Showing posts with label Criticism of religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Criticism of religion. Show all posts

Saturday, November 11, 2017

Roy Moore Story Unraveling? One Accuser Worked For Hillary, Another Claims Several Pastors Made Sexual Advances

Content originally published at iBankCoin.com


From the outset, several aspects of the Washington Post‘s decades-old accusations of Roy Moore having inappropriate relations with four young women seemed off. In addition to odd circumstances surrounding the story’s origins, the accusers themselves – and even the WaPo journalist who wrote the story – have checkered pasts and political views which some could consider ulterior motives.


If the accusations against Moore are true, he needs to immediately step aside and exit politics – as both President Trump and, oddly, Mitch McConnell have stated. Moore has vehemently denied the charges.


How did the story come together?


As Radio host Mark Levin pointed out on his show last week that there are several aspects of the case which don’t really make sense. To recap; a Washington Post reporter overheard a rumor at a Roy Moore event in Alabama about Moore sexually abusing four girls 38 years ago, then found the women, interviewed them, and the rest is history.


Per WaPo:








While reporting a story in Alabama about supporters of Moore’s Senate campaign, a Post reporter heard that Moore allegedly had sought relationships with teenage girls. Over the ensuing three weeks, two Post reporters contacted and interviewed the four women.



Levin posed the following questions:



  • How did the WaPo reporter know there were four women, who they were, and how to contact them?



  • How is it that the reporter"s anonymous source, who they bumped into, knew about the four women who don’t know each other and have never met, and knew each woman"s story and contact information?



  • Why hasn’t any of this been reported in Moore’s 38 years in politics? And why now – a month before an important election to fill Jeff Sessions’ senate seat?


Adding to the list of questionable circumstances - one which the Washington Post oddly omitted from it"s report, is the fact that one of Moore’s accusers, Debbie Gibson, worked as a sign language interpreter for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, and is actively campaigning for Moore’s Democrat opponent, Doug Jones.


As New York Times bestselling author, Attorney, Law professor and Newsmax columnis James Hirsen points out:



 Here’s Gibson, hard at work for Hillary:




Another Moore accuser, Leigh Corfman, has claimed “several pastors at various churches made sexual advances at her.” This 3x divorcee who has also filed for bankruptcy three times.



The Star reports:


She says that her teenage life became increasingly reckless with drinking, drugs, boyfriends, and a suicide attempt when she was 16.


 


As the years went on, Corfman says, she did not share her story about Moore partly because of the trouble in her life. She has had three divorces and financial problems. While living in Arizona, she and her second husband started a screen-printing business that fell into debt. They filed for bankruptcy protection three times, once in 1991 with $139,689 in unpaid claims brought by the Internal Revenue Service and other creditors, according to court records.


 


In 2005, Corfman paid a fine for driving a boat without lights. In 2010, she was working at a convenience store when she was charged with a misdemeanor for selling beer to a minor. The charge was dismissed, court records show.



The WaPo reporter who penned the article wrote fake check, according to an 2011 Red State report


Ms. McCrummen has a rather interesting criminal history herself, as public criminal records in multiple states stretching across 4 time zones have shown.


Ms. McCrummen’s criminal history began with North Carolina Case # 1992 CR 00654, a violation of the Article 19 – False Pretenses and Cheats section of the North Carolina Criminal Code. Ms. McCrummen was convicted of a crime punishable by up to six months of imprisonment for writing a hot check that was deemed worthless.


Last but not least, former Secret Service agent Doug Lewis (@umpire43) has made an unsubstantiated claim that a WaPo reporter named “Beth” offered a family friend $1000 to accuse Roy Moore, and that a tape of the offer is in the hands of the DA. 







Again – if Roy Moore took advantage of four young women 38 years ago, it is reprehensible and he should face justice if at all possible. That said, several troubling aspects of the Moore accusations have come to light in the days since the report, casting what many feel is reasonable doubt on the entire thing.


Moore has denied the allegations and issued the following statement:


 




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Monday, August 14, 2017

"White Supremacist","Gentle Giant" James Fields Denied Bail, Said "Hitler's Policies Were Good"

Charlottesville car attack driver James Fields, described both as a "gentle giant" by some and "hard-core pro-Hitler" by others who know him, was ordered held without bond Monday as he faces second degree murder and other charges for ramming the grey car into the crowd, killing a 32-year-old woman and injuring 19 others.



As NYDailyNews.com reports, Fields appeared via video in Charlottesville court wearing a black and white collared jumpsuit. No cameras were allowed to film or photograph the proceeding. Mr. Fields was charged with one count of second-degree murder, three counts of malicious wounding and one count of hit and run, according to local police.  His only words were “yes sir” and “no sir” to Judge Robert Downer’s questions.


The 20 year old man was remembered as a quiet student by a school principal and a fellow classmate, but a former teacher said he also espoused white-supremacist views.





“From what I remember, he was a quiet and reserved student,” Michael Wilson, principal at Randall K. Cooper High School in Union, Ky. said in an email. “Our thoughts and prayers are with those in Charlottesville, Virginia. Hatred and violence is never a viable solution to any problem. As educators, we are always using teachable moments and providing guidance to students to create college, career and life ready students to make good and sound choices.”



The Wall Street Journal reports that Mr. Fields joined the Army shortly after high school and reported to basic training in August 2015.





“He was, however, released from active duty due to a failure to meet training standards in December of 2015,” Lt. Col. Jennifer Johnson, an Army spokeswoman, said in an email. She didn’t elaborate on how he failed to meet standards.



“As a result he was never awarded a military occupational skill nor was he assigned to a unit outside of basic training,” Lt. Col. Johnson said.



Mr. Fields’s father died in a car accident while Ms. Bloom was pregnant, according to David Young, a former neighbor who said he knew Ms. Bloom and her son in Florence, Ky., when Mr. Fields was a young boy.





Fields" mother, Samantha Bloom, said that her son had told her he was going to a rally, which she thought “had something to do with Trump.”



A high school teacher said Fields was fascinated with Nazism, idolized Adolf Hitler and had been singled out by school officials in the 9th grade for his “deeply held, radical” convictions on race.





As a freshman, the student turned in an assignment to another teacher that expressed views that “the Nazis were good, their policies were good, Adolf Hitler was a great leader,” Mr. Weimer recalled in an interview. “In a nutshell, the white race is superior—that was the general thrust,” he said.



During Mr. Fields’s junior and senior years, Mr. Weimer taught him two classes, world civilization and a course on modern U.S. wars. Mr. Fields chose to study the Waffen SS—the military wing of the Nazi Party—for an in-depth research paper, Mr. Weimer said. While Mr. Fields did well on the assignment, it was “hard-core pro-German,” his former teacher said.



