AWOL Again

I’m going away overnight to visit family, so there will be no news feed tonight. I’ll return to my desk sometime tomorrow.

Dymphna will be holding things together while I’m gone. Stay cool, dudes and dudettes.

“This Is How Societies Go Down”

A new Pat Condell video that appears to be a riff off that BBC Panorama program, “Honour Killings”, which the Baron posted on recently:


And some further thoughts at The Commentator on the ‘M’ word:

This is how societies go down: when matters of the profoundest significance to their character, and potentially their very existence, have been rendered undiscussable by the people that set the terms of public debate.

[…]

So be it. Go ahead and have a conversation about deep-seated problems inside the fastest growing demographic group in Europe without mentioning what that group is. The quality of your discussion will be moronic. But you reap what you sow.

Oh, my: it’s a good thing they’re not called Nuslims or we’d have TWO "undiscussable" ‘N’ words and endless confusion. We’d be like those prisoners who’ve endlessly told the same old jokes to one another so often that they've long since begun referring to them by numbers: “Hey Sam — that #28 is a fine one. Tell it again.” So Sam obligingly shouts “28!”, and everyone laughs real hard...except for the guy at the end of the cell block. He hollers back, “you didn’t tell it right!”

Seriously, though we’ve got 24 letters left to assign to forbidden words. ‘Oops — ‘T’ for “terrorist” — make that 23 letters left.

Sssh, children. The Silence is coming.

Gates of Vienna News Feed 3/21/2012

Events in Toulouse are still dominating the news. Some additional stories about the incident are below, including an interesting account of Mohamed Merah’s two visits to Afghanistan. The suspect was picked up by U.S. soldiers during his first trip and sent straight back to France.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Erick Stakelbeck, Gaia, heroyalwhyness, Insubria, JP, KGS, Seneca III, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

Video Report from Toulouse

Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading this MSNBC report about the ongoing standoff in Toulouse:

Joseph Goebbels: Alive and Well at the BBC

My earlier report on Toulouse featured a BBC article about the siege. For some strange reason, the BBC failed to mention its reversal of spin after learning that the killer was a Muslim, rather than a Le Pen supporter.

Our British correspondent Cyrus Spitama takes note of what the Beeb did in the following report.


BBC Reporting. Joseph Goebbels would have been proud.

by Cyrus Spitama

Anyone following to the BBC’s coverage the Toulouse shootings can’t have missed the terms ‘xenophobic’, ‘anti-immigration’, ‘far-right’, ‘neo-Nazi’, ‘Islamophobia’ and ‘anti-Semitism’ peppered liberally throughout their reports

And of course the name of Marine Le Pen has been a regular feature in the BBC’s reporting, as well as the linking Sarkozy’s move to the right to these murders.

I read in The Telegraph this morning that the shooter is a Muslim jihadist of Algerian ethnicity called Mohammed.

So I looked in on the BBC news website to see their take on it. After all, they clearly felt that ethnicities and religions of the victims were very important and relevant, so I wanted to see how they reported the background of the shooter. But predictably, they didn’t.

All they reported this morning was that the murderer “has claimed affiliation to al-Qaeda”.

I scoured the report to see for any morsel of news regarding the man’s ethnicity or religion. Nothing. However, there was this at the end of report:

Siege in Toulouse

Rather than a neo-Nazi, the man suspected of killing the Muslim paratroopers and the Jewish schoolchildren in Toulouse is an Islamic fundamentalist. As of this writing he is still under siege, holed up in an apartment in a suburb of Toulouse. The police say they are determined to capture him alive.

The media were slavering over the prospect of a neo-Nazi killer and the inevitable take-down of presidential candidate Marine Le Pen that would have followed the arrest of the culprit. Now that the case has a Mohammed Coefficient of 100%, what will they do with themselves?

The murdered rabbi and the children were buried today. As soon as the perp is caught or killed we may expect the incident to disappear quickly from the MSM. Down the memory hole!

But really, the media got exactly what they wanted — isn’t a Muslim terrorist a form of Nazi? Paleo-, neo-, or unmodified: the worthy heir of Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler.

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The Daily Mail has extensive coverage of the siege in Toulouse. See the original article for photos and video. Below are excerpts from the text:

A self-confessed Al Qaeda terrorist thought to have murdered seven people across south west France over the past two weeks was going to post footage of his crimes online today, he claimed.

