As less than two weeks remain until the ban on Muslim face veils comes into force in Austria, the authorities decided to inform the citizens and foreign nationals about it once again by issuing statements and distributing flyers.
Via: rt.com
“The Anti-Face-Veiling Act prohibits covering facial features in public by clothes or other objects in such a way that they are no longer recognizable,” a statement, which will be included in the flyers to be distributed in airports upon arrival, as well as by police officers in public places, says.
The flyers, which include four languages – German, English, Arabic, and Turkish – will also warn both Austrian nationals and tourists that those violating the new law face fines of up to €150 (US$178).
The Austrian Interior Ministry also issued a similar statement on its website. The law is set to go into effect on October 1. According to the statement, “all places, which can be accessed at all times or at certain times by a group of people not limited beforehand, including transport facilities such as bus, rail, air or maritime traffic,” are considered to be public and come under the provisions of the law.
The statement also says that those found in violation of the law will be obliged to remove their face veils at the request of police, or be “taken to a police station by a police officer.”
Officers will be forbidden, however, to remove face veils by force.
The legislation, which is commonly referred to as a ‘burqa ban,’ also covers other headwear. People wearing balaclavas, covering their faces with scarves, or even wearing medical masks without sufficient reason could also be found in violation of the new law, according to the Wiener Zeitung.
The law exempts those covering their faces due to medical or safety reasons, as well as due to hazardous weather conditions such as smog. Participants of street carnivals and other “artistic, cultural or traditional events” are also exempted, along with athletes requiring face-covering gear.
Austria approved the ban on full face veils in May as part of a larger ‘integration law,’ which the foreign ministry says is aimed at encouraging people to assimilate into Austrian culture.
“People are not judged by their country of origin but by their will to contribute to Austria. The main goal of this law is to promote and call for integration,” the foreign ministry said in a March press release.
The law drew criticism after it was initially proposed, with thousands taking to the streets to protest in February, chanting slogans such as “Hey minister! Hands off my sister!”
Islam is the fastest growing religion in Austria, with around 700,000 Muslims living in the country – twice as many as in 2001, according to AFP. Almost half of those are Turks, followed by Bosnians, Chechens, Syrians, and Afghans.
Austria was also the first European country to recognize Islam as an official religion, but Vienna city councilor Omar al-Rawi told AFP on Thursday that today’s political parties always address Islam “in a negative context.”
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For decades, in both America and Europe, the gay establishment – gay magazines, gay rights organizations, and self-designated gay leaders – have been dictating politics to the gay multitudes. Those politics have been consistently left-wing and Democratic. Not all gays have played follow-the-leader, but most have, so that in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections Hillary Clinton won a far larger percentage of the gay vote than Donald Trump.
Via: Bruce Bawer
Even though Hillary had opposed same-sex marriage until 2013, had taken millions of dollars from governments that execute homosexuals, and was married to the man who signed the Defense of Marriage Act, the gay mafia had managed to depict her as gay-friendly while depicting Donald Trump, a longtime gay marriage supporter, as an enemy of gay rights.
Even more perverse than the official gay take on Trump vs. Clinton is the official gay party line on Islam. To get a good picture of this party line, all you need to do is glance through the archives of The Advocate, a gay news magazine.
“Islam is not intrinsically homophobic,” wrote Trudy Ring in a 2013 Advocate report about Muslim “activists and scholars” who, she claimed, were making progress in their effort to make Islam “more welcoming to LGBT people.” In a 2014 piece, Stevie St. John promoted a Muslim lesbian’s claim that the Koran “prescribes no punishment for being gay or transgender.”
True, but wildly deceptive: in fact, the Koran contains explicit condemnations of homosexual conduct, while the punishments for such conduct are spelled out in Islamic law. Then there’s the 2017 Advocate article in which one Samra Habib happily noted that after the Orlando Pulse nightclub massacre, many news media eschewed anti-Islamic “finger-pointing” and instead “offered many queer Muslims a platform to share how they too were in mourning and how they often felt doubly ostracized” – victimized, in other words, by both “Islamophobia and homophobia.”
Any whitewash of Islam is reprehensible. But when gays whitewash Islam in a publication read by other gays, it’s downright dangerous. No ideology on Earth is more anti-gay. In ten Muslim countries, gay sex is punishable by death. To pretend that there’s any way of reconciling homosexuality and Islam, or any chance of transforming Islam into a gay-friendly faith, is to encourage a menacing fantasy.
So it’s promising to observe that as Islam plants its roots ever more deeply in the soil of Western Europe, more and more European gays are wising up, breaking ranks with the fools and liars in their midst who preach that the “gay community” and the ummah are natural allies, and casting their ballots for politicians whom they’d previously scorned.
In April, for example, Thomas Adamson of the Associated Press reported that although gay rights groups in France had not wavered in their fierce opposition to Marine Le Pen’s Front National (FN), the party now enjoyed a higher level of support among gay voters than among straights.
Adamson quoted gay artist and Paris resident Kelvin Hopper: “Faced with the current threats, particularly from radical Islam, gays have realized they’ll be the first victims of these barbarians, and only Marine is proposing radical solutions.” The historically anti-gay FN, noted Adamson, now had “more top aides who are publicly known to be gay than any other French political party.”
On September 14, CNN’s website ran a story about gays in Germany who are supporting the Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD). A middle-aged Bremen couple interviewed for the piece had been violently gay-bashed by “two locally known Muslim extremists” who “were never arrested and later fled to Syria.” After failing to receive justice from local prosecutors and the mayor’s office, the couple had cast their lot in with AfD.
“I don’t like everything they say,” admitted one of the two gay men, a longtime leftist and former Green Party voter, “but this is too dangerous for gay people to live openly here, if we get attacked like that. We need a party that’s talking openly about this.” Like FN, AfD opposes same-sex marriage – but also has gay people in its leadership, and is supported by a higher percentage of gays than of straights.
That many gays are embracing parties like FN and AfD is a source of bafflement and outrage for politicians, journalists, academics, and gay activists who are used to the idea of gays as docile field hands on the leftist plantation. Their response to this new development is to smear the right-wing parties as cynical exploiters of the gay electorate, and to find some condescending way of interpreting gay support for these parties.
For example, German social psychologist Beate Kupper told CNN that gays are joining AfD because it makes them feel better, as members of an “out” group, to demonize members of another “out” group.
In March, J. Lester Feder of BuzzFeed interviewed a “group of queer and immigrant activists” in Amsterdam who angrily dismissed politician Geert Wilders’s expressions of concern about Muslim gay-hatred as “racism dressed up in liberal drag.” Wilders, Feder warned, wasn’t alone: Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte was also now saying that immigrants who “harass gays” should leave the country.
Gay former MP Tofik Dibi, whose parents came from Morocco, admitted to Feder that “anti-LGBT attitudes are a real problem in some immigrant communities” (euphemism, anyone?), but insisted that politicians who raise this issue don’t care about gays: they’re using it “as a weapon” against Muslims.
Note that rhetorical sleight of hand. In reality, gays aren’t bashing Muslims in Europe; Muslims are bashing gays. But Dibi turns that reality on its head, transforming perpetrators into victims.
Then there are the out-and-out lies served up by the likes of Tanja Ineke – head of the Netherlands’ leading gay-rights organization, no less – who told Feder that “immigrants don’t pose a special threat to LGBT people.” Tell that to the countless Dutch gays who, fearful of being beaten by Muslim gangs in a city that was once the safest place on Earth for them, have fled Amsterdam for provincial towns or moved abroad. Because of the city’s demographic revolution, Amsterdam’s gay scene is a shadow of what it was twenty or even ten years ago.
To his credit, Feder at least included in his article a memorable quotation from the late, great Pim Fortuyn, the gay sociologist-turned-politician whose stern warnings of the dangers of Islamization led to his assassination fifteen years ago. “I have no desire,” said Fortuyn, “to have to go through the emancipation of women and homosexuals all over again.”
Alas, unless Wilders and other politicians who dare to criticize Islam gain power very soon, the closing down in Western Europe not just of gay rights but of all kinds of rights will proceed apace, and emancipation of any kind will increasingly look like a pipe dream.
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Fears of Swedes losing their culture and identity has fuelled a rise in anti-migrant sentiment, after 163,000 people arrived in the country in last year.
Via: Alix Culbertson
Sweden has been the poster child for openness and toleration for decades but that has changed in just two years, the study by independent British think-tank Demos found.
In September 2015, thousands of people took to the streets with banners saying “Refugees Welcome” while Prime Minister Stefan Löfven spoke about not buildin
g walls and offering help “when need is great”.
A year later, in October 2016, his government decided to implement border controls, which had always been available but not used, to stem the rapid flow of asylum seekers.
Anger in Sweden over neo-Nazis’ May Day march
The report said: “This U-turn in refugee policy and rhetoric on refugee admission was accompanied by an increased focus on questions of national identity and civic integration. ‘Swedish values’ became one of the key terms in the immigration debate, in a country where nationalism used to be a political taboo.”
And a surge in nationalistic language has shown many Swedes now consider migrants a threat to the nation, the report said.
The 458-page study into populism in Europe found an increasing use of “exclusionary nationalist rhetoric” in 2015 and 2016 by Swedish politicians across the spectrum.
