The Maldives: No debate on Sharia punishments, because “there is nothing to debate about in a matter clearly stated in the religion of Islam”

Protesters called for the arrest of the UN human rights chief for criticizing and calling for debate on flogging for extra-marital sex, as is called for in Qur’an 24:2: “The woman and the man guilty of adultery or fornication,- flog each of them with a hundred stripes: Let not compassion move you in their case, in a matter prescribed by Allah, if ye believe in Allah and the Last Day: and let a party of the Believers witness their punishment.”

Such debates have been branded “anti-Islamic issues,” and the implication is clear that to challenge Sharia is to challenge Allah, which could conceivably bring its own set of charges (Qur’an 5:33) at some point in the Maldives’ gallop toward full Sharia.

The phenomenon on display here is also the major obstacle to reforms in Islamic countries where human rights in general, and the rights of non-believers and women are concerned. “Maldives won’t allow debates on anti-Islamic issues: Foreign Minister,” by Ahmed Hamdhoon for Haveeru News Service, November 26 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

The government will not allow debates to be held in the Maldives on issues that are against the fundamentals of Islam, Foreign Minister Ahmed Naseem said today.

The minister’s comments come two days after the UN human rights chief called for a public debate in the Maldives on the practice of flogging women found guilty of extra-marital sex.

Minister Naseem told Haveeru that the government would not open a basic Islamic principle such as flogging for public debate in the Maldives despite requests to do so.

“What’s there to discuss about flogging? There is nothing to debate about in a matter clearly stated in the religion of Islam. No one can argue with God,” he said.

“Our foreign ministry will not allow that to happen.”

Naseem stressed that the government will not act against the views expressed by Islamic Minister Dr Abdul Majeed Abdul Bari on Navi Pillay’s comments.

“The government will follow the recommendations given by the Islamic Ministry on religious issues. The government will not stand up against the views expressed by Bari, which is the view of the government [regarding Pillay’s remarks],” he said.

“Maldives is a 100 percent Muslim country.”

During her four-day visit to the country, Pillay told parliamentarians on Thursday that flogging women convicted of extra-marital sex is one of the most inhumane and degrading forms of violence against women.

“I strongly believe that a public debate is needed in Maldives on this issue of major concern,” she said.

Pillay later told reporters that she held discussions with President Mohamed Nasheed, ministers and the judiciary on how to end the practice of flogging in the Maldives.

“At the very least, pending more permanent changes in the law, it should be possible for the government and the judiciary to engineer a practical moratorium on flogging,” she proposed.

She also called on Maldivian authorities to remove the “discriminatory” constitutional provision that requires every citizen to be a Muslim.

“I would again urge a debate on that to open up the benefits of the constitution to all and to remove that discriminatory provision,” she said.

Meanwhile, the UN human rights chief’s comments sparked protests in capital Male with some calling for her arrest.

Protestors surrounded the UN Building yesterday, condemning Pillay’s remarks and demanding an apology from the UN and parliamentarians.

Pillay’s visit was the first such visit to the Maldives by a UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

From Jihadwatch

Maldives: Catholic arrested for having a Bible and rosary in his home

thanks to Jihadwatch

One will recall the massive economic boycott and sanctions leveled against South Africa for the institution of apartheid there. The countries that practice Sharia’s own, centuries-older version of apartheid, denying freedom of conscience, religion, worship, and equal status and rights, should not get a pass.

“Indian Catholic jailed in the Maldives over a Bible and a rosary,” by Nirmala Carvalho for Asia News, October 7:

Mumbai (AsiaNews) – Shijo Kokkattu, an Indian Catholic from Kerala, has been languishing in a Maldives prison for more than a week because he had a Bible and a rosary at his home. Both items are banned on the archipelago.

“The lack of justice and the degree of religious intolerance” on the islands “are reflected by the actions of the Maldives government,” said Sajan K George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC). “This is the worst form of religious persecution. The Indian government should demand an apology for the shabby treatment inflicted on one of its citizens.”

Islam is state religion in the Maldives. There is no freedom of worship. In 2008, a constitutional amendment denied non-Muslims the right to obtain Maldivian citizenship.

Shijo, 30, has taught at Raafainu School on Raa Atoll for the past two years. Recently, whilst transferring some data from his pen drive to the school laptop, he accidentally copied Marian songs and a picture of Mother Mary into the system. Some teachers reported the matter to the police who raided his home and found a Bible and a rosary in his possession.

Shijo Kokkattu’s case shows the paradox of the Maldives, a nation that “claims to be a major tourist destination, yet arrests innocent people,” George said. “This shows its intolerance and discrimination towards non-Muslims as well as its restrictions on freedom of conscience and religion.”

“Religious freedom remains a taboo on the archipelago,” the GCIC president explained. “Muslims refuse all other forms of worship other than the one approved by the state. Doing the opposite means arrest. Kneeling, folding one’s hands or using religious symbols like crosses, candles, pictures or statues can lead to government action.”

For George, “All this is a clear violation of universal human rights. If Muslims living in non-Muslim countries can enjoy religious rights, the spirit of reciprocity should apply to countries like the Maldives and Saudi Arabia.”

Germany on the Brink

by Robert Spencer (more by this author)

In Stuttgart, Germany, last week, violent Leftist and Islamic supremacist demonstrators violently menaced anti-jihad activists – giving a sobering picture of where Germany, Europe, and the U.S. as well are headed if we don’t stand up and resolutely defend our freedom now.

 

Thursday afternoon I spoke in Stuttgart at the invitation of the human rights group Pax Europa. The event was well advertised, and so the thuggish Leftist/Islamic supremacist alliance mobilized and was out in full force.

 

About a thousand protesters from the frequently violent hard-Left Antifa group showed up, along with around 500 German riot police. “Antifa” stands for “Anti-fascism,” but if any fascism was on display, it was from the “anti-fascists,” who did their best to destroy the Pax Europa event. They were menacing people, starting fights, banging drums, blowing whistles, and chanting Leftist and Communist agitprop slogans. One young man from Antifa came up to me as I was standing right in front of a line of German police and said, “You’re lucky there are so many police here today.” He was not expressing solidarity.

 

Pax Europa had planned a full program featuring Middle Eastern Christian musicians, a Coptic Christian activist, and others, so as to highlight the hollowness of the Islamic supremacist narrative of Muslim victimhood and anti-jihadist racism. But the police ordered the Pax Europa organizers to drastically reduce the scope of their event. Everyone was restricted to ten minutes only. Several participants opted not to appear, in light of the manifest danger. Antifa people were attacking supporters of Pax Europa. I saw several individuals being chased by rabid Leftist gangs. At least one man went to the hospital.

 

The police used loudspeakers to call on Antifa twice to disperse, as Pax Europa had lawfully reserved the space for their event. The Antifa people responded only by moving forward, chanting slogans, banging their drums, and holding aloft the usual Leftist kitsch — Che Guevara, the hammer and sickle, the Palestinian flag, signs denouncing Islamophobia, etc. The police moved them back a bit but did not ask them again to disperse, and allowed the Pax Europa event to begin.

