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Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Judith Bergman : Canada: Parliament Condemns Free Speech


  • "Now that Islamophobia has been condemned, this is not the end, but rather the beginning." — Samer Majzoub, president of the Canadian Muslim Forum. Majzoub is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.
  • What exactly are they condemning? Criticism of Islam? Criticism of Muslims? Debating Mohammed? Depicting Mohammed? Discussing whether ISIS is a true manifestation of Islam? Is any Canadian who now writes critically of Islam or disagrees with the petitioners that ISIS "does not reflect in any way the values or the teachings of the religion of Islam" now to be considered an "Islamophobe"?
  • The question, naturally, is whether Canada's motion will be replicated in other parliaments in the West. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is particularly active in Europe, having opened a Permanent Observer Mission to the European Union in 2013.
  • In what parallel universe can the efforts of the OIC to stifle free speech possibly be considered advancement of freedom of speech and religion?
  • As the OIC steps up its media campaign and efforts in Europe, European parliaments are likely to experience initiatives like the petition in Canada. The European Union, for one, looks as if it would be to happy facilitate such a motion.
On October 26, Canada's parliament unanimously passed an anti-Islamophobia motion, which was the result of a petition initiated by Samer Majzoub, president of the Canadian Muslim Forum. The petition garnered almost 70,000 signatures.
According to the text of the petition,
"Recently an infinitesimally small number of extremist individuals have conducted terrorist activities while claiming to speak for the religion of Islam. Their actions have been used as a pretext for a notable rise of anti-Muslim sentiments in Canada; and these violent individuals do not reflect in any way the values or the teachings of the religion of Islam. In fact, they misrepresent the religion. We categorically reject all their activities. They in no way represent the religion, the beliefs and the desire of Muslims to co-exist in peace with all peoples of the world. We, the undersigned, Citizens and residents of Canada, call upon the House of Commons to join us in recognizing that extremist individuals do not represent the religion of Islam, and in condemning all forms of Islamophobia".
The Parliament of Canada, in Ottawa. (Image source: Saffron Blaze/Wikimedia Commons)

While a motion will have no legal effect unless it is passed as a bill, the symbolic effect of the Canadian parliament unanimously condemning "all forms of Islamophobia," without making the slightest attempt at defining what is meant by "Islamophobia," can only be described, at best, as alarming.

What exactly are they condemning? Criticism of Islam? Criticism of Muslims? Debating Mohammed? Depicting Mohammed? Discussing whether ISIS is a true manifestation of Islam? Is any Canadian who now writes critically of Islam or disagrees with the petitioners that ISIS "does not reflect in any way the values or the teachings of the religion of Islam" now to be considered an "Islamophobe"?

No one knows, and it is doubtful whether the members of the Canadian parliament know what it means themselves. It would seem, however, that the initiator of the petition, Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Samer Majzoub, knows. This is what he had to say in an interview with the Canadian Muslim Forum after the motion passed:
"Now that Islamophobia has been condemned, this is not the end, but rather the beginning ... We need to continue working politically and socially and with the press. They used to doubt the existence of Islamophobia, but now we do not have to worry about that; all blocs and political figures, represented by Canada's supreme legislative authority, have spoken of that existence. In the offing, we need to get policy makers to do something, especially when it comes to the Liberals, who have shown distinct openness regarding Muslims and all ethnicities... All of us must work hard to maintain our peaceful, social and humanitarian struggle so that condemnation is followed by comprehensive policies."
Whereas the Canadian parliamentarians seem entirely unaware of what Muslim organizations have in store for them in terms of "comprehensive policies", it is clear that to the parliamentarians, the motion constitutes "virtue-signaling" at its worst. Whereas the parliamentarians might now feel good about themselves, does their vote mean that those Canadians who dare to criticize Islam and disagree vehemently with the premises of the motion are likely to be considered (even more) beyond the pale of civilized society? Does it mean that only one view is correct and that any view that differs from it will now be, by default, incorrect -- if not criminal?

