Breaking News

October 15th, 2017 Breaking News

Austrian voters concerned about immigration, Islam

(ABC NEWS) — Wrapping up a bruising political campaign season, Austrian political parties were counting down to an election Sunday that could turn the country to the right amid voter concerns over immigration and Islam.

The vote is coming a year ahead of schedule after squabbles led to the breakup last spring of the coalition government of the Social Democrats and the People’s Party. A total of 16 parties are vying for 183 seats in the national parliament and will be chosen by Austria’s 6.4 million eligible voters. But less than a dozen parties have a chance of getting seats.

The People’s Party, which has shifted from centrist to right-wing positions, is leading in the pre-vote polls after an image make-over by its leader, 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz.

Austria’s traditionally right-wing, anti-migrant Freedom Party is expected to come in second and the center-left Social Democrats are thought to be trailing in third place.

Others that may clear the 4 percent hurdle needed to get into parliament seats are the Greens, the liberal NEOS, and Liste Pilz, led by former Greens politician Peter Pilz.

Favoring the People’s and Freedom parties is distrust of migrants and Muslims among many Austrian voters.

The 2015 influx of hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the war in Syria and poverty elsewhere into the EU’s prosperous heartland left Austria with nearly 100,000 new and mostly Muslim migrants. That has fueled fears Austria’s traditional Western and Christian culture is in danger. As a result, voters are receptive to the anti-migrant platforms of both the People’s Party and the Freedom Party.

[READ MORE]

October 15th, 2017 Breaking News

In Belgium, arguments about Islam grow louder

(THE ECONOMIST) — Like much else in Belgium, the administration of the country’s second-largest religion is in a rather chaotic state, and things could get worse.

In a kingdom of 11m people, Islam claims the loyalty of about 800,000 souls, of whom the vast majority originate either from Morocco or Turkey. Most of the country’s 300-plus mosques are Turkish or Moroccan in flavor, and imams who serve them usually come from those countries. In Brussels, which is the country’s capital as well as hub of Europe’s main institutions, the Muslim share of the population is about 25%.

Since the terrorist outrages of March 2016, which targeted Brussels airport and the metro system, both the government, the security services and a parliamentary commission have been delving into the country’s Islamic scene to see whether it has any characteristics that make it prone to produce fanatics.

The handling of this problem is complicated by Belgium’s older division between Francophones and the Dutch-speakers of Flanders. Among Flemings on the political right, there is a strong streak of Islamo-scepticism. Many sensitive matters, like the teaching of Islam and the regulation of female headgear, are handled at regional or local level. Flemings sometime accuse French-speakers of being soft on Islam.

Even before last year’s horrors, Belgium had the grim distinction of being the European country that produced the highest number per head of young fanatics who went off to fight in Syria. The heavily immigrant Brussels district of Molenbeek received (and bitterly resents) the nickname of “jihadi central” because it had been a way-station of the perpetrators of terror in France. For the record, it is a pleasanter place to walk the streets than are similar urban areas in England or France.

[READ MORE]

September 29th, 2017 Breaking News

China orders Muslim families in Xinjiang to hand over Qurans, prayer mats

(BREITBART) — by Frances Martel

Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported this week that some Uighur Muslims in China’s westernmost province of Xinjiang have accused the police of confiscating their Qurans, claiming the seminal Islamic text contains “extremist content.”

Xinjiang is home to a Uighur Muslim separatist movement and the Chinese government has previously claimed citizens from Xinjiang have left to the Middle East to join the Islamic State. In response, the Communist Party has cracked down significantly on public displays of faith, including publicly fasting during Ramadan or wearing Islamic garb on public transportation.

Radio Free Asia cites Dilxat Raxit, World Uyghur Congress spokesman, as having seen orders from police on the social media platform WeChat ordering families to hand over their Qurans and prayer mats, among other religious paraphernalia.

“All Qurans and related items must be handed into the authorities, and there are notices to this effect being broadcast via WeChat,” Raxit told the outlet. “We received a notification saying that every single ethnic Uyghur must hand in any Islam-related items from their own home, including Qurans, prayers and anything else bearing the symbols of religion … They have to be handed in voluntarily. If they aren’t handed in, and they are found, then there will be harsh punishments.”

