporters Wednesday he was surprised how offended many Muslims were by the 12 drawings.
"I didn't intend to offend or insult anybody," Rose said, adding that he stands by the decision to print the drawings.
Rose is releasing a book about the cartoon uproar in which he states that the purpose of the drawings was to test whether the cartoonists would apply self-censorship when asked to portray Muhammad. The cartoons are reprinted in his book.
Rose said the idea for the project came from reports that the illustrator of a Danish children's book on religion demanded anonymity because he feared retaliation for a drawing of the prophet.
The cartoon crisis escalated as the drawings were reprinted in a range of Western media, triggering massive protests from Morocco to Indonesia, and rioters torching Danish and other Western embassies and diplomatic missions.
Denmark's government distanced itself from the cartoons but doggedly resisted calls to apologize to Muslims, citing the freedom of speech and saying the government could not be held responsible for the actions of Denmark's free press.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Klavs Holm said Danish embassies abroad were "more on their toes than usual" this week but had not received any threats.
"We are alert but not alarmed," Holm said.
(Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
Video: Ann Coulter On Why People Think Obama Is A Muslim
From CNN and Floyd Reports:
Video of the Day: Ann Coulter on Why People Think Obama is Muslim
Posted by Ben on September 29, 2010 ·
Video of the Day: Ann Coulter on Why People Think Obama is Muslim
Posted by Ben on September 29, 2010 ·
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Bowing To Islam's View Of Us
From The Orange County Register and Alliance Defense Fund:
Published: Sept. 26, 2010
Updated: Sept. 27, 2010 7:04 a.m.
Mark Steyn: Bowing to Islam's view of usBy MARK STEYN
Syndicated columnist
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While I've been talking about free speech in Copenhagen, several free speech issues arose in North America. I was asked about them both at the Sappho Award event and in various interviews, so here's a few thoughts for what they're worth:
Too many people in the free world have internalized Islam’s view of them. A couple of years ago, I visited Guantanamo and subsequently wrote that, if I had to summon up Gitmo in a single image, it would be the brand-new copy of the Koran in each cell: To reassure incoming prisoners that the filthy infidels haven't touched the sacred book with their unclean hands, the Korans are hung from the walls in pristine, sterilized surgical masks. It's one thing for Muslims to regard infidels as unclean, but it's hard to see why it's in the interests of us infidels to string along with it and thereby validate their bigotry. What does that degree of prostration before their prejudices tell them about us? It’s a problem that Muslims think we’re unclean. It’s a far worse problem that we go along with it.
In this photo taken Sept. 21, 2010, boxes of religious books are photographed in Washington, D.C. Christian Defense Coalition Director Rev. Patrick Mahoney of Fredericksburg, Va., gained possession of the Qurans that Florida Pastor Terry Jones intended to burn on Sept. 11, but canceled the event after international pressure. Mahoney had some of the books shipped to his Washington office. AP Photo/The Free Lance-Star, Peter CihelkaADVERTISEMENT More from National Columnists
•Ron Hart: Another televangelist flames out
•Charles Gasparino: Fannie, Freddie and Barney Frank's new excuse
•Peter Wehner: Obama has become what preached againstTake this no-name pastor from an obscure church who was threatening to burn the Koran. He didn’t burn any buildings or women and children. He didn’t even burn a book. He hadn’t actually laid a finger on a Koran, and yet the mere suggestion that he might do so prompted the president of the United States to denounce him, and the secretary of state, and the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, various G7 leaders, and golly, even Angelina Jolie. President Obama has never said a word about honor killings of Muslim women. Secretary Clinton has never said a word about female genital mutilation. General Petraeus has never said a word about the rampant buggery of pre-pubescent boys by Pushtun men in Kandahar. But let an obscure man in Florida so much as raise the possibility that he might disrespect a book – an inanimate object – and the most powerful figures in the Western world feel they have to weigh in.
Aside from all that, this obscure church’s website has been shut down, its insurance policy has been canceled, its mortgage has been called in by its bankers. Why? As Diana West wrote, why was it necessary or even seemly to make this pastor a non-person? Another one of Obama's famous "teaching moments"? In this case teaching us that Islamic law now applies to all? Only a couple of weeks ago, the president, at his most condescendingly ineffectual, presumed to lecture his moronic subjects about the First Amendment rights of Imam Rauf. Where's the condescending lecture on Pastor Jones' First Amendment rights?
When someone destroys a Bible, U.S. government officials don’t line up to attack him. President Obama bowed lower than a fawning maitre d’ before the King of Saudi Arabia, a man whose regime destroys Bibles as a matter of state policy, and a man whose depraved religious police forces schoolgirls fleeing from a burning building back into the flames to die because they’d committed the sin of trying to escape without wearing their head scarves. If you show a representation of Mohammed, European commissioners and foreign ministers line up to denounce you. If you show a representation of Jesus Christ immersed in your own urine, you get a government grant for producing a widely admired work of art. Likewise, if you write a play about Jesus having gay sex with Judas Iscariot.
So just to clarify the ground rules, if you insult Christ, the media report the issue as freedom of expression: A healthy society has to have bold, brave, transgressive artists willing to question and challenge our assumptions, etc. But, if it’s Mohammed, the issue is no longer freedom of expression but the need for "respect" and "sensitivity" toward Islam, and all those bold brave transgressive artists don’t have a thing to say about it.
Maybe Pastor Jones doesn't have any First Amendment rights. Musing on Koran burning, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer argued:
[Oliver Wendell] Holmes said it doesn’t mean you can shout 'fire' in a crowded theater... Why? Because people will be trampled to death. And what is the crowded theater today? What is the being trampled to death?
This is a particularly obtuse remark even by the standards of contemporary American jurists. As I've said before, the fire-in-a-crowded-theater shtick is the first refuge of the brain-dead. But it's worth noting the repellent modification Justice Breyer makes to Holmes' argument: If someone shouts fire in a gaslit Broadway theatre of 1893, people will panic. By definition, panic is an involuntary reaction. If someone threatens to burn a Koran, belligerent Muslims do not panic - they bully, they intimidate, they threaten, they burn and they kill. Those are conscious acts, at least if you take the view that Muslims are as fully human as the rest of us and therefore responsible for their choices. As my colleague Jonah Goldberg points out, Justice Breyer's remarks seem to assume that Muslims are not fully human.
More importantly, the logic of Breyer's halfwit intervention is to incentivize violence, and undermine law itself. What he seems to be telling the world is that Americans' constitutional rights will bend to intimidation. If Koran-burning rates a First Amendment exemption because Muslims are willing to kill over it, maybe Catholics should threaten to kill over the next gay-Jesus play, and Broadway could have its First Amendment rights reined in. Maybe the next time Janeane Garafolo goes on MSNBC and calls Obama's opponents racists, the Tea Partiers should rampage around town and NBC's free-speech rights would be withdrawn.
Meanwhile, in smaller ways, Islamic intimidation continues. One reason why I am skeptical that the Internet will prove the great beacon of liberty on our darkening planet is because most of the anonymous entities that make it happen are run by people marinated in jelly-spined political correctness. In Canada, an ISP called Bluehost knocked Marginalized Action Dinosaur off the air in response to a complaint by Asad Raza, a laughably litigious doctor in Brampton, Ontario. Had his name been Gordy McHoser, I doubt even the nancy boys at Bluehost would have given him the time of day. A similar fate briefly befell our old pal the Binksmeister at FreeMarkSteyn.com: In other words, a website set up to protest Islamic legal jihad was shut down by the same phenomenon. In America, The New York Times has already proposed giving "some government commission" control over Google’s search algorithm; the City of Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence was adopted and the Constitution signed, is now so removed from the spirit of the First Amendment that it's demanding bloggers pay a $300 "privilege" license for expressing their opinions online. The statists grow ever more comfortable in discussing openly the government management of your computer. But, even if they don't formally take it over, look at the people who run publishing houses, movie studios, schools and universities, and ask yourself whether you really want to bet the future on the commitment to free speech of those who run ISPs. SteynOnline, for example, is already banned by the Internet gatekeepers from the computers at both Marriott Hotels and Toronto Airport.
But forget about notorious rightwing hatemongers like me. Look at how liberal progressives protect their own. Do you remember a lady called Molly Norris? She's the dopey Seattle cartoonist who cooked up "Everybody Draws Mohammed" Day, and then, when she realized what she'd stumbled into, tried to back out of it. I regard Miss Norris as (to rewrite Stalin) a useless idiot, and she wrote to Mark's Mailbox to object. I stand by what I wrote then, especially the bit about her crappy peace-sign T-shirt. Now The Seattle Weekly informs us:
You may have noticed that Molly Norris' comic is not in the paper this week. That's because there is no more Molly.
On the advice of the FBI, she's been forced to go into hiding. If you want to measure the decline in western civilization's sense of self-preservation, go back to Valentine's Day 1989, get out the Fleet Street reports on the Salman Rushdie fatwa, and read the outrage of his fellow London literati at what was being done to one of the mainstays of the Hampstead dinner-party circuit. Then compare it with the feeble passivity of Molly Norris' own colleagues at an American cartoonist being forced to abandon her life: "There is no more Molly"? That's all the gutless pussies of The Seattle Weekly can say? As James Taranto notes in The Wall Street Journal, even much sought-after Ramadan-banquet constitutional scholar Barack Obama is remarkably silent:
Now Molly Norris, an American citizen, is forced into hiding because she exercised her right to free speech. Will President Obama say a word on her behalf? Does he believe in the First Amendment for anyone other than Muslims?
Who knows? Given his highly selective enthusiasms, you can hardly blame a third of Americans for figuring their president must be Muslim. In a way, that's the least pathetic explanation: The alternative is that he's just a craven squish. Which is odd considering he is, supposedly, the most powerful man in the world.
