RUTHFULLY YOURS

As American liberals and leftists continue to portray Donald Trump’s immigration ban on seven Muslim nations in the worst possible terms—from “racist” to “Islamophobic”—and as Muslim activists continue to claim “shock and trauma,” a lone Egyptian man has asked some relevant questions that few Muslims care to face.

The man in question is Dr. Ahmed Abu Maher, a researcher and political activist who regularly appears on Arabic language television and who has a long record of exposing Islamic institutions like Al Azhar University for using texts and curriculums that promote terrorism in the name of Islam. On Feb. 6, Maher posted a brief video of himself speaking in Arabic, relevant portions of which I translate below:

Friends, in regards to the presidential victory of Donald Trump, we wanted to ask our brothers—the fuqaha [jurists of Islamic law] and the ulema [scholars of Islam]—a question: If this man who has on more than one occasion announced that he doesn’t want Muslims … were to coerce, through the power of arms, the greater majority of Muslims living in America … to become Christians, or pay jizya, or else he takes over their homes, kills their men and enslaves their women and girls, and sells them on slave markets. If he were to do all this, would he be considered a racist and a terrorist or not? Of course, I’m just hypothesizing, and know that the Bible and its religion do not promote such things, but let’s just assume: Would he be a racist or not? Would he be a terrorist or not? How then [when one considers] that we have in our Islamic jurisprudence, which you teach us, and tell us that all the imams have agreed that the Islamic openings [i.e., conquests] are the way to disseminate Islam? This word “openings” [futuhat]—we must be sensitive to it! The Islamic openings mean swords and killing. The Islamic openings, through which homes, castles, and territories were devastated, these … [are part of] an Islam which you try to make us follow. So I wonder O sheikh, O leader of this or that Islamic center in [New York], would you like to see this done to your wife and daughter? Would you—this or that sheikh—accept that this be done to your children? That your daughter goes to this fighter [as a slave], your son to this fighter, a fifth [of booty] goes to the caliph and so forth? I mean, isn’t this what you refer to as the Sharia of Allah? … So let’s think about things in an effort to discern what’s right and what’s wrong.

To those unacquainted with the subject matter, Maher is referring to history’s Islamic conquests, which in Muslim tradition are referred to in glorious terms, as altruistic “openings” (futuhat) that enabled the light of Islam to shine through to mankind. For centuries, Muslim armies invaded non-Muslim territories, giving the inhabitants three choices: convert to Islam, or else pay jizya (tribute money) and accept third class status as a “humbled” dhimmi (see Koran 9:29), or else face the sword, death, and slavery.

“Whoever behaves in his host country as the reports suggest has not only lost any claim to our hospitality but also their right to asylum!” — Mayoral candidate Volker Stein, Frankfurt.

The actual number of migrant-related sex crimes in Germany is at least two or three times higher than the official number. Only 10% of the sex crimes committed in Germany appear in the official statistics. — André Schulz, head of the Criminal Police Association.

An even more toxic practice is for police deliberately to omit any references to migrants in crime reports. This lapse makes it impossible for German citizens to understand the true scale of the migrant crime problem.

City police asked German media to delete any images of the suspect. A note for editors stated: “The legal basis for publishing the surveillance photos has been dispensed with. We strongly urge you to take this into account in future reporting and to remove and/or make changes to existing publications.”

“As a refugee, it is difficult to find a girlfriend.” — Asif M., a 26-year-old asylum seeker from Pakistan, in court on charges he raped one woman and attempted to rape five others.

German authorities are investigating reports that dozens of Arab men sexually assaulted female patrons at bars and restaurants in downtown Frankfurt on New Year’s Eve 2016.

The attacks, in which mobs of migrants harassed women in a “rape game” known as “taharrush gamea” (Arabic for “collective sexual harassment”), are said to have mirrored the mass sexual assaults of women in Cologne and other German cities on New Year’s Eve 2015.

Germans protesting the New Year’s Eve 2015 mass sexual assaults wave flags, alongside a banner saying “Rapefugees Not Welcome,” on January 9, 2016 in Cologne. (Image source: Getty Images)

A report published by Bild on February 5 alleged that some 900 migrants, many of whom were intoxicated, gathered at the central train station in Frankfurt on December 31, 2016. Police blocked their access to the Mainufer, a downtown pedestrian area along the Main River and the site of a large New Year’s celebration, so the migrants walked to the Fressgasse, another downtown pedestrian zone known for its restaurants and bars.

Witnesses said that groups of up to 50 migrants of “Arab or North African” appearance entered several establishments and began sexually assaulting female patrons. They also stole handbags and jackets, threw bottles and firecrackers, and, for good measure, finished their victims’ drinks.

Frankfurt Police insist they did not know about the incidents until Bild, the newspaper with the largest circulation in Germany, reported on them. It remains unclear why the victims waited more than a month before coming forward with their complaints. A police spokesperson said the claims are “worrying” and “cannot be excluded.”

Some say the incidents in Frankfurt harken back to those in Cologne, where police covered up the sexual assaults for several days, apparently to avoid fueling anti-immigration sentiments, until local media reported on them. Others question why no cellphone videos or photographs surfaced on social media to corroborate the claims.

