Happy Allahween

Something to Shaker Up The Celebrations

Well, he does look friendly

As Shaker Aamer, the "last British resident to be held in Guantanamo Bay", is released after 13 years, and the media goes into full-blown jubilant celebration mode, please take some time to read this handy summary produced by the Henry Jackson Society back in February of this year, detailing the jihadist activities Aamer is believed to have been involved in - and which have never been disproven - including his terrorist associations and the evidence that he actively fought against Coalition troops in Afghanistan. The short report also debunks some common myths surrounding Aamer and explains why he has been detained for so long despite never being formally charged.

It's conclusions are concise and straightforward:

There is little reason to dispute the US government’s assessment [despite Shaker's claim that he is merely a charity worker ~ Ed] that Aamer is a trained mujahideen fighter who recruits for extremist causes and has wide-ranging connections to al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda-related charities, and known terrorists.  

Even if Aamer is released, there should be no illusions over the nature of his past activities and why he was detained at Guantánamo Bay in the first place.

After you've read that, move on and read about this guy, who the British government freed from Gitmo and gave £1 million in compensation...and who has now fled to Syria and joined the Islamic State.

And after you've read that, crack some tunes on and paaaaaaartay!

Budding Islamic State Recruit Was Just Emulating Muhammad

The set-up is disturbingly familiar: A teenager tried to travel to Syria to join the blood-thirsty Islamic State, after becoming fascinated by online videos of the beheadings of British aid workers, a court has heard.

Ednane Mahmood, 19, searched "British man beheaded" on his laptop before downloading the video showing the execution of David Haines, alongside fellow captive Alan Henning kneeling on the ground. He then began looking up cheap flights to Bulgaria and Turkey. His family tipped off police before he could flee to Syria, though, and the teenager is now on trial charged with attempting to commit acts of terrorism abroad.

All very worrying, of course, but hang on - towards the end of this Express article, we get the following additional nugget of information:

He also posted an image on Facebook on August 31, last year, writing: "I wish I could fight in the cause of Allah and then be killed, and then fight, and then be killed, and then fight, and then be killed."

If, as we constantly hear from the media nowadays, Ednane Mahmood was "radicalised on the Internet", then I know exactly what he must have been reading: the hadith, or traditions of Muhammad.

For this online posting is simply a word-for-word quote from the Prophet of Islam himself, as depicted in the canonical traditions: “The Prophet said, 'By Him in Whose Hands my life is!...I would love to be martyred in Allah's Cause and then get resurrected and then get martyred, and then get resurrected again and then get martyred and then get resurrected again and then get martyred.'” (Sahih Bukhari v.4, b.52, no.54)

But don't you dare get the idea that this has something to do with Islam, you horrible far-right extremist.

Sharia Law In The UK (Part 2)

Although the suffering of the victims of sharia in the Muslim world is an obvious and egregious human rights violation, many in the West find it difficult to connect with the issue, because it often plays out in distant lands, with only a fraction of the distressing incidents that take place being reported by the mainstream media.

But as immigration from Muslim countries continues to increase due to the "refugee" crisis, we should not be surprised if these tales from distant lands begin to become a reality in the West also. Many in the West scoff at the notion of sharia coming to Europe or America, believing that the idea is just too far-fetched to take seriously. However, this wilfully ignores a raft of alarming evidence suggesting that sharia is already here – and not just in the shape of formal sharia courts, either.

Below are a few sobering recent examples from modern Britain, demonstrating the influence of sharia here, and the negative implications of such influence.

- A variety of polling data collected over the last decade demonstrates support for all aspects of sharia among a significant percentage of British Muslims: A 2006 survey reported that as many as 40% would like to see the British legal system replaced with sharia; a detailed study by the Policy Exchange think tank in 2007 found, among other things, that around half of the Muslims surveyed support polygamy, roughly 40% support the execution of those who leave Islam, and 39% believe that sharia should not be reformed in order to conform to British law or modern human rights standards;  and a 2010 cable from the US Embassy in London revealed that in a study of 600 Muslim students in 30 British universities, not only did 40% support sharia, but one third of them also believed that killing in the name of religion was justified. A quarter of British Muslims also believe that killing someone for insulting Islam can be justified.

