Monthly Archives: December 2015

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night…

Posted on by

Update: The email problem seems to be repaired for the time being. I’m in the process of catching up.

…but something on our email server.

We’re experiencing problems with our email. It doesn’t affect operations here at Gates of Vienna, but it does mean that my responses to emails may be delayed.

It also may affect posting here, to some extent, depending on how much time I have to spend on the phone with the hosting service, the phone company, etc.

So all of the above may stay me from my appointed rounds.

The 4th Sunday of Advent 2015 AD

Posted on by

I couldn’t go to church with the Baron this morning; I seldom can. So instead I listened to many versions of my favorite Advent hymn.

I also looked up the background again for this ancient plain chant, whose words (from the O Antiphons) probably date to the 9th century – or so it said in the choral hymnbook of my childhood, which also attributed authorship of the plain chant to Thomas Aquinas, and the words to a Syriac church lost in the mists of time. Little did I know – or did my teachers know – the repeated attempts to eradicate that most ancient of Christian communities, probably formed (alongside similar Jewish communities) in the diaspora following the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.

Whatever.

Here is a wiki with a long discussion and a good presentation of more modern versions of the hymn, whose popularity arose with The Oxford Movement:

The pre-history of the text stretches back to the origins of the O Antiphons themselves, which were in existence by, at the latest, the eighth century. However, to speak meaningfully of the text of the hymn per se, they would need to be paraphrased in strophic, metrical form. It is certainly within the realm of possibility that efforts along those lines could have been made quite early; we know, for instance, that they were paraphrased extensively by the English poet Cynewulf in a poem written before the year 800.[1] However, despite popular imagination of an early origin for “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” the hymn’s history is first substantiated only much later.

No thank you. Like most of us, I prefer my childhood’s faith and imagination: all those afternoons of practice in the choir loft as our young voices echoed from the vaulted ceilings never bored me…the fact that I was repeating sounds reverberating down thousands of years of faith never failed to ground me more solidly within the context of my faith.

This is the final week of Advent, a month of Sundays repeating endlessly in The Liturgical Year. In the coming days, the final hectic time for everyone who ‘does’ Christmas, I may post other versions of this hymn. It encapsulates so perfectly the anticipation, the adumbration, of a fast-approaching event that has repeated year after year for the whole of my conscious life. I love the culmination of Advent into the Octave of Christmas, and the Nativity narratives (which appear in only two of the Christian gospels). But these are only sideshows to the Reality. Still, what sideshows they are! Choirs of angels singing to shepherds on the hillsides, Wise men showing up with gifts foretelling suffering, followed by a hasty flight into Egypt…all that is still to come. At the moment, Joseph and Mary are on the dusty road to Bethlehem, obedient to the Roman call for a census…

Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/19/2015

Posted on by

In a poll of its readers, the British newspaper The Daily Express found that respondents would prefer Vladimir Putin to be Prime Minister rather than David Cameron. Mr. Putin garnered 78% of the votes, while Mr. Cameron received only 22%.

In other news, French authorities are beefing up security at churches over Christmas, out of concern that they may be attacked by kinetic activists.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Dean, ESW, Fjordman, Insubria, Ivan Winters, JD, 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.

Continue reading →

From Syria to Germany to do Dawa

Posted on by

The following video features a brief video with a young Syrian “refugee” who came to Germany for the avowed purpose of converting people to Islam. The original was in Arabic, which was translated into German for subtitles, and then into English.

Many thanks to Nash Montana for the translation from the German, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Transcript:

Continue reading →

How Did the Shahada Come to Augusta County?

Posted on by

As we reported last night, our neighbors over in Augusta County made national headlines when their “Islamophobia” caused the closure of the county’s schools. The parent of a student assigned to copy out the shahada complained, and the controversy went viral on social media. The resulting uproar caused the school board to shut down all the schools in the district yesterday, “out of an abundance of caution.”

The superintendent didn’t say what he was being “cautious” about, but you can bet the recent events in San Bernardino and Paris were in the forefront of his mind. Even a provincial school official must have noticed by now what angry Muslims tend to do when non-Muslims say or do things they find insulting to their religion.

