Europe opens its gates wider … 61

… to the conquering hordes of Islam.

The passion of European leaders for the destruction of the European peoples by the invading hordes of Islam intensifies with every act of Muslim terrorist violence committed on their soil. 

Soon after the atrocities committed by ISIS in Paris, the EU passed a resolution to bring in more Muslims, more terrorists.

Astonishingly one new amendment put forward by the Social and Democrats grouping, of which Labour is a leading member, and passed by the parliament said that member states must not use any border controls which “stop the travel of suspected terrorists”. 

The jaw-dropping document states that the EU parliament “vehemently believes, in light of the current refugee and migrant crisis in Europe, that member states must refrain from using any border control measures aimed at fighting terrorism and stopping the travel of suspected terrorists for immigration control purposes”.

So the Express (UK) online reports.

Islamic State (ISIS) jihadis have been given carte blanche to reach the gates of Britain and potentially carry out atrocities against innocent civilians after an EU motion backed by Labour BANNED using border controls to stop terrorism.

Labour MEPs voted en masse for a raft of Brussels resolutions which will prevent European security services in Schengen agreement countries from implementing “any border control measures aimed at fighting terrorism”. 

The barmy edicts claim that trying to stop terrorists from returning home is racist and set out a series of stringent criteria dictating how extremists’ “human rights” must be pandered to.

They mean that ISIS jihadis will be able to stream into Europe and cross the continent unchallenged all the way to Calais, where they can launch attempts to smuggle themselves past Britain’s overwhelmed border guards.

Critics said the actions of Labour’s representatives in Brussels were “shameful” and will put British lives at risk by “opening the door” for ISIS fighters to return from Syria and carry out atrocities on our streets.

But that, it seems, is the very thing that Europe’s leaders, and the British Labour Party under the leadership of the extreme leftist Jeremy Corbyn, desire. On the way to total dominance by Islam.

Posted under Europe, Islam, jihad, Leftism, Muslims, Terrorism by Jillian Becker on Monday, November 30, 2015

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Prophecies from a frightening book 3

In my book L: A Novel History, revolution sweeps Louis Zander, a charismatic philosopher of art and politics known as L, into power as a Marxist dictator of England.

It is available in hardback, paperback and kindle editions here.

These are quotations from L: A Novel History illustrating themes of the book which, though set in a fictitious England in the 1980s, are applicable to the United States under President Obama.

1. Analogies to The Occupy Wall Street Movement:

There was no use in protest marches and demonstrations now. For now there was real deprivation, real tyranny, real hunger. And that was precisely what L had promised them. They were no longer rich in many poor things, as once protestors had so angrily complained to governments and authorities. Now they were poor in all things. It was those who had freedom and decried it, pretending they were oppressed; those who had material plenty and despised it, pretending they were poor; those who thus secreted a worm in their own hearts, and so at the heart of civilization – envy: the amazing unforeseen and unforeseeable envy, by the free and comfortable, of the unfree and wretched of the earth: it was these self-deceiving, would-be lovers of mankind … the affluent children who squatted in the communes and protested against freedom calling it “repressive tolerance”, and those they elected … who were caught in the trap of their own lies, and brought an end to liberty in the name of liberation; an end to plenty in the name of humanitarianism; and an end to the impersonality of the law before which all were equal, and the impersonality of the market in which all were equal, and created legal discrimination and class elitism, in the name of equality.

2. Dependency on the state:

The people had become unaccustomed to self-reliance. They did not after all want a government that would leave them to do the best they could for themselves, and only remove obstacles and restrictions. They wanted a government with paternal responsibilities: to house the citizens, educate them, inoculate them against diseases, cure them when they were ill, keep them warm, tell them to fasten their safety-harnesses in their cars, warn them against smoking tobacco, “counsel” them when they quarreled with their spouses or beat their children or drank too much … and even spend as much of their money as possible on what government considered good for them rather than let them spend it themselves! If the educated and well-off did not need all this for themselves, they believed that “the vast majority of the people of this country” did need it. … The tragedy of Britain was that a self-reliant, self-disciplined, industrious people who had valued freedom, justice, goodwill, commonsense, and had grown strong and prospered because they had the character to embrace those values, had been turned into dependants, dissatisfied and envious, demanding that the state provide what they were no longer willing to provide for themselves.

L wrote: “I look towards a time when none shall have peace, when all feel insecure, and can look only to the Party, manifestly whimsical, for any reward and any punishment, without any reason to expect justice. For there and there only authority will reside, and it will be total and incomprehensible. No aspect of their lives will be too big or too small for the Party to deal with. It will reach into the heart and mind of every man, and his person, his life, will belong not to him but to the Party. The Party will hold the monopoly of life and death. Whatever anyone has will be dispensed to him by the Party, whether it is a material thing, like food and drink, or dignity, self-respect, his mate, the company of his own children. And there will be no escape. For the power of the Party must be planetary. That is why there can be no refuge for individualism; why anyone who expresses thoughts the Party has not allowed him, or who even thinks them to himself, must be stopped.”

3. Redistribution:

L wrote: “You and I know perfectly well that a redistribution of wealth does not make everybody wealthy. In fact, it makes everybody poor.”

4. Social justice:

Increasingly it was the case that the victims of crime were less the object of concern than were the criminals who were excused on the grounds that they were the “real victims” of something called “social injustice”. Tax-payers’ money was spent lavishly on providing them with “therapy”, shelter, comfort, and rehabilitation.

5. Central planning:

The oligarchs occupied themselves with the laborious business of trying “to plan society”. Laws, rules and regulations proliferated, all emanating from the Council of Ministers. Local government was “suspended” when the Council took its “emergency powers”. Administrators were appointed in their stead: Party officials with unlimited powers over persons and property in their districts.

6. Inflation:

“It is in our interest to boost inflation … the unions which have power in the state-monopolized vital services – electricity and gas, mining, transport, shipping, the health service – must use it to keep public expenditure high. Easy enough, since members are unlikely to object to using their collective power to get wages as high as the union can squeeze out of the government for them … The more public money paid out to failing industries the better for us … High unemployment is in our long-term interest, but it is not to our short-term advantage. … Workers are less likely to strike, bring private firms to bankruptcy and generally disrupt the economy if they have real reason to fear the loss of jobs through employment reduction or closure of a business. … There is also the extreme danger that they will start selling their services privately for payment they do not declare – in other words the free ‘black’ economy might gain in strength, and far too many rediscover the personal advantages of self-employment.”

