Oslo warns gays not to inflame terrorists further by marching - then permits terrorists to build a mosque.
Bruce Bawer is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
On the night of Friday, June 24, a 42-year-old Muslim named Zaniar Matapour shot up the city’s largest gay bar, London Pub, and the tiny watering hole next door, Per På Hjørnet (Per on the Corner). He killed two and wounded twenty-one. But even though Matapour kicked off his evening of mayhem by shouting “Allahu akbar” and was later shown to belong to a radical Islamic clique, don’t think for a moment that his offense had anything to do with Islam. And even though he committed his dastardly deeds on the eve of Oslo’s scheduled Pride parade, a week after his buddy Arfan Bhatti, a convicted terrorist, posted a note on Facebook calling for the murder of gays, don’t dare suggest that the crime might have been rooted in Islam’s deadly view of homosexuality.
After all, as I reported here on June 27, no less eminent a figure than Masud Gharahkhani, the 39-year-old president of the Norwegian parliament who is (after the king) the country’s highest-ranking person - and who, like Matapour, came to Norway as a child refugee from Iran - was quick to deny that this was an Islamic act. “Hate is hate,” Gharahkhani told a reporter for VG, “and has nothing to do with religion or background.” (Why, then, did his parents flee Iran after it became an Islamic theocracy?)
Norway’s leading Muslim organizations agreed with Gharahkhani. The Islamic Council (IRN), which for years refused to take a position on punishing homosexuality with the death penalty, condemned the atrocity and denied any Islamic connection. Ditto Senaid Kobilica of the Muslim Dialogue Network (MDN). Ditto, too, Fahad Qureshi of IslamNet, who asserted, in total contravention of the Koran, that “Islam does not permit taking the life of an innocent person, no matter gay or straight.”
You had to go into the archives to discover just how hypocritical Qureshi’s statement was. He’s on the record as saying that all Muslims support the death penalty for gays. (For obvious strategic reasons, he’s since announced that gays who abstain from sex need not be executed.) As for Kobilica and IRN, get a load of what happened in 2009 when Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the world’s leading Islamic scholar, praised the Holocaust. Asked for a comment, IRN’s then Secretary General, Sultan Shoaib, referred reporters to Kobilica, who was then IRN’s head. Kobilica, in turn, passed the buck to the Islamic Association’s Basim Ghozlan, who declined to comment on Qaradawi’s remark because, he said, it was a “political statement.”
So the same Muslim leaders who now pretend to be appalled by two murders chose to stay mum on the Shoah.
More on Kobilica. A few months ago, he assured a reporter “that Muslims aren’t allowed to hate Jews. In fact we can’t be Muslims…without believing in the Torah and Bible as holy books.” Anyone familiar with another holy book - the aforementioned Koran, natch - knows very well that devout Muslims view themselves as having been divinely commanded to kill Jews and Christians. It’s called (ahem) jihad.
But it wasn’t the Muslim organizations whose crocodile tears took the cake. No, it was Bassel Hatoum, head of Queer World (Skeiv Verden), Norway’s major gay organization, who hit a home run. “To link this to Islam,” he said about the Oslo bloodbath, “is very wrong and fraudulent.” Gays, Muslims, and everyone else, he wrote, “stand together” as “one community.”
Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre made similar noises, adding that in the wake of Matapour’s actions all Norwegian Muslims were in danger - of reprisal, presumably. (Yes, the old “backlash” fiction.) Then there was hijab-clad Attia Mirza Mehmood, a Socialist Left member of Oslo’s City Council, who took the breathtakingly dishonest line that “we don’t yet know what the perpetrator’s motive was” and that gays and Muslims share the same enemies and should therefore be allies.
At least ordinary Muslims were honest. After the shootings, as Erling Marthisen reported at document.no, Muslims who were posting at Arabic-language websites in Sweden were busy “praising the terrorist” as a “hero,” describing the victims as “filth and rubbish,” and thanking Allah. There’s no reason to think Muslims in Norway weren’t celebrating, too.
So far, in short, nothing new. These days, throughout the Western world, the first instinct of people in authority after an act of manifest jihadist slaughter is to deny its Islamic roots and paint Muslims as peace-loving victims.
Yet this time something was different: a few establishment voices broke with the party line.
First, in a June 27 op-ed for Aftenposten, Ola Svenneby, head of the Norwegian Young Conservatives (Unge Høyre), noted wryly that the ten Muslim countries that punish homosexuality with death don’t do so “because they’ve misread the Koran.” It’s time, he concluded, for Norwegians to hold real discussions about the threat Islam poses to free and tolerant societies.
(Alas, the 25-year-old Svenneby is too young to recall that frank exchanges about Islam used to take place in Norway - notably on the TV2 series Holmgang, which was canceled in 2008 after an aggressive Muslim campaign against it. Three years later, the government and media used Anders Behring Breivik’s murder of 77 people to try to silence critics of Islam who, they cynically contended, were, in effect, Breivik’s accessories. Since then, robust conversations about Islam have been relegated mostly to a couple of much-maligned alternative websites.)
In response to Svenneby’s piece, Dih Yazan Al-Obaide, the Marxist leader of the gay Muslim organization Salam, wrote that he felt “unsafe,” “demonized,” “dehumanized,” and “viewed with suspicion” - no, not by Muslims like Matapour, but (ludicrously) by Svenneby and other members of right-of-center parties, who, if returned to power, he warned, might well force gays to undergo conversion therapy or even deport them. Svenneby got a thumbs-up, however, from Anne Holt, a crime novelist and former Minister of Justice who’s arguably Norway’s most famous lesbian. In a June 28 op-ed , Holt wrote that until now she’s kept mum about Islam and mass Muslim immigration (untrue: in several op-eds she’s called critics thereof racists and xenophobes ) but that the London Pub shootings changed her mind. If Matapour really acted against gays “in Allah’s name,” declared Holt, she needs to break her silence and call for a “Big Conversation” about Islam.
(How odd that twenty-one years and Allah knows how many jihadist atrocities after 9/11, it took this event to alert Holt to the dangers of Islam! Still, better to have her on side than not. Or is she really all in? At the end of her op-ed, Holt actually stated that she might be wrong about the need for a “Big Conversation.” My interpretation? If the blowback from her friends is too strong, she’ll issue a mea culpa. )
Far more impressive than Holt was the 44-year-old Progress Party leader Sylvi Listhaug, who in a June 29 op-ed , came out strongly against Gharahkhani’s absurd “nothing to do with religion” line and Støre’s disgraceful focus on Muslims, not gays, as victims. The London Pub shootings, she insisted, were an act of hatred, and “the hatred comes from someplace and deep down we know where”; hence it’s high time to “begin seriously to demand that people who settle voluntarily in Norway respect our values of freedom.” Long since high time, I’d say.
I wasn’t surprised when Kjetil Rolness, one of the few marquee-name writers in Norway to dissent frequently from the lockstep consensus, also weighed in, writing in Aftenposten on July 2 that the problem isn’t that Muslims live by other values than secular Norwegians, but that their punishments for dissent from orthodoxy are so severe. Even VG columnist Shazia Majid - after railing about “Islamophobia,” asserting that Matapour’s motives remain unknown, and making the baffling suggestion that she and other Norwegian Muslims were being “scapegoated” - admitted on July 1 that it’s well past time for Norwegian society to take on the “homo-hate that flourishes in some immigrant communities.”
