Steven Emerson, Executive Director August 1, 2018 Articles by IPT |  IPT in the News |  IPT Blog |  Profiles |  Multimedia |  Donate |  Contact Us How Quiet Islamization Threatens Secular States by Abigail R. Esman Special to IPT News August 1, 2018 https://www.investigativeproject.org/7556/how-quiet-islamization-threatens-secular-states Print Send RSS Share: Be the first of your friends to like this. While all eyes have focused on the obvious – Islamist violence in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq, in Pakistan and the Congo, and in Muslim communities of Western European cities – radical Islam has been quietly tightening its grip in formerly-secular Muslim regions such as Malaysia, Turkey, Bangladesh, Indonesia and the Maldives. In turn, these changes are also helping to guide the rise of radical Islam across the West. As Farooq Sulehria, assistant professor at Beaconhouse National University in Lahore noted in a recent e-mail, "diaspora communities are politically reflective of the mainstream currents in the home country." Yet outside of think tanks and counterterrorism circles, few have paid much attention to the changes in these countries, and the growing threat they pose. Even since the 2002 attacks on two nightclubs and the American consulate in Bali, for instance, most people considered Indonesia a secular, Muslim majority state. Subsequent suicide attacks, one in 2003 and another in Jakarta in 2005, were staged by Jemiaah Islamiya, an al-Qaida- and ISIS-affiliated group with no direct ties to Indonesia. But by 2017, Reuters reports a survey showed that "one in five Indonesian students supported an Islamic state, and one in four" were ready to wage jihad "to achieve it." According to the polling company Alvara, the results indicate that "intolerant teachings have already entered top universities and high schools" in the world's largest Muslim-majority country. Already that influence is being felt by skeptics and non-believers, including atheists and Christians, says the AFP. Criticizing religion can result in a jail sentence, at a time when "conservative Islam has exploded in Indonesia's public life in lockstep with the rise of hardliners and religiously motivated violence." Such crackdowns have already led to the implementation of Sharia law in Indonesia's Aceh Province, where a woman was publicly caned last year for being seen with a man other than her husband. Similar stories are emerging from Malaysia, Indonesia's formerly-secular neighbor. Earlier this year, Malaysia's federal court ruled that sharia courts could preside over cases involving apostasy. Last year, a state assembly controlled by the Islamist PAS party approved a law that would subject those found guilty of adultery or drinking alcohol to public canings. Even stricter laws are already in place in Kelantan state, which bans cinemas and nightclubs. In addition, throughout Malaysia, reports the AFP, the word "Allah," which has previously been used both by Muslims and Christians, is now reserved for Muslims only. Arabic words are increasingly replacing Malaysian ones, while Christians have been prohibited from erecting crosses. And during the Chinese New Year, despite the fact that nearly 25 percent of Malays are of Chinese descent, images of dogs meant to celebrate the Year of the Dog were "omitted from Lunar New Year decorations and merchandise for fear of offending the country's Muslim majority." The situation is getting worse., "One of the reasons is that Malaysia sends thousands of students to Saudi Arabia, where they are indoctrinated with hardline intolerant forms of Islam like Salafism and Wahhabism," Ahmad Farouk Musa of the Islamic Resistance Front, a Malay think tank, told CNN. Students also are being indoctrinated in Bangladesh, another formerly-secular Muslim country facing what a New York Times op-ed called "Creeping Islamism." As in Malaysia, books by non-Muslims have been removed from school curricula, and secular bloggers have been threatened or even killed, including one American. Two of the largest extremist groups in Bangladesh, al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) and ISIS, have targeted separate groups of young men – the former focused on less-educated youth, the latter on wealthier, upper class men – resulting in a broad swath of jihadist recruits. Fortunately, "Bangladeshi terrorists have largely been incompetent" so far, Georgetown University Professor C. Christine Fair notes. Still, "there is evidence that "Bangladeshi terrorists are upping their game." Indeed, last December, a Bangladeshi terrorist attempted to blow up a New York City subway station near Times Square. Five people were injured, although the suicide bomb "malfunctioned. " ISIS has also made significant inroads in the idyllic "paradise" tourist destination of the Maldives, a group of nearly 1,200 tiny Pacific islands especially favored by honeymooners. Travel web sites describe lush, tropical gardens, snow-white sands, sapphire waters and other alluring clichés, accompanied by tantalizing photographs. But in recent years, "there have been protests calling for the imposition of sharia law, the black flag of Islamic State waved by participants, just 15 minutes' boat ride from the nearest resort serving alcohol and pork to skimpily-dressed Western guests," the Telegraph reported in 2015. The country also has one of the largest per-capita numbers of ISIS recruits, and, according to a 2017 European Press Prize-winning report in the Internazionale, the ISIS fighters are considered national heroes. "While the rest of the world watched the Olympics last August," journalist Francesca Borri writes, "everyone here was watching the battle of Aleppo. And rooting for Al Qaeda." A tourist staying at one of the Maldives' luxurious island resorts would never notice most of this, because most locals live on other islands. There, reports Borri, women are completely covered. Former Buddhist temples have been transformed into mosques. While a supreme court justice was caught with prostitutes, women suspected of adultery receive public lashings. And only Muslims can be citizens. Compounding the problem is that poverty in the Maldives is extreme – a situation that adds to the allure of joining foreign terror groups, where salaries are high and benefits frequently extended to families at home. Now, some are returning from the failed caliphate and other battlefields, yet "are living freely" on the islands, recruiting and plotting new attacks. But Islamism does not always translate into violent terrorism. In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's successful re-Islamizing of Ataturk's secular republic involves the molding of minds away from Western values to create a "new, religious generation." More and more public schools have become more like religious madrassas, where girls are taught to "obey" men, lessons on evolution have been removed from schoolbooks, and boys and girls are often segregated in classrooms. In Istanbul, reports the Washington Post, "a local education official...demanded that teachers bring pupils to attend morning prayers at local mosques." "Basically, President Erdogan is destroying Turkey's secular education system," Soner Cagaptay, Turkey program director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told Voice of America. "That is the key reason why Turkey worked as a democratic society, which did not produce violent jihadist radicalization." It's not just the schools. After the failed coup in 2016, Erdogan commanded the country's mosques to raise the volume on calls to prayer. Once a gently melodic intonation, the sound now blares over the cities, making normal conversation nearly impossible until it ends. Most notably, many critics of Islam have been arrested, and on Turkish state TV, renowned theologian Mustafa Askar stated in 2016 that "those who do not pray in the Islamic fashion are animals." Such incidents attest to Sulehria's claim that Islamization in countries of origin are shaping immigrant communities in the West. In Holland, for instance, 20 Islamic boarding schools were legalized in 2016, according to Elise Steilberg, who maintains a blog focusing on Turkish and Islamic involvement in education in The Netherlands. Almost all, she says, are run by a Turkish religious organization. Many also maintain strict Islamic dress codes "that make covering the hair obligatory for girls from the age of 4 on." Girls are also required to wear long skirts or pants, and boys an Islamic headdress, or "topi." And all students memorize Quranic surahs in both Arabic and Dutch. Indeed, Steilberg says, there is an encroaching sense that Muslims are becoming more fundamentalist in the Netherlands, despite efforts at integration. "According to a recent survey," she notes, "the number of people in the Netherlands that call themselves pious Muslims is decreasing. But those who are religious are steadily becoming more conservative in their beliefs. It is no longer even a surprise to see an 11-year-old fully covered in a chador in downtown Amsterdam." Such sightings, to be fair, are by no means common; but the very presence of fully-covered girls in a city known for its freedoms, including legalized marijuana and prostitution, demonstrates the dramatic cultural changes fundamentalist Islam is imposing on the secular West. Yet Western governments seem to do little about it. In the UK, observes Deutsche Welle, rights organizations "have repeatedly pointed to a growing radicalization, yet it appears that authorities have not taken strong measures against it." In Holland, "There is a lot of discussion about potentially violent radicalization, but the principle of freedom of religion makes the discussion of the growth of Islamic orthodoxy a no-go area," says Steilberg. And in Belgium, despite a spate of terrorist attacks, Politico warned in early 2017 that "an increasing number of mosques in Belgium teach a radical form of Islam," while moderate preachers feel "'powerless' against the spread of the more extreme ideology." For many, the concern also goes beyond national security and cultural change. Human rights issues are also frequently involved, particularly when it comes to girls and women. Of the young girls in chador in downtown Amsterdam, for instance, Steilberg says, "if she goes to an Islamic school, one wonders if she will ever be fully aware of the rights and liberties our country has to offer her. I think those rights and liberties are something we should be proud of. They are not relative, but a basic ingredient of what the Netherlands are and stand for today, and should be a part of every citizen's future." Even more, they are rights and liberties that should belong to everyone, wherever they may live. Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New York and the Netherlands. Follow her at @radicalstates. Related Topics: Abigail R. Esman, Malaysia, radical Islam, Farooq Sulehria, blasphemy laws, sharia courts, Islamic Resistance Front, Ahmad Farouk Musa, Al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent, Bangladesh bloggers, C. Christine Fair, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, madrassas, Soner Cagapty The IPT accepts no funding from outside the United States, or from any governmental agency or political or religious institutions. Your support of The Investigative Project on Terrorism is critical in winning a battle we cannot afford to lose. All donations are tax-deductible. Click here to donate online. The Investigative Project on Terrorism Foundation is a recognized 501(c)3 organization.   To subscribe: http://www.investigativeproject.org/list_subscribe.php The Investigative Project on Terrorism 202-363-8602 - main 202-966-5191 - fax

