Somalis have Changed Minneapolis
Everyone not lying to themselves predicted when the federal government under Bill Clinton – aided and abetted by Lutheran Social Services, Catholic Charities and World Relief Minnesota -- plopped 30,000 Somalis down into the midst of the kind, virtue-signaling, eager-to-help Midwesterners of Minneapolis (of which I am one) that it would lead to some grave consequences for our community.
Now, due to continuing refugee placements as well as chain migration there are an estimated 80,000 Somalis living in the Twin Cities metro area, or more like 79,000 if you subtract those who’ve left the country to join terrorist organizations like ISIS.
Anyhoo, here’s a week Minneapolitans had with their Somali neighbors last month:
On Wednesday, May 15th a couple of University students were attacked on campus at the East Bank Train station by two Somali thugs. It was an attempted robbery that the guys rebuffed sustaining injuries that required a hospital visit.
On Thursday, May 16th two Somalis burned down the pavilion at Lake Calhoun [or Lake Bde Maka Ska if you’re a virtue signaler) an eating and hanging out meeting place in the heart of the city enjoyed by generations of Americans around the prettiest city lake you’ve ever seen. This is in the most expensive neighborhood in Minneapolis.
Photo credit: August Schwerdfeger (croppped)
KMSP-TV screen grab
On Friday, May 17th a gang of 10-12 Somali youths attacked all the white people at a that same East Bank Train station with hammers and pipes. Snopes says this is “Mostly False” because after the attack they fled, and out of the 7 who were eventually apprehended only two were still in possession of weapons, in this case pipes. So therefore, it never happened.
And now Tuesday, May 20th a woman walking her dog in a gorgeous, huge, wooded off leash dog park, complete with sandy beach on the Mississippi River, found spikes just off the path. Sharp metal objects taped to a wooden spike, presumably designed to hurt dogs running happily through the underbrush. Now, we don’t know that a Somali did that, it could be some crazed psycho Swede, but Islam abhors dogs as unclean because the prophet did.
Will this cause anything to change in Minnesota? Will the city’s leaders stopwearing the hijab in solidarity with the worst of Islam, incredibly, after they attack us!? Will Minneapolitans elect secular, assimilated Somalis rather than proudly Sharia- supporting, anti-Semitic, enshrouded Somali Muslims like Ilhan Omar? (80% of Democrats picked her in the primary.) I doubt it. They did all thatafter the following events:
· In 2018 it was uncovered that Somalis had perpetrated a massive, community wide scam against the welfare state of Minnesota, stealing an incredible $100 million from a childcare handout program by fraud and shipping that money to Somalia to fund God knows what. (Incidentally, though finally proven in 2018, this was an open secret for years. I knew about this scam when I left the state in 2014.)
· Dozens of Somalis, men and women, over the years arrested or tracked as they attempted to join terrorists overseas including ISIS. The feds are concerned it is still a rich breeding ground for Islamic supremacy and terrorist organizations.
· In 2016 the first Somali police officer murdered a woman in her pajamas who had called in a disturbance. I guess it’s not safe to call the cops when you see something and say something. He has been found guilty of that murder.
· In 2018 a Somali student at St Catherine University attempted to burn downthe school and “hurt people,” saying, ““You guys are lucky that I don’t know how to build a bomb because I would have done that.”
· In 2017 a Somali man stabbed a young woman 14 times for no apparent reason -- he didn’t go after her purse -- while she was walking home from her job at an Apple Store. He’s still at large. Curiously no composite sketch was ever released to the media.
· In 2016 during Ramadan a gang of religious robed Somali men terrorized the city’s affluent Linden Hills community “for three straight days, threatening to rape a woman, beating one resident’s dog, and shouting “jihad!” as they drove vehicles over residents’ lawns and pretended to shoot people through their duffel bags. No arrests were made.” (Seriously read this account. You will find it absolutely horrifying and it’s shocking that no arrests were made with all these people trying to get license plate numbers, all the likely surveillance cameras etc. It makes one wonder if the city is protecting Somalis from being held accountable to our laws.)
· In 2012 90% of Somalis worldwide said they think agree with Sharia Law and think it should be implemented.
But Ilhan Omar wears such pretty head scarves when she’s raising money for the Muslim Brotherhood.
I’m not sure what it would take for Minneapolitans to wake up and stop being so suicidal with their multiculturalism. Terrorism, arson, violent crime, murder, corruption, fraud, female oppression is apparently not enough.
Can Islam Be Rescued from Islamism?
In The
Qur'an Problem and Islamism, published by Mantua Books in Canada, Salim
Mansur offers an exceptionally courageous and principled Muslim narrative of
his personal beliefs and philosophy of life in a world where Khomeinism,
Al-Qaeda, Wahhabism, the Muslim Brotherhood, and ISIS, dominate and suffocate
the Islamic conversation. Islamism is a "monstrosity," affirms
Mansur, reflecting the rot in the Muslim world. Its savagery in murdering
thousands of innocent human beings in Nigeria and Pakistan, France and Spain,
Egypt and Iraq, has brought shame upon many good Muslims globally.
Prophet Muhammad
Should Spain Apologize to
Muslims?
But if Yihad Sirasua were inclined to be honest, he would have
plenty to apologize for. The History of Jihad From Muhammad to
ISIS, the first and only comprehensive history of the 1,400-year jihad
phenomenon worldwide in the English language, shows that Muslim Spain was
anything but pluralist -- it was miserable to live as a Christian there.
Christians could never be sure that they would not be harassed. One
contemporary account tells of priests being “pelted with rocks and dung” by
Muslims while on the way to a cemetery. The dhimmis suffered severe economic
hardship: Paul Alvarus, a ninth-century Christian in Córdoba, complained about
the “unbearable tax” that Muslims levied on Christians.
Jihad and the Media in an Age of Delusion
In
initial reports of all jihad attacks, we are told “it is not terror related.”
The shifting definition of terror is slippery but expected. Then President
George W. Bush dropped the ball on September 20,
2001,
when he danced around whether “A is A,” decidedly avoiding jihad and Islam.
Even with the thick, acrid smell of burnt blood and flesh, ash and steel in the
NYC air, Bush opted instead for the vague, blame-free “War on Terror.”
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.
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.”
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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.
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