The Irish Savant : Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Incredible Disappearing Man

The Irish Savant

Sunday, 8 March 2015

The Incredible Disappearing Man 

 

Of course you all know of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Who doesn't?  Legendary Russian dissident during the Soviet era, prisoner in the gulags, starved, tortured, ostracised.  But never broken. He spoke truth to power like few have ever done. His novels such as The Gulag Archipelago, The First Circle and Cancer Ward were not only brilliant literature but offered the rarest of insights into the life of a dissident in the USSR.  He came to be regarded as one of the most eminent writers and philosophers of his age.  Which contributed to his being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970 "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature".
Feted wherever he went, his books became international best sellers, translated into dozens of languages, the world was at his feet.  Then almost overnight it all stopped. He became a non-person. The transformation was virtually unprecedented in the field of literature. Why did this happen? Because Alex stepped on the Third Rail.  Well he didn't so much step on it, rather dived on it full length. You see he wrote a book called 200 Years Together that traced the Jews' colourful relationship with the Russian people and especially their role in the Bolshevik Revolution and its ensuing murderous tyranny.
He didn't pull his punches.  He placed Soviet Jews centre place in perpetrating the worst mass murders of the 20th century. While acknowledging that some Jews also suffered under this tyranny he clarified that it was not as Jews per se, rather that they were in the wrong faction at the wrong time. Solzhenitsyn's own estimate for the number of Christians (his word) who died was 60 million.
He documented all of this in meticulous detail.... names, dates, times. But he did something else, something more insidious and dangerous. Something that had strategic international consequences for the Tribe. For a start he shone a light on the extraordinary Jewish capacity to magic themselves into the position of victimhood irrespective of their actual accountability. This in turn depended on - as he pointedly noted - their uncanny ability to seize control of media outlets.  "There are pages of this history which one does not open without trembling. And these are the pages that are systematically and purposefully eradicated from the consciousness of the Jews."
Other observations that cut to the bone included their practice of manipulating the legal framework to reflect Jewish interests.  (Think "hate" legislation.) “Russian people are now confronted by a Jew both as their judge and hangman. Why was it that anyone who had the misfortune to fall into the hands of the Cheka could count with high probability on standing before a Jewish investigator or being shot by a Jew?" He meticulously debunked Jewish writers who sought to portray Soviet Jews as having no choice in what they did. 'Just following orders'  How ironic is that? He carefully traces the ways in which Jews, both within the USSR and internationally, favoured and supported Jewish interests under the cloak of universalistic altruism.
Sound familiar?
I haven't even begun to describe what he wrote in '200 Years Together' not least because I haven't read it, only certain chapters.  So why have I not read it? Aha, therein lies a tale!  You see, Solzhenitsyn's legendary status and guarantee of vast sales would in normal circumstances have had international publishers slavering at the prospect of getting their hands on the rights. But none did. None wanted it. It was never published in the West. In fact, incredible as it seems it has never been formally translated into English! Given that English translations exist for almost every half-assed writing in the most obscure of languages the disappearance of 200 Years Together is mind-blowing. The author himself became a non-person just as he had in the USSR.
Think about it. It is, as I said, mind-blowing. What sort of pressure could have resulted in every Western publishing house, every Western TV company, every Western magazine being intimidated into passing up such a unique and hugely profitable publishing coup?  How exactly was this Jewish power exercised?  Was it overt, subtle, physical, financial....or what?
It truly is frightening.
Is it any wonder that the American armed forces were afraid of commemorating the attack on the USS Liberty? Or that the country's so-called legislators should prostrate themselves before their true rulers in the sight of all?

 

 

 

 http://irishsavant.blogspot.gr/2015/03/the-incredible-disappearing-man.html

The Irish Savant ; Living - for now - testaments to the New Woman

The Irish Savant

Sunday, 3 April 2016

Living - for now - testaments to the New Woman

Fascinating to watch 'em crash and burn, victims of their own design. Madonna and Angelina Jolie, the embodiment of the spirit of the New Woman, of Having It All. Sexually active while barely into their teens, an unfathomable number of subsequent partners (of both sexes), glittering careers, vast wealth, late onset "families", some of whom were purchased ready-made, home-wrecking, abandoned marriages (...AJ says of her first husband 'the greatest husband a girl could have......but I needed freedom'), feted and rewarded for dishing out democracy and women's rights to all those cute faces the rest of us see only on TV.

