During the course of our journey as the keepers of this blog, our understanding of the great foe to Western culture has grown and changed over time. As we have struggled to come to grips with the alien nature of Islam, many of our hopes have been laid aside. Some have been brutally hacked away. For example, the myth of the moderate Muslim was a hard notion to let go. When it left, the idea that Islam could be ‘reformed’ (in the sense that Judaism and Christianity have experienced) followed soon after.

Sure, there are secular Muslims, but when push comes to shove it is not they who are in charge of Islam. And their cloak of moderation can be deadly for themselves in the face of their masters. Look at any country ruled by Islam and you will see corruption and bloodshed. It is not only the borders of those countries that are bloody: the citizens within do not live, cannot live, in a manner commensurate with what Westerners believe to be basic human liberties.

With Islam, the Law prevails, and the Law is not merciful. Nor is it just. We all know the insane instances of applied sharia law in which raped women are beaten by the authorities for their “sins”.

This law can be twisted into pretzels that would make the Jesuits blush. From The Washington Times comes a news item that won’t surprise anyone who has studied the issue for long:

The latest edition of al Qaeda’s online, English-language magazine includes an article offering an Islamic justification for extremists to steal from non-Muslims to finance their activities…

Yes, even that paper calls them “extremists”. Through sad experience, that’s not a word we believe any more. It’s the terrorists, stupid. Stealing in the name of Allah’s Ummah is cool, according to these terrorists – and to the many, many “moderate” Muslims who contribute to the cause.

Now comes a book that exactly lines up with the way our thinking has evolved at Gates of Vienna. Rebecca Bynum nails it in Allah Is Dead: Why Islam is Not a Religion. I’ve been saying this for a while now so it’s exciting to see that someone has written a book laying out systematically what it took us so many years to understand, to wit: Islam is a totalitarian system tricked out to look like a religion, and it fools even many of its adherents. In reality, Islam is a prison – as those who try to leave know all too well. You wonder sometimes what would happen if Islam’s so-called ‘apostasy’ were done away with? How many adherents would still be in the system? Especially I wonder how many women would remain if they were free (as in really free from physical retaliation) to get on the bus, Gus.

Allah is Dead is due for release in February, but it can be ordered now from Amazon. That page has a pre-review from Ms. Bynum’s cohort at The New English Review, Hugh Fitzgerald:

For many, the word religion commands immediate respect. In the American context, that word implicates the most important Constitutional protections. But is the ideology of Islam accurately, or helpfully, defined as a religion? Is that word, as understood in the Western world, properly applied to Islam, or does it help to hide a reality that needs to be understood? These are the questions that Rebecca Bynum asks, and to which she offers answers, in this, the first book-length investigation of how to most accurately describe or define Islam. [my emphasis]

Finally, someone has done it! By ‘it’, I mean given us a working definition of this utopian scheme that lays aside any theological pretensions in order to examine the ugly reality. All Utopias are misconceived, but none has been so brutal as this one.

Now, as all of us in the Counterjihad labored to come to terms with what our enemy means, we have been supplied serendipitously with a most necessary definition of what it is we fight. Interestingly, Ms. Bynum has arrived at the very point we were struggling to achieve. From all indications regarding her book, she has given us the perspective we need to more effectively do battle against this latest Destroyer.

I look forward to reading her book, to having the satisfaction of feeling, “yes, that’s it. She’s nailing it”. As the editorial description at Amazon puts it:

…Bynum maintains Islam s current status as a religion, along with all the other religions of the world, is in error. She refers to Islam as the duck-billed platypus of belief systems and proposes it should be classified accordingly; as the hybrid religio-socio-political belief system it is. She also reminds the Western world about what religion itself actually is, not the caricature modern analysts often mean when they refer to “religious fundamentalisms.” Bynum has given policy-makers a powerful tool for dealing with Islam. Let us hope they understand, and grasp, and choose to make use of it.

Soon after the book arrives, expect to see a post about it. In fact, if you order and read the book and want to write your own review, please send it to us for consideration as a post.

We fight more effectively when we can name the enemy. Thus, we can say with fair certainty, given the evidence, that Islam is a political system of brigandry with a veneer of pious-sounding rules. Do a little digging past that ‘piety’ about killing all the Jews and find the blood-soaked history behind the façade.

No wonder Islam annihilates any history but the one it writes.

No wonder it issues death threats against anyone who says otherwise.

No wonder so many people have died because of this plague on humanity.

Thank you, Ms. Bynum.