 

It was an incredible din. We had loudspeakers that appeared to be able to reach the considerable crowd behind the protesters, but the Antifa thugs did all they could to drown us out: the drums got louder, the vuvuzelas came out, they were blowing whistles, and of course they were screaming and yelling. They also started throwing things: bottles, ice eggs, excrement and more. One bottle narrowly missed the Coptic activist’s head and crashed onto the stage — other bottles crashed at our feet. Several speakers were hit with eggs. The manure they threw was all over the stage floor.

 

It was like looking into the pit of hell. Here were young people passionately committed to their cause and believing it to be that of justice and freedom, and they are eager and willing useful idiots for the most radically intolerant ideology on the planet. So when my turn came to speak, I addressed them, and told them just that. I told them they wouldn’t like what happened to them when their friends took power, but by then it would be too late for them.

 

The menace continued. Antifa burned the truck belonging to the company that set up the stage for Pax Europa’s Thursday rally. Friday night they found out the hotel that the courageous anti-jihad politician René Stadtkewitz was planning to stay in when he came to Stuttgart to announce the founding of the local branch of his new Freedom Party; they reportedly broke the hotel’s windows and painted threatening messages on its walls. Also yesterday, I spoke to a Pax Europa meeting at a location in Stuttgart; Antifa thugs found out the location after the meeting had ended, and stormed and surrounded the place. Thirty-six were arrested.

 

But it is not too late for Europe. I spoke at Stadtkewitz’s Freedom Party event on Sunday, and found a crowd made all the more resolute and determined by the violent intimidation to which they had been subjected. They realize that freedom hangs in the balance today in Germany, and in Europe and the U.S. as well, and they’re prepared to take a stand.

 

That was a great source of hope. Saturday morning I had the great honor of meeting with Susanne Zeller-Hirzel, one of the last surviving members of the White Rose, the nonviolent resistance movement that worked against Hitler’s regime in Nazi Germany in 1942 and 1943. We discussed numerous parallels between the Nazi era in Germany and the advance of Islamic supremacism today — as we saw in Stuttgart Thursday, Nazis and Islamic supremacists are remarkably similar in their taste for using force to shut down opponents they can’t out-argue.

 

It’s time for the White Rose to flower again in Germany. And as Islamic supremacism continues to advance in the U.S. also, we are not far behind.

Mr. Spencer is director of Jihad Watch and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad, Stealth Jihad and The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran (all from Regnery-a HUMAN EVENTS sister company).

Muslimisches Gebet in Rom… zu Ostern!

Danke an SOS Heimat

Bilder von betende Moslems auf Straßen kennt man aus Frankreich oder vor kurzem aus Frankfurt, wenn Islamisten dazu aufrufen.
Just am Karfreitag versammelten sich erstmals im (einst) heiligem Rom auf der Piazza Venezia Muslime zu ihrem Freitagsgebet!
Unser befreundeter Blog Dolomitengeist berichtet:

Auf einem großen blauen Plane zugewandt Richtung  Mekka, beteten  etwa hundert Muslime, darunter viele Mitglieder der Bengali Cultural Association der römischen Dhuumcatu, in den Gärten der Piazza San Marco, nur einige Meter entfernt von der  Piazza Venezia.
Der Imam, Mizanur Rahman, sang den Ruf zum Gebet, das nach dem Ritual der Waschung am Freitag begann.
Dies war das erste Gebet  im „öffentlichen“ islamischen Rom  von  etwa 50 Männer und Frauen getrennt. (So wie auch Frauen und Männer in Moscheen beim Gebet getrennt werden.)

Die Initiative der Muslime hatte ein Ziel:
zum  gewährleisten der Freiheit ihrer Relgionsausübung, einer wirtschaftlichen Unterstützung, die  Stromrechnung für die Gebetsräume  soll die Stadt übernehmen, einen Friedhof für die Muslime, und die Anerkenung von muslimischen Feiertagen und Ferien nach den
islamischen Kalender.

Also wieder ihre üblichen Forderungen – es ist nur mehr eine Frage der Zeit, bis Muslime auch auf den Straßen Wiens oder Graz,…. ihre Teppiche auspacken werden!

Hier nun ein Video von gestern aus Rom:

Siehe…

Sharia and the US Constitution

This is for all those who think that the United States Constitution is strong enough to protect against the imposition of shariah law:

Thanks to ACT! for America for this analysis

March 18, 2011

Florida Judge orders Muslims to follow sharia law!

The eyes and ears of ACT! for America are everywhere. Make sure you’re sitting down when you read what we became aware of this week!

In Tampa, Florida, a dispute arose over who controls the funds a mosque received in 2008 from an eminent domain proceeding.

Former trustees of the mosque are claiming in court they have the right to the funds. Current mosque leaders are disputing that claim.

The current mosque leaders want the case decided according to secular, Florida civil law, and their attorney has been vigorously arguing the case accordingly.

The former trustees of the mosque want the case decided according to sharia law.

Here’s the kicker.

The judge recently ruled “This case will proceed under Ecclesiastical Islamic law,” (sharia law), “pursuant to the Qur’an.”

You can read the judge’s ruling here.

Now it’s not unusual for a dispute to arise within a religious institution and for a court to order a mediation or arbitration, in order to resolve this without the court having to render its own judgment.

But what makes this case unusual, and highly troubling, is that a group of Muslim leaders—the CURRENT mosque leaders—who do NOT want to be subject to sharia law, are being compelled to do so by an American judge!

This is reminiscent of the 2009 New Jersey case, where a Muslim woman sought a restraining order, in civil court, against her Muslim husband, who was raping her several times a day. The judge denied the restraining order because, in his opinion, the husband did not commit a crime because he was following his Islamic beliefs.

In the New Jersey case, and now in this recent case in Tampa, Muslims found themselves being subjected to sharia law against their will.

Last October, ACT! for America aired a radio ad across Oklahoma in support of the referendum preventing Oklahoma judges from using sharia law in their decisions. The referendum won with 70% support.

The point we made then, which now bears repeating, is that such legislation protects non-Muslims AND Muslims alike from being subjected to sharia law.

When someone claims that opposition to sharia law in America is “anti-Muslim,” make sure you tell them about the New Jersey woman and the mosque leaders in Tampa.

Jihadwatch adds:

What was that Hamas-linked CAIR and other Islamic supremacist groups were saying about how it was utterly fanciful that Sharia would ever be used to judge cases in American courts?

Itamar and Islamic Jew-Hatred – The Unnamed Incitement

Rightside News

by Andrew Bostom

The “holy” Koranic imagery of Jews shared by Arab and non-Arab Muslims, children and adults, alike.

Friday night 3/11/11 in Itamar, Samaria, parents, Udi, 36, and Ruth Fogel, 35, as well as three of their six children, Yoav, 11, Elad, 4, and the 3-month old infant Hadas, were all brutally stabbed to death. The infant Hadas was in fact decapitated. Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, terrorist wing of the Fatah faction headed by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, claimed responsibility for the savage attack, characterizing it as a “heroic operation.”

Saturday evening (3/12/11) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the Itamar massacre. Netanyahu’s eloquent remarks included a demand

… that the Palestinian Authority stop the incitement that is conducted on a daily basis in their schools, mosques and the media under their control.  The time has come to stop this double-talk in which the Palestinian Authority outwardly talks peace, and allows – and sometimes leads – incitement at home.

