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Italy Travel Ideas
Thursday, 25 July 2013
Petition against Italy's Freedom-Killing "Homophobia Bill"
In Italy, several websites are collecting signatures for a petition opposing the "bill against homophobia and transphobia".
It is an oppressive, totalitarian and dangerous piece of legislation, threatening freedom of speech and religion. The petition has already collected 24,000 signatures (including mine) in a few days.
The Italian Parliament's lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, is about to discuss a new "bill against homophobia and transphobia". If approved, this law would have serious repercussions on the fundamental human rights recognized by the Italian Constitution, including the right to freedom of thought (art. 21) and freedom of religion (art. 19).
Under this law, people could be indicted (and subject to imprisonment up to one year and six months) for:
1. urging MPs not to introduce a gay marriage law;
2. proposing to deny children's adoption to homosexual couples;
3. thinking of organizing a propaganda campaign to oppose the introduction of a gay marriage law;
4. saying publicly that homosexuality is a "grave depravity," quoting the Scriptures (Genesis 19.1 to 29; Rm 1.24 to 27, 1 Cor 6:9-10, 1 Tim 1:10.);
5. declaring publicly that homosexual acts are "intrinsically disordered" (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Persona Humana Declaration)
6. maintaining that homosexual acts are "contrary to natural law," because "they preclude the sexual act from the gift of life and are not the result of a genuine affective and sexual complementarity" (art. 2357 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church).
This law would ban any organization, association, movement or group "inciting" to prevent homosexuals from marrying and adopting children (imprisonment from six months to four years for participants, from one to six years for founders and leaders).
This law would introduce for the first time in the Italian legislation the definition of "gender identity" as "the perception that a person has of himself or herself as belonging to the male or female gender, although opposite to his or her biological sex", pace the principle of legal certainty and objectivity of the offence.
This law allows for citizens to be subjected to a sort of re-education through a further punishment - to be served "at the end of the jail sentence" - consisting in work "in support of associations for the protection of homosexual persons."
In fact homosexuals already enjoy the legal instruments provided by the Italian penal code against all forms of unjust discrimination, violence, offence to personal dignity.
The bill on homophobia, therefore, has no reason to enter the country's legal system.
Opposing it means fighting against the risk of a dangerous violation of the freedom of expression of religious thought and belief, the foundation of all civil liberties.
Photo by daameriva
Monday, 22 July 2013
Current Riots Are the Perpetuation of What Caused the Death of Trayvon Martin
From the article "Dr. Carson: 'Tone Down Rhetoric' on Race" :
Trayvon Martin probably had a "fight-or-flight" frame of mind the night he was fatally shot by George Zimmerman, Dr. Ben Carson said on "Fox News Sunday."Yes, it's a bad philosophy to bash someone's head for no reason. If Martin is the victim of somebody or something, he's the victim of that horrifying idea that blacks are always the victim and must always be prepared to react with violence, the same idea that we now see in action in all those so-called "demonstrations" which are in fact looting and vandalism sprees, fomented by the rhetoric of career "anti-racists" who are in reality the true racists, the various Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons, a group which now seems to include Barack Hussein Obama as well.
Carson, speaking to host Chris Wallace from Sun Valley, Idaho, said youths who grow up in inner cities experience the world differently than those who grow up "in a gated community in Palm Springs."
"You have a situation where you have a young black male walking home, not doing anything incorrect, and he ends up killed, and nobody suffers any consequences," Carson said.
"On the surface, that would appear to be a gross miscarriage of justice. Those of us in leadership positions need to be looking for things that we can take out of this situation that will be helpful, not things that inflame the situation.
Let's tone down the rhetoric and recognize that we the people aren't each other's enemies," he said.
Carson said he is from an inner city and "when you grow up in that environment, you develop a different type of philosophy."
"Trayvon Martin may well have had that philosophy and went into this fight-or-flight mode," Carson said.
An Island in Revolt: A Window into Europe’s Future
First published on FrontPage Magazine.
