The excellent British historian Andrew Roberts explains, with brilliant clarity, why President George W. Bush led the invasion and conquest of Iraq in 2003.

As we read Soeren Kern’s latest report for Gatestone on the state of Her Britannic Majesty’s Islamic Kingdom (our designation, not his), our wild laughter echoed down our noble godless halls.

Here are extracts. For the whole hilarious story, go here.

Following is a brief summary of some of the main stories involving Islam and Islam-related issues in Britain during January 2015, categorized into three broad themes: 1) Islamic extremism; 2) British multiculturalism; and 3) Muslim integration into British society.

1. Islamic Extremism

On January 7, the British-born Islamist Anjem Choudary defended the jihadist attacks on the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. In an opinion article published by USA Today, Choudary wrote:

Contrary to popular misconception, Islam does not mean peace but rather means submission to the commands of Allah alone. Therefore, Muslims do not believe in the concept of freedom of expression, as their speech and actions are determined by divine revelation and not based on people’s desires. In an increasingly unstable and insecure world, the potential consequences of insulting the Messenger Muhammad are known to Muslims and non-Muslims alike. So why in this case did the French government allow the magazine Charlie Hebdo to continue to provoke Muslims, thereby placing the sanctity of its citizens at risk?

On January 9, Muslim cleric Mizanur Rahman of Palmers Green, north London, also defended the jihadist attacks in Paris and declared that “Britain is the enemy of Islam”. Speaking to an audience in London — his speech was also streamed online to thousands of his followers — Rahman said the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo were guilty of “insulting Islam” and therefore “they can’t expect a different result” … “Clearly what happened in France is a war. These cartoons is [sic] part of their own war, is part of the psychological warfare. You can’t have that attitude. You know what happens when you insult Muhammad.”

Rahman … was on police bail after he and Anjem Choudary were arrested in September 2014 on suspicion of terror offenses. Both men deny any wrongdoing and have not been charged. …

An Islamist from Luton was pictured in Syria brandishing an AK-47 rifle. Abu Rahin Aziz, 32, skipped bail before he was handed a 36-week jail sentence for stabbing a football fan in London’s West End. Aziz has been using Twitter to urge other people to join him and to emulate the recent attacks in Paris. In a tweet, Aziz, who also calls himself Abu Abdullah al-Britani, wrote:

Still deciding to what to do with my #british passport, could burn it, flush it down the toilet, I mean realistically its not worth spitting on.

… A convicted al-Qaeda terrorist with close links to the massacre in Paris cannot be deported from Britain because it would breach his right to a family life. Baghdad Meziane, a 49-year-old British-Algerian who was jailed for eleven years in 2003 for running a terror network recruiting jihadists and fund-raising for al-Qaeda, was released from prison five years early and allowed to return to his family home in Leicester. Since then, Meziane has successfully thwarted attempts by the Home Office to deport him, despite the government’s repeated insistence that he constitutes “a danger to the United Kingdom”. … The Meziane case has cost British taxpayers tens of thousands of pounds in court costs to date. …

Sylvie Beghal, a French citizen, lives rent-free in a four-bedroom house in Leicester after she came to Britain with her children in search of a more “Islamic environment”, after deciding that France was too anti-Muslim.

On January 22, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond warned that Britain is at “very significant” risk of attack by the Islamic State.

On January 25, Green party leader Natalie Bennett told the BBC1’s Sunday Politics show that it should not be illegal for people living in Britain to join the Islamic State. She was commenting on the British government’s move in June 2014 to make membership of the Islamic State a crime. Bennett said: “This is a part of our policy that I think dates back to the age of the ANC [African National Congress] and apartheid South Africa… What we want to do is make sure we are not punishing people for what they think or what they believe.”

On January 20, the former chief of MI6, Sir John Sawers, warned Britons not to insult Islam if they want to avoid Islamic terrorists from striking inside the country. He said: “If you show disrespect for others’ core values then you are going to provoke an angry response… There is a requirement for restraint from those of us in the West.” …

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles sent a letter to more than 1,000 imams across Britain asking for their help in fighting extremism and rooting out those who are preaching hatred. He also asked them to explain to Muslims how Islam is compatible with being British. The letter said:

We must show our young people, who may be targeted, that extremists have nothing to offer them. We must show them that there are other ways to express disagreement: that their right to do so is dependent on the very freedoms that extremists seek to destroy. We must show them the multitude of statements of condemnation from British Muslims; show them these men of hate have no place in our mosques or any place of worship, and that they do not speak for Muslims in Britain or anywhere in the world. You, as faith leaders, are in a unique position in our society. You have a precious opportunity, and an important responsibility: in explaining and demonstrating how faith in Islam can be part of British identity. We believe together we have an opportunity to demonstrate the true nature of British Islam today. There is a need to lay out more clearly than ever before what being a British Muslim means today: proud of your faith and proud of your country. We know that acts of extremism are not representative of Islam; but we need to show what is.

Muslim groups responded by accusing the British government of stoking “Islamophobia”. 

In an angry response to Pickles, the Chief Executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, Mohammed Shafiq, wrote:

I wish to express my dismay at the letter sent by the Communities Secretary Eric Pickles MP, this letter is patronising and factually incorrect and typical of the Government only looking at Muslims through the prism of terrorism and security. We do not need to be patronised by a Government that claims it wants to give young Muslims an alternative to the extremist narrative and then refuse to discuss foreign policy. In terms of British values, is Mr Pickles really suggesting as the far right do that Muslims are detached from mainstream society? I hope the Minister clarifies his comments.

In an interview with Sky News, Talha Ahmad of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) said:

The letter has all the hallmarks of very poor judgment which feeds into an Islamophobic narrative, which feeds into a narrative of us and them.

