This may look like “Rule 5 Friday” at first glance, but it’s way more important than that. Be sure to read the article too!

Daily Mail (UK): Belgian politician risks Muslim backlash after using teenage daughter dressed in burka and bikini for campaign against Islam

(h/t: Blazing Cat Fur)

By Rick Dewsbury
Last updated at 1:33 PM on 3rd February 2012

A Belgian politician has risked causing uproar among Muslims after starting a ‘Women Against Islamization’ campaign featuring his 19-year-old daughter wearing a burka and a bikini.

Filip Dewinter, leader of the far-right Vlaams Belang party, uses a shot of his daughter An-Sofie Dewinter in the dark blue bikini for the political campaign.

The glamorous teenager dons a burka that covers her head and face, while the rest of the Muslim garment is draped over her back.

The provocative image is likely to inflame tensions among Islamic groups and nationalists in the racially-divided country.

The poster shows the words ‘Freedom or Islam?’ written on a red bar across Ms Dewinter’s breasts.

Further down the poster a black panel with the words ‘You choose!’ is seen covering the teenager’s crotch.

The extremist Vlaams Belang party claims that it wants to convince women to take a stand against Islam.

Ms Dewinter told the Belgian press she does not feel used by the party.

She said: ‘I’ve suggested (the poster) myself, I have learned to live with it but I have had everything up to death threats made at me.’

She said that she ‘ wanted to make this statement.’

She added: ‘What is the greatest contrast with a niqab? Nude.

‘The campaign fits in perfectly with how I feel about the whole issue. As women, we must choose: freedom or Islam.’

The teenager claimed that she had been threatened by Muslim groups

She added: ‘Death threats and criticism no longer scare me off.’

Her father, the party’s leader, said: ‘Women are always the first victims of Islam. We want to make clear that they have a choice.’

The potentially incendiary poster comes after The Islamic fundamentalist group Shariah4Belgium was slammed for its aggressive stance.

The group opened the country’s first Sharia court, a putting it on a collision course with the country’s nationalists.

Vlaams Belang spoke out against the Muslim courts and said that all legal disputes should be settled in the country’s civil judicial system.

More here.

Let’s expose some of the “spin” in the Daily Mail article:

First of all, there’s this phrase in the article title: “…using teenage daughter in burka and bikini…” Filip Dewinter is not “using” his teenage daughter in this campaign. She suggested the poster; it is not unduly revealing; and, at 19, she is of age to make the decision to be photographed. As a young adult who grew up in a political family, she thoroughly understands and accepts the risks involved. Kudos to her for participating in the Women Against Islamization campaign.

“…likely to inflame tensions among Islamic groups and nationalists in the racially-divided country.” Yeah, we get it; if you object to the burqa or the niqab, you must be a raaaaacist. Belgium is divided in two different ways, neither of which have to do with race: by region (socialist French/Walloon versus conservative Flemish) and by ideology (Islam versus freedom). Islam is a totalitarian ideology; it is no more a “race” than communism is, and non-Muslims have the right to reject it.

“Filip Dewinter, leader of the far-right Vlaams Belang party…” Here we go again. Patriotism in western Europe has become a dirty word. Any European political party or organization that takes a stand for national sovereignty or against Islamic infiltration will be labeled as “far-right.” In the mainstream media, “far-right” is a code word for raaaaacist or neo-Nazi. This smear against conservatives is especially misleading in view of the fact that Hitler was a Marxist, always a man of the Left.

“The extremist Vlaams Belang party claims that it wants to convince women to take a stand against Islam.” Extremist is another code word that the mainstream media uses to make a person, group, or idea seem too far outside of the mainstream to be a respectable topic for discussion. On the one hand, jihadi violence is blamed on a “tiny minority of extremists” within Islam, rather than on mainstream Islamic doctrine set forth in the Qur’an, the hadiths, and the schools of Islamic jurisprudence. On the other hand, any party opposing Islamic expansionism is labeled extremist, as a ploy to make the reader feel secretly ashamed for agreeing with it.

More here:

• Filip Dewinter (Flemish language)
• Vlaams Belang (Flemish language)
• The Flemish Republic

Iran threatens Jews overseas. How very Nazi-like.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by SDAMatt2a on Feb 4, 2012

Nice pals ya got there, liberals.

“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.”
=============
The status of Israel has become a pivotal issue in all talks about the Middle East. Israel’s legitimacy rests, not just on United Nations resolutions or Zionist aspirations, but, for many, on Biblical narratives and the historical connections of Jews with the Holy Land. A minority of Muslims find justification for the Zionist enterprise equally in the Bible and the Qur’an and believe that the Qur’an offers divine sanction for the establishment of a Jewish state in southern Syria. However, the majority cite other Qur’anic verses and passages from the Hadith (purported records of the Prophet Muhammad’s actions and sayings), stating the exact opposite. This second, negative attitude toward Jews is expressed in sacred texts and in the body of Shari’a (Islamic law) where Jews, like all non-Muslims, are assigned a status that does not permit their becoming rulers over Muslims or over Muslim territory.
Traditionally, this has not been an issue. Under the different Muslim empires, Jews were kept firmly in their place and represented no sort of threat to the ruling order. It is only in the modern period that this has become a burning issue. Thus, the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the British Mandate to modern Israel has been as much a religious as a political clash. The Arab onslaught of 1948 was religiously motivated, as is modern opposition to Israel by Islamist groups.

The Hamas charter asserts that “the Islamic Resistance Movement [i.e. Hamas] regards Palestine as an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future generations until Judgment Day.” A waqf is a religious endowment bestowed by God. Consequently, “neither it, nor any part of it, should be squandered: Neither it, nor any part of it, should be given up. Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab countries, neither any king or president, nor all the kings and presidents, neither any organization nor all of them, be they Palestinian or Arab, possess the right to do that. Palestine is an Islamic Waqf land consecrated for Muslim generations until Judgment Day.”

The charter is not unique: It represents a mainstream view among Muslims today. In contrast, several Muslim spokesmen have recently claimed that the Qur’an promises Israel to the Jews and that the claims of Hamas, Hezbollah, and allied groups are illegitimate on Islamic grounds. This is a comforting message, which some of these spokesmen have taken to Jewish audiences, reinforcing the idea that the Islamic jihad imperative against Israel is simply the province of a tiny minority of extremists and that the voices of reason, moderation, and Qur’anic authenticity will eventually prevail.

Although an extremely comforting message to supporters of Israel, it is not true and is based on a partial and inaccurate reading of the Qur’an.

- Robert Spencer

In view of the above story, the Iranians have no basis for complaint when the Israelis make fun of them in an advertisement. Because a Samsung tablet was shown in an “insulting” ad for Israeli cable TV services, Iran is threatening a boycott of Samsung. Yes, Samsung should indeed apologize – NOT for the ad, but for having traded with Iran in the first place.

He who sups with the devil should have a long spoon.

Iran banning Samsung products over an Israeli Ad (Subtitled)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by Concord9000 on Feb 3, 2012

A senior lawmaker says Iran’s Majlis is considering a plan to cut off the country’s economic transactions with South Korea’s Samsung in reaction to the company’s anti-Iran teaser.

Head of Majlis Energy Committee Arsalan Fat’hipour said the double-urgency plan, aimed at imposing a complete ban on buying all Samsung products, would make the company regret making the insulting teaser.

South Korea’s giant manufacturer of electronic devices and home appliances produced a teaser shortly after the assassination of the Iranian scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan by Mossad agents in Tehran, in which Iran had been depicted as a primitive society.

The clip also implies that Israel is powerful enough to easily destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities or assassinate the country’s nuclear scientists.

The Iranian lawmaker added that forgetting the high volume of its trade with Iran, the company has produced the teaser to curry favor with Israel.

Fat’hipour said Samsung’s apology to the Iranian nation, though necessary, would not be enough and that the company must be held accountable for producing the teaser.

Meanwhile, Samsung’s Dubai office has issued a statement condemning the production of the teaser by the company’s Israel office.

Samsung’s public relations official in Tehran, Elaheh Taheri, told reporters on Thursday the clip had nothing to do with the South Korean company and that it had been produced by an Israeli cable TV station, Hot.

From YouTube:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by lector0003 on Jan 26, 2012
Probably Douglas Murray’s finest speech delineating the inane moral fetor emanating from Western academicians on the Iranian nuclear crisis (and the hapless Jewish state Europe hates).

More from Douglas Murray here.

ACT for Australia has the story:

Australians are becoming increasingly aware that many Muslims refugees:

• Abuse our hospitality. E.g., Mansor Almaribe threatened to sue the Australian Government after they had lobbied the Saudi Government when he was arrested on charges of blasphemy, helping to get his sentence drastically reduced .
• Import barbaric sharia. E.g., the man who strangled his wife with her veil, because she ‘shamed’ him by leaving him after many years of abuse.

So when growing public anger forces our government to restrict Islamic immigration, Islamic countries will have to think of new strategies to gain entry. It won’t be easy, as evidence of the repressive nature of Islamic countries is continually being exposed.

The Barnabas Fund reports:

• The media is banned from producing or broadcasting any programme “that humiliates Allah or his prophets or the holy Quran”.
• Foreign workers and tourists can practise their faith only in private. It is also illegal to carry or display in public books on religions other than Islam.
• In October 2011 a Christian teacher from India working in a school on Raa Atoll was imprisoned for transferring Christian songs on to a school laptop and keeping a Bible in his home.

In 2010, it was reported that legislation was planned to ban all non-Muslim places of worship in the Maldives:

• … the bill would make it illegal to build non-Muslim places of worship or to practise non-Muslim faiths in public… Punishment would be a jail term of three to five years or a fine of between US$2,800 and US$4,700.
• … Muttalib, MP… said that the purpose of the legislation was to maintain Islamic principles and to prevent the spread of non-Muslim faiths. He mentioned too the phenomenon of “wedding tourism” , which would “indirectly set up churches in this country”.
• Sheikh Mohamed Shaheem Ali Saeed… commented that non-Muslim places of worship are necessary only in countries where there is religious diversity. This did not apply in the Maldives… whose constitution does not permit Maldivians to follow a non-Islamic faith.
• Nazam Rashid MP agreed the bill was important because human rights organisations were trying to impose freedom of religion on the Maldives.

The Maldives has no freedom of religion, and denigrates and oppresses any who follow another religion.

Its pretense of being moderate in order to attract tourists has resulted in some bizarre situations, as when a wedding celebrant was caught out insulting tourists:

• The celebrant, who conducted the ceremony in the local language at an upmarket resort fringed by white sand and turquoise water, had been arrested …
• A video of the ceremony, during which the hapless couple are taunted and subjected to a series of insulting and religious-tinged abuse, was posted on YouTube and has sparked fears for the country’s tourism-dependent economy.
• President Mohamed Nasheed announced his government would introduce strict guidelines on conducting wedding ceremonies … he expressed “disgust” at the incident … saying “bad behaviour, such as that depicted in the YouTube video, can cause enormous damage to the country’s tourism industry”.
• The Vilu Reef hotel… said it was “unforgivable” that a staff member had read out the sexual and religious slurs in the Dhivehi language.“You are swine,” the couple were told. “The children that you bear from this marriage will all be bastard swine.”