By Enza Ferreri
One could be justified for being perplexed about Pope Francis’s choice of Lampedusa, a tiny island off the coast of Sicily and Italy’s — indeed Europe’s — southernmost tip, as the destination of his very first official visit, which took place on July 8. Not a world capital, not a place in some important geopolitical region of the globe.
What is significant, even symbolic, about Lampedusa is its geography: The small island, with a population of 5,000, is positioned in the middle of the Mediterranean, making it close to the Muslim world, even closer to Tunisia than Sicily.
These two conditions explain what’s been happening to Lampedusa for over a decade, and how it could be a miniature model of the whole of Europe in the not-too-distant future.
Since at least 2001, Lampedusa has been a primary entry point into Europe for immigrants, mostly illegal from Africa. Tens of thousands have been landing here over the years, peaking during the “Arab Spring.” In 2011, according to a report of the United Nation’s Human Rights Council, “[a]pproximately 60,000 irregular migrants arrived [in Italy] as part of the 2011 influx from North Africa,” mainly from Tunisia and Libya. Around 50,000 of these came to Lampedusa.
Over 10,000 received residence permits on humanitarian grounds, because the Italian government declared a state of humanitarian emergency in February 2011, subsequently extended until December 2012.
In Lampedusa, the temporary immigrant reception center where outsiders were accommodated and sent to other facilities where they could request asylum, became so overcrowded that thousands of people had to sleep outdoors and in shelters provided by the local parish and ordinary Lampedusans.
The immigrants, among whom were suspected escaped prisoners, were given temporary visas and then gradually transferred to mainland Italy and other EU countries, but there were many times when the number of newcomers was higher than that of the locals.
On those occasions, when natives were outnumbered, there were tales of local women having to be accompanied everywhere to protect them from immigrants’ unwanted attention, sacked shops, apartment doors forced open, people returning home to find Tunisians sitting at the dining table eating and, after the intruders’ departure, some householders even discovering faeces inside saucepans.
The island became what one newspaper called “a huge immigrant camp.”
Maybe expecting to find a hotel reception and with scarcely a thought about the crisis they were creating on the small island, the illegal immigrants were complaining, as in the video below, describing what they found in Lampedusa as “shameful” and pontificating “the reception is zero” as if they were giving a hotel review on TripAdvisor:
This video confirms what Lampedusa Mayor Bernardino De Rubeis said: “We have here young Tunisians who arrogantly want everything immediately, just like criminals, ready to endanger our lives and theirs.” He later added: “We’re in a war, and the people will react. There are people here who want to go out into the streets armed with clubs.”
The reception center was burnt down twice by the migrants, during inmate riots in February 2009 and in September 2011. The media blamed everyone for the arson: the Italian government, the provisional Tunisian government, the EU; all except the actual perpetrators. In April 2011 the illegals set fire to a guest house where they were staying at the expense of a charity organization, and threw rocks at the police.
Without the reception center, they had to be accommodated in hotels and tourist villages, which are virtually the place’s only economic resources.
Aliens overwhelmed the 5,000-inhabitants island and took advantage of their hospitality, subjecting the place to unusually high levels of violence and crime. Lampedusa is a micro-representation of what will happen to Europe if both current Muslim immigration and European demographic trends continue, when the proportion of natives and migrants will be the same in Europe as it’s been in Lampedusa. The islanders’ reaction, a small civil war, could also represent a prediction of future continent-wide events.
At the height of the immigration flux, confronted with an unprecedented crisis and left to their own devices to deal with it, the people of Lampedusa used “direct action” methods.
They stopped the Italian Coast Guard patrol boat, loaded with still more “rescued” North Africans. Women occupied the harbour and docks, chained themselves, overturned wheelie bins and blocked the road. Fishermen pulled boats to the entrance to the harbour. “Nobody enters here any more,” the women shouted from the quay where patriotic flags were flying. To chants of “freedom!” they raised a banner: “We are full.”