Listen to what President Obama, Justice Breyer, General Petraeus, The Seattle Weekly and Bluehost internet services are telling us about where we're headed. As I said in America Alone, multiculturalism seems to operate to the same even-handedness as the old Cold War joke in which the American tells the Soviet guy that "in my country everyone is free to criticize the President", and the Soviet guy replies, "Same here. In my country everyone is free to criticize your President." Under one-way multiculturalism, the Muslim world is free to revere Islam and belittle the west's inheritance, and, likewise, the western world is free to revere Islam and belittle the west’s inheritance. If one has to choose, on balance Islam’s loathing of other cultures seems psychologically less damaging than western liberals' loathing of their own.
It is a basic rule of life that if you reward bad behavior, you get more of it. Every time Muslims either commit violence or threaten it, we reward them by capitulating. Indeed, President Obama, Justice Breyer, General Petraeus, and all the rest are now telling Islam, you don’t have to kill anyone, you don’t even have to threaten to kill anyone. We’ll be your enforcers. We’ll demand that the most footling and insignificant of our own citizens submit to the universal jurisdiction of Islam. So Obama and Breyer are now the “good cop” to the crazies’ "bad cop." Ooh, no, you can’t say anything about Islam, because my friend here gets a little excitable, and you really don’t want to get him worked up. The same people who tell us "Islam is a religion of peace" then turn around and tell us you have to be quiet, you have to shut up because otherwise these guys will go bananas and kill a bunch of people.
While I was in Denmark, one of the usual Islamobozos lit up prematurely in a Copenhagen hotel. Not mine, I'm happy to say. He wound up burning only himself, but his targets were my comrades at the newspaper Jyllands-Posten. I wouldn't want to upset Justice Breyer by yelling "Fire!" over a smoldering jihadist, but one day even these idiots will get lucky. I didn't like the Danish Security Police presence at the Copenhagen conference, and I preferred being footloose and fancy-free when I was prowling the more menacing parts of Rosengard across the water in Malmö the following evening. No one should lose his name, his home, his life, his liberty because ideological thugs are too insecure to take a joke. But Molly Norris is merely the latest squishy liberal to learn that, when the chips are down, your fellow lefties won't be there for you.
ELECTION NOTE
I'm looking forward to getting back to the U.S. and weighing in on November's fun and frolics. But a quick word on Christine O'Donnell, the GOP Senate candidate from Delaware whom the politico-media establishment have decided is this season's easiest conservative target. If I understand their current plan to save the Dems, it rests on the proposition that America is about to be delivered into the care of a coven of witches who want to take away your right to masturbate. Two thoughts: First, any young woman (as she then was) willing to go on MTV, before a live audience, and attack masturbation certainly doesn't want for courage. As to her alleged dabbling with "witchcraft", so what? Several readers suggest Ms O'Donnell use Sinatra's "Witchcraft" as her campaign theme song. No, no, no. She should use the theme from "Bewitched": All she had to do was twitch her nose, and Mike Castle vanished. If it's a choice between Elizabeth Montgomery and Democrats cackling as they toss another trillion dollars into their bubbling cauldron, it's no contest.
Always loved the lyric to "Bewitched", which you never hear. If Ms O'Donnell wins, I'll be singing it on election night.
Thank you to everyone at the Danish Free Press Society who helped make my trip to Copenhagen such fun - especially Lars, Eva, Kit and Katrine. You can scroll down for the links to the audio of my acceptance speech plus various interviews. Afterwards, I nipped across the water to enjoy a livelier-than-usual Swedish election campaign, despite the best efforts of the dreary enforcers of its one-party media. As I always tell my Danish pals, Sweden is insane even by Scandinavian standards.
Published: Sept. 26, 2010
Updated: Sept. 27, 2010 7:04 a.m.
Mark Steyn: Bowing to Islam's view of usBy MARK STEYN
Syndicated columnist
letters@ocregister.comNext Article »0
Share10
Article Videos
While I've been talking about free speech in Copenhagen, several free speech issues arose in North America. I was asked about them both at the Sappho Award event and in various interviews, so here's a few thoughts for what they're worth:
Too many people in the free world have internalized Islam’s view of them. A couple of years ago, I visited Guantanamo and subsequently wrote that, if I had to summon up Gitmo in a single image, it would be the brand-new copy of the Koran in each cell: To reassure incoming prisoners that the filthy infidels haven't touched the sacred book with their unclean hands, the Korans are hung from the walls in pristine, sterilized surgical masks. It's one thing for Muslims to regard infidels as unclean, but it's hard to see why it's in the interests of us infidels to string along with it and thereby validate their bigotry. What does that degree of prostration before their prejudices tell them about us? It’s a problem that Muslims think we’re unclean. It’s a far worse problem that we go along with it.
In this photo taken Sept. 21, 2010, boxes of religious books are photographed in Washington, D.C. Christian Defense Coalition Director Rev. Patrick Mahoney of Fredericksburg, Va., gained possession of the Qurans that Florida Pastor Terry Jones intended to burn on Sept. 11, but canceled the event after international pressure. Mahoney had some of the books shipped to his Washington office. AP Photo/The Free Lance-Star, Peter CihelkaADVERTISEMENT More from National Columnists
•Ron Hart: Another televangelist flames out
•Charles Gasparino: Fannie, Freddie and Barney Frank's new excuse
•Peter Wehner: Obama has become what preached againstTake this no-name pastor from an obscure church who was threatening to burn the Koran. He didn’t burn any buildings or women and children. He didn’t even burn a book. He hadn’t actually laid a finger on a Koran, and yet the mere suggestion that he might do so prompted the president of the United States to denounce him, and the secretary of state, and the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, various G7 leaders, and golly, even Angelina Jolie. President Obama has never said a word about honor killings of Muslim women. Secretary Clinton has never said a word about female genital mutilation. General Petraeus has never said a word about the rampant buggery of pre-pubescent boys by Pushtun men in Kandahar. But let an obscure man in Florida so much as raise the possibility that he might disrespect a book – an inanimate object – and the most powerful figures in the Western world feel they have to weigh in.
Aside from all that, this obscure church’s website has been shut down, its insurance policy has been canceled, its mortgage has been called in by its bankers. Why? As Diana West wrote, why was it necessary or even seemly to make this pastor a non-person? Another one of Obama's famous "teaching moments"? In this case teaching us that Islamic law now applies to all? Only a couple of weeks ago, the president, at his most condescendingly ineffectual, presumed to lecture his moronic subjects about the First Amendment rights of Imam Rauf. Where's the condescending lecture on Pastor Jones' First Amendment rights?
When someone destroys a Bible, U.S. government officials don’t line up to attack him. President Obama bowed lower than a fawning maitre d’ before the King of Saudi Arabia, a man whose regime destroys Bibles as a matter of state policy, and a man whose depraved religious police forces schoolgirls fleeing from a burning building back into the flames to die because they’d committed the sin of trying to escape without wearing their head scarves. If you show a representation of Mohammed, European commissioners and foreign ministers line up to denounce you. If you show a representation of Jesus Christ immersed in your own urine, you get a government grant for producing a widely admired work of art. Likewise, if you write a play about Jesus having gay sex with Judas Iscariot.
So just to clarify the ground rules, if you insult Christ, the media report the issue as freedom of expression: A healthy society has to have bold, brave, transgressive artists willing to question and challenge our assumptions, etc. But, if it’s Mohammed, the issue is no longer freedom of expression but the need for "respect" and "sensitivity" toward Islam, and all those bold brave transgressive artists don’t have a thing to say about it.
Maybe Pastor Jones doesn't have any First Amendment rights. Musing on Koran burning, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer argued:
[Oliver Wendell] Holmes said it doesn’t mean you can shout 'fire' in a crowded theater... Why? Because people will be trampled to death. And what is the crowded theater today? What is the being trampled to death?
This is a particularly obtuse remark even by the standards of contemporary American jurists. As I've said before, the fire-in-a-crowded-theater shtick is the first refuge of the brain-dead. But it's worth noting the repellent modification Justice Breyer makes to Holmes' argument: If someone shouts fire in a gaslit Broadway theatre of 1893, people will panic. By definition, panic is an involuntary reaction. If someone threatens to burn a Koran, belligerent Muslims do not panic - they bully, they intimidate, they threaten, they burn and they kill. Those are conscious acts, at least if you take the view that Muslims are as fully human as the rest of us and therefore responsible for their choices. As my colleague Jonah Goldberg points out, Justice Breyer's remarks seem to assume that Muslims are not fully human.
More importantly, the logic of Breyer's halfwit intervention is to incentivize violence, and undermine law itself. What he seems to be telling the world is that Americans' constitutional rights will bend to intimidation. If Koran-burning rates a First Amendment exemption because Muslims are willing to kill over it, maybe Catholics should threaten to kill over the next gay-Jesus play, and Broadway could have its First Amendment rights reined in. Maybe the next time Janeane Garafolo goes on MSNBC and calls Obama's opponents racists, the Tea Partiers should rampage around town and NBC's free-speech rights would be withdrawn.
Meanwhile, in smaller ways, Islamic intimidation continues. One reason why I am skeptical that the Internet will prove the great beacon of liberty on our darkening planet is because most of the anonymous entities that make it happen are run by people marinated in jelly-spined political correctness. In Canada, an ISP called Bluehost knocked Marginalized Action Dinosaur off the air in response to a complaint by Asad Raza, a laughably litigious doctor in Brampton, Ontario. Had his name been Gordy McHoser, I doubt even the nancy boys at Bluehost would have given him the time of day. A similar fate briefly befell our old pal the Binksmeister at FreeMarkSteyn.com: In other words, a website set up to protest Islamic legal jihad was shut down by the same phenomenon. In America, The New York Times has already proposed giving "some government commission" control over Google’s search algorithm; the City of Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence was adopted and the Constitution signed, is now so removed from the spirit of the First Amendment that it's demanding bloggers pay a $300 "privilege" license for expressing their opinions online. The statists grow ever more comfortable in discussing openly the government management of your computer. But, even if they don't formally take it over, look at the people who run publishing houses, movie studios, schools and universities, and ask yourself whether you really want to bet the future on the commitment to free speech of those who run ISPs. SteynOnline, for example, is already banned by the Internet gatekeepers from the computers at both Marriott Hotels and Toronto Airport.
