There is a poll on the left side bar of my blog on our Great Leader. You are allowed 5 answers. This poll will run for a month. It is what you feel about him. It basically is about what is he, the"Father of". Happy Polling!

So you mean that PAS cannot compromise on its position on hudud law and the Islamic state? Nik Aziz: How can we compromise? This is our ibadat (religious obligation). If we reject the meaning of Islam, we are rejecting our ibadat. God created man to follow ibadat, which is not restricted to just praying.

Not only in Britain. Saudi funded Islamic academies in the US teach the same intolerance and hatred toward Christians and Jews.



It is alway the case of not read in the correct Arabic, or the infamous and abused word, " out of context", see the Saudi bitch squirming and obfuscating, after calling the Jews and Christians as monkeys and pigs, when faced up front and questioned. Oh yes, she lies with a straight face about the Saudi platitudes of hate. It is amazing she talks about tolerance...and she is a Saudi!!!!!!

The Pathologisation of Muslims As Everything That is Wrong With Europe

A long extract by someone named Fess: I’m sure Farish didn’t intend to open up a debate about the middle east and all that entails, and I’ve certainly avoided that subject thus far, but as Ida brings it up, ostensibly to have a, all too predictable poke at the jews, I consider myself granted license to respond. Take this particulal nugget: “If the word muslims were to be replaced with jews (note the lower cases), the Press Complains Comission will be very busy.”

If if if if. Well if Jews were blowing up buses and underground stations, flying planes into skyscrapers, butchering fellow soldiers etc etc then I think it’s accurate to say that the press would report such stories with as much, if not more, gusto as they do the bad news Muslim stories. Stop shooting the messenger.

If British Muslims don’t want the press to cover such stories then the best advice I can give them is to bring about the level of change in their communities necessary to deny the oxygen which allows such extremism to flourish.

Jews don’t get this sort of press in Europe because there doesn’t exist any pattern of Jews behaving like this in Europe. If Muslims are so affronted by the press coverage then the rational advice anyone would offer them is to, and I know this is a real choker, do as the Jews do, which is to say do as practically every other religion and ethnicity does. Be citizens, identify yourself with the country you live in, WITHOUT QUALIFICATION, educate your children to accept as equals, again without qualification, their classmates and other kids in the neighborhood and allow happen what happens to every other community which migrates to a new land, BECOME PART OF IT!!! Ida Bakar, another thing the US is a republic with strict constitutional separation between church and state. It isn’t a “christian country” it is a republic where the majority of the population are christian.

As regards Gaza I think that is another front and although I’m greatly tempted to take you on about that I’ll restrict my response to this: why no mention of the HAMAS rockets which targeted Israeli civilians exclusively? Why no mention of the fact that civilian martyrdom is both a tactic and a goal of the Palestinian leadership? I don’t want to clog up this blog with link the the relevant footage, go look for yourself, but this is am incontrovertible fact! To paraphrase Golda Meir: The Israel Palestinian issue will be solved easily once Palestinian parents learn to love their children more than they hate the jews.

Ida conveniently mentions US interventions in Irag and Afghanistan but avoids the more troublesome US involvement in Bosnia. Troublesome for Ida because there was no motivation other than to save the Bosnian Muslims from the Serbians which goes a long way towards scuppering the notion that these represent christian wars against Muslims.

I note also that Ida states that Muslims contribute large number of doctors to the British Health Service. Do these Muslims arrive in the UK with their skills honed and offer their services? No, they don’t. The Muslims in question, and quite righty too, take advantage of an educational system which is open to all. It doesn’t, as is done in Malaysia to the non Malay (read non muslim) minorities, set a higher bar for Muslims to vault than it does for others. Doesn’t this reveal a somewhat level playing field rather than expose some plot to hold the Muslims back? Which takes me to another point of Farish’s which really does need taking on, head on:

“I sadly note that in all the years that I taught in Europe, I did not have a single Arab-Muslim student to supervise at Masters or Phd level. The stereotype has become a self-fulfilling prophesy.” says Farish. Indeed.

Well Farish, is the situation really as you seek to imply? It seems you’re rather having your cake and eating it too. You offer nothing to back up the conclusion you’ve drawn, and shared publicly here, other than the conclusion itself plus some dark hints at European racism. Why not offer something more than that? If you really believe that Arabs find themselves educationally discriminated against by European academic institutions, or European societies in general and given that your own academic achievements are, virtually without exception, European, by now, you must have a storehouse full of examples of this discrimination. Yet you offer nothing save your observation that you’ve “yet to have a single Arab-Muslim student to supervise at Masters or Phd level.” Do you really expect anyone, except perhaps your students, to treat such a comment seriously? To draw the conclusion you seek to proffer?

There are myriad alternative conclusions to draw from the rather impoverished data you offer. I’ll offer a couple, they might be right or they might be wrong, likely they’re part of a causal matrix of contributing factors, but at least they offer a more enriched set of explanations, or part explanations, than does your own, rather pat, hand crafted one.

1) Arab parents are less interested in rather abstract fields like your own and prefer their children to acquire more traditional professional qualifications such as (thanks Ida Bakar for reminding me) Medicine or Engineering. As a Dubliner this makes sense to me given the amount of Arabs enrolled in the Dublin Royal College of Surgeons. It’s possible there are a large, rather hidden, population of Arab students in UCD’s or Trinity College’s humanities departments but I’ve yet to hear of it.

2) The amount of book titles translated into Arabic, on an annual basis, is known to be notoriously low. The accounts I’ve read, and I admit I can’t rule out completely a degree of exaggeration being used, is that there are more books translated into Spanish on an annual basis than have been translated into Arabic in the last hundred years or more. I don’t know, and I won’t pretend otherwise, why this should be the case but I do know that this isn’t the fault of Europeans or Americans. (Farish, would you care to step up to the plate on this one? It seems you’re not interested, or are perhaps otherwise occupied, in engaging in the hand to hand combat of the comments section but perhaps you might like to take this one on in a future article.)