The island descended into chaos. An urban riot occurred, with violent clashes between hundreds of Tunisians, police and locals. Many were injured. Three Lampedusans tried to assault their mayor, who barricaded himself in his office with a baseball bat for self-defence, while outside dozens were protesting against him and the immigrants, who wandered around the streets after having burnt down the reception center.
Islanders attacked journalists and TV crews. Tunisians and Lampedusans threw rocks at each other after illegals had threatened to explode gas cylinders near a petrol pump.
The reality is that this was a pseudo-humanitarian crisis: the illegals overwhelmingly were not refugees but economic migrants. What’s for years been called an “emergency” continues. Every day there are new arrivals.
The number of immigrants to Italy from the Mediterranean is growing. In the first 6 months of 2013, 7,800 of them arrived on Italy’s southern coasts, compared to 3,500 in the first 6 months of 2012. About three quarters landed on Lampedusa from Africa, the rest disembarked on Italy’s south-eastern coast in Apulia from Greece and Turkey.
The Pope, unfortunately, seems to have gone to Lampedusa in order to make everybody feel guilty for the immigrants, those lost at sea and the survivors. He condemned the “globalisation of indifference”; he talked about “the frontier of the desperate” and tragedies of people crossing the sea to seek a better life.
His sermon’s been received with mixed reactions. While Italy’s Prime Minister Enrico Letta has promised to put into practice the Holy Father’s appeal through more European co-operation (nothing new here, Italy has unsuccessfully tried for years to pass the buck to Europe), the political Right hasn’t been so keen.
Fabrizio Cicchitto, of Silvio Berlusconi’s party, PDL, pointed out that religious preaching is one thing, but a country’s management of such a complex and even intractable problem as illegal immigration — further aggravated by the presence of criminal groups — is another.
Erminio Boso of the secessionist, “far-Right” Northern League has been more outspoken: “I don’t care about what the Pope did. Indeed, I’m asking him to give land and money for the extra-comunitari [immigrants from outside the European Union]. I’m defending my own land.”
The Italian blog Diavoli Neri has made the interesting observation that the Vatican City State’s law declares that those found in its territory without authorization may be expelled, subject to fine or imprisonment. Further evidence, it concludes, that the Papal sermon, as so often, was beautiful and touching, but government laws are another matter.
A Northern Italian radio phone-in program aired irate messages from its audience: “I would have expected a few words [from the Pope] for those who are killed and raped by them [the immigrants]“; “As a Catholic I’m outraged. I’ve never heard this or another pope worry for the massacres that they commit”; “We have to prevent them from coming here. Let’s shut everything up and start thinking as a macro-region.”
Much of the immigration debate in Italy centers on whether to give citizenship to Italian-born children of immigrants, a worrying prospect considering that one third of the so-called “new Italians” are Muslim.
Particularly vociferous in support of the proposal is the Minister for Integration, Congolese Cecile Kyenge, who claims that this would “acknowledge a path to integration of the parents.”
Italians should look more closely at the experience of countries with a longer history of Third-World immigration, like Britain, where Muslim immigrants of second and third generation are more devout, orthodox and radicalized than their parents and grandparents. Something similar happens in Germany. Rather than a “path to integration” we witness a “path to Islamization.”
Either Kyenge doesn’t know what’s going on in the rest of Europe – where the policies she recommends are bringing to ruin entire countries – or she knows it very well, in which case she is a dangerous woman.
It’s already taking place in Italy too: among the hundreds of second- and third-generation immigrants leaving Europe to fight alongside the jihadist rebels in Syria there are 45-50 who lived in Italy.
In conclusion, the lesson from the Lampedusa experience is that there’s a limit to what indigenous populations can take. While it’s true that the most common reaction of native Europeans to Third-World non-military invasion so far has been leaving the city or country where this colonization occurs, it may not stay like this forever. There could sooner or later be a breaking point.
Friday, 19 July 2013
Journalist Enza Ferreri Joins Liberty GB Executive Council
Below is an announcement from the website of my party Liberty GB. Above is our new leaflet against halal meat and the Islamisation of Britain.
