BERLIN (AP) — Clashes erupted in Germany when police tried to separate competing rallies by an ultraconservative Muslim group and a small far-right march, injuring 29 officers, authorities said Sunday. More than 100 Salafist protesters were briefly arrested.
The trouble in the western city of Bonn started late Saturday when hundreds of Muslims protested against the rally of about 30 supporters of the local far-right party Pro NRW, which has angered Muslims by showing unfavorable cartoons depicting Islam's Prophet Muhammad. Strict Muslims oppose any depiction of their prophet.
About 110 Salafist protesters were arrested after they started attacking security forces with stones and bottles, police said. Two of the injured police officers were hospitalized with serious wounds after being stabbed.
A 25-year-old German protester of Turkish origin, who is suspected of having stabbed the two police officers, remained in custody and was investigated on suspicion of attempted homicide, police said. "This was an explosion of violence as we haven't witnessed in a long time," Bonn police chief Ursula Brohl-Sowa said at a news conference Sunday.
About 200 Salafists threw objects toward police after the far-right protesters showed the cartoon depicting Mohammed,
Germany's intelligence and security agencies are closely monitoring the Salafists' actions as the group is increasingly viewed as a threat to security, according to officials.
"Salafism is currently the most dynamic Islamist movement as well in Germany as internationally. Its fanatic followers represent a particular danger for Germany's security," Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich told Sunday paper Bild am Sonntag. "The Salafists provide the ideological foundation for those who then turn violent,"
The “Pro NRW” party has said it intends to send activists to 25 mosques throughout the state in the run-up to the state election in North Rhine-Westphalia on May 13, staging protests in Cologne, Bonn, Düsseldorf, Aachen, Wuppertal and Solingen.
Last week, a state court lifted a prior ban on the group using Mohammed caricatures in its election campaign, despite criticism that the images were purely being used for provocation.
The incident follows a similar protest on Tuesday, when 81 people were arrested in Solingen after violence broke out during a protest of Salafist Muslims against “Pro NRW.” The group had set up a stand showing cartoons of Mohammed outside a mosque.
One of the most radical Muslim confessions is on an aggressive campaign of preaching ultra-conservative Islam in Germany. Protected by the freedom of religion act, they spread a message that raises concerns within German society. The Salafist community in Germany organized a campaign with long-term goal to put no fewer than 25 million copies of the Koran into German homes. Over 300,000 copies have already been handed out from over 100 special booths across most parts of Germany.
It is not the matter of how the Koran is being distributed, but rather who is behind the distribution. The group behind the Koran distribution in Germany is the radical Salafist Muslim "True Religion" network led by Palestinian preacher Ibrahim Abou-Nagie, one of Germany’s most-influential Salafist leaders, who has already been charged in Cologne with inciting the public to commit illegal acts.
German Federal Office of Constitution protection has come to a conclusion that Salafist traditions do not comply with the German constitution as the Salafists deny democracy basic principles, human rights and gender equality. There are passages in the Koran about violence, especially against women, who are not protected by Sharia law as men are. Also, violence against the unfaithful is acceptable
Delegates at the recent General Convention of the United Methodist Church (held from the 24th April to May 4th, 2012) approved a resolution calling for a boycott of Israeli goods made in the West Bank.
It was to be expected as the United Methodist Church has for some time expressed substantive hostility toward the Jewish State. There was a great deal of hand-wringing over the supposed harm being done to Palestinian Christians due to the “Occupation” but zero concern over the treatment of Palestinian Christians by the Palestinian Authority itself. Nor was there much worry expressed over the systematic cleansing of Christians from the Islamic Middle East, such as the ongoing oppression of Arab Christians in nearby Syria and Egypt, not to mention recent events in Southern Sudan, Mali, Nigeria…
During another anti-Israeli resolution that failed to pass, which sought the divestment of the Church’s stock in three multinational companies that do business with Israel, the sheer bigotry of one speech by a BDS campaigner stood out. The individual in question: One Margaret Novak of the two-man Yellow Stone delegation to the Conference.
Margaret Novak stated to the assembly, without any subsequent censure:
I would just ask us all to imagine we were United Methodists in the 1930s and 40s [and] that our Board of Pensions held stock in the very successful manufacturing firms in Germany that bid and received the bids to manufacture the ovens for the concentration camps.
At what point would we decide it was time to divest?
How much evidence would we ask for before it was time to stop the wholesale destruction of people?
Whilst the comparison of Israeli policies in a conflict zone to the destruction of Jews in the Holocaust is a common defamation of the Jewish State, which doesn’t remotely stand up to any sort of impartial analysis as the condition of the Palestinian populace in the West Bank improved considerably since the so-called “occupation” began in 1967, with their welfare comparing favourably with neighbouring countries, Ms. Novak went one stage further by comparing three modern multinational companies that dared to do business with Israel with the very firms that manufactured the ovens used during the extermination programme known as the Holocaust.
What are these diabolically evil companies from which Ms. Novak sought divestment? Step forward Caterpillar, Hewlett Packard and Motorola! Ye ebil are responsible for the slaughter of the Palestinians!
It would be an exaggeration to describe Ms. Novak’s assertion as a new nadir in the BDS Movement since activists for that very cause routinely engage in blood libel, for example the aggressive year-long protests in Australia against a Jewish-Israeli chocolatier that featured the signature chant “There’s blood in your hot chocolate”.
Nonetheless, such a statement of moral equivalence represents an interesting insight into the extreme moral depravity of those involved in BDS campaigning, their extremist stances, and frequent attacks on any sort of positive collaboration between Israeli’s and Palestinians. In totality it points to the fact that BDS campaigners do not seek a just solution to the conflict but rather wish to perpetuate it until Israel’s destruction.
Ms. Novak played the BDS Movement’s signature tune that slanders Israel with Holocaust imagery. It is a rather ironic thing to do. Despite their claims that BDS(M) is based on the boycott of Apartheid South Africa, it actually has its origins in the anti-Semitic Arab economic boycott of Israel, which was initiated several years before the Jewish State was born, mere months after the atrocities of the Holocaust were revealed to the world.
The policy of the Arab League was based on an older Arab boycott of Jewish businesses, which started circa 1920. In various guises it became a critical element in achieving within a few decades an effective Judenrein of the Middle East. Interestingly, similar boycotts were instituted in other parts of the world at the same time, not merely the Judenboykott of 1930’s Nazi Germany. These boycotts were driven by nothing other than naked unabashed anti-Semitism. Today same the strategy is ennobled with a fashionable humanitarianism but the behaviour of those involved reveals its true intent.
The BBC never ceases to have Timothy Garton Ash, Professor of European Studies in the University of Oxford, commenting on a wide variety of issues.
On BBC Radio 4 News at One today he was dispensing his wisdom in regard to the elections in Greece and France.
What a tragedy for the hapless people of Britain that they are being fed information from an organisation, the BBC, which seems to operate like a kind of Islamic Lord Haw Haw, and that the people are not issued with a health (and wealth) warning that the views of such luminaries as professor Timothy Garton Ash include a Europe which should accept gracefully that it becomes Eurabia.
This is what Mark Steyn wrote about Garton Ash:
Meanwhile, the complaceniks held down prestigious chairs at European universities and think tanks and assure us there’s no problem. Timothy Garton Ash is an Oxford professor who directs its European Studies Centre, the sort of chap National Public Radio calls in when they need an “expert” on the EU.
[…]
The populations of Europe are aging fast, so more immigrants will be needed to support the pensioners, and these will largely be Muslim immigrants. For this increasingly Muslim Europe to define itself against Islam would be ridiculous and suicidal…Let’s imagine, for a moment, Europe in 2025 at its possible best. A political, economic, and security community of some forty free countries and 650 million people, embracing all the lands in which the two world wars began, and producing, still, a large part of the wealth of the world. A further 650 million people, born in the most explosive parts of the early twenty-first-century globe, but now living in a great arc of partnership with this European Union, from Marrakesh, via Cairo, Jerusalem, Baghdad, and Tbilisi, all the way to Vladivostok. That would not be nothing.
No, indeed. It would certainly be something, but quite what he declines to say. And that’s what Garton Ash sees as the Continent’s “possible best” – a giant Euro-Muslim “arc of partnership”. Faced with a choice between correcting course or drifting irrevocably into Eurabia. Garton Ash has chosen consciously to embrace the latter. He will not be the last.
AMERICA ALONE By Mark Steyn p. 125.
So this Oxford professor, who is also, according to his Biography the Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, thinks that "this increasingly Muslim Europe" is "a good thing" (Mark Steyn, p 124).
Well I wonder whether the people of Europe think that living under Muslim colonisation, duly Islamized and with no legal rights, will be a "good thing"?
But do the people of Europe realise that this is what is happening?:
This book describes Europe’s evolution from a Judeo-Christian civilization, with important post-Enlightenment secular elements, into a post-Judeo-Christian civilization that is subservient to the ideology of jihad and the Islamic powers that propagate it. The new European civilization in the making can be called a “civilization of dhimmitude.” The term dhimmitude comes from the Arabic word “dhimmi”. It refers to subjugated, non-Muslim individuals or people that accept the restrictive and humiliating subordination to an ascendant Islamic power to avoid enslavement or death.1 The entire Muslim world as we know it today is a product of this 1,300 year-old jihad dynamic, whereby once thriving non-Muslim majority civilizations have been reduced to a state of dysfunctional dhimmitude. Many have been completely Islamized and have disappeared. Others remain as fossilized relics of the past, unable to evolve.
