RUTHFULLY YOURS

South Sudan, the land of my birth, is not only the world’s newest nation, but also the only country in Africa that is currently blocking Islamic extremism from flooding southward to overtake the entire continent.

Without US engagement, there would be no South Sudan today, and without its leadership again, and yours, Mr. President, there may not be a South Sudan in the near future.

President United States of America
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington DC 20500

Dear President Donald J. Trump,

As a former Sudanese slave, human rights activist, and American citizen deeply grateful for your public stand against all forms of public violence, I humbly ask that you allow me to provide some counsel on the grave situation in South Sudan, the land of my birth. It is not only the world’s newest nation, but also the only country in Africa that is currently blocking Islamic extremism from flooding southward to overtake the entire continent. I hope that we will be able to meet in person to discuss the ongoing war and humanitarian disaster there.

The people of South Sudan achieved their independence thanks to George W. Bush’s personal leadership, which resulted in millions of people being saved from more slavery, Islamization and Arabization. In the eyes of so many, this is one of the greatest legacies of the United States as a whole in Africa. Without US engagement, there would be no South Sudan today, and without its leadership again, and yours, Mr. President, there may not be a South Sudan in the near future.

The US under President Barack Obama has allowed it to happen.

Mr. President, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) has failed completely to bring peace to the people of Southern Sudan. The only hope that Southern Sudanese have now is your leadership as a man of moral conscience when it comes to preventing the further spread of extremist Islam from overrunning all of Africa. The situation is still salvageable, with America’s help.

On behalf of all of the South Sudanese community in the United States, we beseech you as our new leader. We humbly request a meeting with you or with your staff in which we can discuss the situation in South Sudan, and hopefully discover some ways forward toward an end to the country’s crisis and South Africa’s future. We would appreciate your insight and your help.

I look forward to this opportunity, and stand ready and willing to visit you or your staff, at your earliest convenience. Thank you for your consideration.

Most Sincerely,

Simon Deng
Human Rights Activist

In 1910, a French editor in the colonial ministry, Alain Quellien, published The Muslim Policy in West Africa. This work, addressed to specialists, is one of measured praise for the religion of the Koran, a “practical and indulgent” religion, better adapted to indigenous peoples, while Christianity is “too complicated, too abstract, too austere for the rudimentary and materialist mentality of the Negro.” Seeing Islam as a civilizing force that “removes peoples from fetishism and its degrading practices” and thus facilitates European penetration, the author calls for an end to prejudices that equate this confession with barbarism and fanaticism, castigating the “Islamophobia” prevalent among colonial personnel. What is needed, on the contrary, is to tolerate Islam and to treat it impartially. Quellien was writing as an administrator, concerned with order. Why demonize a religion that keeps peace in the empire, whatever may be the abuses, which he considers minor, of which it is guilty—that is, slavery and polygamy? Since Islam is the best ally of colonialism, believers must be protected from the nefarious influence of modern ideas; their way of life must be respected.

Maurice Delafosse, a colonial administrator living in Dakar, writes at about the same time: “Whatever may say those for whom Islamophobia is a principle of indigenous administration, France has nothing more to fear from Muslims in West Africa than from non-Muslims.” He adds: “Islamophobia therefore serves no purpose in West Africa.”

The term “Islamophobia” probably existed before these bureaucrats of the empire used it. Still, this language remained rare until the late 1980s, when the word was transformed little by little into a political tool, under the pressure of British Muslims reacting to the fatwa that the Ayatollah Khomeini had pronounced against novelist Salman Rushdie, following his publication of The Satanic Verses. With its fluid meaning, the word “Islamophobia” amalgamates two very different concepts: the persecution of believers, which is a crime; and the critique of religion, which is a right. A newcomer in the semantic field of antiracism, this term has the ambition of making Islam untouchable by placing it on the same level as anti-Semitism.

In Istanbul, in October 2013, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, financed by dozens of Muslim countries that themselves shamelessly persecute Jews, Christians, Buddhists, and Hindus, demanded that Western countries put an end to freedom of expression where Islam was concerned, charging that the religion had been represented too negatively as a faith that oppresses women and that proselytizes aggressively. The signatories’ intention was to make criticism of the religion of the Koran an international crime.