But forget about notorious rightwing hatemongers like me. Look at how liberal progressives protect their own. Do you remember a lady called Molly Norris? She's the dopey Seattle cartoonist who cooked up "Everybody Draws Mohammed" Day, and then, when she realized what she'd stumbled into, tried to back out of it. I regard Miss Norris as (to rewrite Stalin) a useless idiot, and she wrote to Mark's Mailbox to object. I stand by what I wrote then, especially the bit about her crappy peace-sign T-shirt. Now The Seattle Weekly informs us:
You may have noticed that Molly Norris' comic is not in the paper this week. That's because there is no more Molly.
On the advice of the FBI, she's been forced to go into hiding. If you want to measure the decline in western civilization's sense of self-preservation, go back to Valentine's Day 1989, get out the Fleet Street reports on the Salman Rushdie fatwa, and read the outrage of his fellow London literati at what was being done to one of the mainstays of the Hampstead dinner-party circuit. Then compare it with the feeble passivity of Molly Norris' own colleagues at an American cartoonist being forced to abandon her life: "There is no more Molly"? That's all the gutless pussies of The Seattle Weekly can say? As James Taranto notes in The Wall Street Journal, even much sought-after Ramadan-banquet constitutional scholar Barack Obama is remarkably silent:
Now Molly Norris, an American citizen, is forced into hiding because she exercised her right to free speech. Will President Obama say a word on her behalf? Does he believe in the First Amendment for anyone other than Muslims?
Who knows? Given his highly selective enthusiasms, you can hardly blame a third of Americans for figuring their president must be Muslim. In a way, that's the least pathetic explanation: The alternative is that he's just a craven squish. Which is odd considering he is, supposedly, the most powerful man in the world.
Listen to what President Obama, Justice Breyer, General Petraeus, The Seattle Weekly and Bluehost internet services are telling us about where we're headed. As I said in America Alone, multiculturalism seems to operate to the same even-handedness as the old Cold War joke in which the American tells the Soviet guy that "in my country everyone is free to criticize the President", and the Soviet guy replies, "Same here. In my country everyone is free to criticize your President." Under one-way multiculturalism, the Muslim world is free to revere Islam and belittle the west's inheritance, and, likewise, the western world is free to revere Islam and belittle the west’s inheritance. If one has to choose, on balance Islam’s loathing of other cultures seems psychologically less damaging than western liberals' loathing of their own.
It is a basic rule of life that if you reward bad behavior, you get more of it. Every time Muslims either commit violence or threaten it, we reward them by capitulating. Indeed, President Obama, Justice Breyer, General Petraeus, and all the rest are now telling Islam, you don’t have to kill anyone, you don’t even have to threaten to kill anyone. We’ll be your enforcers. We’ll demand that the most footling and insignificant of our own citizens submit to the universal jurisdiction of Islam. So Obama and Breyer are now the “good cop” to the crazies’ "bad cop." Ooh, no, you can’t say anything about Islam, because my friend here gets a little excitable, and you really don’t want to get him worked up. The same people who tell us "Islam is a religion of peace" then turn around and tell us you have to be quiet, you have to shut up because otherwise these guys will go bananas and kill a bunch of people.
While I was in Denmark, one of the usual Islamobozos lit up prematurely in a Copenhagen hotel. Not mine, I'm happy to say. He wound up burning only himself, but his targets were my comrades at the newspaper Jyllands-Posten. I wouldn't want to upset Justice Breyer by yelling "Fire!" over a smoldering jihadist, but one day even these idiots will get lucky. I didn't like the Danish Security Police presence at the Copenhagen conference, and I preferred being footloose and fancy-free when I was prowling the more menacing parts of Rosengard across the water in Malmö the following evening. No one should lose his name, his home, his life, his liberty because ideological thugs are too insecure to take a joke. But Molly Norris is merely the latest squishy liberal to learn that, when the chips are down, your fellow lefties won't be there for you.
ELECTION NOTE
I'm looking forward to getting back to the U.S. and weighing in on November's fun and frolics. But a quick word on Christine O'Donnell, the GOP Senate candidate from Delaware whom the politico-media establishment have decided is this season's easiest conservative target. If I understand their current plan to save the Dems, it rests on the proposition that America is about to be delivered into the care of a coven of witches who want to take away your right to masturbate. Two thoughts: First, any young woman (as she then was) willing to go on MTV, before a live audience, and attack masturbation certainly doesn't want for courage. As to her alleged dabbling with "witchcraft", so what? Several readers suggest Ms O'Donnell use Sinatra's "Witchcraft" as her campaign theme song. No, no, no. She should use the theme from "Bewitched": All she had to do was twitch her nose, and Mike Castle vanished. If it's a choice between Elizabeth Montgomery and Democrats cackling as they toss another trillion dollars into their bubbling cauldron, it's no contest.
Always loved the lyric to "Bewitched", which you never hear. If Ms O'Donnell wins, I'll be singing it on election night.
Thank you to everyone at the Danish Free Press Society who helped make my trip to Copenhagen such fun - especially Lars, Eva, Kit and Katrine. You can scroll down for the links to the audio of my acceptance speech plus various interviews. Afterwards, I nipped across the water to enjoy a livelier-than-usual Swedish election campaign, despite the best efforts of the dreary enforcers of its one-party media. As I always tell my Danish pals, Sweden is insane even by Scandinavian standards.
Acquitted Christian missionaries Plan To Sue Dearborn Over Arrests At Arab Festival
From Michigan Live.com and Alliance Defense Fund:
Attorney: Acquitted Christian missionaries plan to sue Dearborn over arrests at Arab festival
Published: Monday, September 27, 2010, 11:47 AM Updated: Monday, September 27, 2010, 1:50 PM
Jonathan Oosting
MLive.com
A video of the arrests, which the Acts 17 Apologetics group posted to YouTube.
253
Share 49 Comments A jury on Friday acquitted four Christian missionaries accused of breaching the peace at the Dearborn International Arab Festival in June, but their attorney says the legal battle is far from over.
Robert Muise of the Thomas More Law Center plans to file a civil lawsuit on their behalf against the City of Dearborn "in short order," he said this morning on WJR-AM 760.
"They spent a night in jail for doing nothing but attending an Arab festival and daring to discuss their faith," he told host Frank Beckmann. "That can't happen in the United States."
Dearborn Police Chief Ron Haddad previously explained the evangelists "caused a stir" at the festival, and a police report indicated one of the missionaries was "screaming into the crowd" leading officers to arrest the group "to gain control of the situation and avoid a possible riotous crowd."
But the missionaries -- members of the Act 17 Apologetics group, which openly claims Islam is a false religion -- video recorded their interactions at the festival, evidence Muise said convinced the jury they did nothing to provoke a confrontation.
Listen to Robert Muise:
Mayor Jack O'Reilly told the Detroit Free Press he respected the jury's decision but suggested the video cameras were proof the missionaries planned the confrontation as a stunt to drum up publicity and donations.
"It's really about a hatred of Muslims," he said. "That is what the whole heart of this is. ... Their idea is that there is no place for Muslims in America. They fail to understand the Constitution."
Muise called the accusation "utter nonsense" and pointed out that two of the missionaries -- adult converts -- remain close to Muslim family members.
"Their greatest decision they made in their life was to convert from Islam to Christianity and they want to share that story with as many people who are willing to listen to them," he said. "That is the essence of free exercise of religion. That is the essence of the First Amendment right to freedom speech."
Listen to the full WJR-AM 760 interview with Muise in the embedded player above.
Related topics: Dearborn Missionary Arrests
Attorney: Acquitted Christian missionaries plan to sue Dearborn over arrests at Arab festival
Published: Monday, September 27, 2010, 11:47 AM Updated: Monday, September 27, 2010, 1:50 PM
Jonathan Oosting
MLive.com
A video of the arrests, which the Acts 17 Apologetics group posted to YouTube.
253
Share 49 Comments A jury on Friday acquitted four Christian missionaries accused of breaching the peace at the Dearborn International Arab Festival in June, but their attorney says the legal battle is far from over.
Robert Muise of the Thomas More Law Center plans to file a civil lawsuit on their behalf against the City of Dearborn "in short order," he said this morning on WJR-AM 760.
"They spent a night in jail for doing nothing but attending an Arab festival and daring to discuss their faith," he told host Frank Beckmann. "That can't happen in the United States."
Dearborn Police Chief Ron Haddad previously explained the evangelists "caused a stir" at the festival, and a police report indicated one of the missionaries was "screaming into the crowd" leading officers to arrest the group "to gain control of the situation and avoid a possible riotous crowd."
But the missionaries -- members of the Act 17 Apologetics group, which openly claims Islam is a false religion -- video recorded their interactions at the festival, evidence Muise said convinced the jury they did nothing to provoke a confrontation.
Listen to Robert Muise:
Mayor Jack O'Reilly told the Detroit Free Press he respected the jury's decision but suggested the video cameras were proof the missionaries planned the confrontation as a stunt to drum up publicity and donations.
"It's really about a hatred of Muslims," he said. "That is what the whole heart of this is. ... Their idea is that there is no place for Muslims in America. They fail to understand the Constitution."
Muise called the accusation "utter nonsense" and pointed out that two of the missionaries -- adult converts -- remain close to Muslim family members.
