Posts Tagged ‘islam’
No. Pork has not been banned in Islington schools
Islington Council will no longer serve pork to primary schools because it says it can no longer monitor which pupils don’t want to eat sausages, bacon and pork chops due to their religious beliefs. Monitoring is an “unnecessary cost at a time of tight budgets”.
So reports the Evening Standard.
Pork will still be served in the borough’s secondary schools. Although, vegetarians can still say “no thank you”.
Chris Godfrey, owner of Godfrey’s butchers in Highbury Park, says it’s “disgusting”.
“I think it is disgusting that they do not have pork on the menu. There are so many religions in this country and if listened to all of them then you would not eat anything. We are pandering to other religions too much – kids that don’t eat pork should take packed lunches. It is not up to us to pander to their requirements.”
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Chapel Hill murders: Craig Hicks was driven to murder by race, politics, abortion laws and unarmed targets
Chapel Hill murders: news on alleged murderer Craig Hicks and the three victims: Deah Shaddy Barakat, wife Yusor Mohammad and her sister Raza.
Having heard the story of three innocent students shot dead in North Carolina, one writer immediately called it a hate crimne and castigated the Press for “ignoring” Muslim deaths.
Last night, the BBC says “thousands of mourners have gathered for the funeral of three Muslim students killed in North Carolina”.
The father of two of the victims told the crowd they were victims of a hate crime and his pain was indescribable… Police say initial indications suggest there was a parking space dispute but they are investigating whether Craig Hicks was motivated by religious hate…
The BBC’s Rajini Vaidyanathan said many mourners feel the murders were sparked by something far deeper than a parking row.
Chapel Hill police chief, Chris Blue, spoke at the service and promised his officers would investigate every lead, including the possibility of hate crime…
Is feeling it was hate crime enough to make it one?
Sarah, who grew up with all three [vcitims] and says she’s experienced Islamophobia, articulated a view many shared: “You have to have a lot of hate in your heart to kill three people in cold blood, and over a parking spot, it’s ridiculous to say this was just that”.
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Daily Express and Daily Mail twist Prince Charles words into an attack on British Muslims
The media heard Prince Charles’ words on race relations. Discussing the radicalisation of young Britons, Prince Charles told BBC radio:
“Well, of course, this is one of the greatest worries, I think, and the extent to which this is happening is the alarming part. And particularly in a country like ours where you know the values we hold dear. You think that the people who have come here, [are] born here, go to school here, would imbibe those values and outlooks…
“Christianity was founded in the Middle East which we often forget. From a morale point I hope it showed they were not forgotten. I wish I could do more. Many of us do wish we could do more. I think what doesn’t bear thinking about is people of one faith, a believer, could kill another believer. That’s the totally bewildering aspect in our day and age.”
The Daily Mail heard that, too, and told its readers:
Prince Charles risked provoking a new political and religious storm yesterday when he said Muslims living in the UK should follow British values.
Prince Charles last night called for a halt to the persecution of Christians by Islamic State and other militant Islamic groups, telling them bluntly: ‘We were in the Middle East before you.’
“No, I didn’t describe myself as a defender: I said I would rather be seen as ‘Defender of Faith’, all those years ago, because, as I tried to describe, I mind about the inclusion of other people’s faiths and their freedom to worship in this country. And it’s always seemed to me that, while at the same time being Defender of the Faith, you can also be protector of faiths. It was very interesting that 20 years or more after I mentioned this – which has been frequently misinterpreted – the Queen, in her Jubilee address to the faith leaders, said that as far as the role of the Church of England is concerned, it is not to defend Anglicanism to the exclusion of other religions. Instead, the Church has a duty to protect the free practice of all faiths in this country. I think in that sense she was confirming what I was really trying to say – perhaps not very well – all those years ago. And so I think you have to see it as both. You have to come from your own Christian standpoint – in the case I have as Defender of the Faith – and ensuring that other people’s faiths can also be practised.”
Posted: 9th, February 2015 | In: Reviews, Royal Family | Comment
Free speech: Clifford Chance lawyer pitches to open office in Islamic State
Freedom of speech not buts… That’s the mantra. But Aysh Chaudhry, a lawyer at London law firm Clifford Chance looks at the 17 people murdered by jihadis in Paris and blames the “kuffar”.
“Brothers and sisters, we would not be here had it not been for the fact that the kuffar 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.”