Since the beginning of 2015, the study found an increasing use of the term “Swedish values” by not just the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats which have gained popularity since then, but by all main parties.
Swedish media mentioned the term more than 1,600 times in 2016, an increase from 286 times in 2012, the study found.
Stockholm Station Migrants
The authors said: “Discussions of national identity became much more prominent from 2015 onwards in relation to the refugee crisis.”Politicians continually spoke about Swedish national culture and heritage which, while not overtly anti-migrant, led to an exclusion of those who were not native.The leaders of the liberal-conservative Moderate Party and conservative Christian Democrats were more subtle than Sweden Democrats about linking values and culture with the suggestion immigrants “are causing a demise of Swedish values”, however they did make the link, the study found.Sweden has traditionally bucked the growing trend of support for populist anti-immigration parties across Europe, with the country welcoming an influx of labour migrants in the Sixties and Seventies.Since 2000, the number of asylum seekers to the country increased rapidly from an average 16,000 annually to 160,000 in 2015.Support for anti-migrant party the Sweden Democrats has increased since the 2014 election when it was already at an all-time high, the study said.Politicians from all parties have been recorded making comments questioning the future of national identity or ‘Swedishness’.Anna Kinberg-Batra, leader of the Moderates, said arranged marriages could not be defended as freedom of religion.She said: “To take the future away from your daughter – that is not freedom.”
She added that honour killings were “dishonest and it goes against Swedish values”.
Ebba Busch Thor, leader of the Christian Democrats, suggested the migration crisis was not over and said if immigrants could not speak the language and understand Swedish culture and values “exclusion will grow”.
There was uproar when a Muslim politician refused to shake a female journalist’s hand in April last year, and widespread anger after several swimming pools offered female-only hours following requests from Muslim women.
Swedish National Day, originally a “non-celebration”, has now become a popular public festival after being made a public holiday in 2015.
The study stated: “Our analysis has shown ethnic conceptions of Swedishness go hand in hand with anti-immigrant sentiment.”
It added: “In short, Swedish immigration politics has changed substantially and rhetorically in the past few years, with asylum policies taking a restrictive turn following a large influx of asylum seekers, support for the Sweden Democrats rocketing and immigration taking an uncharacteristically but seemingly unmovable central position on the political agenda.”
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Staffanstorp’s municipality is Sweden is the “worst” against immigrants. The municipality’s solution to place new arrivals in used caravans on a field – without water. Politicians are defending the decision, refusing to buy expensive condominiums for immigrants as other municipalities did.
Via: Marianne Pernbro
The Swedish Migration Board has been tired of Staffanstorp’s reluctance to accept immigrants.
Therefore, the authority has begun sending new arrivals to the municipality without a message about housing the immigrants.
The municipality responds by placing immigrants in used caravans in the middle of the fields.
Now, dozens of immigrants live two and two in six caravans without water and 20 minutes walking distance from a bus stop.
“We do not have internet, nothing and if you do not feel good, you can not do anything,” says Wassim Allshatib.
His friend says it’s not “human worthy” to live like this.
SVT News Skåne has also written about Staffanstorp’s unusual treatment of new arrivals, and describes “the wet and muddy ” also consists that the two barracks with of caravans are with toilets and kitchens.
“We have to stand and eat,” says Josief Debretsion to SVT.
But the municipality defends the decision to use the caravans.
The municipal council Christian Sonesson (M) says that it is an urgent solution, pointing out that, on the part of the municipality, it has always been said that there is no housing, but the Migration Board has fought in. Buying expensive condominiums to the newly arrived immigrants, like some other municipalities done, Staffanstorp refuses to do. It would drive housing prices and mean an economic risk.
“The number of caravans can become more if the Migration Board’s instructions continue it’s new way,” the municipality writes.
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Fewer rapes have been solved in Sweden so far in 2017 than by the same stage a year before, new figures from the country’s National Council on Crime Prevention (Brå) suggest.
Via: thelocal.se
Brå’s preliminary figures for the first six months of 2017 show that only eight percent of rapes investigated by police this year have been solved (mening 302 have been solved), down from 12 percent at the same stage a year before, when 354 were solved.
Police say they want to do more, but complain that limited resources are hampering their cause. According to Brå‘s researcher on sex crimes, there are also a number of other factors that can influence the change.
“Eight percent is quite low, but it’s also worth remembering that these crimes are generally difficult to investigate. Even if police could do more to investigate these crimes in a better way, that would perhaps mean a difference of a few percent, and doing everything in the book wouldn’t necessarily mean some kind of extreme change,” Johanna Olseryd told The Local.
“In general it’s a type of crime where the clearance rate is quite low and it can vary year by year and be up and down. It’s also not unusual for there to be larger cases which include many individual crimes for example. So if a final decision is reached on that kind of case, it can impact the rate of crimes being solved by several percent,” she added.
In Sweden each case of sexual violence is recorded as a separate instance, so for example if someone tells the police that they were raped by a partner several times, each of those instances would be recorded as an individual potential crime.
Another factor that could contribute is that the number of rapes that have been processed so far in Sweden this year is up to 4,004 from a lower 3,047 during the first half of 2016, meaning the police simply have more work to do.
Of those 4,004, an investigation was launched in 3,810 instances, while 194 were dismissed without one. In 2016, 2,843 were investigated and 204 were dismissed.
But the fact that more rapes have been processed by police does not necessarily mean that more were committed, Olseryd pointed out:
“In general what we know from research is that more people are coming forward and saying they have been subjected to sexual crimes. We don’t know how much that is down to there being more crimes committed, or because there is a bigger public discussion of the subject, which means more people are likely to understand that they have been subjected to something that’s a crime, or that they have a higher tendency to report it.”
The increasingly stretched nature of the police force in Sweden has been a prominent subject in the country as of late. Unions have complained that a lack of adequate staff numbers is preventing more crimes from being solved, with a Swedish Police Union (Polisförbundet) survey in May showing that 39 percent of officers think a lack of investigation staff means the crime clearance rate is going in the wrong direction.
A difficult working environment and low salaries are also blamed for officers leaving their job prematurely, with 200 under the age of 40 leaving their positions in 2016.
Earlier this week, the Swedish government announced that it will give two billion kronor to the police in 2018 in an effort to help turn the force around, with the money to be directed towards improving working conditions and encouraging people to say in their job, as well as recruiting more officers.
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What won’t you see in this book? You won’t see a picture of Muslim “morality police” patrolling neighborhoods and controlling women’s conduct. You won’t see Muslim men cutting in front of Swedish women in queues and then calling them “whores” when they protest. One of Sweden’s former prime ministers, Fredrik Reinfeldt, pronounced with approval in December 2014 that the future of Sweden belonged not to ethnic Swedes but to immigrants.
Via: Bruce Bawer
Speaking at a rally in Melbourne, Florida, on February 18, President Trump mentioned recent terrorist attacks in Nice, Paris, and Brussels, and then said:
“You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this. Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.”
Nothing major had happened the night before in Sweden, except that the country has taken in armies of Muslims, and as a result is descending into social and economic disaster.
The Swedish media might have responded to Trump’s comment by addressing their country’s immigrant crisis honestly. Instead, they took it as an opportunity to mock Trump. The Stockholm newspaper Aftonbladet ran an article in English headlined: “Here’s what happened in Sweden Friday night, Mr President.” The article included a list of innocuous news items, among them technical problems that had occurred at rehearsals for Swedish Eurovision and the temporary closing of a highway because of lousy weather.
So much for that episode, right? No. Several Swedish photographers decided to drag it out waybeyond a single news cycle. The result: a new coffee-table book entitled Last Night in Sweden.
At least one Swedish photography website has applauded this project. This book, the anonymous author wrote, is a “profound and insightful” work that “encapsulates a true and candid Sweden,” shows “the country as it really is, from the inside — in its multiplicity, subtle textures, and political, social and cultural nuance.”
Lee Roden of the free Swedish newspaper The Local agreed, claiming that the pictures in the book “combat the hysteria about the country provoked by people like US President Donald Trump.” The photographer in charge of the project, Jeppe Wikström, told Roden that people smear Sweden out of jealousy: “We manage to combine diversity with success. We do have high taxes, but we also have a very successful business life.” Wilkström admitted that there are some odd things about Swedes: “We take off our shoes before going inside, put money into the right position and make sure it’s not so wrinkly before paying at a cash register.”
The first copy of Last Night in Sweden, published on September 7, was mailed to Donald Trump. Other copies have been, or will be, sent to “all members of the US Congress and European Parliament” as a way of countering “false news.” [This is how they put it] At the end of October, an exhibition of photos from the book will move from Stockholm to the European Parliament in Brussels.
The book contains pictures of an ethnic Swedish man sitting on a snowmobile on a snow-covered icy river; a young guy walking around a gym practicing the tuba; a 94-year old Swedish woman in a retirement home being pushed in her wheelchair by a Somali immigrant; an octogenarian Swedish couple sitting in their home sauna in Lapland; a handicapped Algerian immigrant working out in the gym he founded; a Romani beggar woman kneeling on a city street; an elderly Swedish couple playing in their kitchen with their dog. And so on. In other words, a bunch of images showing immigrants doing things that, in one way or another, enhance life in Sweden, mixed in with a few photos of ethnic Swedes living pretty much the same way they did before the immigration tsunami started.
