Gunmen have shot dead an Islamic cleric in the Russian republic of North Ossetia in an attack that suggests militant Islamist violence in Russia’s southern Muslim provinces is spreading to nearby regions.
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If you thought New Year’s celebrations were universal around the world, think again. Muslim clerics in Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic, have issued a fatwa calling for a ban on New Year’s parties. The clerics believe the holiday is not related to Islam and the whole thing is just too expensive.
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Dinesh D’Souza, filmmaker of the documentary 2016: Obama’s America, says the work is even more relevant now that President Obama has won re-election. While it’s too early to say if the most dire predictions in the film will come true, D’Souza says he’s troubled with two recent developments: 1. Obama scheduling a trip to Russia, presumably to discuss dismantling America’s nuclear defenses 2. The continued rise in Muslim militancy around the world. He discusses these issues with Newsmax.
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French citizens march to support their values and culture, and to protest against radical Islamists migrating into the country, establishing separatist communities following Sharia law. The French media blacked out coverage of the march, which occurred this past Monday in Paris.
Author Renaud Camus, who helped to organize the event, has been outspoken in his criticism of the media for refusing to address the shortcomings of multiculturalism in France. Asked why the media angers him, Camus (no relation to Albert) replied, “Because they impose (almost) unanimously a system of interpreting the world that is a formidable machine for not seeing, not saying, not understanding…. Supported by threats, it serves to dissimulate what is happening: that is to say the changing of people, the Great Replacement, the reverse colonization.” H/T The Astute Bloggers
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The Arab Spring has not only brought democracy to Egypt, but also emboldened the nation’s most hardened radicals. Take Murgan Salem, an Egyptian Salafi Sheik who’s now calling for the Spinx and the ancient Pyramids to all be destroyed because they stand as symbols of pagan idolatry. What smart advice to render in a dirt-poor country where tourism not only accounts for many jobs, but also a much-needed infusion of foreign currency. H/T MEMRI
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Anti-Semitism runs rampant in Islamic circles, but the latest pronouncements by Mohammed Rashid Qabbani, the Grand Mufti of Lebanon, don’t just qualify as bigoted and ignorant. This guy is Looneytunes crazy — an embarrassing representative for his religion. In an interview with Al-Manar TV in Lebanon, the Grand Mufti declares the Juice orchestrated 9-11 and also financed the YouTube video The Innocence of Muslims, all in a conspiracy to persecute the world’s downtrodden Muslims. Wonder what’s in the kahvesi this dude’s drinking? H/T MEMRI TV
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Taliban assassins yesterday attacked 14-year-old Malala Yousufzai in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, leaving the girl with a bullet wound in the head. Yousufzai, winner of Pakistan’s first National Youth Peace Award, was targeted because she has been an outspoken advocate of education for girls. The attack occurred as she was making her way home from school in Mingora, the region’s largest city. Doctors at the hospital in Mingora said the young victim should recover, but Ehsanullah Ehsan, a spokesman for Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan — the Pakistani Taliban — vowed that the group would target her again if she survives. Two other girls also were injured.
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Here is a New York Times profile of Yousufzai and her family created in 2009, when she was only 11 years old. At the time, some 200 schools for girls were being closed across Pakistan in areas under control of the Taliban. The closures included a school run by Yousufzai’s father, who expressed great sadness over the edict while also refusing to leave the Swat Valley.
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An 11-year-old non-Muslim boy reported being bullied by a pack of Muslim students at his school in Sydney, Australia. The source of the conflict: The boy had brought a salami sandwich to eat at lunch. The bullies took offense, viewing the act as a religious sacrilege, falling during Ramadan. H/T BareNakedIslam
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Tunisia, the birthplace of the Arab Spring, has sunken into chaos since the toppling of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on Jan. 14, 2011. Before the revolution, Muslims, Christians, Jews and atheists lived in relative peace. But in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, radical Islamists have terrorized the nation’s minorities. Roving bands of jihadists and Salafists have desecrated churches, destroyed graves and chanted anti-Jewish slogans outside El Ghriba, Tunisia’s last functioning synagogue. The extremists spread feces on the walls of a Russian Orthodox Church, ordering the priest to remove all Christian symbols. “And if we didn’t do it, they’d resort to force,” the frightened priest says.
The moderate Ennahda party, which is now running the Tunisian government, insists these are the actions of rogue elements. “We have to convince them. It is a country for all citizens, whether Islamists or not,” says Rachid Ghannouchi, Ennahda’s leader. But his party faces an uphill struggle. Thamina Thabet from the Society for the Support of Minorities notes the Salafists have “taken control of 400 mosques and now they are teaching a new generation the way they think.” Bill Code reports from Tunisia and asks, “As religious minorities watch with unease the growing strength of puritanical Islamist groups, can a country with a proud secular tradition find its democracy?” H/T Journeyman Pictures
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