“You know, the War of Independence wasn’t America against England — it was Englishmen resisting the oppressive regime of their autocratic German king.”
Pat Condell on the European Union, the euro, and the disappearance of democracy in Europe:
In her post last night Dymphna likened the emotional experience of the past month to the unexpected breaking of a wave over an unwary swimmer. Our sensation of being suddenly flooded informed the nautical theme for this quarter’s fundraiser. Beginning on Friday July 22, and continuing for more than two weeks, we were overwhelmed by a vast tide of events beyond our control, and swept into a maelstrom that no one would enter voluntarily.
Dymphna’s description, plus the hurricane that is now advancing up the coast towards us, put me in mind of a memorable event that occurred thirty-six years ago, in late July 1975. Hurricane Irene seems to be heading tomorrow for Atlantic Beach or Morehead City in North Carolina, but back then Hurricane Blanche never came ashore — it just paralleled the coast for a few days, close enough to affect the surf at the coastal resorts.
I was in Virginia Beach at the time, and went swimming in the surf one morning. As it happened, I entered the water about twenty minutes before the local authorities decided that the surf had become too dangerous, and instructed the lifeguards to pull everyone out of the water.
There’s nothing like an offshore hurricane to make body-surfing exciting, so I enjoyed myself for the first few minutes. Then a particularly large wave broke over me, and its backwash pulled me further out. When I struggled to my feet I realized just how BIG those waves were, and how frequently they were breaking. My feet could barely touch the bottom, and I became quite frightened — it seemed that I might not be able to make it safely back to shore.
Then the old Boy Scout training kicked in. I recalled the manual’s advice to ocean swimmers caught in a cross-current or an undertow. The most important tactic is counterintuitive: stop struggling to keep your feet in contact with the bottom. Pull them up and float in the breast-stroke position. Keep your body at right angles to the incoming surf, so that no breaking wave can catch you by surprise, yet you can turn and pull towards shore with each wave as it comes by.
Keep your head above water. Here comes the wave: turn and swim a few strokes towards the beach. Repeat with the arrival of each new wave. Don’t put your feet down and walk until the water is below waist level.
That’s what they taught us in Scouts, and it worked. It seemed to take hours, but it was really only a few minutes until I staggered out of the water and up the beach just as the lifeguards started calling swimmers out of the water. I flopped down on the sand, breathing hard, and rested for a few minutes, thanking the Lord for giving me one more chance.
I promised myself then and there that never again would I mess with another hurricane surf. Yet here I am, thirty-six years later, having just emerged from another kind of dangerous surf.
Maybe the Boy Scout training took hold again this time, but in a more generalized form. When huge turbulent events overwhelm you, there’s no point in trying to retain any real control. You have to pull your feet off the bottom and go with the flow.
That’s what I did for the first two weeks, paying no attention to anything but the next foaming crash of crisis that broke over me. I pulled with each new surge in the direction I wanted to go, and every day the surf got a little less rough, and water was a little more shallow.
My feet are now touching bottom again, but I haven’t quite arrived at the beach of normalcy, not just yet. When I reach it, I trust the Lord to provide me with a few moments of respite, just lying there in the warm sand, breathing hard.
Unfortunately, this time I can’t swear off the hurricane surf for good. Rough water goes with this job, and after I get my breath I may well have to wade right back into that raging tide.
Stateside: California, Illinois, New York, Ohio, and Texas
(No Canadians today!)
Far Abroad: Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, and the UK
Many thanks to all the generous souls who have contributed.
Maybe I should use some of your donations to buy a rubber raft…
President Obama’s popularity with Hispanics has dropped to 44%, which is 41% below its peak of 85% back in the spring of 2009. His rating with Hispanics dropped 5% during the last week alone — the same week in which Janet Napolitano announced her administrative amnesty for illegal immigrants.
In other news, a Christian Egyptian blogger has gone on a hunger strike in jail. In April Dr. Michael Nabil Sanad was sentenced to three years in prison for criticizing the military regime.
To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.
Thanks to C. Cantoni, Gaia, JP, Kitman, Mary Abdelmassih, Steen, 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.
This is one of those news stories that makes you say, “What the heck is going on here??”
Two men were hurt by an explosion in the cab of their pickup. They said it was a drive-by bomb attack.
Hmm.
However, witnesses saw the men throwing something into a nearby field before the police arrived. Police later found unexploded mortar rounds in the field, and a “mortar-like device” in the truck.
Again, hmm.
All this occurred in Michigan, but my knowledge of the state’s ethnic geography is insufficient to determine how culturally-enriched Columbia Township is, or how likely it is the miscreants victims were adherents of the Religion of Peace. I suppose we’ll have to wait for the men to be charged and named by the police, if that ever happens.
From MLive:
Truck Explosion in Columbia Township Sends Pair of Adrian Men to U-M Hospital
A pair of Adrian men have been airlifted to the University of Michigan Hospital following an explosion in the truck they were driving Sunday afternoon in Columbia Township.
According to Columbia Township Police Chief David Elwell, the men, 22 and 23 years of age, were riding in a 1995 Chevrolet pickup on Cement City Road at Dearmyer Road at about 4 p.m. when the cab of the truck exploded.