IPT Blog: Bogus Apartheid Claims Follow Passage of Israel Nation-State Law

Steven Emerson, Executive Director August 1, 2018 Articles by IPT |  IPT in the News |  IPT Blog |  Profiles |  Multimedia |  Donate |  Contact Us Bogus Apartheid Claims Follow Passage of Israel Nation-State Law by Ariel Behar  •  Aug 1, 2018 at 1:45 pm https://www.investigativeproject.org/7557/bogus-apartheid-claims-follow-passage-of-israel Print Send RSS Share: Be the first of your friends to like this. Anti-Israel groups in the United States are using a recently passed Israeli law to ramp up false claims of apartheid. The "nation-state" bill defines Israel as "the national home of the Jewish people" with Jerusalem as its capital. "Israel arrogantly enshrines Jim Crow laws," the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter at New York's New School blasted on Facebook. "Apartheid is a legal term, not an insult. It's the most suitable label to describe Israel's treatment of millions of Palestinians over the last seven decades," read a graphic shared via Facebook by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). SJP and JVP are known for their animosity towards Israel. The groups normalize hate, promote anti-Semitism, and previously hosted convicted-terrorist Rasmieh Odeh at a national conference in 2017. "What this law really does is it enshrines racisms and discrimination and like you said apartheid into the foundational constitutional law of the state of Israel," JVP Executive Director Rebecca Vilkomerson said in an interview with MSNBC's Ayman Mohyeldin. "So that means the 20 percent of Israeli citizens who are not Jewish are being told, and the state is actually now obligated with this law to treat them unequally." "Formalizing de facto apartheid, the Israeli Knesset passes the racist nation-state law, which officially designates Palestinian citizens of Israel...along with all other Palestinians living in historic Palestine under Israeli sovereign power—as second-class citizens," claimed Columbia University's Students for Justice in Palestine chapter. Apartheid is a term used by anti-Israel activists and groups to smear and delegitimize Israel. And unlike apartheid South Africa, both Jewish and non-Jewish Israelis receive full voting rights, hold elected office, serve in the military and prominently on Israeli courts. The nation-state bill passed the Knesset in a 62-55 vote. Israel's Druze community voiced concern over the bill. But President Reuven Rivlin assured a delegation "that is the basis of the state we founded – the Zionist movement in full partnership with all who live here in this good land, which is good for all of us and where we can exist in equality without any problem." Still, the bill's passage prompted Stanford University SJP member Hamzeh Daoud, a residential assistant, to threaten to "physically fight" pro-Israel students. He later changed the wording in his Facebook post from "physically" to "intellectually" and noted that "I edited this post because I realize intellectually beating Zionists is the only way to go. Physical fighting is never an answer to when trying to prove people wrong." Both Daoud's Facebook and Twitter accounts have been deactivated. Most analyses conclude the law is more symbolic than substantial. It does nothing to change the rights of Israeli Arabs, although many are displeased at its recognition of Hebrew as the country's official language, seeing it as downgrading Arabic. People are free to criticize Israel and the bill. But it's clear that groups like SJP and JVP will do anything to bash Israel and delegitimize its existence. Related Topics: Campus  |  Ariel Behar, Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, anti-Israel groups, anti-Semitism, nation-state law, Knesset, Rebecca Vilkomerson, Israeli Druze The IPT accepts no funding from outside the United States, or from any governmental agency or political or religious institutions. Your support of The Investigative Project on Terrorism is critical in winning a battle we cannot afford to lose. All donations are tax-deductible. Click here to donate online. The Investigative Project on Terrorism Foundation is a recognized 501(c)3 organization.   To subscribe: http://www.investigativeproject.org/list_subscribe.php The Investigative Project on Terrorism 202-363-8602 - main 202-966-5191 - fax