Perhaps best of all, on June 30, another Muslim, Qalbi Khan, a professor of dentistry at the University of Oslo, made essentially the same point in Aftenposten - and emphasized, to boot, the need for liberal Muslims to take the lead in challenging backward Islamic attitudes. Yes, there was much in his piece to quibble with - beginning with the notion that one can be liberal and Muslim. But he closed with a wonderful line suggesting that Islamophobia - i.e. fear of Islam - can be healthy and appropriate.
None of these people, alas, chose to give a tip of the hat to their gutsy fellow citizens, such as Rita Karlsen, Hege Storhaug, Hans Rustad, and Peder (Fjordman) Jensen, who’ve been reviled for years in Norway’s media, academy, and corridors of political power for speaking home truths about Islam. In the 1980s, New York intellectual diva Susan Sontag decided to stop applauding Communism, but described others who’d opposed it for decades as “premature anti-Communists.” Will Storhaug, Karlsen, and company - not to mention yours truly - come to be known as premature critics of Islam?
Well, if the Norwegian establishment develops enough backbone on Islam to turn this country around, I won’t mind much having to wear that label, if that’s the price to pay. But what are the real chances of that happening? On Sunday, my fellow Islam critic Nina Hjerpset-Østlie wrote on Facebook that “it seems a critical number of social commentators are ready for ‘The Big Conversation’ on Islam’s obvious and extensive problem in relation to sexual minorities.” I hope she’s right - and that, if so, the conversation will take in a lot more than the “sexual minorities” stuff. But it seems to me that the bulk of politicians, professors, and popular authors have had nothing to offer in response to the London Pub shootings but the usual cowardly pabulum, euphemism, and appeasement.
Moreover, three days after the Oslo police prevailed upon organizers to cancel the gay-pride parade - lest terrorists be handed a target-rich environment - came news that made any hope of a sea change in elite Norwegian attitudes seem like a pipe dream. Oslo’s City Council announced that it had green-lit plans by the Islamic Association - the Norwegian face of the Muslim Brotherhood and, in the view of the United Arab Emirates, a terrorist organization - to build an imposing new mosque in the heart of the city, complete with a “cultural center,” library, sports complex, and café. Could the authorities have given a clearer signal of their determination to capitulate to the enemy?
Finally, as if all of the above weren’t more than enough, a week after the London Pub shootings another terrorist act occurred in the same city. Lars Thorsen is head of a group called Stop the Islamization of Norway (SIAN) and is viewed by the Norwegian establishment in much the same way that Tommy Robinson is viewed by bien pensant Brits - in other words, as human garbage. On July 1, perhaps in an effort to pacify Muslims who were put off by the sudden wave of truth-telling about Islam that followed the London Pub shootings, Thorson was arrested for hanging a banner on a mosque and spraying three people with “self-defense spray.” The next day he and several colleagues burned a Koran on an Oslo street - after which, in a scene out of a movie, an angry driver forced their jeep off the road, causing it to flip on its roof. There was one serious injury; the driver was arrested on the spot, and another suspect was arrested on Sunday.
But the police officer in charge at the scene seemed to be less interested in discussing what looked like an attempted murder than in criticizing the Koran burning. “A lot of people,” he said, are outraged by actions like SIAN’s, and “we” - the police - “understand” their outrage. Such, alas, in the year 2022, is the utterly predictable reaction of Norwegian officials to a conflict between Norwegian patriots whose worst offense is destroying a Koran and Islamic jihadists who are prepared to kill as many Norwegians as they can.
JOE BIDEN - MORALLY AND ETHICALLY DEPRAVED ON ALL FRONTS! HE'S A FUKING SOCOPATH GAMER LAWYER!
Hayward: Susan Rice’s Abandonment of Democrats’ Khashoggi Crusade Frames Biden Saudi Trip JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images 7:23
Democrats have become quite muted in their criticism of Saudi Arabia, particularly over the death of political activist and writer Jamal Khashoggi, as President Joe Biden prepares to visit Riyadh in July and beg for oil from the kingdom he once promised to excommunicate from the civilized world. Obama Administration veteran Susan Rice, a major force in the Biden White House, seems to have lost her previously fervent interest in “punishing” the Saudis.
Human rights activists are grumbling about the sudden silence from Biden and his party. When Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia was announced, Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard called it a “betrayal for Jamal Khashoggi, for Yemen, and a betrayal of what the Democratic party stood for over the last three years.”
“I have absolutely no doubt that Joe Biden will get nothing in terms of human rights protections and the visit will be seen as a full victory and endorsement of Saudi Arabia,” Callamard predicted.
These complaints are muted compared to the excoriation former President Donald Trump received for supporting the Saudi government after the murder of Khashoggi, who was lured into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey in October 2018, violently executed by a team of Saudi agents, and dismembered.
Jamal Khashoggi’s fiance appears before his death was confirmed in Turkey in 2018 (Photo: Associated Press)
The Saudis have portrayed the killing as a rogue operation and prosecuted several alleged perpetrators. Many human rights groups dismissed those claims and accused Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the de facto chief executive of Saudi Arabia, of ordering the murder.
Those groups believed the Saudi government deserved to be condemned and ostracized for the killing, atop their grievances against the Saudis for hitting civilian targets during their intervention against the Iran-backed Houthi insurgents of Yemen, as Callmard indicated.
Joe Biden promised to do exactly that during the 2020 presidential campaign, most famously during the Democratic primary debate in 2019. Asked if he would “punish” senior Saudi leaders for Khashoggi’s death, Biden replied:
Yes, and I said it at the time. Khashoggi was, in fact, murdered and dismembered, and I believe on the order of the crown prince. And I would make it very clear we were not going to, in fact, sell more weapons to them, we were going to, in fact, make them pay the price and make them, in fact, the pariah that they are. There’s very little social redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia.
And I would also, as pointed out, I would end subsidies that we have, end the sale of material to the Saudis where they’re going in and murdering children, and they’re murdering innocent people. And so they have to be held accountable.
VIDEO
One of the biggest players in the Biden administration is Susan Rice, who was national security adviser to President Barack Obama when Joe Biden was vice president. Rice was a big part of the Obama administration’s bizarre obsession with turning away from the Gulf Arab states and embracing ultra-hostile Iran as America’s key partner in the Middle East, and she was a very loud critic of the Saudi government and President Trump after the Khashoggi murder.
Rice went directly after MBS in an October 2018 op-ed for the New York Times , calling him out for “extreme recklessness and immorality” that made him “a dangerous and unreliable partner for the United States.”
Rice heckled Americans “from Silicon Valley to the editorial pages of our leading papers” for getting suckered by “the crown prince’s promises of reform and the deft marketing of his leadership,” but said his true character had been exposed by “numerous impulsive and vicious actions” – from the war in Yemen to Khashoggi’s killing, from the repression of dissidents to his brutal seizure of power and money from other royals.
“If we fail to punish him directly and target only those around him, the crown prince will be further emboldened to take extreme actions,” Rice urged, going right up to the line of regime change.
“The United States was wrong to hitch our wagon to Prince Mohammed, but we would be even more foolish to continue to do so,” she declared.
That was then, and this is now, with President Biden’s approval ratings tumbling into the abyss because of skyrocketing inflation and gas prices, and Democrats looking at a midterm election bloodbath.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal (2nd R) welcomes US Vice President Joe Biden (C) at the Riyadh airbase on October 27, 2011, upon his arrival in the Saudi capital with a US official delegation to offer condolences to the King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz following the death of his brother, Crown Prince Sultan. (AFP via Getty Images)
The Obama-Biden administration supported the Saudi intervention in Yemen when it began, but in a 2019 interview with the Huffington Post , Huffington Post was very unsatisfied this answer, presaging today’s left-wing grumbles about Biden attempting to repair his relationship with the Saudis.