This demand arose at the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Durban as early as 2001 and would be reaffirmed almost every year. UN special rapporteur for racism Doudou Diene, in a 2007 report to the organization’s Human Rights Council, decries Islamophobia as one of the “most serious forms of the defamation of religions.” In March of that year, the Human Rights Council had equated this type of defamation to racism, pure and simple, and demanded that all mockery of Islam and its religious symbols be banned. This was a double ultimatum. The first goal was to impose silence on Westerners, who were guilty of colonialism, secularism, and seeking equality between men and women. The second, even more important, aim was to forge a weapon of enforcement against liberal Muslims, who dared to criticize their faith and who called for reform of family laws and for equality between the sexes, for a right to apostatize and to convert, and for a right no longer to believe in God and not to observe Ramadan and other rites. Such renegades must face public condemnation, in this imperative, so as to block all hope of change.

The new thought crime seeks to stigmatize young women who wish to be free of the veil and to walk without shame, bareheaded in the street, and to marry whom they love and not who is imposed on them, as well as to strike down those citizens of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom of Turkish, Pakistani, or African origin who dare claim the right to religious indifference. Questions about Islam move from the intellectual, individual, or theological sphere to the penal, making any objection or reticence about the faith liable to sanction. The concept of Islamophobia masks the reality of the offensive, led by the Salafists, Wahhabis, and Muslim Brotherhood in Europe and North America, to re-Islamize Muslim communities—a prelude, they hope, to Islamizing the entire Western world. Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, a refugee in Qatar sought by Interpol for inciting murder and promoting terrorism, often deplored the fact that Islam failed twice in its conquest of Europe: in 732, when Charles Martel stopped the Saracens at Poitiers; and in 1689, with the aborted attempt of the Ottomans to take Vienna. Now the idea is to convert Europe to the true faith in part by transforming the law and the culture.

The majority of the judges nevertheless determined that “triple talaq” was actually “against the basic tenets of the Holy Quran,” and “what is bad in theology is bad in law as well.” According to the decision, the practice was in violation of Article 14 of India’s constitution, which guarantees the right to equality.

In Britain, abusive practices against Muslim women are still undertaken by Sharia Councils with impunity. In the West, the supposed dangers of multiculturalism are still regarded as more important than human rights. All Britain would need to do is enforce its own laws.

What supporters of this form of multiculturalism fail to realize — or refuse to acknowledge — is that the very existence of Sharia-compliant tribunals is not only a threat to modern justice, but necessarily abets the abuse of Muslim women, lack of equality, and the total lack of equal justice under law. In truth, justice is denied.

In a recent landmark ruling, India’s Supreme Court followed the lead of 22 Muslim countries — including Pakistan and Bangladesh — by outlawing the Islamic practice according to which a husband is able to divorce his wife instantly by uttering the word talaq (Arabic for “divorce”) three times — including by text or voice mail. The decision was not unanimous. A minority of the judges argued that banning “triple talaq” would be a violation of the Indian constitution, which protects religious freedom.

The majority of the judges nevertheless determined that “triple talaq” was actually “against the basic tenets of the Holy Quran,” and “what is bad in theology is bad in law as well.” According to the decision, the practice was in violation of Article 14 of India’s constitution, which guarantees the right to equality.

The verdict was the result of a petition filed by five Muslim women whose “triple talaq” divorces left them destitute, all because of undue powers bestowed upon their husbands by radical clerics. The verdict was an enormous relief to them, and other women like them across India. Its broader message, however, needs to serve as a road map. And a warning. In the West, the supposed dangers of multiculturalism are still regarded as more important than human rights.

In Britain, abusive practices against Muslim women are still undertaken by Sharia Councils with impunity. These practices include “triple talaq,” halala (a ritual enabling a divorced Muslim woman to remarry her husband only by first wedding someone else, consummating the union, and then being divorced by him) and iddah, a mandatory waiting period of three menstrual cycles before a divorced woman is allowed to remarry.

These Sharia Councils in the U.K. have been running unofficial parallel justice systems “everywhere in the country,” performing weddings and decreeing divorces according to the strictest interpretation of Islam.

