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The Muslim Council of Britain’s Little Problem Miqdaad Versi and Dodgy Facts by Douglas Murray

The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) presented themselves in the manner of debt collectors: standing beside a big bruiser stressing how sorry they were to have to demand this payment, but that they were only just holding back their big, angry friend.

Unfortunately for them, during the last Labour government in Britain the MCB’s behaviour and beliefs were exposed by the more progressive Muslim voices who were by then coming along, and also by a wider society which had become wise to the tricks of these self-appointed “community leaders.”

The Daily Mail issued an apology, allowing supporters of the radical National Union of Students president to pretend that she was the victim of a smear campaign by self-confessedly inaccurate media reports rather than a nasty anti-Semite whose back was being covered by a full-time pedant with dodgy facts.

Miqdaad Versi is happy to apply rigorous standards to others, but holds exceedingly lax standards himself so long as he can carry on his own campaigning work against the UK government’s counter-terrorism and counter-extremism programmes.

Sadly for Versi, the British public’s security concerns are not caused by very slightly inaccurate media reports but rather by the deadly accurate bomb blasts and shooting attacks around the world which nobody needs to make up and nobody can fully cover over.

When considering the roles that various people worldwide play in advancing various causes, a lot of attention is paid to the people who blow themselves up. A fair amount of time is spent on the victims of such people. But relatively little time is spent focusing on the people whose role is clearly to tire everyone to death.

In this regard, it is worth introducing to a wider audience the existence of a man called Miqdaad Versi. This man works for the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), an organisation which enjoyed a certain amount of access to the British government after the Satanic Verses affair, 9/11, 7/7 and other atrocities. During those years, they presented themselves in the manner of debt collectors: standing beside a big bruiser stressing how sorry they were to have to demand this payment, but that they were only just holding back their big, angry friend.

Unfortunately for them, during the last Labour government in Britain, the MCB’s behaviour and beliefs were exposed by the more progressive Muslim voices who were by then coming along, and also by a wider society which had become wise to the tricks of these self-appointed “community leaders.” The Labour government took a strong exception to the MCB’s then-Deputy Secretary General, Daud Abdullah, signing the ‘Istanbul Declaration’. As Home Office Minister Hazel Blears said at the time, it “supports violence against foreign forces — which could include British naval personnel… and advocating attacks on Jewish communities all around the world.”

Finland: Radical Islamic propaganda spreading

Finland’s security and intelligence police Supo says it’s seeing a rise in radical Islamic Finnish-language propaganda. Supo highlighted one blog in particular, which has been operating since last August.

Finnish security police have identified a Finnish-language blog disseminating propaganda by the extremist Islamic State organisation. The blog has been used to share content such as speeches by IS leaders as well as texts from the group’s online paper, translated into Finnish.

According to Supo, the blog has been in existence since last August and officials described the translations as reasonably clear Finnish, although peppered with some foreign words.

“The blood of kaffirs is halaal [acceptable] to you so let it flow,” one section of texts urges.

Supo added that the writings say that sowing fear in the hearts of infidels is the duty of Muslims.

The existence of the blog was first reported by the independent online foreign and security policy paper, The Ulkopolitist.

The blog calls on adherents of extreme Islam to select a variety of soft targets for attacks, such as businessmen on the way to work, young people playing in parks and florists.

In another article translated from IS’s online paper, the writer calls on readers to take their families and flee to Muslim states for protection. If that is not possible, the writer continues, Muslims should publicly declare an oath of allegiance to the caliphate.

The blog also urges followers to use the Telegram messaging service, which offers end-to-end encryption as a security feature, to receive IS updates.
Supo following propaganda phenomenon

Supo special researcher Pekka Hiltunen said that the intelligence agency is familiar with the blog. However he added that Supo will not comment on the legality of individual blog posts.

The agency also declined taking a public position on who may be behind the blog or the location from which it is updated.

According to Hiltunen Supo has observed a growing trend to provide radical Islamic content in Finnish and to target Finland with such propaganda. He said that two factors must be considered when looking at the calls to commit murder.

“First, if we look at it from a law enforcement perspective, then if generally speaking there is reason to suspect a crime, then a preliminary investigation will be launched,” Hiltunen noted.

He noted that if the case is viewed as part of a wider phenomenon of propaganda distribution, then the writings represent a broader trend aiming to drive Islamic State’s agenda, he noted.

“It is also trying to instigate strikes anywhere outside the conflict area, in countries where readers may be,” he added.

