An Atheist’s Antipathy Towards Islam

Many thanks to JLH for translating this brief piece from Bild:

Islam as a Hindrance to Integration

by Nicolaus Fest
July 27, 2014

I am an atheist who is sympathetic to religion. I do not believe in any god, but Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism do not disturb me.

Only Islam bothers me, more and more. I am disturbed by the highly disproportionate criminality of young people of Muslim heritage. I am bothered by the [literally and figuratively] killing contempt for women and homosexuals.

I am disturbed by forced marriages, “peace [sharia] judges,” and “honor killings.”

And I am disturbed more than even semi-civilized words can convey by anti-Semitic pogroms.

So I ask myself: Is religion a hindrance to integration? My impression — not always. But in the case of Islam, it probably is. We should take that into account, when considering asylum and immigration.

I can do without imported racism, and, as to what else Islam stands for, I can do without that too.

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

Gates of Vienna News Feed 7/27/2014

Photos of an “Australian” mujahid posing with the severed heads of Syrian soldiers were posted on Twitter. Australian Muslims reacted by expressing their shock — shock, I tell you! — at the number of jihad fighters who had traveled from Australia to Syria. Meanwhile, the prominent Sydney Muslim leader Keysar Trad was threatened by his fellow Muslims after he said that they should not join the Syrian jihad, but give to charities instead.

In other news, 36 people were killed in clashes between Libyan military forces and Salafist mujahideen in Benghazi, while 23 Egyptian workers were killed by a rocket fired by extremists in Tripoli.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, Jerry Gordon, JP, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

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

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

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“Jews to the Gas!”

JLH has translated an opinion piece from the Austrian media about the pro-Palestinian anti-Semitic wave currently sweeping across Europe. The translator includes this note:

Die Presse always did have the class writers. But in this age of fawning on the authorities, it is bracing to encounter a journalist of the old school who does not hesitate to tell it like it is.

I suspect Christian Ortner believed in the principles of the EU as they were originally presented and resents the distortions they have undergone. As they say, a cynic is an idealist who has been mugged by reality. His irony is vicious, and well-deserved. Vienna continues its tradition of brilliant, against-the-grain writers.

The translated op-ed from Die Presse:

That Could Have Almost Become a “European Kristallnacht”

Anti-Semitic mobs are venting their rage in Europe’s big cities, and that is less of a concern for so-called Peace Project Europe than the light bulb question.

by Christian Ortner

The few, old denture-clacking Nazis still alive must have experienced a kind of spiritual revival of the Nuremberg Rallies* in recent days, when they rolled up to the TV in their wheelchairs to watch the news. Because there, in the great cities of Europe — Berlin, Paris and London — anti-Semitic mobs were moving through the streets as if it were 1938, attacking local Jews and Israeli tourists, trying to destroy synagogues and going after Jewish businesses. “Jew, Jew, cowardly swine/Come on out fight alone!” the thugs chanted, under the eyes of German police who not only made no move against them. but even loaned the rioters a megaphone, and immediately an Islamic Berlin hate preacher segued into calling for Jews to be killed: “Jews to the gas!” In Salzburg’s Bischofshofen, anti-Semitic hooligans actually attacked Israeli soccer players. The fact that in recent months 700 French Jews have emigrated to the rocket-plagued south of Israel testifies just how protected Jews feel in Europe in the early 21st century. It is highly probable that, without massive police presence, there would have been burning synagogues, smashed windows in Jewish businesses and a few lynched Jews in the EU last week. That week, Europe was not very far from an EU-wide Nazi pogrom night 2.0 — a kind of domestic market for anti-Semitism, so to speak.

One or the other of the surviving NS veterans, in a transport of joy, must have thought: “Oh, that I have been privileged to see this!”

The reactions of full-time wreath-layers and other tourists at the Wailing Wall to the activities of this mob in European cities were instructive. The proponents of the “European Peace Project” in Brussels — ordinarily concerned about every light bulb on the territory of the EU — witnessed the milieu-appropriate expressions of displeasure by the anti-Semitic rabble without turning a hair. This is surprising, on the one hand, because setting fire to a synagogue creates even more climate-damaging carbon dioxide than a forbidden light bulb. On the other hand, it is understandable, since Professional Europeans are presently fully and competitively occupied in insinuating themselves into the highly remunerated top jobs in Brussels, so they won’t just be hanging around the Côte on vacation (as they presently are), where a person — even a Jew — is safe, at least if you can afford a room in the Eden Roc in Antibes. And because “Peace Project Europe” is a recent recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, the thus honored EU grandees need not worry too much about the Jews of Europe being left in peace. You can’t worry about everything. Worrying about the EU as a reformatory for its inmates is enough.