To put the incident in perspective, consider what the equivalent assignment might have been if the topic had been Christianity. A rough equivalent would have been to copy out John 3:16 as presented in the King James Bible:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Or possibly the first of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:3):

Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.

To be strictly analogous, the first would have to be copied out in Koine Greek, and the second in Hebrew.

Can you imagine a public school in the United States handing out such an assignment in the year of Our Lord 2015? It would end the career of the teacher, and possibly those of the principal and the district superintendent as well.

So how did the shahada come to be in the curriculum of an Augusta County high school? Before we look into that question, let’s recap the past week’s events. From Newsplex:

AUGUSTA COUNTY, VA (WHSV) — The mother of a Riverheads High School student says she felt her rights as a parent had been violated when her ninth grade son came home with a homework assignment last week that involved the Islamic Shahada, or statement of faith.

Kimberly Herndon said the assignment asked him to copy the Shahada, which translates to, “there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.”

When asked about her reaction to the assignment, Herndon said she was “shocked that this was sent home, shocked that this was in the schools [and] shocked that this was right here in our small town.”

The assignment says it is meant to give the students “an idea of the artistic complexity of calligraphy.”

However, Herndon said she felt the assignment tried to indoctrinate her child into the Islamic religion.

“There was no trying about it. The sheet that [the teacher] gave out was pure indoctrination in its origin,” said Herndon.

Augusta County Schools Superintendent Dr. Eric Bond said, “Neither these lessons, nor any other lesson in the world geography course, are an attempt at indoctrination to Islam or any other religion, or a request for students to renounce their own faith or profess any belief.”

He went on to say the lesson “attempts objectively to present world religions in a way that is interesting and interactive for students.”

[…]

On Tuesday night, dozens of people met at Good News Ministries to voice their own opinion. Herndon has not sent her child back to school since the incident happened last week.

“I will not have my children sit under a woman who indoctrinates them with the Islam religion when I am a Christian, and I’m going to stand behind Christ,” said Herndon.

Meanwhile, the school maintains the lesson is consistent with the Standards of Learning in Virginia.

A Dec. 11 social media post Herndon made has been shared hundreds of times.

In her post, she wrote, “I am preparing to confront the county on this issue of the Muslim indoctrination taking place here in an Augusta County school. This evil has been cloaked in the form of multiculturalism.”

Also from Newsplex:

Below is a statement from the Augusta County Schools district regarding the closure:

Augusta County Schools and all administrative offices will be closed Friday, December 17, 2015.

Following parental objections to the World Geography curriculum and ensuing related media coverage, the school division began receiving voluminous phone calls and electronic mail locally and from outside the area. As a result of those communications, the Sheriff’s Office and the school division coordinated to increase police presence at Augusta County schools and to monitor those communications. The communications have significantly increased in volume today and based on concerns regarding the tone and content of those communications, Sheriff Fisher and Dr. Bond mutually decided schools and school offices will be closed on Friday, December 18, 2015. While there has been no specific threat of harm to students, schools and school offices will be closed Friday, December 18, 2015. All extra-curricular activities are likewise cancelled for tonight, Thursday, December 17, through the weekend. We regret having to take this action, but we are doing so based on the recommendations of law enforcement and the Augusta County School Board out of an abundance of caution.

Finally, the Augusta County School Board and Dr. Bond appreciate parents bringing concerns directly to our attention, and a constructive and respectful dialogue between school and community is always welcome. As we have emphasized, no lesson was designed to promote a religious viewpoint or change any student’s religious belief. Although students will continue to learn about world religions as required by the state Board of Education and the Commonwealth’s Standards of Learning, a different, non-religious sample of Arabic calligraphy will be used in the future.