Mr. Weimer said Mr. Fields would often steer class discussions on topics that had nothing to do with Nazism to “pro-Hitler stuff, pro-white supremacy stuff.”



One high-school classmate wrote in a blog post Sunday that he remembered Mr. Fields as a “gentle giant” who was kind and shy when spoken to.


Mr. Weimer said he had a good rapport with Mr. Fields, who he said tried to marshal facts in support of his arguments and wasn’t combative toward him or Mr. Fields’s classmates.





“I used all these tricks to really ram home how evil and wrong the Nazis were, how we live in the greatest country,” Mr. Weimer said.



“I definitely feel like I failed.”


Thursday, July 13, 2017

A Month Of Multiculturalism In Germany: June 2017

Authored by Soren Kern via The Gatestone Institute,


  • A 10-year-old girl from a former republic of the Soviet Union was raped by an asylum seeker from Ghana, but police and the local government allegedly suppressed information about the crime for more than two weeks.

  • A student sexually assaulted an 11-year-old girl and punched another boy in the face, breaking his glasses. At least six other students have been beaten bloody. The school"s leadership has refused to discipline the child, apparently because of his migrant background, and instead has lashed out at the parents for demanding a safe environment for their children.

  • Police in Lübeck suspect that refugees are taking over illegal drug trade in the city.

June 1. A Syrian migrant was stabbed to death in Oldenburg by another Syrian because he was eating ice cream during Ramadan. The murder, which occurred in broad daylight in a busy pedestrian shopping area, was just the latest example of Islamic law, Sharia, being enforced on German streets.


June 2. Around one million non-Europeans living in Germany are now on welfare, an increase of 124% in just one year, according to new statistics from the Federal Employment Agency (Bundesagentur für Arbeit). The top welfare beneficiaries are from: Syria (509,696); Turkey (276,399); Iraq (110,529) and Afghanistan (65,443).


June 2. Police temporarily halted the annual Rock am Ring music festival in Nürburg because of a possible jihadist threat. Authorities asked the 90,000 visitors to leave the concert grounds in a "controlled and calm" manner. The move was based on "concrete leads which do not allow us to eliminate a possible terror threat," the police said.


June 3. Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann called on Germany"s BfV domestic intelligence agency to begin surveilling minors suspected of being involved with Islamist groups:





"I would strongly urge for the age limit for surveillance to be lowered throughout Germany. Minors have already committed serious acts of violence. Normally, the domestic intelligence agency in Bavaria would not place children under surveillance. But if there is concrete evidence that a 12-year-old is with an Islamist group, we have to be able to monitor them, too."



June 4. Mostafa J., a 41-year-old asylum seeker from Afghanistan, stabbed to death a five-year-old Russian at a refugee shelter in Arnschwang. The Afghan, who had been arguing with the boy"s 47-year-old mother, was shot to death by police after a standoff. It later emerged that the man had a criminal history in Germany and should have been deported but was not. In October 2009, for example, a court in Munich sentenced Mostafa J. to six years in prison for arson. In July 2011, he received a deportation order, but in 2014 he fooled a judge into believing that he had converted to Christianity and would be killed if he were deported to Afghanistan.


June 5. A study conducted by the Hanns Seidel Foundation, a think tank affiliated with Bavaria"s Christian Social Union, found that half the asylum seekers in Bavaria subscribe to classic anti-Semitic views about Jewish power. Around 60% of Afghans, 53% of Iraqis and 52% of Syrians said Jews wield too much influence.


June 7. A 27-year-old migrant from Syria stabbed and killed a Red Cross mental health counselor in Saarbrücken. The attacker and the psychologist allegedly got into an argument during a therapy session at a counselling center for traumatized refugees.


June 9. A court in Cottbus sentenced a 32-year-old Chechen migrant named Rashid D. to 13 years in prison for slitting his wife"s throat and throwing her out of the second-floor window of their apartment. The couple"s five children now live in Chechnya with their grandparents. The man was charged with manslaughter rather than murder because, according to the court, the "honor killing" was done in the heat of passion: the man thought that his wife had been unfaithful.


June 12. A 44-year-old migrant from Syria named Sultan K. was arrested at his home in Bullenhausen on charges of being a member of the Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist group. Police said that the man"s three brothers, Ahmed K. (51), Mustafa K. (41) and Abdullah K. (39), were also suspected of being members of al-Nusra. The arrest confirmed fears that jihadists posing as refugees have gained access to Germany.


June 12. Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann called on three German states — Berlin, Bremen and North Rhine-Westphalia — to introduce random police spot checks. Local laws against "racial profiling" prohibit police in the three states from stopping and identifying individuals. Hermann called it a "blatant security gap that urgently needs to be closed." He also said he wanted to see random checks extended in border areas, around airports, railway stations and rest-stops, as well as on highways that lead in and out of the country. At the moment, such checks are only allowed within 30 kilometers (20 miles) of German borders. Parliamentary spokesman Stephan Mayer said:





"The demand of Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann to finally introduce so-called spot-checks in the states of Berlin, Bremen and North Rhine-Westphalia is completely and utterly justified. Given the basically open borders in Europe, random checks are a necessary instrument for preventing terrorists, criminals and illegal immigrants from entering the country."



June 13. The newspaper, Bild, posted on its website a film — "Chosen and Excluded: Jew Hatred in Europe" — that was censored by the Franco-German television outlet ARTE because it showed Islamic-animated anti-Semitism and Jew-hatred in all walks of European life. Julian Reichelt, Bild"s online editor-in-chief, said:





"The TV documentary proves the rampant, in part socially acceptable Jew-hatred, for which there are only two words: disgusting and shameful. It is suspected that the documentary is not being shown on television because it is politically unsuitable and because the film shows an anti-Semitic worldview in wide parts of society that is disturbing. Our historical responsibility requires us to decisively counter the unspeakable truth that this film establishes."



June 14. A 33-year-old migrant from Syria stabbed and seriously injured his ex-wife at a supermarket in Cologne. He also stabbed his 13-year-old son after the boy intervened to protect his mother.


June 15. A 21-year-old migrant from Nigeria went on a rampage after the manager of a public swimming pool in Rosenheim repeatedly told him that hygiene regulations prohibited him from swimming in his underwear. After police arrived, the Nigerian attacked an officer. He was arrested for refusing to obey a police officer.