"Their greatest decision they made in their life was to convert from Islam to Christianity and they want to share that story with as many people who are willing to listen to them," he said. "That is the essence of free exercise of religion. That is the essence of the First Amendment right to freedom speech."
Listen to the full WJR-AM 760 interview with Muise in the embedded player above.
Related topics: Dearborn Missionary Arrests
Radical Islam Gets The Better Of Free Speech And American Journalists
From Jihad Watch:
"The new norm is a self-censorship consistent with Muslim teaching that Islam must be free from insult, though other religions may be insulted at all times"
In "Radical Islam gets the better of free speech" in the Star Tribune, September 25, Katherine Kersten asks why American journalists have not rallied to the cause of Molly Norris:
[...] Surely, you say, American journalists and media moguls -- always staunch defenders of the First Amendment -- are proclaiming outrage and rallying round this young woman? On the contrary. The media have largely been silent about her nightmarish plight.
When the Washington Examiner, an on-line newspaper in Washington, D.C., asked the American Society of News Editors for a statement about Norris, none was forthcoming. Ditto for the Society of Professional Journalists. This, despite the fact that the editors group's mission statement extols "the First Amendment at home and free speech around the world," while the journalists claim to stand for "the perpetuation of the free press as the cornerstone of our nation and liberty."
Principle and backbone were more in evidence back in 1989, when Iran's radical Ayatollah Khomeini launched the current drive to extend Islamic law to the West. After Khomeini accused British novelist Salman Rushdie of blasphemy in "The Satanic Verses" and called for his death, the U.S. Senate unanimously resolved "to protect the right of any person to write, publish, sell, buy and read books without fear of violence."
But since 9/11, American media have increasingly caved to threats from radical Islam. The new norm is a self-censorship consistent with Muslim teaching that Islam must be free from insult, though other religions may be insulted at all times.
Posted by Robert on September 27, 2010 7:12 AM
"The new norm is a self-censorship consistent with Muslim teaching that Islam must be free from insult, though other religions may be insulted at all times"
In "Radical Islam gets the better of free speech" in the Star Tribune, September 25, Katherine Kersten asks why American journalists have not rallied to the cause of Molly Norris:
[...] Surely, you say, American journalists and media moguls -- always staunch defenders of the First Amendment -- are proclaiming outrage and rallying round this young woman? On the contrary. The media have largely been silent about her nightmarish plight.
When the Washington Examiner, an on-line newspaper in Washington, D.C., asked the American Society of News Editors for a statement about Norris, none was forthcoming. Ditto for the Society of Professional Journalists. This, despite the fact that the editors group's mission statement extols "the First Amendment at home and free speech around the world," while the journalists claim to stand for "the perpetuation of the free press as the cornerstone of our nation and liberty."
Principle and backbone were more in evidence back in 1989, when Iran's radical Ayatollah Khomeini launched the current drive to extend Islamic law to the West. After Khomeini accused British novelist Salman Rushdie of blasphemy in "The Satanic Verses" and called for his death, the U.S. Senate unanimously resolved "to protect the right of any person to write, publish, sell, buy and read books without fear of violence."
But since 9/11, American media have increasingly caved to threats from radical Islam. The new norm is a self-censorship consistent with Muslim teaching that Islam must be free from insult, though other religions may be insulted at all times.
Posted by Robert on September 27, 2010 7:12 AM
The Netherlands: Dutch To Complete Talks On Cabinet Backed By Anti-Islamist Freedom Party
From Bloomberg News and Alliance Defense Fund:
Related News:Canada .Dutch to Complete Talks on Cabinet Backed by Anti-Islamist Freedom Party
By Jurjen van de Pol - Sep 28, 2010 5:37 AM CT
Email Share
Business ExchangeTwitterDeliciousDiggFacebookLinkedInNewsvinePropellerYahoo! BuzzPrint Wilders and his 23 fellow lawmakers in the Freedom Party intend to support a Cabinet led by Liberals Mark Rutte. Photographer: Valerie Kuypers/AFP/Getty Images
The Dutch Liberal Party and the Christian Democratic Alliance intend to reach an agreement today on forming a government with support from the anti-Islam Freedom Party, creating the Netherlands’ first minority administration since World War II.
The three parties resume talks this afternoon in The Hague and expect to complete them during the day, the government information service said in an e-mailed statement. Party leaders plan to submit the accord to their lawmakers for approval tomorrow before reporting back on Sept. 30 to Ivo Opstelten, who chairs the negotiations on behalf of Queen Beatrix.
It’s taken three attempts to form a coalition following the inconclusive June 9 election. The proposed government, to be headed by Liberal leader Mark Rutte, would have a combined 52 seats in the lower house of parliament and rely on the 24 lawmakers from the Freedom Party, led by Geert Wilders, to give it the smallest possible majority in the 150-seat chamber.
“This is new for the Netherlands; it’s an experiment,” Kees Aarts, a professor of political science at the University of Twente in Enschede, said in a telephone interview.
Austerity measures have been the most important issue on political leaders’ agenda, with the Netherlands, the fifth- largest economy in the euro region, needing to narrow its budget deficit from almost 6 percent of gross domestic product this year to 3 percent by 2013 to meet EU rules.
Budget Cuts
Outgoing Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende’s caretaker government presented its 2011 budget last week, including a reduction in spending. While the cuts will help narrow next year’s budget shortfall to 4 percent of GDP, further reductions are needed to trim the deficit, Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager said.
Wilders’s party more than doubled its representation in parliament at the election, while the Christian Democrats, who were led into the vote by Balkenende, lost half of their support. Rutte’s party is the largest in the new parliament.
The Freedom Party seeks to ban new mosques, curb immigration, cut development aid and reduce European Union influence in the Netherlands. Wilders, 47, receives police protection around the clock and faces trial next week on charges of inciting hatred in his 2008 film “Fitna,” in which he calls on Muslims to rip out “hate-preaching” verses from the Koran.
Although the Freedom Party leader won’t be a part of the government, Wilders’s involvement may hurt Dutch diplomatic and business interests abroad. “Fitna” sparked protests in majority-Muslim countries including Indonesia and Pakistan and led to calls for the boycott of Dutch products in Malaysia and Iran.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jurjen van de Pol in Amsterdam at jvandepol@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Fraher at jfraher@bloomberg.net.
Related News:Canada .Dutch to Complete Talks on Cabinet Backed by Anti-Islamist Freedom Party
By Jurjen van de Pol - Sep 28, 2010 5:37 AM CT
Email Share
Business ExchangeTwitterDeliciousDiggFacebookLinkedInNewsvinePropellerYahoo! BuzzPrint Wilders and his 23 fellow lawmakers in the Freedom Party intend to support a Cabinet led by Liberals Mark Rutte. Photographer: Valerie Kuypers/AFP/Getty Images
The Dutch Liberal Party and the Christian Democratic Alliance intend to reach an agreement today on forming a government with support from the anti-Islam Freedom Party, creating the Netherlands’ first minority administration since World War II.
The three parties resume talks this afternoon in The Hague and expect to complete them during the day, the government information service said in an e-mailed statement. Party leaders plan to submit the accord to their lawmakers for approval tomorrow before reporting back on Sept. 30 to Ivo Opstelten, who chairs the negotiations on behalf of Queen Beatrix.
It’s taken three attempts to form a coalition following the inconclusive June 9 election. The proposed government, to be headed by Liberal leader Mark Rutte, would have a combined 52 seats in the lower house of parliament and rely on the 24 lawmakers from the Freedom Party, led by Geert Wilders, to give it the smallest possible majority in the 150-seat chamber.
“This is new for the Netherlands; it’s an experiment,” Kees Aarts, a professor of political science at the University of Twente in Enschede, said in a telephone interview.
Austerity measures have been the most important issue on political leaders’ agenda, with the Netherlands, the fifth- largest economy in the euro region, needing to narrow its budget deficit from almost 6 percent of gross domestic product this year to 3 percent by 2013 to meet EU rules.
Budget Cuts
Outgoing Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende’s caretaker government presented its 2011 budget last week, including a reduction in spending. While the cuts will help narrow next year’s budget shortfall to 4 percent of GDP, further reductions are needed to trim the deficit, Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager said.
Wilders’s party more than doubled its representation in parliament at the election, while the Christian Democrats, who were led into the vote by Balkenende, lost half of their support. Rutte’s party is the largest in the new parliament.
The Freedom Party seeks to ban new mosques, curb immigration, cut development aid and reduce European Union influence in the Netherlands. Wilders, 47, receives police protection around the clock and faces trial next week on charges of inciting hatred in his 2008 film “Fitna,” in which he calls on Muslims to rip out “hate-preaching” verses from the Koran.
Although the Freedom Party leader won’t be a part of the government, Wilders’s involvement may hurt Dutch diplomatic and business interests abroad. “Fitna” sparked protests in majority-Muslim countries including Indonesia and Pakistan and led to calls for the boycott of Dutch products in Malaysia and Iran.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jurjen van de Pol in Amsterdam at jvandepol@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Fraher at jfraher@bloomberg.net.
A defense Of Free Speech By American And Canadian Muslims
This is a hopeful sign. I hope that more will speak out this way. If they feel this way, and live what they say, then Islam can co-exist with other religions within a democracy.
From The American Muslim:
A DEFENSE OF FREE SPEECH BY AMERICAN AND CANADIAN MUSLIMS
Posted Sep 28, 2010 • Permalink • Printer-Friendly Version
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A DEFENSE OF FREE SPEECH BY AMERICAN AND CANADIAN MUSLIMS
We, the undersigned, unconditionally condemn any intimidation or threats of violence directed against any individual or group exercising the rights of freedom of religion and speech; even when that speech may be perceived as hurtful or reprehensible.
