RUTHFULLY YOURS

Turkey experienced another terrorist attack to start off 2017, following a very bloody 2016 during which multiple deadly terrorist attacks took place. A gunman targeted a popular upscale nightclub in Istanbul about 1 AM on Sunday, killing at least 39 New Year’s celebrants and wounding dozens of other people. In addition to the Turkish victims, foreign citizens from such countries as Israel, Belgium, France, Jordan, Tunisia, Lebanon and India were among the dead. The attack occurred despite stepped up security that was put into place after American intelligence officers had issued a warning to expect an attack in Turkey during the holiday season. ISIS, directly through its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and via supportive media, has threatened attacks specifically in Turkey

The gunman reportedly screamed “Allahu Akbar” as he carried out his massacre. Turkish intelligence officers believe that the prime suspect is a member of the East Turkestan branch of ISIS. Officials have released a picture of the suspect whom, as of the writing of this article, is on the run and has not yet been identified by name or nationality.

Turkey’s president, Tayyip Erdogan, vowed: “As a nation, we will fight to the end against not just the armed attacks of terror groups and the forces behind them, but also against their economic, political and social attacks.” Noting that the terrorists “aim to create chaos, demoralize our people, and destabilize our country with abominable attacks which target civilians,” President Erdogan added, “We will retain our cool-headedness as a nation, standing more closely together, and we will never give ground to such dirty games.”

World leaders were quick to condemn the attack and send their condolences. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, whom has worked with the Turkish and Iranian governments to negotiate a ceasefire in Syria, sent Turkey’s president a telegram message, stating, “It is hard to imagine a more cynical crime than killing innocent people during New Year celebrations. However, terrorists don’t share moral values. Our common duty is to combat terrorists’ aggression.”

President Putin sent this message against the backdrop of the murder of Russia’s ambassador to Turkey, Andrey Karlov, two weeks ago by a terrorist associated with al Qaeda’s Nusra Front (now known as the Fatah al-Sham Front).

Mass migration from the Muslim world is fast-tracking the Islamization of Germany, as evidenced by the proliferation of no-go zones, Sharia courts, polygamy and child marriages. Mass migration has also been responsible for a host of social disruptions, including jihadist attacks, a migrant rape epidemic, a public health crisis, rising crime and a rush by German citizens to purchase weapons for self-defense — and even to abandon Germany altogether.

Development Minister Gerd Müller warned that the biggest refugee movements to Europe are still to come. He said that only 10% of the migrants from the chaos in Iraq and Syria have reached Europe so far: “Eight to ten million migrants are still on the way.”

“There are written instructions … today we are not allowed to say anything negative about the refugees. This is government journalism, and this leads to a situation in which the public loses their trust in us. This is scandalous.” — Wolfgang Herles, Deutschlandfunk public radio.

The Turkish government has sent 970 clerics — most of whom do not speak German — to lead 900 mosques in Germany that are controlled by the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB), a branch of the Turkish government’s Directorate for Religious Affairs, known in Turkish as Diyanet. Critics accuse Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of using DITIB mosques to prevent Turkish migrants from integrating into German society.

A Cologne police superintendent revealed that he was ordered to remove the term “rape” from an internal police report about the mass sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year’s Eve. He said that an official at the North-Rhine Westphalia Interior Ministry told him in an angry tone: “This is not rape. Remove this term from your report. Submit a new report.”

The German branch of Open Doors, a non-governmental organization supporting persecuted Christians, reported that thousands of Christians in German refugee shelters are being persecuted by Muslims, sometimes even by their security guards.

A 23-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker wearing a T-shirt with the words “I’m Muslim Don’t Panic” was assaulted by fellow refugees for offending Islam. He was beaten so badly that he was hospitalized.

Half of the three million ethnic Turks living in Germany believe it is more important to follow Islamic Sharia law than German law if the two are in conflict, according to a survey.

A document leaked to Der Spiegel revealed that more than 33,000 migrants who are supposed to be deported are still in Germany, being cared for by German taxpayers. Many of the migrants destroyed their passports and are believed to have lied about their countries of origin to make it impossible for them to be deported.

Migrants committed 142,500 crimes during the first six months of 2016, according to a report by the Federal Criminal Police Office. This is equivalent to 780 crimes committed by migrants every day, or 32.5 crimes each hour, an increase of nearly 40% over 2015. The data includes only those crimes in which a migrant suspect has been caught.

Bild, the largest-circulation newspaper in Germany, warned that the country was “capitulating to Islamic law.”

Germany’s Muslim population surpassed six million in 2016 for the first time ever. Germany now vies with France for the highest Muslim population in Western Europe.

Tharwa Boulifi, aged 15, lives in Tunisia.