June 16. Germany"s first "liberal mosque" opened in Berlin. The Ibn Rushd-Goethe Mosque, which holds its services inside the St. Johannis Church in the Moabit district, was founded by Seyran Ates, a women"s rights activist who has been hailed by some as the "champion of modern Islam." The mosque allows men and women to pray together and the Koran to be interpreted "historically and critically." The mosque, which is open to everyone, including Alawite and Sufi Muslims, as well as homosexuals, has caused outrage in the Muslim world. Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, generally considered the leading authority on Sunni Islam, issued a fatwa warning against "religious innovation that is not approved by Islamic Sharia." Turkey"s religious affairs agency, Diyanet, said that the mosque"s practices "do not align with Islam"s fundamental resources, principles of worship, methodology or experience of more than 14 centuries, and are experiments aimed at nothing more than depraving and ruining religion." Ates, the mosque"s female imam, is now under 24-hour police protection.



Seyran Ates, a women"s rights activist who has been hailed by some as the "champion of modern Islam," recently opened Germany"s first "liberal mosque" in Berlin, and serves as its imam. Due to the outrage this caused in the Muslim world, Ates is now under 24-hour police protection. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)


June 17. In Cologne, a peace march organized by German Muslim groups to condemn terrorism and violence in the name of Islam had an extremely low turnout. Organizers had expected at least 10,000 participants, but actual turnout was estimated at between several hundred to about 3,500. Germany"s largest Islamic association, the Turkish-Islamic Union (DITIB) refused to take part in the march because it would "send the wrong signal to suggest that Muslims were mainly responsible for international terrorism."


June 18. The parents of student at the Kronwerk Gymnasium, a school in Rendsburg, have been ordered to appear in court because they refused to allow their child to visit a nearby mosque as part of a geography class. The parents, who are not religious, said they did not want their child to be exposed to "religious indoctrination." No one could be compelled to enter a sacred building against his or her own free will, they argued. The school insisted that the visit to the mosque was compulsory: "The school is designed to promote the openness of young people to cultural and religious diversity, the desire for international understanding and peace." Each parent was fined €150 ($175), which they refused to pay. They are now being sued. The mosque in question belongs to the Milli-Görüs movement (IGMG), one of Europe"s largest Islamist organizations. According to Germany"s BfV domestic intelligence agency, the movement is extremist and virulently anti-Semitic.


June 18. Local authorities in Hereford reportedly covered up information about the rape of a ten-year-old girl at a refugee shelter in the city. The girl, who is from a former republic of the Soviet Union, was raped by an asylum seeker from Ghana, but police and the local government allegedly suppressed information about the crime for more than two weeks.


June 18. Muslims in Freiburg launched an online petition demanding that the city prohibit male supervisors from working at a female-only swimming pool in the city. The petition says that Muslim women who want a "break from everyday gazes" are unable to use the pool. The petition adds that the "presence and supervision of male staff is deeply reactionary and sexist" and calls for the "creation of a dialogue to promote mutual understanding and acceptance." Facility managers at the Lorettobad said that it hired male supervisors because of a shortage of female personnel. The pool has been rocked by disputes between Muslims and managers who have been trying to enforce hygiene regulations at the facility: Muslim women have been angered after being told that they are not allowed to wear jeans and other street clothing while swimming, and also that they cannot consume food while in the pool. Some Muslim women have also been told that they have "too little control over their offspring" and that their children are "too wild" and are disturbing other guests. Muslims have reacted with such aggression that police repeatedly have been called to restore order at the pool.


June 19. Jakob Augstein, a German newspaper editor well known for his anti-Israel tirades, wrote an essay for Der Spiegel in which he expressed glee that so few Muslims attended an anti-terrorism rally in Cologne. He said that those Muslims who did attend were "Uncle Toms" and excessively subservient to their German "overseers." He wrote:





"Terror is not a question of civil society, but one of politics. What is more important, however, is that the demonstration call was addressed to the Muslims in Germany. This is an impertinence. What does the average German Muslim have to do with terrorism? Nothing.



"Just because terrorists justify their crimes with Islam, there is still no special obligation for people of the Muslim faith to distance themselves from these crimes. On the contrary, the terrorists would be given an honor that is not theirs: they are taken seriously as representatives of Islam. But they are not.... Terrorism is a political and social phenomenon, not a religious one. There are more than 1.5 billion Muslims in the world. Should all of them demonstrate? If I were a Muslim, I would refuse such requests."



June 20. Police in 14 German states raided the homes of three dozen people accused of posting hateful comments on social media. Most of the raids were said to have involved "right-wing incitement" while two of the raids involved "left-wing agitators." The head of the Federal Criminal Police (BKA) Holger Münch said: "Our free society must not allow a climate of fear, threats or criminal violence to be found either on the street or on the internet." Critics say the crackdown is part of an effort to suppress criticism of Chancellor Angela Merkel"s open door migration policy ahead of federal elections set for September 24, 2017.


June 20. In an essay published by Süddeutsche Zeitung, Benjamin Idriz, an imam in Bavaria, called on the German government to provide language training for imams so that they can become the "driving force behind integration and dialogue" in Germany:





"The demand for imams from around 2,700 municipalities in Germany is usually supplied by imams from abroad. Many of them are thus directly connected with foreign religious authorities and under foreign influence. Imams from abroad also hardly have sufficient language and cultural competence. They are therefore not conducive to the integration of the Muslims, nor do they meet the needs of the Muslim communities, especially among the younger generation. The demand for imams is enormous, and too much time has already been lost. We must begin before we lose the next generation."



June 21. The parents of more than 20 fifth-graders at the Herder-Gymnasium, a school in Charlottenburg district of Berlin, initiated a boycott of the school over accusations that the school was not dealing with discipline and violence in class. The problem revolves around one male student who has been bullying his classmates since he arrived at the school last fall. The student has sexually assaulted an 11-year-old girl and punched another boy in the face, breaking his glasses. At least six other students have been beaten bloody. "Our concern is that our children be protected," a father said. The school"s leadership has refused to discipline the child, apparently because of his migrant background, and instead has lashed out at the parents for demanding a safe environment for their children: "We deeply regret the fact that because of a single populist exception among the parents such serious damage has been done to the reputation of our school."


June 22. Aydan Özo?uz, Germany"s commissioner for immigration, refugees and integration, admitted that "there has been a shift in perceptions" and that only a quarter to a third of the so-called refugees in Germany will enter the labor market over the next five years, and "for many others we will need up to ten." In an interview with the Financial Times, she said that many of the first Syrian refugees to arrive in Germany were doctors and engineers, but they were succeeded by "many, many more who lacked skills." The Times, citing statistics from the Federal Employment Agency, revealed that only 6,500 refugees of the more than two million who have been allowed into Germany during the past two years are enrolled in work training programs. "We don"t take in refugees according to their skills set," Özo?uz said. "The only criteria should be to help people fleeing war and political persecution."


