Author Archives: Baron Bodissey

Gates of Vienna News Feed 11/5/2014

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In two separate attacks, Palestinian Arabs targeted Israeli Jews with their vehicles, killing one person in each incident. In the first attack, after running down several people, the Palestinian driver left his car and started hitting pedestrians with an iron bar, after which he was shot dead by police. The second driver escaped and was still at larger after killing one soldier and wounding several others.

Israeli citizens must be relieved to know that neither incident had anything to do with Islam.

In other news, intelligence agents in Norway say that they expect a major terrorist attack within the coming year.

To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, Jerry Gordon, Papa Whiskey, Phyllis Chesler, 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.

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.

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The Charge of the Lightweights

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Many of our readers will be aware that JLH spends most of his time translating German for us. However, a while back he took some time off from all the umlauts and the eszetts to pen a little spoof for us. It’s been in my “IN” tray for a few weeks, but now is a good time to break it out, in the wake of last night’s congressional elections:

The Charge of the Lightweights

by JLH
With apologies to the shade of Lord Tennyson*

Half a step, half a step,
Half a step backward,
All in a world gone mad,
Stumbled the White House crowd.
“Strategy we have none —
We’ve never needed one.
For a country that is bad,
We just scraped and bowed.”

Side to side, they careened,
But their base remained serene,
Placid and somewhat cowed,
Despite the dark suspicion that
Someone was stupid.
Theirs not to reason — why?
Theirs but to vote and sigh.
Through a world they’d driven mad,
Bumbled the White House crowd.

IS to the right of them,
Putin to the left of them,
Muslim Brothers holding their hands,
Clichés resounding proud,
Blindly, halting but pell-mell,
Thinking still that all was well,
Into the maze they went —
Faster than word can tell.
Insouciant White House crowd!

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The Delights of Faithlessness, Part 3

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This is the final installment of a three-part guest-essay by Thucydides. Previously: Part 1, Part 2.

The Delights of Faithlessness
by Thucydides

Part 3: What Is To Be Done?

I have described a self-serving, immensely empowering and gratifying worldview, one that protects one from the adverse consequences of failure and betrayal by transferring allegiance away from those supposedly to be served to the group of which they are a part; one that is hermetically sealed off from argument, from evidence, from shame and guilt, from remorse, and from contrition and penitence by means of group solidarity. This worldview, if not vigorously combatted, will lead the West to drift inexorably away from republican forms of government and toward a fascist variant, one that in time, as tensions and contradictions become more apparent and more insoluble, will evolve from a soft despotism into something harder and more overtly menacing.

What then is to be done?

Freud said, “Reason is no avail against human passion.” It certainly is of no avail against this hermetically sealed worldview, one that privileges holders and leads them to believe that they possess a special kind of esoteric insight that renders them immune from criticism by “know nothings.”

So what is to be done? Certainly not to bewail our fate. Nor to attempt to re-analyze our situation, which God knows has been endlessly analyzed by minds far better than mine. Nor can it be to make impassioned appeals to our faithless leaders, almost all of whom share French Socialist Premier Hollande’s contempt for the “toothless” poor, whom Trierweiler reports he calls the sans dents. Most members of traditional-values coalitions and the counterjihad are certainly poor, and any amount of money we could raise would pale in comparison to the wealth the oligarchs and governmental elites can mobilize.

Some in the counterjihad hope that when the day of overt conflict comes, the governing elites will have no choice but to side with the indigenous population. I think this is by no means certain. What is clear to me is that European leaders fear widespread civil unrest. And they do so for many reasons:

1)   They fear widespread Muslim military defections, and even Muslim soldiers turning on their own comrades.
2)   EU countries are financially broke and have decimated their military budgets to prop up their expensive social welfare systems, so that it may no longer be adequate to the task of containing widespread insurrection.
3)   They fear that a prolonged civil insurrection and the devastation wrought by it will break the economy.
 

These fears, which all but ensure a continued dual policy of appeasement of Muslims and intimidation of their non-immigrant populations, are most acute in France and the UK, but exist everywhere Islamic populations are large and militant, e.g. Belgium, Holland, and Germany.

No, there is only one available strategy: Raising consciousness. But raising consciousness does not mean consciousness of our situation. That has already been done. It means raising consciousness of the faithlessness of the West’s ruling elites and their media allies.

