Michael Sturzenberger has endured years of threats, harassment, legal attacks from the German State and bias from the mainline media. He should be a sad, worn down and perhaps embittered man - but he's not. Instead he is full of optimism and energy about the future of the struggle against political Islam in Europe. This even goes against the trend in the general German public where surveys show Germans are much more prone to depression than most other Europeans.

In the face of all this how does he do it? This half hour chat allows him to explain his work, his difficulties and why he is still so wonderfully optimistic. You've just got to love the guy! He has so much to say to some of us who feel marginalised and despondent.

Get into it - it's good medicine!

UPDATE: I have emailed Bishop Howarth about this sad case and am glad to say that he took the time to give me quite a full response. Suffice it to say that, while there are most definitely difficult issues arising from his conversion to Christ - including persecution - our friend Nissar Hussain has some problems of his own and a complicated history of relationships with various people from many backgrounds.

If the Bishop is to be believed - and knowing what I know about him and judging by his response to my enquiry I certainly will give him the benefit of the doubt - there is much more to this story than is being shared in the video below. Please join with me in praying that Mr Hussain and his family would be free both from persecution for his faith and from other inhibiting facets of his experience that are not permitting him to enjoy the full freedom for which Christ has set him free. Pray also for wisdom for church leadership in appropriately assisting all involved. Thank you.


>>>>>>>>>>
Below is a half hour talk by a Birmingham Muslim chap who converted to Christianity. Unfortunately the recording is not the best and takes a degree of concentration to follow some times, but it is one of those first-hand accounts that carries an enormous amount of weight.

This man in his 50's was raised as a Madrassa educated Muslim and explains some of what that involved. Later in life he converted to Christ. That's when the real fun started. The appalling, violent responses from his Pakistani Muslim community are of course, no longer shocking to those of us who have been paying attention to the plight of converts, however, listening to this I would say that you will be genuinely shocked by a) the response of the Police; b) the response of politicians; and c) most tragically for me, the response from the Anglican church including through his personal interaction with the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Bradford's current Anglican Bishop Toby Howarth is himself a fine scholar of Shi'a Islam and I would be greatly surprised if it turns out that he has failed this family of Christian converts as is described here. If that has been the case then I eagerly expect and hope that this will be quickly remedied - I know he's better than that. Perhaps I'll drop him an email and see what he says. Watch this space.

​As well as a peek into the past insofar as his treatment corresponds perfectly with historic Islamic doctrine - except in that he did manage to escape the Sharia mandated mandatory death sentence, so I suppose those Muslims who merely beat him & terrorised his family were moderates - it also gives us a window into contemporary Britain and a view to New Zealand's future.

We still live in a free society. What are we going to do for such people?


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The Plight of a Muslim Convert to Christianity Who Lives Under Sharia in Britain
From the Gates of Vienna.

Nissar Hussain is a British-born man of Pakistani heritage who is not just an apostate from Islam, but also a convert to Christianity. I don’t know which Muslims hate more, one of their fellows who converts to another religion, or one who becomes an atheist. But judging by the way they treated Mr. Hussain, they have a great deal of antipathy towards Christian converts.

In 2015 Nissar Hussain was badly beaten by Muslims on the street in front of his house. A year later he and his family were forced to leave Bradford — a.k.a. Islamabad West — because the police could no longer protect them. To add insult to injury, he took his case to three successive bishops of the Church of England — who swore an oath before God to care for members of their flock — and was brushed off. Even the Archbishop of Canterbury showed antipathy towards Mr. Hussain, presumably because the convert’s plight was an inconvenient interference with Christian establishment’s worship of their new golden calf: Ecumenism.
​
Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for improving the audio in this video. 

Bruce Bawer pens this chilling article on our present lack of freedom of speech and enquiry. It's quite long, but I'd encourage you to make the time. Do pay particular attention to the opening statement where he says that this is a talk he would have given had the Police not stepped in to stop him due to threats of violence.

A familiar story, it's getting all too familiar in the "free West" today.


>>>>>>>>>>>>
The Speech I Never Gave
Sweden's Islamic invasion catalyzed by the death of free speech.  ​
Frontpage magazine.

A few prefatory words: I was invited to give a talk in Gothenburg, Sweden, on Saturday, September 29, as part of an “Alternative Book Fair.” The Gothenburg Book Fair was being held that weekend, and the point of the alternative event was to highlight books – mostly about Islam, I gathered – that the official fair had rejected. I was asked to talk about freedom of speech, a freedom that is in increasingly short supply in Sweden, as elsewhere in Western Europe. As if to prove the point, civic officials – at the urging of police, who were spooked by Antifa threats – banned the “Alternative Book Fair.” Here's what I planned to say. 

  When I was twenty years old, there was a famous free-speech case in the state of Illinois. Nazis wanted to march in a Chicago suburb called Skokie, which had a large population of Jews, many of them Holocaust survivors. Skokie sued successfully in county court to prevent the march. The Nazis, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, took the case to the state appellate court and the Illinois Supreme Court. Long story short, after the case had gone to the United States Supreme Court, the Nazis were allowed to march.

As I say, I was twenty years old at the time. The Supreme Court's decision filled me with admiration. Not because I liked Nazis, but because that ruling demonstrated that in the United States of America, even the most reprehensible expression was protected.  Innocuous speech doesn't need protection. What requires protection is controversial speech, extremist speech, speech that perhaps everyone on earth except the speaker finds offensive. Without such protections, any dissent from received opinion is in danger of being shut down. It's a simple point but a crucial one. Without absolute freedom of speech, freedom itself – all freedom, every freedom – is threatened, period.

Freedom of speech matters to all of us, although some of us avail of ourselves of it more frequently than others, and are thus more aware of it on a day-to-day basis. I've been a writer all of my adult life, and I've always seemed to have a tendency to take on controversial issues, and so my freedom of speech is something I've always been intensely conscious of. Even when I wrote an article severely criticizing the president of  my country in my country's most prominent and powerful newspaper, the New York Times, I knew that my freedom of speech was sacrosanct. I knew that the government would never come after me just for speaking my mind, even about the president. That sort of thing happened in the Soviet Union, not in the U.S., and I never took that difference for granted. 

Then I moved to Europe. That was twenty years ago. Soon afterwards came 9/11. During the next decade I wrote two books that were very critical of Islam. Both books were published by a major New York publishing house. The first, While Europe Slept, came out 12 years ago, the second, Surrender, came out nine years ago. While Europe Slept became a bestseller. Thanks to book critics from red-state newspapers – that is, from newspapers in middle America, not in New York or Washington or Los Angeles – While Europe Slept was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. That was good. But when the names of the finalists were announced, the president of the NBCC publicly condemned my book and the member of the NBCC board who was delegated to read the list of nominees called me a racist.

Despite the success of While Europe Slept, the New York Times chose not to review it. I was in good company. At around the same time, Robert Spencer, Mark Steyn, Bat Ye'or, Claire Berlinski, Walter Laqueur, and Oriana Fallaci also wrote important books about Islam. The New York Times didn't review them either. It was only a few years after 9/11, which had been followed by other terrorist actions in Europe. In my view, it was vital for us in the West to understand our enemies' ideology. I knew these books could help. But the New York Times ignored them. Other major newspapers ignored them too – or ran reviews accusing us of anti-Muslim bigotry. Meanwhile the media, almost uniformly, echoed the official “religion of peace” line. 

The walls, I saw, were beginning to close in on open and honest discussion of Islam.

But at least those books got published. Since then, things have gotten even worse. Much worse. I don't think While Europe Slept could be published now, at least not by a major New York publisher. Have any of you ever read Oriana Fallaci's books on Islam? They were the bluntest of all. Published in 2002 and 2004, they became bestsellers all over the Western world. Can you imagine a major publisher touching them now? This summer, the biggest publishing house in Germany, which had contracted for a book on Islam with the bestselling author Thilo Sarrazin, wimped out and told him to take it elsewhere. When I finished writing my latest book, my agent said that no major American publisher would touch it. Maybe ten years ago, but not now. So I published it myself.

It was actually a fun and rewarding experience. But I shouldn't have had to self-publish. I was forced to do so because, at the book publishers, as in the news media, in films and on television and in the public square, the walls are closing in on free speech. In the Netherlands, Denmark, France, and other countries, writers and politicians and ordinary citizens have been put on trial simply for speaking the truth about Islam. Earlier this month, French authorities ordered Marine Le Pen to take psychiatric tests because she had denounced ISIS. In Norway, I've been called in by the police for writing critically about Islam. Six years ago, after Anders Breivik killed 77 people in Norway, the Norwegian judicial establishment tried to force me and other writers about Islam to submit to questioning at his trial, so that they could link us with him in the public mind and thus discredit our writings forever.

The walls are closing in.

And it's not just about Islam. More and more, it's being demanded of us that we embrace certain claims as true, whether or not they are true. We're expected to agree that Caitlin Jenner is not just a woman – she's “Woman of the Year.” We're expected to accept that Linda Sarsour, a vile anti-Semite in a hijab who is a supporter of jihad, is not just a feminist – she's a feminist heroine. Try questioning the so-called consensus on global warming. Try criticizing socialism. If you dissent in any way from the party line, you'll be accused of committing “hate speech.” If you do it on the campus of an American university, you'll be charged with violating somebody's “safe space.” If you react to some outrageous but officially endorsed lie with so much as a grimace, you'll be told that you've committed a “microaggression.”

Ugly words that used to mean something, labels that you would never attach to anyone's name except on the most serious of grounds, are now pasted reflexively on anyone who dissents from establishment orthodoxy. Dare to make it clear that you care first and foremost about the well-being of the people of your own country, and they'll call you a xenophobe. Dare to call an illegal immigrant an illegal immigrant, and they'll call you anti-immigrant. Dare to criticize race preferences, and they'll call you a racist. Some time in the last couple of years, everybody who's white suddenly became a “white supremacist.” We're living in a time when racism and sexism are at long-time lows in the Western world – and yet there are more accusations of racism and sexism than ever.

This month, at the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America, a speaker explained that if a journalist reports on Palestinian terrorism, he's an Islamophobe. At around the same time, a British newspaper columnist explained that if you're a journalist who pays too much attention to Muslim rape gangs in the UK, that's Islamophobic, too. Also this month, the Speaker of the British House of Commons refused to let the Members of Parliament investigate and discuss the case of a convicted male pedophile rapist who, because he says he identifies as a woman, was incarcerated in a women's prison, where he raped several of his fellow inmates. Think of it: this man's claim to be a female is so sacred in the eyes of the Speaker of the British House of Commons that he would not allow the elected representatives of the British public to even talk about it. 

Diversity of opinion used to be viewed as positive. Now they don't talk about diversity of opinion. They call you “divisive,” which of course is negative. Divisive: this is how they used to talk behind the Iron Curtain and in Mao's China. I don't know if you've seen the YouTube video in which Tommy Robinson, on vacation in Tenerife a few weeks ago, confronted a reporter who had followed him there and taken pictures of him and his family. Why, Tommy asked, did he deserve such harassment? The reporter replied that Tommy was “divisive,” saying things about Islam that might incite violence. Tommy asked, well, then, the Koran calls for violence – should it be banned? No, the reporter said, the Koran is fine; terrorists have misread it. “And you know that,” Tommy replied, “because you've studied the Koran?” No. The reporter, it emerged, had never the Koran. Anyone surprised? Why should he read it? He already knew what he was expected to say about it. By contrast, Tommy, who had studied the Koran, refused to deny what was in there. This made him “divisive.”

Then there's the word “polarizing.” I don't know how many of you are familiar with Fredrik Skavlan, whose TV talk show is broadcast every Friday in Sweden and Norway. A couple of weeks ago, interviewing Jimmie Åkelsson, the head of the Sweden Democrats, Skavlan asked: “Have you contributed to a polarized Sweden?” In fact, Åkelsson speaks for millions of Swedes who are increasingly uneasy about Islam. But to dare to voice their concerns is to be “polarizing” – to disrupt the cozy, lockstep consensus of the political establishment.

“Polarizing”! A few months ago, Governor Cuomo of New York said that people who don't share his politics don't belong in New York. At a recent event in Quebec, when a woman simply dared to ask Justin Trudeau a fair question about his immigration policies, he told her she was a racist who didn't belong in Quebec. In the U.S., if you write something that offends the Southern Poverty Law Center or Media Matters, they'll label you a hate group and try their best to get your employer to fire you, your server to drop you, your platforms to de-platform you, your publisher to cancel your book, your bank and credit-card companies to cancel your accounts, your donors to cut off your funding.