The Obama brain trust’s pivot to Iran lies in shambles , wiped out by the hostility and intransigence of the aspiring nuclear power in Tehran. The Iranians certainly are not going to rescue the Democrats from the electoral consequences of Joe Biden’s malicious energy policies.
The Saudis won’t either, in part because they remember Biden and Rice’s insults, and because their own geopolitical agenda does not include surging oil production to bring prices down. French President Emmanuel Macron took the remarkable step on Monday of warning Biden not to waste his time in Riyadh in front of press cameras , very much aware that his “personal comments” to Biden would be heard around the globe.
Macron told Biden that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is at maximum oil production capacity now, and the Saudis could only increase their output by 150,000 barrels per day, “maybe a little bit more.”
The Emiratis quickly confirmed Macron’s statement was accurate and the world price of oil promptly went up , the exact opposite of what Biden was hoping for.
According to Politico this month, some Democrats are quietly fuming at Biden for dropping his tough campaign talk when nothing in Saudi Arabia has changed much. Some of them had ideas for little snubs Biden might deliver during his July trip to show the Saudis that his administration remains displeased, without antagonizing them too much – a pathetic walkback from a party that once vowed to isolate Saudi Arabia the way Russia was isolated after invading Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (L) meets with U.S. President Joe Biden in the Oval Office at the White House on September 01, 2021 in Washington, DC. This was the two leaders’ first face-to-face meeting and the first by a Ukrainian leader in more than four years. (Photo by Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images)
Of course, Biden’s isolation of Russia has been bungled as badly as the rest of his presidency – Moscow is raking in more petrodollars than ever, while the U.S. president is reduced to mewling that Russian leader Vladimir Putin is responsible for the lousy Biden economy. In other words, Biden is saying he picked a financial brawl with an economy one-fifteenth the size of America’s and lost .
With an election just months away and the American people giving him record-low approval ratings, Biden is not about to start a fight with the world’s pivotal oil producer. Even the Iran-centric loons Biden inherited from the Obama administration will think twice about pushing Saudi Arabia and its OPEC partners further into Russia’s – and China’s – orbit.
Biden needs to come back from Riyadh with some kind of win, and MBS can be counted on to negotiate a high price for it. Talk of making the Saudis into global outlaws for murdering Jamal Khashoggi will be long forgotten.
Afghanistan, Islamic Militants in Nigeria and Ayatollah Khamenei Named Persecutors of the Year
A victim of ethnic clashes between the northern Fulani and southern Yoruba traders, speaks of burnt valuables at Shasha Market in Ibadan, Nigeria, Feb. 15, 2021. (Photo by Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP via Getty Images)
(CNSNews.com) - Afghanistan, Islamic militants in Nigeria, and Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, were named 2022’s Persecutors of the Year by International Christian Concern (ICC) .
At a ceremony in Washington D.C. on Wednesday, ICC unveiled this year’s “Dis-Honorees” in recognition of their role in persecuting Christians. At their annual award ceremony (which began in 2021), the group names a nation, an entity, and a person as the persecutors of the year.
This year, the nation that inflicted the most pain on Christians was Afghanistan. The ICC described the Taliban government as putting a “death sentence on Christians.” The group describes the Taliban government as “The Embodiment of Persecution.”
According to the ICC report, the Taliban has employed intimidation and harassment tactics in order to push Christians into hiding. These measures have limited Christians’ access to food and medical supplies, and have led to arrests and torture. The Taliban has also rolled back human rights in the region, particularly for women.
Societal and employment discrimination has deprived minorities--especially Christians--of necessities. Some families have taken measures as desperate as selling their daughters into marriages with older men.
The Taliban took control of the Afghan government on August 15, 2021 amid the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The United States officially completed the withdrawal on August 30, 2021 .
In 2020, the Trump administration agreed to withdraw from Afghanistan before May 1, 2021. President Biden moved that deadline to September 11 of that year less than two months after entering office.
Nigeria’s Fulani militants were deemed by the ICC to be the entity that posed the greatest threat to Christians in the past year. According to ICC: “Fulani militias have killed tens of thousands of Christians and left countless homeless in a 20-year genocide.”
The Fulani people are a nomadic culture in the Sahel, the dry region south of the Sahara. Desertification and the expansion of the Sahara have pushed the Fulani farther south into Nigeria, where the Muslim north is increasingly confrontational with the Christian south.
Over the past year, a radicalized, fundamentalist Islamic sect of the Fulani people has terrorized Christians throughout Nigeria. Their tactics include kidnapping, raping, dismembering, and burning their victims. The situation has produced a refugee crisis among Christians.
Last week, two Catholic priests were murdered in Southwestern Nigeria. Dozens of Christians were massacred in Nigeria during Pentecost early in June. ICC claims that the government of Nigeria has a complacent attitude towards this persecution and refuses to acknowledge the ethnic nature of the conflict, instead describing it as “farmer-herder” clashes. The organization draws a parallel between this response and the initial response to ethnic violence in Rwanda that culminated in the 1994 genocide .
The ICC gave Grand Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, its Individual Award for persecution in the last year.
Khamenei controls the security and judicial branches of the nation’s government, which are largely responsible for the intense persecution of Christians within Iran. Although the state claims to allow the free practice of religion, only certain established ethnic groups, such as Armenians and Assyrians, are permitted to practice Christianity.
The Ayatollah has led a campaign of arrests and church closures against Iranian Christians that has driven believers underground. He has described house-churches as “national security threats” and uses the power of the state to vigorously track them down. His attacks on religious freedom have led to the State Department to designate Iran as a Country of Particular Concern for its severe violations of religious freedom.
Khamenei’s government has jailed Christians at the notorious Evin Prison. Evin Prison is notable for its miserable conditions, lack of medical care, and the frequent, severe torture inflicted on prisoners by the guards. Although Iranian officials have long denied accusations of abuse at Evin Prison, when footage of conditions in the facility leaked in 2021, even the head of the Iranian prison system admitted that the prison conditions there were “unacceptable.”
THE MUSLIM CULTURE OF VIOLENCE
Meanwhile, fifty people on the terror watch list have been apprehended at the Southern border so far this year, and there is no telling how many got across without being caught. Welcome to Old Joe Biden’s America.
VIDEOS:
Denmark: provoking the limits of tolerance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sM8p7hnprM
Why does SWEDEN NO LONGER WANT IMMIGRANTS? - VisualPolitik EN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CSUimZjiI0
Terror-Linked Muslim Umbrella Group Brings Hundreds to DC to Lobby Congress US Council of Muslim Organizations delegates included individual who joked about threatening to blow up school.
Fri Jul 1, 2022
Joe Kaufman is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and the Chairman of the Joe Kaufman Security Initiative . He was the 2014, 2016 and 2018 Republican Nominee for U.S. House of Representatives (Florida-CD23).
Armed with an extremist agenda, hundreds of Islamists from around the nation representing the US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO) descended upon the US Capitol building, from June 13-14, to lobby members of Congress. USCMO has major terrorist ties, and some of the individuals acting as the organization’s delegates are just as radical. One, Syed Ammar Ahmed, an official from the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), once even joked about threatening to blow up a school. Unless he/she thinks their fanatical talking points are valid, why would any sitting Congressman wish to give this group of zealots any of his/her time?
USCMO was founded, in March 2014, to provide mainstream American Islamist groups a bigger voice and influence in politics. These groups include: the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR ) and American Muslims for Palestine (AMP ), the South Asian terror-related ICNA , the Muslim Brotherhood-associated Muslim American Society (MAS), and more. The groups sponsoring this year’s event, ‘The 7th Annual Muslim Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill,’ included ICNA and Islamic Relief (IR ), an organization that has been banned by a number of nations due to its many ties to terrorist financing.