You can have that expert opinion for free. Cartoonists, Ahmed the copper and the Jews (always the Jews). You’ve been warned.
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When the Paris Mosque saved Jews from the Nazis with Muslim IDs
It was during World War 2 when French Jews were being rounded up for murder by Nazis that Si Kaddour Benghabrit, the rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris until 1954, acted.
Benghabrit, an Algerian-born religious and political leader, was audacious and cool. The Jews were hidden in the mosque’s cavern-like cellars. Above them, Benghabrit gave Nazi officers and their wives tours of the mosque.
A North African Jew named Albert Assouline, who had escaped from a German prison camp, wrote about life in the mosque:
“No fewer than 1,732 resistance fighters found refuge in its underground caverns. These included Muslim escapees but also Christians and Jews. The latter were by far the most numerous.”
He had a story to tell:
According to Assouline, he and an Algerian named Yassa Rabah escaped together from the camp and stealthily traversed the countryside across the French-German border, heading for Paris. Once in Paris they made their way to the mosque, where, evidently thanks to Rabah’s connections to the Algerian community, the two found refuge. Eventually Assouline continued his journey and joined up with Free French forces to continue the fight against the German occupation … the most fantastic part of the story was his claim that the mosque provided sanctuary and sustenance to Jews hiding from the Vichy and German troops as well as to other fighters in the anti-Fascist resistance.
In a 1983 article for Almanach due Combattant, a French veterans’ magazine, Assouline wrote [that] the senior imam of the mosque, Si Mohammed Benzouaou took “considerable risk” by hiding Jews and providing many (including many children) with certificates of Muslim identity, with which they could avoid deportation and certain death. Assouline recalled one “hot alert” when German soldiers smelled the odor of cigarettes and, convinced that Muslims were forbidden to smoke, searched the mosque looking for hidden Jews. According to Assouline, the Jews were able to escape via sewer tunnels that connected the mosque to nearby buildings.
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Posted: 19th, January 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (2)
The Islamophobia generating honour brigades: turning Muslims into a race
Demonstrators holding a banner which reads, ‘unity against Islamophobia’, to protest against the conference on the Islamization of France and Europe, in Paris, Saturday, Dec. 18, 2010.(AP Photo/Michel Euler)
There has been lots of talk of Islamophobia. But how real is it? Are the mob about to race riot? Is every outrage by Islamist nuters – and many crimes in France involve jihadis hunting Jews – followed by a bout of anti-Muslim violence? The Press would have us think so.
The prime minister of France, Manuel Valls has an opinion:
“It is very important to make clear to people that Islam has nothing to do with ISIS,” Valls told me. “There is a prejudice in society about this, but on the other hand, I refuse to use this term ‘Islamophobia,’ because those who use this word are trying to invalidate any criticism at all of Islamist ideology. The charge of ‘Islamophobia’ is used to silence people. ”
Valls was not denying the existence of anti-Muslim sentiment, which is strong across much of France. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack, miscreants have shot at Muslim community buildings, and various repulsive threats against individual Muslims have been cataloged. President Francois Hollande, who said Thursday that Muslims are the “first victims of fanaticism, fundamentalism, intolerance,” might be overstating the primacy of anti-Muslim prejudice in the current hierarchy of French bigotries—after all, Hollande just found it necessary to deploy his army to defend Jewish schools from Muslim terrorists, not Muslim schools from Jewish terrorists—but anti-Muslim bigotry is a salient and seemingly permanent feature of life in France. Or to contextualize it differently: Anti-Muslim feeling appears to be more widespread than anti-Jewish feeling across much of France, but anti-Jewish feeling has been expressed recently (and not-so-recently) with far more lethality, and mainly by Muslims.
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Posted: 17th, January 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
Questions on Islam: ‘Is it permissible to make snowmen?’
Sheikh Muhammed Salih Al-Munajjid is answering you questions on Islam. Under ‘New Fatwas’, the Sheikh talks about snow.
226557: Ruling on making snowmen
Is it permissible to make snowmen?
The answer:
Praise be to Allah.
If the snowman does not have clear facial features such as eyes, a nose and a mouth, and it is merely a three-dimensional figure with no features, like the scarecrows that farmers set up to scare away birds, and signs that are put on roads as a warning of roadworks or construction, then there is nothing wrong with any of that.
