Freedom of Speech Replaced by Sharia

Blogger Diana West has a very good article, "Trading the First Amendment for Sharia":

This is no media flap. This is war. Islam is attempting to dominate the West by attacking the basis of the West – freedom of speech. Our leaders won’t tell us that because too many of them have already surrendered. They deplore the violence against our people and our sovereign territory, yes, but their priority is not to defend free speech but to see that Islamic speech codes are enforced. They have already decided to discard liberty for Shariah. The U.S. government and the Islamic bloc known as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) couldn’t be more in sync on this vital issue.

How to get around the First Amendment? Through “some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last year. She was speaking about the so-called Istanbul Process, the international effort she and the OIC are spearheading to see Islamic anti-”blasphemy” laws enforced around the world.

Since last week, the Obama administration has made not one but two attempts to persuade YouTube to remove “Innocence of Muslims,” the Islamic riot-button du jour. The administration has denounced and practically jumped up and down on the video clip as “the cause” of Islamic rampaging. (To its credit, YouTube owner Google so far has refused.)

Amid the rioting, President Obama called on Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan for political support. Erdogan obliged by condemning violence against U.S. personnel in Libya, but he identified the video as “provocation” – indeed, all the more reason for blasphemy laws. When free speech “is in the form of a provocation,” Erdogan said, “there should be international legal regulations against attacks … on religion.” There should be domestic laws, too, he said, continuing: “Freedom of thought and belief ends where the freedom of thought and belief of others starts.”

A video in no way limits the freedom of thought and belief of anybody. This is another example of the tortuous logic of the Muslim world which, not incidentally, has never been able to reconcile Islam with Aristotle, the founder of formal logic.

That’s not how it works in the West. But such Shariah norms are what all of Islam – not just a “tiny band of extremists” – is pressing on us. A survey of the week’s news in the Islamic world reveals that whether terror kingpins (Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah and Indonesia’s convicted Abu Bakar Bashir) or Islamic scholar (Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Ahmed el-Tayeb), whether smashing U.S. Embassy windows in Yemen or meeting in the offices of the Arab League, whether Pakistani lawyers or Hamas fighters, whether under U.S. sanctions (Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) or an Obama ally (Turkey’s Erdogan), the Islamic world is speaking in one voice. Criticism of Islam must be outlawed, and violators punished.

And more audaciously than ever. Just this week, an Iranian group increased the bounty on Salman Rushdie’s fatwa’ed head to 2.5 million euros for “insulting” Islam 23 years ago in his novel “The Satanic Verses.” The influential Union of Islamic Scholars, headed by Muslim Brotherhood spiritual adviser Yusuf al-Qaradawi, demanded that Pope Benedict XVI apologize for his 2006 address in Regensburg, Germany, linking Islam and violence. Egyptian cleric Ahmad Fouad Ashoush issued a fatwa (death sentence) against the cast and crew of “Innocence of Muslims.” The Pakistani government declared a national holiday for anti-U.S. protests. And the Egyptian government, still begging for U.S. cash, not only sentenced an Egyptian Christian to six years in jail this week for “insulting the prophet” (and Egypt’s president and a lawyer), it also issued arrest warrants for six U.S.-based Egyptians who made the “offending” film and pastor Terry Jones for promoting it.

This is what a world without the First Amendment looks like. In the eyes of the Obama White House, however, the First Amendment is just an obstacle to synchronicity with the Islamic world. They are right, of course. That makes it our lifeline to liberty.

Obama Supporters Hate Romney Not for His Failures, but Successes

Ruthie Blum was on the TV channel Russia Today last night, in one of those albeit too frequent instances of the "Cross Talk" debates in which one person is on the opposing side of the other two debaters plus the "moderator" Peter Lavelle.

The subject was the relationship between the USA and Israel.

I was so annoyed that she was shouted down every time she opened her mouth (and the few words she managed to utter pointed to something worth listening to) that I googled her and found this insightful piece about the so-called Romney's "gaffe" on the 47%, which is not really a gaffe at all. Here is an excerpt:

Ironically, many of the very analysts who grasp that America is not at fault for the bashing it is receiving from the Islamic world find it hard to acknowledge that Romney is not to blame for every surge Obama enjoys in the polls. Never before has an incumbent with this abysmal a record been given such a break by the media and the public.

...Which brings us back to Romney's comments, made months ago, that caused such a stir this week. In the first place, he was not speaking on a podium in a public forum, but among a small group of sympathizers with whom he could be blunt about his strategy.