That's not all. On top of everything else, if you're considered divisive, your words will be re-defined as acts of violence – while actual acts of physical violence against you will be redefined as justifiable self-defense. 

The walls are closing in.

Even in the U.S., where the First Amendment used to be sacrosanct, the media now talk in a way they never did before about “balancing” free speech with other considerations. There's talk about reviving the so-called Fairness Doctrine, under which the Federal Communications Commission used to police broadcast media coverage of the news, supposedly for “honesty” and “balance.” Meanwhile the American Civil Liberties Union, which in the 1970s defended the free-speech rights of Nazis, is no longer putting free speech first. In a new set of guidelines, the ACLU declared that speech denigrating certain groups can cause harm – and therefore should not be defended. When Tommy Robinson was locked up for reporting from outside a Muslim rape trial, an imprisonment that violated every basic rule of judicial procedure, you might have expected at least a whisper of a protest from Amnesty International, or Human Rights Watch, or Reporters without Borders. But there was nothing.

In the face of all this, we're all grateful for the Internet and for the ease and affordability of modern self-publishing. But of course those resources are also under attack. A couple of weeks ago it was reported that Amazon has begun banning “controversial books.” Without Amazon, writers, especially self-publishing writers, are screwed. As for the Internet – well, where would we be without the Internet? This country, this continent, are in serious trouble, but imagine how much worse things would be, how much more clueless we would be, without the Internet? The Internet has brought Western Europe closer to having a First Amendment. Without the Internet, Hillary Clinton would be president of the United States. But more and more, they're out to get that too. In 2018, if your politics offend Silicon Valley, they'll remove you from Facebook, from YouTube, from Twitter. And the mainstream media, instead of being alarmed by this strangling of free speech, will cheer.

At the same time that the social networks are stepping up censorship, Western governments are intensifying their own efforts to control Internet content. If you live in the U. K. and you write the wrong thing on Facebook, you might get a visit from the cops. The Sentencing Council for England and Wales has proposed that online criticism of religion be punished by up to six years in prison. On September 9, a tweet from the South Yorkshire Police urged the public to report “offensive or insulting comments, online, in person or in writing” because “hate will not be tolerated in South Yorkshire.”

Of course offense is in the eye of the beholder, and in these times, offense only goes one way. Two days after that tweet, on September 11, it was reported that a group of Tory and Labour members of the British Parliament were sponsoring a bill to “shut down Facebook groups that back Tommy Robinson and [that] speak out against Radical Islam.”  The very next day, September 12, the EU Parliament approved Article 11, known as the “link tax,” and Article 13, known as the “upload filter,” which could close down alternative news sites – and worse. Then there's the EU's so-called “General Data Protection Regulation,” thanks to which, sitting at my computer in Norway, I can no longer access articles in certain American newspapers, among them the L.A. Times and the Chicago Tribune.

The walls are closing in.

Now I've come to the part of the speech where I'm supposed to explain that there's some hope. Is there? What do you think? I don't know. Maybe. In Britain, finally, UKIP is openly speaking the truth about Islam. The EU Parliament and the British Parliament have made clear their eagerness to silence dissent, but we can hope, at least, that the U.S. Congress is another story. Some members of Congress, at least, are just beginning to pay serious attention to online free-speech issues. If they take decisive action against the Silicon Valley commissars, it can have a worldwide impact. In the same way, the more strict constitutionalists Donald Trump is able to put on the U.S. Supreme Court, the better it will be for freedom of speech.  

Anyway, if worse comes to worst, let's remember that even in the Soviet Union they had samizdat. Even if the EU shuts down websites like Nya Tider and Samnytt in Sweden and Document and Resett in Norway, and if some of us are denied access to the online tools to publish our own books, and if we're denied the right to sell them on Amazon, then we'll have to find some other way to distribute our work. Maybe we'll have to do it the old-fashioned way. Thomas Paine's pamphlets won converts to the cause of American liberty. Copies of Vaclav Havel's essay “The Power of the Powerless,” passed from hand to hand, inspired millions in Eastern Europe to believe in the possibility of triumphing over Communism.

Yes, things may get worse, perhaps a lot worse, before they get better. But we have to commit ourselves to being the ones who will make it better.

As the walls keep closing in, we need to push back with all our strength.

Ah the noble and persecuted "Palestinian" people! A people with a fine history and a proud identity stretching back through antiquity, all the way to ..... 1964.

While the name "Palestine" itself harks back to AD 134 when the Romans renamed the area - alluding to the ancient Biblical Philistine's - there was no distinct people or nation of that name. A member of the PLO executive committee made this rather awkward statement - one that I'm sure he subsequently regretted - in 1977,
              The Palestinian people does not exist, the creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political & tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism. 

Ion Pacepa is mentioned in the video below. I have Pacepa's outstanding book "Disinformation" and highly recommend it for those who seek to know how the Communists sought to influence Western foreign policy and shape domestic opinion. Romanian, Col. Pacepa is the highest ranking Communist to defect to the West and his experience's really do shine a light on how the West was lied to over the decades by Communist elements - literal disinformation. 

Reading Pacepa and listening to other dissidents such as Yuri Bezmenov (aka Tomas Schuman, watch this one hour video from 1983 as an introduction) will make sense of the current state of the West for those of us who have seriously underestimated the strength and malevolence of Marxism.

Bezmenov stated the goal of KGB efforts in the West was to "demoralise" it. By this he did not mean simply to place doubt or fear in people, but literally to remove their morals. The Communists believed that the way to destroy the West was to remove our sense of right and wrong. The West would then gradually & inescapably capitulate. How are we going? 

Interestingly Pacepa includes in "Disinformation" perhaps the most well researched and authoritative study of Pope Pius XII and the slander that he was "Hitler's Pope" who betrayed the Jews during WW2. He points out that the Chief Rabbi of Rome converted to Christianity after the war largely on the basis of how he saw the Pope act towards the Jews.

Odd isn't it that such a competent man of integrity missed all that supposed Antisemitism?

In the 8 minute video below Robert Spencer takes us through the establishment of "Palestine" as the brainchild of the KGB to undermine the state of Israel. I think you will find particularly fascinating the widely fulfilled intentions of Comrade Andropov regarding how much of the Islamic world (and many of us in the West) view America and Israel.

This short, well researched presentation honestly is indispensable.
We need to know this. Please watch it.


​>>>>>>>
Robert Spencer: How the "Palestinians" were invented
Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer explains how and why Yasser Arafat and the KGB invented the "Palestinian" nationality and ethnicity in the 1960s.

There's been a lot of talk about Judge Kavanaugh recently hasn't there? Given the position to which he aspires the scrutiny is well deserved. Many of us who consider ourselves feminists have been particularly strident in our opinions. But does this group also suffer from a blind spot of their own?

I mean, there is so much attention being given to so many men and their relationship with women these days - including the existence of the "patriarchy" and systemic misogyny in the Western hemisphere, oftentimes echoing to the old complaint that "all men are rapists". Some people seem to have no problem slandering or libeling an entire gender when they believe it fits. Yet what of the predicament of their fellow women under Islam?

​Here are a couple of egregious examples from only the last few days of the most vile abuse of women for simply being women. Ponder with me the silence of the feminists on these matters:~

Bruce Thornton mentions the Egyptian actress Amal Fathy.
>>>>>>>>>
She has just been sentenced to two years in prison for posting a Facebook video documenting her subjection to sexual harassment. This is part of a wider crackdown on and censorship of women who complain about the conditions of sexual apartheid in which they live. As the Wall Street Journal, reports,   
                        In a 2013 United Nations survey, 99.3% of women in Egypt reported being been sexually harassed. A separate Egypt-U.N. joint study in 2015 found that 2.5 million women were sexually harassed in the streets in one year, as were 16,000 girls at schools. The study deems harassment to range from whistling and verbal abuse to rape.

Less than 1% of Egyptian women report sex-based violence to the police, who dismiss their claims or side with the harassers. And this is nothing compared to the experiences of women living in less developed countries, especially Muslim ones where subordination and abuse of women, especially Christian women, are validated by faith and tradition. 

But how often do we hear the same feminists who elevate a decades-old, unsubstantiated charge of assault into a career- and reputation-ending offense, say anything about the widespread documented violent physical and sexual abuse of women?  Instead, American feminists make an outcast of true feminist heroine Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has risked her life to speak out against genital mutilation of women, and their lack of human rights under sharia law. 
<<<<<<<<<<<<<

So aren't Egyptian women part of the human family? Is there to be no Western feminist voice to speak up for them? 


Our second example, via Robt. Spencer, is of Iraqi beauty queen Tara Fares.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
       Iraqi social media star and model Tara Fares has been shot dead in Baghdad….The former Miss Baghdad, and first runner-up for Miss Iraq, was killed on Thursday after gunmen opened fire on her.

Tara was a Christian and “famous for her bold clothing and posts on social media.” Those attributes sealed her fate, along with that of other women in her country who fly in the face of the Sharia, such as the human rights activist, Suaad al-Ali, who “was shot and killed in an outdoor market by an unknown gunman” two days before. Last month, “two well-known women in Baghdad’s beauty industry” were also murdered: Rafeef al-Yaseri, known as the “Barbie of Iraq,” and Rasha al-Hassan — owner of a beauty center — who was found mysteriously dead inside her home. Now the government is ordering a so-called “investigation” in the face of these highly publicized deaths. Nothing will likely come of it, since the deaths are tied to the larger problem of Sharia intolerance against any semblance of autonomous female identity.
<<<<<<<<<<<<

"Bold clothing". That's cute. "Bold" in a predominantly Islamic context is not likely to be "bold" in a Western context. But it seems that the problem common to all these women was simply that they dared to be women. And for this they are now dead. Not merely humiliated, discriminated against or pushed into lowly roles in society. They have been murdered.

But why is it that the huge bulk of us don't tend to hear about these poor ladies in the West?  How is it that those well informed and well connected feminists that make it their business to become aware of such matters don't make such a huge noise about them that we all know about it? 

Too hard? Are non-western women not worth the effort? Are there easier and more pressing targets demanding our attention for the greater and long-term good? What?

Amazing how easily we can dismiss the suffering, humiliation and even murder of some people when they are in an inconvenient place or come at an inconvenient time isn't it?

It concerns me that there may be an unspoken hierarchy in play here. Have we allowed ourselves to be defined by our enemies - or rather our perceived enemies - than by what we actually stand for? What is worse: not believing a woman making an allegation of sexual abuse or imprisoning a woman for making such a complaint? And getting murdered under Sharia for daring to be pretty - surely no-one can abide this?

Well this gigantic blind-spot greatly disturbs me, at least.
Why doesn't it similarly disturb our feminist friends?

Are we really serious about fixing Islamophobia? Really? Well let's see about that shall we.

Robert Spencer has 5 simple steps to wipe out the plague of Islamophobia forever.
​Forever.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Where is the program to combat the spread of the jihad ideology among Muslims?

Here is how they can accomplish it. [People should] call upon Muslim individuals and groups to:
1. Focus their indignation on Muslims committing violent acts in the name of Islam, not on non-Muslims reporting on those acts.
2. Renounce definitively, sincerely, honestly, and in deeds, not just in comforting words, not just “terrorism,” but any intention to replace Western constitutions (or the constitutions of any non-Muslim state) with Sharia even by peaceful means. In line with this, clarify what is meant by their condemnations of the killing of innocent people by stating unequivocally that non-Muslim civilians, including Israelis, are innocent people, teaching accordingly in mosques and Islamic schools, and behaving in accord with these new teachings.
3. Teach, again sincerely and honestly, in transparent and verifiable ways in mosques and Islamic schools, the imperative of Muslims coexisting peacefully as equals with non-Muslims on an indefinite basis, and act accordingly.
4. Begin comprehensive international programs in mosques all over the world to teach sincerely, and again transparently, against the ideas of violent jihad and Islamic supremacism.
5. Actively and honestly work with Western law enforcement officials to identify and apprehend jihadists within Western Muslim communities.

If Muslims did those five things, voila! “Islamophobia” would vanish! 
<<<<<<<<<<<

How hard would it be to implement these steps? They don't seem to involve Muslims doing anything more than genuinely ensuring that what is preached and done is in line with what they tell us ad nauseam their Faith teaches anyway.

