Islamism & Islamophobia Abroad - News & Analysis (9-8-2014)

Peregrine · Post by **Peregrine** » 25 Jan 2015 04:07

Why is Westminster Abbey honouring the king of a country where Christianity is banned?

Cheers

arun · Post by **arun** » 25 Jan 2015 10:57

A new wrinkle on the “Love Jihad” saga.

Munna Kumar Singh, the editor and publisher of the weekly Hindu Sabha Varta describes Sharmila Tagore, Kareena Kapoor, Gauri, Kiran Rao, Rina Dutt and Gauri Chhibbar as victims of “love jihad”. He goes on to say, “It is our challenge to these Khans of Bollywood if they actually love their wives then they should also try to convert to Hinduism and adopt their religion and culture.”:

Hindu Mahasabha to Khans: convert if you love your wives : The Hindutva outfit has posed a challenge to Shahrukh Khan, Amir Khan and Saif Ali Khan.

Tuvaluan · Post by **Tuvaluan** » 27 Jan 2015 08:56

http://sputniknews.com/middleeast/20150 ... 77385.html

Hopefully when this new king kicks the bucket, which is apparently not too far away, the Indian and UK govts. will mourn for at least 2 weeks. The mourning for Abdullah was just not enough. The style of just randomly lopping heads off is very similar to how justice is conducted in Pakistan these days, as they are getting more purely islamic.

Haresh · Post by **Haresh** » 27 Jan 2015 15:16

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... eir-smears

David Hicks to be declared innocent? His critics should prepare to recant their smears

The rightwing campaign against David Hicks assumed his guilt, and made it seem a radical position to defend due process

NOTE THE COMMENTS:

londonhongkong
27 January 2015 12:24am
Recommended 24

"David Hicks, by his own admission, chose to join Laskhar-e-Toiba, the grou behind so many Islamist terrorist attacks in India, including the indiscriminate murder of 150+ people, men, women and children, of Hindu, Muslim, Jain, Sikh, Christian background....oh and the very deliberate targeting to a Jewish family - all for the crime of not being what they deem right.
And yet you make him about to be a victim? He's a terrible person."

londonhongkong Kinglyaffair

27 January 2015 12:46am
Recommended 14

"Hicks has stated multiple times in interviews that he joined Laskhar-e-Toiba with the express purpose of killing Indians. Apparently for him and you as long he joins a group with a stated genocidal intent for their view of unbelievers and they happen to be brown, its fine by you?

As far as I know he has never recanted this belief. You should be ashamed of yourself defending this person."

Virendra · Post by **Virendra** » 27 Jan 2015 15:25

Around 40 Philippine cops are feared dead in clashes with muslim mob. Anyone has news updated on that?
Edit : Found it .. CNN uvacha - http://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/26/world ... lf-battle/

Excerpt :

Forty-three elite police commandos were killed by Muslim insurgents in the southern Philippines Sunday, when they were ambushed while pursuing "high value" terrorist bomb makers.

The commandos, members of the elite Special Action Force (SAF) unit of the Philippine National Police, were killed in a firefight that raged for 12 hours in Mamasapano town, Maguindanao Province, said police deputy director general Leonardo Espina.

Do read the full article.
The 2 high value targets (Marwan & Usman) have a combined bounty of US $ 6 million on them.
Philippine State machinery's media response as shown in the article looks very WKK.

Virendra · Post by **Virendra** » 27 Jan 2015 15:41

Lo behold, the senior cops can't even count yet if any of the men are still missing !! ..

"We are also calling on our brothers in the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters that if indeed they are still holding some of the PNP (Philippine National Police) personnel, they must respect their rights and they must be returned to their mother units and ultimately to their family members," he told reporters

Aditya_V · Post by **Aditya_V** » 27 Jan 2015 16:00

David Hicks is a mercenary and they think since he fought for ally Pakistan, he is innocent. Declaring war on India is ok with Australians.

hanumadu · Post by **hanumadu** » 27 Jan 2015 16:05

Religious Census 2011 sucks: Hindu population may be seriously overstated

member_19686 · Post by **member_19686** » 28 Jan 2015 04:35

Le Pen urges Japan to avoid making same mistakes as France
KUCHIKOMI JAN. 13, 2015 - 06:38AM JST

TOKYO —
On January 5—two days before the fatal shootings of 12 people at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris by a pair of jihadists claiming to represent al-Qaida in Yemen—the February issue of Sapio went on sale.

In it was a one-page article titled “Imin seisaku wo oshi susumereba Nihon wa Furansu no ni no mai ni naru” (If it presses forward with its immigration policies, Japan will repeat the same mistakes as France).

Author of the article was Jean-Marie Le Pen, who from 1972 served as head of France’s anti-immigration National Front party, France’s third largest party after the Gaullists and the Socialists. He stepped down in January 2011 for his daughter Marie Le Pen to assume the party’s reins.

“I have been told,” Le Pen begins, “that voices are being raised in Japan that immigrants will be necessary as a source of labor because of the low birth rate and rapid aging of society. But rather than bringing in foreigners to work, the country should, from a long-term standpoint, instead consider policies aimed at increasing the birth rate. The immigration policies we pursued in France were overly simplistic.”

After World War II, France adopted the policy of taking in immigrants to supplement its own labor force. But prior to 1974 no one gave consideration to how this would affect the stability of the country. Then from that year, under President Giscard d’Estaing, it became possible for foreign workers to bring in their families, and this led to the French government’s bestowing citizenship on people who were not workers.

Forty years on, these immigrants have become ubiquitous. Foreigners entered the country at the rate of 300,000 a year. As opposed to an average of two children per family of native-born Frenchmen, it was not rare to see immigrants with five offspring.

Presently out of France’s total population of 65 million, 15 to 20 million are Muslim immigrants or their descendants, Sapio says. (Editor’s note: Based on checks of online sources, these figures appear to be considerably inflated.) And because France permits dual nationality, when elections are held in Algeria, for example, some 800,000 Algerians holding French citizenship can vote. Moreover, they also have the right to vote for the president of France.

