Germany Cracks Down on Critics of Mega-Mosque

by Soeren Kern
April 16, 2013 at 5:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3678/germany-mega-mosque-critics

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"Our work of information is not oriented against Muslims, but against the political ideology of Islam. Muslims are its first victims, most of all women." — Politically Incorrect

The Bavarian branch of Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), has placed under state surveillance German activists accused of fomenting hate against Muslims due to their opposition to the construction of a mega-mosque in Munich.
The move to silence critics of the mosque for being "unconstitutional" was announced by Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann in a press conference on April 12, and represents an unprecedented threat to the exercise of free speech in post-reunification Germany.
Herrmann made the announcement while presenting an annual report about threats to democratic order in Germany. A seven-minute video of the press conference with subtitles in English can be viewed here.
Herrmann singled out a citizen's movement called Die Freiheit Bayern (Freedom Bavaria), as well as the Munich branch of a highly popular free speech blog called Politically Incorrect (PI), which focuses on topics related to immigration, multiculturalism and Islam in Germany.
Both groups have been drawing public attention to plans to build a massive mosque complex known as the Center for Islam in Europe-Munich (ZIE-M). The 6,000 m² (65,000 ft²) project, which will cost an estimated €40 million ($51 million), is designed to be a key strategic platform for spreading Islam throughout Europe.
Speculation is rife that the Persian Gulf Emirate of Qatar -- which is building Wahhabi mega-mosques at a breakneck pace across Europe -- will be financing the project in Munich.
Members of Freedom Bavaria and PI (German equivalents to the American Tea Party movement, roughly speaking) are, according to Herrmann, "right-wing extremists who increasingly are establishing citizen's initiatives, in order to attract the attention of German voters, under the guise of civil involvement. In this way they use, for example, the discussion about the construction of mosques to arouse, in an anti-constitutional way, prejudices against Muslims and Islam."
Herrmann continued: "In Bavaria, this involves the Freedom Bavaria Party and the Munich chapter of Politically Incorrect (PI). Their activities are aimed, inter alia, at fomenting sweeping fears of Muslims and to disparage them because of their belief that Islam is a threat to the rule of law. As a result, religious freedom, human dignity and the principle of equal treatment as key components of our liberal democratic order are being violated."
Herrmann reserved special vitriol for Michael Stürzenberger, the chairman of Freedom Bavaria and the spokesman for the Munich chapter of PI, who is guilty of "initiating a campaign for a public petition against the Center for Islam in Europe-Munich as a platform for promoting anti-Islamic propaganda, whether on the Internet or at public events."
Stürzenberger's petition has garnered more than 20,000 signatures; he needs a total of 30,000 signatures to force a public referendum on the mosque project.
German intelligence began monitoring Freedom Bavaria and PI at the end of March 2013, and Bavaria is the first state in Germany to classify so-called Islam-haters as extremists, according to Burkhard Körner, the head of Bavarian intelligence.
By contrast, German intelligence stopped monitoring Benjamin Idriz -- the Macedonian imam behind the Munich mega-mosque project who has unsettling links to radical Islamic elements -- more than two years ago.
Not surprisingly, Stürzenberger and his supporters view the situation rather differently than do Herrmann and the powers that be. In a blog post on PI, Stürzenberger describes his predicament as "as an incomprehensible warping of reality: those who want to protect democracy and fundamental law before an anti-constitutional ideology [Islam] are now being pilloried. Does anyone question that political correctness has completely infested Germany?"
Indeed, the crackdown on Freedom Bavaria and PI appears to be part of a year-long smear campaign led by a triple alliance of German multicultural elites, sundry Muslim groups and members of the mainstream media, who have been relentless in their efforts to discredit the so-called counter-jihad movement (also known as the "Islamophobes") in Germany.
Opinion polls show that growing numbers of ordinary German citizens are worried about the consequences of decades of multicultural policies that have encouraged mass immigration from Muslim countries.
Germans are especially concerned about the refusal of millions of Muslim immigrants to integrate into German society, as well as the emergence of a parallel legal system in Germany based on Islamic Sharia law.
In an effort to reverse this rising tide of negative public opinion, the guardians of German multiculturalism have been working overtime to regain the initiative by accusing the critics of Islam of engaging in hate speech to try to intimidate the so-called "new right" into silence.
The media campaign has been led by two financially troubled newspapers, the Berliner Zeitung and its sister publication, the Frankfurter Rundschau, as well as Der Spiegel, a left-leaning magazine based in Hamburg that has long served as the mouthpiece for German multiculturalism.