The Supo researcher said however that the intelligence police have long known about IS’s propaganda incursions. He pointed to a 2015 Supo threat assessment which also mentioned strikes committed by so-called lone wolves.

“Several of those incidents by individual actors either have propaganda as the background or some similar inspiration. So as a trend, this has been in the threat assessments for a long time,” he noted.

At the end of last year an IS call to action shocked the Lapland tourism sector, as the propaganda images showed Santa, a snowy winter landscape, reindeer as well as a burning sign showing the year 2017.

Why It’s Wrong To Compare Terrorist Attacks To Generic Gun Violence Being unsure about what’s going to happen and knowing we’re helpless to prevent it increases how afraid we are By M.G. Oprea

http://thefederalist.com/2017/02/07/wrong-compare-terrorist-attacks-generic-gun-violence/

On Friday, an Egyptian man armed with two machetes attacked a group of security guards patrolling the Louvre Museum in Paris. The man, who yelled “allahu akbar” during the attack, was shot and taken to the hospital. Thankfully, no one was killed. The attack still terrified Parisians and many across the West. Why? Because of the attacker’s intent and our own vulnerability in our day to day lives.

Since President Trump signed his executive order on immigration two weeks ago, social media has been flooded with memes and graphs showing how few people have died at the hands of immigrants from Muslim-majority countries who’ve committed acts of terrorism. The Left uses this narrative to argue that we don’t need to worry about Middle Eastern terrorism or refugees coming into the country.But this misunderstands, on a deep level, the psychology of terrorism and the importance of intention.
Terrorism Aims to Destabilize Society

Statistics about terrorism are often accompanied by the number of gun deaths that occur every year. This is a typical tactic of the Left. Whenever Islamist terrorism comes up, they change the conversation to guns and gun control.

There’s no doubt that gun violence in America is out of control. But comparing terrorism to gun violence misses the importance of intention, and how strongly it affects peoples’ sense of security. This is at the root of why terrorism frightens people so much.

Man stabbed in the neck with a SCREWDRIVER and others shot after terror attack in market A TERROR attack has left at least four people injured following a knife and gun rampage in an Israeli market. By Rebecca Flood

Local media reported a man opened fire on a bustling market, injuring at least three people who were buying groceries ahead of the Jewish sabbath. Israeli police have said one man also suffered stab wounds after being knifed in the neck with a screwdriver. The ambulance service rushed to the scene and confirmed they treated a man and a woman, in their 50s, for bullet wound injuries to their lower bodies.

Paramedics added the stab victim was a 40-year-old man. Police branded the incident a terror attack, adding the suspect was overpowered by shoppers using their bare hands.The incident occurred at a market in the central Israeli town of Petah Tikva, on Thursday afternoon.

Spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the suspect was arrested at the scene.A police investigation is underway. According to reports the suspect is a 19-year-old Palestinian. Video from the scene shows a large crowd gathered around the suspect, who is on the floor and surrounded by armed police. The attack came just hours after an explosion ripped through the Gaza border with Egypt, killing two Palestinians in what appeared to be a strike on cross-border smuggling tunnels.

Meet Avi Avital, Israeli Mandolin Virtuoso About to embark on a limited tour, the charming musician uses an unusual instrument to lend welcome new textures to familiar classical music. By David Mermelstein

At a time when many classical musicians are scrambling to book trendy alternative venues (mostly bars and clubs), the Israeli mandolin virtuoso Avi Avital is doing exactly the opposite—taking his folk instrument to concert halls around the world to perform with musicians more typically at home in such places.

Last September, Mr. Avital, age 38 and based in Berlin, made his debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, performing Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” for an audience of around 10,000 at the Hollywood Bowl. In December, he appeared with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, performing both a concerto he commissioned from Avner Dorman in 2006 and one by Vivaldi. Later that month, he joined the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center for two concerts of Baroque music at Alice Tully Hall in New York.

On Thursday, he and the harpsichordist Kenneth Weiss perform a nearly all-Baroque program at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, right before Mr. Avital and the Dover Quartet resume a tour that sandwiches three appearances on the West Coast between dates in Toronto on Saturday and Vancouver on Feb. 19. The programs include arrangements of six miniatures by the Georgian composer Sulkhan Tsintsadze, a favorite of Mr. Avital’s, and a 23-minute piece from 2013 written for mandolin and string quartet by David Bruce, which Mr. Avital and the Dover plan to record. In addition, Mr. Avital will perform a transcription of the Chaconne from Bach’s Second Partita for Solo Violin.