Sitting on the board of USCMO are Mazen Mokhtar , the former admin for the now-defunct al-Qaeda recruitment/financing site qoqaz.net, who has referred to suicide bombings as “an effective method of attacking the enemy”; Siraj Wahhaj , a Brooklyn imam who was named a party to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and who has been linked to the bomb maker of the attack, Clement Rodney Hampton-El; and AMP Executive Director Osama Abuirshaid , who threatened, in January 2020, “Palestinians, if they don’t take what they want willingly, they will take it forcefully… [W]e’re going to liberate our land… whether they like it or they don’t like it.”
Some of those representing USCMO as delegates at Muslim Advocacy Day seem to be just as radical as the USCMO leadership, itself. One delegate, who was photographed posing with others outside the office of US Representative Carlos Gimenez, was the Government Affairs Coordinator at ICNA’s social services division, ICNA Relief USA, and Hugo Chavez fanboy, Syed Ammar Ahmed . In February 2010, following a debate he participated in at a school, Ahmed commented, “I hate white people,” called himself a “terrorist,” and at the suggestion of an acquaintance, joked that he “should have threatened to blow up the school.”
Another was CAIR-California CEO and apologist for al-Qaeda operatives held in Guantanamo Bay, Hussam Ayloush . This past May, Ayloush called for Israel’s destruction, writing, “It is our moral responsibility and focus to make sure that the racist apartheid structure is dismantled…” He clicked ‘like’ for a photo posted on his Facebook page containing the message, “We pray for the near dissolution of the Zionist state.” He wrote that Palestinians have a “legal right to resist” (i.e. commit terrorist acts) against Israelis. He posted that “American Jews” who support Israel are “animals” and said that relocating Jews to Israel was part of a conspiratorial “Zionist plan.”
Yet another delegate was CAIR-San Francisco Executive Director Zahraa Billoo . In September 2019, Women’s March, a left wing activist group, removed Billoo from its board for anti-Semitic remarks about Israel. In December 2008, she posted on her blog that she considered starting a website to recruit volunteers to attack Israel. In March 2008, she labeled US troops “scum.” In September 2007, she wrote, “Apartheid Israel is not a country” and questioned if anyone had the right to be upset at those calling for its destruction. In January 2007, she wrote that she had thoughts of committing suicide, after she noticed a pro-Israel poster on a San Francisco train.
The terrorist-friendly agenda items (“legislative measures” ) USCMO delegates were told to lobby members of Congress about easily reflect the terrorist relations of the individuals and groups that make up USCMO. One issue dealt with the Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP ) grant program, which provides funding to governmental and non-governmental entities, with the goal of preventing and countering violence. Because the program is seen by USCMO and its affiliates as primarily targeting Islamic militants, the delegates were instructed to lobby in favor of resolutions that would severely weaken it.
A second issue dealt with lobbying for citizenship for evacuees from Afghanistan. It has been reported that a number of Afghans evacuated, during and after the Biden Administration’s 2021 pullout, had “potentially significant security concerns.” Other reports reveal that several Afghans applying for asylum in the US have associations with the Taliban. However, USCMO, whose member organizations officially assist in the resettlement of aforesaid refugees – a conflict of interest – instructed its delegates to lobby members of Congress to “allow the tens of thousands of Afghan evacuees to apply to become lawful permanent residents one year after arrival.”
A third issue concerned the subject of ‘Islamophobia,’ a term often used to silence critics of Islamist terror. USCMO delegates were instructed to urge members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to adopt the International Combating Islamophobia Act, legislation that was introduced by USCMO ally Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and, according to USCMO, “would establish a special envoy office… to monitor and combat international Islamophobia.” Given its very nature, the act would be used to stifle speech and protect groups, like USCMO, who would wish harm upon our nation and effectively label any criticism of radical Islam as “hate speech.”
USCMO is a conglomerate of various Muslim extremist outfits, and its Islamist agenda is a dangerous one. All freedom loving Americans should be deeply concerned that USCMO, each year, is sending hundreds of its followers and affiliates to roam the halls of Congress and to agitate for their insidious, anti-democratic, pro-sharia initiatives, initiatives that threaten to undermine America and by extension Western civilization.
USCMO’s 7th Annual Muslim Advocacy Day should be its last.
Beila Rabinowitz, Director of Militant Islam Monitor, contributed to this report.
JOE BIDEN’S ASSAULT ON AMERICA’S HOMELAND SECURITY
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2022/06/joe-bidens-assault-on-homeland-security.html
REMEMBER THE MUSLIM INVASION SEPT 11 AND THE WORLD TRADE TOWERS
What could possibly go wrong? Border Report reported Monday that “a shelter for Muslim migrants opened over the weekend in Tijuana, the first of its kind in all of Mexico.” This is no small-time effort: “The Latino Muslim Foundation, based in San Diego and Tijuana, raised half a million dollars to make the facility a reality.” Meanwhile, fifty people on the terror watch list have been apprehended at the Southern border so far this year, and there is no telling how many got across without being caught. Welcome to Old Joe Biden’s America.
CAIR Takes Aim Can you guess whom the terror-tied group is targeting now?
Fri Jul 1, 2022
In a June 14, 2022 op-ed in the Washington Post , Corey Saylor, the Director of Research and Advocacy at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), issued a demand to the administration of newly-elected Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin and Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears. CAIR, which was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation terror funding trial, wants the Youngkin administration to “reject [Brigitte] Gabriel and ACT for America .” A May 20, 2022 photo posted on @ACTBrigitte’s Twitter page showed Lieutenant Governor Sears posing with Gabriel. Displaying that photo, CAIR issued a May 27, 2022 press release calling Gabriel a “[n]otorious racist and anti-Muslim bigot” and calling on Sears to “repudiate her alleged ties with a notorious anti-Muslim hate group leader.” CAIR’s more recent Washington Post article then made reference to that photo of Gabriel with Sears and claimed that ACT for America is an “anti-Islam extremist group” whose leadership should be ostracized and rejected.
It would seem a bit rich that an organization such as CAIR, which itself has been named specifically in the legal documents of a terror financing trial, should be providing advice on professional associations to anyone, much less the Government of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Ronald Weich, Assistant Attorney General of the United States Department of Justice, wrote a letter to then-U.S. Congresswoman Sue Myrick dated February 12, 2010, in which he responded to her about how CAIR came to be named an unindicted co-conspirator of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development in the United States v. Holy Land Foundation et al. (CR. No. 3:04-240-P N.D.TX.) case. In that letter , Assistant Attorney General Weich provided official trial testimony and other evidence introduced in that trial “which demonstrated a relationship among CAIR, individual CAIR founders, and the Palestine Committee. Evidence was also introduced that demonstrated a relationship between the Palestine Committee and HAMAS, which was designated as a terrorist organization in 1995.”
To be clear, this was not mere guilt by association, a scenario that Saylor attempts to portray for Gabriel and ACT for America in his Washington Post piece, in which he cites alleged statements of various individuals who may have been present at an ACT event sometime in the past. Citing the Southern Poverty Law Center doesn’t help his case, either.