L knew that continuous inflation of the value of money was inimical not only to prosperity, but to security and hopes for the future. He knew that the most responsible, the most self-reliant, the most thrifty, would be the most cheated, because to save money was to lose money. He knew that as money bought less, demands for higher wages would be made more frequently and more exorbitantly; and that those demands could only be met by the printing of ever more paper money, worth ever less and less. And as the Conservative government tried to bring down inflation, tried to make the country live within its means, produce more to earn more real money, L’s legions howled against their efforts. .L-ite economists urged that the government print more money. Their recommendations were given wide and persistent publicity by the BBC, independent television and radio, and most – though not quite all – of the national daily newspapers.

7.  The politics of envy:

Private ownership of land could be ended forever; private education could be made illegal; private medicine entirely abolished; all the known needs of the underprivileged supplied in perfect measure, the poor made collectively rich, and – best of all – the rich made poor.

8. Freedom as a burden:

The Left feared: “The Conservatives will impose freedom on everybody, even those least able to bear it.”

9. Judging according to empathy rather than evidence:

What judges were expected to do was “manifest heart”. The important thing in what had once been called a criminal case was to “arrive at an understanding of the quality of the man” they were judging.

10. Back to the simple life:

[The citizen’s] experience of the revolution was of the decay of everything. He was poor. He was cold. Quite soon he was worse fed that he had ever imagined would be possible in England. Soon the scope of his activities became severely curtailed, and life became monotonous in its misery, unless it was suddenly made appalling and agonizing for this or that individual.

L wrote that they must feel not just cold and hunger, but terror, loneliness, despair. Only then will they understand that the Party is their savior, and that it alone can redeem them from their most terrible spiritual torment – isolation. They will give up their little selfish desires, the pathetic shallow satisfactions they have been deceived into imagining are their real needs. They will begin to understand their role in history. They will thank the power that whips them with tears in their eyes, the mastering Party, giver of bread and purposes.

11. Making the country ungovernable – on the lines of the Cloward-Piven strategy:

The assault on the “commanding heights of power” was to be done by the disruption of civil order, the stirring up of violence in the streets, to the point of serious insurrection and even civil war if possible. Hence the importance of the emotional issue of race. The idea was that liberal democratic government was to be seen not to work. Then an extreme left-dominated Party would take extraordinary powers to restore order.

12. “We all belong to the government” – as per the 2012 Democratic National Convention:

“Everyone will have the pleasure of knowing that he is being used. That what he does is what he must do. That therefore he is necessary, and has purpose. He will belong to the state and the state to him. He will be attached to the state as a babe to its mother’s breast.”

“The state must put them in houses, bring them to school, tempt them with pensions, lure them with kindness. When all have been received inside the shelter of the state, then they will be redeemable. What a harvest will then be promised of men and women for the new age, the third millennium and beyond. But the process of redemption will not be as easy as the gathering-in. They have yet to learn that beyond their material needs there are others, which they have first to discover and then to understand and then to satisfy before they are fit for the absolute community of the human spirit wherein no individual shall have an existence outside of the community, and each will joyfully give up his life at any moment for the preservation of the Greater Life of Universal Man.”

L: A Novel History may turn out to be prophetic if the new leader of the British Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, comes to power. 

 

Jillian Becker   November 29, 2015

Posted under Britain, communism, Marxism, Miscellaneous, Progressivism, revolution, Socialism, United Kingdom, United States by Jillian Becker on Sunday, November 29, 2015

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The Islamization of America 2

President Obama said that the USA is “a Muslim nation”.

It isn’t. But is he trying to make it so?

We quote from the Washington Examiner:

President Obama’s open-door immigration policy is set to accept more immigrants from Muslim nations over the next five years than the entire population of Washington, D.C., according to federal documents.

Figures from the Department of Homeland Security show that the president has already issued 680,000 green cards to immigrants from Muslim nations over the past five years. Unless Congress changes his policy, that number will be repeated in the next five years.

What’s more, the president is also planning to add over 100,000 more with refugee status, many from Syria. Refugees can also petition the government for their relatives.

DHS data released by the Sen. Jeff Sessions’ Judiciary subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, noted that refugees, who must apply for a green card within one year, have instant access to federal welfare and entitlements, along with local benefits and education services; these costs are not offset.

The subcommittee said that “assuming no change in visa policy, the U.S. can expect to give green cards to another 680,000 more migrants from these countries over the next five years. A green card entitles recipients to access federal benefits, lifetime residency, work authorization, and a direct route to becoming a U.S. citizen.”

That is a group bigger than Washington, D.C.’s population of 658,893.

And it could grow far more. The Census Bureau suggests that migration from the Middle East is fast growing.

Immigration is one of the most controversial topics in the nation due to Obama’s policies on undocumented children and parents and lately his plan to settle up to 85,000 Syrian refugees. Several governors and the House have caused for a pause on the program due to concerns it will let terrorists pretending to be Syrians into the U.S.

Here are figures for the number of immigrants from Muslim majority countries during the first four years of Obama’s presidency:

Green Card Totals, FY09-FY13:

Pakistan 83,000

Iraq 83,000

Bangladesh 75,000

Iran 73,000

Egypt 45,000

Somalia 31,000

Uzbekistan 24,000

Turkey 22,000

Morocco 22,000

Jordan 20,000

Albania 20,000

Lebanon 16,000

Yemen 16,000

Indonesia 15,000

Syria 14,000

Sudan 13,000

Afghanistan 11,000

Sierra Leone (10K),

Guinea (8K),

Senegal (7K),

Saudi Arabia (7K),

Algeria (7K),

Kazakhstan (7K),

Kuwait (5K),

Gambia (5K),

United Arab Emirates (4K),

Azerbaijan (4K),

Mali (3K),

Burkina Faso (3K),

Kyrgyzstan (3K),

Kosovo (3K),

Mauritania (2K),

Tunisia (2K),

Tajikistan (2K),

Libya (2K),

Turkmenistan (1K),

Qatar (1K),

Chad (1K)

Now let’s compare those numbers with the number of green cards issued to Europeans.