What more could the independent grrrlll of today ask for?

But now?  Being nearly twenty years older than she, Madonna reveals what awaits Jolie.  Excluding paid hangers-on she's now abandoned, alone and unwanted, so detested by her dysfunctional "family" that she used the law on her son when he chose in desperation to flee to his father. A bitter, squalling hair-trigger shrew, ricocheting between rage and self-pity as she frantically struggles to hang on to her collapsing career, each performance becoming more and more an exercise in self-parody.

And Angelina? Twenty five years of feminist freedom have left her a physical and emotional wreck with yet another disintegrating marriage and a squad of  mainly purchased children spiralling out-of-control. Luckily her non-stop filming, human rights status-whoring and stints in rehab mean she incurs minimal personal inconvenience from these little horrors. But pity the surrogate parents!

At least Madonna and Angelina have the wealth to purchase hangers-on and luxury. And, catastrophic as the results might have been, they have fulfilled their basic biological imperative by spawning their own offspring. But what about the ordinary woman, seduced during  her (long vanished) youth by the feminist illusion, and now toiling at her useless career in a tiny impersonal cubicle? For every Angelina or Madonna there are literally millions like her, and for whom a bleak future beckons.

Having decided to put off settling down she's horrified at the speed with which her child-bearing years are disappearing, while all those disposable 'good men' whom she confidently put to one side at an earlier time are no longer available, being married and/or interested only in girls a lot younger than she. The liberated kind  of girl who dispenses sexual favours with reckless abandon....like she herself used to do. But now as her eggs atrophy in her drying ovaries she's doomed to an atomised life with just cats as a surrogate family, doomed to negotiate a Darwinian cul-de-sac.

While I do feel a small tinge of schadenfreude at the fate of such women I also recognise that they're victims. 

Victims of feminism, the single most evil and destructive movement ever to beset the White race.  

 

A curse which most of us, men and women, have fallen under at one time or another. We now need to unambiguously proclaim that this has been a Jewish movement from start to finish, a fundamental component of the Cultural Marxist Revolution developed to destroy the White Christian family and with it the unique civilisation to which it gave birth.  

Feminism's intellectual genesis in the Frankfurt School, its icons such as Frieden and Dworkin, and its brainwashing enablers in news and entertainment have been overwhelmingly Jewish.

 As long as this central reality is denied or ignored there never will be a solution, a solution whereby our women revert to being friends and partners, not adversaries.

So let the deprogramming begin!

 

http://irishsavant.blogspot.gr/2016/04/living-for-now-testaments-to-new-woman.html

The Irish Savant : Not with a bang but a whimper

The Irish Savant

Thursday, 1 June 2017

Not with a bang but a whimper

I have (with the exception of sport, and I'm working on that) long ago given up watching TV.  It was surprisingly easy. But due to family circumstances I had to endure severe doses of it for most of last week. The scale, depth and overall pervasiveness of the indoctrination was breathtaking. 

 

 It starts with infants. The cartoon characters are close to 50% non-White, blacks and browns are portrayed as clever and well-spoken leaders, families invariably mixed-race, often featuring same-sex 'parents', androgyny is everywhere with everything dumbed-down to the lowest degree. The aphorism 'give me the child and I'll give you the adult' - variously attributed to Lenin and the Jesuits - never seemed more valid. 

 

On Sky News the two coal black presenters (one male, one female of course) were at one stage joined by the network's Chief Political Correspondent...... one Feisal Islam.

There followed a panel discussion on what it means to be British. Panel was wall-to-wall black and brown with a few carefully-selected  British eunuchs thrown in for ballast. The general consensus was that they all felt British. But would prefer if being British was less associated with being White! The limp-wristed moderator clucked in sympathy. And that's the way it's going. The resultant stew will have no common sense of history, culture, race or religion....the things that made them British. (The same syndrome applies all over western Europe, from Ireland to Greece, from Finland to Portugal). 

In such circumstances the nation eventually becomes fractious and atomised. Sedated and stupefied by bread and circuses an enormous cohort of welfare parasites will  continue to elect politicians that actively work to destroy their nation-states and enmesh them ever deeper into the international globo-homo power structures. 