Whatever the explanation it hasn’t stopped Farish from completing a BA in Philosophy & Literature at the University of Sussex in 1989, before studying for an MA in Philosophy at the same University (University of Sussex) in 1990, then an MA in South-East Asian Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, before completing his PhD at the University of Essex in 1997 in the field of governance and politics. Notice something here? Notice a pattern? I do and it’s not a pattern which supports any argument which advances Farish’s thesis: “The Pathologisation of Muslims As Everything That is Wrong With Europe”

Maybe we should be debating the Muslim world’s, apparent, hostility towards the humanities (this is quite overt in Iran at the moment where the regime are threatening to shut down the humanities departments within their Universities completely). Why don’t we have a chat about that? I don’t know but my best guess is that such discourse offers Farish scant opportunity to imply that the Europe which educated him, and which equipped him with his formidable rhetorical tools, is run by a pack of racists and bigots.

I know that Farish’s point was specifically made about Arabs. However I believe that having made it he could perhaps do this Arab demographic a great service by explaining how he managed to thrive in such academic environments. Maybe Farish was obstructed at every step he took. maybe his story is one of heroic triumph over adversity. A Muslim in a rather hostile “abroad.” If that’s so, I’m sure I speak for all his readers when I say, this then is a story we want to hear about. Then again maybe he didn’t. Maybe his actual experience offers little by way of supporting narrative of racism in European educational institutions. Indeed maybe he found himself in vibrant and ecumenical educational environments where all you had to bring to succeed was your intelligence and a capacity for hard work.

In any case Farish dropped a rather big accusation disguised as a casual observation. So casual that perhaps it seems rather unsporting of me to treat it so seriously. I’m sorry if that’s the impression but with so many other, and I contend, more compelling explanations than Farish’s preferred one I think he should be glad of any invitation to support his own contention.

There is this article in Malaysiakini, written by a Muslim Is the Quran hostile to Jews and Christians?, by LEENA EL-ALI

I would answer it with a yes, due to it's adherents committing round about 14,000 acts of violence since Sept 11, 2001 . Why ? I will not dwell on the violent verses and abrogations , for there are many which are hostile to the Jews and Christians, as I do not want to muddle the picture. The author tries her utmost to obfuscate. The very use of the 'out of context' term by itself is is obfuscating which means the author is trying to obfuscate a problem with extraneous information. 'She', I assume that author is a 'she'. She goes to great lenghths talking about the Jews and Christians being the 'people of the book', right? She talks about the the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ, very slick on her part.

She then insults the Christians by saying, yes she is insulting, as her article is addressed to Christians and other believers, "There is a theological difference with Christian belief: Jesus is a highly regarded prophet, rather than God's son. Still, the overall message is of coexistence, not division". Yeah right, whatever it is , he is the Son of God, not a Prophet as stated by her, that is insulting and blasphemous to Christians.

She then says, "If we listen to its words with an open mind, we might be reassured - if not left in awe - by its resonant and familiar message".

Okay I am going talk about "Enmity towards the Jews and Christians, 17 times a day". These are daily prayers, reciting "The Key" in Arabic unifies all Submitters of the world, regardless of their languages. A total of seven verses, look at the seventh…. . SIRAATAL LAZINA AN`AMTA `ALAYHIM; GHAYRIL MAGHDOOBI `ALAYHIM WALADDAALEEN (the path of those whom You blessed; not of those who have deserved wrath, nor of the strayers).

1:7 صِرَاطَ الَّذِينَ أَنعَمتَ عَلَيهِمْ غَيرِ المَغضُوبِ عَلَيهِمْ وَلاَ الضَّالِّين

The path of those whom you have blessed, not of those who have deserved anger, nor of those who stray. Submission Org

Okay, Who is this addressed to ? This: The way of those upon whom You have bestowed Your grace, not (that) of those who earned Your anger, nor of those who went astray).

These two paths are the paths of the Christians and Jews, a fact that the believer should beware of so that he avoids them. The path of the believers is knowledge of the truth and abiding by it. In comparison, the Jews abandoned practicing the religion, while the Christians lost the true knowledge. This is why `anger' descended upon the Jews, while being described as `led astray' is more appropriate of the Christians. Those who know, but avoid implementing the truth, deserve the anger, unlike those who are ignorant. The Christians want to seek the true knowledge, but are unable to find it because they did not seek it from its proper resources.

This is why they were led astray. We should also mention that both the Christians and the Jews have earned the anger and are led astray, but the anger is one of the attributes more particular of the Jews. Allah said about the Jews, (Those (Jews) who incurred the curse of Allah and His wrath) (5:60). The attribute that the Christians deserve most is that of being led astray, just as Allah said about them, Source:Tafsir

They do this 17 times a day during their prayers. Okay now, is not the asking of wrath upon Jews and Christians by itself not the instillation of enmity in the hearts of the "believers", 17 times a day, not hostility, I ask? The Christians pray the 'Lord's Prayer' an extract, " …forgive us of our sins as we forgive those who trespass aginst us". I forgive you, Leena El-Ali for your trangressions against the Jews and Christians, which was lying. When we pray, we do not seek the wrath of God on others. Anti semitism and hate is part of your prayer. You should not ask," Is the Quran hostile to Jews and Christians?" It is in the psyche, to be an anti semite even in prayers.... When it is you who are the problem! Marina's excuse for anti semitism

In Egypt, of all places, where Obama was yapping that "throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.

Cairo (AINA) -- Christians in Egypt are up in arms this week over a controversial book issued as a free supplement with this month's Al-Azhar magazine, describing Christianity as a Religion of "idolatry" and claiming that the Holy Bible is a misquotation of the original one. The book was published by State-owned corporations that are financed by taxpayers, Christians as well as Muslims.