In spite a liberal marriage contract issued in 2008 by the Muslim Institute, guaranteeing equal rights to British Muslim women (including the banning of forced marriages) — which was endorsed by the Muslim Council of Britain, the Islamic Sharia Council and other prominent Islamic groups — virtually nothing has changed. Britain’s Forced Marriage Unit reported 1,428 cases of forced marriages in 2016 alone. All Britain would need to do is enforce its own laws.

German successes against Denmark, Norway, Belgium and France were a product of the geopolitical situation, thanks to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which gave Hitler a free hand in the west. Dunkirk was a defeat, that’s true. But Churchill’s resolve to fight sowed the seed of victory.

The appearance and success of the film Dunkirk have added to the list of war films that are both impressive and harrowing, but the film has not done much to explain the significance of the episode. Indeed, precisely because of the film’s overwhelming focus on the beach and on the immediate military conflict, there is a failure to consider the wider military context let alone the political one.

In 1940, the world was provided with its greatest geopolitical crisis of the last century, one that was even graver than that in 1917-18, serious as that was. In 1918, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk between Germany and Russia posed the threat of a new alignment, one that would enable Germany to turn all its efforts on the Western Allies (Britain, France and the United States), while Bolshevism was able to establish itself with German help. In January 1918, Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, suggested that the Allies help anti-Bolshevik movements in Russia that “might do something to prevent Russia from falling immediately and completely under the control of Germany … while the war continues a Germanised Russia would provide a source of supply which would go far to neutralise the effects of the Allied blockade. When the war is over, a Germanised Russia would be a peril to the world.” The challenge was not ended by the close of the war. Indeed, in July 1919, the British General Staff argued, “taking the long view, it is unquestionable that what the British Empire has most reason to fear in the future is a Russo-German combination”.

The threat recurred in 1940, but in a more acute form. By the end of 1939, Germany was allied with Japan, Italy and the Soviet Union, and had co-operated with the Soviet Union in conquering Poland and determining spheres of influence in Eastern Europe, which left the independent states there with few options. The United States was neutral. Britain and France, while supported by their mighty empires, were reduced to dubious hopes of long-term success, in particular through a blockade that was in practice not going to work due to the Russo-German alignment.
This essay appears in the current edition of Quadrant.
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German successes in early 1940, first against Denmark and Norway, and subsequently against the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Britain, were a product of the existing geopolitical situation, because Germany was able to fight a one-front war and thus maximise its strength. In short, Stalin was the root cause of the German triumph in the West in 1940. In 1939, by allying with Hitler, Stalin had followed Lenin in 1918 by joining the cause of international communism to that of state-advancement in concert with Germany.

This process was greatly facilitated by a shared hostility to Britain and its liberalism. This hostility stemmed from a rejection of liberal capitalism as a domestic agenda for liberty and freedom, but also hostility to it as an international agenda focused on opposition to dictatorial expansionism. Just as Britain had fought to protect Belgium in 1914, and had intervened in favour of Estonia and Latvia in 1919-20, so it went to war in 1939 in response to the invasion of another weak power, Poland.

The past rarely repeats itself, as comparisons between the German offensives in 1870 and 1914, and 1918 and 1940 indicate, or, indeed, between the Russo-German combination in 1939–41 and more recent relations between the two powers. German success in the field in 1940 owed much to the serious deficiencies of French strategy and planning, especially the deployment of mechanised reserves on the advancing left flank so that, in practice, they were not available in a reserve capacity, and, linked to this, the absence of defence-in-depth. French failures magnified German efforts at innovation, efforts which were subsequently in the war to be revealed as inadequate against defence-in-depth.

And so to Dunkirk. The problem with war is ultimately that of forcing opponents to accept your will. That is the outcome sought. Output, the “boys and toys” of killing and conquest, is important to the process, but only if linked to a political strategy that will deliver the outcome. That strategy involves maximising international advantages, as the Germans did in 1939 and continued to do in 1940 with Italy’s entry into the war, and dominating the political agenda of your opponent’s society.

