A report on last Thursday’s attack on Tommy Robinson has been published in Luton Today:

EDL Leader in Lay-by Attack

POLICE have launched an investigation after English Defence League leader Stephen Lennon was violently assaulted in a lay-by outside Luton.

Mr Lennon, who calls himself Tommy Robinson, says he was driving along the A6 at about 2am last Thursday (Dec 22) when he pulled over after another car, a black Vauxhall Zafira, flashed its lights at him.

When he got out of the car he was attacked by three men, with the beating only coming to an end when a ‘good Samaritan’ stopped at the scene, he said.

Mr Lennon, who runs a tanning salon in Luton, said: “I was on my way back from Dunstable and near Streatley I noticed the car flashing me.

“I pulled over and got out. The car was being driven by a girl and three lads jumped out and I took a beating.

“As soon as I got out the passenger leapt out and I could tell straight away what was going to happen.

“I started fighting back and then the other two got out.

“The geezer that pulled over to help me said one of them had a pole but I didn’t see anything. But the hospital said the injuries looked like they’d been caused by a blunt object.”

Mr Lennon drove to Bedford Hospital where he was given a CT scan, which revealed bruising on his brain. He was released later the same day.

“I didn’t want to go to hospital but the guy that helped me kept insisting that I had to go,” he said. “They had knocked me out when he arrived – he said if he hadn’t pulled over they would probably have carried on.

“I’ve never had a kicking like it. I had to go home to my kids looking like that.”

Mr Lennon said claims on an anti-EDL website that the attack had been faked or had been carried out by football hooligans were “pathetic” and had been fabricated by people who had been kicked out of the EDL for being too right-wing.

He described his attackers as being of Asian appearance and said they were wearing jeans and bomber jackets, with one wearing a checked scarf.

A spokesman for Bedfordshire Police said it was as yet unclear what the motive for the attack was.

They appealed for any witnesses to come forward, including the good Samaritan, saying: “He was driving a silver Ford Mondeo and was called John or Jonathan.

“The officer investigating this case is Det Con Tom Hamm, contactable direct on 01582 473322. He would like to hear from John or anyone who knows who John is.”

Take a look at the original article to see a new photo of Tommy’s busted-up face.

Hat tip: PS.

In last night’s post about honor killing, I quoted authoritative Islamic law to demonstrate that killing one’s children is not punishable under sharia.

The source I cited was ’Umdat al-salik wa ’uddat al-nasik, or The reliance of the traveller and tools of the worshipper. It is usually referred to as Reliance of the Traveller when quoted in English. My references were from the Revised Edition (published 1991, revised 1994), which is billed as “The Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law ’Umdat al-Salik by Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri (d. 769/1368) in Arabic with Facing English Text, Commentary, and Appendices”, edited and translated by Nuh Ha Mim Keller. The publisher is listed as amana publications in Beltsville, Maryland.

The book is considered an authoritative source on Sunni Islamic law because it is certified as such by Al-Azhar University in Cairo. There is no higher authority on Sunni Islamic doctrine than Al-Azhar. To give the book additional gravitas, it has also been certified as an authoritative source of Islamic law by the governments of Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia.

Reliance of the Traveller is thus a useful tool for us “Islamophobes”, since no Muslim can credibly assert that it does not represent the “true Islam”.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

I mention all this because a reader emailed us this morning with some pertinent questions about Reliance, and the Koranic justification for its reading of Islamic law. His questions and my responses are below.

Do you have a copy of “Umdat al-Salik”?

Yes, a big thick hardback with a green and gold cover.

I imagine that it is expensive, …

Not terribly. I can’t remember the exact cost, but it was normal for a hardback book of that size.

…and that its text is not available online.

It is available online, actually. I picked up a text document version (.txt, no formatting), and I also have a huge Word document of it. But I acquired those several years ago, and no longer have the URLs for the sites where I found them.

According to this famous citation from it, a Muslim who kills a non-Muslim and a person (even a non-Muslim!) who kills his/her own child or grandchild must not be punished for the killing. I have never been able to find the Quran passage or hadith on which this impunity is based. Does this “Umdat” citation have a footnote pointing to the relevant ayat/hadith? How do the ulema scripturally justify this ruling?

Reliance sometimes cites the Koran and/or the hadith to justify its prescriptions and proscriptions, but not always. In this particular case, no scripture is cited.

The relevant section (O, “Justice”, o1.0, “Who is subject to retaliation for injurious crimes”) begins with several citations from the Koran and the hadith about how much Allah abhors “killing without right”, which he considers an “enormity”.

If Allah (through Mohammed) does not forbid an activity, it is by definition lawful. The killing of one’s children is not mentioned as “killing without right” in the Koran or the hadith. One assumes that “honor killings” were a common practice in 7th-century Arabia, as they are today. Thus al-Misri considered it necessary to list them as “not subject to retaliation” so that the fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) would be clear on the topic.

That’s my best guess, but it would take an actual scholar to confirm or refute my suppositions.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Some further thoughts on the same topic:

All possible human activities are regulated by Islamic law. If an action is not specifically mentioned in the Koran or the Sunna, its status under sharia is determined by scholarly examination of relevant references that may be extended to cover the activity in question.