June 22. Police in Lübeck suspect that refugees are taking over illegal drug trade in Schleswig-Holstein, the northernmost state in Germany. Since May there have been more than a dozen mass brawls involving Afghans, Iraqis, Syrians and North Africans armed with knives and batons. Some of those involved are known drug traffickers. "The middle level of drug trafficking is targeting migrants in the refugee shelters, promoting them as street vendors or couriers," said Christian Braunwarth, spokesman for the Lübeck public prosecutor"s office. "Unfortunately, the economically weaker parts of society are vulnerable to such offers."


June 23. A 37-year-old migrant from Syria sexually assaulted a ten-year-old girl in Tübingen. The girl was riding her bicycle when the man ambushed her from behind. Passersby who heard the girl scream rushed to her aid. Police said the man was a "prior offender" and was known to them. A "southern-looking" (südländisches Erscheinungsbild) sexually assaulted a 23-year-old woman in broad daylight in Voerde. A 17-year-old German-Turk raped a 17-year-old woman in Stuttgart.


June 24. An 18-year-old Syrian asylum seeker shouting Allahu Akbar injured four people with a metal chain at the central bus station in Lünen. The initial police report described the perpetrator only as "an 18-year-old" and failed to mention that he had dedicated his attack to Allah. Dortmund police provided more details only after being pressed by a local newspaper.


June 25. A police officer in Duisburg asked a man to move his car, which was illegally parked. The man refused and began shouting at the officer. Within minutes, more than 250 people appeared at the scene and began harassing the police officer, who called for backup. More than 50 policemen and 18 police vehicles were required to resolve what began as a routine traffic procedure.


June 25. Four Iraqi men sexually assaulted three girls, aged 13, 15 and 16, at a public swimming pool in Kassel. A 35-year-old migrant from Romania sexually assaulted two girls, aged 12 and 13, at a public swimming pool in Stuttgart. The man was questioned and released.


June 26. The Berlin Labor Court ordered the city-state of Berlin to pay €6,900 ($7,900) — the equivalent of two months" pay — to a Muslim teacher whose job application at a grammar school was rejected because she wears a headscarf. Berlin"s Neutrality Law (Neutralitätsgesetz) prohibits teachers from wearing conspicuous religious symbols at state schools, but the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) has ruled that a general prohibition of Muslim headscarves is unconstitutional unless there is a concrete threat to security. In February, the National Labor Court of Berlin-Brandenburg awarded a Muslim woman compensation of almost €8,600 ($9,800) after her job application was rejected because she wore a headscarf. The judges ruled that it was a violation of the Equal Treatment Act (Gleichbehandlungsgesetz).


June 27. A "southern-looking" (südländisch aussehenden) man raped a woman at a park in downtown Cologne. Two "dark-skinned" men (dunkelhäutigen Männer) sexually assaulted a 52-year-old woman in Hüfingen.


June 28. A 23-year-old migrant from Iraq was arrested in Immenstaad on Lake Constance on charges of being a war criminal. After the man — who arrived in Germany as a refugee at the height of the migrant crisis in late 2015 — reportedly threatened to kill a roommate at a migrant shelter in Böblingen, police found three mobile phones in his room. One of the phones contained a picture of him posing alongside the decapitated heads of six jihadists from the Islamic State. The photo was created sometime between December 2013 and September 2015 when the man was an Iraqi soldier. The Attorney General"s office in Stuttgart said the man was guilty of "mocking the slain combatants and degrading them in their death" which "should be seen as a war crime...according to the criminal code (Völkerstrafgesetzbuch and Strafgesetzbuch)."


June 29. Mohammad Hussain Rashwani, a 38-year-old migrant from Syria tried to behead 64-year-old Ilona Fugmann at a beauty salon in Herzberg. Less than a year earlier, Fugmann had offered Rashwani a job as a hair stylist at her salon and German media praised him as an exemplar of successful integration. Fugmann and her husband Michael were said to have bestowed "infinite goodness and magnanimity" toward Rashwani. In the weeks leading up to the attack, however, Mohammad reportedly had found it difficult to subordinate himself to his female boss. "I am still convinced that it is 100% correct to help other people, but we have to admit that in this case our attempts at integration have failed," Michael concluded.


June 30. The German Parliament approved a controversial law to fine social media networks up to €50 million euros ($57 million) if they fail to remove so-called hate speech. The Network Enforcement Act (Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz, NetzDG), commonly referred to as the "Facebook law," gives social media networks 24 hours to delete or block "obviously criminal offenses" (offenkundig strafbare Inhalte) and seven days to deal with less clear-cut cases. German Justice Minister Heiko Maas said the measure to "end the internet law of the jungle." Critics say the law will restrict free speech because social media networks, fearing high penalties, will delete posts without checking whether they are within the legal limits and should actually remain online. Others say the real purpose of the law is to silence criticism of the government"s open door migration policy, as well as multiculturalism and the rise of Islam in Germany, ahead of the federal elections on September 24, 2017.

Wednesday, July 12, 2017

France: "Jihad by Court"

Authored by Yves Mamou via The Gatestone Institute,


  • The goal of this trial is to create judicial precedent: to ensure that in the future, any criticism or insult against Islamism must be considered "racism".

  • Valentina Colombo, a professor at the European University in Rome, warned early on about jihad by court. In 2009, she wrote that, "The lawsuit that was initiated by The Union of the Islamic Organizations of France and the Great Mosque of Paris against the satirical magazine "Charlie Hebdo" for republishing the Danish cartoons about Muhammad is one of the most recent examples of this kind of jihad." But nobody paid attention to the warning. And when jihadists came in 2015 to murder eight journalists and cartoonists, nobody understood that "jihad by court" is only the first step.

  • "Legal action has become a mainstay of radical Islamist organizations seeking to intimidate and silence their critics." — Steven Emerson, Founder and President of The Investigative Project on Terrorism.

A silent jihad is under way in France. Spread by a constellation of Muslim organizations allied to powerful (non-Muslim) "anti-racist" associations, "jihad by court" is attacking freedom of press, and freedom of speech. Any journalist, politician, lawyer or intellectual who talks or writes either about Islam or some of its representatives in a critical way, is at risk of being taken to court for "racism" or "outraging a group of people because of their religion."


The so-called "jihad by court" began in an experimental way in France at the beginning of the century. In 2002, the famous French writer Michel Houellebecq was sued for "incitement to hatred" by Islamic organizations allied to the Ligue des droits de l"Homme, ("Human Rights League"), a prestigious "anti-racist" organization. Houellebecq was sued for having said in an interview with Lire magazine that, "of all existing religions, Islam is the dumbest. We read the Coran, we all collapse." Houellebecq was acquitted.