It will almost certainly deter people from speaking up, for fear that they will be labeled "racists" or "Islamophobes" by arbitrarily creating a threatening atmosphere of political correctness, where those who do not adhere to the groupthink are shamed and ostracized. Such strangulation of opinion also cannot be beneficial to any country's national security. How can anyone warn the authorities about virtually anything if they have to worry first that their warning might be considered "Islamophobic"?

There were, of course, no parallel motions in Canada's parliament to condemn "Christianophobia" or "Judeophobia," the latter being much more prevalent than "Islamophobia." In fact, according to statistics, Jewish Canadians are more than 10 times as likely to be the victim of a hate crime than Muslim Canadians.

It was exactly this kind of toxic, politically correct atmosphere in the United States that enabled Major Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, to gun down 13 people and to wound 29 others in the Fort Hood massacre in 2009. His former classmate, Lt. Col. Val Finnell, told Fox news at the time that, despite Hasan's suspicious behavior, such as giving a presentation justifying suicide bombings, nothing was done about Hasan to see if he might be a security risk. Instead, he was treated with kid gloves. "The issue here is that there's a political correctness climate in the military. They don't want to say anything because it would be considered questioning somebody's religious belief, or they're afraid of an equal opportunity lawsuit", said Lt. Col. Finnell.

In December 2015, a man who had been working in the area where the San Bernardino terrorist Syed Farook lived told CBS Los Angeles that,
"he noticed a half-dozen Middle Eastern men in the area in recent weeks, but decided not to report anything since he did not wish to racially profile those people. "We sat around lunch thinking, 'What were they doing around the neighborhood?'" he said.
The fear of being labeled an "Islamophobe" is real and has had lethal consequences. It is this fear that the Canadian parliament has now elevated into a parliamentary motion, signaling that this sentiment is shared by the highest echelons in the country, those who make the laws.

A democratic parliament presumably should not be cowing its citizens into silence. The term "bullying" comes to mind. Parliamentary bullying and reckless disregard of the freedom of speech should have no place in a society that cares about the values of freedom and national security. Canada has already seen, to its disgrace, attacks on free speech against Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant, among others. Is this the country Canada wishes to become?

The motion is reminiscent of the US House Resolution 569, "Condemning violence, bigotry, and hateful rhetoric towards Muslims in the United States," which was introduced in the House of Representatives on December 17, 2015. This Resolution is more detailed than the short condemnation of Islamophobia from the Canadian parliament, but the essence of both appears to be the same: Criticism of Islam or of Muslims is wrong and should be condemned, if not outright criminalized.

In condemning "all forms of Islamophobia", Canada's parliament has in effect done everything the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) -- consisting of 56 Muslim states plus "Palestine" -- could wish for. Fighting "Islamophobia" is at the very top of the agenda of this organization, which is headquartered in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The OIC is aggressively promoting the so-called Istanbul Process, which aims to forbid all criticism of Islam and make this ban a part of international law.

Ironically, the Saudi Arabian flag flew on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on November 2, as Canadian public officials met with a so-called "human rights" commission from Saudi Arabia. This commission publicly supported Saudi Arabia's mass executions in January 2016, in which 47 people were executed by the authorities, saying that they "enforce justice, fulfill ... legitimate and legal requirements, and protect the society and its security and stability". That, apparently, is not problematic in the eyes of Canadian parliamentarians.