Mohammed Mera, 24, told news channel France 24’s editor Ebba Kalondo at 1am this morning he had ‘filmed everything’ with a small video camera and ‘intended to put the videos online’.

But just two hours later more than 300 armed police dramatically raided his Toulouse home — where three officers were injured — and he is now cornered and under siege.

He has been described as ‘armed and dangerous’ with a cache including an Uzi machine gun and Kalashnikov assault rifle, with police saying he is likely to kill again.

It has also emerged he was being tracked by French security services ‘for years’ and had broken out of a jail in Kandahar, Afghanistan, as part of a mass Taliban escape in 2008.

He said he is punishing France’s army for its foreign interventions and the plight of Palestinian children — and has promised to give himself up later today.

A close family friend of the 24-year-old suspect told Le Parisien she knew him well while in the city’s Izards housing estate.

The woman, Laela, said: ‘He was well known to the police. Around two years ago he kidnapped a young person on the estate.

‘I remember that the mother of the boy in question was wandering around the estate trying to find him.

‘Finally, her son was freed. And I’m convinced then a complaint was lodged, and Mohammed was heard by investigating officers.’

Shoot the Boer (Again)

We’ve posted videos in the past showing South African officials singing about “killing the Boer”. But this latest call for genocide one isn’t being sung by some low-level flunky — this is Jacob Zuma, the President of South Africa, singing with joy and enthusiasm about killing white people. The occasion was a conference at Vodacom stadium in Bloemfontein on Sunday, 8 January 2012.

Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading this video:


The reader who sent the tip for the video had this to say:

You are probably aware there’s been a rumour going around South Africa for quite a while. It goes something like this: when Nelson Mandela dies, the Blacks will rise up and the Whites will be killed.

The ANC Youth League president Julius Malema was recently expelled for, amongst other things. calling for the killing of White South Africans. The South African president, Jacob Zuma, appears to have very recently called for the killing of Whites. Some of those who have commented the video affirm that the translation is in fact correct. Please publicise the existence of this video.

Gates of Vienna News Feed 3/20/2012

French police originally thought that a known neo-Nazi group was responsible for the shootings at the Jewish school in Toulouse, and possibly also for the murder of the Muslim soldiers. However, the police have now investigated and cleared the Nazis. The authorities now suspect that Islamic extremists were behind the killings, possibly on the orders of Iran.

In other news, Mitt Romney won a decisive victory in the Republican presidential primary in Illinois, strengthening his lead over the other contenders.

Meanwhile, according to a recent poll, a significant majority of Swedes would vote to re-elect President Obama.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to 1389AD, C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JP, J-PD, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

Memo from Johannesburg

Ra5cal from Johannesburg just sent us the following message with the latest poll results from South Africa:

An update on the situation in South Africa which came to me via an NY Times twitter feed (no links yet).

At the Afrobarometer survey launch in South Africa. Lots of interesting data on public attitudes in SA:

• 71% say using force or violence during a protest is wrong.
  
  [Ironic, as service delivery protests are often violent/destructive. Also, this means 29% of 40 million South Africans support violent protest.]
  
  
• 38% said the government should be able to restrict any information it wants, 48% said only for national security.
  
  [Interesting, as it points out that 86% of South Africans support the government’s plan to restrict information access.]
  
  
• Only 1/3 of respondents unwilling to live under undemocratic rule in exchange for housing, jobs.
  
  [Does this mean 2/3 support autocratic rule if they will be given work and a roof over their heads?]

Honour Killing in Britain (Excerpts)

The BBC recently aired a Panorama documentary about “honour crimes” in Britain. The link is only usable for viewers in the UK, so I haven’t actually seen the program. However, excerpts were made available to Vlad Tepes, and he has made a brief video from them.

I’m told the producers of the documentary went to a lot of trouble to disguise the overwhelmingly Islamic nature of honor violence, using customary euphemisms such as “Asians”, “cultural practices”, etc. Despite their best efforts, however, the M-word did creep into the sound track in a few places, and a couple of those can be heard in the clip below.