We are concerned and saddened by the recent wave of vitriolic anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic sentiment that is being expressed across our nation.
We are even more concerned and saddened by threats that have been made against individual writers, cartoonists, and others by a minority of Muslims. We see these as a greater offense against Islam than any cartoon, Qur’an burning, or other speech could ever be deemed.
We affirm the right of free speech for Molly Norris, Matt Stone, Trey Parker, and all others including ourselves.
As Muslims, we must set an example of justice, patience, tolerance, respect, and forgiveness.
The Qur’an enjoins Muslims to:
* bear witness to Islam through our good example (2:143);
* restrain anger and pardon people (3:133-134 and 24:22);
* remain patient in adversity (3186);
* stand firmly for justice (4:135);
* not let the hatred of others swerve us from justice (5:8);
* respect the sanctity of life (5:32);
* turn away from those who mock Islam (6:68 and 28:55);
* hold to forgiveness, command what is right, and turn away from the ignorant (7:199);
* restrain ourselves from rash responses (16:125-128);
* pass by worthless talk with dignity (25:72); and
* repel evil with what is better (41:34).
Islam calls for vigorous condemnation of both hateful speech and hateful acts, but always within the boundaries of the law. It is of the utmost importance that we react, not out of reflexive emotion, but with dignity and intelligence, in accordance with both our religious precepts and the laws of our country.
We uphold the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Both protect freedom of religion and speech, because both protections are fundamental to defending minorities from the whims of the majority.
We therefore call on all Muslims in the United States, Canada and abroad to refrain from violence. We should see the challenges we face today as an opportunity to sideline the voices of hate—not reward them with further attention—by engaging our communities in constructive dialogue about the true principles of Islam, and the true principles of democracy, both of which stress the importance of freedom of religion and tolerance.
SIGNATORIES:
Prof. Hassan Abbas, Quaid-i-Azam Chair, South Asia Institute, Columbia University
Anisa Abd el Fattah, Founder and Chairwoman, National Association of Muslim American Women (NAMAW)
Khaled M Abdel-Hamid, MD, PhD, writer
Ammar Abdulhamid, Executive Director, Tharwa Foundation
Imam Johari Abdul Malik, Director of Outreach, Dar-Al-Hijrah Islamic Center
Salma Elkadi Abugideiri, Co-Director, Peaceful Families Project
Aly R. Abuzaakouk, VP Minaret of Freedom Instit., Managing Editor “Democracy Watch” of CSID, Dir. of Foreign Relations: Network of Arab Journalists
Mehnaz M. Afridi, PhD, Adjunct Professor (Judaism, Islam & Genocide Studies) Antioch University
Asma Afsaruddin, PhD, Professor of Islamic Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington
Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, PhD, Director, Minaret of Freedom Foundation
Ahrar Ahmad, PhD, Professor of Political Science, Black Hills State University
Prof. Akbar S. Ahmed, PhD, Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies, American University
Osman Ahmed,PhD, President Islamic Society of Essex County, Newark, NJ
Prof. Parvez Ahmed, PhD, Fulbright Scholar & Assoc. Prof. Univ. of North Florida
Levent Akbarut, Steering Committee member, Islamic Congregation of La Canada Flintridge
Barbara Al-Bayati, Co-Founder, Orphan Whispers
Aman Ali, writer, stand-up-comedian
Javed Ali, founder and publisher, Illume magazine
Wajahat Ali, playwright, journalist, and producer of “Domestic Crusaders”
Sumbul Ali-Karamali, JD, LLM (Islamic Law), author of “The Muslim Next Door”
Shaykh al-Hajj Dawud Ahmad al-Amriki, Director, Muslim America
Salam al-Marayati, Pres., Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC)
Shahed Amanullah, Editor-in-Chief, Altmuslim
Dr. Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law, Emory University School of Law
Patricia Anton, Board member, Muslim Peace Fellowship
M. Saud Anwar, Co-Chair, American Muslim Peace Initiative
Abdul Cader Asmal MD, PhD, Past President, Islamic Council of Mew England
Aref Assaf, PhD, President, American Arab Forum
Hussam Ayloush, Exec. Director, CAIR Greater Los Angeles Area
Robert Azzi, photojournalist, writer
Imam Yusuf Badat, Islamic Foundation of Toronto and Mathabah Foundation
Laleh Bakhtiar, PhD, Scholar-in-Residence, Kazi Publications
Hazami Barmada, Pres, American Muslim Interactive Network (AMIN)
Bahar Bastani, M.D., Professor of Medicine, S.L.U., Secy. General Shia Islamic Education Center, VP of IMANA-St. Louis
Victor Ghalib Begg, Senior Advisor, Chairman Emeritus, Council of Islamic Organizations of Michigan
Zahra Billoo, Director, CAIR San Francisco Bay Area
Jannah bint Hannah, activist, al-Fatiha Foundation
Farah Brelvi, Board of Directors, ACLU-NC
Arsalan Bukhari, Executive Director, CAIR-WA
M. Ali Chaudry, PhD, President, Center for Understanding Islam (CUII)
Kamran Cheikh, Activist, Committee member, Muslims for Peace, Justice & Progress (MPJP), researcher for Deen Research Center (DRC)
Noor-Malika Chishti, Vice Chair, So. CA Committee for a Parliament of the World’s Religions, Representative, the Sufi Order International, Member, World Council of Muslims for Interfaith Relations
Sakina Cornell, Risk Management Coordinator, PSA Healthcare
Vincent J. Cornell PhD, Asa Griggs Candler Prof. of Middle East and Islamic Studies, Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies, Emory University
Robert D. Crane, JD, author of numerous books
Prof Golam Dastagir, PhD, Visiting Research Scholar, New College, University of Toronto, Canada
Almoonir Dewji, blogger - “That We May Know Each Other”
Mustafa Stefan Dill, blogger;/PR/social media analyst for Muslim issues; musician
Ramsey El-Moslimany, member, Board of Directors, Islamic School of Seattle
Lamia El-Sadek, political and human rights activitist
Mohamed Elsanousi, Director of Communications and Community Outreach for the Islamic Society of N America (ISNA)
Mona Eltahawy, journalist
Dr. Hashim El-Tinay, President, International Peace Quest Institute (IPQI)
Aziz Enhaili, Political analyst, columnist for Tolerance.ca
Yusuf Estes, Chaplain ret., author of many books, public speaker
Prof. Mohammad Fadel, PhD
Fatemeh Fakhraie, Editor-in-Chief, Muslimah Media Watch
Ali Galedary, Assistant Principal, University High School, Los Angeles
Mike Ghouse, President, World Muslim Congress
Iftekhar Hai, President, UMA Interfaith Alliance
Asma Hanif, Executive Director, Muslimat Al Nisaa
Rabia Terri Harris, Founder and Coordinator, Muslim Peace Fellowship
Hesham Hassaballa, M.D., author, journalist, blogger - “God, faith, and a pen”
Amir Hussain, PhD, Professor of Theological Studies, Loyola Marymount University
Iftekhar Hussain, Chair, Board of Directors, CAIR-PA
Arsalan Iftikhar, author, human rights lawyer, blogger - “The Muslim Guy”
Jeffrey Imm, Director, Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.)
Ghazala Irshad, journalist, blogger - “The Floating Lotus”
Nakia Jackson, writer
Anjum Jaleel, writer
M. Zuhdi Jasser, MD, President, American Islamic Forum for Democracy
Safi Kaskas, President & CEO Strategic Edge
Mohja Kahf, PhD, Assoc. Professor of Comparative Literature, Univ. of Arkansas, author “The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf”
Dr. Asad U Khan, President, Islamic education Foundation of Manitoba
Mohammed Azhar Ali Khan, C.M., O. Ontario, President, Muslim Coordinating Council of the National Capital Region of Canada
Prof. Muqtedar Khan, PhD, author of several books, Blogger - “Globalog”
Farah Kinani, Journalist, blogger - “Global Voices”
Scott Kugle (Siraj al-Haqq), PhD, Prof. of Islamic Studies, Dept. of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies, Emory University
Shaikh Ahmad Kutty, Resident Senior Scholar, Islamic Institute of Toronto
Faisal Kutty, Visiting Asst. Prof. of law, Valparaiso University School of Law and Adjunct Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School (Toronto)
M. Junaid Levesque-Alam, writer, blogger - “Crossing the Crescent”
David Liepert, M.D., blogger and author of “Muslim, Christian AND Jew”
Afaun Mandol, Board of Directors, MuslimFest
Radwan A. Masmoudi, PhD, President, Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy (CSID)
Melissa Matos, President, Al-Ghazali Legal Society, Saint Louis University
Prof. Uzma Mazhar, writer
Shelina Merani, community activist, artist, blogger “Muslim Presence”
Ruxana Meer, Esq.
Yahya Merchant, Interfaith Worker, Outreach contact for Islamic Center of Conejo Valley CA
Melody Moezzi, JD, MPH, writer and attorney
Muna Abshir Mohamud, author, editor
Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore, author of many books of poetry
Ebrahim Moosa, Assoc. Professor of Islamic Studies, Dept. of Religion, Duke University
Ann El-Moslimany, PhD, Islamic School of Seattle
Lt. Col. Abdul-Rasheed Muhammad, U.S. Army Chaplain
Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid, President Sound Vision
Arman Musaji, artist
Sheila Musaji, Editor, The American Muslim (TAM)
Muneeb Nasir, President, Olive Tree Foundation, Editor IQRA Canada
Q. Amin Nathari, National Representative, Islam in America Movement (IAM)
Ahmed Naumaan, PhD, Director, Karsaz Inc.