So how could there possibly be any sort of obstacle to Islamic institutions themselves destroying "Islamophobia" forever?

See, that was easy to sort out wasn't it? It's up to them to fix this, not us.
​
Now let's see who's really serious about having a good relationship. 

Three posts today from Jihad Watch really got my attention. All show the strategy of Sharia compliant Muslims who focus their energies wherever weakness is presented to them. Do note the progression here.

Firstly, the article stating that a Migrant Camp in Greece seems to be run by supporters of the Islamic State. 

      "A television report by Deutsche Welle, claims that criminal gangs of Syrians that are sympathetic to the Islamic State (ISIS), have established a regime of terror in the Moria migrant camp, on the Greek island of Lesvos. ... Underneath the nose of the Greek authorities, gangs from Syria control drug smuggling and prostitution. Members of the gangs do not hesitate to use overt violence, using knives, and relying on Sharia law, the report says."

Given the expectation that such people are "needy refugees on their way to safety in Europe" how are we expected to think that might work itself out?

Well we don't need to speculate. The second article gives us a pretty solid idea. 

    A 21-year-old asylum seeker was taken into custody on Friday following the broad daylight attack in the Baden-Wuerttemberg town, which saw the migrant stab two passers-by at a bus stop before knifing a 52-year-old who tried to stop him with a restaurant chair several times.

Yet another violent attack by a recent Muslim migrant - and as is often the case these days, an Afghan. A couple of months ago Germany had another stabbing on a bus of 9 people perpetrated by a German of Iranian origin. Police were - once again - at a loss to explain the motive (what - no mental illness?).

In the most recent case,

The state minister for integration has warned Germans against the “hatred and malice” of anyone who might draw political conclusions after an Afghan migrant stabbed three people in Ravensburg town centre. 

Heaven forbid that anyone might link Islam with violence! As we all know, Islam means peace and any citizens becoming agitated over the spiraling rates of violence and sexual assault where there is an increasing proportion of Muslims in non-Muslim contexts must simply accept the comforting and very knowledgeable assertions from our elected representatives that the two are in no way correlated. Or even if they are correlated, of course correlation is not causation.

Alas, uninformed drones that we are, to us they do seem not only very definitely correlated but also causative. Islam itself seems to be a major issue. Unfortunately we have no high-sounding theories to back up our claims, merely the evidence of our eyes.

But wait! There is another aspect to this, the third article is from another Western country enjoying the enrichment of an well established Islamic community; Canada.

Would you believe it? Apparently the (obviously) Islamophobic government of Canada has a Canada Revenue Agency which regulates and audits that country's charities. They have found that the Islamic Society of North America - which I would have thought would be one of the largest Muslim organisations, if not the largest, in Canada - has negligently sent CA$136,000 to some needy people in Kashmir and that ISNA-Canada “may have, knowingly or unknowingly, provided the benefits of its status as a registered charity to support the efforts of a political party and its armed wing”. They have fined and warned them.

Now, it's a tiny bit hard to be shocked by this as one of the stipulated areas where regular Muslim zakat is to be sent, according to Sharia, is to aid jihad. Do please check this 2011 entry from Robert Spencer:~
 
  Ever wondered why so many Islamic “charities” have turned out to be jihad-financing factories? Here are some telling sections from “21 Common Misconceptions about Zakaah,” by Asma bint Shameem, an article that came to me in my morning mailing from the “Islam_1_God_1_Religion_1_Truth” Yahoo Group. Someone made me a member of that in hopes, I guess, of converting me to Islam. Every mailing contains the tagline, “Only Authentic Information about Islam is passed backed by Quran or Hadith’s [sic].” In them, Asma bint Shameem explains that zakat, the obligatory alms that Muslims must pay, may not be given to non-Muslims, and may not be used to build hospitals, orphanages, or even to print Qur’ans or build mosques, but may be used to finance jihadists.

Misconception # 18:
Zakaah can be given to Non-Muslims if they are poor
It is not permissible to give Zakaah to any kaafir except the one who is inclined towards Islam, in the hope that he will become Muslim if you give him zakaah (al-Tawbah:60).

Al-Tawbah:60 is Qur’an 9:60: “Alms are for the poor and the needy, and those employed to administer the (funds); for those whose hearts have been (recently) reconciled (to Truth); for those in bondage and in debt; in the cause of Allah; and for the wayfarer: (thus is it) ordained by Allah, and Allah is full of knowledge and wisdom.”

Misconception # 19:
I will use Zakaah to build hospitals, masjid and orphanages

That is not permissible, because this is not included in the eight categories on which zakaah may be spent.

Allaah tells us that Zakaah may be spent on the following:
“As-Sadaqaat (Zakaah) are only
for the Fuqaraa (poor),
and Al-Masaakeen (the poor)
and those employed to collect (the funds);
and to attract the hearts of those who have been inclined (towards Islam);
and to free the captives;
and for those in debt;
and for Allaah’s Cause (Mujaahidoon “” those fighting in a holy battle),
and for the wayfarer (a traveler who is cut off from everything)” [al-Tawbah:60]

But if the intention in giving the money to an orphanage is so that this money will be spent on the poor orphans, then this is permissible, if the orphans are poor.

Similarly, Zakaah cannot be used to print Quraans and other Dawah material.

Do note that it's not me saying this. It is Islamic teaching based on the Sunnah of Muhammad. This represents the third facet of the warning that we should be taking note of. So we have three movements in this symphony of ignorance and neglect,

1) Don't be embarrassed to scrutinise the impending movement of "refugees" coming here - examine their world view. Be aware of the often markedly different attitudes towards the use of violence and to women, people of other faiths, homosexuals, democracy and so on. Acknowledge the plain, if unpalatable, reality of the situation. Yet
2) Be aware that there are many politicians (and media types. And academics. And those naively committed to inter-faith "dialogue") who simply will not give up their own worldview (or their careers) and who keep insisting that there are no problems at all to be considered in point 1), and 
3) Note that once Muslims get established it is quite likely that not only individuals but even their largest institutions will, unsurprisingly, also want to act according to their Faith.

None of this is difficult to understand. Yet this simple and oft repeated pattern overseas will - I guarantee - occur here and will be met with the same (mock?) surprise, denial and rejection. Instead those who raise these very real concerns will be stigmatised as acting "for political purposes by spewing hatred and malice on all of us who stand up for unity in this city,” as helpfully described by the Green Party minister Manne Lucha regarding the latest German stabbing mentioned above.

One thing though - with all the warnings, with all the evidence, with all the plain statements of belief and intent, nobody here should be able to feign innocence.

The evidence is there for all to see and if, for whatever reason, those in positions of responsibility do not see it they remain accountable.

So let's hold them to a standard befitting their responsibilities.

Something that needs repeating ad infinitum: Muslims per se are not the problem, the source documents of Islam and the character of its central figure Muhammad are the problems. Please understand what we are saying here. This Iraqi scholar is a survivor of the religious wars in Iraq. He has valid personal experience as well as his scholarship to lean on.

I do hope some might listen to him.

By the way: if I have seemed unusually quiet lately it is because I have been ill for the past month. Many years ago I struck my head particularly hard in an accident and these days, every 9-12 months it seems, I get all the recurring symptoms of concussion: headaches, exhaustion, severe loss of concentration, sensitivity to light and noise etc. All I can do is wait it out. I apologise. Normal service will be resumed as soon as I can manage it.

​God bless.

Yes we seem to be seeing a lot of this don't we?

Douglas Murray offers some appropriately negative insights into the decline of the West in the first 10 minute video. From where will the West find its meaning? IMHO most likely not from outside itself but from its underlying Faith - Christianity and from the moral & intellectual history built upon that Faith.

The second video is a documentary & gives an insight into what is happening in China today. They have recently greatly increased their surveillance technology. I don't know about you, but this concerns me quite a bit. The doco dwells on the plight of the Muslim Uighurs in China's West and suggests that the government's problem with them is ethnic in nature. Our media once again does not seem able to delineate between pure racist xenophobia with its unthinking reactionary rejection of "the other" and fact-based concerns about the belief system of Islam and Islam's historically observable affect on people. 

Re-education camps are one end of the spectrum of solutions. At the other end is what we're doing, where our officials utterly fail to comprehend the problem of Islam as a competing political and value system at all and instead make life difficult for those among us who do recognise the issues.

Of course we in the-last-direction-on-the-compass-that-retains-some-memory-of-freedom, i.e. the West, tend to sneer at the suggestion that we may well lose many of our freedoms should big tech combine with a repressive government. More fool us then. 

After 911 the Patriot Act came into being. In order to "protect" Americans many Americans became perfectly happy to sacrifice the freedoms that, if you'd asked them on the 10th of September 2001, they might have gone to prison to preserve. Such is the power of pressing need. Even without a disaster to act as a catalyst we see ever more encroachment on our freedoms and the manipulation of information through media outlets, governments, Police and large social media and search engines.

It seems to me that the draconian Chinese measures of surveillance and personal grading are already under way in the West. I used to think that all we needed was the right kind of serious crisis to initiate our subjugation. I no longer think such a crisis is necessary, being scolded and shamed is doing a fine job of driving dissent underground and paving the way for a system of controls that opponents will be too ashamed to speak against when it finally arrives.

I had an American friend who was a lifelong Democrat. He used to complain that he was being called a Socialist or even a Communist if he was considered by his Republican acquaintances to be even "slightly to the left of Genghis Khan". Poor Frank didn't find such automatic and unthinking stigmatisation helpful in encouraging open and constructive dialogue.

These days of course it is very popular to compare those of us who find ourselves only slightly to the right of Mother Teresa to be called Nazis (oh wait a minute, Mother Teresa was extremely vocal in her Pro-Life stance; of course that makes her tantamount to Hitler - Rats!! I'd better find another example). The current occupant of the White House regularly finds himself compared to the man who orchestrated the systematic destruction of millions of lives.

(BTW - If one really wanted to insult someone surely it would be better to call them Stalin or Mao wouldn't it? I mean, both men were responsible for more deaths than Hitler. I can't imagine why this oversight is perpetuated. Can you?) 

But who were really nasty people compared to before Herr Hitler manifested?

Well, among his many harsh criticisms of Islam - born of years of personal experience and study - Winston Churchill called Mein Kampf the "new Koran of faith and war". Unfortunately the website I refer to here, like several others I have seen, manifests a profound ignorance of the contents of the Koran viz-a-viz the Bible. The Bible could not possibly be compared to Mein Kampf (lit. "my struggle" - as in "my jihad"). There are very clear reasons why such a well informed man chose the Koran and the prophet of Islam to compare the Hitler Movement to.

Churchill also famously stated:~
        "How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. ... The effects are apparent in many countries: improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. ... A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement, the next of its dignity and sanctity, ... The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. ... Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.”

He had a huge problem with Islam's prophet.
Not very PC is it? He'd likely be arrested for enunciating such sentiments today. 

It's interesting for me to now find that Carl Jung had a similar opinion of Islam and of it's prophet. In fact in the days before there was a Hitler to compare evil people Jung likened him to Islam's prophet, Muhammad. Now why might that be?

​Good question! The short video here gives us some answers. We'd better pay attention I think.

A 55 minute follow-on film by the maker of the documentary Killing Europe. This video documents the abysmal state of Canada these days regarding free speech and rational discourse. 

Is Canada so very different from New Zealand? This film really makes you wonder, if we see this in Canada - which is so similar to us in many ways - how far away is the day when we see similar things here? Indeed, we've already had some clear demonstrations of the media and academia failing to deal competently with perspectives they don't wish to permit (or even understand). So what is next? This film gives us a clue I think.

It is is unfortunately laced with bad language, for which I apologise, but once again the issues at stake here are vital.

Well, bless their hearts - the creative types in Hollywood certainly know how to spin a good, emotionally provoking yarn don't they? I wonder what they might make of the genuine history of the Crusades? Now that would make a great story!


Here's a half-hour introductory video on the matter.
​Get your popcorn...

>>>>>>>>>
​Were the Crusades an unprovoked act of aggression on behalf of bloodthirsty Christians? Did the First Crusade mark the beginning of close to a millennium of hostility between Christianity and Islam, or did the conflict begin centuries earlier?

Stefan Molyneux takes a closer look at the historical background of the Crusades and presents shocking information that is often hidden from the general population. What is the truth about the origins of the Crusades? Sources: http://www.fdrurl.com/truth-about-cru...