A blog called bruegel collected this information from government sources:

The European Union’s share in worldwide immigration to the US is quite small. In 2013, 54 356 EU nationals received green card status in the US. This represents only 0.01% of the total EU population in 2013 and 5.5% of all green cards issued by the US in that year.  A US green card can be obtained through various means. Most immigrants receive green cards through family members who are US citizens or permanent lawful residents (about 65%). A smaller portion (16% of all green cards issued by the US in 2013) of immigrants receive green cards through their US employers, and this process is known as employment-based immigration. Although small in number, this category of immigrants typically includes exceptionally skilled individuals.

It is important to consider that US employment-based immigration requires US employers to petition on the immigrant employee’s behalf (pay the necessary fees, file the extensive paperwork, and deal with the US immigration system and Department of Labour). This entails that the immigrant employee must be a valuable asset to the employer.

The US reserves about 140 000 green cards each year for employment-based immigration. Preference is given to highly skilled immigrants. Green cards are also reserved, albeit in smaller numbers, for immigrants who establish companies large enough (and with enough funds). These immigrants are able to petition for themselves.

The EU is much better represented in employment-based immigration to the US than in total immigration. This means that the immigrants coming into the US from Europe are more skilled than immigrants coming into the US from other world regions.

In 2013, 18 171 EU immigrants obtained green cards through employment. …  The EU’s share in US employment-based immigration is twice as high as its share in total US immigration.

The United Kingdom is by far the most important source for employment-based immigration from the EU to the US. Almost 6 000 UK nationals obtained green cards through employment in 2013, which was about one-third of all employment-related green cards issued to EU nationals that year and 45% of all green cards issued to UK nationals.

In summary, the emigration of EU citizens to the US is not characterized by overcrowded flights and waiting times. It is, rather, a small and steady flow. Nevertheless, this small flow possesses exceptional skill and education levels … a huge potential for wealth creation that is permanently migrating to the US.

So only 5.5% of all green cards issued by the US in 2013 went to Europeans. 

Why is the flow from Europe small?

It is not because only a few Europeans are applying to immigrate into the US. We personally know professional people in the UK who have been waiting years for their applications to be processed.

Green cards are issued by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The DHS was created after 9/11 – because of 9/11. That needs to be stressed. Because Muslims attacked America and killed nearly 3,000 people, a special government department was created to keep Americans safe from such attacks. And its policy has been to import hundreds of thousands of Muslims into the US.

And the number will soon be in the millions. 

What can be concluded from these facts and figures, but that both President Bush and President Obama have wanted many more (mostly unskilled and dependent) Muslims to become American citizens than (mostly skilled and independent) Europeans.

In the case of President Bush, that silly “compassionate conservatism” of his may be to blame.

In the case of President Obama – could it be that he is doing all he can to Islamize the United States?

Posted under Britain, Europe, immigration, Islam, Muslims, Refugees, United States by Jillian Becker on Saturday, November 28, 2015

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Brussels reaps what Brussels sowed 242

We hope that Brussels, “under lockdown” in fear of Muslim terrorist attacks, is experiencing maximum inconvenience. That’s the least it deserves.

We quote from an article at Gatestone by Stefan Frank:

The Molenbeek district of Brussels is considered Europe’s “terrorist factory”.

At least three of the perpetrators of the November terrorist attacks in Paris came from there: Ibrahim Abdeslam, Abdelhamid Abaaoud and the remaining fugitive Salah Abdeslam. The list does not stop there. The Viennese daily newspaper Die Presse writes:

Molenbeek made headlines for the first time in 2001: Abdessatar Dahmane, the murderer of the Afghan war hero and horror of the Taliban, Ahmed Schah Massoud, was a regular at the Islamic center at 18 Rue du Manchester, known for its radical views; as well as Hassan El Haski, who was presumed behind the attacks in Casablanca (41 dead in 2003) and Madrid (200 victims in 2004). The weapons that were used in the attacks on the French satirical paper Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 came from Molenbeek. The French jihadist Mehdi Nemouche, who caused a bloodbath in the Brussels Jewish Museum the previous year, lived here. In August 2015, Ayoub El Khazzani started out from here on his attempt to attack a train from Amsterdam to Paris.

The two jihadists killed by Belgian police in January, in Verviers, came from Molenbeek. The terrorist Amedy Coulibaly, who attacked the HyperCacher kosher supermarket in Paris, also spent time in Molenbeek.

The majority of the terrorists who have appeared in Europe in recent times originated from a single neighborhood, six square-kilometers in size — an astounding concentration.

Belgium is, in relation to the size of its population, the greatest European exporter of fighters for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Most of them come from Molenbeek. “Instead of bombing Raqqah,” says the French journalist Eric Zemmour, “France should be bombing Molenbeek.”

More than half the population of Molenbeek is Muslim; a quarter come from Morocco – such as the Paris attackers. “You know, there are more veiled women here in Molenbeek than in Casablanca,” says a resident interviewed by investigative reporter Gilles Gaetner of the French news portal Atlantico. … “When one walks the streets of this Brussels district, with its nearly 96,000 residents, one is overcome by a bizarre impression. Not only would you think you were no longer in the Kingdom of Belgium, but an oppressive atmosphere reigns here.”

Foreign reporters are only now discovering Molenbeek. …

[Brussels is] a city in fear. Much of the responsibility for this apparently rests with Philippe Moureaux, member of the Socialist Party (Parti Socialiste), who was mayor of Molenbeek from 1992 until 2012. Confronted with the complaints of his citizens, he regularly denied the unsustainable conditions in his town: “It makes me angry when people pick out tiny details and lie about them,” he said in the quoted report. Molenbeek is “not the Bronx; the problems with criminality only concern a small number of streets,” said Moureaux.

Then Moureaux showed his true colors: “Molenbeek is a symbol that certain people want to destroy. But only over my dead body.” Certain people? Does the mayor actually believe in a conspiracy against his district of misery? One does not have to search for long to realize that Moureaux, on whose initiative Belgium passed an “anti-racism law” in 1981, is an anti-Semite  … He downplays and supports the violence of young Muslims – also against Jews.