Dymphna did a little digging into the story last night. One person on Facebook said:

I along with another parent whose child was directly involved with the incident that took place at Riverheads High school met with school officials today at 3:45. The school was forthright in admitting that the teacher made a mistake in assigning the children to copy the shahada which is the Islamic creed that indoctrinates one into the Muslim belief. Also, it was admitted that asking the students to put on the head dressing of the Islamic woman was a bad choice in that there was no representation of any other apparel of any other culture or religion. We have been approached by a local news station to present this story to the citizens of this community who we strongly believe have the absolute right to be presented with the facts of the events that have taken place and what consequences have taken place as a result of the mistakes that have been made.

And Dymphna summarizes more of the information from social media thus:

Continue reading →

Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/18/2015

Posted on by

Enrique Marquez, a friend of the San Bernardino terrorists, was arrested today and charged with plotting with Syed Rizwan Farook to commit a terror attack. Mr. Marquez is the man who allegedly bought the weapons used by the jihadi couple in their massacre.

In other news, between 800 and 1,000 migrants tried to storm the entrance to the Channel Tunnel near Calais in an attempt to get to Britain. French police resorted to the use of tear gas to drive them away.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, MD, RRR, Seneca III, 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.

Continue reading →

Augusta County Says “No!” to the Shahada

Posted on by

Augusta County, Virginia is very close to us — just over Afton Mountain in the Shenandoah Valley. It’s an ordinary Virginia county, mostly rural. Staunton and Waynesboro are the big towns.

Augusta made national headlines this week because the mother of a high school student — a real “grizzly mama” — objected to an assignment that required him to copy out the shahada, the Islamic profession of faith. She probably didn’t know that if he had completed his assignment, his action would have constituted conversion to Islam in the eyes of Muslims. But she objected anyway.

Her action caused a big ruckus in social media, which made the national news. As a result, Augusta County closed all its schools today as a “safety precaution”.

Dymphna has been collecting a lot of material about this, and we’ll be posting more about it in the next day or two. But a couple of points are worth noting:

1.   Augusta County doesn’t have a significant Muslim population, as far as I know. The Jamaat ul-Fuqra compounds are all over on this side of the Blue Ridge.
2.   The assignment was drawn from a curriculum handed down by the Commonwealth of Virginia, which almost certainly means it originated with the federal government. If that’s the case, I can guarantee you that it was inserted in that form by members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
 

Below are excerpts from the CNN report on the controversy, with a video:

Schools in Virginia shut over anger at Islam homework

(CNN)After a teacher at a Virginia school handed out a standard homework assignment on Islam, such an angry backlash flooded in that it prompted officials to close every single school in the county as a safety precaution.

“While there has been no specific threat of harm to students, schools and school offices will be closed Friday, December 18, 2015,” Augusta County Schools said. Extracurricular activities were shut down Thursday afternoon.

And social media exploded over the school lesson — a simple drawing assignment — into a caustic discussion about religion and education.

Draw this

When the world geography class at Riverheads High School in Staunton rolled around to the subject of major world religions, homework on Islam asked students to copy religious calligraphy.

It read:

“Here is the shahada, the Islamic statement of faith, written in Arabic. In the space below, try copying it by hand. This should give you an idea of the artistic complexity of calligraphy.”

The illustrative classical Arabic phrase was the basic statement in Islam. It translated to: “There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is the messenger of Allah.”

Angry calls

When students took it home, it was like a spark hitting a powder keg. Some of their parents saw the homework as an attempt to convert their children to Islam.

Calls and emails flooded the school. Some of them demanded the teacher be fired for assigning it.

Cheryl LaPorte had not designed the assignment herself, but took it from a standard workbook on world religions, local newspaper The News Leader reported.

LaPorte told The News Leader that now her job is to get her students through Standards of Learning tests.

Continue reading →

The Mujahideen for the Islamic State: Let Them Come to Berlin

Posted on by

The following article about Islamic State proselytizers in Berlin was published recently by the Berliner Zeitung. Many thanks to Nash Montana for the translation:

Islamists Openly Recruiting for the Islamic State in Berlin-Spandau

Loyalists of the terrorist army “Islamic State” apparently loudly tried to recruit for new members. In the subway on Line 7 they sang fight songs and distributed flyers.