I mentioned the Hindu holocaust the other day and it is really worth reading up on that subject. When I did so a few years ago I found that there are also other issues which - I have to be honest - I had never associated with Islam before I looked at India's experiences under Islamic subjugation.

In my research three points in particular stuck out to me as they were discussed by Indian historians. 

Firstly, the wearing of the charming Sari. This head covering was in fact forced upon Hindu women under Islamic oppression in order that they not be considered "immoral". It seems it started its life not as a lovely feminine cultural symbol but as a symbol of subjugation and fear. We see exactly the same thing happening in suburbs of Paris and in other European areas where Islam takes hold, like Malmo.

Secondly, widow burning or Sati. This practice was instituted because the now accompanied & unprotected woman was open to being degraded in terrible ways by Muslims. In fact I found that the women would rather throw themselves alive onto their husbands funeral pyre than live to be so violated. As such this was not perceived to be an insignificant threat.

Thirdly, child marriage. Again this arose because the Hindu girls would be kidnapped, raped and forcibly converted before they got to a normal marriageable age. We can understand this very well because see the same today in places like Pakistan and Egypt. Rather than risk this for their daughters the family married them off very young in order to protect them.

All 3 practices suddenly make a lot of sense don't they when we see how Islam has historically acted and is now acting in other parts of the world? 

As I keep saying around here: Islam is Sharia and the leopard does not change its spots. Surroundings may ameliorate these religious imperatives and individual Muslims may become more or less Westernised by their contexts (we call them "moderate" Muslims -  where we simply mean cultural or unobservant) and find such practices and beliefs as repellent as the rest of us. But nevertheless Islam teaches the second or third rate status of non-Muslims; the second class status of women and the absolute superiority of the Muslim and of Sharia over any other law. These aspects are unalterable. 

It gives one a lot more respect for what the Hindus and other groups in India suffered over many centuries doesn't it? So much of what they themselves think of as their own authentic culture is nothing more than the result of Islamic imperialism. According to my research, the vast majority of modern Hindus do not even realise this. We have to wonder when the day will come when our descendants look back and assume women wearing head coverings in New Zealand has also always been the custom. We can see those days are coming in some areas of France where, 30 years from now, women will just be used to covering their heads and making sure they don't go out without a male. 

Yes, we see the same pattern repeated in various contexts. I wonder when we'll be ready to discuss the real issues here like grown-ups without being accused of "Islamophobia". Quite apart from the incalculable suffering of their victims and the resultant destruction of their culture - the very thing everyone seems so keen to safeguard these days, among non-European peoples at least - at what point do we declare that we love Muslims enough to challenge them with the whole truth of their Faith and ask them to take responsibility for its teachings in a way that any other adult would?

Or are we likely to remain too polite?
How did that work out in India?

Oh we've learnt quite a few things! Nothing about Islam of course.
But plenty otherwise.

One thing we've learnt is to never associate Islam with the attacks. Islam had nothing whatsoever to do with them. Even though those who perpetrated the attacks claimed absolutely that it did and that they were only acting out on the express commands of the prophet, Qur'an and Sunna. But we've learnt not to take any notice of that. They misunderstood their religion. Even though most of the hijackers were very well educated men, some with doctorates.

​As the New York Times noted in 2005,
           We examined the educational backgrounds of 75 terrorists behind some of the most significant recent terrorist attacks against Westerners. We found that a majority of them are college-educated, often in technical subjects like engineering. In the four attacks for which the most complete information about the perpetrators' educational levels is available -- the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, the 9/11 attacks, and the Bali bombings in 2002 -- 53 percent of the terrorists had either attended college or had received a college degree. As a point of reference, only 52 percent of Americans have been to college.
...
The 1993 World Trade Center attack involved 12 men, all of whom had a college education. The 9/11 pilots, as well as the secondary planners identified by the 9/11 commission, all attended Western universities, a prestigious and elite endeavor for anyone from the Middle East. Indeed, the lead 9/11 pilot, Mohamed Atta, had a degree from a German university in, of all things, urban preservation, while the operational planner of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, studied engineering in North Carolina. We also found that two-thirds of the 25 hijackers and planners involved in 9/11 had attended college.

Of the 75 terrorists we investigated, only nine had attended madrassas, and all of those played a role in one attack -- the Bali bombing. Even in this instance, however, five college-educated "masterminds" -- including two university lecturers -- helped to shape the Bali plot. ... In fact, two of the terrorists in our study had doctorates from Western universities, and two others were working toward their Ph.D.

Yet all these intelligent and educated men were apparently completely unable to understand the plain injunctions of the Religion of Peace™ to spread that peace. How to explain this?

Well that's another thing we've learnt - we don't ask those questions any more. To interrogate Islam means to hate all Muslims with the perfect hatred of a thousand Suns.

We did investigate Islam in the beginning of course, but that was quickly snuffed out. Some argue that we cannot even understand Islam due to our not being native Arabic speakers raised on the Arabian peninsula. To ask such a question is simply to "other" & dehumanise all Muslims further marginalising by implying that they have anything to do at all with mass murderers. Even though that's not what we're doing.

Our protestations that we can't possibly know what drives the Red Brigade or the Labour Party or Methodists or the Lions if we don't study their writings, charters or vision statements are ignored. We are to simply accept the reassurances of some Muslim leaders that "true Islam" doesn't condone the murder of innocents. Even though some of those Muslim leaders are proven liars, Antisemites and supporters of jihad who preach violence against non-Muslims, the subjugation of women and death for homosexuals. Far from being investigated, such men are often greeted with wide open arms when authorities invite Muslims to bridge-building events.

To the contemporary Western mind - and I use the term loosely - affirmation and acceptance is all that matters. Surely people, underneath it all, believe in the same set of values! Surely we're joined in our common humanity! Surely the biggest threat is from "old white men" in the hierarchy who seek to continue the stale status quo (although this one is often more an unspoken assumption it does more and more pop out into the light).

So we can't understand Islam. We can't hold Muslims accountable for acting out on the plain & historic teachings of Islam. And we're bad people for even wanting to understand the teachings that led to the death of thousands of people on that September day in 2001. According to the Religion of Peace website Islamic terrorists have carried out over 33,783 deadly attacks since 911. Each one of those attacks claimed at least one life and was carried out by individuals basing their actions on core teachings of Islam. But we've learnt that we must not look at such things.

Instead we've learnt that whoever tries to get us to look at such things are the real villains. "If it wasn't for you guys everybody would be happy!" Ah yes, I remember being told this back when a few of us were deeply concerned about the gay paedophile Pastor of our church 20 years ago. The problem was, silencing us & driving us out of the church didn't stop the damage. It didn't help heal anyone involved and it didn't get people to accept reality and make changes for the better. What it did do, for those who believed it, was to drive them into a fantasy world and make them lose their minds and perpetuate the carnage.

So to today - did you see the article about the Christian evangelist Franklin Graham on Jihad Watch?
Newsweek reports that,
            The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), an umbrella organisation for hundreds of Muslim groups, has lent its support to calls from three members of parliament and thousands of members of the public to deny the preacher a visa for spreading hate speech. 
...
The MCB in a statement to The Guardian said: “In the past the government has banned individuals whom they claim are ‘not conducive to the public good’. Mr Graham’s remarks are on record and clearly demonstrate a hatred for Muslims and other minorities. “We would expect the government to apply its criteria here. If it does not, it will send a clear message that it is not consistent in challenging all forms of bigotry.”

Newsweek then gives us a key phrase that helps us categorise Mr Graham in the "do not listen to" basket:
   A supporter of President Donald Trump, [Graeme: There ya go! Sigh...] Graham has described Islam as “evil” and a “religion of war,” claimed that Barack Obama was “born a Muslim,” ...

Let's check this.
A) "Islam is evil". That's a value judgment, but there is a mountain of evidence to sustain that allegation. For instance, the religion's central figure is a man who: married a 6 year-old and consummated the marriage when she was 9; organised assassinations of political opponents and even those who made fun of him; tortured Kinana b. al-Rabi` with fire in order to find treasure; and led 83 war raids. That man is the perfect example of a life pleasing to Allah. This isn't evil?
B) Islam is "a religion of war". Got any proof for this claim Mr Graham? Heaps. Two-thirds of Christendom was conquered by Islam during its first 400 years. While we keep being told about the terrible evils of the first Crusade which has led to so much ill will among today's Muslims, we never seem to hear about that do we? One Hindu source also notes that because of Islam: "By all known accounts of world history, as pointed out by Koenard Elst in his book the Negationism in India, destruction of about 100 million Hindus is perhaps the biggest holocaust in the whole world history". We don't hear so much about this either. Why might that be?
C) Barack Obama was "born a Muslim". As even Snopes states that Mr Obama's father was born a Muslim, then yes, technically under Sharia any children born to a Muslim man are automatically Muslims. There is no argument about this doctrine. Indeed, Sharia states that every child is born a Muslim and is then often taught a false religion by their parents. Whether he was raised a Muslim or what kind of Muslim his father was is not addressed by Mr Graham.

On all 3 points the Minister is correct in what he says. So what's the problem?

But, since 911, we have learnt that we are to read all sorts of nefarious motives into those who raise legitimate concerns about Islam. If we have learnt all this in just 17 years, one really does have to wonder what we will learn in the next 17. Or 27. Or 37. Just keep ignoring the piles of dead, the masses of raped girls, the no-go zones, the stifling of free speech that offends Islam. It's all so gradual.

But due to endless repetition we seem to be learning our lessons very well.

Here is a first rate review of Raymond's Ibrahim's new book (the arrival of which in my mailbox I eagerly await) Sword and Scimitar. Published by Crisis Magazine and titled, “Islam’s Thousand Year War on Christendom,” Kilpatrick’s review follows. A 9 minute audio of this is also at the link.

Indeed there is nothing new under the sun in the motivation for Islamic warfare in its various guises. Just as there is nothing new in the response of non-Muslims to that threat.

During Tony Blair's time as Prime Minister of Great Britain I bought a 1937 English translation of Bonaparte: Governor of Egypt by F. Charles-Roux. Chapter 5 is entitled "Bonaparte and Islam". In that chapter I saw Bonaparte conduct himself towards Islam in a way very like Mr Blair did. The self-flattery of these two; the inability of the man with a secularist mindset - though Mr Blair claimed to be a Catholic - to understand the power of religion, let alone the great cult-like following the prophet had and has; the belief that such people could be appeased with worldly rewards such as peace and prosperity when in reality nothing can ever substitute for the approval of a god in whose hand is one's eternal destiny.

Here is a very real fear of eternal damnation holding a very definite sway on foreign policy, law making and the entire idea of what constitutes success itself. Obedience - or submission, as the word Islam means - to the prophet and a white hot veneration to the teachings and glory of the eternal Qur'an is ultimately all that matters.

Yet both Bonaparte and Blair remained apparently uncomprehending of all this. As Robert Spencer notes, Bonaparte flattered the Muslims:

     In Egypt, he aggressively courted the Muslim population, saying to one imam: “Glory to Allah! There is no other God but Allah; Muhammad is his prophet, and I am one of his friends…. The Qur’an delights my mind…. I love the prophet.” [Graeme: we have heard very similar words spoken by Tony Blair as he sought a peace with Muslims] He told Egyptian imams that it was “the will of Muhammad” that the Egyptians ally with the French. He denounced the Russians to the Ottoman sultan, saying that they “abhor those who believe in the unity of God, because, according to their lies, they believe that there are three,” an echo of the Qur’an’s warning to Christians to “say not ‘Three’” (4:171), that is, do not profess the faith in the Holy Trinity.