Pierre Rehov Film

GLOBALISM: As Trudeau Gives Our Tax Dollars To The Palestinians, Canadians Say Poverty Here At Home Is Rising

https://www.spencerfernando.com/2018/08/01/globalism-as-trudeau-gives-our-tax-dollars-to-the-palestinians-canadians-say-poverty-here-at-home-is-rising/

NewsSpencerFernandoAugust 1, 20180

The broken and backwards priorities of the Trudeau government continue to be revealed.

As I reported yesterday, the Trudeau government is planning to give $50 million of our taxpayer dollars to the Palestinians:

“$12.65 million will go to the Palestinians through the United Nations and other ‘international organizations,’ while most of the rest will go towards other NGOs who will disperse the money.

Some of the money will “help young female Palestinians build businesses,” and “address gender-based barriers to entrepreneurship.”

At the same time as Trudeau gives our money away, more and more Canadians are saying that poverty is rising in their communities.
Here’s what was reported in a recent Angus Reid survey:

“Canadians overwhelmingly see poverty in their communities as increasing, rather than decreasing, and they believe their federal and provincial governments aren’t doing enough to reverse this trend. Just what should be done, however, is the subject of considerable disagreement.”

The poll shows 82% of Canadians saying “the growing gap between the rich and everyone else is unacceptable,” while 74% have said “it’s getting harder to maintain a middle-class standard of living where they live.”

The price of Globalism

This is the price of globalism. While Canadians are increasingly facing economic challenges, the government that is supposed to be serving us is taking our tax dollars and giving it away to other countries.
So long as that keeps happening, we won’t be able to solve our problems here at home, and Canadians in need will pay the price for the virtue-signalling of disloyal politicians like Trudeau.

The Trudeau Liberals Just Admitted The Carbon Tax Will Hurt Canada’s Economy

https://www.spencerfernando.com/2018/08/01/the-trudeau-liberals-just-admitted-the-carbon-tax-will-hurt-canadas-economy/

MoneySpencerFernandoAugust 1, 20180

Can they get any more incompetent?

Ever since the Trudeau Liberals introduced the idea of the carbon tax, people have been raising concerns about how it will damage Canada’s economy.

It hurts Canadian businesses by increasing their costs, and hurts Canadian consumers by raising the price of everything as it filters out through the economy.

It also makes Canadian businesses far less competitive when compared to businesses in the US who don’t have a carbon tax, and have lower overall business taxes as well.

For years, the Trudeau Liberals ignored those concerns, saying the carbon tax was necessary to deal with ‘global emissions,’ (total BS), and that it wouldn’t hurt the economy at all. In fact, Catherine McKenna has repeatedly said the carbon tax and the Liberals ‘environmental’ policies would help the economy and boost growth.

But now, the Trudeau Liberals have admitted that the carbon tax will hurt Canada’s economy.

They didn’t say that of course, but the recent announcement that they’re setting a lower carbon tax price is a clear admission of how damaging the tax is.

As noted in a recent report, “The Liberal government is curtailing its plan to price carbon pollution after hearing concerns from Canadian industry officials about how the tax would impact competitiveness. As the Globe and Mail first reported Wednesday morning, Environment and Climate Change Canada plans to release new guidelines that lower the percentage of emissions some polluters will have to pay the carbon tax on. Back in January, Environment Minister Catherine McKenna set the benchmark at 70 per cent of an industry’s average emissions performance, meaning companies would have to pay a tax on 30 per cent of their emissions.”

Now, the tax will apply to between 10% and 20% of emissions.

Notably however, the per-tonne cost remains the same.

The move comes as Canadians turn against the carbon tax, with Ontario and Saskatchewan fighting it in court, Manitoba introducing a carbon tax that the government rejects as too weak, PEI fighting against it, New Brunswick introducing a plan McKenna opposed, and Alberta likely to elect a Conservative government in 2019 that will scrap the provincial carbon tax.

Scrap the tax entirely

This move by the Trudeau government is an obvious admission that the tax hurts the economy. After all, if it didn’t hurt the economy, why would reducing it help competitiveness?

It also exposes the dishonesty of the government. If the tax was really about helping the environment, then wouldn’t lowering it be a total disaster?

By lowering it, the government has admitted that it’s not about the environment at all, and that it is bad for the economy.

So that raises the obvious question: Why not scrap it entirely?

A lower carbon tax is technically better than a higher carbon tax, but it’s still far worse than no carbon tax. As long as the carbon tax exists, Canada’s businesses are less competitive, and Canadian consumers are getting screwed over. If the Liberals actually wanted to fix that problem, they would get rid of it fully.

The Trudeau government continues to fall further and further into the depths of incompetence and dishonesty.

'Ultimate Form of Civilization Jihad' Planned for Michigan City

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270879/ultimate-form-civilization-jihad-planned-michigan-leo-hohmann

Iraqi-Christian refugees on edge after learning of mosque 'conversion' project.

August 1, 2018

Leo Hohmann

29

With wounds still fresh in the minds of residents of Sterling Heights, Michigan, where a proposal to build a mega-mosque in the middle of a residential area sparked multiple lawsuits, a group of Pakistanis is moving forward with plans for another controversial mosque project, this one involving the conversion of a church.