The thing that struck me most is that they had no beards. Terrorism seems to be changing tactics. It no longer shows up as beards, revolvers, religious clothing… But it has started to take over our daily lives: in buses, subways, streets, supermarkets, maybe mostly in the slums. Every day, there, terrorists are being snapped up by ISIS.

“Religion” for me now just means “violence” and “kill.”

The thing is, Muslims generally do not have great arguments, so they just insult us. The subject of religion seems taboo for them: seeing other people — especially those who do not share their same beliefs — criticizing or asking questions about it is considered a humiliation. Discussing Islam means questioning its credibility, and so humiliating it.

Discussing Islam also seems a threat to their psychological safety: having the same beliefs and the same God is a sort of a reassurance and protection. To cast doubt on their religion means breaking into their “comfort zone” — and possibly even raising doubts.

For many, religious tolerance has become a business currency — a way to promote tourism, improve relations with other countries, elevate Tunisia’s image and benefit from the aid of rich countries. But that only makes tolerance a mask worn for personal gain.

The subway is something I do not go on a lot anymore, said the boy. On the subway, said the boy, people still gave me the evil eye; probably the long hair. Last time, a friend phoned; I spoke to him in Arabic. Soon after, a group of young men came up.

One said, “Are you Tunisian?”

“Yes,” I said.

Then, one of them saw the cross.

“Are you a Muslim?” he said.

“The cross is a gift,” I said. Then I told them the truth. “I am atheist,” I said.

I tried to ignore them, but one of them grabbed me by the shoulder.

“Oh really?” he said. “Then where do you think you are going after your death? Who created the universe if it was not Allah? If you do not revere Allah, you must revere Satan.”

By Western standards, military rule is shunned as an oppressive form of government, but in the Islamic world it is the only buffer of protection from the tyranny of total sharia law that must be enforced by Islamic theocracies, such as those of Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The days of sacrificing the safety and security of citizens of the West for the sake of multiculturalism, are over. In order for multiculturalism to work, it must be a two-way street between people that share common values of respect of each other’s culture. Unfortunately, the West did not get that from Islam.

It really does not matter what is “true Islam”. That is something the Muslim world needs to deal with internally; it does not serve us in the West to try to evaluate what is “true Islam” and what is not.

Your religious leaders, whose salaries are paid by Islamic governments, stand before your media cameras and call on Muslims to stab, slam trucks, kill, rape and humiliate the kafir [non-Muslim] Jews, Christians and Pagans.

Islamic governments and terror groups are two peas in a pod, working together for the same goal: enforcing Allah’s law, sharia, on the world. It is no secret that a Muslim head of state must rule by sharia and must conduct jihad against non-Muslims. Sharia law commands Muslim citizens to remove, by rebellion or assassination, any Muslim leader who does not abide by sharia and support jihadists.

As of today, the West must hold Islamic governments responsible for jihadist actions of their own terrorist citizens. Nothing happens in Muslim countries without the knowledge of their governments. If a Muslim government has no control of its citizens, it should be considered a rogue nation.

Bringing in unvetted refugees from Syria and Iraq is not an act of compassion, but gross negligence. Western governments have failed their citizens for too long in that respect and that will end today.

After all, why should cultures that loathe the West seek to live in the West? As President-elect Trump said, why should America — or any country — not allow in only immigrants who love us and who respect our laws and way of life?

TAIPEI, Taiwan—Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen played down the significance of a planned U.S. stopover in January en route to Central America amid warnings from Beijing and speculation that she might meet with President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team.

Speaking to reporters Saturday, the president of the self-ruled island said she wouldn’t be on an official visit to the U.S. and would make routine transit stops. “A transit stop is just a transit stop,” she said.

While Ms. Tsai and her predecessors made similar stopovers in the past, her plan to transit through Houston and San Francisco follows a groundbreaking telephone conversation with Mr. Trump in early December. That call set aside nearly 40 years of protocol that has left contacts between the two sides to lower-level officials at the insistence of Beijing, which claims Taiwan as its territory.

Under Washington’s agreement to open full diplomatic relations with Beijing in 1979, the U.S. downgraded its relations with Taiwan. The two, however, maintain close political, economic and military ties on an “unofficial” basis. Beijing, while tolerating the arrangement, is wary that Washington’s support may stiffen Taiwan’s resistance to China’s goal of reunification.

The phone call between Mr. Trump and Ms. Tsai irked Beijing. The anger was amplified after Mr. Trump questioned the usefulness of the “one China” policy under which the U.S. keeps its ties with Taiwan unofficial.

China’s foreign ministry spokesman this week called on the U.S. to prevent a stopover by Taiwan’s president and avoid sending the “wrong signals” to elements on the island pushing for formal independence.