Rep. Allen West of Florida has lodged a vigorous protest over the U.S. government’s granting permission to the PLO to fly its flag in Washington D.C. He says it is a mistake to give legitimacy to a known terrorist organization.

In other news, the latest data indicate that over the last two years, as unemployment hovered around the 10% mark, more than a million immigrants, many of them illegal, found jobs in the United States.

Meanwhile, Al-Azhar University has cut off interfaith dialogue with the Vatican to punish the Pope for his interference with Egypt’s internal affairs.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, DF, Escape Velocity, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, JP, Kitman, Nilk, Reinhard, Shirl in Oz, TV, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

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.

It’s always a pleasure to hear the words of a Muslim zealot who discards all pretense and dissimulation and tells it like it is, Islam-style. Anjem Choudary in the UK is a perennial favorite in this regard, never failing to assure a television interviewer that Islam is superior to all other religions, that it must triumph, and will eventually rule in Britain.

Australia seems to have raised up its own antipodean Choudary in the person of Ibrahim Siddiq-Conlon, a white convert to Islam. Like Mr. Choudary, Mr. Siddiq-Conlon has launched a “Sharia4” franchise in his country, “Sharia4Australia”. But he goes a step farther than his soul brother in England — he acknowledges that violent confrontation may in fact be required to assure the victory and ascendance of Islam in Australia.

Here’s the report from The Australian:

PM Go and ‘Let the Muslims Take Over’

ISLAMIC preacher Ibrahim Siddiq-Conlon points heavenwards to emphasise his message for the governments of Australia — there is no God but Allah and only his laws should be obeyed.

“My attack is on the Prime Minister of Australia,” he said yesterday. “I hate the parliament in Canberra. I want to go straight for the jugular vein and advise the parliament that they have no right to legislate. They should immediately step down and let the Muslims take over.”

An Australian-born convert to Islam, Siddiq-Conlon is the self-anointed leader of a group called Sharia4Australia, which is pushing for the introduction of sharia courts as a first step towards achieving Islamic law.

“One day Australia will live under sharia; it’s inevitable,” he said. “If they (Australians) don’t accept it, that’s not our problem. We hope, and our objective is to have a peaceful transition, but when you look at history that has never been the case. There’s always been a fight. It is inevitable that one day there will be a struggle for Islam in Australia.”

A masters graduate in architecture from the University of Technology Sydney, Siddiq-Conlon formed Sharia4Australia last year. He said he had three objectives. The first is to persuade Muslims they must hate “taghoot”, the worship of any God other than Allah, which includes democracy.

“They must hate it, speak out against it. And, if that doesn’t work, take action against it.”

His other objectives are to advise elected governments they have no authority to rule, and to educate non-Muslims on the benefits of sharia, including punishments such as stoning adulterers and severing the hands of thieves.

“If chopping off the hands is the punishment given by the sharia court then we say glad tidings, because chopping off the hands — when you understand what is sharia — is a mercy to that person.

“Why is it a mercy getting your hands chopped off? Because it can be expiation for your sins. It is better to get punished in this life than to go underground into the grave or into the hellfire for eternity.”

Siddiq-Conlon will join a debate tonight at the Parramatta Town Hall in Sydney on the merits of sharia versus democracy. The event was organised by self-styled debate promoter Zaky Mallah, who was acquitted of terrorism charges in 2005 but pleaded guilty to threatening to kill a commonwealth officer after his passport was cancelled.

The pro-democracy case will be argued by an Australian army veteran, self-described “concerned Aussie” and senior member of the pro-gun Firearms Forum, Jack Zedee. “The issue with Mr Conlon and Sharia4Australia is they are preaching hatred. His views horrify me,” Mr Zedee told The Australian.

Police and private security are expected at the debate, after both sides claimed to have received death threats. Mallah said he had tried to cancel the event but the debaters insisted on proceeding.

Siddiq-Conlon shrugs off concerns his campaign will damage the moderate Muslim community. “If it causes a backlash against the Muslims, I can’t help that. This is a necessary debate.”

Hat tip: Shirl in Oz.

In the past we’ve written about the Thomas More Law Center’s lawsuit against the U.S. Government over its bailout of AIG, which is an aggressively shariah-compliant company. The bailout terms made the government a majority shareholder in the company, so the feds are now in the business of promoting shariah, which is blatantly unconstitutional.

Unfortunately, a federal district judge has dismissed the lawsuit. However, the case isn’t over, since the Thomas More Law Center has appealed the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals.