But surely the White middle and working class males will not just sit back while they get dispossessed of everything their ancestors left them? Well that's where my excerpt from T S Elliot's Hollow Man comes in. I think they'll do just that.  

Despite Brexit and the inescapable signs of a White awakening I fear this is the way their world ends, not with a bang but a whimper. Already street-by-street vast swathes of their towns and cities have succumbed to the toxic black/brown sludge. And Whites retreat. Again and again. How long can this go on? Well, long enough for it to become an irreversible reality.

Before that happens the real nature of multiculturalism will of course have become clear. But this is where the carefully-constructed mind control programme comes in. Because as Orwell foresaw, when you constrain what can be said you eventually constrain what can be thought. 

 

My grandson's generation may well end up lying to themselves without knowing that they're doing it. Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote 

 “Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others." 

 

 I became aware of this in the old Communist countries, especially Roumania. The lies and cognitive dissonance were so outrageous it seemed to me the authorities were not trying to convince but to humiliate, to break the people's spirit and will to resist. By forcing people to acquiesce to the lies and to remain silent, or even worse to regurgitate them rots the moral fibre, rendering them easily controllable and malleable.

Was this what Elliot had in mind when he wrote the final lines of The Hollow Man

In this last of meeting places

We grope together

And avoid speech

Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

http://irishsavant.blogspot.gr/2017/06/not-with-bang-but-whimper.html

Thomas Quiggin : The Muslim Brotherhood Connection: ISIS, "Lady al Qaeda," and the Muslim Students Association

The Muslim Brotherhood Connection: ISIS, "Lady al Qaeda," and the Muslim Students Association

by Thomas Quiggin
June 1, 2017 at 4:30 am

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10423/muslim-brotherhood-connection

• "It should be the long-term goal of every MSA [Muslim Students Association] to Islamicize the politics of their respective university ... the politicization of the MSA means to make the MSA more of a force on internal campus politics. The MSA needs to be a more 'in-your-face' association." — Hussein Hamdani, a lawyer who served as an adviser on Muslim issues and security for the Canadian government.
• Several alumni of the MSA have gone on to become leading figures in Islamist groups. These include infamous al Qaeda recruiter Anwar al Awlaki, Osama bin Laden funder Ahmed Sayed Khadr, ISIS propagandist John "Yahya" Maguire and Canada's first suicide bomber, "Smiling Jihadi" Salma Ashrafi.
• What they have in common (whether members of ISIS, al Qaeda, Jamaat e Isami, Boko Haram, Abu Sayyaf or others) is ideology often rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood -- as findings of a 2015 U.K. government review on the organization revealed.

In August 2014, ISIS tried to secure the release from a U.S. federal prison of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui -- a Pakistani neuroscientist educated in the United States -- formerly known as the "most wanted woman alive," but now referred to as "Lady al Qaeda", by exchanging her for American war correspondent James Foley, who was abducted in 2012 in Syria. When the proposed swap failed, Foley was beheaded in a gruesome propaganda video produced and released by his captors, while Siddiqui remained in jail serving an 86-year sentence.

Part of an FBI "seeking information" handout on Aafia Siddiqui -- formerly known as the "most wanted woman alive." (Image source: FBI/Getty Images)

ISIS also offered to exchange Siddiqui for a 26-year-old American woman kidnapped in Syria while working with humanitarian aid groups. Two years earlier, the Taliban had tried to make a similar deal, offering to release U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in exchange for Siddiqui. These efforts speak volumes about Siddiqui's profile and importance in Islamist circles.

Her affiliation with Islamist ideology began when she was a student, first at M.I.T. and then at Brandeis University, where she obtained her doctorate in 2001. Her second marriage happened to be to Ammar al-Baluchi (Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali), nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks.

During the 1995-6 academic year, Siddiqui wrote three sections of the Muslim Students Association "Starter's Guide" -- "Starting and Continuing a Regular Dawah [Islamic proselytizing] Table", "10 Characteristics of an MSA Table" and "Planning A Lecture" -- providing ideas on how successfully to infiltrate North American campuses.

