Censorship in the guise of opposition to monopoly control
Co-founder Chris Hughes calls for government break-up of Facebook
Calls for government regulation of the big technology corporations have escalated in Washington and the corporate media following the New York Times’ May 9 publication of an op-ed by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes calling for a breakup of the company. These demands are driven not by opposition to monopolies, but by a desire to more effectively censor left-wing oppositional views on the internet.
Hughes, who is reported to have a personal wealth of $430 million, founded Facebook along with current company CEO Mark Zuckerberg and several others in 2004, while they were students at Harvard University. Hughes left the company in 2007 to become a volunteer in the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. He has since bought and sold a majority stake in the New Republic magazine and is currently co-chairman of the Democratic Party think tanks Economic Security Project and The Roosevelt Institute.
In his comment in the New York Times, Hughes argues that his former company “has grown too big and too powerful” and that the US government needs to “break up Facebook’s monopoly and regulate the company.” A new government agency, Hughes writes, must be “empowered by Congress to regulate tech companies”
In the course of describing the development of Facebook’s dominance of social media markets, Hughes blames Mark Zuckerberg for his “unchecked power” and “staggering” influence. Due to the fact that Zuckerberg controls 60 percent of the company’s voting shares, Hughes writes, “Mark alone can decide how to configure Facebook’s algorithms to determine what people see in their News Feeds, what privacy settings they can use and even which messages get delivered.”
After writing that “Mark is a good and kind person,” Hughes says Zuckerberg’s influence is “far beyond that of anyone else in the private sector or in government,” adding that the Facebook CEO “controls three core communications platforms—Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp—that billions of people use every day.”
A substantial portion of the op-ed deals with the anti-competitive business practices of Facebook over the past decade, tactics used by every monopoly for more than 100 years. According to Hughes, things like duplicating the innovations of competitors and buying startups to kill off ideas that represent potential market threats arose from Mark Zuckerberg’s personal ambition for “domination,” not the objective tendency of capitalism toward market control and absolute dominance.
Hughes also describes the approval by the Federal Trade Commission of Facebook’s 2012 acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram as a “mistake,” rather than an example of the way powerful financial interests on Wall Street drive government policy. He writes, “The company’s strategy was to beat every competitor in plain view, and regulators and the government tacitly—and at times explicitly—approved,” as though this is a departure from the norm.
Hughes’ advocacy of censorship of left-wing views comes out when he deals directly with the question of speech and political expression. He admits that Facebook has unprecedented control over speech, but his criticism is that the company is a poor censor.
He writes, “In 2016, they [Facebook] enabled the spread of fringe political views and fake news, which made it easier for Russian actors to manipulate the American electorate.” According to Hughes, the presence of left-wing and anti-capitalist political views on Facebook “made it easier” for “Russian meddling” in the 2016 elections. This is a new interpretation of the fabricated and unsubstantiated claims by the Democrats that the defeat of Hillary Clinton by Donald Trump was the result of Russian election interference, facilitated by social media.
Hughes goes on to say that “Facebook has responded to many of the criticisms of how it manages speech by hiring thousands of contractors to enforce the rules that Mark and senior executives develop.” In other words, responsibility for establishing censorship rules and enforcing them on Facebook cannot be entrusted to the management and staff of Facebook and must be turned over to the government.
One revealing comment made by Hughes is that the new strategy of Facebook for more “private, encrypted messaging” between individuals is aimed at a more “friendly oversight from regulators and other industry executives” rather than genuine concern for the privacy rights of users. “Facebook isn’t afraid of a few more rules. It’s afraid of an antitrust case,” he writes.
In describing an incident that occurred in 2017 during the atrocities against the Muslim Rohingya in Myanmar, Hughes says that Facebook employees intervened to delete “sensational” messages based on on-the-spot directives from Zuckerberg. Hughes writes that “most people would agree with his decision, but it’s deeply troubling that he made it with no accountability to any independent authority or government.”
Hughes’s program is very clear: censorship is best done by the state, not by private enterprise.
Hughes concludes his op-ed with the proposal that Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp be split into three separate companies and that Facebook be banned from future acquisitions “for several years.” The separation of the firms would take the form of a “spin off” of Instagram and WhatsApp into their own publicly traded companies. Current shareholders would continue to own stock in the new businesses, while executives like Zuckerberg would be barred from holding any shares.
Hughes’s 6,000-word essay—released along with a slick New York Times five-minute infographic-style video—is part of the campaign by the Democratic Party establishment and sections of the intelligence apparatus that are spearheading the anti-Russian witch hunt and the drive for internet censorship, and consider Facebook to be insufficiently aggressive in carrying out the desired crackdown.
As a social media platform that touches one-third of the world’s population and hosts content that is not completely controlled by big business or the state, Facebook has the potential to become an instrument of mass political and organizational opposition within the working class. Already a wave of teachers’ strikes in the US, the Yellow Vest protests in France and the maquiladora auto parts strikes in Mexico, among other workers’ struggles, have been organized outside of the control of the pro-corporate unions through social media.
