HRS International

On Sunday, September 12, the New York Times ran a selection of letters from readers reacting to debates about the Ground Zero mosque and the planned book burning in Gainesville, Florida. The thrust of the letters was that any concern about Islam was a sign of ignorance and that criticism of Islam was an act of bigotry against Muslims.

Which country in Europe has done the best job of appeasing Islam and selling out democratic values for an illusion of social harmony? It’s a tough question. After all, the French have allowed the suburbs of their major cities to become no-go zones. In Britain the Archbishop of Canterbury has defended sharia law. In the Netherlands the queen responded to the murder of Theo van Gogh by shunning his funeral and instead paying a friendly visit to a Muslim community center.

Hold on tight: a professor of Islamic and Arabic Studies in Germany supports Yusuf al-Qaradawi in a book about Qaradawi, Global Mufti, which will be presented at a book festival in Berlin later this month. The reason for this support is that Qaradawi has issued a fatwa in which he allows women to kill Jews without having to ask their parents or husbands for permission. The women are even allowed to carry out suicide bombings without veils. For this female German researcher, this is a sign of “true gender equality.” Bravo!

As we approach the ninth anniversary of the day on which jihadists murdered 2,977 people on American soil, it’s nothing less than obscene to see American leaders quaking in their boots at the thought of some clown in Florida offending the Muslim world.

How could so unprecedented a collapse of will and principle have taken place? How is it possible that, in the words of Bernard Lewis from the video discussion, Muslims “now consider Europe the House of Islam”? And that the European intelligentsia have given them the key to the front door?

“Folks, defend the building of Park51 if you will. But don’t defend it by repeating absurd claims about Islam that have been discredited again and again. Don’t close your eyes to the basic facts about Islam.” Thus writes Bruce Bawer in a distinguished essay for rights.no.

The President has made a disastrous decision on the Ground Zero mosque.

Ibn Warraq: Covert operations appear to have slowed down Iran's nuclear Program.

To survive at all and preserve our cherished rights and freedoms, our cultures, our religions, our civilizations, we must declare an ideological war against Universal Jihadists. We must do so now. They long ago declared war on us, says the Republican candidate for Congress, Vijay Kumar.

BRUCE BAWER: A handful of far-left organizations have been given enormous power to silence those they disagree with.

IBN WARRAQ: Right on Top of the Bodily Remains of 9/11 Victims.

Erik Schjenken’s life changed in Sofienberg Park in 2007. That was when Schjenken, then an ambulance driver, made a decision which the power elite and the anti-racism industry – with the generous help of the media – made use of to label Schjenken a racist. He was later cleared of racism charges, but the road was long and the charges obviously too heavy to bear. Now he wants Dagbladet convicted of defamation. He must be what is known as an optimist. The number of us who are victims of the media is steadily on the rise here in Norway, because that’s how the system works.

Those of us who are in our forties grew up in the 1970s and 80s as individuals. Which is to say that it never crossed our minds to think that we did not have full control over our own lives and futures . We dreamed about and flirted with love. We dreamed about and flirted with various career options. We were the world – and the world was there for us.

The newsweekly Ny Tid has found educational statistics from Statistics Norway that date back to 2008 and that they believe indicate that young men with immigrant background are ”at the top educationally.” Statistics Norway’s Lars Østby is backing them up on this. Ny Tid wonders why no other media have reported this ”news” before. But these statistics – and especially Statistics Norway’s presentation of them – raise more questions than the editors of Ny Tid seem to recognize.

Nahid Rachlin’s fate became a book, and her autobiography, “Persian Girls: A Memoir”, of course found its way to Helle Merete Brix’s crowded bookshelves. When Brix visited New York recently, she naturally took the opportunity to interview Nahid – a woman who want the most precisely because she had so little to lose.

Norwegian and Danish flags are going up in flames in Lahore in reaction to “Everybody Draw Muhammed Day!” Meanwhile, however, Pakistanis in Norway and Denmark are as silent as the grave. They’re not taking to the streets and demonstrating for freedom and in support of their beloved new homelands. They aren’t protesting passionately through the spokespeople whom they make use of when they claim their feelings have been hurt. Why not, one wonders?

It is interesting that the establishment media and commentators in Norway are almost always way behind the Internet media when it comes to understanding Islam and immigration. No newspaper in Norway, for example, has done a better job of giving Islamist voices a megaphone than Aftenposten.

Led by such institutions as the Index on Censorship, governments, universities, museums, the press and the Obama Administration, the West is fast abandoning free speech. Thus writes Ibn Warraq.

The Iranian government has participated in the Muslim Brotherhood’s effort to “destroy…Western civilization from within” by sponsoring a TV series hosted by Tariq Ramadan and targeting English-speaking viewers around the world since April 2008.

Tariq Ramadan’s current speaking tour of North America has been met with widespread enthusiasm from the media and from appeasers of Islam in all walks of life. Marc Lebuis and Étienne Harvey offer a definitive account of who Ramadan really is and what he really stands for, as demonstrated by his own words and those of the Islamic scholars he most admires.

Tariq Ramadan’s current speaking tour of North America has met with widespread enthusiasm from the media and from appeasers of Islam in all walks of life.

In the mainstream Western media these days, with few exceptions, knowledge about islam is forbidden knowledge, and, through a weird Orwellian alchemy, is magically transmuted in the pages of politically correct newspapers into ignorance and bigotry. Thus writes Alex Knepper for Right.no

rights.no hereby announces with great pleasure that the world-famous Islam critic and author who writes under the pseudonym Ibn Warraq has agreed to be a regular columnist for us and the Danish website sappho.dk. Warraq, who grew up in Pakistan and now lives in New York, is perhaps best known for his book Why I Am Not a Muslim.

By 2008 the Saudi government was yet to remove extremist statements from textbooks used in Saudi-financed schools in the United States, writes Ibn Warraq for rights.no.