Brussels: European capital or Islamic center?

By Michael Curtis

Brussels as the headquarters of the European Union is the nominal “capital of Europe.”  One would expect the city to be the center of enlightenment—the exemplification of political and social tolerance and freedom of speech, assembly and religion, not to mention an advocate of human rights.  Disappointingly, recent events have shown that Brussels has increasingly become a place of lies, deliberate disinformation, political manipulation, anti-Semitism and attacks on Israel.

Recent developments, particularly Islamist political as well as physical aggressiveness, justify this sad conclusion.  One is the election in November 2012 of two Muslim politicians of the new Islam Party, Lhoucine Ait Jeddig and Redouane Ahrouch, who won seats in two of the 20 municipalities of Brussels, Molenbeek-Saint-Jean and Anderlecht.  Considering  their unqualified stated objective to make Belgians understand the advantages of having Islamic people and Islamic laws, their assertion that “then[,] it will be completely natural to have Islamic laws and we will become an Islamic state” is quite chilling.

The Islam Party intends to continue running candidates in future Belgian and European-wide elections.  It is likely to gain further successes because of demographic changes in the country.  Calculations suggest that Muslims in Belgium now number 625,000, more than six percent of the total population.  Brussels contains 300,000 Muslims—more than a quarter of its population.  It is now the largest Islamic city in Europe; by 2030 it will, according to the sociologist Felice Dassetto in her book “The Iris and the Crescent,” probably have a Muslim majority.

The heavily Muslim-populated districts of Brussels have become troubled areas, experiencing a considerable increase in crime, including about 250 gang rapes a year since 2007.  For some years, these areas have been arenas of violence: in the riots of September 2009, the Muslim inhabitants attacked the Belgian police with Molotov cocktails, stones, and tear gas.

Among other consequences of this violence, the U.S. advertising agency BBDO in June 2011 left its offices in the Molenbeek district of Brussels after stating that there had been more than 150 assaults on its staff. Other multinational corporations left the area for similar reasons.

Simultaneously with its declaration that its ultimate goal was to establish Shariah law in Belgium, the Islam Party issued three main immediate demands: halal meals in public cafeterias, national recognition of Muslim holidays and insistence that all women publicly wear hijab coverings.  The danger of that ultimate goal of the Islamic extremists has now been recognized publicly in March by the Belgian foreign minister, Didier Reynders.  He made a point of saying he was not critical of moderate Islam views but was calling for more monitoring of the messages that some imams in Belgium, about 300 of whom obtain state subsidies, are preaching in their mosques.  He drew attention to those imams or other types of preachers “who adhere to more salafist and fundamentalist views, or who support radical movements, instead of having more moderate views.”

Reynders, member of the Mouvement Réformateur, the largest Francophone party in Belgium, described his personal encounter with Islamic intolerance.  When he and other Belgian officials met in April 2012 with Abdellah Benkiran, the Muslim Brotherhood prime minister of Morocco, the latter refused to speak with Reynders’s colleague, Annemie Turtelboom, the Belgian minister of justice, because she is a woman.

Reynders is conscious of the same problem in Belgium.  Muslim leaders have refused even to shake hands with women, including a local mayor, or to mix with women in public transport.

The problem is immediate and growing.  In Antwerp, a majority of elementary school children are Muslims.  The most common name for boys born in Belgium during the last few years is Mohammed.  The country has witnessed an increase in the number of mosques and minarets, more veiled women in public, and more extreme salafist Islamic organizations.  The Muslim politicians and imams want to implement Islamic Shariah law throughout Belgium…

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Homeland Security guidelines advise deference to pro-Sharia Islamic supremacists

By Robert Spencer

Just more of the same from the Obama Administration. “Homeland Security guidelines advise deference to pro-Shariah Muslim supremacists,” by Charles C. Johnson in the Daily Caller, May 17:

The Department of Homeland Security, which under Secretary Janet Napolitano has shown a keen interest in monitoring and warning about outspoken conservatives, takes a very different approach in monitoring political Islamists, according to a 2011 memo on protecting the free speech rights of pro-Shariah Muslim supremacists.In a checklist obtained by The Daily Caller entitled “Countering Violent Extremism Dos and Don’ts” the DHS’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties notifies local and national law enforcement officials that it is Obama administration policy to consider specifically Islamic criticism of the American system of government legitimate….

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Prominent American Muslim, Umar Lee, leaves Islam: “We were lied to”

By Robert Spencer

Umar Lee, a convert to Islam from St. Louis, was once enough of an Islamic supremacist to write to a rival: “i could cut your neck with the sword of islam and watch you squeal like a bitch like daniel pearl.” In an email exchange with me, heendorsed the death penalty for apostasy.