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Posted: 12th, January 2015 | In: Strange But True | Comments (4)
Get Marc Jacobs to the Kurds now: because like the Nazis, jihadis look cool in uniform black
Because black can be very flattering. Richard Fernandez on why bad guys get the best outfits:
“Our Western leaders are on one side of the chessboard and the big kingpins of the international Jihad — the Middle Eastern billionaires and the heads of rogue state intelligence agencies — are on the other. Their foot soldiers in the lands of Islam might be starvelings fighting for a pittance. But their recruits in the West, the Lone Wolves, come from that part of the population which in each generation doesn’t want to stay on the conveyor belt. . . . It’s easy to forget how important image-identification can be. One reason the Brownshirts out-attracted the Communist youth street gangs was the Nazis’ investment in uniforms. While Communist street fighters were dressed in clothes that made them look like municipal garbagemen, the Brownshirts wore uniforms by Hugo Boss.”
How to win the war on terror: get the Kurds Vivienne Westwood and Marc Jacobs now! They can have John Galliano and Dior.
And round up the usual suspects…
Fox News expert on Islam UK: Only Muslims are allowed to enter Birmingham
‘See yous at Black Friday prayers’ – Birmingham’s Ayatollah Ozzy
Fox News has the experts who know about Islam and the UK.
Terrorism ‘expert’ Steven Emerson states that Birmingham, UK is ‘entirely Muslim’ and that non Muslims ‘simply don’t go in’.
Ian Rennie @theangelremiel: Birmingham is entirely populated by muslims. Unlike nearby Wolverhampton, which is entirely populated by wolves. #foxnewsfacts
Posted: 11th, January 2015 | In: Reviews, TV & Radio | Comments (3)
Charlie Hebdo Massacre: The Jews did it
People gather to pay their respects to the shooting victims of Mohamed Merah in Toulouse, France, Friday March 23, 2012. France’s prime minister fended off suggestions Friday that anti-terrorism authorities fell down on the job in monitoring a radical Islamist who gunned down Jewish children, paratroopers and a rabbi in a wave of killings that revolted the country.
Yesterday, men screaming ‘“Allahu akbar” murdered 12 people in Paris when they attacked the Charlie Hendo magazine offices. Like you, we know who did it. Yeah. The Jews. Always the Jews.
Writing on the grandly titled International Business Times, Gopi Chandra Kharel explains all:
Charlie Hebdo Attack and Mossad Link: Is Israel Venting Its Fury For France’s Recognition of Palestine State?
Headlines ending with a question mark can always be answered ‘no’. But a Jew told me that. So. We should read on…
There is no clarity on which organisation is behind the attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris on Wednesday and therefore, conspiracy theories are gaining traction in internet forums.
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Posted: 8th, January 2015 | In: Reviews | Comments (4)
Piss Christ! Associated Press censors library lest it provoke murderous Christianists
Piss Christ! Can we all say that in unison? Piss Christ!
Anyone shoot you in the face? Anyone threaten to murder you? Go on. Say it again. Louder. PISS CHRIST!
The Associated Press thinks nutters and victims of Christianophobia might be listening and driven to murder by hearing or seeing Piss Christ. To spare its clients the death threats and being murdered by Christianists, this bastion of free speech has removed Andres Serrano’s 1987 photograph Immersion (Piss Christ) from its image library.
Piss Christ (no exclamation mark) is a photograph of a small plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist’s urine. It is not to be mistaken for Christ Piss, which is used to describe the wine served at my niece’s Holy Communion.
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Charlie Hebdo: Islamists tap into the West’s war on free speech
Victims Georges Wolinski, Jean Cabut (aka Cabu), Charb and Tignous
You crying? You feel the prick of tears? You angry? You should be. You should be furious. The cold-blooded attack on the offices of French magazine Charlie Hebdo claimed 12 lives. You should weep for the lives of the murdered. They were champions of free speech and free thinking. And you should be angry that all we must hold dear is under attack.
The 12 dead are victims of a slaughter by violent, Islamic racists. The magazine’s “controversial” cartoons and editorials – always billed as “controversial” in the mainstream press, as if it were a bad thing – were meant to trigger a battle of ideas. The sane could debate the rights and wrongs. People would talk. No-one would get hurt – not by voices and debate. Charlie Hebdo would be the polemicists, fomenting a new view and changing the dialogue. You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to buy it. You can criticise it. You can vote with your feet at the offence and blasphemy. But the Islamists took up guns.