There was heavy rioting in 2009 during Ramadan in Molenbeek. Muslim youths set up barricades made of burning tires, set cars ablaze, threw rocks at firefighters who came to put out fires and, equipped with rocks and crowbars, looted stores. … The police received the following order: “Do not provoke them, do not search them, do not intervene, even if dozens of them come together, do not issue warnings for harassment, not even if they throw rocks at you.”

Jewish shop-owners were also harassed other than at Ramadan. In 2008, the Flemish magazine Dag Allemaal reported on “youths” yelling, “The Jews are our worst enemies,” in the streets of Molenbeek. There used be many stores run by Jews on the Rue du Prado and the Chaussée de Grand in Molenbeek, but in 2008, with the exception of one furniture store, they suddenly disappeared. And nobody seemed bothered by this, especially not Mayor Moureaux.

None of the Jews wanted to speak with the Dag Allemaal reporter, out of fear of reprisals. The one exception was a man whom the paper referred to as “René.” René ran a barbershop for over 30 years in the Chaussée de Gand. Then came a series of acts of violence. It began with graffiti on his shop’s windows: “Sale youpin” (“dirty Jew”) and other anti-Semitic slogans. Later on, six Muslim youths stormed into his shop, destroyed the furnishings and punched René in the face. He called the police. An hour later, the youths returned in order to “punish” him; they broke all the mirrors. For more than 35 years, René had built up a large and loyal customer base, but after this attack, most people were afraid to visit his shop. He had no other choice but to close it.

How did Moureaux react? By accusing Belgian Jews of wanting to deny Muslims the “right to diversity”. …

This “right to diversity” was not granted to citizens by Moureaux during Ramadan. In a press release with the title, “Ramadan regulations for everyone”, Moureaux appealed to citizens in August 2011 to stop driving into the center of Molenbeek in the afternoon during the month of Ramadan, because Muslims are doing their shopping there.

In January 2015, after the massacre of the staff of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and the murder of four Jews in Paris’s HyperCacher supermarket, the now-retired mayor gave an interview to Maghreb TV, a channel broadcast via the internet, the target audience for which is North Africans in Belgium. After he made an appeal not to hold all Muslims responsible for the actions of a few terrorists, it got wild:

Many have an interest in dividing us. … Unfortunately, these people can be found everywhere. There is a contagion of the problems of the Middle East, in the Near East, the Israeli-Palestinian problem, which leads to some having an interest in provoking local disagreements, like a reflex to what happens over there. … It will be said that it is coming from both sides. But it is obvious that they are trying to create hatred for Arabs here in the West, in order to justify the policies of the state of Israel, policies that appear unacceptable to me.

It is supposed to be Israel’s fault when the Arabs of Belgium – and especially those of Molenbeek – have a bad reputation? This type of anti-Semitic resentment is unfortunately not only typical for Moureaux, but for his entire party. In March 2013, the Socialists of Molenbeek issued an invitation to an event titled: “What if we freely and calmly spoke about Zionism?” On the invitation flyer was an anti-Semitic caricature, drawn in the style of Der Stürmer, by the Arabic neo-Nazi Zéon. After loud protests, the Socialists cancelled the event – on the grounds that the aspired-to “calm” discussion was unfortunately no longer possible.

Welcome to Molenbeek. The jurist Etienne Dujardin recently wrote in the news portal Levif.be that the conditions in Islamist terror districts such as Molenbeek, Verviers or Saint Denis also had something to do with the deliberate efforts of some politicians, who find welcome campaign workers in radical Islamic circles:

Parties have been practicing a form of cronyism based on elections; they all used the same radical mosques as mouthpieces for their election campaigns. Some saw them as a massive pool of easily available votes.

And that is how it seems Mayor Moureaux observed that he could personally profit from the transformation of Molenbeek into a bastion of jihad. As he himself lives in a wealthy district, he was able to reject with great arrogance citizens who complained about excessive crime. He won elections by catering to radical Islam. … Behind the anti-Israel agitation of Moureaux lay a corrupt mayor, who only cared for his office and his income; who, as he himself said, was “addicted to power”. That his town was transforming into a hell of criminality, anti-Semitism and Sharia, he either did not care about or actually welcomed. …  This is how Molenbeek became, during the term in office of just one man, what it is today.

Thanksgiving 2

On this Thanksgiving Day, we thank all our readers and commenters for their interest, support, critical appreciation and encouragement.

We specially thank one indispensable commenter, liz, on whose insightful, well-informed comments we have come to rely to reinforce and often expand our posts.

Generally speaking – and disregarding occasional attacks by believers in the Supernatural or Big Government – we must have one of the most intelligent readerships of any blogs in the world.

Quite a large number of our regular readers do not live in the US. Canada, Britain, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Australia, South Africa and India are where most of our foreign visitors reside. But there are also a few who live in countries where it is dangerous for them even to let our title appear on their screens. They have our respectful admiration as well as our gratitude.

We wish you all long life, liberty, and success in the pursuit of happiness.

Posted under Miscellaneous by Jillian Becker on Thursday, November 26, 2015

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Atheists who do as Christians do 349

Atheists of the Left – “Humanists” some call themselves – often reveal with unconscious irony how close Leftism is to Christianity: the same moral myopia, hubris, and sentimentality.

In order to enjoy the cheap emotional satisfaction of feeling they are “good people”, they go in for this sort of thing.

We quote from the Friendly Atheist at Patheos:

After the Daily Caller News Foundation posted a map of supposed “radical mosques” in the U.S., it wasn’t long before threats were made against them.

But in a wonderful gesture on Monday, the Humanists of the Palouse reached out to the Muslims, sending them a letter of concern and offering whatever help they could:

To our Muslim friends in the Moscow/Pullman area,

Recently, we have been made aware of threats to our community, centered on the Pullman Islamic Center and it and many other Mosques being mis-reported as “radical”. In today’s climate, these threats should not be taken lightly, and we certainly do not. We fully support your right to practice religion free from harm and harassment.

We recognize your members as valued residents of the Palouse. The Humanists of the Palouse want you to know that we will always defend religious freedom and cultural diversity, and threats against these are threats against our very way of life. We stand with you, and offer our support.

If you feel threatened, please do not hesitate to contact us. We would be happy to accompany anyone who feels that their safety is at risk (e.g. grocery shopping, on a walk around town, or just for someone to talk to). If we can advocate for you in any way, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us, and know that you have friends and allies amongst The Humanists of the Palouse.