Mr. Avital first gained wide attention in 2012, when Deutsche Grammophon, with whom he now has an exclusive contract, released an album of Bach transcriptions he produced himself. His arrangement there of Bach’s First Violin Concerto makes a compelling case for his instrument’s ability to lend welcome new textures to familiar music without compromising the score’s integrity. That principle received ideal expression on his second album: the aptly titled “Between Worlds,” a gratifying compendium of folk-inflected music by composers as diverse as Béla Bartók, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Manuel de Falla, Astor Piazzolla and Ernest Bloch. His third and most recent CD, an all-Vivaldi record, returned him to the classical mainstream, albeit in music largely adapted for his instrument—the fecund composer having written just two works expressly for mandolin. (Mr. Avital’s next album, “Avital Meets Avital,” arriving this spring, pivots in another direction, pairing him with the jazz bassist and composer Omer Avital, no relation, in music that pays homage to their shared Moroccan heritage.)

Merkel on the Ropes She could lose, but Germany needs a competitive election.

One of Europe’s last great political certainties is evaporating as it becomes clearer that Angela Merkel could lose the autumn election in Germany. For the first time since 2010 her party fell to a close second place in a poll released this week, and not a moment too soon.

We say that not out of enthusiasm for the opponent who’s upstaging Mrs. Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) got a boost when it selected former European Parliament President Martin Schulz as its leader. Mr. Schulz is an orthodox tax-and-spend, pro-European Union social democrat, but he has the advantage of not being tarred by the previous leadership’s 2013 decision to form a grand coalition with Mrs. Merkel.

Mrs. Merkel needs some serious political competition. Absent a vibrant center-left, Mrs. Merkel positioned herself as a pragmatic centrist of the European status quo. Most controversially, the lack of a challenger for centrist votes led Mrs. Merkel to assume she could count on that part of the electorate to support her open-door migration policy despite opposition from her right within the CDU. This fueled the popularity of the far-right, euroskeptic Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

Now voters inclined to vote for a social democrat appear to be returning home to Mr. Schulz because he really is one. Polls show the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU, together virtually tied with the SPD at around 30% support. This is forcing Mrs. Merkel back toward the right. Witness the tougher new policy to deport some migrants—and to step up security surveillance while migrants are in Germany—she unveiled Thursday. This is a sign she’s no longer taking for granted the support of the CDU faithful.

It’s significant that Mrs. Merkel is being harried not by a euroskeptic but by another “good European.” Perhaps the message is that voters have turned to fringe parties such as AfD not out of dislike for the EU but out of frustration with mainstream parties that don’t compete against each other vigorously enough.

In which case, here’s hoping Mrs. Merkel continues her rightward drift. Maybe she can even embrace economic-reform ideas such as the tax cuts for which some members of her party are agitating, while Mr. Schulz pushes his proposals for more government spending. The result would be a genuine mainstream choice for German voters—something too many of their European peers have been denied in recent elections.

The Islamic Jihad and Peace with Jews by Bassam Tawil

On the face of it, the anti-normalization campaign appears driven by political motivations. However, it turns out that there is also a powerful Islamic angle to this campaign of hate, which is aimed at delegitimizing Israel and demonizing Jews.

The Palestinian anti-normalization “enforcers” do their utmost to conceal the Islamic aspect of their campaign. They are not eager for the world to know that Islam supplies much of the ideology and justification for their anti-Israel activities.

Fatwas (Islamic religious decrees) and statements issued by leading Muslim scholars and clerics have long warned Muslims against normalization with the “Zionist entity.” Such normalization, they have made it clear, is considered an “unforgivable crime.” The authors of these hate messages are not opposed to normalization with Israel because of settlements or house demolitions, but rather because they believe Jews have no rights at all to any of the land.

In 1989, more than 60 eminent Muslim scholars from 18 countries ruled that it was forbidden for Muslims to give up any part of Palestine.

The vicious campaigns to boycott Israel and Jews, while political in dress, are in fact deeply rooted in Islamic ideology.

These campaigns are patently not a legitimate protest. They are not even part of an effort to boycott Israeli products or politicians and academics. The real goal of the campaigns is revealed in the words of the Muslim leaders: that Jews have no rights whatsoever to the land, and must be targeted through jihad as infidels and enemies of all Muslims and Arabs

Settlements, checkpoints and fences are irrelevant; Muslim scholars want Jews off what they define as sacred Muslim land. Supporters of BDS and the anti-normalization movement would do well to consider this fact. Failing to do so is tantamount to aiding and abetting Muslims to destroy Israel, and kill as many Jews as possible in the process.