But Netanyahu failed to break a universally imposed, self-destructive taboo. He refused to identify the ubiquitous, if unnamed raw material for Palestinian Muslim “incitement”— the jihad and Jew-hating motifs from Islam’s mainstream, orthodox canon.

For the past 90 years, Palestinian Arab Muslim religious and political leaders, beginning with the founders of this jihadist movement, Hajj Amin el-Husseini and Izzad-Din al-Qassam, have imbued their rhetoric, unabashedly with the extensive jihadism and Jew-hatred—including apocalyptic,  annihilationist themes—featured in Islam’s foundational texts: the Koran, hadith (words and deeds of Islam’s prophet Muhammad), and sira (the earliest pious Muslim biographers of Muhammad).

Sheikh Tayseer al-Tamimi, who currently heads the Palestinian Authority’s Sharia (Islamic Law) Courts, in 1994, then chairman of the PA’s Islamic Law Council, stated,

The Jews are destined to be persecuted, humiliated, and tortured forever, and it is a Muslim duty to see to it that they reap their due. No petty arguments must be allowed to divide us. Where Hitler failed, we must succeed.

Hamas cleric Wael Al-Zarad during a television program which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on February 28, 2008 intoned the following about the Jews of Israel: “By Allah, if each and every Arab spat on them, they would drown in Arab spit.” Wael Al-Zarad’s seemingly hallucinatory statement also included this allegation,

From the dome of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, they proclaim that Ezra the Scribe is the son of God.

The reference to Ezra is actually a false, intentionally defamatory Koranic accusation (Koran 9:30) against Jews, citing a claim which Jews, in fact, have never made.

But the crux of Al-Zarad’s remarks explained that the Muslims’ blood vengeance against the Jews, “will only subside with their [the Jews] annihilation, Allah willing, because they tried to kill our Prophet several times.”

These allegations are part of a central antisemitic motif in the Koran which decrees an eternal curse upon the Jews (Koran 2:61/ reiterated at 3:112) for slaying the prophets and transgressing against the will of Allah. And Koran 3:112 is featured before the pre-amble to Hamas’ foundational Covenant—it is literally part of the very first statement of the document. [Here is the Arberry translation of 3:112: “Abasement shall be pitched on them, wherever they are come upon, except they be in a bond of God, and a bond of the people; they will be laden with the burden of God’s anger, and poverty shall be pitched on them; that, because they disbelieved in God’s signs, and slew the Prophets without right; that, for that they acted rebelliously and were transgressors.”]

This central motif is coupled to Koranic verses 5:60, and 5:78, which describe the Jews transformation into apes and swine (5:60), or simply apes, (i.e. verses 2:65 and 7:166), having been “…cursed by the tongue of David, and Jesus, Mary’s son” (5:78). The Muslim prophet Muhammad himself repeats this Koranic curse in a canonical hadith (Sunan Abu Dawoud, Book 37, Number 4322). And the related verse, 5:64, accuses the  Jews—as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas did in a January 2007 speech, citing Koran 5:64—of being “spreaders of war and corruption,” a sort of ancient Koranic antecedent of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The centrality of the Jews’ permanent “abasement and humiliation,” and being “laden with God’s anger” in the corpus of Muslim exegetic literature on Koran 2:61/3:112, is clear. By nature deceitful and treacherous, the Jews rejected Allah’s signs and prophets, including Isa, the Muslim Jesus. Classical Koranic commentators when discussing Koran 5:82, which includes the statement (“Thou wilt surely find the most hostile of men to the believers are the Jews..”), concur on the unique animus of the Jews towards the Muslims, which is repeatedly linked to the curse of  Koran 2:61/3:112. The canonical hadith update this curse with perfect archetypal logic: following the Muslims’ initial conquest of the Jewish farming oasis of Khaybar, one of the vanquished Jewesses—acting in a prototype “Jewish conspiracy”—reportedly served Muhammad poisoned mutton (or goat), which resulted, ultimately, in his protracted, agonizing death.

Indeed the Koran’s overall discussion of the Jews is marked by a litany of their sins and punishments, as if part of a divine indictment, conviction, and punishment process. The Jews’ ultimate sin and punishment are made clear: they are the devil’s minions (4:60) cursed by Allah, their faces will be obliterated (4:47), and if they do not accept the true faith of Islam-the Jews who understand their faith become Muslims (3:113)-they will be made into apes (2:65/ 7:166), or apes and swine (5:60), and burn in the Hellfires (4:55, 5:29, 98:6, and 58:14-19).

Thus within two centuries of Islam’s advent, prominent Muslim scholars and theologians in Baghdad (then seat of the Abbasid Caliphate) reported the abiding animus of the Muslim masses toward the Jews engendered by these Antisemitic motifs—a hostility which exceeded the Muslims’ enmity toward the infidel Christians.

Salah al-Khalidi (fl. late 20^th century) makes plain how the Koranic motifs of Jew-hatred are interpreted by Hamas in a manner that is entirely consistent with classical exegeses. Extracts (translated from the original Arabic by Dr. Michael Schub in my The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism) are provided below from Khalidi’s  major work Haqa’iq Koraniyya al Qadiyya al-Filastinniya [“Koranic Facts Regarding the Palestinian Issue”] which was first published in 1991 by the Hamas Publishing House Manshūrāt  Filastin al-Muslima, and translated into Urdu, Hindi, Turkish, Russian,  and English (formerly available online at http://www.assabeel.com) due to its international popularity.

Humiliation is attached to the Jews for their entire lifetime: they were humiliated in Egypt, and when they arrived in [sic] Palestine, and when they were exiled from Palestine, and when they dispersed into the valleys of the earth. What concerns us here-in our discussion of the Jewish character-is to indicate that this humiliation is to be considered as an inveterate Jewish character trait, and a destructive Jewish perversion. Humiliation is one of their historical attributes, a fixed fact of their existence, and a  qaa`ida, basis of their life… (Koran 2:61) The Jews are humiliated because they disbelieved in God, killed His prophets, disobeyed His emissaries, transgressed His prohibitions-all of this is humiliation. They are humiliated-and this is why they search out lustful indulgences, and have become their slaves. All of this is humiliation.

It is impossible that the Jews could not be cursed. How could they not be accursed when they are attributed with such degenerate inveterate character traits, twenty of which we have demonstrated above. (Note: Khalidi earlier states, ‘We have extracted from Koran twenty Jewish traits. The Jews are: liars, perverters (of the Text), envious, tricky, fickle, mercurial, sardonic, treacherous, in error, causing others to be in error, merchants, fools, humiliated, dastards, misers, avid for (this) life, disloyal to their firm contracts, rush into sinful aggression, concealers of true evidence, corrupters in the earth, and obstructors in God’s path.’ For specific Koranic citations confirming his litany see here). They are worthy of eternal curse because of the villainous traits they display and the corrupt evils they have perpetrated.

