7 Muslims Found Guilty of Raping British Children

Seven members of a sex grooming ring have been convicted of abusing children from Oxford.

 

An Old Bailey jury heard six girls were drugged and suffered sadistic abuse while aged between 11 and 15.

The court heard victims were plied with alcohol and drugs before being forced to perform sex acts. Some had also been beaten, burnt and threatened.

Nine men had denied charges including rape, arranging child prostitution and trafficking between 2004 and 2012.

Two were acquitted of all charges.

The judge told the guilty men: “You have been convicted of the most serious offences and long custodial sentences are inevitable.”

They are due to be sentenced on 26 June.

Pain and humiliation

The abuse began in Oxford but some of the victims would be later taken around the country to be offered to other men who were in contact with the gang.

The court heard how the men identified vulnerable girls for abuse then groomed each one of them until they were under the control of the gang.

Acts of physical and sexual violence escalated into using objects to cause pain and humiliation.

The court heard girls were tied up, burnt, suffocated, bitten, scratched and urinated upon.

Jurors were told most of the victims chose to take vast quantities of hard drugs to deaden their senses, particularly when they knew they were being hired out to a large group of men for gang abuse sessions that could go on for days.

The victims would return to Oxford bleeding, injured and carrying sexually-transmitted diseases.

One of the victims described being plied with hard drugs and forced to have sex with strangers while being filmed at the age of 13.

On one occasion she was given so much crack cocaine she could not breathe and was rushed to hospital.

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Another, who was groomed at the age of 11, said she fell in love with Mohammed Karrar who raped her, beat her with a baseball bat and forced her to have an illegal back-room abortion when she was 12-years-old.

She said of her abuse: “At the time I thought it was my choice and it was fine, but years on I can see I never had a choice. I said ‘no’ but I didn’t have a say.

“It was literally like a normal relationship but I know now it isn’t a normal relationship. I was a child.

“He told me he loved me. He said he would take me to Saudi Arabia when I was 15 and marry me. I believed him at the time.”

A number of opportunities to catch members of the gang are believed to have been missed and prosecutors, the police and social services have apologised for any failings.

Scuffle in court

The jury at the Old Bailey considered the evidence for two-and-a-half days and returned the following verdicts.

• Kamar Jamil was found guilty of five counts of rape, two counts of conspiracy to rape and one count of facilitating child prostitution.

• Akhtar Dogar was found guilty of five counts of rape, three counts of conspiracy to rape, two counts of child prostitution and one count of trafficking.

• Anjum Dogar was found guilty of four counts of rape, two counts of child prostitution, two counts of conspiracy to rape and one count of trafficking.

• Assad Hussain was found not guilty of rape and guilty of two counts of sex with a child.

• Mohammed Karrar was found guilty of two counts of conspiracy to rape, three counts of rape of a child, one count of using an instrument to procure miscarriage, two counts of trafficking, one count of assault of a child by penetration, one count of child prostitution, one count of rape and one count of supplying a class A drug.

• Bassam Karrar was found guilty of two counts of rape, one count of conspiracy to rape a child, one count of rape of a child, one count of child prostitution, one count of trafficking and one count of conspiracy to rape.

• Zeeshan Ahmed was found guilty of two counts of sex with a child.

There was a scuffle in the dock as Ahmed struck out at Mohammed Hussain when he was cleared of the charges against him.

Mr Hussain was found not guilty of three counts of sex with a child.

Sold for sex

The Old Bailey was told the key members of the group used and abused the six victims in a systematic and organised sex trafficking ring over eight years until their arrest in 2012.

The court heard how the men identified vulnerable girls for abuse and then groomed each one of them until they were under the control of the gang.

They were then each either abused by the men themselves, given to their friends or offered at a price to others who were not on trial.

The youngest girl to be targeted was 11-years-old. The girls were mostly chosen because their unsettled or troubled lives made them easier to manipulate.

The Crown Prosecution Service said it would look again at its decision to take no further action over allegations involving the girls between 2005 and 2006.

Baljit Ubhey, chief crown prosecutor for Thames and Chiltern, said: “I think we could have been more proactive. Of four cases we looked at, in three of those it’s arguable we might have been able to do more.

“I think what these cases have highlighted is that they’re probably not isolated incidents and there’s probably more of this activity going on.”

‘Deep regret’

One of the victims had complained to police twice but no one was charged.

A care home manager, who was later sacked, refused to pay her taxi fare when she returned after running away and the 14-year-old was driven back to Oxford where she was raped.

The court heard girls, who had been placed in care by Oxfordshire County Council for their own protection, would frequently abscond and were caught with older men by police.

Council chief executive Joanna Simons said: “We are incredibly sorry we were not able to stop it any sooner.

“We were up against a gang of devious criminals. The girls thought they were their friends.”

Det Ch Supt Rob Mason said: “Thames Valley Police and Oxfordshire County Council social services deeply regret that this activity wasn’t identified sooner and that we were too reliant on victims supporting criminal proceedings and that they suffered a terrible ordeal.”

More on This Story

Related Stories

• ‘Abused to the point of torture’ Watch

  14 MAY 2013, UK

• Who were the victims?

  14 MAY 2013, ENGLAND

• Who were the men behind the abuse?

  14 MAY 2013, OXFORD

• Why was abuse not stopped sooner?

  14 MAY 2013, ENGLAND

• Oxford grooming: Girl Three’s story

  14 MAY 2013, UK

 

source:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-22438623

Sharia Undercover: Muslim Women in UK Forced to Stay in Abusive Marriages

Secretly filmed documentary shows growing trend of Sharia courts deciding fate of Muslim women in UK.

By Soeren Kern 

A new documentary secretly filmed inside several of the 85 Islamic Sharia Law courts operating in Britain has exposed the systematic discrimination that many women are suffering at the hands of Muslim jurists.

The documentary, Secrets of Britain’s Sharia Courts, was filmed by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and was first aired on BBC Panorama, a long-running current affairs program, on April 8.

The undercover investigation proves what has long been suspected: Namely, that Sharia courts, which operate in mosques and houses across Britain, routinely issue rulings on domestic and marital issues according to Islamic Sharia law that are at odds with British law.

Although Sharia rulings are not legally binding, those subject to the rulings often feel obliged to obey them as a matter of religious belief, or because of pressure from family and community members to do so.

The documentary contends that the Sharia courts, run by Muslim judges known as qadi, are putting women at risk of violence from abusive husbands by pressuring them to stay in abusive marriages.

In one case, the BBC secretly filmed proceedings at the Islamic Sharia Council in Leyton, a heavily Islamized area in east London. While there, a BBC reporter met Sonia, a Muslim woman from Leeds who has suffered extreme physical abuse from her husband. When Sonia obtained a civil divorce, the courts allowed her husband only indirect access to the children.

But when Sonia went to Leyton Sharia Council for an Islamic divorce, she was told she would have to give up custody of the children to her husband. According to British law, Sharia courts are not allowed to interfere in child access matters.

After Sonia threatened to contact the police, the Leyton Sharia Council dropped its demand.

Reflecting on the court case, Sonia said, “I could not bear the thought of such a violent person having my children. What was shocking was when I explained to them why he should not have that access to the children, their reaction was, well, you cannot go against what Islam says.”

In another case, a Muslim convert from Bristol named Cara contacted the Leyton Sharia Council for a divorce. Cara, who met her husband at university, had been persuaded to have only a Sharia marriage. After the wedding, she was abused by her husband, who allegedly controlled her by taking all of her earnings. After he brought prostitutes to their home, Cara ran away to a shelter.

The Leyton Sharia Council told Cara she would have be accompanied by her estranged husband for arbitration. “I was shocked,” says Cara. “Surely they can see that women who have been through this cannot be forced to meet up with someone who is abusing them.”

The BBC then sent an undercover reporter to the Leyton Sharia Council to see what advice its members would give a vulnerable female client. Her story was that her husband was hitting her.

During the proceedings, the secret recordings show that Suhaib Hasan, a senior member of the Leyton Sharia Council, told the undercover reporter that going to the police would result in her having to go to a shelter, which, he said, was a “very bad option.”

Hasan suggested that she ask herself if the violence was due to her own actions, then urged her to redouble her efforts to be a good wife by cooking and cleaning for her husband.

The BBC also filmed proceedings at Sharia Council of Dewsbury, a city in West Yorkshire that is a magnet for Muslim immigration. (Islamists have promised to turn Dewsbury into an independent Islamic state ruled by Sharia law, and entirely apart from British jurisprudence.)

The documentary also shows a woman named Ayesha who has been physically abused by her estranged husband and then went to the Dewsbury Sharia Council to get a divorce. Although her husband has been imprisoned for violence, Ayesha was told she would have to go to mediation with him. The advice ignored injunctions issued by a British court and which Ayesha and her children hold against her husband due to his abuse.

According to Ayesha, “I cannot do that because he is not even allowed near my house, and because I am frightened. I cannot face him… but they did not take any notice.”

After an outside lawyer became involved in Ayesha’s case, the Dewsbury Sharia Council eventually agreed to see Ayesha on her own. It took Ayesha two years for her divorce to be granted by the council, by which time her husband had re-married in Pakistan.

The BBC showed the secret footage to the head of the Crown Prosecution Service in northwestern England, Nazir Afzal, a Muslim who has spoken out against honor-based domestic violence. He said he was “disappointed but not surprised” by what he had seen.

Referring to the Sharia courts, Afzal said, “Most of them are fine, are absolutely fine, but there are some who are putting women at risk. And doing so for ridiculous reasons, namely that they are somehow responsible for the abuse they are suffering.”

Under the Arbitration Act 1996, Sharia courts in Britain — home to a sizable Muslim population of nearly 3 million — are legally recognized as providing a form of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). In addition to marital disputes, Sharia courts rule in conflicts over inheritance, contractual disagreements between Muslim landlords and tenants and sometimes between employees and their employer.

But Sharia courts have long been accused of discriminating against women. In the case of divorce, for example, men and women are treated differently. When a man has initiated a divorce, the procedure is called talaq; when a woman has initiated a divorce, it is called khula.

With an Islamic marriage, a man can initiate the divorce from his wife by pronouncing the so-called triple-talaq ["I divorce you. I divorce you. I divorce you."]. By contrast, the only way for women to divorce their husbands is through the use of Sharia councils. Women are required to produce two male witnesses, and, while a man pays nothing, an Islamic divorce costs a woman at least £400 ($600).

Moreover, under Sharia law, a woman must pay compensation to her husband by handing over all of her dowry and other wedding gifts before a divorce can be granted. This can effectively constrain women from seeking a divorce because, with the loss of the dowry, they have no financial means of support. Because Sharia marriages are not recognized under British law, when it comes to a divorce, Muslim women are not automatically entitled to half the house or financial assets.

The British Parliament held its first-ever full parliamentary debate on the issue of Sharia courts in October 2012, after the Baroness Cox, who has long campaigned against the spread of Islamic law in Britain, presented a bill in the House of Lords that would specifically limit the activities of Sharia courts and explicitly require them to uphold equality laws including women’s rights.

The so-called Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill — currently moving through the legislative process — would also make it a criminal offense punishable by five years in prison for anyone falsely to claim or imply that Sharia courts or councils have legal jurisdiction over British family or criminal law.

Baroness Cox told the House of Lord about Sharia law cases she had encountered, including that of a woman who had been admitted to hospital by her violent husband — who had left her for another woman but still denied her a religious divorce so she could remarry.

Another woman was forced to travel to Jordan to seek permission to remarry from a seven-year-old boy she had never met because she had no other male relatives. A third woman who came to see her was so afraid of being seen going into the Sharia court that she hid behind a tree.

Another woman told Baroness Cox: “I feel betrayed by Britain, I came to this country to get away from all this but the situation is worse here than in my country of origin.”

At the same hearing, Baroness Donaghy, a Labour Party peer, said: “The definition of mutuality is sometimes being stretched to such limits that a women is said to consent to a process when in practice, because of a language barrier, huge cultural or family pressure, ignorance of the law, a misplaced faith in the system or a threat of complete isolation, that mutuality is as consensual as rape.”