In 2007, a similar lawsuit was initiated by the Union of the Islamic Organizations of France (UOIF) and the Great Mosque of Paris against the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, because it republished the Danish Muhammad cartoons. The plaintiffs accused Charlie Hebdo of "racism". Charlie Hebdo was acquitted. In 2011, unknown arsonists burned Charlie Hebdo"s offices. The magazine was sued again in 2012 and in 2013. Each time, the plaintiffs were different Muslim organizations claiming different instances of "racism" or "blasphemy". January 7, 2015, two Muslim terrorists stormed into the offices of Charlie Hebdo and murdered 12 people.


Two years after that, jihad by court is everywhere.


Against Intellectuals and Journalists


Éric Zemmour, a writer and journalist, was sued in February 2011 for "racial incitement". He said on television that "most dealers are blacks and Arabs. That is a fact". He was fined €2,000. In May 2012, Zemmour was sued for defamation by Patrick Lozes, president of Council of Black Associations (CRAN). Zemmour had written in 2008: "Patrick Lozes said "Obama is our president", which proves that for him, racial solidarity is superior in his enamored eyes than national solidarity". Zemmour was acquitted.


In 2014, Zemmour was sued again because he said, "The Normans, the Huns, Arabs, the great invasions after the fall of Rome are now replaced by gangs of Chechens, Roma, Kosovars, North Africans, Africans, who rob, abuse or strip your belongings." He was released in September 2015. The appeals court reconfirmed his release in 2016.


In December 2015, Zemmour was again fined €3,000 because he had declared to the Italian daily Corriere della Sera that the "deportation" of five million French Muslim seems "unrealistic", but is comparable to "the five or six million Germans who had to leave eastern Europe after World War II". Zemmour succeeded in proving that the word "deportation" was added by Corriere della Sera, but the judge did not take that into consideration, and Zemmour"s conviction was reaffirmed after an appeal in November 2016.


In June 2017, Zemmour was fined €5,000 after saying on television in September 2016, that "jihadists were considered by all Muslims, good Muslims." The plaintiff was a pro-Palestinian association, CAPJPO-EuroPa­les­tine.


Pascal Bruckner, an author and essayist, was sued in December 2015, by the Islamic, "left-wing" associations, Les Indivisibles and Les Indigenes de la République. Bruckner had said on television that the plaintiffs had "ideologically justified the murder of Charlie Hebdo"s journalists". Bruckner was acquitted in 2016.


In January 2017, all "anti-racist" associations and the Islamist CCIF (Collective Against Islamophobia) sued Georges Bensoussan -- an award-winning Jewish French historian, born and raised in Morocco -- for racism. He had said on the radio that "in France, in Arab families... anti-Semitism is imbibed with one"s mother"s milk." He was acquitted, but the prosecutor has filed an appeal.


Against the "Fachosphère"


The fachosphère (combination of "fascist" and "sphere") is the term that the mainstream media are now calling a collection of websites -- such as the Riposte Laïque, Resistance Republicaine and many others -- that warn of the dangers of being overrun by radical Islam. Between 2012 and 2017, Riposte Laïque alone was sued "no fewer than 43 times" its editor-in-chief, Pierre Cassen, told Gatestone. This time, the plaintiffs were not only "anti-racist" associations (LDH, SOS-Racisme, le MRAP, la LICRA and Islamist CCIF) -- but also the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo; former Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, and various Islamic associations such as L"Aube du Savoir ("Sunrise of Knowledge"), journalists from the mainstream media (Libération, Le Monde), the Ligue de Défense Judiciaire des Musulmans ("Muslim Judicial Defense League"). These libel and racism suits asked for fines from €5,000 to €40,000.


Against Officials


On March 30, 2016, Laurence Rossignol, then Minister of Families, Children and Women"s Rights and known to be a fierce critic of the omnipresence of the Islamic veil in public places, was interviewed by the radio station RMC. She compared veiled women to "American negroes ["nègres américains"] who supported slavery". Rossignol apologized for using "negroes", but possibly too late. The Islamist Collectif Contre L"islamophobie en France (CCIF) and the Frantz Fanon Foundation launched a class action suit for "insult of a racial nature" and announced their intention to submit a complaint to the Cour de Justice de la République, a court empowered to adjudicate lawsuits against members of the government. The plaintiffs also threatened to sue the minister appointed to the Correctional Court and the Administrative Court of Paris.


In June 2017, Véronique Corazza, Head of Elsa-Triolet secondary school of Saint-Denis (a suburb of Paris), was sued by Majid Messaoudene, an official of the municipality of Saint Denis, because she republished on her Facebook page dozens "shameful tweets" of Messaoudène in which he supported BDS against Israel and mocked the secularist imam of Drancy, Hassen Chalghoumi.


On June 20, 2017, the jihadi terrorist Salah Abdeslam sued Member of Parliament Thierry Solère, for "breach of privacy". Abdeslam is the only survivor of the Islamist terror cell that murdered 130 people and wounded 430 others on November 13, 2015 in Paris. Exercising his right as a member of parliament to visit prisons, Solère described to two journalists the life of the prisoner, from brushing his teeth to doing exercises in his cell.



Salah Abdeslam (left), a member of the Islamist terror cell that murdered 130 people in Paris on November 13, 2015, filed a lawsuit against Member of Parliament Thierry Solère (right), for "breach of privacy". Solère had described to journalists the life of Abdeslam in prison. (Images source: Wikimedia Commons)


On June 22, 2017, Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, head of the new anti-ISIS task-force created by president Emmanuel Macron, was sued and fined €500 euros for "defaming" Imam Mohamed Khattabi. In 2015, Bousquet de Florian said that Khattabi was a Salafist and a hate-preacher.


Against Secularist Muslims


On February 6, 2015, Soufiane Zitouni, a professor of philosophy, published an op-ed in the daily, Libération, questioning the Islamist style of Averroes Muslim College, which was employing him. He described the college as "Muslim territory under contract with the State" and criticized an incipient anti-Semitism in the school. He was sued for defamation by Amar Lasfar, president of Union des Organizations Islamiques de France (UOIF), an umbrella organization said to be "in conformity with" the Muslim Brotherhood. Zitouni was acquitted.


Between 2015 and 2017, Mohamed Louizi, author of Pourquoi j"ai quitté les Frères Musulmans ("Why I Quit the Muslim Brotherhood") was sued four times. In May and July 2015, he was sued for defamation because he published six articles on his blog about Sofiane Zitouni"s case with Averroes College (see above). In these two cases, Louizi was acquitted.


Then, in 2017, Louizi again shed light on arrangements made behind closed doors between some Socialist officials heading the city of Lille and Islamists accused by Louizi to be members of the Muslim Brotherhood. He was sued twice. Judgement is pending.