The Jews are in a condition of  mal`ana, i.e. everyone pours out curses on them; God has cursed them, the angels have cursed them, their prophets have cursed them, the good people among them have cursed them, and everyone has cursed them. They are deserving of this eternal and continual damnation until the day of resurrection when they will encounter God’s wrath, fury, and punishment. They were accordingly exiled from God’s mercy, and kept afar from His goodness.

Many Koranic verses were revealed emphasizing…the judgment upon them of cursed damnation, and exile from His mercy, e.g.  Koran 5:13: “For breaking their covenant, We curse them, and have made their hearts hard.” And Koran 5:60…And Koran 5:64…And Koran 5:78…

The recent annihilationist sentiments regarding Jews, as expressed by Hamas cleric al-Zarad, are also rooted in Islamic eschatology [end of times theology], and incorporated permanently into the foundational 1988 Hamas Covenant. As characterized in the hadith (the words, deeds, and even unspoken gestures of Muhammad as ostensibly recorded by his earliest pious Muslim companions), Muslim eschatology highlights the Jews’ supreme hostility to Islam. Jews are described as adherents of the Dajjâl — the Muslim equivalent of the Anti-Christ — or according to another tradition, the Dajjâl is himself Jewish. At his appearance, other traditions maintain that the Dajjâl will be accompanied by 70,000 Jews from Isfahan wrapped in their robes, and armed with polished sabers, their heads covered with a sort of veil. When the Dajjâl is defeated, his Jewish companions will be slaughtered- everything will deliver them up except for the so-called gharkad tree, as per the canonical hadith (Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985) included in the 1988 Hamas Covenant (in article 7). This hadith is cited in the Covenant as a sacralized, obligatory call for a Muslim genocide of the Jews:

…the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to realize the promise of Allah, no matter how long it takes. The Prophet, Allah’s prayer and peace be upon him, says: “The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him,’ except for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews.” (Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985)

Jihad is the other pillar of Hamas’ foundational Jew-annihilationist ideology featured in the 1988 Covenant. Once again, this is already suggested in the opening statement before the preamble which includes the following quote by Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood: “Israel will exist, and will continue to exist, until Islam abolishes it, as it abolished that which was before it.” Hamas, it should be noted, claims to be a wing of the International Muslim Brotherhood. Article 2 of the Hamas Charter, for example, states: “The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine. The Muslim Brotherhood Movement is a universal organisation which constitutes the largest Islamic movement in modern times.”

But the body of  the Hamas Covenant includes unequivocal statements of Hamas’ irredentist commitment to the annihilation of Israel via jihad. Jihad martyrdom is lauded in article 8 “the Hamas slogan,” (in fact borrowed from the 1928 Charter of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood), which states, “Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Koran its Constitution; Jihad is its path, and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.” Article 13 makes plain that Hamas’ jihadism is completely incompatible with any meaningful Middle East peace settlement:

Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse against part of religion. Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its religion. Its members have been fed on that…There is no solution to the Palestinian question except by Jihad. All initiatives, proposals, and International Conferences are a waste of time and vain endeavors.

And article 15 (subtitled, “Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine is a Personal Duty”) elucidates classical jihadist theory, as well as its practical modern application to the destruction of Israel by jihad:

The day the enemies conquer some part of the Muslim land, jihad becomes a personal duty of every Muslim. In the face of the Jewish occupation of Palestine, it is necessary to raise the banner of jihad. This requires the propagation of Islamic consciousness among the masses, locally [in Palestine], in the Arab world and in the Islamic world. It is necessary to instill the spirit of jihad in the nation, engage the enemies and join the ranks of the jihad fighters. The indoctrination campaign must involve ulama, educators, teachers and information and media experts, as well as all intellectuals, especially the young people and the sheikhs of Islamic movements…

It is necessary to establish in the minds of all the Muslim generations that the Palestinian issue is a religious issue, and that it must be dealt with as such, for [Palestine] contains Islamic holy places, [namely] the Al-Aqsa mosque, which is inseparably connected, for as long as heaven and earth shall endure, to the holy mosque of Mecca through the Prophet’s nocturnal journey [from the mosque of Mecca to the Al-Aqsa mosque] and through his ascension to heaven thence. “Being stationed on the frontier for the sake of Allah for one day is better than this [entire] world and everything in it; and the place taken up in paradise by the [horseman’s] whip of any one of you [jihad fighters] is better than this [entire] world and everything in it. Every evening [operation] and morning [operation] performed by Muslims for the sake of Allah is better than this [entire] world and everything in it.” (Recorded in the Hadith collections of Bukhari, Muslim, Tirmidhi and Ibn Maja). “By the name of Him who holds Muhammad’s soul in His hand, I wish to launch an attack for the sake of Allah and be killed and attack again and be killed and attack again and be killed.” (Recorded in the Hadith collections of Bukhari and Muslim)

The rise of Jewish nationalism—Zionism—posed a predictable, if completely unacceptable challenge to the Islamic order—jihad-imposed chronic dhimmitude for Jews—of apocalyptic magnitude. As historian Bat Ye’or has explained,

…because divine will dooms Jews to wandering and misery [pace Koran 17:4–5/ 7:168; and 2:61/3:112], the Jewish state appears to Muslims as an unbearable affront and a sin against Allah. Therefore it must be destroyed by Jihad.

This is exactly the Islamic context in which the widespread, “resurgent” use of Jew annihilationist apocalyptic motifs, would be an anticipated, even commonplace occurrence. And for more than six decades, promoters of modern jihad genocide have consistently invoked Islam’s Jew-exterminating eschatology. Hajj Amin el-Husseini, ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, and Muslim jihadist, who became, additionally, a full-fledged Nazi collaborator and ideologue in his endeavors to abort a Jewish homeland, and destroy world Jewry, composed a 1943 recruitment pamphlet (see Jennie Lebel’s 2007 biography of the Mufti , pp. 311-319) for Balkan Muslims entitled, “Islam and the Jews.” This incendiary document hinged upon antisemitic motifs from the Koran (for example, 5:82), and the hadith (including Muhammad’s alleged poisoning by a Khaybar Jewess), and concluded with the apocalyptic canonical hadith describing the Jews’ annihilation.

Forty-five years later the same hadith was incorporated into the 1988 Hamas Covenant, making clear the jihad terrorist organization had its own aspirations for Jew annihilation.

Unfortunately, the orthodox Islamic archetypes of Jew hatred promulgated by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, are also being disseminated by the most respected, mainstream Islamic institutions. Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, who served as Grand Imam of Al Azhar University from 1996 till his death in March 2010, wrote these words in his 700 page treatise rationalizing Muslim Jew hatred, [Jews in the Koran and the Traditions], originally published in 1968/69, and then re-issued in 1986:

[The] Koran describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e. killing the prophets of Allah [Koran 2:61/ 3:112], corrupting His words by putting them in the wrong places, consuming the people’s wealth frivolously, refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do, and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted lasciviousness…only a minority of the Jews keep their word….[A]ll Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims [Koran 3:113], the bad ones do not.