Muslims are encouraged to denigrate and curse other religions, so Nasheed would have been shocked, not by the celebrant’s behaviour, but that this story leaked out.

That’s the problem with deceit: sooner or later the mask slips, and the perception that the Maldives is just like any other luxury resort, with alcohol aplenty and people in skimpy clothing relaxing by the pool, is shattered by the reality of Islam, as when the government tried to close down all spas:

• The Maldives government is looking to rethink a decision to close down all spas after the tourism industry threatened protests if the decision was not reversed.
• A protest was called by the opposition Justice Party and several other groups that accuse President Nasheed’s government of compromising principles of Islam and want strict Islamic law.
• The protesters also have called on authorities to stop the sale of alcohol, shut down brothels operating in the guise of what they said are “massage parlors” and demolish monuments gifted by other countries marking a South Asian summit because they are “idols.”
• An angry protest also followed a call by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay for the Maldives to end floggings of women being punished for adultery.

Some Maldivians are aware of the contradictions:

Lured by the exotic brochures they come to visit the Maldives. Sun. Sand. Sea. holiday. Paradise.

The visiting tourist knows he is going to a 100% Muslim Nation. But he is unaware that his Paradise package that mustached man sold him at the travel fair is going to land him in Hell.

Mamduh Waheed explains it all at Minivan News:

…the Maldivian constitution…clearly states that a Maldivian citizen can only be a Muslim. And from this follows other laws and regulations which prohibit Maldivians from consumption of alcohol and any other behavior that is deemed outside of the Muslim moral code. And tourism regulation in the country is perhaps a good example of this. We facilitate tourists to travel thousands of miles and spend as much dollars to travel to the beautiful islands of the Maldives (of which we are the inhabitants) and do things we believe will only take them closer to hell; drink alcohol, engage in sex outside marriage, wear revealing clothes in public, etc. So we have a situation where we ourselves refrain from the bad things but actually help others who do not belong to our community to do these very sinful things. The same laws of the land has different provisions to different persons, and while some laws describe us as having certain unalienable rights, others deny us those very same rights.

For many centuries, the Maldives were populated by Buddhists from Sri Lanka. They were converted to Sunni Islam in 1153, and, in true Islamic fashion, virtually all traces of the indigenous culture have been obliterated.

Under the Constitution, Islam is the basis of all laws in the Maldives and no laws contrary to any tenet of Islam can be enacted. Only Muslims can be citizens or own land. Non-Muslims may not vote or hold public positions.

Eventually, this must put an end to the wedding and other tourism: in the meantime, there are still many wealthy/naïve tourists who are drawn to the luxury resorts.

But no worries: when tourism dries up, they can always invade neighbouring countries and plunder their wealth. Luckily, President Nasheed is on the ball, using the climate change pretext to announce his plans to use tourism money to purchase land in Australia, for his people to relocate should rising sea levels due to climate change inundate the country.

We know Muslims would get a welcome from the Greens:

The Greens have pledged that they will:

“Establish a new climate refugee visa to help those displaced by climate change.”

Our elite media is also on their side.

An editorial published in The Age and elsewhere lectured us on our obligations:

THE idea of government ministers donning scuba gear to attend an underwater cabinet meeting seems to conjure up a scene from surrealist drama, but in the Maldives it really happened. In 2009 President Mohamed Nasheed and his cabinet did just that to draw attention to the fact that their country might literally disappear beneath the waves… If the sea level rises by 59 cms in the course of the century… most of the republic’s 200 inhabited islands will have to be abandoned.

Rising sea levels are one of the key indicators of human-induced global warming, which is perhaps why skeptics contest the evidence for it so vigorously… But the inhabitants of the Maldives… have no doubt that the IPCC’s predictions are a pointer to their future…

Australians tend to think about the Maldives, Tuvalu and Kiribati…as paradisal holiday destinations…The islands’ proximity, however, is a reminder that the threat to the low-lying states’ existence is not only a problem for the islanders themselves.

If the Maldives were to vanish, their 350,000 human inhabitants would have to go somewhere…Australia, Sri Lanka and India, would be their most likely destinations.

These islanders would not be asylum seekers in the strict sense, because they would not be fleeing persecution. But as victims of a catastrophe not of their making they would certainly have a claim on the rest of humanity. Two of the most divisive issues in Australian politics in the past two decades, climate change and immigration, would have coalesced.

At last year’s UN climate-change conference in Durban… delegates agreed to begin work on a new global treaty…on carbon emissions, to come into force by 2020.

To Nasheed, 2020 will be too late. He wants world leaders to bring the date forward, but he is also keenly aware that the Maldives… lacks diplomatic clout. That may well doom his plea, and ultimately his nation, too. But Australia should remember that our neighbours’ interests are also our interests.

How can our neighbours’ interests also be our interests when Australia is a democracy, with egalitarian values and freedom of religion, whereas, behind a façade of an idyllic holiday destination, The Maldives is a totalitarian Islamic state?

Fairfax’s Sydney Morning Herald are also on side:

THE Maldives will begin to divert a portion of the country’s billion-dollar annual tourist revenue into buying a new homeland – possibly in Australia – as an insurance policy against climate change that threatens to turn the 300,000 islanders into environmental refugees, the country’s first democratically elected president has said.

Mohamed Nasheed… said the chain of 1200 islands and coral atolls… is likely to disappear under the waves if the current pace of climate change continues to raise sea levels.

“We can do nothing to stop climate change on our own and so we have to buy land elsewhere. It’s an insurance policy for the worst possible outcome. After all, the Israelis [began by buying] land in Palestine.”

The President – a human rights activist who swept to power in elections by ousting Maumoon Abdul Gayoom…said he had broached the idea with a number of countries and found them to be receptive.

He said Sri Lanka and India were targets because they had similar cultures, cuisines and climates. Australia was being considered because of the amount of unoccupied land available.

Environmentalists say the issue raises the question of what rights citizens have if their homeland no longer exists.

“It’s an unprecedented wake-up call,” Tom Picken, head of international climate change at Friends of the Earth, said. “The Maldives is left to fend for itself. It is a victim of climate change caused by rich countries.”

Nasheed is a rising star in Asia, where he has been compared to Nelson Mandela. Before taking office the President asked Maldivians to move forward without rancour or retribution – an astonishing call, given that Nasheed had gone to jail 23 times, been tortured and spent 18 months in solitary confinement.

The Maldives is one of the few Muslim nations to make a relatively peaceful transition from autocracy to democracy. The Gayoom “sultanate” was an iron-fisted regime that ran the police, army and courts and which banned rival parties.

Public flogging, banishment to island gulags and torture were routinely used to suppress dissent and the fledging pro-democracy movement… However, public pressure grew and last year Gayoom conceded that democracy was inevitable.

Nasheed said that without an emergency bail-out from the international community, the future of the Maldives as a democracy would be in doubt.

“It’s desperate. We are a 100 per cent Islamic country and democracy came from within. Do you want to lose that because we were denied the money to deal with the poverty created by the dictatorship?”

Amazing that an Australian newspaper can publish an article which claims that The Maldives is a democracy, Nasheed a Human Rights Activist, climate change is the fault of rich countries and if we don’t let them in, we will be destroying their ‘democracy’.

Come to think of it, aren’t the Arab countries rich? Plus they have “they had similar cultures, cuisines and climates”. Moreover, the Emirates are the biggest environmental vandals, so surely it’s their fault too! Maldivians would feel right at home in Dubai or Saudi Arabia, both of which have sharia and despise human rights and democracy.

Mind you, The Age recently published a revealing article on The Maldives, so I guess that’s pretty even-handed!

WHEN the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay visited the Maldives, she urged that the practice of flogging women for having sex outside marriage – and very rarely punishing men in the same way – should be abolished.

“This practice constitutes one of the most inhumane and degrading forms of violence against women,” she told local reporters.

The response was as vicious as it was unexpected.

The next day protestors rallied outside the UN building, carrying placards that read “Ban UN”, “Islam is not a toy” and threatened to “Flog Pillay”. A website promised to “slaughter anyone against Islam”.

Anecdotal reports suggest female circumcision is undergoing a resurgence in the Maldives, particularly on the outer islands.

Maldives President Nasheed conceded an emergent religious fundamentalism had changed the way women were viewed, and were treated, in his country.

He said he was distressed by groups who campaigned for girls to be circumcised [FGM] or to be kept home from school.

“We were a matriarchal society, our inheritance, also, in the past was from women. But with a new kind of radical Islam, the perceptions some of them have on women are not familiar to many Maldivians.”

Sadly, our Government promotes the idea of a moderate Islam.

Journalist Peter Day writes:

In 2004, the Australian Government produced a glossy promotional booklet on Islam – Muslim Australians: Their Beliefs, Practices and Institutions… authored by Professor Abdullah Saeed, the Sultan of Oman Professor of Islamic Studies and Director of the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Islam at Melbourne University.

… the booklet’s treatment of the right of Muslims to leave Islam (apostasy) is … an example of the booklet’s overall approach to explaining Islam. This topic is dealt with in a section headed ‘Stereotypes and Misconceptions,’ where the proposition that ‘People who leave Islam (apostates) will be killed’ is listed as one of the ‘misconceptions’. The text that addresses this explains Muslim teaching on the matter as follows:

From a religious point of view, the Qur’an stipulates that ‘there is no compulsion in religion (2:256), and a person can neither be forced to become a Muslim nor to stay in the religion.

It is also stated that in the time of the Prophet, if a person left Islam because of their own religious choice, then in general there were no repercussions. This is because the Qur’an instructed the Prophet that his duty was to preach the message of Islam but that ‘If then they turn away, We have not sent thee as a guard over them. Thy duty is but to convey [the Message].

It seems fair for a reader to conclude from this that Islamic teaching is summed up in the words… ‘a person can neither be forced to become a Muslim nor to stay in the religion’. But Professor Saeed, is also co-author of a major book on this very topic, Freedom of Religion, Apostasy and Islam, which takes a very different view. His book … will be an eye-opener to anyone who has gleaned what they know of the religion from his Muslim Australians… he summarises the consensus position on apostasy among Muslim religious scholars as follows:

While there is general consensus that coercion should not be used to convert anyone to any religion … the right of religious freedom is not extended to a Muslim who wants to change his or her religion to another.

He goes on to tell us that, according to ‘the majority of Muslim jurists’, to flout the prohibition on leaving Islam ‘is to commit the crime of apostasy, and a person so doing should be put to death.’

Based purely on the information presented in Professor Saeed’s Freedom of Religion book, it is clear that the Muslim Australians booklet falls well short of an accurate presentation of contemporary Muslim teaching on this issue.