In a response to Pickles, the MCB wrote:

We do take issue with the implication that extremism takes place at mosques, and that Muslims have not done enough to challenge the terrorism that took place in our name. This is why we responded to the media, and an assertion in some quarters, that you were somehow endorsing the idea that Muslims and Islam are inherently apart from British society. We reject such notions. We also reject suggestions that Muslims must go out of their way to prove their loyalty to this country of ours.

The president of the Bradford Council for Mosques, Mohammed Rafiq Sehgal, said … :

We ask Mr Pickles to publicly apologize to the Muslim community for bringing this peaceful section of the British society into disrepute. Blaming Muslims may win Mr Pickles and his party some support from the right wing voters but it does not help good community relations. …

2. British Multiculturalism

On January 29, a Sky News investigation into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham, a large town in South Yorkshire, found that hundreds of new cases continue to emerge. In August 2014, the so-called Alexis Jay report revealed that between 1997 and 2013, at least 1,400 children were sexually exploited, mostly by Muslim gangs, and that municipal officials in Rotherham and police in South Yorkshire failed to tackle the problem because of politically correct concerns over being branded as “racist” or “Islamophobic”. … One victim told Sky News: “It’s still going on if not worse, because now they’re having to hide it more.”

… It emerged that hospitals across Britain are dealing with at least 15 new cases of female genital mutilation (FGM) every day, and that the problem is especially acute in Birmingham. … Although FGM has been illegal in Britain since 1984, there has not been a single conviction in the UK. …

Tarik Kafala, the head of BBC Arabic, the largest of the BBC’s non-English language news services, said that the term “terrorist” was too “loaded” to describe the actions of the men who killed 12 people in the attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. … “We try to avoid describing anyone as a terrorist or an act as being terrorist. What we try to do is to say that ‘two men killed 12 people in an attack on the office of a satirical magazine’. … Terrorism is such a loaded word …”  Kafala’s comments are in line with the BBC’s editorial guidelines on reporting terrorism. …

Durham Free School, a Christian school, will be forced to close after government inspectors found that the school was failing to help students understand “British values” or “prepare them for life in modern Britain”.  The report said: “Some students hold discriminatory views of other people who have different faiths, values or beliefs from themselves.” Teachers said the verdict was grossly unfair and based on a comment made by a single pupil, who gave the wrong answer when inspectors asked him what a Muslim was. His answer to the question apparently included a reference to terrorism. The teachers said the school’s Christian ethos made it an easy target for officials who wanted to show they were promoting the government’s diversity agenda. …

Oxford University Press (OUP) warned its authors not to mention pigs or sausages in their books, to avoid causing offense to Muslims. …

3. Muslim Integration

Zack Davies, 25, attacked a 24-year-old Sikh named Sarandev Bhambra with a machete at a Tesco supermarket in Mold, north Wales. Bhambra was seriously injured. British newspapers initially portrayed the attack as a “racially-motivated attempt” by a right-wing extremist promoting “white power”. It later emerged that Zack Davies is actually a Muslim convert who goes by the name Zack Ali. On the morning of the attack, Ali warned on his Facebook page of his impending attack: “The wrath of Allah is about to come down upon the kafir [unbeliever], I will have my revenge.” He also posted four verses from the Koran that call for violence against non-Muslims. …

On January 27, a judge at the Newcastle Crown Court sent four Muslim teenagers to a juvenile detention center after they admitted to attacking a 41-year-old Jewish man in nearby Gateshead. [They] pleaded guilty to racially-aggravated common assault for the attack, which they said was motivated by the Arab-Israeli conflict. The night before the attack, Sultan sent a text message saying he was “going to go Jew bashing” and asked a friend: “Do you want to go to Gateshead to smash some Jews up.”  …

A Muslim trainee lawyer at the London-based law firm Clifford Chance produced a 21-minute YouTube video, in which he blamed non-Muslims for the jihadist attacks in Paris. Aysh Chaudhry, 22, said:

Brothers and sisters, we would not be here had it not been for the fact that the kafir [non-Muslims] had gone to our lands and killed our people and raped and pillaged our resources. This, brothers and sisters, is what we need to understand. We need to move away from this apologetic tone and have confidence in Islam because we are enslaved otherwise. We need to remove this Western cultural lens with which we are viewing and responding to attacks on Islam from our eyes. Stop putting freedom on this pedestal. This is a value stemming from secular, liberal beliefs. We don’t need a value which stems from a bankrupt ideology. We are becoming infatuated with the civilization of the kafir and their beliefs and their values and indeed we have latched on to these. Now you know who you are if you are of those who state ‘I will die to protect your freedom and I believe in freedom of speech’.

A spokesperson for Clifford Chance, one of the most prestigious law firms in the world, said: “The firm is committed to establishing an inclusive culture where people with diverse backgrounds and views work effectively together and feel confident to develop their potential.”

Finally, police in Bradford on January 29 launched a manhunt for an unidentified white male who allegedly muttered derogatory comments about Islam on a bus. The incident, described by police as a public order offense, allegedly happened on the 576 Halifax to Bradford bus, between 10:00 pm and 10:20pm on January 8. The suspect is described as white, aged 40 to 50, about five feet 8 inches tall. He was wearing a black woolly hat and black jacket that may have had a bit of red on it.

This opinion column appears today , March 3, 2015, in The Times of London.

It points out that there is a necessity to oppose the deal that Obama is making with the monstrous Iranian regime.