In Bonaparte: Governor of Egypt, Charles-Roux notes, 

         No European colonizer ever met Islam in a more tolerant, even deferential, and sympathetic spirit. No ulterior motive of Christian proselytization, no denominational prejudice influenced Bonaparte against the Mussulmans. They did not occur through their religion either his aversion or his contempt. He was still too thoroughly imbued with the ideas propogated by the French Revolution, too detached from the Catholic church, too prejudiced against the Papacy to think ill of the followers of Islam ...
               Their profound faith, their piety, and the essential dogma of their theology, that of the oneness of God, ran counter to no philosophic opinion of his. He respected their faith; his conception of divinity was closer to the unitarian dogma  [Graeme: interestingly Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was also a Unitarian who believed in "reason". It may be only a slight oversimplification to note that, being aware of this, Herr Hitler had but to convince Chamberlain that he too was "reasonable" to achieve many of his territorial goals before war became inevitable. A similar widespread degeneration of Christian doctrine in the post-Christian West is evident today. We are ignorant and too unwilling to discuss the thornier issues] of Islam than to the trinitarian dogma of the various Christian confessions. As the founder of a religion, as a lawmaker, Mahomet aroused his admiration.
...
     [In his writing & recorded conversations] there are some of the most impartial and some of the most sympathetic pages ever written on Islam in a Western language. To convince the Mussulmans of Egypt of the benevolence of his intention, genuine as it was; to declare and prove it to them - this was the essence of Bonaparte's religious policy. ...
[He spoke many reassuring words and took concrete steps to ensure compliance with Islamic sensibilities, but] These precautions did not overcome the suspicion and hostility inspired by the French, as infidels, in the majority of the Mussulmans of Egypt.
...
         A war from which few European conquerors in Islamic countries have escaped was preached by the imams and was brewing in Egypt - the Holy War. ... However sincere the declarations, the protestations of friendship of an infidel would always be suspect. The only declarations that had any chance of being listened to by the masses were those of the Mussulman religious leaders, authorizing and ordering obedience to the French. 'We had to convince and win over the muftis, the ulema, the sherifs, and the imams, so that they would interpret the Koran in [our favour].'
...
       Bonaparte sought recognition by [Egypt and all the surrounding Muslim countries] as a friend and protector of Islam. ... 'In Egypt I have reassured the people, and protected the muftis and imams and the mosques. The pilgrims from Mecca have never been welcomed with more friendly attentions than I have shown them; the festival of the prophet has just been celebrated with more splendour than ever'.

All this does sound a lot like the words and actions of the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan after the recent wars doesn't it? Indeed all over the West our leaders are bending over backwards to accommodate & befriend the "religion of peace" (mustn't offend by saying it's ever been anything but that eh?) and proclaim its eminent compatibility - even superiority - to our own way of life.

But there is nothing new under the sun. Such transparent flattery & appeasement as we see in these days has a long history. It didn't work before. It will not work again. What is worse contemporary Islamist leadership can spot a quisling, a flatterer, a useful fool and the ignorant very easily. Such people may be led by the nose quite well to either a banquet or to a slaughter. Whatever is deemed to advance the temporal goals of Islam while also advancing its eternal goals. And the eternal goals are always paramount.

Not all opposition comes in the form of violent jihad. The most effective, to which we now readily prostrate ourselves, is the "good cop/bad cop" routine being played out before us. "Respect our beliefs (of course - as we respect yours!) or we really cannot be held responsible for what some of our younger men will do about you being so unreasonable." The Islamist leadership need not bother with this charade while our leaders seem very willing to accept any excuse to capitulate.

And if we stubbornly remain uninterested in the details of this religion - its doctrines and history - how will we ascertain what such goals might be? What is worse is that today it is not only us in Muslim lands but Muslims in our lands and the issues simply must be reckoned with at some stage. Surely we should have the upper hand in this struggle to retain our own way of life. Yet to observe our leaders is to believe the opposite.

We should take the warning. But we won't.
Is that too pessimistic of me? 
I really don't think so.

You see, there really is nothing new under the Sun.


>>>>>>>>>>
Islam’s Thousand Year War on Christendom
William Kilpatrick

At a time when Catholic youth are taught that Islam means peace, pilgrimage and prayer, and Catholic adults are under the impression that Muslims are a misunderstood minority who only want to share their values and their baba ghanoush, it’s refreshing to occasionally make contact with reality.

I mean “refreshing” here in the sense that a dive into chilly waters is refreshing. I just finished reading Raymond Ibrahim’s Sword and Scimitar, a history of fourteen centuries of war between Islam and the West, and the effect is similar to the shocked-awake effect of a plunge into cold water.

Not that I didn’t have a general acquaintance with the history, but one tends to forget the details, and the devil, as they say, is in the details. Ibrahim supplies plenty of those. Moreover, the details are so shocking that one is inclined to think that the devil was intimately involved in the centuries-long jihad against Christendom.

Indeed, that’s exactly what many Christians of those times did think. Muhammad and Islam were frequently referred to by popes and peasants alike as “demonic,” “diabolic,” and “satanic.” For their part, Muslims had a particular hatred of Christians. They considered the Christian belief in Christ’s divinity to be a great sin against Allah. Wherever Muslim armies went they desecrated and destroyed churches, broke crosses and statues, and made a particular point of violating nuns and torturing priests and monks.

In short, the violent conflicts between Muslims and Christians were primarily religious wars, not, as many modern historians suggest, wars for resources or national interests. Some historians, it seems, are less interested in past events than in finding ways to fit those events into contemporary narratives. Their primary source is their own subjective “modern” outlook. By contrast, Ibrahim, who reads both Arabic and Greek, lets the Muslim and Christian witnesses to past events speak for themselves. Thus, when speaking of the Janissaries—Christian boys who were snatched from their parents and forced to become soldiers of Islam—Ibrahim, relying on centuries-old manuscripts, recounts the horror of the abductions, the abuse of the boys, and their transformation into Islamic true believers who were then turned loose against their former kin. By contrast, according to modern academics, the indoctrination of the Janissaries was “the equivalent of sending a child away for a prestigious education and training for a lucrative career.”

Despite the passage of more than a thousand years, the Muslim-Christian conflict was marked by certain constants. There is a remarkable continuity of belief and behavior—especially on the part of the Muslims.

One of the recurring themes is that of world conquest commanded by Allah. Muslims justified all of their wars and depredations during this immense stretch of history by referring to the Koran and to the words and deeds of Muhammad. Muslim leaders did not look upon their conquests as simply local affairs, but as stepping stones to subjugating the earth. Thus, two common refrains across the centuries were “we will stable our horses in Constantinople” and “we will stable our horses in Rome”—and this from warlords who may have been more than a thousand miles distant from either Rome or Constantinople. When, in 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams inquired of Tripoli’s ambassador to Britain why the Barbary States preyed on American shipping, they were informed that according to the laws of their prophet, Muslims had a “right and duty” to make war on all nations that did not acknowledge their authority.

Another constant over the centuries is what Ibrahim calls the “win-win” bargain. Whether a Muslim lived or died in battle, he was guaranteed a reward either way. If he survived a raid or battle he would be rewarded with plunder, slaves, and concubines. If he died, all his sins would be forgiven by Allah, and he would be saved from the tortures of hell. In addition, he would be rewarded in paradise with food, drink, and seventy-two “eternally young” virgins (houris). Indeed, Muslim officers and preachers would circulate among the troops before battle, reassuring them of their immortal rewards should they die in battle. Many early chronicles attributed Muslim zeal and fanaticism in battle to the “win-win” incentive.

Still another constant was slavery. One modern historian observes that “the Islamic jihad looks uncomfortably like a giant slave trade.” The number of the enslaved was astronomical. It was not unusual for a campaign to result in the enslavement of 100,000 people. Between 1530 and 1780, the Barbary Coast Muslims enslaved at least a million Europeans. Some three million Slavs—Poles, Lithuanians, Russians, and Ukrainians—were enslaved between 1450 and 1783. Millions more were taken captive by the Muslim conquerors of Spain [Graeme: Ah! The Golden Age of Andalusian tolerance!]. One caliph, Abd al-Rahman III, had 3,750 slaves and 6,300 concubines.

Slaving raids were also carried out in Ireland, England, Denmark, and as far away as Iceland and Scandinavia. Slaves were used for labor, as soldiers, and as concubines. White slaves were highly prized, especially blonde and red-headed girls and women. Black slaves were routinely castrated. Although few Americans are aware of the fact, the Arab and Ottoman slave trade lasted far longer than the Atlantic slave trade and resulted in the loss of many more lives.

Even America did not escape the reach of Islamic jihad. In its formative years, as Ibrahim points out, America was forced to make jizya payments—amounting to 16 percent of the federal budget—to Algeria for the release of captured American sailors. Indeed, America’s first war as a nation was a war against Islam. Over a period of thirty-two years, the American navy fought an intermittent war to put an end to the Barbary States’ attacks on American shipping. That is what is referred to by the “shores of Tripoli” in the Marine Corps hymn.

Sword and Scimitar puts to rest several important myths. One of these myths is that Christians were the aggressors in this long and bloody conflict. This is decidedly not the case. For example, the modern idea that “the crusades were unprovoked wars of conquest” is demonstrably false. As Ibrahim points out, the crusades were a very belated response to 400 years of Muslim conquest. Two-thirds of the Christian world had already been devoured by Muslim armies before Pope Urban II made his appeal to the knights of Christendom. Many regions which are now solidly Muslim were once Christian. All of the twenty-two nations which now comprise the “Arab world” in the Middle East and North Africa were Christian. The same is true of Turkey, whose capital, Constantinople, was once the center of Christendom.

Perhaps the major lesson of Ibrahim’s timely book is that little has changed over the centuries. One of the misleading myths of our time is that al-Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram, and other major terrorist groups have perverted the meaning of Islam. They are variously described as having “hijacked,” “distorted,” or “misunderstood” the true message of Islam. History says otherwise. According to Ibrahim, “this book…records a variety of Muslims across time and space behaving exactly like the Islamic State and for the same reasons.” “Muslim hostility to the West,” he observes, “is not an aberration but a continuation of Islamic history.” Against today’s wishful thinking about Islam’s peaceful intentions, Sword and Scimitar documents “what Muslims have actually done to and in the West for centuries.”

The historical record also reveals two perennial weaknesses of the Western response to Islam. One is disunity. There were several cases of Christians failing to come to the aid of other Christians. And there were even cases of Christians taking the side of Islam. Protestant Queen Elizabeth I formed an alliance with the Barbary pirates against Catholic Spain, and Protestant Count Tholky of Hungary actually marched with the Turks against Catholic Vienna. Likewise, some Catholic rulers had more interest in fighting other Christians than in fighting the Turks. According to one historian, King Charles V “would spend more time, money, and energy fighting the French and the Protestants than he ever devoted to the war with Suleiman.” More shamefully, Louis XIV supported the Ottoman siege of Vienna with men, money, and engineers. When Jan Sobieski’s victorious army inspected the field of battle, “a great many French” bodies were found alongside the Turks.

A second Western weakness was indifference. Many Western leaders took little notice of approaching threats until Muslim armies were on their doorstep. As Pope Sixtus IV warned European rulers:
        Let them not think that they are protected against invasion, those who are at a distance from the theatre of war! They, too, will bow the neck beneath the yoke…unless they come forward to meet the invader.

Even though the distance between peoples as measured by days and weeks has shrunk drastically, many in the West today still maintain an attitude of indifference toward the threat from Islam. They think that the persecution of Christians in the Middle East and Africa can’t happen to them. And many in America are unaware of the accelerating Islamization of Europe. They would do well to heed Pope Sixtus IV’s words: “Let them not think that they are protected against invasion.”

Can’t happen in the here and now? As Sword and Scimitar ably demonstrates, what has happened over and over in the past is very likely to happen again.

++++++++++++
William Kilpatrick taught for many years at Boston College. He is the author of several books about cultural and religious issues, including Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right From Wrong; and Christianity, Islam and Atheism: The Struggle for the Soul of the West and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Jihad. His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including Catholic World Report, National Catholic Register, Aleteia, Saint Austin Review, Investor’s Business Daily, and First Things. His work is supported in part by the Shillman Foundation. For more on his work and writings, visit his website, turningpointproject.com

We are always being told that real jihad is an internal spiritual struggle to be a better person aren't we?

Yeah, got a problem with that.

​As the eminent scholar of Islam Robert Spencer has previously said,
     If jihad is simply a spiritual struggle, then why is there an entire chapter of the Qur’an entitled “Booty” or “The Spoils of War” (al-Anfal). What spoils ensue from a spiritual struggle? If jihad is simply a spiritual struggle, how is a Muslim supposed to make Jews and Christians “pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued” (Qur’an 9:29) spiritually? If jihad is simply a spiritual struggle, why are there thousands upon thousands of Muslims worldwide who have joined violent jihad groups? Why are there any violent jihad groups at all? Why is this misunderstanding of jihad so widespread?

