Islamic Sex Slavery Painting Stirs International Controversy
An American museum is vociferously calling on a German political party to stop using one of the former's paintings in the latter's campaign poster for the European elections.
Titled "Slave Market" and painted by a Frenchman in 1866, the painting "shows a black, apparently Muslim slave trader displaying a naked young woman with much lighter skin to a group of men for examination," probably in North Africa (AKA "Barbary").
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, founded in 2013 and first elected to Germany's national parliament in 2017, has been putting up posters of the painting with the slogan, "So that Europe won't become Eurabia."
"We are strongly opposed to the use of this work to advance any political agenda," objected Olivier Meslay, director of the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, which houses the original painting. He said his museum had written to AfD, "insisting that they cease and desist in using this painting." Despite the rather legal tone, the painting is in the public domain; even Meslay acknowledges that "there are no copyrights or permissions that allow us to exert control over how it is used other than to appeal to civility on the part of the AfD Berlin."
For its part, the AfD said the U.S. museum's call is "a futile attempt to gag the AfD," adding that "[t]he German public has the right to find out about the truth about the possible consequences of illegal mass immigration." Even so, other elements in Germany are even more hostile to the AfD's poster: "party workers have had to repeatedly put up new copies, only to see them destroyed again the following night."
What to make of all this? Objectively, the "Slave Market" painting in question portrays a reality that has played out countless times over the centuries: African and Middle Eastern Muslims have long targeted fair "infidel" women — so much so as to have enslaved millions of them over the centuries (as copiously documented in my recent book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, from which the following quotes and statistics are derived).
Concerning the Muslim demand for, in the words of one historian, "white-complexioned blondes, with straight hair and blue eyes," this traces back to the prophet of Islam, Muhammad, who enticed his followers to wage jihad against neighboring Byzantium by citing its fair and blonde women who awaited them as potential concubines.
For over a millennium afterward, Islamic caliphates, emirates, and sultanates — of the Arab, Berber, Turkic, and Tatar variety — also coaxed their men to jihad on Europe by citing (and later sexually enslaving) its fair women. Accordingly, because the "Umayyads particularly valued blond or red-haired Franc or Galician women as sexual slaves," Dario Fernandez-Morera writes, "al-Andalus [Islamic Spain] became a center for the trade and distribution of slaves."
The insatiable demand for fair women was such that, according to M.A. Khan, an Indian author and former Muslim, it is "impossible to disconnect Islam from the Viking slave-trade, because the supply was absolutely meant for meeting [the] Islamic world's unceasing demand for the prized white slaves" and "white sex-slaves." Emmet Scott goes so far as to argue that "it was the caliphate's demand for European slaves that called forth the Viking phenomenon in the first place."
As for numbers, according to the conservative estimate of American professor Robert Davis, "between 1530 and 1780 [alone] there were almost certainly a million and quite possibly as many as a million and a quarter white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast" (the appropriate setting of the "Slave Market" painting). By 1541, "Algiers teemed with Christian captives [from Europe], and it became a common saying that a Christian slave was scarce a fair barter for an onion."
With countless enslaved European women — some seized from as far as Denmark and even Iceland — selling for the price of vegetables, little wonder that European observers by the late 1700s noted how "the inhabitants of Algiers have a rather white complexion."
Further underscoring the rapacious and relentless drive of the Muslim slave industry, consider this: the United States of America's first war — which it fought before it could even elect its first president — was against these Islamic slavers. When Thomas Jefferson and John Adams asked Barbary's ambassador why his countrymen were enslaving American sailors, the "ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that ... it was their right and duty to make war upon them [non-Muslims] wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners."
The situation was arguably worse for Eastern Europeans; the slave markets of the Ottoman sultanate were for centuries so inundated with Slavic flesh that children sold for pennies, "a very beautiful slave woman was exchanged for a pair of boots, and four Serbian slaves were traded for a horse." In Crimea, some three million Slavs were enslaved by the Ottomans' Muslim allies, the Tatars. "The youngest women are kept for wanton pleasures," observed a seventeenth century Lithuanian.
Even the details of the "Slave Market" painting/poster, which depicts a fair and naked female slave being pawed at by potential buyers, echoes reality. Based on a twelfth-century document dealing with slave auctions in Cordoba, Muslim merchants "would put ointments on slave girls of a darker complexion to whiten their faces; brunettes were placed for four hours in a solution to make them blond ('golden'); ointments were placed on the face and body of black slaves to make them 'prettier.'" Then, the Muslim merchant "dresses them all in transparent clothes" and "tells the slave girls to act in a coquettish manner with the old men and with the timid men among the potential buyers to make them crazy with desire."
In short, the Clark Art Institute's objection to the Alternative for Germany party's use of the "Slave Market" painting as a poster is just another attempt to suppress the truth about Muslim/Western history, including its glaring continuity with the present. For the essence of that painting—Muslim men sexually pawing at and ultimately preying on fair skinned women—continues to this day all throughout Western Europe, especially Germany.
The historic events, statistics, and quotes narrated above are from and documented in Raymond Ibrahim's book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West. American Thinker reviews appear here and here.
Can Islam Be Rescued from Islamism?
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.
Paul Coleman serves as executive director of ADF International.
"In the East, Islam has persecuted
and terrorized the Christians; but in the West, Islamist Muslims have been free
to advance an Islamist agenda – in schools, in mosques, in public and political
fora, in the media – successfully intimidating the weak-willed while glorifying
the supremacy of Islam over all other cultures and religions."
Can Islam Be Rescued from Islamism?
Islamic terrorism in its violent
expressions coexists with Islamic terrorism in thought. The blatant and
barbarous aspect of Islamism, its murderous activities in New York and
Jerusalem, Bali and London, Paris and Nairobi, Argentina and the Philippines,
Madrid and Mumbai, Syria and Sri Lanka, mesmerizes world attention. Yet the
terror of thought is no less, and perhaps more, menacing and paralytic: it
constricts freedom of consciousness, intimidates free speech, and submits and
smothers society under conformist Islamist religious forces. Islam from
its beginning promoted both jihad warfare "in the path of Allah"
and dawamissionizing to advance the new religion and make it
supreme, if not exclusive, in the world.
