Are Jihadists Taking over Europe?

by Giulio Meotti • June 7, 2017 at 5:00 am

In the four European countries most targeted by terror attacks -- Britain, France, Belgium and Germany -- the number of official extremists has reached 66,000. That sounds like a real army -- on active duty.
The terrorists' ransom is already visible: they have destabilized the democratic process in many European countries and are drafting the terms of freedom of expression. A jihadist takeover of Europe is no longer unthinkable. Islamic extremists are already reaping what they sowed: they successfully defeated Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen, the only two European candidates who really wanted to fight radical Islam.
Europe could be taken over the same way Islamic State took over much of Iraq: with just one-third of Iraqi territory.

Of all the French soldiers engaged in military operations, half are deployed inside France. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

"Germany is quietly building a European army under its command," according to some in the media. Apparently German Chancellor Angela Merkel, after her clash with U.S President Donald Trump, would like to invest, along with France, in a European army.

At present, however, there is just one real army in Europe -- the Jihadist Army, as in the terrorists who struck London on June 3 and murdered seven people, just two weeks after carnage in Manchester.

In the four European countries most targeted by terror attacks -- Britain, France, Belgium and Germany -- the number of official extremists has reached 66,000. That sounds like a real army, on active duty.

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Facebook's Little Ethics Problem

by Ruthie Blum • June 7, 2017 at 4:30 am

Facebook has been aiding abusers of human-rights -- such as China, Turkey, Russia and Pakistan -- to curb the freedom of expression of their people.
"On the same day that we filed the report, the 'Stop Palestinians' page that incited against Palestinians was removed by Facebook... for 'containing credible threat of violence' which 'violated our community standards.' On the other hand, the 'Stop Israelis' page that incited against Israelis, was not removed. We received a response from Facebook stating that the page was 'not in violation of Facebook's rules.'" — Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, head of The Israel Law Center.
According to Darshan-Leitner, Facebook's insistence that it cannot control all the content on its pages is disingenuous, if not an outright lie. After all, its algorithms are perfectly accurate when it comes to detecting users' shopping habits.

There is a problem at Facebook. On May 8, the social media platform blocked and then shut down the pages of two popular moderate Muslim groups -- on the grounds that their content was "in violation of community standards" -- without explanation.

Had these pages belonged to the radicals who incite followers to violence, however, the move would have been welcome, and would have corresponded to Facebook's Online Civil Courage Initiative, founded in Berlin in January 2016, to "challeng[e] hate speech and extremism online," in the effort to prevent the use of social media as a platform for recruiting terrorists.

The pages that Facebook shut down, however -- Ex-Muslims of North America, which has 24,000 followers; and Atheist Republic, with 1.6 million -- do nothing of the sort. In fact, they are managed and followed by Arabs across the world who reject not only violence and terrorism, but Islam as a religion.

This, it turns out, is precisely the problem.

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Sweden's Multicultural Apartheid

by Nima Gholam Ali Pour • June 7, 2017 at 4:00 am

Swedish politicians keep trying to portray Sweden as a liberal and tolerant paradise. Experience from the suburbs, however, where most of the migrants are, shows that a large part of Sweden's population is not part of Sweden's liberals and feminists. They, in fact get harassed by Islamists every day. In those communities, there is a lack of tolerance.
These women are not some right-wing pundits who criticize Islam. Instead, they are simply Muslim women who are denied fundamental rights in Sweden because they are women and happen to live in communities where parallel Islamic social structures have been created.
The problem is that those who govern Sweden do not originate from, or have any deeper knowledge about, the immigrant suburbs, where people cannot live as free citizens, and clearly have no interest in these suburbs. The LGBT movement and the feminist movement prefer to silence those who protest Islamic oppression in Sweden's immigrant suburbs.

In Stockholm's Tensta suburb, the self-appointed "morality police" gather outside assembly rooms to prevent young people from entering if they try to organize parties with music. (Image source: Holger.Ellgaard / Wikimedia Commons)

In Sweden, as in many other suburbs throughout Europe, the repression from which many refugees are fleeing, instead seems to be following them there. Nalin Pekgul, who defines herself as a practicing Muslim and has served as a politician in the Social Democrat Party, stated that in immigrant-settled areas, such as Stockholm's Tensta suburb, where she lives, the self-appointed "morality police" gather outside assembly rooms to prevent young people from entering if they try to organize parties with music. Islamist organizations in Sweden, Pekgul says, have strengthened their position through support from Saudi Arabia and Sweden's government agencies, media, political parties and so on.

According to Pekgul, there are many Muslims in in Sweden who have become fundamentalists. For calling public attention to these changes, Pekgul has been called an "Islamophobe". When, in protest against the extremist Muslims, she began wearing short skirts in Tensta, she was harassed.

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