Georgetown University Stumps for the Muslim Brotherhood - Andrew Harrod

by Andrew Harrod

Georgetown has a longstanding history of enabling the MB's deceitful use of liberal language to mask totalitarian goals.

The Muslim "Brotherhood [MB] is traditionally a reformist, gradualist movement [which] is working on social change," stated the Egyptian MB member Amr Darrag at a Georgetown University panel last month. With that, Darrag and his fellow speaker, the British-Iraqi MB operative Anas Altikriti, added to Georgetown's longstanding history of enabling the MB's deceitful use of liberal language to mask totalitarian goals.

Georgetown's Saudi-funded Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU) hosted the event, which was titled: "Post-Arab Spring Middle East: Political Islam and Democracy." A pro-Islamist bent was inevitable given that the moderator was ACMCU director Jonathan Brown. This professor has his own professional links to MB groups and is the son-in-law of convicted terrorist Sami Al Arian. In February, Brown was widely criticized after he gave a speech at a MB think tank justifying the practice of slavery within Islam.

Before the event, MB expert Eric Trager warned against Darrag's visit to America: "The Muslim Brotherhood is an international hate group that seeks" to establish a "global Islamic state or neo-caliphate." Speaking at the event, Altikriti, whom the Hudson Institute describes as "one of the shrewdest UK-based Brotherhood activists and the son of the leader of Iraq's Muslim Brotherhood," dismissed Trager's article as "hilarious."

Despite Altikriti's insistence elsewhere that he has no connection to the Muslim Brotherhood, he describesthe movement as "the most important democratic voice that espouses multiculturalism, human rights and basic freedoms." He also maintains that, while indeed part of the "spectrum" of "political Islam", groups such as Al-Qaeda and Islamic State are "abnormal phenomena" and not ideologically related to the Brotherhood. By contrast, Lebanese-American Middle East expert Walid Phares has identified the MB as the "mothership for the jihadi ideologies."

Notwithstanding Altikriti's support and apologetics for Hamas, an MB affiliate and the totalitarian ruler of the Gaza Strip, he expressed a desire for "far more political players and actors throughout society than political Islam." He added that if the "only alternative to authoritarian regimes is political Islam, that's a choice that I would loathe."

Altikriti's suspect celebration of pluralism echoes his previous descriptions of his own organization, the UK-based Cordoba Foundation. Altikriti has told Al Jazeera that his foundation "rehashes positive memories" of an ostensible period of multicultural coexistence in medieval Islamic Spain. Prime Minister David Cameron, however, describes the Cordoba Foundation as a "political front for the Muslim Brotherhood," while the United Arab Emirates has designated the foundation a terrorist organization.

Darrag, meanwhile, was a former minister in Egypt's MB-led government under Mohamed Morsi, until its 2013 overthrow. Darrag argued that under Morsi the MB wanted "to go back quickly to stability, to establish institutions, elections, get a parliament, constitution, a president, all the institutions that would be perfectly fit for an established democratic system." He denied Islamist involvement in the "Arab Spring," arguing that protestors "didn't go out to ask for the application of sharia." Trager has noted in fact that Darrag played a central role in creating under Morsi a new, sharia-focused Egyptian constitution.

Darrag also claimed that the MB rejects violence in its pursuit of political reform. He described the work of his Istanbul-based Egyptian Institute for Political and Strategic Studies (EIPSS) as the promotion of liberal, democratic issues, such as "transitional justice" and "civil-military relations." Once again, however, Trager has noted that EIPSS "presents itself as a scholarly think tank, but it often promotes violent interpretations of Islamic texts" in Arabic-language articles — yet another example of the MB feigning nonviolence.

The Georgetown panel reflected the Hudson Institute's previous analysis of Altikriti: his longstanding strategy is "to persuade Western governments that they should fund Brotherhood groups as moderate alternatives to al-Qaeda." A 2015 review of the MB by the British government itself judged treating the MB as a moderate alternative to Salafi-jihadism as counterproductive and contrary to security interests.

Altikriti, who has joined with senior Hamas leaders to found the British Muslim Initiative, is certainly not a moderate. His Cordoba Foundation once co-hosted an event featuring the Al Qaeda operative Anwar Awlaki. No wonder a British bank decided, in 2014, to close the accounts of Altikriti, his family members, and the foundation.

The Georgetown hosts made no notice of their panelists' extremist connections. Altikriti and Darrag were presented as no different to technocrats running for city council in a Western country. Yet the facts of the speakers' ideology leave no illusions that smooth-talking, suit-wearing Islamists have any real interest in good governance and liberty under law. Critical observers should not fall for this farce.

Andrew Harrod is a writer for Islamist Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.

Source: http://www.islamist-watch.org/27404/georgetown-university-stumps-for-the-muslim

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Interpol accepts the "state of Palestine" as a full member - Melanie Phillips

by Melanie Phillips

The hen-house votes for the fox

Interpol, the world’s largest international police organisation, today accepted the “State of Palestine” as a full member. The Palestinians’ membership bid was accepted with 75 countries voting yes, 24 voting no, and 34 abstaining.