- A 2010 BBC Panorama investigation identified a network of more than forty Muslim weekend schools teaching around five thousand children, from age six to eighteen, that promote violent sharia punishments. The investigation identified a book for 15-year-olds being used in the classes which says: “For thieves their hands will be cut off for a first offence, and their foot for a subsequent offence.” There are diagrams showing children where cuts must be made. One passage says: “The specified punishment of the thief is cutting off his right hand at the wrist. Then it is cauterised to prevent him from bleeding to death.” For acts of “sodomy”, children are told that the penalty is death and it states a difference of opinion whether this should be done by stoning, or burning with fire, or throwing over a cliff.

- A 2010 Mail on Sunday investigation revealed that numerous high-profile schools, hospitals, pubs and famous sporting venues around the country are serving up meat slaughtered in accordance with sharia to unwitting members of the public, without informing them. Despite the fact that Islamic halal slaughter is an unethical and inhumane process which causes unnecessary suffering to animals by slitting their throats and drowning them in their own blood while they are still conscious,  many British institutions only serve meat slaughtered in this barbaric way.  Since the 2010 revelations, the creep of halal meat into non-Muslim establishments has only been confirmed, with Subway, Pizza Express, the Ministry of Defence, and many of Britain’s top universities all forcing non-Muslims to either eat halal or nothing.

- In 2014, Paul Weston, the leader of the tiny Liberty GB political party, was arrested while campaigning for the European elections in Winchester, for simply quoting Winston Churchill’s criticism of Islam through a megaphone. Although charges of inciting hatred were eventually dropped, the very fact that he was arrested at all amounts to a partial application of sharia blasphemy law by UK police. Other instances of adherence to the Islamic prohibition on criticising or disrespecting Islam - an indispensable part of any free society - include arrests for burning the Qur'an, and jail sentences for "attacking" a mosque...with bacon.

- Sharia-compliant student loans, pensions and wills have also been implemented or seriously proposed in recent years, effectively enshrining aspects of Islamic law as a parallel legal system in this country, segregating rather than integrating British Muslims and promoting division and inequality.

From the above, we can see that the fear among some observers that sharia law is creeping further and further in British public life is not a hysterical fantasy, and nor is it exaggerated. It is time for us to say, "Enough is enough", and demand that the Muslims who have fled from Islamic countries to enjoy greater freedom in Britain refrain from bringing with them a system of theocratic governance that is specifically designed to crush that freedom in every way imaginable.

Why Netanyahu's Faulty History Doesn't Invalidate His Point

Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, meeting with Hitler in 1941

Israeli PM Netanyahu has come under fire from Leftist politicians in the country after he claimed in a speech today that Adolf Hitler did not initially want to annihilate the Jews but rather to expel them, and that it was the Palestinian Mufti Hajj Amin Al Husseini who convinced him to murder them.

Netanyahu was accused of "absolving Hitler of the Holocaust". He denied that charge, but added that "it is absurd to ignore the role that the Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini, a war criminal, played in encouraging Hitler, Ribbentrop, Himmler and others, to annihilate the Jews of Europe. There are numerous testimonies to this, including that of Eichmann's deputy in the Nuremberg trials, not now but after World War Two."

It seems to me that the PM is getting slightly confused on this. His central claim is that the idea of exterminating the Jews first arose during a meeting between the Mufti and Hitler, when Hitler had suggested expelling the Jews from Europe. Al-Husseini had argued that if this happened, the Jewish refugees would simply flee to Palestine, where they obviously wouldn't be welcome, and that therefore the best solution was to destroy them.

The confusion arises because Netanyahu seems to believe that this exchange occurred during the pair's first meeting, which occurred on 28th November 1941, around the time that Hitler authorised the Final Solution. But in actual fact, al-Husseini's pleas not to allow the Jews to emigrate to Palestine were delivered later, in 1944, when the extermination of the Jewish people had already been well underway for at least two years.