We are delighted to welcome Enza Ferreri to the Liberty GB Executive Council, to fill the currently vacant role of Press Officer. Enza is an experienced journalist who has written many outstanding articles for this website and for major European and US websites, and has helped shape Liberty GB's philosophy and policies. She will be an invaluable addition to the team.
******
I am Italian, I was born and grew up in Viareggio, a seaside resort on the coast of Tuscany, a few miles from Pisa, whose university I attended.
I came to live in London in 1984 partly because I loved England (and partly because I've always wanted to be where I was not).
My attraction for Britain began when I was 13, in 1967, due to my fascination with the Rolling Stones and 'Swinging London'. The fact that I've always been a passionate animal lover and Britain had then the most advanced animal welfare movement in the world reinforced my preference. I saw Britain as a land of freedom and solid moral values.
You can then imagine my disappointment when I witnessed Britain descend into the current multicultural abyss. I may as well have gone to Pakistan, Nigeria, Lybia or Egypt.
I don't want to convey the impression that I don't love Italy. Typical to my nature, since I've been here I started seeing my country of birth's good aspects, such as the fact that Italy is home to the greatest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites and to half of the world's great art treasures.
My being Italian can actually help our party establish connections with like-minded parties in Italy.
One thing I had was a good education, in which Italy, in fairness, excelled, at least at that time. The secondary school I attended was the Liceo Classico, where among other things I studied Latin and ancient Greek, for which I am grateful because this is the basis – along with Christianity – of Western civilisation. Latin is a very logical language and it teaches you to think analytically. Later I got a degree in Philosophy from the University of Pisa. I am interested in the theoretical foundations of things, in philosophy and science.
But I also want practical action, to make a change in the world. That's why I became a journalist, corresponding from London for the Italian press, initially almost exclusively on animal issues. I saw journalism as a political activity.
I suppose this is why Liberty GB offered me the role of Press Officer. I have a fair idea of how the media think, what interests them in a story.
When Liberty GB was formed I immediately became very enthusiastic about it. I believe our party has enormous potential. People are deeply disappointed with the current political elite and the social chaos it has created. They are unhappy about the results, but don't yet clearly see the causes. Liberty GB will grow and achieve its goals if we manage – and I don't see any reason why we shouldn't be able to do so – to explain that what people don't like in today's Britain is caused by the current dominant political ideology, cultural Marxism, and give them a much better, constructive alternative.
It ain't over yet. Demography is not our destiny. If it were, then we would easily win the battle, because we are still the great majority. But the majority is not fighting Islamisation. Why? Because it has been indoctrinated by 6-7 decades of cultural Marxism.
We need to reverse that brainwashing. That is our priority. To fight Islam, mass immigration, the EU or any other evil the Left has thrown at us, which are the symptoms, without addressing the ideology they stem from, which is the disease, would be like curing a headache without treating the underlying brain tumour.
Antonio Gramsci was right: we need to win the cultural war and wake up the consciousness of people before we can win the political war. The Left did it and won; now it's our turn, we'll do the same.
This is why militant atheists like Pat Condell and the late Christopher Hitchens who are anti-Christianity as well as anti-Islam help, whether they like it or not, the Islamisation of Britain. I believe that without Christianity, at least as a system of ethics if not of theology, Britain will become Muslim. Unlike individuals, societies cannot be atheist. For reasons of space, I'll explain why in a future article. Suffice it to say that Christianity has always been the great target of socio-communism and other would-be destroyers of Western civilisation.
And also, this is why what Americans call the 'culture wars', on issues like abortion on demand, the fatherless society, the destruction of the family and the normalisation of homosexuality, must necessarily be fought if we want to go to the root of the problem and not just deal with the surface. We should devote more attention to the same-sex marriage bill about to become British law, a terrible blow to both the institution of marriage and freedom of speech, since opponents will be silenced in any possible way. Our enemies, the elites, the establishment, will get stronger because of that.