Can this be done through reasoned debate? Doubtful. Instead, we must take a page from those on the Left who have waged successful social insurgencies, from those on the Left who understand the futility of reasoned debate where deeply, almost religiously held, beliefs are involved, and who therefore adopt a strategy rooted in relentless psychological intimidation; in essence in psychic warfare.

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 11/4/2014

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As you all know, today was Election Day here in the USA, the midterm elections for Congress. As of this writing it seems that the Republicans have gained control of the Senate, and substantially increased their majority in the House of Representatives.

A decade ago I might have found the news exhilarating, but not this time. It’s more like: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

I’ll venture a few predictions for the next two years under an all-Republican Congress:

1.   The first thing the new Republican majority in the Senate will do when they are seated in January will be to “reach across the aisle.”
2.   For the next two years, anything bad that happens in the United States will be blamed on the Republicans in Congress.
3.   President Obama — or rather, the Marxists on his staff who direct his actions — will, in classic Cloward-Piven fashion, make sure that plenty of bad things happen as soon as the new Congress convenes.
4.   The Republican majority in the Senate will gladly assist in the passage of some form of “amnesty”.
5.   The Republican-controlled Congress will not repeal ObamaCare.
 

On that dyspeptic note, I will relinquish my grey hairs to my midnight pillow with relief.

To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.

Thanks to ESW, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Takuan Seiyo, 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.

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.

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“Moderate Islam” Is Nothing But Falsified History

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Yesterday we posted a video of Geert Wilders’ speech in Copenhagen on November 2. His remarks were followed by a question and answer session with the audience, and included the participation of other members of the podium panel. Part of the discussion was a lively exchange between Daniel Pipes and Mr. Wilders on the question of the “Moderate Muslim”, or “Moderate Islam”.

For those who would like to listen to the debate between Dr. Pipes and Mr. Wilders, the video of the event is here. The relevant portion begins at about 37:08 and ends at 43:10 (the quality of the audio is not very good, but a transcript is in the works).

Last night I posted my own two cents on the moderate-versus-radical trope. Our Arabic translator ritamalik weighed in with a comment on the subject, which deserves to be reproduced here in its entirety. It has been edited slightly for paragraphing, punctuation, and clarity:

The problem with this “Moderate Islam” stuff is that even if it happens it will be a lie, and all lies will one day be exposed and a backlash will be imminent.

Islam did become more “moderate” at the turn of the century and as a result of forced secularisation and the abject defeat of the Ottoman Empire, a.k.a. The Caliphate. A lot of its more militant aspects were swept under the rug for many decades.

But if that was the solution then why are we here now having to deal with Al Qaeda and IS? The reason is that “moderate Islam” is a lie! The only person who has the right to define Islam and say what it is and it is not is the founder of the religion i.e. Muhammad.

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The Immigrant Traffickers’ Club Med

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Here’s how the deal works: You’re a poor, illiterate peasant from Bamako or Ouagadougou. Your country is in severe drought and your family is near starvation. So you sell your surviving cattle and pay €1,200 ($1,500) per family member to an Egyptian trafficker who says he can get you across the Mediterranean to Italy.

You set out across the desert with your family. You have to stay awake all night holding a big knife to keep the traffickers and your fellow asylum-seekers from raping your wife and daughters (and maybe even your younger sons) at the roadside camps. Then, when you get to Cyrenaica, you’re locked in a warehouse near the coast and beaten up by the guards, going without food for three days until the overloaded boat is ready to set sail.

By the time you’re picked up by a passing ship and put ashore on Sicily, you’re bruised, emaciated, sick, exhausted, and penniless. But none of that matters now — you’re in Italy, where the living is easy! Where the government feeds you and houses you and even gives you spending money! And, with a little luck, you may make it to Germany, or Britain, or Sweden, where the benefits are even greater…

The above account is my imaginative reconstruction of the background details for a recent news story. The traffickers in question have been caught, but their asylum-seeking charges will presumably remain in the Schengen Area indefinitely.

Below is a report from ANSA about the incident, which has a very unusual Mohammed Coefficient of 150%:

Two Egyptian ‘Migrant Traffickers’ Arrested

Men allegedly responsible for trafficking 58 immigrants

(ANSA) — Pozzallo, November 3 — Police stopped two men on Monday believed to be the speedboat pilots responsible for trafficking 58 immigrants who landed near the Sicilian coastal city of Ragusa on October 31.