Again here is what a book of Sharia Law itself says about this idea of Jihad being a spiritual struggle,
             The Shafi’i legal manual (the Shafi’is are a school of Islamic jurisprudence) ‘Umdat al-Salik (Reliance of the Traveller), which has been certified by al-Azhar, the foremost authority in Sunni Islam, as conforming to the “practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community,” devotes one paragraph to jihad as spiritual struggle and seven pages to jihad as warfare. It makes it quite clear that jihad is warfare against non-Muslims:

Jihad means to war against non-Muslims, and is etymologically derived from the word ‘mujahada’, signifying warfare to establish the religion. And it is the lesser jihad. As for the greater jihad, it is spiritual warfare against the lower self (nafs), which is why the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said as he was returning from jihad,

“We have returned from the lesser jihad to the greater jihad.”

The scriptural basis for jihad, prior to scholarly consensus is such Koranic verses as:
(1) “Fighting is prescribed for you” (Koran 2:216);
(2) “Slay them wherever you find them” (Koran 4:89);
(3) “Fight the idolators utterly” (Koran 9:36);

and such hadiths as the one related by Bukhari and Muslim that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said:

“I have been commanded to fight people until they testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, and perform the prayer, and pay zakat. If they say it, they have saved their blood and possessions from me, except for the rights of Islam over them. And their final reckoning is with Allah.”

and the hadith reported by Muslim,
“To go forth in the morning or evening to fight in the path of Allah is better than the whole world and everything in it.'”

So, if we are to trust what the authoritative sources and great scholars of Islam say about the matter, Jihad is primarily warfare of one sort or another against non-Muslims, not a form of spiritual self-improvement. By all means self-improve, but only after the warfare is over.

I'd have thought those statements should carry a lot of weight. Up to you though. Those sources and scholars may just be rampantly Islamophobic eh? 


>>>>>>>>>>>>
Video: Robert Spencer interviewed on CBN about The History of Jihad
On Monday I was at CBN for a wide-ranging interview with Pat Robertson on the 700 Club on my book The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS, which you can order here now.

Just leave your petty bourgeois fears & insecurities behind and trust our professors OK?

Alas, I am in the camp of Dr Daniel Pipes on this one: the professors (one of his "6 P's": politicians, police, prosecutors, professors, the press and yes, priests) are more often part of the problem than the solution.

Here is a fabulously informative article by Bruce Bawer. The seeds of the same issue are present here in New Zealand. Very pertinent.


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​Then: “Islamic Europe? Ridiculous!” Now: “Islamic Europe? Inevitable – and Terrific!”
European elite changes its tune - to enable surrender.

One week back in 2007, I was paid a not inconsiderable sum of money to fly first class from Oslo to Washington, D.C., on the Tuesday and to fly back on the Thursday, so that I could give a hour-long lunchtime talk on the Wednesday to an audience of American and international diplomats. Given that I had been compensated so well and given, as it was explained to me, that I had been accorded the star spot, the sole solo turn, in the middle of a day-long conference consisting otherwise of panel discussions about Western Europe, I foolishly expected a friendly reception.

My first doubts in this respect began to arise only moments after the event kicked off. Sitting through the morning's panels, I heard one highly credentialed individual after another – professors, politicians, and retired and active diplomats from various countries – join in predicting a glowing future for Western Europe. Socially and economically, they all agreed, prospects looked a lot brighter for Western Europe than for America. Not a single one of the dozen or so panelists diverged from this consensus.

After three or four hours of sunny prophesizing, everybody lined up for the buffet. When they were all back in their seats, I was introduced and, from a lectern up front, proceeded to serve up a condensed version of the argument of my 2006 book While Europe Slept. I described the rise of Islam in Western Europe, the failure of Muslims to integrate, and the consequent increase in gang crime, welfare dependency, forced marriage, sharia-run enclaves, and numerous other ills – the usual litany. Western Europe, I maintained, was undergoing a radical metamorphosis that, unless drastic action were taken, would ultimately bring its liberal democracies crashing down.

It's easy to read an audience. As I spoke, I could feel the snappily dressed, self-impressed-looking crowd growing restive. When I was done and they were invited to ask questions, I didn't get questions but incredibly condescending razzes, remonstrations, and reproaches. A German envoy reacted angrily to my account of some recent incident – I don't remember what – that had taken place in her country. Her colleagues from a couple of other countries had similar bones to pick. “These are just anecdotes!” one diplomat thundered dismissively. I tried to engage them in a reasonable give-and-take, but they weren't having it. 

What made the experience especially striking was that over the course of the previous year or so I'd given a number of talks about the same subject in Europe and North America. The audiences had been composed not of credentialed foreign-policy experts but of ordinary citizens. All of them had recognized that what I was saying was true. During the Q&A sessions, they'd been eager to express their gratitude that someone was talking about these matters, eager to recount their own horrific experiences with the consequences of mass Muslim immigration, and eager to vent their frustration at political leaders who refused to listen to them, to care about their sufferings, or even to acknowledge the plain objective facts.

On that day in Washington, after my lunchtime talk was over, I thought that despite the reception I had received, it would only be polite to stay for the rest of the day's proceedings. I sat there in the audience, then, as the first of the afternoon panel discussions got underway. It began with all of the panelists voicing outrage over my remarks and basically calling me an idiot. One of them, while professing to be astonished at my incomprehensibly buffoonish and offensive views, noted that, remarkably enough, Walter Laqueur – the distinguished elder historian, world-class Europe expert, and sometime professor at places like Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Chicago – had just published a book (The Last Days of Europe) in which he made arguments that were essentially identical to my own. It didn't occur to that panelist to wonder why, if I was so wrongheaded, Walter Laqueur actually agreed with me.

In any case, once I heard myself being bad-mouthed from the stage, I got up and bolted. I've never been sorry that I went, however. For one thing, it was a nice payday. For another, it opened my eyes big time. This was supposed to be a gathering of some of the world's most knowledgeable people on the subject of contemporary Europe. Yet they were either ignorant of, or in deep denial about, things that ordinary people all over Europe – people whom they would surely dismiss as lowbrows – knew all about. That event sent my opinion of diplomats plummeting to rock bottom. It made me even more cynical than I already was about persons who were considered experts simply because of institutional credentials. Years later, when people started talking about the Deep State, I knew what they were talking about, because I'd been in the room with it that day.

I mention that event in Washington not because it was an outlier in my experience of public discussions about Islam but because it was thoroughly consistent with what was, at the time, the reigning attitude of the Western cultural establishment toward any expression of concern about the topic. I recall, for instance, an omnibus review in the Financial Times of While Europe Slept, Bat Ye’or’s Eurabia, Melanie Phillips’s Londonistan, and Walter Laqueur’s The Last Days of Europe – four books by authors with very different backgrounds but making very similar arguments. How to explain this? Were we all part of some cabal? The reviewer wasn't troubled by that question. Indeed, he wasn't troubled by any of the hundreds of exceedingly troubling anecdotes in any of our books. No, as far as he was concerned, our books were just dystopic jeremiads written by hysterical bigots. Western Europe was in great shape. Islam wasn't about to take over anything.

One more example. In March 2007, Newsweek ran a “special report” on “Europe at 50.” That piece, too, cited a handful of recent books about the rise of Islam in Europe, my own included. Like the Financial Times reviewer, the Newsweek writer was thoroughly dismissive. Citing our worries about Western Europe's Islamization, he wrote: “To most who live in Europe – or have visited lately – all this seems wrong, even absurd.” Far from being in peril of Muslim domination, he asserted, Europe was moving from strength to strength: “50 years after the EU’s march to unity began, it is now Europe, not the United States, that’s held up as a new lamp unto the nations.”

Cut to 2018. As it turns out, it's not Europe but Islam in Europe that's been moving from strength to strength. As the number of terrorist atrocities, mass car burnings, and gang riots and rapes across Western Europe climbs relentlessly, it's harder and harder to hold up Europe as “a new lamp unto the nations.” Consequently, the elite's message about Islam in Europe has begun to shift. Only the day before yesterday, it seemed, they were telling us – and many of them, to be sure, are still telling us – that it's preposterous to suggest that Western Europe's present order is on the verge of being undone. But now at least some of them are starting to sing a different tune. Yes, they admit, Islam is taking over Western Europe – but hey, there's no reason to worry about it!

Case in point: on March 28 of last year, the Dutch newspaper Trouw ran an interview with Maurice Crul, a professor at the Free University of Amsterdam who “has been conducting research on migration and integration for twenty-five years.” Since only every third Amsterdammer under age fifteen is of Dutch descent, noted Crul, ethnic Dutch people will soon be a minority in that city. The same holds for other major Western European burgs. For Crul, the lesson here is obvious: integration “now works in two directions.” Meaning what? Meaning that Western European natives who have been complaining for years about the failure of immigrants to integrate will themselves henceforth be obliged to integrate into the new, multicultural urban landscapes.

“White Dutch people have to get used to this idea,” Crul insisted. Trouw's interviewer neglected to ask him exactly how much of Muslim culture the ethnic Dutch, as part of their integration process, should be expected to accept as majoritarian norms. Forced marriage? Imam-approved school curricula? Honor killing? Should Dutch women who don't want to be raped start wearing hijab? Does Crul, who's been studying this stuff for a quarter century, have any clue that what he's talking about is gradually accepting and accommodating Islamic strictures until all of Western Europe is under sharia law?

Crul isn't alone. This past August 6, the German newspaper Tagesspiegel published a column by Barbara John, a retired 80-year-old politician who belongs to Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union Party. John noted that in some major German cities, people with foreign backgrounds already outnumber native Germans. In Frankfurt, for example, 51.2 percent of the population is non-German. This trend, John pronounced, “is irreversible.” It “awakens fears,” she added. “But they are unfounded.” She held up Rotterdam and Amsterdam as examples of immigrant-heavy cities that are doing just dandy. “After all,” she stated, the new majorities in those cities consist of “many immigrant groups, which differ enormously in education, ethnicity, religion, culture and finances,” and are thus divided from one another, and from ethnic Dutch people, in many ways.

Yes, there are people from all kinds of backgrounds in Western Europe's largest cities. But only one of those backgrounds is problematic. At this point, no one needs to be told why. At present, Muslims make up about 17% of the population of Antwerp and Brussels, 22% of Birmingham, 25% of Marseille, 11% of Amsterdam, 13% of Rotterdam, and 13% of Frankfurt. Immigration patterns and demographic trends indicate that those numbers will increase steadily in the years to come, and eventually, I repeat, all of Western Europe will be under sharia law. Or, as John puts it so prettily, “many things will be different and some things will be better.”

Well, she'll be dead and it won't matter to her. But to the children and grandchildren of today's Western European adults –  people who never voted to have their countries turned over to foreigners and, ultimately, governed by Islamic law – it will matter. To read these blithe reassurances from the likes of Maurice Crul and Barbara John is to recognize them as precisely the kind of people who, at that 2007 conference in Washington, mocked those of us who warned that Western Europe was in for an impending transformation of colossal proportions. Now our warnings are beginning to be treated as received truths, even as those of us who issued the warnings continue to be treated as pariahs. For the nature of our perceived offense is starting to shift, too. These days, more and more, the crime isn't predicting a Muslim takeover of Western Europe. The crime is complaining about it instead of humbly and obediently adapting to it.  

I found this excellent scholarly inquiry into the roots of Islam at the Gates of Vienna. 

It is my intention that it remind us (particularly my fellow Christians, who are the best equipped of all people to understand Islam) that we are obligated to treat Islam like any other religion or set of beliefs. We are obligated to scrutinise the origins, teachings & central personalities of the Faith. Muslims should welcome this as Christians have welcomed it. If only...

How does the history of Islam stand up to scrutiny? The answer is: abysmally. It is quite crushed.
One hour. Enjoy!


>>>>>>>>>>
What Mohammed? What Koran? What Mecca?
The following video is an excellent introduction by Dr. Jay Smith to the deconstruction by Western scholars of the Koran, Mohammed, and Islam itself. Using hermeneutics, textual analysis, archaeology, and other modern disciplines, he demonstrates that the three principal elements of Islam could not possibly be factually true in the way they are traditionally expounded:
1. Mohammed                                                           
2. The Koran
3. Mecca
 
The archaeology and relevant historical documents simply do not support the traditions of Islam. Something happened in Arabia between the 7th and 10th centuries, but it certainly wasn’t what is described in the Koran, the Hadith, and the Sira.