Eurabia by Bat Ye’or The Euro-Arab Axis by Bat Ye’or p. 9
1. Bat Ye’or, The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam, translated from the French by David Maisel, Paul Fenton and David Littman. With a preface by Jacques Ellul. Revised and enlarged English edition (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1985).
[Bold emphasis added]
Should the British people be fed the views of such a man as professor Garton Ash without first being told that he is in favour of Muslims assuming control over the governance of Europe?
The Wall Street Journal reported that Socialist leader Francois Hollande has apparently won today's Presidential run-off election.
Given what we posted earlier today in commentary from Nidra Poller and Michel Gurfinkiel, is France's future, especially that of the Jewish community there uncertain, considering Hollande's "nouveau France" platform? We will shortly see what evolves when M. Hollande takes over the Elysee Palace as France's new President. Perhaps there will be a return to rampant muliculturalism and deepening Muslim intimidation in France with the largest Muslim population of any EU member country.
PARIS—French Socialist candidate François Hollande won Sunday's presidential runoff, defeating incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy after a hard-fought campaign that pitted two radically different personalities against each other, according to estimates of preliminary results seen by The Wall Street Journal.
The ballot was set to continue until 8 p.m. local time in some large French cities, but the samples of preliminary results show Mr. Hollande, 57 years old, had garnered between 52% and 53.3% of the vote. The center-right Mr. Sarkozy, also 57, collected an estimatedMr. Sarkozy collected an estimated 46.7% to 48%, according to the sample of results.
Algeria's prime minister called Saturday for his country's stability to be preserved in upcoming polls, arguing he could see no Arab Spring but rather a "plague" wrecking the region.
Speaking at a rally attended by around 3,000 people in Algiers on the penultimate day of the May 10 legislative election campaign, Ahmed Ouyahia criticised voices calling for an Arab Spring-style revolt in Algeria.
"It isn't an Arab Spring which is sweeping the region but a plague, and there is confirmation of this everyday," he said, citing "the colonisation of Iraq, the destruction of Libya, the partition of Sudan and the weakening of Egypt."
Protests left five dead and hundreds wounded broke out in Algeria in January 2011, days after the beginning of the Tunisian uprising, which launched a wave of pro-democracy movements in the region known as the Arab Spring.
But the protests never developed into a broad movement challenging the regime, which soothed tempers by raising the minimum wage and passing a package of cautious reforms.
"We are telling our Arab brothers: 'When our throats were being slit, you didn't even come to extend your condolences, so don't lecture us today'," he said.
Ouyahia was referring to the decade of civil war that erupted in 1992 when the army interrupted legislative elections which the Islamists were poised to win. Some 200,000 people died in the conflict.
In countries affected by the Arab Spring such as Tunisia or Egypt, the elections that came after long-standing autocrats were toppled saw Islamist parties make huge gains.
Ouyahia is believed to be close to the military and a member of the so-called "eradicators" faction which advocates the toughest line against Islamism.
Algerians are called to elect their national assembly on May 10.
An Islamist alliance is hoping to benefit from the Arab Spring effect but observers say deep distrust for the political class could result in very low turnout.
The Buffalo News reported on the results of the recently released 2010 US Religious Census for the Buffalo - Niagara Frontier in Western New York. The fastest growing faith there is, you guessed it, Islam. An article, "The number of religiously unaffilated in area soars," in today’s Buffalo News, notes the disturbing findings for the major faith groups:
Nearly half the residents in the Buffalo Niagara region are considered "unclaimed" by a religious group -- a stunning change from just a decade ago, when the percentage of the population affiliated with a faith tradition was higher here than in any other metropolitan area in the country.
Catholicism, most mainline Protestant denominations, Judaism and some evangelical denominations in the Buffalo Niagara region experienced huge membership declines between 2000 and 2010, according to the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, which last week released the results of the latest U.S. Religion Census.
The study also showed exponential growth of the local Muslim community, which is now estimated at 18,483 people in Erie and Niagara counties, up from about 5,400 a decade ago.
That makes Islam the second most-practiced world religion in Western New York, behind Christianity.
Judaism slipped to third, with a total of 8,084 adherents in Buffalo Niagara, down from an estimate of 20,150 in 2000.
The Buffalo Niagara region had a population loss of less than 3 percent -- about 34,000 people -- between 2000 and 2010. At the same time, membership in a religious tradition fell by 31 percent, or more than a quarter of a million people.
"That's a pretty big drop," noted Dale E. Jones, who conducted data analysis and mapping for the 2010 U.S. Religion Census.
The unclaimed category consists of 514,314 people and is now the single largest segment of the Buffalo Niagara population, when compared with the area's religious groups.
What’s behind the exponential growth of Western New York’s Muslim population? Note what MPACT local director, Dr. Khalid Qasi said in an interview for this article about the liberalization of US immigration policies:
The presence of Muslims grew by 67 percent nationwide, with estimates now pegged at 2.6 million, according to the census.
But in Buffalo Niagara, the percent increase for Muslims was a whopping 242 percent.
The 18,483 estimate appeared to be accurate, according to Dr. Khalid Qazi, president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council of Western New York.
Qazi has pegged the local Muslim population at 20,000 to 25,000 for the six counties of Western New York.
The census, which breaks down data by state, county and metro areas, cited an additional 3,000 Muslims living in Cattaraugus and Chautauqua counties.
"In this context, I don't think it is really different from what my own personal estimates are," he said.
But Qazi said not all of the growth has occurred over the past decade. The 2000 census estimate of 5,400 was much too low, he said. The number then would have been closer to 10,000 Muslims.
Qazi attributed the growth to several factors, beginning with immigration changes dating back to the Lyndon Johnson administration that allowed immigrants from primarily Muslim countries to enter the United States.
More recently, physicians, engineers and scientists needed in the United States to fill professional posts where there is a shortage often are from Muslim backgrounds, Qazi said. And in Buffalo, the resettlement of refugees from Bosnia and Somalia has added to the local Muslim community, which also tends to have families with more children, he said.
"As much as we saw loss of population, it would be far higher if we did not see refugee resettlement," Qazi said.
But why do Muslims gravitate toward and stay in Buffalo?
"I think the community in Buffalo is a much more tolerant community, and people are willing to stay here," he said.
The area's low cost of living compared with larger cities also is a major factor, he said.
Of course, all is not sweetness and light in the Buffalo-Niagara Frontier. You may recall the US case against al Qaeda wannabe terrorists, the Buffalo Six. Then there was the spectacular honor killing beheading of the wife by Muzzammil Hassan, the owner of the alleged moderate Muslim Bridges TV channel. More recently we have the Jewish community’s discovery of extremist Syrian Imams in a disastrous synagogue-mosque twinning program of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding co-founded by Rabbi Marc Schneier uncovered by Dr. Charles Jacobs and Ilya Feoktistov of Americans for Peace and Tolerance, the “buffaloed in Buffalo” incident. In our coverage of the failure of the American Law for American Courts legislation, we also noted Hasan Shibly, Florida’s CAIR director, who hailed from the Buffalo Muslim community. He and his mother had been detained at the US-Canadian border because Homeland Security had information that they had consorted with terrorist financiers at a conference in Toronto. Then there is Buffalo’s burgeoning Somali Muslim population. The Buffalo News in an article in March 2012, “Monitoring of Muslims Continues“ noted that the New York Police Department (NYPD) Intelligence had a special interest in the Buffalo vicinity because of possible recruitment within the Somali community for al Shabaab, the Somalia al Qaeda affiliate. The NYPD also had monitored the website of the University of Buffalo Muslim Students Association chapter.
One footnote on this latest Buffalo News report on the U.S. Religious Census. The 2010 US religious Census had an estimate of 2.6 million Muslims in the US. That is less than two-fifths of the 7 million figure cited frequently by the mainstream press, promoted by Muslim Brotherhood front group the ISNA. A bit of taqiyya?
Watch this WGRS news video of the conflict over the opening inMay 2011 of the Jaffarya Mosque in Buffalo.
GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — Khalid Shaikh Mohammed fingered his long, henna-dyed beard and stared down in silence on Saturday, pointedly ignoring a military commissions judge asking in vain whether the self-described architect of the Sept. 11 attacks understood what was being said and whether he was willing to be represented by his defense lawyers.
Minutes later, Ramzi bin al Shibh, another of the five detainees arraigned on Saturday as accused conspirators in the attacks, stood, knelt and started praying. Later, he shouted at the judge that he should address their complaints about prison conditions because “maybe you are not going to see me again.”
“Maybe they are going to kill us and say that we have committed suicide,” he added.
One defendant, Walid bin Attash, was wheeled into the courtroom in a restraint chair for reasons that were not disclosed.
Amid disruptions both passive and aggressive, the government’s attempt to restart its efforts to prosecute the five defendants in the long-delayed Sept. 11 case got off to a slow and rocky start in a trial that could ultimately result in their execution.
After hours of jostling over procedural issues, all five defendants deferred entering a plea. The judge set a hearing date for motions in mid-June; the trial is not likely to start for at least a year.
(...)
Several family members could be heard muttering when the lawyer for Mr. bin Attash, Cheryl Borman — who wore traditional black Muslim garb, covering everything but her face — asked women on the prosecution team to consider dressing more modestly so that the defendants would not have to avoid looking at them “for fear of committing a sin under their faith.” The women were wearing military or civilian jackets and skirts.