I think that campaigns with very specific targets – an example of which is our anti-halal-meat campaign about to be launched with leaflets and a petition – are very useful because, by focusing on a particular topic, they may attract more attention and unite people on something they feel strongly about. It's a little bit like the tactic used by magazines of focusing on an individual case of a person or a family when introducing a wider topic. People relate better to a larger issue by starting with a particular, specific way of looking at it. Other examples, in relation to Islam, may be anti-mosque and anti-paedophile-rings campaigns.
Halal meat is an ideal target not only because many people care about the animal welfare concerns ritual slaughter raises and are not prepared to tolerate it, but also because it very clearly demonstrates the impossibility to accommodate our values with those of Islam and how in this conflict we'll always lose since Islamic supremacism will force itself on us and we'll have no choice but submit to Sharia law. Non-Muslims are, against their knowledge, eating halal meat, whether they like it or not.
Liberty GB's Executive Council comprises very able people, each with different skills and expertise that complement and complete those of the others.
I can see no reason why we should not succeed.
www.enzaferreri.blogspot.co.uk | Follow on Facebook enza.ferreri | Save the West | Follow on Twitter @EnzaFerreri
Tuesday, 16 July 2013
Black Racist Crime Is an American Epidemic
This is more shocking than anything I expected.
One of the many cases of racially-motivated violence of blacks on whites in the USA happened in June in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where a black male attacked random white people, unprovoked, punching them several times with a glove containing shards of glass and throwing chairs at others. Witnesses say he made racially charged comments during the attack. One of the victims was a 7-month pregnant woman induced into labour due to the assault.
The African-American economist and socio-political theorist Thomas Sowell, referring to the book described in the article below, wrote: "Reading Colin Flaherty's book made painfully clear to me that the magnitude of this problem is even greater than I had discovered from my own research."
From the article "Black racism in Florida: “Polar bear hunting” is illegal" by Dr. Richard Swier (links are in the original):
Are you familiar with the Knockout Game? It is a racially motivated violent game that targets whites. In Florida it is called ”polar bear hunting” and it is illegal.
How is it played?
You start with a group of blacks that number anywhere from 3 to 30 people. As a group, they search for white people, preferably alone, elderly and somewhat defenseless. If they can’t find any, Asians are the next ethnic group targeted. When a target is selected, at least one of the blacks approaches the target and then suddenly sucker punches them in the face as hard as they can. If the victim is knocked out, the person that hit them wins. If the victim is not knocked out, then you continue to hit and kick them until you’re too tired to hit anymore or until the person is dead.
Knockout has become all too common in St. Louis, Missouri. In the past two years, there have been at least 100 Knockout victims, some of which have died. In 2011, one victim was Matt Quain, who was jumped by a group of black teens and beaten, suffered numerous abrasions to his face along with a broken jaw. One of the teens involved in the attack was Demetrius Murphy, a member of one of the most heinous groups in St. Louis known as the “Knockout Gang”...
Colin Flaherty has documented this epidemic of black mob violence in his new book “White Girl Bleed a Lot: The return of racial violence and how the media ignore it.” Flaherty documents, “The Midwest state fair with a ‘Beat Whitey Night?’ Or the Black Beach Week that turns a town into a ‘living hell?’ Or the school principal who blamed Asian students for being racist after suffering years of abuse? The eleven episodes of racial violence on the Fourth of July 2012? Some involving more than 1000 black people?”
Knockout is a racial hate crime that is being ignored and swept under the rug by black social leaders like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson Sr. and the media. If a group of whites played Knockout and targeted blacks, Sharpton, the media and the national press would be giving it the coverage of the George Zimmerman trial, but since it’s blacks targeting whites, everyone just turns their heads and says nothing.
According to US and World Report, “A poll released Wednesday [July 3, 2013] by Rasmussen found African-Americans are more likely to be viewed as racist than whites. Thirty-seven percent of poll respondents said “most black Americans” are racist, compared to just 15 percent who said most whites are racist and 18 percent who said most Hispanics are racist.”