As recently as October 24, the General Secretariat of the OIC held a meeting "to review the media strategy for countering Islamophobia". The meeting was scheduled to:
"discuss the OIC media strategy and ways to counter Islamophobia in light of the recent developments and hate campaigns in different parts of the world, especially with the increasing number of Muslim refugees in Western countries and the mounting hate discourse in a manner that causes serious concern. The meeting aims to come up with clear and practical mechanisms for a counter-Islamophobia media campaign that highlights the true noble image of Islamic and contributes to halting the ongoing deliberate defamatory campaigns waged in different Western fora".
The question, naturally, is whether Canada's motion will be replicated in other parliaments in the West. The OIC is particularly active in Europe, having opened a Permanent Observer Mission to the European Union in 2013. The OIC also recently formed the so-called Contact ‎Group for Muslims in Europe, whose formation was announced at the OIC Istanbul Summit in April 2016, and includes Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Algeria, Egypt, Somalia, Malaysia and Jordan.
The establishment of the OIC Contact Group for Muslims in Europe
"aims at ensuring the effective cooperation between the relevant parties, in order to lay out strategies to eliminate hate speech, physical assault, practices of intolerance, prejudice, racial discrimination and Islamophobia, and to support intercultural dialogue and social inclusion.‎ Further, the Group ‎can be a platform through which Muslims from various nationalities can exchange experiences, define best practices, with a view to increase Muslim participation in the political and social life in Europe". [emphasis added]
The EU apparently sees the OIC as a friendly and benevolent organization with shared values. According to the EU's European External Action service (its diplomatic service, which assists the EU's foreign affairs chief):
"The OIC has undergone important changes during the last decade: it made advances in support of freedom of speech and freedom of religion/belief. It enlarged its cooperation to economic, cultural, development and humanitarian fields."
Seriously? In what parallel universe can the efforts of the OIC to stifle free speech possibly be considered advancement of freedom of speech and religion?
As the OIC steps up its media campaign and its efforts in Europe, European parliaments are likely to experience initiatives like the petition in Canada. The European Union, for one, looks as if it would be happy to facilitate such a motion.
Judith Bergman is a writer, columnist, lawyer and political analyst.
=================

Guy Millière : Geert Wilders and the Suicide of Europe


  • None of Wilders's speeches incites violence against anyone; the violence that surrounds him is directed only at him.
  • The only person talking about these problems is Geert Wilders. Dutch political leaders and most journalists seemingly prefer to claim that Geert Wilders is the problem; that if he were not there, these problems would not exist.
  • What adherents of this view, that the West is guilty, "forget" is that Islam long oppressed the West: Muslim armies conquered Persia, the Christian Byzantine Empire, North Africa and the Middle East, Spain, Greece, Hungary, Serbia and the Balkans, and virtually all of Eastern Europe. The Muslim armies were a constant threat until the marauding Ottoman troops were finally turned away at the Gates of Vienna in 1683.
Even if the Dutch politcian Geert Wilders had won and if the Party for Freedom (PVV) he established eleven years ago had become the first party in the country, he would not have been able to become the head of the government. The heads of all the other political parties said they would reject any alliance with him ; they maintain this position to this day.

For years, the Dutch mainstream media have spread hatred and defamation against Wilders for trying to warn the Dutch people - and Europe - about what their future will be if they continue their current immigration policies; in exchange, last December, a panel of three judges found him guilty of "inciting discrimination". Newspapers and politicians all over Europe unceasingly describe him as a dangerous man and a rightist firebrand. Sometimes they call him a "fascist".

What did Geert Wilders ever do to deserve that? None of his remarks ever incriminated any person or group because of their race or ethnicity. To charge him, the Dutch justice system had excessively and abusively to interpret words he used during a rally in which he asked if the Dutch wanted "fewer Moroccans." None of Wilders's speeches incites violence against anyone; the violence that surrounds him is directed only at him. He defends human rights and democratic principles and he is a resolute enemy of all forms of anti-Semitism.

His only "crime" is to denounce the danger represented by the Islamization of the Netherlands and the rest of Europe and to claim that Islam represents a mortal threat to freedom. 

Unfortunately, he has good empirical reasons to say that. Also unfortunately, the Netherlands is a country where criticism of Islam is particularly dangerous: Theo van Gogh made an "Islamically incorrect" film in 2004 and was savagely murdered by an Islamist who said he would kill again if he could. Two years earlier, Pim Fortuyn, who had hoped to stand for election, defined Islam as a "hostile religion" ; he was killed by a leftist Islamophile animal-rights activist. Geert Wilders is alive only because he is under around-the-clock police protection graciously provided by the Dutch government.



In 2004, Moroccan-Dutch terrorist Mohammed Bouyeri (left), shot the filmmaker Theo van Gogh (right) to death, then stabbed him and slit his throat.