Salim Mansur, Professor Emeritus of
Political Science at the University of Western Ontario, is a believing but
dissident Muslim. Among Muslim reformers and free thinkers in the West, like
his fellow-Canadian Irshad Manji, also Nonie Darwish and Boualem Sansal, are
those who categorically denounced Islam, pointing to the obscenity of
compulsory female genital mutilation and "honor killings," beheadings,
and brutal massacres. Some left the fold; among these apostates are Ibn Warraq,
Mohamed Sifaoui, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Some dissidents in Muslim lands fled into
exile and required police protection. A noteworthy and particular case was that
of Nobel Literature laureate Naguib Mahfouz, a Muslim secularist, who was
assaulted by fanatics in Cairo, survived the attack, and remained in his
country.
Which Islam?
As a classic liberal and modern-day
political conservative, Mansur is an intellectual savant whose worldview
includes rationalism, individualism, and enlightenment, buoyed by loyalty to
Canada and her roots in liberty and law. In his quest to sustain Islam as a
religion embodying morality and humanism, Salim Mansur reads, with an open and
critical eye, the Qur'an and the life of Muhammad, who spread "the Word of
God." Manifestly explicit passages in the Islamic holy book call upon
believers to practice righteousness, to give alms to the poor, to treat orphans
with fairness, and honor and show kindness to parents; faith demands belief in
Allah and the final Day of Judgment. Muslims are to attend to their prayers and
reject idolatry. They are obligated to refrain from imposing their faith on
non-Muslims.
With support from the Qur'an, Mansur
reaches out to "one human family" with a universalism to encompass
all people and believers – not only Muslims -- in the One God. The Qur'an that
"makes things clear" is part of the prophetic legacy in monotheism.
Islam is one path and not the only one toward this truth. In his writings and
interviews, Salim conveys his love for humanity whatever people's background or
faith. This is for him the message of Islam writ large in daily life.
So where is the problem? It is in the
totalitarian ideology of Islamism, this "crippling of Islamic culture and
civilization," which abandoned philosophy and reason, and formulated a
"fascistic" and perverted version of Islam. Great Muslim thinkers
like Al-Ghazali, Ibn Rushd (Averros), and Jalaluddin al-Rumi, have been ignored
or rejected. The infamous preachers advocated jihad, militancy, and martyrdom.
Among the radical fundamentalists were Ibn Taimiyya, Hasan al-Banna, and Sayyid
Qutb. Islam, now reduced to warfare and blood, metastasized into Islamism.
This is Mansur's central claim and he is therefore at one with non-Muslim
authors like Bat Ye'or, Robert Spencer, and Andrew Bostom, who have elucidated
the warlike and expansionist ambitions of a conquering Islam pursuing the
vision of a world caliphate.
One chapter in the book deals with Muslim
anti-Semitism that, for Mansur, is a diabolical strand that has no inherent
foundation in the Qur'an and Islam. Anti-Jewish bigotry is foreign to the holy
text and Jews indeed survived and even sometimes flourished in Muslim lands.
There are ways to interpret the Qur'an through the method of abrogation (naskh)
and contexualizing to invalidate the contemporary relevance of harsh Qu'ranic
verses. The text then becomes subject to the meaning the reader gives to
it. Yet, radical Muslim preachers today are rife with blistering Qur'anic-based
attacks against Jews as cursed, vile people, murdering prophets and breaching
agreements, to the crescendo of likening them to apes and monkeys. For Mansur,
the Qur'anic demand that Jews be reduced to "humiliation and misery"
(Ch.9, 29) is limited to an earlier period of history alone.
When Muslims promote hatred for Jews and
Christians, this is in the view of Mansur a deviation and distortion of Islam's
basic tolerance for other monotheistic religions.
Is There a Non-Political Islam?
Salim Mansur and other Muslims who share
his frustration and rage confront the Islamist domination of Islam's agenda and
activity that possess vast financial and educational networks with a radical
program to Islamize the world, America and Europe included. Over a thousand
years ago, the fanatical Hanbali Muslims in Baghdad raided houses if they found
wine and poured it away; if they found a singing girl they beat her; if
they saw a man going with a woman, they charged them with immorality and
dragged them to the police. These scenes of oppression sound familiar in Saudi
Arabia and Afghanistan of today.
However, other Muslims a millennium ago evoked
a very different sensibility. Avicenna, born in Bukhara (Uzbekistan), was
educated in the Qur'an and jurisprudence, also in mathematics and logic,
Aristotelian philosophy, astronomy, geometry, and medicine. He was a man
of learning and open to acquiring knowledge from whoever could teach him. In
Baghdad Islamists hounded the people in the name of Islam, in Bukhara and
beyond Avicenna sought the horizons of scholarship in tandem with Islam. The
debate regarding the true version of Islam continues until today.
Salim Mansur is a modern man, valuing
reason while not discarding revelation, though choosing the former over the
latter. He seeks coherence and comprehensiveness in knowledge, without
sacrificing his deep faith in Islam. Perhaps he is trying to square the circle,
hold the rope from both ends. He confidently recognizes the cultural continuity
in evolving revelations, Muhammad's included, throughout history. As a Muslim
believer, he seems drawn to the softness and individuality embedded within the Sufi
track, as in the thought of Ibn 'Arabi who identified the "Oneness of
Being" for the mystical climb to be at one with God. This is an invitation
for all human beings regardless of their particular religious affiliation. God
transcends all, and distinctions among men dissolve with the common quest for a
god-like experience and life. Mansur's is a personal religion rather than a
political religion; the classic characterization of Islam as din
wa-dawla (religion and state) is alien to Salim's sensibility.
His nobility of character in an age of
extremism is exceptionally admirable. He feels engaged in the vortex of a
historical moment that imperils both Islam and the West. In Ontario, where he
lives, he had to change the mosque he attends. He was threatened for his
'unorthodox' ideas. No less, he is a spiritual brother to the Jews and a
vigorous supporter of Israel. These convictions fly in the face of the
ideological rigors of Islamism.
Overall, Mansur wants an Islam of
"many faces." He chooses the West for its modernity and openness,
individual liberty and the rule of law. This he found in Canada, the country he
adopted and embraces. He hopes to enter Canadian politics; as a Member of
Parliament he could be a commanding voice for moderation and common sense to
challenge the vagaries of multi-culturalism, religious fanaticism, and
anti-Semitism.
