Serb youths attacked in Kosovo

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA -- At 02:00 CET, an unidentified attacker threw an explosive device from a Lada Niva at a group of Serb youngsters in the center of Lešak, a village in northern Kosovo.

Milutin Vasović, 22 and Slobodan Biševac, 23 were injured in the attack and kept in overnight at Kosovska Mitrovica hospital, while Aleksandar Acković, 22 was allowed home after receiving medical attention.

The Kosovo Police Service’s (KPS) spokesman in Kosovska Mitrovica Besim Hoti confirmed to Beta that an incident had taken place, adding that the motives were unknown, and that the KPS was conducting an investigation with the assistance of UNMIK police.

From: BE92

What’s Going Right in Europe--How Localism Might Save the Continent

Excellent essay by Paul Belien

From: Taki's Magazine

Following the victory of Silvio Berlusconi’s rightist alliance in Italy, The Economist wrote a condescending editorial, entitled “Mamma mia.” The article stated that Berlusconi was not The Economist’s choice and said that the “Italians may come to regret electing the jester of Italian politics once again.” Barely a month earlier, Spain had re-elected its own “jester,” Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, a man whose main ambition is to destroy Spain’s Christian heritage and substitute it with a postmodern, multicultural utopia where homosexuals marry and the state raises children. At that election, however, The Economist did not feel compelled to snub the winner. It just told its readers that Spain needs “a bipartisan approach to […] solve big questions of national identity.”

Italy and Spain are two frontline states on Europe’s southern border. They are being overrun by millions (no exaggeration) of immigrants, many of whom cross the straits in boats from the African shore of the Mediterranean. Three years ago Spain (40 million inhabitants) announced a collective amnesty for a staggering 800,000 undocumented aliens, despite having already offered six other amnesties in the past 15 years. Two years ago, Italy (58 million inhabitants) amnestied 500,000 illegal immigrants, having already offered five similar regularizations between 1988 and 2006. And still the immigrants keep coming. Immigration, however, is not the “big question of national identity” The Economist is referring to.

Obviously, economics is mostly on The Economist’s mind. Consequently, economic reform is what the above editorials mainly dealt with, though in Spain’s case the magazine also mentioned the “national identity” question in a reference to the seats won by regionalist and separatist parties from Catalonia and the Basque country. These parties kept Mr Zapatero from an absolute majority in the Spanish parliament. Hence, he will have to accommodate them in some way.

Strangely–though tellingly for a magazine which, like The Economist, is representative of Europe’s mainstream media—the editorial on Italy did not mention the astonishing electoral success of the Lega Nord, a constituent of Mr. Berlusconi’s right-wing alliance.

Like the parties in Catalonia and the Basque country, the Northern League (full name: Lega Nord per l’Indipendenza della Padania—Northern League for the Independence of Padania) is a regionalist, indeed separatist, party. Padania, in case you have never heard of it, does not exist as a nation; it is the collective name that the League uses to denote the various regions of northern Italy (such as Lombardy, Piedmont, Venice, Tuscany, South Tyrol, and others). The League is made up of several parties (including the Lega Lombarda, the Liga Veneta, the Alleanza Toscana) that want to restore to their regions the sovereignty that they enjoyed prior to the formation of the Italian State in the 19th century.

The success of the Northern League was the pivotal element in the victory of Mr. Berlusconi’s alliance. It enabled him to win an absolute majority in the Italian parliament. The League completely wiped away the left in the north. It doubled in size and won a stunning 8.3% of the national vote, sending 60 deputies (+37) and 26 senators (+13) to Rome. In some northern regions, it had the support of up to 50% of the electorate. This remarkable result, however, was not worth the consideration of The Economist, or of the rest of the European media. As they did not report on the League’s victory, they did not need to explain to their readers why the party had done so extraordinary well. Indeed, the international media preferred to lament the return of “the jester” rather than point out that the Northern League won so massively because of its forceful anti-immigration platform.

On Monday (21 April), the leftist Milanese newspaper Corriere della Sera wrote, “Fear boosted the Northern League’s vote, doubling and tripling its haul in front-line towns where local prosperity is undermined by thefts and burglaries. Unpunished crimes generate anger and people lose trust.” It is telling that even this leftist newspaper talks about “front-line” towns–-as if a war is going on—to describe the blue-collar areas around Milan where immigrants are making life unbearable for indigenous workers who no longer feel at home in their own neighborhoods. Roberto Mura, the League’s secretary for the district of Pavia and the mayor of San Genesio, 25 kilometers south of Milan, told the Corriere: “We struggle to shake off […] the image of the rough and ready, apolitical racist League militant. […] I know we’ve got to live with immigration, but the rules have to be respected. The League has been saying so for fifteen years. We’re now reaping the reward for the coherence and clarity of our project to defend the territory.”

As Mr Mura points out, the “apolitical” Northern League is in politics not for the sake of politics itself, but to “defend the territory.” There is something remarkable going on here, though it will never hit the mainstream media because the latter do not want to see it:

The most successful anti-immigration parties in Europe are regionalist/secessionist parties. They are “apolitical” because they do not particularly like politics. Their militants, members and voters do not like the state, they want to be left alone. They defend local communities that want to run their own affairs. They are parties of the land and the community, rather than the state. They are, as the media and the political establishment derisively call them, “populists.”

Milan, the capital of Lombardy, is 700 kilometers (430 miles) to the south of Brussels, the seat of the European Union, that supranational European superstate in the making which already accounts for 75% of the legislation in its 27 member states. The League is as opposed to Brussels as it is to Rome: it’s regionalist, restrictionist, and “Eurosceptic,” meaning that it doesn’t much like supranational mingling in local affairs.

Let us now travel from Milan to Brussels. First we must cross the Lombardian border into Switzerland, then we cross the Alps in order to reach the valley of the Rhine River. We follow the Rhine, which constitutes the border between France and Germany, until we arrive in the Low Countries, in particular in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking northern part of Belgium, where Brussels is situated. There, we can visit the buildings of the European and the Belgian parliaments but also those of the Flemish Regional Parliament.

The largest party in the latter parliament is the Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) party. It represents a quarter of the Flemish electorate and is considered one of the most professional and successful of Europe’s patriotic parties. It is remarkably similar to the Lega Nord. It is separatist, in favor of restricting immigration and Eurosceptic.

The VB was founded in 1978 by Flemish nationalists aiming for the independence of Flanders. The Flemish provinces are the historic southern, Catholic half of the Netherlands. In fact, the Flemish provinces belonged to the Netherlands until the International Powers gave them to the newly created French-dominated state of Belgium in 1831. From the start, the VB warned against immigration by people from a culture entirely alien to that of Flanders; indeed, the VB was the first party to address the issue. It still demands that immigrants assimilate and, hence, that their numbers remain low enough to assure that this is possible. The party’s position is also that immigration from countries with a culture closer to that of Flanders should be given preference, but they have to adapt to the locals and learn the language of the Flemings, Dutch.

The VB is critical of immigration for exactly the same reason why it demands Flemish independence: because it wants to preserve Flemish national identity. As Frank Vanhecke, the then VB leader, wrote in The Flemish Republic in July 2003: “We defend the Flemish national identity, against the Belgian state as well as against immigrants who abuse our hospitality to wage an anti-Western war in Flanders. The VB is a party of Flemish patriots, prepared to defend Flanders’ culture and traditions, its values and, above all, its freedom.”

The Flemish provinces experienced their heyday in the Middle Ages, when the Netherlands was a confederate cluster of autonomous provinces. The provinces were dominated by powerful cities, such as Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp and Brussels, who made it quite clear to the nominal dynastic ruler that he had to leave the burghers in peace or face rebellion. In northern Italy, the situation was almost similar, with powerful city-states running their own affairs. And so it was all along the 700 kilometers that we have just traveled. The cities along the Rhein, such as Cologne and Strasbourg, enjoyed considerable autonomy, while Switzerland was a confederation of tiny, sovereign republics of Alpine farmers. This was not a coincidence. In fact, these regions have a common history that goes back to the time when Charlemagne’s empire was divided, almost 1,200 years ago.