What won’t you see in this book?
You won’t see Muslim violence in Sweden’s public libraries, which has increased so dramatically in the last couple of years that many librarians are looking for other jobs. You won’t see a picture of the three condos in which a newly arrived Syrian immigrant’s three wives and sixteen children are being put up at a total cost to Swedish taxpayers of $1.75 million. You won’t see a picture of Muslim “morality police” patrolling neighborhoods and controlling women’s conduct. You won’t see Muslim men cutting in front of Swedish women in queues and then calling them “whores” when they protest.
You won’t see a TV news crew from Australia being physically attacked by Muslims for entering a no-go zone. You won’t see Muslim girls being beaten by their families for removing their hijab. You won’t see Muslims setting cars on fire, and then hurling bottles and stones at the firefighters who show up to put out the blaze.
You won’t see a picture of a recent event at which politicians and welfare officials met with residents of Stockholm’s Järva neighborhood to address the prevalence of violence, forced marriage, compulsory hijab, and other forms of oppression within Muslim families – only to be told by the locals that they were not interested in conforming to “Swedish values.” You won’t see a picture of the head of the Swedish security service, Anders Thornberg, who in a TV interview the other day admitted that the number of potential perpetrators of terrorist violence in Sweden had risen immensely in recent years.
You won’t see a gang of Muslim youths raping an infidel teenager. You won’t see a Syrian refugee raping the fourteen-year-old daughter of the woman who took him into her house out of compassion. You won’t see ten men committing a gang rape in August of last year – or their arrest, which finally took place earlier this month because it took that long for the police to fit it into their schedule. They are too busy these days investigating murders to spend much time on rapes.
You won’t see convicted Muslim rapists being punished by paying small fines and performing community service for a few days. (When they pay the fine, do they put the money in the right position and make sure it’s not so wrinkly?) You won’t see a Muslim youth perusing the new booklet put out by the Swedish Ministry of Youth and Civil Affairs, which explains to immigrants that Swedish culture disapproves of rape. You won’t see Muslim girls being raped by relatives – a common enough event that goes unreported because the victims know that if they go to the authorities they’ll be killed. You won’t see a picture of the annual, highly popular Bråvalla summer music festival, which will no longer be held after this year because the number of rapes occurring at the event has gotten out of hand.
Of course, Sweden’s current crisis is not an invention of Islamophobic foreigners. It has been acknowledged by Swedish police inspector Lars Alvarsjö, who has warned that the scale of immigrant crime is straining the country’s police departments and courts to the breaking point.
It has been acknowledged by Swedish police investigator Peter Springare, who has said that virtually all of the criminals he deals with are Muslims. It has been acknowledged by Malmö police chief Stefan Sinteus, who has said that Muslim immigrants in his city are responsible for an “upward spiral of violence.” And of course it has been acknowledged by the recent history of the Sweden Democrats, the only party to speak the truth about these problems, and now enjoys so much voter support that the so-called cordon sanitaire erected around it by the mainstream parties will soon no longer be able to hold.
In recent weeks, Norwegians on social media have been sharing a 1977 video in which Carl I. Hagen, founder of Norway’s Progress Party, warned that Sweden, by admitting too many immigrants and giving them special benefits, has started down a long road to self-destruction. He saw it forty years ago, but even now, many Swedes still refuse to see it. One of Sweden’s former prime ministers, Fredrik Reinfeldt, pronounced with approval in December 2014 that the future of Sweden belonged not to ethnic Swedes but to immigrants. (Why didn’t Wikström and his colleagues erupt in outrage at that remark? Why, instead, get angry at a foreign head of state for actually showing empathy for their plight?)
This is a country in which it was reported on September 9, that a new Muslim political party has filed papers to field candidates in next year’s parliamentary elections. The party is called Jasin, which is also the name of the thirty-sixth sura of the Koran. On September 10, seventeen-year-old Fatemeh Khavari, who wears hijab and who recently led a weeks-long sit-in protesting the expulsion of rejected asylum seekers, told a reporter that her goal is to be Sweden’s prime minister. And why not? By the time she is old enough, she will be just what they are looking for.
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Sweden’s Jasin party is not unique. Islamist parties have begun to emerge in many European countries, such as the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, and France.
Via: Judith Bergman
In the Netherlands, Denk ran on a platform against the integration of immigrants into Dutch society (instead advocating “mutual acceptance”, a euphemism for creating parallel Muslim societies); and for establishment of a “racism police” that would register “offenders” and exclude them from holding public office.
“I consider every death of an American, British or Dutch soldier as a victory”. — Dyab Abu Jahjah, leader of a group called Movement X and possibly starting an Islamist party in Belgium. The Belgian political magazine Knack named Jahjah the country’s fourth-most influential person.
The “I.S.L.A.M” party, founded in 2012, is working to implement Islamic law, sharia, in Belgium. The party already has branches in the Brussels districts of Anderlecht, Molenbeek and Liege. The party wants to “translate religion into practice”.
In France, as the journalist Yves Mamou recently reported, the PEJ has already approved 68 candidates and wants to abolish the separation of church and state, make veils mandatory for schoolgirls in public schools, introduce halal food in all schools and fight “Islamophobia”.
Sweden’s brand new first Islamic party, Jasin, is aiming to run for the 2018 parliamentary elections. According to the website of the party, Jasin is a “multicultural, democratic, peaceful party” that is “secular” and aims to “unite everyone from the East… regardless of ethnicity, language, race, skin color or religion”. Jasin apparently knows what the Swedes like to hear.
In an interview, the founder and spokesperson of the party, Mehdi Hosseini, who came from Iran to Sweden 30 years ago, revealed that the leader of the new political party, Sheikh Zoheir Eslami Gheraati, does not actually live in Sweden. He is an Iranian imam, who lives in Teheran, but Jasin wants to bring him to Sweden: “I thought he was such a peaceful person who would be able to manifest the peaceful side of Islam. I think that is needed in Sweden,” said Hosseini.
The purpose of the Jasin party, however, does not appear to be either secular or multicultural. In its application to the Swedish Election Authority, the party writes — with refreshing honesty — that it will “firstly follow exactly what the Koran says, secondly what Shiite imams say”. The Jasin party also states that it is a “non-jihadi and missionary organization, which will spread Islam’s real side, which has been forgotten and has been transformed from a beautiful to a warlike religion…”
In mid-September, the Swedish Election Authority informed Jasin that it failed to deliver the needed signatures, but that it is welcome to try again. Anna Nyqvist, from the Swedish Election Authority, said that a political party with an anti-democratic or Islamic agenda is eligible to run for parliament if the party’s application fulfills all formalities. Nyqvist considers it unproblematic that the leader of the party lives in Iran. “This is the essence of democracy, that all views should be allowed. And it is up to them to choose their party leader”, Nyqvist said.
Sweden’s Jasin Party is not unique. Islamist parties have begun to emerge in many European countries, such as the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, and France.
In the Netherlands, two Dutch Turks, former members of the Socialist party, founded a new party, Denk, only six months before the Dutch parliamentary elections. Despite the short timeframe, they managed to get one-third of the Muslim vote and three seats in parliament. The party does not hide its affinity for Turkey: Criticism of Turkey is taboo just as is their refusal to name the Turkish mass-slaughter of the Armenians during the First World War a genocide. The party ran on a platform against the integration of immigrants into Dutch society (instead advocating “mutual acceptance”, a euphemism for creating parallel Muslim societies); and for establishment of a “racism police” that would register “offenders” and exclude them from holding public office.
In Austria, Turkish Muslims also formed a new party, the New Movement for the Future (NBZ), established in January 2017. According to its founder, Adnan Dincer, the NBZ is not an Islamic party or a Turkish party, despite being composed mainly of Turkish Muslims. Several of the party’s Facebook posts are written only in Turkish. Dincer has made no secret of the fact that his party strongly backs Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whom it publicly supported at the time of the coup attempt in August 2016, and the subsequent clampdown by the Erdogan government.
In Belgium, several Islamic parties are preparing to run in the next elections. Dyab Abu Jahjah, apparently behind one of them, while not having presented a formal platform yet, has said he wants to “be part of an egalitarian radical renaissance that will conquer Brussels, Belgium, Europe and the whole world, with new politics of radical equality… defeat the forces of supremacy… of sustained privileges … of the status-quo… in every possible arena”.
Jahjah is a Lebanese immigrant, who emerged on the European scene, when he founded the now defunct Brussels-based Arab-European League in 2001. It was a pan-European political group aiming to create a Europe-wide “sharocracy” — a supposedly sharia-based “democracy”. In 2001, after the September 11 terror attacks, Jahjah said that he and many Muslims had felt a “sweet revenge feeling”. In 2004, Jahjah said that he supported the killing of foreign troops in Iraq. “I consider every death of an American, British or Dutch soldier as a victory”. He has also been opposed to the assimilation of Muslims, which he has described as “cultural rape”.
Jahjah used to be considered a Hezbollah-supporting extremist, and, although he describes himself as a “political friend” of Jeremy Corbyn, he was banned from entering Britain. In Belgium, however, he is seen as a respectable activist, leader of a group called Movement X, and formerly with his own weekly column in the Belgian daily De Standaard. The Belgian political magazine Knack named Jahjah the country’s fourth-most influential person, just behind Manchester City footballer Vincent Kompany. In January 2017, however, De Standaard fired Jahjah after he praised a terror attack in Jerusalem. “By any means necessary, #freepalestine,” Jahjah had tweeted after an Muslim ISIS-affiliated terrorist plowed a truck through a crowd of young Israeli soldiers visiting Jerusalem, killing four and injuring countless others.