In a letter to the German Foreign Minister dated 25th July 1944, Husseini complained about the emigration of Jews from Europe, and added that "if there are reasons which make their removal necessary, it would be essential and infinitely preferable to send them to other countries where they would find themselves under active control, as for example Poland [i.e. in the death camps], thus avoiding danger and preventing damage." He also wrote in his memoirs that he had written to Ribbentrop, Himmler and Hitler to protest "the attempt by world Jewry in 1944 to bring about the immigration of Eastern European Jewry to Palestine".

Despite this historical blunder, Benjamin Netanyahu's central point remains of paramount importance. Although the Mufti of Jerusalem did not instigate the Holocaust, there is no doubt that he supported it, facilitated it and actively participated in it. You can find some more information about this here. I also highly recommend the rare book The Mufti of Jerusalem: Haj-Amin el-Husseini and National-Socialism, by Jennie Lebel. It is an exceptionally informative and engaging read, if you can track a copy down (my edition claims on the insert pages that there were only 300 copies in circulation).

Netanyahu's main point was to highlight the general lack of understanding about the role that the Mufti played in the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews during the Second World War. He also made the following critical observations (emphasis mine]:

My goal was not to absolve Hitler for the responsibility he bears, but to show that the father of the Palestinian[sic] at that time, with no [Jewish] state and no so-called 'occupation,' no territories and no settlements, already sought, through systematic incitement, to annihilate the Jews. Regrettably, Hajj Amin al-Husseini is still a venerated figure in Palestinian society, he appears in study books and is exalted as the father of the nation, and this incitement that began then, incitement to kill Jews, continues. Not in the same form, in a different form, and it is the root problem. To stop the murder, the incitement must stop.

Netanyahu really does understand what Israel is up against here: an annihilationist religious agenda that is founded upon the dual pillars of Jew-hatred and apocalyptic, genocidal total war (i.e. jihad). But that will not stop him being demonised and mocked not just by his suicidal opponents inside Israel, but by the international community at large.

David Cameron's Latest Counter-Extremism Initiative Has A Mosque-Sized Hole In It

Today the government released the latest in their recent attempts to outline a cohesive strategy on dealing with the jihadist threat - ahem, sorry, "extremism in all its forms".

The full outline of the strategy, which can be read here, contains many useful and important initiatives which will help to keep the wolf from the door just a little bit longer, but as usual, it is full of massive problems.

The first, once again, is its obsession with placing "right-wing extremists" up on the same pedestal with Islamic jihadis, as if they were at least a roughly equivalent threat. That's not to say that such people shouldn't be combatted where they exist, but the extent of the threat they pose is massively exaggerated - especially when compared to ISIS - and the scariest things the report can come up with are individual attacks against Muslims by loners with no connections to anyone, and a "neo-Nazi" group that holds racist rock concerts. It also cites now-discredited statistics on anti-Muslim hate crimes from Tell MAMA to make the threat of "Islamophobia" seem worse than it actually is.

This isn't just annoying - it also shows how ineffective these new strategies are likely to be, since they work on the assumption that all "extremism" requires the same solutions, and that all ideologies can be dealt with in the same way. There is no logical reason to believe this is the case.

The other HUGE omission, given that despite the false equivalences, the majority of the document does in fact dwell on Islamic extremism specifically, is that it contains pages and pages of material about how to stop online jihadi recruitment, and not even one sentence on dealing with extremism INSIDE BRITISH MOSQUES.

Mosques are only mentioned twice in the entire strategy document: Once on page 9, in a sentence about how Muslims have the freedom to build them in this country, and again on the following page, in a paragraph explaining how mosques are sometimes attacked by "right-wing extremists". That's it. There is also an oblique reference on page 28 to plans to "help faith institutions to establish strong governance." This scheme, however, will apply to "places of worship of all faiths".

Because the UK's 100 or so Sikh temples just need "stronger governance" so urgently.

Why is this omission so critical? Because it flies in the face of mountains of evidence that mosques are a major radicalisation ground, given that they are the place where mainstream Islamic doctrines - which include many things the British government defines as extremist - are taught to the faithful.