The driver of the truck, 22, told police that another vehicle passed by and threw something into it.
“The inside of the truck was pretty damaged,” Elwell said. “It’s a wonder they weren’t killed on impact.”
However, after the explosion, Elwell said two witnesses told police they saw the men run to a nearby corn field, throw items into it and return to the scene before police arrived.
Columbia Township police and fire, with the help of K-9 units, later recovered three round mortars — one 4 inches in length and two that were 3 inches — and a canister mortar in the field.
“Following the K-9 search, Columbia Township police and fire personnel set up a grid search pattern, and within a half hour located a total of four additional unexploded mortars,” according to a release from the Columbia Township Police Department. “An explosion-proof container was obtained from Brooklyn Department of Public Works, and all the explosives that were located were then secured and removed from the scene.”
Police also discovered remains of a “mortar-like device, similar to what is used for fireworks shows” inside the vehicle.
Prior to being airlifted to Ann Arbor, the two men were conscious and still talking, Elwell said. The incident remains under investigation.
Columbia Township police and fire were assisted by the Allegiance Health bomb-detection unit, Blackman-Leoni Township Department of Public Safety and ambulances from Addison and Jackson.
The Lush cosmetics corporation is engaging in what is commonly known as “greenwash” — the cynical exploitation of environmental causes to curry favor with the Green Left. Engaging in greenwash can even be a kind of protection racket, in which corporations that participate are exempt from boycott campaigns or even violent attacks by environmental activists.
One environmental campaign supported by Lush targets the Canadian oil sands industry. Now an advocate for “ethical oil” has turned the tables on the company, using protesters in burkas in front of one of its Canadian retail outlets to protest Lush’s profitable operations in Saudi Arabia.
Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading this video from SUN TV:
Watching the ferocious criminality displayed during the riots in British cities during the past weeks, one might be forgiven for thinking that this explosion of mob violence was taking place in some dilapidated god-forsaken Third World country. The horrific scenes of homes and businesses of ordinary Britons going up in flames will not be easily forgotten. Property was smashed up with brazen impunity, cars burned, and there was looting on a truly massive scale. Not only businesses, banks, post-offices, off-licenses, newsagents and luxury-goods shops but also restaurants, pubs and cafes were comprehensively trashed. The video-recordings often show hooded looters replete with bundles of “free” sports goods under their arms, emerging from shops with big grins on their faces. Looters helped themselves to everything from flat-screen TVs and mobile phones to iPads, laptops and a wide variety of electronics.
For the first three days, the Metropolitan Police (MET) in Britain’s capital city appeared alarmingly powerless to stem the tide. The police have, unfortunately, had to function within a society paralyzed by the politics of victimhood, loudly defended by an increasingly misguided liberal intelligentsia. Within this victim culture most social problems are conveniently blamed on the “racism” or oppression of the majority, while ignoring the failings or delinquency of criminal individuals or gangs. Under this banner, even the British riots can be blamed on unemployment, poverty and the cuts in public spending (not yet implemented) proposed in the austerity program of the Cameron government. The simplistic equation adopted by the liberal Left sees the root cause of social disorder in “economic despair” and unspecified “racial tensions” between various communities. Not unexpectedly, London’s former Leftist Mayor, “Red” Ken Livingstone, immediately blamed the “Thatcherism” of the present Tory Government for the violence. For Livingstone and most of the Labour Left, it is all stunningly obvious — no spending cuts, no riots.
This has also been the kneejerk response of the New York Times, pontificating about the alienation and resentments of Britain’s unemployed youth, as if they were the real victims. But as Max Hastings pointed out in the London Daily Mail, the British mayhem was not sparked by hunger or evidence of real want, let alone any social or political agenda. It reflects the emergence not just of an amorphous underclass but of an amoral, brutalized subculture in which intellectually challenged youngsters claimed to be showing the rich and the fuzz that “we can do what we like.”
British Prime Minister, David Cameron, got it partly right when he responded to the chaos by stating: “This is not about poverty, it’s about culture” — a culture of rights and no responsibilities. But conservatives as much as liberals or leftists are to blame for their foolish support for a dependency culture in which recipients of the largesse of the welfare State have no incentive to be employed. Together with the dependency culture, came the disastrous assumption of entitlement to a high standard of living irrespective of any individual effort. As a result, the nanny-State has created a generation of morally crippled youths with no compunction about willfully smashing up their own communities.
During the last 40 years Britain has seen the breakdown of the family, households with absent fathers, high divorce rates in general, and the encouragement of a sexual free-for-all, embroidered by the dominant clichés of life-style choice. Liberal and leftist intellectuals have continued their relentless assault on British national identity in the name of multi-culturalism and “anti-imperialism”; calls for drug liberalization became increasingly frequent; education has become more and more “child-centered,” leaving issues of sexual morality and drug-taking largely in the hands of teenagers themselves. Sadly, Britain has been fostering an educational system in which teachers are more intimidated than pupils, a society where the police force is partially paralyzed by young looters destroying property with utter impunity, where corrupt politicians fiddle their expenses, where millionaires repeatedly evade tax and uncontrolled immigration is steadily undermining the social fabric.