Previously, the police in Frankfurt reported only one assault on New Year’s Eve: a 30-year-old migrant from Afghanistan attacked a 25-year-old woman at the Mainufer.

Frankfurt’s Mayor, Peter Feldmann, said: “There is zero tolerance for any abuses. I have great confidence in our police. They should always be contacted immediately. Only then can they do their work.”

Christoph Schmitt, security spokesman for the ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU), said: “It is unacceptable that women have been treated this way. If mobs of male refugees are making the city unsafe, then we need more police on the streets and more video surveillance.”

Mayoral candidate Volker Stein said: “While we had high contingent of police at the Main River, the rest of the city was left to the rampaging hooligans. Whoever behaves in his host country as the reports suggest has not only lost any claim to our hospitality, but also their right to asylum!”

Other German cities also reported sexual assaults on New Year’s Eve 2016, despite an increased police presence and crowds that were far smaller than on New Year’s Eve 2015.

The Left, as usual, wishes to cast the White House executive order banning residents of seven ardently Islamic countries as being motivated by race and religious prejudice. It’s an entirely predictable stance and, as always, it seeks to obscure the obvious beneath social-justice boilerplate.
It always comes back to Bernard Lewis. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the mainstream media gave Lewis, who turns 101 years old on May 31, a brief window of opportunity to explain the root causes of Islamic revivalism. In 2003, What Went Wrong? topped the New York Times’ list of best-selling paperbacks and The Crisis of Islam performed the same feat in the hardback category. The PC police, confused and dismayed by the horror of September 11, had permitted – even encouraged – consenting adults to discuss the connection between Islam and radical Islamic terrorism. But it was not for long.

Our gatekeepers soon regained their composure and today America, and the West in general, is paying the price, a case in point being the outcry in response to President Trump’s attempt at gatekeeping: Executive Order (EO) 13769 or “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorists Entry into the United States”.

There are, to be sure, reasons to fault the White House’s EO banning entry of nationals from Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Iran and Yemen for 90 days and refugees for four months. Many – though not all – Iraqi Kurds, Iranian exiles and Syrian Christians are pro-secular democracy and would prove loyal citizens of the United States, or Australia for that matter. Ed Yong, writing for The Atlantic, makes a convincing case that prohibiting Iranian scientists from obtaining residency is detrimental to the interests of the United States. He adds the salient point that Iranian immigrants, who are for the most part Shia, are not generally prone to Islamic radicalism, let alone acts of terrorism.

Others from the nominated seven countries, Sunni Muslim or otherwise, would relish the opportunity to be patriotic Americans. Conversely, émigrés from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan might be more likely – statistically – to engage in acts of domestic terrorism, despite the two countries being omitted from the Trump’s travel-restriction policy. Take, as an instance, the December 2, 2015, San Bernardino massacre. Syed Farook was an American-born citizen of Pakistani descent while his terrorist wife, Tashfeen Malik, was a Pakistani-born lawful resident of the United States. Fifteen of the nineteen September 11 terrorists were Saudi, the rest from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Lebanon. We might also note that Saudi money, particularly since 1979, has funded the radicalisation/Salafi-style transformation of mosques from Djakarta to, well, San Bernardino.

There is, additionally, the issue of the executive order’s scope and reach being too broad. Even Ken Klukowski, senior legal editor for the pro-Trump Breitbart News, has implicitly acknowledged that EO 13769 contains “legally problematic provisions”, such as the entry ban on those with passports from one of the seven proscribed countries who are also green-card holders and, therefore, lawful permanent residents. Although procedural modifications were soon put in place to circumvent the problem, over the first weekend 109 legitimate travellers were detained and held for questioning. When President Trump emphasised the smallness of the number, given the 325,000 arrivals, the mainstream media mostly ignored his comment or took umbrage. Evan Urquhart, writing for Slate, maintained that injustice is injustice even if only a few are inconvenienced: “When something is unfair and indefensible, the last resort of scoundrels is to downplay the number of people who have been unjustly treated.”

EU migration numbers 2016: 490.547 immigrants, 1.205 million asylum applicants

From the offices of EU Parliament’s think tank, comes another publication on migration. Though it claims the document is not the official position of EU parliament, the numbers cited are from official Frontex and Eurostat sources and it represents the documents MEP’s work with. The entire document can be downloaded from here in PDF format. These are the highlights:

Routes and numbers of illegal immigration January-November 2016

The total number of illegal migrants in the mentioned eleven month period: 490,547. The total number of asylum applicants is almost 2.5 times higher at 1.205 million, which is a modest drop from 2015’s 1.323 million.

‘Applicants’ refers to anyone applying for asylum or similar protection or included in an application as a family member.

So while there may have been a sharp decline in – recorded – illegal immigration, the number of applicants has not gone down substantially.

Meanwhile, the geographical displacement of asylum applicants, per capita, remains focused on Germany and Sweden, with countries on the route there (Greece, Hungary and Austria) also taking on substantial numbers.