To avoid this kind of situation, it is clear that restrictions must be placed on immigration.

“We (native French) are taking care of [the immigrants and their families] livelihoods, education and medical care. The unemployed from their ranks as well currently make up several million. From the standpoint of civilization, can this not be said to represent a serious problem?” Le Pen says.

Moreover, France doesn’t know how to halt the phenomenon of Islamization.

He writes, “Ultimately, won’t it come to the point that Muslim immigrants surrender to the terrorists who repeatedly carry out massacres, and cooperate with them? Why? Because the terrorists commit murder without any compunction, the immigrants will be faced with the choice of surrendering or being killed themselves. This is reaching the point where it is penetrating the fundamental safety of French society.

“Japan’s current situation cannot yet be compared with France. Out of a population of 125 million, foreigners number only some 2 million. In this magazine’s issue of May 28, 1992, I expressed my opposition to Japan inviting large numbers of immigrants. Once again I reiterate this advice.

“On August 15, 2010, I visited the Yasukuni Shrine. I have always placed nationalism in the forefront of my mind. History and nationalism do not penetrate all countries to the same degree. Beneath the ‘nation’ lie such attributes as a country’s public safety, freedom, identity, culture and language—attributes that we should always work to safeguard.

http://www.japantoday.com/category/kuch ... -as-france

Amber G. · Post by **Amber G.** » 28 Jan 2015 07:37

Meanwhile King Salman's first .....First beheading under new Saudi king sparks uproar

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – Saudi Arabia on Monday executed a man convicted of raping several girls in a case that has captured the kingdom's attention and marks the first beheading carried out under the newly enthroned King Salman.

The Interior Ministry said Moussa al-Zahrani was executed in the city of Jiddah. The ministry statement, carried by the official Saudi Press Agency, said al-Zahrani was convicted of luring underage girls, intoxicating them, forcing them to watch ***** videos and then physically and sexually assaulting them.

His alleged victims were children assaulted in 2011 in a string of attacks in Jiddah.

The case has caused a stir on social media — which is unusual in Saudi Arabia for cases of violent crimes — in part because al-Zahrani claimed his innocence throughout the trial and two later appeals.

Last year, al-Zahrani appealed in a 20-minute video for Saudi King Abdullah, who died on Friday, to intervene. In the widely-viewed video, the 45-year-old Arabic teacher claimed he was framed by police and that a man — a neighbor of 10 years — who accused him of molesting his daughter was also a police investigator in the case.

An Arabic hashtag on Twitter, "We are all Moussa al-Zahrani" garnered thousands of comments by Saudis with conflicting opinions over the case.

Al-Zahrani's relatives appeared on Saudi talk shows, saying the case was riddled with inconsistencies and that the judiciary did not weigh all the evidence. They claimed a medical report found the investigator's 10 year-old daughter had not been assaulted and that several cases of assault against young girls took place in Jiddah while al-Zahrani was already jailed.

His brother, Hassan al-Zahrani told The Associated Press after the execution that his brother, a father of six, could not have committed the crimes he was convicted of.

Saudi Arabia, which has one of the highest execution rates in the world, follows a strict interpretation of Islamic law and applies the death penalty for crimes such as murder, rape and witchcraft.

arun · Post by **arun** » 31 Jan 2015 11:19

Green on Green religion based Intra Mohammadden sectarian violence sees a demonstration of the IED Mubarak variant of the IEDology of Pakistan. In the town of Shikarpur, Sindh Province in the Land of the Pure, "More Pure" Sunni Mohammadden Jundullah group suicide bombs mosque containing "Less Pure" co-religionists of the Shia sect on the Mohammadden Sabbath of Friday.:

Shikarpur imambargah bombing kills 61 : Jundullah claims responsibility

Karthik S · Post by **Karthik S** » 31 Jan 2015 18:12

hanumadu wrote:Religious Census 2011 sucks: Hindu population may be seriously overstated

I'd be happy if hindu population is even 70%.

Tuvaluan · Post by **Tuvaluan** » 31 Jan 2015 23:21

http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/ ... d-islamist

The american jihadi crowd in CAIR does its bit to silence critics of islamist pro-sharia groups in the media. The group's name itself suggests their pro-ummah tendencies, "American-Islamic Relations" it seems.

A common tactic of CAIR is to blur the issues to be able to convince the public that critics of Islamists are simply racists, or “Islamophobes.” A former member of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood network, Abdur-Rahman Muhammad, has gone on record about a private meeting in the early 1990s of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity, where the participants agreed to use the term “Islamophobia” as a political weapon.

“This loathsome term is nothing more than a thought-terminating cliche conceived in the bowels of Muslim think tanks for the purpose of beating down critics,” says Muhammad.

Hooper complained in the same interview that, “We’re seeing hate rallies against ordinary Muslim conferences, like over the weekend in Texas. “

The conference he was referring to was called “Stand With the Prophet in Honor and Respect.” A featured speaker at this “ordinary Muslim conference” was the extremist Imam Siraj Wahhaj, labeled by the U.S. government as someone who may be named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Wahhaj supports the implementation of sharia law including all its brutal hudud punishments.

He has said, “If only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate.”

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvhzgFhrkuE[/youtube]

Tuvaluan · Post by **Tuvaluan** » 01 Feb 2015 00:51

As an example of the above, a texas lawmaker tweets "Today is Texas Muslim Capital Day in Texas. House is in recess. I did leave an israeli flag on my desk and ask muslim groups to renounce islamic terrorist groups and announce allegiance to America and its laws. We'll see how long they stay in my office."

To which a american "moderate" muslim responds "This is kind of Islamophobia bigotry we face as a community from public Representatives" -- apparently doing either of those things demanded by the US lawmaker amounts to "islamophobia", never mind that the event is obviously pandering to muslim voters in Texas. This islamophobia cr@p needs to be mocked relentlessly, so that even ignorant "liberal" oiseaules like Christine Fair don't feel the need to defend radical islam by yelling "bigot" and "islamophobia" whenever anyone raises that topic.