Islamic scholars undertook such interpretations in the early days of Islam, and eventually settled on conclusions that were described as having “the consensus of the scholars”. The groundwork for the fiqh was thus laid down more than a thousand years ago, and is now considered unquestionable and beyond dispute within all major schools of Islamic law, both Sunni and Shi’ite.

Under sharia, all human actions are either halal (permitted) or haram (forbidden). If the Koran mentions an action as having either status, that codifies it completely. Similarly, if the sayings of Mohammed (in the hadith) mention an action with approval or disapproval, it is codified in the law as halal or haram respectively.

Since Mohammed was the perfect man, whose life serves as an example for all Muslims to emulate, an action becomes automatically halal if Mohammed is known to have engaged in it. This is why beheading Jews or marrying nine-year-old girls is legal under sharia.

The tricky part for medieval Islamic scholars concerned actions that were not mentioned in the Koran and the Sunna. If no apparent analogy could be found with other explicitly cited actions, the ulema were reduced to finding penumbrae from the law that would help them make their distinctions.

This eventually led to gradations within the halal category. Permitted (halal) actions can thus be “mandatory”, or “recommended”, or “not recommended”, or “discouraged”, or simply “allowed”.

My assumption is that honor killing has been a common practice among the Arab tribes since time out of mind. Mohammed didn’t cover the topic, so it remained halal, and al-Misri regarded it as important enough to list it as “not subject to retaliation”; i.e. the perpetrators of such killings could not be punished.

I am, however, a dilettante in these matters. If there are other plausible explanations for al-Misri’s ruling, knowledgeable readers are invited to leave them in the comments.

Tommy Robinson has sent a message today to his supporters in the English Defence League. He wants everyone to know he is recovering well from his injuries, and will soon be as good as new.

Tommy says he is now in Luton Town Centre “standing on his own and proud”. He also says that 2012 will be the start of a new era for the EDL.

Concerning last Thursday’s attack by “youths”, Tommy reports that the Luton police are treating the incident as a “racially-motivated crime”.

He also says he will be releasing a new video within the next few days.

His primary concerns, as usual, are for his children and his mother. The latter is in extremely poor health at the moment.

Tommy extends his “best wishes to every single one of you for a fantastic New Year”, and says he “can’t wait to be at the front in 2012!”

Just before Christmas the European Central Bank flooded European banks with €500 billion of extra money, hoping to boost liquidity and jump-start lending. But the banks did not react as hoped, and instead redeposited much of the money at the… European Central Bank. Even though the ECB offers very low interest rates, it is considered a safe haven for funds — safer than fellow European banks, which otherwise might be the recipients of new loans.

In other news, the Dutch cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot — who has been featured in this space many times in the past — has decided to call it quits. The Dutch state’s ham-handed repression has made his career less and less tenable, and he has decided to stop drawing his distinctive cartoons.

Meanwhile, in Egypt, the popular Salafist party Al-Nour says that it will solve the problem of the idolatrous Pyramids by covering them in wax.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to AC, C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, KGS, Kitman, Salome, Steen, Takuan Seiyo, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

This story from Britain is not brand new. It was published last Thursday, but between the attack on Tommy Robinson and the intervention of Christmas Winterval, I wasn’t able to give it the attention it deserved when it was fresh.

Over the last several years we’ve heard a lot about the 85+ sharia courts in Britain. Apologists for the parallel judicial system reassure us that the sharia courts never hand down decisions that are in any way a violation of British law. Muslims insist that their system is analogous to the Jewish halacha system of mediation, and is thus no threat to secular jurisprudence. If we are to believe their reassurances, sharia courts adjudicate nothing more controversial than arcane details concerning inheritance and child custody, that sort of thing.

But sharia is more than that. A lot more. As Muslims never tire of reminding us, Islam is not just a religion; it’s an “entire way of life”.

For example, from the authoritative source on Sunni Islamic law ’Umdat al-salik wa ’uddat al-nasik, or The reliance of the traveller and tools of the worshipper — commonly referred to as Reliance of the Traveller when cited in English — we learn this useful information (from Book O, “Justice”):

o1.2 The following are not subject to retaliation:

	[…]
(2)	a Muslim for killing a non-Muslim;
	[…]
(4)	a father or mother (or their fathers of mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring’s offspring; …

This is the legal basis under sharia for what are commonly known as “honor killings”. When a child — usually a daughter — dishonors the family, her parents customarily feel bound to kill her, and sharia specifies that Islamic law permits no punishment for such killings.

What makes the following case unusual is that a British court of law anticipated traditional Muslim practice, and forced a baby to be put up for adoption to prevent what “the judge rightly regarded the risk of physical harm” to the child, her mother, her grandmother, and her mother’s siblings. This is a blatant deferral to the most violent aspects of sharia law.

According to The Daily Mail:

A baby born to a Muslim mother after an affair must be adopted to prevent the child becoming the victim of an honour killing, the Court of Appeal ruled today.

The baby’s mother, who is not married, was so ‘terrified’ of how her family would react that after becoming pregnant she ran away from home.

