…These taboos demand that we talk about terrorism in two distinct ways: on the one hand, we catastrophise its far-right variant, ramping up the agency and vileness of its perpetrators; while on the other, we infantilise its jihadi incarnation, playing down the agency of its instigators and forbidding any discussion of the religious motivations behind their violence.
Islam
Christian Science Monitor: If You Don’t Like Public Schools Proselytizing for Islam, You’re a Racist
The Christian Science Monitor did its bit Friday for the left’s propaganda barrage, reminding us all that America is a benighted, sinister land full of racism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia, such that only Old Joe and his henchmen can save us. The Monitor painted a picture of an innocent World Cultures and Geography class in a New Jersey public school teaching about Islam and getting accused by racist redneck yahoos of proselytizing for Islam. As far as the Monitor is concerned, it’s a story of evil Trump followers hating the sainted Other; in reality, however, it reveals how Islamic indoctrination is becoming increasingly common and accepted in public schools.
I am afraid that France has fallen
My fear for France is grounded in its lack of courage to fight for its civilization and the right of its people to speak their minds.
I am worried about France, because it is the cradle of European culture.
I love its writers and ideas, Henry James in his 1903 masterpiece “The Ambassadors” speaks of Paris as the epitome of civilization, it is the country that has given so much and to which we owe so much as Europeans, the country that gives us the only intellectuals in Europe to reflect on our world.
But it is the country that no longer knows how to defend that culture.
Smuggled diary tells how abducted women survived Boko Haram camp
The resistance began three months after the young women were taken from their school dormitory by Islamist militants and hidden in the depths of a forest. It would end in direct confrontation and disobedience, and an unlikely victory which saved their lives.
But as the extremists of Boko Haram drove them through the bush to camps beyond the reach of any rescue, freedom was years away.
The story of the extraordinary courage of the women held for up to three years by the Islamist extremists in north-eastern Nigeria has never been told, despite the massive global attention focused on their abduction in April 2014.
Iran’s female alpine ski team is coachless in Italy – her husband invoked sharia law barring her from travel
The coach of Iran’s national women’s alpine ski team was supposed to fly to Italy with her team on Wednesday morning to compete in the FIS Alpine World Alpine Ski Championships in Cortina d’Ampezzo. But it wasn’t until she got to the airport that Samira Zargari realized that she couldn’t to leave Iran. The team had to fly without Zargari because her husband had forbidden her from leaving the country — which he is entitled to do under Iranian law.
The inconvenient truth about these savage gang attacks
GAVIN MORTIMER, a journalist who covers France for the Spectator, has written recently concerning the attack in Paris on fourteen-year-old Yuriy, a white boy. The brutality of Yuriy’s beating by ten youths (knocking the boy’s eyes out of their sockets apparently) caused mounting consternation, especially after a video appeared of the boy being attacked, beaten to a pulp and left for dead in a square in the 15th arrondissement, one of the so-called beaux quartiers of Paris, and exactly where you wouldn’t expect such an attack to take place, especially after the 6pm national curfew. Apparently, criminality thrives while the rest of us race to the supermarket at 5.15 so that we can make it home by 6.
The story of Yuriy, who remains in hospital, revived references to the ‘ensauvagement’ of France, rejected by the usual suspects, who worry about unfairly scapegoating poor people and minorities.
Biden Cannot Allow the Taliban to Destroy Trump’s Peace Legacy
With former US President Donald J. Trump no longer able to dictate US policy on Afghanistan, the Taliban are exploiting the opportunity to increase their efforts to seize control of the country in spite of the peace accord they signed with the Trump administration last year.
Under the terms of that agreement with the US, the Taliban agreed to negotiate a peaceful resolution of this benighted country’s long-running civil war in return for Washington agreeing to withdraw all its remaining forces. In addition, they agreed to cut their ties with Islamist terrorist organisations such as Al-Qaeda.
Yet, to judge by recent events in Afghanistan, the Taliban are showing little inclination to abide by the terms of the deal.