Imam Abdul Hai Patel, Dir. Interfaith Relations, Canadian Council of Imams, Muslim Chaplain University of Toronto & York Regional Police
Aziz H. Poonawalla, PhD, scientist and blogger - “City of Brass” on Beliefnet
M.Waheed-uz-Zaman Rana, Imam, Prof. Emeritus, Dept. of Surgery, Saint Louis University
Hasan Zillur Rahim, PhD, journalist
Shaykh Ahmed Abdur Rashid, The Circle Group
Prof. Hussein Rashid, PhD, blogger - “Religion Dispatches”
Shafi Refai, President, United Muslims of America
Irfan Rydhan, Co-Founder of Muslim Unity Foundation
Muhamed Sacirbey, lawyer, diplomat, writer
Louay Safi, PhD, Common Word Fellow, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Christian Muslim Understanding, Georgetown University
Ghulam Abbas Sajan, Director Islamic Ahlul Bayt Assembly of Canada
Robert Salaam, blogger - “The American Muslim”
Raquel Evita Saraswati, activist, writer, blogger
Sarah Sayeed, President of One Blue
Vernon James Schubel, NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor of Religious Studies, Kenyon College
Sophia Rose Shafi, MA, MTS, doctoral candidate (Islamic Studies), writer
Shahla Khan Salter, Chair of Muslims for Progressive Values Ottawa, Canada
T.O. Shanavas. MD, Vice President, Islamic Research Foundation, author
S. Abdallah Schleifer, Distinguished Prof., Dept. of Journalism & Mass Com, American University Cairo
Ricka Shorish, M.S., R.N., volunteer/consultant, Avicenna Community Health Center
Jihad Shoshara, community organizer and activist, Chicago
Jafar Siddiqui, blogger - “Penjihad”
Prof. Laury Silvers, PhD
Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons, PhD, Sr. Lecturer, Islamic Studies & African American Religion, University of Florida
Prof. Ibrahim B. Syed, PhD, President of Islamic Research Foundation International, Inc., author
Dr. Sayyid M. Syeed, Nat’l Director, Office for Interfaith & Community Alliances, Islamic Society of N America (ISNA)
Dr. Mahmoud Shawky Taman, Islamic Society of Northern Wisconsin
Haris Tarin, Director, Washington DC Office Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC)
J.Tayeb, MD, President, CAIR-MI, ISNA founders committee member, Vice chair, HUDA free Clinic, Detroit
Pamela Taylor, Co-founder Muslims for Progressive Values, Panelist for On Faith
Tayyibah Taylor, Editor, Azizah Magazine
Mahdi Toourage, PhD, Assistant Prof., U of Western Ontaio
Tarik Trad, writer, humorist, photographer, artist and activist
Asma T. Uddin, Attorney, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and Editor, Altmuslimah
Joya Uraizee, Associate Professor of English, Saint Louis University
Wahida Valiante, President, Canadian Islamic Congress and Chair of Islamic History Month Canada
Jason van Boom, Host of “Islam and Authors”, writer
Amina Wadud, PhD, consultant on Islam and gender, visiting scholar Starr King School for the Ministry
Danya Wellmon, Co-Founder Women Transcending Boundaries interfaith group
Svend White, blogger - “Akram’s Razor”, activist, writer
G. Willow Wilson, author of “Butterfly Mosque” and “Air” graphic novel series
Ani Zonneveld, President, Muslims for Progressive Values
NOTE: If you are a Canadian or American Muslim and would like to add your signature, please send an email with your name, title, and organizational affiliation (if any) to tameditor@aol.com — The list of signatories will be updated daily and the most recent list can be found HERE.
NOTE: All signatories are signing as individuals and not on behalf of the organizations with which they are affiliated.
From The American Muslim:
A DEFENSE OF FREE SPEECH BY AMERICAN AND CANADIAN MUSLIMS
Posted Sep 28, 2010 • Permalink • Printer-Friendly Version
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A DEFENSE OF FREE SPEECH BY AMERICAN AND CANADIAN MUSLIMS
We, the undersigned, unconditionally condemn any intimidation or threats of violence directed against any individual or group exercising the rights of freedom of religion and speech; even when that speech may be perceived as hurtful or reprehensible.
We are concerned and saddened by the recent wave of vitriolic anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic sentiment that is being expressed across our nation.
We are even more concerned and saddened by threats that have been made against individual writers, cartoonists, and others by a minority of Muslims. We see these as a greater offense against Islam than any cartoon, Qur’an burning, or other speech could ever be deemed.
We affirm the right of free speech for Molly Norris, Matt Stone, Trey Parker, and all others including ourselves.
As Muslims, we must set an example of justice, patience, tolerance, respect, and forgiveness.
The Qur’an enjoins Muslims to:
* bear witness to Islam through our good example (2:143);
* restrain anger and pardon people (3:133-134 and 24:22);
* remain patient in adversity (3186);
* stand firmly for justice (4:135);
* not let the hatred of others swerve us from justice (5:8);
* respect the sanctity of life (5:32);
* turn away from those who mock Islam (6:68 and 28:55);
* hold to forgiveness, command what is right, and turn away from the ignorant (7:199);
* restrain ourselves from rash responses (16:125-128);
* pass by worthless talk with dignity (25:72); and
* repel evil with what is better (41:34).
Islam calls for vigorous condemnation of both hateful speech and hateful acts, but always within the boundaries of the law. It is of the utmost importance that we react, not out of reflexive emotion, but with dignity and intelligence, in accordance with both our religious precepts and the laws of our country.
We uphold the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Both protect freedom of religion and speech, because both protections are fundamental to defending minorities from the whims of the majority.
We therefore call on all Muslims in the United States, Canada and abroad to refrain from violence. We should see the challenges we face today as an opportunity to sideline the voices of hate—not reward them with further attention—by engaging our communities in constructive dialogue about the true principles of Islam, and the true principles of democracy, both of which stress the importance of freedom of religion and tolerance.
SIGNATORIES:
Prof. Hassan Abbas, Quaid-i-Azam Chair, South Asia Institute, Columbia University
Anisa Abd el Fattah, Founder and Chairwoman, National Association of Muslim American Women (NAMAW)
Khaled M Abdel-Hamid, MD, PhD, writer
Ammar Abdulhamid, Executive Director, Tharwa Foundation
Imam Johari Abdul Malik, Director of Outreach, Dar-Al-Hijrah Islamic Center
Salma Elkadi Abugideiri, Co-Director, Peaceful Families Project
Aly R. Abuzaakouk, VP Minaret of Freedom Instit., Managing Editor “Democracy Watch” of CSID, Dir. of Foreign Relations: Network of Arab Journalists
Mehnaz M. Afridi, PhD, Adjunct Professor (Judaism, Islam & Genocide Studies) Antioch University
Asma Afsaruddin, PhD, Professor of Islamic Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington
Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, PhD, Director, Minaret of Freedom Foundation
Ahrar Ahmad, PhD, Professor of Political Science, Black Hills State University
Prof. Akbar S. Ahmed, PhD, Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies, American University
Osman Ahmed,PhD, President Islamic Society of Essex County, Newark, NJ
Prof. Parvez Ahmed, PhD, Fulbright Scholar & Assoc. Prof. Univ. of North Florida
Levent Akbarut, Steering Committee member, Islamic Congregation of La Canada Flintridge
Barbara Al-Bayati, Co-Founder, Orphan Whispers
Aman Ali, writer, stand-up-comedian
Javed Ali, founder and publisher, Illume magazine
Wajahat Ali, playwright, journalist, and producer of “Domestic Crusaders”
Sumbul Ali-Karamali, JD, LLM (Islamic Law), author of “The Muslim Next Door”
Shaykh al-Hajj Dawud Ahmad al-Amriki, Director, Muslim America
Salam al-Marayati, Pres., Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC)
Shahed Amanullah, Editor-in-Chief, Altmuslim
Dr. Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law, Emory University School of Law
Patricia Anton, Board member, Muslim Peace Fellowship
M. Saud Anwar, Co-Chair, American Muslim Peace Initiative
Abdul Cader Asmal MD, PhD, Past President, Islamic Council of Mew England
Aref Assaf, PhD, President, American Arab Forum
Hussam Ayloush, Exec. Director, CAIR Greater Los Angeles Area
Robert Azzi, photojournalist, writer
Imam Yusuf Badat, Islamic Foundation of Toronto and Mathabah Foundation
Laleh Bakhtiar, PhD, Scholar-in-Residence, Kazi Publications
Hazami Barmada, Pres, American Muslim Interactive Network (AMIN)
Bahar Bastani, M.D., Professor of Medicine, S.L.U., Secy. General Shia Islamic Education Center, VP of IMANA-St. Louis
Victor Ghalib Begg, Senior Advisor, Chairman Emeritus, Council of Islamic Organizations of Michigan
Zahra Billoo, Director, CAIR San Francisco Bay Area
Jannah bint Hannah, activist, al-Fatiha Foundation
Farah Brelvi, Board of Directors, ACLU-NC
Arsalan Bukhari, Executive Director, CAIR-WA
M. Ali Chaudry, PhD, President, Center for Understanding Islam (CUII)
Kamran Cheikh, Activist, Committee member, Muslims for Peace, Justice & Progress (MPJP), researcher for Deen Research Center (DRC)
Noor-Malika Chishti, Vice Chair, So. CA Committee for a Parliament of the World’s Religions, Representative, the Sufi Order International, Member, World Council of Muslims for Interfaith Relations
Sakina Cornell, Risk Management Coordinator, PSA Healthcare
Vincent J. Cornell PhD, Asa Griggs Candler Prof. of Middle East and Islamic Studies, Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies, Emory University
Robert D. Crane, JD, author of numerous books
Prof Golam Dastagir, PhD, Visiting Research Scholar, New College, University of Toronto, Canada
Almoonir Dewji, blogger - “That We May Know Each Other”
Mustafa Stefan Dill, blogger;/PR/social media analyst for Muslim issues; musician
Ramsey El-Moslimany, member, Board of Directors, Islamic School of Seattle
Lamia El-Sadek, political and human rights activitist
Mohamed Elsanousi, Director of Communications and Community Outreach for the Islamic Society of N America (ISNA)
Mona Eltahawy, journalist
Dr. Hashim El-Tinay, President, International Peace Quest Institute (IPQI)
Aziz Enhaili, Political analyst, columnist for Tolerance.ca
Yusuf Estes, Chaplain ret., author of many books, public speaker
Prof. Mohammad Fadel, PhD
Fatemeh Fakhraie, Editor-in-Chief, Muslimah Media Watch
Ali Galedary, Assistant Principal, University High School, Los Angeles
Mike Ghouse, President, World Muslim Congress
Iftekhar Hai, President, UMA Interfaith Alliance
Asma Hanif, Executive Director, Muslimat Al Nisaa
Rabia Terri Harris, Founder and Coordinator, Muslim Peace Fellowship
Hesham Hassaballa, M.D., author, journalist, blogger - “God, faith, and a pen”
Amir Hussain, PhD, Professor of Theological Studies, Loyola Marymount University
Iftekhar Hussain, Chair, Board of Directors, CAIR-PA
Arsalan Iftikhar, author, human rights lawyer, blogger - “The Muslim Guy”
Jeffrey Imm, Director, Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.)