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 7/26/2014

Norway is expecting a terrorist attack on Monday by mujahideen returning from Syria. It has closed the airspace over the city of Bergen, and all the Jewish museums in the country are closed.

In other news, fighting between rival militias intensified in the Libyan capital Tripoli, forcing the United States to evacuate all 150 personnel from its embassy.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, Jerry Gordon, JP, MC, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

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

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

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Peace Comes to Ottawa

A group of culturally-enriched “Canadians” and their Progressive allies gathered in downtown Ottawa today to promote peace in Gaza and cast opprobrium on Israel. Some of the signage on display was a bit ironic, given that by that time Hamas had refused Israel’s offer of an extension on the temporary truce and started launching rockets from Gaza again. Meanwhile Israel extended the ceasefire unilaterally for another 24 hours.

Bad timing, Ottawa!

Many thanks to Victor Laszlo for being on-site to take the raw footage, and to Vlad Tepes for editing and commentary:

Envy: To Love Death More than Life

This may be Bill Whittle’s finest summation yet. He certainly covers the themes that have been at the center of many private meditations, prayers and ponderings for those familiar with the Jewish scriptural references Mr. Whittle highlights. Thousands of years later and the same old argument continues:

Mr. Whittle names chapter and verse, or rather, he names one of them. The Scriptures limn the many fractures of the human heart, the myriad ways we fail ourselves and each other:

Genesis 26

Now there was a famine in the land, besides the previous famine that had occurred in the days of Abraham. So Isaac went to Gerar, to Abimelech king of the Philistines.

The LORD appeared to him and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; stay in the land of which I shall tell you. “Sojourn in this land and I will be with you and bless you, for to you and to your descendants I will give all these lands, and I will establish the oath which I swore to your father Abraham. “I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven, and will give your descendants all these lands; and by your descendants all the nations of the earth shall be blessed; 5because Abraham obeyed Me and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes and My laws.”

So Isaac lived in Gerar. …

Now Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold. And the LORD blessed him, and the man became rich, and continued to grow richer until he became very wealthy; for he had possessions of flocks and herds and a great household, so that the Philistines envied him.

Now all the wells which his father’s servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines stopped up by filling them with earth. Then Abimelech said to Isaac, “Go away from us, for you are too powerful for us.” And Isaac departed from there and camped in the valley of Gerar, and settled there.

Quarrel over the Wells

Then Isaac dug again the wells of water which had been dug in the days of his father Abraham, for the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham; and he gave them the same names which his father had given them.

But when Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and found there a well of flowing water, the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with the herdsmen of Isaac, saying, “The water is ours!” So he named the well Esek, because they contended with him.

Then they dug another well, and they quarreled over it too, so he named it Sitnah.

He moved away from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it; so he named it Rehoboth, for he said, “At last the LORD has made room for us, and we will be fruitful in the land.”

But he not only points out the sad and tedious repetitions — the Philistines filling in the wells three thousand years ago vs. the Palestinians’ deliberate destruction of the tremendous wealth handed to them in the form of those greenhouses — he goes further to ask American Jews why they voted in, why they support a man so dedicated to the destruction of Israel.

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

Now, with the stunning news of the multitude of tunnels dug from Gaza into Israel, the hinge of history has closed another door. Slammed it quite loudly.

Those tunnels were — are, but shortly will be were — changing the rules of this elaborate game the world has played at Israel’s expense. Who donated the dollars (actually, mostly euros) that made the tunnels possible? Who sold Hamas the concrete? Who helped them engineer and build those tunnels? They did it themselves you say? You live in a dream world.

This a culture created to play the role of underdog. Their job is to exist and to suffer and to make demands. Suffering, the right kind of suffering, bestows the right of entitlement, the right to stand eternally with one’s hand out, demanding more.

The PoorPalis can’t design tunnels; they don’t build bridges; they have no desire, nor the memory of any such desire, to see the embodiment of Beauty or Truth or Goodness. Music to soothe and restore? Art to change perceptions? Research to satisfy curiosity (however momentarily)? Such concepts are now beyond a people raised from infancy to hate a group of people they don’t know beyond the cartoon primers they read in school. This is not the hatred of close encounters, it is the deep, abiding misery that arrives on the tails of an inbred sense of entitlement with no hope of fulfillment. Not ever. Normal human desire to achieve has been replaced by an evil simulacrum of a deeply perverted need to destroy.

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What is Racism?

If you appreciate this essay by Fjordman, please consider making a donation to him, using the button at the bottom of this post.

What is Racism?
by Fjordman

We hear a great deal about the evils of “racism” in the mass media. But what exactly is “racism,” anyway?