The defiant decision of Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to plead direct to the United States Congress against rushing into a nuclear deal with Iran represents a watershed in the dismal relations between Jerusalem and the Obama administration. A foreign leader is being invited by Republicans to denounce the president on American soil. It is a speech that even before its delivery today has split Israel and the Jewish community in America, and is being presented by the Obama team as crude electioneering and provocative mischief-making on the part of Mr Netanyahu. Yet it is a necessary speech. All the signs are that the US, flanked by five other powers including Britain, is accelerating towards a deal with Tehran that will allow it to retain significant capacity to enrich uranium. The arrangement would in theory allow the West to spot and block one year in advance any attempt to build a bomb. That presumes easy access to the most sensitive nuclear sites and a quick and efficient verification system. Israel does not trust Iran. It sees a regime that is so desperate to have sanctions lifted it is willing to fabricate concessions. The negotiations do not include Iran’s ballistic-missile programme, whose prime function can only be the delivery of a bomb. Mr Netanyahu therefore comes to Washington full of suspicion not only about Iranian intentions but also those of the Obama administration. He fears the nuclear treaty would be the first step towards projecting Tehran as a de facto ally and a regional power-broker. A nation that is so often challenged by Iranian-backed Hezbollah militias and the Iranian-supplied weaponry of Hamas has a right to be concerned. Mr Netanyahu has, however, talked himself into an awkward corner. The calendar creates an unfortunate linkage between the Israeli election on March 17 and the next deadline for a settlement with Iran on March 28. Fear of Iran is thus being played out in the Israeli campaign against the fear of losing its most powerful ally, the United States. Almost 200 retired Israeli security officials have warned Mr Netanyahu that he risks not only a rupture with Washington but also advertising Israel’s weakness. President Obama has needlessly aggravated relations with the Israeli government by making it public that he is angry with the prime minister. More, he seems ready to veto the bipartisan Kirk-Menendez bill that would impose further sanctions on Tehran if it failed to sign an accord. This saps the negotiating power of the West. The relationship between the United States and Israel is too important, too fundamental to Middle Eastern peace, to be drawn into partisan feuding. Relations between Mr Obama and Mr Netanyahu have never been warm but the US should recognise that Iran cannot be blindly trusted. Tehran is already a leading sponsor of terrorism in the region; it is alarming to contemplate how nuclear weapons would transform this status. There is still time to build cheat-proof assurances into a future accord. This must be done to reassure Israel and all of Iran’s rightly nervous neighbours. Rigorous inspection, led by the International Atomic Energy Agency, must become the norm. Any attempt to conceal should be punished. Washington cannot deny itself the option of escalating sanctions. Iran, though ready for its own reasons to sit down with the West, remains a hostile power rather than a putative ally. *Adam Levick* Managing Editor, UK Media Watch.

 

The Muslim in this video from the British TV channel Sky News is speaking for an Islamic organization called CAGE.

CAGE, be it well noted, is run by former Guantanamo Bay inmates – and is an affiliate of Amnesty International. 

Amnesty International was taken over by extreme lefties decades ago.

Although Amnesty International is not mentioned, this interview illustrates how far the bizarre alliance between Islam and the Left has defiled and contorted a Western institution founded originally to defend the principle of individual freedom.

With his usual perception and wit, Mark Steyn writes:

The Islamic State [IS] released a 22-minute video showing Flight Lieutenant Muath al-Kasasbeh of the Royal Jordanian Air Force being doused in petrol and burned to death. It is an horrific way to die, and Flt Lt al-Kasasbeh showed uncommon bravery, standing stiff and dignified as the flames consumed him. And then he toppled, and the ISIS cameras rolled on, until what was left was charred and shapeless and unrecognizable as human. …

Even by the standards of his usual rote cookie-cutter shoulder-to-shoulder shtick that follows every ISIS beheading of western captives, the President could barely conceal his boredom at having to discuss the immolation of Flt Lt al-Kasasbeh:

Aaand it, I think, will redouble [pause] the vigilance aaand determination on the part of our global coalition to, uh, make sure that they are degraded and ultimately defeated. Ummmm. [Adopting a whimsical look] It also just indicates the degree to which whatever ideology they’re operating off of, it’s bankrupt. [Suppressing a smirk, pivoting to a much more important subject.] We’re here to talk about how to make people healthier and make their lives better.

The lack of passion – the bloodlessness – of Obama’s reaction to atrocity is always striking. He can’t even be bothered pretending that he means it. …

Given the general halfheartedness of Obama’s “coalition”, King Abdullah [of Jordan] could have been forgiven for also deciding to head for the exit.

Yet he understood the necessity of action. Obama, by contrast … does nothing. His war against ISIS was supposed to be one in which the US would not put “boots on the ground”, but instead leave that to our allies. The allies have the boots, but they could use some weapons, too. Obama has failed to supply the Kurds or anybody else with what they need to defeat our enemies. It’s becoming what they call a pattern of behavior. …

Obama cannot react to atrocities committed by jihadis because he is emotionally (we cannot say intellectually, because unlike his Democratic fans we do not think he has much of an intellect), on their side; which means that, whether he realizes it or not, he is on the side of evil.

Mark Steyn clearly sees that IS is evil. He goes on to consider why it is that tens of thousands of volunteers go eagerly to join its army and help it carry out its atrocities.

You’ll recall Hannah Arendt’s tired and misleading coinage “the banality of evil”, derived from her observation of Adolf Eichmann at his trial in Jerusalem.

We explain when and why she said it, and why it is misleading, in our post The cultivation of evil, the sickness of  Europe, July 20, 2010.

Mark Steyn quotes an earlier article of his:

Hitler felt obliged to be somewhat coy about just how final the final solution was. As Eichmann testified at his trial, when typing up the minutes of the Wannsee conference, “How shall I put it? Certain over-plain talk and jargon expressions had to be rendered into office language by me.” Even the Nazis were reluctant to spell it out.