The 12 victims were murdered for taking the piss out of Muhammad, for showing their comic liberty.
Is Islam so weak it cannot counter a French magazine? Is it so fearful it kills all debate, unable to confront ideas with sanity and reason?
And what now? Do we look to ourselves, the free thinking and censor our views so as not to offend the gun-toting nutters? Do we strive to understand the mindset of two men who see a picture and murder a dozen people? Hey, everyone’s a critic, right? Or do we skewer the censorious bastards with wit?
How brave are we in the West?
Not very.
We banned the Jesus and Mohammed T-shirts. Police demand we tell on anyone saying something unsayable on Twitter, turning us into police narks.
You know what. Screw them. Say what you think. Don’t be gratutious. Don’t seek to offend. Just say what you think and believe. Be prepared to debate that view. Be open to ideas and people. If the other person disagrees, then your argument has failed. Don’t pick up a gun and shoot them dead. Don’t put them in prison. Mock them.
Free speech used to be a right in countries where it was allowed. It’s spread. Online, we enjoy speaking out, sharing our views, prejudices, stupidity and relishing our right to cause offence. These Islamists want to smah that. In doing so they have placed us all on the front line in the war on free speech. We must fight them.
Can we?
Not easily.
Our police and protectors we need to uphold freedoms hard won are seeking to licence journalist with a poxy Royal Charter and spy on us with the horrendous RIPA law.
Fight it. Appeasement has its limits.
Charb, one of the caricaturists killed today, said:
“I am not afraid of retaliation. I have no kids, no wife, no car, no credit. It perhaps sounds a bit pompous, but I prefer to die standing than living on my knees.”
Stand up to tyranny.
Posted: 7th, January 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (5)
Radical Islam declares war on taking the piss and everything we should value
In Paris, France, ten people have been murdered Islamic terrorists:
At least 10 [it’s 12] people have been killed by gunmen armed with Kalashnikovs and a rocket-launcher, after they opened fire in the offices of French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, Paris prosecutors say …
The French president Francois Hollande headed to the scene of the attack and the government said it was raising France’s security level to the highest notch.
“This is a terrorist attack, there is no doubt about it,” Mr Hollande said.
Sky News says the two attackers yelled “Allahu Akbar” and “we have avenged the prophet” as they slaughed the innocent.
France's most talented cartoonists:Cabu, Wolinski, Charb, Tignous died in #CharlieHebdo attack http://t.co/HrNScpSyMj pic.twitter.com/GSG45GlgIt
— Agnes Poirier (@AgnesCPoirier) January 7, 2015
Bloody hell! This looks like war.
Posted: 7th, January 2015 | In: Reviews | Comments (2)
Army on France streets spot the difference between Isis Islamists and the mentally ill killers
French troops are on the streets. Why? Is it terrorism. It is a few nutters? Let’s find out.
The Times knows:
“The French government deployed extra troops to patrol streets and urged calm today after three attacks which caused one death and injured some 30 people, stirring fear of copy-cat violence by Islamist extremists.”
So. Muslim extremists are killing in the name of their god?
The French government deployed extra troops to patrol streets and urged calm today after three attacks which caused one death and injured some 30 people, stirring fear of copy-cat violence by Islamist extremists. Manuel Valls, the Prime Minister, acknowledged that the three acts in three days by lone French citizens, including two rampages in vehicles, were a legitimate source of worry in the light of calls by foreign jihadist groups for the murder of non-Muslims.
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Posted: 24th, December 2014 | In: Reviews | Comments (2)
#ILLRIDEWITHYOU is for bigots and white narcissists: Muslims should charge them by the mile
As murderous Islamist Man Haron Monis/Sheik Haron held hostages in a Sydney chocolate shop, the BBC wrote this:
As a gunman holds people hostage in a cafe in Sydney, thousands of messages of support have been posted online for Muslims in Australia who are afraid of an Islamophobic backlash.
Got that? It’s not the jihadi with the gun and the bloody threats made true (two innocent people dead) we should worry about, it’s us. People tuning in on the telly and commenting online are so slack-jawed and reactionary they will see the gurning maniac and think they should race riot.