She then concealed her pregnancy by wearing loose clothes and travelling to the other side of town for her antenatal care.

As soon as the baby — known only as Q — was born the mother gave her up for adoption.

Upholding a High Court decision, three judges ruled that Q’s father could not have his daughter to live with him because of the risk the baby’s maternal grandfather would track her down.

Instead, Q, who is now a year old, will be adopted.

Under normal circumstances, a family court would prefer to place a child in the care of a natural parent, if that parent is capable of raising the child properly. This is what one would expect if white people persons of British background were involved. But the rules are different for Muslims.

The article continues:

The baby’s maternal grandmother had told police that if her husband found out about the child ‘he would consider himself honour-bound to kill the child, the mother, the grandmother herself and the grandmother’s other children’.

Today Lord Justice Munby, Lady Justice Black and Lord Justice Kitchin said in a joint ruling that the child was at risk if she was not adopted.

Just think about what the justices are doing here: they are anticipating violent, murderous behavior on the part of Muslim relatives, and their reaction is not to warn the likely perpetrators that they will experience the full righteous fury of retributive British justice.

No, they are giving the would-be murderers exactly what they want, the preservation of their honor. A child will be forced into adoption to prevent her grandfather from experiencing shame:

They said if the grandfather discovered the affair ‘it would be a matter of intense almost unimaginable shame to him and his family’.

[…]

The baby’s father — a married man known as F — had launched an appeal against the decision made by Mrs Justice Parker in the High Court last July.

She found there would be ‘a very significant risk of two and two being put together’ if the child went to live with its father because the baby was quite obviously not his wife’s child.

The justices foresee criminal — homicidal — behavior on the part of the grandfather, and their response is to force an infant into adoption rather than deal with the customary behavior of Muslims, which they seem to accept as beyond their control, if not actually normal:

The appeal court judges ruled: ‘In the particular circumstances of this case, the judge rightly regarded the risk of physical harm to Q and M (her mother) as being of major importance.’

The court heard that although both the baby’s mother and father were Muslim, there was a ‘profound cultural difference’ between them.

Upholding Mrs Justice Parker’s decision to make an adoption order, the appeal judges said: ‘The mother’s evidence, supported as it was by her actions, and the evidence of (the father) and an experienced police officer, drove the judge to conclude that refusal of the order would carry with it a significant risk of physical harm.

‘In our judgment this conclusion cannot be criticised.’

Yes, I know that adoption may turn out just fine for the child, and that adoptive parents can be just as loving and nurturing as biological parents.

But that’s not the point. The point is that a British court anticipated murder and adjusted its decision accordingly, seemingly without blinking an eye.

This is complete, unabashed sharia. The British judicial system is not beating around the bush anymore: it is acting as the enforcer of a full-blown Islamic state.

Hat tip: Gaia.

Those seem to be the favorite pastimes of military police and Salafist mobs in downtown Cairo these days.

Many thanks to Bear for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Up until recently Switzerland was a bastion of direct democracy in Europe, with its established institution of referendums providing the means for its citizens to initiate or approve all significant changes of law at the federal level.

Times have changed, however, and the Swiss have lost much of their sovereignty to the European Union — without their consent. The following guest-essay from Kitman details the latest revelations about the plans that have been set in motion to steal direct democracy from Switzerland.

Echoes from the Minarets: The Discreet Evasion of Swiss Democracy

by Kitman

The “anti-minaret initiative” and the “initiative for deportation of criminal foreigners” served as clear reminders to the Swiss establishment that manipulation of the mass media had become an insufficient tool for controlling public opinion. It was therefore not overly surprising when a first step towards the assignment of new powers to the Swiss federal court was approved by the national assembly a few weeks ago. By allowing the federal court to “test the constitutionality” of federal laws, center-left politicians obviously hope the courts can save them from future unpleasantness. Luzi Stamm from the Swiss People’s Party rightly condemned the suggested changes as a clear “step towards the abolition of direct democracy”, whereas the Green party socialists, thrilled by the taste of judicial supremacy, exclaimed “Switzerland IS the constitution!”

Interestingly, WeltWoche revealed yesterday that the very same federal court, along with recently-departed Foreign Minister Calmy-Rey and Integration Minister Johann Schneider-Amman, have been engaged in a sinister plot to surrender Swiss sovereignty to EU courts without having to ask or tell the Swiss people about it.

Confronted with the difficult task of submitting to EU demands without anybody noticing, the federal court, in cooperation with Daniel Thürer (Swiss delegate of the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance [ECRI]), developed the legal equivocations needed to make an actual referendum “unnecessary”. Among other things, the Federal court came up with following gem for insertion into the legal treaty:

“Swiss courts duly take the EU adjudication into account”.

Because the courts have already been doing this for years, that phrase, if inserted correctly, would “strengthen an interpretative mechanism” which according to the federal court would imply that “only given an imperative reason may Swiss courts deviate from EU rulings”. As seen below, Daniel Thürer went somewhat further in his arbitration, suggesting whole new EU agencies inside Switzerland with so-called “powers of co-determination” with the said federal court.