The men, 32-year-old Mouhamed Mouhamed and 59-year-old Adel Ale Mouhamed Ale, both Egyptian, are under investigation by the Ragusa prosecutor’s office for conspiracy to aid illegal immigration.

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 11/3/2014

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A ship carrying illegal migrants from Turkey towards Greece capsized off Istanbul, and at least 24 would-be refugees drowned. Seven were rescued, and the Turkish Coast Guard is still searching for other survivors.

In other news, two Syrian rebel groups that were trained and armed by the USA surrendered to the Al-Nusra Front. The rebels reportedly turned over their American-supplied weaponry, including TOW missiles, to the al-Qaeda affiliate.

To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, 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.

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.

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The Hotheads vs. the Moderates

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The major divide within the Counterjihad movement is between those who believe in the “Moderate Muslim”, and those who don’t.

Nine years ago, in the early days of this blog, whenever the topic of the Moderate Muslim came up I used to say, “The jury is still out on whether he exists or not.” And the jury was out as far as I was concerned — I had only just begun observing the Great Jihad, and was still gathering evidence.

Well, that was 2005, and this is 2014. I’ve collected enough data now. The jury’s in: The Moderate Muslim does not exist.

Mind you, in a strict ontological sense he does exist. You can find a few moderate Muslims here and there. Sincere, well-meaning, decent people who adhere only lightly to the Koranic basis of their religion, and wish to mold it into something humane and modern. Men like Tarek Fatah and Zuhdi Jasser. Women like Irshad Manji. You can’t help but like them (some of them, anyway), and their stance in the face of death threats from their less moderate co-religionists can be admirable.

But they are few in number. None of them leads a large broad-based following. There is no Moderate Muslim with devoted disciples crowding around him trying to touch the hem of his garment. None of them stands on a podium in front of thousands of cheering supporters. They work for (or found) modestly-funded think-tanks and appear from time to time on TV, eloquently presenting their polite, humane point of view.

The rest of the supposed moderates — people like Tariq Ramadan and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf — are really just skilled taqiyya artists for the Muslim Brotherhood, suave persuasive fellows with golden tongues — sometimes several of them apiece. In truth they are no more moderate than Yusuf al-Qaradawi, but simply adept obfuscators whose job it is to anesthetize the cultural elites in Western countries so that they never feel the Islamic stiletto sliding between their ribs.

The rest of 21st-century Islam — Sunni or Shiite or Sufi, Asian or Middle Eastern or African or European — is a seething mass of superstitious backwardness, trapped in an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy* that requires rapine, slaughter, mass destruction, and world domination.

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

I bring all of this up because of the question and answer session that followed Geert Wilders’ speech in Denmark yesterday.

Daniel Pipes is perhaps the most prominent proponent of the Moderate Muslim. Or, to be more exact, a Moderate Islam. In his disagreement with Geert Wilders, he asserted that in the last forty years Islam has changed — for the worse, unfortunately — and it’s possible that it may change again. Why, asked Dr. Pipes, should we write off the possibility that Islam may change for the better? That Islamic scholars may reinterpret the core foundational texts of Islam in such a way that their religion could be led into a humane modernity?

Daniel Pipes might thus be styled a Moderate Counterjihadist, while Geert Wilders and Lars Hedegaard — not to mention a large chunk of the Danes in the audience, and myself — are the Hotheads. We find the desperate search for the Moderate Muslim to be a faintly ludicrous enterprise.

Even if the longed-for change were to arrive someday, what purpose does it serve to dwell on that faint possibility? Should we modify our policies towards Islam as it exists and is widely practiced now? Would we be well advised to pause and wait for Moderate Islam to somehow, against all odds, appear and revolutionize the Muslim world?

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Cultural or Religious?

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Below is the latest newsletter from the Tennessee Council for Political Justice.

Newsletter #149 — What “Minority Practices” Should We Value?

A lawsuit was recently filed against Canadian government policy that anyone being sworn in as a Canadian citizen do so with their faces fully exposed. A Pakistani woman, who covers her face with a niqab where only her eyes show, is challenging this policy.