The group held an "open house" last weekend at the former St. Mark Lutheran Church on 16 ½ Mile Road in Sterling Heights. But a group of Christians who attended said it was unlike any open house they'd experienced.

A realtor was present, along with several Pakistani men dressed in traditional Islamic robes.
"They used the term 'open house' because they probably didn't know what else to call it," said a local woman who dropped in on the event. "But in retrospect I think they were looking for money. That was their plan, to show the property, explain what they were going to do with it and see if people would donate."

The woman, who asked not to be identified, said she lives two miles from the Islamic Association of Greater Detroit in nearby Rochester Hills. Mosques in Oakland and Macomb counties tend to start out small and become very large, she said.

Sterling Heights is unique in that it is home to not only a growing Muslim community but one of the largest concentrations of Chaldean Catholic Christians in the U.S. These Christians fled persecution in Iraq. Word of the open house spread quickly among the Christians when a flyer showing the targeted church started circulating in the area last week.

There is a feeling in the community that the plan to turn the church into a mosque may be connected in some way to the Islamic Association of Greater Detroit, about 15 miles away in Rochester Hills. That mosque's congregants are also mostly Pakistanis who speak Urdu.

Sterling Heights already has two mosques in operation and a third tied up in litigation. The city went through a highly contentious debate in 2015-16 in which a 20,000-square-foot mega-mosque called the American Islamic Community Center, or AICC, was denied a permit by a 9-0 vote of the planning commission. That denial received a standing ovation from an overflow crowd gathered at city hall, but the decision would later be overturned under pressure from the U.S. Justice Department. The DOJ joined local Muslims in a federal lawsuit alleging religious discrimination.

The city settled with the Muslims and agreed to allow the construction to start on AICC mosque but then a citizens' group filed its own lawsuit against the city alleging that it approved the project out of a bias toward Muslims, many of whom would be attending the mosque from outside the city, when the overwhelming majority of city residents opposed the project citing traffic and parking issues. Making things more contentious is the fact that the targeted neighborhood is populated largely by Chaldeans Christians, many of whom escaped Muslim persecution in Iraq.

Several Christian refugees in Sterling Heights were contacted about the church-mosque conversion. They refused to speak on the record, fearing retribution from the Muslims.

In an interview with WDIV-TV last year, Sterling Heights Mayor Michael Taylor let it be known unequivocally that, in terms of the AICC lawsuit, he stands on the side of the Muslims. Taylor said the city plans to "defend against it pretty vigorously" and "go after them for sanctions for this very frivolous lawsuit."
Dick Manasseri, spokesman for Secure Michigan, a citizens' watchdog organization, said that for any group to try to open another mosque in Sterling Heights before the controversy over the previous one is settled represents "a very bold move" that has raised a lot of eyebrows.

"Why would any church board, knowing about the controversy of the previous mosque plan, decide to open the door to another mosque that's coming in from the side, unless they are a player in the interfaith movement, which is going on all over Michigan right now," he said.

The targeted church property sits on 4.8 acres with enough parking for 150 cars. It last changed hands, according to courthouse records, in August 2012 when it was acquired by an entity called God's Love Overpowers Ministries from Crown of Life Lutheran Church for $375,000. According to the listing agent, the property is now under contract to be sold to the Pakistanis for approximately $440,000 and the transaction is scheduled to close in less than three months. Since there is already a house of worship on the property, no rezoning hearings will be required.

The Muslim community in Sterling Heights is still small, estimated at less than 1,000 people out of a total population of 130,000. But more Muslims are moving in each year, coming up from the area to the south, which includes Dearborn, Hamtramck, Madison Heights and Warren, and from Clinton Township to the east.

Some residents have also noticed a change in the city's Ethnic Community Committee over the last couple of years. The committee's biggest event is its annual Cultural Exchange, and that event gets a little bit more Islamic every year, says Tom Mitchell, who has lived in Sterling Heights since 1965. The city's transformation into a multicultural hub sped up under the direction of Mohammed Alomari, an immigration attorney who was named last year as chairman of the Ethnic Committee.

"I understand the original founders of the Ethnic Committee back in 1990 wanted to help new immigrants assimilate into our American culture and become more informed of their new surroundings and new neighbors," Mitchell said. "Back then the outreach efforts were for Sterling Heights residents only."

But that's no longer the case under Alomari's leadership, Mitchell said. With Alomari's approval, the Cultural Exchange welcomes not just ethnic-food vendors and musicians but Islamic propaganda outfits such as the Omar Center for Awareness and Understanding, which is a network of grassroots Islamist activists who hand out free copies of the Quran, copies of Islamic sermons and other religious literature under the guise of promoting "freedom" and "equality" for all people, according to its website, OmarCenter.org.

The group takes its name from the 7^th-century caliph Omar, who followed Muhammad and is often referred to by Muslims as "the Great Conqueror." He earned this nickname for his achievements of defeating the two major powers of his time, the Persians and the Christian-led Roman Empire. Omar is also notorious for instructing his lieutenants to never allow a Christian or Jew to have a position of influence over a Muslim, whether in the military or civilian life. So much for equality.

Another group approved for a booth at the Cultural Exchange this year was the IONA Mosque of neighboring Warren. They gave away Qurans and pamphlets published by Sound Vision, a Chicago-based nonprofit that some say presents a whitewashed view of Islam as a religion of peace.
"Mr. Alomari, as chairman of the Ethnic Committee, approves whatever exhibits get set up at the Cultural Exchange, and now I know why we have all these groups like the Omar Center and IONA Mosque being given access in our citizens, with free Qurans, pamphlets and flyers showing how to contact civil-rights attorneys and immigration attorneys, all written in Arabic," Mitchell said. "This has nothing to do, anymore, with getting to know your neighbor, this is all propaganda for their movement and the average person in our community has no clue this is going on."