The MSA of the United States and Canada was established in January 1963 by members of the Muslim Brotherhood at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign campus. Since its inception, the MSA has emerged as the leading and most influential Islamist student organization in North America -- with nearly 600 MSA chapters in the United States and Canada today.

The first edition of the MSA Starter's Guide: A Guide on How to Run a Successful MSA was released in 1996. A subsection on "Islamization of Campus Politics and the Politicization of The MSA," written by Hussein Hamdani, a lawyer who served as an adviser on Muslim issues and security for the Canadian government, states:

"It should be the long-term goal of every MSA to Islamicize the politics of their respective university ... the politicization of the MSA means to make the MSA more of a force on internal campus politics. The MSA needs to be a more 'in-your-face' association."

In early 2015, Canadian Minister of Public Safety Steven Blaney suspended Hamdani from the Cross-Cultural Roundtable on National Security. No reason was given for the suspension, but Hamdani claimed it had been politically motivated -- related to his support for Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party. The French-language Canadian network TVA suggested, however, that the suspension was actually due to activities in which Hamdani had engaged as a university student, and radical organizations with which he was associated. During the 1998-9 academic year, Hamdani was president of the Muslim Students Association at the University of Western Ontario; in 1995, he was treasurer of the McMaster University branch of the MSA.

Several alumni of the MSA have gone on to become leading figures in Islamist groups. These include infamous al Qaeda recruiter Anwar al Awlaki, Osama bin Laden funder Ahmed Sayed Khadr, ISIS propagandist John "Yahya" Maguire and Canada's first suicide bomber, "Smiling Jihadi" Salma Ashrafi.

What they have in common (whether members of ISIS, al Qaeda, Jamaat e Isami, Boko Haram, Abu Sayyaf or others) is ideology often rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood -- as findings of a 2015 U.K. government review on the organization revealed.

Siddiqui's involvement in the MSA, her subsequent literal and figurative marriage to al Qaeda and her attempted release by ISIS, perfectly illustrate this ideological connection and path.

Thomas Quiggin, a court qualified expert on terrorism and practical intelligence, is based in Canada.

Saher Fares : Grooming Jihadists: The Ladder of Radicalization and Its Antidote

Grooming Jihadists: The Ladder of Radicalization and Its Antidote

by Saher Fares
June 1, 2017 at 5:00 am

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10263/grooming-jihadists

• What you find is that behind every jihadist, who usually starts out as a young, often angry, Muslim seeking a purpose, lies a pulpit ideologue promising rewards and threatening punishments both on earth and in the afterlife.
• Violent jihad may be postponed not out of concern for its victims, but rather if it might adversely affect a Muslim community. This view is frequently mistaken as "moderate."
• Use the press and social media to expose young Muslims to facts other than those they are fed in mosques and the textbooks of their native countries, including the humanistic values of the West, such as freedom of speech and of the press; equal justice under the law -- especially due process and the presumption of innocence; property rights; separation of religion and state; an independent judiciary; an independent educational system and freedom of religion and from religion -- for a start.

On March 22, when Khalid Masood rammed his vehicle into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge in London before attempting to stab his way to the Parliament building, it was as if the heart and soul of British democracy were under assault.
As horrifying as the terrorist attack was, however -- murdering four innocent people and wounding scores of others -- it belied the magnitude of a much larger problem that has been plaguing Europe and creeping up on the rest of the West. Jihadists committing murder in the name of Islam have left a trail of blood across North America, the Middle East, Australia, the Indian Subcontinent, Southeast Asia, Africa and Europe.

Police officers stand guard on London's Westminster Bridge on March 29, 2017, a week after Khalid Masood began his murderous car-ramming and stabbing attack at the site. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

In November 2015, a suicide-bombing and shooting spree in Paris left 130 people dead and hundreds wounded; in March 2016, three coordinated suicide bombings targeting travelers in Brussels killed 32 and wounded hundreds; and last December, a truck-ramming at the Christmas market in Berlin left 12 people dead and another 56 injured.

These were just a few of the successful attacks; those thwarted were more numerous.

France's prime minister said last September that authorities were foiling plots "daily," while some 15,000 people "in the process of radicalization" were being monitored. Last year, British security services prevented no fewer than 12 other assaults.