Nevertheless, it’s amazing that the BBC was willing to discuss the problem even to this extent:


Below are excerpts from the accompanying BBC article:

Enjoying the Good Life in Norway

The Norwegian Labour and Welfare Service (Norsk Arbeids- og Velferdsetaten, or NAV) is tasked with taking care of all the refugees and asylum seekers that the central government, in its magisterial wisdom, decides to allocate to various Norwegian communities.

In their solicitousness for the culture-enrichers, the authorities seem not to worry overmuch about the interests of “persons of Norwegian background”. As a result, according to the article below, the situation has deteriorated to the point that NAV is unable to discharge its duties effectively.

Read the whole thing, but take special note of this passage:

One of the men has 22 children under the age of 18, and he has applied for family reunification with his wife and 11 of his children. The children will eventually also be eligible to apply for family reunification with their siblings and mothers, so the number could increase even further…

And mark well the words of one Hossein Ahmed Mayamuud:

“The government has a big responsibility when it comes to us…”

As I have said many times in the past, nothing short of mass insanity can adequately account for what Western nations are doing to themselves. This is utter madness.

Many thanks to our Norwegian correspondent The Observer for his translation of an article from Document.no:

When 15 becomes 52
by Nina Hjerpset-Østlie

The village of Svelgen in Bremanger municipality (1,198 inhabitants), agreed to resettle 15 Somali and Eritrean refugees but this number could rise to 52 before summer on account of family reunifications. NAV is now pleading with the local council to reject new requests to house more refugees because the tiny community simply can’t cope, the local newspaper Firdaposten writes.

“Accepting refugees is a new experience for us. The numbers are higher than we had anticipated. We expect to receive a total of 52 persons before the end of summer in the village of Svelgen. The number may even be higher, as several of the refugees already living here have told us that they intend to apply for family reunifications. If this happens the numbers could be as high as 63. This creates serious challenges for NAV. We haven’t increased our workforce yet, but this is going to happen soon in order to cope with the situation,” says Anita Steinset, leader of NAV in Bremanger, in a memorandum to the council.

One of the men has 22 children under the age of 18, and he has applied for family reunification with his wife and 11 of his children. The children will eventually also be eligible to apply for family reunification with their siblings and mothers, so the number could increase even further, according to Steinset.

NAV is of the opinion that it is necessary to regain control of the situation, and wants a stop to the resettlement of refugees in Svelgen.

“We need to get the situation under control and ensure that those who are already here and who are waiting for their families receive the best possible assistance. We have to find houses for all of them, and when a person suddenly gets 6-7 family members it requires extra space and suitable houses.”

Cultural Terrorism

The latest from Pat Condell:

Gates of Vienna News Feed 3/19/2012

In the year or so since the “Arab Spring” began, Jordan has lost an estimated $1 billion in revenues from tourism. The Hashemite Kingdom has had to retool parts of its economy, including the airlines and the hotel industry, to take into account the decline in tourism-related demand.

In other news, Germany is now the world’s third-largest arms exporter, after the USA and Russia. Much of the market for arms comes from Asia.

Meanwhile, Islamic authorities in Indonesia have ordered Muslims who purchased tickets to a Lady Gaga concert to return them. They say that the pop star’s dress and antics are un-Islamic, and are designed to undermine the morality of Indonesian Muslims.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, CSP, Fjordman, Insubria, JP, J-PD, KGS, McR, Nick, The Observer, TV, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

Tariq Ramadan Calls a Hudna on Hudud

The Counterjihad owes a debt of gratitude to the numerous Salafist luminaries who live in the West and appear from time to time in our newspapers and on our TV screens. This cohort of fundamentalist firebrands includes Anjem Choudary (UK), Najmuddin Faraj Ahmad (better known as Mullah Krekar, Norway), Taj El-Din Hamid “Catsmeat” Hilaly (Australia), and Abdul Wahid Pedersen (Denmark).

Just when it seems that the general public is all but convinced that Islam is indeed the Religion of Peace, up pops one or another of these Jumpin’ Jihad Jokesters. They proclaim the ascendancy of Islam, sing the praises of shari’ah, defend the stoning of adulterers, denounce homosexuals, refer to our young women as “shameless whores”, and otherwise remind the overwhelming majority of Westerners why they wish Muslim immigrants would attach RUH or IST tags to their luggage handles and head for the airport.