If the word means “to harbor prejudice against people with a different skin color and ethnic background”, then it is documented that Europeans, especially those from northwestern Europe, are among the least racist peoples on the surface of this planet. People coming from other parts of the world, for instance from Asia or Africa, tend on average to be more prejudiced against individuals from a different ethnic background. This further implies that mass immigration from Asia or Africa to the Western world increases the amount of racism in our societies, since Europeans are being displaced by more prejudiced newcomers.

If “racism” is used to indicate that you believe that some cultures are better than others, then this is simply common sense. A brutal, violent clan culture with endemic corruption generates a different society from a culture with high levels of trust and low levels of corruption, where citizens try to settle their differences in peaceful ways. Different cultures produce different societies, and some societies yield better results than others. This is an empirical fact that is easily documented.

If “racism” is intended to mean a belief there could be genetic differences between different human beings which affect not just how they look, but also how they think and behave, then things become more sensitive.

However, the progress in our understanding of human genetics is now very rapid. Evidence is accumulating indicating that human evolution has continued until the present day. According to some studies, it has even accelerated into historical times. Evidence further indicates that genetics influences how people behave. For instance, studies of identical twins indicate that they often hold similar political views. The implications of these studies is that people who are genetically similar also tend to think and act in similar ways.

If we expand this same principle from individuals to ethnic groups, we might theoretically face the possibility that a group of somewhat genetically related people displays related world views and behaviors, partly for biological reasons. Another way of saying the same thing is that perhaps culture has a genetic component. Please note that I say a component, not that everything in a culture is 100% genetic. Ideas clearly matter. This is, for instance, why some white converts to Islam seem to develop a sudden urge to blow things up shortly after converting.

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 7/25/2014

Israel has rejected a Gaza ceasefire proposed by Secretary of State John Kerry. However, it agreed to a twelve-hour humanitarian truce effective Saturday morning. Meanwhile, the IDF uncovered a plan by Hamas for a massive infiltration of Israel via the terror tunnels, timed to coincide with Rosh Hashanah in September. If the operation had been carried out, hundreds or even thousands of Israeli civilians might have been taken by surprise and killed or taken hostage.

In other news, Norway announced that there is a credible and imminent threat of a terror attack by “Norwegians” returning “home” from the jihad in Syria.

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

Thanks to Andy Bostom, C. Cantoni, Diana West, Fjordman, Insubria, Jerry Gordon, JP, Steen, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

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

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

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CAIR, Islam, and Tennessee Politics

The following report from the Tennessee Council for Political Justice combines newsletters #134 and #135.

Newsletter #134 — A Leopard Doesn’t Change Its Spots

Predictably, CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) is standing in defense of Hamas using civilians as human shields as Israel….

Predictably, the Executive Director of the pro-Palestinian D.C. think tank, the Jerusalem Fund/Palestine Center, when asked directly, will not answer the simple yes/no question:

“Is Hamas a terrorist organization?”

CAIR was founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Islamic Association for Palestine, which was created to promote and raise money for Hamas in the U.S. Federal prosecutors have established ample evidence tying CAIR to Hamas. In 1994 CAIR Director Nihad Awad publicly declared his support for Hamas.

The Jerusalem Fund and Palestine Center was founded by Hisham Sharabi who described Hamas as “the true fida’i (self-sacrifice) resistance in Palestine since the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada.” In 2003 he said:

“In the face of relentless Israeli force, the only weapon the helpless and desperate have is to fling their bodies against the beast. Suicide bombings are no longer the lone act of desperate fanatics, but have become a conscious weapon of resistance and war. The culture of death and self-sacrifice is spreading in many Arab and Muslim countries.”

Jerusalem Fund Chairman is Subhi Ali from Waverly, Tennessee. He joined the Jerusalem Fund in 2000, became Vice-President in 2004 serving alongside Sharabi and then became President of the Board in 2005, a position he still retains. The Jerusalem Fund campaigns for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. This is a campaign, the intent of which is widely recognized, to try and destroy the state of Israel.

Subhi Ali is the father of former Haslam appointee, sharia finance specialist, Samar Ali.

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Egypt’s “Cold War” With the U.S.

Ashraf Ramelah’s latest essay concerns the brewing cold war between the United States and Egypt. In one of those strange world-turned-upside-down moments, the president of Egypt opposes the Muslim Brotherhood, while the president of the United States supports it.

Dr. Ramelah’s essay was written before Mr. Kerry’s most recent ceasefire proposal was rejected by Israel.

Egypt’s “cold war” with the U.S.
by Ashraf Ramelah

An unusual security search at the entrance of the Egyptian presidential palace in Cairo took place two days ago as reported by Egyptian newspapers and the Italian RAI 24 news. John Kerry and his staff were asked to go through a metal detector, and one staff member was asked to show the contents of his pockets before visiting President Al-Sisi. This humiliating reversal of protocol was a sign of mistrust towards the U.S. by an Egypt never shy about expressing hostility for America’s support of the Morsi regime. Kerry’s visit to Egypt was for the purpose of brokering peace between Israel and Gaza (the Hamas terrorist organization).