Dyab Abu Jahjah, named by the political magazine Knack as Belgium’s fourth-most influential person, said after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks that he and many Muslims had felt a “sweet revenge feeling”. In 2004, he said that he supported the killing of foreign troops in Iraq. (Left-pane image source: Han Soete/Wikimedia Commons)
Jahjah will likely experience fierce competition from the “I.S.L.A.M” party, founded in 2012, and working to implement Islamic law, sharia, in Belgium. The party already has branches in the Brussels districts of Anderlecht, Molenbeek and Liege. The party wants to “translate religion into practice”. One member explained that, “It’s no coincidence that we started in Brussels. Here there are a lot of Muslims… who are not allowed to come forward with their identity too much…They are therefore frustrated. That can lead to radicalization”.
The party has put forth a mayoral candidate for the Brussels municipal elections in 2018: Michel Dardenne, who converted to Islam in 2002. In his program, Dardenne speaks mainly of how much the party respects Belgian democracy and its constitution, while simply wanting to help an undefined populace against “the elites”. He may have found it easier to appeal to “progressive” non-Muslims that way. Brussels, 25% Muslim, has enormous potential for Islamic parties.
In France, several Islamic parties are also preparing to run in elections. One party is the PEJ, established in 2015 by French-Turkish Muslims and reportedly connected to Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP. As the journalist Yves Mamou recently reported, the PEJ has already approved 68 candidates and wants to abolish the separation of church and state, make veils mandatory for schoolgirls in public schools, introduce halalfood in all schools and fight “Islamophobia”.
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A British imam who told children that martyrdom was better than academic success has been jailed for six-and-a-half years for supporting Islamic State.
Via: theguardian.com
Kamran Hussain, 40, was secretly recorded by an undercover officer giving a series of radical sermons over a period of four months last year.
After he was arrested, the defendant argued that the ability to discuss “difficult concepts in a challenging world” was an essential part of religion and claimed he was exercising his right to freedom of speech.
But following a trial at the Old Bailey, Hussain, from Tunstall, Staffordshire, was found guilty of two charges of supporting Isis and six of encouraging terrorism on dates between June and September last year.
Sentencing, Judge Rebecca Poulet QC said he had preached hatred and division. His encouragement of terrorism and support for ISIS was calculated and intentional at a time of terrible terrorist incidents, she said.
Poulet added: “In my judgment these sermons represented serious and persistent although frequently indirect encouragement to acts of terrorism.”
Mitigating, Michael Ivers QC said his client was no Anjem Choudary, the high profile and influential preacher who was jailed for five-and-a-half years in 2016 for drumming up support for Isis. Before the trial, no one had even heard of Hussain, who preached at a small mosque, he said.
Hussain’s Friday lunchtime speeches at the charity-funded mosque in Tunstall high street, Stoke-on-Trent, were attended by about 40 worshippers, often including children as young as 10.
On 2 September last year Hussain talked about martyrdom to a congregation of nine children and 35 adults.
The prosecutor, Sarah Whitehouse QC, said: “Mr Hussain told his audience that martyrdom was the supreme success and was greater than any other success, such as school or college.”
He continued on the same theme on 16 September and criticised the Prevent programme, aimed at identifying and intervening when young people are at risk of radicalisation, jurors heard.
At a meeting on 19 August last year there were up to 15 children and 25 adults present as he gave a sermon about kuffar, or non-Muslims, the court heard.
Hussain was said to have blamed the British government for creating the English Defence League and funding them to insult Muslims and put them down.
He also claimed the far-right group Britain First was a “government-backed project”, jurors heard.
In all, the undercover officer known as Qasim attended 17 sermons, 10 of which “strayed beyond the mainstream moderate Islamic thought”, Whitehouse said.
On 24 June last year Hussain referred to Isis in his sermon as “a small fledgling state who is standing in the face of a pompous and arrogant army”.
On that occasion he called on the congregation of 10 men to pray for their victory and for their oppressors to be “annihilated”.
The court was told Hussain had one previous conviction, in 2008, for perverting the course of justice, for which he was sentenced to 14 months in jail.
Pakistan-born Hussain had been an imam at the mosque for six years. The court heard there was no evidence anyone had in fact been encouraged to commit terrorism as a result of his sermons. He made no reaction as he was sent down.
DDCS Matt Ward, of West Midlands counter-terrorism unit, said: “Hussain was espousing hatred and violence as well as clearly demonstrating his support for Daesh [Isis] through the content in his sermons. During this investigation we used covert methods to record these sermons and present it as evidence during the trial. We will continue to use every lawful technique and power available to us to tackle terrorism.”
Wayne Jones, Ch Supt for local policing with the Staffordshire force, said: “The actions of this man, who was supporting radical and violent extremist behaviour, have no place in our society, and we will continue to be relentless in our efforts to keep you safe by taking appropriate action whenever we are provided with information about any form of extremism.”
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After 102 shooting in Malmö so far this year, six people were murdered and 35 people were shot dead. However, Mats Karlsson, deputy policeman in Malmö does not think the situation is hopeless.
Via: skd.se
During the first eight months of the year there have been 102 shooting in Malmö.
Six people have died and 35 people were injured.
According to Malmö police, the availability of firearms is a major problem. There is no difficulty in getting over a weapon and young criminals often carry them out in town, SkD writes.
“The availability of weapons makes it a trifle that triggers a shotgun. Fear of former girlfriends or any other personal inconvenience is more common than drug affairs, “said Mats Karlsson, deputy policeman in Malmö, to the newspaper.
Very young people are also involved in crime when children as young as 12 years receive money to deliver drugs. The children, who are not penalized, can receive $ 500 to make a single delivery.
But according to Mats Karlsson, the situation is not completely hopeless.
The shooting in Malmö is seen as a special event and the police have invested considerable resources in investigating all murders and assassinations. Malmö police have put in additional personnel from the rest of Skåne as well as Blekinge and Kalmar County to deal with the serious crime.
Recently, police efforts have led to the arrest of more people and the seizure of more weapons. So far this year, 125 weapons have been seized in Malmö, against 161 last year. In addition, 25 people are currently detained for murder or assassinations.
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Two new children’s books are released in Sweden, which include, among other things, multiply and Muslim Somali culture. They are called “Grandfather has four wives” and “Grandmother is no ghost” and is aimed at very young children.
Via: friatider.se
According to Social News , Somali Nordic Culture is selling the new children’s books at the Book Fair in Gothenburg.
The books are written by author Oscar Trimbel.
“Grandmother is no ghost” is about Omar who greets his grandmother who comes from Somalia.
Grandmother wears full dress but is no ghost.
“When it’s Halloween, Omar dresses like ghosts like any other child. He wants grandma to come along because it’s gonna be nasty”, the book is featured on Adlibris website.
The second children’s book, “Grandfather has four wives”, deals with polygamy. The front is adorned by a Muslim bearded man with his four wives in the background.
Grandmother is no ghost
It tells about Asli who has never been to Somalia, “but now she will finally go there with her dad, to meet grandfather and all her grandmothers,” it’s called at Adlibris.com.
The author Oscar Trimbel worked in the 1980s for Sida’s behalf in Somalia. He has, in the past, given out Somali folk songs and self-painted watercolors from his stay in the country.
The two books were published on the book publisher’s Book Machine in August this year. Appropriate reading age is reported to be 3-6 years.
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Henry Bolton said there is a concern amongst people that their way of life is being “pushed aside”, and vowed to “address it” as he spoke to The Sun a day after his shock election.
Via: Alain Tolhurst
The 54-year-old ex-Army officer had said he wanted to move the party away from focusing on Islam after their manifesto earlier this year contained an “integration agenda” which was almost entirely about Muslims.
And the issue had been brought back to the fore when the controversial anti-Islam campaigner Anne-Marie Waters was the favourite to win the leadership election.
Mr Bolton, who pushed her into second place yesterday, signalled a softening stance on the issue when he spoke to the media, saying he had a “broad platform” and wanted to “move away from the focus on Islam”.
But he swung the focus right back to the religion this morning, when asked if he stood by his comments during the campaign that he was proud of “fighting Islam”.
He said: “There is a concern amongst the population writ large that there is an undermining through general immigration and the weight of numbers that we’ve got – and Islam as well – that our culture is being buried by this, being sort of pushed aside.
“That is a concern that we need to recognise is out there, there is a perception that is out there and we need to address it.”
And in his first speech as leader this afternoon he said immigration is “overwhelming” our public services and said “multiculturalism is swamping or displacing our own British culture”.
To supportive shouts from the audience at the conference in Torquay he said it was “changing our way of life” and demanded “our concerns are heard”.
Mr Bolton said: “We presently have a net immigration that equates to the population of Wolverhampton or Hull every year.
“Immigration is overwhelming our public services, housing and communities.
“It is harming our culture, traditions and way of life. Some talk of multi-culturism, but are we not permitted to preserve our own British culture?
“Of course we are. And this party shall.”