Charlemagne, king of the Franks, a Germanic tribe, conquered most of continental Western Europe and was crowned Emperor in 800 AD. He was the first ruler France and Germany had in common. His son, Louis the Pious, was the last. In 843, the Carolingian empire was divided. Charlemagne’s grandsons, Charles the Bald and Louis the German, became the first kings of, respectively, France (West Francia) and Germany (East Francia). There was, however, a third brother, Lothar, the eldest. He inherited the lands that lay between those of his brothers: Middle Francia.

Lothar’s kingdom was named after him: Lotharii Regnum or Lorraine. Today, Lorraine is the name of a province in the east of France. It is the province where Joan of Arc, France’s national heroine came from. However, contemporary Lorraine is only a tiny part of the Lorraine of old. In Lothar’s time, Lorraine comprised all the countries that lie between France and Germany today—the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg and Switzerland—plus the eastern part of present-day France, the western part of Germany and the northern half of Italy.

When Lothar’s son died without offspring in 875, the middle territories were divided between Charles the Bald and Louis the German. However, as these regions lay on the periphery of their heartlands, generations of kings of France and Germany were never able to establish a firm rule over them. The result was that throughout the Middle Ages, and for some up to the 18th century and even today, the lands of Lothar, Old Lorraine, were made up of self-governing republics of farmers, independent counties controlled by burghers or city republics.

Self-governing, with little interference from greedy princes, their tax controllers and meddling civil servants, these lands became very prosperous. Capitalism has its origins here. This whole axis from Amsterdam in the north to Siena in the south developed into the economic spine of Europe. The former Carolingian Middle Lands saw not only the birth of capitalism but also of limited government. A decentralized political culture developed where the burghers governed themselves without caring much about faraway rulers.

Later, and gradually, French and German monarchs succeeded in bringing most of the regions of the ancient Middle-Frankish realm under their control. The kings of France and Prussia succeeded in subduing their part of the Rhen region. The French Revolution swept away all the existing self-governing systems, and after the fall of Napoleon only Switzerland returned to its old constitutional order. To a large extent, however, the spirit of Old Lorraine lives on today in the lands of the former Middle Kingdom where citizens are still influenced by centuries of independence, self-reliance and adherence to a local identity that opposes centralizing authorities in far-away capitals.

In Switzerland, the only remaining sovereign part of Old Lorraine (at least until Flanders and Padania regain their independence), these feelings are so strong that the country stubbornly refuses to become a member of the European Union. Switzerland itself is a regionalist nation, made up of 26 provinces (cantons) that to a very large extent rule themselves. The country has strict immigration laws and the Swiss want to make these even stricter. The last elections, in November 2007, were won by the Schweizerische Volkspartei (Swiss People’s Party, SVP), which with 29% of the votes reinforced its position as the biggest party in the country. The international media describe the SVP as “far-right,” “populist,” “xenophobic” and “intolerant.” Like the Vlaams Belang and the Lega Nord, the SVP is localist. It combines a strong attachment to local communities with a clear affirmation of the right of these communities to “defend the territory” and preserve their own, traditional, ethnic identity.

Most of the regionalist parties in Europe, such as those in the Basque country, Scotland and elsewhere, are leftist. Except along the “spine of Europe.” These parties are the most successful of the parties of the European right. They have a localist quality, and yet they are fighting to protect the Christian, Western heritage of the continent as a whole. The SVP is currently campaigning for a referendum, on 1 June, to “stop mass naturalization” of immigrants. Italy’s new Interior Minister, Roberto Maroni, comes from the Northern League and has announced “tough measures against clandestine immigration.” The VB, under constant harassment by the Belgian authorities, is working on a project to export its model to neighboring countries. Last January, the party established an international network called “Cities against Islamization,” in which it has aligned itself with local parties in cities along the Rhine—Pro Köln (Pro Cologne) from Cologne in the German Rhineland and Alsace d’Abord (Alsace First) from Strassbourg, the capital of Alsace, the French Rhine province. Like the VB, these parties defend local interests and oppose Islamization.

While France succumbs to North Africans and Germany to Turks, the parties from Old Lorraine, the spine of Europe, are preparing to fight for the preservation of their own identity. Owing to the massive immigration by people from an entirely different culture, many ordinary Europeans no longer feel at home in their own countries. Home is that cosy, often small, place where people feel safe among those whom they know and trust. The fight for the preservation of Europe is a fight for one’s own home, village, town, city, provence. That is why it is a localist issue.

Resistance to Islamization is not a matter of ideology, as one prominent American “anti-Jihadist” seems to think. The successful resistance in Europe has a provincial and an ethnic basis. It is about the right of the Europeans to hand their traditions, their identity, their cultural heritage down to their children so that the latter can continue to enjoy Europe’s ancient freedoms. The spirit of Old Lorraine has survived for 1,200 years. “Populist” parties in Flanders, Switzerland, Lombardia, Cologne and Alsace and other regions along the spine of Europe are popular for the simple reason that they are not prepared to let twelve centuries of capitalist self-reliance, self-governance and limited government fade away simply because foreigners are moving in with a spirit adapted to Arabian desert life.

“It is the wrong way to fight the global jihad,” writes the American anti-Islamist. “To form one group for indigenous Europeans, as has been done in several countries, reduces virtually every issue to the one non-negotiable issue of race and ethnicity, discourages cooperation, and thus encourages Balkanization, works against the idea of representative government, and obscures the common values of Judeo-Christian civilization that are shared by people of many races and ethnicities.”

Ethnicity, however, is not by definition a racial concept; it is a cultural one. Ethnicity is about the spirit, the culture that we share. For the above parties this culture is precisely the culture of limited government, of the common values of Western civilization, the adherence to home. Is all this bad because it is indigenous rather than ideological?

Human Rights Orgs Aids Terrorism And Uranium Theft Condemning Niger

The islamic Taureg tribes are revolting in Niger through terror, attacks on civilians and are engaged with theft of uranium.
The 'Political Correct' Human Rights Orgs are quick to condemn Niger in it's response to terror, the Human Rights Orgs are notorious for endorsing the Sharia law by respecting the Cairo convention on Human Rights which puts the sharia jurisprudence above the universal charter of Human Rights.
It does not take much imagination as to where uranium could end up on the black market from an islamic tribe, though the possibility to make a Nuclear bomb is remote there is a very serious possibility in fabricating a dirty bomb, the Tuareg tribes have got trading routes throughout a number of North and Central African countries such as Sudan, Egypt, Morrocco and Libya.

From: Reuters Africa

NIAMEY (Reuters) - Niger has toughened its anti-terrorism legislation to help its security forces fight a rebellion by Tuareg fighters in the country's uranium-producing north, officials said on Sunday.

A law passed by the West African country's parliament on Saturday penalises the manufacture or possession of explosive devices, hostage-taking, attacks on transport and unlawful possession of radioactive materials.

The rebel Tuareg-led Niger Justice Movement (MNJ) has been fighting a guerrilla campaign for more than a year against the central government to press for more autonomy and a greater share of the wealth of the uranium-rich northern region.

"The integration of this anti-terrorism law into our judicial structure equips our authorities to fight both effectively and legally this scourge that spares no country," Justice Minister Dagra Mamadou told parliament.

Niger, a landlocked former French colony, is one of the world's top producers of uranium, which is used to fuel nuclear reactors and can also serve to manufacture nuclear weapons.

International human rights groups have accused Niger's security forces of committing abuses, including extra-judicial killings, in their fight to quell the Tuareg rebellion.

Earlier this month, a report by London-based Amnesty International said Niger's army shot dead, tortured and abducted several civilians in recent weeks in a wave of retaliation for attacks by rebels.

MNJ fighters have killed at least 70 soldiers, taken dozens more hostage and ambushed convoys and mined roads in the deserts of the northern Agadez region. They have also raided at least one mining camp.

The new legislation also punishes financing and recruitment for terrorism and gives security forces tougher powers, for example by increasing the period of time that police and military can hold suspects.