The controversial book is titled "Scientific Report" and authored by Dr. Muhammad Imarah, a member of Al-Azhar's Islamic Research Academy (IRA), which is affiliated with the Ministry of Religious Endowments. The book discusses Christian dogma, casts doubts over it, and asserts that Christianity is a "religion of polytheism."More... Hat tip: Eye On The World

According to Hamas, Christian bodies "pollute the earth". What was it that Obama told us about Islam? Ah yes, "throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality."

(JPost) Every three minutes a Christian is being tortured in the Muslim world, and in 2009 more than 165,000 Christians will have been killed because of their faith, most of them in Muslim countries, according to a human rights organization that is visiting Israel starting Sunday.

Majed El Shafie, who will head a delegation of human rights activists, members of parliament from Canada and religious personalities at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem.

"Hamas digs up the bodies of Christians from Christian burial sites in the Gaza Strip claiming that they pollute the earth," said Reverend Majed El Shafie, President of One Free World International (OFWI), who will head a delegation of human rights activists, members of parliament from Canada and religious personalities.

During their visit to Israel the delegation will hold a conference on human rights and persecuted minorities at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem. The conference will provide new statistics on the persecution of minorities in Muslim countries. More... Hat tip: Eye On The World

USA: December 4, 2009. (PCP) Dottore Architetto Ashraf Ramelah, President of Coptic Voice said that Sunday, November 29, 2009 will be remembered as a turning point in the protection of our democracy and freedom. I believe that all of the West must congratulate every Swiss citizen that voted to ban the building of Minarets as well as those who agreed to allow them to be built.

This is the democracy that western women and men were brought up on prior to the introduction of political correctness, more appropriately called �shut your mouth.�

Swiss citizens as well as all westerners are in great need to sit back and analyze the facts without any exaggeration or undermining the issues. All of us have a great responsibility towards our children and grandchildren. History will remember us as a great people who fought to keep democracy and freedom, or rather, a people who were unable to protect it.

Referendum plays an important role in democracy and through democracy power is given to every citizen. The result of any referendum is sovereign, and governments are obligated to follow the desire of their citizens.

In the early 1970�s I had the opportunity to observe two important referendums in Italy. The first was in favor of divorce, the second was for abortion. Both referendums were against Catholic teaching. In spite of the fact that the Vatican is in the center of Rome, the Italian capitol, and the head of the Catholic Church is also the Bishop of the eternal city, I never heard any instigation from the Church, its leaders, or political conservatives at that time.

I grew up convinced that I could disagree with your idea but I still respect you. Arabs, on the other hand, think and act differently than this. Arab-Muslim leaders throughout the whole world condemned the Swiss referendum. Some Arab leaders instigated their followers to rise aggressively against such a decision. I am sure that we will soon read and hear about the boycott of Swiss products, and maybe Swiss embassies will be closed in some Arabs countries.

Various western voices including some Vatican officials condemned the result of that referendum. I wonder if those leaders forgot that in a democracy the power belongs to the people, or can it be that such political leaders cannot stay away from so-called political correctness. The question remains that if political correctness were really correct, would one use it to criticize the will of the people, or instead accept the outcome in spite of any disagreement.

In western society there is a tendency to please strangers without consideration to their own people. Furthermore, instead of condemning the referendum results, I was hoping that our political leaders would be more effective in putting pressure on dictatorial and fascist regimes ruling in Arab Islamic countries in order to bring democracy and freedom to those populations. How dare those Arab leaders criticize a Swiss citizen for his choice in his own homeland concerning strangers, while the same Arab leaders do not give any respect to a citizen with a different face living in his own country.

The Grand Mufti of Cairo was very angry about the result of the referendum, criticizing the Swiss people for lacking respect for freedom of religion. Wow!! I wish the Egyptian regime could give Egyptians even one-half of one percent of the freedoms that the Swiss people enjoy. I do not want to take the time to describe the 1400 year history of oppression, discrimination and political correctness that Copts have endured in their own land.

Is there any political or religious leader in all of Egypt who would be willing to stand up honestly and admit that Copts have been under siege for more than 1400 years? Is there any political leader in the West who would be willing to stand up and put aside his political correctness to demand that those who wish to build a Minaret in someone else�s home must first respect basic human rights in his own home. It is time that everything be called by its own name, without hiding the facts, and with no special privilege given to any ethnic group or religion.

On behalf of Voice of the Copts, I urge all the citizens of the European Union to promote a similar referendum in each country along with a demand to their political leaders to put pressure on those regimes in order to help the religious minority in those countries to have basic human rights, democracy and human respect.

The real issue of this referendum was the goal of putting an end to the building of Minarets (architecture) and not the banning of the construction of Mosques as Arab-Muslim leaders and those with politically correct views would have us believe. Pakistan Christian Post

Turkey’s political elite is obsessed with joining the European Union. But senior players in the EU – in a rare moment of clarity amid their delusional fantasies of a federal Europe – are reluctant to let in a country which is increasingly hard to distinguish from the rest of the Islamic world. Here’s a tip for Turkish campaigners for EU membership: if you want to win over Herman Van Rompuy, best not set up your headquarters in a building confiscated from your country’s oppressed Orthodox Christian minority.

This how the UN:Dhimmi website reports the controversy:

Unbelievable but true: the headquarters of the Secretariat for the entry of Turkey into the European Union is a building confiscated from the Orthodox Christian community in the 90s. The building is located in Istanbul, in the well-known area of Ortakoy, under the first bridge over the Bosphorus.

Before the seizure, the building was used as a primary school for children of the minority Orthodox in Ortakoy. Here once lived a thriving Orthodox community, now non-existent because of past purges against minorities, executed by the “secular” Turkish State.