An excerpt from WeltWoche:

Discrete Evasion

[T]he demands from Brussels go far beyond a modification of the bilateral agreement; in fact, they imply the annulment of the agreement. Today both parties to the agreement guard and implement it independently. And disagreements are cleared in mixed committees. However, with the “institutional link-up” demanded from Brussels, the central legal monitoring apparatus of the EU becomes sole interpreter of contracts and their implementation. Foreign judges would thus preside over the legality of [Swiss] measures for controlling migration. And since the European judges in their verdicts notoriously support free [international] contracting over all protective measures, this should cause alarm among trade unionists. The long-term consequences to all contracting are at this time not even possible to estimate.

The Swiss “silver bullet” of bilateral agreements has come to a dead end. In spite of this the Swiss Federal Council are determined to push on, and have thus begun to move the scenery around, in an attempt to disguise the fact that they have deviated from this path and embarked on a different course for EU accession. As former Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey once put it: “We are working on creative solutions.”

However, in these serious matters the creativity does not involve originality or ministerial brilliance. They concern the best way to deceive the people about the true extent of their lost sovereignty.

The preparations were made in an “arbitration” of the Europhile expert in constitutional law Daniel Thürer, professor emeritus Zürich University, along with an “advisory opinion” of the Swiss federal court. The Federal Council has refused to publish both of these papers in an attempt to conceal what they have been hiding all along. In order to ensure public access to this information Weltwoche has made the documents available for internet download (links at the end of this report).

Daniel Thürer advised against a direct submission to the EU courts, because this would require a referendum, which currently “is sure to have a negative outcome”. He therefore proposes three ways to coat the capitulation and stamp out democracy:

a)		Integration into the already existing EWR framework (The European Economic Area) and its 1992 agreement to which Switzerland acceded through a loophole, in spite of its rejection.
b)		The creation of two new controlling agencies in Switzerland with “powers of co-determination” from Brussels.
c)		Establishing a new court parallel to the EWR control agency in Luxemburg or Brussels (again with “the powers of co-determination” of the EU).

However different the professorial boards may seem, their objective is the same. The forced implementation of EU law in Switzerland — without the mandated referendum.

Leaked documents:

• Stellungnahme — Federal court
• Gutachten — Daniel Thürer

This is the feel-good story of the day, and maybe for the entire Christmas season.

A culturally-enriched young man — Mostafa Kamel Hendi by name — approached the counter of a “We Buy Gold” franchise in western North Carolina, waved a gun, and demanded money. After the would-be robber came behind the counter, the clerk decked him with a left, knocking him out cold. When the unfortunate perp came to, the clerk made him mop up his own blood from the floor.

Thank goodness for surveillance video! Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading this clip:

Below the jump is the accompanying news story from a local Spartanburg TV station:

Caught on Tape: Clerk Punches, Knocks Out Armed Robber

Clerk Then Makes Suspect Clean Up His Own Blood

HENDERSONVILLE, N.C. — A clerk at a business in Western North Carolina punched a would-be robber and knocked him out cold just minutes after the man barged in with a gun and demanded money.

It happened about 15 minutes before closing time Friday night at We Buy Gold store in Hendersonville.

“When he came through the door he told me had a gun and he even flashed it,” said Derek Mothershead. “I stood up and threw my hands up and said, ‘Take the money.’”

Mothershead said the man came behind the counter with a bag.

The punch knocked out the would-be thief. Mothershead was able to grab the man’s weapon and realized it was a pellet gun.

“When I pulled it out of his waistband I started laughing,” said Mothershead. “I said, ‘Man, you came in here with a fake gun?’”

Mothershead said he dragged the man over to a desk and held him down with one hand and called 911 with the other.

The man, later identified as Mostafa Hendi, eventually regained consciousness.

“He kind of begged me, begged me to let him go,” Mothershead said. “I said, ‘You came in and tried to rob us. You’re going to jail.’”

While they waited for police and paramedics, Mothershead gave the man a roll of power towels, sprayed the floor with cleaner and told him to clean up his own blood.

“At the time you really don’t think you hit somebody as hard as you do, but looking back at the tape I can say I hit him pretty hard, I guess,” Mothershead said.

Hendi remains behind bars on a charge of attempted robbery with a dangerous weapon. His bond was set at $100,000.

“There was just an opportunity there where I thought that I could actually do something and justice could be served, and I thought that’s what needed to be done,” said Mothershead.

We Buy Gold has dealt with others robberies at its 30 locations between Western North Carolina and the Upstate.

“It’s not even worth hitting us,” said Mothershead. “We’ve got a fast-retrieval money system in order and we really don’t carry that much money to begin with, so there’s no point in hitting us.”

For a complete listing of previous enrichment news, see The Cultural Enrichment Archives.

Hat tip: Takuan Seiyo.

The United States has budgeted at least $40 million to buy back anti-aircraft missiles that Libyan militias stole from Muammar Qaddafi’s arsenals. The missiles pose little threat to modern military aircraft, but the U.S. government is concerned that they might be sold to terrorists and used against civilian jetliners.

