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Sunday, January 31, 2016
YOU ARE INVITED - "CONFRONTING JEW HATRED AT USF"
Mideast Christian Suffering, U.S. Denial
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JANUARY ACTIVISM REPORT (1.31.16)
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In Turkey, Islamism and Pluralism Don't Mix
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In Turkey,
Islamism and Pluralism Don't Mix
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But Mr. Bozdağ's line of defense is problematic. For instance, the existence of Syrian opposition parties did not mean Syria was NOT a dictatorship. Bozdağ's problematic line of defense does not change the fact that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is an elected leader, or that his seat is legitimate. But the fact that Mr. Erdoğan is not a dictator does not change the fact that Turkey has an increasingly wider democratic deficit. That is primarily because Islamist politics is majoritarian and can hardly make peace with pluralism. In his Nov. 8, 2013 editorial, "Ignoring the majority," Hayrettin Karaman, a professor of theology and a columnist for the pro-government Yeni Şafak, wrote the following: Governments cannot protect, through law and order, any behavior the majority would dislike or view as harmful, illegitimate and ugly. The minority will have to give up some freedoms (that are disapproved of by the majority). The remedy ... is democracy with reference to Islam. Otherwise the majority, whose values could be violated by the minority, will have the right to apply neighborhood pressure [on the minority]. Professor Karaman's doctrinaire thinking has hardly changed since then. In his Jan. 17 column, "Freedom of opinion?" He wrote that "a democrat would never say preposterous things like 'there is no democracy in this country, there is dictatorship,' or 'human rights and freedoms are being violated.'" But regarding the academics who recently signed the now infamous declaration of peace [with Kurds] and others who defend their right to express their opinion, Mr. Karaman wrote the following: They view the academics' declaration as freedom of opinion ... despite the fact that it damages our country's image, it is against the law and ethics, and it is impossible that freedom of opinion could allow this [the declaration] ... They are not defenders of human rights; they are democracy fools and 'democratists' [his neologism for possibly fake democrats]. After 13 years of Islamist rule, this kind of majoritarian thinking comes as no surprise at all. In this mindset, a democrat would never complain of human rights violations in his country. Why? Because the government responsible for such violations was elected by the majority's votes/will.
The Islamists' inherent problem with pluralism is often painful for the minority. But the way they sometimes defend their "cause" can be entertaining. For example, one of the staunchly pro-government (or rather "pro-president") newspapers actually admitted that there was a dictator in Turkey. Daily Star's front-page headline on Jan. 17 read "Kemal the dictator," in reference to the main opposition leader. So we know who to blame for Turkey's huge democratic deficit. Perhaps a ban on the opposition would make Turkey a more democratic place? Burak Bekdil is an Ankara-based columnist for the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet Daily News and a fellow at the Middle East Forum. |
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US mosque Obama to visit controlled by Hamas-linked ISNA, former imam was Muslim Brotherhood member
US mosque Obama to visit controlled by Hamas-linked ISNA, former imam was Muslim Brotherhood member
Surprised?
“The US Mosque Obama Has Chosen For His First Presidential Visit Has Deep Extremist Ties,” by Chuck Ross, Daily Caller, January 30, 2016 (thanks to Plamen):
“The US Mosque Obama Has Chosen For His First Presidential Visit Has Deep Extremist Ties,” by Chuck Ross, Daily Caller, January 30, 2016 (thanks to Plamen):
The Baltimore mosque President Obama has chosen as the first U.S.-based mosque to visit during his presidency has deep ties to extremist elements, including to the Muslim Brotherhood.
The White House announced on Saturday that Obama will visit the Islamic Society of Baltimore (ISB) on Wednesday. He has visited several mosques overseas as president but has resisted visiting one in the homeland. The purpose of the trip, according to the White House, is to “celebrate the contributions Muslim Americans make to our nation and reaffirm the importance of religious freedom to our way of life.”
But ISB is a curious choice for Obama’s first domestic visit.
The mosque is a member of a network of mosques controlled by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), a Muslim civil rights group named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation terror case. Several executives with that organization were convicted of sending money to aid the terrorist group Hamas.
An imam who served at ISB for a total of 15 years has also been a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood network and has worked for an Islamic relief group that was designated as a terrorist organization by the Treasury Department in 2004.
Mohammad Adam el-Sheikh, who served two stints as ISB’s imam, from 1983 to 1989 and from 1994 to 2003, was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Sudan in the 1970s. He also co-founded the Muslim American Society, a Falls Church, Va.-based group that is controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood.
While in Baltimore, el-Sheikh served as a regional director for the Islamic American Relief Agency. That group’s parent organization is the Islamic African Relief Agency, which the Treasury Department says provided funds to Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, Hamas and other terrorist organizations.
