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.

Ben Carson Gets It Right Again...And Sam Harris Is Just Ignorant

In a recent interview, GOP Presidential hopeful Ben Carson was grilled once more about his declaration (discussed here) that he would not want a Muslim in the White House. Once again, he answered truthfully and rationally:

Well, let’s -- what we should be talking about is Islam and the tenets of Islam and where do they come from? They come from sharia. They come the Koran. They come from, you know, the life works and examples of Muhammad. They come from the fatwas, which is the writings of scholars.

You know, and if you go back and you look at -- what I would like for somebody to show me is an improved [he actually said "approved" ~ Ed] Islamic text that opposes sharia. Let me see -- if you can show me that, I will begin to alter my thinking on this. But right now, when you have something that is against the rights of women, against the rights of gays, subjugates other religions, and a host of things that are not compatible with our Constitution, why in fact would you take that chance?

Carson's informed, rational comments completely debunk a spurious contention made by Sam Harris during a recent appearance on CNN, that the Republican candidate is merely a "bigot" and a "Bible-thumper" who is engaging in "a kind of Christian demagoguery". Harris added: "I don't expect him to have thought deeply about how Islam as a set of doctrines and ideas may be incompatible with the Constitution."

Sam Harris is an intelligent, thoughtful man who cherishes reason...but it is not difficult to see that he is totally wrong on this. Whatever Carson's Christian beliefs, when one actually bothers to read what he has said on this particular issue, he is quite obviously 100% right, and has clearly given the issue much more thought than Harris is willing to give him credit for. It seems the Islamo-realistic secular Left have not yet risen above appealing to their ultra-Leftist base with cheap, lazy assertions of this kind.

When Carson was asked about his comments on a Muslim President in the recent This Week interview, his initial response was: "[R]ead the paragraph before that where I said anybody, doesn’t matter what their religious background, if they accept American values and principles and are willing to subjugate their religious beliefs to our Constitution. I have no problem with them. Why do you guys always leave that part out, I wonder?"

Indeed. Such omissions are expected from the craven dhimmis of the mainstream media. But coming from someone like Sam Harris, they are simply extremely disappointing.