Idiots don’t need telling. They’re already in the club:
Did the ADL storm Lakemba, a suburb in south-western Sydney with a sizaeble Muslim population? No. It was just white fascists identifying with a deeply troubled, mentaly negligible man who posed no threat to Australian society as a whole. They saw in him a kindred spirit.
What Monis did was terrorise and kill people in a cafe. Terrible stuff. But let’s not amplify it. Let’s not magnify the lone nutter’s impact. Well, not unless in doing so it can make us look good in public.
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Posted: 16th, December 2014 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (5)
Sydney siege: what we know, don’t know and bumping into the gunman’s hard centre
To Sydney, where a bearded gunman is holding around 12 people hostage at the Lindt Chocolat Cafe in Martin Place. The hostages are holding aloft an Islamic flag.
The Sun translates:
“There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of God.”
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Christians And Muslims Fight For Right To Murder For Their Beliefs
ARE we outraged that Christians are being persecuted?
Melanie Phillips in the Times:
Barbaric assaults on religious liberty are greeted in the West with an embarrassed silence. Canon Andrew White is one of the bravest people I know. For nine years this former Middle East envoy for the Archbishop of Canterbury, who has played a key role in freeing hostages in the region, has been the vicar of St George’s church in Baghdad.
As such, he has been the emblem and body-armoured defender of Iraq’s Christian community, which has been under murderous assault in the wars that have engulfed Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
A few days ago, at a conference I chaired in Jerusalem, Canon White told me that the Archbishop of Canterbury has now forbidden him to return to his church in its heavily barricaded compound. Given the advance towards Baghdad of Islamic State (Isis) — which has now murdered a fifth hostage, the American Peter Kassig — it is simply too dangerous even for him.More than 1,200 members of his congregation and several of his staff have been murdered in the past few years. His flock has dwindled from 6,500 to 1,000 today, including the six remaining Jews in Iraq, who have lived under his personal protection.
What is happening is a tragedy of extraordinary, historic proportions. In the place where Abraham was born, most of the 135,000-strong, three millennia-old Jewish community was forced to flee several decades ago. Now it seems that Christianity is about to be wiped out in a land where it has been cradled for more than 2,000 years.
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Posted: 18th, November 2014 | In: Reviews | Comments (3)
Yes, Christians Are The World’s Most Persecuted Minority
WHO are the world’s most persecuted minoroty, asks “Middle East expert Raymond Ibrahim thinks he knows:
One hundred years ago, 20% of North Africa and the Middle East, the birthplace of Christianity, was Christian. Today, Christians make up 4% of the population. Much of that decline has occurred in the last decade. In essence Muslims are rendering North Africa and the Middle East free of Christians.
Take Egypt, for example, my ancestral homeland. In just the past two years, tens of thousands of Christian Copts have left Egypt. And many others want to leave, but they simply cannot afford to. Why they want to leave is no mystery.
On New Year’s Day 2011, the Two Saints Church in Alexandria was bombed, leaving 23 Copts dead and 97 injured. In recent years dozens of Coptic churches have been attacked, many burned to the ground. In August 2013 alone, the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters attacked and destroyed some 80 churches.
Unfortunately, Egypt is more the rule than the exception.
Hundreds of Nigerian churches have been destroyed in recent years, with especially deadly attacks reserved for Christmas and Easter church services, leaving dozens dead or mutilated. Churches have been bombed or burned in Iraq, Syria, and just about every place in the Middle East where churches still exist except Israel. Christian businesses have been torched, Christian girls have been kidnapped, sold as child brides or slaves, and had acid thrown in their faces for not being veiled. Anyone born a Muslim who converts to Christianity faces jail and possibly execution. The list of fresh atrocities by Muslims against Christians grows longer almost every day. Even in Muslim countries often portrayed as “moderate” — Morocco, Indonesia, Malaysia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan — Christian minorities are under legal pressure not to build churches or evangelize.
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Posted: 10th, November 2014 | In: Reviews | Comments (3)
Boko Haram: 200 Kidnapped Schoolgirls Are Now Muslim Brides
WHAT happened to the 200 girls kidnapped by Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram?
Abubakar Shekau, leader of Boko Haram, says:
“Don’t you know the over 200 Chibok schoolgirls have converted to Islam? They have now memorised two chapters of the Koran… We have not made ceasefire with anyone. We did not negotiate with anyone… It’s a lie. It’s a lie. We will not negotiate. What is our business with negotiation? Allah said we should not… We have married them off. They are in their marital homes.”