If every Muslim in the West were like Anjem Choudary or Mullah Krekar, the resistance to Islamization would have won the day and retired from the field long ago. These fellows have no knack for taqiyyah (lying for the sake of the faith) or kitman (misleading the infidel). They consistently proclaim their seditious ideology and supremacist intentions out in the open, for everyone to hear.

Their entertaining antics make our job that much easier.

Unfortunately for the Counterjihad, the Mullah Krekars and Anjem Choudarys are overshadowed by the well-educated glib-tongued telegenic talking heads who represent the Ummah on television and in periodicals. The prime exemplar of the breed in the United States is Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the former front man for the Ground Zero Mosque. Men (and women) like him are the Taqiyyah Masters, virtuosos who know how to play the Western media like a violin. They can sing every tune in the Tolerant Liberal Songbook.

Their job is to reassure and soothe the Western public, in particular the symbolic analysts of the media and the academy. Their high-minded bromides send a signal to the decision-makers of the West that Islam is just fine. The subliminal message: “You and I are both educated men, above the common ruck. Take it from me that Islam is rational and enlightened, much more so than Christianity or Judaism.”

Or, more succinctly: Islam is a Western liberal’s dream religion.


The Grand Taqiyyah Master of them all is the “Swiss philosopher” Tariq Ramadan, a Western-educated intellectual fluent in French and English. Mr. Ramadan is the pre-eminent spokesman on both sides of the Atlantic for modern Westernized Islam.

He is also the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.

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The undated article below by Tariq Ramadan calls for a moratorium on stoning and other corporal punishments within Islam. The piece is not new; it has been a permanent post on Mr. Ramadan’s website since at least 2005.

The author finds it important to distinguish between shari’ah and hudûd (which, lacking the diacritical marks on my keyboard, I will spell “hudud” from now on). In the footnotes to his article he defines hudud as “A concept which literally means ‘limits’. In the specialized language of Muslim jurists, (fuqahâ’), this term is inclusive of the punishment which is revealed in the application of the Islamic Penal code. Sharî’a, literally ‘the way to the source’ and a path to faithfulness, is a corpus of Islamic jurisprudence the in-depth definition of which is beyond the scope of this paper.” After this concentrated dose of esoteric terminology, he adds that “Sharî’a has sadly been reduced to legalistic formulae of a penal code in the minds of many, Muslims and non-Muslim alike.”

In simpler terms: the word hudud refers to the body of prescribed punishments that have been codified within Islamic law. These include the draconian consequences to which Mr. Ramadan is drawing attention, as well as much milder punishments.

Strangely enough, according to numerous public opinion polls, hundreds of millions of Muslims all over the world support the “legalistic formulae” that form the body of what they understand to be shari’ah. But we’ll let that pass, and take a deeper look at the place of hudud in Islamic law. In the process we may gain a clearer idea of why Mr. Ramadan feels it necessary to distance himself from the “legalistic formulae” of shari’ah and argue about hudud instead.

An excellent source on the topic is a Hanafi legal explanation written in English, Theories of Islamic Law: The Methodology of Ijtihad by Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee. The Hanafi school — the first school of Islamic law, founded by Abu Hanifa — is the largest of the four Sunni schools, both in terms of territory under its jurisdiction and the number of adherents who are subject to it.

According to the Hanafi schema, Islamic law is broken down into a series of hierarchical rights:

• The rights of Allah;
  
• The rights of man;
  
• The rights of Allah side-by-side with those of man; and
  
• The rights of the state.

The rights of Allah also break down hierarchically into:

• The rights of Allah that are the rights of pure worship, and
  
• The rights of Allah that are the rights of pure punishment (the hadd laws).

A right of punishment means that Allah has identified an act as a punishable offense. Anyone who commits such an act has violated a right of Allah.

All law comes from Allah, and man cannot change or subordinate Allah’s law to any other law. Thus, despite the encouraging tone of Tariq Ramadan’s treatise, the corpus of Islamic jurisprudence must forever remain “legalistic formulae”. Nothing else will serve; this is the definition of the shari’ah agreed upon by all four schools of Sunni law as well as their Shi’a counterpart.

What about mercy? Can an Islamic court show mercy to a defendant who is guilty of an offense against shari’ah?