The Times of Israel reports:

“Israel fiercely objected to the Palestinians joining Interpol, arguing that Ramallah’s alleged support for terrorism could hinder rather than aid Interpol’s efforts.”

You don’t say. This is totally nuts at every level. What is this “State of Palestine” Interpol has now accepted? Where are its borders? Does it include the terror-statelet of Gaza? How can people representing the murderous outfit Hamas be held to be a suitable member of any law enforcement body, let alone an international one? 

The Palestinian Authority pays terrorists’ families, venerates and commemorates mass murderers and teaches its children to kill Jews. Palestinian Media watch reports:

“The PA Ministry of Education has named at least 31 schools after terrorists and an additional 3 schools after Nazi collaborators, while at least 41 school names honor ‘Martyrs'”.

How can the PA possibly be considered a suitable member of Interpol? Are police officers from the US, UK and other democratic countries really going to share intelligence about Islamic terrorism with these supporters of Islamic terrorism?

By playing politics, this international policing body has at a stroke made the world less safe. When its own policing system starts treating a terror-promoting entity as a law-enforcement resource like this, you know the free world really is in the deepest possible trouble.


Melanie Phillips

Source: http://www.melaniephillips.com/hen-house-votes-fox/

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When Palestinian Arabs cry "Humiliation" - Eli E. Hertz

by Eli E. Hertz

Time to protest the fact that an entire population is harassed by body checks at malls and supermarkets, car inspections at parking lots and worse.

In addition to stabbings, car ramming and suicide bombings that have been frequently occurring at checkpoints, Palestinian Arabs claim they feel humiliated and harassed when Israeli authorities search them and their belongings; when they are prevented from traveling freely because of checkpoints, roadblocks, closures and curfews. They say they feel corralled behind security fences and ugly concrete walls.Meanwhile in Israel, Israelis are searched numerous times during the course of a day. Israelis are asked to open their bags and purses for inspection. In most cases, they are subjected to body searches with a metal detector every time they enter a bank or a post office, pick up a bottle of milk at the supermarket, enter a mall or train station, or visit a hospital or medical clinic. As a matter of routine, Israelis' car trunks are searched every time they enter a well-trafficked parking lot.

Not one U.N. organ has protested the fact that, for years, an entire country has been harassed and humiliated.

Israelis are searched not only when they go out for a cup of coffee at the local Coffee-shop, but also when they go to the movies or the theater or a concert, where the term "dressed to kill" has an entirely different meaning.

These ordinary daily humiliations now extend to similar searches when Israelis go to weddings or bar mitzvahs. No one abroad talks about the humiliation Jews in Israel are subjected to, having to write at the bottom of wedding invitations and other life cycle events, "The site will be secured [by armed guards]" - to ensure relatives and friends will attend and share their joyous occasion.

To date, no one protests the fact that Jewish schoolchildren in Israel are surrounded by perimeter fences with armed guards at the schoolyard gates. Not one Arab village in Israel or the Territories has a perimeter fence around it. Guards are not required at Arabic shops, cafes, restaurants, movie theaters, wedding halls or schools - either in pre-1967 Israel or in Judea and Samaria. Palestinians also do not need armed guards to accompany every school trip, youth movement hike or campout. They are not targets of terrorism.

Israelis are told, in effect, to disguise themselves when traveling abroad - not to speak Hebrew in public and not to wear garments that reveal their Jewish/Israeli origins. On the other hand, Arabs who frequent Jewish cities and towns in Israel wear their traditional Arab headgear without fear of being attacked or harassed.

Even Israel's national airline - El Al - has been forced to remove its logo from the tails of its aircraft at certain airports, out of concern for the safety of its passengers. This followed several attempts to down Israeli civilian aircrafts with missiles - one of which blew up a Swissair flight in mid-air from Zurich to Tel Aviv in February 1970, killing all 47 passengers and crew aboard.

Strangely, no media outlets and not a single human rights organization has fully and objectively reported or protested the daily humiliation and harassment Israelis suffer because of the Palestinian Authority's 'factory of terror.'

Not one U.N. organ has protested the fact that, for years, an entire country has been harassed and humiliated.

All this begs the question: Who are the victims and who are the victimizers? Who are the ones being harassed and humiliated? Palestinians or Israelis?


Eli E. Hertz is the president of Myths and Facts, an organization devoted to research and publication of information regarding US interests in the world and particularly in the Middle East. Mr. Hertz served as Chairman of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting.

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/21101

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Another Anti-Jewish Hire at the Islamic Society of Boston - Sam Westrop

by Sam Westrop

We have uncovered new evidence of intense anti-Semitism expressed by BIS faculty.