The Germans didn’t have social media, but they had newsreels, and Hitler knew enough not to make genocide available to Pathé or “The March of Time”. He had considerations both domestic and foreign. Pre-Wannsee, in Poland and elsewhere, German troops had been ordered to shoot Jewish prisoners in cold blood, and their commanders reported back to Berlin that too many soldiers had found it sickening and demoralizing. So the purpose of “the final solution” was to make mass murder painless, at least for the perpetrators – more bureaucratic, removed, bloodless.

As for foreign considerations, Germany expected to be treated as a civilized power by its enemies, and that would not have been possible had they been boasting about genocide.

Seventy years on, the Islamic State has slipped free of even these minimal constraints. They advertize their barbarism to the world, because what’s the downside? Let’s say the guys who burned Flt Lt al-Kasasbeh are one day captured by Americans. They can look forward to a decade or two of a soft, pampering sojourn in the US justice system, represented by an A-list dream-team that’ll string things along until the administration figures it’ll cut its losses and ship them to Qatar in exchange for some worthless deserter.

As for the upside, “the banality of evil” may have its appeal for lower-middle-class Teuton bureaucrats, but the glamor of evil is a far more potent and universal brand. The Islamic State has come up with the ultimate social-media campaign: evil goes viral! At some level German conscripts needed to believe they were honorable soldiers in an honorable cause, no different from the British or Americans. But ISIS volunteers are signing up explicitly for the war crimes. The Islamic State burned Flt Lt al-Kasasbeh alive not only to kill him but to inspire the thousands of ISIS fanbois around the globe. …

For many of its beneficiaries, modern western life is bland, undemanding and vaguely unsatisfying. Some seek a greater cause, and turn to climate change or LGBTQWERTY rights. But others want something with a little more red meat to it. Jihad is primal in a way that the stodgy multiculti relativist mush peddled by Obama isn’t. And what the Islamic State is offering is Jihad 2.0, cranking up the blood-lust and rape and sex slavery and head-chopping and depravity in ways that make Osama-era al-Qaeda look like a bunch of pantywaists.

Success breeds success. The success of evil breeds darker evil. And the glamorization of evil breeds ever more of those “recent Muslim converts” and “lone wolves” and “self-radicalized extremists” in the news. That’s a Big Idea – a bigger idea, indeed, than Communism or Nazism.

Islam, as we know, means “submission”. But Xtreme-Sports Hyper-Islam, blood-soaked and baying, is also wonderfully liberating, offering the chance for dull-witted, repressed young men to slip free of even the most basic societal restraints. And, when the charms of the open road in Headchoppistan wear thin, your British and Canadian and Australian and European welfare checks will still be waiting for you on the doormat back home. …

As the world burns, Obama, uh, redoubles his, uh, vigilance, uh uh uh… Whatever.

Mark Steyn reminds us that “civilization is a fragile and unnatural state of affairs”. Its would-be destroyers now, in the early twenty-first century, are: the environmentalists; the world-government advocates and all the rest of the collectivists, whatever they call themselves –  progressives or socialists or communists; and, above all, most dangerous, already destroying as much as they can of the heritage of civilization, and winning battle after battle, encountering no effective opposition – Islam.

Obama won’t name it, not even by using the polite form of its name that most politicians and commentators use, “Islamism”.

But be assured that against something or other, he is redoubling his vigilance.

The politically correct establishments and media of the Western world protect Islam from criticism no matter what is done in its name. But they have made an exception of the Islamic State (IS/ISIS/ISIL). Or rather, they claim – ludicrously – that IS/ISIS/ISIL has “nothing to do with Islam”.

That exception explains why a documentary about Muslim men of IS/ISIS/ISIL selling Yezidi women and girls as slaves, was actually produced by the BBC.

Here’s the clip:

Today Taliban terrorists entered a school in Peshawar, Pakistan, wearing army uniforms, and massacred more then 140 people, mostly children between the ages of six and sixteen.

They poured gasoline over one of the teachers and burnt him to death in front of his class.

They cut off the heads of some of the children.

Meanwhile, this is what is happening in Britain, where the reigning monarch is head of the Church of England: –

We quote from an article by Hal G. P. Colebatch at the American Spectator:

Christians are being killed in tens of thousands in the Islamic World and Africa. A Christian woman in Pakistan is sentenced to be hanged for drinking from a Muslim cup. An official who tries to save her is murdered by his own bodyguard, who becomes a popular hero, and Jewish babies are murdered by more Islamic heroes in Jerusalem.

The Church of England, meanwhile, devotes its energies to attacking the British Education Secretary for plans to teach “British values” in schools, calling them potentially “dangerous, divisive and undemocratic”.  …

The government guidelines were drawn up after it was found schools had been infiltrated by Muslim extremists. [But] the church said it had major concerns about the use of inspectors to police instances of promoting the values that diverged from the politically correct ideas of equality and diversity. …

In October a small Christian school in Berkshire was failed by inspectors for lacking sufficient political correctness, and failing “to prepare pupils for life in modern Britain”. … The school was punished by officialdom for being too British.

The headmistress was questioned by government officials as to why she had not brought in a Muslim Imam to lead assemblies …

There was, of course, no suggestion of reciprocity — that Christian chaplains lead assemblies in Muslim schools … to prepare their pupils for life in modern Britain by teaching tolerance, diversity, and respect for other religions, for instance.

It is not hard to imagine how such a proposal would be received, though the recent revelations of the sexual abuse of 1,400 British children in the small city of Rotherham alone by “Asian” [ie Muslim] grooming gangs suggests there may be a need for wider education in such values. Surveys show that a large part of Britain’s younger Muslim population subscribes to extremist propositions, and has provided a large number of recruits for ISIS.