As of today, the chicanery of Islamophobia
and Political Correctness control much of the language and discussion. The West
has been artfully and partly disarmed of its heritage – including Christianity,
and values of equality and liberty, progress for all -- choosing to privilege
Islam by accommodating its parallel society separatism, sharia courts, and
execrable youth marriages (as in parts of Europe today). In the East,
Islam has persecuted and terrorized the Christians; but in the West, Islamist
Muslims have been free to advance an Islamist agenda – in schools, in mosques,
in public and political fora, in the media – successfully intimidating the
weak-willed while glorifying the supremacy of Islam over all other cultures and
religions.
Dr. Mordechai Nisan is a retired lecturer
in Middle East Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His
most recent book is The Crack-Up of the Israeli Left, published by
Mantua Books in Canada.
Prophet Muhammad
Should Spain Apologize to
Muslims?
The chutzpah is off the
charts: Voice of Europe reported
on Saturday that the Ishbilia mosque in Seville, Spain, is demanding that King
Felipe VI apologize for the Reconquista, the Christian Reconquest of Spain.
The mosque’s president,
Yihad Sarasua, addressed the King in a Facebook post: “Sir, being the King of
Spain, I believe that the historical moment has arrived to carry out the
recognition of the vileness, plunder, displacement and murders carried out by
orders of the Catholic kings and their most direct collaborators, which
culminated with the surrender of Granada and the breach of everything
subscribed to the Muslim community.”
Sirasua claimed: “Never has
existed such a fierce persecution and eagerness to eliminate a religious
community, as was carried out by the old Spanish royalty in the times of Felipe
II, an extermination that culminated in the War of the Alpujarres subsequent to
the Pragmatic Sanction of 1567.”
He concluded: “As a
descendant of the aforementioned kings, what a formidable opportunity you would
have to demonstrate to the Muslim community your respect and your discrepancy,
with the Islamic theses, apologising to our community for so many atrocities
and interceding for the recognition of Spanish nationality for the descendants
of Al Andalus, as was done with the Sephardic Jewish community.”
Sure, Yihad. Right after you
folks apologize for the Islamic conquest of Spain that preceded the
Reconquista. But of course, you will never, ever do that, because for jihadis
and Islamic supremacists, every atrocity they ever commit is the Infidel's
fault.
Nor could Christians say
anything about their lot, because it was proscribed by Islamic law, and
criticizing Islam, Muhammad, or the Qur’an in any manner was a death-penalty
offense.
In 850, Perfectus, a
Christian priest, engaged a group of Muslims in conversation about Islam; his
opinion of the conquerors’ religion was not positive. For this, Perfectus was
arrested and put to death. Not long thereafter, Joannes, a Christian merchant,
was said to have invoked Muhammad’s name in his sales pitch. He was lashed and
given a lengthy prison sentence. Christian and Muslim sources contain numerous
records of similar incidents in the early part of the tenth century. Around
910, in one of many such episodes, a woman was executed for proclaiming that
“Jesus was God and that Muhammad had lied to his followers.”
Far from being a paradise of
tolerance, Umayyad Spain became a center of the Islamic slave trade. Muslim
buyers could purchase sex-slave girls as young as eleven years old, as well as
slave boys for sex as well, or slave boys raised to become slave soldiers. Also
for sale were eunuchs, useful for guarding harems. Blonde slaves seized in
jihad raids on Christian nations north of al-Andalus were especially prized and
fetched high prices. Slave traders would use makeup to whiten the faces and dye
to lighten the hair of darker slaves, so that they could get more money for
them.
A 12th-century witness of
the sale of sex slaves described the market:
The
merchant tells the slave girls to act in a coquettish manner with the old men
and with the timid men among the potential buyers to make them crazy with
desire. The merchant paints red the tips of the fingers of a white slave; he
paints in gold those of a black slave; and he dresses them all in transparent
clothes, the white female slaves in pink and the black ones in yellow and red.
If the girls did not
cooperate, of course, they would be beaten or killed.
The primary market for
slaves among Muslims was for non-Muslims, as enslaving fellow Muslims was
considered a violation of the Qur’an’s requirement to be “merciful to one
another” (48:29); hence Muslim slave traders had to look to non-Muslim
communities for merchandise.
Yihad Sirasua will never
tell you any of that, because if the public knew those facts and others, they
wouldn’t favor the policies he wants Spain, and the West in general, to adopt.
The truth that he doesn’t want you to know is in The History of Jihad From Muhammad to
ISIS -- truths he and his allies have been working actively
suppress. As his letter to the King shows, history has today become a weapon to
influence current public policy.
Robert Spencer is the
director of Jihad Watch and
a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of the New
York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to
Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad.
His new book is The History of Jihad From Muhammad to
ISIS. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on
Facebook here.
Jihad and the Media in an Age of Delusion
On Sunday the BBC reported about
another horrible news story from London: a knifeman went on a stabbing spree of
“defenceless” people in London. The story revealed less about the incident it
was purporting to report on than it did about our age of anti-reality and
delusion.
In this age, it is not difficult to step
back and observe almost indiscernible but seismic historical shifts in the
making -- not in the big-bang news events, but in the nitty-gritty details of
the social fabric of our daily lives, where
life happens. It is usually not so easy to detect such
subtleties, let alone observe the silent measures a nation or a civilization
takes when it quietly but most decidedly has… given up. One need not be an
anthropologist to detect seismic changes in human behavior or societies.
First, it’s language. Language is
key. Subtle and not-so-subtle restrictions are placed on what would offend the
invading force with its hair-trigger sensibilities.These
restrictions are rigorously enforced by quisling societal institutions --
media, academia, and so forth. So, for example, “Muslim” is replaced with
“South Asian” or “Asian,” with no fear that the “South Asians” or “Asians” will
bomb a pop concert, mow down scores of families on a national holiday such as
Bastille day or Halloween or Christmas, shoot up a gay nightclub, and so forth.
Actual South Asians and Asians have held demos against the media using them
to cover for jihadis, but no media reported on them, of course. Only the
small, sagacious group of readers who follow websites such as the Geller Report
were aware of the South Asian community’s opposition to the wrongful blame.