Here’s a press release from the Center for Security Policy with all the latest details:

Shariah Law gains foothold in US: Federal judge upholds government funding of Islam; Thomas More Law Center files appeal

ANN ARBOR, MI — Last week, Judge Lawrence P. Zatkoff, a federal district court judge in Michigan, dismissed a constitutional challenge to the U.S. Government’s bailout of AIG, which used over a hundred million dollars in federal tax money to support Islamic religious indoctrination through the funding and promotion of Sharia-compliant financing (SCF). SCF is financing that follows the dictates of Islamic law.

The challenge was brought by the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC), a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and co-counsel David Yerushalmi, on behalf of Kevin Murray, a Marine Corps veteran of the Iraqi War. TMLC filed a notice of appeal immediately after the ruling and will be seeking review of the decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of TMLC, commented: “Judge Zatkoff’s ruling allows for oil-rich Muslim countries to plant the flag of Islam on American soil. His ruling ignored the uncontested opinions of several Sharia experts and AIG’s own website, which trumpeted Sharia-compliant financing as promoting the law of the Prophet Mohammed and as an ethical product, ‘and a new way of life.’ His ruling ignored AIG’s use of a foreign Islamic advisory board to control investing in accordance with Islamic law.

Continued Thompson: “This astonishing decision allows the federal government as well as AIG and other Wall Street bankers to explicitly promote Sharia law– the 1200-year-old body of Islamic canon law based on the Koran, which demands the destruction of Western Civilization and the United States. This is the same law championed by Osama bin Laden and the Taliban; it is the same law that prompted the 9/11 Islamic terrorist attacks; and it is the same law that is responsible for the murder of thousands of Christians throughout the world. The Law Center will do everything it can to stop Sharia law from rearing its ugly head in America.

The federal lawsuit was filed in 2008 against Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. It challenges that portion of the “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008” (EESA) that appropriated $70 billion in taxpayer money to fund and financially support the federal government’s majority ownership interest in AIG, which is considered the market leader in SCF. According to the lawsuit, “The use of these taxpayer funds to approve, promote, endorse, support, and fund these Sharia-based Islamic religious activities violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.”

Through the use of taxpayer funds, the federal government acquired a majority ownership interest (nearly 80%) in AIG; and as part of the bailout, Congress appropriated $70 billion of taxpayer money to fund and financially support AIG and its financial activities, $47.5 billion of which was actually distributed to AIG. AIG, which is now a government owned company, engages in SCF, which subjects certain financial activities, including investments, to the dictates of Islamic law and the Islamic religion. This specifically includes any profits or interest obtained through such financial activities. AIG itself publicly describes “Sharia” as “Islamic law based on the Quran and the teachings of the Prophet [Mohammed].”

With the aid of taxpayer funds provided by Congress, AIG also employs a “Shariah Supervisory Committee.” According to AIG, the role of its Sharia authority “is to review our operations, supervise its development of Islamic products, and determine Shariah compliance of these products and our investments.”

Shortly after filing the complaint in 2008, attorneys for the Obama administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit on behalf of the named defendants. In a written opinion issued in May 2009, the judge denied the request, holding that the lawsuit properly alleged a federal constitutional challenge to the use of taxpayer money to fund AIG’s Islamic religious activities.

In its request to dismiss the lawsuit, DOJ argued that the plaintiff, Kevin Murray, who is a federal taxpayer, lacked standing to bring the action. And even if he did have standing, DOJ argued that the use of the bailout money to fund AIG’s operations did not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The court disagreed, noting, in relevant part, the following:

In this case, the fact that AIG is largely a secular entity is not dispositive: The question in an as-applied challenge is not whether the entity is of a religious character, but how it spends its grant. The circumstances of this case are historic, and the pressure upon the government to navigate this financial crisis is unfathomable. Times of crisis, however, do not justify departure from the Constitution. In this case, the United States government has a majority interest in AIG. AIG utilizes consolidated financing whereby all funds flow through a single port to support all of its activities, including Sharia-compliant financing. Pursuant to the EESA, the government has injected AIG with tens of billions of dollars, without restricting or tracking how this considerable sum of money is spent. At least two of AIG’s subsidiary companies practice Sharia-compliant financing, one of which was unveiled after the influx of government cash. . . . Finally, after the government acquired a majority interest in AIG and contributed substantial funds to AIG for operational purposes, the government co-sponsored a forum entitled “Islamic Finance 101.” These facts, taken together, raise a question of whether the government’s involvement with AIG has created the effect of promoting religion and sufficiently raise Plaintiff’s claim beyond the speculative level, warranting dismissal inappropriate at this stage in the proceedings.