But now he has left Islam and returned to Christianity. Watch the video; in it he makes many, many important points about how converts to Islam are lied to, and how Islam establishes an empire of fear.

Note especially this, starting at 4:04:

“We can talk about the grievance industry, CAIR, etc., trying to hype up the threat of Islamophobia. Islamophobia is very minor. You want to talk about religious bias? You convert to Christianity in Saudi Arabia, you’re murdered. You convert from Islam in so many Muslim countries, it’s the death penalty. Why are Muslim societies so afraid of missionaries? Why are Muslim societies so afraid of freedom of speech? Why are Muslim societies so afraid of the Gospel? Why are Muslim societies so afraid of the message of Jesus Christ? If you believe Islam is the truth, why don’t you believe Islam can compete in the marketplace of ideas? Obviously you don’t, or you wouldn’t kill people that convert to Christianity and put missionaries in jail.”

Clearly they don’t believe Islam can compete in the marketplace of ideas….

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Informed and Determined

By Citizen Warrior

….”Kaibar, Khaibar” was chanted at that rally and “many others,” writes Katz. “It echoed all over the country, as Israeli flags burned in the background, from Florida to Texas, New York to California, and back to Washington, DC. To an outsider, this chant, ‘Khaibar, Khaibar, Ya Yahud, Jaish Muhammad Safayood,’ sounded perhaps like a cheerful freedom song. Many journalists told me that this was what they thought they were hearing. But its meaning is somewhat different: ‘Khaibar, Khaibar, O Jews, the army of Muhammad is coming for you.’ This song originates in a tale from the days of the Prophet Muhammad. As part of his campaign to conquer the Arabian peninsula, Muhammad laid siege to the city of Khaibar, which was inhabited by Jews. After losing several battles to the city’s powerful army, Muhammad decided to try a new tactic. He sent emissaries to Khaibar’s leaders with a message of peace. As soon as a peace treaty was signed and the gates of the city were opened, Jaish Muhammad, Muhammad’s army, stormed the city and butchered every last one of its inhabitants. ‘Khaibar, Khaibar’ means, ‘Let’s trick the Jews into making peace with us, and when they accept our offer, let’s go ahead and kill them all.’”

Do the journalists know this bit of Islamic history? Do they know that it says 91 times in the Koran that Muslims are required to follow Muhammad’s example in every particular? I doubt if one in a thousand knows even that much.

Those of us who have been awakened to the terrifying brilliance of Islam need to step up our game. Our educational campaign needs to be effective and unrelenting. We’re in a race against time. Orthodox Muslims are infiltrating and multiplying. The only thing that can put a stop to them is an informed and determined population of non-Muslims. And the only way our fellow non-Muslims are going to be informed is by hearing it from those who already know. That’s us. They’re not going to hear it at school, in the media, or from politicians. It’s just us.

But we’ve got to be smart about this, not simply passionate. We have to think in terms of small bits and long campaigns. We have to gain and maintain rapport. And we should use the effective tools we have at our disposal. If we do this, we can win.

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Islamic Forced Conversions — Past and Present

by Raymond Ibrahim

The lost history of Christians forced to convert to Islam—or die—is reemerging, figuratively and literally. According to the BBC: “Pope Francis has proclaimed the first saints of his pontificate in a ceremony [last Sunday] at the Vatican—a list which includes 800 victims of an atrocity carried out by Ottoman soldiers in 1480.They were beheaded in the southern Italian town of Otranto after refusing to convert to Islam.”

Palestinian Christian protesters lament forced conversions of loved ones.

The BBC adds in a sidebar: “The ‘Martyrs of Otranto’ were 813 Italians beheaded for defying demands by Turkish invaders to renounce Christianity.  The Turks had been sent by Mohammed II, who had already captured the ‘second Rome’ of Constantinople.”

Historical texts throughout the centuries are filled with similar anecdotes, including the “60 Martyrs of Gaza,” Christian soldiers who were executed for refusing Islam during the 7^th century Islamic invasion of Jerusalem. Seven centuries later, during the Islamic invasion of Georgia, Christians refusing to convert were forced into their church and set on fire. Witnesses for Christ lists 200 anecdotes of Christians killed—including some burned at the stake, thrown on iron spikes, dismembered, stoned, stabbed, shot at, drowned, pummeled to death, impaled and crucified—for refusing to embrace Islam.

