Month: March 2009

More on the Swedish riots: Muslims chanted about killing Jews

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Ann posted on the riots in Malmo, Sweden, last week. Sweden has let in hundreds of thousands of refugees, who have changed Swedish society in fundamental ways. The article she linked to in the Jerusalem Post didn’t mention this, but Europe News reports:

…they were not just protesting against the Israeli tennis team’s participation in the Davis Cup match in the Baltiska Hallen sports facility. They, the mob of Muslim protesters, were shouting:

“Khaybar Khaybar ya Yahoud, Jaish Muhammad SAUF ya’ud”

Europe News provides a translation of a Swedish blogger, Samuel Danofsky, who explains:

A translation of the chant is:

[Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews, Muhammad’s army will return]

It refers to an attack by Mohammad on a Jewish society in particular in the year 629, at the oasis of Khaybar, currently Saudi Arabia. The battle ended with the Mohammed’s Army killing 93 Jews and sent a large number into exile. You can read more about it here, here and here. I have sent a notification to JK with an invitation to look at whether this can be classed as an “incitement to hatred”. For I me, it feels that if in a public place a mood can be whipped up against the Jewish community with such words, then it can be considered a criminal offense.

We saw some of this kind of thing in this country at demonstrations during the recent war in Gaza (posts are here and here) with demonstrators shouting about Jews needing ovens, a sign “Death to all Juice” and other anti-Jewish sentiments.  I’d like to know just how widespread this attitude is among Muslims in the United States.  I’ve never seen a report of a survey that tried to find out. Pew did a  large survey of Muslims in 2007 and asked many questions, but none of them touched on Muslims’ attitude toward Jews.

500 British girls have genitals mutilated every year

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update March 25th:   I thought the British number was high, but here is an article from NYC that says our cases of female genital mutilation are much higher, and we are doing less about it.

 

That is a staggering number.    And, you can bet it’s happening here too in the secretive Somali Muslim communities in cities such as Minneapolis, Seattle, Nashville, Boston, San Diego and so on.

The article, from The Times, tells us that British health authorities are promoting a campaign to reach Somalis and other immigrants from the Horn of Africa  to have the gruesome operation reversed.  It would be done free as part of their nationalized health care sytem.  Hat tip Blulitespecial.  Gosh, just think taxpayers here could be paying for similar operations in years ahead if Obama gets his way.

The NHS is to advertise free operations to reverse female circumcisions, with experts warning that each year more than 500 British girls have their genitals mutilated.

Despite having been outlawed in 1985, female circumcision is still practised in British African communities, in some cases on girls as young as 5. Police have been unable to bring a single prosecution even though they suspect that community elders are being flown from the Horn of Africa to carry out the procedures.

The advertisement will appear from next month on a Somali satellite TV station much viewed in Britain.

What is female genital mutilation?  We have loads of posts on the subject in our health issues category, but it’s important to remind readers again.

Female circumcision, which is done for various reasons, such as religious and cultural traditions, can cause severe health complications including infections and psychological problems. The procedure, predominantly carried out on girls aged between 5 and 12, can range from the removal of the clitoris to the removal of all the exterior parts of the vagina, which is then sewn up.

To understand it fully, I recommend you read Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s book, Infidel, in which she describes how the procedure traumatized her and her sister.

Agency for Culture Change Management UK?   I wonder when we will get one of those.

Sarah McCulloch, of the Agency for Culture Change Management UK, said that every year more than 500 British girls were having circumcisions. “A lot of them are done in the UK, but some still travel overseas,” she said.

She said that a code of silence in Britain’s African communities had allowed circumcisions to continue and prevented arrests. The unqualified female elders, known as “house doctors” because they act in secret in a family home, are flown into the country.

It is supposedly a cultural (cultural relativism is crap) and religious (Islamic) obligation which destroys the sex drive and helps assure men get their sexual pleasure but that their women then don’t stray too far.  But it does more than that, it is the worst form of child abuse wrapped in a veil of secrecy often dooming girls to a lifetime of pain and psychological trauma.

Ms McCulloch said that girls were brainwashed into believing circumcision to be a cultural, and, in some cases, religious obligation that should be kept secret. “It is something they simply do not discuss — if they do they’d be seen as betraying their family and their community and culture,” she said. “I know many girls who want to accuse their parents but can’t. They don’t want to take their parents to court.”

In the US, refugee resettlement workers know this is happening and I sure hope they are brave enough to blow the whistle, but I doubt it.

Books to read:    It’s a long time since we wrote about this, but I recommend especially to our female readers three books that I found very informative about Islam.  I call them ‘my women’s books,’  one is Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s that I mentioned above.  The other two are Nonie Darwish, “Now they call me Infidel,” and Brigitte Gabriel, “Because they Hate: A survivor of Islamic Terror warns America.”

Hirsi Ali grew up in Africa, Darwish in Egypt, and Gabriel in Lebanon, so they give you a multi-country/continent view of Islam and what it means to be female in that male-dominated Islamic political and religious society.

Can’t Grover Norquist stick to taxes?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Goodness knows with the Obama Administration taxing everyone everywhere wouldn’t you think Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform, had enough to keep him busy that he wouldn’t have to get into promoting Islamic causes.   As a matter of fact,  I was just saying to a fellow real conservative the other day that Mr. Norquist has been conspicuously absent in the battle to rein in government spending during this period of arguably the worst attack on taxpayers in our nation’s history.  Now I know why.