It has been noted by the government lawyers that the woman “had removed her veil to get a driver’s licence…[and that she also]… declined an offer to take the oath at the front or the back of the citizenship court,” so that no one could see her face.

With regard to women’s coverings, there is a spectrum of styles as well as interpretations about whether it is an Islamic religious mandate. In Tennessee, Islamists that claim the exclusive right to definitively answer questions like this also say there is no single mandate about how women cover themselves, if at all.


Remziya Suleyman,
Director of the American Center for Outreach
and self-proclaimed “Muslim voice of Tennessee,”
loosened her hijab recently while traveling overseas.

Members of the Muslim Canadian Congress say that the “hijab has nothing to do with morality” but has become a tool for both political and religious operatives.

CAIR lawyer Zahra Billoo says:

Mohammed Khan, a naturalized U.S. citizen trying to join ISIS, was arrested two weeks ago at Chicago O’Hare airport. What does his mother’s picture below communicate about the ideology that may have informed Mohammed’s decision?

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“We Are Writing History Here”

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Below is a video Geert Wilders’ speech in Copenhagen yesterday.

After giving his speech, Mr. Wilders and the podium panel took questions from the audience. Other members of the panel included:

  • Kurt Westergaard, the Danish artist who created the famous “Turban Bomb” cartoon;
  • Robert Redeker, the French author who had to go into hiding after writing a negative article about Islam;
  • Lars Vilks, the Swedish artist whose drawings of the prophet as a roundabout dog brought him death threats and a firebombing attempt on his house;
  • Lars Hedegaard, the founder of the Danish Free Press Society who was intended victim of a failed assassination attempt last year; and
  • Daniel Pipes, the founder of the Middle East Forum.

The exchange between Dr. Pipes and Mr. Wilders concerning the possible emergence of a “moderate Islam” is particularly instructive:

The prepared text for Mr. Wilders’ remarks (from which he deviated slightly in his spoken words) may be read here.

Gates of Vienna News Feed 11/2/2014

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A suicide bomber blew himself up today in Pakistan at the Wagah border crossing with India. Dozens of people were killed in the attack, which occurred late in the day when the crossing was crowded with people.

In other news, Republican candidates are riding high in the polls in the final hours leading up to Tuesday’s midterm elections, and seem to stand a good chance of regaining a majority in the Senate.

To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, 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.

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.

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The Delights of Faithlessness, Part 2

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This is the second installment of a three-part guest-essay by Thucydides. Previously: Part 1

The Delights of Faithlessness
by Thucydides

Part 2: The Incoherence of the Multicultural Paradigm

Max Weber suggested that we almost always pursue our self-interest, but that we want to have a good conscience about serving our own interests. He proposed that when we are successful in idealizing our own interests we are more effective in securing them. He thought that the Protestant Ethic provided that justification. Today, it no longer does — or at least not as effectively as its replacements, Marxist ideology and the supremacist ideology of political Islam.

As early as The Communist Manifesto (1848), a relatively early work, Marx and Engels provide the alienated intellectual with a moral and ideological justification for faithlessness when they write:

Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole [Emphasis added].

In sum, according to Marx and Engels, alienated and disaffected intellectuals are not alienated and disaffected; they are merely more enlightened, more comprehending of the historical dialectic than the benighted masses surrounding them. This is pretty heady stuff for a narcissist, or for any highly intelligent person who feels unappreciated and who is subject to ambitious elitist temptations.

By means of this argument, now part of left-wing orthodoxy, and one now thoroughly internalized by leftist elites, Marx provides those elites with that smug, signature spirit of self-congratulation, that almost gnostic-like confidence that they have privileged insights which place them above others lacking such insight, that scarcely veiled belief that those who disagree with them are benighted, anti-social reactionaries without understanding, that firm conviction that they are the moral agents of history and their adversaries are not, and with all that, the conviction that this is a war and must be fought — albeit rhetorically for now — as if it, indeed, is a war.

But is it a war? And, if so, where is the violence?

To answer that question: The violence is all around us. To name but one example of the pervasive violence now endemic to Europe, one has only to note media reports that two Rotherham fathers who tried to retrieve their daughters from their Pakistani groomers were arrested by the South Yorkshire police. The message? The same that one finds in Dante’s Inferno: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Why would authorities wish to convey such a bleak message? Because demoralization breeds passivity. And a passive population is easier to control.