Following this favorable ruling, the parties engaged in discovery. During discovery, TMLC took depositions, acquired numerous sworn affidavits from AIG and many of its subsidiaries, and acquired thousands of documents. This voluminous evidence was filed with the court in support of TMLC’s motion for summary judgment-a request that the court enter final judgment in its favor because there is no genuine issue of material fact and TMLC should prevail as a matter of law.

On January 14, 2011, the court reversed its earlier position and ruled against Plaintiff Murray, claiming that there was no evidence presented of religious indoctrination, and if there were such evidence, the indoctrination could not be attributed to the federal government and besides, the amount of federal money that was used to support SCF — $153 million — was “de minimis” in light of the large sum of tax money the federal government actually gave to AIG- $47.5 billion.

Robert Muise, Senior Trial Counsel for TMLC, commented: “Based on the incredible amount of evidence presented, much of which DOJ could not refute, and in light of the strength of the court’s prior ruling, we expected the court to ultimately rule in our favor and hold that the federal government violated the U.S. Constitution by using federal tax money to fund Islamic religious activities. As soon as we read the court’s adverse opinion, we filed an immediate appeal.”

In addition to the court’s remarkable claim that $153 million in tax money is “de minimis,” the court stated the following: “In the absence of evidence showing that AIG’s development and sale of SCF products has resulted in the instruction of religious beliefs for the purpose of instilling those beliefs in others or furthering a religious mission, Plaintiff has failed to demonstrate that a reasonable observer could conclude that AIG has engaged in religious indoctrination by supplying SCF products.”

In the court filings, however, TMLC presented overwhelming and un-rebutted evidence from experts and AIG itself to demonstrate that AIG, with the direct support of the U.S. Government, was engaging in religious indoctrination. Specifically, in addition to AIG’s own description of its Islamic financing as based upon Sharia and Sharia in turn described as “Islamic law based on Quran [sic] and the teachings of the Prophet (PBUH),” AIG promotes Sharia and SCF as a way to proselytize non-Muslims through an “ethical product” and a “new way of life.” Indeed, in the U.S. Government’s filings in the case, it admitted that SCF involves “a theological proposition.”

Muise concluded, “Apparently, the court does not believe that the federal government violates the U.S. Constitution when it provides $153 million in taxpayer money to support Islamic religious activities. This is certainly more than the ‘one pence’ James Madison warned about when he helped craft the First Amendment, and I am sure this decision is news for all of the Christian and Jewish organizations and businesses that are prevented from receiving a dime of federal tax money to support their religious activities.”

The appeal is expected to take at least a year to complete.

In this video from the Center for Security Policy, Clare Lopez talks about the danger of a nuclear Iran, and the significance of what happened to the screening of Iranium in Ottawa:

For more background on Clare Lopez, see our earlier post.

Here is Fred Litwin, the president and founder of the Free Thinking Film Society in Ottawa, Canada. His organization’s scheduled showing of Iranium was cancelled under pressure from the Iranian embassy. On a Canadian news program Mr. Litwin discusses what happened, and his plans for a re-screening of the film.

Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for YouTubing this video:

This is Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore vigorously defending the right to free speech in Canada, and lambasting the craven dhimmis who caved in to the Iranian government. I love this guy’s attitude; I wish we had more like him here in the USA.

Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for YouTubing this video:

Maybe James Moore has some Danish blood…

Mona Sahlin, who is retiring as the leader of the Social Democrats in Sweden, gave a final speech to Parliament. She said the most important task facing her party and the country was to isolate the “xenophobic” Sweden Democrats.

In other news, the youth unemployment rate in Britain reached 20%, which set a new record.

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

Thanks to 4symbols, C. Cantoni, DF, ESW, Fjordman, Freyja’s Cats, Gaia, Insubria, KGS, Nilk, SS, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

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 controversy over the cancellation of the showing of Iranium has reached a new level: Canada’s Heritage Minister has ordered the National Archives to show the film. Sources in Canada say that the movie will be screened sometime in February — with extensive security.

Here’s the report from the National Post:

Heritage Minister Orders Library and Archives Canada to Show Controversial Film

OTTAWA — Heritage Minister James Moore has instructed Library and Archives Canada to show the documentary film Iranium after “threats of violence” caused a screening of the film Tuesday to be cancelled, the minister’s office has announced.

Both Mr. Moore and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney had earlier criticized Library and Archives, a federal Crown agency, for cancelling the screening.