A large part of Dr. Smith’s analysis focuses on the qiblas in the oldest mosques, which did not point to Mecca, but to Petra, in what is now Jordan. He explains the likely significance of the switch from Petra to Mecca, which was prompted by the conflict between the Abbasid and Umayyad dynasties in the late first millennium. He also explains the political necessities that likely motivated Abd al-Malik to invent and backdate Mohammed, the Koran, and Islam itself:

>>>>>>>>
Confronting the Spirit of the Age: Concerning the Qur'an and the origins of Islam

"Swedish conditions".
Uh-huh.

The climate is changing there and we are even being told that nothing whatsoever is happening. Even by Snopes. Even by top Swedish politicians. We are being misled. And if you live in Uppsala, Malmo or Rinkeby you will know we are being misled. But who will listen to you?

As an aside: After the treatment of Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux I couldn't help but smile at the ludicrous & apologetic treatment surrounding actual reporting - rare as that was during the visit of those two - you'll see what I mean. Our media and many politicians are right up there with Sweden in our ability to make candy-floss castles to live in and then get shocked when the rain washes them away.

It doesn't get much more deluded than that.

I really apologise for the dropping of the "F" bomb in this otherwise well researched and informative 14 minute video. Such language is so commonplace these days I know, but it did nearly cause me not to post this valuable clip. Sorry, lot's of useful information will, I hope, offset this.

How's that mass Islamic migration thing going these days in France? Well it depends to whom one listens. How to navigate through all the disinformation & bias? I hope this 13 minute video will help. When the President of the United States makes a strong statement it should be scrutinised, not merely accepted. So let's scrutinise it.

There is far too much foul language in the clip which, once again nearly caused me not to post it (that's why I used a different viewer, regrettably even the title is crass). But once again there is a lot of useful information in it that needs to be shared.

Growing Antisemitism? Violence? Awful attitudes to women? Crime & drugs? This will help you decide if President Trump's "Paris is no longer Paris" is at all accurate. 

Calculated or uncalculated risk.

I really like this couple. I like their attitude regarding looking for the best in others and expecting to find it. I love their sense of adventure. My own father travelled by motorcycle from England through Europe, the Middle East, Persia (as it then was known), India and Australia to arrive in New Zealand. This is a vulnerable thing to do. One deliberate act of malice and you're left without your material possessions, your health or even your life. It involves genuine risk.

The couple above rode their bicycles with friends through Tajikistan and were run down and then stabbed to death by Sharia compliant Muslims. I'm absolutely certain that on their journey they were blessed by much hospitality and kindness by other Muslims, but it was the Sharia compliant ones - those serious about following their Faith - that ended their lives. 

As I say, I love their attitude, except ... they were also simply too wishful-thinking and unrealistic in their approach. It brings to mind a story from Mark Steyn's book America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It in which he describes a similar person, a young European woman determined to believe in the innate goodness of people who dressed in a wedding dress and hitch-hiked through Europe to the Middle East. Well, actually she got as far as Turkey before being picked up, raped, murdered and having her body left in a ditch. 

There are proper limits which must be put in place around our positivity and altruism. Such limits allow us to continue practising our good will on another day. To deny the imposition of these limits will mean that we have a decided to play Russian roulette with life itself and deny basic human nature and the nature of the world. 

There are bad people out there. There are very, very bad people. We must prepare accordingly while continuing to live in hope and optimism about our ability to change the world. Tragically, this dear couple did not make the distinction and paid the price.

Robert Spencer offers his thoughts on this disaster. Yes he uses what is to us the unhelpful "Left/Right" paradigm language, but I believe his general warning needs to be heard by many of us. Poverty is not the only driver for crime. Welcome all refugees regardless of vetting? To not study the belief systems and worldviews of those who commit crimes en masse (such as Swedish "carbeques" and British Muslim rape gangs) because they are seen to be irrelevant is not good. 

These are disasters waiting to happen and we would be bringing them upon ourselves. I don't want to see any more people make the same mistake as this young couple. May God help us delineate between virtue & folly.


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
U.S. Couple Murdered by ISIS Fell Victim to Left’s Fantasy World
via PJ Media
The story has invited more derision than sympathy for the victims: a couple that ridiculed the idea that “the world is a big, scary place” was murdered by Islamic State (ISIS) jihadis while biking through Tajikistan. But those who are mocking Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan for their naivete are being too harsh.

The responsibility for their deaths lies not just with ISIS, or with this starry-eyed couple, but also with the Leftist world in which they moved and lived. The Left’s leaders constructed a fantasy world, because Leftist ideas are dead on the drawing board without it.

In their fantasy world, Islam is peace. Borders and nation-states are unwelcome relics of a bygone age, because people are good everywhere -- with the exception of Donald Trump and the “far-right.”

Austin, an employee of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Geoghegan, who worked at Georgetown University, decided two years ago to leave their jobs and go on a bike ride around the world. They kept a blog about their journey, on which Austin wrote last April:

   You watch the news and you read the papers and you’re led to believe that the world is a big, scary place. People, the narrative goes, are not to be trusted. People are bad. People are evil. People are axe murderers and monsters and worse. 
I don’t buy it. Evil is a make-believe concept we’ve invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans holding values and beliefs and perspectives different than our own -- it’s easier to dismiss an opinion as abhorrent than strive to understand it. Badness exists, sure, but even that’s quite rare. By and large, humans are kind. Self-interested sometimes, myopic sometimes, but kind. Generous and wonderful and kind. No greater revelation has come from our journey than this.

Yes, Austin and Geoghegan were unwise to carry this Pollyannish philosophy into Muslim Central Asia, but they didn’t originate it. In this sad episode, ISIS is not the only one with blood on their hands.

Where did Austin get the idea that “evil is a make-believe concept? Perhaps in today’s universities, which are saturated with moral relativism, contemptuous of absolutes, and dogmatically convinced that there is no dispute between people that can’t be settled by mutually respectful “dialogue.”

This perspective dominates contemporary culture, and is taken for granted even at the highest level. When Barack Obama and John Kerry entered into negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran, they were working upon the assumption that it was wrong to think that people “are not to be trusted” and that “people are evil.” Obama and Kerry were essentially embracing the idea that “evil is a make-believe concept.” That the mullahs were perhaps “self-interested sometimes, myopic sometimes,” but ultimately good-hearted. The Leftist intelligentsia was and still is unanimous in applauding that initiative.

Likewise, it is a matter of dogmatic certainty for the Left that Islam is a religion of peace, and that only racist, bigoted “Islamophobes” think otherwise. Why should Austin and Geoghegan have had any reason to be concerned about bicycle riding through the Muslim-majority countries of Central Asia?

After all, those who don’t believe that “evil is a make-believe concept” are subject to furious and concerted demonization. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) -- and the establishment media that treats the SPLC as if it were a reliable source -- sees only one group of genuinely evil people in the world. Those who recognize that there are evil forces in the world that are set against the United States, and who want to protect Americans against Islamic jihadists, criminal migrants, and more, are the only evil ones. Austin and Geoghegan no doubt had nothing but contempt for such “intolerance” and “hate” manifested by foes of jihad terror and unrestricted illegal immigration.

The Left forces people to believe these fantasies, lest they be charged with “hatred” and “bigotry.” The people who filled Austin’s and Geoghegan’s heads with this nonsense bullied them towards their deaths.

The problem with these fantasies is that reality keeps breaking through. Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan discovered too late that some people are evil. Will the West rid itself of the Leftist fantasies that led to their deaths before many more end up dead from embracing them?

Peers of the realm are meant to be chivalrous and it's extremely encouraging to find at least one getting involved as they should in these matters. She makes exactly the same allegations many of us do. But as Baroness Cox is not a "football hooligan" (given the etymology of that term isn't it racist to smear all the Irish? Just saying) or any other kind of "Islamophobe", but a lovely & well educated lady, she might get a hearing where the rest of us would not. 

Four minutes from someone who has a well researched understanding of the problems surrounding Islam and can offer a coherent explanation for what she does. Well worth hearing.

Go on, tell me she's racist for being so concerned about Muslim women. 
I dare you.


>>>>>>>>>>>
Jihad Watch's UK correspondent Joshua Winston interviews Baroness Caroline Cox. She discusses her activism and in particular the bill she is trying to pass through Parliament, which would see an end to Sharia courts.

You may have noticed recently that some heavy hitters are starting to knock around people whose opinions they do not like. Overseas examples include Alex Jones, Gavin McInnes, Pamela Geller & Robert Spencer among others. The scholarly Robert Spencer has in particular been given a ridiculously hard time, losing his Patreon account and upon moving to gofundme he's struck similar issues there. Why? He's called far-right, white supremacist and an Islamophobe. Yet he's never said anything racist, his only concern is the threat of Sharia on the world stage and in the West. Is it racist now to stand up for freedom from oppression and for the equality of women?

Here in New Zealand we've beheld something very disturbing happening that led to the abrupt closure of the venue Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux were set to use for their one public talk here. Massey University then de-platformed a retired conservative politician who was to speak on the chilling effect PC culture may be having on free speech today. It appears that Massey has a considerable irony deficiency. We could try pointing it out to them but I don't think they'd understand.

All this represents what some of us are afraid is a new effort to control language and information. To reform concepts and to frame arguments in certain set ways which are not open to debate. "You disagree with me on a point? You must be a nationalist/populist/ racist/fascist/Islamophobe - I needn't listen to you. Furthermore you do not deserve to have anyone listen to you and I will do all I can to ensure no-one can. Everyone! Come and help me shut this hater up!"

Now in contrast that does indeed sound a bit fascist doesn't it? Does no-one do any research any more? I mean real research - not a quick look at a Wikipedia article and a couple of videos produced by people whose opinions we historically resonate with.

Below is an article from the Barnabas Fund on the winding back of freedom of religion in Britain. It is very interesting in that it raises the concern that - for the very best reasons according to its proponents of course - freedom of choice, of speech, of association and of conscience are being eroded in our increasingly multi-cultural societies in order that we not upset any minority group.

Indeed, the only group it seems that can be upset is the group deemed singularly deserving of criticism: the majority population and in particular those collectively understood to be responsible for any problems faced by any of the minorities. As this only seems to be a phenomenon of the West that majority group is dominated by the more traditional white males among us.

You know, I don't think this is a good way to go.

We need only look at South Africa today where those considered to have had their own way for far too long are about to lose legal rights - along with their farms. Is this justice? Would you think so if you were one of the farmers about to have their land taken by force? Is racism, nationalism and populism OK when it's not white people doing it? How did we arrive at this point?

Rowan Atkinson's speech in the 9 minute video at the end is from 5 years ago when hate speech laws were trying to be established in British law. It just keeps getting more and more pertinent. How long before this blog is considered "fake news" or "hate speech"? How long before dissenting views make one a social pariah, unable to use a bank account or social media or to keep a job? All these things have already happened to some overseas. 

The more diverse societies become the more we need the safety valve and release of free speech. There will be frictions. Forbidding criticism of the problems - or even expressions that problems exist out of a sense of politeness - will not ameliorate matters it will only build resentment and inevitably make things worse in the long run. If the Muslim rape gangs in Britain had been squarely identified and addressed back around 1975 when they first became known we would not have had all the carnage of destroyed lives and greatly increased community tensions that followed.

Time to relocate our core values I think.
​Before it's too late.


>>>>>>>>>>
The slippery slope: from full freedom of religion back to “toleration”
  Do you know the difference between toleration of religion and full freedom of religion? They sound the same don’t they? But there is a vitally important difference. In countries with religious toleration, Christians are generally allowed to worship but they face restrictions such as not being allowed to do certain jobs, not being allowed to meet for worship or openly preach their faith outside church buildings.

Although Christians in some countries face arrest and outright persecution from the government, in others they are allowed to worship but face serious restrictions. They are excluded from some public posts, may be excluded from attending university, standing for election and have to be very careful about any public display of their faith. In other words, they are tolerated on sufferance.

Repeal of the “Toleration Act” and gradual establishment of religious freedom
For about two centuries the UK had religious toleration, which eventually developed into full freedom of religion in 1888. In 1689 the English and Welsh parliament passed a “Toleration Act” which allowed Nonconformists (Protestants who were not members of the Anglican established church) and Catholics to meet for worship, subject to certain restrictions.

Gradually over the following two centuries those restrictions were repealed, first for Nonconformists, then for Catholics, then for Jews and finally even for atheists. A significant example was the repeal, in 1719, of the law requiring school teachers to affirm publicly the then dominant belief system of Anglicanism.  