It is clear… that most current Muslim teaching and practice in this area is in direct contravention of both Article 18 and Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Maldives rather neatly exemplifies current trends on human rights in the Muslim world generally. A revised Maldivian constitution …makes it a formal requirement for all citizens of that country to be Muslims; and that explicitly subordinates all of its citizens’ human rights to Sharia. Notwithstanding this, the Maldivian foreign ministry announced in 2008 that it was joining other members of the UN… to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). There the country’s UN representative unblushingly stated: ‘In today’s Maldives, the ideals and principles contained in the Universal Declaration have found real-world form in our proud new Constitution.

As in the Maldives, so elsewhere in much of the Islamic world: there are greater restrictions on freedom of thought and expression, including the continuing threat of punishment for apostasy; and greater enforcement of Sharia, accompanied by an ever more strident insistence that ‘human rights’ are being fully respected.

So the question must be asked: should our government, media and leaders be promoting an illusory moderate Islam which is perfectly compatible with democratic values?

Or should they tell the truth, and risk offending those determined to suppress criticism of Islam?

Related reading: Seems the Maldives is flavour of the month – The Age has a piece on it and surprisingly, not a complimentary one!

By Cassandra

Also see:

• Vlad Tepes Blog: MPs approve bill to outlaw places of worship for non-Muslims: Maldives
• Maldives government highlights the impact of climate change… by meeting underwater
• Islamic coup of Maldives? President resigns

UKPA: Church set on fire after carnival

An Orthodox Christian church famed for its valuable icons was set alight in southern Macedonia overnight amid religious tension between Christians and minority Muslims over a carnival in which Orthodox Christian men dressed as women in burkas and mocked the Koran.

Firefighters extinguished the fire on Monday night in the two century-old Sveti Nikola church, near the town of Struga. The church’s roof was destroyed but its icons were not damaged, the fire service said.

Hours before the fire, Muslim leaders had appealed for calm among community members.

The January 13 Vevčani festival prompted angry, sometimes violent demonstrations by Muslims, who are nearly all ethnic Albanian and make up 33% of the country’s 2.1 million population and accuse the majority of stoking hatred against them.

Ethnic tension has been simmering in this small Balkan country since the end of an armed rebellion in 2001, when ethnic Albanian rebels fought government forces for about eight months, seeking greater rights for their community. The conflict left 80 people dead, and ended with the intervention of Nato peacekeepers.

The Vevčani carnival, said to have been held for some 1,400 years, attracts thousands of visitors. Local residents traditionally wear elaborate, frequently sarcastic masks, with some of the most common costumes including devils and demons.

But this year’s perceived mockery of the Koran and the burka costumes caused outrage.

On Saturday, protesters attacked an inter-city bus heading from Struga to Vevčani, throwing rocks at the vehicle but injuring nobody. They also defaced a Macedonian flag outside Struga’s municipal building, replacing it with a green flag representing Islam. On the same day, perpetrators attacked a church in the nearby village of Labunista, destroying a cross standing outside.

Macedonian Muslim leaders called for restraint but also accused the government of promoting Islamophobia.

Deputy Prime Minister Musa Xhaferi said such incidents “create discord” and “violate mutual respect and trust.”

Read it here.

As always, Muslims blame someone else (in this case, the Macedonians) for their own lack of self-control.

Oh, and by the way, the term “Islamophobia” is an invention of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Seattle PI: Macedonia Muslims urge restraint over carnival

SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) — Muslim leaders in Macedonia appealed for calm on Monday among community members outraged over a carnival in which Orthodox Christian men mocked Muslims by dressing as Burqa-clad women.

The incident at the Jan. 13 Vevčani festival has prompted angry, sometimes violent demonstrations by Muslims, who make up 33 percent of the country’s 2.1 million population and accuse the majority of stoking hatred against them.

On Saturday, some protesters attacked buses and defaced a Macedonian flag and replaced it with a green flag to represent Islam. On the same day, a church was attacked by unknown perpetrators in the nearby village of Labunista.

In a statement Monday, Macedonian Muslim leaders called for restraint but also accused the government of promoting Islamophobia.

“The behavior of Muslims should be restrained, but, unfortunately, we are concerned that Islamophobia in Macedonia is often combined with government propaganda,” they said. “Such is the case with this carnival that the government annually subsidizes with…the money of all citizens, including Muslims.”

The carnival, said to have been held for some 1,400 years, attracts thousands of visitors. Local resident traditionally wear elaborate, frequently sarcastic masks, with some of the most common costumes including devils and demons.

Muslims in Macedonia are almost all ethnic Albanians. Albanians, in Macedonia and elsewhere, have traditionally been secular, but conservative Islamic schools, especially Wahhabism, have taken a foothold in the years following a brief ethnic Albanian uprising in Macedonia in 2001. This spread has been mainly financed from Saudi Arabia.

Read it here.

Also see:

• MSNBC: Vevčani Carnival Photos
• Macedonian Cultural and Information Centre: Vevčani Carnival
• IDIVIDI: Vevčani carnival is a pearl of Macedonia’s tradition, says Kanceska-Milevska

From YouTube:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by SDAMatt2a on Jan 30, 2012

Father John Ramzy joins Michael Coren to discuss the never-ending violence against Coptic Christians in Egypt by the muslim majority.

Where is Canada’s Boat to Egypt?

Good question.

By CzechRebel

Back in 1961, Hollywood put together a film to whitewash the eleventh-century legend about Spanish warrior Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar (1043 – July 10, 1099), better known as El Cid. Charlton Heston played the role of Díaz, who fights against Muslims and later for Muslims and, still later, is fighting in an army composed of both Christian and Muslim forces. Wrapped up in this strange story is a romance with Sophia Loren playing the leading lady, who is also a Christian.

The theme of the story might be “just give war a chance.” The viewer is bombarded with this message that it scarcely matters who or what you are fighting for, as long as you keep on fighting. Of course, it was not until the late fifteenth century when Spain was finally able to rid itself entirely of Moorish Islamic terrorism. So for another four centuries after El Cid, Spaniards continued to suffer and struggle under the yoke of Muslim tyranny.

From the initial invasion in 711 until the final expulsion of the Muslims in 1492 – 781 years! – Spaniards toiled and bled and died under Islamic rule. The Reconquista was a war to reclaim western civilization from the Dark Ages imposed by Islamic conquest. But the film portrayed the false image that Islam and Christianity were roughly equivalent – merely two sides in a long-ago political and military conflict. That tended to numb whatever sensitivity to the danger of Islamic expansionism that the viewer may have had. Perhaps it even contributed to the foolish mindset of the architects of American foreign policy who think that we can fight on behalf of Muslims sometimes and against Muslims at other times, without letting the Muslims do us any real harm. The West has been doing this since the 1970s and has only gotten burnt in the process.

Not all wars have followed that pattern. World War II could all too easily have gone the other way. It took the Allies only four years to emerge victorious, as opposed to the 400 years it took the Spanish from the time of Rodrigo Díaz to the time of a free Spain. One of the big differences between the so called “War on Terror” and World War II is that the America of the 1940′s took the threat of a fifth column very seriously. The FBI kept a close eye on Germans who might be a bit pro-Nazi long before the war even started. However, there was an even greater threat from Japanese immigrants and even some Japanese-Americans. So more stringent measures had to be taken following the attack on Pearl Harbor.

However, many of those Japanese-Americans were much more American then they were Japanese. A number of them went quietly–if not cheerfully–to internment camps, knowing full well that certain of their seemingly mild-mannered neighbors felt duty-bound to support the Emperor of Japan over any loyalty they might have had to America. But peacefully going into internment was not enough for some Japanese-American patriots!

Many young Japanese-American men volunteered for the American military, most notably the 442nd Infantry Regiment, whose motto was “Go For Broke.” (Other Japanese-American units earned distinction also.) The 442nd became the most highly decorated unit during World War II, taking on some of the most dangerous assignments in Europe and suffering the highest causality rate. 442nd combatants earned over three Purple Hearts on the average per capita. This was in an era when minorities supposedly, in the words of Rodney Dangerfield, “don’t get no respect.” Yes, to this day we hear from the crybabies with their historical revisionist films on how they suffered more and got less credit for winning the war then the “white men.” Well, these guys who physically looked like our Japanese enemies went out and earned their respect in that very era without waiting a few decades for some Hollywood leftist to use their story in one of those manipulative y’all-don’t-love-me-back films.

Oh dear, we may hear from those crybabies who don’t think we appreciate his grandpa’s war effort, so we better address that now. If Hitler had won and his troops had marched down the Main Streets of those little towns where your grandfolks’ family used to live, do y’all really think those Nazis would have given them any more respect? Unless y’all are part of his “Aryan race” it might not have gone so well. For any women who didn’t think they got enough respect, we ask, would the enemy soldier who raped you after winning the war have “respected you in the morning”? Now, if these Japanese-American fellows–the guys who were out winning medals–hadn’t had much luck, had lost the war, and the troops of Hideki Tōjō had come to “liberate” the camps that held their families, those troops’ relatives would have had an excellent chance of surviving the war. For the grandparents of our modern-day crybabies, winning the war was an absolute must. For Japanese-Americans, the US losing the war could have been bad, but probably not fatal.

Time to Choose Sides

Now, to get into the American military at that time, Japanese-Americans faced some probing questions. Most telling was “Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, or any other foreign government, power or organization?” Of course, for some, this meant reneging on such a pledge to the Japanese emperor – a pledge that many Japanese-Americans had made before the war.

In view of that, we are proposing that all Muslim members of the American military, and the armies of any nation or faction that seeks US support in the field, be asked the following question: “Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and renounce any form of allegiance or obedience to any teaching of Mohammad, any teaching based on the Koran, and the dictates of any Islamic civil or religious leaders that teach violence against the US, Western civilization, or any other Judaeo-Christian civilization?”

To any Muslim who can take the above pledge and mean it, 1389 Blog will give the title “moderate.” To those who consider us too extreme, we say, “Drop the El Cid mentality; we don’t have 400 more years to wait!”

Does this look like a halal joint to you?
Hillbilly Heaven is a barbeque-only restaurant that serves pulled pork. But at least one ignoramus actually asked whether they serve halal food, while others kept asking about all manner of other foods that aren’t on the menu. So two years ago, Cameron Bailey began posting funny signs listing foods that the restaurant does not serve, and only now have those signs caused a brouhaha.

Brian Lilley with Hillbilly Heaven’s Cameron Bailey

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by SDAMatt2a on Jan 28, 2012

Inclusivity mavens have a habit of saying very odd, overreaching things in denouncing words and actions of which they disapprove. Evelyn Myrie, who is executive director of the Centre for Civic Inclusion in Hamilton, Ont., provides us with a classic of the genre in today’s Spectator: “He has the right to sell his goods but doesn’t have the right to trash other foods that are culturally driven.”