One wonders what would be the response if the Imam [who should be “brought in to lead assemblies”] advocated death for female adultery, child marriage, and judicial amputation for theft, female genital mutilation, stoning to death for homosexuals and the annihilation of Israel? …

Further, if Imams must lead assemblies, why should cults like the orange people or transcendental meditationists not get a look in, to say nothing of the rather larger religions Buddhism or Hinduism? Furthermore, the whole complex paradox of extending tolerance and pluralism to an absolutely intolerant and uncompromising creed is simply denied or ignored.

Another high-achieving primary school, this time in Lincolnshire, has been attacked and denied its “outstanding” rating by government quango Ofsted because the pupils are “too English and too white”. How can it be expected to have non-white pupils if none live in the area? …

The church’s criticism came from its chief education officer, Nigel Genders, who warned against allowing a government definition of “Britishness”.  The Church also published a submission to the government warning against such an allegedly “negative” and “divisive” approach.

A government spokesman defending what should not have needed defense, said: “The fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual respect and tolerance were set out by the Government four years ago and have been commonly used since.”

Four years ago? Funny, we thought they were British values for much longer than that: the rule of law from the signing of the Magna Carta by King John in 1215, and democracy of a kind since the Glorious Revolution of 1689 when William and Mary became the first constitutional monarchs, and individual respect and tolerance since the days of King Arthur and his Round Table.

[The government spokesman] continued, wetly, “We believe that all young people should develop an appreciation of these values as this will help them to contribute to and succeed in modern Britain.” …

A senior Anglican Bishop, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, a former Bishop of Oxford, said Prince Charles’s future coronation service should be opened with a reading from the Koran.

The gesture would, he claimed, be a “creative act of accommodation” to make Muslims feel “embraced” by the nation.

Hal Colebatch expresses the irritation and disgust we also feel at the Bishop’s “patronizing arrogance combined with cultural shame and masochism”.

He told peers that the Church of England should take the lead in “exercising its historic position in a hospitable way”.

He claimed further that at a civic service in Bristol Cathedral last year authorities had agreed to a reading of the opening passage of the Koran before the beginning of the Christian ritual. This, he said, “was a brilliant creative act of accommodation that made the Muslim high sheriff feel, as she said …

Pause there a moment to notice that the Muslim high sheriff is a she! Also that the opening passage of the Koran is the Shahada – the declaration of faith, the words that are said by a convert to Islam to turn him/her instantly into a Muslim. Did the congregation repeat the words? If so – gosh, Nigel! – do you realize that the entire congregation in the cathedral that day has now become Muslim?

… warmly embraced but did not alienate the core congregation”.

No – the poor ingenuous dears were totally unaware of what was happening to them.

“That principle of hospitality can and should be reflected in many public ceremonies, including the next coronation service.”

Perhaps, to make the embracing even more complete and ultimate, the two Muslims who showed their appreciation of the principle of British hospitality by beheading one of Prince Charles’s soldiers, Lee Rigby, in a London street, could place the crown on the new King Charles’s head. Or should ISIS’s chief headsman be flown in to do the job?

What of Omar Bakri Muhammad, the extremist preacher who is said to have played role in radicalizing the murderers of Lee Rigby and who has attempted to justify the killing of those fighting against ISIS jihadis, using Facebook to say that it is sometimes necessary to kill women and children sheltering in schools and hospitals? What could be more inclusive and multicultural than a place for him at the Coronation with the ISIS executioners?

Or they could invited the Taliban beheaders of children to enhance the inclusiveness of that historic occasion.

Just a suggestion.

Why are Western leaders reluctant to face the truth about Islam? Why are they “in denial” that Islam is the greatest threat to civilization in the world today?

Why are they anxious to pretend that the Islamic State (IS/ISIS/ISIL) “has nothing to do with Islam”?

Robert Spencer writes at PJ Media:

Last Tuesday, Congressman Brad Sherman (D-CA) declared that the State Department “ought to hire one or two experts in Islamic jurisprudence,” so as to refute the ideology of the Islamic State. “One must be able to turn to the Quran, to turn to the Hadith and show how ISIS is making a mockery of a great world religion,” he said.

The Congressman could  try reading the Koran and the hadith himself. He doesn’t seem to have thought of that.

This followed just days after Pope Francis characterized moderate Muslim spokesmen as saying, “They (Muslims) say: ‘No, we are not this [i.e., jihad terrorists], the Koran is a book of peace, it is a prophetic book of peace.’”

Same goes for him.

The “prophetic book of peace” has been in the news recently, but not always in ways that show “how ISIS is making a mockery of a great world religion”. In fact, it has been quite the contrary:

1. Islamic State: Qur’an-waving gunmen murder 39 Indian workers

IndiaToday reported that in Mosul last summer, gunmen of the Islamic State murdered thirty-nine workers from India, after first inquiring to make sure they were not Muslims. All the while, in a vision rivaling the wildest leftist fantasies about “Bible-thumpers,” the gunmen were clutching copies of the Qur’an.

Somehow these gunmen got the crazy, Islamophobic idea that their actions were in accord with the teachings of the book they were holding. Yet Barack Obama and John Kerry and David Cameron and Theresa May and a host of others assure us that the actions of such people have nothing whatsoever to do with Islam. Who could be right? How to tell? It’s a conundrum!

Suggestion: how about read the Qur’an and see what it says? “Slay the pagans wherever you find them” (9:5) — ah, but only “Islamophobes” quote such verses. It’s a “prophetic book of peace”,  and no doubt these Qur’an-thumping gunmen were making a mockery of its teachings, right?

2. Boko Haram leader: “We follow the Qur’an … in the land of Allah”

Well, maybe not – or at least it can be said that all too many Muslims seem not to have gotten the “prophetic book of peace” memo.

After recent reports that he had been killed, Abubakar Shekau, the leader of the Nigerian jihad group Boko Haram, roared back defiantly in a new video. “Here I am, alive,” he proclaimed, “I will only die the day Allah takes my breath.” Shekau added: “We are running our caliphate, our Islamic caliphate. We follow the Qur’an … in the land of Allah.”