Shreeman · Post by **Shreeman** » 01 Feb 2015 03:19

Just permit scientologists to adopt islam as their new name. If you can have mormons as new christians, then why not scientology as new islam? Problem solved. Actually, I declare January 31, sorry day of gandhi's death, February 1 as international islamic reconversion day. Free motor vehicle maintenace to anyone renouncing their faith on this holy day. That would set the cat among the pigeons. Why dont they try to convert them 1.5B instead of going after poor santhals?

Tuvaluan · Post by **Tuvaluan** » 01 Feb 2015 07:42

Just permit scientologists to adopt islam as their new name.

Being a good old profit-oriented religion like Islam and Christianity, except more open about it, they would need a good commercial reason to do that.

Shreeman · Post by **Shreeman** » 01 Feb 2015 08:26

^^^ 1.5B blind slaves, extraordinary fertility, an invincible legion, well trained in beheading? Come on, sauron how many mkre reasons do you want?. It is a self sustaining matrix.

ps -- immediate tax exemption everywhere!

arun · Post by **arun** » 01 Feb 2015 10:52

Deluded by the notion that they would be accepted as fellow adherents of Mohammaddenism, Ahmadiyya’s were strong supporters of the Mohammadden supremacist ideology that resulted in the tearing apart of India and the formation the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The poor judgment of present day Ahmadi’s and their forebears cannot be rewarded. Given the very poor state of inter-state relations between India and the Islamic Republic in the post partition era, neither can the testosterone driven lack of common sense that caused inter-marriage with Ahmadiyya's who were citizens of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan be rewarded:

Following Obama's advice Ahmadiyya's married to Pakistan brides writes to Modi

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 01 Feb 2015 12:05

Cross post of "essential reading"

amitkv wrote:A rather long but good analysis of anti-Shia violence in Pakistan.
One paragraph from the article that strikes me the most is the following:

The question of whether Jinnah was Shia or Sunni was occasionally asked but Jinnah always parried it with the fatuous stock reply “was the holy prophet Shia or Sunni?” This irrelevant (and in some ways, irreverent) reply generally worked because theologial fine print was not a priority for the (superficially) Anglicized North Indian Muslim elite. Their Muslim identity distinguished them from Hindus and especially in North India, it was mixed with a certain anti-Indian racism, the assumption being that they themselves were Afghans, Turks, Persians, or even Arabs, and were superior to the locals. This sense of superiority was racial and extended to poorer Muslims who were clearly local converts. One consequence of this attitude being the fact that North Indian Muslims who became prosperous frequently acquired retroactive Turko-Afghan origins. But foreshadowing the problems that would come later as the ideology of Pakistan matured, a Shia-Sunni distinction did arise when Jinnah died; while his sister arranged a hurried Shia funeral inside the house, the state arranged a larger Sunni funeral (led by an anti-shia Sunni cleric)
http://brownpundits.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... l?spref=tw

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 01 Feb 2015 19:49

Scotland tries to prevent radicalization of Muslim youth:
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home ... .117425272

FYI, from that article:

According to the 2011 census the Muslim population in Scotland is under 80,000. The vast majority are based in the West of Scotland and of Pakistani Punjabi background.

Also from that article, in England:

Ali oversees over 200 Imams or Muslim Chaplains who cater for the religious needs of 14,000 Muslim prisoners. Radicalisation often takes place within prison walls.

He says the overwhelming majority of young Muslims are incarcerated for drug related offences. "In addition we have seen a spike in sex-offences for Muslims, with the recent horrific spate of grooming cases," he remarked.

He says a fracturing of family life, lack of male role models, low educational achievement and aspiration, and intense peer group pressure is seeing young Muslim men turn to crime and being locked up. And interestingly, he said Muslims in England should look to their counterparts in Scotland.

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 01 Feb 2015 21:29

Quran apologists are ridiculous - a western atheist:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2015 ... idiculous/

sanjaykumar · Post by **sanjaykumar** » 01 Feb 2015 22:27

He says a fracturing of family life, lack of male role models, low educational achievement and aspiration, and intense peer group pressure is seeing young Muslim men turn to crime and being locked up. And interestingly, he said Muslims in England should look to their counterparts in Scotland.

That is almost verbatim the plight of Blacks in the US, including the examplification of desirable Blacks as a role model. Muslims are the new *iggers in the West. Perhaps Hindus and Sikhs should wear safron/kesari as suggested by the Taliban or carry a card that reads 'There may be a god but Md. is not his prophet', in the interests of self-preservation.

hanumadu · Post by **hanumadu** » 02 Feb 2015 02:25

Shreeman wrote:Actually, I declare January 31, sorry day of gandhi's death

Gandhi's death anniversary is on 30th Jan not 31st.

member_19686 · Post by **member_19686** » 02 Feb 2015 06:52

Scare Tactics: Michel Houellebecq Defends His Controversial New Book
January 2, 2015 | by Sylvain Bourmeau

It’s 2022, and France is living in fear. The country is roiled by mysterious troubles. Regular episodes of urban violence are deliberately obscured by the media. Everything is covered up, the public is in the dark ... and in a few months the leader of a newly created Muslim party will be elected president. On the evening of June 5, in a second general election—the first having been anulled after widespread voter fraud—Mohammed Ben Abbes handily beats Marine Le Pen with support from both socialists and the right.

The next day, women abandon Western dress. Most begin wearing long cotton smocks over their trousers; encouraged by government subsidies, they leave the workplace in droves. Male unemployment drops overnight. In formerly rough neighborhoods, crime all but disappears. Universities become Islamic. Non-Muslim teachers are forced into early retirement unless they convert and submit to the new regime.

This is the world imagined by Michel Houellebecq in his sixth novel, Soumission (Submission), which will appear next week. Should it be read as a bad Op-Ed, as pulp fiction for an election year, or as the attempt of a great writer to air a social critique through farce? In an exclusive interview—the first he's given about this novel—Houellebecq explains what led him to write a book that has already created a scandal in France, even before its publication.

Why did you do it?