The first exposure many British people will have had to the hate preaching and extreme sermons occurring in British mosques was probably in Channel 4's Undercover Mosque documentary in 2007. The same year, an investigation by The Times revealed that books calling for the beheading of lapsed Muslims, ordering women to remain indoors and forbidding interfaith marriage were being sold inside some of Britain’s leading mosques. The report claimed that such hardline material was found at a quarter of the 100 mosques visited during the investigation.

According to the Evening Standard, the An-Noor mosque in Acton has had numerous links to terror and extremism over the years, including a wanted terror suspect who used it as a shelter to evade the police, and the attendance of Abu Hamza's son, Uthman Mustafa Kamal, who was preaching at the mosque, offering prayers for “holy warriors” to “destroy their enemies”.

And relating specifically to the newest threat of Islamic State, The Guardian reported last month that networks of ISIS operatives are already recruiting inside mosques in the UK, with one imam even resigning from his mosque after witnessing extremist preaching first hand. In August, it was claimed that a teenage "jihadi bride" who groomed three of her school friends to join her in Syria to fight for Islamic State was radicalised at a women’s charity based at one of Britain’s biggest mosques, the East London Mosque in Whitechapel.

In light of all this and much more, the fact that the government's "anti-extremism strategy" says absolutely nothing about monitoring mosques more closely, or forcing mosque leaders to implement transparent programmes in their institutions to teach against the jihadist ideology, is nothing short of scandalous.

One final point: A government press release that came out yesterday, announcing the imminent release of the new strategy, cites the work of the Quilliam Foundation, suggesting once again a collaboration between David Cameron and the organisation founded by Maajid Nawaz. By all accounts, Nawaz seems to think that he has been involved in advising Cameron on this new strategy. Why would this self-professed "moderate reformer" not advise the Prime Minister to do more to tackle Islamic extremism inside the very bastions of Islamic preaching?

If Nawaz was indeed involved in this initiative, it's a question with no comforting answers.

Why The Jerusalem Attacks Are All About Islam

Today has seen at least another two episodes in the ongoing assault on Jews in their historic homeland of Israel, as a Palestinian mob torched the Jewish holy site of Joseph's Tomb (or according to CNN, it just "caught fire"), and a jihadist posing as a photographic journalist stabbed an IDF soldier in Hebron.

These acts and the others that have preceded them in recent days have been inspired by religious clerics issuing religious decrees which have been taken up by devoutly religious Muslims. And yet still we have been forced to read tiresome pieces in the mainstream media which don't mention any of this, and which push neutralised platitudes about "violence increasing" in the region, as if "violence" has just sort of happened of its own accord, or as if it is generally two-way violence, when it is in fact a surge of murderous terror attacks by one side only.

That's why it was refreshing to read this honest, informed take on the matter by Richard L. Cravatts over at The Times of Israel. Confirming my recent observations about the Arab-Israeli conflict here, Cravatts delves into the Hamas charter and the Islamic ideology of the Palestinians to demonstrate that these attacks are about religion, and not about land or about "resistance" to any kind of occupation.

As Cravatts correctly points out, the recent wave of attacks owes a lot to the constant conspiracism that Muslims have always directed towards Jews. In this case, the conspiracy theories arise from "systematic and mendacious incitement regarding the Temple Mount - incitement by Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, and the Islamic Movement in Israel," in the words of Israeli PM Netanyahu.

This conspiracy-mongering is a constant of Islamic history. Just a few examples:

- In the earliest Islamic sources, the Jews who lived at the time of Muhammad are depicted over and over again as malevolent schemers, outwardly offering polite greetings to Muslims while inwardly subtly cursing them. This culminates in the allegation that after the Muslims attacked and conquered the Jews of the Khaybar oasis (628 AD), one of the vanquished Jews is supposed to have served Muhammad poisoned meat, leading ultimately to his drawn-out, painful death (Sahih Bukhari v.3, b.47, no.786).

- Early Sunni Muslim legend, as articulated, for example, by the Muslim historian Tabari (d.923) holds that Abd Allah b. Saba, a Yemenite Jew, was responsible for deliberately fomenting the schism between Sunnis and Shi'ites as part of a ploy to destroy Islam.