He follows the Qur’an? After massacring Christians, torching churches, and taking hundreds of non-Muslim girls as sex slaves, he claims to be following the Qur’an? Brad Sherman, as well as Obama, Pope Francis, and the rest, better hope that he is wrong about that, but unfortunately, he has many Muslims on his side, agreeing with him.

3. Jihad group quotes Qur’an to justify massacre of Christians

One of them is the al-Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage. Last Tuesday, al-Shabaab jihadis raided a quarry inside Kenya, separated the Muslims from the Christians, and murdered thirty-six Christians.

In a statement justifying these murders, Rage exulted:

“We are uncompromising in our beliefs, relentless in our pursuit, ruthless against the disbelievers and we will do whatever necessary to defend our Muslim brethren suffering from Kenya’s aggression.”

“Ruthless against the disbelievers” is from the Qur’an. The full passage is: “Muhammad is Allah’s apostle. Those who follow him are ruthless against the disbelievers but merciful to one another” (48:29).

But perhaps Rage is blinded by his namesake vice – so blinded as to think that a command to be “ruthless against the disbelievers” means to be ruthless against the disbelievers, rather than to treat them to hummus and pita at outreach meetings. Yet unfortunately, others have read Rage’s guiding book, missed the “book of peace” passages, and come to similar conclusions.

4. Kenya: Muslims murder 28 non-Muslims who couldn’t recite Qur’an verses

In fact, only a few days before their quarry murders, al-Shabaab did the same thing on a bus in northern Kenya. A passenger on the bus, Ahmed Mahat, recalled that the jihadis ordered the passengers to get off the bus. “When we got down, passengers were separated according to Somali and non-Somalis. The non-Somalis were ordered to read some verses of the holy Qur’an, and those who failed to read were ordered to lie down. One by one they were shot in the head at point blank range.”

That kind of action can make a mockery of a great religion in a hurry, and for it to happen twice in a week only underscores the cognitive dissonance between Western leaders’ view of the Qur’an and what it really is.

But surely things must be better in the West, no? No:

5. UK: Qur’an-quoting Muslim plotted to murder Tony Blair

A young Muslim named Erol Incedal recently plotted to murder former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife.

When Tony Blair was Prime Minitser, he once stated in public that he had “read the Qur’an  twice”, and still was of the opinion that it taught peace. Lying always came easily to Mr Blair. On that occasion, either he was lying about having read the (ill-written, boring, thoroughly unpleasant) book, or he had read it and was lying about what he found in it.

When searching Incedal’s home, investigators found a notebook that included this:

“Oh you the believers, fight those of the infidel who are near to you. Why do you not fight in Allah’s cause for those oppressed men, women and children who cry out: ‘Rescue us from this town.’”

Ironically, in light of Blair’s fulsome praise for the Qur’an, Incedal’s note is an amalgamation of these Qur’an passages (not that this has anything to do with Islam):

“O ye who believe! Fight those of the disbelievers who are near to you, and let them find harshness in you, and know that Allah is with those who keep their duty (unto Him)” (9:123) …

These Qur’an passages are truly inspirational, but what they inspire is not exactly what Pope Francis, Barack Obama, Brad Sherman and the rest hope for or expect. Yet these five are by no means singular in their view of the Qur’an, and as long as the West persists in refusing to recognize the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat, there are only going to be more of them.

We know why Obama will see, hear, speak no truth about Islam. He loves Islam.

But why do the others cling to their illusion that Islam is “a religion of peace” against overwhelming and terrifying evidence to the contrary?

Your theories are invited.

New political parties have been rising in many European countries to oppose established policies of both leftist and conservative governments, particularly policies towards the European Union and immigration.

Most of the new parties are on the Right, but recently some have been formed – or have quite suddenly grown from being inconsequential groupings into forces to be reckoned with  – on the Left.

The newly aggressive parties of the Left are mainly in the South, in countries at the receiving end of EU subsidies, angry that the subsidies are not substantial enough.

The new parties of the Right are mainly in the North, in countries at the paying end of the system, angry that they have to subsidize the failing economies of the South.

That sections of the Left should see how badly Europe needs a strategy for survival, should find fault with the EU, and object to unending immigration of dependents into their already hard-pressed welfare states, is a startling development. It means that new political patterns of alignment and opposition are emerging.

In the following article, which we quote from Gatestone, Peter Martino writes about the new parties’ concern with the adverse economic effects of EU membership. He only touches on immigration as a factor in the intensifying discontent which prompts the formation of new political organizations, movements and agendas, but it is in fact quite as hot an issue.

Last week, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) won a landmark victory in the Rochester & Strood by-election. With this win, UKIP secured its second Member of Parliament. The UKIP candidate, Mark Reckless, won 42.1% of the votes, thrashing the Conservatives (34.8%), Labour (16.8%) and the Liberal Democrats (0.9%). It was the first time ever that UKIP stood in Rochester & Strood. The party won votes from all the major parties. The Conservatives lost 14.4% of the votes, Labour 11.7% and the Liberal Democrats a whopping 15.5%.

UKIP is expected to do very well in the British general elections next May. Last month, a poll predicted the party could win up to 25% of the vote in these elections. In the 2010 general elections, the party had only 3.1%.

UKIP stands for the preservation of the Britain’s national identity. It opposes the European Union (EU) and wants Britain to remain a sovereign nation rather than become a state of a federal Europe. The party is also critical of mass immigration, in particular from Eastern Europe. Though Nigel Farage, the UKIP leader, carefully avoids the issue of Islam, the party has also become the refuge of voters who worry about Islamization. Above all, however, the party embodies the dissatisfaction of the electorate with the traditional political establishment.

