RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13771/france-muslims-secular-state

“If your synagogue or Jewish cemetery needs someone to stand guard, count me in. Islam requires it.” — Tayyib Rashib, former US Marine, in a tweet.

In late April 2018, thirty imams signed an open letter in the French newspaper Le Monde, in which they bitterly attacked the “confiscation of our religion by criminals” and said “ignorant, disturbed and idle” young people had become easy prey for dangerous ideologues.

Secularism is not an opinion among others, but rather the freedom to have an opinion. It is not a belief, but rather the principle authorizing all beliefs, providing they respect the principles of freedom of conscience and equal rights.

For this reason, it is neither pro- nor anti-religious.Islam has a history largely forgotten today: Schools seem largely to ignore or suppress topics related to Western-Islamic, Indian or Middle Eastern rivalries or contacts. To many modern Westerners, Islam seems to have popped up out of nowhere, from across the Mediterranean.One feature of those discarded histories is that, as Europe moved through the late Middle Ages on towards the eighteenth century, Western societies were in many ways not greatly different from those in the Islamic world.

Western laws on crime, male-female relations, education, diplomacy, slavery, punishment, the upbringing of children, and so on, were not entirely remote from those in the Muslim world. While Christians were monogamous and Muslims practised polygamy and slave concubinage, sexual relations were monitored for impropriety and punishments for extra-marital affairs were severe. The use of execution as a punishment for a range of crimes was common in both polities. What education there was tended to come from religious schooling. The long-lasting Islamic slave trade across the Sahara was eventually matched by the Transatlantic trade from Africa into North America. Western distaste for Islam was for the most part expressed in theological terms, just as Muslim distaste for Christianity seemed a mirror image of that. Both Christians and Muslims mistreated Jews, Christians more harshly on the whole. The Holocaust did not happen because of Islamic anti-Semitism.

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/03/11/the-euro-fundamentalist/

Jean-Claude Juncker’s devotion to ‘ever closer union’ helped provoke a backlash

The caustic reaction of EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker to a series of Brexit votes in the British parliament provoked a tweet from one Conservative Brexiteer describing Juncker in anatomical language un­printable in this magazine and — oh dear — of continental origin. Her fury was proof of sorts that Juncker is in the right job.Jean Monnet, the most important founding father of what evolved into the EU, believed that only a united Europe could assure the continent’s peace and prosperity. In the absence of popular enthusiasm for such a union, it would have to be built, Monnet once remarked, “by zig and by zag,” obliquely, quietly, and by misdirection. “Of course,” observed Juncker years later, “there will be transfers of sovereignty. But would I be intelligent to draw the attention of public opinion to this fact?”

Sovereignty cannot be transferred to an idea. Monnet’s genius lay in establishing the essence of a government — a civil service (the commission), a court, and the precursor of a parliament — long before there was any state for it to run. The commission’s objective was to use the powers it had been given and then accumulate more, often with the connivance of politicians mistily supportive of “Europe” but unaware of the deeper significance of what they were agreeing to. As Juncker explained in a 1999 interview: “We decide on something, leave it lying around, and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don’t understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back.”

https://pjmedia.com/trending/maduro-orders-all-venezuelan-borders-closed-as-protesters-clash-with-soldiers-over-aid/

The situation on the Venezuelan borders is beginning to spiral out of control as several aid caravans carrying thousands of tons of food and medicine are being denied entry by President Nicolas Maduro. Yesterday, an incident at the border resulted in soldiers firing into a crowd, killing two. Today, protesters at the border with Columbia clashed with police, who fired tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowd.

Five Venezuelan soldiers defected to Columbia, abandoning their posts at the Simon Bolivar International Bridge. They urged their fellow soldiers to join them.

Earlier today, Maduro broke off relations with Columbia, which continues to facilitate U.S. efforts to bring humanitarian aid into Venezuela.

Maduro’s order to close Venezuelan borders comes as the country’s opposition steps up the pressure to allow the aid to flow unrestricted.