If you haven't already, make sure to read our recent article on the Boston Islamic Seminary, a new religious educational institution that claims to be training "vibrant members of America's pluralistic society, working collaboratively with people of other faiths."

As our article points out, the Boston Islamic Seminary (BIS) -- and its parent organization, the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) -- are not moderate at all. Both BIS and the ISB have a tendency to employ and promote extremist clerics and activists.

In 2016, for example, the ISB hired an "associate imam" named Abdul-Malik Merchant. Merchant seems to dislike Jews. In a Facebook post discussing Jewish "plotting", he published text claiming: "The Jews wanted to kill Jesus the son of Mary (peace be upon him) because there [sic] normal way or tradition was to kill the prophets." And on a blog run by Merchant, a variety of anti-Semitic scripture is quoted: "Oh assembly of Jews! You are the most disgusting of the creation to me. You killed the prophets of Allaah..."

Now, we have uncovered new evidence of intense anti-Semitism expressed by BIS faculty.

Yahia Abdul-Rahman is an "instructor" at BIS, where he teaches courses on "Islamic finance." Abdul-Rahman is a noted expert in his field. BIS describes him as the "father of Islamic banking." While working at Citigroup, Abdul-Rahman launched the "first ever Sharia-compliant stock portfolio." In addition, he helped establish the Industrial Bank of Kuwait and the LARIBA Bank of Kazakhstan. Under his watch, LARIBA established the first sharia-compliant bank in America. Since then, Abdul-Rahman has written two books on the subject, one of which he claims was a best-seller.

Abdul-Rahman is also, however, a determined anti-Semite. His Facebook page is replete with unpleasant jokes about Jews, support for the Muslim Brotherhood's struggle against Israel and links to neo-Nazi websites.

In August 2015, for example, Abdul-Rahman posted a link to "The Ugly Truth," a website that describes itself as "intelligent 'anti-Semitism' for thinking Gentiles." The website contains conspiracy theories about Jewish control of governments and media, as well as claims of Jewish plots to murder children and discussions about "de-Judifying America."

Abdul-Rahman also spreads Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy theories that Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is of Jewish origin and his government is secretly supported by Jews.

Another post shared by Abdul-Rahman claims that any Muslim who fails to oppose Israel is no longer a Muslim, and has a "Jewish heart."

And in a joke supposedly exposing Jewish complicity during the 2008 financial crisis, Abdul-Rahman posts a story (see screenshot below) explaining how a Jewish merchant swindled an entire village out of its savings and assets.

To the bafflement of observers, the Islamic Society of Boston has long enjoyed strong support from local politicians, media and even Jewish community leaders and rabbis, in spite of the institution's long history of extreme anti-Semitism. The question that many wonder now is: exactly how anti-Semitic do you have to be to lose that support?

Sam Westrop

Source: http://www.islamist-watch.org/blog/2017/10/another-anti-jewish-hire-at-the-islamic-society

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Has Your Kid Gone on an Imaginary Hajj Today? - William F. Marshall

by William F. Marshall

This analysis of Newton’s Islamic teaching materials should serve as a signal flare to parents everywhere.

Newton, Massachusetts, that Ground Zero (or Mecca?) of political correctness, provides America with a glimpse of the false, or at least highly distorted, understanding that modern liberals would have America’s youth believe about the practice and history of Islam and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) has published an important new monograph, entitled "Indoctrinating Our Youth: How a U.S. Public School Curriculum Skews the Arab-Israeli Conflict and Islam," that has meticulously dissected the materials used by the Newton Public Schools system in its high schools -- Newton North and Newton South -- to teach 9th and 10th graders about Islam and the never-ending Arab-Israeli conflict. The short book is a fine case study in the process by which our nation’s young adults are propagandized about Islam, and develop a bias against America and Israel. It should be read by every parent of high school-aged (and younger) students, high school administrators, and teachers.

The core of the book is a set of teaching materials that my friend and colleague, the Harvard/MIT-trained defense policy expert and intelligence specialist, Dr. William Saxton (now head of the nonprofit research and education organization, Citizens For National Security) and I, working through Judicial Watch, obtained from the City of Newton after we waged a nearly two-year long administrative jihad with the attorneys of Newton to release the records. In addition to our time, we were required by Newton’s legal eagles to pay thousands of dollars to have the materials provided to us, to cover the collection and processing of these presumably public materials.

In the first of several open records requests I sent to the City of Newton, filed on October 31, 2014, I sought all records relating to the teaching of Islam and the Arab-Israeli conflict, including such items as lesson plans, handouts, textbook titles and excerpts, class notes, multimedia presentations and the like. What was eventually produced in the nearly 600 pages of material was deeply concerning, as the experts at CAMERA revealed.