Secondly, when he said that he would “never convince [the 47% of the people who will vote for the president no matter what] that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives," he was referring to his inability to garner their electoral support. He was not saying that, if elected, he would not become their president. He was asserting that he would not be able to cause them to adopt his position on personal responsibility.

Third: Everything he attributed to the people who adhere to Obama’s worldview is accurate. Obama believes that government is the key and the solution to everything. It is no secret that socialism is the system suited best to people who see themselves as victims, and who consider the government to be both at fault for their plight and responsible for rectifying it.

These are the people who scream “pro choice” in relation to abortion, for example, but who expect the government to fund the termination of their pregnancies when their choice not to use birth control leads to unwanted consequences.

These are the people who think the “millionaires” aren’t paying enough taxes, but who go on the government dole when those “fat cats” (aka the industry bosses who provide them employment) are forced to shrink or dissolve their businesses when hindered financially.

These are the people whose handouts and bailouts and subsidies force the government on which they so depend to raise everybody else’s taxes.

Yes, these are the people who will never vote for Romney — and not because of his “gaffes,” but rather due to his views on how to stop the vicious cycle and downward spiral caused by government control and intervention.

Islamists hate America not for what it does wrong, but for what it does right. Obama supporters hate Romney not for his failures, but for his successes. It is this that the conservative camp should be shouting from the rooftops. Anything else they have to say on the matter should be reserved for the privacy of their own homes — minus the video cameras.

There Should Be Many More Films on Muhammad

In Islam it's forbidden to portray Muhammad. But why should we non-Muslims all be imposed Islamic laws? That's what Muslims are trying to do. We are inferior, and we should submit and obey.

In fact, there's never been a film (not just posted on the internet but actually shown in cinemas) about Muhammad or the origins of Islam as far as I know. Why not? Maybe because people have been understandably afraid of Muslim wrath.

We non-Muslims have a right to know about Muhammad without interference from Muslims and their own rules, which they have given themselves and are not our rules.

We have that right especially since a very, very large number of Muslims are coming to live among us in the West, particularly in Europe, often forcing their acceptance through illegal immigration, thus violating the laws of the country they enter even before they have established themselves in them.

Shouldn't we at least be allowed to learn about what this great mass of people who have imposed their presence on us believe?

Not everybody will want to read the Quran or even other books on Islam, but films are a popular way of spreading culture. Lots of people know literary masterpieces only through cinema visits and TV watching. So why not films about Islam, without having Muslims telling us what can and can't be said in them?

Something new is happening in historical research on the origins of Islam, which was strangely, almost incredibly, non-existent until now.

Now some books on the subject have been published.

One is Did Muhammad Exist?: An Inquiry into Islam's Obscure Origins (Amazon USA) (Amazon UK) by Robert Spencer, renowned scholar of Islam and political activist.

In an interview on the book with FrontPageMag, he said:

The question of whether or not Muhammad existed is one that few have thought to ask, or dared to ask. For most of the fourteen hundred years since the prophet of Islam is thought to have walked the earth, almost everyone has taken his existence for granted.
...There is, in fact, considerable reason to question the historicity of Muhammad. Although the story of Muhammad, the Qur’an, and early Islam is widely accepted, on close examination the particulars of the story prove elusive. The more one looks at the origins of Islam, the less one sees. In Did Muhammad Exist?, I explore the questions that a small group of pioneering scholars has raised about the historical authenticity of the standard account of Muhammad’s life and prophetic career. A thorough review of the historical records provides startling indications that much, if not all, of what we know about Muhammad is legend, not historical fact. A careful investigation similarly suggests that the Qur’an is not a collection of what Muhammad presented as revelations from the one true God but was actually constructed from already existing material, mostly from the Jewish and Christian traditions.

It matters because my investigations, as the book shows, tend toward the probability that Islam was constructed as a political system foremost, and only secondarily a religious one – a point that has significant implications for the controversy today over anti-Sharia laws and how to regard the incursions of political Islam in the West.

Another book on the origin of Islam and the historical figure of Muhammad is What the Modern Martyr Should Know: Seventy-Two Grapes and Not a Single Virgin: The New Picture of Islam (Amazon USA) (Amazon UK) by Norbert G. Pressburg, translated from the German.

Islam versus Europe has written extensively about this work in several posts.

It says:

But in an earlier age when communications were more limited, when despotic rulers faced no outside scrutiny of any kind, when manuscripts could be burned en masse, dissident thinkers liquidated and alternative power centres subjugated through conquest, could a fake view of history have prevailed?