And some background:

Turkey is often portrayed as a “secular” modern Muslim state. This was indeed the founding vision of the Republic’s “Father”, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, when he created the republic out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire in the 1920s.

However, since late 2002, when Erdoğan’s AK Party came to power, a creeping Islamisation of Turkey has been embarked upon – and the small Christian community has been subjected to increasing harassment and persecution (a social norm in Muslim countries – ask any Christian in Egypt or Pakistan, for example).

And it’s not just the government. A recent survey of Turks revealed:

More than half of Turks oppose non-Muslim religious meetings

59 percent of those surveyed said non-Muslims either “should not” or “absolutely should not” be allowed to hold open meetings where they can discuss their ideas.

54 percent said non-Muslims either “should not” or “absolutely should not” be allowed to publish literature that describes their faith.

49 percent of those surveyed said they would either “absolutely” or “most likely” not support a political party that accepted people from another religion.

The theory that these prejudices will melt away once Turkey is admitted to the EU strikes me as quite fatuous. Ask yourself: has the protective generosity of the welfare state made Islamic immigrants to Britain any more accommodating to our liberal traditions? Telegraph

How does one say hypocrisy in Ayyraab? Egyptian Government Policy of Forced Collective Deportation of Christians.

Somehow, the so called mainstream media, the UN and the ICC avoid this subject and don't see it as a flagrant violation of basic human rights.

(Persecution.org) Egypt has witnessed recently an unprecedented upsurge in sectarian violence directed against the indigenous Christian citizens. Whatever sparked the explosive incidents, whether it was rumor or fact about an 'honour crime' committed by a Christian male, renovation of an old dilapidated church, a Christian praying with relatives within his own four walls, or even an ordinary fight between two parties; one Muslim and one Christian, results in collective Muslim mob punishment of all the Christians in the region; affecting their homes, businesses, property and even their lives.

Forced deportation of Christians from their villages after Muslim violence against them is also on the increase. Deportation of Copts took place twice in the last five months following sectarian violence, in the village of Meet Barbary, in Meet Ghamr last July and in Kom Ahmar, Farshout on November 21.. The plight of those affected by the forced evictions is great, having to leave behind all what they own,and start anew somewhere strange, without any form of government compensation or aid in relocation. In all incidents they were prevented from ever being repatriated back to their homes.

More... Hat tip : Eye On The World

By Lieutenant Colonel (Rtd) Idris Hassan. I refer to the Malaysiakini report Of noisy Indians and 'keling' blood: Utusan strikes again. The attacking of fellow Malaysians by the mainstream media Utusan Malaysia because of their race is unwarranted and most uncalled for. I remember in the late forties when I was a little boy living in my hometown of Raub, Pahang.

I used to pass road gangs of Tamil labourers toiling in the midday's scorching sun from dawn till dusk. Armed with only picks and shovels, they would be hacking at solid rocks to carve out roads along the mountain side.

They had no proper attire, just a withered white towel tied in turban form on their heads. They would wrap rags around their spindly legs to prevent the hot molten tar from scalding them as they went about their chores.

Yet they had time to smile and wave at passing cars. They used to be referred to as 'coolies' and their slave-like living quarters as coolie lines. My late father used to tell us that most of the roads in Malaya at the turn of the century were built solely by Indian labour.


They toiled in the malaria-infested rubber estates, living with their families in filthy inhuman conditions. The white 'tuan' treated them like slaves and allowed them to indulge in drinking toddy to forget their woes .

Yet again it was the same coolies called 'toties' who serviced our bucket system latrines until the early sixties as there were no takers for this job from the other races. I have seen for myself these 'toties' cleaning the rubber tubs at a stream not far from my house with their bare hands.

In short, when there was any dirty, menial job to be done, it was this Tamil coolie, then often called by the derogatory term 'keling', that did it for us.

Now times have changed and their offsprings have made much progress in all fields and want to take their rightful place in our society .Let's not pour scorn on them and laugh away their pride.

As a soldier I know that many of my Indian/Tamil friends who fought and died for this country . They all are a part of those who stood by us during the good and bad times, they have helped make this country great.

A country which rightfully belongs to all Malaysians.Malaysiakini

I'm waiting to hear of some serious Arab and UN protests against this apartheid wall and brutal Egyptian blockade of Gaza, like anytime now. Just like they constantly protest against the Israeli separation wall.

(Haaretz) Egypt has begun the construction of a massive iron wall along its border with the Gaza Strip, in a bid to shut down smuggling tunnels into the territory. The wall will be nine to 10 kilometers long, and will go 20 to 30 meters into the ground, Egyptian sources said. It will be impossible to cut or melt.

And nobody whines about the hardships the Palestinians will have to endure because of this illegal separation wall.

The new plan is the latest move by Egypt to step up its counter-smuggling efforts. Although some progress had been made, the smuggling market in Gaza still flourishes.Egyptian forces demolish tunnels or fill them with gas almost every week, often with people still inside them, and Palestinian casualties in the tunnels have been steadily rising.

So the Egyptians use poison gas on Palestinians. Have anyone ever heard of Arabs accusing Egypt of crimes against humanity? Where the hell is Goldstone when you need him? Where is the International Solidarity Movement? Blatant hypocrisy again? What is it with Ayyraabs and hypocrisy? Hat tip:Eye On The World

Muslims need to look within themselves, instead of playing victims. "Saudi scholars slam Swiss minaret ban"-Gulf News by Abdul Rahman Shahee. Several prominent Saudi Islamic scholars and preachers lambasted the recent Swiss referendum to impose ban on the construction of mosque minarets in the country. This people are from a country where other religions are not allowed houses of worship and worshipping in the open could get you into serious trouble, is that not sheer hypocrisy? Carrying a cross or a crucifix could land you in the slammer. How do you say 'hyopcrisy' in Ayyraab?