More broadly, the Netherlands is a country where the Muslim community shows few signs of integration. There are now forty no-go zones in the country; riots easily erupt, recently in Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Nijmegen. People recently from other countries repeatedly attack Dutch-born citizens. Some are so sure of their impunity that they publish online videos of their crimes. Throughout the country, an ethnic cleansing that Europeans are too scared to name is taking place in the suburbs, and non-Muslim residents often say they feel harassed.

Non-Muslim women are encouraged by local authorities to dress "modestly". As in Islam dogs are haram (impure), dog owners are asked to keep their pets indoors. In 2014, 2015 and 2016, Islamists demonstrated and shouted slogans in support of Hamas and the Islamic State.

Daily life has become particularly difficult for the 40,000 Jews still living in the country; districts long inhabited by members of the Jewish community have become almost entirely Muslim. Authorities recommend that Jews avoid any "visible sign" of Jewishness to avoid creating "unrest". Muslim delinquency is high; the percentage of Muslims sent to jail for various crimes is notably higher than the percentage of Muslims in the population. Six percent of the country's population are Muslim; about 20% of all inmates are Muslim. None of this is secret.

The only person talking about these problems is Geert Wilders. Dutch political leaders and most journalists seemingly prefer to claim that Geert Wilders is the problem; that if he were not there, these problems would not exist. At best, they utter fuzzy words intended to show strength; at worst, they turn their back.

A large percentage of the Dutch population is anxious; the constant demonization of Geert Wilders apparently tries to indoctrinate the people to settle for less.
A year ago, London's Muslim Mayor Sadiq Khan stated that "living with terror attacks is 'part and parcel of living in a big city." It did not used to be that way . Rotterdam's Muslim mayor, Ahmed Abutaleb used harsher words; he said that migrants had to "respect the law or go home".

In late January, the incumbent prime minister, Mark Rutte, published a full-page advertisement in several newspapers warning immigrants to "act normal or be gone"; he did not use the word "Islam".

On March 11, 2017, four days before the Dutch elections, Rutte decided to send a "strong message" to bar Turkish ministers from speaking in Rotterdam. Voters who had considered supporting Geert Wilders voted instead for Rutte's People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD); he thereby secured a last minute win. Wilders's party came in second. The Party for Freedom (PVV) won five more seats than before, but will have only 20 seats, out of 150. Rutte's VVD will have 33 seats. The Labor party, Rutte's main ally until March 15, collapsed and is down to nine seats, its worst result ever. The left, however, is not retreating: GroenLinks, a party largely made of former communists and radical environmentalists won 14 seats,10 more than before. The Socialist Party won 14 seats. "Democrats 66", a "social-liberal", "progressive" and multicultural party won 19 seats, almost as much as the Party for Freedom. A Muslim party, Denk (Dutch for "think, Turkish for "equality "), won three seats. The VNL, a conservative party established by two former Party for Freedom members, was beaten so severely it will have no seat at all.

The next Dutch government will be a coalition of four parties, maybe five, and probably lean more to the left than previous governments. It will certainly include Democrats 66, and could include Groenlinks.

In the years to come, the situation in the country is certin to deteriorate. The Netherlands' fertility rate (1.68 children per woman) is not as catastrophic as in Germany, Italy or Spain, but is far below the replacement rate. The Muslim birth rate is higher than the non-Muslim one.
Dozens of churches close each year due to the rapid decline in the number of practicing Christians; the churches are replaced by mosques. Radical preachers keep coming and proselytizing; Islamist organizations keep recruiting. In a report on the Islamization of the Netherlands published ten years ago, Manfred Gerstenfeld wrote that "resistance to radical forces within the Dutch Muslim community is weak". Nothing has changed since that time.

What is happening in the Netherlands is similar to what is happening in most European countries. In the United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Germany and Sweden, the number of no-go zones is rapidly growing. Islamic riots occur more and more often. Ethnic gangs are growing more violent. Ethnic cleansing is transforming neighborhoods. Jews are leaving for Israel or North America.The Muslim population is sharply increasing. Radical mosques are proliferating. Islamic organizations are everywhere.

Politicians who dare to speak the way Geert Wilders does are treated the way Geert Wilders is treated : scorned, marginalized, put on trial.