For several reasons, I’d say. First of all, I think, it’s my job, though I don’t care for that word. I noticed some big changes when I moved back to France, though these changes are not specifically French, but rather Western. As an exile you don’t take much of an interest in anything, really, neither your society of origin nor the place you live—and besides, Ireland is a slightly odd case. I think the second reason is that my atheism hasn’t quite survived all the deaths I’ve had to deal with. In fact, it came to seem unsustainable to me.

The death of your dog, of your parents?

Yes, it was a lot in a short period of time. Part of it may be that, contrary to what I thought, I never was quite an atheist. I was an agnostic. Usually that word serves as a screen for atheism but not, I think, in my case. When, in the light of what I know, I reexamine the question whether there is a creator, a cosmic order, that kind of thing, I realize that I don’t actually have an answer.

Whereas before you felt …

I thought I was an atheist, yes. Now I really don’t know. So those are the two reasons I wrote the book, the second reason probably outweighing the first.

How would you characterize this book?

The phrase political fiction isn’t bad. I don’t think I’ve read many similar examples, but at any rate I’ve read some, more in English literature than in French.
What books are you thinking of?

In a way, certain books by Conrad. Or by John Buchan. And then more recent books, not as good, which are more like thrillers. A thriller can unfold in a political setting, it doesn’t always have to be tied to the business world. But there’s a third reason I’ve written this book—because I quite liked the way it began. I wrote the first part, up to page twenty-six, practically in one sitting. And I found it very convincing, because I can easily imagine a student finding a friend in Huysmans and dedicating his life to him. This didn’t happen to me. I read Huysmans much later, I think when I was almost thirty-five, but I definitely would have liked reading him. I think he would have been a real friend to me. And so, after I wrote those pages, I did nothing for a while. That was in January 2013, and I must have gone back to the text that summer. But my project was very different at the beginning. It wasn’t meant to be called Soumission—the first title was La Conversion. And in my original project, the narrator converted, too, but to Catholicism. Which is to say, he followed in Huysmans’s footsteps a century later, leaving naturalism to become Catholic. And I wasn’t able to do it.

Why not?

It didn’t work. In my opinion, the key scene of the book is the one where the narrator takes one last look at the Black Madonna of Rocamadour, he feels a spiritual power, like waves, and all at once she fades into the past and he goes back to the parking lot, alone and basically in despair.

Is this a satirical novel?

No. Maybe a small part of the book satirizes political journalists—politicians a little bit, too, to be honest. But the main characters are not satirical.

Where did you get the idea for a presidential election, in 2022, that came down to Marine Le Pen and the leader of a Muslim party?

Well, Marine Le Pen strikes me as a realistic candidate for 2022—even for 2017 … The Muslim party is more … That’s the heart of the matter, really. I tried to put myself in the place of a Muslim, and I realized that, in reality, they are in a totally schizophrenic situation. Because overall Muslims aren’t interested in economic issues, their big issues are what we nowadays call societal issues. On these issues, obviously, they are very far from the left and even further from the Green Party. Just think of gay marriage and you’ll see what I mean, but the same is true across the board. And one doesn’t really see why they’d vote for the right, much less for the extreme right, which utterly rejects them. So if a Muslim wants to vote, what’s he supposed to do? The truth is, he’s in an impossible situation. He has no representation whatsoever. It would be wrong to say that this religion has no political consequences—it does. So does Catholicism, for that matter, even if the Catholics have been more or less marginalized. For those reasons, it seems to me, a Muslim party makes a lot of sense.

But to imagine that such a party might find itself poised to win a presidential election seven years from now …

I agree, it’s not very realistic. For two reasons, actually. First—and this is the most difficult thing to imagine—the Muslims would have to succeed in getting along with each other. That would take someone extremely intelligent and with an extraordinary political talent, qualities that I give to my character Ben Abbes. But an extreme talent is, by definition, an unusual occurrence. But supposing he existed, the party could take off, but it would take longer than seven years. If we look at the way the Muslim Brotherhood has done it, we see regional networks, charities, cultural centers, prayer centers, vacation centers, health care, something not unlike what the Communist Party did. If you ask me, in a country where poverty will continue to spread, this party could attract a lot more than just “average” Muslims, if I can put it that way, because really there is no longer such a thing as an “average” Muslim since we now have people converting who are not at all of North African origin … But such a process would take several decades. The sensationalism of the media plays a negative role, really. For example, they loved the story of the guy living in a little village in Normandy, as French as he could be, not even from a broken home, who converted and went off to wage jihad in Syria. But we can reasonably assume that for every guy like that there are several dozen who convert and don’t go off to wage jihad in Syria, who don’t do anything of the kind. After all, one doesn’t wage jihad for the fun of it, that sort of thing only interests people who are strongly motivated by doing violence, which is to say, necessarily a minority.

You could also say that what really interests those people is going to Syria, rather than converting.

I disagree. I think there is a real need for God and that the return of religion is not a slogan but a reality, and that it is very much on the rise.

That hypothesis is central to the book, but we know that it has been discredited for many years by numerous researchers, who have shown that we are actually witnessing a progressive secularization of Islam, and that violence and radicalism should be understood as the death throes of Islamism. That is the argument made by Olivier Roy, and many other people who have worked on this question for more than twenty years.

This is not what I have observed, although in North and South America, Islam has benefited less than the evangelicals. This is not a French phenomenon, it’s almost global. I don’t know about Asia, but the case of Africa is interesting because there you have the two great religious powers on the rise—evangelical Christianity and Islam. I remain in many ways a Comtean, and I don’t believe that a society can survive without religion.

But why did you decide to tell these things in such a dramatically exaggerated way when even you acknowledge that the idea of a Muslim president in 2022 is unrealistic?

That must be my mass market side, my “thriller” side.

You wouldn’t call it your Éric Zemmour side?

I don’t know, I haven’t read his book. What does he say, exactly?

He and a number of other writers overlap, despite their differences, in describing a contemporary France, which strikes me as essentially fantastical, where the menace of Islam looms over French society and is one of its principal features. In the plot of your novel, it seems to me, you accept this as a premise and you promote the same description of contemporary France that we find in the work of those intellectuals today.