The Center’s Board of Trustees soon issued this heartfelt response:

The entire Board of Trustees of the Pullman Islamic Association joins me in thanking you and the Humanists of the Palouse generally for this powerful statement affirming civil rights in this country. We are especially moved that a humanist group so completely supports the local Muslim group, since Islam is the most disrespected group in this country. We have noticed that the correct way to define and appreciate humanist groups in general and yours in particular is as lovers and defenders of civil rights, individual and group democratic dignities and freedom of thought, not as haters of religion. Your group’s neighborly defense of freedom of religion in the Palouse demonstrates your focus on freedom and social justice. We are impressed by and thankful for your firm support and offer of assistance and solidarity.

One of our Board of Trustees members is meeting with an FBI agent today, which demonstrates that the federal police are taking this threat seriously. Given this sobering reality of threatened arson and violence your support will always be appreciated by the leaders and membership of the Pullman Islamic Association. We hope we will not need to ask for your offered assistance, but if we do need or want such support, we will indeed reach out to Humanists of the Palouse.

That’s how you do it, friends.

You can disagree on theological issues, but I’d hope local atheist groups around the country would be willing to reach out to Muslims who are actually being persecuted by overzealous conservatives eager to shut them down.

If they lose their religious freedoms, we all do.

Can they possibly not know that sharia law – inseparable from the ideology of Islam – condemns apostasy, which is what atheism is deemed to be? And prescribes death as the punishment for atheists? (Atheist men; women not always.) In some Islamic lands they are imprisoned rather than executed. But all risk their lives, and such freedom as anyone has in a Muslim majority country.

These are reports of atheists, apostates, free thinkers who have been sentenced to prison, and/or flogging, and/or death in Islamic countries recently – the crime of atheism often being euphemized into something else in court. And some who have been killed by their Muslim compatriots.

1. From the Economist, on Alexander Aan in Indonesia:

A MOB attacked Alexander Aan even before an Indonesian court in June jailed him for two and a half years for “inciting religious hatred”.

His crime was to write “God does not exist” on a Facebook group he had founded for atheists in Minang, a province of the world’s most populous Muslim nation. Like most non-believers in Islamic regions, he was brought up as a Muslim. And like many who profess godlessness openly, he has been punished. …

Sharia law, which covers only Muslims unless incorporated into national law, assumes people are born into their parents’ religion. Thus ex-Muslim atheists are guilty of apostasy—a hudud crime against God, like adultery and drinking alcohol. Potential sanctions can be severe: eight states, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania and Sudan have the death penalty on their statute books for such offences. …

Most atheists are prosecuted for blasphemy or for inciting hatred. (Atheists born to non-Muslim families are not considered apostates, but they can still be prosecuted for other crimes against religion.) Even in places where laws are lenient, religious authorities and social attitudes can be harsh, with vigilantes inflicting beatings or beheadings.

Many, like Kacem el-Ghazzali, a Moroccan, reckon the only solution is to escape abroad. The 23-year-old was granted asylum in Switzerland after people found out he was the author of an anonymous blog, Atheistica.com. …

Nahla Mahmoud, a 25-year-old Sudanese atheist … fled to Britain in 2010. …

Ibn Warraq, the pseudonymous Indian-born author of “Leaving Islam”, a collection of essays by ex-believers, … lives in exile and has received death threats for campaigning on the behalf of apostates. … Arguments for the death penalty [he says] are usually based on a Hadith, one of the sayings which, along with the Koran, form the basis of Islamic law: “The Prophet said: whoever discards his religion, kill him.” …

Ibn Warraq says that the nub of the problem is that sharia makes atheism the number one sin, ahead of murder.  …

2. From the Guardian, on Ashraf Fayadh in Saudi Arabia:

A Palestinian poet and leading member of Saudi Arabia’s nascent contemporary art scene has been sentenced to death for renouncing Islam.

A Saudi court on Tuesday ordered the execution of Ashraf Fayadh, who has curated art shows in Jeddah and at the Venice Biennale. The poet, who said he did not have legal representation, was given 30 days to appeal against the ruling.

Fayadh, 35, a key member of the British-Saudi art organisation Edge of Arabia, was originally sentenced to four years in prison and 800 lashes by the general court in Abha, a city in the south-west of the ultraconservative kingdom, in May 2014. But after his appeal was dismissed he was retried earlier this month and a new panel of judges ruled that his repentance did not prevent his execution.

3. From Patheos, the Friendly Atheist itself, on Raif Badawi in Saudi Arabia:

December 26, 2013 by Paul Fidalgo [who is admirably scathing in his disgust – ed).

Saudi blogger and religious dissident Raif Badawi has been cruelly punished and toyed with by the Saudi legal system for about a year now, and things have taken a darker turn. According to Badawi’s wife, now living in Lebanon, the high court will try Badawi on the charge of apostasy. If convicted, Badawi could be executed.

This comes after a court opted not to charge him with apostasy in January, but did put him up on charges of “insulting Islam and showing disobedience”. How did they come to this decision? Badawi is the co-founder of a website called the Liberal Saudi Network, which is bad enough, but imagine the horror that washed over Saudi society with this kind of action:

The evidence against him included the fact that he pressed the “Like” button on a Facebook page for Arab Christians.

As a result of this heinous behavior, in July, Badawi was sentenced to 600 lashes and seven years in prison.

Which was horrifying enough. But now it looks like Badawi is being brought up on apostasy charges in earnest. Badawi’s case is one of many being watched by the Office of Public Policy at the Center for Inquiry, where I work, and our Campaign for Free Expression. Browse the cases we have listed there, and you’ll see that, sadly, Badawi’s case is hardly unique.

Cases like this need more international attention, and those who position themselves as “allies” of Saudi Arabia, such as the United States, need to discover their consciences. How can the civilized world refer to itself as such when an ally practices such barbarism, it looks the other way?

The judge in Badawi’s subsequent appeal stiffened the original 2013 sentence – seven years in prison and 600 lashes – to 1000 lashes, ten years in prison and a fine of $266,000. See our post, The punishment of reason, January 12, 2015, where there is an eyewitness description of the first of the series of lashings Badawi is being subjected to.