The average European now knows the names of Masood and those of other publicized terrorists. But few in the West are familiar with the many people who put those terrorists on their path by leading them up the rungs of a ladder of radicalization.

If you spend hours listening to speeches and sermons -- and reading countless articles by "respectable" local imams, community leaders and Islamic scholars -- you can see a pattern emerge. What you find is that behind every jihadist, who usually starts out as a young, often angry, Muslim seeking a purpose, lies a pulpit ideologue promising rewards and threatening punishments both on earth and in the afterlife.

The following is a description of the ladder of radicalization, based on material from 45 detailed case studies, covering the period 2012-2015, compiled by the author from U.K. government sources:

• A radical preacher commonly employs theological "carrots and sticks" as a spur to action. He attempts to terrorize audiences with passages from religious literature about the horrors of hell. He shames those he brands complacent or reluctant to engage in jihad, and instills a heightened sense of crisis. He does this while harping on the notion of Muslim superiority and providing an idealized reading of history that emphasizes "glorious Islamic conquests."
  
• The preacher quotes passages from the Quran and hadith [the sayings and deeds of Muhammad], gradually ratcheting up his rhetoric until openly calling for the restoration of the caliphate through global jihad. The preacher determines whether jihad is beneficial at a given time -- or whether it needs to be deferred -- depending on the clout a Muslim community has attained in a host country or culture. In other words, he decides whether to "declare jihad" based on what he deems possible for the Muslim ummah [community] at that time. Violent jihad may be postponed not out of concern for its victims, but rather if it might adversely affect a Muslim community. This view is frequently mistaken as "moderate."
  
• The preacher presents stark, simplistic choices, cornering his audience into accepting his particular reading of Islam, and leaving no option but jihad. He does this by using language that evokes gut emotions. He presents the Quran, hadiths and Islamic history in a way he knows his audience is in no position to challenge. He juxtaposes, for instance, incidents in Muhammad's life to explain modern geopolitics -- such as the Arab-Israeli conflict -- and that point to a particular course of action. Or he uses ancient Islamic conquests as an inspirational model for current jihadist attacks against the West.
  

At the root of such preaching is a totalitarian worldview. According to it, there is no distinction between private freedoms and the public good. The past and the present are on a continuum. Secular matters are meticulously "guided" by clerical judgements. 
The nation state, he alleges, will give way to the caliphate. Morality is stressed, but expressed more in outward appearance (such as modest dress) than as an internal spiritual goal. 
And he emphasizes that the purpose of public worship is to consolidate al-mumeneen (the believers) into a unified bloc in the cause of jihad -- which ultimately entails physical warfare. 
The underlying theme is that all "infidels" are to be held in perpetual hostility until, as is written in the Quran, "Allah's word reigns supreme."

One reason that this radicalization process has gone undetected in the West has to do with language. Imams and Islamist intellectuals use terms that are seemingly identical to those of Judeo-Christian or secular-liberal discourse, but which have an entirely different connotation in Arabic.

Salaam, "peace," means the peace that will reign only after the whole world has accepted living under the rule of Islam.

Shihada, for example, often translated as "martyrdom," usually refers to the act of those who kill or are killed in battle for a religiously-sanctioned cause. It is not a testimony of faith in laying down one's life instead of recanting under pressure.
Iman, translated as "faith," is proven by total submission to Allah, His Messenger Mohammed and the edicts of sharia as propagated by the leader. It is of great "faith" not to waver in battle against Allah's enemies.

Qassas, wrongly interpreted as "justice", often entails a sense of vindictiveness, and "eye-for-an-eye" revenge. It is also circumscribed by Islamic law, sharia: whatever is inside sharia is just; whatever is outside sharia is not just.

Fight them; Allah will torment [not "punish" as many current translations claim] them by your hands... and will give you victory over them and satisfy the breasts (give a great sense of satisfaction, relief) of a believing people. -- Quran, 9:14, after Sahih International

Power is elevated as an Allah-given right to the believers, whereas humility is scorned as a sign of weakness. The goal toward which you are urged to aspire is not equality but ascendancy.