The “he” in that sentence is one Cameron Bailey, proprietor of Hillbilly Heaven, a local barbecue joint. The issue here is some attempts at institutional humour Mr. Bailey has displayed around his store. On a list of “things we DON’T HAVE and never will,” we find ethnic items such as “halal,” “shawarma,” “kabob” and “Mexican,” along with ethnic-to-other-people items such as “fries,” “wings,” “1/4 chicken” and “burgers.”

Another sign reads, “To better serve you, our staff speaks: ENGLISH.” Another asks: “What would make you think this was a Korean BBQ? Do you see any f’n ducks in the window?”

All of this is perfectly in keeping with the hillbilly persona you’ll find answering supposedly frequently asked questions on the Hillbilly Heaven website. And Mr. Bailey says most are in response to specific questions about his menu, which he believes were ridiculous. But Ms. Myrie demands he remove the signs and apologize.

Let’s have a look at her objections.

1. Does Mr. Bailey “trash” foods that he does not sell? Objectively, he does not. Here’s what trashing food might look like: Shawarma sucks, smells like feet. Ditto Mexican food, which makes you fart and is disgusting and for all I know might be full of donkey meat. Hanging dead ducks in a restaurant window is sick. The Australians’ love of Vegemite is evidence of widespread mental defect.

As it happens, I only believe the last of those things. But it hardly matters. I do indeed have the “right” to trash “culturally driven” foods. I will face no sanction for the preceding paragraph, and neither would Mr. Bailey — if he was, in fact, trashing anyone’s food. Which he isn’t.

2. What the hell is a “culturally driven food,” anyway? Or put it another way: What’s a non-culturally driven food? Catching a fish and putting it straight in your mouth?

3. “Why would he go and attack the people who eat those kinds of foods? He’s ignoring a great deal of the population.” That’s Ms. Myrie again, prefacing her novel interpretation of Mr. Bailey’s rights with a novel interpretation of what’s her damn business. But we can answer her question quite definitively: He’s doing what he’s doing because he wants to, and nobody, not even the Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion, has any bloody right to stop him from doing it.

That, and free advertising.

- National Post

Chris Selley: • cselley@nationalpost.com

Are We Foodists?

January 26, 2012 : Cameron Bailey

I am sure that most of you might have heard about the accusations and controversy brought by Evelyn Myrie of Hamilton’s Centre For Civic Inclusion. If you are not aware, I have posted a copy of the Spectator article to our site.

Over the past two days, we have had camera crews from CHCH, Global TV and CITYTV in the store. In addition I have been on seven radio interviews answering for what Ms. Myrie has deemed offensive signage and menu.

While I respect Ms. Myrie’s position with her group, the mandate of her group is as follows:

* Community-based civic resource centre, committed to working as a catalyst for anti-racist change across Hamilton.

* HCCI initiates and supports transformative processes that promote equality and create racism-free and inclusive environments in all areas of civic life

* HCCI develops and shares training and education resources

* HCCI is a source of support and information to newcomer immigrant and refugee communities, diverse ethno-racial and ethno-cultural groups and First Nations communities

* HCCI helps build community leadership and enable productive dialogues and partnerships between marginalized and ‘centralized’ communities, organizations and institutions

* Hate Crimes Prevention Program aims to fill the deficit of support for victims of hate crimes in Hamilton who are vulnerable and unable to access counselling services

---

Given her mandate, I believe that Ms. Myrie has overstepped her bounds and, through that, made our business appear to be racist in nature. No such racism exists and there has never be a claim made prior to Tuesday’s edition of the paper.

After phone calls and two emails, finally a suggestion potential of legal action caused Ms. Myrie to return my call. I asked her to apologize and she suggested that I deal with her through my lawyer.

Prior to taking that step, I thought it best to bring this to the attention of our customers – perhaps a call or two from concerned citizens may give Ms. Myrie a clearer picture of our community and what weight her accusations carry.

She can be reached at:

Hamilton’s Centre For Civic Inclusion
Evelyn Myrie, Executive Director;
Phone: 905-297-4694   ext 106
Email: emyrie@hcci.ca

As always I appreciate your support – especially those who wrote and visited during this period.

Cameron Bailey
905 538 4525
bbq@hillbillyheaven.com

Where to find Hillbilly Heaven?

Hamilton, Ontario is not far from Niagara Falls.
http://hillbillyheaven.com/

SUN-WED: 10am-8pm
THU-SAT: 10am-10pm
………
647 Upper James Street
Hamilton Ontario L9C2Y9
905 538 4525
Facebook Page

Mr. Bailey’s signage inspired us to create this “No Halal” sign.
Feel free to use it!

The New York Times has gone all in for Islamic infiltration and the stealth jihad. By now, we have all come to expect an outpouring of hard-left/pro-jihadi/anti-Semitic/anti-Christian propaganda flooding the Anglosphere from not only the New York Times, but also the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, Time Magazine, Newsweek, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, PBS, NPR, the CBC in Canada, the BBC and the Guardian in the UK, the ABC in Australia, the AP and Reuters wire services…the list seems endless.

We are so used to it that too few people bother to complain any more as the naked anti-Semitic and pro-Islamic enemy propaganda in the NYT grows ever louder.

Is The NYT’s Agenda to Normalize Islam in the West?

by Phyllis Chesler
Israel National News
January 25, 2012

On a single day, the New York Times has been known to publish anywhere from two to six anti-Israel articles, editorials, op-ed pieces, and letters. Today, I see a new danger arising in their pages.

After spending a year proclaiming the triumph of democracy and the miracle of the Arab Spring and, as PM Netanyahu has just noted, refusing to document the existential danger in which Israel finds herself, the Newspaper of Record has now begun the process of normalizing Islam in North America and Europe. Its pro-Muslim “multicultural” agenda is, paradoxically, another form of racism, but I quibble.

Yesterday, there were at least three articles (3,200 words, four photos, one illustration), devoted to Islam in America and Europe. A 934-word op-ed article titled “How to Integrate Europe’s Muslims” by a Boston College professor is a veritable manifesto of appeasement and racism disguised as a rational call for integration and fairness. Jonathan Laurence suggests that Muslims will be “integrated” into Europe if they are allowed to study Islam at state-sponsored schools, continue their Muslim religious practices, veil women, speak Arabic, Persian, Dari, etc. In his view, this will fend off “fundamentalism” and magically lead to reciprocity in terms of tolerance towards infidels and apostates and to the abolition of Islamic gender and religious apartheid.

According to Canadian professor and author, Dr. Salim Mansur, multiculturalism and the appeasement of tribalism defeats the possibility of citizenship and amounts to a form of “soft bigotry.” As Pascal Bruckner has phrased it: “Multiculturalism is the racism of the anti-racists; it chains people to their roots.” Immigrants are kept confined to their “group” and not encouraged or expected to become “individuals” and “citizens” of a modern democracy.

As we may all recall, the 2011 Goldstone recantation did not make the front page of the NYT; it was buried on page 8. But today, a 1,200 word article, entitled “In Police Training, a Dark Film on U.S. Muslims” is on page one. It continues on page 23 with two photos and it takes up 3/4^th of the second page. The article condemns the use of the film, The Third Jihad, as a “training” device for 1,489 police officers. What is so offensive about this film, which is narrated by a (truly) moderate Muslim, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a physician and former American military officer? First the film has been funded by Orthodox Jews and Zionists (horrors!). Second, it dares suggest that Muslims have launched a war against the West, a “third jihad.” And, there is “ominous” music. Then “Muslim terrorists shoot Christians in the head, car bombs explode, children lie covered by sheets…”

Is this reporter unfamiliar with the persecution of Christians in Muslim-majority countries and with the Islamic terrorist attacks against Muslim and infidel civilians and against Western military and civilian targets?

…There is an Islamic/Islamist war that has been declared against the West as well as against both Muslim and infidel civilians, but it is one that the Paper of Record refuses to acknowledge, or to fight or win.
[...]
Why have papers likes the Times become so obsessed with protecting the religious rights of one single minority group at the expense of every other religious group, including members of moderate and anti-Islamist Islam, and at the expense of women, who represent approximately 53% of the world’s population? Are they, too, possibly being funded by leftists and by Arab oil magnates? Or, do they simply hope to be?

Just wondering.

Read it all here.

What about the one network in the US, namely Fox News, that so many rely on to present conservative voices when no other network will? Those days may be gone soon. Last September (see Fox News “Fair and Balanced”? Bzzzzzt, WROOOOONG!), I challenged its undeserved reputation as a “conservative” and/or even-handed news outlet. More recently, Speranza of 2.0: The Blogmocracy also asked, Is Fox News heading left? Indeed, on Fox News, we are hearing fewer and fewer of those voices, and more and more apologists from the left.

I have had no further use for Glenn Beck after he openly began to shill for that amoral and self-serving RINO candidate, Mitt Romney. That said, if George Soros has the power to censor a major television network and cause him to be fired, that is truly dismaying. The audience of Fox News should determine, through their ratings and their patronage of advertisers, whether Glenn Beck continues to be offered a spot in its lineup.

How George Soros Sacked Glenn Beck

by Cliff Kincaid on 19 Oct 2011
A recent interview of Fox News chief Roger Ailes by Howard Kurtz suggested that the channel is becoming less conservative by design. The real question, not addressed in the piece, is whether the relentless attacks on the channel by George Soros-funded groups have anything to do with this change in the direction of the popular channel and the demise of the Glenn Beck program in particular.

On Glenn Beck’s new TV program, carried on the Internet, Beck himself seemed to indicate this was the case. Talking about Orson Wells, his career, vision and his “Citizen Kane” movie, Beck said, “One of the biggest things [he taught me was] he picked a lot of ill-advised fights, sometimes risking his entire career against titans of industry. It did occur to me recently maybe I should have considered that little part of his life a little more before I locked horns with George Soros.”1 The implication is that Beck’s battle with Soros left him without a job on Fox News.

If this is the case, then we have reached a point in the United States when a private individual has obtained the power to prevent the most popular cable news channel in the country from subjecting his financial and political influence to scrutiny. It is important to see how this was done.

In fairness, Fox has covered Soros after the end of the Beck program. But Beck was doing so in a systematic manner by devoting whole shows to the topic. The sheer magnitude of organizations financially supported by the billionaire makes such an analysis necessary. That is what America’s Survival, Inc. we are doing through our Sorosfiles.com project.
[...]
Beck, who had one of the most successful programs on the channel, left Fox News on July 1, 2011, and launched his own Internet TV show, which appears to be a success in terms of paid subscribers. But some are saying that its influence pales in comparison to the perch that Beck had on Fox News. Clearly, the “progressives” who feared Beck were far more concerned about his Fox News Channel program than his Internet venture.

At the recent “Take Back the American Dream Conference,” held October 3-5. 2011, in Washington, D.C., former Obama “Green Jobs Czar” Van Jones claimed that Beck wasn’t on television any more. He said this in the context of admitting that his exit from the Obama Administration, in response to charges made by blogger Trevor Loudon and Beck and others, had been a traumatic time for him.