These were the expressed, “carefully researched” views on Jews held by the nearest Muslim equivalent to a Pope-the head of the most prestigious center of Muslim learning in Sunni Islam, which represents some 90% of the world’s Muslims. And Sheikh Tantawi never mollified such hatemongering beliefs after becoming the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar as his statements on “dialogue” (January 1998) with Jews, the Jews as “enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs” (April 2002), and the legitimacy of homicide bombing of Jews (April 2002) make clear. Tantawi’s statements on dialogue, which were issued shortly after he met with the Chief Rabbi of Israel, Israel Meir Lau, in Cairo, on December 15, 1997, provided him another opportunity to re-affirm his ongoing commitment to the views expressed about Jews in his Ph.D. thesis.

…anyone who avoids meeting with the enemies in order to counter their dubious claims and stick fingers into their eyes, is a coward.  My stance stems from Allah’s book [the Koran], more than one-third of which deals with the Jews…[I] wrote a dissertation dealing with them [the Jews], all their false claims and their punishment by Allah.  I still believe in everything written in that dissertation. [i.e., Jews in the Koran and the Traditions, cited above]

Nearly 15-years later, the same Rabbi Lau, with some 20,000 other mourners in attendance, provided a moving eulogy at the Jerusalem funeral for the victims of the jihadist carnage at Itamar.

Let us hope that Rabbi Lau, and perhaps more importantly politicians of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s stature, will both acknowledge and denounce the living legacy of mainstream Islam’s theological anti-Jewish animus. The annihilationist Jew-hatred such odious doctrine engenders was graphically illustrated at Itamar. Fomented by contemporary Islam’s clerical and political leadership, this “sacralized” hatred must not be ignored any longer.

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Phyllis Chesler: Turning a blind eye to Islam’s brutal treatment of women

National Post, March 12, 2011 – 7:03 AM ET/Last Updated: March 12, 2011 5:10 AM ET

http://www.nationalpost.com/ Phyllis Chesler in New York City

My feminist generation believed in universal human rights — one standard for all. I still do. Therefore, I have taken a strong stand against the persecution of immigrant women and dissidents. I now submit affidavits on behalf of women who have fled the threat of such killings and who are seeking asylum in the United States.

Those of us who condemn the plight of such women, who are mainly Muslims and ex-Muslims, have been demonized in activist circles as “Islamophobes” and racists because we do not, in the same breath, blame America, the West or Israel for their suffering. Many Western academic feminists are so afraid of being condemned as “racists” that this fear trumps their concern for women’s rights in the Arab and Muslim world.

Islamic gender apartheid, which has penetrated the West, is characterized by normalized daughter- and wife-battering, forced veiling, female genital mutilation, polygamy, purdah (the segregation or sequestration of women), arranged marriage, child marriage and first-cousin marriage. Girls and women often are honour-murdered if they resist such practices, if they wish to divorce a dangerously abusive husband, or if they are viewed as too independent, too modern.

Today, at its most extreme, Islamic gender apartheid is characterized by acid attacks, public stonings, hangings, and beheading of women in Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia and Saudi Arabia — countries in which female rape victims are jailed, tortured and executed.

Feminists should be crying out from the rooftops against these practices. Some are. I am. Yet, many Muslims, as well as many intellectually “progressive” Western infidels, are not. They are welcoming the imposition of Islamic religious law, Sharia law, not only in the Middle East but also in the West.

I have published two academic studies and nearly 100 articles about honour killings, both in the West and in the Islamic world. An honour killing is a collaborative conspiracy carried out against one victim, usually a young girl, by her parents, brothers, uncles, grandfathers, sisters and male cousins. Her relatives believe that her “impure” behaviour has shamed and dishonored them.

An honour killing is not the same as a Western domestically violent femicide. Many honourable feminists disagree with me on this point. They believe that honour killings belong in the same category as Western domestic violence. Understandably, such feminists fear singling out one group for behaviour that may be common to all groups. But if, for reasons of “political correctness,” we fail to properly understand a crime, we will never be able to prevent or to prosecute it.

I began writing about honour killings in the West in 2004. My first study about such killings appeared in 2009 in Middle East Quarterly, the second appeared there in 2010. I studied 230 victims who were honour-murdered on five continents over a 20-year period.

These killings are carefully planned by the victim’s own family of origin, who have warned her, repeatedly, from childhood on, that they will kill her if she dishonours her family in any way. World-wide, women are honour-murdered based on mere rumoors of inappropriate behaviour, for wanting to choose their own husbands, for having infidel friends, for choosing a non-Muslim husband — or a non-Muslim god.

It is rare for a domestically violent Western father to routinely batter, stalk, patrol and murder his own daughter, and to be assisted in this gruesome task by his entire family. In the West, the majority (91%) of honour killings are Muslim-on-Muslim crimes. While Hindus and Sikhs do honour murder, they do so mostly in India, not in the New World.

Honour killings also are distinguished by their barbaric ferocity. The female victim often is gang-raped, then burned alive, stoned or beaten to death, cut at the throat, decapitated, stabbed numerous times, suffocated slowly, etc. This may resemble what Western serial killers do to prostitutes.

In the West, child-murderers, wife batterers and wife-killers are now (courtesy of second-wave feminism), seen as criminals. Yet those who commit or assist in the commission of honour killings view such killings as heroic, and even as the fulfillment of a tribal or religious obligation.

Based on my research, I have increasingly been asked to submit affidavits on behalf of girls and women who have fled being honour killed and who are seeking asylum in the United States or Canada.

My first case was that of an abused Muslim-American teenage immigrant who had secretly converted to Christianity. This was a high-profile case. Lawyers in Florida (she fled there), and in Ohio (her home state), both won her the right to remain in foster care and helped her obtain a green card. The girl now lives in hiding, apart from her family, somewhere in America.

My second case concerns a North African woman who has fled a small European country to seek asylum in America. Just because a Muslim woman lives in Europe does not mean that she lives in a Western environment. Her large, tight-knit, violent, Islamist family inhabits a parallel universe. As a convert to Christianity, this woman’s family will hunt her down until they find and kill her. They will never stop trying.

My third case concerns a brilliant graduate student from a prominent family in a southeast Asian country. She has applied for asylum here. What is her crime? She dared to marry a man whom she loved but who belonged to a different sect of Islam; she did so against her parents’ wishes.

My fourth case concerns a woman who was born and raised in the killing fields of Congo. After her father was murdered, her mother fled to a neighboring African country, where she married a Muslim man who insisted on marrying his new stepdaughter off as the fifth wife to an elderly Muslim man; in turn, her chosen husband insisted that she be genitally mutilated.

Desperate, defiant, this brave soul fled Africa and arrived in the United States with falsified documents. Without going into too much detail, let me say that she has languished in jail in Buffalo, NY for more than three months. Recently, a judge ordered that she be deported to Congo. She has six weeks to appeal this decision.

Just as we have shelters for battered Orthodox Jewish women, shelters for battered Muslim girls and women should be established, and multilingual staff appropriately trained in the facts surrounding honor killings. Young Muslim girls are frequently lured back home by their mothers. When a shelter resident receives such a phone call, the staff must immediately go on high alert.

Perhaps the equivalent of a federal witness protection program for the intended targets of honour killings should be created. England has already established just such a program.