Muslim scholars have feverishly citing chapter and verse from the Quran and the hadith, the words of the Prophet Mohammed, in their efforts to encourage Arabs and Muslims to avoid normalization with Jews.

Is Iona Community Sabotaging Itself by Embracing Kairos? by Denis MacEoin

At the heart of its call for peace and justice, however, lies a profound imbalance. We might say that Ionians, like Quakers and many other Christian groups, are naïve innocents let loose in the real world. There is a role for idealists in limited situations. But problems arise when such do-gooders do not properly understand what lies behind mutual hatred, enduring antagonism between people, and conflicts in the name of one cause or another. And here, the Iona Community falls down spectacularly.

Kairos is built on an Islamic, not a Christian narrative. Under Islamic law, territory once conquered by Muslim armies becomes sacrosanct and can never be forfeited to non-believers. If non-Muslims take control of formerly Muslim land (for example, Spain or Portugal), then Muslims are bound to reconquer it through renewed military action.

Kairos, significantly, does not refer to the fact that Jews lived in and ruled in the region long before the Arab conquests.

When Christians choose to ignore the rights of Jews, they deny their own origins in the land. Jesus was a Jew. The first Christian community was made up of Jews who adhered to Jewish law. All Christian churches recognize the Jewish Bible as part of their own scriptural, and the New Testament is a clear record of Jewish existence in the first Christian century.

There never was a “historic Palestine”, and it is disturbing to find a Christian community buying into the modern Islamic narrative. and the “Palestinian” inhabitants of the Mandate are a combination of the descendants of the 7th-century Arab invaders.

In Israel, Jewish, Arab, Christian, Druze and other citizens, regardless of race or religion or any other circumstance, have exactly the same rights under law to form political parties, serve in parliament, seek employment. Why does the Iona Community single Israel out?

Why is the Iona Community seemingly uninterested in the fate of their fellow Christians in the Palestinian territories yet determined to accuse Israel of enormities, when in fact, Israel is the only country in the Middle East where the Christian population, instead of diminishing, has grown since the establishment of the state?

Why, then, does the Iona Community join forces, not with the people who support Christians but with Palestinian Muslims who seek to destroy Israel and who will, in due course, treat the Christians as badly as they are treated in other Arab Muslim states?

The Israelis have never stalled in the peace process: they have made offers and the Palestinians have turned them all down. There has never been peace because Israel has no partners for peace. That a so-called Christian organization should misrepresent history in this way is an appalling dereliction of truth and honesty on its part.

When will the Iona Community come to terms with its far-left bias, its anti-Semitism, its own reputation, and the harm it is doing to any real hope in the Holy Land for peace?

The Iona Community is a famous ecumenical Christian community with three centers in Scotland, two on the island of Iona in the beautiful Inner Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland and another on the nearby Isle of Mull. But the community is also a far-flung body, with members across the globe. These include people from many denominations, from Presbyterians and Anglicans to Lutherans, Roman Catholics and Quakers, not forgetting members who do not belong to any church.

FROM GATESTONE EUROPE

Watch! Migrants chant “Allah Akbar!” as they approach European coastline
by Timon Dias

Hungary stands its ground on migration despite taking heat
by Vincent van den Born

Swedish cop now under investigation for inciting racial hatred after Facebook post
by Vincent van den Born

Syrian immigrant rapes two underage Swedish girls, gets away with two-month sentence
by Vincent van den Born

ECB President Draghi contradicts himself: ‘France can’t leave the euro, but Italy can’
by Willem Cornax

Leaked report: ‘Salafism in Belgium spiralling out of control’
by David Frankenhuis

Study: ‘Majority of Europeans support Muslim immigration ban’
by Vincent van den Born

92% of German ‘anti-fascist’ protesters still live with their Mum
by Benjamin de Wolf

DISPATCHES FROM TOM GROSS

1. Saudi columnist Siham Al-Qahtani: Jews should no longer collectively be blamed for all disasters throughout history
2. “No Jewish plot against Arabs, without Arab knowledge”
3. Muhammad Al-Sheikh: Only political ignoramuses advocate armed resistance; the two-state solution is the only feasible option
4. Al-Sheikh criticized by Al-Jazeera presenter
5. Prominent Saudi Journalist: West Jerusalem is part of Israel; moving the U.S. embassy there as part of a peace agreement could herald the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
6. Kuwaiti journalist: I support relocating the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem
7. Saudi Cleric Awadh Al-Qarni: 9/11 was “fabricated”
8. Assad welcome in London, Trump not?