Under Islam, murdering 3,000 people who were peacefully going about their business to further the cause of Islam makes them heroes, but glancing at an uncovered woman is a "sin." The morality of Islam is inverted.
The Joint Task Force (JTF) in Borno State and the Islamic sect, Boko Haram, were yesterday locked in a shootout at a wedding in Maiduguri, leaving three guests dead and several others injured.
Confirming the incident in a statement the JTF spokesman, Lt. Col. Sagir Musa said: "Credible information at the disposal of the JTF Operation Restore Order revealed that two top Boko Haram terrorists on the wanted list of the task force sneaked into Maiduguri to attend a wedding Fatiha of one of their own in Sabon Layi, Gwange in Maiduguri metropolis.
"Consequently, at about 0835 hours today (yesterday), the task force mounted surveillance about 200 metres away from the wedding venue. The terrorists within the Fatiha sensing danger opened fire sporadically on the surveillance team and the area. This led to the death of three civilians and two wounded from the fire of the terrorists and two were arrested."
The spokesman said an AK47 rifle, 20 rounds of ammunition and a vehicle used by the terrorists were recovered.
Musa warned the member of the public not to attend any wedding organized by members of the sect.
Fox News reported that polls have opened in France for today’s second round of Presidential elections pitting incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy of the center right against Socialist Francois Hollande. What is at stake is the future of France pitting multiculturalist immigrant friendly “nouveau France” versus a France aroused to take back its national identity. This weekend in separate opinion pieces, American ex-pat Nidra Poller and Michel Gurfinkiel writing from separate perches in undisclosed Parisian arrondissements tried to disabuse Americans and others from the conventional wisdom conveyed by the mainstream media that alleged Socialist front runner Hollande would end up being first past the post. Au contraire! The race has tightened for good and sound reasons.
Poller in her American Thinker article,French elections: Virtue, the Debt, and the Jewish Question zeroes in on what the underlying concerns are the questions of Islam and generous immigration policies. Concerns that fostered unease, especially in France’s Jewish community aroused by the tragic senseless murders of Jewish children and a Rabbi at a Toulouse Jewish school by Mohammed Merah, an al Qaeda wannabe of Algerian origins.
The French presidential elections, initially presented by pollsters and commentators as a pushover for the Socialist contender François Hollande, turns out to be a cliff-hanger. The best comparison with the United States might well be the 1948 Dewey- Truman match. On the eve of the final round, pollsters admit that the gap between the two candidates is gradually narrowing. My prediction is a photo finish, with less than one point of difference. This is the most important presidential election in France since the end of World War 2. The outcome is not only crucial for France but for the free world. I think this is the most clear cut opportunity for a European nation to stand up and confront the wave of conquest unleashed in 1973. There has been some speculation about how this would happen: mass incarceration and deportation of Muslims, civil war, craven surrender... Now, in the European country with the largest Muslim population, the question is going to be treated democratically; not by revolution, not by tribal warfare, but by the exercise of hard won freedom through institutions created and developed over the centuries. French citizens, acutely aware of the high stakes, are riveted on a campaign that has become increasingly articulate and well-defined. It is impossible in the space of this brief article to give a detailed account of issues and events, particularly to an English-speaking readership that has received rather sketchy superficial information.
[. . .]
Far from any spirit of resignation, French Jewish voices are speaking clearly and boldly. There are calls for increased police protection as a short term measure and demands to curb the evil at its roots in media incitement to Jew hatred via anti-Zionism. The SPJC (Service de Protection de la Communauté Juive) is recruiting security personnel for Jewish schools, charitable institutions are raising money to pay for them. When Richard Prasquier, the president of the CRIF, expressed concerns of some Jewish citizens that the far Left, essential for Hollande's victory, would influence the policies of his government he was accused of mixing religion with politics. Sammy Ghozlan, president of the BNVCA (National Office for Vigilance against anti-Semitism), tireless defender of the safety of Jews and indomitable opponent of the BDS movement, has consistently noted the greater incidence of anti-Semitic violence in municipalities governed by communists, with peaks after demonstrations, exhibitions, and anti-Israel rallies.
[. . ]
The choice on Sunday May 6th is not between two men but between two mutually exclusive visions of the future or, more exactly, the survival of France as a nation. If ever the proverbial Jewish vote would make sense, this is the moment. French Jews would not be afraid to be recognized as Jews, wouldn't fear for their lives, the safety of their children, their very future in France if "immigration" did not import Islamic Jew hatred. The Socialist party, which claims to stand for the vivre ensemble [living together] and accuses President Sarkozy of catering to a neo-fascist Front National, cuddles up to the anti-Zionist Left that sees no evil in the population that spawned Mohamed Merah. The point is not to accuse all Muslims of being jihad killers nor to pretend that there is no connection between Islam and jihad, but to ask how the French nation can resist conquest and avoid collaboration. (Read More)
Michel Gurfinkiel echoes Poller’s observations in his own acute analysis as a seasoned French commentator in his Pajamas media article, France/ A Referendum On National Identity”. His subtitle, “choosing a fate’ underlines for all French, especially its beleaguered Jews, what could be today a close watershed election defining the nation’s future.
There is one thing every French citizen agrees upon: the second and final round of the presidential election will have far-reaching consequences. It will not just decide between two candidates, or two parties, or even two political or economic philosophies. Rather, it will settle the fate of France as a nation.
For clarification, examine the 18th district in northern Paris. It voted heavily for the left in the first round on April 22, and is poised to do the same in the second round. François Hollande, the socialist candidate, garnered 43% of the vote there, much more than the 28% he received nationally. Far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon received 15% there but only 11% nationally. The other left candidates received a combined 7% both there and nationally. All in all, the left won a staggering 65% of the vote in the 18th, about 20 points higher than the national returns.
A completely different picture emerged in the neighboring northwestern 17th district of Paris.
There, Sarkozy was the undisputed frontrunner, with 44% of the vote. While Hollande lagged with 26%, Bayrou finished slightly better than he did nationally, with over 10%. Mélenchon stayed near 7%; Le Pen fell to 6%. The far left took 3%.
The right and the center took 60% of the vote in the 17th, while the left did not even reach 40%.
Politically speaking, why are these neighboring districts worlds apart? The 17th is a bit richer as a whole; a bit more bourgeois than the 18th, but there are both affluent and working class areas in both districts. The actual differences are ethnic and cultural.
The 18th is essentially a “neo-French” stronghold: a place where most inhabitants are immigrants (or children of immigrants) from non-European countries and where Islam is the dominant religion. Admittedly, two major tourist spots with a distinct French flavor — Old Montmartre, the Disneyland-style artists’ village near Sacré-Cœur Basilica atop Montmartre Hill; and Pigalle, nowadays merely a sex shop row — are to be found here. But they are just enclaves in an otherwise increasingly alien environment.
To understand what the 18th district really is one must examine everyday life. For instance, note the street prayers that Muslim Arabs and sub-Saharan Muslims have been routinely organizing on Fridays. Though an illegal practice — it blocks cars and even pedestrian traffic for hours — the socialist mayor of Paris and the police have had no option (so say they) other than tacitly tolerating it.
On the contrary, the 17th remains staunchly French in outlook. Its inhabitants, whatever their race, ethnicity, or religion, prefer France to be Western, Judeo-Christian, and democratic. They do not want it to become a post-Western, “globalized” nation. (Or, to use a formerly rude and now politically correct French expression: “Une société métissée” – a mongrel society).
Quite remarkably, the 17th district today hosts — along with more districts and communes in western Greater Paris — the largest French Jewish community. Many of the local Jews are Sephardic immigrants (rather, refugees) from Arab countries who upon coming to France lived in the same areas as Muslim immigrants from North Africa or sub-Saharan Africa. They were forced over the years to migrate to areas where they could expect to be both physically and emotionally safer
[. . .]
A further difficulty: there are marked differences among immigrants, between Europeans and non-Europeans on one hand, and even among non-Europeans on the other hand. Some of them came to France to be French, some to turn France into their own thing.
We may rely on some figures. According to Eurostat (the statistical office of the European Union), metropolitan France was in 2011 the most immigration-oriented of all EU countries: 26.6% of its inhabitants were either immigrants or the children of immigrants. A similar figure is provided by Insee, the French National Institute of Statistics: they found that 23.9% of all babies born in metropolitan France in 2010 had at least one parent born outside of Europe, including the overseas French territories. Roughly speaking, this amounts to one quarter of the 63 million population, or about 15 million people.
[. . .]
In between the two presidential rounds, Nicolas Sarkozy constantly mentioned France’s national identity as one of his priorities. France, he said in Toulouse on April 29, “was twenty centuries old. … It was the combined produce of Christianity, the Enlightenment, the Revolution, and the anti-Nazi resistance. … It was the land of Victor Hugo, Voltaire, Joan of Arc. … It was keeping the memory of the Shoah and of the thousands of North African Muslims who had fought in its armies during WW2.”
Clearly, he was wooing both Marine Le Pen’s and François Bayrou’s supporters, the key voters in the second round. But his words rang true.
Hollande has also undertaken winning at least some of Le Pen’s votes. During his debate with Sarkozy Wednesday evening, he repeatedly said that he would be as tough as anybody on immigration matters, and would uphold a strict separation between state and religion. He even said that his most controversial and most pro-immigration proposal — granting electoral franchise to legal foreign residents in local ballots — was not to be taken seriously, since it implied a complex and unlikely constitutional revision in the first place.