Badawi had written, “My commitment is… to reject any repression in the name of religion… a goal that we will reach in a peaceful, law-abiding way.”

This was interpreted by the judge as “insulting Islam”.

Badawi’s health is now frail. He is unlikely to survive the lashings.

4. From Poetry Foundation, on Hashem Shaabani in Iran:

We were saddened and horrified today to learn of the death of Hashem Shaabani, who was executed on January 27th by the order of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

From Radio Free Europe:

An Islamic Revolutionary Tribunal reportedly had sentenced the poet to death, along with 14 others, last July on charges that included “waging war on God”. 

Press reports said Shaabani was hanged after his sentence was approved by President Hassan Rohani.

In a statement on February 5, Freedom House said Shaabani was subjected to severe torture and interrogation during his three years in prison.

Human Rights Voices also reports on the execution, writing:

To those who knew him, was a man of peace and understanding struggling to extend spaces of individual freedom within the despotic Khomeinist system … In one of his letters from prison, made available to use through his family, Shaabani says  … I have tried to defend the legitimate right that every people in this world should have which is the right to live freely with full civil rights. With all these miseries and tragedies, I have never used a weapon to fight these atrocious crimes except the pen.” 

5. From the Guardian on Avijit Roy and Rafida Bonya Ahmed in Pakistan:

No one could have predicted that the Bangladeshi writer Rafida Bonya Ahmed would make it to London last week. …  In February, Islamist fanatics hacked her husband, Avijit Roy, to death with meat cleavers as the couple left a book fair in Dhaka. They nearly killed Ahmed too: slicing off her thumb and covering her body with wounds. …

Together, Ahmed and Roy ran a secular blog that promoted the writings of young liberal Bangladeshis They wrote on evolution and humanism; they condemned extremism fearlessly, as the title of Roy’s 2014 book The Virus of Faith makes clear. Seeing and fearing a courageous opponent, the enemies of free thought killed him for his ideas. …

6. From a Reuters report on Ananta Bijoy Das and others in Bangladesh:

Third Atheist blogger killed in Bangladesh.

A blogger was hacked to death by machete-wielding attackers in Bangladesh on Tuesday (May 12), the third killing of a critic of religious extremism in the Muslim-majority nation in less than three months.

Ananta Bijoy Das, a blogger who advocated secularism, was attacked by four masked assailants in the northeastern district of Sylhet on Tuesday morning, senior police official Mohammad Rahamatullah told Reuters.

Rahamatullah said Das was a 33-year-old banker.

He was also editor of science magazine “Jukti,” which means “logic,” and on the advisory board of “Mukto Mona” (Free Mind), a website propagating rationalism and opposing fundamentalism …

According to the monitoring service SITE Intelligence Group, Islamist militant group Ansar al-Islam Bangladesh said al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) had claimed responsibility for the attack. …

Imran Sarker, the head of a network of activists and bloggers in Bangladesh, said Das was “a progressive free thinker and a good human being”. …

Militants have targeted secularist writers in Bangladesh in recent years …

On March 30, Washiqur Rahman, another secular blogger who aired his outrage over [Avijit] Roy’s death on social media, was killed in similar fashion on a busy street in the capital, Dhaka.

Their deaths followed the killing in 2013 of Ahmed Rajib Haider, who backed calls to impose the death penalty on Islamist leaders accused of atrocities in Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence.

Why do our fellow atheists – of the leftist “Humanist” persuasion – not burn with anger against the ideology that persecutes atheism, secularism, rationalism, and shun the company of its devotees?

If they think they are earning the goodwill and tolerance of the Muslims towards whom they’re making this gesture, they’re pathetically deluded. Their nice little letter is not going to change sharia law, or the minds of those who want to impose it on us all.

They seem simply not to believe that the Muslims they contacted might be members of “radicalizing” mosques – which is to say, mosques with imams who urge them to support terrorist groups or join ISIS. There’s no hint that they explored the possibility. In their minds, the accusation must be wholly unjustified.

And one more thing. When those poor persecuted Muslims “in the Moscow/Pullman area” whimpered that “Islam is the most disrespected group in this country”, they are lying. The president of the United States is the son of a Muslim and an Islam lover who has brought Muslim Brotherhood advisers into his administration – and has clearly formed policies on their advice..

At the time of this writing there have been 27,322 deadly attacks carried out by Muslims since 9/11. (See the tally in our margin, taken from The Religion of Peace.) Muslim terrorists do all they can to terrify non-Muslims, and then cynically accuse them of an irrational fear of Islam, calling it “Islamophobia”.

Muslims are the target of few “hate crimes” in the US. But they perpetrate more than any others do.

We quote from an article by David J. Rusin at Islamist Watch. His staistics come from a December 2014 report of 2013 figures. (We await the 2014 report this coming December):

New FBI Hate Crime Stats: Another Blow to Islamist Fictions

There were 1,031 incidents inspired by religion last year, 625 (60.6 percent) of which were anti-Jewish. Anti-Islamic ones constituted just 13.1 percent.

On April 15, 2013, Muslim terrorists murdered three and injured hundreds at the Boston Marathon, prompting familiar warnings about an imminent anti-Muslim backlash. The FBI’s findings are proof that such collective punishment did not materialize — as it almost never does.

How have Islamist groups greeted the FBI data? With silence. It is the sound of disappointment on the part of radicals who need Muslim victims, preferably real ones, to serve as human shields for the Islamist agenda. Bad news for Islamists is once again good news for the rest of us.

Europe betrayed 17

Some Europeans can see that their doom is approaching ever faster and becoming ever more certain.

Among them are some who wish it were not so.

But even after people have been massacred in the capital of France by Muslims, the politicians who opened the doors of Europe to the Muslim invaders insist on keeping them open.

One journalist is angry about it and says so.

We quote an article by Leo McKinstry at the Express online:

SEVERAL millennia were required to build European civilisation but its impending destruction has been the work of just a few years, carried out by a cadre of irresponsible, unpatriotic and deluded politicians led by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Dressing up their vandalism as compassion and their cowardice as moral superiority, these leaders have created an immigration crisis so profound that the very existence of our European culture and heritage is under mortal threat.

The tragic paradox of the obsession with free movement and the abolition of national identities is that Europe in any meaningful sense will probably cease to exist this century.