It is a matter of ihssan, or "benevolence" of Muslims that they tolerate the life and severely limited "liberties" of dhimmis (subjugated non-Muslims) so long as the latter pay a "protection" tax, the jizya, and abide by a covenant of inferiority "while feeling themselves subdued". In a state ruled by sharia, equal citizenship between Muslims and non-Muslims is unthinkable.

To challenge Islam's authority, its prophet's character or received tradition, or to critique the religion, is construed as ihanah, or "insult"; sabb-e-Rasul, "disparaging the Prophet," is a libelous offense worthy of death. Failure to accept Islam is also regarded as an "insult" that justifies attack:

As to those who reject faith, I will punish them with terrible agony in this world and in the Hereafter, nor will they have anyone to help. -- Quran (3:56)

Counteracting the radicalization of vulnerable Muslims requires a multi-pronged effort on the part of governments, academic institutions and community leaders. Here are a few recommendations:

• Discourage voluntary segregation in Muslim communities. Establish initiatives that introduce genuine multiculturalism into classrooms, neighborhoods and community centers. This is the only way that insular, extremist thought can be debated and challenged openly by Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
  
• Prevent fundamentalist Muslim community leaders from hiding behind a "moderate" or "mainstream" façade. Hold preachers accountable for the content of their sermons, and make sure that what they are promoting in Arabic aligns with their public statements in English.
  
• Subject the history of early Islam -- the conquests of Persia, the Byzantine Empire, the Middle East, North Africa, Greece, Spain and most of Eastern Europe -- to the same academic rigors to which Western history has been subjected. Do not allow a romantic view of it as a "superior" model to go unchallenged, and do not shy away from examining similarities between current and centuries-old jihadism. The same goes for religious texts and their modern-day interpretations.
  
• Use the press and social media to expose young Muslims to facts other than those they are fed in mosques and the textbooks of their native countries, including the humanistic values of the West, such as freedom of speech and of the press; equal justice under the law -- especially due process and the presumption of innocence; property rights; separation of religion and state; an independent judiciary; an independent educational system, and freedom of religion and from religion -- for a start.
  

Those who preach hate simply build on ahistorical, uncontested narratives to spread the messages that inspired the Manchester, London, Paris, Brussels and Berlin terrorists and that groom the terrorists of tomorrow. When will correcting the record and addressing the root causes please start?

Saher Fares is an Arabic linguist and researcher from the Middle East.

Khadija Khan : Fleeing Tyranny or Bringing it with Them?

Fleeing Tyranny or Bringing it with Them?

by Khadija Khan
May 31, 2017 at 5:00 am

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10356/immigrants-tyranny

• Many newcomers to Canada and Europe are demanding laws similar to those from which they claim to be seeking refuge.
•  
• Newcomers soon start demanding privileges. They ask for gender segregation at work and in educational institutions; they ask for faith schools (madrasas), and demand an end to any criticism of their extremist practices such as female genital mutilation (FGM), forced marriages, child marriages and inciting hatred for other religions. They call any criticism "Islamophobia". They seek to establish a parallel justice system such as sharia courts. They are also unlikely, on different pretexts, to support any anti-terror or anti-extremism programs. They seem to focus only on criticizing the policies of West.
•  
• It is now the responsibility of Western governments to curb this growing turbulence of religious fundamentalism. Western governments need to require "hardline" Muslims to follow the laws of the land. Extremists need to be stopped from driving civilization to a collision course before the freedoms, for which so many have worked so hard and sacrificed so much are -- through indifference or political opportunism -- completely abolished.

Terror attacks and other offshoots of Islamic extremism have created an atmosphere of mistrust between Europe's natives and thousands of those who entered European countries to seek shelter.

The situation is turning the Europeans against their own governments and against those advocating help for the war-torn migrants who have been arriving.

Europeans are turning hostile towards the idea of freedom and peaceful coexistence; they have apparently been seeing newcomers as seeking exceptions to the rules and culture of West.

In an unprecedented shift in policy after public fury about security, the German government decided to shut down the mosque where the terrorist who rammed a truck into a shopping market in Berlin, Anis Amri, was radicalized before hecommitted the crime.

The mosque and Islamic center at Fussilet 33 in Berlin had apparently also been radicalizing a number of other youths by convincing them to commit terror attacks in Europe and to join the terror group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

The authorities had the mosque under surveillance for a time but did not make a move before 12 innocent civilians were butchered by Amri on December 19, 2016, while leaving around 50 others injured.