In the United Kingdom, long notorious for its uncouth soccer hooligans and yob culture, there had long been disturbing signs of the incipient breakdown of civilized behavior which were studiously ignored. The current collapse of the British welfare-state model into mindless thuggery is a warning to all countries of the fragile nature of supposedly stable Western democracies. The thin façade of civilization protecting us from barbarism and mob rule has been exposed to full view. No society in which a significant sector of its youth are without fathers, without guidance, educational qualifications, modern skills or positive ambitions, can expect to survive, let alone prosper. The writing is on the wall for all to read.
With each fundraiser we became more seasoned. Instead of feeling embarrassed, the custom of “blegging” four times a year simply became part of our work here. Sure, there will always be an initial reluctance to put out one’s hand whilst trying to appear nonchalant, but that passes more quickly. With each experience, we understand better all the stages through which we must move in the course of the week. We grasp better our situation — both as participants and as bystanders — with a surer trust in the sequence. Instead of worrying about setting up ahead of time The Theme for The Week, we let the exigencies of the moment carry us through the days and events of each quite individual bleg. At a not-quite-conscious level what was an idea the night before we start coalesces into a complete event.
This journey no longer passes through much of Reason’s territory. That’s partly because I’ve learned to follow the Baron’s lead. Instead of trying to chart the trip, we jump in the boat and sail off on the next new adventure. No longer afraid of being lost — because we can’t get lost — we’re adept at containing our uncertainty so as to allow room for whatever shows up along the way. Sometimes it’s a bit foggy, but whatever surfaces from the murk is always far more entertaining than we anything we could have imagined on our own.
It is often the case that we start out a bit later than we’d have liked. This time particularly we delayed and stalled. We were both still a bit lost; the terra was less firma than usual. However, we reminded one another that this is what we do: come hell or high water…
[…or earthquakes — damned if another ‘aftershock’ didn’t send me out of the house a few moments ago. I held onto the porch railing in order to sense the tremble of the earth. Only when it quieted (a few moments, perhaps) did I come back to the computer. For any interested amateur seismologists, the map coordinates are: 37.940°N, 77.896°W. It was magnitude 4.5, a bit south of Cuckoo (north of the original epicenter) this time. Three miles down into the bowels of the earth, things are still unsettled.]
There aren’t adequate words to express the gestalt of those days at the end of July and moving through August…
The closest I can come to conveying that experience is to ask if you’ve ever been knocked over by a breaking wave you didn’t see until you sensed something and looked up. Suddenly, as if out of nowhere, a lacy curling shawl was collapsing onto you, its fiercely impersonal opalescent energy, in that gaspingly eternal moment of being pulled under, forced you to obey the grave laws of water and sand as you struggled simply to stop tumbling.
Finally, in the company of shells and seaweed, you were dumped without ceremony onto the shore. The wave receded and disappeared. Your nose streamed sea water, your eyes stung with salt . Perhaps you sat for a bit listening to the scree of gulls, or staring into the distance where sea and sky merge. Afterwards, returning to yourself, you carried the results of that encounter in the form of long superficial abrasions on your shoulders and legs — or whatever part of your body had been forced to scrape along the sandy shallows. For a time, you’d relive those long moments of being crushed and overpowered. The feeling faded, but you never quite forgot.
So this is a week of sailing. Of comings and goings. And of aftershocks and rumblings. And of transitions. I love early light and twilight. Transitions.
My sailboat, by Monet, reminded me of a song I heard often growing up. I always liked the old stuff, the tunes they sang before I was here, the ones that will continue after I’m gone.
There are lots of versions of “Red Sails in the Sunset”. Even the Beatles covered it. Not well, I might add.
During my years in the orphanage, the big old summer house was on the river. From the top of the rise where the house was built, you could see the boats go by. Inevitably, in that semi-tropical evening, a sail would catch the last rays of the sun. And someone would always, always say, “red sky at night, sailor’s delight…”
Lots of evenings we’d spend our “recreation hour” singing. Of course we sang the old standards, though we had no idea they were “old” or “standard”. These were simply the songs of our environment, the ones we learned from the ancient cook, or the old nuns put out to pasture with us. We sang to pass the time on long bus rides, or to while away a humid interval between supper and bedtime.
In a much gentler way, but just as deeply, those songs inhabit my memory alongside the felt recall of being tumbled by the waves.
Dame Vera Lynn’s version of “Red Sails” seemed most appropriate to accompany Monet. She is beloved still.
Here’s a good biographical account of Dame Vera, now 94 and counting. Like the Queen, this Lady knows how to wear a hat.
A few details from that wiki:
During the war years she toured Egypt, India and Burma, giving outdoor concerts for the troops. In 1985 it was announced that she would receive the Burma Star for entertaining British guerrilla units in Japanese-occupied Burma. She is one of the last surviving major entertainers of the war years.
In 2000, she was voted “the Briton who best exemplified the spirit of the twentieth century”. Surviving to see in the next century surely had a lot to do with the results of that vote?