Niger's government, which dismisses the MNJ fighters as smugglers and bandits and refuses to recognise their demands as legitimate, denied the report.

Fiercely proud of their independence from outsiders, the nomadic Tuaregs staged revolts in Mali in the 1960s and 1990s and in Niger in the 1990s for more autonomy from black African-dominated governments in far-away capitals.

Peace agreements after the 1990s rebellions aimed to grant Tuareg communities a greater degree of autonomy, but discontent has persisted and revolts have flared again in both countries.

Although the insurgents in Niger and Mali have not declared any formal links, security officials suspect they may be co-operating with each other at least informally.

Hitler was also a madman: Top Mullah: Iran should defend Islamic world

Nobody believed Hitler's and Göebbles rantings before it was to late - How far before the mainstream figure what a bunch of shia fascist mad mullahs are up to?

Well, somehow the irony is not sweet but bitter.

From: AFP

TEHRAN (AFP) — A high-ranking Iranian cleric on Friday said the country should grow into a military super power to defend all Muslims, following an army parade at a time of mounting tension with the West.

"In a not so distant future, we should reach a point to have the most powerful military equipment in the world so that no one even think about invading our borders." Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said in his Friday prayer sermon carried live on state radio.

"And not only that of the Islamic republic, but also the borders of Islam ... We must defend oppressed Muslims everywhere so that the enemies do not dare to attack Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq."

On Thursday's annual Army Day celebration in Tehran, dozens of fighter jets and other aircraft flew over the parade ground in a bid to show the power of the air force.

Also on display was Iran's Shahab-3 missile, whose range includes Israel and even the fringes of Europe.

The hardline cleric also vowed to cheering worshippers, who chanted "Death to America" and "Death to Israel," that their slogans will materialise.

"I tell you that the death of the United States has come. You shouted Death to the Shah and he died," Jannati said, referring to the monarch overthrown by the 1979 Islamic revolution and who died in exile.

"You say Death to Israel and it is dying. You say Death to America and it does not take so long that its death prayer will be said."

Iran has a longstanding policy of not recognising Israel, and its rhetoric against the country has sharpened during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The president has provoked international outrage by repeatedly predicting that Israel is doomed to disappear and talking about the collaps of great powers.

He courted more controversy by playing down the scale of the Holocaust.

Iran is at odds with the West over its disputed nuclear programme, which the United States and its allies fear could be used to make nuclear weapons. Iran insists it only wants to produce nuclear energy.

TERRORISM - ZAWAHIRI: "MAKE IRAQ AN ISLAMIC FORTRESS"

From: AGI News

(AGI) - Washington, 18th April - In a fresh appearance on the web, 'al-Qaeda's second in command, Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, has called on Moslems to "make Iraq a fortress of Islam". The exhortation came in an audio recording lasting almost sixteen minutes, appearing on several blogs used by Islamic extremists.
"It is the greatest duty" of the faithful, stressed the ideologist of the terrorist organisation founded by Osama bin Laden, in a message bearing the title "Five years after the invasion of Iraq, and decades of injustice on the part of the tyrants'. "We shall have our rights once more", Zawahiri averred, "only by our own hand, and not by begging or through fraudulent elections". The appeal made by bin Laden's deputy was intercepted by 'Site', a Washington-based institute specialised in monitoring terrorist activities on line, according to whom the text contains references both to the hearing before the US Senate of David Petraeus, Chief in Command of US troops in Iraq, and to the textile workers' strike held a few days previously in Egypt. Both of these elements are evidence of the recent nature of the recording.
This is the second appearance of a recording attributable to Zawahiri this month: the previous on, on 2 April, consisted of a violent attack on the United Nations, stamped as "enemies of Islam and of Moslems" for its responsibility in "codifying and legitimising the state of Israel and its occupation of Moslem lands". (AGI)

The Golden Age of Islam is a Myth

That myth is assisted actively in universities and academia, to anyone with a sane understanding this mounts to treason, not only to our civilization, our society, learnings, cultures, but also to our future generations, the traitors are the teachers, academics, professors, deans and the rest who makes such treason possible, what right do they have to rewrite our history and replace it with hatred againts the Jewish people and against ourselves.

Source: World Net Daily - LONDON – Jonathan Evans, the director-general of MI5, has warned the government that donations of hundreds of millions of pounds from Saudi Arabia and powerful Muslim organizations in Pakistan, Indonesia and the Gulf Straits have led to a "dangerous increase in the spread of extremism in leading university campuses," according to Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

Eight of Britain's leading universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, have accepted more than 236 million pounds sterling, about $460 million, in donations from Muslim organizations, "many of which are known to have ties to extremist groups, some have links to terrorist organizations."

The Golden Age of Islam is a Myth

From: FrontPage Magazine.

The hatred of Western Civilization, and the corresponding urge to glorify anything outside it, especially if it can be depicted as a victim of the West, is a well-known phenomenon of the contemporary liberal mind. One of the forms it has taken in recent years is the attempt to artificially inflate the historic achievements of other civilizations beyond what the facts support. The noble savage myth is a commonplace; what is more complex is the myth that has been bandied about concerning the supposed "golden age" of Islamic civilization during what we know as the Middle Ages.

The myth of an Islamic Golden Age is needed by Islam’s apologists to save it from being damned by its present squalid condition; to prove, as it were, that there is more to Islam than the terrorism of Bin Laden and the decadence of the oil sheiks. It is, frankly, a confession that if the world judges it by what it is today, it comes up rather short, being a religion that has yet to produce a democratic or prosperous society, or social and cultural forms admired by neutral foreign observers the way anyone can admire American freedom, Japanese order, Israeli courage, or Italian style.

Some liberal academics openly admit that they twist the Moslem past to serve their present-day intellectual agendas. For example, some who propound the myth of an Islamic golden age of tolerance admit that their goal is,

"to recover for postmodernity that lost medieval Judeo-Islamic trading, social and cultural world, its high point pre-1492 Moorish Spain, which permitted and relished a plurality, a convivencia, of religions and cultures, Christian, Jewish and Moslem; which prized an historic internationality of space along with the valuing of particular cities; which was inclusive and cosmopolitan, cosmopolitan here meaning an ease with different cultures: still so rare and threatened a value in the new millennium as in centuries past."

In other words, a fairy tale designed to create the illusion that multiculturalism has valid historical precedents that prove it can work.

To be fair, the myth of the golden age of Islam does have a partially valid starting point: there were times in the past when Moslem societies attained higher levels of civilization and culture than they did at other times. There have been times, that is, when some Moslem lands were fit for a cultivated man to live in. Baghdad under Harun ar-Rashid (his well-documented Christian-slaying and Jew-hating proclivities notwithstanding), or Cordova very briefly under Abd ar-Rahman in the tenth century, come to mind. These isolated episodes, neither long nor typical, are endlessly invoked by Islam’s Western apologists and admirers.

This "golden" period in question largely coincides with the second dynasty of the Caliphate or Islamic Empire, that of the Abbasids, named after Muhammad’s uncle Abbas, who succeeded the Umayyads and ascended to the Caliphate in 750 AD. They moved the capital city to Baghdad, absorbed much of the Syrian and Persian culture as well as Persian methods of government, and ushered in the "golden age."

This age was marked by, among other things, intellectual achievement. A number of medieval thinkers and scientists living under Islamic rule, by no means all of them "Moslems" either nominally or substantially, played a useful role of transmitting Greek, Hindu, and other pre-Islamic fruits of knowledge to Westerners. They contributed to making Aristotle known in Christian Europe. But in doing this, they were but transmitting what they themselves had received from non-Moslem sources.