It may be noted that this would not be the first time that CAIR has attempted to insert itself into the associations, business, and presentations of others it accuses of “anti-Muslim bigotry .” In 2015, Brandeis University withdrew plans to bestow an honorary degree on Ayaan Hirsi Ali (a Somali-born apostate from Islam), just a day after protests from groups that included CAIR. In August 2019, the Norwich Bulletin losing the team . The Pentagon itself has been intimidated by CAIR regarding anti-terror training reportedly termed “anti-Islamic.” And in 2020, a student at Scottsdale Community College was joined by CAIR’s Arizona chapter in filing suit against Professor Nicholas Damask over some quiz questions they alleged condemned Islam for justifying terrorism. Initially, the college chastised Professor Damask, but later apologized to him and cleared him of any wrongdoing. The lawsuit itself was thrown out of court, and the Scottsdale Community College agreed to pay a $155,000 settlement to Professor Damask.
This list could go on, but you get the idea. As for CAIR, though, asked to condemn Hamas by name, well, not so much.
At its official website , ACT for America – which is a non-profit grassroots movement – declares that its mission is “to educate, engage, train, and mobilize citizens to ensure the safety and security of Americans against all threats foreign and domestic while preserving civil liberties guaranteed by the US Constitution.” ACT for America works especially in the public policy arena to provide informative input for bills introduced at the state and federal levels, with an emphasis on preserving civil liberties protected by the U.S. Constitution.
For their part, during the 2020 campaign as well as in the months since taking office, both Governor Youngkin and Lieutenant Governor Sears have made a point of emphasizing their commitment to championing the civil rights and welfare of all Virginians, in policy areas including antisemitism, criminal justice, the economy and job creation, education, and health.
CAIR, on the other hand, apparently would rather forget all about the Holy Land Foundation trial and focus instead on disparaging a 20-year friendship with mean-spirited barbs about the Virginia Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and an American citizen of immigrant background who leads one of the largest and most patriotic-minded organizations in the country. Expect Governor Youngkin, Lieutenant Governor Sears, and most Virginians to see straight through that.
Clare M. Lopez is the Founder/President of Lopez Liberty LLC .
Muslims Attack Christians for ‘Sin’ of Opening a Church Another day in Egypt.
Fri Jul 1, 2022
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article first appeared on Coptic Solidarity .
On the evening of June 23, 2022, Muslim mobs attacked the homes of Coptic Christians, including by hurling stones through their windows, in al-Hilla, a village in Luxor governate, Upper Egypt.
The occasion of this latest Muslim mob attack on Egypt’s indigenous Christian minority was the legalization of the Church of Michael the Archangel. Although the church was originally built in 2003, it only received formal recognition last week. After waiting for 17 years, as soon as the decree (signed by the prime-minister) was issued to legalize and open the church —and in anticipation of expected, fanatical Muslim ire—the responsible committee dispatched a security force to protect, and set up barriers around, the church.
On learning that the church that had been built nearly two decades ago was finally going to start functioning as a church, Muslims throughout the village “rejected the matter,” says one report, “and the process of charging and inflaming the people’s feelings began,” as Muslims cried out that the building or renovation of a church contradicts shari‘a , or Islamic, law (as well captured by the Conditions of Omar
Before long, the angry mobs, which were augmented by Muslims from neighboring villages, had grown very large and, “amidst hostile chants”—which no doubt included Islam’s jihadist war-cry, “Allahu Akbar!”—began hurling stones through the windows of Coptic homes. According to the report, “the security force charged with protecting the church tried to rebuff them, but the number of assailants was too large.”
Before peace could be regained, many Christian homes had been damaged; several vehicles and motorcycles parked in front of Coptic homes were also “smashed” or set aflame, including the village priest’s vehicle.
On the following day, Friday, Luxor police forces reinforced their presence in the village in anticipation of more Muslim anger following Friday mosque prayers—when imams habitually whip the faithful into a frenzy concerning the alleged sins of the “infidels” who need to be punished. Armed security and national forces—including several armored vehicles—were also deployed all throughout the region, especially around the Church of Michael the Archangel, Christian homes, and surrounding mosques.
Meanwhile, and as the report notes, the traumatized Copts maintain that their “only sin” was to have “obtained an official decision to legalize the church.”
It is worth noting that the above scenario has played out countless times in Egypt: whenever a church is built, legalized, or repaired—or is merely rumored to be built, legalized, or repaired—local Muslims riot and attack the Copts. Authorities frequently respond by appeasing the rioters and rescinding the church’s legal status, effectively shutting it down.
Time will tell if the law will, once again, collapse before Muslim mob rule, or if justice will prevail for the Church of Michael the Archangel in Egypt.
Muslim Man Tries to Slaughter Coptic Christian Woman with a Sickle Another day in the life of Egypt’s “infidel” population.
Mon Jun 27, 2022
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article first appeared on Coptic Solidarity .
A Muslim man attempted to slaughter a Coptic Christian woman with a sickle in the village of Sharona, Minya governorate, Egypt.
According to a June 15 report, Qassim Falah Muhammad attacked Mona Wafdi Marzouk, 35, as she was walking to her family farm early in the morning to assist her sick and ailing father. Muhammad crept up behind her and began to strangle her; then, according to the report, “he grabbed a sickle [a sharp tool used for cutting weeds] and tried to slaughter her with it.” Luckily, the sickle had dulled over the years and did not fully slice though the arteries of her neck.
Muhammad then fled the scene, as reported by Mona’s cousin, Makari, who saw the incident from a distance and ran to the butchered woman’s aid. He and other family members instantly transferred her to the nearest medical center, where she received seven stitches to her neck.
Although she survived, “Mona lives in a state of terror and panic after the harsh experience of this extremist person.”
While it is unclear why Muhammad targeted Mona, it is clear and well established that he hates Christians and has targeted them before. In fact, the day before he tried to slaughter Mona, he invaded the home of another Copt in the same village and robbed him of his money and other possessions.
In response to a police investigation, Muhammad’s family instantly produced a certificate indicating that he is “mentally ill”—a tactic on regular display in Egypt whenever a Muslim is caught after attacking a Christian, to get him the most lenient sentencing. But as the report notes,
“If he is mentally ill, why does he exclusively target Copts? Is it sensible to promote the ‘psychopath’ narrative in every single incident against the Copts—as if the mentally ill only see and try to kill Copts?”
This is hardly the first time a fanaticized Muslim man ambushes a Coptic Christian woman in Egypt. In an earlier, and eerily reminiscent, incident from 2020, a Muslim man crept up behind a Coptic woman walking home with groceries, pulled her head back with a hand full of hair, and slit her throat with a knife in his other hand. In this instance, Catherine Ramzi, who was also rushed to a nearby medical center, received 63 stitches to her throat; doctors told her she came within an inch of dying. It is believed that her Muslim would-be murderer—who was, incidentally, also portrayed by Egyptian media as “mentally ill”—may have identified her as a Christian for not wearing a hijab around her hair or for having a cross tattoo on her wrist.
Also, in April, 2021, a Muslim man butchered a Coptic woman and her toddler son with a machete—“as if he were slaughtering chickens ,” said eyewitnesses. He also tried to slaughter the Christian woman’s young daughter, who managed to flee.
REMEMBER THE MUSLIM INVASION SEPT 11 AND THE WORLD TRADE TOWERS
So Many Muslims Are Crossing the Border And now, a shelter for Muslim migrants has opened in Tijuana.
Fri Jul 1, 2022
What could possibly go wrong? Border Report notes that “a shelter for Muslim migrants opened over the weekend in Tijuana, the first of its kind in all of Mexico.” This is no small-time effort: “The Latino Muslim Foundation, based in San Diego and Tijuana, raised half a million dollars to make the facility a reality.” Meanwhile, fifty people on the terror watch list have been apprehended at the Southern border so far this year, and there is no telling how many got across without being caught. Welcome to Old Joe Biden’s America.