Some leading Democratic Party figures such as Virginia Senator Mark Warner, the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee and vice chair of the Senate Democratic Caucus, have been calling for government regulation of the social media monopolies without demanding their break-up. Warner, who is closely tied into the intelligence and military apparatus, does not want to disturb the intimate connections between the internet and tech giants and the Pentagon and CIA. But since October 2018, he has advocated government intervention for the purpose of “combating misinformation,” a euphemism for censoring left-wing and oppositional views on social media.
Corporations such as Facebook, Google, Apple, Netflix and Amazon are monopolies that exercise immense power in the interests of their major shareholders, Wall Street and the capitalist state. They should not only be broken up, they should be transformed into publicly owned utilities democratically controlled by the working population. This is the only way that the revolutionary technological developments in communications can he harnessed to benefit the population of the US and the world, rather than being perverted into new means of surveillance and state propaganda.
This requires a political struggle by the working class against private ownership of the powerful media and information technologies spawned by the internet and the political parties and state institutions that uphold the profit system.
The next stage in tech overlords' censorship: De-platforming un-PC blogs
It's no longer just Facebook, Twitter, and Google
who are censoring online content that offends
political correctness. Wordpress.com, a blog-
hosting site that offers anyone the opportunity to
create and publish a blog at no cost, has decided to
de-platform — in other words, kill — a blog that
has been operating for 15 years: Creeping Sharia.
As Pamela Geller points out, this move by Wordpress.com is itself an example of the blog's focus of creeping sharia happening in real time. Shutting down a critic of creeping sharia is an example of creeping sharia.
Wait, what? @creepingsharia has been doing a new-site as long as I have - almost 15 years. This is obscene. Looks like it not "creeping" anymore.
Terrible
65 people are talking about this
It is important to note that Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org are separate entities. The differences are explained in detail here. Basically:
WordPress.com is owned by a privately held company called Automattic.You have to understand a little bit of history of the open-source WordPress project to understand Automattic's contributions and the reasons why they get favorable treatment such as the ability to use the WordPress trademark and the coveted WordPress.com domain as part of their paid product.Automattic was started by the co-founding developer of the open source WordPress software, Matt Mullenweg.Matt created Automattic in 2005, almost two years after WordPress, with the primary purpose to make WordPress hosting easier and allow people with little technical knowledge to start a blog with WordPress.Since WordPress.com platform was powered by the open source WordPress software, Automattic had a vested interest in the further development of the free WordPress software.Several of the early Automattic employees were contributing developers of WordPress prior to the company, so it should go without saying that financial interest wasn't the only reason why Automattic invested in WordPress.Because the open-source project didn't really make any money in the beginning, Matt first registered the WordPress trademark through Automattic.As WordPress grew in popularity, Automattic donated the WordPress trademark to the WordPress Foundation in 2010 to ensure long-term sustainability of the non-profit project.It's important to note that Matt Mullenweg is the CEO of Automattic and also serves in the board of the WordPress foundation.
Islamic Sex Slavery Painting Stirs International Controversy
An American museum is vociferously calling on a German political party to stop using one of the former's paintings in the latter's campaign poster for the European elections.
Titled "Slave Market" and painted by a Frenchman in 1866, the painting "shows a black, apparently Muslim slave trader displaying a naked young woman with much lighter skin to a group of men for examination," probably in North Africa (AKA "Barbary").
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, founded in 2013 and first elected to Germany's national parliament in 2017, has been putting up posters of the painting with the slogan, "So that Europe won't become Eurabia."
"We are strongly opposed to the use of this work to advance any political agenda," objected Olivier Meslay, director of the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, which houses the original painting. He said his museum had written to AfD, "insisting that they cease and desist in using this painting." Despite the rather legal tone, the painting is in the public domain; even Meslay acknowledges that "there are no copyrights or permissions that allow us to exert control over how it is used other than to appeal to civility on the part of the AfD Berlin."
For its part, the AfD said the U.S. museum's call is "a futile attempt to gag the AfD," adding that "[t]he German public has the right to find out about the truth about the possible consequences of illegal mass immigration." Even so, other elements in Germany are even more hostile to the AfD's poster: "party workers have had to repeatedly put up new copies, only to see them destroyed again the following night."
What to make of all this? Objectively, the "Slave Market" painting in question portrays a reality that has played out countless times over the centuries: African and Middle Eastern Muslims have long targeted fair "infidel" women — so much so as to have enslaved millions of them over the centuries (as copiously documented in my recent book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, from which the following quotes and statistics are derived).
Concerning the Muslim demand for, in the words of one historian, "white-complexioned blondes, with straight hair and blue eyes," this traces back to the prophet of Islam, Muhammad, who enticed his followers to wage jihad against neighboring Byzantium by citing its fair and blonde women who awaited them as potential concubines.