ISIS Brides Sue Sweden For Violating Human Rights
A number of former Daesh* brides currently stuck in internment camps in Syria are now suing Sweden in the European Court of Justice for “failure” to bring them “home”, which they consider a “serious violation” of their human rights.
“We believe that Sweden’s failure to bring Swedish women and children from the camps in northeastern Syria violates their human rights. As representatives of a number of women and children in the Roj camp, we therefore complain to the European Court of Justice and claim that Sweden has a human rights obligation to bring them home to Sweden”, the head of their legal team, Percy Bratt, wrote in an opinion piece in the legal newspaper Dagens Juridik, calling their situation “life-threatening”.
Pakistan arrests two ‘non-Muslim’ men for marrying Muslim women
A Pakistan Highcourt judge on Monday denied bail to two Ahmadi brothers accused of marrying Muslim women.
Justice Syed Arshad Ali rejected the bail applications of Zaid, Zahid, and their father Sajid, accused of marrying Muslim women while being non-Muslim. The brothers who adhere to the minority Ahmadiyya faith were detained with their father in September last year.
Amazon Cancels Allah is Dead
My book, Allah is Dead: Why Islam is Not a Relgion, has been removed from the Amazon website. Therefore I’m re-posting a talk I gave on the subject that nicely summarizes the book.
The Increasingly Violent Conflict Between Shiites and Iran’s Proxies
A killing in Lebanon is a symbol of a growing regional backlash against sectarian politics.
Lokman Slim, a political analyst, activist, filmmaker, and prominent critic of Hezbollah, was killed in cold blood by unknown assailants on the night of Feb. 3. His bullet-ridden body, shot multiple times in the head and the neck, was found in his car in Hezbollah-dominated South Lebanon.
“The truth, I know the truth of who killed him in my heart,” Slim’s sister Rasha al-Ameer told Foreign Policy. Her implication was clear: It was Hezbollah. Slim had been receiving threats for a while, and he had warned in a letter he wrote last year that the Iran-backed Hezbollah should be blamed for any attempt on his life.
Killings surge in Syria camp housing Islamic State families
BEIRUT (AP) — The deaths stacked up: a policeman shot dead with a pistol equipped with a silencer, a local official gunned down, his son wounded, an Iraqi man beheaded. In total, 20 men and women were killed last month in the sprawling camp in northeastern Syria housing families of the Islamic State group.
The slayings in al-Hol camp — nearly triple the deaths in previous months — are largely believed to have been carried out by IS militants punishing perceived enemies and intimidating anyone who wavers from their extremist line, say Syrian Kurdish officials who run the camp but say they struggle to keep it under control.
Boo Hoo.
ISIS recruiter charged with murder and attempted murder of gay couple in ‘homophobic’ Dresden knife attack
Wielding a large kitchen knife, Abdullah al-H H, a 20-year-old Syrian, allegedly stabbed the couple, who were visiting Dresden on 4 October.
Prosecutors claim al-H H, based in Aleppo, targeted the couple because they were gay and was motivated by radical Islamist ideology, being a recruiter for the Islamic State (ISIS).
He was charged last Thursday (11 February) with murder and attempted murder, according to Deutsche Welle.
French refugee center manager stabbed to death by asylum seeker – police
The manager of a refugee center in the French city of Pau has died of his injuries, after allegedly being stabbed multiple times by a Sudanese asylum seeker, police said on Friday.
The suspect, a 38-year-old man from Sudan, was arrested following the attack. He was reportedly known to the authorities for acts of violence and has already been in prison, according to French media.
The knife attack took place at around 11am local time in Pau, in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques. The suspect’s motives for the attack remain unknown, although police sources told local media he had just been refused refugee status by OFPRA, the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons. The public broadcaster France Télévisions reported that the man had been in France since 2015.
Iran: The Mullah’s Pursuit of Obtaining Nuclear Weapons
In spite of the Iranian leaders’ claim that their nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, evidence reveals that the Iranian regime has long sought to acquire nuclear weapons.
A recent report by the International Atomic Energy Agency pointed out that “Samples taken from two sites during inspections in the fall by the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) contained traces of radioactive material”.