Three speculative thinkers, notably the three Persians al-Kindi, al-Farabi, and Avicenna, combined Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism with other ideas introduced through Islam. Greatly influenced by Baghdad’s Greek heritage in philosophy that survived the Arab invasion, and especially the writings of Aristotle, Farabi adopted the view — utterly heretical from a Moslem viewpoint — that reason is superior to revelation. He saw religion as a symbolic rendering of truth, and, like Plato, saw it as the duty of the philosopher to provide guidance to the state. He engaged in rationalistic questioning of the authority of the Koran and rejected predestination. He wrote more than 100 works, notably The Ideas of the Citizens of the Virtuous City. But these unorthodox works no more belong to Islam than Voltaire belongs to Christianity. He was in Moslem culture but not of it, indeed opposed to its orthodox core. He examples the pattern we see again and again: the best Moslems, whether judged by intellectual or political achievement, are usually the least Moslem.

The Moslem mainstream of this time, on the other hand, emphasized rigid Koranic orthodoxy and deployed Greek philosophy and science solely to buttress its authority. "They were rationalists in so far as they fell back on Greek philosophy for their metaphysical and physical explanations of phenomena; still, it was their aim to keep within the limits of orthodox belief." But when the thinkers went too far in their free inquiry into the secrets of nature, paying little attention to the authority of the Koran, they aroused suspicion of the rulers both in North Africa and Spain, as well as in the East. Persecution, exile, and death were frequent punishments suffered by the philosophers of Islam whose writings did not conform to the canon.

On the other side of the Empire, in Spain, Averroës exercised much influence on both Jewish and Christian thinkers with his interpretations of Aristotle. While mostly faithful to Aristotle’s method, he found the Aristotelian "prime mover" in Allah, the universal First Cause. His writings brought him into political disfavor and he was banished until shortly before his death, while many of his works in logic and metaphysics had been consigned to the flames. He left no school.

From Spain the Arabic philosophic literature was translated into Hebrew and Latin, which contributed to the development of modern European philosophy. In Egypt around the same time, Moses Maimonides (a Jew) and Ibn Khaldun made their contribution. A Christian, Constantine "the African," a native of Carthage, translated medical works from Arabic into Latin, thus introducing Greek medicine to the West. His translations of Hippocrates and Galen first gave the West a view of Greek medicine as a whole.

The "golden age" of Islamic art lasted from AD 750 to the mid-11th century, when ceramics, glass, metalwork, textiles, illuminated manuscripts, and woodwork flourished. Lustered glass became the greatest Islamic contribution to ceramics. Manuscript illumination became an important and greatly respected art, and miniature painting flourished in Iran. Calligraphy, an essential aspect of written Arabic, developed in manuscripts and architectural decoration.

In the exact sciences the contribution of Al-Khwarzimi, mathematician and astronomer, was considerable. Like Euclid, he wrote mathematical books that collected and arranged the discoveries of earlier mathematicians. His "Book of Integration and Equation" is a compilation of rules for solving linear and quadratic equations, as well as problems of geometry and proportion. Its translation into Latin in the 12^th century provided the link between the great Hindu mathematicians and European scholars. A corruption of the book’s title resulted in the word algebra; a corruption of the author’s own name resulted in the term algorithm.

The problem with turning this list of intellectual achievements into a convincing "Islamic" golden age is that whatever flourished, did so not by reason of Islam but in spite of Islam. Moslems overran societies (Persian, Greek, Egyptian, Byzantine, Syrian, Jewish) that possessed intellectual sophistication in their own right and failed to completely destroy their cultures. To give it the credit for what the remnants of these cultures achieved is like crediting the Red Army for the survival of Chopin in Warsaw in 1970! Islam per se never encouraged science, in the sense of disinterested enquiry, because the only knowledge it accepts is religious knowledge.

As Bernard Lewis explains in his book What Went Wrong? the Moslem Empire inherited "the knowledge and skills of the ancient Middle east, of Greece and of Persia, it added to them new and important innovations from outside, such as the manufacture of paper from China and decimal positional numbering from India." The decimal numbers were thus transmitted to the West, where they are still mistakenly known as "Arabic" numbers, honoring not their inventors but their transmitters.

Furthermore, the intellectual achievements of Islam’s "golden age" were of limited value. There was a lot of speculation and very little application, be it in technology or politics. At the present day, for almost a thousand years even speculation has stopped, and the bounds of what is considered orthodox Islam have frozen, except when they have even contracted, as in the case of Wahabism. Those who try to push the fundamentals of Moslem thought any further into the light of modernity frequently pay for it with their lives. The fundamentalists who ruled Afghanistan until recently and still rule in Iran hold up their supposed golden age as a model for their people and as a justification for their tyranny. Westerners should know better.

Serge Trifkovic received his PhD from the University of Southampton in England and pursued postdoctoral research at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. His past journalistic outlets have included the BBC World Service, the Voice of America, CNN International, MSNBC, U.S. News & World Report, The Washington Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Times of London, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He is foreign affairs editor of Chronicles.. Robert Locke is Associate Editor of Front Page Magazine.

Yemen: 8-year-old girl demands a divorce because she wants to "have a respectful life"

Nojoud Muhammed Nasser, 8, went to court by herself in Yemen.

Nasser (8-year-old) complained about her husband's behavior.

He used to do bad things to me, and I had no idea as to what a marriage is. I would run from one room to another in order to escape, but in the end he would catch me and beat me and then continued to do what he wanted. I cried so much but no one listened to me. One day I ran away from him and came to the court and talked to them. … Whenever I wanted to play in the yard he beat me and asked me to go to the bedroom with him. This lasted for two months. He was too tough with me, and whenever I asked him for mercy, he beat me and slapped me and then used me. I just want to have a respectful life and divorce him.

The husband:

Thamer is unrepentant but willing to be flexible: "Yes, I was intimate with her, but I have done nothing wrong, as she is my wife and I have the right and no one can stop me. But if the judge or other people insist that I divorce her, I will do it, it's ok."

Update:

Parliament refuses to legislate minimum age for marriage

SANA’A, April 13 – Despite pressure of 8-year-old girl’s husband refusing to set her free. Simultaneously, Yemeni Parliament does not consider early marriage as a priority and is not moving forward with legislation to prevent it.

The Yemeni Parliament, through its Evaluation and Jurisprudence Committee, rejected a request to amend the personal status law presented by the Women’s National Committee (WNC). Women’s movements and civil society in Yemen along with 61 Parliament members have advocated a law that legislates a minimum marriage age of 18 for both males and females. However, the Jurisprudence Committee claims there are no legislative grounds to impose such a law based on its understanding of Islam.

“Not only is it not Islamic, it is even inhuman to subject our girls to such an experience. We must continue to fight for the sake of a better future for our daughters,” said Rashida Al-Hamadani, chairperson of the WNC.

Just following Mohammed...
From: Infidel Bloggers Alliance.

Iran Destroys Synagogues

From: Infidel bloggers alliance.

In an eery repeat of Nazi Germany, Iran has begun destroying the Synagogues in which Jews worship:

And so it begins. The second holocaust ................ they vow to wipe Israel off the map. They are building nuclear weapons. They are destroying synagogues....what next?

Iran: Seven historic synagogues in Tehran destroyed

ADNKronos

Tehran, 15 April (AKI) - Seven ancient synagogues in the Iranian capital, Tehran, have been destroyed by local authorities.

The synagogues were in the Oudlajan suburb of Tehran, where many Iranian Jews used to live.

"These buildings, which were part of our cultural, artistic and architectural heritage were burnt to the ground," said Ahmad Mohit Tabatabaii, the director of the International Council of Museums’ (ICOM) office in Tehran.

"With the excuse of renovating this ancient quarter, they are erasing a part of our history," said Tabatabaii.

He called for the government to intervene to stop the work commissioned by the local authorities.

A group of residents of Oudjalan have also sent a letter to the mayor of Tehran asking him to suspend the renovation work being carried out in the suburb.

Honoring Terrorists, Suicide-bombers, Anti-semitism and giving awards to jailed terrorists - They call it being 'Moderate'.

How to define 'Moderate'?
What is 'Moderate'?
Is it being moderate if turning your face to one side and calling for the murder of innocent Jewish men, women and children, the destruction of a nation and a genocide against a people and then been giving away an award to a terrorist in jail for murder and honoring a suicide bomber?
Is it any honor to pay hommage to one of the greatest terrorists of our time with blood on his hands, is that considered 'Moderate'? - Was Joseph Göebbles a 'Moderate' because he knew how to 'speak'.?