The authors of "Indoctrinating Our Youth" did yeoman’s work in carefully examining the materials used to teach the 9th grade World History unit on Islam and the 10th grade World History unit on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which exposed the use of slanted texts written by Muslim apologists, such as Georgetown’s John Esposito, often factually flawed material, superficial anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian opinion pieces in nonscholarly publications like Time magazine and the Guardian newspaper, and videos produced in collaboration with the likes of University of California Irvine Professor Mark LeVine, a prominent advocate of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, which is bent on the economic destruction of the state of Israel.

Examples abound in "Indoctrinating Our Youth’s" explication of Newton’s whitewashing of Islam in its teaching materials. The authors note the use in the 9th grade course of a textbook called A Muslim Primer: Beginner’s Guide to Islam, written by Ira Zepp, to discuss the status of women in Islam. The CAMERA analysts note that Mr. Zepp “has no formal credentials in Islamic scholarship” and the chapter used “fails to offer a serious, dispassionate survey of women’s conditions in Islamic culture.”

The CAMERA experts note: “A more serious shortcoming is the author’s [Zepp’s] concealment of information about practices like honor killings, genital mutilation, the stoning of women accused of adultery, or the treatment of women as property in some Islamic countries.”

"Indoctrinating Our Youth" cites Dr. Saxton, whose organization, Citizens for National Security, is the nation’s leader in examining school textbooks for factual accuracy. They write, “Saxton estimates that he fields about six inquiries related to inaccuracies in textbooks on the subject of Islam and the Arab-Israeli conflict every day.”

A major fault that the CAMERA analysts found of the Newton schools’ Islamic materials is the teachers’ heavy reliance on unvetted, unscholarly, and frequently dubious hand-outs given to students, often pulled off the Internet, which contain unsupported assertions. For example, one hand-out given to Newton students stated that “all Muslim scholars agree on the fact that the first, greatest jihad is the personal-spirited struggle towards discipline.”

As the CAMERA authors point out, highly renowned scholars of Islam, like Bernard Lewis of Princeton, offer “a different definition of jihad, contending that it was used traditionally to rally Muslims to war against non-believers and that its object was to ‘bring the whole world under Islamic law.’” Similarly, they note, Muslim scholar Khaleel Mohammed of the University of San Diego “stressed the importance of understanding that over the course of Islam’s history, the main emphasis of jihad has shifted between the inner struggle to the obligation to war in the name of Islam. He [Prof. Mohammed] stated, ‘Islam knows its share of violence, and to deny that history is disingenuous.’”

In my own review of the raw materials from Newton, I thought the CAMERA authors may have been too generous in their assessment of the Newton materials. On one page of a lesson plan [page 105] in which the “Spread of Islam” is discussed, to explain the rapid spread of the religion, the teacher’s notes indicate: “In general, decent conquerors (easier on some than their previous conquerors had been) offered: 1.) convert of [sic] Islam; 2.) pay a reasonable tax; 3.) die.” Sound like decent conquerors to me.

In one class assignment [page 216] entitled “Cities: Connecting the Islamic World,” students become pretend Muslims. The teacher writes: “As our concluding project on the Islamic world, you will work in groups to simulate a historical hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca in class. Each of you will be part of a group of Muslim pilgrims from one of the following eight Islamic cities or regions, around a rough time period.” The teacher then lists out eight “Islamic” cities (which includes Jerusalem, by the way). Each group of students is told they will set up a “tent” (presumably imaginary?) which will display newspaper articles the students have written about “their” cities and cultural artifacts they have created to represent their Islamic “hometowns.”

Imagine for a moment if the classroom assignment were to pretend to be part of a group of Christian pilgrims visiting Rome to attend Mass given by the pope in St. Peter’s Square, or a group of orthodox Jews visiting the Wailing Wall to pray, and each student had to write articles and bring artifacts from their “Christian” or “Jewish” city. I suspect Newton’s liberals would be outraged and ACLU lawyers would have a field day on talk shows about “separation of church and state.” 

This analysis of Newton’s Islamic teaching materials should serve as a signal flare to parents everywhere. Find out what your children are being taught about Islam and Israel. Is it imbalanced? Is it inaccurate? Is the violent history of Islam virtually ignored, as it is by Newton? If so, it might be time to chat with the school board.

William F. Marshall has been an intelligence analyst and investigator in the government, private and non-profit sectors for over 30 years. Presently he is a Senior Investigator for Judicial Watch, Inc. (The views expressed are the author’s alone, and not necessarily those of Judicial Watch.)

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/10/has_your_kid_gone_on_an_imaginary_hajj_today.html

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France’s Islamic WWIII - Daniel Greenfield

by Daniel Greenfield

Afghanistan is safer than Paris.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic terrorism.

Interior Minister Gerard Collomb made it official. France is "in a state of war”.

It’s not just rhetoric. Bombs turn up in a posh Parisian suburb. Two young women are butchered at a train station. And it’s just another week of an Islamic World War III being fought in France.

From the November attacks in 2015 that killed 130 people and wounded another 400+, to the Bastille Day truck ramming attack last year that killed 86 and wounded 458, the war is real.