Then the gall of the enemy of free speech , the Secretary General of OIC, which groups 57 Muslim countries, qualified the ban as an unfortunate development that would tarnish the image of Switzerland as a country upholding respect for diversity, freedom of religion and human rights, in that same news. Is that not hypocrisy, again? Do Ayyraabs have an inkling or understanding of the word hypocrisy? Is it in their dictionary at all, that they can condemn the Swiss with a straight face?

According to Iman Kurdi, writing in the Arab News: "And let’s not be hypocrites. If you held a referendum in a Muslim country asking whether the construction of new church steeples should be permitted, you are also likely to get an overwhelming no. So let us not brand this a Swiss phenomenon and let us also remember that it is not the majority of the Swiss population that supported the ban but the majority of those who voted, which if you do the maths comes to 30 percent of the population.”

First, it raises delicate issues of reciprocity in Muslim-Christian relations. A few examples: When Our Lady of the Rosary, Qatar's first-ever church opened in 2008, it did so minus cross, bell, dome, steeple, or signboard. Rosary's priest, Father Tom Veneracion, explained their absence: "The idea is to be discreet because we don't want to inflame any sensitivities."

What about the Church in Shah Alam, Malaysia, the Church of Divine Mercy? Remember, it took more than 20 years from 1977 to 2005 to build and it looks like a factory, religious symbols must be discreet, it is located in an industrial park. See image above.

And when the Christians of a town in Upper Egypt, Nazlet al-Badraman, finally after four years of "laborious negotiation, pleading, and grappling with the authorities," won permission in October to restore a tottering tower at the Mar-Girgis Church, a mob of about 200 Muslims attacked them, throwing stones and shouting Islamic and sectarian slogans. The situation for Copts is so bad, they have reverted to building secret churches.

Why, the Catholic Church and others are asking, should Christians suffer such indignities while Muslims enjoy full rights in historically Christian countries? The Swiss vote fits into this new spirit. Islamists, of course, reject this premise of equality; Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki warned his Swiss counterpart of unspecified "consequences" of what he called anti-Islamic acts, implicitly threatening to make the minaret ban an international issue comparable to the Danish cartoon fracas of 2006.

Second, Europe stands at a crossroads with respect to its Muslim population. Of the three main future prospects – everyone getting along, Muslims dominating, or Muslims rejected – the first is highly improbable but the second and third seem equally possible. In this context, the Swiss vote represents a potentially important legitimation of anti-Islamic views. The vote inspired support across Europe, as signaled by online polling sponsored by the mainstream media and by statements from leading figures. Here follows a small sampling:

France: 49,000 readers at Le Figaro, by a 73-27 percent margin, would vote to ban new minarets in their country. 24,000 readers at L'Express agreed by an 86-12 percent margin, with 2 percent undecided. A leading columnist, Ivan Rioufol of Le Figaro, wrote an article titled "Homage to the Resistance of the Swiss People." President Nicolas Sarkozy was quoted as saying that "the people, in Switzerland as in France, don't want their country to change, that it be denatured. They want to keep their identity."

Germany: 29.000 readers at Der Spiegel voted 76-21 percent, with 2 percent undecided, to ban minarets in Germany. 17,000 readers of Die Welt voted 82-16 in favor of "Yes, I feel cramped by minarets" over "No, freedom of religion is constrained."

Spain: 14,000 readers of 20 Minutos voted 93-6 percent in favor of the statement "Good, we must curb Islamization's growing presence" and against "Bad, it is an obstacle to the integration of immigrants." 35,000 readers of El Mondo replied 80-20 percent that they support a Swiss-like banning of minarets.

Although not scientific, the lop-sidedness of these (and other) polls, ranging from 73 to 93 percent majorities endorsing the Swiss referendum, signal that Swiss voters represent growing anti-Islamic sentiments throughout Europe. The new amendment also validates and potentially encourages resistance to Islamization throughout the continent.

For these reasons, the Swiss vote represents a possible turning point for European Islam. Source....

During WWII, the death camp at Treblinka had an escape, causing the Commandant at a similar camp in Sobibor to vow (actually threaten) that his camp would never experience the same thing. But those who were its captives, the Jewish laborers that had been spared from the ovens, knew that they were on borrowed time and that their only hope was to escape... the only question was how to do it. However, because the Germans would kill an equal number of others whenever a group attempted to escape, the captives knew that if ever an escape was tried, all 600 prisoners in the camp would have to be included



... logistically precluding any ideas about tunnels or sneak breakouts. Indeed, to have such a mass escape could only mean that the Ukrainian guards and Germain officers would have to be killed, which many of the Jews felt simply reduced themselves to no better than their captors... thus making it a struggle of conscience. And therein lies the story, with the film being based on a factual account of what then happened at that Sobibor prison.

Well, this was an arresting opening, to an Associated Press report: “He compared al-Qaida in Iraq to wolves, urging that the terrorist group be crushed since he believed its members would never reject violence.

But the wolves got to the Iraqi counterterrorism officer first.”That officer was Ahmed Subhi al-Fahal, killed in a suicide bombing in Tikrit (Saddam Hussein’s old bastion). Killed along with him were two bodyguards and two bystanders. Al-Fahal was in his early 30s and apparently lived to eliminate violent extremists from his country. He claimed on al-Arabiya, the TV network, that he had killed more than 250 of al-Qaeda’s finest: not a bad haul.

And, according to the AP, “he was also thrown the most difficult missions. It was al-Fahal who was called in to track down 16 prisoners — including several al-Qaida-linked inmates awaiting execution — who escaped in a stunning September jailbreak . . .”

After al-Fahal’s death, an American colonel wrote, “He was controversial, flamboyant, brave, and effective. He single-handedly disrupted numerous enemy plots during the last election . . .”