The vision of the world in Western Europe is now 'hegemonic'. It is based on the idea that the Western world is guilty; that all cultures are equal, and that Islamic culture is "more equal" than Western culture because Islam was supposedly so long oppressed by the West. 

What adherents of this view, that the West is guilty, "forget" is that Islam long oppressed the West: Muslim armies conquered Persia, the Christian Byzantine Empire, North Africa and the Middle East, Spain, Greece, Hungary, Serbia and the Balkans, and virtually all of Eastern Europe. The Muslim armies were a constant threat until the marauding Ottoman troops were finally turned away at the Gates of Vienna in 1683.

This European vision also includes the idea that all conflicts can be peacefully settled, that appeasement is almost always a solution, and that Europe has no enemies.

It also stands on the idea that an enlightened elite must have the power, because if Adolf Hitler came to power through democratic means eighty years ago, letting people freely decide their fate might lead to ill.

The dream seems to be of a utopian future where poverty will be overcome by welfare systems, and violence will be defeated by openness and love.

It is this vision of the world that may have prompted Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel to open the doors to more than a million unvetted Muslim migrants, despite a migrant crime wave and an increasing number of rapes and sexual assaults. The only candidate likely to beat Angela Merkel in this year's German elections is a socialist, Martin Schulz, a former European Parliament president.

In France, Marine Le Pen, the only candidate who speaks of Islam and immigration, will almost certainly be defeated by Emmanuel Macron, a former minister in the government of François Hollande -- a man who see no evil anywhere.

It is this vision of the world that also seems to have led British Prime Minister Theresa May to say that the Islamic attack on March 22 in Westminster was "not an act of Islamic terrorism".

This romanticized, utopian vision of the world also explains why in Europe, people such as Geert Wilders are seen as the incarnation of evil, but radical Islam is considered a marginal nuisance bearing no relation to the "religion of peace".

Meanwhile, Wilders is condemned to live under protection as if he were in jail, while those who want to slaughter him -- and who threaten millions of people in Europe -- walk around free.

This adolescent vision is so embedded in the minds of millions of Europeans that a lot fast growing-up will be required to eradicate it.
Dr. Guy Millière, a professor at the University of Paris, is the author of 27 books on France and Europe.
================

Giulio Meotti : Qatar's Shopping Spree to Buy and Displace the West?

  • Qatar sits on the executive board of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the UN agency that has just erased 3000 years of Jewish history in Jerusalem, and has set its sights on the main chair at UNESCO: as the successor of UNESCO's secretary general, Irina Bokova.
  • Human rights organizations have already promoted a campaign to prevent Qatar's Kawari from taking the UNESCO seat. Citing a vast amount of anti-Semitic material present at the Doha Book Fair, Kawari's flagship, the Simon Wiesenthal Center launched a campaign against his candidacy.
  • Qatar is the puppeteer behind UNESCO's anti-Semitic resolution on Jerusalem, and a world center of Islamic extremism. Qatar does not make a secret of trying to submit Western culture to the Muslim crescent.
The Soviet Union, during the Cold War, invested in propaganda operations in the West to subvert capitalism and democracy. Communism found precious allies in the so-called "useful idiots" who facilitated Soviet work in academia, newspapers and publishing houses. Political Islam has been using the same convenient outlets and mechanisms to spread Islamic sharia law in the West.

The old role of Soviet propaganda has now been taken up by Islamic regimes. Qatar, for instance, is not only interested in buying large segments of Europe's economy (Hochtief, Volkswagen, Porsche, Canary Wharf and Deutsche Bank), but also in playing a key role in Europe's culture.

Qatar sits on the executive board of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the UN agency that has just erased 3000 years of Jewish history in Jerusalem, and has set its sights on the main chair at UNESCO: as the successor of UNESCO's secretary general, Irina Bokova.

The favorite for this race is, in fact, the former minister of culture of Qatar from 2008 to 2016, Hamad bin Abdulaziz al Kawari, who currently serves as "cultural adviser to the Emir," Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. In 2017, the UNESCO leadership is supposed to go to a representative of the Arab world, according to the rule of geographic rotation; Kawari will have to defeat the candidacy of a Lebanese and an Egyptian.
Kawari recently landed in Rome, apparently to start his promotional tour, and he met with its mayor, Virginia Raggi, who received the Islamic emirate's delegation. Kawari received an honorary degree from Tor Vergata University, Rome's second most important university. The photo of the ceremony speaks volumes about political Islam's level of penetration in Europe's academic culture. Abdullah Bin Hamad Al Attiyah, Qatar's former deputy prime minister, even spoke at Tor Vergata.