French casualties in France are worse than in Afghanistan. The French lost 70 people to Islamic terrorist attacks in Afghanistan. And 239 to Islamic terrorist attacks in France.

The French losses in Afghanistan were suffered in over a decade of deployment in one of the most dangerous Islamic areas in the world. The French losses in France were suffered in less than two years.

There’s something very wrong when Afghanistan is safer than Paris.

10,000 French soldiers were deployed in the streets of their own country in Operation Sentinelle after the Charlie Hebdo - Kosher supermarket attacks in 2015. Thousands of French soldiers are still patrolling, guarding and shooting in French cities which have become more dangerous than Afghanistan.

Operation Sentinelle has deployed twice as many French soldiers to France as to Afghanistan. And French casualties in the Islamic war at home have been far higher that they were in Afghanistan.

When the French intervened to stop the Islamist takeover of Mali, they suffered a handful of losses. The 4,000 French soldiers came away from Operation Serval with 9 casualties and Operation Barkhane amounted to 5 dead. The Gulf War? Another 9 dead. It’s a lot safer to be a French soldier fighting Al Qaeda in a Muslim country than a Parisian civilian going to a concert in his or her own city.

French casualties in the struggle with Islamic terror in just the last two years are approaching the 300 casualties of the Korean War.

France is at war. That’s why there are soldiers in the streets.

Its new anti-terrorism bill creates a permanent state of emergency. Suspected extremists can be placed under “administrative detention” in their own homes and neighborhoods under police surveillance and remote monitoring.

Pop-up checkpoints can appear in public spaces that are designated as “security zones” where anyone can be stopped and searched. Mosques can be shut down for six months. Public gatherings can be banned. Warrantless searches can be conducted within miles of potential targets.

The Interior Ministry will have police state powers. And it will be able to wield quite a few of them without having to go through the formality of asking judges nicely for permission.

Some of these measures should be familiar. France is the new Israel.

France's Interior Minister called the anti-terrorism bill, a "lasting response to a lasting threat". The choice of words recognizes that Islamic terrorism is here to stay.

The “State of War” is permanent. And France has no plans for winning the war. Instead it’s trying to get better at playing defense. And that’s what most Western domestic counterterrorism efforts amount to.

France is just taking the lead because it has the biggest problem.

The British put soldiers on the streets after the Manchester Arena bombing. The Italians and the Belgians began deploying soldiers in cities around the same time that the French did.

When an illegal alien Muslim terrorist due to be deported murdered two young women in Marseille while shouting, “Allahu Akbar”, French soldiers opened fire. The 24-year-old who shot the terrorist was a reserve member of a regiment of combat engineers in the French Foreign Legion.

The French Foreign Legion isn’t off fighting in a foreign desert somewhere. It’s fighting in France.

French soldiers are told to loudly announce, “Stop or I Shoot”. And then open fire. And that’s what he did. And French soldiers are being forced to learn the phrase and expect to come under attack.

In February, French soldiers were attacked by a Muslim terrorist outside the Louvre. The Egyptian Jihadist shouted, “Allahu Akbar” and came after them with a machete. One soldier from the 1st Régiment de Chasseurs Parachutistes was wounded. The attacker was shot down.

The 1st Régiment de Chasseurs Parachutistes had been deployed to Afghanistan and Mali. Now they were at the Louvre. You don’t need to be Napoleon to know that counts as a major retreat.

A month later, a Muslim terrorist shouted "I am here to die in the name of Allah" while holding a female air force soldier hostage at Orly Airport.

He got his wish courtesy of her fellow soldiers.

In August, six soldiers from the 35th Infantry Regiment were hit by a BMW driven by a Muslim terrorist. Members of a regiment which had been deployed in Afghanistan were sent to a military hospital after an attack in the wealthy Levallois-Perret suburb of Paris. A year earlier, soldiers from the 5th Infantry Regiment had been hit by a Tunisian shouting, “Allahu Akbar” while they were guarding a mosque.

France has entered its longest state of emergency since the Algerian War. The 2015 attacks saw its first state of emergency since 1961. But where is France supposed to withdraw from this time? Paris?

It was one thing to abandon the beleaguered Algerian Christians and Jews to Muslim terror. And to abandon them a second time when they fled to France only to face persecution by their old Islamic neighbors who had tagged along and settled down in Marseille. But can France abandon the French?

The issue once again is colonialism. But the new colonists are Algerians, Tunisians and other Islamic imperialists who have settled in France and wave the black flag of the Jihad over their no-go zone settlements in French cities. And they have made it abundantly clear that they will not stop there.

Last year, former Prime Minister Manuel Valls said that, "Every day attacks are foiled... as we speak."

And it’s no wonder. Thousands of Muslim settlers left France to fight in Syria and Iraq. Valls was looking at 15,000 potential threats domestically. France has one of the largest Muslim populations in Europe. We don’t know exactly how many millions of Muslim settlers live in France. But we can measure their growth by the expansion of the terror threat. Islamic terrorism is, despite the spin, reducible to Islam.