Manasseri says Michiganders can expect more of this type of deceptive outreach, not just in Sterling Heights but in every corner of the state if Dr. Abdul El-Sayed wins this year's gubernatorial election. He is running in the Aug. 7 Democrat primary and seeks to become America's first Muslim governor. While currently lagging in the polls behind front-runner Gretchen Whitmer, Dr. El-Sayed says his people are going door to door and will "shock" the political world on Aug. 7. He promises to make Michigan a sanctuary state, abolish ICE, offer universal healthcare and free college educations to all those whose parents earn less than $150,000.

But there is something more going on in Sterling Heights than just sharing cultural delights, says Dr. Mark Christian, a former Muslim imam born in Cairo, Egypt, who immigrated to the U.S. and converted to Christianity. It's called dawah in Arabic and it's the Islamic form of proselytizing, inviting the non-Muslim to faith in Allah.

Church conversions are an important aspect of this process.

Dating back to 1453 and its conquest of the majestic Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, Islam considers the takeover of a church to be of great significance.

"It's considered the ultimate victory," said Christian, founder of the Nebraska-based Global Faith Institute. "Muhammad said whoever does that is going to go to heaven – it's a big deal to transfer a church to a mosque. You are taking over a church and replacing blasphemy with the real god, so it's an ultimate act of civilization jihad [also called cultural jihad], and whoever does this is going to be rewarded. It's also the ultimate act of dawah." [See Quran 22:2]

There is a hadith that gives instruction on how to convert a church to a mosque.
"You go in and cleanse it with water, you say 'Allahu Akbar!' in the corners, you remove any and all signs and symbols of Christianity, then stand in the highest place in the building and make a call to prayer," Christian said.

Sheikh Muhammed Salih Al-Munajjid cited the above hadith in giving detailed instructions on an Islamic message board to a group of Muslims in Atlanta who, in 1999, wanted to know how to convert a church to a mosque.

Dawah is always done in the context of raising Allah above everything else, Christian said. "He is the master of humanity and that includes government and religious institutions, civic institutions, everything. To make Allah supreme on the earth is their calling."

Thus, the ultimate goal of dawah has always been, since the days of Muhammad and Omar, the crushing of Christianity.

Not So Rotten in Denmark?

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270880/not-so-rotten-denmark-bruce-bawer

They're not turning things around, but at least they're trying to slow down the decline.

August 1, 2018

Bruce Bawer

28

On July 1, the New York Times ran a long article by Ellen Barry and Martin Selsoe Sorensen headlined “In Denmark, Harsh New Laws for Immigrant ‘Ghettos.’” How harsh? Henceforth, starting at the age of one, children living in designated “ghettos” – in other words, “low-income and heavily Muslim enclaves” – have to spend at least 25 hours a week receiving instruction in Danish values, “including the traditions of Christmas and Easter, and Danish language.” Parents who refuse to obey may lose their welfare payments.

Given the proven failure (over decades) of innumerable Muslim immigrants in Denmark to learn Danish, find jobs, and otherwise integrate into Danish society – not to mention the tendency of young people who've grown up in those “enclaves” to join gangs, commit violence, and express open hostility to native Danes and their culture – these laws sound eminently reasonable. In fact, anyone aware of the scale of the problem might well pronounce them tame and insufficient. But not the Times. Barry and Sorensen describe the new laws not as a responsible attempt to prevent the kind of social and economic collapse looming in next-door Sweden, and to preserve a free, safe, and solvent Denmark for future generations of ethnic Danes and the descendants of immigrants, but rather as a “tough” and “sinister” expression of the Danish government's “ire.”

One law that the Times writers single out for disdain “would impose a four-year prison sentence on immigrant parents who force their children to make extended visits to their country of origin...in that way damaging their 'schooling, language and well-being.'” Barry and Sorensen plainly find this law unspeakably severe. One wonders if they know what they're talking about. The fact is that countless Muslim parents in Europe send their kids “back home” for years at a time – it's called “dumping” – so that they can attend Koran schools, soak up Islamic codes of conduct, and (most important) be shielded from such abhorrent Western phenomena as individual liberty and sexual equality.
As it happens, this practice has been studied extensively. It represents a profound danger to the children involved – girls especially – as well as to the Western countries to which they eventually return. In her 2001 book But the Greatest of These Is Freedom: The Consequences of Immigration in Europe (2011), Hege Storhaug of Norway's Human Rights Service explained that “girls are sent abroad so that they won't be able to live on equal terms with males and enjoy the right to choose their own spouses”; some of them, moreover, “are sent abroad at puberty to be prepared for marriage – to be prepared, that is, to be good wives who live up to the demands and standards set by men in their families' homeland.” Is a four-year prison sentence too tough a penalty for parents who do such things to their children? No, especially when you consider that Danish prisons could be mistaken for luxury hotels while the madrassas in which these people enroll their kids look like, well, prisons – and the marriages (usually cousin marriages) into which those girls end up being forced are, in all but name, prison sentences.

Barry and Sorensen interviewed two critics of the new laws – a pair of Muslim sisters whom they depict as model citizens and describe as being fluent in Danish (but who are also, bemusingly, on welfare). “Danish politics is just about Muslims now,” one of the sisters complained. “I don’t know when they will be satisfied with us.” Gee, maybe when you stop bleeding the Danish treasury dry? Maybe when the 30,000 or so members of your “community” across Europe who belong to Islamic terrorist cells stop plotting murderous mayhem? Sister #2 griped that “her daughter was being taught so much about Christmas in kindergarten that she came home begging for presents from Santa Claus.” Sounds like a salutary change from what's happening elsewhere in Western Europe, where, as part of nefarious propaganda campaigns, non-Muslim kids are routinely taken on school trips to mosques, shown how to put on a hijab, and taught to recite the shahada – all of which the Times and newspapers like it routinely celebrate. “Nobody should tell me,” Sister #2 added, “whether or how my daughter should go to preschool....I’d rather lose my benefits than submit to force.” Fine. Get a job.