Every time there is an attack by a
jihadi, all apologies are extended by the host Western country, with
admonitions of impending “phobia” of Islam and backlash, and so the cycle of
self-flagellation begins and builds with each ensuing attack (all 34,800 since 9/11).
The root cause, above all, is never to
be spoken of. Verboten. Anyone who dares cross that line will be ultimately
destroyed -- a pariah, his or her good name murdered, unable to make a living.
You will submit or you will cease to exist, literally or figuratively. There is
no motive, we are told; the motive, we are told, is “mental illness.”
There is almost nothing in Sunday’s BBC
article about the London stabbings that is correct, save for the reporting that
four people were stabbed. After that it is all… editorial and subtle
propaganda. This has all the earmarks of jihad, but it would be a horror,
blasphemous (Islamophobic) to dare say it. When there is an incident that isn’t
jihad, it is immediately cast in the media as right-wing, white-supremacy
bullocks. Absolutely. But jihad is quite different. You can never surmise, let
alone speculate about whether some attack or incident might be jihad. And when
it is jihad, you still cannot say it. If you use the word Muslim -- as in, “Devout Muslim shouting allahu
akbar stabs…” no one will publish it, and social media platforms
will block the link. You will land in Facebook jail. Your first infraction gets
you three days suspension. Your next “violation” will land you in FB jail for a
week, then a month, and eventually, you are terminated.
The BBC headline states that the
stabbings were “random attacks.” But they were not random if the knifemen
wanted to kill unbelievers. Then they were not random at all. There is a reason
these folks were targeted.
The article goes on to say, “The
Metropolitan Police said the motive ‘appears to be solely to inflict harm’ as
none of the victims were robbed or engaged in conversation before they were
attacked.” That, too, screams jihad. It is the very essence of a jihad terror
attack. Instead, the BBC tells us, “mental health issues may be a factor.” That
they can say; that is accepted language in the age of jihad. The mental health
community is not going to blow up Buckingham Palace.
There’s a lot of fluff in the piece, but
what the article does not tell you is that Edmonton is home to London’s largest
Turkish community. Or that a widow and
grandmother described
as “such a sweet lady” was beheaded in her own backyard by a devout Muslim in
Edmonton not that long ago.
The attack is referred to as “GBH.” Note
the obscure terms. One might say thatgrievous
bodily harm is too harsh, but the media is shielding the perp,
not the reader.
This act of sheer terror is getting no
press. And why would it?
Pamela Geller is the
President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of The Geller Report and author of the bestselling
book,FATWA: Hunted in
America, as well as The
Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the
Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her onTwitter or Facebook.
Brunei
Imposes Sharia Law: Homosexuals May Be Imprisoned, Tortured, and Executed
JOHN HAYWARD
27 Mar 2019341
3:54
Brunei’s already
strict Islamic criminal code will enter an even tougher new stage next week
with the introductions of laws mandating lengthy prison terms, whipping, and
even execution for homosexual behavior. Brunei is set to become the first Asian
country to punish homosexuality with the death penalty, as several Arab
countries do.
Brunei
began imposing sharia law with a three-stage process in 2014.
The first stage criminalized Christmas celebrations, getting pregnant out of
wedlock, and failing to attend Muslim prayer services. Homosexuality was also
criminalized, but the penalty in Stage One of the sharia revolution
was merely 10 years in prison.
The
sultanate disregarded five years of criticism from international human rights
groups and quietly issued court orders to proceed with
Stage Two on April 3. Gays will be whipped, imprisoned for much longer
sentences, and could be executed by stoning, although Brunei has recently been
lax about actually carrying out death sentences.
Another
perennial sharia favorite, cutting of the hands of thieves, is
included in the upgraded legal code. According to Amnesty
International, many of these harsh penalties with be applicable to children.
“Brunei
must immediately halt its plans to implement these vicious punishments and
revise its Penal Code in compliance with its human rights obligations. The
international community must urgently condemn Brunei’s move to put these cruel
penalties into practice,” Amnesty International researcher Rachel Chhoa-Howard
said on Wednesday.
Reuters reported on
Monday that the new laws are being “fast-tracked” after a period of hesitation
on the part of the sultanate. There has been little in the way of a formal
announcement, and the prime minister’s office has not responded to media
inquiries. This week’s outraged responses from human rights groups were based
largely on researchers uncovering government documents ordering implementation
of the new punishments to begin in April.
“We
are trying to get pressure placed on the government of Brunei but realize there
is a very short time frame until the laws take effect. It took us by surprise
that the government has now given a date and is rushing through
implementation,” said Australian activist Matthew Woolfe of The Brunei Project.
His reaction suggests the fast track was chosen so that critics would be caught
off guard.
Channel
News Asia suggested on
Wednesday that Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah might be embracing hard line sharia law
as an exercise in virtue-signaling, shoring up his Islamic bona fides after a
lifetime of conspicuous consumption and some family scandals:
Brunei’s
Sultan is no stranger to controversy at home – the monarchy was deeply
embarrassed by a family feud with his brother Jefri over the latter’s alleged
embezzlement of US$15 billion during his tenure as finance minister in the
1990s.
Court
battles and investigations revealed salacious details of Jefri’s jetset
lifestyle, including claims of a high-priced harem of foreign women and a
luxury yacht he owned called “Tits”.
Human
Rights Campaign director Ty Cobb called on the
Trump administration to take a public stand against Brunei’s legal code:
We
are facing a dangerous crisis as Brunei is close to implementing laws that
impose state-sponsored torture and murder of LGBTQ people. It’s absolutely
crucial that the international community speak out now and demand that the
Sultan of Brunei stop these barbaric changes that threaten the lives of Brunei
citizens. The Trump-Pence Administration must also immediately make clear that
these outrageous human rights abuses will not be tolerated.
The
Trump State Department expressed
concerns about the direction of Brunei’s legal system in 2017,
noting the laws criticized as anti-gay could technically impose death by
stoning against heterosexual couples for engaging in “carnal intercourse
against the order of nature.” The State Department noted numerous reports of
discrimination from gays and lesbians in Brunei, including intimidation by the
police.