Ghazala Irshad, journalist, blogger - “The Floating Lotus”
Nakia Jackson, writer
Anjum Jaleel, writer
M. Zuhdi Jasser, MD, President, American Islamic Forum for Democracy
Safi Kaskas, President & CEO Strategic Edge
Mohja Kahf, PhD, Assoc. Professor of Comparative Literature, Univ. of Arkansas, author “The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf”
Dr. Asad U Khan, President, Islamic education Foundation of Manitoba
Mohammed Azhar Ali Khan, C.M., O. Ontario, President, Muslim Coordinating Council of the National Capital Region of Canada
Prof. Muqtedar Khan, PhD, author of several books, Blogger - “Globalog”
Farah Kinani, Journalist, blogger - “Global Voices”
Scott Kugle (Siraj al-Haqq), PhD, Prof. of Islamic Studies, Dept. of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies, Emory University
Shaikh Ahmad Kutty, Resident Senior Scholar, Islamic Institute of Toronto
Faisal Kutty, Visiting Asst. Prof. of law, Valparaiso University School of Law and Adjunct Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School (Toronto)
M. Junaid Levesque-Alam, writer, blogger - “Crossing the Crescent”
David Liepert, M.D., blogger and author of “Muslim, Christian AND Jew”
Afaun Mandol, Board of Directors, MuslimFest
Radwan A. Masmoudi, PhD, President, Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy (CSID)
Melissa Matos, President, Al-Ghazali Legal Society, Saint Louis University
Prof. Uzma Mazhar, writer
Shelina Merani, community activist, artist, blogger “Muslim Presence”
Ruxana Meer, Esq.
Yahya Merchant, Interfaith Worker, Outreach contact for Islamic Center of Conejo Valley CA
Melody Moezzi, JD, MPH, writer and attorney
Muna Abshir Mohamud, author, editor
Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore, author of many books of poetry
Ebrahim Moosa, Assoc. Professor of Islamic Studies, Dept. of Religion, Duke University
Ann El-Moslimany, PhD, Islamic School of Seattle
Lt. Col. Abdul-Rasheed Muhammad, U.S. Army Chaplain
Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid, President Sound Vision
Arman Musaji, artist
Sheila Musaji, Editor, The American Muslim (TAM)
Muneeb Nasir, President, Olive Tree Foundation, Editor IQRA Canada
Q. Amin Nathari, National Representative, Islam in America Movement (IAM)
Ahmed Naumaan, PhD, Director, Karsaz Inc.
Imam Abdul Hai Patel, Dir. Interfaith Relations, Canadian Council of Imams, Muslim Chaplain University of Toronto & York Regional Police
Aziz H. Poonawalla, PhD, scientist and blogger - “City of Brass” on Beliefnet
M.Waheed-uz-Zaman Rana, Imam, Prof. Emeritus, Dept. of Surgery, Saint Louis University
Hasan Zillur Rahim, PhD, journalist
Shaykh Ahmed Abdur Rashid, The Circle Group
Prof. Hussein Rashid, PhD, blogger - “Religion Dispatches”
Shafi Refai, President, United Muslims of America
Irfan Rydhan, Co-Founder of Muslim Unity Foundation
Muhamed Sacirbey, lawyer, diplomat, writer
Louay Safi, PhD, Common Word Fellow, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Christian Muslim Understanding, Georgetown University
Ghulam Abbas Sajan, Director Islamic Ahlul Bayt Assembly of Canada
Robert Salaam, blogger - “The American Muslim”
Raquel Evita Saraswati, activist, writer, blogger
Sarah Sayeed, President of One Blue
Vernon James Schubel, NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor of Religious Studies, Kenyon College
Sophia Rose Shafi, MA, MTS, doctoral candidate (Islamic Studies), writer
Shahla Khan Salter, Chair of Muslims for Progressive Values Ottawa, Canada
T.O. Shanavas. MD, Vice President, Islamic Research Foundation, author
S. Abdallah Schleifer, Distinguished Prof., Dept. of Journalism & Mass Com, American University Cairo
Ricka Shorish, M.S., R.N., volunteer/consultant, Avicenna Community Health Center
Jihad Shoshara, community organizer and activist, Chicago
Jafar Siddiqui, blogger - “Penjihad”
Prof. Laury Silvers, PhD
Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons, PhD, Sr. Lecturer, Islamic Studies & African American Religion, University of Florida
Prof. Ibrahim B. Syed, PhD, President of Islamic Research Foundation International, Inc., author
Dr. Sayyid M. Syeed, Nat’l Director, Office for Interfaith & Community Alliances, Islamic Society of N America (ISNA)
Dr. Mahmoud Shawky Taman, Islamic Society of Northern Wisconsin
Haris Tarin, Director, Washington DC Office Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC)
J.Tayeb, MD, President, CAIR-MI, ISNA founders committee member, Vice chair, HUDA free Clinic, Detroit
Pamela Taylor, Co-founder Muslims for Progressive Values, Panelist for On Faith
Tayyibah Taylor, Editor, Azizah Magazine
Mahdi Toourage, PhD, Assistant Prof., U of Western Ontaio
Tarik Trad, writer, humorist, photographer, artist and activist
Asma T. Uddin, Attorney, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and Editor, Altmuslimah
Joya Uraizee, Associate Professor of English, Saint Louis University
Wahida Valiante, President, Canadian Islamic Congress and Chair of Islamic History Month Canada
Jason van Boom, Host of “Islam and Authors”, writer
Amina Wadud, PhD, consultant on Islam and gender, visiting scholar Starr King School for the Ministry
Danya Wellmon, Co-Founder Women Transcending Boundaries interfaith group
Svend White, blogger - “Akram’s Razor”, activist, writer
G. Willow Wilson, author of “Butterfly Mosque” and “Air” graphic novel series
Ani Zonneveld, President, Muslims for Progressive Values
NOTE: If you are a Canadian or American Muslim and would like to add your signature, please send an email with your name, title, and organizational affiliation (if any) to tameditor@aol.com — The list of signatories will be updated daily and the most recent list can be found HERE.
NOTE: All signatories are signing as individuals and not on behalf of the organizations with which they are affiliated.
CBS 60 Minutes Piece Propagandizes For Ground Zero Mosque And Its Supporters, Smears Opponents
From Wind of Jihad:
CBS’ Propaganda for the Ground Zero Mosque
by sheikyermami on September 27, 2010
Readers notice: “Anti-mosque comments have a strange way of disappearing from comments…”
60 Minutes whitewashes Ground Zero mega-mosque leaders, smears Pamela Geller (JW)
60 Minutes on the Ground Zero Mosque (Atlas)
Pamela: Considering it’s CBS, yes it could have been worse, but it was pretty bad. I am called a “conspiracy theorist” for speaking the truth and investigating the stealth jihadists behind the mosque. You can write to CBS here.
An update on the 60 Minutes hit piece, here’s the transcript
http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/checker.aspx?v=hdkUSU6UqG
Predictable, sure, but still outrageous — although they can’t prevent the truth from coming through from Pamela Geller, who comments and notes much of what 60 Minutes left out here.
For a particularly egregious example of media bias, compare Scott Pelley’s offensive question to Pamela — don’t you think it necessary to tell the truth? — to his deferential, even reverential treatment of the openly pro-Sharia Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and the developer Sharif El-Gamal, who has described beating people up as “exercise and stress relief.” Pelley doesn’t even come close to asking Rauf about why he wouldn’t condemn Hamas, or El-Gamal about where the money is coming from, or…either of them whether they thought it necessary to tell the truth.
This piece is essentially a PR vehicle for the Islamic supremacist mega-mosque proponents, to help them overcome the public’s overwhelming opposition to the mosque project.
Update:
(CBS) Of course the national argument isn’t about measuring the length of two city blocks – it’s about the distance between perceptions. If you believe Islam is a moral religion hijacked by terrorists, proximity doesn’t matter.
If you believe Islam condones 9/11, this is too close.
“It got the unanimous approval of the community board…the people who live down there,” Pelley remarked to Pamela Geller, who is a key figure in this debate. “How did this become your business?”
“It’s not my business, it’s America’s business,” she replied. (In fact, more than 70% of New Yorkers oppose this victory mosque!)
Geller is the Islamic center’s most ardent opponent. Geller is a former New York media executive who writes a politically far right blog that mixes news, opinion and conspiracy theories.
Smears & stupidity…..