“The principle of free speech is one of the cornerstones of our democracy,” MR. Moore’s office said in a prepared statement. “Minister Moore took action as soon as he heard that the film was cancelled. The minister has instructed the Library and Archives to honour their commitment to show the film, while taking all appropriate steps to ensure security. Canada does not accept attempts from the Iranian Embassy to dictate what films will, and will not be shown in Canada.”

Pauline Portelance, a spokeswoman for Library and Archives Canada, said the Iranian embassy had sent a letter to the federal institution on the weekend asking that the film be cancelled. The request was denied.

Then, people — whom Ms. Portelance described as “members of the public” — started phoning Library and Archives complaining about the planned screening and threatening to protest. “The threats were getting too serious,” Ms. Portelance said.

A decision was then made to cancel the screening.

Asked about the issue during a press conference on Wednesday morning, Liberal house leader David McGuinty said he supports a “free and open society.”

Officials from both Library and Archives and from the film event’s sponsor, the Free Thinking Society, told iPolitics Wednesday they are prepared to discuss showing the film at a future date.

Fred Litwin, president of the society, said he believed the original cancellation was “ludicrous” but that he believed nevertheless the Library and Archives auditorium remains a good place to show the film.

A website about the film, says:” Iranium powerfully reports on the many aspects of the threat America and the world now faces using rarely before seen footage of Iranian leaders, and interviews with 25 leading politicians, Iranian dissidents and experts on Middle East policy, terrorism, and nuclear proliferation.”

Iranium has only had a few screenings so far in the United States. Its premiere was scheduled to take place Feb. 8 simultaneously at several American cities.

The cancellation angered ministers Moore and Kenney who both twittered their concern.

“I am disappointed that Library & Archives Canada chose not to show the film tonight due to threats of violence,” Mr. Moore said Tuesday. “The Iranian Embassy will not dictate to the Government of Canada which films will or will not be shown in Canada.”

Kenney tweeted similar remarks.

“The cancellation of tonight’s screening of Iranium is outrageous,” Mr. Kenney said Tuesday.

Hat tip: Vlad Tepes.

As mentioned earlier today, on Tuesday night the National Archives Theater in Ottawa canceled a showing of the new documentary Iranium. The authorities had been under pressure from the Iranian embassy not to run the film, and some sort of threat was made against the theater the night it was to be shown.

Clare Lopez was scheduled to speak about Iran and Islamic extremism at the same event that included the showing of Iranium. Since she was unable to give her speech, that night the Free Thinking Film Society and Vlad Tepes arranged for her to discuss what happened and present some of her material on videotape. The result is below:

Clare M. Lopez is a Senior Fellow for the Center For Security Policy. Her expertise is in strategic policy and intelligence, with a focus on Middle East, homeland security, national defense, and counterterrorism issues. She is a former operations officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, and also served as Executive Director of the Iran Policy Committee, a Washington D.C. think tank.

Ms. Lopez is a regular contributor to print and broadcast media on subjects related to Iran and the Middle East and the co-author of two published books on Iran. She is the author of an acclaimed paper for the Center, “The Rise of the Iran Lobby”, and was a major contributor to CSP’s “Team B II” report.

Our German translator JLH sends his translation of an open letter from the new German party Die Freiheit to the Left. He includes this introduction:

As you know, René Stadtkewitz and Marc Doll, escapees from the CDU, have formed their own party on the model set up by Geert Wilders. They intended to start small and just make their presence known in one of the federal states. There was a clamor from around the country for participation, so they considered opening it up nationwide. I don’t know how far this process has gone, but the danger to the so-called “anti-fascist” leftist allies of Islamism is manifest, and it has now been demonstrated how clearly they are feeling the heat.

Die Freiheit (The Freedom Party) planned a first state convention in their home ground of Berlin on January 11, 2011, in advance of the September elections to the Berlin House of Representatives. The Berlin Crowne Plaza, which had agreed to host them, caved in to leftist pressure and returned their deposit at almost the last moment.

They quickly arranged for space at a local language school and the pressure shifted there, so the school backed out, and there was no time to find another venue. They are now in the process of deciding on another time and place. Even as Stadtkewitz appeared on the street to briefly address the press on the eleventh, it was possible to hear the angry shouts of the Antifa thugs who had gathered to protest the meeting.

This is Doll and Stadtkewitz’ open letter to the Left, as published in Politically Incorrect. One of those commenters remarks that an open letter is often less to the addressee than to public at large. This one contains a salutary capsule summary of Nazism, for those who know only what they have been force-fed.