For over a millennium afterward, Islamic caliphates, emirates, and sultanates — of the Arab, Berber, Turkic, and Tatar variety — also coaxed their men to jihad on Europe by citing (and later sexually enslaving) its fair women. Accordingly, because the "Umayyads particularly valued blond or red-haired Franc or Galician women as sexual slaves," Dario Fernandez-Morera writes, "al-Andalus [Islamic Spain] became a center for the trade and distribution of slaves."
The insatiable demand for fair women was such that, according to M.A. Khan, an Indian author and former Muslim, it is "impossible to disconnect Islam from the Viking slave-trade, because the supply was absolutely meant for meeting [the] Islamic world's unceasing demand for the prized white slaves" and "white sex-slaves." Emmet Scott goes so far as to argue that "it was the caliphate's demand for European slaves that called forth the Viking phenomenon in the first place."
As for numbers, according to the conservative estimate of American professor Robert Davis, "between 1530 and 1780 [alone] there were almost certainly a million and quite possibly as many as a million and a quarter white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast" (the appropriate setting of the "Slave Market" painting). By 1541, "Algiers teemed with Christian captives [from Europe], and it became a common saying that a Christian slave was scarce a fair barter for an onion."
With countless enslaved European women — some seized from as far as Denmark and even Iceland — selling for the price of vegetables, little wonder that European observers by the late 1700s noted how "the inhabitants of Algiers have a rather white complexion."
Further underscoring the rapacious and relentless drive of the Muslim slave industry, consider this: the United States of America's first war — which it fought before it could even elect its first president — was against these Islamic slavers. When Thomas Jefferson and John Adams asked Barbary's ambassador why his countrymen were enslaving American sailors, the "ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that ... it was their right and duty to make war upon them [non-Muslims] wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners."
The situation was arguably worse for Eastern Europeans; the slave markets of the Ottoman sultanate were for centuries so inundated with Slavic flesh that children sold for pennies, "a very beautiful slave woman was exchanged for a pair of boots, and four Serbian slaves were traded for a horse." In Crimea, some three million Slavs were enslaved by the Ottomans' Muslim allies, the Tatars. "The youngest women are kept for wanton pleasures," observed a seventeenth century Lithuanian.
Even the details of the "Slave Market" painting/poster, which depicts a fair and naked female slave being pawed at by potential buyers, echoes reality. Based on a twelfth-century document dealing with slave auctions in Cordoba, Muslim merchants "would put ointments on slave girls of a darker complexion to whiten their faces; brunettes were placed for four hours in a solution to make them blond ('golden'); ointments were placed on the face and body of black slaves to make them 'prettier.'" Then, the Muslim merchant "dresses them all in transparent clothes" and "tells the slave girls to act in a coquettish manner with the old men and with the timid men among the potential buyers to make them crazy with desire."
In short, the Clark Art Institute's objection to the Alternative for Germany party's use of the "Slave Market" painting as a poster is just another attempt to suppress the truth about Muslim/Western history, including its glaring continuity with the present. For the essence of that painting—Muslim men sexually pawing at and ultimately preying on fair skinned women—continues to this day all throughout Western Europe, especially Germany.
The historic events, statistics, and quotes narrated above are from and documented in Raymond Ibrahim's book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West. American Thinker reviews appear here and here.
Can Islam Be Rescued from Islamism?
Prophet Muhammad
Should Spain Apologize to Muslims?
Jihad and the Media in an Age of Delusion
Brunei Imposes Sharia Law: Homosexuals May Be Imprisoned, Tortured, and Executed
Brunei’s already strict Islamic criminal code will enter an even tougher new stage next week with the introductions of laws mandating lengthy prison terms, whipping, and even execution for homosexual behavior. Brunei is set to become the first Asian country to punish homosexuality with the death penalty, as several Arab countries do.
The recent death toll of Christians in Nigeria has reached 120 with this week’s slaughter of more than 50 by Fulani Muslim militants in the Kaduna state of Nigeria, the Christian Postreported.
Dutch author and sociologist Ruud Koopmans said this week that Muslims are more difficult to integrate into Western society than other migrant groups because of a literal interpretation of the Quran prevalent among Muslims.
"In the East, Islam has persecuted and terrorized the Christians; but in the West, Islamist Muslims have been free to advance an Islamist agenda – in schools, in mosques, in public and political fora, in the media – successfully intimidating the weak-willed while glorifying the supremacy of Islam over all other cultures and religions."
Can Islam Be Rescued from Islamism?
Islamic terrorism in its violent expressions coexists with Islamic terrorism in thought. The blatant and barbarous aspect of Islamism, its murderous activities in New York and Jerusalem, Bali and London, Paris and Nairobi, Argentina and the Philippines, Madrid and Mumbai, Syria and Sri Lanka, mesmerizes world attention. Yet the terror of thought is no less, and perhaps more, menacing and paralytic: it constricts freedom of consciousness, intimidates free speech, and submits and smothers society under conformist Islamist religious forces. Islam from its beginning promoted both jihad warfare "in the path of Allah" and dawamissionizing to advance the new religion and make it supreme, if not exclusive, in the world.