Hunting “polar bears” adds fuel to the black racist fire.
Is Egypt Turning the 2011 Uprisings into a Real “Arab Spring”?
First published on Raymond Ibrahim site.
By Enza Ferreri
When one thinks of the events and processes that developed during Morsi's one-year presidency of Egypt, it's difficult to see how a person who loves democracy, human rights, freedom of speech and of religion cannot but welcome his ousting.
In that time, for example, the Egyptian Minister of Religious Endowments Ali Afifi, in an interview aired on Sada Al-Balad TV on March 14, 2013 said: "[W]e hope that the words of the Prophet Muhammad will be fulfilled: 'Judgment Day will not come before the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Jews will hide behind the rocks and the trees, but the rocks and the trees will say: Oh Muslim , oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him – except for the gharqad tree, which is one of the trees of the Jews.' We fully believe that the future of this land lies with Islam and the Muslims." He was accused of appointing in leading positions in his ministry figures with ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafi movement.
In the year 2012, under the Islamist rule of the Muslim Brotherhood's political arm, the fatwas, Sharia-based legal decrees issued by learned Muslims, differed considerably from the previous Egyptian fatwas. The more power the Brotherhood has, the more rooted in the worst authoritarian and violent elements of Sharia law the fatwas are.
Raymond Ibrahim translated a summary of them. Among others, they include calling for the destruction of the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids; opposing setting a minimum age in the new constitution concerning the marriage of minor girls, saying “they can get married at any time”; ruling that the peace treaty with Israel contradicts the teachings of Sharia and should be annulled, quoting the Koran; denouncing all Muslims opposed to President Morsi, explaining that the Koran declares it to be forbidden to disobey those in authority; banning congratulating Christian Copts on their religious holidays, and forbidding Muslim cab and bus drivers from transporting Christian priests to their churches; forbidding all Muslim women from marrying any of the sons of the “remnants” of the old regimes, portraying them as non-pious Muslims; banning people from joining Muhammad al-Baradei’s “Dustor” political party, claiming him to be a secularist and opposed to the implementation of Allah’s laws.
Morsi may have been democratically elected - although there are suspicions of rigged elections - but so were Hitler and Mussolini. And, just like them, once elected he assumed dictatorial powers. His new constitution was intended to establishd a Sharia state in Egypt.
Until now, counterjihad analysts have been practically the only ones to make the correct predictions about the "Arab Spring" being an Islamist takeover, even though the underlying people's rebellion may have been sustained by genuine economic and political concerns.
In Egypt, we are now witnessing perhaps the first sign of a process that upsets those neat predictions and complicates matters. For the good.
The figures speak volumes: "Obama probably hates it that the 30 million souls who took to the streets in Cairo and throughout Egypt for the largest protests in human history dare to call it a ‘revolution’, says Canada Free Press.
So, how to interpret the new developments? Since I live in London, let's look at what the UK media make of them.
Is it a coup or is it not a coup? This seems to be one of the dominant questions about the ousting of Egypt's Morsi in the British media.
The answer to that question depends very much on the respondent's opinion on whether the ousting's outcome is positive or negative, which in turn rests on his/her view of the Muslim Brotherhood.
As can be expected, left-wing media outlets like The Guardian tend to have a favourable view, even sympathetic, of this "democratically elected" Islamist presidency, so they, taking their cue from the Muslim Brotherhood, call Morsi's deposition a coup and consider .
Generally speaking, right-wing papers like The Telegraph take the view that what counts as democracy is not just the elections but the will of the population however expressed. Morsi acted like an autocrat, did not give people what he had promised them, betrayed the spirit of the revolution and, in the face of mounting popular opposition, refused to concede early elections. So, rather than using force to impose its will, the military deployed its might to implement the will of the people. Ergo, they say, it's not a coup.
These two factions do not even agree about numbers: for the former "hundreds of thousands more took to the street in support of Morsi" (BBC); for the latter "The protesters' superiority in numbers to anything the Brotherhood could muster was self-evident" (Telegraph).