He said: “Across the UK, people see their communities changing without their voice being heard and without any attempt to consult with them.
“Construction and housing developments are given the go –ahead without anyone caring to listen to the community.
“Doctor’s surgeries are being closed, police numbers are being cut and crime is increasing. Multi-culturism is swamping or displacing British culture.”
The new party leader, who once ran against Philip Hammond as a Lib Dem, called for an Australian-style points-based system for managing migration – but failed to lay out a cap on migration numbers.
Yesterday he told a press conference Islam was “more dominating” than Christianity but declared: “We need to look at the integration of all immigrant communities in this country.”
He said as a former police officer there was “an issue” with face coverings but said focusing purely on banning the burka would not solve a security problem.
And he added: “I absolutely abhor the rhetoric that says we are at war with Islam.”
He tackled the subject again in his speech, which began with him walking out to Pharrell’s ‘Happy’ and waving a Union Jack as he slammed the “arrogance” of senior EU figures Donald Tusk, Guy Verhofstadt, Jean-Claude Juncker and Michel Barnier.
But he said they were only acting that way due to the lack of leadership from Theresa May, as he pulled apart her Florence speech for not having any detail on Brexit.
There were shouts of “betrayal” from the delegates as he slammed her plans for a transitional deal after we exit the bloc, keeping us under Brussels rule for an additional two years.
And there were cheers when he said Britain should be prepared to walk away from the negotiations without a deal and go it alone.
Despite the hall being half-empty the crowd made plenty of noise as this previously unknown figure outside Ukip looks to be well on the way to galvanising what has been a fractured party since its electoral high point in 2015.
And he got the members worked up when he attacked the Prime Minister for making cuts to the armed services – suggesting the money is being used to pay off the EU in exchange for a deal.
Mr Bolton pointed out 1,000 Royal Marines are being made redundant and claimed we have “fewer main battle tanks than neutral Switzerland”.
He added: “The government praises our servicemen and women whilst stabbing them in the back.”
And the party’s boss, their fourth in just over a year, went into his plans for the future of Ukip – promising a less top-down approach.
He wanted to get candidates picked for seats earlier, after admitting the party were not ready for this year’s snap election, and would give branches more control of their finances.
Mr Bolton also plans to allow members to come up with policy ideas, and pledged to try and get more donors to help fill its empty coffers.
But he finished by saying Brexit remains the party’s “core task”, telling the audience: “We must believe in our history, we must believe in our future and we must believe in ourselves.
“We must rouse ourselves, we must organise and we must lead. We must be vigilant and determined
“Brexit remains our core task and to secure the future of our great nation is our core purpose. Failure is not an option!”
Speaking earlier today Mr Bolton also seemed to be softening Ukip’s stance on immigration at the same time though.
He refused to put a figure on the number of people who would be allowed into the country, in contradiction with all previous policy.
Their most recent manifesto said their aim would be to get net migration down to zero – from it’s current figure of around 250,000 a year.
And their 2015 manifesto, which Mr Bolton said he would use as the starting point for his policy proposals, said skilled migration would be capped at 50,000.
But Mr Bolton said: “No, I’m not going to put a number on it.
“For me what is important as a society and as a government and an administration providing services, we must be able to manage the inflow of immigration.”
The Government’s official position is that they are aiming to reduce net migration to the “tens of thousands”, but they have been unsuccessful in each of the years it has been their policy.
Mr Bolton criticised Theresa May for the pledge, saying “anybody who is putting a figure on it is being entirely unrealistic”.
The ex-police officer, who was given an OBE in 2013 for his security work around the globe, said Ukip had avoided becoming the “UK Nazi party” by failing to elect Ms Waters as leader.
She hit back after tweeting last night “today: Jihad – 1 Truth – 0”, posting: “Thank you so much to everyone who supported me during this campaign.
“The truth is still true, and we will never ever be Nazis
“During WWII, Islamic leaders colluded with Hitler to annihilate the Jews. The truth is still true, and I will never ever be a Nazi.”
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The number of immigrants who have been refused their asylum application and hiding from the Swedish authorities in order to avoid expulsion increases sharply. Now the official figure is up to 17,000.
Via: friatider.se
Earlier, the border police said that 12,000 people hide themselves from being expelled from Sweden.
Now that figure has increased by several thousand in a year.
Today, 17,000 illegal immigrants escape the authorities. But the total number of people to be expelled is even higher.
“We have about 20,000 issues in balance, of which about 17,000 are people we are looking for. It is a volume problem and a resource problem, “says Patrik Engström, section manager at the border police, for the Week’s Legal.
The situation is exacerbated by the Migration Board’s lack of capacity to take all persons with expulsion decisions in order that they can not avoid enforcement.
In addition, many immigrants are already missing when the police get the cases from the Swedish Migration Board, which means that it will be even harder to capture and expel them.
In nearly 80 percent of cases, the person has already gone underground when the police are intercepted.
Although some of the people may already have left the country on their own, the police believe that the majority will remain.
Patrik Engström expresses concern that the illegal immigrants now form an ever-increasing so-called shadow community in Sweden.
“A large proportion is probably left in Sweden. We notice this in our external activity, where we encounter more and more people living in what is called the shadow community, he says.
The problem with illegal immigrants is further complicated by the lack of identity documents. The police must be able to determine who a person is to be expelled.
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The feminist artist and writer Ulla Lundegård can not understand why it is so outrageous that Muslim men bring more wives when they come to Sweden. “It may be that they live a much more interesting life than many Swedish couples do after thirty years in the industry,”
Via: expressen.se
Ulla Lundegård’s article is a comment to the upset stewards raised after it became clear that Nacka buys homes in Saltsjöbaden for 14 million tax crowns for a Muslim man with three wives.
“Why do we place so much emphasis on the fact that this man has three wives? And why are you talking with disgust that the municipality has to get an apartment for all of these? You also have the right to live, right?” asks the 65-year-old feminist.
Lundegård states that she would not like to be married to three men herself:
“Three men and a friday. Hujedanimej, that would not be a single match!” writes the feminist.
Nacka municipality has pumped half a billion tax crowns into the housing market through its program for apartments for immigrants.
She states, however, that we must not let our “prejudices and established tradition-bound norms” stand in the way of how enriching it may actually be for a Muslim man to have a whole set of wives.
“The children have three mothers with different qualities and ages that can penetrate when needed. They can even share their love for the man and live in the same house! It’s more than any of us can imagine.”
The Muslim family constellation with several wives can in fact be much more exciting than the boring Swedish couple relationships:
“It may even be that they live a much more interesting life than many Swedish couples do after thirty years in the industry. Women may even have fellowship with each other,” writes Ulla Lundegård.
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Speakers with a history of extreme comments invited to 112 events in 2016
Universities include elite institutions Oxford, Warwick and Manchester
Invitees included Moazzam Begg, director of Cage, an organisation which once described Jihadi John as a ‘beautiful young man’
Via: Eleanor Harding
Radical Islamic speakers have been invited to more than 100 events hosted by student societies over the past year despite a government crackdown. new report reveals the speakers were invited to speak to undergraduates at elite institutions including Oxford, Warwick and Manchester.
In total, guests with a record of preaching extreme views were given access to students on 112 occasions – and in most cases no effort was made to provide any balance to their statements.
In one case, a preacher who had previously advocated wife-beating and claimed that ‘Islam is not compatible with democracy’ was allowed to speak to students of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
In another, Oxford University students heard a speech by the director of Cage, the group which once described IS killer Jihadi John as a ‘beautiful young man’.
The data, gathered by the Henry Jackson Society think tank, follows a string of terror attacks this year in Manchester, London Bridge and Parsons Green.
Universities are required to help prevent extremism and report any concerns they have to counter-terrorism officials under the government’s Prevent Duty.
Yesterday, critics said the report showed not enough is being done by university leaders to stop vulnerable students being brainwashed by radicals.
Robert Halfon, the Conservative chairman of the education select committee, said: ‘It is unacceptable that the universities are not doing enough to crack down on extremism.
‘They should do everything possible not to be unwitting accessories to encouraging terrorism.
The hate-filled views of the guests
Events featuring radical speakers on campuses in 2016/17:
Moazzam Begg, director of ‘advocacy group’ Cage who described Jihadi John as ‘beautiful’, spoke at the Oxford Union
2 February 2017 – University of Oxford – Asim Khan gave a talk during an event hosted by Oxford’s Islamic Society as part of ‘Experience Islam Week’. He is involved in the online platform Islam21c, which has published pieces condemning the integration of Western Muslims, describing it as a ‘secular disease’. Mr Khan has referred to homosexuality as ‘evil’, ‘wretched’, ‘shameful’, a ‘sin’ and a ‘criminal act’.
3 July 2017 – University of Oxford – Moazzam Begg gave a speech at the Oxford Union, a debating society which is legally separate from the university but is made up of almost exclusively Oxford students. Mr Begg is the director of Cage, the controversial group which described Isis killer Jihadi John as a ‘beautiful young man’.
22 November 2016 – University of Warwick – Hamza Tzortzis spoke at an event hosted by the Warwick Islamic Society as part of ‘Discover Islam Week 2016’. He is an instructor for the Islamic Education and Research Academy (iERA). He has previously stated that apostates who ‘fight against the community … should be killed’, and that ‘we as Muslims reject the idea of freedom of speech, and even the idea of freedom’. He later tried to distance himself from these comments.
