HRS International

Robert Redeker is a prominent French author and philosopher, who against his will became internationally famous after he had to go underground because of Islamist death threats. Fortunately, Redeker has not stopped writing out of fear. In this essay, which with Redeker's permission has been translated from the French by Bruce Bawer for publication by HRS, Redeker reflects on the grotesque murder of Ilan Halimi and the anti-Semitism – or ”the new Judeophobia” – that is widespread in France's Muslim suburbs.

For many years we have been told to look to Canada when it comes to immigration and integration policy. But do we really know what's going on there? Today Fred Litwin, a Canadian, contributes an essay to rights.no in which he describes a reality entirely different from the one that we've been encouraged to believe in. Litwin depicts a country where Islamists scream racism when they are accused of having terrorist connections and where the media are quick to accuse people of Islamophobia. While the media grow increasingly chummy with Islamists, the government becomes less and less capable of taking meaningful action. And at the center of it all stands a critically weakened security apparatus.

The newspaper Bergens Tidende (BT) has changed its mind about the Muhammed cartoons. Under its previous editor, BT’s policy was that freedom of expression is not absolute.and that it can be more important to protect religions and cultures. In the wake of the recent revelations about the terrorist plans targeting the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, BT has decided that it is individuals who need protection, not cultures.

The Danish imam Abdul Wahid Pedersen became so angry last night that he stomped off the TV program Deadline on DR 2. The reason was that social consultant Kristina Aamand asked the imam why he didn’t explain in his Friday prayers that there is nothing in the Koran that requires a woman to be a virgin on her wedding night.

Is it an explosive revelation of actions bordering on treason by the Labour government of Tony Blair – or a thoroughly mundane account of policymaking as usual that right-wingers have blown out of all proportion? Over the last few days, a newspaper column by a sometime Labour Party insider has raised a ruckus on the scept’red isle, and the controversy isn’t over yet. At the center of it is one critical question: did Blair’s government deliberately – and secretly – set out to transform Britain into a “multicultural” country by permitting a kind of mass-scale immigration to which he knew the British people were vehemently opposed?

We hope that the American author and women’s rights activist Dr. Phyllis Chesler will be a regular contributor to this site. Here she introduces herself to our readers with a look back at her unforgettable experience as a young wife in Afghanistan – and reflections on what she learned from it.

One of the big news stories in Denmark in recent weeks has centered on a small Copenhagen neighborhood called Tingbjerg. Over the years it has been turning gradually into a Muslim enclave in which non-Muslims have been increasingly subjected to harassment and criminality. Among these victims has been the openly gay pastor of Tingbjerg Church, who earlier this month, after several years of being persecuted by local Muslim youths, quit his post and fled the neighborhood, thereby making headlines around the country and sparking widespread discussion and debate about a very widespread phenomenon - namely, the ongoing Islamization of urban areas across Western Europe.

Many new immigrants bring with them – and live out – a view of children, women, and gays that is irreconcilable with the Norwegian way of life. A few years ago anyone who made such monstrous claims about immigrants was pushed into the closet. Such claims were interpreted as applying to all immigrants, and if one dared to be more specific about whom one was talking about, one was shoved even further back into the closet for having stigmatized certain groups. Some Norwegians still react in such ways, but most of them now realize that undesirable views and practices do cross international boundaries. But the journey from recognizing a problem to finding appropriate solutions can be a long one. So far, the magic formula has been dialogue, which in practice has turned out to be insufficiently effective. The new magic formula is courses. At best, this is the right answer at the wrong time.

We see it in France, we see it in Britain, we see it in Sweden and we see it in Denmark: young male immigrants who seek to use violence and threats to secure power in the society. Professionals – including police officers, firefighters, medical personnel, bus drivers, and for that matter clergy – are chased out of areas that are almost regarded as occupied territory. Fearing reprisal, the ordinary man in the street backs off. Researchers prefer to apply old theories to a new phenomenon – the causes, they insist, are socioeconomic – while the authorities prefer to remain silent.

The father and his third-grade daughter went to a school conference, where they were greeted by the girl’s male teacher and his female assistant. When the teacher reached out to shake the girl’s hand, the father assaulted him. The attack reflects a victim mentality, says a cultural sociologist.

A study by Statistics Norway shows that one in three Norwegian-Pakistani children has experienced at least one stay in Pakistan lasting at least a year. As HRS did in 2004, reporters for Jyllands-Posten have visited Little Norway in the Pakistani Punjab, where they met Norwegian-Pakistani children who are supposedly there to be introduced to their parents’ culture and religion. The surroundings are very luxurious and include servants.

In this piece, which appeared in the Norwegian daily Dagbladet on 4 October 2009, Hege Storhaug takes on three of that newspaper’s female journalists, Marie Simonsen, Marte Michelet, and Martine Aurdal, who in Storhaug’s view have betrayed Dagbladet’s proud historic role in the Norwegian women’s movement by turning their back on the plight of their Muslim sisters in Norway. In this regard, of course, the “three M’s” (as Storhaug calls them) are hardly unique to Norway: Storhaug’s critique is equally applicable to great swaths of the supposedly liberal media throughout the Western world.

Norway has a new government, and it has been announced that the crown prince of the Socialist Left Party, Audun Lysbakken, will be the cabinet member in charge of integration, a responsibility which has now been transferred to the Ministry of Children and Equality. This is really a victory for HRS, given that our integration efforts have always focused on women and children.

The respected American author Bruce Bawer has agreed to join forces with HRS. Bawer, who lives in Oslo, will contribute essays to HRS's website, rights.no, will translate major HRS articles into English, and will solicit, edit, and translate columns by international commentators from a range of languages into both English and Norwegian. It is both a great pleasure and honor for us to have Bawer as a colleague.

The Nobel Museum in Stockholm is hosting an exhibition about freedom of speech which asks where its boundaries lie. The museum itself has censored parts of its own exhibition – parts that, not surprisingly, are Islam-related. The question is thus obviously: Which is more offensive: exhibiting works that are critical of Islam, or censoring free speech?