[patriots] Of note
- From: Guy Leven-Torres <senorburrito@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "patriots@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <patriots@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 24 May 2014 07:52:01 +0100
Gang Raping, "I Love Al-Qaeda" and Who Is Advancing Islam?
A Month of Islam in Europe: April 2014by Soeren Kern
May 22, 2014 at 5:00
amhttp://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4323/islam-europe-april205 CommentThe
American Embassy in Prague is financing a new project aimed at promoting Islam
in public elementary and secondary schools across the Czech Republic.
The new law removes the requirement that there must be a special reason to sue
for defamation or insult. Swedish thought police will be able to prosecute
anyone who expresses an opinion about Muslim immigration and much else if that
opinion is deemed to be defamation or slander. The Swedish government is also
spending 60 million krona ($9 million) to boost voter turnout in Muslim
neighborhoods.
"The influx of immigrants is reaching biblical proportions. Italy is fighting a
losing battle." — Admiral Giuseppe De Giorgi, Head of the Italian Navy
In Austria, police say they believe that two teenage girls who vanished from
their homes in the capital of Vienna on April 10 may be in Turkey, and that
whoever helped them get there is using them as pin-up girls to boost
recruitment efforts for the "holy war" in Syria.
Friends of Samra Kesinovic, 16, and Sabina Selimovic, 15, said the girls had
become radicalized after attending a local mosque run by a Salafist preacher,
Ebu Tejma, and learning about the duty of every Muslim to participate in jihad.
The girls were expelled from school after inscribing "I Love Al-Qaeda" on
tables and walls.
But the girls' parents—originally Bosnian refugees who settled in Austria after
the ethnic conflicts of the 1990s—say that messages and photographs posted on
social media networks which claim that the girls are on the front line and
fighting with their new husbands are fake.
In a possible break in the case, Austrian police say they traced a phone call
Samra made to her sister in late April to a landline based in Turkey. The
search for the girls continues.
At least 100 Austrian citizens or residents have participated in the fighting
in Syria, according to Austrian media. Approximately 40 of them are currently
on the front lines, 44 have already returned to Austria and 19 have been killed
in action.
Also in April, the most senior leader of the Muslim Brotherhood living in exile
in Britain, Ibrahim Munir, denied claims that the group was moving its
international headquarters from London to the Austrian city of Graz. TheDaily
Mail, a British newspaper, reported on April 12 that the Muslim Brotherhood was
preparing to move its headquarters to Austria in an "apparent attempt to avoid
an inquiry into its activities set up by the Prime Minister."
The group was expelled from Egypt after a counter-revolution there in July
2013, and recently opened a newheadquarters above a kebab shop in London. On
April 1, British Prime Minister David Cameron announced an investigation of the
Muslim Brotherhood's activities in Britain.
A full summary of Islam in Britain during the month of April can be found here.
In the Czech Republic, police on April 25 raided the headquarters of Prague's
Islamic Foundation in the center of the capital and a mosque on the outskirts
of the city. Police arrested 20 people, including the Czech translator and
publisher of a book about Islamic theology that security officials said
promotes hate speech and incites hatred toward Jews.
The book—"The Fundamentals of Tawheed" [Islamic monotheism] by Bilal Philips, a
Jamaican-born, Qatar-based Muslim extremist who has been banned from entering
Britain and Germany—was being used, police said, to spread Salafist ideology in
the Czech Republic.
Also in April, it emerged that the American embassy in Prague is financing a
new project aimed at promoting Islam in public elementary and secondary schools
across the Czech Republic.
In Denmark, police in Copenhagen on April 25 said the man they believe tried to
assassinate the Danish journalist Lars Hedegaard in February 2013 was arrested
in Istanbul's Atatürk airport as he tried to enter Turkey on a false passport.
The man, identified only by the initials B.H., is awaiting extradition—a
process that could take three months—in a high-security prison in the city's
Maltepe district.