A spokesman for the police confirmed to the Berliner Zeitung, when asked, that the incident at Subway Line 7 took place around 11:30pm between Rohrdamm and Spandau stations. According to one witness who reported to the police, seven men were singing in Arabic in the subway car. The song was identified as a so-called ‘Fight-Nasheed’ for violent jihad. They then proceeded to involve passengers in discussion in Arabic, and passed out flyers in the size of DIN A5 [5.83″ × 8.27″].

Police have requested surveillance videos

The witness, who did not speak Arabic, asked two Arab women, who confirmed to him that this was a recruitment in process for the Islamic State. The witness then filed a complaint with the police. “We are now investigating because of open support for a terrorist organization,” the police spokesman states. He says that they have requested all the surveillance videos of the subway car in question from the Berlin Transport Authority (BVG).

This is not an isolated incident, as the police have ascertained over and over again that militant Islamists openly recruit for IS and for fighters to engage in the war against the “kuffar”. They are known to use three mosques in the city and the Internet as well. It’s because of this that two 21 year old men are in court this week because they were planning an attack on the Israeli Embassy . One of the two had recruited for the Islamic State and praised their violent actions. He radicalized himself mostly on the internet.

Continue reading →

Geert Wilders Trial: Kangaroos Convene on March 18

Posted on by

A trial date has been set: Geert Wilders’ first kangaroo court hearing in The Hague will be on March 18, 2016. Actually, to call the institution a “kangaroo court” would be an insult to marsupials everywhere.

As this farrago of justice unfolds next spring, everyone should bear in mind Mr. Wilders’ “crime”: he asked his supporters whether they wanted more Moroccans in the Netherlands, or fewer.

Below are excerpts from the article in Dutch News:

Geert Wilders trial for inciting hatred to start on March 18

The trial of PVV leader Geert Wilders on charges of inciting racism and hatred will start on March 18 with a procedural hearing, The Hague’s district court said on Friday.

The hearing will focus on the investigation into the charges against Wilders and set dates for witness appearances and the rest of the trial.

Wilders faces prosecution for his comments about Moroccan nationals on March 12 and 19, 2015, during and after the local election campaign.

In March, Wilders told supporters in Loosduinen that he would rather there were ‘fewer Moroccans’ in The Hague.

Continue reading →

Trump Talks to the Jewish Bigwigs

Posted on by

Trump isn’t cool. He’s not detached. No one will ever accuse him of being too shy. He loves to talk about himself and he enjoys telling people what he wants to do. Yeah, he laid the “oi vey” gestures on a little thick in the beginning; he has certain ideas about establishing rapport, especially with a hostile crowd. Sometimes they work. Sometimes nothing works.

I’ve read reviews of this speech which claim he was booed and poorly received. I watched it because I wanted to know how accurate those reviews were. But all I heard was one heckler (Trump told him off) and a number of room-temperature applause points for ideas that should have set these people on fire. I would say he was “cooly received” and with this insular group that’s the best he could have hoped for.

But Trump soldiered on. He talked straight to this group and he enumerated his successes and his plans should he be elected. He said very plainly that there is “something wrong” with Obama – a sentiment many Americans share.

The ending was quiet – no boos and no bravos. His listeners should be ashamed: they failed to welcome with genuine approval the candidate most committed to Israel’s survival. They proved again that being smart isn’t necessarily a point in your favor when it comes to survival.

One thing to ask yourself: did you learn anything from that speech? I did. I understand better – in specific terms – why American companies are leaving the country and costing us trillions in tax receipts and jobs. I knew it vaguely before but I grasp it much more fully now.

NOTICE: There was no written speech. He had a few notes scratched on paper and stuffed into an envelope. There was a glaring absence of teleprompters. He doesn’t need those crutches because he knows what he wants to say.

What a huge difference between him and that Marie Antoinette in the Oval Office, playing his fiddle while the country burns.

The Evil Stepmother

Posted on by

The following op-ed analyzes the political prospects of Angela Merkel, the Christian Democrats, and the Socialists in the wake of the Great Refugee Crisis of 2015.