The phone call may have also played a role in the recent announcement by the small African nation of São Tomé and Príncipe that it was dropping its formal recognition of Taiwan in favor of China. In past years, China and Taiwan have engaged in a bidding war as they competed diplomatic allies. They reached a truce under President Tsai’s predecessor, who adopted a more pro-engagement policy with Beijing. Taiwan has accused China of using “dollar diplomacy” to lure away São Tomé.

Ms. Tsai’s visit to Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador from Jan. 7 to 15 was arranged previously but has taken on new significance as the island seeks to shore up support among its remaining diplomatic partners. Taiwan now has official ties with only 21 countries, most of them small Central American and Caribbean countries as well as Pacific islands. CONTINUE AT SITE

BEIRUT—Islamic State on Monday claimed responsibility for a deadly New Year’s attack in Istanbul that killed at least 39 people and wounded dozens more, claiming the operation had targeted Turkey in retaliation for its military operations against the group in Syria.

The statement was distributed by Nashir News, a channel that publishes Islamic State propaganda, and which had called for followers of the extremist group to target holiday celebrations days before the attack.

Two demagogues have inserted their countries into a monstrous civilisational war between millennialist Shia fundamentalists and apocalyptic Sunni fundamentalists. There were always going to be consequences for such folly – the assassination of Ambassador Karlov is but one.

All of this was clarified yet again with the slaying of Andrey Karlov, Russia’s ambassador to Turkey, by Mevlut Mert Altintas, a twenty-two-year-old policeman. To begin with all we knew – and almost all we needed to know – was that (a) Altintas served in security details protecting none other President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in recent months and (b) the assailant, after dispatching Karlov, repeatedly shouted “Don’t forget Aleppo! Don’t forget Syria! Don’t forget Aleppo! Don’t forget Syria!”

Much of what Putin and Erdoğan say about the public murder of a prime symbol of Russian intervention on the side of Damascus-Iran-Hezbollah in Syria is likely to be propaganda. Turkey’s Ministry of Truth, for instance, was quick off the mark to insist American-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen had a role in Karlov’s death. Altintas, according to this conspiracy theory, was a member of FETÖ, the term invented by Ankara to demonise the Gulen movement as a shadowy, underground terrorist entity determined to subvert the Turkish Republic. Under the headline “Great Sabotage”, the pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper explained it this way: “The pro-FETÖ assassins of the CIA have been mobilised.”

So far, at least, Russia’s version of the Ministry of Truth has been more circumspect about blaming Western intelligence agencies, and yet a smattering of Putin’s allies in the Duma made some like-minded rumblings. Frantz Klintsevich, a significant figure in the Russian parliament, speculated on the “highly likely” possibility that “foreign NATO secret services” were behind the assassination. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, another ally of Putin’s in the Duma, spoke of a “false flag operation by the West.”

The grain of truth in such dissembling is that Mevlut Mert Altintas took the action he did to protest the nascent rapprochement between Putin’s Russia and Erdoğan’s Turkey. That said, Altintas seems an unlikely agent of FETÖ or the CIA. The dramatic footage of him murdering Karlov and then denouncing the fall of eastern Aleppo makes that abundantly clear: “Only death will remove me from here. Everyone who has taken part in the oppression will one by one pay for it one by one.” A spokesman for Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra) later confirmed Altintas’ Salafi-jihadist sympathies. The slaying of Andrey Karlov, in other words, was retribution for Russia’s part in the Shia alliance’s recent victory in Aleppo.

The assassination of Ambassador Karlov suggests that major fault lines divide the Russian Federation and the Republic of Turkey; even if Tsar Vladimir and Sultan Erdoğan themselves would prefer an alliance between their two countries rather than enmity. Back in December 2014, for instance, Ishaan Tharoor, in an article titled “How Russia’s Putin and Turkey’s Erdoğan are made for each other”, captured the friendliness “between two of the most outspoken and demagogic statesmen on the planet” at the time of President Putin’s last visit to Ankara. President Erdoğan provided a welcome “with fitting pageantry: an escort of liveried cavalrymen on horseback, a full military salute and a series of discussions in the cavernous halls of Erdoğan’s vast, new presidential palace.”

Both leaders, Ishaan Tharoor contended, were “kindred spirits”. They were the opposite of “bleeding heart liberals” and pursued reactionary social agendas in their separate domains: Putin, the ardent nationalist and devotee of the Russian Orthodox Church, wary of gender equality and an enactor of legislation hostile to gays; and Erdoğan, the Muslim Brotherhood-style Islamist determined to roll back Turkey’s Kemalist legacy. Erdoğan and Putin were both despots who “squelched” any internal obstruction to their “creeping authoritarianism” and were united by a distrust of the West.