In 2009 she became the oldest living artist to make it to No. 1 on the British album chart, at the age of 92.
We’ll never see Vera Lynn’s England again. But after what Mark Steyn has taken to calling “the Armageddon” perhaps a kinder, gentler, and as beloved an England will emerge.
Stateside: Arizona, California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, and Texas
Near Abroad: Canada
Far Abroad: Croatia, France, Slovakia, and the UK.
Thanks to all of you!
Most of the world is still on vacation, so the news feed is light again tonight.
According to a recent study in the UK, since 1999 asylum seekers have cost the country £10 billion, which comes out to £2.3 million per day. It is thought that more than a quarter of a million asylum seekers are staying in the country illegally.
Meanwhile, in Australia, a family of refugees that the government considers a security risk have been brought from the holding center on Christmas Island to Sydney so that the mother can give birth. While they are on the mainland, security for them has cost almost a million dollars. They cannot be sent back to Sri Lanka because they are considered genuine refugees.
To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.
Thanks to Gaia, JP, KGS, Nilk, Steen, 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 word “Islamophobia” is of relatively recent coinage. I never encountered it until after 9-11, and it was subjected to widespread ridicule, at least among non-Muslims and non-leftists, when it first became widely known. However, after the OIC and the UN harped on it for a few years, and the progressive media solemnly repeated the Muslim party line, “Islamophobia” gained general currency as a serious, scholarly word for a dangerous mental deficiency that needed to be eradicated in the West.
It piggybacked its way into politically correct usage on “homophobia”, which in turn drew on the word “xenophobia” as its ideological predecessor. Strangely enough, “xenophobia” is not in my Shorter Oxford Dictionary on Historical Principles, but appears in my Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology. The word is not terribly old; it was coined in the late 19th century during a period when many mental disorders were first being labeled with Greek neologisms. Based on the Greek word for “fear”, a “phobia” was the general term assigned to conditions of morbid fearfulness. “Hydrophobia”, for example, was used to describe a morbid fear of water. The stem “xeno-” means “strange” or “foreign”, and “xenophobia” was originally synonymous with “agoraphobia” — it meant “a morbid fear of open spaces”.
It wasn’t until the 20th century, with its new preoccupation with race, that “xenophobia” was assigned its current meaning: “a morbid dislike or dread of foreigners”. In the second half of the century, after the racial ravages of National Socialism, any distaste for foreigners or preference for one’s own kind was stigmatized as “xenophobic”. This shunning helped pave the way for mass Muslim immigration into Western countries by transforming opposition to such policies into a mental disorder.
Half a century later, the “xenophobia” precedent has helped legitimize its stepchild “Islamophobia”, which does similar service in stigmatizing any resistance to Islamization.
If the OIC achieves its goals, and Islamophobia is outlawed in the West, lawmakers, bureaucrats, and the police will require guidelines about the ways in which this ugly disease manifests itself, so they can recognize those who suffer from it and assign them to a secure facility for treatment. DHS will need to write up a handbook for its local agents describing what to watch out for. Federal and state legislators will need a clear definition of the word to include in the laws they pass against it.
So what is Islamophobia? What’s a good working definition of the word?
Fortunately, someone has already done the hard work of laying out the concept in detail. And, needless to say, the defining was done by Muslims themselves.
The following article, “A Proposed Definition of Islamophobia”, was written last year by a European group called the European Muslim Initiative for Social Cohesion (EMISCO), an umbrella organization of Muslim NGOs from all over the continent.
Even though it was composed from a European perspective, this definition is probably similar to what will be used in the United States when required. I’ll go through it by sections, bolding phrases and sentences that merit further discussion:
Islamophobia is a form of intolerance and discrimination motivated with fear, mistrust and hatred of Islam and its adherents. It is often manifested in combination with racism, xenophobia, anti-immigrant sentiments and religious intolerance.
Notice that this lead paragraph presupposes an understanding of what is in the mind of an Islamophobe. It assumes that opposition to Islam must be motivated by fear and hatred. It excludes the possibility that opponents of Islam may be motivated primarily by rational self-interest, rather than angry passion.
The text does not specify it, but one may assume that EMISCO’s definition denies the existence of any other motives for opposing Islam. It is simply considered impossible that any non-Muslim could inform himself about the scriptures, teachings, and laws of Islam, read the history of Islamic expansion, observe the behavior of Muslims in his own time, and come to the reasoned conclusion that Islam is a dangerous political ideology that has degraded and impoverished every society in which it has become dominant.
Such rational conclusions cannot be drawn. The possibility of doing so will be defined out of existence. “Fear”, “mistrust”, and “hatred” are the only acknowledged motives that anyone could have for opposing Islamization.
Manifestations of Islamophobia include hate speech, violent acts and discriminatory practices, which can be manifested by both non-state actors and state officials.
“Hate speech” is already well-established as a stand-alone crime in Europe, but in the United States it must accompany a “violent act” or other statutory crime before it can be prosecuted. Perhaps the intention here is to help it become a crime by redefining the scope of “discriminatory practices”, which are already illegal in the USA.