Qatar's Hamad bin Abdulaziz al Kawari (center), who serves as "cultural adviser to the Emir," is pictured receiving an honorary degree from Rome's Tor Vergata University last month. (Image source: Askanews video screenshot)

Kawari also had a meeting with Italy's minister of culture, Dario Franceschini and minister of education, Stefania Giannini.

Last June, Kawari was also in the Vatican to meet with Pope Francis and sign an agreement between the Vatican Apostolic Library and the Qatar Foundation for Education. Kawari, fluent in Arabic, English and French, is an affable man of the world, at home in Paris, where he graduated from Sorbonne University; his climb to the leadership of UNESCO has the support of the rulers of the Gulf and Saudi Arabia.

Human rights organizations have already promoted a campaign to prevent Kawari from taking the UNESCO seat. Citing a vast amount of anti-Semitic material present at the Doha Book Fair, Kawari's flagship, the Simon Wiesenthal Center launched a campaign against his candidacy. In a letter to Kawari, Shimon Samuels, Director for International Relations of the Wiesenthal Center, said the material on display every year in Doha "violates the values ​​promoted by Unesco".

Samuels listed at least 35 anti-Semitic titles, including nine editions of the anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, four editions of Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, and four editions of Henry Ford's The International Jew. "From this point of view, Doha is far from Paris," said Samuels, referring to the general headquarters of UNESCO.

Qatar is the puppeteer behind UNESCO's anti-Semitic resolution on Jerusalem, and a world center of Islamic extremism. Doha just held a meeting between the Palestinian Authority's leader, Mahmoud Abbas, and the heads of Hamas, a terrorist organization devoted to the destruction of the State of Israel. Qatar does not make a secret of trying to submit Western culture to the Muslim crescent. The only question is, which country's culture will UNESCO erase next?

The Qatari royal family is now much involved in "the arts." According to the BBC, "To take a recent example, the Qatari royal family sponsored the Tate's Damien Hirst retrospective. It's now moved to Doha, where Tate director Nicholas Serota attended the official launch." Major works by Warhol, Bacon, Rothko, Koons and Hirst are all thought to have made their way to Qatar.

Qatar is buying academic chairs in Europe's universities, such as the pact between Doha and Rome's Tor Vergata. What is the university presumably expected to do for Qatar in exchange for that? Qatar academic purchases are also the subject of Le Monde's investigation entitled, "Tariq Ramadan: le sphinx," which details how Tariq Ramadan, the well-known European Muslim intellectual, was been able to obtain a chair at the University of Oxford. Mediapart, the French leftist magazine, ran a long exposé about Tariq Ramadan as "Qatar's showcase."

The Qatari monarchy, in 2015 alone, donated £11 million to renew Oxford's St Antony's College, where Tariq Ramadan works. Sheikha Moza, the wife of Emir Al Thani, inaugurated the magnificent building designed by the late architect, Zaha Hadid.

Qatar also financed the creation of an Islamic section at the Bloomsbury publishing house and the "Doha Debates" program that aired on the BBC. It would be interesting to know how Qatar's sharia can find agreement with the sybaritic Bloomsbury's British culture.

The attorney-general of Qatar also signed an agreement with the president of Sorbonne University, Philippe Boutry, in Paris, for the enrollment of hundreds of migrants from the Middle East. The Sorbonne accepted 600,000 euros a year, for three years.

Many British universities also receive large donations from Qatar. University College London, for example, has an archeology campus in Qatar. The Qatar Development Fund recently donated $4.3 million to the Margaret Thatcher Scholarship Trust at Oxford University.

Qatar is also having a shopping spree in American universities, and is funding their university departments in the Arabian desert. Universities such as Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, Texas A&M and Virginia Commonwealth have all signed agreements with Emir Al Thani. Each will receive $320 million dollars a year.