We must issue clear government warnings to all immigrants to the West: Honour killings and female genital mutilation will be prosecuted under Western law. Since honour killings are collaborations, conspiracies, both the perpetrators and accomplices will all be prosecuted. European courts have recently begun to do all this. Unlike the United States, they have a large Muslim immigrant population.

The battle for women’s rights is central to the battle for Western values. It is a necessary part of true democracy, along with freedom of religion, tolerance for homosexuals and freedom of dissent. Here, then, is exactly where the greatest battle of the 21st century is joined.

Phyllis Chesler, Ph.D is an Emerita Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies at City University of New York. She is an author, psychotherapist and an expert courtroom witness. A longer version of this article originally appeared on FoxNews.com.

from: Vladtepes

Dubai plans to deport striking Asian workers

New English Review

There doesn’t seem to be any problem with forcibly deporting Muslims … from Dubai

How many times have we seen a Muslim immigrant who makes speeches openly calling for the overthrow of our government, and who is not deported?  Or, is convicted of rape or other serious felonies, or spends their entire life here collecting welfare and health insurance, or in many other ways drains the resources of the kuffar while providing no concomitant benefit, and yet is immune to deportation?

We are told that the deportation of Muslim immigrants back to their ancestral homelands, to the lands where they spent their childhood, to the lands where the local language is their primary language and the local customs are their own familiar customs, would be a warcrime akin to genocide.  We are told that everyone has a right to come here, that our borders must remain open and immigration must remain unfettered.   To place any sensible limits on immigration is to be xenophobic and racist.

And yet…

In Dubai, Bangladeshi workers, who build those skyscrapers and scrub those toilets and drive those trucks and generally keep the place humming, went on strike.  They talked about organizing themselves and starting a union.  The government of Dubai responded by immediately starting deportation proceedings against them.

The fact that they are fellow Sunni Muslims is not as important as the fact that they are not ethnic Arabs.  In the eyes of their overlords, they are inferior and they are easily replaceable.  A dime a dozen, or more accurately $200 a month per worker on average.

The Bangladeshis had the temerity to ask for an additional $50 a month, and without even a “fine how do you do,” they will be immediately thrown out on the next flight.  Next!

There will be no enraged Muslims marching in protest.  There will be no denunciation from the UN or the “human rights organizations.”  There will be no case filed at the International Court of Justice at the Hague.  There will be no newspaper headlines, nor man-on-the-street interviews on television.

Arab News

By BRIAN MURPHY | AP

Published: Jan 26, 2011 22:11 Updated: Jan 26, 2011 22:11

DUBAI: Dubai authorities plan to deport more than 50 workers from Bangladesh who took part in a rare strike to demand higher wages in another sign of growing labor unrest in the former Gulf boomtown, a diplomat said Wednesday.

The expulsions highlight the strict measures used across the United Arab Emirates to discourage protests by laborers, mostly South Asians brought to build the skyscrapers, hotels and other mega-projects that have risen in the past decade. But workers have become increasingly outspoken as prices rise and companies cancel projects after Dubai’s property bubble burst in 2009.

An estimated 5,000 mostly South Asian workers staged a nearly two-week strike this month to press for a 200 dirham ($54) pay hike from Arabtec Holding, the biggest construction company in Dubai. The workers — who live in company-run camps — make between 700 and 800 dirhams ($190 and $220) a month for basic jobs and slightly more for more skilled positions.

The consul general for Bangladesh, Mohammed Abu Zafar, said police rounded up suspected strike leaders and were moving ahead with deportations.

“Intelligence people identified them and are being deported to Bangladesh,” Zafar said.

He said the other workers agreed to return to the job, but did not receive any promises for pay hikes.

Arabtec officials declined to comment.

Strikes and other labor protests are still uncommon in the UAE, where migrants workers fear arrest or deportation.

Emirati officials, meanwhile, have taken some steps to improve living conditions for workers and curb other abuses after complaints from rights groups.

At a news conference in Dubai, Human Rights Watch said that the situation for migrant workers in the UAE remained dire against the backdrop of a worsening economy. The New York-based group, however, acknowledged that the government has announced “positive labor reforms” such as more oversight of recruiting agencies.

Construction companies across the country “exploited or abused migrant workers in numerous ways,” the group said, citing unsafe working environment, movement restrictions and withholding workers’ travel documents among violations.

Hundreds of laid-off migrant workers have been stranded in labor camps without electricity or running water for months as construction work halted across debt-burdened Dubai, the group told reporters as part of its 2010 world report.

The UAE’s Labor Ministry — in a statement carried by the official news agency WAM — said the UAE “dealt with” the job losses due to the global economic downturn “in an orderly fashion and workers continue to enjoy wage protection.” Earlier this month, laborers at a Dubai labor camp staged a work stoppage after a melee with security guards, who they accused of abuses.

Conditions of Dubai’s immigrant workers highlighted

It is hard to fathom why on earth people still want to vacation in this hellhole… one of many in the Middle East.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12246979

Dark side of the Dubai dream

 

 

By Lila Allen Panorama

It is a place in the sun for over a million of us who holiday there every year. It boasts a host of luxury apartments that has celebrities flocking. But behind the glitz and glamour of Dubai often lies a murky world of exploitation and an immigrant work force living on the breadline.

Hit by the credit crunch, Dubai’s economy has taken a turn for the worse reliant as it is on tourism, financial services and real estate. For those labouring to make the Dubai dream a reality, building the homes for the rich and famous, are facing greater pressures than ever.

Ben Anderson investigates the working conditions for some construction workers

But despite the slump, the pressure on would-be buyers is still healthy. A Panorama reporter posing as a potential buyer and kitted out with a secret camera, met with a company endorsed by celebrities. Footballer Michael Owen is a paid ambassador along with England cricketer Freddie Flintoff and golfer Sam Torrance.

A sales representatives from The First Group said now was a great time to buy property. She also allayed any concerns about the wellbeing of the company’s construction workers.

Offering a purchase that would see a £438,000 apartment rise to £1.33m in just 10 years, the sales reps also said they believed the workers were happy to be there.

“It’s much more difficult to earn some money in Pakistan or India, so people actually save by living for free in proper housing, eating for free in the canteen, using the transport and sending something to their families,” she said.

It is the promise of a land of opportunity that has brought an estimated one million migrant workers to Dubai. Most come from areas of extreme poverty in the Indian sub-continent where they are easy prey for recruitment agents. Paying up to £2,000 to make the trip, the sum often has to be borrowed or family land sold in the belief that within 18 months the debt can be repaid.

30p overtime

Instead on arriving in Dubai they are met with shanty town conditions hidden from public view. In a country that penalises journalists reporting stories which negatively reflect the economy or insult the government with massive fines and even imprisonment, it was important to maintain a low profile.

Ambassadors for a development: Freddie Flintoff and Michael Owen

In secret, we followed a group of workers home from work. Employed by The First Group’s sub-contractors United Engineering Construction, they were working on a development due to be finished in June ready for England striker Michael Owen to move in.

Back at the worker’s camp we were soon rumbled and asked to leave. Returning over the next few days we managed to speak to some of the men living there on condition of anonymity.