- In thirteenth-century Iraq, after a Jew named Sa‘d ad-Daula was made a high-ranking official by the Mongol emperor Arghun, a wave of false allegations were made against him by Muslims hostile to the appointment of a Jew to a senior position, including claims that Sa‘d had advised Arghun to cut down trees in Baghdad and use them to build a fleet to attack Mecca and convert the  Kaa‘ba (the holiest place and structure in Islam) into a heathen temple. These accusations led to the execution of Sa'd and the arrest and murder of many other Jews in the region.

- In the 1920s, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Husseini, successfully incited pogroms of Jews in Hebron by claiming that a Jewish religious gathering near the Western Wall was actually part of a plot by the Jews to take over Muslim holy sites.

- In the modern day, Muslim conspiracism leads to enemies of Israel making the most ridiculous accusations that the Jewish state is using various animals as spies and weapons against innocent, oppressed Muslims.

As Cravatts observes, there can only be one inevitable outcome to all of this:

It is no surprise that in a culture marinated in Jew-hatred, where Jews are debased, portrayed as a subhuman species, bacteria, a disease, fomenters of wars and strife - in fact, are portrayed as the enemies of Allah and mankind - the extermination of Jews, especially in defense of Islam and its holy places, would therefore become not only a reasonable goal but a desired outcome. Who would not murder Jews if they pose such threats to mankind and Islam specifically? Who would ever make peace with the eternal enemies of Allah, let alone negotiate a peace and borders for a new Arab state with them? And would not those jihadis who willingly sacrifice themselves to murder Jews in the name of Allah be celebrated as shahids, martyrs, and have town squares and summer camps named for them and their bravery, exactly as they are by Palestinian leadership now? 

If Jews are the most wretched of humans, and the “liberation” of all of Palestine - including the Temple Mount, including Jerusalem, including all of Israel - is considered a sacred duty and religious obligation, then the murder of Jews must, and will, continue in this millennial apocalyptic struggle in which devote [sic] Muslims see themselves playing a central role.

Do be sure to read the whole article.

Sharia in the UK Redux: Unequal Justice

Yesterday I posted a discussion of the negative consequences of the integration of sharia law into the British legal system. That analysis, however, was written before I saw this, over at Breitbart London.

The article, published this past Thursday, examines a couple of recent disturbing examples of how Muslims (specifically Muslim women) appear to be receiving preferential treatment over non-Muslims under the law.

1) The UK has chosen to allow rape of an “Asian” girl to be sanctioned more severely than a similar crime committed against a white girl. On September 10, 2015, an appeals court agreed with a sentencing judge’s decision to impose a longer sentence on Jamal Muhammed Raheem Ul Nasir for sexually assaulting two underage “Asian” girls (at least one of whom was under age 13) because his victims allegedly suffered more than "white" girls would, due to the stigma of shame and lost honour within their community. This gives rapists a perverse incentive that, if they’re going to rape somebody, it’s better to rape a non-Muslim, because its potential consequences would be less severe.

2) In the name of cultural sensitivity, Lord Neuberger, the President of the Supreme Court, said last April that Muslim women should be allowed to wear a veil in court, even when testifying. If Lord Neuberger has his way, the jury’s right to evaluate a witness’s demeanour will not apply when the witness is a veiled Muslim woman. Jurors will see only what she chooses to show them.

As the piece concludes:

Arguably, these exceptions are motivated, and may contribute to, subjugation of women as the property of their families (here, here, and here). The net effect is still to enshrine a version of Islamic mores in British law and to elevate Muslims over non-Muslims.

Indeed, And by extension, they enshrine sharia law in Britain.

Do you have any kind of strategy to combat this, Mr. Cameron?

Sharia Law In the UK (Part 1)

It's Not Coming Soon...It's Already Here

According to a 2009 report by Civitas, there are at least 85 independent sharia “arbitration panels” operating in the UK, many of which are issuing rulings that contradict British law. Rulings found on websites connected to these courts include fatwas mandating that a Muslim woman may not under any circumstances marry a non-Muslim man unless he converts to Islam, and that such a woman’s children will be separated from her until she marries a Muslim; that a woman may not leave her home without her husband’s consent; and recommendation of severe punishments for homosexuals.