Sounds like a very useful man, and it is no wonder that al-Qaeda is rejoicing over his death. May Iraq, for the sake of its possibility of life, have many more like him. National Review

A promising, independent Palestine is quietly being developed, with Israeli assistance. By Tom Gross

It is difficult to turn on a TV or radio or pick up a newspaper these days without finding some pundit or other deploring the dismal prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace or the dreadful living conditions of the Palestinians. Even supposedly neutral news reporters regularly repeat this sad tale. “Very little is changing for the Palestinian people on the ground,” I heard BBC World Service Cairo correspondent Christian Fraser tell listeners three times in a 45-minute period the other evening.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. I had spent that day in the West Bank’s largest city, Nablus. The city is bursting with energy, life, and signs of prosperity, in a way I have not previously seen in many years of covering the region.

As I sat in the plush office of Ahmad Aweidah, the suave, British-educated banker who heads the Palestinian Securities Exchange, he told me that the Nablus stock market was the second-best-performing in the world so far in 2009, after Shanghai. (Aweidah’s office looks directly across from the palatial residence of Palestinian billionaire Munib al-Masri, the wealthiest man in the West Bank.- Mahathir, you did not know that, even if you knew, you will spin that accordingly, which is anti-semitism)

Later I met Bashir al-Shakah, director of Nablus’s gleaming new cinema, where four of the latest Hollywood hits were playing that day. Most movies were sold out, he noted, proudly adding that the venue had already hosted a film festival since it opened in June.

Wandering around downtown Nablus, the shops and restaurants I saw were full. There were plenty of expensive cars on the streets. Indeed I counted considerably more BMWs and Mercedes than I’ve seen, for example, in downtown Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.

And perhaps most important of all, we had driven from Jerusalem to Nablus without going through any Israeli checkpoints. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu has removed them all since the Israeli security services (with the encouragement and support of Pres. George W. Bush) were allowed, over recent years, to crush the intifada, restore security to the West Bank, and set up the conditions for the economic boom that is now occurring. (There was one border post on the return leg of the journey, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, but the young female guard just waved me and the two Palestinians I was traveling with through.)

The shops and restaurants were also full when I visited Hebron recently, and I was surprised to see villas comparable in size to those on the Cote d’Azur or Bel Air had sprung up on the hills around the city. Life is even better in Ramallah, where it is difficult to get a table in a good restaurant. New apartment buildings, banks, brokerage firms, luxury car dealerships, and health clubs are to be seen. In Qalqilya, another West Bank city that was previously a hotbed of terrorists and bomb-makers, the first-ever strawberry crop is being harvested in time to cash in on the lucrative Christmas markets in Europe. Local Palestinian farmers have been trained by Israeli agriculture experts and Israel supplied them with irrigation equipment and pesticides.

A new Palestinian city, Ruwabi, is to be built soon north of Ramallah. Two weeks ago, the Jewish National Fund, an Israeli charity, helped plant 3,000 tree seedlings for a forested area the Palestinian planners say they would like to develop on the edge of the new city. Israeli experts are also helping the Palestinians plan public parks and other civic amenities.

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"Turkey Objects to Assyrian Genocide Monument in Australia," from AINA, December 6:

Fairfield, Australia (AINA) -- A proposed Assyrian genocide monument has drawn the Turkish government into the debate. The monument, proposed to the NSW Parliament by MP Ninos Khoshaba, would honor the Assyrian victims of genocide in the 20th century, particularly the Turkish genocide of Assyrians in World War One, in which 750,000 (75%) Assyrians were killed between 1915 and 1918, as well as Armenians and Greeks, and the massacre of 3000 Assyrians in Simmele, Iraq in August, 1933....

Turkey's Consul General in Australia, Mr. Renan Sekeroglu, has expressed opposition to the erection of the monument and denied the genocide of Assyrians in World War One. Mr. Sekeroglu conceded there were "tragedies" on "both" sides during that period. Speaking to SBS Radio, Mr. Sekeroglu said "I am afraid that if such proposals bear fruit then it will create a climate of hostility and it will also contradict the environment of historically friendly relations between Turkey and Australia". Mr. Sekeroglu said he will lodge an objection to the proposed genocide monument with the Fairfield Council.

A spokesman for the Fairfield Council said the Council is "...taking into consideration all angles before making a decision on the 4.5 meters sculpture that looks like a hand holding up the globe." The Council will vote on the monument on December 15. Jihad Watch

Compass Direct 7 December 2009

More than Half in Turkey Oppose Non-Muslim Religious Meetings

ISTANBUL -Survey finds nearly 40 percent of population has negative view of Christians. More than half of the population of Muslim-majority. Turkey opposes members of other religions holding meetings or publishing materials to explain their faith, according to a recently issued survey. Fully 59 percent of those surveyed said non-Muslims either "should not” or "absolutely should not” be allowed to hold open meetings where they can discuss their ideas. Fifty-four percent said non-Muslims either "should not” or "absolutely should not” be allowed to publish literature that describes their faith.

The survey also found that almost 40 percent of the population of Turkey said they had "very negative” or "negative” views of Christians. In the random survey, 60 percent of those polled said there is one true religion; over 90 percent of the population of Turkey is Sunni Muslim.

Ali Çarkoglu, one of two professors at Sabanci University who conducted the study, said no non-Muslim religious gathering in Turkey is completely "risk free.” "Even in Istanbul, it can’t be easy to be an observant non-Muslim,” Çarkoglu said. The report, issued last month, was part of a study commissioned by the International Social Survey Program, a 45-nation academic group that conducts polls and research about social and political issues. The survey quantified how religious the population is in each of its 43-member countries.

Çarkoglu, along with Professor Ersin Kalayc?og(lu, carried out the research in 2008. The completed study with the results of all 43 countries will be released in 2010. The study has been conducted previously three times at roughly 10-year intervals. This year marked the first time study data has been collected in Turkey. Turkey was the only Muslim-majority population in the study. The survey includes significant nuance. While 42 percent of the population agreed with the statement that religious people should be tolerant, 49 percent of those surveyed said they would either "absolutely” or "most likely” not support a political party that accepted people from another religion. But 20 percent of those surveyed said they had "very positive” or "positive” views of Christians – 13 percent "very positive,” and 7 percent "positive.”