Baroness Cox added: “These examples are just the tip of an iceberg as many women live in fear, so intimidated by family and community that they dare not speak out or ask for help. It is a system which, in its gender discrimination causing women such suffering, is utterly incompatible with our country’s values. It is time to draw a line in the sand and say ‘enough is enough.’”

The Leyton Sharia Council — the oldest Islamic council in Britain and one of the most active in the country — is also hoping to draw a line in the sand: to establish the full recognition of Islamic Sharia law.

On its website, the Leyton Sharia Council writes: “Though the Council is not yet legally recognized by the authorities in the UK, the fact that it is already established, and is gradually gaining ground among the Muslim community, and the satisfaction attained by those who seek its ruling, are all preparatory steps towards the final goal of gaining the confidence of the host community in the soundness of the Islamic legal system and the help and insight they could gain from it. The experience gained by the scholars taking part in its procedures make them more prepared for the eventuality of recognition for Islamic law.”

source:  http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/inside-uks-shari-courts?ModPagespeed=noscript   

Raped and Abandoned in Dubai: The Alicia Gali Story

Alicia Gali was savagely raped in the United Arab Emirates, then charged with having illicit sex outside marriage and thrown in jail for eight months.

Reporter:  Ross Coulthart

Producer:  Ali Russell 

With Dubai emerging as a major stopover point for long haul journeys, five hundred flights a month will deliver over one million of us to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the next year.

Dubai is being promoted as a luxury high-class paradise in the desert, but the reality is brutally different, as Australian Alicia Gali discovered. Gali took a job in the UAE with one of the world’s biggest hotel chains, Starwood. What happened next makes this story a must-watch for every Australian planning on travelling through the region.

Gali was using her laptop in the hotel’s staff bar when her drink was spiked. She awoke to a nightmare beyond belief: she had been savagely raped by three of her colleagues. Alone and frightened, she took herself to hospital. What Alicia didn’t know is that under the UAE’s strict sharia laws, if the perpetrator does not confess, a rape cannot be convicted without four adult Muslim male witnesses. She was charged with having illicit sex outside marriage, and thrown in a filthy jail cell for eight months.

Now, finally home and struggling to move on with her life, Alicia breaks her silence for the first time on television to reporter Ross Coulthart. 

Video: Alicia Shares Her Story Here:

Abandoned in Dubai:  Part I

Abandoned in Dubai:  Part II

The Australian Television Program, “Sunday Night” emailed Alicia’s employer in the UAE, Starwood Hotels, with a detailed list of questions pertaining to her case. This was their response:

“What happened in June 2008 to Alicia Gali, a former employee of Le Méridien Al Aqah hotel, was deplorable.  While the hotel worked diligently on Ms. Gali’s behalf, the authorities investigated and prosecuted Ms. Gali under the local laws. Additionally, the men involved were also prosecuted and each served prison terms before being deported. As for Ms. Gali’s lawsuit against the hotel, we disagree with the allegations.

The hotel management provided support and assistance to Ms. Gali and her family throughout that time,

including assisting with medical support and the investigation, liaising with her representative Australian embassy and coordinating and arranging affairs with her family in Australia.

Starwood’s repeated approaches to discuss Ms. Gali’s claim with her attorneys have been ignored and declined. As this matter is part of an open on-going Starwood investigation and litigation commenced by Ms. Gali against Starwood and the Commonwealth of Australia, we cannot comment further at this time.

The safety and security of our associates and guests continues to be a paramount priority.”

We also contacted the Australian government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) with a detailed list of questions regarding Alicia’s case. This was their response:

“The Department rejects Ms Gali’s account of her dealings with the Australian Consulate in Dubai, as suggested in your letter of 7 May 2013. Ms Gali was provided with extensive consular assistance by the Australian Consulate in Dubai. Our consular officers do not give legal advice, but do assist Australians in trouble to obtain local legal advice.

As this matter is subject to ongoing legal proceedings, the Department is unable to respond to the questions raised in your letter or participate in the Sunday Night program. The Department will present its position as necessary during the course of the legal proceedings.”

USEFUL LINKS:

The Australian government’s advice to travellers to the UAE

A list of banned substances in the UAE, including codeine

For more information on human rights in the UAE, go to Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International.

 

source:  http://au.news.yahoo.com/sunday-night/features/article/-/17094076/abandoned/

The Crisis of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in the UK

 

by Soeren Kern

Despite these laws, no one has ever been prosecuted for performing FGM. Victims are often afraid to speak out for fear of physical abuse or death threats, some involving paid hitmen.

British authorities are redoubling their fight against the spiraling problem of female genital mutilation (FGM) after a weekly primetime television show broadcast by the BBC forced the previously “taboo” subject into mainstream debate.

FGM is endemic in Muslim-majority countries across Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Three million girls between infancy and age 15 are subject to FGM every year, and it is believed that 140 million women worldwide are suffering from the lifelong consequences of the practice.

FGM has emerged as a major problem in Europe due to mass immigration. The European Parliament estimates that 500,000 girls and women in the European Union are living with FGM, and every year another 180,000 girls in Europe are at risk of being “cut.”

Britain has the highest levels of FGM in Europe. According to a government-funded study published in 2007, at least 66,000 women and girls in Britain have had the procedure performed on them, and more than 20,000 girls under the age of 15 are currently at risk.

These figures, however, may be only the tip of the iceberg. A 2011 Department of Health policy paper warns that “it is possible that, due to population growth and immigration from practicing countries…FGM is significantly more prevalent than these figures suggest.”

FGM is thought to be common in Britain among immigrant groups from Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Indonesia, Iraq, Kenya, Kurdistan, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Northern Sudan, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Somalia and Yemen.

The Times of London has reported that circumcisers — also known as “house doctors” because they conduct the procedure in private homes — are often flown to Britain from Africa and the Middle East to carry out the mutilations.

Alternatively, families who have immigrated to Britain from countries where FGM is practiced may send their daughters back to those countries to undergo FGM there, ostensibly under the guise of visiting relatives.

According to The Guardian, the six-week-long school summer holiday in Britain is the most dangerous time of the year for these girls. It is a convenient time to carry out the procedure because the girls need several weeks to heal before returning to school.

Sometimes immigrants living in other European countries even send their daughters to Britain to have them mutilated there. In an interview with the BBC, Isabelle Gillette-Faye, an anti-FGM activist in France, recounts the story of two little girls about to board a train for London.

Gillette-Faye says: “It was a Friday. We heard just in time. They had tickets for Saturday. A family member tipped us off. We told the police and they were stopped from making the journey.” The parents were warned that if they would go ahead with the mutilations and be found out, they would be imprisoned for up to 13 years.

“In England,” she added, “you are very respectful of your immigrants. It is very different in France. They have to integrate and they have to obey our laws. We simply will not tolerate this practice.”

In Bristol, a city in southwest England with a sizeable immigrant community, it is believed that some 2,000 girls are at risk of “FGM parties.” According to the BBC, “They cut them all together, as a group, because it is cheaper and quicker that way. At first the girls are all excited because it’s a party, until they realize what is going to happen, and then they get frightened. It’s done by the elder women, or the Imam, whoever is expert at cutting.”

FGM has been a crime in Britain for more than 25 years. It was made a criminal offense by the Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985. That Act was superseded by the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 and (in Scotland) by the Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation (Scotland) Act 2005, both of which also introduce extraterritoriality. Taking a British citizen or permanent resident abroad for the purpose of FGM is a criminal offense whether or not it is lawful in the country to which the girl is taken.

Despite these laws — which carry a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison for anyone convicted of carrying out FGM or helping it to take place — no one in Britain has ever been prosecuted for performing it.

One reason for the lack of prosecutions is the difficulty in gathering evidence because the victims of FGM are often afraid to speak out. Girls and women who do speak out against FGM have suffered verbal and physical abuse from adult men and women in their communities in London, Bristol, Cardiff and Manchester in attempts to silence them.

The Sunday Times recently reported that a 29-year-old British-Somalian woman named Nimko Ali had received death threats — a man she considered a friend had offered a hitman £500 ($775) to murder her — since going public in February as a victim of the practice. Intimidation also involves threatening phone calls, emails, texts and tweets.

Another reason for Britain’s dismal record at bringing perpetrators to justice is tolerance of FGM due to political correctness and concerns over “cultural sensitivity.” Although the mainstream media routinely take pains to avoid any insinuation that FGM has anything to do with Islam, doctrinally, historically, geographically and juridically, the practice is intrinsically linked to Islam. As a result, there is a reluctance to tackle FGM because doing so is perceived as attacking Islam. This, however, may be about to change.

In April, BBC One’s Casualty, a highly popular emergency medical drama series, became the first mainstream drama on British television to feature a story about FGM. Scriptwriters on the series worked with FGM pressure groups and young girls to produce the two-part drama, which aired on April 6 and 13.

The program’s storyline (brief video here) follows a young girl called Tamasha who deliberately injures herself to avoid being sent abroad for the procedure. The show also shows another girl’s battle to save her younger sister from having a female circumcision in a makeshift clinic.

Casualty’s focus on FGM has raised popular awareness of the practice in Britain, and has created new momentum to tackle the controversial problem.

On April 29, Scotland Yard [London Police] appealed for information to identify the perpetrators of FGM amid growing indications that girls in the capital are being “cut.”

Detective Chief Superintendent Keith Niven, the head of Scotland Yard’s child abuse command, said officers would “relentlessly pursue” those carrying out FGM and had already received “a variety of pieces of information” that the illegal practice was being carried out in London, where members of Scotland Yard believe at least 6,000 girls are at risk.

In an interview with the London-based newspaper Evening Standard, Niven said that further information was needed to protect girls from the “appalling” physical and psychological damage caused by the crime of FGM. “The information that we are getting is that this crime takes place abroad, but that it also takes place here and we have to take that seriously.”

He added: “Historically, we have looked at this very much in terms of victims coming forward, but there is a very low level of reporting of this crime. So we also want people who have information about where it is happening to speak to us so we can identify the individuals who are cutting girls and gather evidence with a view to prosecution.”

Tip-offs, Niven said, could be provided anonymously via the Crimestoppers number because victims are often reluctant to testify, as many of those performing or organizing FGM are relatives or friends.

After being an “underground” problem for many years, Niven continued, the impact of FGM was now being brought fully “into the open:” “People are beginning to understand the enormity of this crime,” he said. “There are significant psychological, physical and emotional impacts that can last through childhood and later life.”

“We want to send out the message,” he added, “that the UK is not somewhere you can come and get away with this. If you come here and we get information that you are engaging in this crime then we will relentlessly pursue you with a view to prosecution.”

In November 2012, the Director of Public Prosecutions of England and Wales, Keir Starmer, launched a plan he hopes will facilitate prosecutions for FGM. The plan is aimed at increasing the number of referrals to police and prosecutors, and improving evidence gathering. His proposals include learning from countries such as France and Holland where people have been successfully prosecuted, as well as better analyzing failed cases in Britain. A steering group will consider whether a change in legislation is needed, and whether existing laws could be better used.

In announcing the plan, Starmer said: “Everyone who can play a part in stopping FGM — from the doctor with a suspicion that an offense has been committed and the police officer investigating the initial complaint to the prosecutor taking a charging decision — needs to know what to do to improve detection rates, strengthen investigations and, for the part of the CPS [Crown Prosecution Service], to start getting these offenders into court. I am determined that the CPS should play a key role in ensuring that the impunity with which these offenders have acted will end.”

Police and prosecutors are now reviewing hundreds of historic cases of FGM in a bid to bring the first prosecution in Britain since the practice was ruled illegal in 1985. Legal experts are already examining six cases referred by police, and scores more are being considered.

According to the newspaper The Independent, the review centers on cases which originally failed to meet the prosecution threshold under existing FGM laws. The CPS is now reconsidering those cases under a variety of alternative criminal offenses, including conspiracy charges and the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act, which established an offense of causing or allowing a child or vulnerable adult to die or suffer serious physical harm.

A CPS spokesman interviewed by The Independent said, “We have been working with police to identify the types of evidence required to support charges under other legislation, including conspiracy charges. In addition, the Metropolitan Police will be looking at previous investigations of FGM with the CPS, and whether new action can be taken.”