Many thanks to JLH for the translation from Junge Freiheit:

The Evil Stepmother
by Werner Patzelt

For decades, Germany has been fortunate with the CDU — and its chairpersons. But much is now hanging in the balance: trust in the chancellor, the role of the CDU and CSU as the only electable right-of-center parties, Germany’s prosperity. There have been four factors contributing to this.

There is the “social-democratizing” of the CDU. It has made the party as good as unassailable from the left. That pays off in polls and talk shows. But many non-left, non-middle, right-of-center Germans no longer feel they are represented by the CDU. Anyone who is truly on the right is rejected and closed out by the CDU.

“Moving cautiously” as a distinguishing feature

This draws many to the AfD (Alternative for Germany). As the SPD — which had moved to the middle under Helmut Schmidt — thus made place for the Greens, so Merkel is leaving space for the AfD. And is hoping that its mobilization by-words — euro crisis, immigration, integration — will not have the long life enjoyed by the Green battle against nuclear power. If they do, there is the danger of the CDU repeating the history of the Social Democrats’ shrinking.

That is the chancellor’s leadership style. That is how she has managed to be only a little attractive for everyone but a horror for no one. “Moving cautiously” became a confidence-inspiring version of “relying on trial and error.” And approaching something from the end did not have the sound of starting off into the unknown or of adventurousness.

A unity coalition against the people

But precisely this is what the chancellor’s refugee policy has forced upon the country. Since then, she has ruled in matters of immigration with a kind of unified, all-party coalition against the majority of the population. And the question must be asked: is she really increasing the people’s advantage, or at least shielding them from harm?

And there are the real challenges for our country: a shortage of young people as a risk for the social system; guarantees in the euro zone as a risk for the treasury; sending military units into a war zone as a risk to life and limb, and not only for the soldiers; immigration as a risk to social stability; the behavior of German leadership as a risk for the EU.

Continue reading →

Site Blocking: More Data

Posted on by

Update: If you’ve been blocked trying to access Gates of Vienna, please send a screen cap image of the message you received at the moment you were blocked to unspiek (at) chromatism (dot) net. That may help us identify what the issue is.

Over the past few days I’ve posted several times (see here, here,
and here) about the possibility that this site is being blocked by some ISPs, with a special focus in the UK. I asked readers to help crowd-source the data for a research project on the topic, and we have received forty-seven responses so far via email and the comments. A small dataset, but large enough to be of interest.

I’ve reached no definite conclusions yet, so people are welcome to continue providing data. However, the trend seems to indicate that there is no widespread systematic blocking of Gates of Vienna. There were only seven instances of at least partial blocking, and those seem mostly to be of the “You must be 18 years old to enter” variety. Annoying, but still allowing access.

Strangely enough, there are no reports of blocking by the British ISP Sky, despite the fact that blocked.org.uk identifies Sky as blocking us.

And the biggest surprise is that GoV is accessible from Turkey — the Turkish government used to block us.

A full table of the data is below the jump:

Continue reading →

Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/17/2015

Posted on by

Two Muslim employees say they were fired from their jobs at a Paris airport because of their long beards. The two workers, both men, say that their beards are just “hipster fashion”. In possibly unrelated news, some employees and union officials believe that Air France has a problem with religious fundamentalism at Charles de Gaulle Airport. The imposition of halal food in the staff cafeteria was one of the issues cited.

In other news, a Washington think tank reports that Hamas and the Islamic State in the Sinai have been cooperating for the last two years against their common enemy, Egypt.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Nick, NV, 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.

Continue reading →

CNN’s Don Lemon Interviews Trump

Posted on by

Here’s an interview with Donald Trump from December 9th. It keeps getting deleted and popping up elsewhere. There are less than a thousand views of this new iteration. I watched it when it first came out and planned to pass it on to y’all before it disappeared. Now it’s up again.

Watch it while you can.

Opinions are welcome as long as they’re within our usual guidelines. With that proviso, we’re both quite interested in what our readers, Americans and Europeans think of this man (whose mother came here from Scotland but Scotland has made sure that all of us know that they disown him).

Enjoy.