Nigerian Muslim
Militants Kill 120 Christians in Three Weeks
16 Mar 201943,058
2:37
The recent death
toll of Christians in Nigeria has reached 120 with this week’s slaughter of
more than 50 by Fulani Muslim militants in the Kaduna state of Nigeria,
the Christian Postreported.
The
Fulani jihadists, who have become a greater threat to
Nigerian Christians than the Islamist terror group Boko Haram, stormed the
villages of Inkirimi, Dogonnoma, and Ungwan Gora in the Kajuru Local Government
Area last Monday, destroying 143 homes, killing 52 people, and wounding dozens
more.
The
assailants reportedly split into three groups, the first of which fired upon
the people, the second set fire to buildings, and the third chased down people
fleeing from the scene. Victims of the assault included women and children.
Monday’s
incident followed an attack the day before in the Ungwan Barde village in
Kajuru, where 17 Christians were killed and dozens of homes were burned.
In
the first week of March, Muslim extremists massacred more
than 30 Christians in Karamar village, setting fire to several houses and a
church. The terrorists reportedly shot at families trying to escape the fire,
killing 32.
The
spate of recent attacks against communities has taken place within the
predominantly Christian Adara chiefdom of southern Kaduna.
The
governor of Kaduna state, Nasir El-Rufai, has imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew on
the Kajuru Local Government Area to try to contain the violence.
In
late February, militants attacked the Maro village, killing 38 Christians and
torching homes as well as a Christian church.
The Christian Post reported that
Fulani militants killed thousands of Christians in 2018 alone in what many are
calling a Christian genocide in Nigeria’s Middle Belt.
Last
December, a leading Anglican bishop in Nigeria, Dr. Benjamin Argak Kwashi, said
that the Muslim Fulani militants represent the number one terrorist threat facing
Christians in Nigeria.
“The
government is able to provide protection [to the Christians], but what’s
obvious to everybody is that the government is unwilling,” Kwashi told
Breitbart News.
“The
Fulani herdsmen are a bigger threat,” Kwashi added. “Boko Haram operates in the
northeast and scantily moves into other areas, but the Fulani herdsmen are
widespread. They’re everywhere now. So the Fulani are a bigger threat.”
Follow
Thomas D. Williams on Twitter
Islamic Scholar:
No Western Country Has Successfully Integrated Muslims
8 Mar 2019319
3:25
Dutch author and sociologist Ruud Koopmans said this week that Muslims
are more difficult to integrate into Western society than other migrant groups
because of a literal interpretation of the Quran prevalent among Muslims.
Ruud
Koopmans, professor at the Berlin Social Science Center and author of several
books including Contested Citizenship:
Immigration and Cultural Diversity in Europe, told the
Danish newspaper Berlingske that
whereas most groups of migrants integrate relatively quickly, especially from
one generation to the next, Islam stands out as an exception.
“Although
it’s not completely absent in Muslims, the change is much slower,” he said,
noting that a literal interpretation of the Quran prevents them from
integrating into Western countries.
In
an earlier published study titled
“Fundamentalism and out-group hostility,” Koopmans compared Muslim radicalism
with Christian radicalism to better understand why Islam stands out for its
isolationism.
“Almost
60 percent agree that Muslims should return to the roots of Islam,” he wrote,
while “75 percent think there is only one interpretation of the Qur’an possible
to which every Muslim should stick.”
Koopmans,
who has been studying Islam for over twenty years, also found that “65 percent
say that religious rules are more important to them than the laws of the
country in which they live.”
Regarding
Christian citizens on the other hand, Koopmans found that fewer than 4 percent
“can be characterized as consistent fundamentalists.”
“I
conclude that the Islamic world is lagging behind rest of the world when it
comes to democracy, human rights, and political and economic development,”
Koopmans told Berlingske in
his interview this week.
“The
main problem is how many Muslims and, globally, how many Muslim countries
interpret Islam. Namely, in a way that basically claims that the Qur’an and the
Sunna must be taken literally, and that the way the Prophet lived in the 7th
century must be the yardstick for how Muslims should live in the 21st century,”
he said.
“Such
a brand of Islam is, firstly, a threat to world peace. Secondly, it prevents
integration,” Koopmans concluded.
Although
it is politically taboo to draw distinctions between ethnic groups when it
comes to immigration, some scholars, including Pope Benedict XVI, have urged
the West not to assume that all cultures share its basic suppositions about the
human person and society.
Prior
to his election as pope, Joseph Ratzinger wrote that
“the interplay of society, politics, and religion has a completely different
structure in Islam” than it does in the West.
Unfortunately,
he added, much of today’s discussion in the West regarding Islam “presupposes
that all religions have basically the same structure, that they all fit into a
democratic system with its regulations and the possibilities provided by these
regulations.”
“The
Koran is a total religious law, which regulates the whole of political and
social life and insists that the whole order of life be Islamic,” Ratzinger
wrote. “Sharia shapes society from beginning to end. In this sense, it can
exploit such partial freedoms as our constitution gives, but it can’t be its
final goal to say: Yes, now we too area body with rights, now we are present
just like the Catholics and the Protestants.”
“In
such a situation, it would not achieve a status consistent with its inner
nature; it would be in alienation from itself,” he said.
The next stage in tech overlords' censorship: De-platforming un-PC blogs
It's no longer just Facebook, Twitter, and Google
who are censoring online content that offends
political correctness. Wordpress.com, a blog-
hosting site that offers anyone the opportunity to
create and publish a blog at no cost, has decided to
de-platform — in other words, kill — a blog that
has been operating for 15 years: Creeping Sharia.
As Pamela Geller points out, this move by Wordpress.com is itself an example of the blog's focus of creeping sharia happening in real time. Shutting down a critic of creeping sharia is an example of creeping sharia.