RFA adds that sources on the ground have seen instances of confiscations involving non-Uighur Muslims in the region as well, such as Kazakh and Kyrgyz Muslims. “Officials at village, township and county level are confiscating all Qurans and the special mats used for namaaz[prayer],” a Kazakh source told the outlet.

RFA adds that officials in the region began confiscation Qurans this year, citing their “extremist content,” but had only extended the ban to Qurans published more than five years ago, attempting to replace them with government-approved copies.

[READ MORE]

September 29th, 2017 Breaking News

Swiss Parliament votes to ban foreign-funded mosques and Arabic preaching

(BREITBART) — by Liam Deacon

Switzerland’s legislature has voted to ban the foreign funding of mosques, including from Saudi Arabia, as well as to force mosques to use local languages instead of Arabic or other foreign tongues.

The Swiss National Council, the parliament’s lower house, voted by a narrow majority to ban the financing of mosques from abroad and for generally increasing the transparency of how mosques are funded.

If the law passes the Senate, individual mosques will need to declare who they are backed by as well as preach in one of Switzerland’s official languages, namely German, French, Italian, or Romansch, Neue Zuercher Zeitung reports.

The vote took place on Tuesday, and according to the Federal Assembly’s website, 94 members of the parliament voted in favor, and 89 voted against.

The new law is said to be inspired by a similar law enacted in Austria in 2015, which was designed to encourage a distinctly “European Islam” and to deter radicalization and foreign influence on the nation’s Muslims.

The legislation is not backed by the federal government, however, which claims it unfairly discriminates against Muslims by placing them under suspicion and fuels extremism.

They also oppose making mosques use local languages, insisting that it is an issue of freedom of language.

Last year, the federal government managed to block a law voted for by the Council, proposing the banning of the full-face Islamic face veil.

However, a ban on Islamic minarets was voted for in a referendum in 2009 and was approved by nearly 58 per cent of the population.

Saudi Arabia is well known for funding the spread of its radical, Wahhabist interpretation of Islam in Europe, including financing the construction of Finsbury Park Mosque in London. The mosque was notorious for its links to hate preacher Abu Hamza, shoe-bomber Richard Reid, and 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui before it was reformed and reopened in 2005.

[READ MORE]

September 27th, 2017 Breaking News

A million Christians to pray rosary on Poland’s border commemorating historical defeat of Islam

(BREITBART) — By Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D.

Poland’s bishops have urged the nation’s Catholics to join a massive rosary prayer crusade along the country’s 2,000-mile border to pray for the salvation of their country.

Organizers say they expect up to a million people to participate in the “Rosary on the Borders” event on October 7, the anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto, where “the Christian fleet overcame the Muslim armada, saving Europe from Islamization.”

The Catholic Feast of the Holy Rosary was established by Pope Pius V in 1571 as “Our Lady of Victory” after the so-called Holy League won a landmark victory over the Ottoman Turks at the Battle of Lepanto.

On October 7th, 1571, a fleet of ships assembled by a coalition of Christian nations fought an intense battle against the forces of the invading Ottoman Empire. The unexpected victory of the so-called “Holy League” radically curbed efforts by the Ottoman Turks to control the Mediterranean, “causing a seismic shift in international relations from East to West.” As Fr. Steve Grunow, CEO of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries, has written, “the world that we know came into being with this victory.”

In preparation for this decisive encounter, Pope Pius V ordered the churches of Rome opened for prayer day and night, and urged the faithful to invoke the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary through the prayer of the Rosary. On hearing of the Christian victory, the Pope established a new feast day in the Roman Liturgical Calendar, which would come to be known as the feast of the Holy Rosary.

“We believe that if the rosary is prayed by about a million Poles along the borders of the country, it may not only change the course of events, but open hearts of our compatriots to the grace of God,” the organizers say on their website.

“The powerful prayer of the Rosary can affect the fate of Poland, Europe, and even the whole world,” it reads.

The “Rosary on the Borders” event will also mark the end of the Fatima centenary, celebrating 100 years since the apparitions of the Virgin Mary to three shepherd children in Fatima, Portugal, in the spring of 1917.