The police and counter terror authorities also conducted raids in 60 different German cities and searched around 190 mosques to target kingpins of another group called "The True Religion".

Europeans appear to be seeking an alternative way to control this social disruption.
Many Muslims want to live in segregated areas where they strive to create the kind of culture they left behind before settling in the West. This preference, however, seems to lead to a rise in extremism and is proving counterproductive for the society as a whole.

The newcomers soon start demanding privileges. They ask for gender segregation at work and in educational institutions; they ask for faith schools (madrasas), and demand an end to any criticism of their extremist practices such as female genital mutilation (FGM), forced marriages, child marriages and inciting hatred for other religions. They call any criticism "Islamophobia". They additionally seek to establish a parallel system of justice such as sharia courts.

Hardliners have been delivering sermons across the Europe preaching hatred and intolerance of other religious groups.

Most newcomers also seem reluctant to condemn the terror attacks committed by jihadis or the inhumane activities of totalitarian regimes such as Saudi Arabia or Iran. Most newcomers are also unlikely, on different pretexts, to support any anti-terror or anti-extremism program.

These groups seem only to focus on criticizing the policies of West towards the Middle East and Muslim countries and blame the West for everything wrong with the Muslim world.

The Muslim Council of Britain -- a non-government organization claiming to represent British Muslims, and affiliated with over 500 mosques, charities and schools -- introduced its own so-called counter-terrorism campaign, instead of following the one launched by the government.

In the U.S., the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) also shocked many when its leaders demanded the district attorney of Louisiana cancel an ongoing anti-terrorism training program and accused the organizer of being a "notorious Islamophobe".

"We are not a pro-abortion march, we are a pro-women march," one of the advocates for sharia in the West, Linda Sarsour, stated while addressing a feminist event in Washington D.C.

The event was organized right after President Donald Trump's inauguration and was supposed to criticize his anti-abortion stance and seek equal rights for women.

Sarsour, however, seemed less interested in the cause of these women and sounded hungrier for attention and publicity to market her brand of sharia.
Sarsour , who appears to have been seeking imposing sharia on West – in a plan that would entail taking away most of the rights from these liberal women -- was instead standing next to them as if she were the champion of their rights.
Sarsour,known for desiring to slice off the genitals of girls, merely tweets for general Muslim across the globe.

Linda Sarsour speaks onstage during the Women's March on Washington on January 21, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images)

Sadly, we now have in the West extremists who seem hell-bent on dragging civilization back to repression and violence in the name of sharia.

These hardliners are projecting a dogma that implies the advantages of killing and persecuting apostates, non-Muslim minorities, homosexuals, and inflicting the same brutalities on women and minors as we have been seeing in many Muslim majority countries in Middle East, Asia and Africa – as well as, unofficially but increasingly, in Europe and the West.

The British government recently announced a posthumous pardon for thousands of people who were penalized by the state for homosexual activities decades ago.
In the same Britain, however, more than half the Muslim population still believes that in the U.K., homosexuality should be completely illegal.

The cracks between the Muslim and European cultures seem to be widening even in the most harmonious places.

In Canada, a resolution by a Muslim MP seeking special laws to condemn freedom of speech about Islam, has led to scores of Canadians taking to the streets calling on the government to avoid bending rules in favor of a specific religious group in the country.

Many newcomers to Canada and Europe are demanding similar laws to those from which they claim to be seeking refuge.

Khadija Khan is a Pakistani journalist and commentator currently based in Frankfurt, Germany.

Robbie Travers : UK: The Lessons of Manchester

UK: The Lessons of Manchester

by Robbie Travers
May 31, 2017 at 4:00 am

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10436/manchester-lessons

• While Corbyn seems to be saying that Britain's foreign policy is the reason the United Kingdom is being targeted by Islamists, this view seems to be at odds with what the Islamists themselves have said. The Islamic State's propaganda magazine, Dabiq, explained perfectly clearly: "The fact is, even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam."
• Defending what we value would seem the better choice.

Here we are again. According to the analysis of the newly elected Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, the Manchester suicide bomber "was a terrorist, not a Muslim" -- despite all evidence to the contrary.