“We live in a multi-cultural society, a pluristic (sic) society, with all different kinds of people. And how do we do that? We do that by getting along. And you don’t build a 15-story mega mosque at Ground Zero, and talk and say that it’s healing, and say that it’s outreach. Don’t spit in my face and tell me it’s raining,” she told Pelley.
Last December, Geller’s appears to have been the first blog to rename the community center “the mosque at Ground Zero.” Five months later, in May, a committee of the lower Manhattan community board approved the project unanimously. That led Geller to organize a protest at the next board meeting.
All the same, the board approved the project again, 29 to one. Then, on June 6, Geller held a rally at the World Trade Center.
By late summer the community board had approved the center four times. But major media had picked up Geller’s label and across the country, politicians exploited the debate.
Geller kept writing, calling the project “an act of jihad” and “a grotesque flag of conquest on Ground Zero.”
“To what degree are you obliged to tell the truth in your blog?” Pelley asked.
“That’s all I do is tell the truth,” she replied.
“To be accurate in your blog,” Pelley asked.
“Okay, Scott,” she replied.
“You moved the mosque to Ground Zero. It’s not gonna be there. It was never intended to be there,” Pelley pointed out.
“That building is Ground Zero. And I will say something else. Truth is the new hate speech. And you and I live in so tawdry an age that just telling the truth makes you a hero. And yet, there are so few heroes. Or makes you a devil, in the eyes of the media. That’s all I do is tell the truth,” Geller said.
“You think you’re seen as a devil in the eyes of the media?” Pelley asked.
“Absolutely,” Geller replied.
“You don’t seem to mind that too much,” Pelley said.
“I do mind it very much. What am I gonna do? Shut up? You’re never gonna shut me up,” Geller said.
CBS’ Propaganda for the Ground Zero Mosque
by sheikyermami on September 27, 2010
Readers notice: “Anti-mosque comments have a strange way of disappearing from comments…”
60 Minutes whitewashes Ground Zero mega-mosque leaders, smears Pamela Geller (JW)
60 Minutes on the Ground Zero Mosque (Atlas)
Pamela: Considering it’s CBS, yes it could have been worse, but it was pretty bad. I am called a “conspiracy theorist” for speaking the truth and investigating the stealth jihadists behind the mosque. You can write to CBS here.
An update on the 60 Minutes hit piece, here’s the transcript
http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/checker.aspx?v=hdkUSU6UqG
Predictable, sure, but still outrageous — although they can’t prevent the truth from coming through from Pamela Geller, who comments and notes much of what 60 Minutes left out here.
For a particularly egregious example of media bias, compare Scott Pelley’s offensive question to Pamela — don’t you think it necessary to tell the truth? — to his deferential, even reverential treatment of the openly pro-Sharia Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and the developer Sharif El-Gamal, who has described beating people up as “exercise and stress relief.” Pelley doesn’t even come close to asking Rauf about why he wouldn’t condemn Hamas, or El-Gamal about where the money is coming from, or…either of them whether they thought it necessary to tell the truth.
This piece is essentially a PR vehicle for the Islamic supremacist mega-mosque proponents, to help them overcome the public’s overwhelming opposition to the mosque project.
Update:
(CBS) Of course the national argument isn’t about measuring the length of two city blocks – it’s about the distance between perceptions. If you believe Islam is a moral religion hijacked by terrorists, proximity doesn’t matter.
If you believe Islam condones 9/11, this is too close.
“It got the unanimous approval of the community board…the people who live down there,” Pelley remarked to Pamela Geller, who is a key figure in this debate. “How did this become your business?”
“It’s not my business, it’s America’s business,” she replied. (In fact, more than 70% of New Yorkers oppose this victory mosque!)
Geller is the Islamic center’s most ardent opponent. Geller is a former New York media executive who writes a politically far right blog that mixes news, opinion and conspiracy theories.
Smears & stupidity…..
“We live in a multi-cultural society, a pluristic (sic) society, with all different kinds of people. And how do we do that? We do that by getting along. And you don’t build a 15-story mega mosque at Ground Zero, and talk and say that it’s healing, and say that it’s outreach. Don’t spit in my face and tell me it’s raining,” she told Pelley.
Last December, Geller’s appears to have been the first blog to rename the community center “the mosque at Ground Zero.” Five months later, in May, a committee of the lower Manhattan community board approved the project unanimously. That led Geller to organize a protest at the next board meeting.
All the same, the board approved the project again, 29 to one. Then, on June 6, Geller held a rally at the World Trade Center.
By late summer the community board had approved the center four times. But major media had picked up Geller’s label and across the country, politicians exploited the debate.
Geller kept writing, calling the project “an act of jihad” and “a grotesque flag of conquest on Ground Zero.”
“To what degree are you obliged to tell the truth in your blog?” Pelley asked.
“That’s all I do is tell the truth,” she replied.
“To be accurate in your blog,” Pelley asked.
“Okay, Scott,” she replied.
“You moved the mosque to Ground Zero. It’s not gonna be there. It was never intended to be there,” Pelley pointed out.
“That building is Ground Zero. And I will say something else. Truth is the new hate speech. And you and I live in so tawdry an age that just telling the truth makes you a hero. And yet, there are so few heroes. Or makes you a devil, in the eyes of the media. That’s all I do is tell the truth,” Geller said.
“You think you’re seen as a devil in the eyes of the media?” Pelley asked.
“Absolutely,” Geller replied.
“You don’t seem to mind that too much,” Pelley said.
“I do mind it very much. What am I gonna do? Shut up? You’re never gonna shut me up,” Geller said.
Sweden: Muslims Riot, Vandalize Public Property
From Winds of Jihad:
Sweden
by sheikyermami on September 27, 2010
Anti-jihad party wins 20 seats in Swedish Parliament
Thanks to reader o well:
Violent riots in Stockholm last night
- Only short notice in the papers
In one of them, that is, Aftonbladet
- Nothing to see here. If it’s not in the paper, it didn’t happen (Aftonbladet)
Police station in Stockholm suburb of Husby was vandalized in the night. More than ten police patrols were attacked bystonethrowing new Swedes with masks. Before this, the they had vandalized the metro station.
The reason for the riots is unknown, according to the police. According to the news agency TT, a witness thinks that “One of their friends must have been arrested.”
Spencer in Sweden last July with Kent Ekeroth and Daniel Assai of the Sweden Democrats
The Sweden Democrats are mercilessly defamed in the mainstream media. Predictably, they’re charged with being “racist” and “neo-Nazi,” and predictably, they’re neither, as you can see from this pdf. They’re actually a staunchly pro-democracy, pro-human rights, pro-Israel party that is making a strong stand against Islamization and the stealth jihad in Sweden. (Visual evidence of the party’s actual nature comes in the photo above: Ekeroth is Jewish, and Assai an immigrant to Sweden from Iran).
The far left, or course, have their knickers in a twist. Their reaction is nothing short of hysteria:
‘Don’t let the far-right dominate the debate’
I spoke in Sweden at the invitation of the Sweden Democrats last July; you can see the videos here and here. “Extremists in Sweden ride immigration wave,” from UPI, September 25:
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Sept. 25 (UPI) — In a seismic upheaval in Swedish politics, an extreme-right movement accused of being Islamophobic has won seats in the country’s Parliament, observers say.Election victories by the Sweden Democrats, a party widely denounced as “racist and neo-Nazi,” have probably saddled the country with a fragile minority government, Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported.
Sweden Democrats leader Jimmie Akesson, 31, celebrated his party winning nearly 6 percent of the vote by declaring: “We’re in.”…
“The Sweden Democrats Are Not the Problem”
Here’s a video from the Gates of Vienna, subtitled by Vlad Tepes. There’s also a transcript on GoV…..
Sweden
by sheikyermami on September 27, 2010
Anti-jihad party wins 20 seats in Swedish Parliament
Thanks to reader o well:
Violent riots in Stockholm last night
- Only short notice in the papers
In one of them, that is, Aftonbladet
- Nothing to see here. If it’s not in the paper, it didn’t happen (Aftonbladet)
Police station in Stockholm suburb of Husby was vandalized in the night. More than ten police patrols were attacked bystonethrowing new Swedes with masks. Before this, the they had vandalized the metro station.
The reason for the riots is unknown, according to the police. According to the news agency TT, a witness thinks that “One of their friends must have been arrested.”
Spencer in Sweden last July with Kent Ekeroth and Daniel Assai of the Sweden Democrats
The Sweden Democrats are mercilessly defamed in the mainstream media. Predictably, they’re charged with being “racist” and “neo-Nazi,” and predictably, they’re neither, as you can see from this pdf. They’re actually a staunchly pro-democracy, pro-human rights, pro-Israel party that is making a strong stand against Islamization and the stealth jihad in Sweden. (Visual evidence of the party’s actual nature comes in the photo above: Ekeroth is Jewish, and Assai an immigrant to Sweden from Iran).
The far left, or course, have their knickers in a twist. Their reaction is nothing short of hysteria:
‘Don’t let the far-right dominate the debate’
I spoke in Sweden at the invitation of the Sweden Democrats last July; you can see the videos here and here. “Extremists in Sweden ride immigration wave,” from UPI, September 25:
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Sept. 25 (UPI) — In a seismic upheaval in Swedish politics, an extreme-right movement accused of being Islamophobic has won seats in the country’s Parliament, observers say.Election victories by the Sweden Democrats, a party widely denounced as “racist and neo-Nazi,” have probably saddled the country with a fragile minority government, Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported.
Sweden Democrats leader Jimmie Akesson, 31, celebrated his party winning nearly 6 percent of the vote by declaring: “We’re in.”…
“The Sweden Democrats Are Not the Problem”
Here’s a video from the Gates of Vienna, subtitled by Vlad Tepes. There’s also a transcript on GoV…..
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