Perhaps the most astonishing thing about Angela Merkel is her immunity to the political consequences of her decisions. Contrary to all promises, the cost of power has soared, yet this has not impacted her popularity. As to the 1.5 million migrants she has admitted, they haven’t budged the polls at all

In Barack Obama, Merkel had found a younger partner sharing her basic views about climate and social values, a man of mostly talk and little substance. Merkel increased the resources for a government-funded network, WBGU (Scientific Council to the Government, for Global Environmental Policy). The goal was set of a global transformation of the capitalist system in the ecological direction. The Germans on the board included Joachim Schellnhuber, Nebosja Nakicenovic, Ottmar Edenhofer and Claus Leggewie, all well -known to be left-wing.

In 2009, a conference was held in Essen ‘The Great Transformation’. In addition to German ministers, Obama’s Chief Councelor John Podesta and William Antholis from the Brookings Institution were in attendance. Lord Giddens, one of Tony Blair’s closest ideologists, was a speaker. The conference was about values ​​and lifestyles in a globalized interdependent world – how governments through ‘nudge’ could reprogram their people’s brains to make them choose a ‘sustainible lifestyle’. The conference was summarized thus:

Decarbonization of the whole society, through use of renewable energy.
Implementation of the Öko-Soziale Markwirtschaft (a euphemism for a planed economy)
People should avoid using private cars, travel as little as possible.
A vegetarian lifestyle was proposed, proteins from insects are more sustainable than eating meat. Eat bugs.
Organize society more like ant heaps – it’s resilient.
It is doubtful if this vision of the future would be possible to implement in a democratic society. It would be necessary to consider appointing a global expert council who can make important long-term decisions without risking disturbances of short-term populist ideas.

The conference had 500 participants, including four ministers, but had almost no impact at all in the media. Only four journalists attended.
Part I of this series: click here

In the 2009 elections, the FPD (Free Democrat Liberal Party) won more than 15%, becoming the natural coalition partner for CDU, instead of the Social Democrats. The FDP had promised significant tax cuts and a reassessment of the former nuclear-decommissioning policy by 2022. They also wanted to limit wind and solar development because the exorbitant cost of subsidies (EEG). In 2000 it was claimed that the EEG would cost the typical household the equivalent to one scoop of ice cream per month, or 3.5 cents per kWh. Merkel promised not only that the EEG would not only not rise any further, it would be capped and subsequently lowered. That promise was false. Today, in 2017, the EEG is expected to cost about 6.88 cents per kWh. The total cost of Energiewende in Germany until 2030 is estimated at least EUR 1,000 billion. It seems to be an economic apocalypse. German households now, next to Denmark, have the world’s highest electricity costs. At the same time, carbon dioxide emissions have not decreased at all over the last three years. Fossil fuel power is always needed as back-up.

Even as Germany is increasingly cracking down on criticism of Islam, it appears prepared to give a genuine Islamic terrorist group the opportunity to win seats in its parliament.

In a remarkable decision taken at the end of August, Germany’s Interior Ministry declined to bar the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) — listed as a terrorist organization by the US, Canada, the European Union, and Australia — “from campaigning as a political party in the September general election to the Bundestag.”

Yes, the PFLP — on a joint list with the Marxist-Leninist Party — plans to field candidates in this month’s elections in Germany and run for Parliament.

What is the PFLP? Formed shortly after Israel’s Six-Day War through the merger of three militant groups — The Young Avengers (Palestinian nationalists), The Heroes of the Return (based in Lebanon), and the Palestinian Liberation Front (which operated largely out of Syria and the West Bank) — it is today, after Fatah, the second largest faction in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Described variously as a blend of “Palestinian nationalism with Marxist ideology” and as “a Palestinian nationalist organization with different ideological outlooks at different times (from Arab nationalist, to Maoist, to Leninist),” it has called for Israel’s destruction and international communist revolution.

Considered more radical than Fatah, it has, ever since its founding, routinely targeted civilians without remorse. During its early days, it was on friendly terms with Germany’s Red Army Faction (the Baader-Meinhof Gang) and received funding from the USSR and China. In recent years the PFLP has been chummy with Iran.