Speaking of terrorists, the Christmas bombings in Nigeria were so serious that the White House actually used the T-word, condemning them as “terrorism”. President Obama, however, declined to use the I-word or the M-word to describe the ideology motivating the terrorists. The pope also condemned the slaughter in Nigeria. There was general hand-wringing all across the West about the awful events on Christmas.

In other news, Adolf Hitler’s favorite singer died at his home in Bavaria at the age of 108.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Caroline Glick, Fjordman, Insubria, KGS, Lurker from Tulsa, Srdja Trifkovic, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

Soeren Kern has written an article at the Hudson Institute about the “hate speech” case against Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff. Some excerpts are below:

“A Black Day for Austria”
by Soeren Kern

An Austrian appellate court has upheld the conviction of Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, a Viennese housewife and anti-Jihad activist, for “denigrating religious beliefs” after giving a series of seminars about the dangers of radical Islam.

The December 20 ruling shows that while Judaism and Christianity can be disparaged with impunity in postmodern multicultural Austria, speaking the truth about Islam is subject to swift and hefty legal penalties.

Although the case has major implications for freedom of speech in Austria, as well as in Europe as a whole, it has received virtually no press coverage in the American mainstream media.

Sabaditsch-Wolff’s Kafkaesque legal problems began in November 2009, when she presented a three-part seminar about Islam to the Freedom Education Institute, a political academy linked to the Austrian Freedom Party.

A glossy socialist weekly magazine, NEWS — all in capital letters — planted a journalist in the audience to secretly record the first two lectures. Lawyers for the leftwing publication then handed the transcripts over to the Viennese public prosecutor’s office as evidence of hate speech against Islam, according to Section 283 of the Austrian Criminal Code (Strafgesetzbuch, StGB). Formal charges against Sabaditsch-Wolff were filed in September 2010; and her bench trial, presided on by one multicultural judge and no jury, began November 23, 2010.

On the first day of the trial, however, it quickly became clear that the case against Sabaditsch-Wolff was not as air-tight as prosecutors had made it out to be. The judge in the case, Bettina Neubauer, pointed out, for example, that only 30 minutes of the first seminar had actually been recorded.

Neubauer also noted that some of the statements attributed to Sabaditsch-Wolff were offhand comments made during breaks and not a formal part of the seminar. Moreover, only a few people heard these comments, not 30 or more — the criterion under Austrian law for a statement being “public.” In any event, Sabaditsch-Wolff says her comments were not made in a public forum because the seminars were held for a select group of people who had registered beforehand.

More importantly, many of the statements attributed to Sabaditsch-Wolff were actually quotes she made directly from the Koran and other Islamic religious texts. Fearing that the show trial would end in a mistrial, the judge abruptly suspended hearings until January 18, 2011, ostensibly to give him time to review the tape recordings, but also to give the prosecution more time to shore up its case.

On January 18, after realizing that the original charge would not hold up, the judge — not the prosecutor — informed Sabaditsch-Wolff that in addition to the initial charge of hate speech, she was now being charged with “denigrating religious symbols of a recognized religious group.” Sabaditsch-Wolff’s lawyer immediately demanded that the trial be postponed so that the defense could prepare a new strategy.

When the trial resumed on February 15, 2011, Sabaditsch-Wolff was exonerated of the first charge of “incitement” because the court found that here statements were not made in a “provocative” manner.

But Sabaditsch-Wolff was convicted of the second charge against her, namely “denigration of religious beliefs of a legally recognized religion,” according to Section 188 of the Austrian Criminal Code.

The judge ruled that Sabaditsch-Wolff committed a crime by stating in her seminars about Islam that the Islamic prophet Mohammed was a pedophile (Sabaditsch-Wolff’s actual words were “Mohammed had a thing for little girls.”)

The judge rationalized that Mohammed’s sexual contact with nine-year-old Aisha could not be considered pedophilia because Mohammed continued his marriage to Aisha until his death. According to this line of thinking, Mohammed had no exclusive desire for underage girls; he was also attracted to older females because Aisha was 18 years old when Mohammed died.

Read the rest at the Hudson Institute.

For previous posts on the “hate speech” prosecution of Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, see Elisabeth’s Voice: The Archives.

Jamie Glazov interviewed Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff today for FrontPage Mag. Some excerpts are below:

The Persecution of Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, a free speech activist who was charged last year in Austria with “denigration of religious beliefs of a legally recognized religion” for asserting that “Mohammed had a thing for little girls.” In February of this year she was convicted, and will have to pay a fine of up to €480. Just recently, on December 20, 2011, her conviction was upheld by the higher court. If she refuses to pay the fine, she may spend a maximum of two months in jail. She grew up and lived in Muslim countries and experienced Islam first-hand.

