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In this mailing:
by Soeren Kern
• December 31, 2015 at 5:00 am
- Hospitals
across Britain are dealing with at least 15 new cases of female
genital mutilation (FGM) every day. Although FGM has been illegal in
Britain since 1984, there has not been a single conviction.
- At least 1,400
children were sexually exploited between 1997 and 2013 in the town
of Rotherham, mostly by Muslim gangs, but police and municipal
officials failed to tackle the problem because they feared being
branded "racist" or "Islamophobic."
- Reverend Giles
Goddard, vicar of St John's in Waterloo, central London, allowed a
full Muslim prayer service to be held in his church. He also asked
his congregation to praise "the God that we love, Allah."
- There has been
a 60% increase in child sexual abuse reported to the police over the
past four years, according to official figures.
- British
intelligence are monitoring more than 3,000 homegrown Islamist
extremists willing to carry out attacks in Britain.
- A Muslim worker
at a nuclear power plant in West Kilbride, Scotland, was removed
from the premises after he was caught studying bomb-making materials
while on the job.
- "We try to
avoid describing anyone as a terrorist or an act as being
terrorist." – Tarik Kafala, the head of BBC Arabic.
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Talha Asmal (left), a 17-year-old from Dewsbury, is
believed to have become Britain's youngest suicide bomber when he blew
himself up at an Iraqi oil refinery. Friends described Asmal as an
"ordinary Yorkshire lad." Amira Abase (right) travelled from
London to Syria in February, at the age of 15, to join the Islamic
State as a "jihadi bride."
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The Muslim population of Britain surpassed 3.5 million in 2015 to
become around 5.5% of the overall population of 64 million, according to
figures extrapolated from a recent study on the growth of the Muslim
population in Europe. In real terms, Britain has the third-largest Muslim
population in the European Union, after France, then Germany.
Islam and Islam-related issues were omnipresent in Britain during
2015, and can be categorized into five broad themes: 1) Islamic extremism
and the security implications of British jihadists in Syria and Iraq; 2)
the continuing spread of Islamic Sharia law in Britain; 3) the sexual
exploitation of British children by Muslim gangs; 4) Muslim integration
into British society; and 5) the failures of British multiculturalism.
by Burak Bekdil
• December 31, 2015 at 4:00 am
- Earlier in
2015, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that he found it difficult
to understand what Russia was doing in Syria, since "it does
not even border Syria."
- By that logic,
Turkey should not be "doing anything" in the Palestinian
territories, Somalia, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan or any of the
non-bordering lands into which its neo-Ottoman impulses have pushed
it.
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that
he found it difficult to understand what Russia was doing in Syria,
since "it does not even border Syria." Pictured: Russian
President Vladimir Putin (left) with then Prime Minister Erdogan, meeting
in Istanbul on December 3, 2012. (Image source: kremlin.ru)
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In a 2012 speech, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, then
foreign minister, predicted that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's days
in power were numbered and that he would depart "within months or
weeks." Almost three and a half years have passed, with Assad still
in power, and Davutoglu keeps on making one passionate speech after
another about the fate of Syria.
Turkey's failure to devise a credible policy on Syria has made the
country's leaders nervous. Both Davutoglu and President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan have lately resorted to more aggressive, but less convincing,
rhetoric on Syria. The new rhetoric features many aspects of a Sunni
Islamist thinking blended with illusions of Ottoman grandeur.
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