It is important to note that Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org are separate entities. The differences are explained in detail here. Basically:
WordPress.com is owned by a privately held company called Automattic.You have to understand a little bit of history of the open-source WordPress project to understand Automattic's contributions and the reasons why they get favorable treatment such as the ability to use the WordPress trademark and the coveted WordPress.com domain as part of their paid product.Automattic was started by the co-founding developer of the open source WordPress software, Matt Mullenweg.Matt created Automattic in 2005, almost two years after WordPress, with the primary purpose to make WordPress hosting easier and allow people with little technical knowledge to start a blog with WordPress.Since WordPress.com platform was powered by the open source WordPress software, Automattic had a vested interest in the further development of the free WordPress software.Several of the early Automattic employees were contributing developers of WordPress prior to the company, so it should go without saying that financial interest wasn't the only reason why Automattic invested in WordPress.Because the open-source project didn't really make any money in the beginning, Matt first registered the WordPress trademark through Automattic.As WordPress grew in popularity, Automattic donated the WordPress trademark to the WordPress Foundation in 2010 to ensure long-term sustainability of the non-profit project.It's important to note that Matt Mullenweg is the CEO of Automattic and also serves in the board of the WordPress foundation.
Christians Who Died on Easter Were Victims of a Global – And Escalating – Hatred of Christianity
Sri Lanka. April 21. Five hundred wounded, over 300 dead in terrorist attacks.
According to mainstream media and many in the international community, these attacks were another senseless assault on “humanity.” But the destruction of Christian churches on Easter morning was not motivated by generic hatred. We know exactly why these men, women, and children died.
They died for their Christian faith.
On the holiest day in the Christian calendar, three bombs ripped through Christian churches, killing hundreds who had gathered peacefully to celebrate Christ’s resurrection from the dead.
But international leaders have studiously avoided calling this what it is: anti-Christian persecution.
Former President Barack Obama tweeted, “The attacks on tourists and Easter worshippers in Sri Lanka are an attack on humanity.” Hillary Clinton tweeted about “today’s horrific attacks on Easter worshippers and travelers.”
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi condemned “the horrific blasts in Sri Lanka,” but said nothing about how the violence targeted Christians, and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan called the attacks “an assault on all humanity.”
All that is true, but it is not enough—especially given the fact that Obama and Clinton expressly mentioned the Jewish and Muslim communities after recent attacks on a synagogue and a mosque.
Post-Sri Lanka, these leaders avoided the word “church” and said nothing about the global Christian community—or about the reality that Christians are now the most persecuted religious group in the world.
In fact, just one day after the bombings, CNN completely ignored the attacks in a series of town halls. Many journalists actually scoffed at the notion that Christians face intense persecution around the globe.
Pointing out the double standard here might strike some as petty scorekeeping. But words matter.
When people acknowledge that Jews or Muslims are persecuted for their beliefs but ignore that Christians are being persecuted for theirs, they give us a grossly inaccurate picture of reality.
The truth is that Christians globally are facing the same hatred that spurred the Sri Lanka attacks. Consider:
- Asia, where Sri Lankan Christians regularly face the destruction of their churches and physical assault. Christians in India likewise endure extreme persecution from Hindu extremists while the Indian government does little to stop it. In North Korea, Christians who are found out are killed or imprisoned in labor camps, and their families punished as well. Under President Xi Jinping, China has shut down or demolished thousands of churches, arrested thousands of Christians and church leaders, and is even now producing its own Communist Party-friendly version of the Bible. This year across Asia, 1 in 3 Christians will likely experience repression and persecutionbecause of their faith.
- The Middle East, where since 2011, over 200,000 Coptic Christians from Egypt have been forced to flee their homes, and where two years ago, dozens were murdered in Palm Sunday church bombings. In addition, Syrian Christians fear for their lives, and over a million Iraqi Christians since 2003 have fled to avoid persecution.
- Africa, where 2 million Nigerians, including many Christians, have been driven from their homes by Islamist extremists, with thousands brutally murdered. In Libya and Somalia, radical Islamist militias openly hunt down and kill Christians. A new wave of attacks in recent weeks by Islamist terrorists in Burkina Faso have targeted and killed Christians there during worship, with far too few Western leaders speaking out.
- Europe, where last year in France, two Christian churches were desecrated every single day. In Germany, Christians who have fled persecution in the Middle East now face harassment and oppression that is painfully similar to what they left behind.
The Christians who died on Easter in Sri Lanka were not victims of isolated, senseless terrorism. They were victims of a global—and escalating—hatred of Christianity.
Like the millions of other Christians whose lives are increasingly forfeited for their faith, the martyrs of Sri Lanka deserve the truth be told about why they died. The best tribute we can give them is not shock or wistful eulogies. Their enduring legacy should be a new determination—on the part of world leaders everywhere—to promote and defend religious freedom.
President of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani was one of the few world leaders to speak the truth about these attacks and about Christian persecution when he tweeted: “Even on Easter Sunday, there are those who sow hatred and reap death. The attacks in Sri Lanka churches testify to a real genocide perpetrated against Christians. Let us pray for the innocent victims and work towards religious freedom around the world.”
The perpetrators of these attacks are part of a growing genocidal effort worldwide to eradicate Christianity. Only by identifying their motive can we effectively counter and end this brutal agenda.
NHS nurse stared into London Bridge terrorist's 'evil, empty' eyes and asked him 'what's wrong with you?' before he snapped back 'no, what's wrong with YOU?' - and then slashed her neck
- French waiter Alexandre Pigeard, 26, was stabbed to death, an inquest heard
- His terrorist killer 'looked evil' and was smiling as he looked for other victims
- NHS nurse saw stabbing and was also attacked before 'slipping in my own blood'
- Eight people died in June 2017 when terrorists hit pedestrians on London Bridge
- Khuram Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba then leapt out with knives
Nurse Helen Kennett arrives for the London Bridge inquests at the Old Bailey today
An NHS nurse has told how she stared into the 'sorrowless, evil, empty' eyes of an ISIS-inspired killer and asked him 'what's wrong with you?' - before he slashed open her neck in the London Bridge attack.
Helen Kennett was off-duty drinking prosecco to celebrate her birthday with her mother and sister in the courtyard of Boro Bistro when she heard the terrorists' van crash on the street above, an inquest heard today.
When she saw the extremists descend the stairs from the bridge to Borough Market, she thought they were innocent people seeking help after a car accident.
But as she approached to give them first aid, she saw one of the killers, Rachid Redouane, 30, stabbing 26-year-old Alexandre Pigeard from behind and realised it was a deliberate attack.
Giving evidence at the Old Bailey, Ms Kennett said: 'I looked up at the attacker. I did exchange words with him. I looked at him and I said: 'What's wrong with you?'