I don’t know, I only know the title of Zemmour’s book [Le Suicide français], and this is not at all the way I see things. I don’t think we are witnessing a French suicide. I think we are seeing practically the opposite. Europe is committing suicide and, in the middle of Europe, France is struggling desperately to survive. It is almost the only country that is fighting to survive, the only country whose demographics allow it to survive. Suicide is a matter of demographics, it’s the best and most effective way to commit suicide. That’s why France is not committing suicide at all. What’s more, for people to convert is a sign of hope, not a threat. It means they aspire to a new kind of society. That said, I don’t think people convert for social reasons, their reasons for converting are deeper—even if my book contradicts me slightly, Huysmans being the classic case of a man who converts for reasons that are purely aesthetic. Really, the questions that worry Pascal leave Huysmans cold. He never mentions them. I almost have trouble imagining such an aesthete. For him, beauty was the proof. The beauty of rhyme, of paintings, of music proved the existence of God.

This brings us back to the question of suicide, since Baudelaire said of Huysmans that the only choice he could make was between suicide or conversion …

No, it was Barbey d’Aurevilly who made that remark, which is fair enough, especially after reading À rebours. I reread it closely and, in the end, it really is Christian. It’s astonishing.

To go back to the question of your unrealistic exaggerations, in your book you describe, in a very blurry and vague way, various world events, and yet the reader never knows quite what these are. This takes us into the realm of fantasy, doesn’t it, into the politics of fear.

Yes, perhaps. Yes, the book has a scary side. I use scare tactics.

Like imagining the prospect of Islam taking over the country?

Actually, it’s not clear what we are meant to be afraid of, nativists or Muslims. I leave that unresolved.

Have you asked yourself what the effect might be of a novel based on such a hypothesis?

None. No effect whatsoever.

You don’t think it will help reinforce the image of France that I just described, in which Islam hangs overhead like the sword of Damocles, like the most frightening thing of all?

In any case, that’s pretty much all the media talks about, they couldn’t talk about it more. It would be impossible to talk about it more than they already do, so my book won’t have any effect.

Doesn’t it make you want to write about something else so as not to join the pack?

No, part of my work is to talk about what everyone is talking about, objectively. I belong to my own time.

You remark in your novel that French intellectuals tend to avoid feeling any responsibility, but have you asked yourself about your own responsibilities as a writer?

But I am not an intellectual. I don’t take sides, I defend no regime. I deny all responsibility, I claim utter irresponsibility—except when I discuss literature in my novels, then I am engaged as a literary critic. But essays are what change the world.

Not novels?

Of course not. Though I suspect this book by Zemmour is really too long. I think Marx’s Capital is too long. It’s actually the Communist Manifesto that got read and changed the world. Rousseau changed the world, he sometimes knew how to go straight to the point. It’s simple, if you want to change the world, you have to say, Here’s how the world is and here’s what must be done. You can’t lose yourself in novelistic considerations. That’s ineffectual.

But you don’t need me to tell you how a novel can be used as an epistemological tool. That was the subject of The Map and the Territory. In this book, I feel that you have adopted categories of description, oppositions, that are worse than dubious—the sort of categories relied on by the editors of Causeur, or by Alain Finkielkraut, Éric Zemmour, even Renaud Camus. For example, the “opposition” between antiracism and secularism.

One cannot deny there is a contradiction there.

I don’t see it. On the contrary, the same people are often militant antiracists and fervent defenders of secularism, with both ways of thinking rooted in the Enlightenment.

Look, the Enlightenment is dead, may it rest in peace. A striking example? The left wing candidate on Olivier Besancenot’s ticket who wore the veil, there’s a contradiction for you. But only the Muslims are in an actually schizophrenic situation. On the level of what we customarily call values, Muslims have more in common with the extreme right than with the left. There is a more fundamental opposition between a Muslim and an atheist than between a Muslim and a Catholic. That seems obvious to me.

But I don’t understand the connection with racism …

That’s because there is none. Objectively speaking, there is none. When I was tried for racism and acquitted, a decade ago, the prosecutor remarked, correctly, that the Muslim religion was not a racial trait. This has become even more obvious today. So we have extended the domain of “racism” by inventing the crime of islamophobia.

The word may be badly chosen, but there do exist forms of stigma toward groups or categories of person, which are forms of racism …

No, islamophobia is not a kind of racism. If anything has become obvious, it’s that.

Islamophobia serves as a screen for a kind of racism that can no longer be expressed because it’s against the law.

I think that’s just false. I don’t agree.

You rely on another dubious dichotomy, the opposition between anti-Semitism and racism, when actually we can point to many moments in history when those two things have gone hand in hand.

I think anti-Semitism has nothing to do with racism. I’ve spent time trying to understand anti-Semitism, as it happens. One’s first impulse is to connect it with racism. But what kind of racism is it when a person can’t say whether somebody is Jewish or not Jewish, because the difference can’t be seen? Racism is more elementary than that, it’s a different skin color …

No, because cultural racism has been with us for a long time.

But now you’re asking words to mean something they don’t. Racism is simply when you don’t like somebody because he belongs to another race, because he hasn’t got the same color skin that you do, or the same features, et cetera. You can’t stretch the word to give it some higher meaning.

But since, from a biological point of view, “races” don’t exist, racism is necessarily cultural.

But racism exists, apparently, all around us. Obviously it has existed from the moment when races first began mixing … Be honest, Sylvain! You know very well that a racist is someone who doesn’t like somebody else because he has black skin or because he has an Arab face. That’s what racism is.

Or because his values or his culture are …

No, that’s a different problem, I’m sorry.

Because he is polygamous, for example.

Ah, well, one can be shocked by polygamy without being the least bit racist. That must be the case for lots of people who are not the least bit racist. But let’s go back to anti-Semitism, because we’ve gotten off topic. Seeing as how no one has ever been able to tell whether somebody is Jewish just by his appearance or even by his way of life, since by the time anti-Semitism really developed, very few Jews had a Jewish way of life, what could antisemitism really mean? It’s not a kind of racism. All you have to do is read the texts to realize that anti-Semitism is simply a conspiracy theory—there are hidden people who are responsible for all the unhappiness in the world, who are plotting against us, there’s an invader in our midst. If the world is going badly, it’s because of the Jews, because of Jewish banks … It’s a conspiracy theory.