Danish police say the suspect is a 26-year-old Danish citizen of
Lebanese—possibly Palestinian—origin. At the time of his arrest, he was in
possession of a fake passport. He left Denmark on the same day of the
assassination attempt, police said, and has been traveling between Syria,
Lebanon and Turkey ever since.
In Finland, the Parliament's Constitutional Law Committee on April 4 ruled that
the long-standing tradition of singing a summer hymn known as the "Suvivirsi"
at end-of-school ceremonies can continue. In March, Deputy Chancellor of
Justice Mikko Puumalainen had called on the Board of Education to look into the
matter because the song has Christian overtones and could be offensive to the
country's growing Muslim community.
"It's curious that the minority can so strongly influence the activities of the
majority," said Education Chancellor Pekka Iivonen. "Laws concerning religious
freedom work both ways: in addition to having the right not practice religion,
we also have the right to practice religion in Finland, where the majority of
people belong to the Lutheran church."
In France, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve on April 23 presented a new
anti-radicalization plan aimed at preventing French citizens or residents from
waging jihad in Syria and other Muslim conflict zones. The strategy includes
more than 20 measures aimed not only at preventing French citizens from joining
the war in Syria, but also at combatting the radicalization of young French
Muslims during the earliest stages of indoctrination.
On April 22, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told RTL Radio that nearly 500
French citizens or residents are believed to have joined the fighting in Syria.
"This is a very big subject," Fabius said. "Now more and more young people are
going [to Syria] ... Our plan is to tackle this upstream [at the source] and
all the way downstream. We will identify young people caught on this tragic
path. We will monitor this online, and then we must stop them from crossing the
Syrian border, and monitor their return and reintegration."
Some believe the plan is a political ploy by French President François Hollande
aimed at blunting the rising popularity of the anti-immigration National Front
party, which captured a record number of city council seats and mayorships in
local elections in March.
National Front party leader Marine Le Pen told RTL Radio that the government's
plan to fight French jihadists is cosmetic. "It does not attack the root of the
problem—the speech in some mosques that are genuine calls to jihad," she said.
"Nor does the plan attack recruiters and funding from foreign countries known
to support terrorist fundamentalism, such as Qatar."
Le Pen also said it might be necessary to create a new law on mercenaries that
would 1) prohibit those who have French nationality from engaging in fighting
abroad; and 2) revoke French nationality from individuals convicted of
participating in this type of fighting.
A confidential intelligence document leaked to the French newspaper Le Figaro
says a form of Muslim ghettoization is gaining ground within the French school
system. The report says that Muslim students are effectively establishing an
Islamic parallel society completely cut off from non-Muslim students.
The 15-page document, dated November 28, 2013, includes 70 examples—headscarves
in school playgrounds, halal meals in cafeterias, chronic absenteeism during
Muslim religious festivals, clandestine prayers in gyms or hallways—of the
Islamizing trend in schools throughout France.
The document says that Muslims are engaged in a "war of attrition" aimed at
"destabilizing the teaching staff." It adds that Muslim fundamentalists are
circumventing the law that bans religious symbols in schools, and that
self-proclaimed "young guardians of orthodoxy" in many schools are exerting
pressure on Muslim girls.
"During the Muslim holidays, especially during the Eid-el-Kebir [Eid el-Adha],
classes are abandoned by students," with absenteeism bordering 90% in certain
parts of Nîmes and Toulouse. A high school principal in a northern district of
Marseille said that some of his pupils pray with such zeal that their foreheads
bear bruises.
In Évry, a commune in the southern suburbs of Paris, police arrested four
Muslim boys (three Turkish brothers between the ages of 13 and 15, and one
17-year-old from Morocco) for gang raping an 18-year-old woman as she left the
main train station. During police questioning, the minors said they attacked
the woman simply because she was French and "the French are all sons of whores."
The boys were jailed for rape and—unusually in France—reverse racism. Three of
the minors have previously been jailed for rape and robbery, but only six
months ago they were released early as part of a government plan to go easy on
minors.