'He immediately looked at me and said: 'No, what's wrong with you.' Before I could process what was happening he stabbed me in the neck on the left side.
'He was dark-skinned, I'm sure, he had a bit of a whispy beard, not a proper one. I just remember his eyes, they were completely sorrowless, evil, empty.'
Despite his fatal injuries, Mr Pigeard warned the NHS nurse to run away before she was also stabbed by Redouane and left for dead in the incident on June 3, 2017.
Ms Kennett recalled 'slipping in my own blood' as she desperately tried to reach her family in an alleyway near the restaurant.
Rachid Redouane (pictured left), 30, was the terrorist who stabbed nurse Helen Kennett and killed waiter Alexandre Pigeard. One of his accomplices Youssef Zaghba, 22, is pictured right
Khuram Butt walked over to a tap, ran his knife under it to clean off the blood, and wiped it, first on one side of his face, then the other. He was shot dead by police
The three fanatics, Kharum Butt, 27, Youssef Zaghba, 22, and Redouane, murdered Christine Archibald, 30, and Xavier Thomas, 45, with a van, and fatally stabbed Mr Pigeard along with Sara Zelenak, 21, Kirsty Boden, 28, James McMullan, 32, Ignacio Echeverria, 39, and Sebastian Belanger, 36. Another 48 people were injured.
Ms Kennett said it felt as though someone had 'thrown a bucket of warm water' over her as her blood streamed out of her wound.
'I felt this rushing all down my body and I thought: 'Oh no, I've been stabbed as well.'
Ms Kennett, who had been celebrating a family birthday with her sister Louise and their mother, said she was certain she was going to die.
She remembers hearing 'screaming and shouting' as two of the terrorists hacked away at victims near the Boro Bistro restaurant.
She added: 'I knew at this point I couldn't help people and I thought I was going to die. But I didn't want to die there, I wanted to die around the corner with my family.'
Alexandre Pigeard, 26, was killed in the London Bridge attack on June 3, 2017
After reaching her family members, she told them how to treat her wound, and they stemmed the blood with tea towels and a shirt.
She had to walk to an ambulance near the Bunch of Grapes pub on St Thomas Street before she was taken to Kings Cross Hospital. 'I was very conscious of what was happening,' she said.
'I knew that my airway was punctured, I knew my oesophagus was punctured, I thought if my artery has been punctured I may have a few minutes and that's all.'
Recalling the moments the terrorists came down the staircase after crashing their van, she said: 'I presumed they had come down because of an accident and they have come down for us to help them after the accident.
'The first time I noticed [Mr Pigeard] was when I saw him bleeding a lot and the attacker standing behind him.
'I thought that he had been involved in the car crash and the man standing behind him had dragged him down the stairs for us to help him.
'I went to him because I thought I had to do something, he was bleeding a lot. As I got closer I'm sure there was a cut right across his neck.
Mr Pigeard was killed just three yards away from diners he was serving in Bore Bistro
'I looked at his injuries, I looked at the man, then I saw the knives, I saw his throat. I immediately knew in my mind that that was an unsurvivable injury and this was very serious.'
Ms Kennett said the attacker had an arm around Mr Pigeard and had a knife raised in his other hand ready to stab him again.
Describing Mr Pigeard's dying moments, she said: 'I spoke to him, I put my arm out to him. I said: 'Let me help you, I'm a nurse.' He shook his head. I don't know what he knew. I'm sure he told me to run.'
The inquest also heard from Geoffrey Huet who saw the second attack from outside the bistro and said he believed Redouane was trying to 'finish off' Mr Pigeard.
'I looked at the killer in the eyes and saw the flash of the blade,' he said. 'He had this craziness in his eyes, this anger, he looked furious.'
Alexandre was seen writhing on the floor holding his throat with his hands after it was slashed open by Redouane.
The inquest heard brave NHS nurse Kirsty Boden, 28, also rushed to his aid before being knifed repeatedly.
The three terrorists strapped fake explosive belts made from water bottles on to their torsos in a bid to strike fear into the hearts of officers attempting to stop them
The terrorists tied 12-inch knives to their wrists with tape before they launched their attack
Tomasso Clemente, who was also out with friends at Boro Bistro, saw her brutal murder.
He said: 'I saw this guy, he was bent over her. He was stabbing this girl.
'At the beginning I thought he was trying to help her to stand up, but then I saw he pulled a knife from her belly.
'Next to her there was a guy lying on the floor, I recognised him as a waiter because I had seen him around the place.
'I noticed he was covered in blood and he was holding his throat with his hands.'
Mr Clemente said Alexandre was laying on his back 'rocking' from side to side as he died in a pool of blood.
Dubbed the 'Angel of London Bridge' for her efforts to help victims, Ms Boden desperately tried to fend off her killer as she was hacked to death.
'She was lying on the floor and she was trying to protect herself with her hands,' said Mr Clemente.
'She was covering her chest and belly. I saw the knife going through her two or three times.'
The witness described seeing the ISIS fanatic raising his 12-inch blade above his head and plunging it down into the victim repeatedly during the horrifying attack.
A map of the London Bridge area shows where each of the victims were injured
Earlier, the inquest heard from a diner who saw the terrorist stab her waiter to death and told how she feared she would die next as the 'smiling' killer scoured the scene for his next victim.
Andzelika Abokaityte and her boyfriend were celebrating a friend's birthday at Boro Bistro on the evening of June 3, 2017 when Mr Pigeard, who had been serving them, was brutally killed.
Mr Pigeard, 26, was one of eight victims of the three terrorists who had taped armed with 12in ceramic knives.
The couple heard the terrorists' van crash into the railings above them, sending debris down onto the tables in the courtyard below.
'My friends stood up and they were looking at what happened above us and they said a van crashed into the bridge,' she told the inquest into the deaths.
One friend was hit on the arm by glass or a brick from above, she said and she was asking him if he was OK when she heard people screaming.
'Shortly after I was looking and I could see a man holding our waiter,' she said.
The man was three metres away, grasping Mr Pigeard from behind. She said: 'I could only see his face. He looked evil and he was smiling.
'He was dark skinned, I think, with dark hair. I think he had a little beard. He was holding the waiter and stabbing him from behind.
'I think two times and then I looked at my friend and asked him to run.