Our interest in Norquist’s activities go back to August 2007 when he and fellow conservatives were drumming up support for the Kennedy bill to expand Iraqi refugee numbers entering the US (here).

So, now what is he up to?  From Baron Bodissey at Gates of Vienna last week:

Grover Norquist is a conservative activist and the president of Americans for Tax Reform. He is also well-known in Washington D.C. circles as a friend of Islam. Since the 1990s he has held weekly “Wednesday meetings” in which he briefs fellow conservatives and helps plot strategy for the Republican party.

Pushing appeasement:

According to several attendees who were present at Grover Norquist’s Wednesday meeting, the participants — presumably including members of Congress — were offered paperback copies of the “Changing the Course” document (pdf), which outlines the steps needed to help the United States achieve reconciliation with the Muslim world.

Unfortunately for non-Muslims in the United States, this prescription involves more engagement and more appeasement. It calls for yet more dialogue with and respect for Islam, and includes a special emphasis on removing Hamas and Hezbollah from the list of terrorist groups so that they can be recognized as legitimate negotiating partners.

The involvement of Mr. Norquist’s group raises questions about of the extent of Islamist infiltration throughout the conservative NGO groups.

Mr. Bodissey then goes on to connect the dots and point out that at the country’s largest gathering of conservatives in Washington in recent memory, there was no discussion of Islamic terrorism, save the privately sponsored speech by Geert Wilders which Judy and I attended, here.

If anyone is curious why this year’s CPAC — which has just folded its tents — didn’t have a single panel on radical Islam or the war on terror, remember that Grover Norquist is on the board of the ACU, which sponsors CPAC.

In July 2008 we told you more about Mr. Norquist to help explain why a supposed tax reformer was busy promoting the resettlement of large numbers of Iraqi Muslims to the US, not exactly a fiscally responsible thing to do.  Incidentally Norquist’s group also lobbied for amnesty for illegals.   In that same July post we  told you about an extraordinary charge by normally mild-mannered Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch:

Grover Norquist has been responsible, more than any other individual, for the infiltration of Islamic supremacists into the highest levels of the U.S. government. See here the seminal expose by Frank Gaffney of the immense damage Norquist has done.

It’s a great mystery to me, why don’t conservatives recognize the elephant in the living room?

US pullout in Iraq will have unintended consequences for refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

President Obama’s plan to pull us out of Iraq may have deadly consequences for thousands of Iranian dissidents who have sought shelter in Iraq where they were protected by American troops.  

From the New York Times:

And in a remote part of northern Diyala Province, Iraqi soldiers surrounded a refugee camp for Iranian dissidents, Camp Ashraf, blockading food and water to the roughly 3,500 residents there. A spokesman for the dissidents’ group, the People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran, said Sunday that only the presence of Americans had prevented an attack on them.

[…..]

Far to the north, the Iranian refugees at Camp Ashraf have been a renewed source of concern ever since American forces handed over responsibility for the camp’s protection to the Iraqi Army on Jan. 1.

Last Friday, however, Iraqi forces surrounded the camp and cut off supplies, according to Shahin Gobadi, a spokesman for the dissidents, reached by telephone in Paris. Then, on Sunday morning, the refugees resisted an attempt by Iraqi soldiers to enter one of the camp’s buildings, leading to scuffles and beatings of residents that stopped only when American officers there as observers intervened.

“If the Americans leave, you will see a very serious human catastrophe and a massacre in this camp,” said a camp spokesman, Shahriar Kia, who was reached by telephone. So far, though, no one has been seriously injured or killed.

Whew!  Who knew!  If the refugees are killed that won’t look so good for Obama.

Dutch court decision for freedom of speech could help Geert Wilders

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In a hopeful decision, reports the Dutch news service NIS, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands…

produced an important ruling in principle in favour of freedom of speech. The highest court of the Netherlands acquitted a man of insulting Muslims although he dubbed Islam a tumour.

The man in question isn’t Geert Wilders, though the decision will obviously affect his case. A district court and an appeals court had found the man guilty. Here is how the court differentiated between insulting Islam and insulting Muslims:

The Supreme Court acquitted a man who in November 2004 stuck a poster in his window with the text: ‘Stop the tumour that is called Islam’. While people may not insult believers, they can insult their religion, according to the Supreme Court. “The sole circumstance of offensive statements about a religion also insulting its followers is not sufficient to speak of insulting a group of people due to their religion.”

The decision doesn’t automatically get Wilders off the hook.

The case was about Article 137c of the Criminal Code, which makes offensive statements about a group of people an offence. It was not about incitement to hatred or discrimination, the Supreme Court stressed.

Party for Freedom (PVV) leader Wilders, meanwhile internationally known for his struggle against Islam, will be tried for insulting Muslims as a group. The court that will handle his case will have to take yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling into account.

Originally, the Public Prosecutor’s Office (OM) did not want to prosecute the MP, because it did not consider any of his statements a punishable offence. But in January, an appeal court in Amsterdam ordered the OM to change its mind.

As well as for insulting Muslims, Wilders will also be on trial for incitement to hatred and discrimination against Muslims. When the Wilders case will come to court is not yet known.

Distinguishing between insulting Islam and insulting Muslims is a fine point but an important one and I didn’t realize the Dutch law made that distinction. A small opening for free speech.

Hat tip to Jihad Watch. Our posts on Geert Wilders and freedom of speech are here.