This seems to be the general tactic being pursued by Hillary Clinton and the State Department in their consultations with the OIC — to identify those who oppose Islamization as “discriminatory” as they engage in their “defamation of religion”.
Islamophobic rhetoric associates Muslims with terrorism and portrays them as an international and domestic threat. It makes stereotypical allegations about Muslims as a monolithic group of people whose culture is backward and incompatible with human rights and democracy.
Here we have a familiar theme that is often used by Islamic interest groups to deflect any criticism of Islam. Those who associate Muslims with terrorism are making “stereotypical allegations”. This assertion ignores the possibility that “stereotypical” statements about Muslims may be true, as a statistical assessment of the behavior of Muslims.
If I say that cows are revered under Hinduism and protected from harm, is that a “stereotypical allegation” about Hindus? Of course not; it is a simple statement about the practices of most Hindus.
In the case of Islam, it is true that the vast majority of Muslims do not commit terrorism. A somewhat smaller majority do not provide logistical or financial assistance for terrorists. An even smaller majority — possibly even a minority, depending on which surveys are consulted — disapprove of the actions of Islamic terrorists.
What percentage of those who commit, support, or approve of terrorist acts is too large to be acceptable? What percentage is small enough to be tolerated?
This is a discussion that cannot be engaged in, under the strictures that define “Islamophobia”.
As for “backward and incompatible” — these characteristics can also be statistically determined. By their fruits ye shall know them.
Other examples of Islamophobic rhetoric in political discourse, the media, schools, work place and in the religious sphere involve, but are not limited to:
- Calling for banning and/or restricting visibility and practices of Islam in public space on the grounds that Islam is not a religion but an oppressive ideology;
- Accusing Muslims of not willing [sic] to integrate in the society where they live in, but imposing their own values and culture;
- Describing Muslims as a demographic time-bomb which will become a numerical majority where they are minority for the time-being;
- Charging Muslims with not being loyal to the country that they live in but to the Muslim community as a whole;
- Advocating collective expulsion of Muslims based on the accusation that they are enemies within;
- Dehumanizing and demonizing Muslims as a collective “other” defined only on religious basis, leading to the racialisation of the “Muslim category”;
- Accusing Muslims of being responsible for wrongdoing committed by other Muslim individuals or groups;
- Denying contributions that Muslims made and have been making to the society and World;
- Rejecting any possibility of co-operation between Muslims and non-Muslims.
As you can see, the above list includes — in somewhat cartoonish terms — many of the arguments that are used in this blog and other forums that oppose sharia and the Islamization of the West.
In “restricting visibility and practices of Islam in public space”, countries like France are simply enforcing the secularity of the public space, which is considered an integral characteristic of the country’s laws and culture. Muslims insist that an exception must be made for them; that they are different; that their religion requires public displays. Thus we must comply with their own laws and accommodate them.
Why?
Why must we do that?
Those questions cannot be answered, or even discussed, because to do so constitutes Islamophobia.
Many Muslims are most emphatically unwilling to “integrate” — they proclaim that fact openly, and their imams preach against integration in their sermons. To point this out is to state a simple fact, one that is backed up by ample evidence. The “demographic time-bomb” would be less of an issue if Muslims were willing to integrate.
Anyone who objects to his own culture being gradually supplanted by an alien and hostile culture is therefore Islamophobic.
The “racialisation of the ‘Muslim category’” is an important strategy — it helps turn criticism of Islam into the legal equivalent of racial discrimination, which will help the campaign to make “Islamophobia” illegal in the United States.
Acts of Islamophobia, which can be committed by non-state actors or state officials, include:
- Physical attacks, which are carried out spontaneously by individuals or organized groups, on individuals, community institutions and property that are rightly or wrongly associated with Muslims or Islam;
- Discriminatory immigration and naturalization procedures directly or indirectly excluding Muslims or placing them in a disadvantageous situation in comparison with people of other religious origin;
- Racial/religious profiling measures, including stop and search, surveillance of religious and cultural Muslim organizations, and no flight lists, which have disproportional impact on Muslims;
- Restrictions, by either legislative or administrative means, on the visibility of religious symbols targeting at exclusively Muslims, as in the case of prohibition of minarets.
“Physical attacks” are already against the law in all countries. There is no need to add an “Islamophobic” category of assault, except to further the exceptionalism of Islam, as required by sharia.
“Racial/religious profiling measures” are virtually non-existent in almost all Western countries, so the issue is moot. Islam has already won that skirmish.
“Discriminatory immigration and naturalization procedures” are an inherent right of all sovereign nations. To deny that right is to remove the sovereignty of nations, and make them part of the Ummah.