But such cynical short-term tactics cannot change that the long-term future of the left lies with the neo-French only. (Read More)
At the conclusion of this Presidential run in la belle France, we shall see if France returns to its national identity as defined by Sarkozy or enters the troublesome vision of a “noveau France” espoused by multiculturalist Socialist Hollande.
As Hollywood icon actress Bette Davis said in the classic 1950 film, All About Eve: “fasten your seat belts..it’s going to be a bumpy night” in France.
Watch the incomparable Ms. Davis deliver this classic line in this You Tube video:
Dr. Rich Swier had just returned from his first trip to Israel. He sent us this report of what he found there that he posted on the blog for his daily international internet radio program, The Dr. Rich Show, First Impressions: My Trip to Israel. He will discuss what he found there on his upcoming radio program, Monday, May 7th that airs at 11:00 AM EDT in the US.
Rich Swier is a fellow Nam era serving US Army officer and a colleague in The United West. His daily program, The Dr. Rich Show has garnered a wide international audience via the internet. I have been a guest on several episodes with both he and co-host Johnny Jackson. Having family and friends and been to Eretz Yisroel a number of times, I know what Rich has found there. A warm sometimes fractious people who have literally turned a desert waste land into a veritable Garden of Eden. Just look at a satellite photo of the country and notice the green of Israel contrasted with the arid dryness of its Arab neighbors. Israel's founders and several generations of Jewish immigrants and their descendents have labored to return the land to its productive origins. The tragedies of the Shoah that killed Six Million European co-religionists and the pogroms in Arab Muslim lands in the Ummah .sent millions of Jews and their progeny into sanctuary in this land. They have transformed it into a vibrant democracy and leading edge modern technology based economy. They did it by themselves with the support of the Jewish Diaspora and allies like the US, Germany and other friends in the West. This has produced what authors Dan Senor and Saul Singer called in their book a veritable, Start Up Nation. A Jewish nation that treats its minorities, women, gays, Christians and Muslims fairly. It is truly a light unto the nations, surrounded as it is by fundamentalist Islamic neighbors threatening to extinguish it in a religiously inspired Jihad equipped with tens of thousands rockets, missiles, suicide bombers and soon nuclear weapons. Israel's largely citizen Army, Zahal, with its professional core, assures this vibrant country with the means of thwarting those threats. Americans support this valued ally in the troubled cockpit of the Middle East, because it shares common Judeo-Christian values of liberty, freedom and the Future. As Rich has found out on this his first trip to Israel, Jerusalem is the spiritual center of the Judeo-Christian West. Kol Hakavod ("Outstanding in Ivreet") to my chaver, Lt. Col. Rich Swier.
Read my friend Rich Swier’s blog post and tune in to his program via the internet to hear his first impressions of Israel.
I recently returned from my first trip to Israel. I thank the Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee for making this trip possible. People say first impressions are lasting ones. I came home with three everlasting impressions of Israel.
First, Israel is ancient on the surface yet new at its core. My first days were spent in two adjoining cities, Jaffa founded over 4,000 years ago and Tel Aviv founded in 1912. These cities symbolize how Israel's ancient roots gave birth to a modern and cosmopolitan culture. Viewing Tel Aviv from Jaffa one can see why Israel is called the “startup nation". Corporations like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have a major presence there. When you check out at any Publix super market in Florida you will be accessing a software program developed in Israel. Haifa is where the anti-missile defense system named "Raphael", part of Israel's Iron Dome, was developed. Read More
KOHISTAN / DASSU: A former lawmaker and cleric from Kohistan district, Maulana Abdul Haleem, termed formal education for women un-Islamic and asked parents to pluck their daughters from school, or else they would be ‘doomed’.
The nonagenarian, who was elected to the National Assembly from Kohistan on the now-defunct Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal’s ticket in 2002, also railed against non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working in the region in his Friday sermon, calling them ‘hubs of immodesty’.
Maulana Haleem, who was an office-bearer of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl until recently, was delivering a Friday sermon, at Jamia Masjid Komila, on who is dayoos, or those liable to be condemned to hell.
“It’s beghairti (immodesty) to equip girls with secular education,” the cleric said, adding that those Kohistani parents who were sending their girls to schools were acting against ‘Islamic shariah’
He did not spare female NGO workers either.
“Some women from these NGOs visit our houses frequently, mobilising naïve Kohistani women to follow their agenda in the name of health and hygiene education,” he said, adding that this was ‘unacceptable to Kohistani culture’. He threatened them with ‘dire consequences’, saying that married female NGO workers will be sent back to their husbands, and the unmarried ones will be wedded to Kohistani men.
When approached for comments, the cleric stood by the contents of his sermon, and insisted that several Hadith books prohibit girls from receiving degrees and certificates in ‘secular education’.
. . . the cleric said that formal education paves the way for girls to enter the job market. “When they permit their women to work, they give them a free hand to mix with na-mehrum (men they are not related to by blood) – by doing so, the girl’s father, brother or husband become dayoos in the eye of the shariah,” he said.
Such people will never enter Paradise, he added.
The only responsibility men owe to women is their sustenance, and not education, he said. In return, the women should stay at home and look after their children and family members, he added.
He claimed that 97% of girls schools in Kohistan were closed and the few girls that were enrolled, only visited their schools to collect cooking oil which the education department was distributing with the support of foreign donors.
The success of the post-Zionist strategy hinges on breaking the sense of kinship between the Jewish people and the State of Israel.
Independence Day is not a holiday for Israeli Arabs. Sixtyfour years ago, they lost their land and their national honor... [their aversion to] the national anthem “Hatikva” – which talks of “a Jewish soul yearning” – should serve as an incentive for devising symbols and events with which all Israeli citizens can identify without being false to themselves. – Haaretz editorial, April 27
And the two words that are the most important are “Nefesh Yehudi” [A Jewish soul]”. When I hear those two words I know why I am here. I know what I am doing here. – An oleh in an Independence Day interview on the significance of “Hatikva” – April 26
It is not often that I find myself disagreeing with The Jerusalem Post’s Caroline B. Glick. Indeed, for many years I have had nothing but the highest regard for her intrepid and articulate defense of Israel and Zionist ideals.
However, I am compelled to dispute the views articulated in her last column, “Post-Zionism is so 1990s,” in which she appears to convey the view that the threat of post-Zionism has waned into insignificance, or at least receded into obsolescence.
Regrettably, this claim is misplaced and misleading, and although I sincerely wish she were right, I fear that her analysis is unrealistically optimistic and gravely underestimates the true danger.
Post-Zionism more pervasive than ever
The advance of post-Zionism is arguably the greatest menace confronting the Zionist endeavor today, everything it stands for, everything it has accomplished and everything it strives to accomplish. It is imperative not to be lulled into a false sense of security.
I would, therefore, counsel caution before assigning any real significance to the fact that public events in Israel are conducted with greater decorum today relative to the 1990s when, as Glick points out, they tended to be more frivolous, irreligious and disrespectful of Jewish history, culture and heritage.
Despite deceptive appearances, post-Zionism is more pervasive and pernicious than ever.
Seemingly impervious to reality that has repeatedly refuted its doctrine, post-Zionism is hammering on the doors of the mainstream Israeli establishment – and gaining increasingly frequent access. What was unthinkably seditious – indeed legally punishable – barely a generation ago is now fashionably avant garde.
Post-Zionism and the Left
Glick writes: “Despite their best efforts, Netanyahu remains in power and the Left can’t get any traction with the public....”
While this is accurate, the crucial question is how has this affected the party platforms and the conduct of policy?
Two things are worth noting. First, Glick appears to equate the Left and “those who are interested in forcing Israel to make more concessions to the Palestinians” with the phenomenon of post-Zionism.
Clearly, such a “one-size-fits-all” categorization would raise howls of protest from many who would object to branding as “post-Zionists” an array of prominent figures who played central roles in forging the history of Zionism, yet advocated territorial compromise.
However, while lumping all “left-wing” elements into a monolithic ideo-political post-Zionist grouping may be going a little too far, it must be recognized that there is a seamless symbiosis between the self-professed Zionist- Left and the self-confessed post-Zionist radicals.
This facilitates an almost “frictionless” migration and cross-fertilization of political philosophies and policy proposals between these groups.
In turn, this has generated a deceptive ambivalence that often blurs the ideological distinction between the two, making the transition from the one to the other almost imperceptible.
Ideological obliteration of the ‘Right’
The repercussions of this “quasi-equivalence” have been profound and pernicious, resulting in an overwhelming leftward deformation of the Israeli polity and the ideological obliteration of the “Right” – which leads me to the second thing I wish to note.
Glick’s observation regarding Binyamin Netanyahu’s ability to stay prime minister, and the Left’s inability to gain electoral traction – while seemingly true – obscures a far more ominous reality.
For although Netanyahu has indeed managed to retain power, he has adopted policies that are far more concessionary (i.e. leftish) than even Oslo peace laureate Yitzhak Rabin, who was excoriated by the Right for betraying the Zionist ethos, ever dreamed of offering the Palestinians.
Moreover, while it is correct that in terms of parliamentary representation, parties labeled “left-wing” may have been diminished, the parties labeled “right-wing” have largely adopted their “left-wing” agenda.