On June 6, 2017, Ahmed Meguini, secularist activist and founder of LaïcArt association, said on Twitter that Marwan Muhammad was "a son of a b**ch Salafist" and a "small sh**t". Marwan Muhammad, an Islamist and Executive Director of CCIF was not angry at all. He simply picked up his phone and called his lawyer to sue Meguini -- not for having insulting him, but for "racism". The goal of this trial, according to Causeur magazine, is to create a judicial precedent: to ensure that in the future, any criticism or insult against Islamism must be considered "racism".


These lists are not comprehensive; the trials above are just the most visible part of the iceberg.


A "Modern and Aggressive Form of Jihad "


Valentina Colombo, a professor at the European University in Rome, warned early on about "jihad by court". In 2009, in Gatestone, she wrote:





"The lawsuit that was initiated by The Union of the Islamic Organizations of France and the Great Mosque of Paris against the satirical magazine "Charlie Hebdo" for republishing the Danish cartoons about Muhammad is one of the most recent examples of this kind of jihad."



But nobody (in France) paid attention to the warning. And when jihadists came in 2015 to murder eight journalists and cartoonists, nobody understood that jihad by court is only the first step. When people persist in what other people regard as "Islamophobia", murderers have shown up to make sure the message sticks.


In another article, Colombo writes: "Jihad by court is another form of "intermediate" jihad and is a modern and aggressive form of jihad through legal means."


Jihad by court is one of the favorite means of the organizations and individuals ideologically linked with the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in the West and sometimes is connected with the accusation of Islamophobia. The strategy is clear: any journalist, writer, intellectual, academic, activist or any newspaper, organization, association criticizing or exposing a Muslim Brotherhood individual or organization is very likely to be sued for defamation. The Legal Project of the Middle East Forum, based in the U.S., has given a very useful definition of this tactic:





Such lawsuits are often predatory, filed without a serious expectation of winning, but undertaken as a means to bankrupt, distract, intimidate, and demoralize defendants. Plaintiffs seek less to prevail in the courtroom than to wear down researchers and analysts. Even when the latter win cases, they pay heavily in time, money, and spirit. As counterterrorism specialist Steven Emerson comments, "Legal action has become a mainstay of radical Islamist organizations seeking to intimidate and silence their critics." Islamists clearly hope, Douglas Farah notes, that researchers will "get tired of the cost and the hassle [of lawsuits] and simply shut up."



French intellectuals, journalists, officials do not yet understand that they must organize, raise funds and elaborate strategies with lawyers to counter this threat. No one can compete individually against court by jihad. If an organized counter-strategy is not elaborated, the prediction of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Egyptian Islamic cleric and chairman of the International Union of Muslim Scholars -- "We will colonize you with your democratic laws" -- will come true.

Saturday, March 25, 2017

Canada Passes 'Blasphemy' Bill To Silence Critics Of Islam

Despite polls showing that 71% of Canadians would not have voted for the measure, Canada"s Parliament, with the strong backing of Justin Trudeau"s Liberal government, passed a motion this week 201 to 91 that critics say singles out Islam for special protection. Tabled by Muslim liberal MP Iqra Khalid, M-103 urges the federal government to “condemn Islamophobia” and to “develop a whole-of-government approach to reducing or eliminating systemic racism and religious discrimination including Islamophobia.” The term “Islamophobia” is nowhere defined in the motion.


A petition on CitizenGo asking MPs to stop the “restrictive ‘anti-blasphemy’” motion has been signed by 79,500 people.





“This motion will encourage legislation that would criminalize speech deemed ‘islamophobic’ and lay the groundwork for imposing what is essentially a Sharia anti-blasphemy law on all of Canada,” the petition states.



"If that happens, criticism of Islam would constitute a speech crime in Canada,” it states, adding that this “kind of content-based, viewpoint-discriminatory censorship is unacceptable in a Western liberal democracy.”




As LifeSiteNews reports, while the motion does not change existing laws or create new ones, it empowers a committee to study the issue of “eliminating…Islamophobia” and the federal government to collect data on Islamic ‘hate crimes’ for further study.





A Conservative alternative to the motion that condemned racism and discrimination against Muslims, Jews, Christians, and other religious groups — without including the word “Islamophobia” — was defeated by the Liberals in February. Liberals argued at that time that the Tories were simply trying to “water down” the very purpose of M-103, reported Huffington Post.



A number of Conservatives running for the the party"s leadership have been outspoken about the problems they see in M-103.



Brad Trost said he could not support the motion because it “will only serve to strengthen extremist elements within the Muslim community itself that seek to preserve and promote their own form of hate and intolerance.” He added that any “serious plan to combat religious discrimination in Canada should include all faith groups, including Christians and Jews.”



Pierre Lemieux said that Canadians should be wary of the language in the motion.



“Do you have a valid concern about Islam? Do you disagree with Sharia Law? Uneasy about radical Islamic terrorism? The Liberals may very well classify you as Islamophobic,” he wrote in an email to supporters.



Lemieux, who called on supporters to pressure MPs to force a recorded vote on M-103, called it a “great day for accountability and for freedom of speech in Canada” when almost two dozen MPs stood up on Tuesday to demand such accountability.



Leadership contender Andrew Scheer also added his voice of opposition to the motion shortly before the vote, saying that it “could be interpreted as a step towards stifling free speech and legitimate criticism” of Islam.



M-103 is not inclusive. It singles out just one faith. I believe that all religions deserve the same level of respect and protection,” he wrote in an email to supporters.



“I will be voting against it because I believe in Freedom of Speech,” he wrote.



Finally, we leave it to Rebel Media"s Faith Goldy to react to this attack on Canadians" most precious freedom-- the freedom of speech


Friday, March 24, 2017

16 Years Of European Terrorism In One Chart

Europe has suffered many Islamist terrorist attacks in recent years, but before the assault on Charlie Hebdo, only two of them caused more than ten deaths: the Madrid train attack in May 2004 and the London tube and bus bombings 14 months later. Since then, and the beginning of the global "war on terror", things have become exponentially worse...




Mission Accomplished?

Friday, January 27, 2017

The Two "Islamophobias"

Submitted by Denis MacEoin via The Gatestone Institute,


  • While it is not surprising to find Muslims offended by certain words or images, it is distressing to find Western courts and other bodies only too willing to turn "Islamophobia" into a criminal offence in countries that otherwise value free speech and open expression.

  • When the Dutch politician Geert Wilders was brought to court on a hate speech charge, all he had done in fact was to ask a simple question about Moroccan immigrants -- should the Netherlands take in more or fewer? That is a question with many potential answers based on political, social, or demographic grounds. It is a rational question that is, almost by definition, one that could be asked in the Home Office of any state that receives immigrants.

  • "Forty percent of Moroccan immigrants in the Netherlands between the ages of 12 and 24 have been arrested, fined, charged or otherwise accused of committing a crime during the past five years, according to a new report commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Interior." – Dutch-Moroccan Monitor 2011.