As the social revolution accelerates traditional values of democracy, freedom and solidarity will be replaced by conflict, sectarianism, oppression and intolerance.

Increasingly Islamified, barbaric and poverty-stricken, Europe will become indistinguishable from large swathes of North Africa and the Middle East.

Even the stupendously high levels of mass immigration over the past two decades are now dwarfed by the colossal flood of new arrivals that has occurred since the early summer when Merkel made her woefully illconceived pledge that ­Germany would welcome anyone claiming to be a refugee.

She may have thought that the open-door policy would provide a counter to Germany’s appalling record of aggression since the 1860s but in reality by wrecking Europe’s social fabric she has added to the long catalogue of Teutonic crimes.

It is thanks mainly to her that so many African, Asian and Middle-Eastern migrants are coming to our shores. In October alone a record 218,000 of them crossed the Mediterranean, more than the entire total for 2014.

Absurdly some metropolitan elitists complain that Britain has failed to join in this demographic upheaval since our Government has said that we will only take 20,000 refugees from Syria over the next five years.

This ignores the crucial fact that the current annual immigration rate is officially more than 630,000-a-year, with most of the new settlers hailing from outside the EU. How many more are Britain and Europe expected to take?

The potential influx is almost limitless. The United Nations says that globally there are at least 60 million people classified as refugees while more than 1.2 billion live in dire poverty. But the numbers are already proving catastrophic.

A mood of fear hangs over disintegrating Europe. …

Ultra-liberal pro-immigration Sweden has seen some Muslim neighbourhoods in its cities turned into no-go areas, while Malmö has one of the highest rates of rape in the world.

The fraught scenes of chaos in Eastern Europe are replicated at points on the British border, such as Calais, where the vast 6,000-strong migrant camp descends into even greater squalor and tension.

But 95 per cent of the squatters there are not refugees but are tough, fit young men mainly from Africa who have no right to be in Europe at all. If our politicians had any guts they would close down the camp and deport its freeloading residents.

But instead the British taxpayer is being asked to fork out £3.6million a year for improvements at the camp, which will only attract more. The same tensions can be seen at a British RAF base in Cyprus, where a group of migrants are being given shelter and food after landing on the island.

Instead of showing any gratitude some have created disturbances and burnt their tents, hardly the behaviour of people genuinely fleeing persecution. “We want to go to England,” said one, displaying a spirit of petulant entitlement.

It is clear that Europe is now unable to cope. The Greek island of Lesbos has run out of burial space, while tiny Slovenia has 13,000 migrants passing through its borders every day, also setting fire to tents.

Even Germany is struggling. There have been mass brawls at several migrant reception centres and in a chilling echo of the country’s totalitarian past the German authorities are seizing property to provide accommodation for the arrivals.

In one startling symbol of how European society is being overwhelmed the village of Sumte in the north-east is about to see its population increase by 700 per cent through the import of 750 asylum seekers.

As winter approaches and the weather worsens the migrant crisis is set to escalate. A new wave of sentimentality will be unleashed by much of the media, peddling manipulative images of the suffering of the refugees.

Eager to parade their humanitarian credentials politicians will open the doors even further and impose even greater burdens on European taxpayers. So the cycle of decline will gather momentum.

None of us ever voted for our demise.

But without any democratic mandate that is what the politicians have inflicted. One nurse in Germany, who is being evicted from her Nieheim flat so it can be used for migrants, told a reporter last month: “I find it impossible to understand how the city can treat me like this.”

Her experience could be a metaphor for the peoples of Europe.

The scale of this political treachery is almost incomprehensible.

Almost? How can it be understood at all? Why have recent generations of European leaders invited hostile barbarians into their countries to replace their own populations?

Do they reflect and respond to a suicidal mood among most Europeans? A geno-suicidal mood it could be called.

The reluctance of Europeans to have children suggests that geno-suicide is – at least half consciously – intended.

But why, having attained through time and struggle such an unprecedented height of prosperous civilization, do the European peoples want to give up their happy way of life, see all they have built destroyed, and let their tribes die out?

Posted under Britain, Eastern Europe, Europe, France, Germany, Greece, Islam, jihad, Muslims by Jillian Becker on Tuesday, November 24, 2015

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America decaying 65

iOwnTheWorld reports:

Cheryl E. Matias is an “Assistant Professor & Motherscholar, Ph.D. in Race and Gender Studies in Education” (at the University of Colorado at Denver), who “Studies the Emotionality and Psychoanalytics of Whiteness”.

Her article, Why do you make me hate myself?: Re-Teaching Whiteness, Abuse, and Love in Urban Teacher Education, was published in Teaching Education this year.

In her article, Matias writes that teachers must address “normalized, oppressive Whiteness”, saying that a “colorblind” society cannot truly exist in the United States.

The study of race, racism, and exertions of Whiteness are rarely recognized as a substantive issue in teacher education and the teaching profession. … We cannot even begin to address symptoms, such as the racial achievement gap, if we do not address the underlying diseases of racism and Whiteness.

She teaches that “Whiteness” is a disease.

And here’s another sentence of hers to arouse your disbelief and scornful laughter:  “[Another academic] argued that white fragility plays an essential role in the maintenance of Whiteness and when unfettered, the consequences can be dire.”

What can that possibly mean? What exactly has been “fettered”? “White fragility”? How do you fetter fragility? Or the “maintenance of Whiteness”? How do you fetter maintenance? Or Whiteness itself? How do you fetter Whiteness?

You can read the whole nonsensical thing in pdf form by going here and passing a short exam set by Google.

But be warned. It is all gibberish, balderdash, blather, gobbledygook, tripe, hogwash, baloney, bilge, bunkum, twaddle and poppycock.

And it is all too typical of the gibberish etc. that is now being taught in American universities.

Posted under education, United States by Jillian Becker on Monday, November 23, 2015

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Islam shouts 1

… its declarations of war.

The West does not want to listen.

This must-be-watched video was published in June, 2014, by MEMRI (the Middle East Media Research Institute).

After the jihad attacks in Paris on November 13, 2015, will the West start listening? (We doubt it.)