Looks like the hashtag failed…
Murder In Canada: Islam And Dead Soldiers Race For Victimhood
Mark Steyn writes on murder and mayhem Canada.
There have been two recent incidents.
One: The NY Times:
The shootings in the heart of the normally placid Canadian capital came two days after two members of the Canadian armed forces were injured in a hit-and-run crash in a small Quebec city that the authorities considered an act of terrorism.
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French Opera Fascists Refuse To Sing For Woman In Niqab
TO Paris, where a woman on holiday form The Gulf has been ordered to remove her niqab or else be ejected from the Bastille opera house.
During the second act of La Traviata, members of the cast spotted the “Muslim veil” and stopped singin. They would begin again when the woman removed it.
The Times:
The spectator, from the Gulf, was in one of the most expensive seats in the front row of the stalls, just behind the conductor, with her head and face fully shrouded by a niqab.
“They alerted me in the second act,” Jean-Philippe Thiellay, the deputy director of the opera, said. “Some chorus members indicated that they did not want to sing.”
Mr Thiellay said that the unidentified woman was told that she was breaking French law, which since 2010 has prohibited the covering of the face in public spaces. Offenders are liable to a fine of up to €150 (£119).
“It is never very pleasant to ask someone to leave the theatre, which is governed in principle by openness and understanding,” he said. “But in this case there was ignorance of the law and either that lady obeyed it or she had to leave.”
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Posted: 21st, October 2014 | In: Reviews | Comments (2)
The Truth About Jihadi Brides In Islamic State
HOW did you become a jihadi’s bride? The Sun gives its readers an insight:
AN undercover reporter for The Sun was recruited to become a bride for a British fighter waging war in Syria for terror group Islamic State. The journalist, posing as an unhappy London schoolgirl keen to join IS, was allocated a “husband” during online chats with matchmaker Zahra Halane — one of the Terror Twins who left their Manchester home for the war-torn country three months ago.
We hear from Coverntry’s own Rashed Amani, 19, who told the Sun’s blagger:
“I’d love to pick you up as soon as u come.”
It’s Finbarr Saunders.
He’s further quoted:
“I have fought and in fighting u won’t always tell if it’s you who shot them or someone else but more usually we shoot and its Allah the great kills you see.”
Eh? English is his first language.
Not eveyone is seduced by the chance to shag a priapic jihadi to death:
“I just can’t understand why she’d want to go to Syria,” explains Aisha, also 20, and from Slough. The youngest daughter of parents originally from Kashmir, she’s reading Applied Social Sciences at Goldsmith’s. “The UK has given us so much in terms of education, human rights, equality. Why go from that to Syria where, as a woman, she will face so many restrictions? She won’t even be able to go out on her own to the corner shop.”
On Crikey (Aus), we read:
American writer and psychologist Phyllis Chesler speculates that these women have chosen “unfreedom” in response to a surfeit of choices offered to them in the West. Over on the Quadrant blog, economist Peter Smith writes that Amira Kharroum’s story illustrates that the “moderate Muslims” extolled by multiculturalists are a myth.
Unfreedom? It’s either positive freedom (freedom to do) or negative freedom (freedom from). Unfreedom sounds lot like bondage.
Are women really travelling in droves to meet a dreamy jihadi?
The BBC:
When Tunisia’s authorities announced that a stream of young women had been leaving their homes to provide sexual services to Islamist militants in Tunisia and Syria, the statement was greeted with both shock and scepticism. The BBC’s Ahmed Maher went to Tunisia to investigate the reports…
The story is rooted in the Jebel ech Chaambi (Chaambi mountains) area of western central Tunisia, on the border with Algeria… The authorities say they have arrested a number of girls and women in cities around Chaambi, whom they accuse of having sex with battle-weary militants as part of a campaign to improve morale.
We meet the mothr of one women who allegedly services jihadis:
“She has never been to the Chaambi mountains. These are false accusations. She was religious and went to mosque,” the mother told me. She requested anonymity because “this is a sensitive issue in our conservative city.” She wore the full-body veil – we say it’s a sign of chastity, not extremism.”
What’s beneath the veil?
Interior Minister Lotfi bin Jido told the Beeb:
“Tunisian girls are swapped between 20, 30, and 100 rebels and they come back bearing the fruit of sexual contacts in the name of sexual jihad and we are silent doing nothing and standing idle.”