In fact, of course, Beck is on television, albeit Internet TV. But the point was that Beck was gone from cable television, which was much more of a powerful position in terms of the resources he was able to bring to bear to expose figures like Jones. It is a sign of Beck’s declining influence that Jones was rehabilitated and emerged at the conference as director of the “Take Back the American Dream” movement.

As Howard Kurtz told the story, there has been a “course correction” at Fox News and that the change was “quietly adopted at Fox over the last year” because of the problem posed by the “inflammatory rhetoric” of Glenn Beck, such as “his ranting about Obama being a racist.” Ailes was quoted as saying that this had become a “a bit of a branding issue for us.”

There was no ranting from Beck on this topic. His comments were based in part on Obama’s own statements on racial issues, such as his attack on the police for arresting a black professor, Henry Louis Gates. Obama called the police “stupid,” without knowing the facts about Gates’ obnoxious behavior.

The implication is that Beck was fired – technically a deal was reached in which Fox News said Beck would “transition off” the channel – because of charges that Beck was a racist. But Beck had accused Obama of racism in the summer of 2009 and lost his show over a year later. Something must have happened in the meantime. That “something” was that Beck picked a different target – billionaire George Soros.

It’s true that Beck had been the subject of an advertiser boycott, organized by a group called “Color of Change,” founded by Van Jones, but he still had the number three show in cable news. Howard Kurtz reported Beck still had “monster ratings.”
[...]
Much, much more here.

Glenn Beck Staff Threatened by Soros Operatives

Private Investigator says Beck Staff Threatened by Soros Operatives; News Corporation Failed to Protect Employees, Forcing Beck’s Ouster
…[Cliff] Kincaid recently learned of a private investigator, Douglas J. Hagmann, with information that the Soros role in Beck’s ouster was deeper and more insidious than previously realized. In order to further the public’s right to know as to how the First Amendment right of freedom of the press is being manipulated and subverted by covert forces in U.S. politics, Kincaid asked Hagmann, who is the CEO of Hagmann Investigative Services, Inc., and director of the Northeast Intelligence Network for permission to pass on this information. He has agreed, as long as the identities of the sources of information are deleted. There are several sources with information about strange goings-on at News Corporation in regard to the Glenn Beck matter, in which the most vulnerable of the news channel staff members have come under pressure not to report certain facts and information about President Obama personally. But Hagmann says the tipping point in the matter of Glenn Beck leaving the channel came when Beck began a series of programs on Soros, labeled by Beck the “Puppet Master” behind Obama and the progressive movement.

Hagmann informed Kincaid of the following:

“One of my sources, beginning in the first part of 2011, told me that the corporate leadership of News Corporation (the parent company of Fox News) began to put pressure on Glenn Beck — and especially his support staff — about certain topics that were considered ‘off limits.’ This source stated that Beck was advised not to focus on George Soros, as there were certain fiduciary relationships he was not privy to between Soros and either News Corporation or one or more of their board members/corporate staff.”

Hagmann went on, “I was informed that News Corporation and/or Fox News Channel officers actually had a meeting with Soros representatives, during which company officials were advised to stop subjecting Soros to on-air scrutiny. This pressure eventually forced Beck off the air, as the Fox News Channel personality became concerned about the physical safety and security of his own personnel.”

Hagmann added that his sources stated that it was Beck’s concern over the safety of certain staff members, the most vulnerable and exposed among them, who were being overtly intimidated. He stated that one young woman, who became a primary source after being vetted and determined to be credible, was genuinely afraid, not only for her career but for her life and the life of her child. It was surreal, she told Hagmann, that she could be subjected to intimidation through surveillance and veiled threats because of her position to Glenn Beck. At some point, Hagmann added, it appeared Mr. Beck knew he could protect himself and his family, but not everyone involved in the program. “I strongly suspect, based on my professional experience as an investigator for the last 26 years, that Mr. Beck made a tremendous career sacrifice for the safety of others. That speaks volumes about Mr. Beck’s integrity, character and concern for others,” added Hagmann.

ASI President Cliff Kincaid said that investigator Hagmann’s information, while non-specific at this point because of concerns over revealing the identities of sources, is extremely troubling, as it concerns the ability of the American people to get access to information of a critical nature…

Read it all here.

Also see:

• Manufactured Anger Over Islamo-realistic Film Designed to Whack NYPD Into Dhimmitude
• ‘The Third Jihad’ Producers Reply to New York Times Articles

Residents Put Up Jesus Signs to Protest Building of a Mosque on Their Street

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by HALALBOOZESHACK on Jan 24, 2012
ITS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE THE WHOLE NEIGHBORHOOD IS LABELED RACIST.

As Longview mosque goes up, opposition from neighborhood grows

By Glenn Evans gevans@news-journal.com

Longview-area Muslims hope to complete a mosque on the northern edge of the city in coming months — amid opposition from residents in the neighborhood — a mosque spokesman said Tuesday.

Islamic Community of Longview member Saleem Shabazz said the 35 or 40 Muslims planning the worship center are encountering opposition from some future neighbors.

“We expected that,” he said. “I don’t think we’re asking for anything from anyone that anyone else doesn’t have.”

Envisioned as a 2,500- to 3,000-square foot mosque and cultural/education center, the facility on Amy Street would take the place of an apartment where local Muslims have held Friday prayers for about two decades, Shabazz said.

Members have rented larger spaces when needed, such as for the annual dinner at the end of Ramadan.

Meanwhile, some Amy Street residents are saying everyone has a right to a place of worship, just not on their street.

Resident Dewayne Willie, however, draws a distinction between a home and place of worship.

“If it was a house being built there by a Muslim family moving in, I would do the same thing that was done for us — I would welcome them,” said Willie, whose house abuts the future mosque property.

Elizabeth Owens, whose home of nearly 40 years is two houses down from the roughly six-acre lot where the building is being constructed, said the mosque appears inevitable.

“We can’t stop it, maybe, but we oppose it,” she said

Owens distributed about 20 signs being used in a First Baptist Church promotion — each says “Jesus” with the church’s name in small print at the bottom — that neighbors have placed in yards up and down the street.

“It’s going to be, to us, foreigners,” she said. “We’re not acquainted with that culture, and we have children and we have concerns, yes we do. I understand everybody has to worship, but why do they have to bring it to a Christian community? I think that’s terrible.”

I think so too, especially in view of the fact that Christians are forbidden to proselytize, or to build or even repair churches in many Muslim countries.

This isn’t worship – it’s in-your-face provocation.

Owens said she was referring to all of Longview when she said “Christian community.” She said neighbors object specifically to the mosque coming to their street for safety reasons.

Amy Street is a dead end and quite narrow. The east-west road begins in the Longview city limits but soon enters Gregg County.

“I think we have a driving surface of 23 feet,” Owens said. “And you’re going to add another 40 or 50 cars here?”

Shabazz said Friday prayers are at 1:40 p.m., so any increase in traffic will be during the afternoon.

“We don’t have the amount of traffic that a big church or something like that would have,” he said. “On most Fridays, I think we’re talking in the neighborhood of 15 to 20 cars.”

A member of the Longview Race Relations Committee, Shabazz said he has discussed aspects of the new mosque with the county commissioner for that precinct, Charles Davis.

For instance, he said, some neighbors have expressed concern over the call to prayer, which typically is broadcast across an area.

“That’s not going to happen,” he said. “I told Commissioner Davis back in October that, out of concern for the neighbors and not disturbing them or anything, we will not use the outdoor public address system.”

More here.

So the mosque will not use the outdoor public address system? Not immediately, maybe. But they made no promise to refrain from installing a PA system, and as soon as they think the neighborhood residents have been sufficiently intimidated into silence, they’ll start using it. You can take that to the bank.

Originally posted on ACT for Australia.

Reprinted with permission.

What better way to welcome 2012 than with a new museum:

…a hidden trove of performing arts treasures – a $26 million collection featuring items as diverse as Nick Cave’s notebooks, Peter Allen’s maracas, Dame Edna Everage’s extravagant outfits, and, of course, Kylie Minogue’s impossibly tiny and impeccably lavish costumes.

Begun in 1975, the Performing Arts Collection has expanded to 450,000 items. The problem is, only a tiny fraction of the collection can ever be shown…But Arts Centre chief executive Judith Isherwood wants to end the collection’s days in the bunker and give it the prominence it deserves – housing it in a big, new museum, that would become another significant cultural building for Melbourne and could cost up to $100 million. She has been lobbying governments, state and federal, to persuade them of the collection’s national significance, and of its need for a permanent home, a stand-alone building that would be the world’s first dedicated performing arts museum.

A spokesman for Premier Baillieu said that the Victorian government was aware of the proposal for a performing arts museum, but had “no plans to proceed”.

“Any future consideration of this proposal would be made in the context of a number of many competing budget demands,” the spokesman said.

Link here.

So don’t go popping the champagne corks, as this Museum is unlikely to get off the ground, given the State Government’s lacklustre response to the project.

But if one Museum might never see the light of day, another – the Islamic Museum of Australia – is surging ahead, with an agenda to persuade the public that Islam had a prior presence in Australia and made a vital contribution to this country:

Muslim fishermen and traders first came to our shores in the seventeenth century, or even earlier, from the eastern islands of modern Indonesia. They sailed their prahus along our north and north-western coast fishing for trepang and trading with the Aborigines; a cross-cultural interaction that carried on for more than three centuries.

Between 1870 and 1920 approximately 20,000 camels and 2,000-3,000 cameleers landed at ports around Australia…and proved invaluable on numerous expeditions hastening to map the continent, carted wool to ports, and water to drought ridden areas, and transported mail, equipment and stores at a time when railway construction was in its infancy. They played a significant role in facilitating the construction of the Overland Telegraph Line by carting equipment, material and supplies. Without their services Australia’s inland development would have lagged behind…

In the wake of the Afghan and Indian cameleers came the hawkers and later the Malay pearl divers; they in turn were followed by the early Albanians and Turks, and other Muslims from many different countries who were all part of early Australian history…at last this hidden history…can be told.

AUSTRALIAN MUSLIM STORIES

Living as Muslims in Australia today provides fresh and unique insights to be shared with all. A host of Australian Muslim authors, comics, media personalities and charity workers have written books, made TV shows and led interesting lives which highlight the Australian Muslim experience.

This gallery will also profile a number of prominent Muslim Australian sports stars and business identities such as, Ahmed Fahour, John Ilhan, footballer Hazem Masri and cricketer Uthman Khawaja.

Australian Muslims

Indoctrinating our young people is firmly on the agenda:

The Islamic Museum will conduct educational tours for School groups. These interactive and informative tours will provide a fascinating insight into Australian Muslim life, art, history & civilisation.

The tours will be led by Sherene Hassan, who has addressed over 500 primary and secondary school groups over the last 10 years…Education Kits will be prepared by our team of registered teachers with years of experience in Australian schools.

Sherene Hassan is part of the Hamas and Hezbollah-supporting ICV, and a master of taqiya, like when she said she “deplores that Islam is often linked with misogyny and is doing her utmost to confront this belief”. Scary to think that our government is funding the spread of false reassurance about Islam.