Now we come to policy recommendations:
Institutional Islamophobia is state policies and systematic practices discriminating Muslims [sic] based on their religious identity. It poses a serious threat to the security of Muslims because such policies and practices can lead to spreading bias, and therefore be a fertile ground for hate crimes
Recommendations to Combat Islamophobia
In order to combat Islamophobia and foster tolerance and mutual understanding based on the international human rights standards, States should:
- Take all necessary measures in their legal systems to ensure a safe environment free from Islamophobic harassment, violence and discrimination in all walks of life;
- Develop and implement comprehensive educational strategies and programme for combating Islamophobia;
- Create, whenever necessary, specialized bodies and initiatives in order to combat Islamophobia;
- Include in their integration policies programmes and activities addressing Islamophobia and its roots causes;
- Record, monitor and maintain reliable information and statistics about Islamophobic hate crimes committed within their territory and make such reports publically [sic] available;
- Combat Islamophobic hate crimes, which can be fuelled by Islamophobic hate speech in the media and on the Internet;
- Take all necessary measures in order to prevent racial/religious profiling and other forms of institutionalized Islamophobia;
- Conduct public awareness campaigns and specific programmes for governmental officials in order to combat Islamophobia;
- Encourage and support intergovernmental human rights agencies and non-governmental organizations dealing with Islamophobia;
- Strive to develop necessary mechanisms and standards to increase international co-operation in combating Islamophobia.
To implement “comprehensive educational strategies” means to enforce sharia-compliance in schools, training programs, and all other forms of public instruction.
To create “specialized bodies and initiatives” to evaluate and monitor eruptions of Islamophobia means to grant the demands for sharia, since only Muslims may judge the behavior of non-Muslims concerning Islam.
To “record, monitor and maintain reliable information and statistics about Islamophobic hate crimes” means to augment the existing surveillance state for the purposes of enforcing Islamic law.
To “combat Islamophobic hate crimes… in the media and on the Internet” means to enforce the tenets of sharia concerning Islamic slander, and restrict free speech accordingly.
To “increase international co-operation” means to allow the UN — which is already pushing sharia-compliance with respect to the “defamation of religion” — to override any legal impediments to sharia within its member states.
In other words, this is all about enforcing sharia on Muslim and non-Muslim alike.
The end of the article lists the supporting organizations:
This proposal is supported by: European Muslim Initiative for Social Cohesion (Denmark-France), Jewish-Muslim Cooperation Platform (Belgium), Austrian Muslim Initiative, Collectif Contre l’Islamophobie en France (CCIF), JPL MONDE (France), Federation of Western Thrace Turks in Europe (ABTTF – Germany), Ethnic Debate Forum and Fair Play (Denmark), The National Association of Muslim Police (NAMP-UK), Western Thrace Minority University Graduates Association (Greece), Muslim Community of Bulgaria, Muslim Committee on Human Rights in Central Asia (Kazakhstan), Turkish Community in Germany (TGD).
As you can see, there is a National Association of Muslim Police in Britain. Do they have a National Association of Christian Police? Would such a thing be permitted?
Remember the OIC’s stated intentions concerning Islamophobia, as stated in its foreign ministers’ resolution and its annual “Islamophobia Observatory” report.
Notice also that the UN Human Rights Council has already fallen into line with the OIC by passing Resolution 16/18, which Mrs. Clinton was touting in Istanbul.
EMISCO’s definition is just part of a larger mosaic. It represents one strategy within a concerted push by the Ummah, acting through the OIC and various other affiliated bodies and their compliant Western counterparts.
Islam means business when it comes to eradicating “Islamophobia”. Thanks to the enormous wealth wielded by the petro-sheiks, the fecklessness of our leaders, and the somnolence of ordinary Westerners, the OIC is well on the way to achieving its goal.
Don’t think it can’t happen here in the USA. Hillary Clinton is dead set on it. If Barack Hussein Obama gets re-elected next year and manages to appoint a Supreme Court justice or two, all bets are off.
Dymphna and I delayed our summer fundraiser for several weeks, due to the crisis that followed the events in Oslo on July 22, 2011.
We experienced a tremendous traffic surge that began the night after the atrocities, when a Swedish Nazi website asserted that Fjordman and Breivik were the same person. They linked to Gates of Vienna and the Fjordman archives, and the new visitors began to pour in.
Strangely enough, Little Green Footballs took up the story almost instantly — do the Nazis send Charles Johnson tips? — and retailed it uncritically. No surprise there. The Norwegian and Swedish newspapers picked it up next, with the Danish and Finnish dailies following suit later the same day. After that it showed up in Der Spiegel, Der Standard, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The Sunday Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and many, many others.
Some of these esteemed organs of the press actually linked to our blog, but most of them simply named us, generating an unprecedented “Google-lanche” as readers from all over Europe came looking for us. People sent me photos of the front pages of various European newspapers, which had printed screen-shots of our main page or a copy of our masthead image. It was startling and disturbing to be on such universal public display, especially given the repeated descriptions of our site as a “hate-blog” that “inspired” the mass-murderer.
That sort of attention was not what anyone would want. Hate mail in English, Norwegian, Danish, and German. Media requests by the dozen — first looking to interview Fjordman, and then, after he retired from the scene, me. There were some supportive emails, too — they actually outnumbered the hate mail by at least ten to one — but the nasty newspaper coverage was dispiriting stuff to read.
Our traffic peaked at six to eight times its usual level, subsided for a few days, and then skyrocketed again when Fjordman went public. Since then it has slowly dropped to something approaching its normal numbers.