True?
Radio broadcaster Zuhir Eljiis believes the aim is to suggest that the ruling Islamist Enhada party is turning a blind eye to extremism. “The interior minister has not come up with hard evidence. He gave no statistics,” he said. “He’s caused controversy, giving the impression this is a big issue. He is known for his political independence, but I think he might have been caught in a political game between rival parties.”
Is it just a good story?
Another prominent Muslim scholar in Tunisia, Sheikh Fareed Elbaji, told the BBC he personally knew families who had discovered that their daughters had gone to Chaambi and Syria to offer sex in support of the militants, apparently in obedience to fatwas or religious edicts issued on the battlefields of Syria.
And the conclusion?
In largely secular and liberal Tunisia, the idea of sexual jihad comes as a shock. Many dismiss it as a politically motivated hoax. But others, already alarmed by growing extremism in the country, say it cannot be so easily ruled out.
He isn’t sure.
The Daily Mail is sure:
An ever-growing band of young women have left their families in Britain to join the jihadi cause in Syria. Researchers have identified six more such women through their online accounts – and warn this could be the tip of the iceberg.
But we meet only a few:
Academics at King’s College in London said they have seen ‘a big uptake’ in the number of UK women going to Syria. Among them are Salma and Zahra Halane, 16, twins from Chorlton, Manchester, and mother-of-one Khadijah Dare, 22, who is married to a Swedish jihadist. Privately educated radiography student Aqsa Mahmood, 20, from Glasgow, made headline news this week after her sobbing middle-class parents begged her to return.
Can it be that many more young women have left these shores for IS and no-one’s noticed?
The Telegraph looks:
Refugees, women still living under its rule and men who have escaped from its prisons have told Telegraph of the life under the shadow of the extremist group’s black flag. One woman, whose name the Telegraph knows but is withholding, described how she went to the recruiting office of an all-women jihad unit, formed from the women who have flocked to Syria from Europe and elsewhere to serve the cause, some with their children…
“I went inside their headquarters, which used to be the Christian church,” she said. “I asked what the conditions were to join. They said you have to be 18-25, unmarried, and you would earn 25,000 Syrian pounds. But if you joined you had the opportunity to marry one of the foreign fighters. However, they make sure you are a real jihadist.”
What’s the widow’s pension look like?
She said that outside she met four new recruits, three from Tunisia, and one Frenchwoman, who told her she was divorced and had brought her 12-year-old daughter and four younger sons to Syria to join the militants… But the Raqqa woman and other activists from the town say that the imbalance of the sexes means ISIS has begun to “recruit” brides from local schools and colleges.
Among those who resisted, they say, was a 21-year-old student called Fatima Abdullah from a tribal area outside the city, whose brother had joined ISIS and persuaded their father to hand her over for marriage to a Tunisian. She refused, and when her family insisted, killed herself with rat poison. The story was confirmed by other activists from the town.
Are the women simply servants?
Eight months ago, Umm Haritha, a 20-year-old woman from Canada, made her way to Turkey against her parents’ wishes with a half-empty suitcase and $1,500.
Within a week she was in Syria, and a few weeks later she was married to Abu Ibrahim al-Suedi, a 26-year-old Palestinian from Sweden fighting for Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the Sunni jihadist group battling the Syrian regime.
It is not clear whether Umm Haritha’s marriage to Abu Ibrahim was arranged before her travel to Syria. Regardless, it only lasted five months.
On May 5, Abu Ibrahim, whose real name is Taha Shade, was in a car en route to a meeting in Deir ez-Zor with members of rival faction Jabhat al-Nusra. What was meant to be a gathering to finalize a peace treaty between ISIS and al-Nusra turned deadly when an al-Nusra fighter on a motorbike sped up to Shade’s car and detonated his explosive belt.
At the time, Shade was wearing his own explosive belt, which also went off and blew him to pieces.
Two days later, Umm Haritha tweeted about her husband’s death, calling on “Allah” to “destroy those who backstabbed the brothers and resurrect Abu Ibrahim with noor [light] from every piece of his body.”
It’s a bloody puzzle – literally:
The Sunday Times says not:
A 15-YEAR-OLD girl from Bristol who is feared to have travelled overseas to become a jihadist bride may have been recruited by a group of British women who act as religious police for Isis terrorists in Syria. Detectives are investigating postings on social media which suggest that Yusra Hussien was communicating with the women just weeks before she and a 17-year-old friend from London fled the UK.