Hamza Tzortzis, who once stated that Muslims ‘reject the idea of freedom’, was invited to speak at Warwick University
4 November 2016 – SOAS – Abdur Raheem Green spoke at an event hosted by the Islamic Society at SOAS. He is the chairman of iERA, and was reported in February 2009 to have claimed that ‘Islam is not compatible with democracy’, and that a husband may use ‘physical force … a very light beating’ against his wife.
11 November 2016 – University of Manchester – Dr Siema Iqbal was billed to speak at an event organised by the Islamic Society and Students’ Union at Manchester. In 2014, she made a series of controversial statements on Twitter including ‘Truce in Gaza? Don’t you believe it! the Jews are shipping around for cheaper bombs’, another which said ‘When a people who survived a genocide use it as an excuse to commit genocide’ against a backdrop of a blood-stained Star of David, and also made a post calling for the relocation of Israel to the United States as a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
27 October 2016 – King’s College London – An off-campus event hosted by the King’s College London Islamic Society advertised promotional material which initially pledged a ‘mystery speaker’ before revealing Zahir Mahmood as a guest. He has previously claimed the West has ‘been vilifying, demonising the Muslims, Islam, and especially the Prophet’, and that Hamas ‘are not terrorists, they’re freedom fighters’.
Source: Henry Jackson Society
‘If the Prevent guidelines are not working, they need to be toughened up.
‘Given what has gone on in our country over the past few months, they have a real responsibility to stop extremism on campus.’
Anthony Glees, director of the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies at the University of Buckingham, added: ‘Universities should not be soap boxes for extremists. By law, academic freedom applies to professors and lecturers so that they can disseminate knowledge.
‘People pay to go to universities to learn from their professors, not to listen to radical speakers.
‘I hope that this report is taken seriously.
‘Universities have a duty of care to students and they need to exercise their authority.
The School of Oriental and African Studies, in London, hosted the most talks of any university, with 14
‘The events in Manchester and London mean universities cannot pretend that terror is not a threat. It is unacceptable that some appear to be failing to crack down on extremism.
‘Clearly, the Prevent guidelines are not working.’
Universities whose student societies invited extreme speakers also included King’s College London and Queen Mary London.
In every case, the universities themselves were not involved in the invitations as the events were organised by individual student groups – mostly the unions or the Islamic societies.
Often they were held on venues off campus, with Facebook and Twitter used to publicise them.
The Higher Education and Funding Council for England (HEFCE) has found that the majority of universities are satisfying the statutory requirements of the Prevent duty.
The Henry Jackson Society said its findings suggested more stringent guidelines were needed.
It said in all but one of the cases uncovered, the speakers were allowed to disseminate their views without being challenged.
They said the events featuring extreme speakers and organisations were routinely advertised to students through social media pages.
At a university level, the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) played host to the most events – 14.
Many of the events were attended by the same speakers, with the six most prolific speakers accounting for 52.7 per cent of the events.
Report author Richard Black, who attended Oxford himself, stated: ‘Universities are upholding their legal duty towards Prevent.
‘It is now necessary to take a step forwards. Extreme speakers and organisations have been regularly holding events on campuses, and advertising them to students through social media pages. In most instances, these events have been unbalanced in nature, meaning that speakers are disseminating their views without being challenged.
‘Only a joint effort by university staff, students, event organisers and practitioners from across civil society will ensure that extremism is challenged robustly.’
Nick Hillman, of the Higher Education Policy Institute, added: ‘These are intensely difficult issues, especially for autonomous universities at the forefront of free debate and new knowledge.
‘However, the law and regulations are clear and students and universities need to ensure they are applied in full.
‘Our recent survey of free speech issues among students showed they are confused about these issues and also remarkable impressionable.
‘So universities could usefully discuss what is reasonable and what is harder to defend with their students, especially their freshers arriving on campus now.’
A Department for Education spokesperson said: ‘There is no place at universities for those who spread hate or seek to justify terrorism.
‘While these institutions have a responsibility to protect free speech, they are legally required to protect students by risk-assessing speakers and putting in place formal support systems, as set out in the Prevent duty.
Manchester, which was targeted by terrorist bomber Salman Abedi this summer, was another to invite extremist speakers last year
‘Many universities are going above and beyond this but any report that the duty is not being followed will be investigated by the universities regulator HEFCE.
‘However, this is a job for us all and we are continuing to work in partnership with communities of all faith backgrounds to challenge those who spread hatred and intolerance.’
SOAS Registrar Paula Sanderson said: ‘We take our duty of care to our community and our legal obligations very seriously.
‘SOAS hosts hundreds of speakers every year and has a robust policy and code of practice for events held on campus. We also conduct due diligence on all such activities. Indeed our policy was given a high rating last year by the Henry Jackson Society.
‘The events referred to in the Henry Jackson report were held under the auspices of student societies at SOAS. They were legal. No concerns were raised with us by local police or Prevent officers.
‘At SOAS we believe that it is only through freedom of debate and robust discussion that universities can work to address some of the most complex and challenging issues facing the world today.
‘We recognise that these freedoms and rights are not absolute – they are freedoms to be exercised within the law.’
Last year, a Daily Mail investigation revealed how CAGE was targeting students across the country in a sinister campaign.
They were involved in 13 student events over the space of just a few months and were given unchallenged platforms to convey their extreme views.
During the events, they told young Muslims to sabotage the Government’s anti-extremism policy Prevent, claiming it is an attempt by the State to spy on them.
In a series of inflammatory lectures, he told impressionable young Muslims that they are being treated in a similar way to Jews under the Nazis.
Lord Carlile, a former reviewer of UK terror legislation, later warned that students had been at greater risk of being radicalised by Islamic State as a result of CAGE’s campus campaign.
The Mail also exposed how Egyptian cleric Fadel Soliman spoke at five student events in 2015, using them to refer Muslim students to an online lecture series in which he speaks in favour of hitting women and outlines the Islamic case for sex slavery and polygamy.
Following the furore, Oxford Vice Chancellor Louise Richardson said she would still be open to allowing CAGE speakers to meet Oxford students.
She said: ‘We need to expose our students to ideas that make them uncomfortable so that they can think about why it is that they feel uncomfortable and what it is about those ideas that they object to.
‘And then to have the practice of framing a response and using reason to counter these objectionable ideas and to try to change the other person’s mind and to be open to having their own minds changed.’
Richardson said that provided organisations such as CAGE ‘can be countered, I think that we should let them be heard’.
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Western countries are much more lenient toward the jihadists and Islamists. In the Middle East, there are severe consequences if they preach against their own political system. They are permitted to grow only if they teach antagonism towards the West, Christianity, Judaism, and Western values.
Via: Majid Rafizadeh
In Iran, when the Islamist party of Ayatollah Khomeini came to power, it did not embrace all other Islamist and jihadist groups. It supported and promoted only those jihadist groups that agreed to focus on promoting two major issues: anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism. Other Islamist groups, which turned against the regime itself, were immediately removed from society even though they were practicing Khomeini’s version of radical Islam.
The issue becomes: Where do you draw the line? When a radical imam in the US or Europe is publicly inciting anti-Semitic, anti-American, and anti-Western hate, should they be allowed to continue? When many radical Muslim centers in the West preach jihad and terrorism, should you still let them enjoy freedom of speech and assembly? Their preaching is the major factor behind the increasing terrorism we have currently spreading throughout the West. If we allow them to continue, the vicious trend will only ratchet up exponentially.
One of the strategies of these groups is to tap into communities where young people are facing problems — financial difficulties, family hardship, maybe psychological issues. The imams superficially embrace them as fathers, as if embracing his children. Then, they create explanations for why these young people are faced with such problems. They teach them that the problem lies in their society, their government, their own people, even their own families.
Growing up under Sharia law and in Islamist schools, we were taught that the highest level a person can reach is to be a mujahid. A mujahid is a person that God truly loves. Once, I dared to ask what exactly the term mujahid meant. The imam said that a true mujahid is a person who does not just die defensively for protecting Allah’s values. A true mujahid, one who is most loved by God, is a person who acts offensively, including through violence, when he or she sees our religious values are being violated in any part of the world. That person is a true holy warrior, he explained.
That description has been echoed through the halls of schools, and whispered into the minds of children. It has followed me throughout my life. Now, as I reflect on the first time this thirst for violence was explained to me, an eerie reality comes into focus. If the teachings of these radical imams are accurate, then the rate of mujahidin in the West appears to be increasing far higher in the West than in the East.
As some clamored to reach this ideal, we were told that one major indicator of whether the number of mujahdin is increasing or decreasing in a society is to look at the rate of those who are becoming martyrs. The higher the rate, the more mujahidin are there, and the more satisfied God is. It was a powerful message delivered to young, impressionable minds, that were eager to please and learn.
Growing up in the Middle East, within Muslim-majority nations, I rarely heard of radical Islamists committing terrorist acts in the region. But in the few years that I have lived in the West, I have regularly heard of bombing and suicide missions committed by radical Islamists. Their targets have been Americans and Europeans, including attacks in London, Paris, Nice, Brussels, Boston and San Bernardino — and often one another.