This is the thesis advanced in the book “Good Bye Mohammed” by Norbert G. Pressburg, so far available only in German. (I have no knowledge of whether an English translation is forthcoming.) Its scope and ramifications are astounding. Not only does it undermine the foundations of the Islamic religion, but it challenges assumptions that have long since come to be accepted by western historians and even anti-jihadists. If true, it will change everything.

Pressburg believes that Islam arose not in the 7th century AD, as standard historical accounts claim, but in the 9th or even 10th centuries. He believes the Muslims constructed a fake history stretching back hundreds of years, working up a fable of religious revelation and conquest that is now accepted by almost everyone, even those who reject the divine inspiration claimed for it.

The truth, as Pressburg tells it, is that no one called Muhammad existed. The tales of his life and sayings are simple inventions. Even the historical accounts of Muslim battles are invented, he believes. For example, Muslim historiography (and now standard history because the Muslim story has been accepted by everyone) tells of a decisive battle at Yarmuk fought between Byzantine forces and the Muslims. Pressburg notes there is no evidence this battle ever took place.

A third book is historian Tom Holland's In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire (Amazon USA) (Amazon UK) .

Holland's theory is not as revolutionary as that of the two books mentioned earlier but still interesting. He thinks that Islam, rather than pre-dating and motivating Arab conquests, followed them and was invented to justify them by invoking a religious obligation.

I have read excerpts from the book, published in British newspaper The Sunday Times, but I was a bit discouraged from reading the whole work when I watched the UK's Channel 4 documentary "Islam: The Untold Story", in which Holland asks Muslim scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr for constant reassurance. "Can a non-Muslim hope to understand the origins of the Muslim world?" Holland asked. "No", replied Nasr. One of the questions posed to him was whether Nasr would consider this historical research on Islam neocolonialist, to which the Islamic guru answered, probably to Holland's great relief, no. So Holland got permission to carry out his work.

Given Muslims'  incredible proneness to be insulted and provoked, it's understandable that anyone touching the subject would be afraid, but I doubt if fear is generally conducive to objective, impartial work.

Why doesn't a good, and exceptionally brave to the point of heroism, film director make a movie on one of these books?

Does Racism Mean Anything Anymore?

England soccer team's former captain John Terry leaves international football. "England captain John Terry quits international football because he thinks FA have already decided he's guilty of racism charge - even though he was cleared by a court of law" (Daily Mail).

His career is the latest victim (although it sounds odd using that term about ultra-rich and famous soccer players) of the football world and authorities' obsession with racism. Another victim is English football itself, which has lost a valuable player - and God knows they could do with people like that.

Former England manager Fabio Capello acted with much integrity when he stood by Terry and resigned over the FA's decision to strip Terry of his captaincy before his trial.

The absurdity of the accusation of racism moved by the Football Association against him was revealed during the trial, when one after the other several black or half-black colleagues of Terry's testified that he never displayed any racist behaviour, quite the contrary.

What does then "racism" mean? Even if somebody - and I don't know if Terry did, actually he was accused of just saying "black" which can hardly be considered an insult - but even if someone, in a moment of anger during an altercation, especially in a heated, adrenalin-supercharged situation like a soccer match, used a racial epithet that wouldn't mean he is a racist.

If a man's whole behaviour, ideas and attitudes are non-racist, saying "nigger" does not make him a racist.

"Racism" is a much-overused and abused word which, like many others - like "family" - has come to mean whatever anyone wishes it to mean. And I'm not saying that, it's the Macpherson's Inquiry into the death of black teenager Stephen Lawrence on 22 April 1993 which enshrined that, opening the door to the abuses we witness today, with these words: "A racist incident is any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person".

That literally means that a racist incident can be anything, without restriction.

Muslim Radicals with Friends in High Places

Babar Ahmad, Abu Hamza and three other major terrorism suspects will be extradited from the UK to the US in the next few weeks (from the BBC).

The European Court of Human Rights has given its final approval for the extradition.

Notice that the BBC site, in his photo's caption, tries to portray Babar Ahmad as a victim, saying that he has been held in UK custody without trial for nearly eight years, although the reason for that has in fact been appeals and other delaying actions by his lawyers and supporters. One of them is fellow Muslim and politician Sadiq Khan, Former Deputy Leader of the Labour Group, Shadow Lord Chancellor and Shadow Secretary of State for Justice.

Born in England of Pakistani parents, Babar Ahmad is lifelong friend from childhood as well as constituent of Sadiq Khan, who is also the MP for Tooting, South London.