Çarkoglu said the results of study could be attributed to the Turkish educational system, which mandates religious studies for both junior high school and high school students – classes in which Christians and Jews "are not even mentioned” or are portrayed as "the others,” Çarkoglu said. "That instills in these students a severe point of view of intolerance,” he added.

Dual Threat
The Rev. Dositheos Anagnostopoulos, speaking on behalf of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul, said that Greek Orthodox Christians are treated like second-class citizens in Turkey. He said that members of his church feel "pressured” but things have improved slowly over the years. Earlier this year, two Greek Orthodox cemeteries in Istanbul and one in Izmir were severely vandalized. "There’s still vandalism, but there haven’t been any problems with physical threats lately,” he said. In Turkey, Christians face dual threats from a self-declared "secular” state and from members of the public who, according to the study, have become more observant in their Islamic faith. Christians are often seen as enemies of the state, enemies of Islam or traitors to Turkish culture.

A 2009 report on international religious freedom by the U.S. Department of State said that in Turkey, "No law explicitly prohibits religious speech or religious conversions; nevertheless, many prosecutors and police regarded religious speech and religious activism with suspicion. Christians engaged in religious advocacy were occasionally threatened or pressured by government and state officials. … Threats against non-Muslims created an atmosphere of pressure and diminished freedom for some non-Muslim communities.” At times in Turkey’s history, the government has "manipulated public opinion” by putting forth the message that Turkish Christians are aligned with powers outside of the country that want to divide the nation, said Zekai Tanyar, a Turkish national who has been a Christian for more than 30 years. He is chairman of the Association of Protestant Churches (in Turkey).

"There are some who view that Christians are out to undermine the country, especially missionaries,” he said. In January 2007, Hrant Dink, editor-in-chief of the Armenian weekly Agos, was shot dead in Istanbul. Dink was a member of the Armenian Christian community in Turkey. Three months later, two Turkish Christians and a German Christian were murdered in Malatya. The accused killers in all four slayings have alleged links to Turkish nationalists. Two other Christians, converts from Islam, are standing trial charged with, among other things, "insulting Turkishness” and inciting hatred against Islam.

According to the U.S state department report, by law religious services in Turkey can only take place at worship sites approved by the government. And while the Sunni majority receives generous support from the government for its mosques, "[Non-Muslim groups] reported difficulties opening, maintaining, and operating houses of worship.” Tanyar of the Protestant association said that the anti-Christian persecution situation in Turkey has improved in some ways but gotten worse in others. "People have gotten used to the idea that we exist, and certain laws have changed to accommodate us,” he said. "On the other hand, acts of disinformation and violence have increased.”Europe News

Daily Pioneer 7 December 2009By Kanchan Gupta

Turkey’s Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was being faithful to his creed when he declared, "Mosques are our barracks, minarets our bayonets, domes our helmets, the believers our soldiers.” Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi, a fascist Sunni imam with a huge following among those who subscribe to the Muslim Brotherhood’s antediluvian worldview, was more to the point when he thundered at an event organised by London’s then Labour mayor Ken Livingstone, "The West may have the atom bomb, we have the human bomb.”

Sheikh Qaradawi, who is of Egyptian origin, frequently exhorts Muslims not to rest till they have "conquered Christian Rome” and believes "throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the Jews people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler”. Islamic schools in Britain funded by Saudi Arabia use textbooks describing Jews as "apes” and Christians as "pigs”. Theo Van Gogh, who along with writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali produced Submission, a film on the plight of Muslim women under sharia’h, was shot dead by Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch-Moroccan Muslim, in Amsterdam. Rallies by radical Islamists, which were once rare, are now a common feature in European capitals with banners and placards denouncing democracy as the ‘problem’ and Islam as the ‘solution’.

Such crude though accurate assertions of Islamism, coupled with the relentless jihad being waged overtly — exemplified by the London Underground bombings and the riots in Parisian suburbs — and covertly as exposed by Channel 4’s stunning investigation in its Dispatches programme titled ‘Undercover Mosque’, have now begun to raise hackles in Europe. The first signs of an incipient backlash came in the form of French President Nicolas Sarkozy demanding a ban on the burqa (the sharia’h-imposed hijab is already banned at public schools in France).

Any doubts that may have lingered about Europe’s patience with Islam’s rage boys running thin have been removed by last Sunday’s referendum in Switzerland where people have voted overwhelmingly to ban the construction of minarets which are no longer seen to be representing faith. For 57.5 per cent of Swiss citizens, the minaret, an obligatory adjunct to a mosque which is used by the muezzin to call the faithful to prayers five times a day, is now a "political symbol against integration”. They view each new minaret as marking the transmogrification of Christian Europe into Islamic Eurabia. The Islamic minaret, according to Swiss People’s Party legislator Ulrich Schluer, has come to represent the "effort to establish sharia’h on European soil”. Hence the counter-effort to ban their construction.

Last Sunday’s referendum and the massive vote against Islamic minarets is by no means an unexpected development, as is being pretended by Islamists and those who find it fashionable to defend Islamism or are scared of taking a stand lest they be accused of Islamophobia. Resentment against assertive political Islam has been building up in Switzerland for almost a decade, triggered by refugees from Yugoslavia’s many civil wars seeking to irreversibly change the Swiss way of life to suit their twisted notions of Islam’s supremacy.

For the past many years the Swiss People’s Party and the Federal Democratic Union, both avowedly right-of-centre organisations, have been trying to initiate an amendment to Article 72 of Switzerland’s Constitution to include the sentence, "The building of minarets is prohibited.” After doing the cantonal rounds, both the parties set up a joint Egerkinger Committee in 2007 to take their campaign to the federal level. The November 29 referendum is the outcome of that campaign.