One French commentator asks: "Where did their hatred come from? The hatred that
drove them to engage in unspeakable acts on a young girl, barely older than
themselves, who symbolized their host country? What will I report?
Unemployment? Poverty? Inequality?"
In Paris, the 31st congress of the Union of Islamic Organizations in France
(UOIF) was turned into a platform for Muslim anti-Semitism when keynote speaker
Hani Ramadan—a prominent Muslim leader from Geneva—blamed Jews and Zionism for
a litany of maladies in France, Iraq, Rwanda, Syria and Central Africa. "All
the evil in the world originates from the Jews who have only one thing in mind,
realizing the dream of Greater Israel," the French daily Le Figaro quoted him
as saying.
Ramadan said the media and politics are controlled by Zionists. "In the United
States, no one can be elected president without having to kowtow to AIPAC," he
said. "It is the same in France, where no one can be elected without the
approval of the CRIF [an umbrella group of French Jewish organizations], which
in fact leads in the shadows. Against these international schemes of the
Zionist power there is only one rampart: Islam."
Hani Ramadan is the director of the Islamic Center of Geneva and is a brother
of Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss professor banned from entering the United States. The
UOIF congress, held from April 18-21 this year, is one of France's largest and
most prominent Islamic events.
In Germany, the interior ministry on April 8 said it had outlawed the charity
"Waisenkinderprojekt Libanon" [Orphan Project Lebanon] for allegedly raising
millions of euros for Hezbollah. The group, based in the city of Essen,
collected €3.3 million ($4.6 million) in donations between 2007 and 2013 for
the Lebanese Shahid [Martyrs] Foundation, an "integral" part of Hezbollah. The
interior ministry said the funds were used to recruit fighters "to combat
Israel, also with terrorist measures" and to compensate the families of suicide
bombers.
Also in April, it was reported that the 39-year-old German rapper Deso Dogg
(born Denis Cuspert), operating under the alias "Abu Talha Al-Almani" [Abu
Talha the German], was killed on April 20 as a result of infighting among
jihadi groups battling in Syria.
Deso Dogg—the son of a Ghanaian father and German mother, and raised by an
American stepfather—abandoned his rapping career and converted to hardline
Salafism in 2010 after nearly being killed in a car crash. Soon after his
conversion, he began recording nasheeds [traditional Islamic devotional music]
in German, praising Osama Bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar. Deso Dogg's
nasheeds inspired Arid Uka, an Albanian-German Islamist, who killed two U.S.
airmen and seriously wounded two others at the Frankfurt airport in March 2011.
Before and After: Left, German rapper Denis Cuspert in 2005, then known as
"Deso Dogg". Right, Cuspert as jihadist in Syria, in 2013, operating under the
alias "Abu Talha Al-Almani" [Abu Talha the German]. (Image sources: Wikimedia
Commons, ISIS)
After Deso Dogg became a cult figure for Salafists in Europe, German
counter-terrorism authorities, concerned about his potential to serve as a
recruitment tool for radical Islamic groups, began monitoring his activities.
Despite being monitored, Deso Dogg crossed into Syria undetected in 2013, and
gave his oath of allegiance to the jihadist group the Islamic State of Iraq and
the Levant [ISIS] in early 2014. According to many media sources, he was
reportedly killed by a rival al-Nusra suicide bomber in eastern Syria. Reports
of his death, however, have not been independently confirmed, and ISIS fighters
interviewed by the German newspaper Die Welt have denied he is dead.
A new survey published on April 29 shows that only half of the German
population believes that Islam is a part of German culture and society. The
Integration Barometer 2014, produced by the Expert Council of German
Foundations on Integration and Migration, found that 44% of those with an
immigrant background and 53% without a migration background rejected the
statement: "Islam is part of Germany." About half of the respondents, both with
and without a migration background, nevertheless advocated religious
instruction in schools. About two-thirds believe Islamic theology should be
offered at universities.