An astonishing spectacle is unfolding before us, with the ostensibly “right-wing” Likud exhorting the Palestinians to enter into negotiations over a proposed settlement which it itself vehemently rejected not long ago as excessively concessionary – this at a time when all the Likud’s previous reservations are being proved correct.
If that were not enough, the head of Kadima, the main opposition party (established by once super-hawk Arik Sharon, together with once super-hawk Tzachi Hanegbi), ex-Likud defense minister Shaul Mofaz, has declared, a priori, that he would accede to 100% of the Palestinian territorial demands – all this before engaging in negotiations with them.
So while the formal party-affiliated representation of the Left in the Knesset has been reduced, the substantive ideological representation of its dovish political doctrine has acquired overwhelming dominance.
Apart from the marginal fringes of the Right, almost all the parliamentary factions have platforms not only far more dovish than the anti-Oslo Likud platform of the 1990s, but even more dovish than the pro-Oslo Labor vision as laid out by Rabin in his last Knesset address in 1995.
Since the 1990s, the political system has, for all intents and purposes, been gutted of any assertive Zionist party platforms that reject the bogus Palestinian narrative – which is, in large measure, the sine non qua of the post- Zionist credo.
Size doesn’t matter
A deeply disturbing trend is emerging before our eyes: Almost the entire gamut of mainstream political parties has – with varying degrees of reluctance/enthusiasm – accepted the basic tenets of the Palestinian narrative, which negate the Zionist narrative. In doing so, they have opened the door of respectability to post-Zionism, and laid down a red carpet for its access to all the vestiges of the Israeli establishment.
So while Glick is correct in asserting that “the Left” and its post-Zionist affiliates have garnered only marginal public support, this is one instance in which “size doesn’t matter.” For they do not need to win elections to effectively impose their rule on the country – or at least to prevent their ideological rivals from implementing theirs.
No matter what the results at the polls, the Left and its more radical ideological co-travelers can promote their agenda and impede that of their pro-Zionist adversaries through their dominance of the legal establishment, the media and much of academia.
Recent decades are replete with infuriating examples of how an insignificant minority view has been imposed on the nation by means of an ideologically biased judiciary, ruling in favor of PC (Palestinian-compliant) petitions, brought before it by radical left-wing NGOs, generously funded by foreign sovereign sources, and accompanied by massive media hype.
Attempts by the parliamentary majority to redress this deformation of the democratic process have been met with furious – and largely successful – resistance.
Legislative initiatives designed to enhance financial transparency of tax-exempt NGOs, and to address accelerating erosion of the credibility of the judiciary were foiled – almost incredibly with Likud-led government complicity – because they would – wait for it... undermine democratic governance.
The voice of post-Zionism
Having eviscerated the Zionist political parties of any resolve and self-confidence, and emboldened by the reticent response of their adversaries, the post-Zionists have set their sights on the symbols of Jewish sovereignty. They have turned the focus of their assault away from the political front lines to the conceptual hinterland and to the spiritual roots of the Zionist movement.
In this sinister enterprise, their lack of electoral support should not be taken as a measure of their reach. They have other means to amplify the volume of their voice and the efficacy of their message.
A major element of this assault is being conducted via Haaretz. In a string of recent editorials and a barrage of opinion columns, it has sallied forth with an overt drive to eradicate references to the Jewish character of the foundational ethos of Israel.
Consider the following editorial headlines:
• “Israel should consider altering its anthem to include non-Jews” (March 2)
• “Israel needs an anthem that represents Arabs and Jews” (March 12)
• “Israel needs national symbols all citizens can identify with” (April 27)
Ostensibly, the objective is to redraft the trappings of public life to allow the Arab minority to identify with, and participate in, state-related activities, ceremonies and celebrations. However, it takes little analytical effort to discover that this is but a flimsy veneer concealing a unambiguous campaign for the conversion of Israel from the “nation-state of the Jews” to “a-state-of-all-its-citizens.”
Assuaging Arab regret
The current focus of attack is the wording of the national anthem, “Hatikva,” which Haaretz tells us, “ignore[s] the existence of an Arab minority in the State of Israel – a minority for whom this land is also their land.”
According to the paper, “No Arab citizen who had any self-respect, political awareness or national consciousness could sing these words without committing the sins of hypocrisy and falsehood.”
Elsewhere, we are told why this is so: “Independence Day is not a holiday for Israeli Arabs. Sixty-four years ago, they lost their land and their national honor.”
I am trying to get my head around this. Is one of the nation’s major newspapers really calling on the public not only to understand the sorrow the Arab minority feels that the genocidal attempt of its ethnic-kinfolk to obliterate the Jewish population failed, but to take far-reaching steps to accommodate this sadness?
Really?
How are we to assuage their melancholy at having “lost their land and national honor” in their failed Judeocidal effort? Are Jews really expected to forgo the victory and to suppress the expression of their national identity to alleviate the discomfort of the defeated? One cannot but wonder what the consequences would have been had the fortunes of war been reversed? And how are we to restore their “national honor” (much less their ‘land”) – or to compensate them for their loss – without de-Judaizing Israel and deconstructing the Zionist ethos.
But that is what the post-Zionists are really aiming at. However, to achieve this goal of dismantling the status of Israel as the nation-state of the Jews, they first have to achieve an intermediate goal: to decouple Israel from its Jewishness, to denude, and then break, the bond of kinship between the State of Israel and the Jewish people.
Hence the assault on the Jewish emblems – first the anthem, next the flag, then the Law of Return. After all, why should the Jewish Diaspora have unfettered access to the country and not the Palestinian diaspora?
This is a question the post-Zionists – and Haaretz – will doubtless be raising soon in editorials.
The nature of nations
Nations are not a mere amalgam of people who happen to inhabit a piece of real estate. As the liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill observes, to function as a nation populations need to feel “united among themselves by common sympathies which do not exist between them and any others.... The strongest of all [these common sympathies] is identity of political antecedents; the possession of a national history, and consequent community of recollections; collective pride and humiliation, pleasure and regret, connected with the same incidents in the past.”
So how do post-Zionists propose to generate a new sense of "pan-Israeli" nationality when one segment of the population sees in the 1948 Jewish victory a reason for pride and pleasure while another segment sees it as a source of regret and humiliation?
The members of the Arab community in Israel made a call in 1948. They elected to throw their lot in with a Jewish – repeat Jewish – state. They could have left, as did many of their kin. They can leave today if they feel they cannot identify with the fabric of national life here.
They can follow the example of many Israeli citizens who came here from economically developed nations, precisely because they felt their national affiliation was not with their country of birth, but with the Jewish homeland.
Arabs in Israel who feel their national identity is incompatible with political realities and the conduct of public life have many options. Demanding that the victors relinquish their ethos to accommodate the defeated is not one.
This must be made clear – for any ambiguity will herald great tragedy.
Marie Malchodi, a technical assistant in the preservation department of Brown University’s John Hay Library, was looking through a collection of books donated by Solomon Drowne, a physician and graduate of Brown’s class of 1773, when she came across an engraved print stuffed inside the back cover of the 1811 edition of The Modern Practice of Physic by Robert Thomas. Labeled “Buried with Him by Baptism,” the print is an engraving of Jesus being baptized by John in the river Jordan. A crowd of onlookers watch from the shore while angels look down from on high. God is represented by a sun with Hebrew lettering inside. (EDIT: the lettering is YHWH in reverse. Revere neglected to engrave the lettering on the plate backwards so all the prints he made from that plate spell the name of the God backwards instead.) He speaks through one of the rays of the sun saying: “This is my beloved Son, – hear ye him.”
The design is not what you would call top of the notch. Dürer was in no danger of being eclipsed by this particular printmaker. It was the “P. Revere Sculp” signature in the bottom right that made Malchodi realize the piece might be historically significant. She brought it to Richard Noble, the rare materials cataloguer for the John Hay Library, and he recognized the style as typical of the work of silversmith and Revolutionary War hero Paul Revere’s print work. “That’s just crude enough to be him,” is how he put it.
Noble did some research to see if he could confirm the print was made by Paul Revere. He found out that not only is the print documented as one of Paul Revere’s engravings, but it’s extremely rare with only four other copies known to exist. Even rarer, this print is the only one of the five to have the full plate mark visible. The other four have been cropped, removing the mark left by the edges of the metal plate when it was pressed against the paper.
Revere began making prints in 1765, most of them on political themes supporting the colonial cause. He didn’t always make the original drawing, however. One of his best known prints, “The Bloody Massacre perpetrated in King Street, Boston on March 5th 1770 by a party of the 29th Regiment” was copied from an original drawing by Henry Pelham.
Why did Revere create the print in the first place? How did the Drowne family come to own it? Based on Jesus and John’s position chest-high in the water, Noble categorizes it as a theo-political cartoon depicting a Baptist ceremony. In his book, Brigham indicates that he could find no evidence that it was ever used publicly in a book or religious pamphlet. He also could find no model in any British book or periodical that Revere might have used as inspiration for this style of baptism depiction. Noble believes it may have been a one-off printing, meaning that Revere only made a few at a time to give to friends and close acquaintances who requested it, which also explains why the print is so rare.
“It appears to be an American original, by an American original. The son of French Huguenot refugees who eventually became, by all accounts, a Unitarian. The print thus marks a stage in the evolution of that aspect of Revere’s life,” Noble said.