The museum’s Mission is to:

• …provide educational and cross-cultural experiences and showcase the artistic and cultural heritage of Muslims in Australia and in Muslim societies abroad.
• …foster community harmony and facilitate an understanding of the values and contributions of Muslims to Australian society.

Al Age enthuses:

Maysaa and Moustafa Fahour, founders of the Islamic Museum of Australia…hope it can break down misunderstandings…and dispel stereotypes of the often misunderstood religious minority.

…the idea for a precinct emphasising heritage and art drawn from the more than 60 ethnicities who identify as Muslim here was developed by Macquarie banker Moustafa Fahour and his wife Maysaa.

The venture has been granted charity status by the ATO and has the personal endorsement of Victoria’s Multicultural Affairs Minister Nick Kotsiras.

Land has been acquired at a Thornbury industrial site…Darebin Council had signalled that an Islamic museum would be welcome in the neighbourhood.

The museum will include a permanent exhibition featuring basic information about Muslims’ religious beliefs provided in a digestible form to the public.

School groups are also expected to tour on a daily basis.

“As a mother, I love the NGV and Scienceworks and have my kids participate in knowledgeable activities. Nowhere was there something about Islam …It struck me as something to really strive for,” said Mrs Fahour.

Apart from a six-member board…an advisory committee includes SBS board member Hass Dellal, Immigration Museum manager Padmini Sebastian and ABC personality and politics lecturer Waleed Aly.

Alarmingly, the Victorian Government follows the Islamic narrative:

Nicholas Kotsiras welcomed the establishment of the Islamic Museum of Australia…saying that world cultures, traditions, religions, arts and crafts were the bridge linking civilisation and humanity.

“This brings people together and helps build Victoria’s reputation as a thriving, cohesive and cosmopolitan State. It will educate all Victorians on the complexity and diversity of Muslim identities. It will dispel myths and misconceptions, and work towards creating an understanding, compassionate and cohesive society. It is a noble vision; it is a worthy vision.”

Victorian Premier welcomes it!

Disturbing that our Government welcomes an Islamic museum, which will undermine our free society, yet refuses to consider a Performing Arts museum, which would celebrate the fruits of our freedom and creativity.

The Islamic Museum plans to host visiting exhibitions, such as “The 1001 Islamic Inventions exhibition currently touring the U.S.A.”

Sadly, apart from suicide belts, I can’t think of too many other Islamic inventions!

“The recent Australia’s Muslim Cameleers exhibition at the Immigration Museum is another example of the type of exhibition the Islamic Museum aims to attract.”

I went to this exhibition, which perpetuated the myth of Muslims’ huge contribution to Australia.

It came with an education kit, ensuring our kids were indoctrinated, as well as the teacher Personal Development programme, explaining how to brainwash young minds:

“The exhibition offers an opportunity for students to engage with the diversity of individual experiences in our nation’s history and the contribution to the Australian identity and values in relation to issues of respect, tolerance and social harmony.”

Philip Jones eulogised these “pioneers”, suggesting that our failure to appreciate them was due to our ‘Islamophobia’:

The cameleers pioneered a network of camel-pads and tracks that later became roads across outback Australia. The homesteads, mines, missions and townships linked by this network depended upon the cameleers for their viability.

One thinks of the energy and resources directed towards preserving the records and memory of Australia’s Chinese pioneers who provided commercial infrastructure for the Victorian goldfields, or the heritage associated with the contribution made by the post-war migrants to the Snowy River Scheme. How is it that the legacy of the cameleers has been so neglected?

It would be easy to suggest the oversight had to do with the cameleers’ adherence to Islam… But the cameleers did not come to Australia to proselytize…their religious observances rarely impinged on their remarkable capacity to deliver goods intact across vast distances of the Australian interior. For these achievements they earned the general respect of their European neighbours.

Little remains of the heritage of Australia’s Muslim cameleers. Many of these fine men ‘died in the jungle’ with little recognition or understanding from the wider community.

Bill Seager, curator of South Australia’s Museum, continues this theme:

…This exhibition leaves no doubt that camels, cameleers and Australia’s first Muslim community helped shape Australia’s outback.

Their stories…integrate a history of Indigenous Australians that is interpreted outside of the typically marginalised and violent confines of the colonial frontier.

If we don’t get the message that Muslims share with Aborigines the claim to be the indigenous people – unlike the White colonial invaders – a bit of visual art should do the trick:

“The exhibition ends with a 2003 work by Aboriginal/Afghan artist Ian Abdulla titled Afghanistan Blood in Him like Me.

It is a work that seeks to reconnect Abdulla with his Afghan past.

The image reminds us of the exhibition’s relevance for Australian visitors today.”

Our dhimmi Government reinforces this message:

Muslims in Australia have a long and varied history that is thought to pre-date European settlement. Some of Australia’s earliest visitors were Muslim, from the east Indonesian archipelago. They made contact with mainland Australia as early as the 16th and 17th centuries.

…Afghan camel drivers…were vital in the early exploration of inland Australia and in the establishment of service links.

Since the 1970s, Muslim communities have developed many mosques and Islamic schools and made vibrant contributions to the multicultural fabric of Australian society.

Vibrant contributions indeed – vicious gang rapes of teenage girls, criminalizing free speech, and the push for sharia law, including polygamous marriages!

Perhaps the most astonishing feature of the exhibition was the whitewash of the first terror attack in Australia, with a display of the 2 firearms used by Gool Mahamed and Mullah Abdullah in their attack on the picnic train passengers near Broken Hill.

But lest we think they were terrorists (they were!), we are told:

After Federation in 1901, negative sentiment towards ‘coloured races’ was expressed in the White Australia Policy….

These factors, and the alignment of Ottoman Turkey against Britain during the First World War, help to explain the extraordinary events at Broken Hill on New Year’s Day, 1915. On that morning, two cameleers flying the Turkish flag fired on a picnic train as it left the town. At the close of the resultant gun battle, six people, including the two assailants, lay dead.

So our racism caused them to feel alienated and kill people!

The exhibition described some colourful Muslim characters:

Mohammad Bux built up a successful business career in Western Australia…he was able to call his father and cousin to join him in Perth. The process of facilitating the arrival of his extended family members did not cease…Mohammad remained the most successful of the Bux family due to his sharp business acumen and high standards of business ethics.

He brought his wife and a seven years old daughter to live with him…As a practicing Muslim woman…his wife observed purdah and did not come out in public. The practice got him into trouble when some neighbours reported him to the police for imprisoning a woman. Only when an English man well versed in Islamic law explained to the court did the judge dismiss the case. The judge ordered that Bux take his wife daily for a walk at night!

Throughout the three decades of his life in Perth, Mohammad Bux retained his Muslim identity…The spirit of serving the community also helped his country of origin.

When back in Lahore, he helped build the Australia Mosque…

Shocking to hear that even then a judge ignored the law in favour of sharia.

Purdah must NEVER become acceptable in Australia!

No woman ‘observes’ purdah, just as she doesn’t ‘observe’ honour killing or fgm.

These Islamic barbarities are an affront to our egalitarian values and to civilised norms.

And if Bux came here to make money, then took it back to Lahore, how did this help Australia? He came here illegally, but instead of being deported, he brought hordes of his relatives here.

Both museums portray fantasy: the Museum of Performing Arts would have showcased our vibrant arts scene and been a great tourist attraction, while the Islamic Museum will portray a fantasy that Islam is benign and shares our values.

Mind you, there is a precedent for ‘Museum jihad’.

Atlas Shrugs comments on New York City’s Muslim Program in its Children’s Museum:

“Thousands of years of cultural heritage that has come from the Muslim world.” Will the Children’s Museum have exhibits on the hundreds of millions of victims of over a millennium of jihadi wars, land appropriations, cultural annihilations and enslavements? Will it have video on the over 18,000 Islamic jihad attacks since 911, each one done with the imprimatur of a Muslim cleric? Will it showcase the ongoing jihad against the Jews and Christians and Hindus and Sikhs?

And “Muslims in America”? I look forward to seeing the profiles of the 9/11 hijackers, explaining how they were motivated to kill by the quran…

There could be more exhibits dedicated to the stealth jihad — to exposing, for example, grifter Gamal, radical Rauf and Daisy the Con, and their sinister and deceptive Ground Zero Mosque project, and all the Islamic supremacist initiatives to assert Islamic law over American law all over the country.

All this could serve as a warning to non-Muslims to be resolute in defense of freedom against jihad.

But you and I know this exhibit will showcase none of that. Instead, it will be another Hamas-tied CAIR attempt to portray Muslims as the victims of “Islamophobia.” At the taxpayers’ expense.

A glance at those behind the Australian museum gives cause for concern: those involved with ICV are not moderate, nor are any who advocate sharia law.

The Board includes Maysaa and Moustafa Fahour, Sherene Hassan, Anisa Buckley, with Ahmed Fahour as Patron. ICV’s Hass Dellal and Waleed Aly are part of the advisory committee. Could Anisa Buckley be a moderate? To those claiming sharia oppresses women, she replies:

This argument (against sharia) is also misguided for several reasons, mainly that the absence of such a system hurts Muslim women more than the presence of it.

Whatever reservations we may have of religious laws, people in liberal democracies will turn to them if they think it is to their benefit.

And there are many helpful and beneficial aspects to Sharia law.

As for the Fahours, Ahmed was CEO of Bahrain’s Islamic investment bank Gulf Finance House, and cooperated with Macquarie Group to offer a broad range of wholesale Shariah compliant financial services.

Moustafa Fahour is a Board member of Crescent Wealth, which recently launched a sharia-compliant superannuation option. Last month, a Sydney legal firm co-hosted an event with The Crescent Club, with Ahmed Fahour, as the guest speaker:

Sounds to me that the Islamic Museum has an awful lot of sharia connections!

An Age opinion piece laments the lack of support for cultural, as opposed to sporting, endeavours:

The Performing Arts Museum would cost an estimated $100 million – not even a third of the cost of reconditioning Melbourne Park. Ms Isherwood, along with the collection’s patron, Barry Humphries, and actor and long-time Melbourne resident Geoffrey Rush have been lobbying Ted Baillieu, in his Arts Minister costume, and his federal counterpart, Simon Crean, to attract support.

In truth, the proposal…would bring hundreds of thousands of examples of cultural memorabilia out of storage…and up into the light, where they belong. This wide-ranging collection, an intrinsic part of Melbourne’s heritage, is of priceless national and international significance.

But it seems not all culture is neglected.

If it’s Islamic, our governments will rush to help!

By Cassandra

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary Feminism is defined thus:

Date: 1895

1 : the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes
2 : organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests

Who can ever forget the iconic cover of “The Female Eunuch”, by Germaine Greer?

It was everywhere when it was first published in 1970.

It was virtually the next best thing that had happened to women since Emmeline Pankhurst and her Suffragettes worked to get women the vote. So we were told.