The situation is different when it comes to making exceptions for individual
Muslims, such as exemptions from sports or swimming lessons because of
religious sensitivities. A clear majority, 76% of those without a migration
background, viewed such special privileges in a negative light. In addition,
63% of those without a migration background rejected the right of Muslim
teachers to wear headscarves in class. "The majority of respondents obviously
believe that equality and religious neutrality are more important than the
granting of special treatment on religious grounds," the study concludes.
On April 22, the Bavarian Administrative Court in Munich ruled that an
18-year-old Muslim student does not have the constitutional right to wear a
face-covering niqab in class at her state-run vocational college. The court
saidthat her school had done nothing illegal in asking her to remove the veil,
and that this prohibition did not infringe on her freedom of religious worship.
The court also said that the veil acted as a barrier for non-verbal
communication. "Open communication during teaching is based not only on the
spoken word, but also on non-verbal elements such as facial expressions,
gestures and other body language," the court said.
Meanwhile, a German-Turkish candidate for city council elections in the town of
Neuss near Düsseldorf provoked the ire of many Germans when he added the
Islamic crescent-moon to the logo of his party, the center-right Christian
Democratic Union. The Islamized logo appeared on promotional campaign products
such as pens, stickers and 4,000 bags.
Irritated CDU officials ordered Yasar Calik, 37, to cease and desist. He
responded by accusing them of intolerance. Calik said many Turks are skeptical
of the CDU and that he wants Muslims to know they can vote for the party, which
some have dubbed the "Islamic Democratic Union."
In Greece, controversial plans to build a taxpayer-funded mega-mosque in Athens
have been delayed once again after a group of concerned citizens filed an
appeal to block the €950,000 ($1.3 million) project. The government had agreed
in November 2013 to build a mosque at the site of a former naval base in
Votanikos, near central Athens.
Aris Spiliotopoulos, a candidate for the mayor of Athens for the center-right
New Democracy party, called for a referendum on the construction of the mosque.
In an April 16 interview with Skai TV, Spiliotopoulos, a former education and
tourism minister, criticized plans to build a Muslim place of worship in the
heart of Athens, saying that the capital does not need "another pole for
illegal immigration" or "third-world tents under the sacred rock of the
Acropolis." Votanikos is located 3km from the Acropolis. Spiliotopoulos said:
"I don't want the mosque next to the Parthenon."
The Friendship, Equality and Peace Party, purportedly representing Greek
Muslims in region of Thrace, described Spiliotopoulos' referendum proposals as
an "insult to the hundreds of thousands of Muslims living in Athens, the only
capital in the European Union without a mosque." The group added:
"The construction of a mosque has been delayed for strange reasons for many
years, which has opened a deep wound in terms of freedom of religion. Now,
proposing a referendum for a place of worship has created great disappointment.
We expect politicians to leave such a mentality, to avoid putting our country
Greece in a difficult position within the international arena."
Meanwhile, Muslim vandals are being blamed for a spate of attacks against Greek
Orthodox churches on the island of Crete. Anti-Christian slogans written in
Arabic were discovered on the walls of at least three churches.
In Italy, Home Secretary Angelino Alfano on April 4 warned that his country is
facing a catastrophic wave of immigration from the Muslim world. "According to
our information between 300,000 and 600,000 people are on the other side of the
Mediterranean on the North African coastline, waiting to cross sooner or
later," he said at a conference on immigration in Palermo, Sicily.
In the first three months of 2014, more than 11,000 immigrants have landed in
Italy, a seven-fold increase on 2013, with the high season for crossings about
to begin as the weather improves. "The landings are non-stop and the emergency
is increasingly glaring," Alfano said.
On April 4, an official statement from the Italian Ministry of Health declared
"the activation of appropriate measures of surveillance at all international
access points to Italy" due to fears that at least 40 immigrants from Africa
were infected with the Ebola virus.