The translation by JLH from Politically Incorrect:

The Freedom Party — Open Letter to the Left

We have heard that many of you are celebrating the cancellation of the first state convention of the citizens’ rights party for more freedom and democracy, Die Freiheit [Freedom], after you and/or your fellow travelers caused the situation by pressure and threats. On this day, there was one winner and one loser. On this day, fascism won and democracy lost.

We use the word fascism neither hyperbolically nor lightly, since it must at any rate be measured against the methods of National Socialism. Given the development of the political Left (again) in the meantime, this is more than appropriate. Apparently, it is only obvious to a few on the Left — indeed the most intelligent of them — in what tradition they actually stand.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the political debate was carried out only in part in the parliaments — and that much more in the streets. Shock troops sought out those who represented a different opinion than their own, and made sure that the ordinary citizen no longer dared to voice his opinion. The intimidation by force penetrated all political levels. The SA [Sturmabteilung — Nazi storm troopers] stood by at meetings of parliament, and woe to the parliament member who dared to deviate from the party line. That is how the debate was influenced. A political system was created which instituted violence as a legitimate means.

The present-day “Antifa” is very little different from the SA of that time. Their “look” is now black instead of brown, but they use the same methods: Dissenters are pursued and silenced violently, They find every method justified — not even the family, the children, who did not choose to whom they should be born, are safe from the red SA. The red SA know no moral limits. The ideology that leads them is stronger.

They march side by side with the ultra-rightist “Gray Wolves,” who would be happy to have a greater Turkish empire — even better dominion over the whole world, and do not see that they are being used as useful idiots. They demonstrate together with the radical Islamists in demonstrations where “Jews to the gas” is shouted, and do not notice that history is repeating itself.

No doubt there will always be some insane Nazis as a fringe group. What is horrifying is the fact that Leftist Nazi organizations are cultivated and politically protected by various funds and groups. Senator Körting (SPD) cannot even perceive a political motivation in the leftist extremists. But then, why should he take action against those who are bullying his political opponents with violence and terror?

Die Freiheit differentiates quite clearly between the spiritual, religious part of Islam and the political ideology. If Muslims wish to pray to Mecca five times a day or fast for a month, we are will stand protectively for their right to do so. If Muslim men treat their wives like slaves or force headscarf-wearing children to marry, that is when Clara Herrmann [Berlin representative for the Greens] stands before them to protect this “right.” That is the difference. The Left has made a virtue of turning a blind eye. It gives them the pleasant feeling of having “done good,” and it is better than good to attack those who do look and criticize.

The cry was always “you have to differentiate.” Now there is a party that does exactly that, and immediately it is attacked; its arguments are not heard. This shows that it was never about differentiating, but about censoring. Islam was long ago declared a sacred subject in this country by the Left. Indeed, they pursue the same goal: proceeding through overwhelming democracy and doing away with freedom, onward to a totalitarian ideology.

Even though fascism and communism lack the religious component, there are great commonalities with the Islamic ideology.

It is easy for you leftists to criticize Christianity, but you are incapable of criticizing Islam. For you, any criticism of Islam — no matter how differentiated — is rightist extremism. Even clever people who have lived in Islamic countries, according to this logic, are “fishing in a brown swamp” [stumbling in the dark]. You have imposed an ideologically qualified thought ban on yourselves, and now demand that everyone else follow it to the letter. Your denunciations teach the citizen that Islam is untouchable, must not be criticized, and so we are back at the (Left’s) imposed thought ban.

Furthermore, the law which forbids criticism of Islam is called sharia, and is diametrically opposed to universal human rights — it is the absolute intolerance of dissidents and infidels, with the injunction to kill them, and with claims to world domination, anti-Semitism, murder of apostates, oppression of women, child abuse, and many other manifestations inherent to Islam which you find worthy of protection — so much so that critics must be denounced.

Sooner or later, you will have to explain clearly how you define rightist extremism and how you make that fit with our party program. Since when do right extremists demand direct democracy? Freedom of expression? A constitution decided upon by the people? Does it not rather sound like unadulterated democracy, to demand the independence of the media from party monies and the independence of parties from lobbyists’ money, because there is too great a danger that both of them will only be puppets of the money dispensers?

And our demand that the bad habit of financing the political caste with debts that will never be paid and thus gambling away our children’s future sounds more like upstanding representatives of the people, of whom there are too few in our political landscape.

But above all, since when have German rightist extremists been invited into the Israeli parliament, blessed by the representatives of the Knesset, and seen by countless Jews as the hope for their survival?