But in Soumission, isn’t there a conspiracy theory—the idea that a “great replacement,” to use the words of Renaud Camus, is underway, that Muslims are seizing power?

I don’t know much about this “grand replacement” theory, but I gather it has to do with race. Whereas in my book, there is no mention of immigration. That’s not the subject.

It’s not necessarily racial, it can be religious. In this case, your book describes the replacement of the Catholic religion by Islam.

No. My book describes the destruction of the philosophy handed down by the Enlightenment, which no longer makes sense to anyone, or to very few people. Catholicism, by contrast, is doing rather well. I would maintain that an alliance between Catholics and Muslims is possible. We’ve seen it happen before, it could happen again.

You who have become an agnostic, you can look on cheerfully and watch the destruction of Enlightenment philosophy?

Yes. It has to happen sometime and it might as well be now. In this sense, too, I am a Comtean. We are in what he calls the metaphysical stage, which began in the Middle Ages and whose whole point was to destroy the phase that preceded it. In itself, it can produce nothing, just emptiness and unhappiness. So yes, I am hostile to Enlightenment philosophy, I need to make that perfectly clear.

Why did you choose to set your novel in the world of academia? Because it embodies the Enlightenment?

Is it all right to say I don’t know? Because really, I don’t think I do. The truth is that I wanted there to be a long subplot dealing with Huysmans, that’s where I got the idea of making my character an academic.

Did you know from the beginning that you would write the novel in the first person?

Yes, because it was a play on Huysmans. It was like that from the beginning.

Once again, you’ve written a character who is partly a self-portrait, not entirely, but … there is the death of his parents, for example.

Yes, I have used things, even if the details are really quite different. My main characters are never self-portraits, but they are always projections. For example, what if I’d read Huysmans when I was young, if I’d studied literature and become a professor? I imagine lives that I haven’t led.

While allowing actual events to insert themselves in your fictional lives.

I use moments that have struck me in real life, yes. But more and more I tend to transpose them. In this book, all that’s left of reality is the theoretical element—the death of the father—but actually everything about it is different. My father was very different from this guy, his death didn’t happen that way at all. Life just gives me the basic ideas.

In writing this book did you feel you were a Cassandra, a prophet of doom?

You can’t really describe this book as a pessimistic prediction. At the end of the day, things don’t go all that badly, really.

Not so badly for the men, but for the women …

Yes, that’s a whole other problem. But it seems to me that the project of rebuilding the Roman empire isn’t so stupid, if you reorient Europe toward the south the thing starts to make a kind of sense, even if it doesn’t make sense right now. Politically, one might even welcome this development—it’s not really a catastrophe.

And yet the book is extraordinarily sad.

Yes, it has a strong underlying sadness. In my opinion, the ambiguity culminates in the last sentence—“I would have nothing to mourn.” Really, one could come away feeling exactly the opposite. The character has two things to mourn—Myriam and the Black Madonna. But he happens not to mourn them. What makes the book sad is a sort of ambience of resignation.

How would you place this novel in relation to your other books?

You might say I did several things that I’d wanted to do for a long time, things I’d never done before. Like having a very important character whom one never sees, namely Ben Abbes. I also think it’s the saddest ending to a love plot that I’ve ever written, because it’s the most banal—out of sight, out of mind. They had feelings. In general, there is a much stronger feeling of entropy than in my other books. It has a somber, crepuscular side, which accounts for the sadness of its tone. For example, if Catholicism doesn’t work, that’s because it’s already run its course, it seems to belong to the past, it has defeated itself. Islam is an image of the future. Why has the idea of the Nation stalled out? Because it’s been abused too long.

There is no trace of romanticism here, much less lyricism. We’ve moved on to decadence.

That’s true. The fact that I started with Huysmans must have something to do with this. Huysmans couldn’t go back to romanticism, but for him it was still possible to convert to Catholicism. The clearest point of connection with my other books is the idea that religion, of some kind, is necessary. That idea is there in many of my books. In this one, too, only now it’s an existing religion.

Whereas earlier one might have invented a religion, along Comtean lines.

Auguste Comte tried in vain to create a religion and, indeed, I have sometimes created religions in my books. The difference is that this one really exists.

What is the place of humor in this book?

There are comic characters here and there. I would guess that it’s about the same as usual, really, with the same number of ridiculous characters.

We haven’t spoken much about women. Once again you will attract criticism on that front.

Certainly a feminist is not likely to love this book. But I can’t do anything about that.

And yet you were shocked when people described Whatever as misogynistic. This book won’t help your case.

I still don’t think I’m a misogynist, really. I would say that this isn’t the crucial thing, in any case. The thing that may rub people the wrong way is that I show how feminism is demographically doomed. So the underlying idea, which may really upset people in the end, is that ideology doesn’t matter much compared to demographics.

This book is not meant as a provocation?

I accelerate history, but no, I can’t say that the book is a provocation—if that means saying things I consider fundamentally untrue just to get on people’s nerves. I condense an evolution that is, in my opinion, realistic.

While you were writing or rereading the book, did you anticipate any reactions to its publication?

I still can’t predict these things, not really.

Some might be surprised that you chose to go in this direction when your last book was greeted as such a triumph that it silenced your critics.

The true answer is that, frankly, I didn’t choose. The book started with a conversion to Catholicism that should have taken place but didn’t.

Isn’t there something despairing about this gesture, which you didn’t really choose?

The despair comes from saying good-bye to a civilization, however ancient. But in the end the Koran turns out to be much better than I thought, now that I’ve reread it—or rather, read it. The most obvious conclusion is that the jihadists are bad Muslims. Obviously, as with all religious texts, there is room for interpretation, but an honest reading will conclude that a holy war of aggression is not generally sanctioned, prayer alone is valid. So you might say I’ve changed my opinion. That’s why I don’t feel that I’m writing out of fear. I feel, rather, that we can make arrangements. The feminists will not be able to, if we’re being completely honest. But I and lots of other people will.