Ahmad is accused of having run a major English-language pro-jihad website, Azzam, which played a crucial role in recruiting Muslims in the West to fight for jihad in Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan; money laundering through the website; plotting with US nationals; receiving classified US Naval plans; "conspiracy to provide material to support terrorists, namely the Taliban and the Chechen Mujahideen; providing material to support terrorists; and conspiracy to kill in a foreign country" (from Islam versus Europe).

Since the indictment, Khan has refused to sever his ties with his jihad-supporting friend. Indeed, Khan has shamelessly used his position as Shadow Justice Minister to help Ahmad in any way that he can, demanding that he be tried in Britain rather than extradited to the US, even though the terrorist recruitment website Ahmad is alleged to have assisted was operating out of the US.

Cutthroat Life for Immigrants in South Africa

Hard to be an immigrant in South Africa. Discrimination, assault, threats, harassment are daily for those who chose to leave their countries.

They've come to South Africa to work. But their lives are far from easy. African immigrants from Cameroon, Congo, Ethiopia, Somalia regularly suffer discrimination, threats or police harassment. It is not uncommon for their businesses to be looted or vandalized. They are accused by the South Africans of stealing their jobs. Although South Africa is mentioned as an example for the black continent to follow due to its economic development, the unemployment rate is nearly 25%.

The country has 2 million immigrants on its soil, or 3% of its population. But South Africans take a dim view of the fact that immigrants associate to buy wholesale and sell for less. And they do not hesitate to extend credit to loyal customers. Another advantage of these traders is that they open early and close late. "South Africa is a rather xenophobic country", according to Gwada Majange, spokesman for the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants (CoRMSA). "This year, for example, we had many attacks in the country, primarily targeting owners of grocery stores."

In July, at least 500 people have been displaced after attacks in Botshabelo, a township (slum), while shops were set ablaze in the outskirts of Cape Town. During 2008, the xenophobic riots against foreigners left many dozens of people dead.

Immigrants are excluded!

Immigrants' representatives have accused the authorities of complicity and of supporting this xenophobia. In cities, it is better for immigrants to carry their ID documents when they go out because the police do not hesitate to make life difficult for immigrants who do not have them on, says a Cameroonian. "They arrest people who do not have papers, and even those who do" observed Jean-Pierre Lukamba, vice-president of the African Diaspora Forum, a federation of associations of refugees and immigrants. According to him, "there are regular raids, roundups, sometimes they don't even tell you why they arrest you. Some police officers may even tear your papers."

Discrimination also exists in the health field. In South Africa It is more difficult for an immigrant to be treated. "When you go to the hospital if you do not have papers in South Africa, it becomes very slow. There is a woman who has lost her child because of that", says Marc Gbaffou, President of the Forum.

Similarly, to find a job they face multiple barriers. "A lot of job vacancies are marked 'SA only' or 'Bring your ID' (South Africans only, bring your South African papers, ed.). Immigrants are excluded!", denounces Marc Gbaffou. He thinks that the authorities are lax about the situation and they do nothing to improve the living conditions of immigrants. He was referring to a project that the ANC, the ruling party, wants to put in place to restrict "the right of non-South Africans to buy or manage grocery stores or larger companies without having complied with certain legislation."

For the moment, the authorities have not given more details about this project. Associations fighting for the rights of immigrants are respected in the country. They will not hesitate to voice their discontent.

Source: Afrik

Swedes Tired of Discrimination that Favours Immigrants

For the first time in history, Swedish people have held street protests against the discriminatory treatment they receive at the hands of the local authorities.

In the village of Grums, 80 people defied their fear of being called racist by taking to the streets to protest against the preferential policies for immigrants.

The most astonishing of those has been, apparently (I find it even difficult to believe), to forcibly evict native Swedish tenants, even long-standing, from public housing apartmens and replace them with refugees.

The organizers of the protest hope that this is the beginning of a new grass-root movement that will spread nationwide.

According to Victoria Wärmler [one of the organizers], Grums is far from the only municipality in Sweden where politicians refuse to listen to their constituents. After the protest was announced on Facebook, she received encouragement from several other regions where people wish to protest.

In Sweden, immigration is reaching a critical point, and so is indigenous opposition to it.

The number of Muslims in Sweden and Denmark doubled in 14 years.

This is the resut of research by Dispatch International, a new print and online newspaper created by Swedish journalist Ingrid Carlqvist and Danish journalist Lars Hedegaard, both fighters for freedom of speech and the Islamization of Europe.

The video above shows Lars Hedegaard's speech at the International Civil Liberties Alliance's Conference for Free Speech and Human Rights in Brussels on July 9 2012, at which he was presented with the Defender of Freedom Award.