Bu things are never so simple and black-and-white. The Telegraph's chief political commentator, Peter Oborne, thinks that the Islamist regime, like that of Algeria in 1991, has not been given a chance. To do what, I'd like to ask, cut off more hands? Massacre more Christians? Talking of whom, that's what he says: "Mohammed el Baradei (and the Coptic Church) have done himself great damage by backing the military intervention. Whatever form of government comes next will lack legitimacy because of the methods used today."
Morsi has committed no crime and doesn't deserve to be in custody, he claims, and current events are disastrous for the relationship between the West and the Muslim world.
A noteworthy thing is that when some of Britain's militant atheists, for whom this country is rightly famous - or infamous -, like Pat Condell, criticises Morsi's Egypt, in the list of atrocities, along with the usual hanging of homosexuals and stoning of women, he includes "treatment of minorities", sometimes with the helpful addition of "religious", but is never quite capable of bringing himself to utter the word "Christian".
Some antijihadists consider visceral atheists allies because they can be strong critics of Islam. But they don't seem to be aware that atheist commentators who also profoundly dislike and ruthlessly attack Christianity are, whether they realize it or not, giving a helping hand to Islam's penetration into Western society.
Whether the ousting of Morsi is viewed favourably or not, although dependent on the commentator's political ideas, also rests on the division "between those who emphasize process and those who emphasize substance", as New York Times columnist David Brooks put it.
It's an exceptional circumstance if I find myself in agreement with the NYT, so you'll forgive me if I expand on that. He sums up the two camps as, in the former, those for whom following the correct democratic electoral procedure is more important, thinking that ruling in a democracy will reform the Brotherhood and make it moderate. And in the latter those who don't think that democracy lies in "counting heads" but in what you intend to do once you're in power, and in that respect Morsi can be elected till kingdom come he'll never be democratic and he'll never renounce radical Islamism.
Brooks adds:
World events of the past few months have vindicated those who take the substance side of the argument. It has become clear — in Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Gaza and elsewhere — that radical Islamists are incapable of running a modern government.The only thing that remains to be seen is whether the other elements of the anti-Mubarak, anti-old-regime opposition can do that.
Saturday, 13 July 2013
The Islamist Wind in Britain
First published on FrontPage Magazine.
By Enza Ferreri
Over the last weekend there have been two more street attacks on soldiers in Britain, one of which was fatal.
On Saturday, the Yorkshire town of Barnsley in northern England honored soldiers with parades and celebrations for its Armed Forces Day. One of the soldiers, who had returned from the Falkland Islands just hours before, was brutally assaulted at around midnight when he was getting home. He was jumped from behind, knocked unconscious and then repeatedly stamped and kicked in the head and face, and left with a concussion, injuries and bruises.
He is a 28-year-old corporal who has served in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In the early hours of Sunday morning, 26-year-old newlywed ex-soldier David Ryding was attacked in the Warwickshire town of Rugby, in central England, suffering head injuries. He died in hospital almost 24 hours later. Three men have been arrested.
What is missing from these reports? Any information about the suspects, except their ages. The word “Muslim,” which, in view of the beheading of Drummer Lee Rigby by self-confessed jihadists, may spring to mind, is notably absent, and can only be found in the comments to the articles. Also noteworthy is that these incidents were only reported in local news.
Readers, judging by their comments, are suspicious of the media’s suppression of information: “If this were an attack by whites on a muslim it would be on BBC news, lead story – fact.” Another: “I bet it was Muslims who attacked him, but the media have left this part out because of community tensions.”
And:
It might be a random attack but the total lack of info in the rest of the media is pretty weird. After Drummer Rigby you’d think any incident with a soldier attacked the media would want to make sure everybody knew it wasn’t a jihadist attack if it wasn’t but this – total silence.The media may or may not know more about the identities and religious affiliations of the suspects. But it is their reluctance to even mention the elephant in the room, the self-evident similarity with the previous, recent street killing of a soldier, that makes such coverage suspicious and, frankly, surreal.