In Bristol, Police and Crime Commissioner Sue Mountstevens has promised prosecutions where “enough evidence” has been collected. Speaking to the BBC, she said, “This is mutilation and child abuse. We need a wake-up call. Too many people are denying this is happening and we want them to come forward.”

 

source:  http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3705/uk-female-genital-mutilation

Europe and Islam: A Douglas Murray Presentation in Copenhagen (Video)

Islamic Jihadists Recruiting in Welsh Schools

Counter-terror experts are targeting schools feared to have been ­infiltrated by Islamic fundamentalists using Wales as a base for recruitment.

A leaked “restricted report,” called the Wales Contest Plan, that deals with the specific terror threats to Wales, exposes ­growing radicalization in Cardiff and proposes extra training in how to spot extremism for staff at schools “identified as having increased risks” of radicalism.

Early signs of radicalization need to be spotted by professionals, says counter-terrorism expert Professor Michael Levi.

Professor Levi said that in addition to educating teachers to spot the early signs of radicalization, teachers need to engage in an “active debate on legitimacy” on what shapes the beliefs of extremists. Education officials must ensure that the school curriculum fully addresses reasons why people become extremists, the counter-terrorism expert said.

Levi said that while the measures detailed in the Wales Contest Plan are real, the country should not assume that the task of tackling the issues of radicalization and extremism would be easy.

“We have to think about what attracts people into blowing things or people up, as they are essentially announcing, ‘We are here, now pay attention to our grievances’ ” said Levi.

“We have to ask how much attention do we give to debates of legitimacy in society and in our schools? How does this feature in our curriculum? There needs to be an active discussion, as well as providing teachers with the knowledge of what to look out for,” he continued

Prof. Levi’s comments also come as Wales’ most senior counter-terrorism officer said specialists are engaging with youngsters in schools in order to protect them from the dangers of embracing terrorism.

In December 2010, two brothers Abdul Miah, 25, and Gurukanth Desai, 30, from Cardiff, together with Omar Sharif Latif, were arrested after planning a Mumbai-style attack on the London Stock Exchange. They were eventually sentenced to a total of 40 years in jail.

In another incident, Idris Faridi, 32, of Roath, Cardiff, was jailed for nine months after a “terrorist’s manual” called 39 Ways To Serve And Proceed In Jihad was discovered on his computer’s hard drive. He had applied to work at the Millennium Stadium during the Olympic Games.

Assistant Chief Constable Matt Jukes, head of the Wales Extremism and Counter Terrorism Unit said “At the heart of this, there’s a question of safeguarding children. If young people are being exploited, and I’m not suggesting that is the case, if they put themselves on a path of some of these ideals, not only will they take lives, they are at risk themselves and we are concerned about saving lives.”

A recent report by European Police Office (Europol) found that the number of terrorist acts and related arrests across Europe rose in 2012, bucking a downward trend in previous years. The report revealed there were 219 terrorist attacks across Europe in 2012, compared with 174 in 2011. The number of people arrested for terror-related offences also rose to 537, from 484 in the previous year.

Meanwhile Europol director Rob Wainwright revealed that increasing numbers of EU citizens who have become radicalized have travelled to regions of conflict to take part in terrorist activities.  “There is growing concern about the threat posed by these people, given the possibility of their returning to the European Union intent on committing acts of terrorism,” he said.

A spokesman for the Welsh Government said, “Clearly schools have an important role to play in helping our children and young people understand the reasons why a small minority of people are drawn into becoming violent extremists.”

That is the reason that the Welsh Government produced the  “Respect and Resilience” book which is a guide and good practice document for schools to help support schools in their role in developing and supporting strategic approaches to promoting community cohesion and preventing violent extremism.

 

source:  http://www.clarionproject.org/news/islamic-jihadists-recruiting-welsh-schools

Belgium Erasing Christianity for Islam

 

by Soeren Kern

Under the guise of letting go of the Christian holidays, this text provides Muslims with a waiver to add Islamic holidays…. Six Belgian senators introduced a draft resolution in the Belgian Parliament that would make “Islamophobia” a crime punishable by fines and imprisonment. A person would be guilty if he “considers Islam to be violent, threatening or supportive of terrorism…” or “considers Islam to be a political ideology, used for political and military purposes to establish it hegemony.” If passed, the law would pose a devastating blow to the exercise of free speech in Belgium.

Wallonia, the French-speaking southern region of Belgium, has officially renamed the four major Christian holidays on the Belgian school calendar with secular names.

Critics of the move say it reflects an ongoing effort by politicians in Belgium to remove Christianity from public life to accommodate a burgeoning Muslim population.

The French Community of Belgium — which has its own institutions, parliament and government, and has jurisdiction over the five provinces of Wallonia and over the Francophone population of Brussels in the areas of education and culture — adopted a framework decree that formally establishes the new secularized names in the interests of “administrative simplification.”

As reported by the center-right newspaper La Libre on March 26, school calendars within Belgium’s French speaking community will permanently use the following terminology: the Christian holiday previously known as All Saints Day (Congés de Toussaint) will now be referred to as Autumn Leave (Congé d’automne); Christmas Vacation (Vacances de Noël) is now Winter Vacation (Vacances d’hiver); Lenten Vacation (Congés de Carnaval) is now Rest and Relaxation Leave (Congé de détente); and Easter (Vacances de Pâques) is now Spring Vacation (Vacances de Printemps).

Although these secularized appellations have been used intermittently over the past several years, the new decree formalizes their use on a permanent basis.

The move to “de-Christianize” the Christian holidays has been roundly criticized by those opposed to the relentless spread of multiculturalism in Belgium.

Some of the most vocal opposition has come from the Reformist Movement (Mouvement Réformateur, MR), an alliance of four center-right parties that together comprise the largest classical liberal political formation in French-speaking Belgium.

MR leader Françoise Bertieaux accused the Wallonian Minister of Education, Marie-Dominique Simonet, of pandering to Muslims at the expense of Christians. “Minister Simonet wants to push religion [Christianity] out the door, but the new decree actually opens the way for reintroducing religion [Islam] through the window. Under the guise of letting go of [Christian] religion and tradition, this text opens the way to new vacation days for other religions [Islam]. MR firmly regrets this new formula,” Bertieaux said.

According to Bertieaux, Article 9, Paragraph 3 of the new decree provides Muslims with a waiver that would allow them to add Islamic religious holidays to the official school calendar.

The dust-up in Wallonia comes just months after city officials in Brussels removed the traditional Christmas tree in city’s Gothic central square and replaced it with a politically correct structure of abstract minimalist art.

Critics accused the Socialist mayor of Brussels, Freddy Thielemans, of declaring war on Christmas by installing the “multicultural” structure of lights to avoid offending the city’s growing Muslim population.

Historically, a 20 meter (65 foot) fir tree taken from the forests of the Ardennes has adorned the city’s main square, the Grand-Place. In 2012, however, it was replaced with a 25 meter (82 foot) new-age-like structure of lighted boxes (see picture here). In addition, the traditional Christmas Market in downtown Brussels was renamed as “Winter Pleasures 2012.”

The mayor’s office, where more than half of the city’s eleven councilors are either Muslim or Socialist or both, said the non-tree — which cost the taxpayers of Brussels a total of €44,000 ($57,000), compared to €5,000 for the traditional tree — was part of a theme celebrating “light.”

City Councilor Philippe Close said the aim was to show off the “avant-garde character” of Brussels by blending the modern and the traditional to produce something new and different.

But Bianca Debaets, a Brussels councilor from the Christian Democratic and Flemish party, told the Flemish newspaper Brussel Nieuws that she believed an argument over Muslim religious sensitivities had prompted the Brussels City Council to put up the light sculpture.

“I suspect that the reference to the Christian religion was the decisive factor in replacing the tree,” Debaets said. “For a lot of people who are not Christians, the tree there is offensive to them. What will be next? Will all Easter eggs be banned in Brussels because they refer to Easter?”

In an interview with the BBC News, Erik Maxwell, a resident of Brussels, said: “We think the tree has been put up for cultural reasons. A tree is for Christmas and Christians but now there are a lot of Muslims here in Brussels. So to avoid discussions they have just replaced a tree with a couple of cubes!”

After all the efforts to make Belgium more Islam-friendly, however, many Muslims say they still feel alienated from Belgian society.

According to a new survey of Muslim youth in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking northern half of Belgium, only 30% of Muslim males between the ages of 15 and 25 feel as though they are accepted by Flemish society. This figure drops to 25% for Muslim females in the same age group.

The survey, which was published by the daily newspaper Gazet van Antwerpen on April 19, shows that 60% of Muslim youth believe that they will never be integrated into Belgian society. One in three of those surveyed say that he or she has been discriminated against at school, and one in five say they have been discriminated against at work. More than 50% say they have been victims of racism. Although 93% of those surveyed have Belgian citizenship, 42% of them say they consider themselves to be foreigners.

The results are virtually unchanged from a similar survey conducted in 2005, and imply that years of government efforts to make Belgium more multicultural have done nothing to change the minds of Muslim youth.

According to the Flemish Minister for Integration, Geert Bourgeois, Muslim youth should work harder and complain less. “That so many young people feel discriminated against and do not feel accepted means that our society still has a lot of work to do. It’s actually an ‘us-them’ story. We as a society can and should still make an extra effort, but conversely, Muslim youth should do more as well. Perhaps an inverted research shows that we just think that young Muslims do not belong because they do not want to belong,” Bourgeois said.

If Belgian multiculturalists have their way, however, asking Muslims to do more to integrate into Belgian society may soon become a criminal offense.

In February, six Belgian senators (three of whom are Muslim) introduced a draft resolution in the Belgian Federal Parliament that would make “Islamophobia” a crime punishable by fines and imprisonment.

The draft text — which, among other objectives, seeks to equate “Islamophobia” with anti-Semitism — is audacious in scope and if passed would pose a devastating blow to the exercise of free speech in Belgium.

According to the authors of the resolution, a person would be guilty of Islamophobia if he or she:

• Considers Islam to be a single monolithic bloc, closed and static, incapable of adapting to new situations;

• Considers Islam to be separate and “different,” devoid of having any aims or shared values ​​with other cultures, not influenced by other cultures and not influencing other cultures;

• Considers Islam to be inferior to the West, to be barbaric, irrational, primitive and sexist;

• Considers Islam to be violent, threatening and supportive of terrorism, actively engaged in a ‘clash of civilizations’;

• Considers Islam to be a political ideology, used for political and military purposes to establish its hegemony;

• Rejects out of hand criticisms made by Islam of ‘the West’;

• Shows hostility towards Islam to justify discrimination and social exclusion of Muslims;

• Accepts hostility toward Muslims as natural and normal.

This definition of Islamophobia, which is based on a 1997 report published by the London-based Runnymede Trust, would effectively outlaw any critical discussion of Islam in Belgium under the guise of combatting racism.

The draft resolution has outraged free speech activists, who are demanding more public scrutiny of what they say is a “draconian” measure that is contrary to liberal democratic values. But the sponsors of the text remain unapologetic.

In an interview with the daily newspaper Le Soir, Senator Richard Miller from Wallonia accuses critics of the resolution of trying to make the draft text say things it does not say.

Miller, a member of the same Mouvement Réformateur that has accused other Belgian politicians of pandering to Muslims, claims his measure is not meant to prohibit the criticism of Islam, but only to “fight against those who often use a variety of arguments, with the result of creating unease in the Muslim population.”

 

source:  http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3692/belgium-erasing-christianity

Words of Wisdom: Sir Winston Churchill on Islam

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.  A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement, the next of its dignity and sanctity.  The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. 

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it.  No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.  Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith.  It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step, and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it (Islam) has vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.”

Mosques Are the Battleground of the War Between Islam and the West

 

Video Here:  Gavin Boby: Mosque Approval Process

By Enza Ferreri

“We don’t debate unprofessional councillors, unprincipled journalists, and self-righteous community organizers; we turn the tables on them”: this is how British barrister Gavin Boby, also known as the “mosque buster”, describes the activity of his organization, the Law And Freedom Foundation. He uses the law to stop the building of mosques in the UK  by demonstrating to local councils that the building of a mosque or an Islamic centre is actually in violation of British law. And he succeeds: the count so far is 16 victories out of 17 cases.