Salim Mansur, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Western Ontario, is a believing but dissident Muslim. Among Muslim reformers and free thinkers in the West, like his fellow-Canadian Irshad Manji, also Nonie Darwish and Boualem Sansal, are those who categorically denounced Islam, pointing to the obscenity of compulsory female genital mutilation and "honor killings," beheadings, and brutal massacres. Some left the fold; among these apostates are Ibn Warraq, Mohamed Sifaoui, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Some dissidents in Muslim lands fled into exile and required police protection. A noteworthy and particular case was that of Nobel Literature laureate Naguib Mahfouz, a Muslim secularist, who was assaulted by fanatics in Cairo, survived the attack, and remained in his country.
Which Islam?
As a classic liberal and modern-day political conservative, Mansur is an intellectual savant whose worldview includes rationalism, individualism, and enlightenment, buoyed by loyalty to Canada and her roots in liberty and law. In his quest to sustain Islam as a religion embodying morality and humanism, Salim Mansur reads, with an open and critical eye, the Qur'an and the life of Muhammad, who spread "the Word of God." Manifestly explicit passages in the Islamic holy book call upon believers to practice righteousness, to give alms to the poor, to treat orphans with fairness, and honor and show kindness to parents; faith demands belief in Allah and the final Day of Judgment. Muslims are to attend to their prayers and reject idolatry. They are obligated to refrain from imposing their faith on non-Muslims.
With support from the Qur'an, Mansur reaches out to "one human family" with a universalism to encompass all people and believers – not only Muslims -- in the One God. The Qur'an that "makes things clear" is part of the prophetic legacy in monotheism. Islam is one path and not the only one toward this truth. In his writings and interviews, Salim conveys his love for humanity whatever people's background or faith. This is for him the message of Islam writ large in daily life.
So where is the problem? It is in the totalitarian ideology of Islamism, this "crippling of Islamic culture and civilization," which abandoned philosophy and reason, and formulated a "fascistic" and perverted version of Islam. Great Muslim thinkers like Al-Ghazali, Ibn Rushd (Averros), and Jalaluddin al-Rumi, have been ignored or rejected. The infamous preachers advocated jihad, militancy, and martyrdom. Among the radical fundamentalists were Ibn Taimiyya, Hasan al-Banna, and Sayyid Qutb. Islam, now reduced to warfare and blood, metastasized into Islamism. This is Mansur's central claim and he is therefore at one with non-Muslim authors like Bat Ye'or, Robert Spencer, and Andrew Bostom, who have elucidated the warlike and expansionist ambitions of a conquering Islam pursuing the vision of a world caliphate.
One chapter in the book deals with Muslim anti-Semitism that, for Mansur, is a diabolical strand that has no inherent foundation in the Qur'an and Islam. Anti-Jewish bigotry is foreign to the holy text and Jews indeed survived and even sometimes flourished in Muslim lands. There are ways to interpret the Qur'an through the method of abrogation (naskh) and contexualizing to invalidate the contemporary relevance of harsh Qu'ranic verses. The text then becomes subject to the meaning the reader gives to it. Yet, radical Muslim preachers today are rife with blistering Qur'anic-based attacks against Jews as cursed, vile people, murdering prophets and breaching agreements, to the crescendo of likening them to apes and monkeys. For Mansur, the Qur'anic demand that Jews be reduced to "humiliation and misery" (Ch.9, 29) is limited to an earlier period of history alone.
When Muslims promote hatred for Jews and Christians, this is in the view of Mansur a deviation and distortion of Islam's basic tolerance for other monotheistic religions.
Is There a Non-Political Islam?
Salim Mansur and other Muslims who share his frustration and rage confront the Islamist domination of Islam's agenda and activity that possess vast financial and educational networks with a radical program to Islamize the world, America and Europe included. Over a thousand years ago, the fanatical Hanbali Muslims in Baghdad raided houses if they found wine and poured it away; if they found a singing girl they beat her; if they saw a man going with a woman, they charged them with immorality and dragged them to the police. These scenes of oppression sound familiar in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan of today.
However, other Muslims a millennium ago evoked a very different sensibility. Avicenna, born in Bukhara (Uzbekistan), was educated in the Qur'an and jurisprudence, also in mathematics and logic, Aristotelian philosophy, astronomy, geometry, and medicine. He was a man of learning and open to acquiring knowledge from whoever could teach him. In Baghdad Islamists hounded the people in the name of Islam, in Bukhara and beyond Avicenna sought the horizons of scholarship in tandem with Islam. The debate regarding the true version of Islam continues until today.