If history is shocking, the fact is, today, Christians—men, women, and children—are still being forced to convert to Islam.  Pope Francis alluded to their sufferings during the same ceremony: “As we venerate the martyrs of Otranto, let us ask God to sustain those many Christians who, in these times and in many parts of the world, right now, still suffer violence, and give them the courage and fidelity to respond to evil with good.”…

….In Sudan, Muslims kidnapped a 15-year-old Christian girl; they raped, beat and ordered her to convert to Islam. When her mother went to police to open a case, the Muslim officer of the so-called “Family and Child Protection Unit,” told her: “You must convert to Islam if you want your daughter back.”

Indeed, because Christian females are the most vulnerable segments of Islamic societies, they are especially targeted for forced conversions. In 2012, U.S. Congress heard testimony about the “escalating abduction, coerced conversion and forced marriage of Coptic Christian women and girls [550 cases in the last five years alone].Those women are being terrorized and, consequently, marginalized, in the formation of the new Egypt.”

As my new book Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians documents, wherever there are large numbers of Muslims—whether in the Arab World, Africa, Asia, or even in the West—Christians are being persecuted.  Forced conversions are the tip of the iceberg, and certainly not anomalies of history.

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GOOD: 2 Minnesota Women Convicted of Funneling Money to Terror Group in Somalia

Associated Press

Supporters of two Somali women scheduled to be sentenced for helping a terrorist group gather outside the Hennepin County Government Center on Thursday, May 16, 2013, in Minneapolis. The two women being sentenced went door-to-door in the name of charity to collect money for the terror group al-Shabab in Somalia.

Two Minnesota women who claimed they were helping the poor in Somalia were convicted Thursday of conspiring to funnel money to a terrorist group as part of what prosecutors called a “deadly pipeline” sending funds and fighters to al-Shabab.

After the verdicts, one of the women, Amina Farah Ali, told the judge through an interpreter that she was happy because she was “going to heaven no matter what,” and condemned those in authority, saying: “You will go to hell.” She was ordered into custody pending her sentencing.

Ali, 35, and Hawo Mohamed Hassan, 64, were each charged with conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. Ali also faced 12 counts of providing such support, for allegedly sending more than $8,600 to al-Shabab from September 2008 through July 2009, while Hassan faced two counts of lying to the FBI.

Both were found guilty on all counts. The terrorism-related counts each carry up to 15 years in prison, while lying to the FBI carries up to eight years. No sentencing date was set, and prosecutors said it was too early to predict what sentence they’d recommend.

The women, both U.S. citizens of Somali descent, were among 20 people charged in Minnesota’s long-running federal investigations into recruiting and financing for al-Shabab, which the U.S. considers a terrorist group with ties to Al Qaeda. Investigators believe at least 21 men left Minnesota — home to the country’s largest Somali community — to join al-Shabab.

Though others have pleaded guilty to related charges, the women were the first to go to trial.

The verdicts will likely lead to other guilty pleas, said Omar Jamal, first secretary of the Somali mission to the United Nations in New York. He also said it would be difficult for law enforcement agencies to rebuild the trust they had worked to establish with the Somali community.

Prosecutors had emphasized that the case was not about a community or a religion, but two women who deliberately broke the law….

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Turkish Female Journalist Receives Death Threats for Removing Hijab

By Daniel Greenfield

….I FELT FREEDOM WHEN I TOOK OFF MY HEADSCARF”

“During the first years of wearing a headscarf, I used to feel like my head was stuck up inside a nylon bag, and I heard humming. I had those fearful moments when the needles came loose, wondering if the needle would prick my throat. So I would at times take off the headscarf secretly when my mother was not watching. But one day when I got caught by my mother she subjected me to an unforgettably painful beating.

30 years later, when I decided to uncover my head, another battle started. It was very difficult. Radical Islamists got very furious when a covered and well-known writer decided to uncover her head. I heard harsh insults and received death threats.

When I came to America, first of all I started to swim to my heart’s content… It was such regret for me not to have done it for so long that I didn’t want to get out of the swimming pool before I swam for two hours every night…

I suffered from vitamin D deficiency since my skin didn’t get enough sunlight by then and this normally causes serious illnesses, weakness and mental fatigue. I sunbathed a lot. Then I tied my hair in a pony-tail and played tennis under the blue sky with my white tennis clothes on. I cannot tell you how good it felt. Then I fulfilled my dream of growing nails and putting on red nail polish, which was a personal remembrance to me. I had met a woman in my trip to Iran who was forced to put her hands into a bag full of insects just because she had put on red nail polish… Whenever I put on red nail polish, I still remember that woman with sadness…

Now I am free and believe that God has no problem with the hair on my head, He will not burn me in his Hell for this reason, He holds us with much more mercy and kindness than we think, and that being “a good person” is much more important than wearing a dark veil.

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