Gavin Boby is a 48-year-old planning lawyer from Bristol, South-West England. He deals with planning permissions or zoning permissions.

Like many other people in Britain, for almost 10 years Boby had witnessed the progressive penetration of Islam in his country, but like many other people he watched idly not knowing what to do about it.

It was the same feeling of impotence that most of us shared. But then, a couple of years ago, he had this idea. Many mosques disrupt neighbourhoods and drive out long-time residents. Non-Muslim women in particular are made to feel uncomfortable in those areas. Why not use his legal skills to help local communities resist planning applications for mosques?

The BBC video above the article exposes how corrupt the process of granting mosque planning applications can be, showcasing a session in the Rochdale Council’s planning committee in the North of England, during which councillor Begum does not allow discussion before the vote is taken and rushes the other members to vote.

This is very topical in light of the recent revelations that the Boston bombers’ mosque “has been associated with other terrorism suspects, has invited radical speakers to a sister mosque in Boston and is affiliated with a Muslim group that critics say nurses grievances that can lead to extremism”, has classic jihadi texts in its library, and gave money to two terrorist charities which have been shut down by the U.S. government. But then again, when is something about the violent nature of Islam not topical these days?

Still, this is a good way to introduce the mosque buster’s work. What are mosques? As we know, mosques are not like churches or synagogues, they are far more than houses of worship and contemplation, many of them are centres of jihadist activity that indoctrinate to commit and support violence against infidels. In America, as many as 4 different studies have independently come to the same conclusion that 80 per cent of US mosques “were teaching jihad, Islamic supremacism, and hatred and contempt for Jews and Christians”.

The Law And Freedom Foundation website declares: “A mosque is not merely a place of worship. Islamic doctrine requires the application of Islamic law within its geographical reach.”

We can see the truth of that in London. It is no coincidence that sharia-law areas or self-declared Muslim areas with Muslim patrols acting like vigilantes in cities like London are near mosques. We are increasingly seeing Muslim patrols in the proximity of mosques saying to passers-by that they can’t walk a dog, wear a skirt, drink alcohol.

In an interview Gavin Boby explains that mosques are being used as the bridgehead, the forefront of the advance of Islam in a territory. What happens in neighbourhoods – usually working class districts which are not used to dealing with officialdom – where a mosque is built is that the area changes forever for its residents, who no longer recognize it and eventually have to move out, due to things like the parking jihad, general harassment, vandalism.

“The parking jihad is” he describes, “soon after the construction of a mosque, people will find no parking space there, their driveway is being blocked or even a car is parked in the driveway inside your property and if you ask them to move their car they’ll say it’s only for an hour.” The parking tends to be used as a way to establish possession and control over the area, of saying: ”This is a mosque area, we are the owners now and there’s nothing you can do about it”, and then after that it gets worse until the point when people move out.

“The Koran” the Bristol lawyer continues, ”calls 14 times for the enslavement of non-Muslims, and 3 times for killing the unbelievers wherever they are found. This is obviously against English law. You don’t need to be a good lawyer to fight it but you need to be a very good lawyer to get around it.”

Partly, the mosque buster’s approach is that of finding the contradictions and incompatibilities between Islam and Western fundamental principles (that’s the easy part), and making mosque building and planning regulations become the battleground of these ideological conflicts.

In the same way as Islam is not just a religion but also a political doctrine of supremacy and power, so the mosque is not simply a building of worship but also a political one.

Gavin elaborates:

This is the Islamic doctrine, every mosque is instructed to be based upon the original mosque in Medina, where Muhammad originally in the 7th century set up his religious-political doctrine of social control, and the mosque is a place of government, it is a place where treaties are made, death sentences are passed, armies are blessed and dispatched, it is primarily about political control and it is very much used as a tool of advance. Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey talked about that, the Muslim Brotherhood compared their mosques to battalions and to beehives, where Muslims will gather and then advance, and there’s nothing new about this, it goes back to the 7th century.

So, this is the why of the Law And Freedom Foundation’s operation. Now let’s see the how.

Gavin works pro bono as a barrister for anyone wishing to fight the erection of a mosque. He says:

The method is very simple. A planning application gets submitted for a mosque in an area, and it will never be called a “mosque”. It will be called a community centre; an inter-faith centre; a public community, harmony-building outreach centre, and then the neighbours contact us, and it’s usually people who have never been involved in politics before, are shy of politics and officialdom and ask us to help them to resist it. And that’s what we do, we help them to simply use established methods of consultation to tell the local authorities: “We object to this proposal because of the effect it will have on the neighbourhood, the effect on parking, the effect on noise, the effect on disturbance, the architectural effect, the effect of concentrations of people generally, the amenity for residents”. And also we give them advocacy in front of the council meeting, we’ll advocate on their behalf.

Therefore the approach is twofold. The most commonly employed is to use the effects on and the desires of the local communities as tools in the consultation process which is local authorities’ standard procedure before a planning or change of use permission is granted.

As an example, the last two refusals to mosque building from local authorities were motivated by: loss of the retail floorspace; harm to the character, function, vitality and viability of the neighbourhood centre; possible harm to the surrounding transport network in respect of movements to and from the site for both pedestrians and vehicles; loss of employment use in a Locally Significant Industrial Site and potential harm to the viability and function of the remaining Locally Significant Industrial Site; low public transport accessibility inappropriate for a large-scale community facility; lack of adequate on-site parking with resulting overspill on-street parking likely to cause unacceptable traffic management problems and traffic congestion, to the detriment of traffic flow and road safety in the vicinity of the site.

From these you can have an idea of the broadness and scope of reasons that can be used. Other common issues are noise, and congestion at particular times like Fridays at prayer times or when there are Koran lessons for children.

The second approach – although what is predominantly used is the first – goes more to the core of what Islam is. The organization’s website states: ”Also, it is hard to see how a Local Authority has the power to grant planning permission for a mosque, since the purpose of a mosque is to promote a doctrine that incites killing, enslavement and war. You don’t need to be a skilled lawyer to understand this point – you have to be a skilled lawyer to find a way around it.”

This conviction was evident when the mosque buster was asked how he responds to people who say this is an infringement of freedom of religion. He answered:

I understand people who say that, and it would be the case if Islam were simply about private contemplation and reflection, the way that Christianity in a parish church is, but the problem is that you have two legal principles that conflict. You have this issue of freedom of religion and you have the public order issue, it’s not an issue of censorship, it’s a public order issue that [you have] if you have people preaching warfare, preaching violence, preaching killing and enslaving against another part of the population: that is against the most founding principles, [which were established] before freedom of religion was established within English law, within any law.

The British barrister clarifies the relationship between these approaches when he advises his clients: “Don’t focus on the religious and political aspects, focus on the technical ones, but what we are doing is trying to stop the area from being Islamized”. But the two issues, i.e. the political question and the concern about community safety, are in fact indissolubly interconnected; he acts from knowledge of the intimidation and violence that the mosques regularly bring with them.

He observes that mosques are increasingly being built in the UK in numbers which are disproportionate to the need for them, and often in areas with hardly any Muslim population.

The Law and Freedom Foundation also offers advice to local activists on how to go about the business of mosque busting. Gavin Boby’s is an original approach, even the way he talks gives you the immediate impression that he brings something new and different (lawyer-like but this time in a good sense) to the anti-Islam movement.

Boby has become a household name in the counterjihad movement, and others outside the UK are following his example, like Geert Wilders in Holland, whose party recently launched the “MoskNee” (“MosqueNo”) project. Still to remain in continental Europe, the mosque buster spoke at the Brussels ICLA conference on July 9 2012.

He was also invited to speak in Ottawa, Canada by the organization Act for Canada, which points out that the University of Alberta’s former Chair in Islamic Studies explained how the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood Hassan al-Banna hoped to change “the status of the Mosque, bringing it from a static place of worship to a center of Islamic revolution”, while Youssef Qaradawi, unconditionally endorsed by leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood operating in Canada, wrote: “It must be the role of the mosque to guide the public policy of a nation, raise awareness of  critical issues, and reveal its enemies. From ancient times the mosque has had a role in urging jihad for the sake of Allah“. Gavin also spoke in Toronto and Montreal.

In August/September 2012 Mr Boby toured Australia on invitation of the Q Society of Australia, according to which many Australians still do not fully understand how important mosques and mosque-building are in Islamic doctrine and how crucially different a mosque is from a church or synagogue. Many Australians did not know that in their country there are already over 340 mosques and Islamic prayer rooms, many of which are rooms in once secular public buildings and public spaces.

As can be expected, there is controversy and attempts to stop this mosque-busting lawyer from giving speeches wherever they are scheduled, and he has been vilified by the mass media.

But what really matters is that it works. Maybe his activity can be the inspiration to find other specialistic, professional ways to use the law against the Islamization of our countries.

 

source:  http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/mosques-are-the-battleground-of-the-war-between-islam-and-the-west/

Beware: Muslim Males Targeting Christian Girls for Marriage and Forced Conversion

 

by, Schuyler Montague

The information contained herein is based on numerous conversations with muslim males of varying age groups.  All of this information has been confirmed through multiple independent sources.  The details below were provided by muslim males to individuals that they believed to be “other than” Jewish or Judeo-Christian.   

It has come to our attention that there is currently an international concerted effort by muslim males to seek out Judeo-Christian females for marriage and conversion to Islam.  This is a planned initiative that originated from inside the mosque and is now taking root inside the church.  This is currently taking place in every nation around the world.  It is being used as a method of infiltration.  The stated goal is to: “form a relationship with a Christian female, marry her, convert her to Islam and raise the offspring as muslims.

Here is the logic:  A muslim male marrying a Christian female, then converting her to Islam is not simply a numerical loss of one or gain of one.  The subtraction of one from Christianity and the addition of one to Islam is a numerical value shift of two, in the balance between Christianity and Islam itself.  Then, any children that the female gives birth to that would have been Christian children, will now be muslim children.  This pattern would continue from generation to generation.  So, the result of a single muslim male marrying and converting just one Christian female can result in a great reduction of Christians and many more muslims over a period of time.  Now, consider that this same process is being utilized thousands of times.  The resulting shift can be staggering.

We have also received numerous reports of muslim males utilizing social media as a primary method of initiating these “relationships.”  Facebook is the social forum where the greatest number of reports of older muslim guys, searching out and contacting younger Christian girls has occured.  There have also been several reports of older muslim males “stalking” younger Christian girls and sending pornographic material to younger Christian girls, that are often under the legal age of consent.  There are individuals and groups that have been monitoring the various social media networks for this activity and are compiling the data.  We are asking that everyone be vigilant in this effort.  We must all make sure that we are properly educating and warning our young girls about this constant threat.  Whether it be on the internet, in their school or at the mall.  We must make sure that we are educating young Christian females to be aware of this threat from Islam.

It is very important that we get this message out.  Please share this message with your daughters, Pastors, youth leaders and teachers.  We must all make a concerted effort to ensure that, first and foremost, our young girls and women are safe.  We must also make sure that we are not turning a blind eye to yet another dangerous form of child exploitation and islamic infiltration.      

UK Jails 11 Muslims in Terror Plot to Murder Thousands

• Irfan  Naseer, 31, sent four young men to Pakistan for terrorism  training

• Judge describes  him as ‘skilled  bomb maker’ and  ‘driving force’ of plan

• Mr Justice  Henriques said: ‘Your plot had the  blessing of Al Qaeda’

• Gang of 11  wanted to kill up to 2,000 Britons with eight rucksack bombs

• Other  leaders Irfan Khalid and Ashik Ali sentenced to 20 and 23 years

• Rahin Ahmed  sentenced to 12 years for his role as chief financier

• Four ‘travellers’ who went to Pakistan are jailed for 40  months each

By Chris Greenwood

‘Skilful bomb-maker’: Terror ringleader Irfan Naseer  (above) has been jailed for life for planning an attack more devastating than the  July 7 bombings

One of the three terrorists who  planned an  attack to rival the July 7 bombings could be free in as  little as eight and a  half years.

The trio – all British-born – were  jailed  yesterday for plotting a wave of suicide bombings aimed at  transforming a major  city into a ‘little war zone’.