And certainly you cannot deny the benefits and progress that have come from these two women, and the many others who have taken over the baton and changed the lives of millions.

Many of today’s other famous feminists are living very comfortably on self-earned wealth: fine with me, it’s well-deserved.

They have turned their politics and activism into income sources by working in journalism and other media.

People listen to them.

They have power, enormous power.

Camille Paglia is but one of many whose opinions are highly respected, and it is easy to see why.

Germaine Greer is still going on strongly about all kinds of issues.

Gloria Steinem is another member of this esteemed crowd and there are also very many not-so-famous feminists.

These feminists are in almost all professions from politics to pianists, parents and yes, prostitutes – the oldest “profession” of them all!

Then of course there are the other women in the world who don’t occupy this rarefied space but who have decided, and yes, it is a decision now, to become homemakers and mothers. Some of them decide to resume successful careers and some chose not to.

But I wonder if we all really received so many benefits from all these feminists? Some of us didn’t.

With all that is good and liberating in human progress there are often side effects and “unintended consequences”.

Sadly there are goals that have not, and will not, be achieved.

Certainly many of us get equal work for equal pay nowadays, but not all of us.

Then there are those who chose to be wives and mothers, who are often scorned, or looked down upon, for their choices.

“They had jobs, but feminists weren’t satisfied; every other woman had to get one too. So they opened fire on homemakers with a savagery that still echoes throughout our culture. A housewife is a “parasite,” [Betty] Friedan writes; such women are “less than fully human” insofar as they “have never known a commitment to an idea.”

And….

Housewives, not men, were the prey in feminism’s sights when Kate Millett decreed in 1969 that the family must go. Feminists do not speak for traditional women. Men cannot know this, however, unless we tell them how we feel about them, our children, and our role in the home.

Men must understand that our feelings towards them and our children are derided by feminists and have earned us their enmity. Whether or not this understanding garners men’s support, traditional women must defend ourselves because the feminist offensive is, most essentially, a breach of solidarity with us, a disavowel [sic] of the obligation to honor the Women’s Pact [that religious celibates, professional women, and homemakers respect each other] that women in the movement owed to us” (Source).

Oh yes, this site has more. Feminism today goes on and on, intellectualising and re-defining feminism to the extent where it is almost too difficult to follow, let alone comprehend.

Quite frankly I am more interested in the practical day-to-day realities.

I take the two definitions at face value and I note it doesn’t specify any nationality, political allegiance or religion.

1 : the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes
2 : organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests

It is true a lot of this has happened in the West but rather than have Greer et al espouse “intellectual yada yada” I would rather see these women get militant again and do something to help their long-suffering sisters who live in Islamic countries, and who can but only dream of the lifestyle many of their famous feminist sisters enjoy.

All too often I see stories of honour killings, rape, female genital mutilation, subservience, domestic (and other) violence, forced marriage and utter discrimination perpetrated against women in Muslim countries and now also in the West.

Some women are getting hymenoplasties and buying repair kits before they marry.

Some are being recruited as homicide bombers.

One is punished for drinking beer, others face lashings or stonings.

Recall the recent case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani. Fate not yet known, but not looking promising. Here I admit many westerners got under the skin of the Iranian Mullahs. At least they tried.

An Australian Islamist tries to justify poligamy for everyone. Why not? Let’s normalise this situation, let’s legitimise it. How do you suppose women would fare in such a relationship that is so one-sided in favour of the male gender?

There are women who suffer terribly from acid attacks quite frequently.

Women in Gaza are not allowed to ride motorcycles, and Somali women are being scrutinised for wearing a bra!

Where’s Germaine when you need her, or would this make her happy I wonder?

Yet in spite of these incidents feminists like Naomi Wolfe manage to defend discrimination towards women in Islam and it then takes a compassionate feminist, Phyllis Chesler, who has actually lived in a Muslim country, to sort it out for her!

I know many feminists, and women in general, can be fearless fighters.

Code Pink, for example, have gone to Iraq and Afghanistan. True, they are an anti-war movement, but perhaps, just perhaps, they could have drawn some attention to the women who live and suffer in the war zones they are so adamantly against.

They could have easily added one more mission statement to what is on their website which mentions “social justice” – an insidious phrase which bears investigating.

How about some “equal justice” instead?

Indeed, any other anti-war group could easily have done the same. I know they do not define themselves as feminists per se, but why not do more?

Could they not have met with Malalai Joya and offered some help?

Now of course, in hindsight, one knows far more about Code Pink. They are not an anti-war movement at all. They have been helping orchestrate the “Arab Spring” in Egypt.

Together with Bill Ayres and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn they are political activists of a rather nasty kind – and I am being polite here!

And they have the full backing of the Obama Administration.

When I read about the case of Sahar Gul, 15 years of age, I wonder how these feminists can sleep at night.

(Warning – very graphic images.)

Not to mention the wife of Rafiqi Islam who had her fingers chopped off because she wanted an eduction!

I would like to see some of our famous feminists, female politicians and celebrities who spend so much time choking on their own venom over Sarah Palin instead do something useful for the women in Islam.

Are they afraid? “You betcha!” as Sarah Palin would say. Afraid and gutless!

Or are they simply not interested in the women’s issues of today because they think it is another culture and therefore they shouldn’t interfere when they often stick their noses where they may not be wanted.

They know it isn’t right but they can turn a blind eye to it, even as it happens under their noses, and in their own backyards.

How can one respect these women anymore?

It’s a cop-out.

The improvement of the condition of women in Islam is, to me, a far loftier goal than getting to wear trousers, getting equal pay, getting an abortion on demand, and having a man treat a woman more like a man!

This was definitely an “unintended consequence” for me: trivial as it may seem.

I am much heartened by the fact that progress is being made, albeit in small steps.

Kuwati women in parliament refuse to wear the veil. How long will they be able to keep it up?

An Egyptian Cleric wanted to ban burquas and other facial coverings.

Not going to happen anymore with the Muslim Brotherhood in charge!

The women in any country controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood are going to have it worse than ever before.

Strict Sharia Law will prevail.

Honour killing or Honourcide is getting more attention. The tragedy of this is that we are seeing it in the West more and more and little is being done about it.

Lubna Hussein got a lot of media attention over her sentence for wearing trousers.

Najwa Bin Laden and her son, Omar, wrote a book about their now late husband and father, Osama, and seem to be fearless about it. They have provided a fascinating insight into this man as well.

I think the real “feminist”heroines now are the ones who have literally put their lives on the line, not only for women in Islam but for the world in general.

Their goals and commitment are what is truly deserving of our respect and support.

I am referring to women like Dr Wafa Sultan, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Nonie Darwish, Irshad Manji and women like them.

Although Ms Manji has not left Islam it is still worth noting she has put herself out there and for this she deserves credit.

There is another one who would have possibly made it to this list – the face of the Iranian Green Movement: – Neda Soltan -

Tragically she cannot, but in spirit she can inspire so much. I feel she deserves a mention among these brave, dedicated and fascinating women.

This is my challenge to today’s feminists. Use your power again.

I am not a celebrity, a journalist or a politician. I do not have your platform and power.

Justice and equality for women in Islam is indeed a most worthy cause to support and fight for now more than ever.

First Published on “Muslims Against Sharia”.

This is the updated version with permission from the author.

by E.W. Jackson Sr. – June 16, 2009

Like Obama, I am a graduate of Harvard Law School. I too have Muslims in my family. I am black, and I was once a leftist Democrat. Since our backgrounds are somewhat similar, I perceive something in Obama’s policy toward Israel which people without that background may not see. All my life I have witnessed a strain of anti-Semitism in the black community. It has been fueled by the rise of the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan, but it predates that organization.

We heard it in Jesse Jackson’s “HYMIE town” remark years ago during his presidential campaign. We heard it most recently in Jeremiah Wright’s remark about “them Jews” not allowing Obama to speak with him. I hear it from my own Muslim family members who see the problem in the Middle East as a “Jew” problem.

Growing up in a small, predominantly black urban community in Pennsylvania, I heard the comments about Jewish shop owners. They were “greedy cheaters” who could not be trusted, according to my family and others in the neighborhood. I was too young to understand what it means to be Jewish, or know that I was hearing anti-Semitism. These people seemed nice enough to me, but others said they were “evil”. Sadly, this bigotry has yet to be eradicated from the black community.

In Chicago, the anti-Jewish sentiment among black people is even more pronounced because of the direct influence of Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. Most African Americans are not followers of “The Nation”, but many have a quiet respect for its leader because, they say, “he speaks the truth” and “stands up for the black man”. What they mean of course is that he viciously attacks the perceived “enemies” of the black community – white people and Jews. Even some self-described Christians buy into his demagoguery.

The question is whether Obama, given his Muslim roots and experience in Farrakhan’s Chicago, shares this antipathy for Israel and Jewish people. Is there any evidence that he does. First, the President was taught for twenty years by a virulent anti-Semite, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. In the black community it is called “sitting under”. You don’t merely attend a church, you “sit under” a Pastor to be taught and mentored by him. Obama “sat under” Wright for a very long time. He was comfortable enough with Farrakhan – Wright’s friend – to attend and help organize his “Million Man March”. I was on C-Span the morning of the march arguing that we must never legitimize a racist and anti-Semite, no matter what “good” he claims to be doing. Yet a future President was in the crowd giving Farrakhan his enthusiastic support.

The classic left wing view is that Israel is the oppressive occupier, and the Palestinians are Israel’s victims. Obama is clearly sympathetic to this view. In speaking to the “Muslim World,” he did not address the widespread Islamic hatred of Jews. Instead he attacked Israel over the growth of West Bank settlements. Surely he knows that settlements are not the crux of the problem. The absolute refusal of the Palestinians to accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state is the insurmountable obstacle. That’s where the pressure needs to be placed, but this President sees it differently. He also made the preposterous comparison of the Holocaust to Palestinian “dislocation”.

Obama clearly has Muslim sensibilities. He sees the world and Israel from a Muslim perspective. His construct of “The Muslim World” is unique in modern diplomacy. It is said that only The Muslim Brotherhood and other radical elements of the religion use that concept. It is a call to unify Muslims around the world. It is rather odd to hear an American President use it. In doing so he reveals more about his thinking than he intends. The dramatic policy reversal of joining the unrelentingly ant-Semitic, anti-Israel and pro-Islamic UN Human Rights Council is in keeping with the President’s truest – albeit undeclared – sensibilities.

Those who are paying attention and thinking about these issues do not find it unreasonable to consider that President Obama is influenced by a strain of anti-Semitism picked up from the black community, his leftist friends and colleagues, his Muslim associations and his long period of mentorship under Jeremiah Wright. If this conclusion is accurate, Israel has some dark days ahead. For the first time in her history, she may find the President of the United States siding with her enemies. Those who believe as I do that Israel must be protected had better be ready for the fight. We are.