There is no Islamic terrorism without Islam. As Islam expands, so does Islamic terrorism.

France is in the middle of a civil war. The civil war is based on religious differences. As the religious divide between the Islamic colonists and the militantly secular French government increases, the violence will worsen. The outcome of the war will determine whether France will be a secular republic or an Islamic state. The Jihadists have a plan for winning the war.  The French authorities don’t.

And what goes for France also goes for Western Europe. And for the West.

The French combination of social appeasement and police state enforcement isn’t working. The same model ultimately fails wherever it’s applied. Breaking up terror cells and stopping attacks is far better than the alternative, but the scale of the problem will always continue increasing because of demographic growth and a globalized terror infrastructure.

Demographics dictate that France’s terror problem will only keep growing. And the French authorities understand this. That’s why its governments increasingly talk about Islamic terrorism as a lasting threat.

Our War on Terror has squandered endless blood and treasure while avoiding the root cause. Western nations deploy massive armies to root out small terror networks while allying with their Gulf backers. Soldiers patrol major cities waiting for a terrorist or several terrorists to attack. Meanwhile the mosques that indoctrinate them to hate and kill non-Muslims are also protected by those same soldiers.

That’s not how you win a war. It’s how you lose everything.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic terrorism.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/268052/frances-islamic-wwiii-daniel-greenfield

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Suffocating Academic Free Speech - Richard L. Cravatts

by Richard L. Cravatts

The fascist Left tightens the screws on the American campus.

As the left exhibits paroxysms of moral outrage since the presidential election, the symptoms of Trump Derangement Syndrome are increasingly evident on university campuses.

One such instance of this irrationality was on full display in August at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln when Katie Mullen, president of the school’s Turning Point USA chapter, was verbally harassed by leftist professors after she had set up a promotional table for the organization.

A video recording of the events shows a graduate teaching assistant and PhD student, Courtney Lawton, giving the middle finger to Mullen while carrying a sign saying, “Just say No! to Neo-Fascism!” and shouting “Neo-fascist Becky right here. Wants to destroy public schools, public universities, hates DACA kids,” “fuck Charlie Kirk [founder and executive director of Turning Point USA],” and “TPUSA Nazis,” among other repellent slurs.

Another professor, Amanda Gailey (founder of Nebraskans Against Gun Violence and virulent critic of police and gun owners), taunted Mullen with a sign that stated, “Turning Point: please put me on your watchlist,” and others passing by aggressively accused the conservative student of being a white nationalist, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and a fascist.

Even for campuses which normally tolerate any ideological excesses from its leftist faculty and students, this behavior was a bit too much for the Nebraska administration, which quickly removed Lawton from her position as a lecturer and assigned her to non-teaching duties, commenting that her behavior “did not meet the university’s expectations for civility.”

Outraged by the unceremonious firing of one of their colleagues, fellow faculty, students, and union members organized a September rally on the Nebraska-Lincoln City campus sponsored by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP)—purportedly to discuss issues of academic freedom but actually a protest of what they believed was Lawton’s unjustified termination. Ignoring the fact that Lawton had not engaged in debate or dialogue at all but had actually viciously bullied Mullen with ad hominem attacks and slurs, her supporters side-stepped that inconvenient detail entirely, choosing instead to make Lawton the victim. 

It was not Lawton’s outrageously uncivil behavior that was the problem here, but retaliation for daring to question Turning Point USA, a conservative organization. “We find it suspicious and dangerous,” said English professor Fran Kaye, one of the demonstrators, “that [Lawton] is being told that she cannot speak . . .  about an organization that she has, in fact, researched because one of the things it shuts down is research on gay rights, lesbian rights.”

There's an important distinction to be made in this case, however. The lecture[r] was reassigned and relieved of her teaching duties not because of the content of her speech or the views expressed therein, but for the manner in which she expressed them; specifically, her behavior, not her ideas, is what was inappropriate and violated the norms of both the school’s policies on academic free speech and conduct by students and faculty, but also the central idea of reasoned debate and dialogue. In fact, UNL’s own policies on graduate student conduct is very clear on this matter, stating that, “Of particular note in this regard,” the policy stresses, “are behaviors that make the workplace hostile for colleagues, supervisors or subordinates (e.g., undergraduate students) [emphasis added.].”

It is one thing to engage in a discussion from two opposing viewpoints and to marshal facts and opinions to prove one's point in a debate, even if that discussion is very contentious and highly argumentative. It is another thing, however, to attack someone—and particularly when that someone is a student and the attacker is a lecturer—and not engage them in a reasoned debate, but instead use ad hominem attacks, spurious allegations about political affiliations, and accusations that their views as conservatives render their ideas useless because they are equivalent to fascist or Nazis beliefs. This is an entirely different interaction that the principles of academic freedom and campus free speech were never intended to protect or enable.