Ringleader Irfan Naseer was heard describing  how a series of blasts would go off at the same time ‘boom … boom … boom’.

A judge said their plans had been ‘at  the  far end of extreme’ and that they had been determined to carry out ‘mass murder’ to ‘further the aims of Al Qaeda’. But one could walk free in less than nine  years despite having volunteered to strap on an  explosive rucksack and detonate  it in a crowded place.

The sentence contrasts with those of  other  major plots in which Al Qaeda-inspired terrorists were jailed for a minimum of  40 years.

It means the three men are likely to return  to the neighbourhoods they wanted to destroy before they are even middle  aged.

The security services said the  Birmingham  cell was responsible for the most serious terrorist  conspiracy since the failed  airline liquid bomb plot in 2006.

Naseer, 28, and Irfan Khalid, 31,  travelled  to Pakistan where they trained alongside Al Qaeda and learned  how to make  homemade explosives.

During their stay the pair recorded  martyrdom videos to be released after their deaths in which they praised hate  preacher Abu Qatada.

On their return they recruited Ashik  Ali,  28, and transformed his one-bedroom local authority flat in  Sparkhill to a bomb  factory.

Naseer and Khalid told others they  were  working for the ‘Al Qaeda number five’ and had been sent back to  Europe to  spread their deadly new skills.

 

 

 

Co-conspirators: Together with Naseer, the cell was led by his ‘inseparable’  friend Irfan Khalid (left), who boasted the attack was ‘another 9/11′, and Ashik  Ali (right)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sent down: ‘Chief financier’ Rahin Ahmed (left) and another recruit Bahader Ali  were jailed for 12 and six years

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Foot soldiers: Mohammed Rizwan (left) and Mujahid Hussain (right) were both  sentenced to four years in prison

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

40 months each: Shaaq Hussain (left) and Khobaib Hussain (right) travelled to  Pakistan for terror training

 

 

 

 

Went to terror camps: Shahid Khan (left) and Naweed Ali (right) were jailed for  three years and four months

 

The trio recruited eight followers,  four of  whom were sent to a Pakistani terror camp as others posed as  bogus charity  collectors to raise cash. But the plot was smashed in a  series of police raids  that followed a multi-million-pound surveillance  operation in September  2011.

Police finally struck after listening to the  men, via a hidden bugging device, preparing to build a bomb in their  kitchen.

They discovered Naseer, an unemployed  chemistry graduate, had drawn an intricate blueprint for a new kind of homemade  bomb.

It was intended to use chemicals from  cold  packs designed for treating sports injuries, but the men bought the wrong kind  and they turned out to be harmless.

In conversations bugged by MI5, Naseer estimated his nail bombs could weigh up to 5kg (11lb) and that each  could kill  more than 100 people. The men talked of using up to eight  bombs, some on  timers, which each could have killed hundreds of people.

 The trio funded the plot by pretending to be Muslim Aid charity street  collectors

Funding: Irfan Nasser, Rahin Ahmed and Irfan Khalid during a bogus charity  collection to help pay for the attack

Plans: West Midlands Police photo of Irfan Nasser, Rahin  Ahmed and Irfan Khalid at Birmingham Airport. They are part of a home-grown  terror gang facing life in jail for plotting ‘another 9/11′

Naseer, who was known as ‘Chubbs’ because of  his 23-stone frame, said he wanted to turn Birmingham into a ‘little war zone’. The gang also planned to make ‘The Ultimate Mowing  Machine’ by welding knives  to a truck and driving it into crowds.  Another idea involved cooking up  poisonous hand cream and smearing it on to car door handles.

It can now be revealed that MI5 has  investigated links between the bombers and Chechen rebels in the wake of the  Boston marathon bombings.

Naseer and Khalid were recorded boasting how  they met the cousin of an extremist who led militia  in  Chechnya.

And one of the ringleaders campaigned  for  the Liberal Democrats before the 2010 local authority elections.  Khalid joined  bands of volunteers going from door-to-door with  newsletters and leaflets for a  councillor in the Springfield area.

Sentencing the men at high-security  Woolwich  Crown Court in London, Mr Justice Henriques said Naseer was a ‘highly skilled  bomb-maker’. He told him: ‘The only  barrier between you and your team and  mass murder was the authorities. No lack of assets,  skill or manpower was going  to stop you.’

Naseer was sentenced to five life  sentences  and ordered to serve a minimum of 18 years, although he was  told he may never  be released.

Ali, who confessed to police that his  role  was to wear a suicide vest and carry a gun, was jailed for 15  years, but could  be released after less than nine. This is because he  will be released after  two-thirds of his sentence and has already spent  19 months on remand.

It was Naseer’s bulky frame that helped him to work on  his bomb-making skills while at training camps in Pakistan

Charity funded terror: The men posed as  fundraisers for  a Muslim charity (left) then used the cash to pay for  bomb devices such as this  alarm clock (right)

The Sentences were as follows:

Irfan  Naseer                 LIFE (18 YEARS MIN)

Irfan  Khalid                   18 YEARS

Ashik  Ali                         15 YEARS

Rahin  Ahmed                 12 YEARS

Bahader  Ali                     6 YEARS

Mohammed Rizwan       4 YEARS

Mujahid  Hussain           4  YEARS

Shaaq  Hussain               3 YEARS 4 MONTHS

Khobaib  Hussain          3 YEARS 4  MONTHS

Shahid  Khan                   3 YEARS 4 MONTHS

Naweed  Ali                      3 YEARS 4 MONTHS

TOTAL               90 YEARS 4 MONTHS

The partially sighted and blundering  ex-charity worker pretended to be the gang’s ‘teaboy’ but the judge said he was  a ‘keen’ follower.

Khalid, who boasted the attack was ‘another  9/11’, was jailed for 18 years, but could be out in 12.

The three ringleaders were convicted  of  preparing terrorist acts after a three month trial that concluded in  February.  The other members of the gang were jailed for a total of 74  years after  pleading guilty at earlier hearings.

Chief financier Rahin Ahmed, 26, who had a  law degree from Coventry University, was jailed for 12 years.

Ali’s brother, Bahadar, 29, and  another man,  Mohammed Rizwan, 34, were jailed for six and four years  respectively after  being recorded discussing attacks on Britain.

Mujahid Hussain, 21, helped with the  fundraising. He was jailed for four years.

Shahid Khan, 21, Khobaib Hussain, 21,  Ishaaq  Hussain, 21, and Naweed Ali, 25, all travelled to Pakistan for  terrorist  training in August 2011. They were each sentenced to 40 months in prison after  quickly returning home within days because they were so shocked at the appalling  conditions.

Probe: Police raided properties all over Birmingham,  including this safe house, which was full of bomb-making equipment and documents  detailing how to make them

Safe house: The trio were based at this property in  White Street, Birmingham, and used as the headquarters for their terror  cell

Explosive: Police uncovered a variety of powders and  liquids, including this ‘cold pack’ in the dingy house

Destroying the evidence: Police found this burnt note  that detailed the bomb-making process

Bomb-making equipment: Police discovered a  variety of  ordinary domestic equipment including granules to keep  material cold (left) and  a pharmaceutical syringe (right)

Fundraising: Irfan Naseer, Irfan Khalid and Ashik Ali  held table top sales in Birmingham where the cash raised would be secretly  siphoned off to pay for trips to Pakistan

Surveillance: MI5 had been watching the terror group and  had planted a bug in their Hinda Civic where they were heard boasting about the  atrocity they planned

Boom! Boom! Boom! Chilling words of would-be  bombers caught on secret tape

THE endless bragging of the Birmingham terror  cell proved their downfall. Agents from MI5 planted bugs in  their cars and bomb  factory which caught chilling details of their  plans. Here are some of the  would-be bombers’ sickening remarks:

Ringleader Irfan  Naseer

Describing the terror blasts, he said:‘Seven  or eight different places with timers on at the same time…  boom…  boom…boom.’

Threatening British citizens, he  added: ‘Only thing you will achieve is suicide bombers on your streets  spilling so  much blood that you will remember, you’ll have nightmares  for the rest of your  miserable lives.

‘This is revenge for everything, what we’re  doing is another 9/11 inshallah.’

Shopping: Ashik Ali was watched buying curtains from  Argos as part the sophisticated spying operation by the British secret  services

Late night: Officers pulled the terrorists over as they  drove to a takeaway just before midnight

Prosecution: Ashik Ali was taken from the car and is  detained along with the two other men who were all found guilty of terrorism  offences at Woolwich Crown Court today

Capture: West Midlands Police arrested the three men in  Birmingham after intercepting them in their VW as they drove through the city in  September 2011

Recounting the contents of his suicide video: ‘That’s for Osama Bin Laden as well and for burning the Korans  and for  Afghanistan.’

Naseer also said Westerners deserve to be ‘terrorised’ because ‘they wanna have  sex like donkeys on the  street’. He  added: ‘Why shouldn’t we terrorise them, tell me that?

‘You think about it, if someone came  in your  house, yeah, and started dancing and throughout the night and  started basically  having orgies and smoking drugs and stuff…you would  terrorise them, innit.’

Henchman Irfan  Khalid:

Affecting the voice of Formula One  commentator Murray Walker while driving, Khalid said: ‘It’s the four  suicide  bombers driving around ready to take on England.’ Asked how long the car was  taxed until, one plotter said it had an MOT certificate  until June. ‘Yeah we’re  dead by then,’ replied Khalid.

He added: ‘You think about it, you’re  hitting his friends, in their home his friends innit these were Cameron  and  everyone they’re his friends.

‘We’re doing it in the land of the  shaytan  [devil] …This is going to shake them all, all the kaffir that  go to the pub  and that.’

Putting on a mocking English accent, he  added: ‘They’ve hit us in our own country, my god they hit us.’

Scam: CCTV shows Rahin Ahmed depositing charity money  they had fraudulently taken at a Barclays Bank in Moseley, Birmingham

Trips: Khobaib Hussain and Naweed Ali are shown here  sitting and waiting for a flight from Birmingham Airport

Sketch: The group’s members Irfan Naseer, Rahin Ahmed  and Ashik Ali are pictured (left to right) in court

source:  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2315149/7-7-terror-plot-Irfan-Naseer-terrorists-jailed-free-8-years.html

Belgium vs. Islamic Jihadists

 

by Soeren Kern

Some 1,000 Muslims from across Europe are currently active as Islamic jihadists in Syria, which has replaced Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia as the main destination for militant Islamists to obtain immediate combat training with little or no official scrutiny.

Belgian police have carried out dozens of raids and arrested six Islamists — including the pugnacious ringleader of a Belgian Salafist group called Sharia4Belgium — suspected of recruiting foreign fighters for the war in Syria.

The crackdown reflects growing concerns in Belgium and elsewhere about the threat posed by Islamic jihadists, or holy warriors, when they return to Europe after obtaining combat experience in Syria.

Some 1,000 Muslims from across Europe are currently active as Islamic jihadists in Syria, which has replaced Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia as the main destination for militant Islamists seeking to obtain immediate combat training with little or no official scrutiny.

More than 200 Belgian police officers conducted 48 early morning raids on April 16 in the northern port city of Antwerp and in Vilvoorde, which is situated about 20 kilometers north of Brussels, home to most of the 70 young Belgians who are known to have departed for Syria in recent months.

Police seized computers, mobile phones and €30,000 ($40,000), although no weapons or explosives were found. One of those arrested was an unnamed jihadist who was wounded in Syria and just recently returned to Belgium.

According to the public prosecutor’s office, the objective of the police operation was two-fold: to deter other volunteer jihadists from departing for Syria, and also to determine whether a group known as Sharia4Belgium “is a terrorist group,” an offense that carries a 10-year jail term.

In a seven-page statement, the public prosecutor’s office said one of those arrested was Fouad Belkacem (alias Abu Imran), a well-known Antwerp-based Islamist who is the main spokesman for Sharia4Belgium, and who has long called for turning Belgium into an Islamic state.

Although Belkacem had previously been sentenced to two years in prison in February 2012 for incitement to hatred and violence towards non-Muslims, he was released from prison in February 2013 and allowed to serve the rest of his sentence at home, provided he wear an ankle strap and promise not to speak with his followers. His re-arrest implies he violated the terms of his release.