One message stated: “I yearn to be the wife of a mujahid [holy warrior] and support him and khilafa [Islamic caliphate] all the way.”
Yusra is thought to be the youngest Briton to have joined Isis, also known as Islamic State. Friends have claimed she was radicalised online and recently managed to fly to Turkey, which borders Syria, while her Somalia-born parents thought she was at school.
As many as 70 women and girls are among the 500-plus British Muslims who have travelled to the Middle East for jihad. They include a group which has joined a feared all-female religious police force called the al-Khanssaa brigade in Raqqa, the de facto capital of the self-declared Isis caliphate.
Breitbart, however, is having none of it.
The most barbaric bunch of blood-thirsty misogynists this side of Genghis Khan are yearning for western “brides”—and the “brides,” who will be no more than sex and reproductive slaves, are coming, via an internet campaign, to service ISIS’s male Jihadis in the Caliphate in formation in Syria and Iraq. There is a “marriage bureau” in the northern Syrian town of Al Bab for Western women in a marrying state of mind.
She adds, rather oddly:
The would-be “brides” are given point-by-point guidance on what to expect.” What is coming their way is far darker than Fifty Shades of Grey.
Excited much? A little bit turned on?
Some Jihad Janes are mentally ill and, like Maryam Jameelah (aka Margaret Marcus of Larchmont), may find that becoming ardent spokeswomen for Maulana Abul Ala Mawdudi’s Islamist ideology helps them solve the profound limitations of mental illness.
Some Jihad Janes may have been sexually and physically traumatized by their Western families and seek to escape the country or the culture that allowed this to happen. They may not know that they are jumping from the proverbial fire pan into the fire itself.
The writer seems litle short on face and long on fantasy:
Young, impressionable, naïve, and dreamy girls and women may yearn for a Grand “Arabian Nights” kind of Adventure. I doubt they have ever read the Arabian Nights, which is filled with the most bestial acts imaginable, including that of be-heading virgin brides at dawn, after the marriage has been consummated.
Can you be a virgin after you’ve had sex?
Dr Phyllis Chesler goes on:
She may be expected to undergo female genital mutilation so that she will never be able to experience sexual pleasure; every sexual interaction will be agonizing as will each and every experience of giving birth (Or of urinating, etc.).
Yeah. Maybe. Or maybe not.
The BBC:
The notion of “jihadi brides” travelling to Syria to marry IS fighters has gained currency in recent reports in the western media.
Families in France whose daughters have gone to Syria have received phone calls from Syrian men asking for their daughters’ hands in marriage, and the online accounts of male fighters seem bombarded by requests from women wanting to be their wives.
Mia Bloom from the Center for Terrorism and Security Studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell provocatively argued that women are seen as little more than “baby factories” in the desire to populate the new “purist” Islamic state.
However this does not mean the young women simply want to find a husband. The “jihadi bride” concept is only part of the story.
There is another side to their decision to travel. Women are joining IS because it provides a new utopian politics – participating in jihad and being part of the creation of a new Islamic state…
There are images of women carrying AK47’s, wearing a suicide belt and holding a severed head. But they are also cooking, making Nutella pancakes, doing housework, meeting each other for coffee, and being mothers and carers.
It is this combination of violence and domesticity that many find jarring. A female Malaysian medic, now known as Umm al-Baraa, tweeted in January: “Stethoscope around my neck and kalash on my shoulder. Martyrdom is my highest dream”.
This is a video of life in IS:
It might be that – and this is terrifying – many women are make a free and informed choice to live in IS.
Posted: 10th, October 2014 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
The Sun Scores A Hit With Its Muslim Woman In A Union Flag Headscarf Cover
THE Sun has been leading with IS, the group the media labels “so-called Islamic State”.
Yesterday the Sun’s cover featured a staged photograph:
In the Guardian Nesrine Malik (no headscarf) opined:
Yes, you there, Muslim – bleary eyed, sipping your coffee, who thought the activities of a militant group thousands of miles away had nothing to do with you – are you standing up to extremism right now? Is your Islam “British”? If not, then you are Part of the Problem.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 10th, October 2014 | In: Reviews | Comments (2)