  • We, and not our opponents, must place ourselves in a position to define what is and what is not real "Islamophobia." If we cannot do that, others will conflate criticism and hatred, and clamp down on both at once.

If we had to choose one thing that has obstructed many Westerners from understanding modern Islam and undermined our ability to handle its excesses, it would be our perception of Islamophobia. How many times have fair and honest criticisms of one aspect or another of Islam, rebukes of behaviour, or literary and artistic expressions of Muhammad or other figures been loudly shouted down or banned on the grounds that such criticism was "Islamophobic"? In Europe, individuals have been arrested, tried and sentenced for "Islamophobic" utterances. As Judith Bergman recently commented, in Europe it is becoming a criminal offence to criticize Islam.


In 2011, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, for example, a former Austrian diplomat and teacher, was put on trial for "denigration of religious beliefs of a legally recognized religion [Islam]," found guilty twice, and ordered to pay a fine or face 60 days in jail. Some of her comments may have seemed extreme, but the court"s failure to engage with her historically accurate charge that Muhammad had sex with a nine-year-old girl and continued to have sex with her until she turned eighteen -- its regarding the historical record as somehow defamatory -- and the judge"s decision to punish her for saying something that can be found in Islamic sources, illustrates the betrayal of Western values of free speech. A charge of "Islamophobia" was enough to confine the freedoms that most Westerners take for granted.



Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, a former Austrian diplomat and teacher, was put on trial for "denigration of religious beliefs of a legally recognized religion [Islam]," found guilty twice, and ordered to pay a fine or face 60 days in jail, simply because she made the historically accurate statement that Muhammad had sex with a nine-year-old girl -- something that can be found in Islamic sources. (Image source: ICLA video screenshot)


Sabaditsch-Wolff is not the only person to suffer for this "offence". Danish author Lars Hedegaard suffered an attack on his life and lives in a secret location. Kurt Westergaard, a Danish cartoonist, suffered an axe attack that failed, and is under permanent protection by the security services. In 2009, in Austria, the politician Susanne Winter was found guilty of "anti-Muslim incitement", for saying, "In today"s system, the Prophet Mohammad would be considered a child-molester." She was fined 24,000 euros ($31,000) and given a three-month suspended sentence. The phrase "child molester", like the charge made by Sabaditsch-Wolff was based on the fact, recorded by Muslim biographers, that Muhammad had sexual relations with his new wife A"isha when she was nine years old (after marrying her when she was six).


Neither historical fact nor literary sophistication (as the British author Salman Rushdie learned to his cost) are able to deflect charges of Islamophobia.


What is worse is that, while it is not surprising to find Muslims, especially those from unsophisticated backgrounds and little education, offended by certain words or images, it is distressing to find Western courts and other bodies only too willing to genuflect to those charges and turn "Islamophobia" into a criminal offence in countries that otherwise value free speech and open expression.


Recently, the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, a man who could very well become Prime Minister of the Netherlands in 2017, was found guilty of "inciting discrimination and insulting a minority group," merely for asking voters whether they favoured larger or fewer numbers of Moroccan immigrants – a legitimate if controversial political question. Wilders, of course, is known for his antipathy towards Islam, but pertinent concerns about its influence in a democracy do not make him an "Islamophobe", despite repeated accusations of it.


Fear of being "Islamophobic" affects not just the lives of outspoken individuals but the lives of whole populations. Because leading politicians are desperate not to offend Muslims, they often shape public and foreign policies to avoid even the appearance of "Islamophobia". This is, at the domestic level, done to avoid giving offence to growing numbers of Muslims in countries in Europe and North America. Giving offence invariably results in outraged Muslims chanting death threats in the streets; outraged but well-controlled leaders of Muslim organizations appearing in radio and TV interviews masquerading as victims of government or police intolerance, and demands for banning this newspaper, that book, or the resignation of a politician who said something unwise.


A careless word of offence may ruin trade relations with a Muslim state or threaten the cancellation of lucrative arms sales to a human rights-abusing, obscenely rich oil-state in the Gulf. A controversy like this happened to the British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson in early December, when he condemned Saudi Arabia and Iran for their sectarian proxy wars in Yemen and elsewhere -- only to have his views angrily rejected by the Prime Minister, who had just returned from the Gulf on a visit to promote British goods and services. In a shifting world -- with Britain pulling out of the EU and desperate for trade deals anywhere it could find them - hurting the feelings of people who can buy you up and spit you out is hardly advisable.


And this is where accusations of "Islamophobia" come into their own. Fear of it results in leaders such as Barack Obama, John Kerry, David Cameron, and Pope Francis repeating "Islam is a religion of peace" or "terrorism has nothing to do with Islam", when, in fact, Islam has never been free of religiously-inspired violence and the terror attacks we see around the world today have everything to do with Islam and its call to jihad. Denying that involvement for fear of giving offence or encouraging further violence means that Western powers have handicapped their own ability to recognize the source of conflict, target it, and end it. President Obama"s history of avoiding offence and staying apart from direct action in the Middle East was the result of such woolly thinking -- not just woolly thinking but lying through his teeth.


Those of us who express sincere concerns about Islam in general or specific beliefs and actions committed in the name of the religion, yet wish to have respect for Muslims as people and for those aspects of their lives that are not a cause for concern (prayer, alms-giving, celebrations, pilgrimages, social work, mysticism and so forth), have to speak and write in a manner that shows we are not "Islamophobes". We need to do this if we are to be taken seriously, allowing our thoughts the chance to be heard and not dismissed as "bigoted" or "racist".


Much critical work is, however, greatly undermined by a vast quantity of bigoted, racist and genuinely Islamophobic comment on social media and elsewhere. This material, some of which will be quoted here, comes from a deeply worrying trend associated with the far-right, as well as associations of white supremacists. While a great many of these comments or videos on YouTube clearly come from people who seem semi-literate or poorly educated, this is by no means universally true. Many have obviously made limited efforts to educate themselves about Islam. But their efforts at self-education fall short. They repeatedly make factual errors or leap to wild assumptions. They do not know an Islamic language, have never consulted primary sources, nor have they read serious academic studies or reference books such as the Encyclopedia of Islam. But when someone with qualifications challenges their ignorance, they become angry and call their critics "apologists for Islam", something that has happened to the present writer more than once. It is never enough to point out that one may be personally critical of Islam, for they do not seek rational debate or moderate opinion, only hardline condemnation.