Belgian prosecutor Eric Van Der Sypt told a news conference that “the investigation shows that Sharia4Belgium is part of a broad international jihadist movement” which is accused of providing ideological and martial arts training, organizing violent activities in Belgium and recruiting Islamist fighters for conflicts abroad. Van Der Sypt said Belgian authorities were aware of 33 people with links to Sharia4Belgium who were either fighting with, or on their way to fight with, al-Qaeda-inspired jihadists in Syria.

Sharia4Belgium had said in October 2012 that the organization was being dissolved, but that announcement appears to have been an example of taqiyya [dissimulation], a permitted form of deception to non-Muslims to advance the cause of Islam.

According to Stanny De Vlieger, the director of the federal judicial police in Antwerp, “The investigation shows that members of Sharia4Belgium have joined Salafi jihadists inspired by al-Qaeda and they appear to have participated in combat and even in the kidnapping and execution of those they call ‘infidels.’”

Sharia4Belgium, which states that that it wants to implement Islamic Sharia law throughout Belgium, has been belligerent in its appeals to fellow Muslims to overthrow the democratic order in the country.

In one video, Belkacem declares that the black flag of Islamic jihad will “soon be flying on top of all the palaces in Europe.”

The video, which has been translated into English by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), shows Belkacem dressed in military camouflage calling for the destruction of the Atomium, a monument in Brussels that is the national symbol of Belgium.

“This,” Belkacem says, “is a short message to the King of Belgium and specifically to the Muslims in Belgium. This is the flag [black flag of jihad] that, Allah willing, will soon be flying on top of that building over there [the Belgian royal palace]. There you see the [Belgian] flag of the Taghut, the infidels, and soon the flag of ‘there is no god but Allah’ will be flying there, on top of that palace, and on top of all the other palaces in Europe, until Allah willing, we reach the White House…We will not rest, we will not stop, until this flag flies on top of that building [the royal palace].”

In September 2011, Sharia4Belgium established Belgium’s first Islamic Sharia law court in Antwerp, the second-largest city in the country. Leaders of the group say the purpose of the court is to create a parallel Islamic legal system in Belgium to challenge the state’s authority as the enforcer of the civil law protections guaranteed by the Belgian constitution.

The self-appointed Muslim judges running the Islamic Sharia court apply Islamic law, rather than the secular Belgian Family Law system, to resolve disputes involving questions of marriage and divorce, child custody and child support, as well as all inheritance-related matters.

Unlike Belgian civil law, Islamic Sharia law does not guarantee equal rights for men and women; critics of the Sharia court say it will undermine the rights of Muslim women in marriage and education.

Sharia4Belgium says the court in Antwerp will eventually expand its remit and handle criminal cases as well.

But Sharia4Belgium also says it expects non-Muslims to submit to Sharia law.

A partial archive of an earlier version of Sharia4Belgium’s website includes a threat in the form of an invitation calling for all Belgians to convert to Islam and to submit to Sharia law or face the consequences.

The text says: “It is now 86 years since the fall of the Islamic Caliphate. The tyranny and corruption in this country [Belgium] has prevailed; we go from one scandal to another: Economic crises, paedophilia, crime, growing Islamophobia, etc.

“As in the past,” it continues, ” we [Muslims] have saved Europe from the dark ages, we now plan to do the same. Now we have the right solution for all crises and this is the observance of the divine law, namely Sharia. We call to implement Sharia in Belgium.

“Sharia is the perfect system for humanity…,” it concludes. “As a result, we invite the royal family, parliament, all the aristocracy and every Belgian resident to submit to the light of Islam. Save yourself and your children of the painful punishment of the hereafter and grant yourself eternal life in paradise.”

A cache of the background image for the Sharia4Belgium website has the black flag of jihad flying above the Belgian Parliament. Until recently, the Sharia4Belgium YouTube page (which has been shut down) was used to incite Muslims to Jihad, or Holy War. The group had posted videos with titles such as, “Jihad Is Obligatory,” “Encouraging Jihad,” “Duelling & Guerrilla Warfare,” and “The Virtues of Martyrdom.”

In a debate with Filip Dewinter, a Belgian politician who has raised public awareness of the dangers posed by radical Islam, Belkacem said: “There are a lot of Muslims in Belgian politics, which is something I cannot understand. You are either a Muslim or a democrat, you cannot be both. I have no business with infidels. My mission is to please Allah, not infidels.”

Belkacem continued: “Let’s turn Belgium into an Islamic state. We have enough judges, scholars and leaders who can become caliphs…Filip Dewinter is right. This is the beginning of the Islamization of Antwerp. And to all infidels: Adjust or get out!”

In an interview with the Belgian newspaper De Standaard, Anjem Choudary, a British Islamist who helped launch Sharia4Belgium in January 2010, said the implementation of Sharia law in Belgium will happen in one of the following four ways: “Either the majority of the population converts to Islam; or a foreign Islamic power conquers the country; or there will be a rebellion against the oppression of the Muslim people; or the Muslims will overthrow the ruling regime. Society will be united by Islam.”

 

source:  http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3679/belgium-vs-islamic-jihadists

The Civil War in Sweden: Welcome to the Ghetto

Muslim Mob Attacks Five British Christian Women and Two Children in India

Muslims Continue Their Worldwide Christian Holocaust

A Muslim mob attacked two men, five women and two children, all of English origin. The police prevented the destruction of their house, but have arrested two Christians. Leader of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC): “The growing anti-Christian intolerance is alarming.”

by Nirmala Carvalho

Srinagar, India (AsiaNews) – “The anti-Christian intolerance in Jammu and Kashmir is reaching alarming proportions” is the complaint of Sajan George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC), after the arrest of two Christians in Srinagar, the capital of Indian state, on false charges of forced conversions. The arrest took place on April 10 last, after a Muslim mob attacked two men, five women and two children, all of British origin.

The foreigners had been living for about four years Shivpora, a district of Srinagar. According to local residents one of them, James Thomas, was engaged in conversion activities. So, two days ago a large group of people attacked the Christians, threw stones at their vehicles and tried to destroy their house. The intervention of the police prevented the demolition and the wounding of those present, but officials arrested James and Alora Milli to clarify the charges against them.

The police have impounded the building and evacuated the foreigners. The local imam told police that he had repeatedly asked the foreigners not to convert Muslims, but to no avail. “Now – he added – they can no longer access the area. And even if they try to convert anyone, I will prevent it at all costs.”
“The false and defamatory accusations of the Imam – says Sajan George – and the complicity of the police in arresting these Christians are a serious threat to religious freedom, a right guaranteed by the Constitution of India.”

Jammu and Kashmir is the only Muslim-majority state of India where religious intolerance frequently occurs. This past January, a group of foreign tourists risked being lynched after the publication of some posts on Facebook. An exemplary case dates back to 2011, when the Rev. Chander Mani Khanna, pastor of All Saints Anglican Church, was arrested for having baptized seven Muslims and then indicted by an Islamic court (which has no legal authority in the State or in India, ed) for proselytism and forced conversions.

 

source:  http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Indian-Kashmir,-two-Christians-arrested-on-false-charges-of-forced-conversions-27639.html

What Islam is Not (Video)

Sweden Allows Muslim Call to Prayer (Adhan)

The permission allows Muslims to raise the Adhan for three to five minutes between 12:00 pm and 1:00 pm on Fridays

Sweden Persecutes Christianity and Submits to Islam

CAIRO – A mosque in the Swedish capital was given the green light Thursday, April 11, to raise Adhan (call for prayers), to the jubilance of the Muslim community in the Scandinavian country.

“I’m happy, very happy,” Ismail Okur, chairman of the Islamic Cultural Center of Botkyrka, told Sveriges Radio (SR).

“It means a great deal for our association and above all for our religion, and for the prayer.”

Police said Thursday that Fittja mosque in the southern Stockholm suburb of Botkyrka will be allowed to raise the Adhan on Fridays.

The permission allows Muslims to raise the Adhan for three to five minutes between 12:00 pm and 1:00 pm on Fridays.

The move came in response to a request by Muslims to raise their call for prayers from the Fittja mosque, the only Muslim worship place that has a minaret in Sweden.

“I’m really happy and grateful,” Okur told Swedish news agency TT.

Police said strict regulations would govern the placement of the speakers to raise the Adhan.

Information must also be provided to nearby residents before raising the call for prayers, police said.

No date has been set for the first Adhan.

The Adhan is the call to announce that it is time for a particular obligatory Salah (ritual prayer).

The Adhan is raised five times a day.

But Muslims in the West were often unable to make Adhan for prayers as local authorities argue that the call would cause noise to residents.

Muslims make up between 450,000 and 500,000 of Sweden’s nine million people, according to the US State Department report in 2011.

source:  http://www.onislam.net/english/news/europe/462211-sweden-allows-adhan-muslims-happy.html

British Police Arrest Tommy Robinson After Violent Muslim Thugs Try to Attack Him and His Family

In the early hours of this morning Tommy reported via Twitter that he had just been released from police custody after they had tried to remand him. 

Early in the morning of the 9th of April, a group of Muslims gathered in front of Tommy’s families house, shouting abuse and making threats against Tommy, his family and other innocent bystanders in the vicinity: 

The police arrived, and arrested … Tommy. 

Tommy was held in custody for 30 hours and his house was searched under the powers granted by Section 32 PACE (search without warrant upon arrest). These powers allow the police to enter and search your home  if the police officer  “reasonably suspects that he will find on those premises items relating to the offence for which the suspect was arrested.” 

Did they expect that Tommy was hiding illegal immigrants? Why weren’t the people who started the incident arrested? 

This is not a two-tier application of the law, this seems more like perversion of the law to persecute those who do not subscribe to the government-approved double-think. 

So when was it made law that those who suffer antagonism, threats of death and serious beatings must be arrested for their victim status? 

A member of Tommy’s family was followed home by none other than Ibrahim Anderson, a notorious member of the now proscribed “Muslims Against The Crusades” and “Al Muhajiroun” a gang of backward Islamist scum. When Anderson (a white ginger haired convert to Islam) started an altercation with threats outside Tommy’s family’s home, it was apparent that the threats made were real, credible, and potentially life threatening. 

If someone follows a member of your family to your home to instigate trouble then it’s pretty safe to assume that person clearly intends to cause harm, to intimidate. It would be pretty safe to assume he’s not there to give a sermon or flowers or chocolate as a well wisher now is it? 

Of course as anyone would, Tommy and his family acted in the interests of self defence, damage was caused to a car and Anderson soon called his fellow islamist bed buddies to aid him in his “street jihad”. 

Tommy turned up as did the police and they arrested him, they also arrested another member of his family for entering his own home. The Muslims who turned up on masse in support of their jihadist Islamist brother were armed to the teeth with blades and bats. 

Yet Tommy and another family member were arrested? The family home was searched for electronic devices and whatever else Bedfordshire police thought they might obtain. Perhaps they were looking for a phone that had recorded the incident? 

Not one of these backward savages was arrested or searched! Now forgive us for perhaps not quite understanding this but an armed gang of Muslim hatemongers armed with weapons, threatening all and sundry are not arrested or searched? 

Perhaps it’s a coincidence but those who allegedly planned to attack an EDL demonstration in Dewsbury were not searched or arrested at the time either, even though they had an assortment of weapons in the boot of the car which included an improvised explosive device! 

Again we see a two tier system in full view, please view the following videos of the events captured on camera phones at the time. 

With this very much in the public domain and clear persecution of Tommy and his family defending themselves we now think its only right to hold another demonstration in Luton to send a very clear message to the Islamist filth that has infested Luton, to the police and to the council, that we will not tolerate backward Islamist savages living among us any longer. 

We can’t depend on Bedfordshire police clearly but we can depend on ourselves. 

The gloves are off, the seeds of anger have been sown, it’s time for us to show backward Islamist savages what real anger is. We won’t capitulate like police forces up and down the country. 

It’s pretty clear that these events have awoken a sleeping giant. 

That giant is pretty angry and understandably so. 