You could replace the word feminists with women, no?

No, you can’t replace the word feminists with women. Really you can’t. I make it clear that women can be converts, too.

Sylvain Bourmeau is a producer at France Culture and an associate professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris.

Translated from French by Lorin Stein.

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015 ... -new-book/

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 02 Feb 2015 09:52

its a huge headache for GOI agencies to track and monitor all these people who want to join ISIS but cannot get into its borders.

there should be a heart to heart talk about whether they want to remain this side of the ravine(our flag, our culture, family, relatives) or cross the event horizon and live under pure and peaceful islam of the caliphate. let them think it over for 2 weeks and then take the call. if they want to go fine, but relinguish the indian passports since global ummah recognizes no passports or nationality and all must bow before the one true lord. if they want to remain that is also fine, but agencies will come down hard on them if they deviate 1mm off the mainline.

let people choose with their heart instead of being resentful and having to hide true feelings.

harbans · Post by **harbans** » 02 Feb 2015 23:59

^Precisely the reason we have to identify now our values that won't be broken ever. A sort of preamble. A sort of Commandants. A sort of unchangeable set of things we adhere to beyond any other. There is only one set of 10 value/ethics/morals/keys whatever usage one defines it, but these are established in our Sanskriti since millenia. These are the reason for our resistance and existence till date despite our lost lands. Once we identify these Tenets, we can say yes, if you feel so much affinity to the Desert Values why not go there. Agreements can be set in place with Nations to absorb such rabids. From Kashmir to KK we need to establish our Tenets and clear red lines minus PC. And no, there is no relocation again of Desert cult tenets in the midst of our presently retained National borders. There will be a fight, mass death but never again should any other value/ ethic/ tenet system alien to this land be established ever. Our existence will be at stake if these ISIS kinds are allowed to grow and outbreed those that believe in Dharmic Tenet.

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 03 Feb 2015 00:38

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/ ... ZI20150202
Anti-Islam group PEGIDA holds first Austria march

(Reuters) - PEGIDA, the anti-Islam movement born in Germany, drew hundreds of supporters and counter-demonstrators to the streets of Vienna when it held its first march in neighboring Austria on Monday.

With 1,200 police officers deployed in Austria's capital as a precaution, around 250 marchers carrying Austrian flags and chanting "we are the people" faced off against a like number of protesters shouting "down with PEGIDA".

Ranks of police in riot gear separated the two camps. A police spokesman said there had been no incidents or arrests.

Earlier, thousands of people had marched in a protest against PEGIDA.

The rally followed violent demonstrations on Friday by left-wing activists protesting against an annual ball in Vienna that traditionally draws right-wing figures.

Religious sensibilities are on the rise in Austria. The government has proposed requiring standardized German-language translations of the Koran and prohibiting foreign funding of Muslim organizations on its soil in a draft law aimed in part at tackling militants.

The initiative follows alarm over official estimates that about 170 people from Austria have joined up with Islamist militant forces fighting in the Middle East.

The sudden rise of PEGIDA - "Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West" - in Germany rattled that country's political establishment by staging rallies that brought up to 25,000 onto the streets of Dresden.

But it has fallen into disarray after five of its founding members dropped out to start a rival movement.

Georg Immanuel Nagel, a 28-year-old philosophy student from Vienna and spokesman for the Austrian offshoot, told newspaper Die Presse he wanted an end to the "appeasement policy" for the roughly half-million Muslims who live in Austria, a traditionally Roman Catholic nation of 8.5 million.

He called for legislation banning "Islamism" so that people promoting Sharia - or Islamic - law could be punished, just as Austria outlaws glorification of Nazism.

Nazi Germany in 1938 annexed Austria, whose 200,000-strong Jewish population was wiped out in the Holocaust.

Heinz Christian Strache, leader of the far-right opposition Freedom Party that is neck and neck in opinion polls with the centrist coalition parties, has expressed support for PEGIDA, which he has called a "serious civil rights movement".

akashganga · Post by **akashganga** » 03 Feb 2015 06:41

Aditya_V wrote:Bobby Jindal statements will get the Media in India who were so enamored of him in a twist. he is virulently anti modi and hates anything to do with India and yet anti muslim.

Bobby Jindal was raised hindu by his hindu parents. Then he abandoned his religion converted to christianity and is governor of a very conservative southern US state. He is an EJ. His party republican party of USA is more christian fundamentalist than say shiv sena as a hindu party. Republican party will never allow a hindu to be a leader. My 2 cents.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 03 Feb 2015 07:13

akashganga wrote: Bobby Jindal was raised hindu by his hindu parents. Then he abandoned his religion converted to christianity and is governor of a very conservative southern US state. He is an EJ. His party republican party of USA is more christian fundamentalist than say shiv sena as a hindu party. Republican party will never allow a hindu to be a leader. My 2 cents.

Teacher tells her students, "I will give 5 Pounds to the one who tells me who was the greatest man on earth". The Irish girl says St Patrick. The Buddhist boy says "The Buddha". Abdul says "Mohammad". Teacher then asks little Jignes(h) . Jignes says "Jesus Christ" and gets 5 Pounds. Teacher asks "But aren't you Hindu? Why did you say Jesus?". The boy replies, "I know Krishna was the greatest, but for Jignes, bijness is bijness."

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 03 Feb 2015 15:46

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5177/ ... es-britain

In August 2007, researchers at Manchester University predicted that the number of native white Britons in Birmingham would drop by nearly one-fifth over the next 20 years, from 65% in 2006 to 48% in 2027. At the same time, the number of Pakistanis in the city would nearly quadruple, increasing from 13% in 2006 to 48% in 2027.

In January 2013, Manchester University statistician Ludi Simpson analyzed official data from the 2011 census and found that native white Britons are already a minority in Leicester (45%), Luton (45%) and Slough (35%). He also forecast that they would be a minority in Birmingham by 2019, nearly a decade earlier than the previous estimate.

Oh, glorious Karma!