For such people, it is never acceptable to point out that a majority of Muslims are good people, honest, charitable, spiritual. No, for them, all Muslims must be evil, Satanic (a common term), liars and murderous terrorists. Both their language and attitudes betray them as being close to, if not at times, also anti-Semites. Much the same sort of slurs, falsehoods, and calls for murder are increasingly used again about Jews; and it is an understanding of anti-Semitism that acts as a measure for judging these anti-Muslim rants. Anti-Semites create stereotypes about Jews, that they are liars, money-grabbers, conspiratorial enemies of Gentile society. So too, real Islamophobes stereotype Muslims, claiming they are all violent, bent on the overthrow of Western governments, deceivers using the principle of taqiyya [dissimulation] to lie to non-Muslims. Both forms of hatred stem from fear of people who are different, both find their most loyal following in the same parts of society where the Nazi party found its supporters.


In 2015, an Australian body named the Online Hate Prevention Institute, led by Andre Oboler, a British Zionist who has fought hard against anti-Semitism, carried out research on anti-Muslim hate on social media sites. On December 10, 2015, the Institute published an interim statement entitled the Spotlight on Anti-Muslim Internet Hate Report and intended to publish a full report in March 2016. Sadly, the Institute has been unable to find further funding for this work with the result that this valuable research may never be made fully public or available to government ministries.


In the introduction to the interim report, we read:





This report is based on over 1,100 items of anti-Muslim hate in social media reported and categorised by the public through our FightAgainstHate.com reporting tool. The vast majority of the hate this report is based on was found on Facebook. The report indicates the volume of content by category, and how effective Facebook has been in responding to content in each category. The vast majority of this hate has not yet been removed.



This author was given access to a considerable part of these 1,100 items and can testify that many of them are genuinely disgusting and filled with hatred. Here is a short selection of comments taken from them and from other websites, including YouTube. They are self-explanatory. Even to suggest that there are reform movements within Islam is beyond the pale to someone whose username is "IzlamIsTyranny". Some of the milder comments include:






Repeated calls to drop a nuclear bomb on Mecca, for example, or calling on others to stab Muslims, calling Muslims "sandmonkeys" -- statements one can find in several places -- are deeply offensive. Have these bigots forgotten how many Muslim preachers call Jews "the sons of apes and pigs"? Imitating the people you despise can hardly be an intelligent policy or one calculated to win friends in places of influence.


When the Dutch politician Geert Wilders was brought to court on a hate speech charge, all he had done in fact was to ask a simple question about Moroccan immigrants, should the Netherlands take in more or fewer. That is a question with many potential answers based on political, social, or demographic grounds. It is a rational question that is, almost by definition, one that could be asked in the Home Office of any state that receives immigrants. Governments make such decisions regularly, and many have to answer similar questions since the influx of vast numbers of refugees into Europe since 2015. Wilders"s concern about Moroccans has a rational basis in the Dutch-Moroccan Monitor 2011:





Forty percent of Moroccan immigrants in the Netherlands between the ages of 12 and 24 have been arrested, fined, charged or otherwise accused of committing a crime during the past five years, according to a new report commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Interior.



In Dutch neighborhoods where the majority of residents are Moroccan immigrants, the youth crime rate reaches 50%. Moreover, juvenile delinquency among Moroccans is not limited to males; girls and young women are increasingly involved in criminal activities.



But when someone says we should stab Muslims in the throat or, "slaughter all Muslims", there can be no question that this is hate speech, and hate speech with murderous intent. Our problem is that politicians, church leaders, and decent people in general may be led to conflate the two forms of utterance -- the intelligent and critical as against the bigoted and violent. For Wilders and others who want to criticize Islam or ask questions about some Muslim behaviour, the presence of genuine Islamophobia is no help at all. It muddies the waters everywhere. Before the matter gets out of hand, responsible critics of Islam badly need to act to silence this hate speech by joining forces with governmental and social media administrations to clamp down heavily on it. We, and not our opponents, must place ourselves in a position to define what is and what is not real "Islamophobia." If we cannot do that, others will conflate criticism and hatred, and clamp down on both at once.

Tuesday, January 3, 2017

Germany Sees "Overwhelming" Surge In Sales Of Hitler's Mein Kampf

After a 70-year ban, Adolf Hitler"s Nazi manifesto Mein Kampf was made available again in Germany in 2016, and as The BBC reports, the German publisher of a special annotated edition of the anti-semitic text says sales have soared since its launch a year ago.





How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don’t think.
- Adolf Hitler



As The BBC reports, about 85,000 German-language copies of the anti-Semitic Nazi manifesto have been sold.





Publisher Andreas Wirsching said "the figures overwhelmed us".



He is director of the Institute of Contemporary History (IfZ) in Munich.



At the end of January the IfZ will launch a sixth print run. The book contains critical notes by scholars.



Unlike the Nazi-era editions, the IfZ"s Mein Kampf (My Struggle) has a plain white cover - without a picture of Hitler. The swastika and other Nazi symbols are banned in Germany.



Mr Wirsching told the German news agency DPA that the IfZ was planning a shorter, French-language edition. "But two-thirds of our commentaries will be translated" for it, he said.



He said the IfZ had obtained solid legal advice before republishing the book on a limited scale. And the scholarly edition was aimed partly at pre-empting any editions put out by Nazi sympathisers.



"It would be irresponsible to just let this text spread arbitrarily," he told DPA.



But, as Mike Krieger noted previously, sales of Hitler"s manifesto have been soaring worldwide for the last few years. At this point, we’d like to remain hopeful that these sales trends spring from a similar curiosity on behalf of the population, rather than from a darker more hateful place. From Time:





The infamous manifesto Adolf Hitler wrote while in prison after a failed coup in 1923, Mein Kampf or My Struggle, in which the dictator outlined his idea of a global Jewish conspiracy, is a surprise hit on the ebook market. While the book’s print copy sales remain stagnant, the ebook is in the top 20 on iTunes’s Politics & Events chart, next to books by Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, the number one Propaganda & Political Psychology book on Amazon, and the 17th bestseller in the company’s Nationalism list. How could that be?



Chris Faraone explains why in a fascinating essaythat argues ebooks provide the perfect format for reading controversial material. “Mein Kampf could be following a similar trend to that of smut and romance novels,” Faraone writes. Customers may have not wanted to be seen reading the book or having it on their shelf at home, but the cheap digital copies “can be quietly perused then dropped into a folder or deleted.”



Ebook reviewers’ comments support the 50 Shades of Grey theory. “I think I waited 45 years to read Hitler’s words… I wish I had read it sooner,” wrote Steven Wagg. “Curiosity killed me to get this book,” said another reviewer. The document also functions as a warning: “People need to understand that if we do not learn from people like this, then we will fall into their traps again,” Ray D’Aguanno wrote on Amazon.



Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, says it ""would be best to leave "Mein Kampf" where it belongs: the poison cabinet of history."" ""Unlike other works that truly deserve to be republished as annotated editions, "Mein Kampf" does not,"" he adds.