They told a grim tale. None had been paid the money they were promised by the recruitment agencies, and many said they couldn’t afford to eat properly, living on a diet of potatoes, lentils and bread. Average salaries are often no more than £120 a month. This for a six-day week, often working up to 12-hour shifts. One company paid approximately 30p an hour for overtime.

UNEC said that its minimum basic salary and overtime rate were significantly higher and that employees only worked 12 hour days in exceptional circumstances. It said its workers were fully aware of their proposed terms of employment before travelling to Dubai and that it “wholly disapproved” of workers paying recruitment agents. It said it only recruited through one agency in India, but the workers we spoke to came from elsewhere.

The First Group said its own checks had confirmed that the pay and conditions at the camp were legal.

One of Dubai’s biggest new developments is The Jumeirah Golf Estates, which will host the climax of the European Golf championship in November. The main developer is Leisurecorp, which also owns the championship golf course at Turnberry in Scotland, and has a stake in Troon.

Jumeirah Golf Estates has attracted an incredible array of celebrities who are named as ambassadors on its website, including TV chef Jamie Oliver and golfers Greg Norman, Vijay Singh and Sergio Garcia.

Camp overcrowding

Once again we followed workers back to their accommodation. This time they were employed by one of Dubai’s biggest construction firms Arabtec, to work on a part of the development that had been sold to a sub-developer, but the picture was familiar.

Living quarters for the labourers Enlarge Image

After an hour-long journey back to their gated and guarded labour camp, the men agreed to speak to us if their identities were kept secret.

“The latrines are so filthy we cannot use them, we are so disgusted. The roads are full of garbage and waterlogged. Living and moving about here is a great problem. We suffer greatly,” one of the workers told us.

We decided to find out for ourselves.

Armed with a secret camera we sneaked into the camp to be met with the smell of raw sewage. Sewage had leaked out all over the camp, and workers had to create a network of stepping stones to cross it and get back to their accommodation blocks. One toilet block had no water supply and the latrines were filled with piles of raw faeces.

Documents obtained by us showed that a month previous to our visit, the Dubai authorities described the sewage situation at the site as critical. Arabtec had been fined 10,000 dirhams, approximately £2,000, for allowing sewage to overflow into workers’ accommodation.

Downturn

The authorities also reported that the camp was overcrowded with 7,500 labourers sharing 1,248 rooms with poor ventilation.

But with the downturn in the economy, the workers feel less able to complain as the consequences are graver.

“They are telling, now that you have come, you stay and work. If we find any mistake in your work then finish – back to Bangladesh. We will no longer keep you,” one Arabtec worker told us.

Earning just £140 a month for a six day week, he hasn’t told his family at home about the reality of his situation.

“We have not told them because if we do, our wives and our children will start crying, so we have told them we are doing well.”

The Dubai Municipal government said regular inspections are carried out of migrant workers’ living conditions and fines levied for substandard housing.

Arabtec said it did not accept that there were unsanitary conditions at any of its camps’ toilets. It blamed the workers, saying, despite training, their “standards of cleanliness and hygiene are not up to your or our standards” and that the toilet block we had filmed in may have been a block that was meant to be closed.

It now says it is concerned about the situation, and despite originally blaming the problems on a nearby sewage plant, admitted sewage in the camp was a constant problem it was battling to resolve. They said the camp was a temporary one and all workers will be moved out in eight months.

It said that its wage levels were the Dubai norm and the basic working week was 48 hours and overtime was paid for any hours over that.

In a statement to Panorama, Jamie Oliver Enterprises said they were disturbed by the issues raised: “When we started work with our partner in Dubai, we were informed of their strict contractual guidelines which are in place with sub-developers to protect the rights of migrant workers and provide for good living and working conditions. While we are satisfied that the sub-contractors employed directly by our partner to work on Jamie Oliver projects meet the regulatory requirements and are fair, we have been given further assurances that the claims made by employees working on a sub-developer’s project will be investigated.”

Panorama has also been told that Jamie Oliver now wants to come up with more accurate wording to describe his business relationship with Jumeirah Golf Estates.

In the meantime, the celebrity chef’s name has been removed from the list of ambassadors on the company’s website.

Here a selection of comments:

I’ve lived in Dubai and now live in Doha and the situation is really depressing. All the workers are so low paid, the construction workers get the worst of it but cab drivers, shop and restaurant workers and service people get a bad deal too. I’ve spoken to many who were tricked into coming to the Middle East and are now trapped due to visa regulations and sponsorship laws (as well as not being able to afford a flight home). Businesses here totally take advantage, yet everything costs about the same as in the West – how does that add up?
Jill, Doha, Qatar

I totally agree, being an expat here in Dubai for the past three years, I must say I agree completely. Dubai is a brilliant place for the rich but the poor have very little to reap from it. The poverty gap in Dubai is massive, and I myself am quite disgusted in how the public treat the low pay workers. For instance, there are security guards constantly asking the labourers to leave the public beach when it is crowded by tourists. I find this totally unacceptable as a public beach should be accessible to all.

The bottom line is, I find that Dubai is so concerned about creating this “fairy-tale” image and you will find this place to be very materialistic and pretentious- don’t get me wrong, a bit of bling in a city is fun – but when it is at the expense of others it gets ugly.
Sue , Dubai, UAE

Facts and figures are worse than highlighted in the story. It’s not only Dubai, but the same story is everywhere in the country. It is good for the BBC to highlight such things, local media can not highlight these issues.
Naveen Kumar, Dubai UAE

A friend of mine recently returned from Dubai having quit her job there in disgust at the way that the poorer immigrant workers were treated. According to her, it is not only the big corporations who exploit said workforce: the expat Britpack is not without criticism, employing such workers as servants for the most meagre of pittances- wage slavery by any other name. The Brits there even have a derogatory quasi-racist nickname for these immigrants: they call them “Yik-Yaks”, and treat them with contempt and disdain.
Simon, Southampton

Having lived and worked in Dubai, everyone out there knows that Dubai is built on the modern day equivalent of slave labour. It is not a secret, is not hidden, and anyone who tells you different is lying. Whether you choose to ignore it or not is up to you, but do not pretend not to be complicit, when their poor wages subsidise your lavish lifestyle, gas guzzling car, swimming pool, school fees etc etc Hopefully now with the recession even the Brits are realising it is no longer the safe haven cash-cow that they think they are entitled to, by luck of birth.
Anon, Glasgow

I have been a frequent recent visitor to Dubai and to Sharjah. There are certainly the conditions you describe. Further, there is also the issue of the “servant class” – mainly made up of young girls where some of the stories and experiences can be shocking. Important too is the fact that similar conditions/experiences also exist in their home countries. However, I have seen examples in Sharjah of companies having a very different attitude to their workers. Accommodation camps with proper amenities, the provision of computing and internet facilities, medical care and more. There the workers (mainly South Asian) are able to keep in touch with family, get paid visits to return home and are treated in a humane way including better salaries than are available elsewhere.
Pol , London

No Comparison: Shariah and Jewish Religious Courts

By Rabbi Aryeh Spero

Many stealth jihadists pushing to have Shariah law instead of American civil law govern American Islamic communities are making the preposterous claim that Shariah Courts are similar to Jewish religious courts that observant Jews often use to adjudicate intra-community disputes. This is entirely inaccurate given that Shariah has as its goal the replacement of American law with Shariah, whereas Beit Din, Jewish religious court, limits its purview and has no intent or desire to flout American law.