The resultant vote — 57.5 per cent endorsing the proposed amendment to the Constitution with 42.5 opposing it — provides some interesting insights. For instance, the Swiss Government and Parliament, which are opposed to the amendment, clearly suffer from a disconnect with the Swiss masses. The voting pattern also shows that the spurious ‘cosmopolitan spirit’ of Zurich, Geneva and Basel, where people voted against the ban by a narrow margin, is not shared by most Swiss.

The initiative has got 19.5 of the 23 cantonal votes — Basel city Canton, with half-a-vote and the largest Muslim population in Switzerland, barely defeated the initiative with 51.61 per cent people voting against it. This only goes to show that the Left-liberal intelligentsia may dominate television studio debates, as is often seen in our country, but it neither influences public opinion nor persuades those whose perception of the reality is not cluttered by bogus ‘tolerance’ of the intolerant.

Daniel Pipes, who is among the few scholars of Islam not scared to be labelled an ‘Islamophobe’, is of the view that the Swiss vote "represents a turning point for European Islam, one comparable to the Rushdie affair of 1989. That a large majority of Swiss who voted on Sunday explicitly expressed anti-Islamic sentiments potentially legitimates such sentiments across Europe and opens the way for others to follow suit”.

As always, Pipes is prescient. An opinion poll conducted by the French Institute for Public Opinion after the Swiss referendum shows 46 per cent of French citizens are in favour of banning the construction of minarets, 40 per cent support the idea, while 14 per cent are indecisive. "That it was the usually quiet, low profile, un-newsworthy, politically boring, neutral Swiss who suddenly roared their fears about Islam only enhances their vote’s impact,” says Pipes. The post-referendum opinion poll in France shows that one in two French citizens would not only like to see minarets banned, but along with them mosques, too.

Yet, it may be too early to suggest that the tide of Islamism will now have to contend with the fury of a backlash. Governments and organisations that find merit in toeing the line of least resistance have reacted harshly to the Swiss vote; rather than try and understand why more and more people are beginning to loathe, if not hate, Islamism, a case is being made all over again for the need to be tolerant with those whose sole desire is to subjugate the world to Islam.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms Navi Pillay, who is yet to utter a word about the suppression of freedom and denial of dignity in Islamic countries or the shocking violation of human rights by jihadis, has been scathing in her response, describing the Swiss vote as "a discriminatory, deeply divisive and thoroughly unfortunate step”. The Organisation of Islamic Conference has warned that the vote will "serve to spread hatred and intolerance towards Muslims”. The OIC’s complaint would carry credibility if it were to demand tolerance towards non-Muslims in its member-countries, especially Saudi Arabia, and denounce Islam’s preachers of hate. Europe News

(An expanded version of this article can be read at http://kanchangupta.blogspot.com/) -- Follow the writer on: http://twitter.com/KanchanGupta. Blog on this and other issues at http://kanchangupta.blogspot.com/. Write to him at kanchangupta@rocketmail.com

On the surface it might seem that Switzerland's law-binding vote to ban new minarets in mosques is petty, vindictive and unnecessary. And in a sense it is, but in another way it is understandable. It's pretty hard to depict Switzerland as a red-necked, xenophobic society. It is one of the few countries in the world that demands no passport for visitors entering, and it's famous for being a meeting place of cultures.

It is a functioning society that manages to exist without wars, nasty linguistic or ethnic feuds. It is a society that flourishes peacefully in times of war in other countries. It is a country where every male is expected to own a gun and knows how to use it. A country where gun crimes are rare.

All the Swiss seem to demand from people is they behave decently, obey the law, adapt to the Swiss way of life. It is not a country spoiling for trouble, which is why the vote to ban new minarets is more significant than, say, if it occurred in a country beset with Islamic militancy -- a condition that has been growing in Europe.

The Swiss, basically, want to keep their country Swiss.

They don't want Sharia law, even a modified version as dingbat democracies like the McGuinty government in Ontario once favoured in the name of cultural equivalency -- until saner heads prevailed. (As an aside, many of these "saner heads" were Muslim women who've escaped the tyranny of Sharia in their birth countries, and Muslim men who see its oppressiveness). Switzerland is not a country like any other. The cantons that comprise the whole are more important and influential than the central government. It is a country of four regions with four languages -- German, French, Italian and Romansh, with English the language of air controllers.

The world comes together in Switzerland in the form of international organizations and banks, and it values its neutrality (since 1815) and guards its continuing democracy. Prior to the minaret vote, polls indicated 53% of the people opposed banning minarets, which on voting day turned into 57% in favour of the ban. Even the Swiss tell pollsters what they think pollsters want to hear.

Swiss are uneasy about their culture and don't want their landscape dotted with minarets from which the Islamic faithful are called to prayer. Odd, because of Switzerland's 150 mosques, only four have minarets. Non-Muslims -- which is 94% of the 7.5 million population -- are not keen on being roused by sing-song calls for the faithful to pray, should minarets sprout on all mosques. Now there's some fear of a Muslim backlash in Switzerland. Blame for all this is not Swiss prejudice, but Islamic militancy in countries like the Netherlands, Denmark, France, and world-wide awareness that while most Muslims are not terrorists, most terrorists are Muslim.

SILENT TOO LONG

In their way, the vast majority of moderate Muslims are victims of jihadism and Islamic extremism that has poisoned relations. Yet the moderate majority has been too silent for too long. Canada has been fortunate in escaping extremism, as has Switzerland, but there is growing unease about the future here, as there is in Europe's most neutral and tolerant country. One hopes Muslims, who are not monolithic in their attitudes, speak up and take a lead in opposing extremism which threatens the future. Source..