Solomon Drowne and his family were prominent members of the First Baptist Church of Providence, Rhode Island, also known as the First Baptist Church in America because it was in fact the first Baptist church in America, founded by Roger Williams in 1638. Drowne was dedicated to the Revolutionary cause, serving as a surgeon for the Continental Army from 1776 to 1780 and then as ship’s surgeon on the privateer sloop Hope. (He published a journal about his time on board the Hope; pdf here.) It’s certainly conceivable that Paul Revere might have given the print to Drowne, but he could have gotten it any number of ways.
Reuters - Malian fighters from the Ansar Dine Islamist group attacked and burned the tomb of one of the town's saints, classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, residents and a regional official said on Saturday.
The militants broke off doors, windows and wooden gates from the grave and burned them, they said, in the first reported attack on a shrine in Mali.
El Hadj Baba Haidara, an elected member of parliament from Timbuktu told Reuters some young people were discussing how to react despite being unarmed. "There is a risk the people may revolt because this is something that affects their dignity. This tomb is sacred, it is too difficult to bear," Haidara said.
Timbuktu Muslims on their way to Friday worship at the tomb of Sidi Mahmoud Ben Amar and those of other saints were stopped and threatened by armed men from Ansar Dine, one resident said.
"What you are doing is haram! (forbidden). Ask God directly rather than the dead," one of the armed men told the residents, according to Ahmed Ibrahim, a resident who witnessed the scene. "After uttering those words, three of them (armed men) entered the mausoleum, ripped and burnt pieces of white clothing that surrounded the tomb of the saint in front of everyone," Ibrahim said.
Haidara told Reuters the act by the Islamist group could spark a violent reaction from the population, and that he had urged the U.N. body to help protect Timbuktu's heritage sites."They attacked the grave, broke doors, windows and wooden gates that protect it. They brought it outside and burn it, because to build a tomb is contrary to the principles of Islam," he said. The men said they would return to destroy other tombs.
No one at UNESCO was immediately available to comment.
(CBS News) GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba - The first step in the long-delayed trial of the man who has said -- who has boasted -- that he orchestrated the 9/11 attacks on America was set to begin Saturday.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other alleged al Qaeda operatives were to be arraigned at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Four years ago, the Bush Administration brought Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other top 9/11 suspects to trial here in a military courtroom.
But when President Obama took office, he ordered the Guantanamo facility where suspects were being held closed. He said the suspects instead would stand trial in a regular criminal courtroom in New York.
But opposition to that was so intense, they had to scrub those plans. And now, the proceedings were to be held right back where they started and in the format first envisioned -- military trials at Guantanamo Bay.
Without Kahlid Sheikh Mohammed, September 11 would not have happened. The confessed mastermind, known as "KSM," proposed to Osama bin Laden the plot to not only hijack airplanes, but fly them into buildings.
(...)
On Saturday morning, KSM was to appear in before a military judge to face 2,976 charges of murder in the worst terrorist attacks ever on U.S. soil. Also being charged are Waleed bin Attash, an alleged al Qaeda operative; Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who allegedly would have been a hijacker but couldn't get a visa; and Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa Hawsawi, who allegedly helped finance the attacks.
Four years ago, the Bush administration brought them to trial in the same military courtroom.
It was the first time the public had seen KSM since his capture in 2003 -- and he was unrecognizable. Thin, and with a long, bushy beard, KSM also was defiant: He fired his lawyers, railed against America and told the judge he wanted to plead guilty because, as he said, "I'm looking to be martyred."
Although the five suspects said four years ago they wanted to plead guilty, we're hearing from defense attorneys that they've now changed their minds and may not plead guilty this time.
That would mean these proceedings would continue, giving the five a platform to keep bashing America.
A Tennessee federal jury split its verdict Friday in Nashville against nine men accused of operating a sex trafficking ring run mostly by Somali refugee gang members.
Three men were convicted and six men were acquitted. The defendants are among a total of 30 who were indicted in the case that spans from Minnesota to Ohio and Tennessee.
A Somali witness identified only as Jane Doe No. 2 testified that she was used as a prostitute by gang members starting at the age of 12. She cried in court as she described being taken to several apartments in around suburban Minneapolis to have sex with other Somali men for money, sometimes as little as $40.
She later described a trip to Nashville where she was found by police.
Defense attorneys contended the witness willingly had sex with multiple defendants and lied about it so her conservative Somali family could save face.
Idris Ibrahim Fahra, Andrew Kayachith and Yassin Abdirahman Yusuf were found guilty of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of children by force, fraud or coercion. The three men were also charged with sex trafficking and attempted sex trafficking, but only Fahra was convicted on one additional count of sex trafficking.
Seven of the nine defendants are of Somali descent. Another was born in Ethiopia. Kayachith was born in the U.S. and is of Laotian descent.
(...)
Jennifer Thompson, defense attorney for defendant Fahra, said Jane Doe No. 2 was a runaway who manipulated people around her and was fed information from a St. Paul, Minn., police investigator. Thompson also said Jane Doe No. 2 was an adult who was the same age or older than the men she was having sex with.
Another witness, who was identified in court as Jane Doe No. 5, testified that she saw young women and girls being used as prostitutes in a Nashville apartment. She testified that she was being used to have sex with men in Minnesota when she was around 15 or 16 years old.
Luke Evans, a defense attorney for Fadumo Mohamed Farah, said Jane Doe No. 5 was mentally ill and not taking her medication when she testified. He argued that she suffers from paranoid delusions and can’t tell fiction from fact...
Oh yes, these men were the real victims of these terrible little girls - where have we heard this before? How do these defense attorneys sleep at night?
A Muslim woman who repeatedly beat a 10-year-old girl with a steel ladle for not reading enough verses of the Koran is facing jail today.
Asia Parveen, 31 brandished a knife at the child after accusing her of lying about her prayers. Parveen, who was five months pregnant at the time, also forced the girl to stand with her arms outstretched for four hours, Snaresbrook Crown Court heard.
The girl, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, escaped from the house in Stoke Newington, north London, and police found her alone at a bus stop in Waltham Forest, east London, almost four hours later in the early hours of the morning.
Doctors identified 56 injuries when she was examined at hospital,
Parveen, who is a mother-of-three, accepted causing some of the injuries with the ten inch cooking spoon but said others must have been caused when the girl 'fell over.'
Prosecutor Tom Nicholson told the court an argument started between Parveen and the girl on August 15 last year during Ramadan.
'The girl was praying from the Koran and Ms Parveen accused her of lying about how many of the verses she had read,' he said. 'She was 10 at the time. Ms Parveen took a metal spoon about 10 inches in size and the Crown's case is that she hit the child with it repeatedly over a half an hour period, causing extensive bruising over both arms, her legs and head. 'The Crown's case is that Ms Parveen said she was going to kill the girl and ran to get a knife from the kitchen.
'The girl had no alternative but to leave at around 10pm. She got a bus and a train and it was about 1.50am when the police found her at a bus stop in Broadway Parade, Waltham Forest. She was on her own and extremely cold. She was taken to hospital and an examination found she had suffered 56 injuries.'
Parveen admitted a single count of child cruelty but insisted that she only used the spoon once or twice on the girl's arms and bottom.
Judge Martyn Zeidman accepted Parveen's basis of plea, saying it would not be in the public interest for the child to give evidence. 'On the face of it, the defence assertion is incredible. But I don't regard it in the public interest to make the child give evidence. In any view, the defendant has behaved in an absolutely disgraceful way, and what an irony that the child was encouraged to behave in a godly fashion when this was far from godly.
Adjourning the case until June 15 for reports, Judge Zeidman told Parveen: 'I'm releasing you on bail but that gives no indication on what will be the eventual sentence.
'All options are open so you must not assume that because you got bail you will necessarily avoid an immediate prison sentence.'
It does not say that she is the child’s mother; so what was the relationship? Is the little girl the child of a senior wife? Where is her husband in all this? Where is the child’s father?
Non-Muslim Britons are being forced to eat animals slaughtered in "appalling" pain because religious butchering is becoming so common, a former chief vet has claimed.
Prof Bill Reilly, ex-president of the British Veterinary Association, said cutting the throats of lambs, chickens and other animals without stunning them breaches legal requirements because it causes significant pain, fear and distress. British and EU law permits the method of religious slaughter to account for Muslim and Jewish dietary practices, but stipulates that the animals must not be caused "unnecessary suffering."
Prof Reilly called for the practice to be dramatically curbed, suggesting that some slaughterhouses are refusing to stun animals simply to cut costs, rather than for religious reasons. Writing in the Veterinary Record, he said the number of animals having their throats slit while still fully conscious – a practice known as non-stun slaughter – was "unacceptable".
A quarter of all meat on the British market is now killed according to the non-stun Halal principle despite the fact the Muslim community makes up only three to four per cent of the British population.
The figures mean that much of the meat from non-stunned animals is being consumed outside the religious communities which require it, and most secular people would avoid eating the meat if they knew the circumstances under which the animals died, Prof Teilly said.
He wrote: "In my view, the current situation is not acceptable and, if we cannot eliminate non-stunning, we need to keep it to the minimum. This means restricting the use of Halal and Kosher meat to those communities that require it for their religious beliefs, and where possible, convincing them of the acceptability of the stunned alternatives."