The common excuse for this kind of censorship is the wish to avoid indirectly inciting anti-Muslim attacks, that have increased since Lee Rigby’s murder.
A noble intention, I’m sure. It’s a pity that these same media outlets don’t take the same prudential attitude when it comes to trumpeting, say, how “Islamophobic” the British government has allegedly been in its unjust wars against Islam in Iraq and Afghanistan, or how racist the UK police and public allegedly are. In those cases the media don’t seem to be so concerned about possible “backlashes” against non-Muslims or whites.
Nor is the mainstream media worried about having in the UK such a large, non-assimilated immigrant population from alien cultures (one of which, Islamic culture, could hardly be more antithetical to British and, indeed, Western civilization), which may at any moment instigate serious, even lethal, conflicts.
There is an increasing polarization between Britons and Muslims. A recent opinion poll compared answers given by respondents in November 2012 with late May 2013.
In 2012, 50 percent agreed that “There will be a ‘clash of civilizations’ between British Muslims and native white Britons”; in 2013, 59 percent did.
The number of those who agreed with “British Muslims pose a serious threat to democracy” rose from 30 to 34 percent.
In short, it’s not just the “far-right” that is “Islamophobic” now in the UK.
Terrorism is not the only problem by any stretch of the imagination. The Brits are not too impressed by the Muslim pedophile rings which have become an epidemic, or the way mosques disrupt their own neighbourhoods — through parking jihad, general harassment, vandalism, etc. — and drive them to move out, or the de facto imposition of sharia law on them by the selling and serving of halal meat to unsuspecting non-Muslims.
The response of the Establishment to this rise in anti-Muslim feelings has been more of the same with a vengeance, intensifying, if anything, repression of the politically incorrect.
Following the Woolwich beheading, there has been a crackdown on several social network users who have been warned, charged, arrested and released on bail for making “inflammatory” and anti-Muslim comments on Twitter and Facebook. The police said people should be careful about what they write on Twitter as the “consequences could be serious.”
Two of the men detained were organising an anti-Islam protest in Bristol and made racist and “anti-religious” remarks. Anti-religious: I wonder if they would have been arrested for insulting Christianity?
Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller are now considered by the British Home Secretary to be public enemies, holders of opinions that are “not conducive to the public good,” and banned from even entering the country.
The English Defence League (EDL), an organization demonized under normal circumstances for daring to fight against the Islamization of Britain, has been more than ever targeted by authorities.
Two of its leaders, Tommy Robinson and Kevin Carroll, have been arrested practically for attempting to walk too close to a mosque, although the official excuse was “for obstructing the police.”
The media, predictably, are doing their bit. The usual suspects, like The Guardian, RT and Sky News, are doing their best to create an association in the mind of the public between EDL peaceful demonstrations, a lawful expression of free speech, and attacks on mosques or Muslims, which are criminal acts.
Channel 4, one of the UK’s major TV networks, has gone even further. It has announced that it’s going to broadcast the Islamic call to prayer throughout Ramadan, which began Tuesday, 9 July.
Channel 4’s head of factual programming, Ralph Lee, has excellent reasons for doing so. He said:
And let’s not forget that Islam is one of the few religions that’s flourishing, actually increasing in the UK. Like Channel 4’s target audience, its followers are young. It’s recently been reported that half of British Muslims are under 25.That nice bit of demographic information will cheer us all up, Ralph. He added that the broadcasting is “a deliberate ‘provocation’ to all our viewers in the very real sense of the word.” We are all grateful for that.
Unsurprisingly, Islamist preachers like Anjem Choudary and Abu Zakariyya applaud his decision as a step towards the implementation of sharia law in the UK.
Choudary ventured a prediction: “[B]y some accounts Britain could be a Muslim country by 2015.”
Not so fast. Hubris could be your downfall, Anjem. We may still have something to say on the matter.
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