As its pretty clear that Tommy and his family are at a much higher risk than before. We ask that anyone who can, no matter how little or large, make a donation on the front page of our website (EDL Website) http://englishdefenceleague.org/  to help with the security measures we need in place to keep Tommy and his family safe. 

Your help is always appreciated! 

NSE

Here is a pic of just one of the violent muslim bastards that showed up to attack Tommy’s family at their home:

 

source:  http://englishdefenceleague.org/edl-news-2/1871-tommy-and-family-attacked

Europe Will Become Christian or Muslim: There is No Middle Ground

‘Either Europe Will Become Christian Again or It Will Become Muslim’

By Enza Ferreri

Only a few days ago one of the best known figures of the Italian counter-jihad, Egyptian-born journalist Magdi Cristiano Allam, a former Muslim who converted to Catholicism, announced that, although he remains Christian, he has left the Catholic Church.

In his column in the daily paper Il Giornale he gave several reasons, prominent among which is “Because this Church is weak vis-à-vis Islam”:

What more than anything else drove me away from the Church is its religious relativism, in particular the legitimization of Islam as true religion, of Allah as true God, of Muhammad as true prophet, of the Koran as sacred text, of mosques as places of worship. It is genuine suicidal madness that John Paul II went so far as to kiss the Koran on May 14, 1999, Benedict XVI put his hand on the Koran praying toward Mecca in the Blue Mosque in Istanbul on November 30, 2006, while Francis I began by extolling the Muslims “who worship one, living and merciful God.” On the contrary I am convinced that, while respecting Muslims who, like all people, possess the inalienable rights to life, dignity and freedom, Islam is an inherently violent ideology, as it has historically been conflictual inside and belligerent outside. Even more I am increasingly convinced that Europe will eventually be submitted to Islam, as has already happened from the seventh century to the other two sides of the Mediterranean, if it does not have the vision and the courage to denounce the incompatibility of  Islam with our civilization and the fundamental rights of the person, if it does not ban the Koran for apology of hatred, violence and death against non-Muslims, if it does not condemn Sharia law as a crime against humanity in that it preaches and practices the violation of the sanctity of everyone’s life, the equal dignity of men and women, and religious freedom, and finally if it does not block the spread of mosques.

This news has attracted national and worldwide media attention, just as the announcement of his conversion from Islam to Catholicism on 22 March, Easter Eve night, 2008 did, when he “received Baptism, Confirmation and Communion in St Peter’s Basilica from Pope Benedict XVI”.

Allam’s position has several Italian (and international) counter-jihad blogs sympathetic to it, carrying articles with titles like Islamic Fundamentalism and the Impossible Dialogue.

But his new decision to leave the Church has also attracted many criticisms in Italy. Journalist Filippo Savarese: “I do not know what could be worse than repudiating one’s conversion for (alleged) issues which are in fact mostly ‘political’.” Politician Maurizio Lupi who was Allam’s godfather: “I am sorry, but Christianity taught me to love the freedom of every man and to respect it even when I do not agree with his choices. In this case not even with the reasons (we are Christian for love of truth not for aversion to Islam), but I notice that, unfortunately, this is the attitude of many who say they accept Christ but not the Church.”

Gabriele Satolli, candidate to the 2013 Italian general election for the party founded by Allam, Io Amo l’Italia, left the party, called Magdi’s motivations “raving, and therefore impossible to agree with.”

Still, although we may dispute whether they are a good enough reason to leave the Catholic Church, Allam’s arguments are grounded in reality.

“Having a dialogue” is by definition a reciprocal verb, as “being a sibling.” They mean something only if what is true of the subject of the verb is also true of the object, be it a quality, relationship or activity. When a call for dialogue is not met with a response, it is a monologue.

As Raymond Ibrahim points out, the Muslim countries with some of the worst records on their treatment of Christians are also the most interested in interfaith initiatives in the West:

Few things offer surreal experiences as when Islam and the West interact—when 7th century primordialism encounters 21st century relativism.  Consider the issue of “interfaith dialogue.”  In principle, it is a decent thing: Christians, Jews, Muslims, and others trying to reach a common ground and professing mutual respect.  But what does one make of the gross contradictions that emerge when a human-rights violating nation calls for “dialogue,” even as it enforces religious intolerance on its own turf?

Enter Saudi Arabia.  Birthplace of Islam, the Arabian kingdom is also the one Muslim nation that regularly sponsors interfaith initiatives in the West—even as its official policy back home is to demonize and persecute the very faiths it claims to want to have an interfaith dialogue with.

There are different positions within the Catholic Church with regard to Islam, with a minority of voices, some of which are powerful, dissenting from the official stance.

The two positions at the extreme opposites are exemplified by the late Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, who was Archbishop of Milan, and Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, Archbishop of Bologna.

The former is credited with having anticipated many bishops of Italy and Europe in stretching out an acquiescent hand towards Islam. As early as 1990 he dedicated his Saint Ambrose homely to “We and Islam.” In 2001, after 9/11, his Saint Ambrose homely had a title that substituted a clear stance with a list of concepts: “Terrorism, retaliation, self-defence, war and peace.”

On Islam, the most difficult issue of the decade, as well as on many other questions, Martini’s position has always been the search for a grey area, a balancing act: “We have to prevent the dramatic scenario of a clash of civilizations,” qualified by “We must not delegitimize the right to self-defence from terrorism and the need to extinguish its hotbeds.”

It is interesting how, replicating the ideological and political alliance between Islam and the Left in the Western lay world, Cardinal Martini, considered a progressive and constantly praised by the mainstream liberal media, was after his death eulogized by the leftist newspaper La Repubblica for having approved of policies ranging “from dialogue with Islam to yes to condoms” and because “he had never condemned euthanasia.”

Writer and blogger Antonio Socci thus sums him up rather unfavourably: “Everything imposed by ideological fashions found Martini open to dialogue and to all possibilities: ‘there is nothing wrong in two people, even homosexuals, having a stable relationship and in the State favouring them,’ he had said.”

At the other end of the spectrum is Cardinal Giacomo Biffi. As early as 30 September 2000, before 9/11, when not many people in the West worried about Islam at all, he delivered a speech at the Fondazione Migrantes seminar, “On Immigration”. The following [translated from Italian by the author] is what he said on Muslim immigration to Italy and Islam:

The case of Muslims

If we do not want to evade or censor realistic attention, it is apparent that the case of Muslims should be treated separately. And it is hoped that political leaders will not be afraid to face it with open eyes and without illusions.

Muslims – in their vast majority and with few exceptions – come here determined to remain alien to our “humanity”, individual and social, in its most essential, valuable, “secularly” non-renounceable aspects: more or less openly, they come here determined to remain substantially “different”, waiting for us all to become substantially like them.

They have different eating habits (not in itself a big problem), a different holiday in the week, a family law incompatible with our own, a concept of women very far removed from ours (going as far as practicing polygamy). Above all, they have a strictly fundamentalist view of public life, so much so that the perfect identification between religion and politics is part of their unquestionable and inalienable faith, although they prudently wait to become predominant before imposing it. It is therefore not the Church, but modern Western states that must think carefully about this.

I shall say more than that: if our state seriously believes in the importance of civil liberties (including religious) and democratic principles, it should work to make them more widespread, accepted and practiced at all latitudes. A small tool to achieve this goal is the request of being given a not purely verbal “reciprocity” by the immigrants’ countries of origin.

In this respect the Italian Bishops Conference wrote in 1993: “In many Islamic countries it is almost impossible to adhere to and freely practice Christianity. There are no places of worship, non-Islamic religious events are not allowed, not even minimal ecclesiastical organizations exist. That raises the difficult problem of reciprocity. And this is a problem that affects not only the Church, but also civil society and politics, the world of culture and even international relations. For his part, the Pope is tireless in asking everyone to respect the fundamental right to religious freedom” (n. 34). But – we say – asking does not help very much, even if the pope cannot do any more.

Although it may seem alien to our mentality and even paradoxical, the only effective and not unrealistic way to promote the “principle of reciprocity” by a really “secular” state,  truly interested in propagating human freedoms, would be to allow for Muslims in Italy only the authorization of institutions which Muslim countries actually allow for others. [...]

Conclusion

In an interview ten years ago, I was asked with great candor and with enviable optimism: “Are You among those who believe that Europe will either be Christian or cease to exist?” I think my answer then may well serve to conclude my speech today.

I think – I said – that either Europe will become Christian again or it will become Muslim. What I see without future is the “culture of nothing”, of freedom without limits and without content, of skepticism boasted as intellectual achievement, which seems to be the attitude largely dominant among European peoples, all more or less rich of means and poor of truths. This “culture of nothingness” (sustained by hedonism and libertarian insatiability) will not be able to withstand the ideological onslaught of Islam, which will not be missing: only the rediscovery of the Christian event as the only salvation for man – and therefore only a strong resurrection of the ancient soul of Europe – will offer a different outcome to this inevitable confrontation.

Unfortunately, neither “secularists” nor “Catholics” seem to have so far realized the tragedy that is looming. “Secularists”, opposing the Church in every way, do not realize that they are fighting against the strongest inspiration and the most effective defence of Western civilization and its values of rationality and freedom: they might realize it too late. “Catholics”, letting the knowledge of the truth they possessed fade in themselves and replacing apostolic anxiety with pure and simple dialogue at all costs, unconsciously pave the way (humanly speaking) to their own extinction. The only hope is that the seriousness of the situation may at some point lead to an effective awakening both of reason and of the ancient faith.

It is our hope, our commitment, our prayer.

Written in 2000. All predictions confirmed. Truer, if possible, now than it was even then.

 

source:  http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/either-europe-will-become-christian-again-or-it-will-become-muslim/

Britain Releases Child Rapist: Claims Incarceration is a “Violation of His Human Rights”

Human rights: The court in Strasbourg found that the decision to re-detain Abdi  in 2008 was not lawful because the required reviews weren’t carried out

European Court ”Re-Molests” British Little Girls

• Mustafa Abdi was jailed in 1998 for rape and  indecency with a child

• Somali was later detained for two and a half  years as he awaited deportation

• This breached his right to liberty, European  Court of Human Rights found

• UK Government ordered to pay more than £7,000 in damages and legal costs

By Jack Doyle

A Somali paedophile has been given thousands  of pounds by a human rights court – and released on to the streets.

Ministers have spent more than a decade  trying and failing to deport Mustafa Abdi, who is thought to have cost taxpayers  more than £600,000 in jail costs and legal aid.

But yesterday Strasbourg judges ordered the  British government to pay the convicted child rapist thousands of pounds in  damages and legal costs.

The court said Abdi was ‘wrongfully detained’ for two and a half years, breaching his right to liberty.

Ministers had decided he should  remain in  jail while awaiting deportation because he presented a ‘high  risk’ to the  public. But it emerged he was released from prison in  January this year because  there was no prospect of him being deported  any time soon.

He has spent around 13 years in jail and  received tens of thousands of pounds in legal aid to help him thwart  deportation.

Last night Home Office officials were still  insisting they would ‘continue to seek to deport’ him – despite  having failed  to do so since 2002.

Abdi, who was born in 1975, arrived  in  Britain in May 1995. His asylum claim was rejected, but he was given  leave to  remain in Britain until February 2000.

In 1998 he was convicted of rape and  indecency with a child and sentenced to eight years in prison.

In May 2002 David Blunkett, then Home  Secretary, ordered his deportation – but Abdi made the first of several  appeals.

While in prison he was assessed as  presenting a ‘high risk’ of sexual offending if let out. As a result he  was  detained after his sentence was completed while ministers tried to  deport him.

They were thwarted because no airline was  prepared to fly him, or any other Somali nationals, back home  against their  will. Abdi refused to return home voluntarily.

In September 2006 he was given permission to  apply for a judicial review of the decision to keep him behind bars.

He won his initial case, but the  Court of  Appeal ruled that his detention between December 2004 and June  2006 was lawful  because he could have returned to Somalia voluntarily.  He was let out in April  2007 but arrested again a year later after  breaching his bail conditions by  failing to report to police.

Ministers struggle to return Somali  nationals home, even those convicted of heinous crimes, because of  another  ruling by the European Court of Human Rights.