The head of the Italian Navy, Admiral Giuseppe De Giorgi, said the influx of
migrants is reaching "biblical proportions" and that "Italy is fighting a
losing battle."
Justice Minister Andrea Orlando on April 1 signed an agreement with his
Moroccan counterpart to have Moroccan convicts sent back home. The move is
aimed at tackling chronic overcrowding in Italian prisons. The agreement will
affect Moroccans who have been convicted in Italy and sentenced to one or more
years in prison, according to a statement released by the Justice Ministry. The
new plan will allow convicts to serve out the rest of their sentences in
Morocco while receiving "social reintegration" there, where "they have social
and family ties." There are some 4,000 Moroccan prisoners in Italian prisons.
In the Netherlands, Interior Minister Ronald Plasterk and Rob Bertholee, the
head of the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD, on April 23 presented the AIVD
annual report for 2013. The report says that more than 100 Dutch citizens or
residents travelled to Syria in 2013 with the intention of taking part in
jihadist activities there.
The vast majority of Dutch jihadists joined one of two groups: the Islamic
State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) or Jabhat al-Nusra (JaN). A relatively
small proportion of jihadists (just over 20) returned home during the course of
the year. The AIVD believes that at least ten men from the Netherlands were
killed in Syria in 2013, including two Dutch jihadists who took their own lives
in suicide attacks.
The report warns:
"The participation of foreign jihadists in the conflict in Syria has
contributed to its escalation. Their experiences there, and the contacts they
establish with international networks, mean that they may well pose a threat to
national security if and when they return home. For the jihadist groups active
in Syria, the presence of European fighters represents an excellent opportunity
to recruit individuals familiar with our region to commit acts of terrorism
here. In addition, returnees could exploit their status as veterans to
radicalize others in the Netherlands.
"As well as potentially posing a direct threat, returnees from Syria might also
have a radicalizing and mobilizing effect upon fellow Muslims. In the
Netherlands, they could act as the catalyst pushing some young people already
attracted by a radical strand of Islam into militant activism. That could
strengthen local radical groups and spread their message to a wider audience."
Meanwhile, police said they had arrested a 35-year-old Dutch-Turkish national
named Aydin Coban in the case of a Canadian teenager who was blackmailed after
exposing herself in front of a webcam. The 15-year-old girl, Amanda Todd, later
committed suicide after detailing her harassment on a YouTube video watched by
millions around the world. Dutch prosecutors said the man is suspected of
blackmailing girls in Britain, the Netherlands and the United States. Canadian
police said they would seek extradition.
The number of people requesting asylum in the Netherlands rose by more than
4,000 in 2013 to 17,190, the immigration service said on April 14. Somalia
topped the list with just over 3,000 requests, followed by Syria (2,670) and
Iraq (1,090).
In Norway, the education ministry approved a controversial plan to launch the
country's first Muslim-only primary school in Oslo. The school will be run by
the Association of Muslim Mothers, which wants to teach its pupils Arabic and
Islamic values as well as the standard subjects on the curriculum. A standard
course on Religion, Philosophy and Ethics would be replaced by Islam, Religion
and Philosophy.
The school aims to have 200 students, and is expected to look for premises in
the east side of Oslo, home to many immigrants. Both Norway's opposition Labour
Party and the anti-immigrant Progress Party, which is part of the government
coalition, have voiced opposition to the plan.
On April 28, envoys from Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries accused the
Norwegian government of doing too little to protect its Muslim minority, and
called for all criticism of Islam to be made illegal. The accusations against
Norway were made in Geneva during a session of the United Nations Universal
Periodic Review, which occurs every four years. Norwegian Foreign Minister
Børge Brende told Norway's NTB newswire: "It is a paradox that countries which
do not support fundamental human rights have influence on the council, but that
is the United Nations."
In Spain, a large Muslim umbrella group called the Union of Islamic Communities
in Spain [UCIDE] sent letters to education officials in all of the country's 17
regions asking for precise data on the number of students in primary and
secondary public schools who have applied for Islamic religious training.