Tuvaluan · Post by **Tuvaluan** » 03 Feb 2015 19:18

Utterly fascinating how the oiseaules in AP create a story that plays down the IS terrorist scum and does the "terrorism has no religion" schtick

Kenji Goto’s words, now more than four years old, have taken on a new poignancy.

“Closing my eyes and holding still. It’s the end if I get mad or scream. It’s close to a prayer. Hate is not for humans. Judgment lies with God. That’s what I learned from my Arabic brothers and sisters.”

So apparently, "hate is not for humans" is what he learned from his arabic brothers and sisters who just beheaded him out of what can only be true love, going by the process of elimination, logically speaking.

http://indianexpress.com/article/world/ ... oes-viral/

It is getting very hard not to despise the mofos in the west who provide cover to islamist terrorism for their own realpolitik reasons -- US/Western govts. are the B-team of the IS scum and their financiers in the Middle East countries.

akashganga · Post by **akashganga** » 03 Feb 2015 19:37

shiv wrote:
akashganga wrote: Bobby Jindal was raised hindu by his hindu parents. Then he abandoned his religion converted to christianity and is governor of a very conservative southern US state. He is an EJ. His party republican party of USA is more christian fundamentalist than say shiv sena as a hindu party. Republican party will never allow a hindu to be a leader. My 2 cents.
Teacher tells her students, "I will give 5 Pounds to the one who tells me who was the greatest man on earth". The Irish girl says St Patrick. The Buddhist boy says "The Buddha". Abdul says "Mohammad". Teacher then asks little Jignes(h) . Jignes says "Jesus Christ" and gets 5 Pounds. Teacher asks "But aren't you Hindu? Why did you say Jesus?". The boy replies, "I know Krishna was the greatest, but for Jignes, bijness is bijness."

Watching Bobby Jindal's talks and extreme right wing policies he is of EJ variety and not a bjiness is bjiness kind.

It is unfortunate that hindus in US do not assert their hindu identity. I salute US congress women Tulsi Gabbord for openly saying she is a hindu even though both her parents are non-indian origin. I have seen top Jewish guys openly asserting their faith. My 2 cents.

uddu · Post by **uddu** » 03 Feb 2015 22:17

IS Says Jordanian Pilot Burned Alive In Video
Images of Mu'ath Al Kassasbeh's apparent murder are circulated on Twitter and show a man in a cage engulfed in flames.
http://news.sky.com/story/1420656/is-sa ... e-in-video

Arabs must start adopting their pre Islamic Pagan faith.

Jarita · Post by **Jarita** » 04 Feb 2015 03:08

Tuvaluan wrote:Utterly fascinating how the oiseaules in AP create a story that plays down the IS terrorist scum and does the "terrorism has no religion" schtick

Kenji Goto’s words, now more than four years old, have taken on a new poignancy.

“Closing my eyes and holding still. It’s the end if I get mad or scream. It’s close to a prayer. Hate is not for humans. Judgment lies with God. That’s what I learned from my Arabic brothers and sisters.”
So apparently, "hate is not for humans" is what he learned from his arabic brothers and sisters who just beheaded him out of what can only be true love, going by the process of elimination, logically speaking.

http://indianexpress.com/article/world/ ... oes-viral/

It is getting very hard not to despise the mofos in the west who provide cover to islamist terrorism for their own realpolitik reasons -- US/Western govts. are the B-team of the IS scum and their financiers in the Middle East countries.

He was an evangelical who convert 2 decades ago. That is why much ado about what he said to support conversions and oomph up the ground troops. They are not playing down ROP but playing up ROL. Arab brothers and sisters means bible. I hope the Japanese see through this though emotions are high.
Strange how a lot of the journalists being executed have been evangelicals.
Regarding Moaz the message to the believers is that if you side with the enemy your death will be as gruesome as Moaz's. We will not hold back with the believers for your betrayal is greater. It is a visceral blow because the Islamic factions supporting western interests so far will get a death blow to morale. Those that ISIS could not convince through the Islamic brotherhood message, they will convince through fear. ISIS is very very clever. They are fighting an asymmetric war but really making the most of their access through uncontrolled media. Such propaganda would never have been allowed 30-40 years ago.
ISIS target re. Moaz burning is really the Muslim population.
The executions are a reward for the Muslim population that is on their side and to shake the neutral ones. See how we are bringing the great powers to their knees. The brutal killings of Muslims is to put fear.

Rony · Post by **Rony** » 04 Feb 2015 06:32

Islamist Savages

WARNING: ISIS Video of burning the Jordanian Pilot victim alive
Read more at http://www.dmldaily.com/warning-isis-vi ... 11OtCCF.99

KJo · Post by **KJo** » 04 Feb 2015 06:50

Rony wrote:Islamist Savages

WARNING: ISIS Video of burning the Jordanian Pilot victim alive
Read more at http://www.dmldaily.com/warning-isis-vi ... 11OtCCF.99

I think the word "Islamist" has been invented to deflect the contribution of Islam in this. These are Islamic savages.

akashganga · Post by **akashganga** » 04 Feb 2015 06:56

uddu wrote:.....

Arabs must start adopting their pre Islamic Pagan faith.

I have read that arabs in pre-islamic time were much more civilised, and decent people. Birth of islam was the start of their civilizational destruction.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 04 Feb 2015 07:38

Voice of America
French Soldiers Attacked Outside Jewish Community Center
Voice of America - ‎3 hours ago‎
Three French soldiers were attacked Tuesday by a knife-wielding assailant outside a Jewish community center in the southern French city of Nice.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 04 Feb 2015 07:47

TSP had threatened to expedite the hanging of 100s of TTP types lodged in sarkari jails in response to the school attack.

what happened, did it follow through or back out after the usual shouting?

Sachin · Post by **Sachin** » 04 Feb 2015 09:51

Singha wrote:TSP had threatened to expedite the hanging of 100s of TTP types lodged in sarkari jails in response to the school attack.
what happened, did it follow through or back out after the usual shouting?

At least 9-10 of them have been executed (by hanging). I remember at least reading three news reports which mentions executions carried out in Pakistan. And these were always of executions of 1-3 people minimum at the same time. A few terrorists who killed police personnel have also been sent to meet their 72.