Some Islamic courts are making decisions under sharia law beyond their legal remit. “About two-thirds of Muslim marriages are not being registered under the Marriages Act, which is illegal,” said Neil Addison, a barrister specialising in the law on religion.

Addison rejected the comparison between sharia courts and Jewish Beth Din courts: “These courts are not operating within the same disciplines as the Beth Din. The Beth Din acknowledge that 'the law of the land is the law,' and a rabbi cannot perform a synagogue marriage ceremony unless a registrar is present to simultaneously register the marriage under English law.” Addison added: “Imams and mosques are performing marriage ceremonies that are not registered under English law. They are the only religion that are doing it...Hindus and Sikhs have registered their temples under the Marriages Act.”

An insight into the mindset of those running these sharia courts can be found on the website of the Islamic Sharia Council, which runs Britain’s sharia court network. The website previously contained a number of unsavoury rulings for ordinary Muslims who write in for advice, although many of these seem to have been pulled within the last few months (I have saved caches of the relevant pages). In response to the question, “What is the Islamic ruling on statements stating the sharia law is barbaric and what is the ruling on saying Hudood [hadd punishments] are incompatible with contemporary life?”, the website said that any Muslim who criticises sharia is an unbeliever and will burn in hell. Another ruling reiterated the Qur’an’s admonition that the testimony of a woman in a court of law ought to have half the weight of a man’s (2:282), while also affirming in passing that “Cases of serious nature, like that of fornication, adultery and rape attract a very hard punishment in Islam. Flogging a hundred times for unmarried couples and stoning to the married ones.” A 2008 seminar hosted by the ISC (and summarised on their old website) openly championed the “perfection” of sharia, endorsing polygamy and outlining the “future steps to further accommodate within the British Judicial system elements that are fundamental to the way of life for a Muslim”.

Further insight comes from the statements of some of the top sharia court judges in this country. For example, Sheikh Maulana Abu Sayeed, president of the Islamic Sharia Council, sparked controversy in 2010 by saying that men who rape their wives should not be prosecuted because “sex is part of marriage”. He claimed that many married women who alleged rape were lying.

In an earlier interview, Sayeed had made clear that he believes “non-consensual sex is the minor aggression, and calling it rape is the major aggression”. He also stated that to prosecute marital rapists would be “compromising Islamic religion with secular non-Islamic values,” and this should not be done, because “We don’t deviate from Qur'an, deviate from Sunnah.”

The general secretary of the ISC, Dr. Suhaib Hasan, is another proponent of deviant misogynistic attitudes, as evidenced by a BBC documentary in 2013 which showed him telling an undercover female Muslim reporter posing as a victim of spousal abuse that she should avoid going to the police to report it, before suggesting that she find out why her husband was so angry (“Is it because of my cooking? Is it because I see my friends?”) so that she could “correct” herself. The documentary revealed that similarly dangerous advice was being given to Muslim women in sharia courts all over the country.

Hasan is also very open about supporting the brutal punishments meted out under sharia in Muslim countries. “Even though cutting off the hands and feet, or flogging the drunkard and fornicator, seem to be very abhorrent, once they are implemented, they become a deterrent for the whole society. This is why in Saudi Arabia, for example, where these measures are implemented, the crime rate is very, very low,” he told The Sunday Telegraph in 2008.

Despite claiming that the ISC do not want to implement the sharia penal system in Britain (for now), Dr. Hasan effectively advocates it anyway. “If sharia law is implemented, then you can turn this country into a haven of peace because once a thief’s hand is cut off nobody is going to steal,” he says. “Once, just only once, if an adulterer is stoned nobody is going to commit this crime at all. We want to offer it to the British society. If they accept it, it is for their good and if they don’t accept it they’ll need more and more prisons.”

Even this small sampling of evidence proves that sharia law, as applied and advocated in this country, poses a major threat to human rights and freedom in the UK. The question remains: How widespread are these attitudes, and how prevalent is support for this kind of barbarity among Muslim communities in Britain?

It is to this question that I will turn in a future post.