After yet another mass casualty terrorist attack, elected leaders seems unable to attribute any of these attacks to the supremacist ideology that caused it: radical Islam.

At what point does an individual cease to be a Muslim and start to become a terrorist? Is there a definitive moment? Why can an individual not be a Muslim and a terrorist. Especially if that individual says he is?

Or is this just a racism of lowered expectations?

Refusing to name the problem also takes power away from Muslim reformers who are seeking to remove violence and bigotry from Islam, as well as other religious demands under which they would prefer not live -- such as the lack of free speech, lack of separation of powers, subjugation of women and death penalty for apostasy.

Also, how come no one makes a distinction between religion and violence with any other faith? During the Inquisition, no one would ever claim that Torquemada was not a Christian. Why should this distinction apply only to radical Islam?

Perhaps it is just easier to put short-term political futures ahead of national security, and short term political gains ahead of addressing harsh political truths. That attitude only imperils the rights and Judeo-Christian values we may prefer to keep.

No one wants to blame the entire Islamic community for the actions of a few of its members -- just as all Germans were not Nazis -- but why can one not call Islamic terrorism exactly that and still emphasize that not all Muslims are terrorists?

Many would have it that in the wake of massive bombings and other terrorist attacks -- from America's 9/11, to London's 7/7, multiple attacks in Paris, Nice, Toulouse, Berlin, Westminster, Copenhagen, Brussels, Orlando, Manchester, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and so on -- that the major crime is "Islamophobia" and not the attacks themselves.

Worse, the silence of so many Muslims in the wake of those attacks does not help to dispel an impression of indifference. "Qui tacet consentit": He who is silent consents.

Britain's leader of the Labour Party opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, stated the attacks were the fault of the West:

"Many experts... have pointed to the connections between wars our government has supported or fought in other countries and terrorism here at home. An informed understanding of the causes of terrorism is an essential part of an effective response that will protect the security of our people, that fights rather than fuels terrorism."

So, the conquests of Persia, the Byzantine Empire, the Middle East, North Africa, Greece, northern Cyprus, Spain and most of Eastern Europe do not count? Only our wars count? Who is doing the counting?

What "foreign intervention" prompted the fatwa of a multi-million dollar bounty on the head of Salman Rushdie for writing a novel?

What "foreign intervention" provoked bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania before 9/11? 

What "foreign policy" prompted the bombing of a Yemeni hotel in 1992? 
What prompts Islamists to kill thousands of fellow Muslims and Yazidis -- what offence did their foreign policy commit?

While Corbyn seems to be saying that Britain's foreign policy is the reason the United Kingdom is being targeted by Islamists, this view seems to be at odds with what the Islamists themselves have said. The Islamic State's propaganda magazine, Dabiq explained, perfectly clearly:

"The fact is, even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam."

That is pretty succinct. Who might know better what Islamists think, Corbyn or Islamists?

Our foreign policy is not the problem; our values are. We are seen, it seems, as degenerate, gender-unsegregated, music-loving, idolators. 
Western nations and their citizens refuse to become Muslim, accept Allah and bow to the demands of Islamic law, sharia. End of story.

As long as Western nations remain man-made democracies and not divinely-made Islamic States, these nations will be the major target for Islamists.

There seem to be two choices: either become more like Islamists, adopt sharia, and continue not to address the coercion out of fear that we might be further attacked -- we will be anyway -- or to confront the threat, now, before it becomes larger and costlier to contain, in lives and treasure.

Heavily-armed police patrol in Manchester, England, on May 27, 2017. (Photo by Anthony Devlin/Getty Images)

The entire aim of terrorism is to achieve political change by using violence to intimidate. Do we really want to change our way of life just to appease terrorists, allowing them to win?

Corbyn presents a choice of fighting against Islamism and thereby making ourselves into targets, or failing to do so in order to appease Islamists and thereby surrendering to a religious autocracy.
As Islamists highlight that, regardless of our policies, they will attack us unless we embrace Islam, defending what we value would seem the better choice. It is time for Europe's leaders to face up to the reality.

Robbie Travers, a political commentator and consultant, is Executive Director of Agora, former media manager at the Human Security Centre, and a law student at the University of Edinburgh.