The shelter is, of course, a humanitarian effort. Sonia Tinico, the president of the Latino Muslim Foundation, explained: “Being on one of the largest borders in the world, this is a source of pride that we’re here able to help people arriving at the border. We’ll be able to provide shelter for Muslims who are seeking to get to the U.S. or Canada.” The shelter will provide “housing, medical care, meals and legal services inside the 8,000-square-foot facility.”
Tinico added that the Muslim migrants on their way to the U.S. “can pray here and have halal meals that don’t have pork since we don’t eat pork. We’ll have separate areas for women and men.” Not only that, but the migrants “will be offered psychological and dental assistance along with workshops to help asylum-seekers get familiar with North American culture and customs.”
How wonderful. But will any effort be made there to determine if any of the migrants are listed on the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB), or should be? Probably not — that would be “Islamophobic.”
As if that weren’t enough, Iran International English reported late Friday that “the Biden admin has decided to lift a controversial ban on the entry into US of Iranian men who’d been conscripted into IRGC, a Foreign Terrorist Organization, as part of their compulsory military service, as they don’t ‘pose a national security or public safety risk.’” The IRGC is Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which the Trump administration designated a terrorist organization in 2019. Here again, what could possibly go wrong?
The terror risk involved in the open border has long been known. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported back on Feb. 3, 2021, that “Yuma Sector Border Patrol agents arrested a group of 11 Iranian citizens who illegally crossed the border into the United States. … Yuma Sector agents apprehended eight Iranian nationals in FY2020, compared to just 14 from all other border patrol sectors combined. So far in FY2021, Yuma Sector agents have apprehend [sic] 14 nationals from Iran.”
Rep. John Katko (R-N.Y.) asserted in March 2021 that “individuals that they have on the watchlist for terrorism are now starting to exploit the southern border. We need to wake up.” Then in August 2021 , former Border Patrol chief Rodney Scott warned that the Southern border was “a national security crisis,” with “TSDBs at a level we have never seen before. That’s a real threat.” In October, he said on Fox News that “we have terrorist threats we can’t get into in this type of a forum but they are real.”
Yes, they are, and they’re entirely Biden’s fault. Former CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan said Monday that border agents are “demoralized” with the border “wide open.” He added that “every aspect of our public health, safety, national security is being jeopardized.” Over 7,000 migrants cross the border every day as it is, and once Title 42, a Trump administration attempt to control the wave of migrants, is ended as Biden’s handlers plan to do next month, that number is expected to jump to 18,000 per day.
Morgan observed that one group taking advantage of this is the drug cartels. “They know, because of this administration, our borders are wide open,” Morgan said. “We literally handed over operational control to the cartels. It’s way beyond the millions that have been smuggled in this country.” Not just terrorists, but drug cartels as well. The nightmare never ends.
And it has all been done on purpose. The Biden administration, Morgan added, “opened our borders and intentionally created and facilitated a catastrophic crisis on the southwest border that we’ve never seen in our lifetime.” Why would they do such a thing? You know the answer. Morgan explained: “Their priorities [are] to get as many illegal aliens in this country because – it’s disgusting – but because they see a perceived political benefit.”
It’s insane. The Left seems intent on destroying the country in pursuit of unchallenged political power. What kind of a country they’ll be ruling over once it is overrun with migrants and its economic power entirely outsourced or outpaced doesn’t seem to be a question that ever crosses their minds. How they’ll be able to pay for all their new welfare recipients once the American middle class is entirely taxed out of existence is also not a priority consideration for them. The only thing that matters is gaining and securing political power indefinitely. But this might easily become a pyrrhic victory.
Shelter Opens in Tijuana for Muslims Entering the U.S. A large influx must be expected.
Mon Jun 27, 2022
What could possibly go wrong? Border Report reported Monday that “a shelter for Muslim migrants opened over the weekend in Tijuana, the first of its kind in all of Mexico.” This is no small-time effort: “The Latino Muslim Foundation, based in San Diego and Tijuana, raised half a million dollars to make the facility a reality.” Meanwhile, fifty people on the terror watch list have been apprehended at the Southern border so far this year, and there is no telling how many got across without being caught. Welcome to Old Joe Biden’s America.
The shelter is, of course, a humanitarian effort. Sonia Tinico, the president of the Latino Muslim Foundation (pictured above), explained: “Being on one of the largest borders in the world, this is a source of pride that we’re here able to help people arriving at the border. We’ll be able to provide shelter for Muslims who are seeking to get to the U.S. or Canada.” The shelter will provide “housing, medical care, meals and legal services inside the 8,000-square-foot facility.”
Tinico added that the Muslim migrants on their way to the U.S. “can pray here and have halal meals that don’t have pork since we don’t eat pork. We’ll have separate areas for women and men.” Not only that, but the migrants “will be offered psychological and dental assistance along with workshops to help asylum-seekers get familiar with North American culture and customs.”
How wonderful. But will any effort be made there to determine if any of the migrants are listed on the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB), or should be? Of course not. That would be “Islamophobic.”
As if that weren’t enough, Iran International English reported late Friday that “the Biden admin has decided to lift a controversial ban on the entry into US of Iranian men who’d been conscripted into IRGC, a Foreign Terrorist Organization, as part of their compulsory military service, as they don’t ‘pose a national security or public safety risk.’” The IRGC is Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which the Trump administration designated a terrorist organization in 2019. Here again, what could possibly go wrong?
The terror risk involved in the open border has long been known. U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported back on Feb. 3, 2021 that “Yuma Sector Border Patrol agents arrested a group of 11 Iranian citizens who illegally crossed the border into the United States….Yuma Sector agents apprehended eight Iranian nationals in FY2020, compared to just 14 from all other border patrol sectors combined. So far in FY2021, Yuma Sector agents have apprehend [sic] 14 nationals from Iran.”
Rep. John Katko (R-N.Y.) asserted in March 2021 that “individuals that they have on the watchlist for terrorism are now starting to exploit the southern border. We need to wake up.” Then in August 2021 , former Border Patrol chief Rodney Scott warned that the Southern border was “a national security crisis,” with “TSDBs at a level we have never seen before. That’s a real threat.” In October, he said on Fox News that “we have terrorist threats we can’t get into in this type of a forum but they are real.”
Yes, they are, and they’re entirely Biden’s fault. Former Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan said Monday that border agents are “demoralized” with the border “wide open.” He added that “every aspect of our public health, safety, national security is being jeopardized.” Over 7,000 migrants cross the border every day as it is, and once Title 42, a Trump administration attempt to control the wave of migrants, is ended as Biden’s handlers plan to do next month, that number is expected to jump to 18,000 per day.
Morgan observed that one group that is taking advantage of this is the drug cartels. “They know, because of this administration, our borders are wide open,” Morgan said. “We literally handed over operational control to the cartels. It’s way beyond the millions that have been smuggled in this country.” Not just terrorists, but drug cartels as well. The nightmare never ends.
And it has all been done on purpose. The Biden administration, Morgan added, “opened our borders and intentionally created and facilitated a catastrophic crisis on the southwest border that we’ve never seen in our lifetime.” Why would they do such a thing? You know the answer. Morgan explained: “Their priorities [are] to get as many illegal aliens in this country because – it’s disgusting – but because they see a perceived political benefit.”
It’s insane. The Left seems intent on destroying the country in pursuit of unchallenged political power in it. What kind of a country they’ll be ruling over once it is overrun with migrants and its economic power entirely outsourced or outpaced doesn’t seem to be a question that ever crosses their minds. How they’ll be able to pay for all their new welfare recipients once the American middle class is entirely taxed out of existence is also not a priority consideration for them. The only thing that matters is gaining and securing political power indefinitely. But this might easily become a pyrrhic victory.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 23 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) , The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad . His latest book is The Critical Qur’an . Follow him on Twitter here . Like him on Facebook here .