In a January 4, 2012 interview with the Berliner Zeitung and the Frankfurter Rundschau, Manfred Murck, the director of the Hamburg branch of German domestic intelligence, said the owners of anti-Islam blogs "have a disturbed relationship to the democratic constitutional state" and often promote "infringements of human rights protected under our constitution."
Murck continued: "I also see evidence of criminal relevance, such as making threats and public invitations to crime." He said criticism of Muslims and Islam constitutes "an attack against the freedom of religion, which is protected by Article 4 of the Basic Law."
The Berliner Zeitung and Frankfurter Rundschau interview was conducted by Steven Geyer and Jörg Schindler, two propagandists masquerading as journalists who have been leading an ongoing effort to shut down PI, which over the years has grown into a major information resource for Germans concerned about the spread of Islam in their country.
PI's motto reads "Against the Mainstream, Pro-American, Pro-Israel, Against the Islamization of Europe, For Fundamental Laws and Human Rights" – which encapsulates everything German multiculturalists abhor.
The Berliner Zeitung and the Frankfurter Rundschau, for example, have fomented some hysteria by publishing dozens of agitprop articles, some by Mely Kiyak, a first-generation German whose parents were Turkish-Kurdish immigrants. Kiyak, who calls herself a "political pioneer," portrays all critics of Islam as hate-mongers.
One article, entitled, "Politically Incorrect: Vulgar, Uninhibited, Racist," says that, "the Internet portal 'Politically Incorrect' is part of an international network of Islam haters and Muslim stalkers. This is confirmed by research conducted by the Frankfurter Rundschau."
Another article, "PI News: Prototype of the New Right," links criticism of Islam with anti-Semitism: "The 'New Right' has been growing for ten years and has momentum. The blog 'Politically Incorrect' shows what the movement looks like. The director of the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism, Wolfgang Benz, sees parallels to anti-Semitism." Open expressions of anti-Semitism are illegal in post-war Germany; the inference here is that those who criticize Islam are guilty of committing a crime. (Never mind that PI is decidedly pro-Israel.)
Other Berliner Zeitung and Frankfurter Rundschau articles are entitled: "Politically Incorrect: Where the Internet Stinks;" "Rightwing Populists: United in their Hatred of Muslims," and "Politically Correct Hatred."
A frenzied article, "Politically Incorrect: Inside the Network of Islam Haters," asserts: "PI is far more than a harmless website. It is rather a highly conspiratorial organization that works to demonize an entire faith community. It plays a vital role in an international network of those who hate Islam. It provides racists and glorifiers of violence who share the world view of the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik with a forum."
Spiegel magazine, sifting through a stock of more than 10,000 private emails stolen from PI, published an article, "Politically Incorrect Closely Knit to Far Right Scene," in which it asserted that the people behind PI are undemocratic and pose a threat to the German constitutional order.
Yet another article, "Germany's Anti-Muslim Scene: Authorities Debate Surveillance of Islamophobes," asserts that right-wing populism is a new form of extremism: "There are concerns that the anti-Muslim scene is becoming increasingly dangerous. In essence, the question is whether the hatred of Muslims is enough to endanger freedom of religion and international understanding, or whether it is a radical but legitimate expression of opinion by individual authors within the limits of the constitution."
Spiegel magazine has worked hard to portray all critics of Islam as belonging to the "far right" even though opinion polls overwhelmingly show that voters from across the political spectrum are concerned about the spread of Islam in Germany.
In Munich, the so-called progressive newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung has been leading the propaganda war against Stürzenberger and those who are concerned about the mega-mosque.
In a commentary entitled "The Dangerous Poison of Hate," Bernd Kastner, a twenty-something apologist for Islam in Germany, writes: "At last! German intelligence has declared the enemy of Islam, Michael Stürzenberger, to be an extremist. Since late March, the Freedom Bavaria Party and the Munich chapter of Politically Incorrect are being monitored, so they are formally unconstitutional. Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann accuses them of denying the human dignity of Muslims. With their agitation they threaten the peaceful coexistence of people of different backgrounds and religions."
Kastner, displaying his anti-democratic leanings, continues: "Should there be a referendum about the mega-mosque, it is feared that the mosque, which is so far only an idea, will become a campaign object. That will bring the extremists not only tens of thousands of signatures and addresses of sympathizers, but also votes in the upcoming elections."
According to PI: "Our work of information is not oriented against Muslims, but against the political ideology of Islam. Muslims are its first victims, most of all women. We want to liberate them from the shackles of this ideology so that they can integrate in our free democratic society…One thing is clear: We will maintain our way consistently and continue unswervingly."
Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.