Students of American Universities based in Doha are also invited to attend the sermons of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual mentor of the Muslim Brotherhood, who is known for his hate-ridden religious edicts. The Simon Wiesenthal Center has called it "outrageous" for Cornell University to decide to open a campus in Doha while the kingdom funds Hamas's war against Israel.

The Financial Times once called Qatar "the world's most aggressive deal hunter."

Emir Al Thani is now promoting a takeover of Western culture. But very few in Europe seem to care about that. Is it because "it is difficult to avoid its money and influence", especially for an economically depressed Europe? With their telling silence, are they simply aligning with Qatar's sharia rulers, and hoping they will chosen to be bought out next?
Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.

Giulio Meotti : New Ways of Responding to Extremist Islam


  • "According to one estimate, 10−15 percent of the world's Muslims are Islamists. Out of well over 1.6 billion, or 23 percent of the globe's population, that implies more than 160 million individuals." – Ayaan Hirsi Ali, in her new book, The Challenge of Dawa.
  • That was Ronald Reagan's major achievement in his long war against the Soviet Union: presenting communism as a joke -- exposing the lies of the Soviet regime, exposing the misery under which its people were living, and explaining why Western values were preferable to Communist ones. This is exactly what the West, Hirsi Ali explains, should be doing with radical Islam.
  • Western civilization is a humanist vision in which Christianity integrated Jewish wisdom, Greek philosophy and Roman law, thereby giving Western culture its distinctive character: freedom of speech and of the press, equal justice under law, the primacy of the individual, separation of religion and state, freedom of religion and from religion, property rights, sexual equality, an independent judiciary, and independent education, among other values. This is what radical Islam wants to destroy. That is why terrorists are attacking our churches, the State of Israel and why they are subverting democracy to turn it into Islamic law, sharia.

Jihad is spreading violence -- and succeeding. "Of the last sixteen years," notes Ayaan Hirsi Ali in her new book, The Challenge of Dawa, "the worst year for terrorism was 2014, with ninety-three countries experiencing attacks and 32,765 people killed."
"The second worst was 2015, with 29,376 deaths. Last year, four radical Islamic groups were responsible for 74 percent of all deaths from terrorism: the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), Boko Haram, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. Although the Muslim world itself bears the heaviest burden of jihadist violence, the West is increasingly under attack".
Hirsi Ali's research, supported by the Hoover Institution, is a summary of the war on terror since the extremist Muslim attacks on the United States in September 2001:
"Since 9/11, at least $1.7 trillion has been spent on combat and reconstruction costs in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The total budgetary cost of the wars and homeland security from 2001 through 2016 is more than $3.6 trillion. Yet in spite of the sacrifices of more than 5,000 armed service personnel who have lost their lives since 9/11, today political Islam is on the rise around the world".
According to Hirsi Ali, the West is "obsessed" with terror and this makes it blind to the broader threat, dawa, outreach: the ideology behind the terror attacks.

How large is the worldwide jihadist movement? More than we thought.
"In Pakistan alone, where the population is almost entirely Muslim, 13 percent of Muslims surveyed—more than 20 million people—said that bombings and other forms of violence against civilian targets are often or sometimes justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies... According to one estimate, 10−15 percent of the world's Muslims are Islamists. Out of well over 1.6 billion, or 23 percent of the globe's population, that implies more than 160 million individuals".

According to Hirsi Ali, along with drones, counter-terrorism and security measures, the West needs to invest in an ideological war against radical Islam. If terrorist violence is the jihadi hardware, its software is radical Islam. To cripple the hardware, you have first to block the software.

The Islamic world is investing in "dawa", or Islamic propaganda. "Since the early 1970s, Middle Eastern charities have distributed $110 billion, $40 billion of which found its way to sub-Saharan Africa and contributed heavily to Islamist ideological indoctrination there", Hirsi Ali writes.
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Under Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet Union's leader in the 1970s, Communism started failing to seduce the masses with its promise of a new society. The Communist utopia started to creak much before the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. It began when the powerful ideological myth of Communism was replaced by socialism, which has been visibly destroying one economy after another. That was Ronald Reagan's major achievement in his long war against the Soviet Union: presenting Communism as a joke -- exposing the lies of the Soviet regime, exposing the misery under which its people were living, and explaining why Western values were preferable to Communist ones. This is exactly what the West, Hirsi Ali explains, should be doing with radical Islam.