However, was President Al-Sisi merely reflecting the animosity of the Egyptian people towards the Obama administration and posturing to score points with Egyptians? Or was Al-Sisi’s motive to emphasize Egypt’s sovereignty to an Obama administration for America’s egregious error in backing the former terrorist-backed president, Morsi — not standing for and with the Egyptian pro-democracy majority? Al-Sisi’s coldness counters a U.S. State Department unwilling to let go of America’s glaringly wrong position. Western media’s “military-coup general” is turning out to be Egypt’s best prospect for human rights and democratic ideals up to this point.

Egyptian pro-democracy freedom fighters who backed Al-Sisi for president, have been icy and caustic towards the U.S. since lobbing tomatoes at Hilary back when she visited Egypt in support of the Muslim Brotherhood “freedom-fighters.” That was the moment the Western media reversed the facts in Egypt’s revolution saga. Referring to the MB as freedom-seekers, this “fact” became the premise underlying all reports to date.

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 7/24/2014

Meriam Ibrahim, the Sudanese woman who was imprisoned and sentenced to death for apostasy, was able to leave Sudan and landed in Rome with her children. She and her family then met with Pope Francis.

In other news, an Air Algérie jetliner bound from Burkina Faso to Algiers crashed in the Mali desert after taking off from Ouagadougou. All 116 passengers and crew are believed to have died in the crash.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JP, Steen, The Independent, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

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

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

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Shooters, Shills, and Shahids

Consider this recent article from The Telegraph entitled “Revealed: the Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces”:

More children than Palestinian fighters are being killed in the offensive on Gaza, according to the UN. The name, age, sex and location of 132 of the 155 Palestinian children killed have been collected by the Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights.

The Telegraph is allegedly conservative, yet the above text is indistinguishable from the “narrative” dispensed by The Guardian and other lefty news outlets. The media line on what is happening in Gaza and Israel right now is all but uniform across the political spectrum: reports by stringers from Gaza about bombed schools and hospitals, photos of dead children and weeping mothers on the nightly news, calls by world leaders for an immediate ceasefire, and condemnation in the UN of Israeli “war crimes”.

Occasionally a newscaster will venture off the main path to mention that Hamas terrorists have fired thousands of rockets from Gaza at civilians in Israel. And there are occasional articles about the terror tunnels used by Hamas to infiltrate Israel and murder more civilians.

Almost all major news outlets neglect to look beneath the surface to look at Hamas’ strategy of war, which the terror organization openly declares in Arabic-language media, especially those in Gaza itself. An unusual exception may be found in this opinion piece by Michael Oren at CNN, of all places:

More than a military strategy, Hamas has a media strategy. Calculatingly, Hamas employs primitive military tactics to mount a sophisticated media campaign that can threaten Israel’s basic security. And in conducting that offensive, Hamas can count on one of the world’s most powerful weapons: the international media.

[…]

In a war with Hamas, though, Israel’s strength and morality can become vulnerability and guilt. By investing nothing in air raid sirens and bomb shelters, by hiding deep beneath neighborhoods and shooting near hospitals and mosques, Hamas ensures that Israel will invariably wound and kill civilians.

Hamas gunmen carry out attacks disguised as women and old men, fight from UN and Red Cross vehicles, store rockets in schools, and physically prevent Palestinian civilians from fleeing combat zones. This context, though, is rarely mentioned by the media when covering the civilian cost of the fighting.

As the Israeli cabinet member Naftali Bennett told Wolf Blitzer on CNN, “Hamas is committing massive self-genocide to its woman and children.”

This is the deliberate use of the civilian population of Gaza as raw material for a “humanitarian” crisis for which Israel will be blamed. Yet the international media seem unable — or unwilling — to recognize what Hamas is doing.

As Carl in Jerusalem pointed out, this is the reason why Prime Minister Netanyahu did not order a ground offensive sooner. As long as there are more dead Palestinians than dead Israelis, any effective Israeli response will be seen as a “disproportionate” use of force and “indiscriminate slaughter”. In other words, Mr. Netanyahu would have to fail in his primary duty to protect his own citizens before the United Nations, foreign political leaders, and the international media would view any Israeli military action as justified.

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Poland, RIP

Takuan Seiyo just sent this, which he says was relayed by an Irish-American friend and patriot who until now had drawn some comfort in the relative immunity of Poland and its neighbors to PC/MC:

From that website:

You should know that hate crimes are prosecuted ex officio in Poland. It means that, in the event where the Police or prosecutor’s office learn about such a crime (from you, the media, or a witness’s account), these institutions are obligated to take actions irrespective of a victim’s initiative.