Toward the end of their piece, Barry and Sorensen dutifully quoted a handful of Danes who enthusiastically support the new measures. One woman mentioned her shock at being invited to a wedding only to discover that the guests were separated by sex. Another said, “We pay their rent, their clothing, their food, and then they come in broken Danish and say, ‘We can’t work because we’ve got a pain.’” A third observed: “You could say, of course, parents have the right to bring up their own kids....We would say they do not have the right to destroy the future freedom of their children.” Nevertheless, in classic Times sob-story fashion, the piece concluded with a quote from a Muslim high-school student who warned that the new laws, however well-intentioned, will only serve to bring about the “parallel society” that Danes are “so afraid of.” What malarkey! Those parallel societies already exist all over Western Europe, and the Danish government is doing more than probably any of its counterparts in Western Europe to eradicate them – and thereby save its people, their society, and their values from everything that those parallel societies portend.

Two days after the Times lambasted the new Danish laws, Time's Amro Ali went even further, comparing Denmark's actions on Muslims to – yes – Nazi Germany's treatment of Jews. “The legislation reads like a 19th century missionary enterprise, a colonial experiment to civilize the brown folks,” groused Ali. No, that missionary impulse was part of the reason why one set of Danish leaders after another, against all reason, persisted in flooding their tiny country with unassimilable hordes from a culture that could hardly more different from their own. As for the bit about “the brown folks,” color has nothing to do with it; Hindus, for example, have proven to be not a burden and a threat but a boon to Europe.

No, the new Danish laws are all about the unique danger that Islam represents, and represent nothing more or less than a noble endeavor to keep a small free country from becoming part of a totalitarian caliphate. In his indictment of Denmark, Ali used pretty much every word one might expect: “divisive,” “illiberal,” “bigotry,” “xenophobic,” “discriminatory,” “exclusionary,” “[h]atred,” “fear.” If Ali sincerely doesn't understand Denmark's actions, he might contemplate his own magazine's' dilemma: the one-mighty Time is now on its last legs, a sad shadow of its former self, precisely because its owners failed to respond competently to the profound challenge posed by the rise of the Internet. Denmark's leaders, too, face a profound challenge – that of Islamization, which threats to bring down their small jewel of a homeland – and they're doing everything they can to try to keep their own little vessel afloat.

To be sure, three weeks before the Times and Time started wringing their hands over Denmark's cruelty to Muslims, the Guardian was on the case, with reporter Richard Orange filing an article headlined “Denmark swings right on immigration – and Muslims feel besieged.” Wrote Orange: “The Social Democrats’ leader, Mette Frederiksen, has called Islam a barrier to integration, said some Muslims 'do not respect the Danish judicial system,' that some Muslim women refuse to work for religious reasons, and that Muslim girls are subject to 'massive social control.'” All true. “She has also called for all Muslim schools in the country to be closed.” Good. All they teach is fanaticism and hate. Orange interviewed one Istahil Hussein, 36, who “says the change in Danish opinion so disturbing that she is thinking of returning to Somalia, the country she left 18 years ago.” Good idea. Don't let the door hit you on your way out. Like his colleagues at the Times and Time, Orange represented Denmark's actions as a product of unfounded prejudice. There was no mention of, say, classrooms full of Danish-born children who don't speak Danish or of imams who preach conquest of Europe.

Speaking of which, on July 24,  Danish prosecutors charged Imam Mundhir Abdallah, who preaches at a mosque in the Nørrebro district of Copenhagen, with delivering a sermon in which he read the following sacred text: “Judgment Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them.” It was the first time the Danes ever prosecuted a Muslim cleric for urging the murder of Jews. It may have been the first time any Western European country ever did such a thing. In reporting this news, France24 further noted that five Muslim hate preachers had been banned from Denmark in May of this year– this, while in the U.K., for instance, the government and media soft-pedal mass Muslim gang rapes and deny entry not to Muslim hate preachers but to critics of Islam.

There's more. As The Local reported on July 11, “people who have lived in Denmark for over three years will have to pay for interpreters if required during medical treatment.” Good. One opponent of this measure “rejected the argument that patients should be expected to understand Danish after three years in the country.” Many people, she argued, “have come here for various reasons and have not been able to learn Danish within the three years.” Yes, that's precisely the problem: it's called a lack of effort. When I moved to Norway, I took language classes, studied hard, and was able to pass an advanced fluency test within a few months. I was over forty – way past the optimum language-learning age. Why should Danes do anything whatsoever for people who don't think a free ride in their country is worth taking that kind of trouble?

On July 26 came another story. These days, it turns out, Denmark is receiving fewer tourists from Muslim countries than its neighbors Germany, Norway, and Sweden. The reason? Partly its ban on face-covering veils, partly its ban on halal slaughter. Why visit such an Islamophobic country, after all, when, as the Resett website pointed out, there are plenty of German and Swiss hotels in which each room's furnishings include a Koran and a compass (so you can figure out the direction to Mecca, of course)?

When it comes to resisting Islamization, in short, Denmark is doing a far more impressive job than most of its Western European neighbors. Still, as much as the mainstream media and the rest of the left may squawk with outrage at its attempts to rein in the advance of Islam within its borders, these attempts may all be too little, too late. In a profoundly bleak talk given last year, Lars Hedegaard, the gutsy and eloquent Danish critic of Islam (who is a survivor of both a jihadist assassination attempt and a hate-speech trial), maintained that “once the Muslim population exceeds, say, five percent, it's game over.” Muslims currently make up about 5.3% of Danish inhabitants. Let's hope he's wrong. The Danes, of all people in Western Europe, deserve for him to be wrong.

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About Bruce Bawer

Bruce Bawer is the author of “While Europe Slept,” “Surrender,” and "The Victims' Revolution." His novel "The Alhambra" has just been published.

Spain: New Gateway to Europe for Mass-Migration

by Thomas Paul Wiederholen
August 1, 2018 at 5:00 am

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12792/spain-mass-migration

• Spain's socialist government, under Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, has promised free healthcare to migrants and says it will investigate every asylum claim individually.
• "[A] majority of irregular migrants rescued in the Central Mediterranean are most likely not refugees in the sense of the Geneva Convention, given that some 70 % come from countries or regions not suffering from violent conflicts or oppressive regimes." — From a 2017 report by the European Commission.
• "We have created refugee shelters for tens of thousands of people, but there are hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants in our country. This has heavily impaired the security situation. They include terrorists, criminals, and human traffickers who do not care about human rights. It's horrible." — Libyan leader Fayez al-Sarraj.