Information about these attacks is splashed across the media, discussed between concerned citizens, and echoed throughout global politics. This situation prompted me to ask: Why do there appear to be more Islamist terrorists in the West, even though the homeland of their religious teaching is on the other side of the world?
It would seem implausible that the West, with freedom of education, would become a hotbed for these violent minds, and yet the numbers are clear.
Ignoring the trend will not do anything to prevent future tragedies. The cause of this explosion of terror in the West needs to be rooted out. After careful study, it seems that there are several explanations.
First of all, Western countries are much more lenient toward the jihadists and Islamists.
When I came to the West and learned what kind of teachings the radical imams in the UK and the US preach, I was astounded. They freely lash out at the country which gives them shelter, they denounce the political system, they criticize the people they see every day in the streets.
They denigrate the way people live in the West, the way they dress, eat, every aspect of their daily lives.
In fact, these radicals do not preach about the violence and dictatorships in the Middle East where they are originally from, or claim to have escaped from. Their only target appears to be Western societies.
In the Middle East and under Islamist states where these radical ideologies actually originated, however, these groups are not allowed to operate as freely if they target their own land. In the Middle East, there are severe consequences if they preach against the domestic political system. They are permitted to grow only if they teach antagonism towards the West, Christianity, Judaism, and Western values.
In Syria, for example, politicians, including the late President Hafiz Al Assad, gave shelter to fundamentalists who founded the Muslim Brotherhood of Syria. The objective of the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood was to incite hatred toward Israel and the US. But, since jihadists will not stop until they rule over the nation and impose their own version of Islamist laws, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood added another goal to its agenda: turning against the Syrian regime. Immediately, the rulers took action and removed the whole organization and its members from Syria, even though Syria was their homeland and they were practicing the religion of the constitution and the land.
In Iran, when the Islamist party of Ayatollah Khomeini came to power, it did not embrace all other Islamist and jihadist groups. It supported and promoted only those jihadist groups that agreed to focus on promoting two major issues: anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism. Other Islamist groups, which turned against the regime itself, were immediately removed from society even though they were practicing Khomeini’s version of radical Islam.
The Islamist rulers in the region, where Islamism was actually born, are fully cognizant of the danger of letting some jihadist groups preach against their own society and system. They know how influential the Islamist ideology is in changing people, brainwashing, recruiting mujahidin, committing acts of violence, taking power and controlling the political establishment.
On the other hand, many in the West are far too lenient toward these fundamentalist groups. There is a belief that you should give them the same rights to enjoy freedom of speech, press, and assembly as everyone else. These rights in themselves are valuable. But the issue becomes, where do you draw the line? When a radical imam in the US or Europe is publicly inciting anti-Semitic, anti-American, and anti-Western hate, should they be allowed to continue? When many radical Muslim centers in the West preach jihad and terrorism, should you still let them enjoy freedom of speech and assembly? Their preaching is the major factor behind the increasing terrorism we have currently spreading throughout the West. It is this hate speech, and incitement of violence, that has taken lives of many innocent people. If we allow them to continue, the vicious trend will only ratchet up exponentially.
The West needs to understand that the Islamists do not see these rights as something to appreciate; they see them as something to exploit.
These very rights are used to manipulate and radicalize citizens and foreigners alike, to turn against the host government and the innocent people who share the land they stand on. They are brainwashed and then encouraged, if not commanded, to go out and change everything around them.
The second problem facing the West is that many people do not take the capabilities of these extremist groups and their preaching seriously. Growing up under Islamist rule, you could witness how intricate, powerful, and simultaneously simple their words can be. One of the strategies of these groups is to tap into communities where young people are facing problems — financial difficulties, family hardship, maybe psychological issues. The imams superficially embrace them as fathers, as if embracing his children. Then, they create explanations for why these young people are faced with such problems. They teach them that the problem lies in their society, their government, their own people, even their own families.
Once they fill a young mind with their message, they show the ultimate solution: Be a true mujahid, a true holy warrior. Youths are told they will satisfy God the most and will be met in the next life with everything they do not have in this world. They dangle the glamour of a better existence in front of these young minds until it is the only goal they seek. That is where committing suicide bombings and other terrorist acts against citizens of their countries comes in. The whole process of making someone a mujahid does not take as long as people may think. Nor is it difficult, as they know exactly the type of vulnerable youth to target.
Finally, people in the West do not know what radical Islam and jihad actually are. There is this predominant notion that if you are nice enough to these radical Islamists, and if you treat them with generosity and kindness, they will rehabilitate into valuable citizens. Along with this, there is another flawed idea, that if Muslim groups that claim to be less violent and “moderate” are given more power, then the extremely radical groups will just evaporate. These theories are extremely unsophisticated and rudimentary, highlighting the ignorance of some in the West of the nuances and complexity of Islamism. The majority of people who hold these beliefs most likely have not lived under an Islamist state or in a Muslim-majority society.
In addition, many in the West think that if borders are opened and people are given citizenship, shelter and education, they will appreciate Western values and adopt them. This argument has proven to be absolutely inaccurate. The top Islamist leaders initiated their jihadist movement after they came to the West. Sayyid Qutb, for instance, who became an inspiration for Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and similar terrorist groups, was provided a free scholarship to study, and opportunities to work in the West. Qutb attended Wilson Teachers College in Washington, D.C., Colorado State College for Education in Greeley, and Stanford University. He was given the occasion to travel across the US and Europe. The first thing he did after returning to his birthplace, Egypt, was to publish an inflammatory book, The America that I Have Seen, in which he lashed out at every aspect of America, including women, life, culture, art, lifestyle, religion, and those prized freedoms that afforded him so much.
Sayyid Qutb, a leading member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950’s and 60’s who became an inspiration for Al Qaeda and ISIS, wrote his inflammatory book, The America that I Have Seen, after he came to the US. He studied at Colorado State College for Education in Greeley, among other American schools.
As long as this leniency and the multitude of flawed perceptions are allowed to continue in the West, the number of jihadists will grow, and subsequently the number of innocent lives being taken by terrorist acts will soar. We only need to look at the not-too-distant history of the West and current Islamist states to see that if action is not taken immediately against the spread of hatred and violence, it will be too late for anything but regret.
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Svea Court of Appeal has ripped the expulsion decision against an Afghan-so-called refugee child convicted of a brutal gang rape against a girl. According to the court, the crime was indeed “very serious”, but not “particularly gross” – and therefore the rapist may stay in Sweden after earning his short punishment.
Via: friatider.se
Free Times reported in June about three Muslim men convicted of gang rape.
A group of refugees had invited three girls to an apartment Haninge south of Stockholm where they persuaded their victims to drink large amounts of alcohol.
When one of the girls, who was 16 years old, became so drunk that she could not stand on her legs, two of the men were raping her behind a locked door.
At the same time, her friend was raped by another refugee child in another room, according to the verdict of the District Court.
“By Allah!”
The third girl stood outside one room, cried at the door. When she threatened to contact the police, one rapist threaten her not to do so.
A sms conversation used as evidence showed how refugee children Omid and Aziz later panicked that they had been “revealed”.
“By Allah” they wrote to each other.
“What a whore,” Aziz wrote about the girl he had raped and continued: “We have been revealed.”
The district court sentenced three of the men who covert the rape to short sentences with reference to their stated age. Omid claimed to be just under 18 and therefore abandoned with 10 months of childbirth and expulsion. Aziz, who declared his age to 18 years, was convicted of one year and ten months in prison and expulsion of the Södertörn District Court.
Two of the Afghans Omid (left) and Aziz (middle) in the text called one of the victims of “hora” and called on the Muslim god when they realized they were going to be arrested for rape.
No “very serious crime”
judgment was appealed to Svea Court of Appeal – which now raises the expulsion decision for Aziz, as today’s Legal Report reports on Wednesday.
The Court of First Instance first states that the crime committed by the rapist is “very serious”.
“However, according to the Court of Appeal, it is not such a particularly serious crime that makes it possible to expel him despite the fact that he has a refugee status declaration,” the judgment states.
At the same time, Aziz is punished for two years in prison, while the sentence against Omid is fixed.
Frias Whole – Despite Sperm In Beliefs
The third refugee child convicted of rape against the other girl in the district court is completely dismissed by the court of law on the grounds that the “technical evidence” is lacking. This despite the fact that his sperm was found in the girl’s panties and that the girl had a lot of pain in the abdomen after the event.
The man in various interrogations has alternatively refused to have sex with the girl, attempted to excuse the jail that he received involuntary release in sleep or claimed to have volunteer sex.
One of the girls tried to commit suicide after the assault by cutting into the wrist with a kitchen knife.
The judgment in Svea Hovrätt has been signed by the court of law Mats Walberg and Sara Lindqvist, tf. Chief Judge Assassin Anna Juhlin, Rapporteur, and the politically appointed members Monica Serrander and Bo Aldal.
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Sweden and other European countries continue to send back so-called single immigrants who have rejected their asylum application to Afghanistan. 10,000 should now be forced to return. But Amnesty is strongly critical of the decision and claims that Afghans are at risk of torture and death.
Via: gp.se
On Tuesday, several Afghans will be sent back from Sweden to Afghanistan. So far, they are kept in the custody of the Migration Board.
The expulsions also continue from other EU countries.
“The European governments send back nearly 10,000 people to Afghanistan, despite the risk of torture and death,” Amnesty writes in a new GP report.