Salim Mansur is a modern man, valuing reason while not discarding revelation, though choosing the former over the latter. He seeks coherence and comprehensiveness in knowledge, without sacrificing his deep faith in Islam. Perhaps he is trying to square the circle, hold the rope from both ends. He confidently recognizes the cultural continuity in evolving revelations, Muhammad's included, throughout history. As a Muslim believer, he seems drawn to the softness and individuality embedded within the Sufi track, as in the thought of Ibn 'Arabi who identified the "Oneness of Being" for the mystical climb to be at one with God. This is an invitation for all human beings regardless of their particular religious affiliation. God transcends all, and distinctions among men dissolve with the common quest for a god-like experience and life. Mansur's is a personal religion rather than a political religion; the classic characterization of Islam as din wa-dawla (religion and state) is alien to Salim's sensibility.
His nobility of character in an age of extremism is exceptionally admirable. He feels engaged in the vortex of a historical moment that imperils both Islam and the West. In Ontario, where he lives, he had to change the mosque he attends. He was threatened for his 'unorthodox' ideas. No less, he is a spiritual brother to the Jews and a vigorous supporter of Israel. These convictions fly in the face of the ideological rigors of Islamism.
Overall, Mansur wants an Islam of "many faces." He chooses the West for its modernity and openness, individual liberty and the rule of law. This he found in Canada, the country he adopted and embraces. He hopes to enter Canadian politics; as a Member of Parliament he could be a commanding voice for moderation and common sense to challenge the vagaries of multi-culturalism, religious fanaticism, and anti-Semitism.
As of today, the chicanery of Islamophobia and Political Correctness control much of the language and discussion. The West has been artfully and partly disarmed of its heritage – including Christianity, and values of equality and liberty, progress for all -- choosing to privilege Islam by accommodating its parallel society separatism, sharia courts, and execrable youth marriages (as in parts of Europe today). In the East, Islam has persecuted and terrorized the Christians; but in the West, Islamist Muslims have been free to advance an Islamist agenda – in schools, in mosques, in public and political fora, in the media – successfully intimidating the weak-willed while glorifying the supremacy of Islam over all other cultures and religions.
Dr. Mordechai Nisan is a retired lecturer in Middle East Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His most recent book is The Crack-Up of the Israeli Left, published by Mantua Books in Canada.
Prophet Muhammad
Should Spain Apologize to Muslims?
The chutzpah is off the charts: Voice of Europe reported on Saturday that the Ishbilia mosque in Seville, Spain, is demanding that King Felipe VI apologize for the Reconquista, the Christian Reconquest of Spain.
The mosque’s president, Yihad Sarasua, addressed the King in a Facebook post: “Sir, being the King of Spain, I believe that the historical moment has arrived to carry out the recognition of the vileness, plunder, displacement and murders carried out by orders of the Catholic kings and their most direct collaborators, which culminated with the surrender of Granada and the breach of everything subscribed to the Muslim community.”
Sirasua claimed: “Never has existed such a fierce persecution and eagerness to eliminate a religious community, as was carried out by the old Spanish royalty in the times of Felipe II, an extermination that culminated in the War of the Alpujarres subsequent to the Pragmatic Sanction of 1567.”
He concluded: “As a descendant of the aforementioned kings, what a formidable opportunity you would have to demonstrate to the Muslim community your respect and your discrepancy, with the Islamic theses, apologising to our community for so many atrocities and interceding for the recognition of Spanish nationality for the descendants of Al Andalus, as was done with the Sephardic Jewish community.”
Sure, Yihad. Right after you folks apologize for the Islamic conquest of Spain that preceded the Reconquista. But of course, you will never, ever do that, because for jihadis and Islamic supremacists, every atrocity they ever commit is the Infidel's fault.
Nor could Christians say anything about their lot, because it was proscribed by Islamic law, and criticizing Islam, Muhammad, or the Qur’an in any manner was a death-penalty offense.
In 850, Perfectus, a Christian priest, engaged a group of Muslims in conversation about Islam; his opinion of the conquerors’ religion was not positive. For this, Perfectus was arrested and put to death. Not long thereafter, Joannes, a Christian merchant, was said to have invoked Muhammad’s name in his sales pitch. He was lashed and given a lengthy prison sentence. Christian and Muslim sources contain numerous records of similar incidents in the early part of the tenth century. Around 910, in one of many such episodes, a woman was executed for proclaiming that “Jesus was God and that Muhammad had lied to his followers.”
Far from being a paradise of tolerance, Umayyad Spain became a center of the Islamic slave trade. Muslim buyers could purchase sex-slave girls as young as eleven years old, as well as slave boys for sex as well, or slave boys raised to become slave soldiers. Also for sale were eunuchs, useful for guarding harems. Blonde slaves seized in jihad raids on Christian nations north of al-Andalus were especially prized and fetched high prices. Slave traders would use makeup to whiten the faces and dye to lighten the hair of darker slaves, so that they could get more money for them.
A 12th-century witness of the sale of sex slaves described the market:
The merchant tells the slave girls to act in a coquettish manner with the old men and with the timid men among the potential buyers to make them crazy with desire. The merchant paints red the tips of the fingers of a white slave; he paints in gold those of a black slave; and he dresses them all in transparent clothes, the white female slaves in pink and the black ones in yellow and red.