'When I looked around and, I don't know if it was the same person, I saw him slicing the neck.'
Pictured: the battered Renault van used by terrorists during the attack on London Bridge in 2017, leaving it with its bumper hanging off
The man was 'looking around as if to find the next person to stab', she said. 'I remember thinking I was going to die. The whole thing was horrific'.
The couple retreated inside the restaurant from where a friend jumped through the window, to rescue his wife from under one of the tables and they then escaped through the emergency exit.
'There was a man holding his neck with a lot of blood trying to stop it and there was a woman lying down, I'm not sure if she was alive.
'I think there were her friends standing around. I think she was wearing a multi coloured dress with flowers on it. She wasn't moving, her eyes were open.'
Mr Pigeart's colleague, Dimitri Gabriel, heard the crash and went out to investigate with Mr Pigeart leading the way.
'The last word he said to me is let's go up and see what happened. Maybe it's an accident on the bridge,' Mr Gabriel told the inquest.
They went through a stone arch and up some stairs, where other witnesses suggest Mr Pigeart was stabbed in the neck before retreating.
'He was just in front of me,' Mr Gabriel said. 'He went towards the arch. As soon as I reached that arch he was already going up the stairs.
'There were loads of people screaming and so I decided to go back. The screams were coming from the top of the stairs. People were coming down.'
He retreated down an alleyway and then returned to the restaurant. 'I decided to go and check on the customers and when I went back outside I saw him.
He was laying down right in front of the restaurant. 'My colleagues were saying it's Alexandre, it's Alexandre. I said no. One of my colleagues took a blanket to cover him.
'He was face down but my colleagues together we were in shock as well. We didn't know what to do.'
The inquest continues into the deaths.
Who were the victims of the London Bridge terror attack?
Ignacio Echeverria
Spaniard Ignacio Echeverria was stabbed to death as he tried to fight off the terrorist attackers with his skateboard.
The 39-year-old had been in the UK for over a year was working as a financial crime analyst at HSBC.
Mr Echeverria joined unarmed police constables Wayne Marques and Charlie Guenigault in fighting off the three attackers as they set upon Marie Bondeville, hitting at least one terrorist with his skateboard.
'His courageous efforts were to seek to stop the attack,' Chief Coroner Mark Lucraft said.
Kirsty Boden
Mr Echeverria was the youngest of five siblings and was a Catholic who went to mass every week. He could speak English, German and French fluently.
Nurse Kirsty Boden was fatally stabbed as she tried to tend to the wounded and the dying.
Miss Boden, 28, moved to London in 2013 from the small town of Loxton, in South Australia.
She was a senior staff nurse at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital and lived with her British boyfriend James Hodder in a flat in Hampstead.
Mr Hodder said: 'She loved people and loved her life helping others. To Kirsty, her actions that night would have been an extension of how she lived her life.'
Alexandre Pigeard
Alexandre Pigeard was working as a waiter at Boro Bistro when he was attacked.
The 26-year-old Frenchman had moved to London to further his ambitions as a dance music DJ.
Minutes before he was fatally stabbed, he video-called his father Philippe during a break from work at the French restaurant.
Mr Pigeard had planned to return to France in the autumn of 2017 to help open a restaurant in Nantes and to record an EP with his musician father.
Mr Pigeard senior told the inquest: 'I'm present here as a devastated father who has lost a child in such circumstances - an inconsolable father.'
James McMullan
James McMullan was stabbed in the chest near the Barrowboy and Banker pub while he was celebrating getting financial backing for his online education company.
The British-Filipino entrepreneur was watching the Champions League final with friends in the pub.
The 32-year-old, from Hackney in East London, was attacked when he stepped outside to have a cigarette.
He had dreamed of helping children without access to education through his e-learning company.
Mr McMullan's father Simon described his son as 'funny, charming and clever' and said 'his fearlessness could never be underestimated'.
Sebastien Belanger
The mother of chef Sebastien Belangersaid she does not forgive the terrorists who 'mutilated and killed him'.
Her 36-year-old son was drinking at the Boro Bistro when he was stabbed repeatedly in the chest.
His mother Josiane Belanger said: 'We miss him so much, his smile, his joie de vivre. I do not forgive what they did to him.'
Originally from Angers in western France, Mr Belanger started work at the Coq d'Argent in the City and was promoted to the role of head chef.
Australian au pair Sara Zelenak was on the 'trip of a lifetime' when she was stabbed to death while on a night out with a friend.
Sara Zelenak
Miss Zelenak's mother Julie Wallace said 'every sliding door' put her daughter in 'harm's way'.
'She was meant to be working and at the last minute she got the night off,' Mrs Wallace said.
'At 10pm Sara's phone rang and her friend said 'I've finished at the rugby' and so she left her safe haven and walked out into a terrorist attack and was stabbed to death.'
Before leaving for UK in March 2017, Miss Zelenak worked with her stepfather Mark as a crane truck operator in Brisbane to save up for her trip.
Her parents have since set up Sarz Sanctuary to help other families to cope with grief.
Xavier Thomas
Xavier Thomas was walking over London Bridge with his girlfriend Christine Delcros when they were hit by the van.
The 45-year-old father-of-two was catapulted into the Thames and his girlfriend suffered life-changing injuries. His body was recovered downstream three days later.
Mr Thomas, who had arrived in London on the day of the attack, lived near Paris and worked for American Express.
Miss Delcros said: 'Since Xavier disappeared in such tragic and traumatic circumstances our whole world has fallen apart.'
Canadian tourist Christine Archibald told her fiance Tyler Ferguson she loved him seconds before she was mowed down.
Christine Archibald
Miss Archibald and Mr Ferguson were walking across London Bridge after dinning at a nearby restaurant when the atrocity unfolded.
Her fiancé said: 'At one point Chrissy stopped me out of nowhere, grabbed me close and gave me a passionate kiss after telling me she loved me.
'I remember it being a warm summer's evening and the sun had just gone down.. And then the attack took place and Chrissy was killed.
'No words can express how I felt when this happened. I was absolutely devastated and inconsolable. Nothing has ever been the same since.'
Miss Archibald's engagement ring was lost during the attack, but later recovered from the bridge. Mr Ferguson now wears it on a chain around his neck.
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