Coming soon to Germany’s Parliament?
Pictured: Terrorists of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in Jordan, in 1969. (Image source: Library of Congress/Thomas R. Koeniges/LOOK/Wikimedia Commons)

Half a century ago, the PFLP specialized in hijacking planes — it was the first Palestinian group to do so, and the first successfully to commandeer an El Al plane. That act, in 1968, is widely considered to mark the beginning of the modern era of international Islamic terrorism. On a single day in September 1970, its members hijacked three passenger flights headed from European airports to New York. In 1972, a PFLP member took part in the Lod Airport Massacre, in which 28 people were murdered at what is now called Ben Gurion International Airport. In October 2001, it assassinated Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze’evi in retaliation for Israel’s killing of its top leader at the time, Abu Ali Mustafa (after whom the group’s militant wing is now named).

During the next few years, the PFLP focused on suicide bombings in Israel; more recently, it has kept busy firing rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip.

In November 2014, two PFLP associates murdered six people in a synagogue massacre in Jerusalem. On June 16 of this year, it collaborated with Hamas on a fatal attack in East Jerusalem; on July 14, it murdered two Israeli police officers in Jerusalem’s Old City and bragged that its “heroic operation” had successfully broken through “the security cordon imposed by the Israeli occupation forces on the city of Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa, breaking the arrogance of the Zionist security which sees in the city and in Al-Aqsa an impenetrable fortress.”

The suspected Islamist terror attack on a restaurant in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on August 14 made headlines briefly, until the carnage in Barcelona took center stage three days later. The killing of 18 people in the capital of the small francophone country was practically a mirror image of the terror attack that left 29 dead in a hotel in Burkina Faso in January 2016. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) claimed responsibility for that assault.

In both cases coverage focused on the infiltration of jihadist extremists who are prepared to shed innocent blood to keep Westerners and Western investment out of the country and who are committed to paving the way, in the manner of ISIS and Boko Haram, for the eventual establishment of an Islamic caliphate on the African continent

Meanwhile, flying well below the radar is what some call the “Arabization” of Burkina Faso and other poor and underdeveloped African countries with significant Muslim populations. It takes the form of scholarships offered to impoverished youth who are invited to study in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, or Kuwait. They return schooled in a far more rigid, intolerant form of Islam. It clashes with the tranquil, easygoing ways of the faith as it has developed in certain African cultures, where it has been shaped by the peaceful strands of Sufism and mixed with animist beliefs and practices. “Arabization” is an effort to purify Islam according to the strict standards of the Wahhabi and Salafi sects.

That push is evident also in the work of non-governmental organizations from the Arabian Peninsula that are active in Burkina Faso. Prominent among them is Qatar Charity, one of the biggest Persian Gulf aid organizations. It is active in numerous countries, including the United Kingdom and France. The U.S. government has accused Qatar Charity of financing al-Qaeda. In Burkina Faso, Qatar Charity and similar NGOs operate subtly: Development projects, such as the digging of wells, go hand in hand with bringing preachers into the country from Pakistan and Qatar; the NGOs also build Koranic schools and social centers that help promulgate Wahhabism.

NGOs provide funding for the repair and construction of roadways, with projects often undertaken on the condition that local authorities allow for the building of mosques every so many miles — mosques run by highly conservative if not radical imams who are chosen by the NGOs. These NGOs work on hundreds of projects each year, all of them designed to benefit only the country’s Muslim population.

This Arabization is not necessarily tantamount to radicalization, at least not at this relatively early stage. Nonetheless, the import of stricter forms of Islam poses a threat to the comity that has long existed between Burkina Faso’s Muslims, about 60 percent of the population, and its Christians, just under a quarter.

Particularly at the village level, the unique bond between Catholics and Muslims has been expressed in their celebration of each other’s major feast days and other important occasions, such as the appointment of a new bishop. But since Arabization, a certain chill has begun to affect these bonds of friendship, particularly where the newly constructed mosques dot the cityscapes. This new wariness also reflects resentment that, although the Muslim majority holds economic power in the country, two Christians — President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré and Prime Minister Paul Kaba Thieba, both of them Catholics — steer the ship of state.