FP:		Ms. Sabaditsch-Wolff, welcome to Frontpage Interview. I would like to talk to you today about your trial and where it stands now. But let us begin with a bit of background about yourself.
ESW:		Thank you Jamie. My father was posted at the Austrian Embassy in Tehran before the Iranian Revolution. I was also there, a child of seven, and I experienced the pre-revolutionary Iran, a beautiful country with friendly people, great food and even greater skiing. I attended the German school and generally enjoyed myself. Then came the revolution and everything changed. There was religious fervor in the air, chanting, demonstrations featuring black-clad women. And one day in late 1978 my mother, my sister and I were forced to leave Tehran, and we joined the thousands of desperate men and women scrambling to get out of the country, the only difference being that we had a country to return to. I still remember all this as if it were yesterday. I knew that this had to do with religion, with Islam. I knew what “Allahu akhbar” meant, just as I knew that our Iranian housemaid set fire to our house because she no longer seemed to like our Western ways much. (Although I was in the house at the time with my mother and sister, we survived the fire.) My father returned to Austria just shortly before the war between Iran and Iraq broke out. In the coming years my life would touch the Islamic world, sometimes more, sometimes less. My father was posted to Baghdad in late 1982, so we joined him for Christmas and New Year. I experienced life on the other side of the war, Saddam’s side. What I don’t remember is Islam, strange as it sounds. The Iraq of the early 1980s was a secular country, albeit a war-torn one. My mother had to “pack” food and other staples in her luggage so we could celebrate Christmas properly. I also remember attending Christmas mass in Baghdad. After a few years of high school in Chicago, we returned to Vienna, where I graduated and became a ski instructor. In the summer of 1990 I spent three months at the Austrian Embassy in Kuwait, thereby returning to the Middle East for the first time since 1982/3. Memories flooded my brain, everything seemed so familiar. But then Saddam returned to my life: I was in Kuwait on August 2, 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait. I was unable to return to Austria until August 26, 1990, but that is another story. In February 1997, I once again traveled to Kuwait, this time as a visa officer at the Austrian Embassy. During my nearly four years in Kuwait, I was able to experience the true Islam for the first time. Because I was older — in my mid-twenties — I reflected more strongly on what I saw and heard. I saw and heard a lot, and I also experienced a lot first-hand. Two examples: First, Ramadan. The first one was sort of fun, a different experience, something new. The second one was a nuisance, especially after I heard reports of harassment, especially of the one against the Coptic husband of my colleague, who was chided for licking the stamps for the Christmas cards. Ramadan coincided with Christmas back in the late 1990s. And the third Ramadan forced me to rebel: I started eating salami sandwiches in the visa section, in plain sight of the fasting applicants. I got away with it because the Austrian Embassy is legally Austrian soil. I started asking myself: what was the point of Ramadan? Our Jordanian translator, a devout Muslim and heavy smoker, suffered greatly during Ramadan, but he was unable, maybe even unwilling to quit during that month of abstention. I did not understand the purpose of his fasting and abstaining if nothing good came of it. This sentiment was furthered by newspaper articles about Ramadan and a Q&A. One question remains with me forever: “I accidentally swallowed a fly while riding my bicycle. Is my fast still acceptable or do I have make it up?” Unbelievable. The second example concerns the relationship between Mohammed and Aisha, a relationship that earned me the conviction in court. Part of my job was to read the two English-language newspapers. I don’t remember what the article was about, but it must have been something about Mohammed’s marriage to Aisha and the subsequent consummation of the marriage. I clearly remember my shock. I got up from my desk and went to our translator, who was also my friend and confidant. “Hussein,” I said, “Is it true what I just read about Mohammed and Aisha? Did he really have sex with her when she was nine? But that, that, that’s…” Hussein looked at me sternly, “Do not ever talk about this again. Do not mention this again.” Now, he did not deny it. He just ordered me never to speak about this. Though I did not know about it at the time, he was actually enforcing Sharia law.

[…]
ESW:		Simply put, I have now been made a victimless convict. On December 20, 2011, my conviction for denigration of a legally recognized religion was upheld by the higher court. What was the reason for this conviction, you may ask. Well, during the course of my seminars, I mentioned the choking EU directive “Framework decision on combating racism and xenophobia,” and in order to illustrate my point I told the audience about a conversation I had with my sister and how she believed that one should find a different word for Mohammed’s actions with Aisha. I said, “How does one name what he did if not call it pedophilia?” And this sentence got me convicted, for I am allowed by law to say that Mohammed had sex with a young girl, but I may not qualify this behavior as this is deemed “excessive” and thus denigrating. The Austrian state has created a victimless crime, and a criminal without a single victim. The trial is now officially over. There is only one way to appeal, and that is taking the matter to the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg. But– this will cost a lot of money and will take a lot time (6-8 years minimum).
FP:		Ok so what is going to happen? Are you going to appeal, go to jail? Tell us what options you face and what you are going to do…

Read the rest at FrontPage Mag.

For previous posts on the “hate speech” prosecution of Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, see Elisabeth’s Voice: The Archives.

There’s almost no news feed tonight! That’s because everyone is sprawled in their armchairs, semi-comatose from the sin of gluttony during Christmas dinner.

All except for our poor Norwegian friend Tommy, that is. (S)he is curled up in a sequined fetal ball under the Christmas tree, still traumatized by a near-fatal shortage of butter…

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to Gaia, Insubria, KGS, Nilk, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

The Muslim community in Nigeria celebrated Christmas by blowing up Christians as they worshipped in their churches. The terror group Boko Haram (“Western customs are prohibited”) has claimed responsibility for killing at least sixty people in five separate bombings.