William Rosenau observed that, "the United States has so far failed to conduct anything approaching an effective counterideological campaign against al-Qaida".

 That was also former U.S. President Barack Obama's fatal approach to dealing with the Islamic State: apparently for his own reasons, he refused to name what ISIS was really about: a global caliphate secured through a global war.

U.S. President Donald Trump's major achievement so far is to have named the enemy: "radical Islamic terrorism". Those are the three words that separate Trump from the rest of establishment. Trump's several appointees, such as Steve Bannon, have rightly described this war, like the wars against Nazism and Communism, as primarily an "ideological struggle to preserve Western civilization".

"Western civilization", however, does not seem to be what many liberals have in mind. Instead, they have been advocating multiculturalism, gender ideology, feminism, pacifism, and militant secularism.


Western civilization is a humanist vision in which Christianity integrated Jewish wisdom, Greek philosophy and Roman law, thereby giving Western culture its distinctive character: freedom of speech and of the press, equal justice under law, the primacy of the individual, separation of religion and state, freedom of religion and from religion, property rights, sexual equality, an independent judiciary, and independent education, among other values. This is what radical Islam wants to destroy. That is why terrorists are attacking our churches, the State of Israel and why they are subverting democracy to turn it into Islamic law, sharia.

David Thomson in his new book, Les Revenants, interviews French jihadists. One of them, Zubair, who grew up in a social housing project in Seine-Saint-Denis, defines jihad as a "response to the ideological vacuum" of the West. 

Islamic extremists in Europe are now filling the Western ideological vacuum by appealing to the masses. This is how radical Islam convinced 160 million Muslims to hate and fight the West.

Like communism, radical Islam is a powerful ideology based on a cultural war against these Western humanistic values: the Mohammed cartoons and the murders of the editors of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo -- as well as the torrent of laws and trials criminalizing freedom of expression -- are a war against freedom of speech and of the press. 

The battle for women to wear the Islamic veil is a war against the freedom of women to wear what they like and not be looked on as prostitutes. 

The global appeal for "transformation" is a war against the democratic governance by men and for establishing a Caliphate ruled by Allah.

The supposed rejection of class and ethnic distinctions means that a huge number of Europeans are converting to Islam. 

Agitation and propaganda -- especially against Jews, Christians, minority groups and supposed Muslim "apostates" -- lays bare a conspiratorial mindset.

During the Cold War, the West supported organizations such as the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which financed the anti-Communist publishing industry through books and magazines, as well as media outlets, such as Radio Free Europe, and an aggressive ideological warfare in Europe with pro-American and pro-Western messages. But today?

Worse, the opposite is taking place: Western governments are blaming newspapers and journalists for the Mohammed cartoons affair

The publishing industry, every time it censors books about Islam, is betraying freedom of expression. When the Arab-Islamic bloc in the corrupt United Nations erased the Jewish-Christian history of Jerusalem and other sites, Western democracies abstained. Western liberal media defended symbols of Islamic propaganda, such as the female veil, as symbols of emancipation instead of oppression.

And instead of supporting Islamic reformers and dissidents, Western elites are abandoning them. The elites seem to prefer dialogue with "non-violent Islamists". Ask Ayaan Hirsi Ali. After being targeted by a petition of Muslim activists and human rights militants, she was recently forced to cancel a tour in Australia, ostensibly for "security reasons".

In France, Islamists continue to build "two new mosques per week".
Why are Western democracies, as part of their diplomatic relations with the Arab-Islamic world, not requiring churches to be built? Instead, Western public opinion has become accustomed to the idea that mosques belong to Europe's landscape while extremist Muslims go about destroying churches in Syria and Iraq.

If we do not want to lose the ideological war against Islam, it is not too late to reverse the trend -- but time is running out fast.
Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.
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