As such, UKIP is part of a broad trend that can currently be perceived all over Western Europe.

In Spain, a poll this week said that Podemos, a brand new party that was established only nine months ago, is currently the largest party in the country with 28.3% of the vote. The governing conservative Partido Popular of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy would finish second with 26.3% and the Socialist Party would get only 20.1%. Three years ago, in the November 2011 general elections, the Partido Popular won 44.6% of the votes.

Unlike UKIP, Podemos is a party that clearly belongs to the left of the political spectrum. Podemos (the Spanish for We can) was founded by “anti-capitalist” academics and trade unionists who want to “oppose the dominating EU politics from the left”. Unlike UKIP, Podemos does not want to abolish the EU. On the contrary, since Spain is receiving billions of euros in EU subsidies, a majority of the Spaniards clearly want their country to remain an EU member state.

However, the party opposes the austerity policies that the EU is imposing on Spain as a prerequisite for the continuation of the flow of EU subsidies. Both the Spanish Socialist Party and Prime Minister Rajoy’s Partido Popular are perceived by voters as implementing the same set of EU-prescribed policies.

In this regard, Podemos does resemble UKIP, which also accuses the British political establishment of simply implementing EU mandated policies. In Britain’s case, the dissatisfaction with the EU stems mostly from British taxpayers having to pay billions to the EU, which are then transferred to countries in the south of Europe [such as Spain -ed], where governments use them to fund welfare programs. In this sense, the rise of leftist tax-and-spend parties (or rather tax-other-countries-and-spend parties), such as Podemos, reinforces the rise of parties such as UKIP in the north of Europe.

Indeed, all along the Mediterranean, parties opposing the EU-mandated austerity policies are growing spectacularly.

One of the keynote speakers at Podemos’ recent first-ever party congress was Alexis Tsipras, the leader of Greece’s neo-communist party Syriza. In last May’s European elections, Syriza became Greece’s biggest party with 26.5% of the votes, ahead of the governing Nea Demokratia party of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras. Syriza draws on the same kind of sentiments as Podemos and is popular for exactly the same reasons.

The same is true of Italy’s Five Star Movement, led by the comedian Beppe Grillo, which, with 21.2% of the vote, became the country’s second largest party in last May’s European elections.

And the same is even true for the Front National of Marine Le Pen in France. Ms Le Pen claims that without the euro, the EU’s common currency, there would be “no need for austerity”. Drawing on anti-EU sentiments, the Front National became the largest French party in last May’s European elections with 24.8% of the vote.

The popularity of these parties is still rising. A recent poll in France revealed that Marine Le Pen might win the next French presidential elections, not just in the first round, but also in the decisive second round. It is the first time ever that the FN leads in a presidential poll against France’s two major parties, the Socialist PS and the Center-Right UMP.

In the countries to the north, however, the popularity of the parties opposing the EU subsidization of the southern countries is rising equally spectacularly.

In the Netherlands, the anti-establishment Party for Freedom (PVV) of Geert Wilders is currently the biggest party in the polls. Wilders has consistently opposed the bailing out of countries such as Greece and Spain with Dutch taxpayers’ money.

In neighboring Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a party established last year to oppose eurozone bailouts, is shaking up politics with its astonishing wins in recent state elections.

In Sweden, the Sweden Democrats (SD), opposing both immigration and the EU, won 13% of the vote in last September’s general elections, but their popularity keeps rising. Last week, an SD spokesman said the party is currently expected to win up to 18% of the vote.

All across Europe, the electorate is deeply dissatisfied and disillusioned with both the Conservative and the Social-Democrat parties of the political establishment. Voters no longer see much difference between the traditional political protagonists, who are perceived as imposing an EU agenda that, for various reasons, is seen as bad for the country.

In Europe judging by the polls, political landslides are on the way.

Britain is becoming a Muslim country.

An American conservative writer, Bethany Blankley, recently told this story of her visit to the (still) United Kingdom.

As an American Anglophile who lived in London in 1995 and in Edinburgh ten years later, I was greatly dismayed to witness how much the U.K. has changed for the worse during my recent trip to London shortly after Remembrance Day.

The highlight of my trip was to see the 888, 246 poppies and pay tribute to those who died in Afghanistan and Iraq, whose faces adorned small crosses lining the pavement alongside Westminster Abby. With [the TV series] Peaky Blinders’ season two finale still fresh on my mind, I couldn’t help but recognize the striking differences and similarities between 1914 and 2014 Britain.

Peaky Blinders, set in circa 1920 Birmingham, portrays a primarily white protestant and catholic community hit hard by the Great War.

2014 Birmingham bears no resemblance as Muslim children outnumber Christian [read “indigenous”] children by double. The same is true for other cities throughout the UK: Bradford, Leicester, Luton in Bedfordshire, Slough in Berkshire, and the London boroughs of Newham, Redbridge and Tower Hamlets, where nearly to-thirds of children are Islamic.

Additionally, over the last decade Muslim immigrants and converts have more than doubled in the UK. … More than 5,000 Brits convert to Islam each year in the UK. Muslim births outnumber non-Muslim births in some areas by 8:1, keeping in line with the Hadith, “Marry, for I will outnumber peoples by you.”

By 2050 (some argue within ten years), the UK will be a majority Muslim nation.

It is worth following that link. It gives chilling information from the Census Bureau.

In Europe, the majority of Muslims are on welfare. In the UK, The Sun recently exposed Imam Anjem Choudary and others, urging Muslims to claim unemployment to have more time to plan jihad against non-Muslims. Exploiting the welfare system is justifiable because [he said:], “The normal situation is to take money from the kuffar [non-believer]. You work, give us the money.” 