On July 26, some 800 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa violently stormed the border fence between Morocco, where they were living illegally, and the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. According to Spanish authorities:

"In an attempt to stop the Guardia Civil getting close to the break-in area, the migrants ... [pelted] officers with plastic containers of excrement and quicklime, sticks and stones, as well as using aerosols as flame-throwers."

Many people were wounded in the clash, and 602 migrants succeeded in entering Spanish territory.

Pictured: A section of the border fence between Morocco and the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. (Image source: David Ramos/Getty Images)

Two weeks earlier, the rescue ship Aquarius, operated by the French NGO Sos Méditerranée, picked up 629 Sub-Saharan migrants off the coast of Libya. After both Italy and Malta refused to take in the migrants, with Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini declaring, "No to human trafficking, no to the business of illegal immigration," Spain welcomed the ship, and two other vessels carrying illegal migrants, at the port of Valencia.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, the head of Spain's newly-formed socialist government -- which has promised free healthcare to the migrants and says it will investigate every asylum claim individually -- said in mid-June: "It is our duty to help avoid a humanitarian catastrophe and offer a safe port to these people, to comply with our human rights obligations."
According to a July 27 report about Spain in The Telegraph:

"The country is now the largest gateway for migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Europe, with 20,992 people landing on its shores so far this year... Arrivals to Italy now trail Spain by almost 3000 - a gap that just a week ago was 200."

This, the report says, has completely "overwhelmed" the Spanish coastguard, which is issuing an urgent call for additional resources to help deal with the massive influx.
According to a 2017 report by the European Commission:

"The geographic distribution clearly reveals that a majority of irregular migrants rescued in the Central Mediterranean are most likely not refugees in the sense of the Geneva Convention, given that some 70 % come from countries or regions not suffering from violent conflicts or oppressive regimes."

Absorbing the large numbers of migrants is not the only problem that Spain has to contend with, however. According to a December 2016 report in the Financial Times, based on confidential reports it obtained, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) accused some charitable organizations that support rescues in the Mediterranean of collaborating with human traffickers. This claim was also made by the pan-European think tank, Gefira, which posted a YouTube video listing the NGOs that have been abetting – regardless of their "high-minded intentions" – the criminal practice of smuggling people into Europe for financial gain.
According to The Independent:

"At the last European Council summit in Brussels at the end of June, EU national leaders agreed on the need to set up secure centres to process asylum claims, as well as agreeing a raft of hardline stances on migrants – such as condemning NGO-operated rescue boats operating off the Libyan coast."
...
"Leaders also in principle agreed another proposal for "disembarkation platforms" based in North Africa where EU officials could process asylum claims outside EU territory ..."

However, despite the agreement between EU members, "no north African country has yet agreed to host migrant screening centres to process refugee claims," according to Dimitris Avramopoulos, the European commissioner for migration.
The Speaker of Egypt's House of Representatives, Ali Abdel Aal, told the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag on July 1, "EU reception facilities for migrants in Egypt would violate the laws and constitution of our country."

Abd al-Aal recalled that a high number of migrants are already living in his country. "We already have about ten million refugees from Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Palestine, Sudan, Somalia and other countries," said Ab al-Aal. In Egypt, all refugees have a right to health care and education. "This means that our capacities are already exhausted today. It is therefore important that Egypt receives support from Germany and the EU."

In an interview with the German news outlet Bild on July 19, Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj said:

"We have created refugee shelters for tens of thousands of people, but there are hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants in our country. This has heavily impaired the security situation. They include terrorists, criminals, and human traffickers who do not care about human rights. It's horrible. In order to improve the situation, we must fight these structures. But we also need more international help for this. It begins with our country's borders. It is imperative that they be better controlled."
...
"We are strictly against Europe officially placing illegal migrants who are no longer wanted in the EU in our country. We also won't agree on any deals with EU money about taking in more illegal migrants. The EU should rather talk to the countries that people are coming from and should put pressure on these countries instead. There won't be any deals with us.
"I am very surprised that while nobody in Europe wants to take in migrants anymore they are asking us to take in further hundreds of thousands."

In an article for Gatestone in March 2018, Uzay Bulut sheds light on why the migrant crisis has become a problem that many European governments are beginning to recognize: "demographic jihad."
Bulut cites Turkish MP Alparslan Kavaklıoğlu, a member of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), and the head of the parliament's Security and Intelligence Commission, who stated:

"... Europe is going through a time that is out of the ordinary. Its population is declining and aging... So, people coming from outside get the jobs there. But Europe has this problem. All of the newcomers are Muslim. From Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. Those who come from these places are Muslim. It is now at such a level that the most popular name in Brussels, Belgium is Mohammed... [If this trend continues], the Muslim population will outnumber the Christian population in Europe... Europe will be Muslim. We will be effective there, Allah willing. I am sure of that."

The Turkish leadership's assessment echoes a sermon delivered at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem on September 11, 2015 (the 14th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks) by Imam Sheikh Muhammad Ayed, who stated, in part:

"They [Westerners] have lost their fertility... We will give them fertility! We will breed children with them, because we shall conquer their countries. Whether you like it or not, oh Germans, oh Americans, oh French, Oh Italians, and all those like you. Take the refugees! We shall soon collect them in the name of the coming Caliphate... We will say to you: These are our sons. Send them or we will send our armies to you."

The act of migration has a strong basis in the Qu'ran. For example, Verse 9:20 states:

"The ones who have believed, emigrated and striven in the cause of Allah with their wealth and their lives are greater in rank in the sight of Allah. And it is those who are the attainers [of success]."

Verse 22:58 states:

"And those who emigrated for the cause of Allah and then were killed or died - Allah will surely provide for them a good provision. And indeed, it is Allah who is the best of providers."

None of the above, however, appears to have put a dent in the policies or ideology of the left-wing parties supporting the new Spanish government. On June 29, following the European summit, Sanchez tweeted:

"...The EU is beginning to move in the right direction: to give a European perspective to a European challenge such as migration."