What is considered 'Moderate' if you listen to your own moral compass, common sense and rational thinking, certainly it is far from the mind of those who prefer the world of a delusion and deceit, the cowards who refuse to 'see' or are afraid to offend if telling the truth.

There is no doubt in my mind about what to think.

From: Honest Reporting.

On the eve of the anniversary of the horrific 2002 Passover massacre in Netanya's Park Hotel, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas has delivered a stinging reminder that "moderacy" on the Palestinian side is a relative term.

The Jerusalem Post reports that the Al Quds Mark of Honor, the PLO's highest medal, will be given to two female terrorists who helped kill Israelis.

Ahlam Tamimi, a Hamas-linked terrorist in prison for assisting the suicide bomber who killed at least six people in the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem, and Amra Muna, who seduced Ophir Rahum over the Internet and then lured him to Ramallah to be murdered, will be awarded the medal.

Conferring the Al Quds Mark of Honor is decided at the discretion of the Palestinian Authority's president, and he alone has the final say when choosing the Palestinians to be honored with the medal.

It is highly unlikely that this appalling story will be covered by the mainstream media, which regularly describes Abbas as a "moderate". While this may be true in comparison with the absolute fanaticism of Hamas, this incident is yet another demonstration of how the media is too quick to cast Palestinian leaders in these terms.

Abbas, as recently as February, did not rule out returning to the path of armed "resistance" against Israel and took pride in the fact that he had been the first to fire on Israel and that his organization had trained Hezbollah. This, in addition to his history of Holocaust denial.

So why does the mainstream media continue to refer to various Israeli politicians or civilians who live over the Green Line as "hard-line", "uncompromising", "intransigent", "implacable" and other similar terms while Abbas and other Palestinians are presented as "moderate"?

In a similar vein, former US President Jimmy Carter laid a wreath Tuesday on the grave of Yasser Arafat, whom he claimed, fought for the advancement of the Palestinians and other just causes in the world. Is this the same godfather of terror responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocents in a bloodstained career? Or was he a "moderate" Palestinian leader?

Demand more from your media - ask why some unpleasant truths are systematically under-reported while Palestinian leaders are inaccurately described in gracious political terms.

*** Note: Those of you who wish to respond to the Bangor Daily News op-ed featured in yesterday's communique, please send your e-mails to letters@bangordailynews.net, and not the address previously published.

HonestReporting. com

Click here for Backspin to comment on this communique and the articles above.

If Kossovo can...

Some people seem to be "shocked" with the latest weird move of the european union: The acceptance of Kossovo as an independent state.

I believe it is a marvellous act! This means the implosion (even if on this case it was an explosion of a state, someone seems to have bombed Yugoslavia based on the usual rumours of a "massacre", and not summary execution for national treason, ah whatever...)

So this is an act of liberty, this means that Ireland can claim northern Ireland to itself, Scotland can say goodbye to their beloved english queen who has shed so many tears for the scottish people for what they done with their national hero (what? She hasnt? Well, how shoud I know?) Flamish people can just assume that they are free and the Basque can tell Juan to shove it.

So Kossovo opened a precedent in europe, a good precedent I believe.

Now that europe is gathering for a question of nescessity (our national pride be damned! There wont be no more nation), regions with a common culture dont need the protective wings of nationalism.

Ladies and gentlemen, my good men and my good women, we are entering continentalism, and it was about time we did so.

For the first time in history europe has stepped in the right direction to the union of this continent. By peaceful measures. (Well, if we forget the rather shameful trial of Milosevic and the obliterance of a former healthy nation called Yugoslavia, united by Tito, a man so loved by the yugoslavians as Mannerheim is by the finns)

The Kossovo precedent is a good thing (once this sad incident with Yugoslavia, ahem), as it entitles any region to declare sovereignity inside europe, so if people who seem to support violence and justify gang rape as a religious right, why not gather for the creation of a new nation (region?) by followers of science, reason and logics?

Lets regroup (as we all seem a little confused here, with our "sovereign states" allowing ignorant semi analphabetic people to dictate our will in exchange for votes), and form a new country!

When we become 2.5 million we just move somewhere in europe and declare independence.

We have a fellow culture, we have an ideology and we have the desire of beeing free from the burden of abusive self-rightgeous pricks and corrupted politicians.

And more, on this new country, the tax will be only 10% of a personal income!

My unhappy discontented and dissapointed friends, Kossovo was not a defeat, it was a victory, a victory of people who are determined to have things their way, and how can I blame them?

Who dares wins, and who works for something achieves it, and somehow somewhere we seem to have forgotten this principle, the principles that made european countries possible in the first place.

When Leonidas shouted "come and get it at the hot gates, when a knight in Malta refused to give up despite the ammount of beheaded floating on the sea, when some villages in northern Spain just didnt feel like circuncising, and when some tribes on a very cold part of europe realised that land armies were the enemies strong point and decided to fight them at sea, when Lepanto somehow became a known name and a survivor of this day lived to write a world known classic loved even by the writers worst enemies, What would prevent us from declaring in our own right, the right to form a country based in the logic of the facts?

A nation based in technology, progress and sofistication, a country based on true europeans values, a strong brave little country with well intended citizens who wont hate others because they refuse to bend to a building or to a fellow human. A free country. Thats worth living for.

If kossovans can...

...join the nation of YAN:

www.nationofyan.com

And for your own sake, believe it, as it is already real.

A great lie, repeated many times...

Greetings all,

because im new here I will take a bit longer in explaining myself.

i thank the owner of this blog in the opportunity to express my opinions.

To request and persistance from the owner of this blog, I feel compelled to write these lines here, as now at last I have something to write about.

What I have to write about is of simple understanding, beware of complicated words and long explanations as they are usually excuses for what is dubious. Usually.

Fact is that since the declaration of human rights has been established in 1948, in order to avoid such a horrible waste and degradation of humanity as these two last great wars have been what made the greedy european powers drunk in their sense of might to slaughter themselvesblindly untill all their ressources were gone and their empires turned into a mockery from the past, the counter currents to this thought have been working hard to destroy it.

As they could not destroy it because europe seem to have at last learned to counter its overexcessive greed and destructive impulses with reason and humanity, purging every guilt we could have from our former errors, (except for the Yugoslavian question, but this seems was more kind of american action against an emerging market out of their control I can be however, wrong. I hope I am) these forces started corrupting the ideology that the declaration of human rights (or so it seems) by changing our understanding of reality. Twisting it.

Feeling weakened inside europe as europeans now struggle strongly for peaceful measure (my reticenses to Yugoslavia, however) they decided to bring more people inside our continent who believe in the idea of revlution to achieve a goal.

As I believe in evolution and not in revolution, I see the flaunt of this thought.

And I must point this out.

They seem to have created rules and forbade resistance to the thought that those people, potential revolutionaries as they are proving to be lately, to prevent europeans from having a choice (their favorite hobbie it seems) when the time came for their precious "revolution" came, once again.

This is even reflected in our semantics, as for instance (just an example folks, nothing more than an example of how words are being twisted right under our noses) words like muslim or islam:

Muslim means "one who believes" (in God) so it is related to all those who believe in God and therefore people from alæmost all religions.

Islam means "Submission" (to God) so all those who are submissive to the will of a God are to be called such on that language.

Those are also foreign words, why use them? We already have words for this.

Marketing?

These words are today used to describe muhamedans and muhamedanism, words that truly explain the nature of these beliefs.

thise words are not insultive as Christian is not indsulting or Buddhist is not restraining, but mere qualities of a person who follow very specific teachings.

So by calling followers of this specific belief as " the ones who believe in God" is to give monolpoly of belief for them only, and that is not precise. That is not correct.