Yes, the violence is all around, only disguised as menace, the menace abused spouses recognize as part of the world they inhabit, the menace so unpredictable and uncontrollable that one has to rationalize it by pretending one is the cause of it in order to contain the anxiety and depression it arouses. Thus many seek to rationalize the faithless actions of the ruling elites and their apparatchiks rather than confront the realization that their faithlessness will lead to the abyss. But all such attempts at rationalization not only strengthen the faithless by providing them with endlessly creative justifications for their faithlessness, they undermine the possibility that the abused will awaken to their true condition. Thus to the many temptations of faithlessness described above, another is the fact that the faithless, as actors rather than acted upon, suffer less anxiety and depression than those they are betraying. For many, the answer to the anxiety and depression is to tune out.

But still one wonders how someone in the middle of a spousal abuse relationship can fail to recognize what is occurring; fail to accept what is occurring even when the situation and their response to it is thoroughly analyzed for them?

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Geert Wilders at Trykkefrihedsselskabet

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Geert Wilders spoke today at Trykkefrihedsselskabet (the Danish Free Press Society) in Copenhagen to mark the tenth anniversary of the murder of Theo Van Gogh.

Below is the prepared text of his speech:

Geert Wilders’ speech to the Danish Free Press Society Copenhagen, 2 November, 2014

Dear friends,

I am happy to be in Copenhagen again.

It is always a pleasure to return to this wonderful city — the home of my good friend and fellow freedom fighter, the Danish hero Lars Hedegaard.

It is always a privilege to be in the capital of the brave Danish people.

And it is always an honor to be a guest of your great organization.

The Danish Free Press Society is a beacon of light. For Denmark, for Scandinavia, for the whole of Europe, and for the entire West. Your staunch defense of civil liberties, such as freedom of speech, serves as an inspiration for many, including myself and my party.

On a moment like this, when the free world is in mortal danger, an organization such as the Danish Free Press Society is needed more than ever.

Exactly ten years ago, today, my fellow countryman Van Gogh fell as a martyr of free speech.

I remember that morning very well. The press came to my office to ask for a reaction, but hardly anyone could believe that what had happened was really true. We all realized that the Netherlands would never be the same again. Unfortunately few lessons have been learned since that horrible day in 2004.

Islam claims that Muhammad was a prophet. But Muhammad was not a prophet; Theo van Gogh was a prophet.

Van Gogh saw what was coming. He spoke out forcefully against the danger of Islamization.

He had also just made a short movie, together with my then colleague Ayaan Hirsi Ali, about the plight of women in Islamic society. The movie was called “Submission.”

That is why he was murdered. His assassination should have been an alarm bell.

Van Gogh warned us in a strong language, as clear as the colors that his great-granduncle Vincent used when painting his landscapes.

He was a brave man. When he realized the danger of Islam, he did not run like a coward.

He would have hated to see how our freedom of speech has been restricted in the ten years since his death.

Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, the more Islam we get, the less free our societies become. Not only because of the Islamization but also because of the weak appeasers who call themselves politicians.

We are no longer allowed to crack jokes or draw cartoons if Islam feels insulted by it.

If you do so, your life is in danger, as Kurt Westergaard and Lars Vilks can testify. You might even get arrested, as happened a few years ago with the Dutch cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot.

Sure, the charges against Nekschot were later dropped. But if you value your life and if you prefer to avoid trouble, it is better not to do anything that might remotely insult Islam.

We are no longer allowed to tell statistical truths, as Lars Hedegaard experienced, when he referred to rape figures in Islamic families.

A murderer came to Lars’s door and the state authorities persecuted him for so-called hate speech. Sure, the Supreme Court eventually acquitted Lars. But if you value your life and if you prefer to avoid trouble, it is better to keep quiet.

We are no longer allowed to refer to scientific and historical research, as my friend, the brave Austrian human rights activist Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, experienced.

In a seminar on the historical figure of Muhammad, she mentioned that he had a crush on little girls and had sex with a 9-year old. That is the truth.

But Elisabeth was convicted, and her conviction was even upheld by the Appeals court. Once again, it is better to remain silent if you want to avoid trouble.

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