There are many bloggers who would have welcomed the increase in traffic. Their ad rates depend solely on their traffic, so extra visitors are a bonus. Page impressions are page impressions, no matter who clicks the link or who sent the rubberneckers.
But we have no paid ads, so the hostile hordes offered us no advantages, and were a horrifying burden to bear while they lasted. The tsunami of visitors carried with it a large cohort of toxic commenters — lefty trolls, agents provocateurs, hostile opportunists, and operatives from antifa-type organizations who hung around looking to start trouble. There were so many of them that monitoring their invective became too large a job to manage — it was taking five or six hours of my day, and another six or seven to read and answer the hundreds of daily emails. So we had to close the comments until the flood subsided, and even now we are moderating them, because some of those provocateurs are still lurking behind the arras, hoping to slip a stiletto into their unwary hosts and thus provide Blogger with an excuse to shut us down for violating their terms of service.
We could have tried to fundraise during all that mess, I suppose. But most of the new readers were virulently antagonistic, and would have hardly been sympathetic to our appeals. Besides, Dymphna and I are old-fashioned, and raising money so soon after the horror would have been unseemly. Now that a month has gone by, we’re willing to give it a try.
We’ve actually picked up a few new friendly readers, people who were brought to our shores by the tides of controversy, liked what they saw, and decided to settle here. A number of them emailed us to express their solidarity with the Counterjihad movement.
To all of the newcomers we say, “Welcome!” It’s always good to have “new skin for the old ceremony” here at Gates of Vienna.
So here we are, beached on the slopes of Mount Ararat, with all the animals sauntering out of the ark two by two, wandering the landscape and wondering what to make of the sodden desolation all around them.
God bless all of you.
The first day’s roster of donor locations looks like this:
Stateside: California, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas
Near Abroad: Canada
Far Abroad: Australia, Denmark, and the UK
We’ll be at it again tomorrow, so keep the chili warm and the beer cold until we get back.
Finland has started a new trend by demanding collateral from Greece for the money that it will contribute to the Greek bailout. After Finland struck its deal with Greece, Austria, the Netherlands, Slovakia, and Slovenia followed suit, demanding their own collateral. Greece apparently has no more islands it can hock as collateral, so it will be required to put up a cash deposit. However, since it has no money of its own, it will probably have to borrow the money from… the European bailout fund.
Yes, things really have gotten that weird in Europe.
In other news, at least one of the aftershocks following today’s Louisa County (Virginia) earthquake registered 4.8 on the Richter scale, according to updated measurements.
To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.
Thanks to C. Cantoni, Gaia, Insubria, Janet Levy, Jedilson Bonfim, JP, Nilk, Steen, 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.
Like so many other writers who oppose Islamization, the Danish psychologist Nicolai Sennels has been lumped together by the media with the mass murdering psychopath of Oslo and Utøya. This is his response.
I am now one of those who are accused of making Anders Breivik into a mass murderer. As Gates of Vienna is also involved, I thought my answer might be of interest and maybe also inspiration for GoV’s readers:
“In his commentary ‘Behind the Gates of Vienna’ in the August 19 edition of Weekend Newspaper, Arne Hardis puts me into the same category as Anders Breivik. The reason for this is that I have called the violent conflict between the Islamic world and everyone else a Third World War. We are not at war with Islam, but Islam is at war with us. The whole thing begins in the Quran, which in reality is a declaration of war against all non-Muslims.
Islamic terror has no limits, and Muslim ghettos have no fatherland. You may call it what you like, but the war on terror is a worldwide conflict.
Hardis also thinks that I am too harsh when I predict exchanges of fire between Muslim groups and Western authorities. Unfortunately, this has already happened several places, among others at Grenoble. There, the police chief said desperately at a press conference that ‘ they shoot at us like shooting at rabbits ‘.
The Islamists’ demand for local sharia states in Europe, which I likewise have predicted, is now a reality. Does Hardis dare to believe that there are no Muslims who will take to the usual means of terror and kidnapping in order to get these demands fulfilled? Breivik was fed up with the Leftist rulers’ careless policy toward a violent and totalitarian religion, and committed crimes against the democratic principles supported by Islam-critical blogs.
Only Breivik can assume the responsibility for his deplorable acts. Those who let Islam enter the Gates of Vienna, however, and sold their voters the dream of a happy multiculture, have burdened themselves with a historically huge responsibility.
Previous posts by or about Nicolai Sennels:
Our Norwegian correspondent The Observer sends his translation of a surprising op-ed from Dagbladet.
Ole Martin Moen says things in this piece that one would not normally expect to see in the Norwegian media. In fact, don’t his words prove that he is an “Islamophobe”, just like — gulp! — Anders Behring Breivik?
From Norway, of all places, a remarkably sane opinion column:
Go ahead, insult
We need to stop the preferential treatment of Islam
by Ole Martin Moen
Criticism of Religion: When the pope visited the UK last year, thousands of protesters gathered in the streets to express their opinion of the Catholic Church: That it acts as brake on enlightened ideas and equality, and that it isn’t welcome in modern day Britain. The slogans were numerous. ‘Nope Pope!’ and ‘Go Home Pope!’