Benzion Netanyahu, the venerable scholar and personal secretary of Revisionist Zionism founder Zev Jabotinsky, died on Monday at the age of 102. He was the father of three sons, Yonatan, Benyamin and Iddo. The valorous Yonatan was commander of the historic Entebbe Raid in 1976, killed by a sniper while commanding the rescue of 104 Jewish Hostages taken by German and Palestinian terrorists on an Air France flight to Uganda. Benyamin and Iddo like their older brother served in Israel’s elite special ops group, the Sayeret Matkal. Bibi emerged as a Likud politician to serve Israel twice as its Prime Minister. Benzion the father was an accomplished academic who obtained a PhD at Dropsie College in Philadelphia, later absorbed into the University of Pennsylvania. He had several academic posts in the US at Cornell University, the University of Denver and at the University of Pennsylvania. His masterful history of the Spanish Inquisition, The Origins of The Spanish Inquisition in the Fifteenth Century, , was portrayed as racially driven because of the paranoiac obsession of Inquisitors with the Jewish sanguinity or blood lines of their victims. Benzion viewed it as a prequel to the similar racial Antisemitic doctrine of the Nazi Holocaust.
In the wake of Benzion’s passing there have been recollections of his experience in America during the Holocaust. His assessment of both FDR’s seeming indifference to the genocide of European Jews and the failure of will among American Jewish leaders were telling.
The Jerusalem Post published an article, yesterday, "FDR Used the Jews", an interview in 2009 with the late Benzion Netanyahu by Rafael Medoff, Director of the David S. Wyman Institute in Washington, DC. Note Benzion Netanyahu's final comment:
It is a mark of the poverty of the Jewish people that these were its leaders in those terrible times.
The track record of FDR’s opposition to the rescue of European Jews underlines his lack of action unless prodded by domestic political pressures . Pressures that conflicted with the overarching priorities of managing a two front war to victory against Nazi Germany in Europe and Militarist Japanese Shintoists in the Pacific and Far East. He deferred to advisors who were equally as indifferent to the plight of Jews, some verging on being anti-Semitic.
FDR’s track record on rescue of Jews during the Holocaust is littered with lost opportunities. Start with the pre-war 1938 refugee conference at Evian in France about what to do with German Jewish refugees. Then there was the denial of landing rights in Cuba and the US for the 908 Jewish passengers on the ill-fated ship, the St. Louis. Hapless passengers on the doomed voyage who could view the lights of Miami, while Secretary of State Cordell Hull denied them sanctuary. The wartime Bermuda conference called at the request of the British in April 1943 in the midst of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising resulted in sparing less than 2000 Jewish refugees in North Africa. Then there was FDR’s decision not to bomb Auschwitz Birkenau before the bulk of Hungarian Jews were murdered there on the grounds that it would divert resources from the object of destroying the Nazis. Treasury Secretary and FDR’s Dutchess County, New York neighbor, Henry Morgenthau, Jr.’s staff alerted him to the Holocaust toll on European Jews. That propelled Morgenthau to confront FDR forcing him to establish the War Refugee Board. As Robert Dallek has written FDR showed "passivity in the face of the destruction of European Jews". One of the last meetings with foreign leaders that FDR had before his passing in April 1945 was with Saudi King Abdul-Aziz Ibn Saud. They met on the deck of the USS Quincy anchored at the Great Bitter Lake in the Suez Canal following the Yalta Conference that February. Ibn Saud emphatically lectured FDR about not giving arms to Palestinian Jews.
Was FDR a friend of American Jews, Democratic stalwarts, who thought that he was their savior? As Benzion Netanyahu says in the Medoff interview in the Jerusalem Post, FDR might have moved with intervention by an aggressive American Jewish leadership prodded by the Republican 1944 Presidential platform plank supporting a Jewish state in Palestine. David Bedein's account of Benzion's talk at his high school in Philadelphia in the 1960's, published in The Times of Israel, was about the GOP victory in the 1946 Congressional races. That victory forced political advisers to Harry Truman to recognize that the Jewish vote in his Presidential election in 1948 could be crucial. That lead to Truman’s recognition of the new State of Israel
As we noted earlier, Benzion Netanyahu was secretary to Zev Jabotinsky, the leader of Revisionist Zionist movement who died in 1940 in New York, an exile from the pre-State of Israel. Jabotinsky had repeatedly warned Jews in Poland and Lithuania during visits in the late 1930's that the Nazis were coming to slaughter them, "Ihr kommt -they're coming". Ironic that Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu, Benzion's son made note of this paralleling his own warnings about the annihilationist genocidal proclamations and development of nuclear weapons by Mahdist Shia Ayatollahs in Tehran. Note Bibi's remarks at this year's Yom Ha Shoah commemoration at the Yad Va Shem memorial in Israel, less than two weeks before his late father’s passing:
There have always been those among us who prefer to mock those who tell uncomfortable truths than squarely face the truth themselves.
That is how Zev Jabotinsky was received when he warned the Jews of Poland of the looming Holocaust.
This is what he said in 1938, in Warsaw:
“It is already THREE years that I am calling upon you, Polish Jewry, who are the crown of World Jewry. I continue to warn you incessantly that a catastrophe is coming closer. I became grey and old in these years, my heart bleeds, that you, dear brother and sisters, do not see the volcano which will soon begin to spit its all-consuming lava… I see that you are not seeing this because you are immersed and sunk in your daily worries… Listen to me in this twelfth hour: In the name of G-d! Let anyone of you save himself, as long as there is still time, and time there is very little.”
Remember the cowardice of American Jewish leaders and advisers to FDR, who had his own upper class anti-Semitic prejudices along with key actors within his Administration. Aides like Breckenridge Long at State had charge of the wartime refugee program and John J. McCloy was Assistant Secretary of War. McCloy dismissed the ability to destroy the crematoria at Auschwitz Birkenau when the US Army Air Force was already bombing the Buna Monowitz plants less than five miles away. It was left to an assimilated Jewish Secretary of Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. prodded by his immediate staff to confront FDR who finally gave the Executive Order establishing the War Refugee Board. Morgenthau, perhaps had in mind the precedent of his father, Henry Morgenthau, Sr. President Wilson's Ambassador to the Sublime Porte of the Ottoman Caliphate in Istanbul. His father was one of the few who warned the world of the Jihad genocide of the Armenians by the Ottoman Turks. A genocide that Hitler used as a precedent for his systematic murder of Six Million European Jewish men, women and children.
Thus, FDR was not the folk hero savior of American Jews. They have allied themselves with the Democratic Party since World War II and Truman’s recognition of the State of Israel. They had yet to realize that FDR had feet of clay when it came to helping their coreligionists who died in the millions during the existential Nazi Holocaust. Without a sovereign Jewish State with military power behind it, Jews would not survive in a world indifferent to their existence.
Benzion Netanyahu’s eyewitness report on America’s response to the Holocaust.
Over the years, I had the opportunity to conduct a number of lengthy interviews with Prof. Benzion Netanyahu, who passed away early Monday, concerning his activities in the United States in the 1940s, when he was executive director of the American wing of the Revisionist Zionist movement.
The previously unpublished interview below took place in June 2009, as I was working on my book, Herbert Hoover and the Jews: The Origins of the “Jewish Vote” and Bipartisan Support for Israel (coauthored with Prof. Sonja Schoepf Wentling), which was published last month.
In your view, why were American Jewish leaders so cautious during the 1940s?
Part of the problem was how they saw themselves. In their contacts with President Roosevelt, Jewish leaders thought of themselves as weak or helpless. Take, for example, Rabbi Stephen Wise – leader of the American Zionist movement, the American Jewish Congress and the World Jewish Congress. He thought of himself as a servant of President Roosevelt.
What about the Jewish advisers within Roosevelt’s inner circle?
FDR used Jews if they served some purpose that he needed. Samuel Rosenman was useful to him as a speechwriter. Henry Morgenthau Jr. was useful to him as Secretary of the Treasury. Only a certain kind of a Jew could reach that position in Roosevelt’s administration – the kind of Jew who would not talk about Jewish issues or problems.
FDR used the Jews, but there was no room in his heart for the plight of the Jewish people. In his mind, the suffering of Europe’s Jews was not included in the “Four Freedoms,” the four great principles for which America was fighting in World War II. Roosevelt had no time for the problems of the Jews.
When Anwar al-Awlaki emerged as the clear inspiration behind a series of terror plots in 2009, his former associates in America insisted he was radicalized well after leaving the United States in 2002.
But in what might be his last published work, Awlaki explains that his involvement in violent jihad dated back to 1991, and that he hated the American government as far back as his college days.
"Spilling out the Beans: Al Awlaki Revealing His Side of the Story," appeared this week in the final edition of al-Qaida's English-language magazine Inspire.
The clarification flies in the face of claims by American Muslim leaders that he had been radicalized by Islamophobia after the 9/11 attacks, and motivated to violence following his 18 month imprisonment in Yemen, starting in 2006. At the heart of some Muslim leaders' argument was a desire to distance themselves from Awlaki's new public radicalism, and to twist the debate to focus on America's role in creating a vengeful monster.
"While employed at Dar Al-Hijrah, Imam Al-Awlaki was known for his interfaith outreach, civic engagement and tolerance in the Northern Virginia community," a statement from the imam's former mosque in northern Virginia said after Awlaki died in a U.S. drone strike last fall. "However, after Mr. Al-Awlaki's departure from the mosque in 2002 he was arrested by Yemeni authorities and allegedly tortured. It was then that Al-Awlaki began preaching violence," they claimed, while condemning America's assassination of Awlaki in a drone strike.