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The Islamic Paradise

by Ali Salim
April 16, 2013 at 4:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3662/islamic-paradise

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When as a Muslim and as an Arab, I look... with envy at life in the West, I feel cheated.

Paradise Lost

To denigrate the achievement-rich West and glorify, as a role model, Islam, Islamic extremists compare the way of life in Europe and the United States to the pre-Islamic period of jahiliyya, the time of ignorance and violence swept away by the prophet Muhammad (May the prayer and blessing of Allah be upon him). The extremists represent Christianity as paganism, and say America is "wanton" because of its so-called promiscuity, prostitution, gambling, usury, violence, alcohol and homosexuality. They compare crime in the West to the mutual murder and robbery indulged in by the tribes in the pre-Islamic Arabian Peninsula, and compare abortions to the jahiliyya's practice of burying girls alive.
However, Islamic extremists also deliberately hide other aspects of the jahiliyya, those suitable to the most exalted values of the West that unfortunately can no longer be found in today's Arab-Muslim world. An investigation of the old Arab sources shows that the jahiliyya was a time when the honor of keeping one's word was so important that people were willing to lose their own lives and those of their loved ones rather than go back on it. According to Arab historiography, for example, a Jew named Samaua'l ibn-Adiya, who lived in the Arabian Peninsula in the seventh century, allowed his hostage son to be killed rather than break his promise to Imrū' al-Qays al-Kindī (the father of Arabic poetry, and also the son of one of the last Kindite kings). Ibn-Adiya promised him he would ensure the safety of his family and preserve his armor. Al-Qays' rivals kidnapped ibn-Adiya's son, held him hostage, and demanded that he turn over al-Qays' family members and armor in return for the son's freedom. Ibn-Adiya refused, and the kidnappers killed his son.
The jahiliyya, compared to Islam today, was Paradise on earth, and in fact society was fairly similar to contemporary Western society. It was a society that valued its members and in which men behaved like gentlemen. Knowledge, music and poetry were respected and there was frank and open discourse; and people who frequent Hyde Park today could learn from the debates held in the Arab markets.
Many aspects of the jahiliyya are familiar to us from Western culture and quite different from the herd culture that now fails to respect the individual, and that insists on unquestioning obedience, terrorism and oppression, all of which have become the norms of the radicals, who interpret Islam for their own benefit and who have done so since the time of Muhammad (May the prayer and blessing of Allah be upon him).
I am convinced that life in the West, despite its many drawbacks, is Paradise on earth, and certainly in comparison to life in the Arab-Muslim world. There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that radical Islamic ideologues who lived in the West, such as the Muslim Brotherhood's Sayyid Qutb, have been as envious as I. They have seen with their own eyes the startling difference between Western society, which is progressive, developed and has untold achievements to its credit, and oppressive Islamic society, which smothers its people and forces them into a life of backwardness. The shock that greeted extremist Muslims, and the realization that Islam could never achieve such greatness, caused a rush of jealousy and hatred easily seen in publications and activities, the objectives of which are to incite Muslims to destroy the West, its culture and its achievements.