If the girls did not cooperate, of course, they would be beaten or killed.
The primary market for slaves among Muslims was for non-Muslims, as enslaving fellow Muslims was considered a violation of the Qur’an’s requirement to be “merciful to one another” (48:29); hence Muslim slave traders had to look to non-Muslim communities for merchandise.
Yihad Sirasua will never tell you any of that, because if the public knew those facts and others, they wouldn’t favor the policies he wants Spain, and the West in general, to adopt. The truth that he doesn’t want you to know is in The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS -- truths he and his allies have been working actively suppress. As his letter to the King shows, history has today become a weapon to influence current public policy.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His new book is The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.
Jihad and the Media in an Age of Delusion
On Sunday the BBC reported about another horrible news story from London: a knifeman went on a stabbing spree of “defenceless” people in London. The story revealed less about the incident it was purporting to report on than it did about our age of anti-reality and delusion.
In this age, it is not difficult to step back and observe almost indiscernible but seismic historical shifts in the making -- not in the big-bang news events, but in the nitty-gritty details of the social fabric of our daily lives, where life happens. It is usually not so easy to detect such subtleties, let alone observe the silent measures a nation or a civilization takes when it quietly but most decidedly has… given up. One need not be an anthropologist to detect seismic changes in human behavior or societies.
First, it’s language. Language is key. Subtle and not-so-subtle restrictions are placed on what would offend the invading force with its hair-trigger sensibilities.These restrictions are rigorously enforced by quisling societal institutions -- media, academia, and so forth. So, for example, “Muslim” is replaced with “South Asian” or “Asian,” with no fear that the “South Asians” or “Asians” will bomb a pop concert, mow down scores of families on a national holiday such as Bastille day or Halloween or Christmas, shoot up a gay nightclub, and so forth. Actual South Asians and Asians have held demos against the media using them to cover for jihadis, but no media reported on them, of course. Only the small, sagacious group of readers who follow websites such as the Geller Report were aware of the South Asian community’s opposition to the wrongful blame.
Every time there is an attack by a jihadi, all apologies are extended by the host Western country, with admonitions of impending “phobia” of Islam and backlash, and so the cycle of self-flagellation begins and builds with each ensuing attack (all 34,800 since 9/11).
The root cause, above all, is never to be spoken of. Verboten. Anyone who dares cross that line will be ultimately destroyed -- a pariah, his or her good name murdered, unable to make a living. You will submit or you will cease to exist, literally or figuratively. There is no motive, we are told; the motive, we are told, is “mental illness.”
There is almost nothing in Sunday’s BBC article about the London stabbings that is correct, save for the reporting that four people were stabbed. After that it is all… editorial and subtle propaganda. This has all the earmarks of jihad, but it would be a horror, blasphemous (Islamophobic) to dare say it. When there is an incident that isn’t jihad, it is immediately cast in the media as right-wing, white-supremacy bullocks. Absolutely. But jihad is quite different. You can never surmise, let alone speculate about whether some attack or incident might be jihad. And when it is jihad, you still cannot say it. If you use the word Muslim -- as in, “Devout Muslim shouting allahu akbar stabs…” no one will publish it, and social media platforms will block the link. You will land in Facebook jail. Your first infraction gets you three days suspension. Your next “violation” will land you in FB jail for a week, then a month, and eventually, you are terminated.
The BBC headline states that the stabbings were “random attacks.” But they were not random if the knifemen wanted to kill unbelievers. Then they were not random at all. There is a reason these folks were targeted.
The article goes on to say, “The Metropolitan Police said the motive ‘appears to be solely to inflict harm’ as none of the victims were robbed or engaged in conversation before they were attacked.” That, too, screams jihad. It is the very essence of a jihad terror attack. Instead, the BBC tells us, “mental health issues may be a factor.” That they can say; that is accepted language in the age of jihad. The mental health community is not going to blow up Buckingham Palace.
There’s a lot of fluff in the piece, but what the article does not tell you is that Edmonton is home to London’s largest Turkish community. Or that a widow and grandmother described as “such a sweet lady” was beheaded in her own backyard by a devout Muslim in Edmonton not that long ago.
The attack is referred to as “GBH.” Note the obscure terms. One might say thatgrievous bodily harm is too harsh, but the media is shielding the perp, not the reader.
This act of sheer terror is getting no press. And why would it?
Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of The Geller Report and author of the bestselling book,FATWA: Hunted in America, as well as The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her onTwitter or Facebook.
Brunei Imposes Sharia Law: Homosexuals May Be Imprisoned, Tortured, and Executed
JOHN HAYWARD
27 Mar 2019341
3:54
Brunei’s already strict Islamic criminal code will enter an even tougher new stage next week with the introductions of laws mandating lengthy prison terms, whipping, and even execution for homosexual behavior. Brunei is set to become the first Asian country to punish homosexuality with the death penalty, as several Arab countries do.