Amnesty International strongly criticizes European politicians, saying it is not safe to send people back to the Muslim country.
But the EU states have made a different assessment.
“Our assessment is that the conflict has not reached a level where it affects everyone across the country, that is, the level of law and practice that all Afghan citizens should be entitled to stay,” said Fredrik Beijer, Head of Legal Affairs at the Migration Board, in a statement by the end of August.
In other words, expulsions from Sweden continue.
Earlier this year, the Norwegian equivalent of the Swedish Migration Board, UDI, also released a report explaining that 32 of Afghanistan’s 34 regions are safe.
“I understand that many in Norway can experience Afghanistan as unsafe. But the insurgency attacks that occur in most parts of the country are mainly aimed at governmental objectives, also linked to the international presence in Afghanistan, said UDI Director Frode Forfang to VG.
According to GP, the Migration Board has begun sending Afghans rejected their asylum application to Kållered. There they must sit until they are expelled.
On Tuesday, a new plan will fly from Landvetter to Afghanistan. On the planet there will be a number of adults and so-called young Afghans.
Figures from the National Board of Medicines have shown that over 83 percent of so-called single-parent as age-tested are actually adults.
However, in the GP, it is argued that the MET is not “reliable” and there is a risk that children will be classified as adults.
But after all, most “single-parent” people can already stay in Sweden.
“The Migration Board has long considered that the situation in Afghanistan is serious and many people therefore receive protection in Sweden,” the Migration Board wrote on its website in August.
So far this year, 83 percent of the unaccompanied and 47 percent of all Afghans have been granted residence permits as so-called need for protection.
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The flags and pictures on the wall of the Raqqa home serving as a Yazidi women’s unit seem familiar, even though they can’t be.
Via: Bethan McKernan
A big red Sinjar Women’s Protection Units (YJS) flag, with its spiky yellow sun on a green background, in the middle. Next to it, a bronze picture frame with photos of martyred friends, and below that, a picture of a male soldier killed fighting. To the left, a poster of jailed Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan.
The eight members of the YJS heavy weapons unit – the oldest, Darsim, 26, the youngest, Ariyah, just 20 – sit on the floor smoking and deftly personalising their famous scarves by braiding the edges, the ceiling fan providing welcome relief during the hottest part of the day.
Then it clicks: there is already a picture of these women known to the whole world. In it, four of them stand with straight backs, proud faces and hands flashing the V for victory sign in front of the decorated wall. They hold posters condemning the recent racially-charged violence in Charlottesville, along with their condolences for the death of left wing activist, Heather Heyer. “Unite Against Fascism”, one of the signs reads in English.
“As women who have suffered at the hands of Daesh we know well the dangers that fascist, racist, patriarchal and nationalist groups and organisations pose. Once again men of this mindset, this time in America, have martyred a woman, Heather Heyer, who was resisting against the division and destruction of communities,” says the post accompanying the photograph.
“We believe that Heather Heyer’s struggle is our struggle and that the fight against fascism is a global battle. For this reason, we are calling on women around the world to unite against fascism and put an end to terrorist groups like Daesh and those made from the same cloth that kill women like Heather.”
Uploaded by a Facebook account affiliated with the YPJ, or Kurdish Women’s Protection Units – after which it was shared thousands of times – the call to arms from Raqqa’s frontline reinvigorated anti-fascist movements around the world. Punch Nazis, defeat Isis: two sides of the same coin, many on the left figured.
And here they are, in the flesh, these women from the famous picture, enjoying a little downtime as air strikes thud in the distance. Do they know about the impact the photo had?
No, it turns out. Raqqa hasn’t had functioning communications towers or cellular data service since al-Nusra, and then Isis, seized control of the city from Free Syrian Army rebels four years ago. And when you’re posted to the front line as the jihadists struggle to retain control of their de facto capital, there isn’t a lot of time to focus on news from the outside world.
All eight members of the unit have sisters, cousins and friends still suffering at Isis’s hands. With no contact for years at this point, they have no idea where their missing female relatives are, or whether they’re even still alive.
“Daesh are monsters,” says Darsim. “There have been 73 separate massacres of Yazidis. We are trying to protect our people, and we want revenge.
“In our training we learn how men control women and how that is how almost every society functions. We have an enemy like Daesh that is obvious. But these ideas, how men oppress us, that is a part of everything.”
Syria’s complex civil war, now in its seventh year, is unlike any other modern conflict. Almost 500,000 people have been killed, half of the pre-war population of 22 million have been driven from their homes and its full repercussions are yet to be understood.
Yazidi women are perhaps the most persecuted of all of those who have suffered in the war.
As Isis evolved out of Syria’s violence, it began to impose their poisonous beliefs on the communities under their control.
The violence committed against the Yazidi people – a minority population whose beliefs combine elements of Islam, Christianity and Zoroastrianism – amounts to genocide.
Isis decimated Yazidi villages in Sinjar, just over the Syrian-Iraqi border, after it managed to blitz into Iraq in 2014. Men were lined up and shot and thousands of women kidnapped to serve as slaves who are both sexually and physically abused.
The stories of those who managed to escape are chilling. All but one of the YJS unit were trapped on Sinjar mountain by militants without food or water as they waited desperately for Kurdish Peshmerga and YPG forces to assist the evacuation – they were lucky to escape alive.
“Before Isis came I was just in school,” says Nagasin, one of the unit’s two snipers. “I never thought I would learn how to use weapons and be independent. Now we can trust ourselves. We know we can fight.”
Learning how to defend themselves thanks to training from the Kurdish Women’s Protection units (YPJ) and joining the fight for Raqqa has changed the trajectories of these women’s lives.
Tiny Ayidza, the only foreigner of the group, from the Yazidi community in Germany’s Black Forest, demonstrates how to use the dozens of rocket launchers and guns, which sit in a room that looks like it was once a teenager’s bedroom.
It’s easy to forget that the room could have recently belonged to any of the fighters (“Of course they’re young,” says Darsim – at 26, clearly the mother of the group. “The older ones have already been killed.”)
While they prepare lunch all of the women pad around in brightly coloured animal-pattern socks that make a striking contrast with their US-issued polyester fatigues.
Ayidza goes on to point out the new graffiti on the side of a mosque next door that is mostly intact despite intense US-led coalition bombing which has destroyed entire neighbourhoods and coated what’s left in dust.
“Resistance is life,” it says, in Kurdish, English and Greek – most likely the work of a foreign fighter from an international unit stationed nearby.
The house, too, is covered in slogans and “YJS” tags, one accompanied by a smiley face. It’s a sign of quite how complicated things are in Raqqa: the last few jihadis left in the city are being hunted down thanks to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) coalition of Kurdish, Arab, Turkmen, Assyrian and Yazidi fighters, which the Pentagon says numbers 40,000.
But even when civilians are able to return to the heavily mined city, Raqqa is a majority Arab town. With Isis on the back foot, at some point the Syrian government will turn its attention back to it.
The SDF cannot stay here indefinitely – which means it is also unclear what lies ahead for its soldiers, such as the women of the YJS.
Most of the Yazidi and Arab recruits, liberated from the jihadists, were keen to join the Kurds in the fight against Isis. Syria’s war is far from over, and especially for fighters originally from Iraq, any renewed conflict with Bashar al-Assad’s government is not necessarily something they have signed up for.
Either way, life is very different for the YJS now.
“If we as women had been armed and knew how to defend ourselves in the beginning, maybe the massacres against us would not have happened,” Ayidza said.
“We have proved to the whole world we can protect ourselves now.”
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Several months of systematic investigation of the identity of over 700 asylum seekers who said they were persecuted and oppressed stateless persons from Kuwait, gave results to the Immigration Service.
Via: Martin Johansen
According to the board, 634 of these are not from Kuwait, and therefore they have received a rejection over the summer. This is the case for the most important issue regarding identity in asylum so far, “says Anders Dorph, Deputy Director of the Immigration Service, responsible for asylum.
“We have previously seen cases of fraud where you try to lie to another nationality to gain an advantage, but not to this extent,” he says.
A special team in Denmark‘s Immigration Agency could demonstrate through a comprehensive mapping of family patterns as well as traces of social media, mobile data and international cooperation that the many asylum seekers probably originate from Iraq.
More than 300 of the people have proven to belong to the same family, and the board found two applicants with manuals with detailed instructions on what to say and make an asylum call for credibly appearing as stateless – so-called bidooner – from Kuwait.
According to Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen, Professor of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Sweden and Refugee Researcher, the manuals and scope of the case point to the fact that there is an organized network behind. He can see obvious reasons that Iraqis should try to appear as bidooners from Kuwait. The so-called recognition rate for Iraqis has thus fallen. Last year, 13 per cent had asylum. There are no separate figures for the so far very small group of stateless people from Kuwait, but among all stateless people, including Palestinians, the recognition rate was 82 in 2016.
“There’s a huge deal of forging documents and helping people to take on identities, where one can be fairly sure of getting asylum. If an Iraqi can increase his chance of getting asylum to 80-90 per cent, then it may seem attractive to many to try another nationality, “says Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen.
The Refugee Board, the second and last instance in asylum cases, has just settled the first 16 complaints cases and in all cases confirmed the refusal of the Immigration Service.
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The School of Oriental and African Studies, in London, hosted the most talks of any university, with 14