The Journey to the Promise of Paradise

The result was that Islam forbade the pleasures of this world, and the gratification of desires and enjoyment in general were postponed to the afterlife. In contrast to the value system of the jahiliyya, which included authentic physical, emotional and cultural pleasure, Islamic propagandists stress the elements of fraud and deceit in the Islamic tradition. They give Muslims permission to lie freely to infidels and to include terrorism in Islam's operational code to achieve their goals.
Instead of the pleasure of this world advocated by the jahiliyya, Islamic interpreters spur on jihad fighters by telling them they can have all the happiness and satisfaction that they condemn on earth, but only in Paradise. On the list are never-ending sex and orgies with 72 dark-eyed houris, goblets of gold and crystal overflowing with wine, and aromatic gardens hung over rivers of milk and honey. Included in the package are immortal youths with bowls and ewers and a cup of purest wine, with boys of their own, as fair as virgin pearls, refilling their glasses.
When, as a Muslim and as an Arab, I read Islamic historiography that paints the jahiliyya in negative colors and then look with envy at life in the West, I feel cheated. I am convinced that we, the Arabs, despite the violence prevalent during the jahiliyya, were far in advance of the West when it came to freedom, the rights of the individual, education, pluralism and the arts. All of these disappeared when the Islamic interpreters came along and extinguished the fire of Islamic progress -- when all the jahiliyya really needed was to evolve. Had it evolved and not been extinguished at birth, it would stand shoulder-to-shoulder in accomplishments with the West today.
It often seems to me that the interpreters of Islam have taken the tribal violence of the jahiliyya, the looting and murder, and turned them into a killing machine to conquer and occupy, murder and terrorize Western infidels. It is a jihad against world peace, an excuse to steal what belongs to others, and an abandonment of what was good in Arab culture before Islam, and was left behind.
So while the West lives the life of jahiliyya, in its positive senses of freedom and creativity, Islam is waging a war on the permissiveness it calls jahiliyya and on modernism as defined by sex, liquor and gambling. In the mosques, however, Muslims are told they can have those all in Paradise. The problem is, the entrance requirements for that erotic garden are fairly stiff: postpone gratification and channel it into a secret perversion, or kill a Jew or a Christian or any other infidel, and die as a shaheed [a martyr for the sake of Allah], and then enter Paradise.
However, according to this view, it is perfectly permissible for a Muslim to enjoy the pleasures of this world, on the condition that he plunder them from infidels, as he is entitled to their goods, property and women -- if he can take them while he is waging jihad. Thus the interpreters of Islam legitimized the darkest of human motivations and channeled them into a rampage of religiously-justified murder and terrorism. They used our Islam to authorize prostitution by calling it "pleasure marriage," a temporary situation in which an unmarried woman or an underage girl can be used as a sex slave, by any passerby or an older man, and then discarded.
While life in the West apparently really is Paradise on earth, as Muslims we can only achieve it once we are dead, and the only way we can get there is through jihad against the infidels. The interpreters of Islam have us convinced that the ticket to Paradise can only be bought with the blood of innocent Western civilians. Thus it happened that, throughout history, the sword of Islam, wielded by Arab tribes united under the flag of the Islamic nation, cut its way through Christian communities in the Middle East and Europe. And thus it happened that the Jews of the Arabian Peninsula, especially those in Khaybar, were slaughtered, as were the Copts of Egypt, and the Byzantines, on the ruins of whose churches today sits Islamist Turkey, headed by the Muslim Brotherhood's Erdogan.
The genuine jahiliyya, characterized by individual freedom of choice, can still be found in the West, where it is the cornerstone of the progress, enlightenment, invention and technological development for which the West is famous, as opposed to our backwardness in so many ways.

Ticket to Hell

I am convinced that the regressive, extremist interpretation of Islam has turned us into a backward, perverse society. We repress our dark urges but they find their outlet in frustration, jealousy, hatred, terrorism and the desire to destroy the West. While the Islamic Paradise is sexual and permissive, it cannot be attained through normal means because it is conditioned on death and on killing innocent victims. The truth is that Paradise really does exist, but only in the West. This is evident to any shepherd in the Middle East who has access to a generator, a television set and a satellite dish.
The culture gap is frustrating and leads to a strong desire to copy the West and even belong to it; but it also leads to a destructive envy of the West by the radical Islamic ideologues, who hate music, dancing, democracy, Western society, pluralism and the pleasures of this world.
It is hard to judge what goes on in the mind of a Muslim who, every Friday, listens to the nonsense propounded by the Imam about jahiliyya and the West. I am certain that the conflict leads every observant Muslim like myself to feel a deep envy leading him to hate himself and the West, its progress and achievements. The knowledge that, apart from the Holy Qur'an, we have not contributed anything to the progress of mankind, beyond a collection of wars and terrorist attacks, frustrates and depresses many of us. An internal conflict grows as we realize that we are more than one billion strong, and that we possess an enormous amount of the geography of the world, its fresh water, its oil and its riches, but that to the world at large, we represent backwardness and violence, and that the excuses of our leaders are couched in empty, anachronistic terms such as "Western imperialism and colonialism."
I can see no magic solution for an Islamic nation that believes only in the law of the sharia, which today means enslaving, drugging and neutering our intelligence. The sharia separates the world into exactly two parts: observant Muslims on one side and enemy infidels on the other. The world as well is divided now into two parts: the region ruled by Islam and the battle zone where anyone lives who is not a Muslim.
Only when we are liberated from our catastrophes, from the things forbidden to us -- and from our unwillingness to ask why these aspects of Islam were promoted instead of others, and what the people who promoted them really wanted -- will we progress and become creative. Unless we turn Islam into a religion purely of the spirit, calling for a direct connection between man and Allah, we will never be rehabilitated. We must do without the mediation of mercenary sheikhs financed by various backward Islamic states who, like a dark religious mafia, are trying to set the world on fire. Until that happens we will remain in our own private hell and try to drag the rest of the world into it with us, our way of life will continue to represent hell for the rest of the world and we will continue to complain about Islamophobia and dream of Paradise while it is just nearby, close enough for us to reach out and touch it.

Related Topics: Ali Salim

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