The AAUP has perennially been a strident defender of professors’ academic freedom, but even its own policies reflect the belief that lecturers have a professional obligation not to engage in behavior or speech—even outside of the classroom—that is not in keeping with professional standards. In its “Statement on Extramural Utterances,” for instance, the AAUP referred “to the special obligations of faculty members arising from their position in the community: to be accurate, to exercise appropriate restraint, to show respect for the opinions of others, and to make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.” 

To see how campus colleagues can betray their fellow professors when those professors have what leftists believe are the wrong set of beliefs or ideologies, one has only to look at the case of Connecticut College professor Andrew Pessin, who found himself vilified on campus, not only by a cadre of ethnic hustlers and activists, but by fellow faculty and an administration that was slow to defend Pessin’s right to express himself—even when, as in this case, his ideas were certainly within the realm of reasonable conversation about a difficult topic: the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

In August of 2014, during Israel’s incursions into Gaza to suppress deadly rocket fire aimed at Jewish citizens, Pessin, a teacher of religion and philosophy, wrote on his Facebook page a description of how he perceived Hamas, the ruling political entity in Gaza: “One image which essentializes the current situation in Gaza might be this. You've got a rabid pit bull chained in a cage, regularly making mass efforts to escape.”

That image of a pit bull did not sit well with at least one Connecticut College student, Lamiya Khandaker, who, not coincidentally, had founded a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, the virulently anti-Israel, sometimes anti-Semitic student activist group operating on more than 200 campuses across America.

Khandaker complained publicly about Pessin’s old Facebook post, asserting that it was dehumanizing and racist, and claiming that Pessin was characterizing all Palestinians, not just Hamas, as pit bulls.

Faculty from the College’s History Department joined the fray in vilifying Pessin and expressing their self-righteousness, announcing that “we condemn speech filled with bigotry and hate particularly when that speech uses dehumanizing language and incites or celebrates violence and brutality,” an odd accusation to make against an individual who had critiqued the behavior of a terrorist group. More than that, Pessin, according to the enlightened history professoriate, was complicit in a wide range of oppression, subjugation, and racism, pointing to “the particularly salient tactic of dehumanizing language as a means to justify brutality and lull otherwise ‘well intentioned’ people into silence and, effectively, complicity in racism, sexism, discrimination, colonialism and the numerous genocides throughout human history.” The fact that the Hamas Charter is itself essentially a call to genocide—specifically of Jews—apparently was lost on these historians.

This case also exposes a startling double standard that is currently prevalent in academia when it comes to who may say what about whom. Either because they are feckless or want to coddle perceived protected student minority groups in the name of diversity, most faculty and administrators are morally inconsistent when taking a stand against what they consider “hate speech,” believing, mistakenly, that only harsh expression against victim groups needs to be moderated. When other groups—whites, Christians, conservatives and Trump supporters, heterosexual males, pro-Israel groups, for example—are the object of offensive speech, apparently no protection is deemed necessary and activism against them is excused, justified, or defended in the name of social justice or progressivism.

Professor Pessin made an innocuous comment on social media about a terrorist group half-way around the world and was subsequently vilified as a racist libeler who had injured the sensibilities of Arab students he had never even met or with whom he had never directly communicated. Graduate instructor Lawton, on the other hand, had verbally bullied and harassed a student in her presence, using her status as a professor as a club with which to beat Mullen with accusations of her being a fascist, neo-Nazi, and worse simply for being a member of a conservative student group. Her colleagues came to her defense anyway, cloaking her outrageous behavior as a debate about academic freedom.

The AAUP is correct in vigorously defending the right of academics to enjoy free speech on campus, together with the ability to articulate opinions and ideas that may well be controversial, incendiary, or divisive. But academic free speech, while giving professors the right to express themselves without restraint, was never conceived of as a way of releasing those exercising it from responsibility for their expression, or for providing a convenient way to mask unacceptable biases or justify unprofessional behavior.

And if the professoriate wishes to give lip service to their support of the academic freedom they hold so dear, they must judge their peers consistently, and not based on whether their views represent prevailing progressive ideology or only political views with which the majority largely agrees. Otherwise, it will “represent a profound betrayal of the cardinal principle of intellectual endeavor,” as commentator Melanie Phillips put it, “which is freedom of speech and debate,” something universities should never stop diligently defending.

Richard L. Cravatts, PhD, president emeritus of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, is the author of Dispatches From the Campus War Against Israel and Jews.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/268068/suffocating-academic-free-speech-richard-l-cravatts

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The Goal of Western Leaders: Avoid Change, Duck Accountability - Douglas Murray

by Douglas Murray

Europe (and Canada) submit to Islamic terror

• Political leaders across the Western world seem to have a clear set of priorities that we will not change, and therefore we must simply accept the problem.
• There are several possible reasons for this, but the most likely is that they know that it is the policies of successive governments, including their own, that have caused such attacks to happen. If countries such as Canada, France and Finland had been more careful with their national security, these current attacks would not be happening.
• In order to avoid the political repercussions that might follow any honest evaluation of our current situation, they seem to conclude, the only thing to be done is to pretend that terrorism is -- like the weather -- something that just happens to us, and that our principal problem is the bigotry of Europeans rather than another two women lying dead on our streets.