Mumin Salih, an apostate from Islam who lives in Britain, comments accurately, at Islam Watch, on the jihad and Europe’s capitulation:

The West has committed suicide; the lethal pill was swallowed by the post war generation of Europeans. The so called “baby boomers” inherited treasures of wealth, culture, freedom and unsurpassed civilization, earned by their fathers and grandfathers. The rich inheritance didn’t come cheaply but at the cost of millions of lives that were sacrificed by the previous generations. All the baby boomers needed to do was to enjoy those treasures and pass them on to the next generations; a task they could have done effortlessly, but they didn’t. The result is what we see today, a Europe [of] nations ashamed of their culture, identity and history.

And Obama would have America follow Europe’s lead into self-destruction.

Posted under Arab States, Britain, Europe, France, Germany, History, immigration, Islam, jihad, Muslims, Spain, Treason, United States, Videos by Jillian Becker on Sunday, November 22, 2015

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Islam is our enemy 4

Islam, not “Islamism”, is our enemy.

Not “radical Islam” or “radical Islamism” but Islam is our enemy. 

Pro-Muslim advocacy in whatever form is inherently fatuous and incoherent.

We quote from an article by David Solway:

The culture that has sustained us for centuries is being breached, infested, eroded and is ultimately on the verge of being brought down by a primitive horde of invaders who represent its antithesis. …

Regarding the effort by most liberals and some conservatives to lay the blame for Muslim violence on something called “Islamism” rather than Islam, it just won’t wash. …

“Islamism” is an invented concept, like “Islamophobia” (a synonym for a fictitious “hate crime”). It is meant to make Islam palatable, in the same way “Islamophobia” is meant to marginalize and discredit those who know it is not. …

“Islamism” is merely a word minted to obscure the truth of Islam as a theo-political ideology camouflaging its claim to world domination under the cloak of religious observances and domestic cultural practices …

As Ayaan Hirsi Ali states — and she should know — “Islam is not a religion of peace. It’s a political theory of conquest that seeks domination by any means it can.” …

“Some,” Solway says, “have taken vehement exception” to his thesis that Islam and Islamism are “fundamentally the same”. He answers one critic who “affirms that I am missing … the myriad moderates who are waging battle against Islamist forces, for example, the Kurds”, with this reminder:

The fact is, the Kurds, heroic as they may be, are not fighting for freedom, equality, the rights of assembly and unfettered expression, habeas corpus or the institution of impartial justice as we know them in the West … They are engaged in an intra-faith conflict that is a perpetual feature of the Islamic world. We should not forget that the Kurds, too, are Muslims. …

The situation is deteriorating even as we speak. The so-called “economic migrants” and displaced refugees swarming the borders of Europe constitute the latest Muslim push into the West, on the one hand consisting of (let’s call them) “welfare migrants” who will deplete state budgets and create housing turmoil, and on the other of an army of incendiaries that will burn, rape and plunder what remains of a liberal civilization. …

The torrent of Muslim migrants into Germany, to take a particularly conspicuous example, has led to a 65 percent increase in criminal activity. The fate of the small German town of Sumte, population 102, soon to be home to 750 Middle Eastern and African migrants, is literally over the top, but 50 would be enough to change the face of the community forever. Such scars cannot be healed. In Sweden violent crime has increased by 300 percent … since the time “the Swedish parliament unanimously decided to change the formerly homogenous Sweden into a multicultural country”. (There are now 55 no-go zones in Sweden.) In the Netherlands, 50-70 percent of former asylum seekers live on permanent welfare. Prison statistics for Muslims are through the roof in most European countries with Muslim immigrant populations. In Denmark alone, among the most peaceful of European countries, the crime rate differential of Muslims to non-Muslims is in the order of 450 percent.

Most western countries with a rump population of Muslims will experience different levels of social, cultural and economic distress, ranging from insistent legal demands to acts of terrorism. Parasitism, violence, political and religious fanaticism, the fostering of hate speech legislation, the proliferation of no-go zones, the re-uniting of families that will bloat the influx to even more unmanageable proportions, the insinuation or imposition of Sharia law (according to a Pew Poll analysis, one billion Muslims worldwide favor Sharia), high-casualty attacks like the recent Paris atrocity — Islam is a delivery system that fires multiple warheads. And it is happening before our very eyes and with the willing complicity of our preceptorial betters, aka the political class, the intellectual clerisy, the corrupt academy and the media camarilla. …

The fundamental equation continues to hold: Islamism=Islam. Or perhaps the reverse formulation is even more accurate: Islam=Islamism.

Any way we want to look at it, jihad is codified in Islam; it is the command of Allah, the religious duty of all Muslims when they are in a position to perform it. According to the Grand Ayatollah of Iraq Ahmad al-Baghdadi, there are really two major kinds of jihad: “defensive jihad” to reclaim “occupied” territory (Israel, of course, as well as Portugal, Spain, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Greece, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Romania, Armenia, Georgia, Crete, Cyprus, and parts of Russia ) and “offensive jihad” to conquer non-Muslims. …

And we would do well to note that Salat [Muslim prayer] …  comprises execrations against infidels, such as: “We forsake and turn away from the kafirs”, “O, Allah, punish the kafirs of the people of the book who are preventing other from following your way”, and “Surely the kafirs will receive your punishment”. …

As for the migrants inundating Europe … the majority may be described as aggressive columns of young men, a large number from North Africa, seeking to establish ribats (outposts from which to conduct jihad) and spread their way of life at the expense of Western societies. They are not “moderates” and they are certainly not “Islamists”. They are votaries of Islam who bring with them the Muslim conviction of innate superiority to all other human beings, as well as the habits, tenets, injunctions and commands of a faith perennially at war with Western civilization.

And thousands of these are ISIS-trained gunmen smuggling their way into Western nations where they are destined to unleash havoc.

We have admitted them, as we have admitted Islam, into our midst, at the price of our customary assumptions about cultural usages and social decorum, the residual integrity of our universities, the even-handed dispensation of justice and what remains of political probity, fiscal resilience, the safety of our streets, and indeed our very security. “Paris” will happen over and over again.

We can pretend all we like that we are the avatars of “diversity” and that the culture will prosper by accepting the soldiers of Allah into our homeland, but  … so long as we continue to insist on the false distinction between Islamism and Islam, which clouds our vision and weakens our resistance, Islam will be poised to prevail against us.

Posted under Islam, jihad, Jordan, Muslims by Jillian Becker on Saturday, November 21, 2015

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