These claims were echoed by major outlets like the New York Times and National Public Radio. They portrayed Awlaki as a victim of his circumstances, and accepted the moderation of the "eloquent" preacher who claimed he could have been "a bridge between Americans and one billion Muslims worldwide."
But that image has not jibed with other accounts of Awlaki's life. Quotes from his early American speeches, accounts of his family life, and personal insights from friends show someone who idolized the Afghani jihad and Osama bin Laden's mentor Abdullah Azzam. Long before Awlaki preached America's destruction, he already believed that jihad was a key point of Islam and that America was against Muslims.
Spilling the Beans
In the Inspire article, Awlaki weaved the events of his life into a consistent narrative of hate.
"I have had experiences with the US government at quite a young age that most of you would not have in a lifetime. I have seen the other face of America," Awlaki wrote. From the beginning, Awlaki struggled with his relationship with America, while holding his own views close to heart.
Awlaki was born in the United States, but moved with his family to Yemen when he was 7. His father, a university professor in the capital Sana'a, became the country's agriculture minister. His father's clout helped him obtain college scholarships meant for foreign students even though he was an American citizen. Awlaki was influenced by his local environment to a much greater degree than previously believed. A New York Times biographical article states that the Afghani jihad against the Soviet Union was at the top of many people's minds in Yemen in the 1980s and early 90s, but not the Awlakis'. They were focused on using contacts to get a scholarship for their son.
But in his Inspire article, Awlaki wrote he already harbored pro-jihad sentiments and feared the United States saw him as a potential asset.
"Even though I was not fully practicing back then … I had an extreme dislike to the US government and was very wary of anything concerning intelligence services or secret orders," he wrote. "Thus, I was cold when it came to my relationship with the Office of International Students (which in my belief is a front for recruitment of international students for the government and is also a front from spying on them and reporting on them to the authorities). I also received an invitation to join the Rotary Club which I turned down."
The 1991 Gulf War in Kuwait triggered his hatred while a student back in the United States. "That is when I started taking my religion more seriously and I took the step of traveling to Afghanistan to fight," he wrote. "I spent a winter there and returned with the intention of finishing up in the US and leaving to Afghanistan for good. My plan was to travel back in summer, however, Kabul was opened by the mujahideen and I saw that the war was over and ended up staying in the US."
That account differs sharply from a 2010Time magazine profile. Awlaki wasn't interested in al-Qaida or Afghanistan after visiting in 1993, Timereports, and he "was depressed by poverty and hunger in the homes where he stayed."
Solidifying His Views
After returning to America, Awlaki claimed that he lost his scholarship in part due to his grades and because of what he called his fighting role and service as a Muslim Student Association president. Regardless, he now considered himself a fundamentalist and took up a new position reflecting this status when he moved from Denver to San Diego.
When Awlaki returned from Afghanistan he wore clothes popular with the mujahideen and often quoted Abdullah Azzam. He was also accused by a member of his Denver mosque of encouraging a Saudi youth to join jihad in Chechnya, shortly before he left for San Diego.
There, he became imam for the mosque Masjid al Ribat al Islami in 1996, chosen by "a group of students from Saudi [Arabia] and the Gulf states who formed their own mosque because they "were not happy with how things were run" at the moderate San Diego Islamic Center. Awlaki claimed that his conservatism and good fit with the community was important, because the government actively tried to infiltrate the mosque and recruit him to spy on his community, which he helped to prevent. He also claimed this was the reason why he was "falsely" arrested for soliciting prostitutes.
By 1998, Awlaki was fed up with the United States and ready to leave, but it took "three years and September 11" to "unwind" himself from the United States. During this time, Awlaki solidified his views of America and jihad.
Awlaki began preaching about the glories of jihad and the enemies of Islam in a lecture series from the late 1990s called "Lives of the Prophets." Evil surrounds Muslims in the West, he said, arguing that U.S. foreign and domestic policy are controlled by "the strong Jewish lobbyists." His disdain of Jews, whom he terms "the enemy from Day 1 to the Day of Judgment," is a common theme.
In one sermon, Awlaki prayed to Allah to "free" the al Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site of Islam, from what he terms "the Jewish terrorists" who he claims "have taken (it) over" and "give it back to the Ummah of Islam." He called for the broad institution of Sharia law as the basis for society. "Justice is in the heart of the judge," he said, "and that is why we can only have justice through a true Islamic system."
In another, Awlaki preached patience and persistence in pursuit of victory, saying people can get "fired up fast" by "a very hot" sermon about jihad and be "ready to go on the battlefield."
But those emotions can be lost "by the time you step your foot out of the masjid … Very easily fired up, and very easily we cool down," he lamented.
In the "Lives of the Prophets" lectures, well before 9/11 and before his time in a Yemeni prison, he called for a sustained commitment to jihad:
"Talking big is easy, but the sacrifice, and especially long-term sacrifice which jihad needs, that is difficult. Jihad is not only sacrifice, but it is a long term sacrifice. And that is where people fail. If you are asked to sacrifice in one time, you could be fired up by a speech, and then you would give out your money, for example, and you would sacrifice. That could happen. But when you're asked to sacrifice for a long period, then you're suffering hardship for a long time, that is what causes people to fail"
Sacrifice, he said, could take many forms and people should be willing to do whatever is required: "It could be your life, your time, your money, your family, it could even be the Islamic family or brothers that you are with, it could be the scholars that you love. Anything is possible."
Although his language became more direct in later sermons, calling for unlimited attacks on Americans, Awlaki proved that he already embraced violent jihad as a fundamental part of his worldview.
'Two bombs have exploded in Russia's Dagestan Republic, killing at least 15 people and injuring more than 20 others.
'Russian security officials say the first blast was a car bomb that went off after police stopped a vehicle for document checks in Dagestan's capital, Makhachkala.
'Not long after the first wave of fire brigades and ambulances arrived, a second blast rocked the area.
This one-two punch technique - which deliberately uses a first bomb to create 'bait' by which more potential victims (usually first responders - army, police, ambulance workers and ordinary, charitable bystanders intending to render first aid) are lured to the area in order to be hit by a second 'follow-up' bomb - is deployed by modern Mohammedan jihad terror raiders all over the world; it has been seen in places as far apart as Thailand and Iraq. - CM
'Russia has been fighting a low level Islamic insurgency throughout its northern Caucasus republics against militants fighting for a separate Islamic state'.
This sentence is worded oddly: it would make more sense if it said 'Russia has been fighting against a low level Islamic insurgency waged throughout its northern Caucasus republics by militants fighting for a separate Islamic state'.
And it would make even more sense if it said 'Russia has been defending itself against a Jihad that Muslims who want a separate Islamic state are waging throughout the majority-Muslim northern Caucasus republics'.
Furthermore: one must bear in mind that the jihadists in Dagestan and in other Muslim-majority Caucasus republics within the Russian Federation are doing this because Islam programs Muslims to feel 'oppressed' in any situation in which they cannot dominate and domineer over non-Muslims. To be a Muslim minority within a larger non-Muslim entity - such as the Russian Federation - is viewed as intolerable 'oppression'; to be the civil and social equals of non-Muslims within a multireligious secular polity is also 'oppression'. If the sharia-pushing Muslim jihad raiders of Dagestan were permitted to split off from the Federation and set up a separate Islamic state they would not be satisfied nor would they cease waging Jihad against Russia; for Islam mandates nothing less than the subjugation of the entire planet. A sharia-compliant Islamic state of Dagestan would be a source of perpetual jihad raids against neighbouring non-Muslims. First Dagestan, then Russia, then the world...Dagestan is merely the aperitif. - CM
'Despite ongoing sweeps by security services, there are bombings and assassinations nearly every week.
'There are bombings and assassinations nearly every week'. And that constitutes 'a low level Islamic insurgency'? So how, then, are we to define a high-level Islamic insurgency? Bombings and assassinations every day? Every hour? - CM
Following the arrest of twenty Muslims accused of the murder of five Macedonian men earlier this week. From Focus Information agency. Photograph from Novinite
Skopje. Hundreds of youths have gathered outside Jaja Pasha Mosque in Skopje in support of the people arrested in Monstrum police operation following the killing of five fishermen close to the Macedonian capital, the local news website Plus Info reported.
The protest kicked off after the Friday prayer in a mosque controlled by the Islamic religious community in Macedonia. The demonstrators headed to the buildings accommodating courts. Later
The protesting Muslims in Macedonia’s capital Skopje have started hurling stones at the police, the local news agency Makfax reported. Protestors shouted 'Allah is great'.
The protest kicked off outside Jaja Pasha Mosque in Skopje and the incident occurred outside the government’s building.
The demonstrators also managed to smash the windows of a bus stop.
Two men were arrested today by police investigating claims that female genital mutilation is being offered in the UK.
West Midlands Police said a 55-year-old and a 61-year-old were arrested after officers from the force's public protection unit attended three separate addresses in Birmingham.
Detective Inspector Caroline Marsh said: "We are still in the very early stages of this investigation but I hope this morning's action sends out a clear message about how seriously we are taking these allegations."
The men were arrested on suspicion of offences contrary to the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003.
Officers went to properties on Stratford Road, Sparkhill, Trafalgar Road, Moseley and Kingstanding Road, Kingstanding, at around 9am. A force spokesman said an investigation was launched following the publication of an article in The Sunday Times on April 22.
My gut reaction from their ages is that these are doctors offering the mutilation rather than parents/grandparents sending their children to submit.
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