VIDEOS:
Denmark: provoking the limits of tolerance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sM8p7hnprM
Why does SWEDEN NO LONGER WANT IMMIGRANTS? - VisualPolitik EN https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CSUimZjiI0
OSLO, Norway (AP) – A gunman opened fire in Oslo’s night-life district early Saturday, killing two people and leaving 10 seriously wounded in what police are investigating as a possible terrorist attack during the Norwegian capital’s annual Pride festival.
Update 1400: The Norwegian security service PST has raised its terror alert to the highest level after a mass shooting left 2 people dead and many wounded during Pride week in Oslo. Acting PST chief Roger Berg called the shootings an “extreme Islamist terror act.” He said the gunman, who was arrested shortly after the shootings, had a “long history of violence and threats.”
Investigators said the suspect, identified as a 42-year-old Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, was arrested after opening fire at three locations in downtown Oslo.
While the motive was unclear, organizers of Oslo Pride canceled a parade that was set for Saturday as the highlight of a weeklong festival. One of the shootings happened outside the London Pub, a bar popular with the city’s LGBTQ community, just hours before the parade was set to begin.
Police attorney Christian Hatlo said the suspect was being held on suspicion of murder, attempted murder and terrorism, based on the number of people targeted at multiple locations.
“Our overall assessment is that there are grounds to believe that he wanted to cause grave fear in the population,” Hatlo said.
Hatlo said the suspect´s mental health was also being investigated.
“We need to go through his medical history, if he has any. It´s not something that we´re aware of now,” he said.
The shootings happened around 1 a.m. local time, sending panicked revelers fleeing into the streets or trying to hide from the gunman.
Olav Roenneberg, a journalist from Norwegian public broadcaster NRK, said he witnessed the shooting.
“I saw a man arrive at the site with a bag. He picked up a weapon and started shooting,” Roenneberg told NRK. “First I thought it was an air gun. Then the glass of the bar next door was shattered and I understood I had to run for cover.”
Police secure the area after a shooting in Oslo on June 25, 2022. – Two people were killed and several others seriously wounded in a shooting in central Oslo, Norwegian police said on June 25. – Norway OUT (Photo by Javad PARSA / NTB / AFP) / Norway OUT (Photo by JAVAD PARSA/NTB/AFP via Getty Images)
Police inspector Tore Soldal said two of the shooting victims died and 10 people were being treated for serious injuries, but none of them was believed to be life-threatening.
Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said in a Facebook post that “the shooting outside London Pub in Oslo tonight was a cruel and deeply shocking attack on innocent people.”
He said that while the motive was unclear, the shooting had caused fear and grief in the LGBTQ community.
“We all stand by you,” Gahr Stoere wrote.
Christian Bredeli, who was at the bar, told Norwegian newspaper VG that he hid on the fourth floor with a group of about 10 people until he was told it was safe to come out.
“Many were fearing for their lives,” he said. “On our way out we saw several injured people, so we understood that something serious had happened.”
Norwegian broadcaster TV2 showed footage of people running down Oslo streets in panic as shots rang out in the background.
Investigators said the suspect was known to police, as well as to Norway’s security police, but not for any major violent crimes. His criminal record included a narcotics offense and a weapons offense for carrying a knife, Hatlo said.
Hatlo said police seized two weapons after the attack: a handgun and an automatic weapon, both of which he described as “not modern” without giving details.
He said the suspect had not made any statement to the police and was in contact with a defense lawyer.
Hatlo said it was too early to say whether the gunman specifically targeted members of the LGBTQ community.
“We have to look closer at that, we don’t know yet,” he said.
Still, police advised organizers of the Pride festival to cancel the parade Saturday.
“Oslo Pride therefore urges everyone who planned to participate or watch the parade to not show up. All events in connection with Oslo Prides are canceled,” organizers said on the official Facebook page of the event.
Norway has a relatively low crime rate but has experienced violent attacks by right-wing extremists, including one of the worst mass shootings in Europe in 2011, when a gunman killed 69 people on the island of Utoya after setting off a bomb in Oslo that left eight dead.
In 2019, another right-wing extremist killed his stepsister and then opened fire in a mosque but was overpowered before anyone there was injured.
Follow Breitbart London on Facebook: Breitbart London (AFP) — The Spanish prime minister on Saturday described a deadly migrant rush on the enclave of Melilla from Morocco as an attack on Spain’s “territorial integrity”, as human rights activists demanded an investigation.
A t least 18 African migrants died in the latest drama on the doors of the European Union, when around 2,000 mostly sub-Saharan African migrants approached the Moroccan border with the tiny territory at dawn on Friday.
More than 500 managed to enter a border control area after cutting a fence with shears, Melilla authorities said in a statement.
Moroccan officials said late Friday that 13 migrants had died of injuries sustained in the incursion, in addition to five confirmed dead earlier in the day.
“Some fell from the top of the barrier” separating the two sides, a Moroccan official said.
Migrants climb the fences separating the Spanish enclave of Melilla from Morocco in Melilla, Spain, Friday, June 24, 2022. Dozens of migrants stormed the border crossing between Morocco and the Spanish enclave city of Melilla on Friday in what is the first such incursion since Spain and Morocco mended diplomatic relations last month. (AP Photo/Javier Bernardo)
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told journalists in Madrid that “if anyone is responsible for everything that happened at the border, it is the mafias that traffic in human beings.”
But Morocco’s AMDH human rights group said it was “a true catastrophe that shows the consequences of the latest Moroccan-Spanish entente”, just weeks after the two sides resolved a year-long diplomatic rift.
On Saturday, calm returned to the border area, with Moroccan security forces lightly deployed along the frontier.
In a forested area where migrants have been camping out for years, none were to be seen.
Mohamed Amine Abidar of the AMDH said migrants, who are often rounded up by authorities and taken to cities further south, had “probably moved away for fear of being displaced”.
Migrants run on Spanish soil after crossing the fences separating the Spanish enclave of Melilla from Morocco in Melilla, Spain, Friday, June 24, 2022. Dozens of migrants stormed the border crossing between Morocco and the Spanish enclave city of Melilla on Friday in what is the first such incursion since Spain and Morocco mended diplomatic relations last month. (AP Photo/Javier Bernardo)
Images on Spanish media on Friday showed exhausted migrants lying on the pavement in Melilla, some with bloodied hands and torn clothes.
The AMDH demanded a “comprehensive, quick and serious enquiry to determine responsibilities and shortcomings”, and warned against burying the migrants’ bodies until their deaths had been properly investigated.
Residents of the Barrio Chino neighbourhood on the Moroccan side of the barrier said they were in shock.
“This is the most violent attempt to cross into Melilla that I’ve ever seen,” said Rachid Nejjari, a waiter in a cafe near the heavily fortified border fence.
“I saw migrants armed with sticks and iron bars… I was afraid of being attacked.”
A migrant runs on Spanish soil after crossing the fences separating the Spanish enclave of Melilla from Morocco in Melilla, Spain, Friday, June 24, 2022. Dozens of migrants stormed the border crossing between Morocco and the Spanish enclave city of Melilla on Friday in what is the first such incursion since Spain and Morocco mended diplomatic relations last month. (AP Photo/Javier Bernardo)
Melilla and Ceuta, Spain’s other North African enclave, have the European Union’s only land borders on the African continent, making them a magnet for migrants.