Brunei began imposing sharia law with a three-stage process in 2014. The first stage criminalized Christmas celebrations, getting pregnant out of wedlock, and failing to attend Muslim prayer services. Homosexuality was also criminalized, but the penalty in Stage One of the sharia revolution was merely 10 years in prison.
The sultanate disregarded five years of criticism from international human rights groups and quietly issued court orders to proceed with Stage Two on April 3. Gays will be whipped, imprisoned for much longer sentences, and could be executed by stoning, although Brunei has recently been lax about actually carrying out death sentences.
Another perennial sharia favorite, cutting of the hands of thieves, is included in the upgraded legal code. According to Amnesty International, many of these harsh penalties with be applicable to children.
“Brunei must immediately halt its plans to implement these vicious punishments and revise its Penal Code in compliance with its human rights obligations. The international community must urgently condemn Brunei’s move to put these cruel penalties into practice,” Amnesty International researcher Rachel Chhoa-Howard said on Wednesday.
Reuters reported on Monday that the new laws are being “fast-tracked” after a period of hesitation on the part of the sultanate. There has been little in the way of a formal announcement, and the prime minister’s office has not responded to media inquiries. This week’s outraged responses from human rights groups were based largely on researchers uncovering government documents ordering implementation of the new punishments to begin in April.
“We are trying to get pressure placed on the government of Brunei but realize there is a very short time frame until the laws take effect. It took us by surprise that the government has now given a date and is rushing through implementation,” said Australian activist Matthew Woolfe of The Brunei Project. His reaction suggests the fast track was chosen so that critics would be caught off guard.
Channel News Asia suggested on Wednesday that Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah might be embracing hard line sharia law as an exercise in virtue-signaling, shoring up his Islamic bona fides after a lifetime of conspicuous consumption and some family scandals:
Brunei’s Sultan is no stranger to controversy at home – the monarchy was deeply embarrassed by a family feud with his brother Jefri over the latter’s alleged embezzlement of US$15 billion during his tenure as finance minister in the 1990s.
Court battles and investigations revealed salacious details of Jefri’s jetset lifestyle, including claims of a high-priced harem of foreign women and a luxury yacht he owned called “Tits”.
Human Rights Campaign director Ty Cobb called on the Trump administration to take a public stand against Brunei’s legal code:
We are facing a dangerous crisis as Brunei is close to implementing laws that impose state-sponsored torture and murder of LGBTQ people. It’s absolutely crucial that the international community speak out now and demand that the Sultan of Brunei stop these barbaric changes that threaten the lives of Brunei citizens. The Trump-Pence Administration must also immediately make clear that these outrageous human rights abuses will not be tolerated.
The Trump State Department expressed concerns about the direction of Brunei’s legal system in 2017, noting the laws criticized as anti-gay could technically impose death by stoning against heterosexual couples for engaging in “carnal intercourse against the order of nature.” The State Department noted numerous reports of discrimination from gays and lesbians in Brunei, including intimidation by the police.
Nigerian Muslim Militants Kill 120 Christians in Three Weeks
16 Mar 201943,058
2:37
The recent death toll of Christians in Nigeria has reached 120 with this week’s slaughter of more than 50 by Fulani Muslim militants in the Kaduna state of Nigeria, the Christian Postreported.
The Fulani jihadists, who have become a greater threat to Nigerian Christians than the Islamist terror group Boko Haram, stormed the villages of Inkirimi, Dogonnoma, and Ungwan Gora in the Kajuru Local Government Area last Monday, destroying 143 homes, killing 52 people, and wounding dozens more.
The assailants reportedly split into three groups, the first of which fired upon the people, the second set fire to buildings, and the third chased down people fleeing from the scene. Victims of the assault included women and children.
Monday’s incident followed an attack the day before in the Ungwan Barde village in Kajuru, where 17 Christians were killed and dozens of homes were burned.
In the first week of March, Muslim extremists massacred more than 30 Christians in Karamar village, setting fire to several houses and a church. The terrorists reportedly shot at families trying to escape the fire, killing 32.
The spate of recent attacks against communities has taken place within the predominantly Christian Adara chiefdom of southern Kaduna.
The governor of Kaduna state, Nasir El-Rufai, has imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew on the Kajuru Local Government Area to try to contain the violence.
In late February, militants attacked the Maro village, killing 38 Christians and torching homes as well as a Christian church.
The Christian Post reported that Fulani militants killed thousands of Christians in 2018 alone in what many are calling a Christian genocide in Nigeria’s Middle Belt.
Last December, a leading Anglican bishop in Nigeria, Dr. Benjamin Argak Kwashi, said that the Muslim Fulani militants represent the number one terrorist threat facing Christians in Nigeria.
“The government is able to provide protection [to the Christians], but what’s obvious to everybody is that the government is unwilling,” Kwashi told Breitbart News.