In their holy book is stated: "if your neighbour is not a believer in God (intentionally not translated to our language as "muslim") you must fight your neighbour"

So if we at least were not so lazy and cared translating the terms for like it was we would not have the problems of entering useless discussions with them as their majority only does what they are told and therefore are confused to our lazyness (if it is not intentional) in not translating their terms properly, and therefore feel justified to feel justified to defend their position as a believer, while many unaware of what the term truly means, assume the position of unbelievers, even if they are believers.

I have been called an atheist many times before I pondered why so since I clearly believe in God, as in my sceptiscism am forced to do so for the ammount of miracles that have happened in my life. and my opinion only reflects my personal understanding of the world around me.

Yes it is "uncool" to believe on these things nowadays on the occident but well, Im not here to be "cool" but to be truthful with what I believe on, as for me peer pressure can suck it as peer pressure is usually sheer ignorance and fear, just as bad as following blindly any set of rules, religious or not, as atheists have been responsible on their short time spam to act for the biggest bloodbathes ever in history so lets keep it on an equality level both dogma and anti-dogma.

So I was called an atheist even if I believe, why so?

60% of muhamedans are analphabet, so they cannot have an understanding on the own book they claim to follow, so they must stick to the basics of semantics and words they were taught to understand their own religion, therefore relying on their religious authorities, the same mistake we have commited during the middle ages when peasants were cattle in the hand of their lords because the religious authorities said so.

So on this sense I dont blame them, how could I.

I blame however the european authorities who allowed the wrong semantics to change enforcing their beliefs that we are all atheists (and therefore on simple people logics, against God)

I blame the authorities who claim to be literate and cult and were unaware that a huge cultural gap shoud have been filled and utterly explained (and accepted so they could establish themselves here.

The responsible are not the good faithed muhamendans who were invited to live here, believing it to be a gift from God, but the lame, lazy and perhaps wicked authorities who let them do so without properly explaining to them what is what.

How to blame a child from having a tantrum if the adult is not firm. (and by firm I do not mean brutal, I think that the children of these places have had enough of this sort of behaviour and therefore seeked refuge with the pedagogue (us) i mean firm as on patient and clear with our attitudes so no dount or gap is there to be taken advantadge of as a child is constantly testing its limits as an adult is on a new environment)

if a child is the term aplied is because I feel like a child when on foreign territory and I must try out my limits until someone tells me what i am doing wrong.

So the error was from our authorities.

However it is never late to learn better so our authorities do have chance and conditions to make it better still.

As europe is now, reminds me of europe at the time of Chamberlain.

So I wonder... ...are europeans going to let Hitler take until he overdrives and cause a new war?
Are we going to allow the chamberlains of modern europe to do this all over again?

When will we europeans learn?

I follow the certain say: my country is where I feel most loved.

It seems we have just misplaced the former arrogance with overly protection of those who are not european and these are the same to me, as in both the capacity of the "protected" or "colonised to take care of themselves is blatantly ignored.

While I write these lines european youth has huge problems with drug abuse and lack of care, and are forming their own "Peter Pan" clubs as "ungdomshuset" kids who live technically in filth (as I have lived with some of them) and lack the most basic human standarts of living with others like cleaning up after themselves and expect to be treaty equally without ever deserving it, with no morals whatsoever and with so much sorrow in their hearts that would make me puke if I would ever be allowed to look into it by them.

We have huge problems ourselves and we shoud stop behaving so arrogantly like we could rule the world if we cannot even rule ourselves and help our own before we even think of helping others.

Because throwing money to social institutions filled with bureucrats that dont care for these youngsters as they are not family related nor can have any real obligation towards those kinds (unless they wish to spend time in jail, thanks to our new social rules) and these bureucreats will just suck the money for their own personal interests, because they are only human, is not enough.

We must learn with our own mistakes and not repeat them.

Some people complain that "muhamedans procreate too quickly" and cry out "not fair", and instead of demanding the same rights to procreate without being punished (as we are by our laws if we try the same sort of endeavour as poligamy or other natural behaviour, the same who complain about their merely natural multiplication mock the idea of having children, as it is only "an ignorant person" who can do such.

Thats absurd, and again, some empty headed baseless arogance has taken place.

We europeans have been brainwashed to go againt our human nature.

It is our own fault having accepted such and it is up to us only, and nobody else, to revert that.

No wonder some of these foreigners are offended by our lack of sense, we have become anti-natural! And we dare mocking medieval penitence and that classic sense of guilt on the best "mea culpa mea culpa mea maxima culpa" with whip in hand and yet, we restrainfrom having children we induce abortion and we mock who wants to establish a family because it is so "old fashined".

We are destroying ourselves, and instead of whyning about what the inmigrants are doing right, we shoud learn from it and do it better.

My danish grand-grand-parents had families with nine kids (and boye, they were allowed to have only one wife), today danes can barely reproduce.

Too much preventive measures in our recicled water it seems. The same could be said about our own mentalities.

Lets do it better, shall we, and really? We know nothing, if we are being swallowed raw by people some of us claim to be so "ignorant" just to make us feel superion in some bizar sense of "because I say so". They seem to know better as the same people who despise them for being "ignorant" are crying out loud that "we are being taken over, and on a few decades" yadayada.

Liberty is like respect or a position in work: it is deserved, not given just because.

i really thought we new better than this.

Kosovo: Europe's highest birth rate, smallest GDP

Some background.

Source: Moonsters and critics.

Pristina - Kosovo holds parliamentary and local elections, both for the third time since NATO ended a bloody conflict by ousting Serbian security forces and a UN administration took over in 1999.

The Albanians eagerly hope to finally gain independence from Belgrade, but the recognition of the province as the world's newest state remained elusive despite expectations.

Apart from bordering Albania proper, Kosovo straddles three countries with sizeable Albanian minorities - Montenegro, Macedonia and Serbia. In the latter two, Kosovo's unresolved status and porous borders have helped foment insurgencies over the past eight years.

[...]

Kosovo facts:

Size - 10,908 square kilometres (quarter-size of Denmark)

Neighbours - Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania

Population - 2.1 million (estimate)

Major cities - Pristina (capital), Prizren, Pec, Kosovska Mitrovica, Gnjilan, Urosevac, Djakovica

Ethnic groups - Albanians (92 per cent), Serbs (5.3 per cent), Bosniaks, Turks, Roma (2.7 per cent)

Age - 0-14 years 33 per cent, 15-64 61 per cent, 65+ 6 per cent

Birth rate - higher than 2.5 per cent, highest in Europe

Economy - estimated GDP growth 3-4 per cent, per capita GDP estimated at 1,500 dollars; Roughly one-fifth of the two 2-billion-euro (3 billion dollars) GDP is generated by foreign aid, 45 per cent of revenues in Kosovo is made up of remittance from diaspora and UN programmes.

Unemployment - 30-50 per cent, by various estimates

Main economic sectors - wood and metal industry

The Kosovo peacekeeping force, led by NATO: 15,000 troops [2007], down from more than 50,000 in 1999.

Will Europe Resist Islamization?

An excellent article from Israel enews.

Some analysts of Islam in Western Europe argue that the continent cannot escape its Eurabian fate; that the trend lines of the past half-century will continue until Muslims become a majority population and Islamic law (the Shari‘a) reigns.

I disagree, arguing that there is another route the continent might take, one of resistance to Islamification and a reassertion of traditional ways. Indigenous Europeans – who make up 95 percent of the population – can insist on their historic customs and mores. Were they to do so, nothing would be in their way and no one could stop them.

Indeed, Europeans are visibly showing signs of impatience with creeping Shari‘a. The legislation in France that prohibits hijabsfrom public school classrooms signals the reluctance to accept Islamic ways, as are related efforts to ban burqas, mosques, and minarets. Throughout Western Europe, anti-immigrant parties are generally increasing in popularity.

That resistance took a new turn last week, with two dramatic events. First, on March 22, Pope Benedict XVI himself baptized, confirmed, and gave the Eucharist to Magdi Allam, 56, a prominent Egyptian-born Muslim long living in Italy, where he is a top editor at the Corriere della Sera newspaper and a well-known author. Allam took the middle name Cristiano. The ceremony converting him to the Catholic religion could not have been higher profile, occurring at a nighttime service at St. Peter's Basilica on the eve of Easter Sunday, with exhaustive coverage from the Vatican and many other television stations.