Sanchez was correct, but for all the wrong reasons. The "European perspective" that he and fellow EU members should be embracing is that of democracy and freedom, not one that allows the unfettered entry of millions of penniless and unskilled illegal migrants, among whom are radical Islamists whose beliefs are antithetical to European values.
In case Sanchez has not been paying attention, the influx of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa has been taking a serious toll on Europe. According to a recent Heritage Foundation report:

"Over the past four years, 16 percent of Islamist plots in Europe featured asylum seekers or refugees... Radicalization of plotters generally occurred abroad although in the most recent plots, more commonly within Europe itself. Europe's response to migration flows has been inadequate and inadvertently increased the terrorist threat dramatically..."

In the book Europe All Inclusive by former Czech President Václav Klaus, co-authored by the Arabic-speaking economist Jiří Weigl, the authors sum up the role that the Left plays in the migrant crisis:

"Europe, and especially its 'integrated' part, is riddled with hypocrisy, pseudo-humanism and other dubious concepts. The most dangerous of them are the currently fashionable, and ultimately suicidal, ideologies of multiculturalism and humanrightism. Such ideologies push millions of people towards resignation when it comes to concepts like home, motherland, nation and state. These ideologies promote the notion that migration is a human right, and that the right to migrate leads to further rights and entitlements including social welfare hand-outs for migrants... Europe is weakened by the leftist utopia of trying to transform a continent that was once proud of its past into an inefficient solidaristic state, turning its inhabitants from citizens into dependent clients."

As the "largest gateway" for migrants now entering Europe, Spain has a particularly great responsibility to wake up to and deal with reality.

Thomas Paul Wiederholen is based in Europe.

August 01, 2018 Tommy Robinson WINS: Ezra Levant's brief on the judges' findings

https://www.therebel.media/tommy_robinson_wins_ezra_levant_s_brief_on_the_judges_findings

"Tommy is on his way home as we speak..." Outside the London courthouse where Tommy Robinson won his appeal, Ezra Levant briefly explains the judges' ruling

Kurdish Afrin Falls to Turkey

Turkish Government Official: "Europe Will be Muslim"

by Uzay Bulut
March 19, 2018 at 4:00 am

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12050/turkey-demographic-jihad

Translations of this item:

Czech German

• Turkey Islamized northern Cyprus through a military invasion in 1974. To Islamize the much more powerful European continent, however, Turkey has been promoting demographic, rather than military, jihad.
• "The places where you work and live are your homelands and new countries now... Drive the best cars. Live in the most beautiful houses. Make five children -- not just three. For you are the future of Europe." — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, 2017.

Yesterday, while many Europeans are still pilloried for viewing mass migration from Muslim-majority countries as a threat to Western culture -- and are still accused of "xenophobia," "Islamophobia" and "fear-mongering" -- the city of Afrin, in the Kurdish area of Syria, fell to Turkey.
At the same time, a prominent Turkish government official has been openly and proudly declaring that the demography of Europe is changing in favor of Muslims.
MP Alparslan Kavaklıoğlu, a member of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the head of the parliament's Security and Intelligence Commission, recently stated:

"The fortune and wealth of the world is moving from the West to the East. Europe is going through a time that is out of the ordinary. Its population is declining and aging. It has a very old population. So, people coming from outside get the jobs there. But Europe has this problem. All of the newcomers are Muslim. From Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. Those who come from these places are Muslim. It is now at such a level that the most popular name in Brussels, Belgium is Mohammed. The second most popular name is Melih [Malih] and the third one is Ayşe [Aisha]."

According to Kavaklıoğlu, if this trend continues,

"the Muslim population will outnumber the Christian population in Europe. This... has increased the nationalistic, xenophobic and anti-Islam rhetoric there. Hence, marginal, small parties have started to get large numbers of votes... But there is no remedy for it. Europe will be Muslim. We will be effective there, Allah willing. I am sure of that."

Kavaklıoğlu is not the first Turkish official to stress the importance of population growth. In 2009, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who was prime minister at the time, called on the public to have at least three children per family. The greater our numbers, he said, "the stronger we will be." Since then, Erdoğan has been trying to encourage Turkish nationals to multiply. In 2013, he reiterated his plea:

"We need a young and dynamic population... Right now, the West is in trouble. But we do not want to put Turkey in the same trouble. I am calling on my country through mothers: Do not take this sensitivity of ours lightly. We need to make this widespread, in waves. We need to make this happen. The [value] of this cannot be measured with money or any other physical wealth."

In 2017, Erdoğan called on Turks residing in Europe to have even more children:

"The places where you work and live are your homelands and new countries now. Lay a tight claim to those places. Open more businesses and enroll your children in better schools. Live with your families in better neighborhoods. Drive the best cars. Live in the most beautiful houses. Make five children -- not just three. For you are the future of Europe."

Pictured: Thousands of supporters of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan rally, waving Turkish flags, in Cologne, Germany, July 31, 2016. (Photo by Sascha Steinbach/Getty Images)

Erdoğan is now also saying the same thing to Turks in Cyprus. During a recent meeting with the prime minister and deputy prime minister of the "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus" (recognized only by Turkey), Erdoğan reportedly said, "Economic growth happens in parallel with population growth. The population of Greek Cypriots is more than one million. Just make your own population grow."
Turkey already largely Islamized and Turkified northern Cyprus through a military invasion in 1974. The Turkish military terrorized the indigenous Greek Cypriots, causing them to flee to the south. The Turkish government then imported thousands of illegal settlers from Turkey to northern Cyprus, to change the demographic structure of the illegally occupied territories. To Islamize the much more powerful European continent, however, Turkey has been promoting demographic, rather than military, jihad. This attempt by Ankara to guarantee that Muslims outnumber Christians globally has been accompanied by the erection of mosques – "from Europe to Africa, from the Balkans to the Central Asia" -- by Turkey's government-funded Diyanet (Religious Affairs General Directorate).
Whose assessments, then, are liberal Europeans to believe regarding unfettered immigration? Those who consider the mass influx from Muslim countries a threat to liberty and security, or the honest planners and perpetrators of demographic replacement and Islamization?
One only needs to look at Afrin, Cyprus and the appalling human rights record of Muslim-majority societies.

Uzay Bulut is a Turkish journalist born and raised in Turkey. She is presently based in Washington D.C.

• Follow Uzay Bulut on Twitter