[READ MORE]

September 19th, 2017 Breaking News

Denmark: Thousands of cases of “low-tech jihad” — Worst situation since WWII

(THE NEW AMERICAN) — By Selwyn Duke

In Denmark, once one of the world’s safest countries, the army now has been deployed domestically. It’s part of an effort to combat “low-tech jihad,” thousands of “incidents involving loosened wheel bolts on cars, large rocks or cinder blocks thrown from highway overpasses, and thin steel wires strung across bicycle paths meant to decapitate unsuspecting cyclists, reports Dr. Nicolai Sennels, a Danish psychologist and writer.

Moreover, despite Denmark’s ultra-strict gun-control laws, gangs of immigrants from the MENAP countries (Middle East, North Africa, and Pakistan) are randomly shooting people in the capital city of Copenhagen, Sennels further informs.

Sennels, who spent years working with Muslim youth in prison, claims that his nation itself is beginning to resemble a prison, with the rule of law breaking down and migrant gangs controlling some streets.

For example, after citing the shootings of three young men used for, as he puts it, “target practice,” Sennels reports that police warned 17- to 25-year-old men to avoid public spaces in Copenhagen. He quotes Preben Bang Henriksen, spokesman for Denmark’s majority government party, as being horrified and stating, “We have not had such warnings from the police since the 2nd World War. It is totally unacceptable.”

But wholly predictable, many would say. In Western Europe, crime has exploded and terrorism become frequent as the Mideast migrant population has risen, prompting nations such as Hungary and Poland to take a hard line against Muslim migration. Even liberal Denmark is waking up to, and warning of, the gathering storm. As 10 News wrote in July:

Danish police warn that the excessively liberal refugee policies of Germany and Sweden endanger lives in neighboring countries.

Intelligence services in Europe and the US have long warned that Islamic jihadis are among refugees coming to the West. Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) is now criticizing Merkel’s and Sweden’s refugee policies, with direct warnings that they destabilize security in the region.

They have reason to worry, too, as these migrants cannot be reliably vetted. After all, Third World countries such as war-torn Syria, Afghanistan, and Sudan simply don’t have comprehensive Western-style databases providing accurate information on citizens. Yet it wouldn’t matter if they did because in places such as Syria, you can pay a bribe and get official government documents saying you’re whoever you want to be.

Thus, it’s no surprise that an intelligence warning last year indicated that Islamic State hit squads were hiding among migrants in Germany.

In a similar vein, self-described orthodox Muslim Dr. Mudar Zahran, a Jordanian Palestinian academic and political leader currently living in the United Kingdom, warned in a 2015 interview that many of the migrants are not Syrian, but claim to be so, to get refugee status. Moreover, he avers that 75 percent of the Syrians come from safe areas and that the imperiled Syrians cannot even get out of the country. In other words, Zahran stated, most of the migrants are unknown quantities entering the West for economic reasons — or something darker.

As to the latter, Zahran said at the time, “I can authoritively [sic] confirm — I have photos, I have images, I have pictures, I have names of terrorists who actually are already in Europe posting their photos in Europe on Facebook.” He also warned about the migration that if “you read Arab magazines and Arab newspapers, they are talking about, ‘Good job! Now we’re going to conquest [sic] Europe.’ So it’s not even a secret.” Zahran called this “the soft Islamic conquest of the West.”

As for Sennels, he delves into these problems’ root causes. Apparently drawing upon his experiences working with Muslim teens, he writes that we “must not underestimate how strongly the Qur’an’s message of holy war affects Muslim youth.”

Yet it’s not just the Koran. As I reported in February, “The Islamic canon — the Koran, Hadith, and Sira — has literally 9.6 times as many words devoted to political violence as does the Old Testament: 327,547 vs. 34,039. (The New Testament has zero.)” Moreover, these violent injunctions aren’t limited but apply in every time and place.

Sennels explained the result, writing,

80 percent of young Turks in Holland see “nothing wrong” in jihad against non-Muslims. The very high number must be seen in the light of the fact that Turks are considered to be among the more Western Muslims. 27 percent of all young French and 14 percent of all young brits [sic] under 25 sympathize with the jihad movement Islamic State. This probably includes a very large majority of young Muslims in the two countries. The figures closely match that 75 percent of Muslims in Europe believe that the Quran — a book that hundreds of places preaches violence against non-Muslims — must be literally interpreted.

The above helps to explain a comprehensive German study of 45,000 youths that was reported in 2010. It found that while increasing religiosity among Christian youths made them less violent, increasing religiosity among Muslim youths actually made them more violent.