Below are three news videos about Christmas in Nigeria, as uploaded by Vlad Tepes. First, from AP:

The second is from Fox:



And finally, from Channel 4:

Update: The translation below was undertaken entirely at the initiative of the owners of Gates of Vienna, as suggested by the translator himself. Neither the author (Tore Kvæven) nor the publication (Utdanning) requested this translation or its publication at Gates of Vienna. The fact that it has been published here in no way implies that the author approves of this blog or any of the other material it has published. The opinions expressed at this blog have been, and will remain, entirely those of its owners and contributors. They have nothing whatsoever to do with Utdanning.

Our Norwegian correspondent The Observer sends us a translation of an op-ed about the pervasiveness of propaganda in the Norwegian educational system. He includes this note:

Utdanning (Norwegian word for “education”) is a magazine that focuses on issues related to education. published by the Norwegian Department of Education. Its front page says that its readers consists of teachers, lecturers, students, and anyone who is interested in educational issues. It also says that it has a circulation of 130,000 readers.

To my mind this op-ed brilliantly exemplifies the bias that exists in Norwegian schools.

His translation from Utdanning:

Censorship and propaganda in Norwegian schools

Approximately one million Europeans succumbed to or were killed as slaves under Muslim rule in northern Africa, among them 3,000 to 4,000 Norwegians. Is it a mere coincidence that this historical fact is a non-issue in Norwegian schools?

by Tore Kvæven

About a year ago, after having sustained a minor eye injury and spending a night in hospital, I was driven home from Stavanger by a Palestinian taxi driver originally from Gaza. During the one-and-a-half-hour drive home I had several discussions with him, covering a range of subjects, among them Hitler and Germany’s extermination of the Jews. The driver insisted that the concentration camps never existed and that it was simply a conspiracy theory concocted by the Jews themselves and their European allies, and that there were no evidence of any pogroms perpetrated against the Jews during WW2. My arguments to the contrary failed to make an impression, and I thought to myself that the driver had to be a victim of political propaganda, and that he was most likely exposed to this propaganda at an early age. I assumed that the Palestinian educational system and textbooks were biased when it came to the subject of Jewish history. Of course I could have been mistaken. I know very little about the curriculum and textbooks used in the schools in the Gaza strip. But my impression was that the driver believed in what he was saying.

I had a similar debate along the same lines on a different occasion, but the subject this time was slavery, and my debate opponents were ethnic Norwegians. My assertion was that the Muslims were heavily involved in white slave trade during the Middle Ages, and that they brought more white slaves from Europe (slightly more than one million) than the total number of black African slaves (slightly less than one million)that were shipped over to America. These assertions were met with incredulity. Nor was my assertion that the Islamic slave trade from Africa to Asia exceeded the European slave trade to America accepted. This knowledge was so fundamentally at odds with the knowledge of my Norwegian friends that they were unwilling to accept it, just like the case of the Palestinian taxi driver. And just as his views were a result of sustained propaganda in school and in society, I suspect that many Norwegians’ views are a result of politicised opinions found in Norwegian schools and in Norwegian society.

The following quote is from the textbook Midgard 6: social studies for children:

“When media are used to influence people’s opinions in a certain way, it’s called propaganda. … the purpose of propaganda is to shape the people’s views. Censorship and propaganda are often found in countries ruled by dictators.”

This is obviously a correct assertion. But after having worked as a teacher for ten years, I have to ask the following question; “But isn’t the Norwegian school system also influenced by propaganda, something that this textbook clearly shows?”

Another example:

As a political science teacher for students in years six and seven I taught about the Middle Ages in Europe. One of the chapters in the aforementioned textbook deals with the Muslim colonisation of Spain and Portugal, from 711 to 1492. This is portrayed as an era of great human achievement, and the colonisation itself is portrayed as a positive thing. Everything that deals with this colonisation has positive undertones. Here are some short excerpts from the textbook:

“effective irrigation systems”, “new fruits and vegetables”, “knowledge about how the beautiful silk fabrics could be manufactured”, “the beautiful Arabian horse”, “both Christians and Jews were allowed to worship their religions in peace”, “good relations between Christians, Jews and Muslims”, “many converted to Islam”, “in the city of Cordoba there was a brilliant palace with gardens, water fountains, mosques and public baths”, “during the night the city was illuminated by lamps”, “scholars from Europe and the Arabian empire”, “in Andalucía the majority of the population were literate, while the majority in the rest of Europe at the time were illiterate”, “the farmers produced crops two to three times a year”, “big gardens containing fruits and vegetables surrounded the cities”.

It goes on to claim that the Muslims decorated “buildings and rooms with the most amazing patterns, poems and passages from the Koran.” And last, but not least, that the Christians in the 13th century “conquered” (notice the choice of words) Granada and that “everything the Arabs brought with them to Europe continued to live on in European culture.”

The list of positively charged words from this specific chapter is long, and there’s no mention of any negative factors. There is no mention of the culture that existed prior to the Arab colonisation, no reference to those who died as a result of this conquest, and no mention of the living conditions for the indigenous population under the Cordoba Caliphate.

The Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula was probably not any worse than any other colonisation up through history. But then again it was probably not more benign either. Here are some of the atrocities that the Muslims carried out:

• In his chronicles Sultan abd Allah of Granada describes how Muslims in the year 1066 killed every single Jew in the city of Granada (three to four thousand Jews were massacred).
• From 1010 to 1013 huge numbers of Jews were killed in Cordoba under the rule of the Muslim leader Suleiman. The remaining survivors were chased out of the city. The death toll may have been as high as several thousands.
• In the period 1130-1232 the Muslim Almohadane tribe carried out genocidal atrocities against the Jewish and Christian civilian population in Spain and North Africa. In the city of Tlemcen Jews who refused to convert to Islam were killed. It is possible that as many as 220,000 Jews and Christians were killed in the cities of Fez and Marrakesh during this period. Every single Jewish community in the Spanish cities of Seville, Cordoba, Jaen and Almeria were affected by genocide. Families who chose to convert to Islam to avoid being killed had their children taken away from them.
• Jews and Christians had to pay higher taxes and had fewer rights within the judicial system. It is true that the majority of Christians and Jews converted to Islam during the occupation, but their motivations for doing so were of a much less noble character than what is insinuated in the textbook.
• It’s also reported that Jews who converted to Islam were the victims of abuse and racism even three generations after the conversion took place.

But despite all this, the Islamic conquest of the Iberian Peninsula is still being portrayed as something wholeheartedly positive. The victims seem to be “censored away”.

Could the European colonisation of South-Africa, the USA, or New Zealand be portrayed in a similar manner? Long lists of positively-charged words and vivid narratives of all the positive things that the Europeans brought with them? About progress and civilisation, about medicine and railroads, about hospitals, books, schools, etc.? While at the same time not mentioning anything about the suffering of the indigenous populations? That’s hardly likely. That type of description would be considered to be propaganda and an insult to all the Indians, Maoris and black Africans that were killed as a result of this colonisation. Norwegian textbooks are in this case very specific: Europeans atrocities and the indigenous suffering is something the students are taught about, anything else would be disrespectful and repression of historical facts.

But not when Muslims were the colonisers and Europeans were colonised?

This is not the only example of the filtration of facts and undue bias based on ethnicity in Norwegian schools. On the contrary, it’s symptomatic of what appears to be a politicised spin in several areas in the subjects of history and social studies. One has to look very hard to find any mention of Muslim atrocities in Norwegian textbooks. And this is not only limited to Muslims. This is also the norm for most non-Western cultures and religions. Atrocities perpetrated by these groups seems to be deliberately ignored or downplayed.

Isn’t that also propaganda? (A question, by the way, which I intend to ask the Norwegian minister of Education.)

Other examples:

A student who graduates from a Norwegian school has a good knowledge of the Ku Klux Klan and the numerous murders carried out by the organisation against blacks in the USA (perpetrators were white), but the same student has no knowledge of the equally horrific and even more numerous killings of white South African Boer farmers, including women and children, that has occurred since the introduction of democracy in that country. White Boer farmers have the highest risk of being murdered in the world, and they are living under conditions that resemble genocide with murder rates that are four times higher than that of average South-Africans (perpetrators are black).

The same student will have learnt about the Norwegian role in the transatlantic slave trade (through Danish rule). But he will be unaware that somewhere between three and four thousand Norwegians were captured as slaves by Muslims in North Africa between the years 1600 and 1800, and that the majority of these Norwegians died or were killed as slaves, according to Torbjørn Ødegaard’s book Nordiske slaver — afrikanske herrer (“Nordic slaves —African masters”).

The student will also have knowledge about apartheid and white South-African racism, but be unaware of the plight of the Christian Copts in today’s Egypt.

The student will have knowledge of the Spanish massacres of Indians in South and North America, but be unaware of the genocide perpetrated by Turks against the Armenians in the early 1900s.

In the textbook Kosmos 9, social studies for high school, racism is listed as one of the motivations for European colonisation:

“Many Europeans believed that they were superior to other races.”

This is probably a true assertion, but I have yet to see non-Westerners described as racists in our textbooks. If there’s a perception in our society that only white people can be racists, are Norwegian schools then guilty of giving rise to this idea? And if that is the case, isn’t that also racism?

Propaganda in Norwegian schools is characterised by the downplaying of simple facts, and an over-emphasis on others, in order to achieve the desired effect. This type of propaganda is more difficult to expose and to counter than the lies found in totalitarian states, but is it more acceptable?

Of course I could be wrong, but I would assume that many of those who read this article, and who share the values embraced by Norwegian schools, and have the same political view that has shaped the Norwegian school, have an implicit understanding that the propaganda and censorship that I have referred to in this article hovers like an invisible veil over certain portions of information presented in the subjects that have been mentioned here. Even so, there are few critical voices. On the contrary many believe that this of censorship and propaganda is in the service “of a good and noble cause”, and consequently should continue. But hasn’t this type of justification always been endorsed by the machineries of propaganda throughout history?