The irony here is that the original reason – or excuse – for the importation of unlimited numbers of immigrants from Islamic countries into Britain (and into all western European countries), was that they were needed as a work force. The indigenous population was reproducing at too low a rate to sustain the welfare state. None of this was at any time explained to the general public. The media did not do their job and provide the information. Either they were complicit with the bureaucracy in concealing these facts, or the bureaucracy successfully kept it even from them.

Ever more people on welfare, and still a shrinking work force – surely a guaranteed formula for bankruptcy?

Increased Muslim populations is directly linked to increased crime. Muslims control the prisons and are actively seeking to destroy democracy by creating “no-go zones” within de facto Shari’a judicial systems, organized under the Islamic Sharia Council.

Only a few years ago, on July 7, 2011, exactly six years after the London Tube Bombings (when Muslim suicide bombers killed 52 people and injured 800 others), the Islamic Emirates Project was launched. It seeks to transform Muslim communities (specifically twelve British cities) into independent areas operating solely under Shari’a law, and it is succeeding.

In one strategy document they state, “The Only Identity for Muslims is Islam … In no shape or form can a Muslim support any form of nationalism such as promoting Britishness.”

Yet, the UK continues to welcome with open arms boatloads of Trojan horses onto its shores and its people live in willful denial, like their former Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who sold engines to Germany that were later used by German planes to blitzkrieg London.

I recently spoke to a self-identifying Christian who seeks to encourage British Christians involvement in British politics. I asked him about Britain’s most serious threat: Islam and immigration. With a straight face and serious demeanor, he told me extremists like Jihad John who had just decapitated another white Christian American humanitarian aid and ex-Army ranger, represent a minority of British Muslims who are “actually peaceful”.

He is not alone. Every Brit I spoke to, from tour guide to hotel staff to airport supervisor to commuter, expressed the sentiment that “Islam is a peaceful religion”.

Such sentiment could not be more ironic as Britain is honoring its war dead during the 100-year anniversary of the Great War. Only Winston Churchill sounded the alarm bells in 1935 when Hitler broke the Treaty of Versailles and began militarizing and taking land, with the support of 99 percent of German voters.

In 1936, Hitler began a skillful “Diplomatic Revolution”, negotiating with European countries, publicly expressing his desire for “peace”. Muslims today are propagating the same lie through Qur’an sanctioned deceit known as Taqqiya.

A similar strategy to Hitler’s has been implemented throughout Britain and its government and law enforcement are turning a blind eye.

Like Hitler’s militarization— Muslim Patrols are replacing British police, walking the streets harassing non-Muslims shouting, “this is a Muslim area”.

Muslims ignore British civil and criminal laws, enforcing violence against women and children. Child prostitution, rape, forced marriage, abuse, and genital mutilation are all Qur’an sanctioned.

Muslim leaders like Mohammed Shahid Akhtar, Imam of Birmingham’s Central Jamia Masjid Ghamkol Sharif Mosque, argue child marriage must be enforced. Upon learning a teenager did not want to be married he said, “She’s 14. By Sharia, grace of Allah, she’s legal to get married.” Likewise, Sheikh Maulana Abu Sayeed, president of the Islamic Sharia Council in Britain, explains men who rape their wives should not be prosecuted because “sex is part of marriage”.

In Oxfordshire, where I visited Churchill’s grave, a pedophile ring went unreported by a social worker and police for at least ten years. These public officials knew a sex trafficking ring of nearly 2,000 children existed in their jurisdiction, perpetrating rape of girls as young as 11, drugging and holding them against their will in care homes (public housing) and later forcing many to have abortions.

Yet public officials did nothing because they didn’t want to be labeled as “racist” or “Islamaphobic” because all perpetrators were Muslim men.

Likewise, the Birmingham City Council suppressed information for 23 years of a sex trafficking operation targeting children specifically linked to Muslim cab drivers.

Like Hitler’s indoctrination of school children, Muslims are doing the same. For example, in 13 Birmingham public schools children are being taught “Christians lie” …

Christians as Christians do lie, of course, but so do Muslims as Muslims …

… and “wives must have sex or go to hell”.  Non-Muslim parents’ concerns have been ignored and the Department of Education Superintendent insists the Islamization of its school system “is not a police matter”.

But it surely is a Department of Education matter.

Numerous examples of Muslim violence exist in the UK, and Europe. France, followed by the Netherlands and Belgium, have the largest percentage of Muslims in the EU, with over 25 percent living in major metropolitan areas, all of which are experiencing unprecedented levels of crime. Europe’s Muslim population is projected to exceed 58 million by 2030.

These facts are no small matter. The Brits I spoke to claimed Muslim extremists are only a small percentage and that British Muslims account for less than 25 percent of their population. But in 1936, nearly 6 million Germans were members of the Nazi party— representing only 7 percent of the German population. That 7 percent caused more than 50 million deaths by 1945.

There is little time and much at stake. …

British citizens must demand their political and legal systems eliminate Shari’a councils …  and oppose the police department’s inane attempt to become “culturally diverse” by hiring convicted criminals instead of prioritizing curtailing crime.

That’s another link worth following. Astoundingly, it is true. The police in Britain are hiring criminals. Foxes to guard the chicken coops.

It seems that terror of being labeled “racist’ has driven the British police force mad.

My grandfathers and their brothers and the millions of British war dead did not fight for democratic freedoms to be replaced by Shari’a law. Either rule of law matters or it doesn’t. The European Court of Human Rights ruled more than once that Shar’ia law is “incompatible with the requirements of a democratic society”, and opposes the “values embodied in the Geneva Convention”.

100 years after the Great War Europeans and Americans do not need appeasement or denial. They need leaders like Churchill, Thatcher, or Reagan, who steadfastly name and fight evil. For them evil was Nazism or Communism.

Today evil is Islam.