Over 1800 years ago, the Talmudic Rabbi Samuel set the tone of how Jews were to interact with the laws of Babylonia, which had become the primary residence of the Jewish People after its exile from Israel.  His statement and decision has guided the Jewish community throughout their dwellings in new lands: “The law of the land is the law.” Rabbi Samuel understood, as did all subsequent rabbinic figures, that dwelling in a land and being a good citizen meant living by its laws and standards.

Naturally, many aspects of Jewish religious life differed from that of the host culture, such as the requirement to eat kosher food, observe the Sabbath and abstain from bread on Passover, and Rabbi Samuel would have been the first to reject any attempt by the State to prohibit our core religious observances. In the spirit of Render unto Caesar that which is his and unto God that which is His, Rabbi Samuel demarcated between religious law and civil law. His intellectual honesty lay in not allowing the subterfuge of categorizing civil law as “religious” law, which would have effectively nullified the whole concept of “The law of the land is the law”.

Rabbi Samuel certainly wished to preserve Jewish culture and ethnicity. Nonetheless,
the Head of Babylon’s Jewish community imbibed a deep respect and loyalty to his new country and would not allow zealots and separatists to lurch into a mode of cultural supremacy by erecting autonomous communities within the nation, which is accomplished when the purview of religious law is inflated to include that which is essentially civil and criminal law, something to be decided by the general public.

Eight hundred years later, as the center of Jewish life shifted westward to Europe, Rabbi Gershom of Germany expanded on the theme of “The Law of the land is the law.” He declared that because something is permitted in religious law does not mean a Jew should exercise that religious right if it is contrary to a fundamental standard and custom of the country where he now resides. So that even though the ancient Bible did not limit a man to one wife, henceforth Jewish men living in Europe could not marry as was done in biblical days, since European/Christian mores had rejected the simultaneous taking of multiple wives. Though polygamy was already centuries earlier culturally taboo among western Jews, Rabbi Gershom took the opportunity to prohibit it officially and legally to underscore the point that no particular ethnic community stands above and beyond deep-rooted national moral and ethical mores and standards.

Contrast this philosophy with that of shariah compliance where, for example, in certain European countries Islamic clerics are asking that the State welfare system subsidize the multiple wives of a Pakistani-born Muslim, or that of New Jersey where a lower court judge agreed not to hold a man liable for raping his wife, “reasoning” that his culture permits a man to force himself on his wife even though she vehemently protests her subjugation. Or the case of an 18 year old Columbus, Ohio girl whose wish to convert to Christianity is causing a risk to her life from her parents who claim that shariah does not allow her to become Christian. Jewish law intrinsically deplores what shariah here espouses, and no Beit Din would kow-tow to such rejection of civilized American societal norms.

The three cases mentioned above, some even criminal, stand foursquare against our American principle that women and children are not simply a man’s property. This isn’t simply a legalism but fundamental to our identity and to who we are as a people and nation. Having two sets of laws, one of which extends to Muslims the right to do that which is forbidden to all other Americans is a breach of the bedrock principle of Due Process, wherein our laws are applied equally to all, be it our rights or our prohibitions. Should we suddenly make one group of citizens more privileged than all others? That is not American, nor western. Equality under the law must transcend fashionable and often silly notions of multi-culturalism. Too much multi-culturalism leads to no culture at all, a society denuded of standards.

It has always been understood here that no one can claim a religious exception to civil and criminal rules that govern all. Religious freedom does not mean freedom from living by the civilized laws that constitute us as a people. That is exactly what Rabbi Samuel had in mind 1800 years ago when warning against those who would abrogate their fealty to civil and criminal law by claiming a special dispensation under religious law.

There are two areas where from time-to-time a Jew invites a Beit Din into his life. One is marriage and divorce. But here the Beit Din does not supersede routine civil law, rather it embellishes these events with certain required rituals, none of which offend deep-rooted social morality nor contradict existing civil law. After the divorced couple arranges their divorce settlement — finances, child custody questions etc. — the Beit Din’s scribe quilts on parchment a divorce document according to an ancient Hebrew text. Marriage is similarly preceded by written documents and blessings. These additions do not abrogate any civil laws, rather fall under the rubric of rituals that adorn and enrich each particular group within humanity.

The second is the arbitration process where two Jewish litigants decide to forgo the expenses of lawyers and protracted civil court proceedings and opt to have the Beit Din arbitrate and decide their business or monetary conflict. Courts are often pleased by this choice since it relieves them of yet another case on their heavy dockets. But even here, the Beit Din cannot pull out of left field some wild form of insular reasoning whose logic could not stand up in secular court. Nor would it ever arbitrate on criminal matters.

And herein lays an essential difference between those advocating shariah for Islamic communities as opposed to Beit Din in highly observant Jewish communities. Whereas, a Jew finds himself at a Beit Din once or twice in life, and for many never at all, shariah will dominate the individual within the community. He will live under shariah. Shariah is comprehensive, and coercive. It is the ultimate balkanization, wherein a mini nation lives within a broader nation. It is a seceding from the Union – yet with all the privileges of being in that union.

For stealth jihadists, shariah is the most effective way to Islamize a country. Through its imposition, it telegraphs that a nation has no unique and binding set of laws, mores and standards. That’s why radical multiculturalists love it. It helps brings down America.

Islamic shariah has a completely different aspiration than Jewish law. Jewish law has no world-wide ambitions. We don’t even seek converts. There’s one Jewish state, and a small one at that. Islam’s stated goal is to have the world live under shariah. It yearns for a world-wide caliphate, bringing all under Islam, individuals and nations.

Shariah announces that Islam is above and beyond the law. It is above country. Once allowed and implemented in Islamic neighborhoods, it reaches beyond and extends to ever growing areas where its adherents migrate, so that neighborhoods once under American law now must forfeit their American way of life if they wish to do business or be shielded from harassment. Shariah does not believe in Live and let Live, which has been the sweet anthem that has guided America. It demands changes in our schools, work places, swimming pools, and every facet of public and commercial life.

In England , for example, whole school districts now forbid pork in school cafeterias where Christian children still constitute the majority, and some districts won’t even teach the Holocaust because it “offends” anti-Semitic Muslims. Liberals call this sensitivity and accommodation. But it is capitulation; capitulation by emasculated multi-culturalists who feel that the only way to validate our western culture is by forfeiting it and submitting to those who wish to destroy it. Any ideology whose demands and stranglehold on civic and public life are so extensive and unyielding is theocratic in nature and thus incompatible with and dangerous to western life.

At one time, North Africa was not Islamic. Neither was Turkey, southern Asia, Indonesia, Central Africa, Persia, nor most of Iraq and Lebanon; nor were vast lands west, east and north of India. Nor were the Balkans. They are now mostly Islamic. Some fell to the sword of Islam. Others decided to be “nice guys” and allow shariah law in their countries for those few who demanded it. Now, tens of millions of them and their children must live under shariah law. Their heritage is gone