What seems certain is that Denmark, and the rest of Europe, are also getting more violent. But, hey, having the violent, and not just the non-violent, increases diversity, too.[READ MORE]

September 8th, 2017 Breaking News

Jihadis will continue terror attacks despite Isis defeat

(FINANCIAL TIMES) — By David Gardner

It is hardly news to the people of Barcelona and London, and before them the citizens of Paris and Brussels, Istanbul and Ankara, St Petersburg and Stockholm, or Nice and Berlin, that jihadis inspired and incited by Isis can terrorize their cities, even as an array of forces recaptures Isis strongholds in Mosul, Raqqa and, now, Deir al-Zor. The Islamic State caliphate, in all its monstrous vainglory, will perish. But jihadism, in all its blood-addled and doctrinal simplicity, would seem to have a fiery future.

Attacks like last month’s on Barcelona’s Ramblas, or at Westminster and London Bridge, are not, of course, new — nor purely a tactical riposte to territorial defeat in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. Isis may be the first modern, Sunni jihadist movement to have set up a proto-state. But it always urged its followers to use the full gamut of irregular warfare, from classic terrorism and hit-and-run guerrilla insurgency to vans and knives. The world will now see more of this as the jihadis melt back into local Sunni Arab towns and tribes, and build their global networks and regional franchises.

Getting a good sense of their numbers is hard. But it is worth remembering that the precursor to Isis, the Iraqi chapter of al-Qaeda created by the sanguinary Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was all but destroyed in 2007-09 by the US military “surge” and revolt of the Sunni tribes of central and western Iraq. Resurrected by Syria’s descent into sectarian carnage, and given new backbone by allying with the Sunni supremacist, residual power structure of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party and army, Isis stormed back into Iraq to set up its caliphate five years later. Can it repeat this phoenix trick?

The war in Syria, now in its seventh year, has made Isis — at its core, Iraqi — a much bigger phenomenon than its al-Qaeda predecessor. Yet the question goes beyond Isis. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the latest iteration of the Jabhat al-Nusra movement spawned by al-Qaeda, now fields one of the biggest armies in Syria.

Although much of Tahrir al-Sham’s estimated 30,000-strong force is bottled up in Idlib province in the north, it has successfully annexed most rival Salafist fighting groups, controls a long strip of Syria’s north-west border with Turkey, has a plentiful supply of suicide-bombers and demonstrable offensive capacity. Unlike Isis, as the French Syria scholar Fabrice Balanche remarks, this group “practices discretion in order to avoid antagonizing locals” and, crucially, “relies more on the potency of its network than on the accumulation of territory”.

[READ MORE]

September 8th, 2017 Breaking News

Rohingya Muslims crisis: 270,000 refugees flee Burma for Bangladesh, UN says

(UK INDEPENDENT) — An estimated 270,000 Rohingya refugees have fled Burma in the past two weeks and sought refuge in Bangladesh, where two existing refugee camps are “bursting at the seams”, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said on Friday.

The exodus of the minority Rohingya was triggered by insurgent attacks on 25 August and an army counter-offensive.

Burma says its forces are fighting a legitimate campaign against terrorists responsible for a string of attacks on the police and army since last October. Officials blame Rohingya militants for killing non-Muslims and burning their homes.

“The two refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar in southeast Bangladesh home to nearly 34,000 Rohingya refugees before this influx are now bursting at the seams. The population has more than doubled in two weeks, totaling more than 70,000. There is an urgent need for more land and shelters,” UNHCR said in a briefing note for reporters in Geneva.

“The vast majority are women, including mothers with newborn babies, families with children. They arrive in poor condition, exhausted, hungry and desperate for shelter.”

The United Nations was expecting a total refugee influx of 300,000, up from a previous estimate of 120,000, an official told Reuters on Wednesday.

[READ MORE]

September 6th, 2017 Breaking News

Europe facing decades-long “bloody fight” with jihadists, warns Nigel Farage

(INFOWARS) — by Dan Lyman

Civil war in Europe now inevitable due to Islamic invasion

British statesman Nigel Farage has conceded that Europeans have crossed a tipping point and are now facing a battle against jihadists that could go on for decades, despite countless forewarnings about border security and immigration trends issued by nationalists like him.