NEVER AGAIN!
E.W. Jackson is Bishop of Exodus Faith Ministries, an author and retired attorney. Email: bshpjksn@gmail.com

Thanks Froike. If you email me at standamerica@cox.net, I’ll put you on my email the list to receive my national commentaries which air on Radio America. I am also President of STAND, Staying True to America’s National Destiny. One of our tenets is support and protection of Israel. Never Again!
G-d bless you too. Bishop Jackson

“Freedom Fest” – NORFOLK, Va, – Bishop E.W. Jackson speaking at FreedomFest2010 at Old Dominion University. –”This group does not disagree with the president because of the color of skin, but because the content of his policies!”
Website - Bishop E.W. Jackson – “Exodus Faith Ministries”
Book - “Ten Commandments to an Extraordinary Life”

The Mainstream Media Buries Every Negative Story about Barack Hussein Obama

They’ll bury it and they’ll keep it buried, even when they have all of the proof on video. Under the US Constitution, our free press has the right (and, arguably, the duty) to expose public as well as private wrongdoing. Instead, our mainstream media organizations have become consolidated into a small, closed, wealthy clique that opposes and flouts the beliefs and values of most of its audience. They support and protect hard-left/pro-jihadi/radical-environmental (“red-green-green”) politicians and causes – especially Obama and his policies – while trying its hardest to clear the GOP field of any conservative strong enough to unseat him.

What story is being buried? It’s Barack and Michelle Obama’s longtime association and close friendship with former PLO operative and rabid anti-Semite, Rashid Khalidi.

American Thinker: A GOP Candidate’s Bitter Ex-Wife Receives More Coverage Than a Video of Obama Dining with Terrorist-Supporters

(h/t: Diane)

By Lauri B. Regan
[...]
However, of greater importance in my view is the silence, save for a few journalists and pundits on the right, regarding exposing a videotape recorded in 2003 of Barack Obama at the farewell dinner for terrorist-supporting Palestinian Rashid Khalidi. News of the videotape’s existence came to light while Obama was a candidate, and the free pass given to him by the mainstream media was only just beginning to come to light when the enamored Chris Matthews’ shared news of the tingle up his leg.
[...]
But there is a videotape sitting in the vaults of the Los Angeles Times, and every American should be screaming from the rooftops for its release.  In light of the Arab Spring, Obama’s endless attempts to bully Israel into succumbing to all sorts of unprecedented and unsafe demands in the hopes that he would go down in history as the POTUS who made peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, and the administration’s ineptness in addressing Iran’s nuclear program and military threats, exposing this videotape is of utmost importance.

In April 2010, Roger L. Simon published an article on PajamasMedia entitled, “Why is the L.A. Times Burying the Obama/Khalidi Tape?”  Of further consequence is why the media — and Americans — are not demanding that the L.A. Times immediately release the tape.  Simon wrote:

The Khalidi tape could be of tremendous significance in revealing the provenance of Obama’s views on the Middle East and the degree to which the public was misled on those views during the presidential campaign[.] …

So what are we to think? We have an administration that not only ascribes most of the Middle East blame to Israel, but also has banned “Islamism” and all related words, even “Islam” and “jihad” from our national security documents. They’re completely gone. Indeed, even the Fort Hood massacre, so clearly inspired by Islamic extremism, has now been shifted into the comfortable category of the lone, angry killer. Rashid Khalidi should be happy. And, in fact, he is.

Sometimes I want to yell and scream. What is wrong with the Los Angeles Times? Are they a news organization or the propaganda wing of some leftover unit of the IWW? No wonder subscribers are deserting them in droves.

While I am sure that Simon’s questions were rhetorical, I will answer the obvious.  Of course the paper is a propaganda tool.  Were it not for the internet and cable television, true news organizations would no longer exist.  It was recently reported that Jerusalem Post editor Steve Linde quoted Bibi Netanyahu calling The New York Times and Haaretz Israel’s two main enemies because “they set the agenda for an anti-Israel campaign all over the world.”  Netanyahu denies making this exact statement, but there is no question that both papers’ reporting reflects a bias that can be characterized only as anti-Israel propaganda.  Taken a step further, there is no question that the mainstream media as a whole has become completely entrenched in propaganda, bias, anti-Israel and anti-American sentiment, and indoctrination based on liberal, progressive values that are completely out of the “mainstream.”

The public will never understand that the Islamists taking over the Mideast are not moderate, will not promote democracy, are not friends of the United States, and wish the ultimate destruction of the West if the public reads and relies upon only The New York Times, L.A. Times, MSNBC, or similar tools of the left for its “news” and information.  Americans will not understand the implications of four more years of a pro-Islamist president if they do not understand what Islamism is all about.  And they will not know who is sitting in the White House making policy decisions based on personal biases if the media continues to promote Obama’s agenda rather than investigate and report.

So why is the videotape of such paramount importance?  Simon quotes from an article published in the L.A.Times discussing the tape and its contents:

[A] young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, “then you will never see a day of peace.”

One speaker likened “Zionist settlers on the West Bank” to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been “blinded by ideology.”

Furthermore, rumors abound regarding additional messages that may or may not have been openly shared at the dinner in Obama’s presence.  Ted Belman reported at Israpundit that he has a reliable source that “the audio tape clearly picks up the toast ‘death to Israel’.”  Did Obama drink to the death of an American ally that he has been actively intimidating, browbeating, and dissing since he phoned Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on his first day in office?  Does Obama liken Israelis living in the West Bank to Osama bin Laden, whose death he claims as his greatest foreign policy accomplishment?

Simon concluded his article with a request that readers send in suggestions on how to make the contents of the tape public.  Apparently Donald Trump missed this request when he wasted the media’s energy pushing for the release of Obama’s birth certificate — something with which Obama is still having fun as he mocked the birthers at the Golden Globe awards last week.

But I highly doubt that the POTUS, who had his worldview formed while sitting in the pews of Israel-bashing Jeremiah Wright and at the dinner table of anti-Semite Khalidi, will be mocking people who care enough to properly vet his credentials by urging the release of the tape.  And I venture a guess that if the videotape is released, Barack Obama will be packing his bags at the end of this year.  But that is a big “if” because until the media stops obsessing over the infidelities of the GOP candidates and starts doing its job, Barack Obama’s chances of a second term continue to scare the living daylights out of those who understand its implications.

Read it all here.

Margaret MacDonald is nearly 83 years old and suffers from lung damage (as do I). Standing outside in the cold at night could have killed her. Though she could not muster enough lung power to activate a breathalyzer, her blood alcohol level proved to be zero.

Unless we all want to capitulate to shari’a law, it’s time to put a stop to the moral panic about alcohol in Canada and the US.

Ezra Levant on Canada neo-Prohibitionist fascists

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by SDAMatt2a on Jan 12, 2012

To bully and berate an innocent senior then punish her without a trial for a crime she clearly didn’t commit.

This, apparently, is what Alberta has to look forward to under draconian drunk-driving laws inspired by our neighbouring province, where suspected motorists are guilty until they prove themselves innocent.

Fortunately for 82-year-old Margaret MacDonald, tears brought on by allegedly obnoxious B.C. RCMP officers didn’t blind her to protecting herself.

“I came into the house and burst into tears — then I stood here at three o’clock in the morning and thought ‘my word means nothing,’” said MacDonald.

“Three officers don’t believe me, so I phoned the hospital and took a taxi over to have a blood test.

“I’m not going to let the Mounties get away with saying I was drunk.”

At the Cranbrook Hospital, she obtained a laboratory document proving what she’d desperately been trying to tell police a few minutes before.

There was no alcohol in her system — not a drop — and yet MacDonald’s failure to provide a proper breath sample meant her car was taken away for a month and her licence suspended for 90 days.

Now, $6,000 out-of-pocket and in fear of losing her home, the Cranbrook senior will wait another six months for a ruling on her case, as the B.C. government tweaks legislation to comply with a court order.

It was May 21 when MacDonald was approached by an off-duty RCMP officer, just outside her home.

MacDonald, a near-teetotaler, was returning from an engagement party at a friend’s house when she mistakenly turned into the wrong lane. She assumed that’s why the police officer was there.

Even when the off-duty cop told MacDonald a breathalyzer was coming to test her for drinking and driving, she didn’t worry — her last serious drink was 60 years ago: “I really don’t drink,” she said.

What she didn’t count on was the lung power needed to properly blow into a police breathalyzer. Having suffered from serious pneumonia a few years ago, she couldn’t manage.

That didn’t stop RCMP from making her try — over the next two hours, MacDonald says she was forced to stand in the chill and told to blow 15 times by increasingly snotty RCMP officers.

“He pounded on the hood of his car and shouted at me to blow. He shoved this thing in my mouth and it fell on the ground, and he picked it up and put in back in again,” said MacDonald.

“I said ‘I don’t drink, I haven’t been drinking,’ and he said, ‘you’re sticking your tongue in there because you don’t want do this — you’re slurring, you’re drunk and you stink of alcohol.’”

RCMP officials are now reviewing the conduct of officers that night, but try as they might, the Mounties couldn’t get a sample from the shivering, teary-eyed senior, who was wearing only sandals and a thin dress.

Thus, MacDonald was cited for failing to provide a breath sample, given a Notice of Driving Prohibition for three months, fined $500 and told her car was to be towed.

MacDonald wept, but she was sharp enough to obtain proof of her innocence, because in Canada that used to be enough to make those in power see sense.

Not anymore. Under a system about to be adopted in Alberta, drivers suspected of driving drunk, even under .05%, can lose their licences and cars without a trial.

Even after MacDonald took her blood test to the RCMP station, she was told nothing could be done.

A helpful corporal on duty provided her with a letter, stating: “I believe it is only fair that this Driving Prohibition and Vehicle Impound be terminated and removed from your driving record as soon as possible.”

But it didn’t end there.

Despite proof of alcohol-free blood, B.C.’s superintendent of motor vehicles adjudicator still found her guilty — a decision now under review by direct order of B.C. Solicitor General Shirley Bond.

“Obviously, I am concerned with this circumstance but it is important that we get all the facts of the case,” Bond said in a statement to QMI Agency.

“As soon as I became aware of this, I directed the Superintendent of Motor Vehicles to review the case and that work is currently underway.”

The ordeal took a massive toll on MacDonald — a few days later, she suffered what doctors in Calgary told her was a mild, stress-related heart attack, leaving her bed-ridden in hospital.

Back in Cranbrook, all she can do is wait.

“I’m nearly 83 and you have to cope with life, but through my years I’ve never been this traumatized over anything,” she said.

“Especially when I’m totally innocent.”

- Calgary Sun

Piss off, MADD, you pathetic prohibitionists

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by SDAMatt2a on Jan 18, 2012

In Ontario the legal BAC limit is 0.08 per cent, but the blithering idiots at MADD have seen to it that your car can be impounded if you blow at the * legal * limit of 0.05. The cop has been made judge and jury. Your papers, please.

And wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man’s heart. – Psalm 104:15, KJV