Allam followed up his conversion with a stinging statementin which he argued that beyond "the phenomenon of Islamic extremism and terrorism that has appeared on a global level, the root of evil is inherent in an Islam that is physiologically violent and historically conflictive." In other words, the problem is not just Islamism but Islam itself. One commentator, "Spengler" of Asia Times, goes so far as to say that Allam "presents an existential threat to Muslim life" because he "agrees with his former co-religionists in repudiating the degraded culture of the modern West, and offers them something quite different: a religion founded upon love."

Second, on March 27, Geert Wilders, 44, released his long-awaited, 15-minute film, Fitna, which consists of some of the most bellicose verses of the Koran, followed by actions in accord with those verses carried out by Islamists in recent years. The obvious implication is that Islamists are simply acting in accord with their scriptures. In Allam's words, Wilders also argues that "the root of evil is inherent" in Islam.

Unlike Allam and Wilders, I do distinguish between Islam and Islamism, but I believe it imperative that their ideas get a fair hearing, without vituperation or punishment. An honest debate over Islam must take place.

If Allam's conversion was a surprise and Wilders' film had a three-month run-up, in both cases, the aggressive, violent reactions that met prior criticisms of Islamdid not take place. According to the Los Angeles Times, the Dutch policecontacted imams to gauge reactions at the city's mosques and found, according to police spokesman Arnold Aben, "it's quieter than usual here today. Sort of like a holiday." In Pakistan, a rally against the film attracted only some dozens of protestors.

This relatively constrained reaction points to the fact that Muslim threats sufficed to enforce censorship. Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenendedenounced Fitna and, after 3.6 million visitors had viewed it on the British website LiveLeak.com, the company announced that "Following threats to our staff of a very serious nature, … Liveleak has been left with no other choice but to remove Fitna from our servers." (Two days later, however, LiveLeak again posted the film.)

Three similarities bear noting: both Allam (author of a book titled Viva Israele) and Wilders (whose film emphasizes Muslim violence against Jews) stand up for Israel and the Jews; Muslim threats against their lives have forced both for years to live under state-provided round-the-clock police protection; and, more profoundly, the two share a passion for European civilization.

Indeed, Allam and Wilders may represent the vanguard of a Christian/liberal reassertion of European values. It is too soon to predict, but these staunch individuals could provide a crucial boost for those intent on maintaining the continent's historic identity.

Islamic university on the way in Denmark

Response to the article in Copenhagen Post the 9th of April 2008:
Islamic university on the way:

It is with absolute disbelieve reading the Jyllands Posten article 'Islamic University on the way'. Al Azhar is widely known for its extremism and to be under the influence from organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood which has got notorious members such as Al-Zawahiri who is Osama Bin Laden's spiritual mentor.

Moreover it has hatched terrorism apologists such as Tariq Ramadan [2] who is the grandson of Hassan Al Bannah the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood[5] in 1928, Hani Ramadan who is Tariq Ramadan's brother headed the Al Taqwa Bank in Switzerland which has funded Al Qaeda terrorism with clandestine credits to Al Qaeda members.

Tariq Ramadan is prohibited to enter the United States on charges of involvement with terrorism – Tariq Ramadan has previously defended the Islamic practice of stoning women to death for adultery in France in 2003 to name a few of the values he promotes in a well articulated and soft spoken manner which can best be described as an Islamic Goebbles.

Moreover even in Egypt the Al Azhar University is causing controversy.

Egyptian reformists such as intellectual and poet Ahmed Abd Al-Muti Higazi who has explained "...Those who quote [religious scriptures] and impose the word [namely, the chief clerics] are the ones responsible for producing fundamentalist terror...." Higazi added, "The positions of the sheikh of Al Azhar...were established by the state, but they serve only to root the principle of quote-hear-obey. They kill creativity and lead to the atrophy of the Arab mind."[1]

With this in mind one can be tempted to ask what exactly Rasmus Alenius Boserup understands by the logic development in regard to the Islamic Faith Society turning to Al Azhar, needless to point out that the notorious Imams Akhmed Akkari and Abu Laban went to Egypt among places prior to the explosion of the cartoon crisis, the pictures they showed were not of the little Mermaid as we all know.

"Rasmus Alenius Boserup, director of the Danish-Egyptian Dialogue Institute in Cairo, believed it was a 'logical development' that the Islamic Faith Society would turn to Al-Azhar for co-operation in developing its activities in Denmark. 'There's hardly anything dangerous in that,' said Boserup,"

Danish-Egyptian 'Dialogue' in this context is a rather Owellian twist bearing resemblance to Newspeak – From there the logic is to be found, but then again, considering the Islamic Faith Society and what the Al Azhar University stands for there is a real and sinister logic.

If taking the Al Azhar curriculum on face value this will be the 'dialogue' which we can expect to get and which is to even the untutored mind promoting a supremacist ideology with a religious sanction – Not to mention with what little imagination it takes to figure out which kind of students such a University will hatch – I will let the reader to decide whether Boserup is being sincere or sarcastic when exclaiming 'There's hardly anything dangerous in that,'.

From Middle East Research Institute on the Al-Azhar in Cairo:

If we examine some of the extremist curricula, we will find that the principle of fighting any non-Muslim and killing him is not an offensive innovation by [founder of Wahhabism] Sheikh Muhammad ibn Abd Al-Wahhab and by [ Ayman ] Al-Zawahiri, [Osama bin Laden's deputy and the head of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization]. This [is] because a book of the Hanafi [school of thought], ' Al-Ikhtiyar fi Ta'lil Al-Mukhtar ' [by Abdallah Ibn Mahmoud Al-Mawsily ] teaches the next generation that 'the war against the infidels is an obligation of all intelligent, healthy, free, and able men…

And when the Muslims besiege their enemies in a town or a fortress, they must call upon them to convert to Islam. If they convert, [the Muslims] must cease fighting them, and if they do not convert, they must call upon them to pay the jizya [poll tax]. If they refuse to pay the jizya, the Muslims must call upon Allah's help in the war against them, to erect catapults, to destroy their fields and their trees, to burn them, and to pelt them [with catapult stones], even if [the enemies] use Muslims as a human shield…'

What Kind of Thinking are We Teaching Our Next Generation, that It has the Right to Attack Other Countries in Order to Convert Them to Islam?

The book then instructs [Muslims] to act with compassion in this war: 'The Muslims must not breach a contract assuring protection [of the subjugated], must not take more than their share of the booty, must not mutilate bodies, kill madmen, women, children, cripples, one whose right hand has been amputated, or an elderly man, unless one of them is a king or a person able to fight, to incite [to war], to give advice about war or to instigate [fighting] by means of his possessions.'

The stipulation that women, elderly, and cripples would be pardoned if they did not incite to war implies that everyone, in effect, should be killed, since no citizen living in a country attacked by foreigners does not incite to battle…[3]

More on the Al Azhar from National Review:

One issue on the agenda should be Al Azhar. Immediately after 9/11, a group of leading clerics and professors declared jihad against the U.S. at the most prestigious Islamic center of learning in the Muslim world, the Egyptian-government-supported Al Azhar. The issue of extremism at Al Azhar has emerged as one aspect of the war on terrorism which has not received much attention.

DECLARATION OF WAR
Sheikh of Al Azhar, one of the most coveted positions of authority in Sunni Islam, from 1929-1935 was Muhammad al-Ahmadi al-Zawahiri, grandfather of al Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri. More recently Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi, who previously served as mufti of Egypt until he was appointed by the government as Sheikh of Al Azhar, has led the call in Egypt for jihad against U.S. forces in Iraq.