And how can a party be right-extreme when it has no extremists? Unlike you, Die Freiheit accepts no extremists, neither from the Right nor the Left. You know that you can never win a democratic debate in this way, so you avoid taking this stance.

The central problem, no doubt, is quite different. Direct democracy means giving the people more voice and consequently reducing the power of the established political parties. It is more than logical that Die Freiheit is a thorn in the side of the established parties and must be massively combated at the outset. That is how the retention of power has functioned for decades. That is why the SPD is immediately calling up its union troops.

The more intelligent of those on the Left know of course, that this is not a question of justice or human dignity, for these things languish most in leftist ruling systems, and only serve as deception. It is about moving an entire people to Socialism. For this purpose, mature structures must first be destroyed so that a new system can be built on the ruins.

The Nazis contributed to destroying the political landscape of the Weimar Republic. We know the ghastly results. But immediately thereafter the next Socialism carried on. The SED [Socialist Unity Party of Germany] regime also ruthlessly persecuted dissidents, declared them insane, and locked them up. As in National Socialism, the state intervened massively in the private sphere of the citizen in even the most perverse way: in his thoughts. Anyone who wanted to flee this dictatorship was shot. And we find this pattern everywhere where Socialism has been, and is, attempted.

From the start, your leftist ideology is false. Human beings are not alike. They are of equal value from birth on, but not homogeneous. That is our nature and it is good the way it is. Every attempt to force this multiplicity into a prepared mold cannot be accomplished and maintained without totalitarian oppression and state-sponsored terror. Anyone who wants to make all human beings alike must reduce the them to the lowest common denominator and trim off whatever obtrudes. What remains is a zombie-like shell, robbed of everything that makes us real. And all that simply for the sake of an ideology.

Our opinion is different from yours in many ways, and we are betting that in the end our convictions will touch more voters than yours. But we leave you your convictions — will never threaten or intimidate you. We denounce no one, and it would never occur to us to use violence. On the contrary, we would even combat those who employed violence against you. And that is what distinguishes democrats from fascists.

As we said, the winner on January 11, 201 was fascism; the loser was democracy.

Decide for yourself which side you are on!

Marc Doll and René Stadtkewitz
For the Board of the Citizens’ Rights Party Die Freiheit

Last night we reported on the cancellation of the showing of the documentary Iranium at the National Archives Theater in Ottawa. On Monday the Iranian embassy had placed a call to the Canadian government asking that the film not be shown, but the Free Thinking Film Society managed to persuade the authorities to let the showing proceed.

However, just before the scheduled event Tuesday evening, the National Archives announced that the Theater was to be shut down and evacuated. It seems that some kind of threat had been received, and one report said that the authorities were alarmed by suspicious envelopes that were delivered to the Archives.

Vlad Tepes has posted a video of the emergency vehicles that arrived after the closing of the building. He says:

Below, the emergency vehicles that appeared after the closure of the Archives. After we left, the Hazmat (Hazardous materials unit) appeared as well.

We’ll have more on Iranium later on.

The new trial for Geert Wilders begins on February 7. In anticipation of what is to come, our Flemish correspondent VH has translated an article about the badly administered and compromised nature of the court system that tried Mr. Wilders the first time.

VH includes this note:

The enclosed news bulletin shows how important it is, with every inquisition-trial, to research and publish all details that can be squeezed out, and jump on top of the court involved — judges and accusers alike — using all blogs available.

His translation from Het Parool:

Judges in Wilders trial succumbed to media pressure

“The effect of challenging a court in an intensive and demanding trial such as this, and on top of that, in front of the eyes of the nation, is much larger than normally is the case”

by Albert de Lange

In the trial against Geert Wilders, the criminal chamber [of the Amsterdam Court], which was removed from the case after having been challenged for “creating the impression of being biased”, has been under heavy pressure due to the media attention and public opinion. The chamber was not sufficiently guided and has not understood well that its actions would be very critically examined on political bias.

These are the main conclusions of the Meijerink Commission [report in Dutch: pdf], partly an external group of experts, commissioned by the court administration to examine the organizational approach of the criminal case against Wilders. The committee also criticized the overly hasty composition of the second challenge-chamber on October 22 that took the judges off the case. In that challenge-chamber a judge was seated who was a direct colleague of one of the judges in the criminal chamber.

Crisis

The challenging has led to a crisis within the criminal law division of the court. President Jan Moors and the two other members of the criminal division felt compromised in their integrity — because of the cameras present during the challenge-session, they did not attend it — and along with those feelings, according to the commission, felt abandoned and not cared for.