Putin Bombs Jihadis - And We're Not Happy About It

Russia is engaged in "classic asymmetric warfare" in Syria by using its military clout to "prop up" President Bashar al-Assad while saying it is attacking Islamic State militants, Britain's foreign minister Philip Hammond said on Sunday.

Russia last week began striking targets in Syria - a dramatic escalation of foreign involvement in the civil war which has been criticized by Western leaders as an attempt to prop up Assad, rather than its purported aim of attacking Islamic State.

Barack Obama agrees, calling Russia's involvement a "recipe for disaster", and telling reporters that Russia “doesn’t distinguish between (IS) and a moderate Sunni opposition that wants to see Mr Assad go.”

There are several problems with the stance our esteemed leaders have been taking towards Putin's approach. One is that Russia really is attacking Islamic State - Russian airstrikes over the weekend destroyed an Islamic State command post near Raqqa as well as an underground bunker, and they have also hit several other provinces since Wednesday, including Aleppo in the north, Idlib in the northwest and Hama in central Syria, all known jihadist hotbeds, as well as six IS targets on Friday.

What's more, they have been attacking other jihadis, too, including al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate al-Nusra Front.

The other major problem with the West's approach is its reliance on the chimeric "moderate Sunni opposition" which it thinks we should be supporting, despite there being no evidence of its existence. In fact, we know that Pentagon-trained "rebels" have already betrayed the US and handed weapons over to al-Qaeda immediately after entering Syria. We also know that despite a huge investment in creating programmes to train "moderate" opposition to Assad, they have been able to find hardly any such moderates, and as of July, were only training 60 (yes, SIXTY) Syrian fighters.

The fact is that while Assad is undeniably a bad man, whoever replaces him is likely to be much, much worse. Russia appears to recognise this and is rightfully bombing Western "allies" into the mud, knowing that they aren't the liberal democrats that Philip Hammond and Barack Obama seem to think they are.

You know that we're well and truly screwed when Vladimir Putin ends up becoming the leader of the free world.

Eurabia Rising

In a brilliant article today at the Gatestone Institute, Soeren Kern documents how Christians, Kurds and Yazidis in German refugee shelters are being attacked by Muslims with increasing frequency and ferocity. Muslim migrants from different sects, clans, ethnicities and nationalities are also attacking each other. Violent brawls - sometimes involving hundreds of migrants - are now a daily occurrence.

With example after example, Kern chronicles the savagery that has been imported to the shores of Europe, including assaults on Christians, as well as bloody rioting and in-fighting between Muslim Albanians, Syrians, Pakistanis, Algerians, Malians, Afghans, Iraqis, Tunisians, Moroccans, Somalis, Libyans, Sudanese, and Montenegrans.

Kern quotes the former mayor of the Neukölln district of Berlin, Heinz Buschkowsky, who warned that the first lesson migrants must learn when they arrive in Western countries is tolerance, and if they refuse to accept people of other faiths, their asylum applications should be rejected. He expressed pessimism about the possibility of integrating the current wave of migrants into German society: "The bulk of the migrants who are arriving here cannot be integrated."

In an earlier article at Gatestone, Kern also demonstrated how a growing number of women and young girls housed in refugee shelters in Germany are being raped, sexually assaulted and even forced into prostitution by male asylum seekers. At the same time, growing numbers of German women in towns and cities across the country are being raped by asylum seekers from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Many of the crimes are being downplayed by German authorities and the national media, apparently to avoid fueling anti-immigration sentiments.

Make no mistake, Germany is changing, and has now reached the point where it may never be able to recover. What we are witnessing as a result of this "refugee" crisis is Eurabia writ large, the deliberate transformation of Europe into an Islamic colony, initiated by Islamic supremacists and a European elite who sought no mandate from their people for this treachery.

The rioting, violence and savagery we are already seeing from the migrants who have arrived in recent weeks and months will only multiply, as those we have elected to office - and those we haven't - tell us that facilitating this mass suicide is the "humanitarian" thing to do. If there are any free people left in Europe in a hundred years' time, they will view these events as a human tragedy of a very different kind.