“The Fulani herdsmen are a bigger threat,” Kwashi added. “Boko Haram operates in the northeast and scantily moves into other areas, but the Fulani herdsmen are widespread. They’re everywhere now. So the Fulani are a bigger threat.”
Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter
Islamic Scholar: No Western Country Has Successfully Integrated Muslims
8 Mar 2019319
3:25
Dutch author and sociologist Ruud Koopmans said this week that Muslims are more difficult to integrate into Western society than other migrant groups because of a literal interpretation of the Quran prevalent among Muslims.
Ruud Koopmans, professor at the Berlin Social Science Center and author of several books including Contested Citizenship: Immigration and Cultural Diversity in Europe, told the Danish newspaper Berlingske that whereas most groups of migrants integrate relatively quickly, especially from one generation to the next, Islam stands out as an exception.
“Although it’s not completely absent in Muslims, the change is much slower,” he said, noting that a literal interpretation of the Quran prevents them from integrating into Western countries.
In an earlier published study titled “Fundamentalism and out-group hostility,” Koopmans compared Muslim radicalism with Christian radicalism to better understand why Islam stands out for its isolationism.
“Almost 60 percent agree that Muslims should return to the roots of Islam,” he wrote, while “75 percent think there is only one interpretation of the Qur’an possible to which every Muslim should stick.”
Koopmans, who has been studying Islam for over twenty years, also found that “65 percent say that religious rules are more important to them than the laws of the country in which they live.”
Regarding Christian citizens on the other hand, Koopmans found that fewer than 4 percent “can be characterized as consistent fundamentalists.”
“I conclude that the Islamic world is lagging behind rest of the world when it comes to democracy, human rights, and political and economic development,” Koopmans told Berlingske in his interview this week.
“The main problem is how many Muslims and, globally, how many Muslim countries interpret Islam. Namely, in a way that basically claims that the Qur’an and the Sunna must be taken literally, and that the way the Prophet lived in the 7th century must be the yardstick for how Muslims should live in the 21st century,” he said.
“Such a brand of Islam is, firstly, a threat to world peace. Secondly, it prevents integration,” Koopmans concluded.
Although it is politically taboo to draw distinctions between ethnic groups when it comes to immigration, some scholars, including Pope Benedict XVI, have urged the West not to assume that all cultures share its basic suppositions about the human person and society.
Prior to his election as pope, Joseph Ratzinger wrote that “the interplay of society, politics, and religion has a completely different structure in Islam” than it does in the West.
Unfortunately, he added, much of today’s discussion in the West regarding Islam “presupposes that all religions have basically the same structure, that they all fit into a democratic system with its regulations and the possibilities provided by these regulations.”
“The Koran is a total religious law, which regulates the whole of political and social life and insists that the whole order of life be Islamic,” Ratzinger wrote. “Sharia shapes society from beginning to end. In this sense, it can exploit such partial freedoms as our constitution gives, but it can’t be its final goal to say: Yes, now we too area body with rights, now we are present just like the Catholics and the Protestants.”
“In such a situation, it would not achieve a status consistent with its inner nature; it would be in alienation from itself,” he said.
The next stage in tech overlords' censorship: De-platforming un-PC blogs
It's no longer just Facebook, Twitter, and Google
who are censoring online content that offends
political correctness. Wordpress.com, a blog-
hosting site that offers anyone the opportunity to
create and publish a blog at no cost, has decided to
de-platform — in other words, kill — a blog that
has been operating for 15 years: Creeping Sharia.
As Pamela Geller points out, this move by Wordpress.com is itself an example of the blog's focus of creeping sharia happening in real time. Shutting down a critic of creeping sharia is an example of creeping sharia.
Wait, what? @creepingsharia has been doing a new-site as long as I have - almost 15 years. This is obscene. Looks like it not "creeping" anymore.
Terrible
65 people are talking about this
It is important to note that Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org are separate entities. The differences are explained in detail here. Basically:
WordPress.com is owned by a privately held company called Automattic.You have to understand a little bit of history of the open-source WordPress project to understand Automattic's contributions and the reasons why they get favorable treatment such as the ability to use the WordPress trademark and the coveted WordPress.com domain as part of their paid product.Automattic was started by the co-founding developer of the open source WordPress software, Matt Mullenweg.Matt created Automattic in 2005, almost two years after WordPress, with the primary purpose to make WordPress hosting easier and allow people with little technical knowledge to start a blog with WordPress.Since WordPress.com platform was powered by the open source WordPress software, Automattic had a vested interest in the further development of the free WordPress software.Several of the early Automattic employees were contributing developers of WordPress prior to the company, so it should go without saying that financial interest wasn't the only reason why Automattic invested in WordPress.Because the open-source project didn't really make any money in the beginning, Matt first registered the WordPress trademark through Automattic.As WordPress grew in popularity, Automattic donated the WordPress trademark to the WordPress Foundation in 2010 to ensure long-term sustainability of the non-profit project.
No comments:
Post a Comment