UCIDE is lobbying the Spanish government to expand the teaching of Islam in the
public school system, and is said to be compiling the data to back up its claim
that there are not enough Islam teachers to keep up with the growing demand.
On April 30, police in Almería, a port city in southern Spain, arrested a
French-Algerian jihadist who was returning to Europe from combat in Syria.
Abdelmalek Tanem, 25, was a member of the al-Qaeda-linked group, the Islamic
State of Iraq and the Levant [ISIS], from October 2013 to January 2014,
according to a statement issued by the Spanish Interior Ministry.
"During this period, Tanem is believed to have carried out the work of
'combatant' and as a 'facilitator' on the Turkish-Syrian border in order to
make it possible for other European citizens to be integrated into this
jihadist group," the statement says. Tanem is the second returning jihadist who
has been arrested by Spanish police; the first was Mohamed Sadik Abdeluahid in
Ceuta, in January.
On April 29, the Spanish government announced that it would allocate €2.1
million ($2.9 million) to try to stem illegal border crossings in Ceuta and
Melilla, two Spanish exclaves in North Africa. More than 1,000 African migrants
attempted to reach Spain in April during nearly daily attempts to storm and
scale the six-meter (20-foot) triple-layer fence separating Melilla from
Morocco.
In Sweden, the parliament on April 10 approved a new law that will make it
easier for public prosecutors to take criminal action against Swedes who
criticize immigrants or government officials online. The new law removes the
requirement that there must be a special reason to prosecute for defamation or
insult. Critics say the new law, which takes effect on January 1, 2015, is an
assault on the exercise of free speech: Swedish thought police will be able to
prosecute anyone who expresses an opinion about Muslim immigration and much
else if that opinion is deemed to be defamation or slander.
The measure has been pushed by Swedish parliamentarian Andreas Norlén, who in
an unchallenged debate on the issue in parliament, said: "I do not think it
takes very many prosecutions before a signal is transmitted in the community
that the Internet is not a lawless country: the sheriff is back in town."
The Swedish government is also spending 60 million krona ($9 million) to boost
voter turnout in Muslim neighborhoods—such as the Rinkeby district in
Stockholm, the Rosengård district in Malmö, and the Rymdtorget and Bergsjön
districts in Gothenburg—ahead of European elections in May.
Separately, the government was forced to drop a controversial plan to lower the
tax rates in Muslim neighborhoods after the European Commission said that
allowing immigrants to pay lower taxes than Swedes would violate EU rules on
state aid.
According to the latest data from Eurostat, Sweden is the EU country that
receives the most asylum seekers from developing countries relative to their
population. Most of the asylum seekers in 2013 were from Afghanistan, Kosovo,
Pakistan and Syria.
At the same time, more than 50,000 native Swedes fled the country in 2013,
according to new data from Statistics Sweden (SCB). This is the highest figure
since the peak years of emigration to North America in the 1880s. By contrast,
immigration from the developing world to Sweden reached its highest level ever
in 2013, with nearly 115,800 immigrants, according to the SCB.
On April 5, it emerged that a Swedish national of Somali origin was arrested in
Kenya on suspicion of trying to recruit young men for the Islamic terrorist
group, Al-Shabaab. Some 30 Swedish nationals have traveled to Somalia to join
Islamic militant groups, according to the Swedish intelligence agency Säpo.
In Switzerland, the University of Fribourg will host the country's first
training center for imams. The center will provide courses for imams on Swiss
culture and society, courses for social workers and health professionals on
accommodating the Muslim community and, ultimately, a training program for new
imams. The objective is to produce locally-trained imams to join the ranks of
the country's 150 imams, all of whom were schooled abroad.
The original idea for the project came from a national research program called
"Religious Groups, State and Society," which found that most of the imams and
teachers of Islam did not speak Swiss national languages and did not know Swiss
society, culture and laws.
Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is
also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios
Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter.
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