At a press conference last year, Tantawi called on the Iraqi people to "continue its jihad in defense of religion...whether [by] martyrdom operations [i.e. suicide operations] or [by] any other means." He encouraged volunteers from Muslim countries to go to Iraq "to support the jihad...because resistance to oppression is an Islamic obligation...." During a Friday sermon at Al Azhar the following day, Tantawi added: "The American aggression against Iraq is not acceptable to Islamic law.... The Iraqi people must defend itself...because it is a jihad that is authorized by Islamic law.... The gates of jihad are open until the Day of Judgment, and he who denies this is an infidel..."[4]

This leaves little doubt in mind and but an ice-cube from the top of the ice-berg – How is it possible that such issues can be ignored?

In who's interest is it and for what purpose?
Clearly the Al Azhar is a University in which students are taught the Islamist ideology which has resulted so far in graduating the most notorious Islamic terrorists in today's world, among those are the late leader and co-funder of the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas Sheik Akhmed Yassin [5].

Rolf Krake

Quoted sources:

[1] http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/stalinsky200404120847.asp

[2] http://www.investigativeproject.org/profile/111

[3] http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD79004

[4] http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/stalinsky200404120847.asp

[5] Muslim Brotherhood http://www.meforum.org/article/687

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Azhar_University

The EUSSR Grows Bolder - Soviet Style Propaganda

Now the medias have to help to make the EU citizens accept the grand EUSSR multiculti social engineering experiment Soviet style taking for granted that media and citizens can only think, write and speak of what the EUSSR decides - A free debate, the objective reality and a free media apparently makes the EUSSR afraid.

The noted blogger Fjordman is filing this report via Gates of Vienna.
For a complete Fjordman blogography, see The Fjordman Files. There is also a multi-index listing here.

Notice how this senior member of the European Parliament states that the media “must” engage in breaking down resistance to increased mass immigration to Europe. The fact that political authorities clearly view the media as just another arm of the transnational bureaucracy demonstrates just how far down the path of totalitarianism the European Union has already gone.

The EUSSR is taking shape right in front of our eyes. As I have said a million times before, the only possible solution to this is to get rid of the EU. All of it. The entire organization is just a big pile of corruption, sharia and Utopian ideologies. It needs to go if the European continent, and the civilization it gave birth to, is to survive this century:

From EU Observer:

Instead of the narrow-minded approach suggested at the Anglo-French Summit Europe we need to agree a far more ambitious package: one which combines the fight against illegal migration with the creation of legal migration channels and development and security policies that actively bolster third countries.

Before our ambitions can be achieved, however, parliamentarians and the media alike must commit to engaging in the crucial step of changing public perceptions. For without public confidence and backing, an ambitious global migration policy for Europe is unlikely to see the light of day.

The UN's Attack On Our Freedoms

The UN has outlived it's role and glory, a corrupt and inefficient abomination spending $11.000.000 on pencils - If that is not enough the UN is actively working against human rights.

From: Frontpage Magazine.

Al Qaeda’s second in command, Ayman al-Zawahri, just recently declared on one of the websites al Qaeda uses to spread its propaganda that “the United Nations is an enemy of Islam and Muslims.”

Strange that Zawahri would kick a gift horse in the mouth. In fact, the UN is one of the best friends that Zawahri and his Islamic cohorts have today on the world stage. It has become the enemy of Israel and of Western democratic values. Dominated by the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), the UN General Assembly and the Human Rights Council in particular provide political cover for virtually every crime against humanity that the Islamists commit.

The OIC’s party line is that freedom of press and speech must give way to respect for Islam by avoiding any criticism that could be considered “defamation” in the eyes of Muslims. UN member states belonging to the Organization of Islamic Conference have managed to push resolutions through the UN General Assembly and Human Rights Council that condemn “defamation of religions.” The only religion singled out for protection is Islam.

Late last month, the OIC formally introduced an amendment to the mandate of the Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, which would require the Special Rapporteur to "report on instances where the abuse of the right of freedom of expression constitutes an act of racial or religious discrimination.” The amendment passed. In other words, the UN’s Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression is now charged with the responsibility for policing expression that is deemed to go too far in criticizing Islam. This turns the role of the Special Rapporteur on its head. The proper role, of course, is not to monitor expression considered abusive by some, but to consider and monitor abusive limits on any expression.

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has unfortunately taken up where Kofi Annan left off in kowtowing to the OIC’s party line. This was evident in his recent condemnation of the Dutch film Fitna, which Ban called “offensively anti-Islamic.” This controversial film juxtaposes horrific scenes of killings and destruction at the hands of the Islamic terrorists with verses from the Koran and excerpts of incendiary speeches by Islamic leaders that are used to justify such acts of terrorism.

Ban Ki-moon applauded “the efforts of the Government of the Netherlands to stop the broadcast of this film” and appealed for “calm to those understandably offended by it.” His appeal for calm has not stopped the threats of violence against the film’s creator and against the staff of a video website that had released it.

Ban Ki-moon said that the film traffics in what he calls “hate speech” and “incitement to violence.” Therefore, he reasoned, the “right of free expression is not at stake here.”

The best antidote to any distortions that the film may contain in portraying the violent strains of Islam as practiced today is not to ban the movie but to encourage more speech that debunks the film’s premise. This may be a difficult task, which explains the pressure to suppress the film altogether.

The following are just a sampling of Koran verses that sanction hatred and violence against non-Muslims:

"Kill the disbelievers wherever we find them" (Koran, 2:191)

"O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends: They are but friends to each other" (Koran 5:51)

"Shall I tell you who, in the sight of God, deserves a yet worse retribution than these? Those [the Jews] whom God has rejected and whom He has condemned, and whom He has turned into monkeys and pigs because they worshiped the powers of evil" (Koran 5:60)

"I will inspire terror into the hearts of unbelievers: you smite them above their necks and smite all their fingertips off of them" (Koran, 8:12)

"When we decide to destroy a population, we send a definite order to them who have the good things in life and yet sin. So that Allah's word is proven true against them, then we destroy them utterly" (Koran, 17:16-17)

Islamic texts teach that the Koran's more violent passages such as these supersede the peaceful passages that had been written earlier in Muhammad’s life. Now there is no denying that the Old Testament and other non-Muslim religious tracts surely contain their own share of inflammatory language. However, Islam has not gone through the internal re-examination and reformation that Western religions have. The leaders and thinkers who claim to speak in the name of Judaism and Christianity today do not make a habit of interpreting their texts as literal justifications for violence against non-believers as Muslim preachers still do.

The vilest hate speech and incitements to violence in the world today appear daily in Muslim newspapers, in Muslim preachers’ sermons and in the standard curriculum used by many Islamic schools. Yet only Westerners who write or speak negatively about Islam’s excesses can be guilty of ‘hate speech’ in the eyes of UN officials and other misguided politically correct apologists.

Respect for the bedrock freedoms of speech, press and religion lie at the very heart of the difference in worldview between Western democracies and Muslim theocratic or autocratic societies. Freedom of religion and freedom of expression do not work at cross-purposes, as Islamists tend to argue. To the contrary, these individual freedoms are mutually reinforcing in protecting the individual from subordination to governmental control. Religious believers, or non-believers for that matter, have a right not to be persecuted or discriminated against on the basis of their beliefs, but religion itself like all other ideas and institutions benefits from the expression of diverse views.

As the International Freedom of Expression Exchange pointed out in its opposition to the UN Human Rights Council’s efforts to legislate the suppression of free speech, the “equality of all ideas and convictions before the law and the right to debate them freely is the keystone of democracy…freedom of expression is applicable not only to ‘information’ or ‘ideas’ that are favourably received, but also to those that may offend, shock or disturb any or all of us.”

Those who insist on strict adherence to the literal word of Islamic law define everything in terms of the individual’s complete subordination towards Allah. What this means in practice is the surrender of any freedom to debate, criticize, mock or in any way differ from the Islamists’ fundamentalist reading of the Koran and Sharia which, in their mind, are immutable for all time and omnicompetent in all matters. It is this primitive worldview that the United Nations is now on record yet again as protecting against the more enlightened values of individual freedom and democratic principles upon which the UN was originally founded.