After leaving Baltimore, el-Sheikh served as imam at the infamous Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church. That mosque has a lengthy roster of known terrorists and terrorist sympathizers. Its imam during much of the 1990s was Mohammed al-Hanooti. He was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which killed six people.
Dar al-Hijrah came under the control of Anwar al-Awlaki in 2001. He’s the American al-Qaeda recruiter who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2011. Nidal Hasan, the U.S. Army major who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in Nov. 2009, is said to have attended the Virginia mosque when al-Awlaki served there. The pair also reportedly exchanged emails. Two of the 9/11 hijackers also attended Dar al-Hijrah during al-Awlaki’s tenure.
El-Sheikh took over at Dar al-Hijrah in Aug. 2003, a little over a year after al-Awlaki left. While there he defended Palestianian suicide bombings against Israel.
“If certain Muslims are to be cornered where they cannot defend themselves, except through these kinds of means, and their local religious leaders issued fatwas to permit that, then it becomes acceptable as an exceptional rule, but should not be taken as a principle,” he said in 2004, according to a Washington Post article at the time.
As The Post reported Saturday, ISB’s website states that it seeks “to be the anchor of a growing Muslim community with diverse backgrounds, democratically governed, relating to one another with inclusiveness and tolerance, and interacting with neighbors in an Islamic exemplary manner.”
But that desire for tolerance — which President Obama frequently touts as well — does not appear to be a virtue shared by ISB’s resident scholar, Yaseen Shaikh.
A 2013 Youtube video shows Shaikh, who previously served as imam at a mosque in Plano, Tex., speaking out forcefully against homosexuality in Islam.
During an hour long diatribe, Shaikh called homosexuality a psychological disorder that has no place in Islam or society. He also lamented that gay rights groups have “hijacked” political discourse.
“This whole subject of homosexuality in the public sphere…is no longer a religious issue, unfortunately, as much as we want to use the religious card and try to defeat this, now it’s become a politicized issue,” Shaikh says in the video….
REPORT: Economic Benefits Of Migration Debunked, ‘A Reservoir For Low-Cost Labour’
REPORT: Economic Benefits Of Migration Debunked, ‘A Reservoir For Low-Cost Labour’
Getty
A stunning new report on migrant employment has skewered the oft-cited economic argument for mass migration, revealing that most migrants are unemployed for years, and countries won’t see a benefit for at least a generation.
The report for German paper Die Welt
entitled “The Truth about the Refugee Job Wonder” asks if German
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s pronouncement that migrants will be the
“labour revitalisation” of Germany is actually true? It turns out
Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis are more likely to be unemployed than the
average German by a large margin.
The Institute for Employment Research (IAB)
has conducted research into migrant employment rates and found that in
the case of Syrians their employment rate has dropped from 32 percent to
only 9 percent as recently as last November.
Afghanis and Iraqis, who are increasingly becoming a larger proportion of migrants coming into the EU according
to Frontex, don’t fare much better, with Afghan employment
participation going from 37.6 percent to 24.5 percent and Iraqi
employment going from 34 percent to 25.3 percent over the same five year
period. To put this in perspective, the employment rate of the average
German is 67.3 percent.
Migrants have an especially difficult
time and even those with professional qualifications tend to have a hard
time becoming employed. It is actually easier, according to the report,
for an unskilled native worker.
According to IFO Institute for Economic Research migration expert Gabriel Felbermayr, “We
know that people who come as refugees, much more difficult to integrate
into the labor market than those who immigrate to work,” and said,
“Usually it takes at least a generation,” until the employment rate,
“has approached the domestic population.”
This amount of time to enter the
workforce presents huge problems for the welfare system that the
migrants are thought to be able to prop up. Often the countries which
they come from improve and conditions allow them to go back, meaning a
zero return on investment from the costs associated with housing and
education.
Employers often fail to recognise the
qualifications of migrants from Africa and the Middle East as they have
found their education not comparable to a European equivalent
qualification. This leads many former professionals to low paid work and
the report says, “for companies the refugees are mainly REPORT:
Economic Benefits Of Migration Debunked, ‘A Reservoir For Low-Cost
Labour’,” and not the engineers and academics many left wing media
sources have said.
The report seems rather late when
economists from elsewhere have been saying that the migrants will be a
net negative for the German economy and rather than a benefit.
Migration Watch UK already debunked a report that tried to explain the economic benefits of the migrant crisis. They determined, as Die Welt
has, that putting over a million people on welfare, paying for
retraining, language courses, accommodation and the like only takes more
money from the German taxpayer instead of supposedly propping up
Germany’s decaying welfare state.
The German people themselves appear wiser
than the experts who argue the economic benefit. It was revealed that
only 16 percent of them believe Chancellor Merkel’s idea of a
migrant-fuelled economic miracle, as Breitbart London has reported.
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