Yesterday the same court overturned  the  British court’s ruling and said his detention was unlawful because  regular case  reviews did not take place.

The Strasbourg judges ordered the  Government  to pay £1,277 (1,500 euros) in damages and £5,960 (7,000  euros) for legal costs  and expenses. It is thought he has received  between £20,000 and £30,000 in  legal aid in Britain, while taxpayers  have also had to cough up £45,000 a year  for jail costs.

A Home Office spokesman said: ‘We are  extremely disappointed with the court’s decision and are urgently reviewing our  options.

‘We will continue to seek to deport this  individual who has shown a complete disregard for the laws of this country.

‘We believe it is right that dangerous  individuals are kept in detention, wherever possible, in order to protect the  public.’

A Similiar Story From the States: http://www.limitstogrowth.org/articles/2010/06/03/somali-refugee-sentenced-in-vermont-for-child-rape/

 

source:  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2306373/Mustafa-Abdi-Somali-child-rapist-receives-compensation-Government-unlawfully-held-half-years-awaiting-deportation.html

Building Mosques in Europe Hits Record Levels

Europe:  Mosque Building Shifts Into High Gear

by Soeren Kern

“In Spain there are signs that Islam will dominate once again.” — Hizrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, Spiritual Leader, Ahmadiyya Community, Spain

From Belgium to Greece and Spain to Germany, 2013 is shaping up to be another banner year for the construction of mosques in Europe.

In Belgium, work is about to begin on the construction of a mega-mosque in Liège, the third-largest city in the country. The largest mosque in Wallonia (the French-speaking region of Belgium) will be built on an 11,000 m² (118,000 ft²) plot and will consist of a main building with a capacity for 1,000 worshippers, a library, a cafeteria and several shops.

Plans to build two 30 m (98 ft) minarets were scrapped after opposition from local residents. The new plan involves one 18 m (60 ft) minaret which will be automatically illuminated during calls to prayer.

The mayor of Liège, Willy Demeyer (PS), banned a protest march against the mosque that was to have been held on March 30. “My role is to avoid excesses and problems of public order,” he said.

In Germany, Muslims in the northern city of Hamburg are converting the former Kapernaumkirche (Capernaum Church), a cultural heritage site, into a mosque.

In the southern German city of Munich, local politicians are debating where to build a massive mosque complex known as the Center for Islam in Europe-Munich (ZIE-M). The 6,000 m² (65,000 ft²) mega-project, which will cost an estimated €40 million ($51 million), is designed to be a key strategic platform for spreading Islam throughout Europe.

Speculation is rife that the Persian Gulf Emirate of Qatar will pay for the project, although the Qatari Ambassador to Germany recently told the newspaper Münchner Merkur that no final decision has been made.

The citizen’s movement Die Freiheit Bayern (Freedom Bavaria) organized a demonstration against the project in downtown Munich on March 24, but only 120 people bothered to show up.

In Greece, which is effectively bankrupt, the government has pledged to spend €1.1 million ($1.4 million) to build an official mosque in Athens for the city’s expanding Muslim population.

The mosque, which will be built on the former naval base in Votanikos, will be able to hold around 500 worshippers as well as hundreds more in an outdoor area.

The Greek government agreed in September 2011 to pay for the mosque after an offer from the Turkish government to pay for it was rejected by Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, and opposed by the Muslim community in Greece, which insisted that the Greek state pay for it.

Samaras says he wants to establish a mosque in Athens — the only capital in European Union that lacks a state-backed place for Muslim worship — in a bid to boost Greece’s diplomatic hand vis-à-vis Turkey.

An estimated 120 sites are illegally operating as mosques in Athens. These makeshift spaces serve an estimated 200,000 Muslims living in the city, many of whom are illegal immigrants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Nigeria and Pakistan.

In Thessaloniki, the 111-year-old New Mosque (which was once a museum and is now used as an exhibition hall) welcomed Muslim worshippers for the first time in 90 years on March 30. On the initiative of the city’s mayor, Yiannis Boutaris, the mosque opened its doors to 50 Muslims from Komotini, a city in Thrace, a region of northeastern Greece.

Komotini is home to a sizeable Muslim minority, which constitutes 45% of the city’s population. Turkey’s ambassador to Greece, Kerim Uras, said he expects Islam to have a higher profile in Greece in the future. He said the move to open the mosque was “a positive step in the right direction. We’re expecting the rest to come. I hope Athens will also be a place where Muslims can pray.”

In Ireland, city planners in Dublin have given the go-ahead for the construction of a sprawling mega-mosque complex that will cater to Ireland’s growing Muslim population. The massive €40 million ($50 million) “Islamic Cultural Center” will be built on a six-acre site in Clongriffin, a new and as yet unfinished suburb at the northern edge of Dublin. It will compete with another mosque complex in the southern suburb of Clonskeagh that also goes by the name “Islamic Cultural Center,” a sprawling four-acre campus, financed by Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the deputy ruler of Dubai.

Rumors have it that the new mega-mosque at Clongriffin will be financed by Qatar, which recently donated €800,000 ($1 million) to build a mega-mosque in Cork, the second-most populous city in Ireland.

In Luxembourg, a Muslim group called Le Juste Milieu (LJM) is engaged in a fund-raising drive to collect €1.8 million ($2.3 million) to purchase the ground floor of a building that currently houses a makeshift mosque in downtown Luxembourg City. The building is mostly residential; local residents are opposed to the mosque.

The purchase is generating controversy because of concerns over how LJM will raise the cash it needs. In August 2012, the German-language newspaper Tageblatt reported that the Qatar was paying €2.2 million ($2.8 million) to establish a mosque and madrassah [Islamic religious school] that would cater to the 10,000 Muslims who have settled in Luxembourg.

In Scotland, St. John’s Episcopal Church in Aberdeen has become the first church in the United Kingdom to share its premises with Muslim worshippers. The church now welcomes hundreds of Muslims praying five times a day in their building because the nearby mosque was so small that worshippers were forced to pray outside.

According to the rector of St. John’s, Isaac Poobalan, “Praying is never wrong. My job is to encourage people to pray. The mosque was so full at times, there would be people outside in the wind and rain praying. I knew I couldn’t just let this happen, because I would be abandoning what the Bible teaches us about how we should treat our neighbors.”

The bishop of Aberdeen, Robert Gillies, says that by handing over sections of the church to the mosque, the church has accomplished “something of global significance on a local scale.”

In Spain, Muslims inaugurated a new mosque on March 21 in the northern Basque town of Portugalete. The mosque has been resoundingly opposed by local residents, but city officials approved the building permit in order to “promote the integration of Muslims into the local community.”

A recent study commissioned by the Basque government found that one in four Basques reject the idea of having a mosque in their neighborhood, and one in five do not want a Muslim as a neighbor.

The Basque Country is home to more than 50,000 Muslims, 70 Muslim groups, two dozen officially licensed mosques and hundreds of unofficial Islamic prayer rooms and cultural centers. Muslims in the Basque region, who hail mostly from Algeria, Morocco, Pakistan and sub-Saharan Africa, have become increasingly assertive in recent years.

Residents of the Basque city of Bilbao are finding their mailboxes stuffed with flyers in Spanish and Arabic from the Islamic Community of Bilbao asking for money to build a 650 m² (7,000 ft²) mosque costing €550,000 ($735,000).

Until recently, the Islamic Community of Bilbao had the following statement posted on its website: “We were expelled [from Spain] in 1609, really not that long ago. … The echo of Al-Andalus still resonates in all the valley of the Ebro [Spain]. We are back to stay, Insha’Allah [if Allah wills it].” (Al-Andalus was the Arabic name given to the parts of Spain ruled by Muslim conquerors from 711 until 1492.)

In Valencia, the third-largest city in Spain, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community inaugurated a new mosque on March 29 — which also happened to be Good Friday, the day when Christians commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his death at Calvary.

The 1,500 m² (16,000 ft²) Baitur-Rahman Mosque, with a capacity for 600 worshippers, adds to the 172 mosques already located in the Valencia region.

The mosque was inaugurated by Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, the spiritual leader of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, whose sermon was broadcast in several languages to tens of millions of viewers with the help of eight satellites.

Ahmad told his followers that Valencia had been chosen to host the mosque because that is where the expulsion of the Moriscos (descendants of the Muslim population that converted to Christianity under threat of exile from King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in 1502) began in 1609.

Ahmad added: “In Spain there are a million Muslims and we believe that in twenty years this number will double. In Spain there are signs that Islam will dominate once again.” He also said the mission of the new mosque would be to “spread the teachings of Islam to every single citizen of Spain.”

In the Catalan municipality of Salt, a town near Barcelona where Muslim immigrants now make up 40% of the population, work has begun on the construction of a two-story Salafi mega-mosque — built by two Spain-based Salafist groups, Al Hilal Islamic Cultural Association and Magrebins per la Pau Association, with funding from Saudi Arabia — with a capacity for 750 worshippers.

Salafism, a branch of radical Islam based in Saudi Arabia, seeks to establish an Islamic empire (Caliphate) across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe, and eventually the world. The Caliphate would be governed exclusively by Islamic Sharia law, to be applied both to Muslims and non-Muslims.

Salt approved a one-year ban on the construction of new mosques in August 2011 to provide “some time for reflection” after it emerged that the previous Socialist government in the town secretly gave permission to the Salafi Muslims to build the mega-mosque.

The deal to build the mega-mosque was discovered only after the Socialists were ejected from power in May 2011. Public outrage prompted the new town council — now ruled by the center-right Convergència i Unió (CiU) party — to prevent the mosque from being built.

Construction of the Salafi mosque is proceeding, nonetheless: apparently the construction permit was issued before the non-retroactive moratorium took effect.

In nearby Lérida, where 30,000 Muslims make up more than 20% of the city’s population, mosque builders are facing a problem of a different kind: on March 4, 2013, the Catalan Supreme Court ruled that a local Muslim group would not be allowed to build a mega-mosque in an industrial park, called El Segre, because a municipal ordinance states that the area may only be used for industrial purposes; as such, the premises were deemed unfit for public assembly.

Two days after that ruling, another judge at a different court ordered city officials in Lérida to approve the construction of an 800 m² (8,600 ft²) brothel in the same industrial park, two streets away from where Muslims had wanted to build their mosque.

City officials said they had originally denied the license to build the brothel because of a lack of parking space, but the judge disagreed, saying the denial “has more to do with the subject of the proposed business (a brothel) than with a concern over parking.”

An article in the Catalan newspaper La Vanguardia entitled, “Brothel Yes, Mosque No” reports that the Lérida City Council “does not hide its surprise at these two opposing points of view from the judiciary on the use that can be given to the plots in the same industrial park.” City officials say they will appeal the ruling.

In Switzerland, a Muslim group called Club Paradise is converting a bowling alley into a mosque. The future imam of the new mosque, Fehim Dragusha, originally from Kosovo, made local headlines in late 2011 when he called on Muslim parents to beat their children if they refuse to pray. Dragusha says he was misunderstood because of his poor German language skills. He now says he favors a “modern Islam.”

In other mosque-related news, the Danish toymaker Lego has tried to defend its controversial decision to remove its Jabba’s Palace toy set — based on a scene from Star Wars Episode VI — from store shelves.

In January 2013, the Turkish Cultural Community of Austria (TCA) complained that “Jabba’s Palace” resembled the Hagia Sophia mosque, originally a Christian church, in Istanbul, formerly the Christian city of Constantinople; and that the accompanying figures depicted “racial prejudice and vulgar insinuations” against Muslims as people with “deceitful and criminal personalities.”

Initially, Lego refused to back down, insisting that the product was merely a faithful reproduction of the images in the Star Wars movie. But after a meeting in Munich on March 29 between Turkish community leaders and Lego executives, Lego agreed to end its production of the toy from 2014 onwards.

Lego says its decision had nothing to do with pressure from Muslims and everything to do with the natural lifecycle of the product. But the Turks do not see it that way. The jubilant president of the TCA, Birol Killic, said in a statement: “We are very grateful and congratulate Lego on the decision to take Jabba’s Palace out of production.” He added: “Lego managers have also promised that the chief toy maker will be sensitized on this [multicultural] issue.”

 

source:  http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3657/europe-mosques