Friday’s was the first such mass incursion since Spain mended a year-long rift by backing Morocco’s autonomy plan for the disputed Western Sahara region, scrapping its decades-long stance of neutrality.
Sanchez then visited Rabat, and the two governments hailed a “new stage” in relations.
The row had begun when Madrid allowed Brahim Ghali, leader of Western Sahara’s pro-independence Polisario Front, to be treated for Covid-19 in a Spanish hospital in April 2021.
A month later, some 10,000 migrants surged across the Moroccan border into Spain’s Ceuta enclave as border guards looked the other way, in what was widely seen as a punitive gesture by Rabat.
Rabat wants Western Sahara to have autonomous status under Moroccan sovereignty but the Polisario Front insists on a UN-supervised referendum on self-determination as agreed in a 1991 ceasefire deal.
In the days just before Morocco and Spain patched up their ties, there were several attempted mass crossings of migrants into Melilla, including one involving 2,500 people, the largest such attempt on record. Nearly 500 made it across.
Migrants run on Spanish soil after crossing the fences separating the Spanish enclave of Melilla from Morocco in Melilla, Spain, Friday, June 24, 2022. Dozens of migrants stormed the border crossing between Morocco and the Spanish enclave city of Melilla on Friday in what is the first such incursion since Spain and Morocco mended diplomatic relations last month. (AP Photo/Javier Bernardo)
The mending of ties has meant a drop in migrant arrivals in Spain, notably in the Canary Islands.
The number of migrants who reached the Canary Islands in April was 70 percent lower than in February, government figures show.
Sanchez warned earlier this month that “Spain will not tolerate any use of the tragedy of illegal immigration as a means of pressure”.
Spain will seek to have “irregular migration” listed as one of the security threats on the NATO’s southern flank when the alliance gathers for a summit in Madrid on June 29-30.
Over the years, thousands of migrants have attempted to gain entry to the Spanish enclaves by climbing the barriers, swimming along the coast or hiding in vehicles.
The two territories are protected by fences fortified with barbed wire, video cameras and watchtowers.
Follow Breitbart London on Facebook: Breitbart London
Over Six in Ten French Say Country has Seen Too Much Immigration JULIEN DE ROSA/AFP via Getty Images 2:17
A poll released this week has revealed that 65 per cent of the French public believe that the country has seen too much immigration, with older French far more concerned with the issue.
The poll, which was conducted by the CSA Institute, revealed that 65 per cent of French people overall say that the country has seen too much immigration with a small minority claiming that France has not seen enough immigration.
When broken down by age, only those in the 18 to 24-year-old demographic thought France had not seen enough immigration at 60 per cent, while 72 per cent of people 50 to 64 think France has seen too much immigration, broadcaster CNews, which sponsored the survey, reports .
Politically, those on the right are far more concerned about immigration than left-wing parties, however, among supporters of the far-left La France Insoumise party, just 51 per cent said that there had not been enough immigration into France, while the number was much higher among other left-wing parties.
Concerns over immigration may have played a role in the massive gains seen by Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) at the parliamentary elections last weekend as Ms Le Pen campaigned on the issue and had previously promised a referendum on immigration during her campaign for the French presidency.
The RN election performance, which turned eight seats won in 2017 into 89 seats last Sunday, has made Le Pen’s party into a major player in the French parliament as President Emmanuel Macron’s bloc was unable to secure a majority .
Le Pen has since announced she will step down as the president of her party to focus on leading her group in parliament, likely to be the largest after the Macron bloc as the leftist NUPES coalition has so far refused to form a single bloc in parliament.
Speaking after the election result, Le Pen highlighted immigration saying, “It is true that we were pleasantly surprised by the mobilisation of our compatriots and by this wish that immigration, insecurity, the fight against Islamism do not disappear from the National Assembly.”
French Jews Fear For Their Safety the Most in Europe: Survey Getty Images 2:22
A study of the Jewish populations in twelve European countries found that Jews living in France were the most fearful for their own safety, mostly due to anti-semitic terrorist attacks in recent years.
The European Jewish Association (EJA) released the data earlier this week, which compiled a “Jewish Quality of Life” index using data gathered by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research in London and the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights regarding key issues for Jews in Europe.
According to the index, French Jews claim they feel the least safe in their country. In contrast, Jews in Denmark felt the safest, with Daniel Staetsky, the author of the index, citing anti-semitic terrorist attacks in France as a possible reason for the feelings of insecurity, broadcaster CNews reports .
France, which has the largest population of Jews in the European Union, ranked 10th out of 12 in the index overall, which covered security of Jews, government attitude toward Jews, freedom of worship and other issues relating to the security of religious sites.
Italy was ranked first in the index with a score of 79 out of a hundred, while Hungary came in second place, despite the country being ranked first on anti-semitism.
Insecurity among the Jewish community in France is a trend that has been reported on for years as members of France’s Jewish community have fled areas like the suburbs of Paris due to high levels of anti-semitism.
Rabbi Moshe Lewin commented on the situation for Jewish people in the Paris suburbs of Seine-Saint-Denis in 2017 saying, “What upsets me is that in some areas of France, Jews can no longer live peacefully, and that just five minutes from my home, some are forced to hide their kippas (skullcaps) or their Star of David.”
Earlier this year, a survey commissioned by the American Jewish Committee and the Foundation for Policy Innovation found that nearly half of the Jews in France instruct their children to hide their Jewish faith to avoid insults and possible violence as at least 60 per cent of Jewish parents reported their children had been subjected to anti-semitism in school.
Last year, a Lund University study revealed that a majority of those convicted for rape in Sweden were either migrants or from migrant backgrounds, with nearly half of the convicts being people born outside of Sweden.
Of those convicted rapitsts born outside of Sweden, 34.5 per cent came from either North Africa or the Middle East and 19.1 per cent were individuals from sub-Saharan Africa.
Swedish Action Movie Legend Dolph Lundgren Decries Sweden’s Rape Rates Pool ARNAL/URLI/GARCIA/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images 2:21
Swedish action film star Dolph Lundgren has decried the number of rapes taking place in his home country, claiming the country cannot protect women from being raped.
1980’s action film legend Lundgren made his comments this week on his Instagram page saying , “Sadly, my home country Sweden still cannot protect their women from rape.”
“In the past week three men were sentenced for gang-raping a handicapped girl – one assailant got 4 years the other two 2 years prison term. Another man was sentenced to 4 years for repeatedly raping his daughter,” he said and contrasted the cases with another man who was sentenced to eleven years in prison for selling drugs on the internet.
“Sweden has the highest rate of rape per capita in Europe and one of the highest in the world,” Lundgren added.
According to a 2019 report, Sweden saw a 33 per cent increase in the number of rape cases reported to authorities in a ten-year period, although some of the increases have been attributed to changes in Swedish law in 2018 when the government approved a law classifying sex without consent as rape.
In 2020, the number of reported rapes increased again but according to the National Council for Crime Prevention (Brå), the number of rapes of adult women remained largely the same as the year prior but the number of reported acts of sexual abuse toward children had increased by 16 per cent , with 3,950 rapes against children reported in 2020.
Last year, a Lund University study revealed that a majority of those convicted for rape in Sweden were either migrants or from migrant backgrounds, with nearly half of the convicts being people born outside of Sweden.
Of those convicted rapitsts born outside of Sweden, 34.5 per cent came from either North Africa or the Middle East and 19.1 per cent were individuals from sub-Saharan Africa.
“Our findings are of particular importance for crime preventive efforts. Very little, however, is known about the association between rape and different contextual factors among immigrants in Sweden,” the authors of the Lund University report wrote.
Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ
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