During the next 170 years a series of other “Test Acts” were abolished which had excluded non-Anglicans from being lawyers, army officers, magistrates, town mayors, students or academics at Oxford and Cambridge universities or becoming an MP. Restrictions on public expression of non-Anglican forms of belief were also gradually lifted. Importantly, in 18121 the Five Mile Act was repealed which had made it illegal to have a non-Anglican place of worship within five miles of any town sending an MP to parliament.

Slipping back down the slope to mere toleration?
So, in 1888, when the last of these restrictions were lifted and even atheists were allowed to sit in parliament, the UK entered a period of full freedom of religion. However, today there is a real risk that the UK is slipping back down the slippery slope from full freedom of religion to mere toleration, on sufferance. Like the proverbial frog in a saucepan of water that is being slowly brought to the boil, Christians in the West could all too easily become accustomed to this gradual erosion of freedom of religion, not noticing until it is too late.

Let’s take the recent case of Allan Coote, an ordinary Christian from East London who believed God wanted him to read the Bible in front of St Paul’s cathedral. He was arrested while reading the verses from the sermon of the mount which says “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:10). Since Barnabas Fund first publicised his story on 10 July, it has been carried by national newspapers such as the Mail on Sunday, the Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph and even by the media in countries such as the USA and New Zealand. Yet, what happened to Allan is just further slippage on a slippery slope that began 21 years ago.

Step one on the slippery slope
1997 marked a particular turning point. Until then no street preachers had been arrested since Victorian times. Then, an evangelist Alison Redmond-Bate was arrested after preaching on the steps of Wakefield Cathedral and convicted. However, the High Court subsequently overturned her conviction with Lord Justice Sedley declaring, "Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having.”

He also said that even if a crowd of hecklers are becoming unruly the police cannot order a preacher to stop because, “a police officer has no right to call upon a citizen to desist from lawful conduct."

Since then we have seen literally dozens of arrests of street preachers, with many held in custody for the best part of the day, then either released without charge or bailed, with the Crown Prosecution Service quietly dropping charges weeks later. Even when they do go to court the preachers are often acquitted, sometimes within minutes.

Step two on the slippery slope
In February 2017, during the trial of two street preachers the Crown Prosecution Service lawyer claimed that quoting from the King James Bible, “in the context of modern British society, must be considered to be abusive and is a criminal matter.”

Both preachers were convicted but this was overturned by the Crown Court in a retrial.

Step three on the slippery slope
On Christmas Eve 2017, Roland Parsons was peacefully reading the nativity story from Luke 1:52-68 outside Victoria Underground station in London as he had done every Christmas Eve for the previous 20 years. On this year, however, he was approached by a police officer and ordered to stop. Mr Parsons said:

“As an Open Air Preacher for 34 years I have stood outside Victoria Underground Station in London on Christmas Eve and read the account of the birth of Jesus Christ, usually from Luke chapters 1 and 2. Over the years many weary travellers have come up to my wife and I with great delight at hearing those familiar verses, thanked us. The occasional official has raised his eyebrows, but as soon as they heard the familiar verses that are so beloved within the traditional English Parish church carol service they have let it continue.”

But as from Christmas Eve 2017 this reading has now been stopped.

The slippery slope continues: where we are today
Staff at St Paul’s Cathedral asked police to stop Allan Coote reading from the Bible, even though he was not committing a criminal offence and even though another police officer said there was no offence and it would be “remiss to stop a man reading the Bible in a place of worship”. St Paul’s have claimed they would treat anyone outside the cathedral the same way, but Allan is not the first Christian preacher to be silenced. Two years ago a Methodist minister received similar treatment. However, in 2011 cathedral authorities allowed anti-Capitalism protestors to occupy the area in front of St Paul’s for four months, even though this forced the closure of the cathedral. Then on Christmas Eve 2012 radical Muslims claiming Jesus is not the son of God held a protest there.

It is particularly sad that it is church authorities who have now sought to ban Bible reading in public although, following all the publicity, Allan’s case has now received they have relented and said they will allow it for half an hour a week! However, as Allan points out this is still placing restrictions on Christians reading the Bible in public. "They have allowed me to have half an hour a week to preach there but there should not be a limit,” he said, adding, “If I want to go all week, I should be allowed to do this without interruption.”

In other words, in the course of just 21 years we have moved down the slippery slope from street preachers not having been prosecuted since Victorian times to a point where preachers are regularly arrested and even church authorities seek to restrict the public reading the Bible. We are sliding further backwards from the full “Freedom of Religion” which was achieved 130 years ago to mere “Religious Toleration”, where Christians are still allowed to worship freely but restrictions are placed on other aspects of openly practising their faith.

Barnabas Fund is taking a lead in a UK-wide push back to Turn the Tide against the erosion of religious freedom in the UK. Barnabas Fund’s Our Religious Freedom Campaign and petition calls upon the UK government to introduce a new Act of Parliament to enshrine fully and permanently into law our hard-fought-for religious freedoms, including the freedom to read Scriptures in public.
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If you have not yet signed our petition calling for this please click here.

We keep hearing how much non-white Muslims suffer from racism from the majority in Western countries, don't we? Here's a 6 minute talk with a chap who left Islam and has a lot to say about being raised as a Pakistani Muslim in England, including how he was taught to be very, very racist.

He also discusses the Muslim rape gangs in Britain, which are often dismissed as cultural manifestations that have nothing to do with the profoundly generous and irenic religion of Islam. But if the problem is cultural then where are the Sikh or Christian Pakistanis doing these things? As our friend states, the role model of Muhammad remains the great stumbling block - as long as he remains the al-Insan al-Kamil, the "perfect man", the ideal example of a pleasing follower of Allah, then abhorrent and pestilential practises such as FGM, rape gangs and racism will persist among Muslims.

I do not believe it is possible to reform this character Muhammad. Honest scrutiny can only lead to him being dismissed altogether. Muslims can only continue to hold him up as a moral example either by ignoring all his foul deeds and statements or by placing them in some convenient, often imaginary context.

That is not good enough. It is dishonest.

For a mere man who continually stated that he was not God to nevertheless be treated as the flawless God is not good. There was only ever one man who claimed to be God who is the centre of a great world religion. Our Pakistani friend below has found him to indeed be the person he claimed to be. He also found Muhammad to be the person he claimed to be. 

The difference was so obvious that he had no choice but to change.
It's time for you to make the change too friend.
You can't go that way any more.

They seem particularly adroit at discerning its presence in the non-Muslim world - many would say even when individuals and groups are nothing of the kind - but how is it that they just can't find any right-wing political parties in the Muslim world? Do they simply not exist there or is something else going on?

Another one of those teeny, tiny blind spots perhaps? Perhaps a matter of unconsciously patronising those considered deserving if ignorant eh? However well intended it doesn't aid accuracy or understanding.
Does it?

This article from the Middle East Forum is very useful I think.


>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Whitewashing Far-Right Parties in the Middle East
Seth Frantzman
The decision to remove “right and “left” from the political landscape of the greater Middle East is partly an Orientalist way of othering the region

When France went to the polls in 2017, CNN described an interview with the “far-right candidate Marine Le Pen.” In March, France24 reported on Italy’s elections as a choice between “the populist Five Star Movement, three-time former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s right-wing coalition and the ruling center-left Democratic Party.” Hungary voted in national elections in April and The Guardian wrote about “Gergely Karacsony, the leading left-wing candidate.”
 
Pakistan went to the polls last week and Imran Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf came in first. France24 reported that prior to his win there had been a “rotating leadership between the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan People’s Party.” The Guardian reported that the PML-N had complained about the vote. CNN noted that the “Pakistan Muslim League came in second with 64 seats and the Pakistan People’s Party won 43.”
 
Notice the difference. In Pakistan there is no “right” and “left” or “far right.” The closest most Western media came to apply the labels they apply throughout the West to Pakistan was France24 describing the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam as “religious.” Only Al-Jazeera labeled some of the parties in Pakistan’s elections as “far right” and others as “religious supremacists.”
 
The absence of political spectrum terms “right” and “left” affects every country from Morocco to Pakistan, except for Israel. In Israel elections, major media describes a political spectrum spanning far left to far right. Even though India and Pakistan share similar histories, The Independent described “far-right populism” in India, but not “far-right populism” in Pakistan. If there isn’t “far-right” populism in Pakistan, perhaps there is “far-left populism?” Nope. Neither that. It is as if the greater Middle East exists in an apolitical universe. There are left- and right-wing parties in South America, in sub-Saharan Africa, and in East Asia and Australia.
 
What explains the inability of major media, particularly in the West, to use terms “right, far right, left, far left” or “conservative, liberal” for the Middle East? Hamas and Fatah are not described as “right-wing religious” and “center-right nationalist,” although that’s what they might be called if they ran in Bulgaria or Denmark. There are slight exceptions to this rule. Reuters refers to “Islamist Hamas” and AP refers to Hamas as an “Islamic militant group.”

But what happened to terms such as right-wing, far right, right-wing extremist, far-right conservative?

To erase these terms (and in the process sanitizing and whitewashing most of the politics across dozens of countries), major media even created new terms for some political divides, like that in Iran. In Iran, there are “hardliners and moderates.” That’s it. There are no “right-wing” parties. No centrists. No populists. No alt-right, obviously. Mahmud Ahmadinejad is called a “brash, populist hardliner.” When Roy Moore ran for Senate in Alabama, he was called “reactionary,” a “far-right Republican” and a “controversial conservative” by the same publications that can’t use similar terms for Holocaust-denying Ahmadinejad.
 
Of interest, Turkey tends to get some “right” and “left” descriptions because of its proximity to Europe. BBC described “fiery nationalist Meral Aksener” and “center-left CHP,” the “Islamist-rooted AKP,” the “nationalist MHP” and “pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party.” Okay, but actually the AKP is a right-wing party, the MHP is also a right-wing party and the HDP is a left-wing party. It’s not just “pro-Kurdish,” its roots are in left-wing politics. So why can’t Western media say so?

The decision to remove “right” and “left” from the political landscape of the greater Middle East is partly an Orientalist way of othering the region. The argument is that countries from Morocco to Pakistan, primarily Muslim countries, cannot be understood on this spectrum, they are so different. Even when they share a history and political traditions, such as India and Pakistan, one country is devoid of right-left politics.

The second reason for the disappearing descriptions is because of a conscious effort to whitewash the politics of these countries. Pakistan’s politics primarily span the extreme religious right to the nationalist right. Iran’s politics also span the far-right religious conservatives to the extreme far-right religious conservatives. There simply are no left-wing parties in most of these countries. In Pakistan, almost every politician supports the death penalty for blasphemy. If a politician in the US supported the death penalty for blasphemy they would obviously be “extreme far-right religious.” If Le Pen is “far right,” then certainly so is Ahmadinejad, and the AKP and Hamas and Hezbollah and the PML-N and many other parties.

A third reason why the region lacks a political spectrum is that in the West the term “left” generally means “good” in media parlance while right, or far right will be a stand-in for “bad,” “racist,” “nationalist” or “religious conservative.” Throughout the Middle East, almost every party is either nationalist or extreme right conservative. The decision not to label them as such is a way to quietly sanitize them for the reader. There is a deeper agenda here. Hamas and Hezbollah, for instance, are regularly called “religious” but then said to provide “social services.” Then they are quietly moved into the “left-wing” column as providing the “poor” with “social justice.” Of course, the KKK also had “social services,” but it was not a leftist party. Hamas and Hezbollah share more in common with the KKK than Karl Marx. But some people want us to see them as more Marx than murderers.

It’s time to take the gloves off and label politics from Morocco to Pakistan. In a globalized world, the various parties and movements do not exist in a vacuum. Political Islamist parties are right wing. They aren’t “hardliners.” Maybe they are “populists,” but then label them what they are. Nationalists are nationalists. They aren’t just the “leading party” and the “opposition.”

Are there left-wing, secular style parties in this region. Yes, there are. A few. Are there liberals? Yes, there are. Let them be liberal and define the rest of the politics as “conservative,” which is what it is. Stop the charade of calling parties in Israel and India “far right” while labeling Palestinian and Pakistani parties as just their names, without a judgment as to where they sit on the spectrum. End the charade of telling us that Bulgaria and Russia have a political spectrum but not Kazakhstan and Iraq.
 
Seth Frantzman is a fellow at the Middle East Forum and Opinion Editor for the Jerusalem Post.