Most people believe that a big and authoritarian religion like Catholicism needs to be able to tolerate such protests. But ask yourself: How would a similar protest against Islam be dealt with? Quite differently. Slogans like ‘No to Imams!’ and ‘Imams go home!’ are hardly ever heard. No one would say that Islam isn’t welcome in a modern European nation. Geert Wilders had to stand trial for expressing similar thoughts.
Does Islam deserve a softer treatment than Catholicism? Hardly. Islam is the bigger religion of the two, and it has more political power. Islam is also the most oppressive. While Catholicism discriminates between men and women in matters relating to the church, Islam also discriminates in these matters in civil society. If a scantily dressed woman enters St. Peter’s Cathedral, she will be asked to cover more of her body. If she enters Mecca she will be jailed. In most Catholic nations gays can get married; in most Muslim nations they’re persecuted.
Catholic countries have freedom of expression, something that hardly any Muslim country has. Compared with Islam modern Catholicism is almost like Sunday school [Norwegian word for kids’ bible study classes].
I’m stressing the word ‘modern’, because of course both Catholicism and Christianity have dark histories. But Christianity has for almost 500 years been exposed to massive criticism. Christians have been told time and again how primitive it is to believe that a Jewish cult leader from 2,000 years in the past was God’s son. They have been put in their place, and they have matured and become sufficiently thick-skinned to stomach such criticism.
Islam has never been exposed to such criticism, but has instead been protected. Because of this Islam has never grown up. Instead Islam has been treated like a spoiled kid who throws a tantrum whenever someone says something unpleasant.
If Islam is going to grow up, rather than remaining an unbearable bully indefinitely, we have to stop protecting it and stop giving it preferential treatment. We have to be brave enough to treat it just as harshly as Christianity was with Øverland [A Norwegian author who was charged with blasphemy in 1933], and say that Islam is a backwards and dogmatic religion. We need to be brave enough to say that ‘Muslims are wrong’ just as easily as we say that ‘liberals are wrong’. We need to draw caricatures of Muhammad just like we draw caricatures of Jesus. We need to treat Kurt Westergaard like we treat Monty Python. We can’t demonize Geert Wilders’ Islam critique anymore than we demonize Anonymous’ scientology criticism.
Perhaps this will cause offense among some. That will only confirm that the criticism was necessary. Religions need to be insulted until they reach an insult-saturation point. Only when they’ve reached this point will they be able to tolerate criticism without screaming, hyperventilating and behave like spoiled children.
Yesterday I posted a brief summary of a news story about a Moroccan terrorist in Spain who was arrested for planning to poison the local water supply.
Below are some excerpts from an AFP article in English about the incident:
Qaeda suspect ‘plotted to poison water’: Spanish judge
By Daniel Silva (AFP)
MADRID — An Al-Qaeda suspect plotted to poison tourists’ water supplies to avenge the killing of Osama bin Laden, a Spanish judge said Saturday as he remanded the man in custody.
Abdellatif Aoulad Chiba, a 36-year-old Moroccan, had gone so far as to obtain manuals on poisons, toxins and explosives on jihadist websites, the judge said.
Police swooped soon after the suspect appeared to be saying farewell to his wife.
Chiba’s online comments on jihadist websites “expressed a clear desire to carry out an attack against ‘infidels’ by poisoning human water supplies”, he said in a written ruling.
The online comments indicated that he wanted to strike “at camp sites and tourist resorts”, most likely in Spain, said the judge of the National Court, Spain’s highest authority for hearing terrorist cases.
“The risk increased after he entered in contact with other users of the forum who supplied him with manuals on how to make and use poisons, toxins and explosives.”
Police arrested Chiba on Wednesday in the southern town of Linea de la Concepcion.
He was remanded in custody Saturday on suspicion of conspiracy to commit a terrorist killing and of being a member of a terrorist organisation. Formal charges have not yet been laid.
In one online post found by police he swore his allegiance to Al-Qaeda’s North African offshoot, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
The suspect had “expressed his intention to continue the organisation’s efforts to avenge the death of Osama bin Laden and other key members of Al-Qaeda”, the court said.
[…]
“It is considered probable that all the actions carried out by Abdellatif Aoulad could be the steps taken according to a plan whose goal could be to carry out a terrorist act,” the judge said.
Chiba called for attacks to be carried out in Europe and the United States in the online postings but the court said the plot to poison water supplies “probably concerned Spain since that is where he lives”.
In one post he wrote on August 11, he urged members of the jihadi forum “to kill the enemies in the heart of Europe and the USA … attack their houses, poison their water, set off explosives in their markets and the places where they meet”.
Police found information about poison and water deposits on his computer, the court said.
Chiba telephoned his wife in Girona, northeastern Spain, in the early hours of August 12, the ruling said.
“During the conversation he did not discuss any topic which would justify the urgency of calling at this hour,” the court said.
“But between the lines you can detect a need to express his love in what appeared to be a tacit farewell.”