In an interview with Westmonster, Farage was asked how he feels about the unfolding crisis of Islamic terrorism in the UK and Europe, knowing that he has attempted for many years to avert the looming catastrophe while being constantly defamed and slandered by the global elite, EU internationalists, and mainstream media alike.

“No one said sorry, not one – the legions who lined up to say that I was racist, neo-fascist – no one has apologized.” Farage said. “Surely, decent people would admit they were wrong.”

“To be honest, even my most pessimistic view of what was going to happen here has been far exceeded by truth and reality.”

“I think we are in a very bad place. I think we are in for decades of a very difficult and literally bloody fight, and I believe we have brought it all upon ourselves,” he assessed.

The EU’s head of counter-terrorism, Gilles de Kerchove, revealed in a recent interview with El Mundo that there are more than 50,000 known Islamic radicals currently in Europe, 20,000 – 25,000 of whom are in the United Kingdom.

“I would not venture to a specific figure, but tens of thousands, more than 50,000,” Kerchove stated when asked to estimate the number of jihadists in Europe.

According to El Mundo, Kerchove believes that Islamic slaughter in Europe is “a generational question that will accompany us for decades,” and that “we will suffer more attacks… it seems clear that something like Barcelona will happen again,” which serve as confirmations of Farage’s assertions.

[READ MORE]

September 3rd, 2017 Breaking News

Intel chief – Germany must expect attacks by lone wolves & terrorist groups at ‘any time’

(RT) — Germany is likely to see more terrorist attacks conducted by Islamist jihadists, the country’s domestic intelligence chief has said while presenting an annual report which analyses threats to the state from all forms of extremism.

“We must expect further attacks by individuals or terror groups,” the Bundesamt fur Verfassungsschutz (BfV) chief, Hans-Georg Maassen said Tuesday. “Islamist terrorism is the biggest challenge facing the BfV and we see it as one of the biggest threats facing the internal security of Germany.”

The statement followed the agency publishing its annual report on constitution protection and threats to the state. It said some 24,400 Islamists remain in Germany, including around 10,000 Salafists, an ultra-conservative movement within Sunni Islam, followers of which have been prone to terrorism.

“The attacks have substantiated the IS threat scenario in Germany. IS can be held responsible for all attacks mounted in Germany in 2016,” the report reads. “Germany is the focus of Islamist terrorism. Terrorist incidents are possible in Germany at any time in the future.”
Read more

Maassen said jihadists managed to carry out five attacks in 2016 while security services thwarted another seven.

The report classified the 2016 attacks in Germany as part of whats been termed, “phenomenon of the individual jihad,” acts which are committed by individuals or “micro groups.”

Germany is currently monitoring some 680 Islamist radicals who could potentially carry out an attack, according to Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere.

The intelligent assessment said young people remain vulnerable to terrorist recruitment schemes as the youth “are particularly susceptible to jihadist propaganda, especially spread via social media.”

The report noted that the younger generation can easily be indoctrinated to “develop a readiness to consequently obey the order to kill unbelievers.”

New potential terrorists “possibly entering Europe under cover as part of the migration movement” as well as those returning from war zones in Syria and Iraq, remain under the radar of the security agencies, the report notes.

Maassen estimated that some 930 people left Germany to fight in Syria or Iraq, 20 percent of whom were women. From that number, the BfV chief believes 145 people have been killed in action.

Besides the jihadist and Islamist terrorism threat, the constitution protection report also analyzed the activities of various other groups, including far-right and far-left extremists.

With far-right extremism on the surge, events “directly or indirectly associated with Islam” have been frequently exploited by far-right sympathizers, the report notes. Last year, those accounted for 23,100 members while the number of violent offenses rose to 1,600. More than a half of those crimes particularly targeted asylum seekers and accommodation facilities.

Security has been stepped up in Germany following five lone-wolf terror attacks in the country last year. The most noted attack happened in December 2016, when a Tunisian asylum seeker, who pledged allegiance to Islamic State, plowed a truck into a Berlin Christmas market, killing 12 people.

Germany is now focusing all its efforts on this weekend’s G20 summit in Hamburg where around 20,000 security officers have been deployed.

Hey guest, welcome to RT! Sign up and become a member.
[READ MORE]