In Europe today, it is what goes unacknowledged and un-commemorated that reveals the trouble we are in.

There are plenty of public campaigns and calls by politicians to demonstrate "awareness" of things that are either non-existent problems or second-order problems. Earlier this year, for instance, the President of Austria came up with an eye-catching initiative. Addressing the ban on women wearing full-face coverings in public places, Alexander van der Bellen, the former leader of the Green Party, said:

"If this real and rampant Islamophobia continues, there will come a day where we must ask all women to wear a headscarf -- all -- out of solidarity to those who do it for religious reasons."

That day has not yet come. Non-Muslim women across Austria have not yet all been asked to wear the headscarf in solidarity with Muslim women who wear the headscarf. But it is possible that they will be asked to do so in the near future, whenever the President of Austria or another senior figure decides that "Islamophobia" has become even more "rampant" and that this requires all the women of Austria to cover their heads. By contrast, after real and deadly attacks on women across Europe, nobody knows precisely what to do.

Recently in Marseille, two women, aged 20 and 21, were walking past the Saint-Charles train station. The women -- named as Mauranne and Laura -- were cousins, one a medical student, and the other a trainee nurse. A man stabbed both of them to death, while shouting "Allahu Akbar" before each assault. This man -- who was shot dead by police -- is believed to hold a number of identities, including a Tunisian passport in the name of one Ahmed H, born in 1987.

The attack in Marseille is reminiscent of a number of attacks in Europe in recent years, not least the murder in August of two women and the wounding of eight others in the Finnish city of Turku. The perpetrator of that attack was a 22-year-old Moroccan, Abderrahman Bouanane, who had lied about his age, identity and asylum claims when he had arrived in Finland a year earlier.

After Turku, nothing changed. In the same way nothing will change after Marseille. On the same day that the latest two young women were butchered on the streets of France, an Islamist carried out an attack in Canada. In Edmonton, a 30-year-old Somali refugee stabbed a police officer and mowed down pedestrians with a van. An ISIS flag was subsequently found in the perpetrator's car. In response to the atrocity, the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, released a statement, saying:

"We cannot -- and will not -- let violent extremism take root in our communities. We know that Canada's strength comes from our diversity, and we will not be cowed by those who seek to divide us or promote fear."

This response was almost perfectly European in its framing -- and typical of the aftermath of any Islamist attack in Western Europe or North America.

It has no direction of travel other than "forward" and displays no evidence of returning to problems to think them over anew. It says simply that what has happened is because of something we will not change, and therefore we must simply accept the problem. "Diversity is our strength" is one part of this repetitious hymn-sheet. Another is to announce that we will not give in to "hate".

The lack of any other response is deeply telling. In reply to the phantom menace of "Islamophobia", political leaders across the Western world seem to have a clear set of priorities and proscriptions. So much so that they can even suggest every woman in the country changing their mode of dress to show solidarity against one alleged form of bigotry. Yet when it comes to responding to actual murders and stabbings of women and others they have nothing to say but "carry on".

There are several possible reasons for this, but the most likely is that they know that it is the policies of successive governments, including their own, that have caused such attacks to happen. If countries like Canada, France and Finland had been more careful with their national security, these current attacks would not be happening. If the Canadian Prime Minister had not decided to make such a virtue of blindly opening his country to the world, he would not have the current immigration challenges they have. If he had decided to think, "We should be careful with our future" rather than "Diversity is our strength", Canadian diversity would not have stretched to a Somali extremist.

If countries like Canada, France and Finland had been more careful with their national security, the current terrorist attacks would not be happening. Pictured: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (right) meets with France's President Emmanuel Macron (left), on July 7, 2017.

Likewise, it is only because European leaders have become so lax about their borders and entire immigration systems, that only after he stabs a number of women to death on European streets does anyone bother to find out how many identities the perpetrator holds and which parts of his claims for being in Europe are least true. Until then, it bothers Europe's politicians not a jot that so many people are wandering the continent with so many erroneous and concocted reasons for being there in the first place.

In order to avoid the political repercussions that might follow any honest evaluation of our current situation, they seem to conclude that the only thing to be done is to carry on as normal. Pretend that terrorism is -- like the weather -- something that just happens to us, and continue to pretend that our principal problem is the bigotry of Europeans rather than another two women lying dead on our streets.

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Douglas Murray, British author, commentator and public affairs analyst, is based in London, England. His latest book, an international best-seller, is "The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam."

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11110/western-leaders-accountability

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