European Officials: Apologists for Arab-Islamic Repression, Terrorism

by Giulio Meotti • February 15, 2018 at 5:00 am

European officials have been not only mute about the Iranian regime's attacks on its own people. They have also been missing "a robust defense of Western values", now under attack in Iran: freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, separation of religion and state, judicial due process.
The European Union these days is alarmed about political reforms in Poland, but totally quiet about Erdogan's "coup against civilians" in Turkey.
How is it possible that Pope Francis, the world's highest Catholic authority, does not feel any urgency to denounce the avalanche of anti-Semitism and hate coming from the Islamic authorities, but pleased them by sending a letter of support?
As these last few years of terror attacks should have proven to them, they delude themselves if they think that this deadly ideology will be kept confined to Tehran, Ramallah or Ankara.

How is it possible that Pope Francis, the world's highest Catholic authority, does not feel any urgency to denounce the avalanche of anti-Semitism and hate coming from the Islamic authorities, but pleased them by sending a letter of support? Pictured: Pope Francis with Ahmed el-Tayyib, Grand Imam of Cairo's Al Azhar, at the Vatican on May 23, 2016. (Image source: RT video screenshot)

Federica Mogherini has been busy in recent weeks, appeasing one repressive regime after another. Mogherini, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, began with Iran. "Mogherini was mute on the popular uprising in Iran," wrote Eli Lake at Bloomberg.

"She waited six days to say anything about the demonstrations there. When she finally did, it was a mix of ingratiation and neutrality. 'In the spirit of openness and respect that is at the root of our relationship,' she said, 'we expect all concerned to refrain from violence and to guarantee freedom of expression'".

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Turkey's "Peace Operations"

by Uzay Bulut • February 15, 2018 at 4:30 am

"You can live a normal life here [Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus] if you keep quiet, if you don't tell the truth that we live under Turkish occupation, that much of our territory is a military zone where we can't go." — Şener Levent, owner and editor of the daily newspaper Afrika, in Turkish-occupied Cyprus.
In 1974, the Turkish army brutalized and terrorized at least 170,000 indigenous Greek Cypriots into fleeing to the free, southern part of the island, seized their properties, and replaced them with illegal settlers from Turkey.
"40,000 Turkish troops remain in Cyprus as a presence that prevents securing the human rights of Greek Cypriots. Turkey has been found guilty of mass violations of human rights by the European Commission and the Court of Human Rights, including the right to life, the right to property, liberty, and security of person, freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, and the prohibition of discrimination." — Artemis Pippinelli and Ani Kalayjian.

The Turkish Cypriot daily newspaper Afrika criticized Turkey's military offensive in Syria. Turkish President Erdoğan then attacked Afrika and called on his "brothers from northern Cyprus... to give the required response" -- which was a violent attack by a mob who raided and plundered Afrika's offices. (Image source: Kibris Gerçek Facebook video screenshot)

On January 20, Turkey launched a military offensive against the U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in the Afrin district of northern Syria. Ironically code-named "Operation Olive Branch," the offensive was proudly described by Turkish Parliament Speaker Ismail Kahraman as "jihad," a holy war, without which "there can be no progress."

Parroting this sentiment, both pro- and anti-government mainstream media outlets in Turkey endorsed the Afrin invasion, using similar jihadist slogans. One newspaper that did not do so was the Turkish Cypriot daily newspaper Afrika, which headlined its coverage of the offensive by comparing it to Turkey's 1974 invasion of Cyprus, which it called a "peace operation."

In a column criticizing Turkey's invasions in the region, the owner and editor of Afrika, Şener Levent, wrote:

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Western Feminists: Hijab Hypocrisy

by Khadija Khan • February 15, 2018 at 4:00 am

No one in the Women's March called out the Iranian government for imprisoning, torturing and killing women trying to break free of their shackles. Instead, they chanted "Me Too" and "Time's Up," as they paraded with activists such as Palestinian-American Linda Sarsour, who calls for jihad and apparently also denigrated one of her employees who was a victim of sexual assault in the workplace.
The same day as activists, fighting tyrannical regimes, were burning hijabs in solidarity with Iranian and other suppressed women across the world, the spineless British Foreign Office was handing out hijabs, trying to sell them as a symbol of "Liberation", "Respect" and "Security".
These women -- who are trapped in despotic Middle Eastern dictatorships, who face possible prosecution and having their lives ruined -- were given no attention by the same women marchers in the U.S. Evidently, feminists in the West were too busy wearing hijabs in solidarity with Sarsour and other promoters of Islamic law (sharia), which advises husbands to beat their wives; that in court, a woman's testimony is worth only half a man's testimony; that daughters can receive only half the inheritance of a son, and that if a woman is raped, she will need four male Muslim witnesses, supposedly at the scene, to prove that she was not committing adultery.

Asmi Fathelbab (pictured) was an employee of left-wing "feminist" activist Linda Sarsour at the Arab American Association, when Fathelbab was sexually assaulted in the office. "She [Sarsour] called me a liar because 'Something like this didn't happen to women who looked like me,'" according to Fathelbab. (Image source: Fox News video screenshot)

February 1 marked World Hijab Day, an annual expression of solidarity with "millions of Muslim women who choose to wear the hijab and live a life of modesty." Less than two weeks earlier, on January 20, a Women's March was held -- with rallies across the United States -- to re-enact the protests of the previous year against the election of President Donald Trump.

Bizarrely, Western feminists devoting their energy to supporting the right of Muslim women to wear the Islamic headscarf and highlighting the "MeToo" and "Time's Up" movements against sexual harassment, have been ignoring the genuine plight of their counterparts in the Islamic Republic of Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East, Asia and the Indian Subcontinent.

Vida Movahed, for instance, age 31, publicly removed her hijab and placed it on a stick in the streets of Tehran. For this act of freedom-seeking defiance, she was arrested and sent to prison.

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