“The effect of challenging”, according to the commission, “in an intensive and demanding trial such as this, and on top of that in front of the eyes of the nation, is much larger than is normally the case.” The court administration has offered too little support and provided no backing to the three judges towards the outside world, by observing media silence. The court administration also commissioned the report to meet the internal complaint that they stand up too little for their own people.

The challenged judges did find support in an internal critical review by Diederik Aben, Advocate General at the Supreme Court, which made mincemeat of the motivations to challenge. The discarded members of the criminal division felt need to justify themselves, and through them the review by Aben came into the open, which is highly unusual, after which Aben hastened to declare that he had written the review in a personal capacity.

Permanent challenge-chamber

Only during the first three session days of the trial was a challenge-chamber kept at hand. When Wilders’ lawyer Bram Moszkowicz near the end of the trial made a second attempt to challenge the court, after it refused to immediately hear Arabist Hans Jansen, in no more than one hour an ad-hoc challenge-chamber had to be composed, because there was no longer one on standby. The Commission finds that in a case such as this, there should be a permanent challenge-chamber ready to assist.

Carla Eradus, president of the Amsterdam Court,^[1] agrees with this: “It is simply not thought about,” she said in an interview in [the print edition of the newspaper] Het Parool. “Now all of a sudden an ad-hoc chamber had to be composed, and then colleagues from the same corridor came face to face with each other. This has brought the emotions very close to the coffee machine.”

Notes:

The trial, with new — and now already controversial — judges, will resume Monday, February 7.

[1]

The president of the Amsterdam Court, Carla Eradus, is also chairman of the left-wing anti-Wilders broadcaster VARA, and is nicknamed “the Monster of Amsterdam” due to corruption and nepotism (source).

Gates of Vienna is pleased to welcome a new Czech correspondent, Benjamin Kuras. His first contribution is a report from Prague on last night’s demonstration in Wenceslas Square against the worldwide persecution of Christians.

It’s gratifying to note that the demonstrators recognized the common cause shared by Jews and Christians against the danger of Islamic expansionism, and identified political correctness as the debilitating disease that has allowed radical Islam to infect a weakened Europe.

Protesting the Persecution of Christians
by Benjamin Kuras

Some 3,000 signatures were collected in a week under an appeal to the Czech government to pay attention to the persecution of Christians and consider granting asylum to at least some of the worst affected Iraqis. The campaign, organised by the Young Christian Democrats (the youth branch of the small parliamentary Christian Democrat Party) and supported by a dozen Christian, Jewish and civic organisations, culminated on Tuesday 18 January in a Wenceslas Square demonstration attended by some 200 people.

Small but select. A line of renowned speakers was headed by Prague’s Catholic Archbishop who used the words “well-planned extermination amounting to genocide” and reminded the audience that “the map of the democratic world is identical with Biblical civilization”. He welcomed the participation of “our brothers of the Mosaic faith” who opened the meeting with blasts of the shofar (the ancient Biblical ram’s horn). The Archbishop emphasized that anti-Christianism and anti-Semitism were now closely related and that Christians and Jews must support each other.

Catholic Bishop Vaclav Maly, popular ex-dissident jailed by the Communist regime, reported on his recent visit to Iraqi Christians and warned of the threat of radical Islam, but spoke also of Christians persecuted in China and North Korea. The new Chairman of the Christian Democrat Party announced that he was appealing to the government to take action in support of persecuted Christians.

The threat of Islamism in Europe, fueled by political correctness, was highlighted by the Chairman of the ecumenical Christian International Solidarity, the Chairman of the Civic Institute (who is also the Prime Minister’s adviser on human rights) and the Chairman of the small non-parliamentary Conservative Party who also pleaded for solidarity with Israel as an outpost of Western civilization. The Chairman of the Christian Evangelical Alliance accused the media of a malicious bias in over-reporting a case of a preacher wanting to burn the Koran while keeping silent for years about church-burning in the Islamic world.

A popular writer and columnist appealed to liberals and secularists to join the campaign alongside Christians and Jews, since they were as much under threat. Quoting Niemöller’s famous “I did not defend them against the Nazis because I was not one of them — and when the Nazis came for me, there was no one left to defend me,” he reminded everyone that human indifference is the quisling of all persecutions.

Even though a respectable hard core of well-placed freedom defenders has undoubtedly arisen from this campaign, indifference still rules. With their small and barely visible Muslim community of not much more than 10,000, most Czechs would guess that hijab, niqab, and burqa are some Lebanese delicacies.